Utiseta

Chapter 5: Again

At 11:59, Griffin stood outside the gates of Hope Hills Cemetery, pulling his leather jacket tighter around himself. As Halloween approached, the days got shorter and the nights colder. He could already feel the sombre chill of winter slowly creeping closer and closer.

Shivering at the thought, he looked up to see Jason making his way toward him, tugging his own jacket closer against the sudden gust of autumn air. At the same time, Jason looked up to meet his gaze and Griffin could easily see the indecision in his friend's eyes. He was no doubt wondering what possibly could have possessed Griffin to come back to the cemetery after what had happened the last time they'd visited.

There were no pleasantries when they met outside the gates. Griffin simply pushed open the heavy metal door and the two entered in silence. This quietude lasted just long enough for them to reach Griffin's intended destination. Once there, he pulled out his new phone, turned the flashlight on, and shone it on the headstone they stood before.

"'Juliano Jacobo'" Jason read loud. "Did you know him or something?"

"No," Griffin answered solemnly. "But I'm about to."

"What?" Jason asked, confused.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Griffin let loose with the whole story. Meeting Kiera at the bar - alive; then meeting her again in the cemetery - very much dead. He told Jason about the conversation he'd had with the dead woman and about her cryptic plea for him to find J.J. Finally, he revealed his discovery of J.J.'s name in the paper.

"So...here we are."

Griffin watched a series of emotions cross Jason's face. He really shouldn't have asked Jason to come along in the first place; he had nothing to do with this and was probably better off not knowing that there were in fact things that went bump in the night. But truth be told, Griffin was scared, and his best friend was just about the only thing standing between himself and utter madness.

There were a few responses Griffin had anticipated in light of the information he'd just let slip: confusion, concern, maybe even a little anger. What he had not expected, however, were the peals of laughter erupting from his friend's lips.

"Damn, Griff," Jason said after a few more moments spent nearly doubled over. "If this is your idea of a wedding present, I think you should have stuck to the registry."

"J, this isn't a joke."

"Right," his friend answered, disbelieving. "What's the next step, then? You got a Ouija board hidden in your jacket?"

"I think," Griffin began, hoping perseverance would bring Jason around. "I need to lie down on the grave."

Jason laughed again. "'Lie down on the grave?' You do realize how nuts that sounds, right?"

Griffin nodded. Oh yeah, it made him sound absolutely certifiable.

As Jason inspected his face more closely, understanding began to dawn in his eyes. "Is this about that story you used to tell when we were kids?" Jason asked hesitantly, with the tone of someone speaking to a small child. "The útiseta ritual? Griffin, that's just a story."

"A story based in fact," Griffin protested, but the argument sounded hollow even to his own ears. "The Vikings believed in it and it's still used in Shamanistic practice today."

"Oh, 'the Vikings believed in it?' Great."

"Are you going to repeat everything I say?"

Jason raised his arms in a gesture of defeat. "I don't know what to tell you, man."

"You're right. You're leaving for your honeymoon first thing in the morning. You should go. Be with your wife."

Griffin turned away and approached the grave. He could hear Jason's footsteps behind him, but they weren't retreating as Griffin had expected. He turned to find his smirking friend leaning enigmatically against a nearby headstone.

"If I leave you here alone, with your luck, you'll just get robbed again."

Griffin laughed and nodded his thanks. Turning away once more, he lifted his hood until it covered part of his eyes. That done, he gingerly lowered himself down onto the mound of fresh dirt and waited in silence.

The last time, he'd just awoken from unconsciousness when the spirit had appeared to him. He really hoped he wouldn't have to ask Jason to whack him over the head. He was just pondering that very unappetizing thought when he heard an unfamiliar voice.

"Mi scusi."

Griffin opened his eyes to see a small elderly man standing about a foot in front of where he lay. With his slicked-back hair, dark-rimmed glasses, and pressed pinstripe suit, the Italian man looked like he had fallen straight out of the 1940s.

"Uh...buonanotte," Griffin responded hesitantly, climbing to his feet.

"Mi chiamo Juliano Jacobo."

J.J. It looked like Griffin had come to the right place after all.

"Io sono Griffin."

Thankfully Juliano did not try to shake his hand; Griffin wasn't sure what he'd do if the man's hand had travelled right through his own.

Griffin continued in Italian: "This is going to sound strange, but do you happen to know a girl named Kiera Montgomery? She told me to find you."

Juliano nodded sadly. "My granddaughter."

"I'm sorry."

The old man nodded, looking pained.

"I saw her the day she died. It looked like someone was after her," Griffin confessed.

J.J.'s gaze dropped, and his eyes glazed over as though he were looking at something beyond Griffin's sight. After a moment, J.J. sighed and started to explain: "We both made mistakes, Kiera and I. I was getting old, losing my touch." His hands rose up to mime the playing of a cello. "I wanted to regain what I'd lost - the fame, the shows, the money. I was getting desperate. That's when he found me."

"He?" Griffin asked, a chill racing down his spine.

J.J. nodded. "He knows when you are desperate - when you'll do anything to get what you most desire. That's how he found me: alone, almost penniless, a has-been. He offered me something I couldn't refuse." The old man's eyes glazed over again, and this time his eyes fixed on something over Griffin's right shoulder. "He told me he could make me young again, relive my youth, regain my prominence. It was all a lie of course," he scoffed, laughing pitifully. "He took something very precious from me and, in return, offered me nothing but sorrow. He did the same to my Keira and I didn't realize until it was too late. Now she's gone. Damned forever."

"Damned?"

At that, six words from his conversation with Kiera sprang unbidden into his mind: deal, Devil, Victim of the Beast. He shivered at the thought, an icy chill spreading itself across his nerve endings. He had the sudden urge to run far and fast, to get away from Hope Hills Cemetery and never come back.

When he broke out of his reverie, J.J.'s face had suddenly distorted. His tanned skin paled to a carcass-grey, his eyes sunk into his skull, and his frail form seemed to hunch all the more.

"It has seen you." His voice deepened too, turning into something guttural and fierce. "It wants you. It knows of your gift and it will come to collect it."

Before Griffin could press him for more, flames rose up from the ground, engulfing J.J.'s frail spectral form in a flurry of red and orange.

Griffin shot up, breathing hard. He was lying on the cold ground. A quick look around confirmed that the old man's spirit was gone; Griffin's only company was a distraught-looking Jason, who hovered a few feet away as if he were afraid to get closer.

"Where did you go?" Jason asked as though he'd taken great pains to word his question just so.

"I saw him," Griffin answered, climbing clumsily to his feet. "I saw J.J."

"What did he say?"

Taking a moment to get his bearings, Griffin grabbed his friend by the sleeve and pulled him toward the exit. "I'll explain on the way."

"Where are we going?" Jason inquired, breaking into a jog to keep up.

"Anywhere but here."