Author's Note:
I've been playing around with this one for months, mostly for writing warm-ups and keeping in practice. I never intended to publish it. Years and years ago someone asked for me to write a "Barkis Revenge" story, and I used that for a prompt. What I came up with ended up amusing me greatly. I hope it amuses you, too. Also, if you care about this sort of thing, this is a total one-off unconnected to my other stories. -PP

1

It was a warm late afternoon in August, swiftly cooling toward evening. The air was heavy and still on the narrow road from the fishing village. Anne Van Dort walked alongside her older sister, Lydia. They were headed home from a day at the harbor. Liddie had been helping to unload one of Grandad's fishing boats, and Anne had gone along to watch. Sitting on a barrel on the wharf, sketching and watching the action, was a pleasant way to spend a summer day.

The walk was pleasant, as well. Anne took a deep breath of the late summer air. This was her favorite time of day during her favorite season. The light was beautiful just before twilight, golden and warm. Anne hoped they wouldn't be too late. They'd been expected home earlier than this. And she didn't like to walk in the dark. The woods around her home were ominous and frightening in the dark.

The sound of a carriage approaching made them look over their shoulders and move to one side of the road. Anne fell into step behind Liddie, minding her step among the rocks and weeds.

"Nice evening for it, Mr. and Mrs. Van Dort!" came a voice Anne recognized as the greengrocer's. His small cart pulled up alongside them, the horse going at a nice clip.

"It's the misses Van Dort, actually," Lydia replied with a grin. "Evening, Mr. Doubek."

Anne watched Mr. Doubek do a double take, staring Lydia up and down. Anne gave a weak smile and tried not to look too embarrassed by her sister. Liddie was wearing an old pair of their father's trousers, along with a man's work shirt she'd bought herself. Added to the fact that her hair was tightly bound up with only her unruly bangs escaping, she looked exactly like their father.

In contrast, Anne took after Mother. They had exactly the same face and build—Anne knew from portraits that she was the very image of Mother as a seventeen-year-old. The only difference was that she had black hair and Father's pale coloring.

So the grocer could be forgiven his mistake. Disapproval was obvious on his face as he gave Liddie another look. Lydia stared right back. Anne cast her eyes to the ground.

"Well, good evening, ladies," Mr. Doubek said, touching his cap. Anne watched the cart disappear down the road toward the village, wheels and hooves kicking up dust.

"Did I embarrass you?" Lydia asked, frowning. Anne felt her cheeks redden. The honest answer was yes, but she didn't want to hurt her sister's feelings. Or make her angry. The second one was more likely.

"I brought you a change of clothes," Anne said meekly, patting her satchel, which also contained her notebook and pencils.

Liddie tossed her head and quickened her pace, forcing Anne to trot to catch up. "I'm not embarrassed, why should you be?" Lydia said. "I was working, so I'm wearing working clothes. And you know, I like them. I don't care."

Anne, trying hard to both keep up and not trip, just nodded.

Lydia finally slowed down when they reached the woods path that skirted the cemetery and the river, and would lead them to the churchyard. Anne looked up into the trees. The crows were beginning to come back to their roosts around the cemetery. The birds croaked to one another as they settled. A few seemed to be watching Anne and Lydia as they walked along.

Anne cleared her throat, and stepped a bit closer to her sister. There was that ominous feeling, in the gathering darkness. But it was worse tonight, somehow. She couldn't quite put a finger on it, but something felt...different. In a way that pricked the back of her neck and gave her gooseflesh down her arms.

A faint breeze stirred the leaves. Through the trees they could see the church, backlit by the swiftly disappearing sun. The shadows had all nearly disappeared into darkness.

The path led them around the far side of the church, where the oldest and most crooked headstones were. Lydia made to take their usual shortcut through the graveyard itself. Anne stopped. Something about the atmosphere, the wind, the sky, the tilt of the monuments and the thorny weeds, made her want to keep to the path that went around to meet the road.

"Let's take the path instead," she called as quietly as she could to Liddie. It was dark enough now that her sister was mostly a shadow. Liddie didn't even break stride.

