by Rex Hurst
Others in robes came down, five of them. They carried the semi-conscious, naked, carcass of his sister, Michelle. She kept rolling around the floor and they had to re-flip her onto her back. Two of them grabbed Jon’s body—his eyes were wide open, barely blinking—and stuffed him into a corner. One of them put a boot into Jon’s stomach to make sure he was as out of the way as possible. Each drank a tablespoon of the white liquid.
The five stood equidistant from each other, with his sister in the middle. They linked hands and began to chant in an unknown tongue. Obscene intonations swirled around his ears. The language had twisting syllables and an odd high-pitched lilt, sometimes it seemed to disappear out of human range altogether.
Then a flash, or the lens flared up, or something. Something extraordinary had occurred. He rewound and inspected it closer. Yes. There it was, for a brief few seconds before the flash on the floor, a blue outline of a pentagram had appeared, and each of the robed ones stood at its cardinal points. After the flash, they were all on different points. He could tell due to their height. Plus, his sister was now lying on her front instead of her back. All of them dropped to the floor, exhausted. One vomited up green slime.
After several minutes of rest, they rose and took away his sister as well as the crockpot. Then one came back for Jon and dragged him away as well. That called for another shot of whiskey. A victory one. There really was something off about his basement. It wasn’t just some weird childhood phobia. But what caused it? A communion spot the Devil had said in his hallucination. A place to meet with the realm infernal. That scared him enough to take another drink.
That scene filled in a puzzle piece that had been nagging at him. He couldn’t see his parents wasting their time in some pathetic little cult. Wearing silly robes, cutting animal throats, and drinking blood or whatever, that wasn’t his parents. Especially if it was all just dress up. But if there was some real power behind it, some truth in the myths, that was a different matter. He could easily see his amoral parents clutching at poky old superstitions to attain it. Whatever it was.
And now what? The questions floated from the cloudy depths of his subconscious. Jon was flummoxed. It would have to be . . . Well, no police. It might not be illegal. Freedom of religion meant just that. Legally, nothing he could prove at that moment meant anything. Maybe the tape? Oh, yes! If you couldn’t go for a legal cure, then social ostracism would be just as effective. Worse really. The family might take a major financial hit and lose everything. That three minutes of tape and an explanatory note could easily be passed along to the local news. All three of the networks were so desperate to upstage the others that there was no doubt one of them would play it.
He grabbed a blank video tape from a high shelf, then connected two VCRs together. It was a trick Michael had taught him. If you connected the output wire from the first VCR and plugged it into the input jack of a second, then you could play the tape on one, while making a copy of it on the other. The two of them used to have their parents rent videos, then they would make illegal copies for later viewing. He copied the three minutes onto a blank tape and was just about to stash it away in his room when he caught himself.
That was no good. How did he know his parents didn’t rummage through his room on a regular basis? Someone had slipped that tarot card into his notebook. He needed a place beyond his family residence. There was only one person he trusted enough to hold onto the tape. Michael.
The phone rang and he snatched it up, only now realizing that it was dark outside. Why was the house empty?
“Hello?”
“Hey,” It was Michael. “You missed the game.”
“Oh, sorry. I got sick. Been asleep all day.”
“I understand, I was almost late filling out all these scholarships, then I had to run around and get stamps. My parents wouldn’t give me any of theirs. Then I had to go to the bank to have money orders taken out of my account to send in for the college application fees. All of them have nearly wiped me out.”
“Yeah.” Normal world problems just couldn’t make an impact today.
“You missed my announcement for the next game.”
“Which is?”
“It’s Halloween on Friday, so we’re gonna have it in a cemetery.”
“I don’t know. Isn’t that illegal?”
“This is a decommissioned cemetery. No one goes there anymore. We’re gonna bring sleeping bags, pick up some snacks, game all night, then come back in the morning. It’ll be so rad.”
“How’s a cemetery get decommissioned?”
“It’s full. Been that way for a hundred years or so. They don’t even have a caretaker. Everyone else is going.”
“Everyone?”
“Louis said he’d tell his parents that he was camping with us, which is kind of true. His parents would freak out if they knew the truth. And Kathy’s parents are out of town. They went on some dig to Mexico and won’t be back for a couple of months.”
“What? They just left her alone?”
“Yeah. She said it was your fault.”
“Me?”
“Said it had something to do with stuff you showed her parents. Something similar had been dug up in Mexico and they ran down there to look at it and maybe find where it came from. Kathy told me she had never seen her parents so excited. She claimed it might be a breakthrough discovery that would cement their careers.”
“What did they find?”
“I dunno. You’ll have to ask her, since you two have been spending so much time together.”
“All right. Knock it off.”
“Kathy and Jon were ugly dumb lovers.
Especially in their hand-me-down covers
When he pulled out his trigger
She said, ‘Not much of a frigger
Can’t find the right hole to make me a mother.’”
“You are hi-fucking-larious.”
“Are you in?”
“Okay, I’m in. Gotta go.”
