July 19, Friday

I WAS walking to the cemetery carrying my gigantic flashlight in case the sun set before I could lock the gate and racewalk back to the house. At a rumbling noise behind me, I turned to see a small bus lurching over the uneven road, going much too fast. I jumped into the ditch to get out of the way as it sped by.

Who would be visiting the cemetery at this hour?

On a bus?

By the time I reached the gate, the bus had parked and a couple of dozen people had disembarked. A white-haired woman wearing a colorful caftan seemed to be leading the motley group of people. She passed out flashlights, then clapped her hands and they all crowded around as dusk descended.

I gathered it was some kind of tour. I stopped at the gate to watch and listen.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the woman announced in a ringmaster's voice, "this is the infamous Whisper Graveyard. There are more alleged witches buried here than anywhere else in the south. Two families—the Benson family and the Whisper family—lived here in Irving. They're reputed to have descended from witches burned during the Salem witch trials, and they fled here to hide out."

I smirked. Irving seemed to be the place people went when they wanted to disappear.

"Despite an ages-old rivalry between the families, they had to depend on each other, and they worshipped together. The Whisper family was much more prosperous, and they allowed the Benson family to bury their dead here, although you can see the distinctive divide where the Whispers were buried on one side and the Bensons on the other."

She indicated the center path with a flourish of her arms.

"Then the unthinkable happened—Charles Whisper and Sophia Benson fell in love, infuriating both families and renewing the feud. The Whispers and the Bensons allegedly turned their black magic on each other. Charles and Sophia's romance was a true Romeo and Juliet story that sadly ended in a suspected murder-suicide." She pointed to their graves and sighed.

"And the worst part of this sad story is that Charles and Sophia had a child named Rose. Besides being beautiful, she was allegedly a Grand High Witch, the most powerful kind of witch known to the Wiccan religious. But she, too, died tragically in this very cemetery only a few months ago, her cause of death, unknown."

I frowned. It didn't seem right that the woman was embellishing Rose's overdose for the sake of the story.

"And you are my first group to see Rose's headstone. Gather around, quickly. For darkness is falling and who knows what could happen if we tarry."

The group rushed forward to see Rose's headstone, then just as quickly rushed back to the bus, staring at me as if I might suddenly elevate.

"Please hurry," I announced loudly. "I need to lock the gate."

"Yes, hurry," the woman said, shooing them. "The gates have to be locked to keep the witches' spirits within the cemetery."

I snagged her arm as she passed. "That's not remotely true."

She gave me a haughty look, then leaned in. "Really? Then leave the gate unlocked and see what happens."

She palmed a card into my hand, then climbed onto the bus. When the vehicle pulled away, the woman was staring at me through a rear window.

I pushed down a sense of foreboding. I knew fiction when I heard it.

But I locked the gate anyway.

And ran all the way back to the house.