It was a DARE! I can't break my perfect record, it goes against who I am. If I take a dare you can count on me to do it.

(She slung her feet up over the next chair while she continued to relate her story to us)

We were looking for something new and fun to do on Halloween. Things were getting so boring. I was at a party at my boyfriend's house. We all had a bit too much to drink and we spent about a hundred bucks on toilet paper and we already decorated the town with it. We all dressed up and went out Trick-or-Treating. I really made a haul on the candy that year. I always thought, why stay at home and hand it out to little snot-nosed kids when you can go out and get some for yourself?

Well, anyway, we ran out of things to do. We had started partyin' already, early that afternoon, so most everybody was too wasted and some were already passed out on the floor and draped across all the furniture but me and my sister Carrie and her boyfriend and Eli were still itchin' to do something. We decided to play our old favorite Truth-or-Dare game. Since Eli hates to tell the truth, he NEVER tells the truth, he took the dare. We dared him to take off his clothes and run naked down to his mom's house, ring the doorbell and run back here. It was only three blocks away. He was not allowed to hide behind bushes or trees at any time along the way and he had to stay on the street. What the Hell, it was like 11:00 pm already. He didn't want to do it at first but he did and he never got caught by the local bacon. He did get chased by a dog though. It was SO FUN-NEEE.

But MY dare was pretty wild. It was something I've always wanted to do really but now I had the chance because some old woman died and was gonna be buried out at the local graveyard, just outside town. They already dug the hole out there. They dared me to sleep in that open grave. ALONE!

This graveyard is pretty creepy, man. I mean, it's got all the creepy looking trees and really, really old gravestones and it's way out in woods, ya know. I wanted to take a blanket with me but they wouldn't let me. They said I wanted the blanket because I was scared but really it was just because I didn't want to get COLD!

The four of us jumped in Eli's old pontiac and drove out there. When we shut the car lights off it was SO dark, we couldn't see nothin' man. We had to turn the lights back on and leave the car running so we could find where that open grave was exactly. It was waaay towards the back of the cemetery. It figures. We didn't see it right away. Eli found it when he fell into it! HA! One minute he was walking next to me, the next he was just gone! GOD that was fuckin funny man. We couldn't see him for a minute until the top of Eli's cue-ball head appeared next to our feet as it popped up out of this black hole! He screamed like a little girl when he fell in, you should have heard him. He scrambled up and outa there pretty fast though. He was grumbling 'cause they didn't cover it with boards like they usually do after they dig a grave. He said he hurt his ankle and he was limping around, but he's SUCH a wuss.

(She was laughing so hard she needed a minute to compose herself before she could continue with her story. She ran her fingers through her short, spiked blonde hair while she tipped back in her chair...I wondered if she might tip back too far and fall over.)

We didn't have a flashlight. All of the sudden, it starts to sprinkle. I'm saying no way am I staying out here if it's gonna rain!! But the rain stopped and it just started to get like really cold.

Eli helped me down into the hole. I gotta tell ya, it gave me the creeps. I was having second thoughts but I wasn't gonna admit it. No way.

They were like, "Nightie, night Carol. Sweet dreams" and "don't let the bedbugs bite!" I couldn't see them anymore but I just yelled back at them "F..k you!" I could hear them laughing on the way back to the car and then the next thing I know, the car lights grew real dim, slowly, then went out. Carrie screamed and I heard Eli yell "SHIT!"

I was standing there in that hole, in that cold open grave, probly like 150 yards from them, laughing my ass off. But I was a little scared the car wouldn't start though. That would suck. I tried to climb up out of that hole and I couldn't get out! Man, the dirt just kept sliding and crumbling so I just decided to wait and listen to those guys for a minute. They couldn't see the car. They were stumbling around up there trying to see where it was. The idiots knew all they had to do was just keep walking straight and they would eventually walk right into the thing. But then again, hey, you ever try walking straight in the dark?

Which way is straight ...when you can't see anything?!

(More laughs)

Carrie started freaking out but it didn't take long and I heard the squeaky hinges on the car door open and I heard Carrie go, "Whoo, Yeah!" Then all I heard after that was Eli mumbling and then I heard click, click, click ... he tried to start the car. Amazing how sound travels when everything is so still and you're miles away from any houses in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Well, it ended up that they had to stay in the car ALL night up by the road. Carrie and her boyfriend were in the back seat and Eli reclined by the steering wheel. He couldn't get the car to start at all.

And me, well, I was stuck in the hole.

Let me tell ya, it got COLD that night. It started to get really windy so I just sat down with my knees pulled up to my chin in a corner of that six-foot rectangle hole in the ground but I could hear the wind above me and I heard the trees making creaking and groaning noises while they swayed and their branches rubbed together. I could look straight up at some of the limbs of the big old brittle trees that were in view just over the hole. It almost seemed like they were looking down at me, actually staring back at me, kinda like what you wrote in one of your writings Laura. They looked kinda like long, skinny gray ghoul arms stretched over me in the sky with bony skeleton fingers on the ends of them. But I couldn't see anything beyond them. It was pitch black beyond those limbs.

It was like 2:00am when I finally actually lay down in that hole. Trust me, it's colder below the grass. I stretched out flat on my back like a dead person and I tried to imagine what it would be like, ya know, to be dead. That dirt was grainy and not exactly posturepedic if ya know what I mean. Something tried to crawl in my ear. I didn't like that very much. I pulled my sweater up over my ears and nose and eventually had to curl up to try to get warmer. There were lots of little rocks under me I kept sweeping them out of the way. And I was as close to nature as I want to get. I don't even want to go camping anymore. You wouldn't believe the sounds I heard out there that I never heard before. I don't know what they were or where half of those sounds were coming from but your imagination really starts to get the best of you, ya know? Your head starts to like play tricks on you.

I didn't really sleep. The dirt was cold and damp. I don't like the smell of dirt anymore either. Never really knew it even had a smell until that night. Kinda musty-like. I might have lightly dozed off for just a few minutes here and there but it seemed like I was in that grave for an eternity.

It made me think alot about death and how one day I would be back in a hole just like this one and never be able to get out again. I don't know. I started thinking all kinds of things. I thought about that old lady who died who was gonna actually be put into this hole, and unlike me, she'd have to STAY here! Geez! I closed my eyes for a minute and tried to imagine what it would be like to be closed up in a coffin and burried in this hole under six feet of solid dirt.

My eyes popped back open. It was too scary to keep my eyes closed. So I lay there looking up at those creepy branches and thought about it some more. I didn't know that lady who died, only heard about her, but started to wonder what she was like and what her life had been like. I wondered if she was really still around in some way, you know, a ghost, spirit or whatever. It was weird. I started wondering what I was gonna do with the rest of my life. For the first time I felt sorta ...alone. Not just alone in the hole. Alone in the universe kind of. It was very weird. I even started feeling bad that I had T-P'd the neighborhood and stuff.

I feel kind of different since my night in that open grave.

I dunno.

Can't really explain it.

But I never T-P'd the neighborhood after that and I don't go Trickstering or Trick-or-Treating no more.

Now I stay home and hand out candy to the little kids.

But there ya go. There's my story.

Happy Halloween you guys!

~Carol D.

(And yes...we did ask her how they managed to leave the graveyard that next morn. They all had to walk miles back into town. Tired and hung-over. Eli's brother returned to the graveyard later that afternoon with his pickup truck and towed the old pontiac back to town ...after which the car started just fine and no problems were found.)

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