“I…” Maria felt her face flush. “I’m sorry. It made me feel better, just in case…”
“Just in case I turned out to be crazy after all?”
“Yeah, if you want the truth.”
“Go ahead and play it back.”
“Why?”
“Humor me.”
Slowly, Maria picked up the recorder, pressed the stop button and then played back their conversation. Except that instead of Levi’s voice, somebody else spoke to her. A different voice boomed from the device. She couldn’t distinguish its sex or age. There was no accent or distinguishing characteristics. It had a hypnotic, musical quality, and flowed like water.
“
MARIA. PLEASE HELP
.”
Maria’s jaw went slack. Her fingers tightened around the recorder until her knuckles turned white. The voice was replaced with a feint, electronic hiss—white noise. Maria advanced the recording, but there was just more silence.
“How…” She turned off the recorder and looked at Levi, her eyes wide. “How did you…your voice?”
Levi’s smile grew broader.
“Let me guess,” he teased, mimicking her earlier taunt. “You heard the voice of God?”
Maria started to respond, but couldn’t. Her mouth felt dry, her tongue swollen. She tried licking her lips. They seemed puffy. Heavy. Her ears rang. She struggled to sit up straight, but the car’s interior began to spin. Her fingers grasped the seat, but she couldn’t feel the upholstery.
“Maria?” Levi reached for her, concerned. “Are you okay?”
Levi’s voice sounded far away, as if he were speaking from the other side of a long tunnel. Maria tried to answer him but had trouble forming the words. She felt weak and her senses seemed deadened. She bowed her head, grasping for something to hold on to. Her hand felt heavy—made of lead. It suddenly seemed very hot and stifling inside the car, yet she was shivering.
“N-no…I…”
Then her eyes rolled in their sockets and she fainted.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ken went through the masks and costumes, making sure everything he’d ordered was there. He ticked them off in his head. Werewolf. Gorilla. Boar with tusks. Witch. Evil clown. Phantom of the Opera. Both Boris Karloff’s and Robert DeNiro’s versions of the Frankenstein monster. A leering jack-o’-lantern. A gargoyle. Gollum from
The Lord of the
Rings
. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Jason Voorhees. Freddy Krueger. Pinhead. A few zombies, including Bub from George Romero’s
Day of the Dead
. Several different mutants and aliens. Leatherface. The Fly. A man with one latex eyeball hanging down his cheek. Another man with a hard foam axe jutting from his latex head. And Ken’s personal favorites, masks of veteran horror actors Bruce Campbell and Michael Berryman, cast from molds of their faces. Two of his volunteers were going to dress like the actors’ characters in
Army of
Darkness
and the original version of
The Hills Have Eyes
. For the former, they’d even built an attraction that looked like the inside of the windmill from the movie. Hopefully, the attendees would recognize it. In any case, these masks would cap the ensembles off perfectly. Satisfied with the results, Ken then double-checked the costumes and found they were all in order, as well.
“All set?” asked the clerk, a college-aged kid who still hadn’t outgrown the curse of teenage acne.
“Yeah,” Ken said. “I think we’re good to go.”
“Sweet. I’m glad you picked these up early. We’ll be busy tonight.”
“Because of Halloween?”
“You got that right. We make nine months of rent during the month of October.”
At the counter, Ken grabbed a few compact discs of Halloween music and added them to the pile. He already had dozens of sound effect and ambience recordings, but a few more wouldn’t hurt.
“Want to add a fog machine, Mr. Ripple? I can give you a discount since you bought so much.”
“That’s okay. To be honest, the ones you guys have here are too small for my needs. The Ghost Walk has a creek that flows through one part of it. We’re gonna use dry ice. Drop it in the creek and place buckets of it at intervals along the trail. According to some haunt enthusiasts I’ve talked to online, once it starts evaporating, the dry ice should have the same effect,”
As he handed the salesclerk his credit card, Ken’s cell phone rang, playing the main orchestral theme from
Young
Guns II
. While the clerk rang up his charges, Ken glanced at the phone and saw it was Terry calling.
“Hey,” he answered. “What’s up?”
“The police were here.”
“W-what? Why? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Rhonda and Sam. The kids from the high school? Turns out they never went home last night. Their parents called it in. Last time anybody saw them was here, at the Ghost Walk.”
“Yeah,” Ken agreed. “I saw Rhonda yesterday evening, before Maria and Rudy showed up.”
“I told the cops that. They want to talk to you about it when you get a chance.”
Ken twitched. “Why? They…they don’t think I had something to do with it, do they?”
The clerk looked up from the register. Ken turned his back on him.
“No,” Terry said. “At least, I don’t think so. They found Sam’s car in Lancaster this morning, parked at a supermarket in Columbia. That’s all they’d tell me. Don’t know if they ran off together, or had a fight, or what. I wouldn’t worry about the cops thinking we’re involved. You know how kids are. Remember the shit we used to get up to?”
