A group of aspiring young paranormal researchers who were also minor YouTube celebrities hear of an extremely haunted cemetery in northern Michigan. Rumor had it that hauntings happened night and day, with sightings of wandering children and statues that weep. The cemetery resided in a small town that was first inhabited by Native Americans, and then occupied by Dutch settlers. Because the town is small, it is quite poor, and the cemetery has fallen into disrepair.
Even so, the descendants who remain hold precious their ancestral cemetery. Although the town is poor, they brought into their hire Elder Barbas, a large, grizzled man with more scars than humor. He let no one who was not the bereaved into the cemetery: not visitors, not news media, and certainly not the droves of ghost hunters and college students looking for a cheap, drunken thrill who showed up after the cemetery was featured on the basic cable history network show Paranormal Happenings.
Until then, the largely unknown cemetery stood relatively quiet, save for the odd ghost hunting team that found it purely by luck or an internet listing of historic burial sites. It was former resident Erma Rae who, thinking that it’d bring some much needed tourist dollars to the poor town, notified the show, telling them of all of the strange phenomena that occurs daily at the cemetery. When the show came calling, no one else would corroborate Erma Rae’s stories, so only she and her family members were featured as “eye witnesses”; T.V. smoke and mirrors took care of the rest. The episode was a hit, and the town was subject to unwanted visitors ever since.
So, every day and night Elder Barbas patrolled the cemetery. He was a godsend to the residents. Not a resident himself, and having no real connection to the town, he just showed up one day, after the media attention, and offered his services to town officials. Not doubting for a moment that his imposing size and frightening countenance would be a hindrance to foreign thrill-seekers, he was hired immediately, and accepted offers of clothing and beer when the town was low on cash.
This latest group of researchers, who called themselves The Ghost Bros. plus Katie, were unaware of the presence of Elder Barbas; but, being young and cocky, were undeterred when they arrived and found him at the cemetery’s only entrance, scowling and ready to reject them.
“This is private property, no trespassers,” growled Elder Barbas, in a tone that brooked no argument. Brady, leader of the Bros., argued anyway.
With his best gleaming smile, Brady approached Elder Barbas, hand outstretched, “Hi, Sir, It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Brady, and we’…”
“This is private property, you will be leaving now,” responded Elder Barbas. He was not used to having to repeat himself.
Not used to being rejected, but getting everything that he wanted, the charismatic Brady pressed on.
“Sir, we understand that this is private property, and we know that we didn’t secure permission to be here ahead of time…”
“You would never be granted permission to be here,” responded Elder Barbas. “You need to leave now.”
“Come on, Braid, let’s go,” begged Kaiden, Brady’s younger brother. “Yeah, Brady, he’s not going to let us in,” agreed Katie, a schoolmate of Brady’s and Kaiden’s secret crush.
Brady, irritated by both his inability to charm the caretaker and his group’s willingness to give up so easily, turned to shut them up, then turned back to the caretaker, this time with a little less charm in his voice.
“Look, SIR…we’ve driven all the way from Oregon – ORGEGON – to get footage here for our show. All we want to do is stay overnight, film the footage, and leave. We have money…look, we’ll pay you.” Brady pulls out a wad of cash. Elder Barbas is unmoved.
“I do not care from whence you came. You are not permitted entry into the cemetery. Leave. Now.” Elder Barbas’ voice was all command. He began to move his entire 7-foot, 325 lb person toward the group.
“C’mon Braid, let’s go NOW!” Kaiden nearly screamed. With a poorly masked fury, Brady stood his ground as Elder Barbas neared, saying nothing.
It was when Elder Barbas’ imposing figure was but a foot away that Brady displayed a modicum of sense and relented. “Fine,” he said, “We’ll leave. But we’ll see the selectman tomorrow, and we’ll have permission to be here, you just wait.”
The Ghost Bros. crew left, Brady skulking away from his defeat. When they all reached the car, Brady let loose.
