We both stopped and listened. Where was that frightening moaning sound coming from?
Like a sad cry from the grave, I told myself.
Then I saw a blur of yellow-white. A pale spot of light.
I took a few steps over the crackling leaves. I moved closer, squinting hard.
“Peter — do you see this?” I pointed.
He turned from the row of graves. He followed my gaze.
I took another few steps closer to it.
I saw a deep hole, black against the gray of the ground. An open grave.
Beside the grave, I saw some narrow tombstones. Unmarked. Tilting this way and that.
And at the head of the open grave … a wider grave marker. Like a stone tablet.
With a yellow object resting on top of it.
The mask!
The skull mask. I could see it clearly now. I could see its deep eyeholes. The open jaw slack against the front of the gravestone.
“Peter! Here it is!” I shouted. “I found it.”
He cried out. I could hear him running to me.
I stepped up to the mask. I bent down.
The skull had a hideous toothy grin on its sagging mouth. The top of the head was bumpy and crisscrossed with cracks.
I raised both hands. I hesitated for a moment. I knew something weird was about to happen. But I had no choice.
I grabbed the skull mask by the sides.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
I opened my mouth in a shriek of cold terror.
The cracked yellow skull — it wasn’t a mask.
It was hard, like stone. A real skull.
I started to lift the skull before I realized it was attached to a skeleton.
I froze. I was too stunned to let go. The skeleton rose over me. The bones were dry and yellow under the moonlight.
And as I stood there, a strong gust of wind blew through the skeleton’s rib bones.
And it moaned.
Now the skeleton rose up. Its cracked skull tilted toward me as if it was looking at me through its empty eye sockets. Its mouth was frozen in a hideous grin. It had only two or three broken teeth left in its mouth.
Peter bumped up beside me. He tugged my hands off the sides of the skull. Then he uttered a cry as the wind blew through the skeleton’s bones and the skeleton moaned again. The leg bones made a cracking sound as they stood taller.
I tried to stagger back, away from the ugly thing.
But it moved with surprising speed.
It grabbed my throat with its hard, bony fingers.
I saw it grab Peter with its other fleshless hand.
We both screamed as the skeleton lifted us off the ground — and heaved us into the open grave.