“Yeah.”
“The cop left a business card for you and wrote his cell phone number down on the back. I told him you’d be out running around most of the day but would get back to him as soon as you could. I also gave him two free passes. Hope that’s okay? He seemed really into the Ghost Walk.”
“Sure,” Ken said. “That’s fine. I’m finishing up at the costume shop right now. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Sounds good,” Terry said. “I just figured you’d want to know right away.”
“You did the right thing. Are the others saying anything?”
“The cop talked to Cecil, Tom, Russ and Tina. Jorge ain’t back yet with the lime. I walked out here to the field so I could call. You know how bad cell coverage is in the woods.”
“Okay. Hold down the fort. I’ll be there soon. And Terry?”
“Yeah?”
“Let Cecil and the others know that I’d appreciate it if they didn’t go blabbing about this. We don’t need that kind of publicity, and it’s not going to help the cops find them.”
“Agreed.”
Finished, Ken disconnected the call and stuffed the cell phone back in his pocket. Then he turned back to the clerk, who was holding out the store copy of his receipt and a pen for him to sign it with.
“Everything okay?” the clerk asked.
Ken nodded. “Fine. Just one of those days, you know?”
“Tell me about it. Seems like I’m having one of those lives.”
Ken signed the receipt. “Ever get the feeling something bad is coming? You don’t know what, but you can feel it—looming like a thunderstorm?”
The clerk stared at him. “No, can’t say that I ever have.”
“Oh.” Ken shrugged. “Must be me, then.”
“I’ll give you a hand loading up,” the clerk offered. “And then you can be on your way. Bet you’re excited! Tomorrow’s the big day.”
“Thanks,” Ken said. Then he muttered under his breath, “It’s just getting more exciting all the time.”
“Time to piss,” Cecil Smeltzer announced.
“Thanks for sharing,” Tom McNally said. “Want me to hold it for you?”
“No need. This ain’t no union job and we don’t work for the state road crew. Doesn’t take two men to hold my pecker. It still stands up every time. Unlike you younger guys with your Viagra.”
“You get a hard-on when you piss? Maybe you’d better see a doctor about that.”
“No, sir.” Cecil frowned. “I don’t guess I will. You get to be my age, any visit to the doctor involves him putting his finger in your ass.”
The sound of their laughter filled the forest.
“I’m gonna go back to the field,” Tom said. “Check in with Terry. See how he made out with that cop. You want anything from the cooler?”
Cecil shook his head. “No, I’m good. I drink anything else, I’ll just have to piss again.”
As Tom strode away, he called over his shoulder, “Careful you don’t cut your dick off with that machete while you’re pissing!”
“Young people,” Cecil muttered. “No respect for age or beauty.”
After Tom was gone, Cecil drove the blade of his machete deep into a rotting tree stump. Splinters of dry wood fell to the ground around the stump’s base. When he let go of the handle, the machete was still vibrating from the force he’d put behind the blow. He grinned, flashing his dentures and feeling happy. At his age, he was lucky if he could lift the machete most days, let alone swing it hard.
Volunteering for this Ghost Walk had been good for him, more than he’d even at first suspected. Initially, Cecil had gotten involved because he liked Ken Ripple and appreciated what the younger man was doing to honor his wife’s memory. Ken and Deena had gone to Cecil’s church for a while. Good people. Deena had one of those smiles that made people feel better, no matter what kind of day they were having. Ken had stopped coming to services after Deena’s death. Cecil couldn’t blame him much. Cecil’s wife, Gladys, had been gone two years now, struck down in the night by a blood clot. But if she hadn’t been such a bitch to him for the last thirty years of their lives together, then maybe Cecil would be pissed at God, too. Instead, he was secretly grateful.
Maybe it was the fresh air or just the fact that he’d been more active these past two months than he’d been for the last five years, but Cecil felt better. Healthier. He felt strong again, like he had in his forties and fifties. The exercise was definitely helping. He’d swung that machete all morning long, stopping only to drink coffee and talk to the police officer, but his back and shoulder muscles barely ached.
“Yes, sir,” he whispered. “Maybe I’ll head on down to the Lutheran Home’s Senior Center tonight and see if I can’t meet a lady. Play a few hands of strip cribbage.”
He left the trail, pushing through the undergrowth. Although Tom and Terry were up in the field, Russ and Tina Farnsworth were around somewhere, putting up cornstalk walls along parts of the trail. Wouldn’t do for Tina to come strolling down the path and find Cecil with his penis hanging out of his pants. She might get one glimpse of it and leave Russ for him.