“What was that back there, bros? I thought you assholes had my back!”
“Dude, did you see that guy back there?” asked Kaiden. “He looks like something out of a horror movie. No way I’m fuckin’ with that dude.”
“And what did you expect me to do, Brady?” asked Katie. “I’m 5 feet in heels. That guy’s big enough to use me as a toothpick, and you expect for me to have your back? We knew this was going to be a longshot when we left Oregon. We should have called someone first, like we ALWAYS do. Don’t fuckin’ blame me because you failed.”
Brady stomped his way over to Katie with an unimaginable speed. He put a finger in her face as he yelled, “DON’T EVER CALL ME A FAILURE YOU FUCKING BITCH!!! If it weren’t for the show that I put together, you’d still be sucking professor’s dicks at office hours just to get Cs. REMEMBER YOUR PLACE!”
Looking torn between his brother and his crush, Kaiden stares down Brady before saying, “You’re a real asshole, you know that?” He then ran after Katie. Brady just stood there in his anger.
A few minutes later, Kaiden walked back toward their vehicle, arms around Katie’s shoulder, whispering consolations in her ear. When they reached Brady, who was reclined on the vehicle, he stopped, and still holding Katie, said, “You were WAY too harsh, bro. You need to apologize to Katie, now. She was just telling the truth, and you know it.”
Katie kept her eyes low, not expecting an apology. For a few tense moments it looked like she wasn’t going to get one, as Brady sat on the hood of their vehicle, staring off in the opposite direction.
He then suddenly hopped from the hood of the car, flashing that charismatic smile, and went over to Katie with hand outstretched.
“My bad, bro. I was just heated that Frankendouche back there wouldn’t give us a break. I lost my cool, which was not cool. Everything copacetic, bro?”
“Fuck off,” Katie said, while she flipped him the bird. Brady just smiled that dangerous smile and said, “Fuck off indeed.”
Feeling the storm pass, Kaiden turned to Brady and said, “Dude, we drove like, 13 million miles to get here. We don’t have that much money, not for both a hotel AND gas money back. Even if we did, you said it had to be TONIGHT. The solar storms made tonight THEE night, remember? If we were to ever get ghost activity on camera, it had to be tonight, in this place. “
“I know that, Kaid,” said Brady.
“So we can’t wait until tomorrow. If we’re going to get permission from the town selectman, we have to do it now, while it’s still daylight.”
“The town who?” asked Brady.
“The town selectman. You just told Frankendouche that you’d get permission from him tomorrow.”
“Oh. I have no idea who the selectman here is, if they even have a selectman,” said Brady. “Might be a mayor, might be an alderman, might be a goat with a blue sash and a cigar. I was just talking shit. But there’s no way I’m leaving here tonight without getting what I came for. What we’re going to do is pretend we’re leaving, but we’re really going to be looking at the walls for weaknesses, see if we can find a spot to either climb over, or climb under, or find a big enough gap to squeeze through. Get in whichever way we can, but we’re gonna have to be stealthy. I don’t want to admit it, bro, but that guy scares the shit out of me. I mean, who drew that guy, right? He looks like fake vomit.”
Kaiden laughed, then the brothers turned and started toward the car, where Katie was already waiting in the front passenger seat. They informed her of the plan, then pulled away. Katie waved to Elder Barbas as they left.
His face twitched. His head followed the movement of the vehicle.
The Ghost Bros. drove out to the main road. Brady wanted to be sure that he got as far away from the caretaker’s sight as possible. He looked big, but he didn’t look big and dumb. Once they got to the main road, Brady drove the car around what he figured would be the cemetery’s perimeter. Having left from the cemetery’s north face, he tried east and west, with no luck finding a way close to the burial site – at least no stealth way.
The team circled the perimeter from as many angles as they could without being seen by the caretaker. Just as even Brady was ready to give up, Katie gasped.
