Barnabas Bartholomew and the Undead Freshmen by Matthew Lett

“What in the heck is a lich?” Barney asked.

“It’s a member of the Undead class, like us, except it was brought back to life by a sorcerer or a necromancer for evil purposes.”

“What sort of evil purposes?” Barney asked. There was a knot in his stomach; a bundle of nerves resting on the edge of a guillotine.

“Hard to tell,” Pudgy replied. “Depends on what the sorcerer wants the lich to do. He could use it as an assassin, I suppose, to knock off his enemies, or as a bodyguard. Or in this case, a guard dog over a graveyard.”

“But why a graveyard? What would a sorcerer want in a graveyard anyway? And what if it’s not even there? This lich thing. Suppose it’s gone?”

Pudgy shrugged. “Then it’s gone and we don’t have to worry about anything. But if it is real, and there is a lich wandering around, it’ll be looking for souls to eat. That’s why we need the crucifix, to repel it.”

“’Souls to eat?’” Barney repeated. “Are you serious?” He felt light-headed for a second; the world beyond his eyes in a lazy swoon.

“Quite serious,” Pudgy answered. “That’s what liches do. They eat the undead, and if they can, they’ll eat their souls too.”

Barney’s face paled at the thought. An undead cannibal running around the graveyard? That’s what it was! An undead cannibal! The dead eating the dead, for Christ’s sake!

Pudgy caught the look on Barney’s face; pallid, the sickly color of cream cheese left out in the sun for too long. He snickered. “Hey, calm down. It’s a legend, remember? We’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Barney didn’t answer, his tongue frozen to the roof of his mouth, when Millicent cleared her throat. “Guys?” She tapped the face of her wristwatch. “We need to go if we plan on making curfew. You can discuss the ins-and-outs of liches later, but we need to move.”

“You’re right,” Pudgy said. “I’ll take the lead with the flashlight. Milly, you’ll be behind me. Barney next and then Marcy, and I don’t want you two kissing back there. Agreed?”

Barney blushed clear to his toes. Marcy smiled at him. Millicent laughed out loud and Pudgy winked at Barney, who was staring at the tops of his shoes with a sheepish grin. “Yeah, yeah, okay…” he mumbled. “Funny, real funny, now can we go?”

And so they entered the southwest tunnel, its passages by now near memorized. It was more of a home away from home for the children; its twists and turns nothing more than well-travelled streets and avenues in their hometowns.

Barney stepped through (minus his flashlight which he’d given to Pudgy), when a thought struck him like a phantom stone in the darkness: Pudgy never fully answered my question, he thought. Why the graveyard? Why would a sorcerer (or a necromancer, for that matter) want a lich guarding a graveyard for him? Hmmm…

###

The trip to the graveyard took less than forty-five minutes, and the four of them arrived to find the wrought iron gates unlocked, and the tombstones shrouded in a silky mist of pale fog. A raven, with one eye missing, was perched on a spire atop the gate. It looked down at the children, as if considering their plight, then cawed in its shrill voice a single word they heard all too well:

“BEWARE!”

The raven took flight after its portent of doom. It did a hop and a half-skip, spread its wings, and then soared over the face of the moon reflected in the wavering mist. The raven disappeared as Pudgy opened the gate in a scream of rust. It was loud in the tranquil of the graveyard; as good as any doorbell that rings after midnight.

“Smooth move,” Barney quipped.

“Sorry,” Pudgy said. “I didn’t expect that. Let’s go.”

They walked through the gates; their eyes blind, sinking in what they could not see. Silence–the full-time caretaker of the grounds–greeted them. Distant thunder rolled over the clouds in the east. Lightning followed and took a snapshot of the graveyard for posterity’s sake.

And had there been a black cat perched on the back of a tombstone, with its yellow lamp-lit eyes and its spine arched in a splay of fur, it would not have surprised Barney in the least. The graveyard was spooky, if not picturesque in the simmering light of the moon; a mural better suited on the backdrop of a Halloween landscape.

“What now?” Barney whispered. The air was dank, hollow

somehow. There was no need to whisper, but the graveyard almost

demanded—dared that it be so upon its consecrated ground.