He stopped after he’d gone about fifty yards. He glanced behind him. The brush was dense enough that he couldn’t see the trail, which meant that nobody could see him either. Satisfied, Cecil unzipped his pants and freed his penis. Rather than the usual pathetic trickle, his stream was strong.
A twig snapped somewhere behind him.
Cecil turned his head, but couldn’t see anything. He focused his attention on the business at hand again, amazed by his renewed vigor.
“Yep,” he breathed. “Hard work does a body good.”
Then he thought of his brother, Clark—a reminder that honest labor didn’t always have the same positive results.
Cecil tried not to dwell on Clark. For years, he’d refused to speak or think about him at all. He’d put all of his brother’s pictures in a shoe box and hid them in the attic, beneath Gladys’s cross-stitch collection and a pile of old record albums. He’d tried to contact his nephew, Barry, a few times over the years, but the boy had turned out just like his father, and Cecil had given up. Talking to Barry just made him think of Clark. Thinking of Clark caused pain, so the easiest way to deal with it was to pretend his brother had never existed.
But, Cecil was learning, these days it wasn’t so easy to ignore the past. Maybe it was because he was lonely, or that he had so much free time on his hands since he’d retired, but lately, he thought of Clark more and more. The pain was just as strong now as it had been back then, like an old scar that had been reopened and was bleeding out fresh again.
Cecil felt haunted.
While Cecil had taken a good job at the paper mill, Clark Smeltzer had gotten work as the cemetery caretaker for the Golgotha Lutheran Church in Spring Grove. At first, Cecil had been a little jealous of his younger brother. Sure, Cecil had union benefits and a fine hourly wage, but Clark’s position entitled him to a home along with his weekly paycheck. He and his family lived across the street from the cemetery in a house owned by the church. They stayed there rent free, paying only for their utilities. It was a good job.
Until Clark fucked it all up.
Somewhere along the line, Clark went crazy. Cecil blamed himself for not seeing it sooner. Perhaps he’d just been bad all along—keeping his insanity brewing beneath the surface, hidden from everyone but himself. Maybe it was the booze or the gambling, or the whores he’d slept with on the side. Clark beat his son, beat his wife, and drank himself nearly to death. Then he’d started robbing graves—stealing from the people he was supposed to be burying. Worse, when the hookers apparently weren’t doing it for him anymore, he’d kidnapped two women and held them in a tunnel he’d dug beneath the cemetery, raping them repeatedly. He’d died in that same tunnel, killed while trying to murder his own son and the boy’s friend, both of whom had discovered what he was up to. And even in death, he’d continued to poison those around him. Cecil’s nephew Barry was living proof of that. Despite everything he’d gone through, the boy had turned out just like his old man.
As Cecil’s stream slowed to its more normal trickle, another twig snapped behind him, closer this time. Leaves rustled.
“Hello?”
Snap…snap…snap…
“That you, Tom? Don’t you be messing around now or you’re liable to get a surprise.”
Something growled, low and deep.
“Clark?”
Cecil immediately felt stupid. Clark had been dead since 1984. Why would he call out his name now?
Because I’m getting senile in my old age?
Cecil stuffed his shriveling penis back in his pants and quickly pulled up the zipper. The noises continued, coming from three different directions now. When he turned around, something brown and red darted between the trees.
Coyote
, he thought,
or maybe a fox
. He’d never heard of either attacking a full-grown man before, but he didn’t intend on waiting around to find out.
“Go on!” He tried to holler, but it came out more of a whisper. His mouth was suddenly very dry. “Scat! You get out of here now.”
He hurried back toward the trail. To his left, the predator—whatever it was—growled again.
“Let me get my machete and you won’t be growling like that, I goddamn guarantee you.”
Sam, that kid the cop was looking for, stepped out from behind a tree, holding the machete in his right hand. Cecil noticed that the boy’s hand had what appeared to be dried blood on it. The teen looked sick. His clothes were dirty. Patches of his hair were missing. Cecil remembered seeing pictures of the prisoners in the Nazis’ death camps during World War II—living skeletons, flesh stretched parchment thin over sharply angled bones. That was what Sam resembled, which made no sense, since two days ago, when he’d helped Cecil and the others with construction on the maze house, he’d looked fine.
“Kid,” Cecil gasped. “What the hell happened to you?”
Ignoring the question, Sam raised the machete over his head. “Looking for this?”
“Put that down before you hurt yourself. Listen, there’s a coyote or something back there. Let’s get back to the trail. You don’t look so good. You got the AIDS or something?”
Smiling, the teen shook his head.
“You know the cops are looking for you?”
Still smiling, the teen shuffled closer, holding the machete as if to strike. As he closed the distance between them, Cecil got a good look at his eyes.
They were black.
“I…” Cecil tried to talk, but found that he couldn’t breathe.
Another man stepped out of hiding. Cecil didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t one of the volunteers. The stranger pointed a hunting rifle at him.