“Brady, back up!” Katie said as they passed the south end of the cemetery, which was covered by thick, forest-like growth. “Do you see that?”
Brady slammed on the brakes, and then backed up. “Shit, Kate, I almost missed it. Kaid, look…there’s a clearing in the brush. You can see straight through it. It looks like it leads into the back of the cemetery!”
“Fuckin’ sweet, man,” replied Kaiden. “Let’s make our way in.”
Brady found a spot to hide the vehicle, turning off the car’s engine and coasting into place quietly. He held up his index finger to his lips, indicating to the rest of the crew to be as quiet as possible. They opened car doors, removed equipment, and shuttered the car as silent as whispers. Making their way through the bush as quietly as possible, the back end of the cemetery quickly came into view. Amazingly, it was only blocked by a short brick wall, 4 feet in height. It would be nothing for one of the crew to hop over and receive the equipment bags thrown over, Brady told them as they grew ever near.
Brady, Katie, and Kaiden all met up at the short south wall, carefully piled up the equipment bags, and proceeded to decide who would be the first over it. When it was decided that Katie, the shortest and lightest, would go, Brady and Kaiden both knelt and locked hands, giving Katie a foothold and a boost over the wall. Katie stepped onto their hands, braced herself on the wall, and as they proceeded to lift her up, she let out a shriek.
“OH MY GOD HE’S HERE! LET ME DOWN! LET ME DOWN!”
Katie fought frantically to get her friends to let her down. Before she could manage, however, Elder Barbas grabbed her hand. He wouldn’t let go.
Katie squealed an almost unintelligible, “HE’SGOTMEHE’SGOTMEHE’SGOTMEHE’SGOTME” to the guys. “Let her go!” Brady demanded, while both he and Kaiden tried to tug Katie loose. For a while they couldn’t budge her, so tight was his grip. Then, as suddenly as he began, he let her go. She fell in a tumble of fear, friends, and equipment bags.
Brady’s fury was written all over his face. He was about to launch into a tirade against the caregiver, but looking at Kaiden’s face gave him pause. He realized that all those months of waiting would go down the toilet if he screwed this up. Since it was he who got the group into this situation, he needed to come up with a better plan to get them out of it. The ever-charismatic Brady launched into damage control mode. Throwing on his best smile, he turned to the caregiver and said, “Sir, I am so sorry. Please, please don’t hurt Katie anymore; she only did this because I asked her to. I realize what I’ve done is wrong. We have breached your trust. I would ask for your forgiveness, but I realize that our actions don’t warrant that.”
Elder Barbas just looked on, stone faced.
“The only thing we can do at this point is work to earn your trust,” Brady went on, undaunted. “As you can see, we’re very determined to shoot at this cemetery, on this night. I know that to you, it’s not something that you think is important, but trust me, for us it is. We only have one shot at this, and so I can only beg of you that you let us do something, anything, to get you to trust us and let us shoot tonight.”
Elder Barbas, still looking.
As Brady’s charisma starts to wane, his frustration begins to emerge. “Sir…ok, I think we got off on the wrong foot. We never even introduced ourselves to one another. I’m Brady, this is my bro Kaiden, and our friend Katie.” He extends his hand for a handshake.
Elder Barbas stands as still as a statue
Slowly lowering his hand, all pretense finally falls from Brady’s face. In a cracked voice he pleads, “Please…please allow us to earn your trust, sir.”
Elder Barbas finally shows signs of movement. The faintest of smiles spreads across his lips. “You know nothing of trust. You – all three of you, and all of your ilk across nations and nations – only know gratification; instant, by any means necessary gratification. If you want to earn my trust, I will allow your attempts. What I will ask of you will allow you to learn what trust means. Once you understand what it means to have someone’s trust, I will allow you access to the graveyard, and I will also give you my name.”
Elated, Brady’s expression instantly brightens. With a clap of his hands, he says, “Great, sir. You won’t regret this. I promise that we’ll earn your trust. We’ll all end this night knowing your name.”
