The Paupers' Crypt (20 page)

Must have been the Schnapps
, he thought, grinning.

Usually, he didn’t drink it, but Matt had been buying. And when someone’s buying, you drink whatever they put in front of you.

Rich wandered through the cemetery, which was bigger than he had suspected. The moonlight lit up the headstones and the grass, the paved roads. He made his way steadily to the back, and he saw newer markers. Bright, polished stones. In the far right corner of the cemetery, he saw the perfect spot.

A new headstone. Not too tall. But nice and wide. Perfect to hide behind.

Rich was able to read the name on the marker. Dylan Mailer.

“Hope you don’t mind company, Dylan,” Rich said, chuckling.

But as he sat down at the grave something strange happened; Rich lost control of himself.

His body twisted around so he was on all fours. He ripped up handfuls of grass until the turf came up in sheets. The smell of fresh earth filled his nose as his hands plunged into the dirt. He dug quickly, and steadily, and he was unable to stop himself. Rich tried to get his hands to listen, to make any part of himself listen, but as he did so, the little voice which had told him so many excellent ideas, spoke up.

And it wasn’t little anymore.

I don’t need you for long,
the voice said.
Only for a short while, I promise. We have some digging to do.

Why?
Rich thought, panic welling up in him.

I need something, something in the coffin. But don’t worry,
the voice said,
it will be easy to find.

What is it?
Rich asked.

Just keep digging,
the voice said soothingly.

Rich’s hands continued their excavation. He had formed a rough rectangle and worked down, casting handfuls of dirt out onto the grass.

Is it in the grave?
Rich asked, horrified.

Yes,
the voice said.

Somewhere in the casket?
Rich said.

Indeed, it is
, the voice said, chuckling.

Will it be easy to get?
Rich asked, desperately hoping he was having a nightmare.

It depends on how you might view the task,
the voice said.
Have you fished before, Richard?

Yes,
Rich answered.

Has a fish ever swallowed a hook?
the voice asked.
And have you had to retrieve it?

Yes,
Rich replied.
Did you lose a hook?

No,
the voice laughed.
Not at all. But what I need is in Dylan’s stomach. Let us hope, for your sake, that they did not stitch him up too well. I would hate for you to have to chew your way in.

Rich screamed within his own head as his hands continued to dig.

Yet even as the stranger forced Rich’s body to dig faster, Rich felt something happening within his head. A pulsing and throbbing in his right temple. He didn’t know what it was, but he could tell it was bad. The farther he dug, the worse it became. Beneath the stranger’s control, Rich could feel his heartbeat changing, thundering erratically. It felt as though his heart was a fist and it sought to batter its way out of his chest. The vein in his right temple continued its own mad rhythm, and then one in his left temple joined in.

He felt his fingernails crack, and the pinky finger on his right hand broke. Rich’s lungs screamed for oxygen and his stomach rebelled at the labor. He threw up. The vomit, a foul mixture of alcohol and bar snacks. It turned the dirt into a muddy mixture as mucus ran from his nostrils and tears streamed from his eyes.

Rich’s arms shook and he knew it wasn’t from the digging.

I’m going to die,
Rich realized dimly.

Not yet,
the voice said conversationally.
I’m not done with you.

Before Rich could reply someone spoke.

“It’s true, Leo” a woman said, and Rich looked up.

A middle-aged, attractive woman stood on the right side of the grave. Beside her was a smaller man, and while she had a sympathetic expression, the man’s was one of polite curiosity.

“Josephus is in the man,” the woman said.

Leo nodded. “Yes, Sylvia, you are absolutely correct.”

From a darkened section of the cemetery road, a man appeared, stocky and bald. He carried with him a plastic shopping bag and a shovel. The stranger within Rich’s head began screaming in rage.

Suddenly, Leo and Sylvia reached down and took hold of Rich, their hands painfully cold on his wrists. The stranger shrieked, blasphemies and curses spewing, ricocheting through Rich’s mind. Despite the freezing grip they had upon him, Leo and Sylvia were gentle, even as the stranger tried to force Rich’s arms to shake them off. When they had taken him out of the hole he had dug, the bald man reached them, nodded to Sylvia and Leo, and dropped the bag to the ground.