An odd thought just occurred to him. Was the find in Mexico the same bowl his parents had locked up? He flipped the painting and plugged the code into the hidden safe. The bowl was still there. The money, the guns, the genealogy also. He opened it up and took another look. Once again, the size of his family surprised him. But this time he focused on the top of the chart. Most the family seemed to emerge from 13th Century family with Jerome St. Fond as its patriarch. A man who sired thirteen children. Apparently, the name had originally been de St. Fond and changed sometime in the 17th Century.
Penciled in just above that, with a connecting line, was the name St. Fond and a small note in tight script stating, “See Roman and Gaulish records for more detail.”
He folded the chart up and was about to put it back, when he spotted a small book in the back that had been previously hidden by a pile of money. He snagged it out. It was ancient, hand bound by a long dead craftsman. The pages were not paper, but vellum—the membrane of skin from a calf, soaked in lime and stretched to make it useful to write on. A process not used beyond the Middle Ages. There was no title, just a series of chapters written with a calligraphic hand. A leather bookmark, attached to the cover by a thin thread, was set to a chapter named Vita Beato Fond and a hand drawn picture of a saint, which looked remarkably like Mother. The actual text was written in Latin.
The lock on the front door clicked. Cold fear ran down Jon’s spine. The panel to the secret room was open and all the machines were turned off. Shit, shit, shit. He threw all the stuff back into the safe and raced across the room as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. Below, people were coming in talking, laughing, and being a loving family. No time to set the machines, he popped the panel back in and snuck over to his room, peering at those below between the bars of the upstairs railing as he did so. Mother, Father, and Catherine were all in the living room, licking frosty goodness from a waffle cone. Nonchalantly he walked down the stairs.
“We’ve got ice cream,” Catherine yelled at him, thrus
ting her pink cone forward in a challenge. What she meant was we did, but you get nothing.
“Good to see you up and about,” Father said. Mother muttered something about Jon’s laziness, but stopped to look from Father. “We had to take Michelle in. Turns out she’s pregnant again.”
“She gonna have another ‘bortion,” Catherine blurted between slurps of cream.
The parents laughed pleasantly. Mother dropped to her knees and hugged the little girl tightly. She was offered a bite of the little girl’s cone in return, the ultimate act of giving for a young child. Father stepped up to Jon.
“Didn’t get you any ice cream,” he said. “Anything you want to say about that?”
“No,” Jon replied.
Truth is, he barely noticed the injustice. He was too worried about the switched off VCRs. Father’s yellow eyes burrowed into him. With a struggle he met Father’s gaze, hoping like hell that his face was a blank. They locked eyes for a brief eternal moment, then the elder pulled away and went up to his room without comment.
Later that night, after it seemed the entire world had fallen asleep, Jon crept back into his parents’ room. They had made a ruckus earlier, a lot of playful screams, but it all died down around two and he waited another hour just to be sure.
Over time, he had learned which of the floorboards in the old house would creak, so he took a weird route across the hall, stepping here and there, mostly sticking to the sides where the boards were thoroughly nailed in. Their door was slightly ajar, Mother’s wheezing snore filtered through the air. Inside, their TV kept displaying some rather violent pornography on a tape loop.
Carefully, inch by inch, he stuck his head through the door. The stench of recently expelled sex mixed with some type of lubricant assaulted his nostrils. Mother and Father were passed out. The blanket only barely covered those anatomical pieces of his parents Jon hoped to never see again. Empty bottles of top shelf liquor lay scattered about the floor.
***
One step, two steps, three steps across the carpet. Someone waking? Stop. Pause. The telltale heart thumped hard. Sleep babble. Father turned over. Five more steps and he was in the closet.
He pushed the button and the wall clicked open. He twirled around, looking at the two bodies, waiting for some sign that he was busted. But no. The snoring continued, the porn played on, and Jon slipped into the secret room.
The machines were still turned off. He quickly flipped them back on, rewound the tapes, and started to record again. That meant his exit from the closet and his parents’ room would be recorded as well, but it couldn’t be helped. He looked around. Was everything in the right place? Had the chair been there? Or was it further back? He moved it. It didn’t look right, so he moved it back.
Slipping out was easy and he crept down to the kitchen. The tape was good, but he wanted more. Perhaps a sampling of what was the milky stuff cooking away in the crockpot. Leaving all of the disgusting possibilities aside, it must be some concoction to help them with their rite. He rummaged through the kitchen. Looking in all cabinets for the crockpot, searching inside every nook for a hidden space, but it all came up empty. He searched the rest of the closets on the first floor, groping away for hidden rooms, but again came up empty. The item wasn’t there.
He poured some tap water into a glass and sat down in the dim kitchen. The light from a full moon was his only guide. What was there left to do? Watch and wait. Keep an eye on what shuffled in and out of the safe. That seemed to be the best source of information beyond the video tapes. Tomorrow he would have to give the tape to Michael to hide for him. Jon decided that he would only use it as a last defensive measure. If his family was destroyed, then that meant he’d be out on the sidewalk too or stuck in some godforsaken foster home until he hit eighteen, then tossed out onto the cold streets. Even if he emptied the safe, it wouldn’t last him that long. No, he had to wait and find a better way.
