A group of friends were having a beer at the neighborhood coffee shop and the conversation turned to ghosts. Soon, in their state of inebriation, they started to aggressively challenge the boaster in the group to spend a night in a famous cemetery.
“Of course, I can do it. I’m not afraid. There are no such things as ghosts, I tell you.” he said rather too loudly. “Just tell me when!”
“Not tonight. If you go there drunk, you’ll just fall asleep. Saturday night. And we’ll all go and stand guard outside the cemetery to make sure you’re not cheating.”
“Okay. Now you want to bet how much?”
They settled on a figure to make it worth his while.
This was a Thursday. In the course of the week, the boaster’s good friend, who had not been at the beer-drinking session, heard the bet and quickly approached him.
“Are you going to go ahead with this stupid bet?” he asked.
“I have no choice,” the boaster said. “If I back out now, I will lose face.”
The friend begged him not to continue, saying he should just tell all the others to simply drop it. The boaster who, now that he was sober, could not understand how he had let himself get trapped into such a horrible situation, tried to sound out the leader of the group, the one who had suggested the wager in the first place, on dropping the idea.
“After all, we all have better things to do than to spend a Saturday night around a cemetery, isn’t it?” he said.
“Are you chickening out?” the leader said.
“Of course not, i’m just mentioning this because i thought i would save us all a useless time standing around a cemetery. That’s all.”
“We are all looking forward to it. That is, unless you want to chicken out. You won’t even have to pay up we’ll understand,” the leader of the pack taunted.
“I’m not backing out. If that’s what you think , meet you there at 11 pm as agreed,” the boaster replied.
So it was that at the hour before midnight, several of the friends met outside the cemetery. Some of them had backed out but the others had come to see the boaster get his due. And the boaster was there on time, armed only with a flashlight.
“How do I get in?”
He asked.
“You climb the main gates,” the leader said.
“Alright,” the boaster said.
When they reached the gates and the boaster was about to climb, one of the members of the group piped op. “I think this has gone far enough.”
Another member agreed. Then another. “Let’s go for a beer and some seafood,” one suggested.
The leader said nothing, but the boaster saw the mocking look in his eyes.
“No I’m going in. Don’t let anybody say i backed out,” the boaster said and scaled over the gate before anybody could stop him. On the other side, he looked back at his friends and said, “ill be out in the morning,” and turning , walked into the darkness.
The friends were upset and one said, “we should stop him.”
But nobody made a move.
“Let him go, he wants to win his money, that’s all. Nothing will happen to him,” the leader of the pack said. “Well come back for him in the morning.”
Reluctantly the others followed his lead and the whole group left for a nightclub.
Meanwhile, inside the cemetery, the boaster walked just out of sight of the others and then stopped cold.
He was afraid. He wished he could just close his eyes and stand here without anything disturbing him and that when he opened his eyes it would be morning. But he knew he could not just stand here. Everywhere about him were tombstones. He tried not to look but the pale, blush stones drew his eyes towards them every time.
Finally, he thought of an idea.
He would climb up a tree and spend the night there. That would be better than wandering about this cemetery alone at night. And it would certainly be better than just standing or sitting here waiting for morning to save him from this awful position.
So the boaster found a suitable tree, one without much foliage because those trees looked scary. He had trouble climbing up, causing a lot of rusting, which made his heart almost stop. At one point he thought he heard a cat meowing, but he dismissed it as his imagination because he did not hear it again. Finally, he made it up the tree. He did not want to be too look down on the tree in case something grabbed him from below. So, he climbed up to a slightly higher position.
Now, up in a tree in a large cemetery, the boaster did not feel big at all. The roar of every passing bus made him shiver, every rustle in the trees made his heartbeat wildly. He looked at his watch. It was approaching midnight. My God, he thought, what would happen then?
Suddenly, for a moment, he panicked.
The hair on the back of his head was literally rising. His head felt heavy and light at the same time. His breathing was shallow. It would be the midnight hour, within a minute. If he wanted to get out of here he had better do it now. Do it NOW!
Never mind what the others thought, never mind if they thought him a coward for the rest of his life but anyone in his position had the right to be scared. God, what was he doing? He had to run. He had to get out.
Before he knew it, he was down from the tree and running.
Running towards the gates as fast as his legs would take him.
Then, suddenly, he lost his grip on his flashlight and it flew out of his hand. It was his only source of light and it lay there on the grass shining on a white figure carved on a tombstone. The very sight made his legs take off again.
He ran towards the gates, which he could make out in the foreground now. They were getting nearer all the time. He was almost there. Once over those gates, he would be free! Only seconds to go to midnight!
He was running so fast; he could not stop when he reached the gates and hit them running. This knocked the air out of him, but he did not let it stop him. He put one foot on the lower bar and started to climb when he felt it.
A slap and a hard grip on his neck.
They found him the next morning. A rigid figure, his finger clutched tightly around the bars of the front gate of the cemetery and his body clinging to it. He had been dead for hours, the doctors later determined that his heart had stopped suddenly.
The people who found his body reported that there was a branch of a tree slapping his neck whenever the wind blew hard.
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