Rich didn’t see any more, for the one named Leo leaned over him and reached into his chest. The sensation was shocking, a bitter chill that fished through his flesh. Rich could feel the hands digging inside him. The questing fingers searched for the stranger and finally grabbed hold of him and tugged forcefully.

Horrified, and quickly becoming sober, Rich watched as a dull white form was dragged from his chest. In a moment, it formed into the bare semblance of a man, and the stranger attempted to fight Leo. Yet even as the stranger attacked the other man, Sylvia stepped in. The three forms melded and shifted, the earth shuddering beneath them. Grass turned white and broke, tree limbs shook and frozen leaves plummeted to the ground.

The sound of a shovel, striking something hard, caught Rich’s attention and he twisted around, wincing at the pain in his arms and hands.

At the grave, he saw the bald man, who threw the shovel out of the grave. He reached out, found where he had dropped the bag and dragged it into the hole. Within a minute, the man in the grave climbed out, with the bag and nodded pleasantly to Rich.

Rich could only nod back.

The man squatted down, opened the bag and pulled out a small object, which Rich couldn’t quite make out.

“Sylvia,” the bald man said, “I’ve got it. It was just one bone, right?”

From behind Rich, the woman Sylvia said, “Yes, Shane.”

“Fair enough,” Shane said. He placed the bone on the ground, removed a container of salt from the bag and shook some of it out onto both earth and the bone. Next, he took a bottle of lighter fluid out and sprayed the bone and the ground around with the liquid. A moment later, he pulled a box of matches from the bag, and a scream forced Rich to twist around.

The stranger who had been drawn from Rich’s chest was shrieking. Leo and Sylvia were on either side of the pale form, each holding an arm. The figure had lost much of its substance, and Rich could see a great deal of the cemetery through him.

“You cannot!” the stranger howled. “You must not!”

The striking of a match was the only response.

A moment later, the sound of flames devouring oxygen, filled the night air.

The thing which had hijacked Rich’s body shrieked. A terrible, agonized sound which threatened to shatter Rich’s eardrums. The figure writhed and twisted, seeking to escape. But neither Leo nor Sylvia let go.

He rolled away from the shrieking shape and looked back at the bald man. The man lit a cigarette as the flames reflected brightly in his pale skin. He saw Rich looking at him, and he smiled.

Around his cigarette, Shane chuckled and said, “Only way to get rid of him.”

Rich dry-heaved once, and fainted, the sounds of fire and screams chasing him into unconsciousness.

Chapter 73: Brian and Jenny and the Cemetery

Brian and Jenny sat on the hood of her car, staring into Wood’s Cemetery. They were parked just outside of the gate and each of them was armed with a shotgun. Each shell was loaded with rock salt, and Brian felt a nervous flutter in his stomach.

What if the bone in Dylan’s body isn’t the last?
he wondered.
What if there are more?

“Are you okay?” Jenny asked, glancing over at him.

Brian nodded, “Worried is all.”

“Me too,” she said. She slid a little closer to him, adjusting her grip on the weapon. “How will we know if it worked?”

Before Brian could answer, the earth rumbled. A slight tremor which shook the car and caused the chain around the gates to rattle. Then, at the far edge of his vision, where the moonlight shined brightly down upon the Paupers' Crypt, Brian saw movement. Dim, gray shapes drifted up from the grass. After a moment, he saw the shapes were people. Vague outlines of those who had been buried and trapped by Josephus.

They were moving up, through the air, and towards the heavens.

“It worked,” Brian said softly, pulling Jenny in close. “Thank God, Jenny, it worked.”

*  *  *

Bonus Scene Chapter 1: Woods Cemetery, August 1st, 1971

Jacob Wurbach walked to the office door, opened it and went into the building.

The heat within was heavy and humid, exactly the same as it was in the cemetery itself.

And Jacob loved it.

His blood had thinned after two years in Vietnam. He had also come home with a vicious case of malaria, as well as a form of ‘jungle rot’ the dermatologists in Boston were still fascinated by.

