Short Story

Indians from Safron Beach

I’ve always heard that Indian burial grounds were sacred grounds and not to be messed with. The word is that there are spirits, mostly evil, that can haunt people and terrorize them for the remainder of their poor lives. Seems like a load of crap, right? Well, at least that’s what my friends and I thought and there was no better time to test this superstition than on Halloween night.

In our little beach front town there used to be Indians, of course I’m talking about hundreds of years ago, but there were Indians. Eventually, the Spanish explorer Varquez came and landed on a beach called Safrons. He was met by aggressive Indians who did not want to share land and a battle ensued resulting in the death of all the Safron Indians. Varquez’s men buried all the bodies, which formed a large hill of dirt. Fast forward to present day, and the hill remains and is a fenced area only accessible by certain personnel. Oh, and of course it’s haunted.

Marty, my right-hand man was a shorter, dark haired, scraggly looking kid who always seemed to have on faded vintage shirt and filthy jeans that looked like they had been rubbed in dirt. He was a hard headed fool who did not believe anything until he had seen it for himself. So, he thought that the Indian burial ground was a long living urban legend. He was a convincing fellow too, always pulling random facts out of his ass, so we believed it was a myth also. Our other buddy, Jim was a tall, pale, lanky guy. He was the daring kind who liked to take risks. Yea, he had been arrested for some of these risks, but I always thought that was what was appealing to him. It was Halloween night and we were just partying and drinking some beers at Jim’s house. It was basically a bachelor pad with a dock that overlooked the green waters of the Gulf of Mexico and a pool that seemed to fill up any night of the week.

“Guys, we should goes to the Indian burials grounds and check out dem Indian ghosts,” said Jim. Yea, he was drunk, but so was I and that seemed like an intelligent idea at the time. Fortunate for us Marty had just arrived and was as sober as a duck.

The car ride was a mess of stupidity and small pointless talk. Marty was concentrating hard on driving, I was in the passenger seat because I called “shotgun”, and Jim was in the back about to piss his pants in excitement.

“Drive faster Marty! Ya drive like a grandma on the way to bingo,” said Jim. We pulled up and it looked pretty creepy. There was a round dirt lot and tall, endless trees lined the fences so no one could see inside. Getting out of the car you could hear the small waves washing up against the mixture of rock and sea wall. Then we heard a “CAAAAA” come from inside the burial grounds. Jim actually heard this and I think it helped him sober up a little. Now we were a little hesitant about entering this unknown land.

Ten minutes later of debating whether to go back to Jim’s or enter, we finally decided to jump the fence that was as tall as us. Upon entering we took a couple steps, all of us following Jim through the thick, scratchy brush. All I could hear was the sound of everyone’s breath and hearts beating. We came upon a fire pit that was encircled by bones. I was pretty sure that all of us by then were scared shitless.

“Jeff, let’s peace out, run back, and not get haunted for the rest of our lives,” Marty said to me. I quietly laughed and called him a big sissy. A hundred feet later there was a run down old, blue cottage. There were faded red curtains that seemed to be torn to pieces from past storms. The door to the inside of the cottage was hanging on by the bottom hinge while the steps leading up to the door were sinking in mud. Of course Jim with no hesitation walks nonchalantly into the cottage like he owned the place. Marty and I decided to follow slowly behind. The inside of the cottage was scattered with dusty, broken wicker furniture. Then in the peripheral of my vision I saw something run by. I quickly grabbed Jim and Marty’s attention. Right then and there I could have sworn we were being hunted by Indian ghosts with their Indian bow and arrows. Deep in the closet of the cottage I spot an old, rusted hatchet.

“Hell yes I’m keeping this for defense. But wait, can I stab a ghost?” I thought to myself. I did not care about the answer to my question because that hatchet made me feel safe.

We finally exited the house and progressed on. However, once again a loud “CAAAA” rang out among the burial grounds. This time it was louder and more piercing, like nails on a blackboard. Jim thought he had an accurate idea of where it came from so we followed our brave leader. We quietly walked forward and found several peacocks wandering around aimlessly. These