(Art Cover done by my Uncle Joe)
THE ROSE
THE MISTY OCTOBER BREEZE BLEW AGAINST ROBBIE’S NECK, CAUSING THE HAIRS TO STAND ON END. The crescent moon reflected very little light onto the small gloomy cemetery. The shriveled twisted leafless trees swayed with the chilly gusts. The few gravestones that there were, cast tiny reaching shadows.
His parents were buried here. His mother died in her hospital bed, she was diagnosed with a disease. His dad died the next day in a car accident; he slid on a patch of ice. They lay side-by-side with cheap rock headstones. It was all Robbie could afford. He didn’t get a lot of help from the town, his family just moved there because of the doctor offerings at the hospital.
Another whirl of wind whipped up and made his dark bowl-cut hair swirl around his head. Robbie groped the headstones; it was the closest he could get to his parents. They lived together in some world out there and left him to fend for himself. His green catlike eyes watered and tears poured like a waterfall. This would be the last time he would visit their resting place.
The graveyard was weird! Eerie things happened every night. For example, the white orange speckled cat that refused to let Robbie into the cemetery. She slept by the rusty old gate and didn’t budge. When he awoke her, she attacked with anger as if she was defending the gate. Robbie had to get gloves so he could lift the cat away and slip in before she retaliated. Or the two crows that perched on the same gnarled tree. They would watch him. Gathering courage they would fly to the ground and hop closer with every passing minute. But the crows would lose interest and always fly to the black stoned grave deserted in the far corner of the cemetery. They would perch on the grave and caw every now and then. Making Robbie jump at every ghastly squawk.
But the eeriest thing of all was the reappearing black rose that lay across his parents’ graves. At first he thought it belonged to someone else and wedged it in one of the trees, hoping its owner would find it. But it returned! He started to break the stem and tear each of the pedals off and throw it away, but it always returned. It was always lying in the same place every night Robbie came back to visit the death yard. He told his friends about it, but they didn’t believe him.
Every time Robbie came back to the cemetery the crows would get closer and closer. The cat would put up more of a fight to move. And that stupid black rose would be there! As the things got weirder he vowed this would be his last night visiting his parents, but it never was. Robbie always showed up at the graves.
The wind howled again. Robbie heard the faint sound, leave. That’s crazy, he thought, the wind doesn’t speak. But yet — crows don’t walk about at night pestering people, cats don’t put up fights for gates, and black roses don’t regrow exactly alike and walk around to find my parents’ graves, Robbie screamed in his head. But here — they did!
There was a rustle of leaves from behind him. Robbie looked instinctively at the lonely dark grave nestled in the corner. The leaves have been stirred. He walked cautiously over to the creepy grave and hid behind the closest wrinkled tree. The crows flew from his parents’ graves to the black grave and cawed as loud as they could. He heard the cat’s screaming meow and her clawing at the squeaky gate. The wind howled louder, leave. And as all the noise continued something grabbed him!
He whispered, “Revenge is sweet.”
All the noise silenced! Nothing was heard! The pale ghostly man grabbed Robbie’s hand! Robbie looked at the man’s face; he was one of his parent’s patients that disappeared into depression with his incurable deadly disease. The man flashed a black rose before Robbie’s eyes and pricked his finger with a thorn.
Robbie’s life flashed before him. The rose! He remembered a rose on the dashboard of his father’s out-of-control car before he jumped out to save his life, and then watched his dad crash into a telephone pole. He remembered the vase next to his mother’s hospital bed… It supported a single rose. And now — the black rose at Robbie’s parents’ graves. The thing that was in common with his parents’ deaths was a single dot of dried blood on their index fingers and the roses! But then Robbie could remember no more.
Robbie’s killer has never been found, because no fingerprints were seen anywhere on Robbie’s body.
There was only a trickle of blood from Robbie’s pointer finger, the only clue. There was no mysterious cat, no wind, and no black rose. But every night instead of two crows there would be three that flew from Robbie and his parents’ graves to the very weird abandoned grave in the corner of the graveyard.
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