He set Gary Winn’s order and wondered where the man was.

It was unlike Gary to be gone when Jacob brought in the goods. Jacob was the only other man from Mont Vernon who had seen combat overseas. Gary had fought the Vietcong up on the Cambodian border, and Jacob had fought them on the coast.

Terrible times Jacob would like to forget, but his nightmares kept images of the war at the forefront of his thoughts most days.

Jacob glanced out the window over the desk, saw Gary’s beat-up old Chevy parked on the grass, and wondered where the man was. The doors to the bathroom and the closet were both open.

Jacob paused.

The double barrel shotgun, Gary kept around for the raccoons, wasn’t in the closet. On the floor by the desk was a package; the brown paper ripped free to reveal boxes and boxes of shells for the gun.

Jacob reached down, took a box out and looked at it.

Each shell was loaded with rock salt.

Jacob put the box back and walked to the doorway. He looked out at the cemetery and tried to spot Gary.

Where in the hell did he get off to?
Jacob wondered.

Two quick blasts answered the question.

A moment later, Gary came running from the back right corner.

Gary stopped, broke the weapon down, reloaded it with shells from his shirt pocket, turned and took aim.

Jacob tried to see what Gary had run from, and stiffened.

Harold Morgen was walking up from the old Paupers' Crypt.

The problem was Harold had been killed when a tree fell on him back in nineteen thirty-three, and since the Morgen family was poorer than dirt, Harold had been buried in the Paupers Crypt.

The man’s skin was sickeningly white, his eyes blacker than night in the jungle.

He was grinning. His long white teeth, which had always scared Jacob as a boy, flashed in the morning light.

Gary fired both barrels and Harold vanished.

When Gary turned and saw Jacob, he yelled, “Get out, Jacob! Get the hell out of here!”

Jacob didn’t wait around to ask why.

He leaped out of the doorway and raced towards the exit, only to see the gates slam shut on their own.

Jacob skidded to a stop, caught a glimpse of movement out of his right eye and turned in time to see a corpse pull herself out of an old slate headstone.

The lady looked even worse than Harold had.

Her skin was dark gray, the nails as black as her eyes. The lips around her open mouth were a putrid white, and she stank of death. A smell the war had made Jacob all too familiar with.

She was a short, thin woman, and whether her slim figure was from being buried for so long or the way she was in life, Jacob couldn’t tell.

He didn’t care either.

Her gap-toothed smile was far from friendly.

The shotgun ripped the air, and the woman vanished even as Jacob let out a howl of pain.

“Jacob!” Gary yelled. “Back to the office!”

Again Jacob didn’t argue, he turned and sprinted towards the office.

There were dead everywhere. Gary was at the office door, weapon ready. He stepped aside as Jacob hurtled in, tripped, rolled and slammed into the far wall while Gary kicked the door closed and locked it.

“Oh thank Christ,” Gary said. “Catch.”

Jacob sat up and caught the shotgun.

“It’s loaded,” Gary said without looking back at Jacob.

Jacob put his back against the wall, kept the barrels of the weapon pointed at the closed door and asked, “What in God’s name is going on out there, Gary?”

“Hold on,” Gary said, ripping into the box of goods Jacob had delivered. “Ah, perfect.”

He pulled out a large box of Morton’s salt, cracked it open and laughed. He slammed the window closed and poured a thick line of salt across the sash and the sill.

Jacob watched as he did the same thing at the threshold. He then went around the small office and filled the corners and lined the walls with it as well. Finally, Gary walked back to the desk, dropped the empty Morton’s container to the floor and pulled out a pair of beers. He gave one to Jacob and then he sat down.

“Thanks,” Jacob said, handing the shotgun back to Gary. He popped the top on the beer, took a big swallow and said, “What the hell is going on?”

“Something terrible,” Gary said, opening his own beer. “Something absolutely terrible, Jacob. It’ll be worse if the damned fog rolls in.”

“Fog?” Jacob asked. “In August?”

Gary looked over the can at him, lowered it and said. “It’s not a natural fog.”

“What do you mean?” Jacob said. “What the hell are you talking about?”