Elder Barbas does not reply, but simply gestures for the group to enter the graveyard – through the front gates.
When the crew arrived at the front gates, they found them open, a stoic Elder Barbas waiting a few feet within. Brady was confident that they’d ace whatever trust exercises the old caretaker would throw their way, and thus instructed his crew to bring in their equipment with them.
Once the crew regrouped within the cemetery, Elder Barbas spoke. “Four trials you will endure to gain my trust and gain access to the burial grounds. You each will have a single trial that you must undergo on your own, with the last being completed with you as a group. I will have you all go to separate corners of the burial ground, where you will wait until I arrive with your instructions. I do not care which corner you choose, but you must be alone when I arrive. I will give you time amongst yourselves to decide.”
Brady turned to his group. “Katie, I want you to be as close to the gate as possible, in case things go badly. Take the southeast corner. Kaiden, you stick close to her, so you take the southwest. I’ll go northeast.” The group nodded their agreement and turned back to the caretaker.
“We’ve decided our locations, and are ready to start,” said Brady. Elder Barbas nodded, and the crew turned to exchange glances of hope and good luck, then set off for their respective corners.
Elder Barbas reached Kaiden first. “To earn my trust, young Kaiden, you must demonstrate blind faith. You must make your way to the center of the burial ground, as marked by the angel headstone, using only your wits and your sense of touch. You will be blinded to your surroundings until you reach your destination.”
Scared to death of being alone with the imposing figure that was the cemetery caretaker, Kaiden said nothing, but turned around to be blindfolded.
Kaiden was not blindfolded. Strips of flesh – his flesh – began to stretch and thicken, criss-crossing across his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He screamed in anguish as the skin pulled taut across his eyes. Certainly the thick covering of skin cut off his sense of sight to the cemetery, but the pain itself was blinding enough on its own.
Kaiden fell to the ground, writhing to and fro on his back as he tried to get the flesh blindfold off. The more he pulled, the worse it hurt.
“Do not struggle, young Kaiden. The more you struggle against the binding, the more you will hurt, and the less likely you will pass this trial.”
“FUCK YOUR TRIAL, get this shit off me!!!!” Kaiden screamed.
Elder Barbas gave no reply, but with a wave of his arm lifted Kaiden from the ground and placed him on his feet. Shocked, Kaiden stopped struggling. “Find your way,” said Elder Barbas. With that, Elder Barbas headed towards Katie, and Kaiden was left alone.
Katie stood shivering in her corner of the cemetery. She’d heard Kaiden’s screams, but was too afraid to go help. A tear streamed down her cheek when she saw the caretaker approach.
Elder Barbas gave Katie the same trust exercise. Her shrill shrieks of terror and pain would have been unbearable to others, but Elder Barbas stood calmly while she struggled, then eventually lifted her from the ground in the same manner as Kaiden. Amid her simpering pleas of “no” and “please stop this, help me”, he reiterated his instructions to meet at the center of the cemetery, and then made his way to the group’s leader, Brady.
Brady stood frozen to his spot. Despite all his charisma, all of his supposed bravery, he could not bring himself to leave his corner of the cemetery. He comforted himself in this by saying that he was committed to getting the footage the team needed for their channel, but he knew deep inside that he was simply too scared to rescue his friends. He fearfully awaited his fate after he heard Katie’s screams. He was about 200 yards away from her, but it seemed as though he was waiting an eternity for the caretaker to come to him to make him earn his trust. He was certain 20 minutes had passed when he heard a huge “thump” from about 100 yards away.
The caretaker was now approaching him quickly. From where Brady stood, he seemed to stand twice his height, which was frightening enough on its own, but he was also carrying what seemed to be a heavy object over his shoulder, which Brady could not make out. Because of how heavy it looked, it should have made it impossible for him to be carrying it and still walking at the speed in which he was travelling.
