I’ve been writing about my hometown for a while now, and though many of you may know the name Samuel Singer, and have roamed the streets of Habitsville vicariously through my stories, there’s one special spot in town that I’ve never written about.
The cemetery.
It’s a little cliché, don’t you think? Of all the horror sand oddities that exist in Habitsville in broad daylight, it seems like overkill to go looking for trouble in a place already so haunted by death. Besides, dying in Habitsville and having a body to be buried—well, that made you one of the lucky ones.
The only visitors the cemetery saw was the occasional mourner placing flowers on a headstone, or, this time of year, groups of giggling teens ducking through the scattered trees. There were signs posted telling the latter to keep out, but, being kids, they never did. They’d leave behind beer bottles and candy wrappers, the groundkeepers would clean them up in the morning, grumbling all the way, and that would be that. A graveyard, after all, is nothing to be afraid of, and every midnight truth or dare session would come and go without much incident for Habitsville’s adolescents.
Because, for the most part, they all knew better than to go near the MicMillan Family Circle.
It was made with love. Or, at least, that was what was carved into the large limestone table that sat in the center. The structure was in the very heart of the cemetery, and the headstones surrounded the display like planets around the sun. It was a huge slab, kept rugged around the edges, carved deeply by hand the words “credula res amor est”—a credulous thing is love.
Around the table, heavy and cold, with vines climbing up their legs, were four chairs, one for each of the members of the MicMillan family: John & Louella and their two children, a son and a daughter, Paul and Dorothy.
John MicMillan commissioned the monument in 1910, when the entire family was alive and healthy—it was assumed that John, who had made his fortune in the highly meticulous business of limestone mining and trade, was simply a man who liked to be prepared.
That assumption was proved false, of course, when the entire MicMillan family died, in one fell swoop.
As the story goes, John MicMillan had found out Louella had been seeing another man behind his back, and in a fit of rage, had murdered his entire family one Halloween night. Their ashes were poured into the hollow backs of each of the chairs around the stone slab, just as Mr. MicMillan had prepared just three years prior, and death dates were carved into the bases of each one, all the same exact one: October 31, 1913.
The townspeople of Habitsville each took turns trying to put blame on each of the family members—it was John’s fault for being so impulsive, or Louella’s for cheating, or perhaps it was one of the children that had revealed the affair.
But one compelling piece of evidence suggested it wasn’t a spur of the moment massacre after all. The setting: John MicMillan had murdered his family as they sat around the dinner table. Though the specifics of the murders had never been disclosed to the public, John was an avid collector of pistols, and it was believed that he had used one of his prized weapons to put a bullet in each member of his family.
Back in 1913 the massacre was full of speculation, but in today’s Habitsville, this was nothing more than an urban legend. Details rarely travel over a hundred years intact, and so the MicMillan Massacre became a story to tell around campfires, rather than a chilling example of true crime. People didn’t take it seriously.
That is, until last Halloween.
Though we were both there at the same, time, we were there for different reasons. I saw the group of teenagers through the lens of my camera. I was out that Halloween night taking pictures for the Habitsville Gazette, a task I am not a fan of—I would much rather write for my column, Bad Habit, than take some crappy pictures of ten different Spidermen. Needless to say, I was bored.
So when I saw the gaggle of teenagers making their way through the graveyard, towards the MicMillan Family Circle, I had an odd mix of fear and excitement flow through me. I decided to follow them.
They were reading the graves and laughing at the names, each trying to impress each other in that way kids do. I followed behind silently, occasionally picking up my camera and snapping a picture of the far side of the graveyard—if I was caught, at least I could say I was working.
I thought they would stop before they got to The MicMillan Family Circle—even if they were making light of all the bodies that were buried beneath their feet on the main cemetery path, most everyone instinctively knows better than to approach the limestone furniture.
In fact, they all automatically stopped, their feet stuck in the grass, about ten yards away from the monument.
“What, are you scared?” the boy, tall and blonde, said mockingly to the other three, although he too had stopped walking towards the mass grave.
“Shut up Dylan,” the closest girl, with brown eyes and freckles retorted.
