Born on the 4th of July

might be doing already.
“All right—”
“She’s coming from the office and she’ll take a turn into this main tunnel, but not before we’re past the turn. She’s coming fast!”
Angela’s eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. The little pinpricks of light allowed for her to make out shapes.
The tunnels had been built for the living; now, they housed the dead. The slabs—like the one she had lain on—had not been enclosed with any kind of sealant.
Corpses had lain on them for maybe a hundred-and-fifty years.
Bones, for the most part, were covered with decaying shrouds.
She closed he eyes for a split second. Everything inside her cried out.
But something stronger cried out as well. Not just her instinct for survival, but the instinct to protect her unborn child at all costs.
“Help me the best you can!” she said.
She quickly slid onto one of the closest slabs, choosing one with the shroud that remained in the best shape.
“Forgive me!” she whispered, pushing bones with bits of mummified skin to the side and crawling beneath the shroud.
“That’s Papa Jim; he wouldn’t mind in the least,” Jennie assured her.
She was barely in the slab—worried her extended belly would be a give-away—when she heard footsteps.
A light step, she thought. A woman, not a man.
Hatfield! Merissa Hatfield was the witch who had doused her!
She really hoped Papa Jim didn’t mind. She felt one of the disarticulated bones at her side; a femur. She curled her fingers around it.
Forgive me! She said, in silence this time.
And she waited. The footsteps were coming closer.
And closer.
*
“It’s locked,” Corby said, frowning and staring at the door to the office. “His car is out there—but the door is locked.”
Adam stood next to him. He pounded on the door.
Charlie Dearborn’s car was, indeed, parked right in front close to the door. The man had to have reached the office.
There was no answer to Adam’s banging.
“He’s got to be in there!” Josh Harrison’s ghost murmured. “Maybe I could will myself through the wall, but . . . I can’t open doors. I couldn’t let you in. I could tell you—"
Corby banged on the door himself.
“Where could he have gone? Is he trying to ignore us now?” Corby demanded.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Adam murmured. “I have the legal backing; he’d be a fool to try and suppress the video—or try to alter it in any way.”
“Dad knew he was up to something,” Corby said. He banged on the door himself.
“Up to something?” Josh murmured. “He was a jerk. And he was stunned Corby knew what he knew about the place. Guess he’s not much with the Internet!”
“We don’t know,” Adam murmured.
Adam was a wonderful man; kind, giving, and caring. He had become a grandfather to Corby, and it was wonderful. He’d never had a grandfather before.
But Jackson was smart as a whip, and when it didn’t come to “education,” his dad had instincts like few other people.
And yet . . .
Maybe it was obvious. Charlie Dearborn was in charge of the grounds at the cemetery. He had to have known about the tunnels. He’d gone back to the office—to help them.
But he had locked the door. And he wasn’t here.
And neither was the lady who had been there before.
Or if they were here, they weren’t answering!
“Adam, something is wrong,” Corby said. “It’s obvious. He’s not opening the door—and that lady isn’t there, either. And it’s clearly still office hours!”
“You’re right and your father was right,” Adam said. “He’s up to something. Stupid—because he knew we’d be here for the video surveillance and that we know who he is.”
“Maybe,” Corby murmured.
Adam looked at him. “Maybe. False name?”
Corby shrugged.
Adam pulled out his phone. He was calling Jon Dickson, Corby thought, because Jon was due to be out there soon.
“How close are you?” Adam asked.
Corby didn’t hear Jon’s answer, but it satisfied Adam. He thanked Jon and ended the call and looked at Corby.
“I wish I had shoulders like a linebacker,” he said. “I don’t. When Jon gets here—he said he was five to ten minutes away, and I don’t think I can get a local cop out any faster—we’ll break the door down.”
Corby nodded, but even five minutes was a long time to him.
“I’m going to look around,” he said.
“Corby—”
“Just walking around the house.”
“These people are dangerous—”
“I’m not a woman and I’m not pregnant,” Corby reminded him.
“I’ll follow him,” Corby heard Josh’s ghost mutter.
Of course. Josh was safe and wise and probably had been when he’d been ten. He’d died when he’d been a teenager, and now he was a great friend, an older brother, to Corby.
He was grateful to have living friends now, too.
But even as a ghost, Josh was a great friend.
The house had been a rectory—a home for the priests. It was still white-washed, small, surrounded by flowering shrubs, and as pleasant as the rest of the cemetery.
Ascetic.
Corby knew Adam would be worried, but he was also anxious to walk around to the back, though it would look like the back to any house.
But that meant a back door, one that would probably be locked, too. Still he had to try.
The back of the office or old rectory was a small grass lane, surrounded by more flowering shrubs that edged the stone roadway or car path around the cemetery.
Once, it would have accommodated carriages and horses, Corby thought, and he could imagine them, just as he could imagine the old chapel and rectory when they had first been built and the graveyard when the first dead had been buried.
He had looked it all up. He had seen maps of the place through the years.
He hurried up the stone path to the backdoor and tried the old handle. To his amazement, it gave way for him.
Someone had thought only to lock the front door.
“It’s open!” Corby said.
They had forgotten the back.
“Don’t go in! Get my dad!” Josh said.
“Adam!” Corby shouted, starting to run back around. But Adam was already coming his way and he nearly knocked him over in his haste to reach him.
“What? What? Are