“Like a club,” John said.
“The Cemetery Club.” Todd raised his hand, and everyone high-fived him.
“Christ.” Cory splashed water on his face and looked into the mirror. If he stared hard enough, he could still see a ghostly image of his sixteen-year-old self hiding beneath his current features. “Maybe we were doomed from the moment he said it,” he told his younger self.
Was that even possible? It sounded too much like fate - or a bad movie - to him, but the idea wouldn’t go away, that they’d somehow attracted the notice of a supernatural entity with their foolish high school antics.
With sleep rendered an impossible goal, Cory decided to put his past on the back burner by focusing on work. Even with Todd loose and no longer a prime suspect, there was always the chance of the police arresting him again and a good lawyer had to be prepared.
“First stop, the morgue.”
Chapter 5
Marisol recognized the man at the desk as Cory Miles before he even turned around to face her. Something about the way he stood, the shape of his nose and chin seen from a partial profile, instantly brought back memories of the boy who’d been her best friend in high school.
The boy she’d hoped to marry someday but he’d moved away, leaving her with no one but the assholes who only wanted to get into her pants.
“Cory?” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud and had to fight the urge to duck into an office before he looked at her.
“Marisol?”
Holy shit, it really is him! She stood frozen as a broad smile bloomed on his face and he started towards her. Cory Miles is here, right here. Aware she must look totally disheveled after a ten-hour shift in the lab, her cheeks grew hot with embarrassment and the moisture magically evaporated from her tongue, leaving her with an acute case of cotton mouth.
Cory stopped a few feet away, his hands held partially out, as if he wasn’t sure if he should hug her or shake her hand. The fact that he looked like a man imitating the classic Virgin Mary benediction pose made her want to laugh, which in turn broke the spell holding her immobile. She grasped his hands in hers and stepped forward to give him a quick kiss on the cheek.
“I can’t believe you’re here! What are you doing in town? Wait; what the hell are you doing in the morgue?”
“It’s a long story,” he said, still smiling and staring at her. “Can you grab a cup of coffee?
Marisol hated to divert her eyes away from him, as if doing so might reveal that his appearance was just a hallucination. But she chanced a quick look at her watch, realizing in the process they were still holding hands.
“My shift ends in fifteen minutes.” She reluctantly relinquished her grip. Did it seem as if he was slow in letting go as well? “Meet me in the lobby and we’ll go to the diner.”
“Hogan's?”
“Of course.”
“That sounds great.”
He stood there smiling at her and she wondered if her own grin looked as goofy. She considered giving him another kiss but just then the lab door opened and Randy, another lab tech, stuck his head out.
“Hey Marisol, I can’t find the sample vials for the micro centrifuge. Do you know where they are?”
Cory took a step backwards. “I’ll let you get back to work. See you in fifteen.”
Before she could say anything, he turned and walked down the hall towards the elevator.
“Marisol?”
She sighed. “I’m coming Randy. Hold your horses.”
I still can’t believe I’m sitting with Cory Miles again. The two of them had instinctively taken the same booth in the back corner that they’d always tried to get when they were in high school. How many nights did we sit here, me desperate to avoid going home, Cory bored with life in general and just looking for something to do?
In the bright lights of the diner she saw he hadn’t changed all that much since high school. His hairline had receded a bit and he had a few lines around his dark brown eyes but he’d managed to stay in shape. He’d been tall when they were juniors, almost six feet, but it looked like he’d only added an inch or two since then.
As they regarded each other over their coffee cups, she wondered if his assessment of her was as favorable. She certainly didn’t look the same as when he’d known her. A two-cup increase in her bra size and an almost overnight rounding of her ass had changed her figure from model-thin to Playboy curvy during senior year, one of the main reasons she’d become so popular with the boys after being virtually invisible the year before.
A strict diet, lots of exercise and an ex-husband who belittled her whenever she gained weight had helped her keep the pounds off in the years since high school, but it was still a never-ending struggle.
“I can’t believe we’re sitting here,” Cory said, breaking the silence. He gestured at the booths and patrons around them. “Shit. I can’t believe the diner’s still here.”
“You mean you can’t believe I’m still here.” Marisol sipped her coffee and smiled to let him know she wasn’t insulted.
He nodded. “That too. You always hated this town. I figured you’d be gone before the ink on your diploma was dry.”
She shrugged. “You know how it is. The classic story. Girl falls for wrong guy. Girl gets married. Guy abuses girl. Girl takes fifteen years to get her shit together and leave him.” She stopped, aware of the bitterness creeping into her voice.
Am I mad at myself or at Cory for leaving me behind?
Cory looked down at his cup. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. After you moved, I...well, I guess you could say I blossomed.” She gave her boobs a quick pat and he laughed. “I started getting attention from all the guys. I was too stupid to realize they only wanted my body.”
“Who was it?”
“Who wasn’t it? People always thought of me as a poor spic from the Lowlands. By the middle of senior year I was the slutty poor spic from the Lowlands. Except, I didn't know it. I thought I was popular ‘cause I had a date every weekend.”