“You shut up Lyla,” Dylan responded. A witty comeback.
“You’ve heard the stories about this place, right?” The other, shorter boy said. He seemed younger than the rest, but I think he was just the naiveté in his voice and his slight frame.
“The McDonald’s Massacre,” Dylan said spookily, wringing his hands mockingly.
“It’s MicMillan,” Lyla corrected, rolling her eyes but smiling anyway.
“Charlie, I want to go home,” the tiny girl who was with the shorter boy grabbed onto his sleeve. “This place is weirding me out.”
Charlie took the girls hand, an uneasy smile on his face. He looked to Dylan hopefully, but the other boy crossed his arms. The message was clear—they were supposed to stay, and anyone who left would be deemed weak.
“Come on Steph,” Charlie said unconvincingly, “It’s not that bad. Those stories aren’t true anyway.”
“I don’t know,” Dylan said, beginning to walk towards the table, “It looks pretty real to me.” The other three hesitated, but as the gap continued to close between their leader and the grave, they began to follow behind him.
I crept behind, careful to remain in the shadows. I had to admit, I was curious—despite the stories, I’d never actually visited The MicMillan Family Circle. I told myself it was because I didn’t believe the legends, or I had too much on my plate—but actually, it might have been because I knew there was something deeply wrong with that place.
And, as I found out, that night, I was right.
Approaching the limestone table was like sinking deeper and deeper into an underwater trench. There was a certain heaviness in the air, and though that October night had started out unseasonably warm, a chill was building on the breeze with every step that I took.
The kids felt it too, at least, the reluctant ones. They exchanged worried looks as Dylan led them around the table, eyeing each chair. “They really do all say the same date,” he said absentmindedly.
“That doesn’t mean the stories are true,” Charlie said, seeming to be talking to himself more than anyone else.
“Stop being so lame, Charlie,” Dylan said, and Charlie seemed to get even smaller when he said it. I was starting to not like this guy.
“Okay, we came, we saw the table,” the small girl, Steph, said quickly, “now can we go?”
“What is this? A big rock?” The brown-eyed girl, Lyla, was bending over the table. In the center, above the inscription, was a large stone, one I had never heard of being there before. In fact, in the few pictures of the MicMillan Family Circle I had seen before that night, I couldn’t recall ever seeing anything in the center besides the Latin phrase.
I was sure it was limestone too, though it didn’t look like it. While the tables and chairs were carved roughly, with jagged edges and crumbling corners, this stone was polished. It shone brightly in the moonlight, a bright pearlescent greenish white, as though it emitted a glow from the inside.
I figured it was another feature John MicMillan had requested when designing his family’s resting place—a testament to the success he found in the stone trading business.
“This whole thing is a big rock,” Dylan said dismissively, and Lyla backed away from the center stone. “Ah, here it is,” the boy said, and before anyone could stop him, Dylan did something that seemed unthinkable.
He sat in John MicMillan’s chair.
Charlie winced, and Steph closed her eyes tight, as though the entire thing might explode. Lyla simply looked annoyed. “You really shouldn’t sit on a grave, Dylan.”
“They shouldn’t have made it a chair, then.” he shot back. “Come on guys, have a seat.” He motioned around the table. “Unless, of course, I’m here with a bunch of babies.”
Lyla rolled her eyes again but walked over to Dylan’s side and took Louella’s seat. Charlie looked from Steph, who was trembling from fear and cold, to the couple who waited for him at the grave. Then, he silently made his choice, sitting in little Paul MicMillan’s chair.
Steph stared at the three other kids, a look of betrayal on her face.
“If I sit down…” she said cautiously, “then do you promise we can go home?”
“Straight home,” Charlie nodded, “I promise.”
I watched through the trees as Steph sat in Dorothy MicMillan’s chair.
As soon as her flesh touched the cold limestone, everything changed.
The Habitsville cemetery disappeared, slipped out from underneath my feet, and the scene that replaced it was entirely unfamiliar.