What the tapes had revealed was that his older sister was also a victim of these strange rites. Was there an ally there? Could she help in some way? Possibly. If he could ever catch her at a sober moment. Their relationship was practically non-existent. She was so addled with drugs, it was nearly impossible to have any kind of conversation with her. But he had to try.
He pulled down the drawstring for the ladder to Michelle’s attic apartment and crept on up. It was cramped and smelled bad. He had to stoop slightly under the low ceiling. Most of the room was taken up by a large TV and stereo on one end and a bed jammed into the other, in-between lay a carpet of garbage. Drug residue, clothes, beer bottles filled with cigarette butts, expended lighters, and various incidentals crunched under his feet.
There she was, similar to the other night with the hot dog, unconscious, naked except for a rubber tube around her left arm and a needle dangling next to it. He threw a ratty blanket over his sister and tried to snap her out of her stupor.
“Michelle. Michelle.”
Her eyes half drooped open. A bubble blossomed between her lips. It grew to extraordinary size then popped.
“More?” she said.
“Michelle, do you know what they’re doing to you in the basement?”
Her eyes held no recognition for her brother, but the words snapped some trigger in her memory. An idiot smile lolled cow-like on her face as she said,
“The basement is great. It’s where they make me immortal. It’s why I get more.”
The heroin high claimed her and she nodded off to chase the dragon. Jon slipped down to his room, letting the ladder snap up. She was in on it. As much as her addled brain could take in, she agreed with whatever her parents’ plans were.
CHAPTER 6
Blessed are the Bold
“The name means Hill of the Ghouls. Isn’t that messed up?”
The black van clunked on through the fading light of day. It was All Hallow’s Eve and rather than get drunk and steal candy from children like their peers, Jon and friends were bundled away in warm winter gear and passing around a bottle of scotch Kathy had stolen from her parents’ liquor stock.
“How much longer, you reckon?” Louis asked.
“Soon. Maybe twenty more minutes,” Michael answered from the driver’s seat.
“You actually been there?”
“Uh . . . ”
“That’s what I done figured.”
“Hey, I got a road atlas.” He hefted up a massive spiral notebook filled with the finest AAA maps. “It’s current. Came out last year. I know where I’m going.”
Michael lapsed back into discussing the fanciful and grotesque history of Goodleburg Cemetery, their ultimate destination. Jon only tuned in with half an ear, since he knew the first thing Michael said was untrue. The place was named after one of the families who had settled the area and donated the land for the religious to plant their carcasses. Their name might actually translate to “Hill of the Ghouls”, but that wasn’t the intent of those who Christianized the place Goodleburg.
Michael went on about ghosts, fatal car accidents, suspicious deaths, satanic cults, desecrated graves, and mutilated children. All of these apparently were connected to the graveyard. Each account had been published in various ghost hunting guides available in local bookstores.
“You really believe all that?” Louis asked.
“I look at it this way. A few things you might be able to write off as coincidence, bad luck, or someone making up a tale. But there are just so many stories collected in this one place that you have to pay attention. I mean, it seems like something’s going on.”
Jon kept his mouth shut. His recent brush with the bizarre had tossed all his old objections out the window. But—he couldn’t help yanking out that but—one of the reasons there were so many stories was that it was one of the first areas inhabited by colonists. The cemetery had some of the oldest graves in New York State. Thus it had more time to collect weird stories than in other places.
As for the larger number of car fatalities, the roads were barely one s
tep above dirt paths. Add the icy winter weather and a Depression-Era alcoholism rate and you have a perfect recipe for large helpings of road pizza.
Jon moved to the back of the van and sat down next to Kathy. She had been keeping her distance on the trip.
“So, how is it my fault your parents abandoned you?” he began.
“Those damn pictures you showed them. It’s all my mom could talk about for days. They called up everyone they could about it, all over the world, and no one knew anything. Dad said it was probably a hoax, but when my mother gets on a new idea . . . Where did you get them anyway?”
“It’s not important.”
“Well, she got some anonymous package in the mail with a broken bowl and a letter in Latin.”
“Latin?”
“Weird, huh? That got them all excited and she got my dad to make a few phone calls down to some colleagues at the state university in Mexico City. Three days later, they had permits to do an excavation at an old site and they ran off.”
“That was fast, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. That process is supposed to take months and the financing even longer. I guess some strings were pulled or whatever. My dad has a lot of connections down there.”
“So they just left you alone? “
“They gave me money for food and other stuff. It’s not the first time they’ve done this. ‘You have to make work your greatest joy in life,’ my father always says, ‘otherwise you’re just wasting time.’ And they do.”
“Sorry if it was my fault.”
She touched his hand lightly. “That’s okay. I’ll be home alone a lot.”
He stiffened up, in both senses. Damn it, why did his hormones have to constantly run wild? The invitation was open, right there for him to grab. Again he had an idea in his head of the movie-star hot woman he really wanted, and Kathy just didn’t fit the bill. He’d heard plenty of his mother’s feminist minions whining about men thinking with their cocks. He decided to take the opposite route for once and show them all. He pulled back. Kathy withdrew her hand and stared at the floor, saying nothing, cheeks a little red.