"Help yourself, I'm already halfway through," she called back.

"I...I...I don't want to walk it alone," Anne insisted, a bit embarrassed to say it out loud.

"I'm right here, for heaven's sake," Lydia told her, finally coming to a stop. "I'll wait for you, come on, either way you like."

For a moment she dithered. She could tell Lydia was getting annoyed. It was dark. She was wasting time. So, with foreboding she told herself was just her overactive nerves, she followed her sister through the maze of stones.

Until her skirt caught on something, and she was jerked backward.

She gasped in surprise and turned to look. The lace trim on her dress had snagged on a gnarled root in between two headstones. When she tried to tug it loose, she found it stuck fast.

"What are you doing over there?" Lydia asked, finally heading back toward her. "You're the one who wanted to hurry."

"My dress is caught," Anne replied. She gave another tug, and then, to her shock and horror, she found herself pulled so that she stumbled to the ground, nearly striking her head on one of the stones. She was on her knees for a moment before another inhumanly strong yank knocked her onto her back.

"Hold on," came Lydia's voice from behind her. But Anne had nothing to hold. She was being dragged. The strap of her satchel caught about her neck. At the same time she tried to kick at whatever had her dress. It just grabbed her ankle instead.

That's when she realized that this was not a root. It was a hand. A skeletal, inhumanly strong hand. The hand was joined by another, gripping her other ankle so that she could no longer kick. Skeletal arms extended from the earth, pulling her closer and closer. Her skirts rode up and twigs and thorns scratched at her legs. At last, Anne got the breath to shriek.

The earth was crumbling away beneath her, she was being pulled into a hole, an ever-widening hole in the churchyard. She twisted with all her might, tried grabbing at the sparse grass, but it was no use.

And then Liddie was there. Anne was still on her back, unable to get any traction, now almost waist-deep in the dirt. Lydia grabbed her under the arms and tried to pull her free, but whatever had her was too strong. Liddie only managed to get herself dragged along, too. After a moment, Liddie lost her grip, and Anne squeezed her eyes shut as her face was pulled into the dirt. She felt her sister's hand flailing about, trying to get hold of her again. At the last second she managed to catch Anne's sleeve in her fingers.

Anne was pulled under the earth of the graveyard, down into sour-smelling darkness, dragging Lydia with her.

2

While Anne and Lydia had been walking home, their sisters Catherine and Mary had been near the churchyard, too. They were messing about with Mary's new camera.

Well, Catherine was messing. Mary took her photography very seriously.

They were sitting on the church steps as the sun set, reasonably certain that Pastor Galswells was either in the village or eating his evening meal and wouldn't come out to shoo them away. They'd spent most of the afternoon in and about the woods, and were on the lookout for their sisters before they headed home. Mary had graciously let Catherine have a look at her new vest pocket camera, and was pointing out the features as they sat together.

Catherine sighed contentedly and tucked her skirt more securely around herself against the chill of the stone step. She was overdressed for an afternoon with her little sister. When Mary had asked her to "come take pictures," Catherine had naturally assumed she'd be modeling. So she'd put on a darling lacy white tea gown she'd just bought this summer, along with the matching shoes and hat. However, Mary wasn't interested in taking photographs of her sister in the garden. Instead, they'd rambled through the wood, places Catherine had never been. They walked to the sawmill, all about the village walls, through the cemetery, and all in between. They'd even found an abandoned well near the mill, grown over romantically with blackberry brambles.

"Isn't this just the most darling little thing?" Catherine remarked, holding Mary's camera carefully as she examined it. "It's so tiny! Does it take tiny pictures?"

"The negatives are about the size of a stamp," Mary told her. "So pretty small, yes."

"Ingenious, isn't it?" Catherine said. "You combine a special lens and some light and some special paper and voila! Photographs. It's like magic."

Mary grinned. "It is, a bit," she agreed. "You'll have to come to the dark room sometime and watch me develop the film. That's really magic."

Mary's makeshift dark room in the old kitchen pantry was her top-secret laboratory, so to be extended an invitation was a surprise and an honor. Catherine grinned.