It wasn’t long before the caretaker was close enough to Brady for him to learn that the object he was carrying was in fact a section of what used to be a very large tree trunk. The graveyard was heavily populated with large oaks, too large for any one person to cut down in 20 minutes, even if they had a chainsaw. Brady heard no chainsaw in operation at all while he was awaiting his trial.
When the caretaker finally approached Brady, he put down the trunk with a solid thud. The trunk had been snapped off from its roots. It was a roughly hewn section of trunk about 4 feet high, and 3 feet in diameter. Brady shuddered to think of what he was going to have to do with the trunk to earn the caretaker’s trust.
“You are the leader of your tribe, and thus subject to carrying more than your share of burdens,” the caretaker began. “But I believe that you purposefully keep those burdens light. To gain my trust, young Brady, you must prove to me that you can carry heavy burdens, for the sake of your tribe and yourself. You will carry this trunk to the center of the graveyard, where there sits the angel headstone, meeting up with your tribe and preparing for your final trial.”
Brady DID NOT want to do this. The center of the graveyard was 150 yards away, and the tree trunk looked to be 100 lbs, easy. It was at this moment that he was ready to abandon the shoot, grab his team and get the hell out of Dodge. But before he could utter a protest, his arms were thrown around the tree trunk, a chain intertwined between them and the trunk, and locked at the place where his arms could not reach. He was inescapably chained to the tree trunk; he had no choice but to complete the trial. When he looked around, the caretaker was nowhere to be found.
Realizing that he had no choice but to continue the trial, he awkwardly began his way to the center of the cemetery. It was difficult to get started, as he was himself 6 ft. 4, only slightly taller than the trunk he was carrying. He could not get a good stride going as the length of the trunk was in his way. He had to shuffle more than walk. He got a good start, but after only a couple of minutes, he began to feel an excruciating pulling in his shoulder and elbow joints. His arms were bound tightly around the trunk so that it would not fall out of his grasp, but it was so tight that his arms were being ripped out of their sockets, step by step.
Brady, experiencing a pain he’d never known possible, was somehow nearly halfway to the center of the graveyard when he heard Kaiden’s ear-piercing scream, a scream cut short by a fall that sounded…off. He knew his little brother had fallen and hurt himself at the very least. He didn’t want to think any further than that. He just knew that he had to get to him quickly. It was because of him that they were in this predicament, and he wasn’t going to let Kaid and Katie suffer any longer. He tried to hoist the trunk a little higher. His thinking was that while he wouldn’t be able to see, his legs would be a little freer, helping him get to his goal so that he could help his team. He felt that he had a straight shot to the angel, so long as he kept on his diagonal. He stepped as he hoisted the trunk…and tripped over an in-ground headstone. He couldn’t balance the trunk; it began falling, ripping his arms from their sockets. He wanted to scream, but it never escaped his throat. It was at that moment that he heard Katie scream, followed an ominous gurgling sound. He passed out.
When Brady came to, he found himself propped up against the angel tombstone. Their lighting rigs had been set up and were aimed directly at him from three different angles. Also, a fire had been set a few feet away from him, and it was warm due to its proximity. It was nothing, though, compared to the fire emanating from his shoulders, where his arms had been ripped from his body. He looked to his left and saw that the tree trunk was there, the chains, and subsequently his arms, still wrapped around its berth. He leaned over further left and vomited.
When he sat up again, what he saw made him wished he hadn’t. Kitty corner to where he was sitting, his dear schoolmate Katie stood awkwardly, the left side of her neck impaled by the horizontal end of a sharp ornamental cross that adorned one of the taller headstones. The headstone looked to have been pulled up from its spot in the graveyard. Katie looked to be alive, but could not talk. Her face was frozen in terror.
Slightly to their right lay Kaiden. He was on his left side, dead, spikes driven through his forehead, right eye, throat, chest, right arm, and left leg, which lay broken at an impossible angle. This time Brady didn’t turn to vomit, but let loose right as he sat.