It was a green wallpapered room, with heavy violet curtains. The sunlight that filtered through was a deep orange, as though the world outside was at the tail end of sunset. It wasn’t an unpleasant place to be on ordinary circumstances, but my pulse raced and my chest tightened with dread as I saw what waited in the center of this new room.
A large, round table, surrounded by four chairs.
This time, the furniture was wooden, and three of the chairs were full. A woman with tied back hair, a long skirt, and a high-collared blouse sat, head bent, praying. Clasping each of her hands were two children, a boy and a girl, the boy in linen shorts and a sweater, the girl in an aproned dress. While the woman was bowing her head, the boy and girl were exchanging disgruntled glances.
“Mama,” the boy said timidly when the woman’s head raised. “May we eat now?”
It was strange. He was only a child, perhaps ten or eleven, but he sounded much older.
The woman put a hand on the boy’s head, smoothing his hair tenderly. What she said next stopped my breath in my throat.
“Not yet, Paul. Not until your father gets home.”
It was horrible for two reasons. It wasn’t difficult to tell where I was, no matter how impossible it seemed. The fashion, the furniture, the table—and sealing the deal, the little boy’s name.
Somehow, I was standing in the middle of the MicMillan’s dining room.
But the second thing, as perplexing and terrifying as the first, was that just as the little boy’s voice hadn’t sounded like it matched his body, the woman’s didn’t seem right either. It took only a matter of seconds for me to realize why.
They were speaking with the voices of the teenagers.
“Lyla? Steph?” I asked aloud, but no one so much as turned in my direction. Wherever I was, whatever I was experiencing, it was clear that I was only an observer, not given a seat at the table.
“When will Father be home?” the little girl, speaking with the voice of Steph, asked. “I’m hungry.”
The woman, who I assumed to be Louella, speaking with the voice of Lyla, smiled. “Any moment now.”
As if on cue, a man entered the room, coming from the space behind me as though from an entrance, though when I turned, only a thick blackness was visible around the scene’s edges. He strolled into the dining room whistling, carrying a large tweed bag.
“Hello, little ones,” the man said. It was Dylan’s voice.
The two children scrambled to his side, hugging him around the waist. His wife smiled, but it was a terse expression. “You’re late,” she said tiredly.
“I know, I know,” her husband, John MicMillan, replied, “But for good reason Lou, I swear.”
He walked over to the table, setting his bag on the tablecloth as his wife grimaced. It made a heavy sound as it touched the wood, and as he opened it and removed its contents, I could see why. He unwound the cloth that covered it, and as the rest of the MicMillans and myself watched in awe, he revealed that huge, gleaming piece of limestone. The same mysterious shard that the group of teenagers had found in the center of the MicMillan Family Circle.
“It’s beautiful,” the little girl said. “Can I hold it?”
“I don’t think so Dot---” Louella started to say, but John was already handing it to the child.
“Be careful with it darling,” he said. The rock was huge in the girl’s tiny hands, and though it must have been heavy, she lifted it right up to her face, staring at her reflection in its smooth surface.
“My turn, my turn,” the impatient boy said with the voice of Charlie. The little girl handed the stone off to her brother.
“Wow,” he said, before nearly dropped it.
John caught it quickly and brought it over to his wife. “The boys found it near the site today, down in some cave by the docks. We think its lime, but we’re having some of the specialists take a look tomorrow. If it is, it’s the clearest naturally occurring hunk of limestone we’ve ever seen. Worth a fortune.”
Louella tentatively took the stone from her husband and held it gingerly. “It’s truly lovely,” she said quietly, staring deep into its milky surface. Then she blinked, as though breaking from its spell. “But don’t think this makes you being late to dinner alright.”
Dylan—well, John MicMillan—laughed, and kissed his wife on the cheek. He took the large stone and put it in the center of the table. “There—a centerpiece fit for a king.”
Once the children and her husband were seated, Mrs. MicMillan brought out the dinner they had been waiting for—a hefty roast chicken, stewed potatoes and carrots, and a rich cabbage soup. I could smell it from where I stood, and my mouth began to water.
And yet, the MicMillans, even the children, didn’t seem to want to eat.
They pushed their food around their plates, but never wanted to bring any to their mouths, as though they had been served an entirely unappetizing meal.
