Never The Honeysuckle
A short horror story
Cora paused between two oak trees and listened. When she finally heard their stuttering bleats she lifted her crook and slammed it back into the ground with a huff.
“Oh those wicked beasts are going to be the death of me.” She stormed off through the woods, determined to deny her errant wards their nightly apples. Knowing full well that their soft, nuzzling noses would eventually win her over and rub out her resolve. The bleating again. The graveyard was close, they must have squeezed through the fencing. Lord knows they were downright contortionists when they were after something tasty. As she neared the spot she heard a man, his voice raised in anger, and her goats, bleating in terror. Underneath it, a sweet scent wafted to her on the breeze. A scent she recognized. Honeysuckle, a trickster, her grandmother always said. “Lucky one minute, unlucky the next, girl. Tricksters are always hungry, best be wary.” The goats screamed again. Cora lifted her skirts and broke into a run.
Bri skirted the high brick wall that enclosed the old graveyard. Judging by the missing letters on the arched sign over the gate and the rusted padlock, it hadn’t been open to visitors in some time, but a scent had infiltrated her attention as she’d passed. Chance, a closed sidewalk on her usual route, had diverted her daily run down this sleepy, wooded little street. She’d know the scent anywhere, honeysuckle. There had been honeysuckle at the old farmhouse she’d lived in as a child. It had been her mother’s favorite, until nothing was. Until the bad thing happened and her mother had become the bitter old woman she was today, sitting alone in her tiny room at the elder care center, remembering only the hard times, and never the honeysuckle.
She picked her way through the thick shrubs and trees that surrounded the little graveyard until she came to the back part of the wall. She’d hoped to be able to climb a tree and drop over, but part of the wall had fallen, making an easy entrance. The sweet scent wrapped her in warmth as she gripped the crumbling red bricks and lifted herself through the gap.
