The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan

the deep shadow.
    There were no more groans. Only the wind. The stirring of branches. The rattle of leaves.
    I was about to turn away. But before I did, I raised the flashlight and shone its beam out into the night.
    The dim ray picked out a headstone not far from the house. I shifted the flashlight to the side and another headstone became visible, then another. Finally, the light rested on the black base of the statue. I raised it slowly and the mourning woman in her cowl came into view.
    I gazed down at her where she stood ghostly and pathetic and still.
    And slowly, I became aware that there was another figure standing just behind her.
    It was a vague outline beyond the reach of the light. The figure of a man standing motionless, his face upraised and turned toward me. It was a weird, empty face. It seemed to have no features. It seemed to gleam bizarrely in the darkness.
    My heart sped up. I started to move the light to get a better view.
    Suddenly, a hand grabbed my shoulder. I cried out and dropped the flashlight. Its beam rolled crazily this way and that around the room.
    “What’re you doing?”
    It was Rick, standing behind me.
    “Oh! Oh!” was all I could say. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would explode.
    “What?” muttered Josh from his sleeping bag—and both Rick and I jumped, startled by the sound of his voice.
    “There’s someone . . .” I managed to whisper finally. “Someone out there.”
    “Out where?” Rick whispered back.
    “In the graveyard.”
    Rick had his flashlight too. He shone it out the window. “I don’t see anyone.”
    “By the statue. Just behind it.”
    “There’s no one there.”
    I looked. He was right. The figure was gone.
    Josh had his sneakers on too now. He joined us at the window.
    “What was he doing?” said Rick.
    “Just standing there. Just staring up at me,” I said.
    “Who?” said Josh.
    “I don’t know. Someone out in the night. In the cemetery.”
    “There was someone in the cemetery staring up at you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s terrifying,” said Josh. “I mean, that’s . . . that’s terrifying. I mean, it’s terrifying. Isn’t it?”
    I nodded.
    “I mean, isn’t that terrifying?” said Josh.
    “All right, man,” said Rick. “I think we all get that it’s terrifying.”
    “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me.”
    “It’s not just you.” Rick moved his flashlight over the graveyard. The wind rose, the trees bending and creaking. We stood together, staring, as Rick’s beam picked out a headstone, an obelisk, and then the mourning woman making her eerie gesture to the darkness. But there was nothing else in the graveyard now. No figure lurking in the deeper shadows. “Is it possible you could’ve . . . ?”
    “Imagined it?” I said. “I don’t think so, bro. I heard it first. I heard this . . . this kind of groan.”
    “A groan?” said Josh, his voice breaking. “What do you mean, a groan?”
    “I mean, like a . . . like a low groan, like, ‘O-o-o-oh.’ Like that.”
    “That is so terrifying,” Josh murmured.
    “Then I got up and came to the window. And when I looked out . . . I only saw it for a split second, but it was definitely there. A figure. A man, I think. With this kind of weird, white face . . .”
    “A weird, white face? A weird, white face? What does that even mean?”
    “It means a weird, white face, Josh. Like it . . . I don’t know. Like it didn’t have any features.”
    “How could it not have features? What kind of face is that? If it’s a face it has to have features. Otherwise, it would be terrifying. Right? I mean, isn’t that . . .”
    The words caught in his throat as the wind became even stronger and the whisper and creak of the branches grew louder and under that whisper—yes, there it was again: that low, dreadful groan as of a man in pain.
    Rick and Josh and I fell silent, gaping at one another with open mouths.
    “Did you . . . ?” Josh tried to say.
    Rick and I