"That would be fun!" she replied, handing back the camera. "I'd love to."

"If you don't touch anything," Mary added, quite serious.

"Of course not."

They sat in companionable silence for a while, watching the sky grow orange and purple with the sunset. The evening chorus of crickets and crows began as the air cooled around them. Catherine took a deep breath through her nose and closed her eyes.

"This was a lovely day," she told Mary. "I haven't had so much fun in ages!"

Mary raised an eyebrow. "Really?" she asked. "You've been going to parties and balls and everything all summer long. I thought you were having fun at those."

Catherine smiled and poked her sister affectionately. "That's a different kind of fun. This kind of fun is much better, trust me."

Mary still looked disbelieving, but Catherine was telling the truth. Catherine had had her social debut in the spring, the only one of her sisters to do so. Lydia had scoffed, Anne said she'd think about it but was clearly distressed at the idea, and Mary was too young. She did love parties, and traveling, and spending so much time with her Grandmamma at beautiful houses. And the dresses and the food and the company and the music. But...

The last garden party she'd attended the week before had spooked her. The manor where it was held had gorgeous grounds, the cakes had been splendid, the other girls had been fun. All was grand until Grandmamma upbraided her on the way home for eating so many cakes and never even speaking to any of the gentlemen in attendance. In the whirl of new dresses, different faces, dancing, and delicious food, Catherine had quite forgotten the whole point of a debut and a social season: to find a husband.

Catherine was not interested in getting married. She just wanted to have fun. The idea that men had started writing asking to call on her disturbed her greatly. That they'd been watching and assessing while she'd been having a wonderful time, being herself, in her element. It was a little creepy, actually. So today had been a nice break. Mary was wonderful company—intrepid and funny and extremely smart about cameras. It had been fun to behave as though she were eleven again, too.

Footsteps from the churchyard made them both turn. It was growing dark quickly. In the twilight Catherine could just make out Lydia striding across the graveyard. Then she stopped and called out behind her, presumably to Anne. It was hard to make out the words at this distance.

"Oh good, they're back," said Mary, hopping to her feet and stowing her camera in its case, which she wore on a strap. "I'm ready for dinner."

"Me, too," Catherine said. She'd just got to her feet when a shriek ripped through the evening stillness.

In a flash, the pair of them bounded down the church steps and into the old graveyard with its crooked, mossy stones. At first Catherine couldn't see anyone. But then she caught movement in the shadows near the church wall. Two figures, one hunched and one flat on the ground, were in the thorns and weeds of the oldest edge of the churchyard.

"It's them, it's Liddie and Anne!" Mary cried, pointing. Catherine squinted.

"Did Anne trip and fall?" she wondered aloud. Poor Anne tended to bumble a little.

Mary took off running without answering, unencumbered by long skirts. Catherine was left behind in seconds.

"Drat these narrow skirts!" she grumbled to herself, hobbling along as fast as she could. When she heard Mary holler, she picked up her pace enough that she heard her dress tear. Running was a bit easier after that, but oh, this was a nice dress...

When at last she reached Mary, it took her a moment to take in what she was seeing. There was a large hole in the ground. A few of the crumbling headstones had been knocked askew by the movement of the earth. And Liddie's feet were disappearing into the ground.

"I couldn't get a good hold of her!" Mary cried, watching as the graveyard swallowed Lydia up. "She was holding onto Anne, and they both went under!"

"Into a hole?" Catherine asked. "Did they fall? Is it a sinkhole?"

"I don't know!" Mary replied angrily, hands on hips. "How would I know?"

Catherine dropped to her knees at the edge of the hole. No sign of Liddie or Anne. There was only darkness beneath. But not entirely dark. She thought she could see an eerie green light from somewhere below. Muffled thumps and scuffles could be heard, sounds that made her heart flip-flop. Then, as she watched, the edges of the hole began to close in.

"It's closing!" Catherine cried, scarcely believing her eyes. Without thinking twice she thrust both arms forward, hoping to stop it. All she did was topple and begin to slide, half-shoving and half-digging her way after her sisters, Mary close behind.