They didn’t say anything either, each one looking up only to steal glances at the stone that had been put in the center of the table.
It was quiet in the dining room, an eerie, unnatural quiet. And then, for seemingly no reason at all, John MicMillan began to laugh.
“John?” Louella said, smiling.
“I’m sorry,” her husband replied between chuckles, “I just had the oddest idea.”
“Well go ahead and share it,” his wife replied, strangely eager.
He laughed a few more times. “Well, alright.”
There was a moments hesitation. Then, John MicMillan picked up his fork with his right hand, and without so much as a second-thought, plunged the prongs into his left.
I jumped violently where I stood, but it seemed that none of his family were as horrified as I was. They watched as their family’s patriarch pulled on his fork, skin stretching until it reached a breaking point. He lifted up his utensil with a morsel of flesh on the end, dripping with blood down onto the tablecloth and his clothes.
John MicMillan let out another small, childlike giggle. And then, he put the fork in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
He smiled at his family, teeth pink with a thin sheen of blood, and they smiled back. The children seated at his side soon scooted closer, sticking their forks into their father’s legs, ripping the material of his trousers and the skin beneath them. Their cheeks grew slick with blood and fat as they ate.
Louella got up and casually walked over to join them, standing over her husband and taking a fork and knife and slicing him up like a roast, like she would have done to the chicken, which sat untouched on the table.
The MicMillans ate John for what felt like hours, though it could have only been a few minutes. John himself kept consuming more and more of his own body, long after his eyes had been eaten by his children like cherry tomatoes, and the bones of his legs shone through what flesh was left.
He grew weaker and weaker, and bloodier and bloodier, until finally, his hand fell limp at his side, and his fork hit the ground.
The sound of metal on the hardwood floor seemed to startle everyone for a moment.
Then, Louella sat back down in her seat, took her fork to her hand, and took her first forbidden bite.
Her children circled her, their hunger seemingly endless, as they ate their mother to the bone. There were no cries of pain, no hesitation, only the wet grunts of consumption, like pigs at the trough. And soon, Louella’s hand stopped moving, and the children stopped eating.
It was the boy who sat in his chair next, and helped his sister tear his flesh from his bones, even cutting his sweater like a knife, vivisecting his stomach to each the morsels of his parents that waited within.
But eventually, even Paul stopped moving, and Dorothy was left alone. Silently, a sweet scarlet smile on her lips, she sat down in her chair.
She began to feast.
The little girl didn’t even look at the gory bodies of her family as she ate, starting on her forearm. I could hear her chew through shallow breathing, swallowing joint, fat, and sinew as easily as if it was ice cream.
She slowed down, her eyes half closed, and her fork lazily bit into the side of her cheek, ripping it from her skull. I could see her teeth gnashing the pink taffy together through the hole she had created.
Then she swallowed. And then, it was done.
I saw the scene laid out before me, a massacre of the strangest kind. The MicMillans were missing huge holes out of their bodies, their bellies all distended and bloated with the meat of their kin.
And then I blinked, and as suddenly as it had come, it was gone.
I was standing in the middle of Habitsville cemetery, looking at The MicMillan Family Circle, the table and chairs no longer wooden, the glow of sunset fading back into the dead of night. The giant shard of mysterious, luminescent limestone had disappeared from the center of the table, and only that phrase, credula res amor est, remained.
Seated around the limestone table were the teenagers—and as my eyes adjusted to the dark, my stomach turned violently. There they were, missing huge holes out of their bodies, their bellies full to the brim. All of them, dead.
Or, so I thought.
I leaned over to vomit into the cool dew grass, but when I brought my head up, I saw a shocking sight—one of the shapes was moving, ever so slightly.
It was Steph, her bloodied hand, the one she hadn’t eaten, tugging on the tattered sleeve of Charlie, slumped and vacant next to her, his one remaining eye staring blankly ahead.
I could see Steph’s tongue flick in her mouth as she spoke, slipping through the hole in her cheek, her speech garbled and choked.
“Can we go home now, Charlie? You promised.”
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