The caretaker appeared seemingly out of nowhere, then, roughly handling one of the crew’s video cameras in his oversized hands. He looked at Brady with an expression that may have been disgust, but it was difficult to tell as his otherwise monstrous features took on a more demonic look.
He threw the camera at Brady. “You failed your individual trials of trust. Yet if you can still manage, as a group, to complete the last trial, I will still allow you to utilize the cemetery overnight,” he said.
“If you can find a way to film a warning to others to stay away from these hallowed grounds, you will have passed the fourth and final test,” said the caretaker.
Incredulous, Brady looked up at the caretaker. “In case you haven’t noticed, your trial ripped off my arms. Kind of hard to operate a camera without, oh, I dunno, HANDS.”
“Find a way,” said the caretaker, and with that, he was gone.
Teetering on the edge of delusion, Brady’s pain was beginning to wane. He looked up at Katie, and though she looked very bad, he felt he had to preserver if there was any chance he could save her life. He looked from her to his dead brother, and thought.
After a while, he knew what to do. He scooted on his back, like an inverted inchworm, toward his brother’s corpse. He was careful to keep the camera balanced on his stomach, but it still fell off when he was just inches away. Brady turned on his side, intending to use his knees to scoot the camera near one of the spikes impaling is brother. The combination of the impact of falling on his side and the dust, dirt, and sharp pebbles on the ground reawakened the pain in his shoulder socket. It was all that Brady could do to not yell out, but he knew that he had to keep going. He took a moment to let the wave of pain subside, but it didn't; it only weakened. Once he could manage it, he began to scoot the camera again, scraping his open wounds against the ground.
He was able to get the camera positioned near the spike in Kaiden’s left leg. He then turned on his back and scooted around so that his feet could maneuver the camera against the spike. He took great care to angle it so that the camera was aimed at both himself and the impaled Katie.
With his feet he pressed the record button using the spike protruding from Kaiden’s leg. Once he was certain that the lens was aimed at both he and Katie, with a wavery voice he began. “Hey Bros, this is Braid of The Ghost Bros., here at the famed and fabled Dutch cemetery in Northern Michigan. You may know that tonight is a very special night for this cemetery, which is said to be a portal to hell, for tonight the portal opens.” His voice cracks even more as he tries to hold in his sadness and fear. “It’s true. I have to tell you that it’s true. Unfortunately we don’t have any footage for you to prove it, but look at me, and look at Kait. These injuries are real. You can’t see Kaid because…because,” he pauses, no longer able to hold back his tears, “because he’s dead! He’s dead, run through by some sort of spiked weapon. I had to use…(he gasps)...I had to use…I had to use one of the spikes to turn on the goddamned camera! Oh god, my arms are gone and I had to use the spike coming out of his leg to turn on the camera.” He breaks down, sobbing uncontrollably for several minutes. Out of the corner of his eye, he spies the caretaker and regains his focus.
“Yo, bros, you do NOT want to come here. I don’t care how awesome you’d think it’d be, STAY AWAY! You do NOT want to end up like us, bros, trust me. Kaid’s dead dudes, he’s gone! I don’t even know if Kait and I will make it. Please, don’t come here!” This last plea was a high-pitched squeal. Elder Barbas came around suddenly and kicked away the camera. He then walked over to Katie and pushed her neck further into the headstone cross, until her head split in two, her face folding over to rest on her chest.
The caretaker walked over to a now hysterical Brady, and looked down on him. He picked him up by his jacket collar until they were face to face. Brady saw that the caretaker had morphed into a full demon. He almost passed out again, but the caretaker wouldn’t let him.
In a voice that seemed to have two pitches, one deep, one light: “You did well, young Brady. Now it’s time for me to keep my promise. My name is Barbas, and you have earned my trust,” he said, right before he snapped Brady in half. He then went about the business of gathering all three bodies, tossing them into the barbed pit where Kaiden was killed.
He began covering their bodies with dirt.