A blush crept up Cory’s neck and cheeks. “I meant, who was it you married?”
Shit! Good one Marisol. Way to give too much information. “Jack Smith,” she said, not able to meet Cory’s eyes.
“Jack Smith? The swim team captain? Mister My-Shit-Don’t-Stink?”
Marisol nodded. “Yeah. Classic, huh? I actually thought he loved me. It wasn’t until after we were married that I found out he just wanted me ‘cause of my looks. I was ‘an exotic beauty,’ as he put it, a toy he could show off at his business dinners. Oh, he didn’t say that last part out loud, but then he didn’t have to.”
“Why not?”
“His parents told me. The day we came back from our honeymoon. I almost left him right there but Jack insisted they were wrong, he really loved me, and just because his parents had a problem with my background and skin color didn’t mean he did.”
Cory signaled the waitress to bring them more coffee and then turned back to Marisol. “So what happened then?”
“I got to star in my own private version of My Fair Lady. I had to act a certain way, dress a certain way, even talk a certain way, so I’d ‘fit in’ at the country club, the Rotary dinners or the fucking fund raisers we went to every weekend. And then I found out Jack liked to tell his friends what a firecracker I was in bed because I was Hispanic.”
“That sucks.” Cory looked like he was about to say something else but he closed his mouth and cast his eyes downward yet again.
“Yeah. But enough about me. What have you been up to since you moved away?”
Cory smiled, the same self-deprecating grin he’d always used in high school when he tried to make light of the honor roll status he’d maintained despite cutting classes and hardly studying. “Not much. We moved to Connecticut and I went to college in Boston.”
“Harvard? Yale?” Marisol teased.
“No smart ass. Boston University. Then law school at University of Connecticut. After that,
a few years bouncing around as a junior associate before starting my own practice. Criminal law, mostly.”
“Criminal...wait. Is that why you’re in town? Are you representing Todd?”
“Yep. He called me out of the blue. Said he needed my help. How could I say no? Not after what he went through because of us.” Cory leaned forward, a serious look on his face. “He also said something else. That—”
A loud chime cut off his next words. “Hold that thought,” Marisol said, lifting up her cell phone. “Crap. There’s a problem at the lab. I have to go.”
“Wait.” Cory placed his hand on her arm. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“Why? Are you asking me on a date?” Marisol tried to keep her tone light but his words had her body in a tizzy, her stomach full of butterflies and her heart beating double-time.
“What? No, I...um...I’m having dinner with Todd and I think you should be there.”
“Oh.” A hole opened up in her gut and all her sudden hopes drained away. “I don’t think so. I’m...busy.”
“Please? It’s really important. For all of us.”
Something in his voice made her pause. It was the kind of tone the police used when they informed someone of a loved one’s death. She started to say no again, thinking she was better off not getting involved, and then reconsidered. It’s better than sitting home watching reruns.
“Okay. Here’s my number.” She handed him a business card. “I get off at two tomorrow.”
“Thanks. And Marisol?”
“Yeah?”
“It was great seeing you.” He smiled and for a moment she saw nothing except the sixteen-year-old boy she’d been secretly in love with.
“You too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She hurried away before she said anything stupid.
But for the rest of the day, she couldn’t get that smile out of her mind.
* * *
The setting sun splashed pastel reds and oranges across the decades-old tract houses and trailers that made up the Lowlands, providing a few minutes of picturesque color to a section of town where most of the residents considered ‘lower middle-class’ an unattainable financial goal. The standard for landscaping in this area was car parts and broken toys peeking through overgrown lawns. For that brief moment of time, something approaching beauty held sway over a neighborhood defined for decades by its ugliness.
Sitting between Gates of Heaven Cemetery and the factory district, the Lowlands was home to more than five hundred families, the majority of whom rented rather than owned. Most of the men worked in factories or as laborers. Some didn’t work at all. The women who didn’t stay home, smoking endless packs of cigarettes while they ironed clothes and watched Oprah, took whatever work they could get in order to supplement their husbands’ earnings, a good portion of which went to beer and bowling. Children in the Lowlands made do with hand-me-downs for Christmas and Hamburger Helper for dinner and didn't complain, unless they wanted to feel the sting of a leather belt.
It was a place where spousal abuse, drunken revelry and shouting matches were as common as fine wine and roast duck in the restaurant district. Like most neighborhoods of its kind, it was a place where people minded their own business.
Which was unfortunate for Duffy Walters and his wife.
Just as the sun completed its descent, pulling the beauty from the Lowlands like a coroner lifting a sheet from a corpse, Pete Webster and Lester Boone had mounted the sagging steps of the Walters’ single-level house and kicked in the front door, surprising Duffy and Patty as they sat in front of the TV, watching Cops and eating Hungry Man dinners.
Duffy had time to shout, “What the fuck!” and then Pete crashed into him, sending an explosion of meatloaf and peas into the air. Next to him, Patty never had a chance to raise her portly body out of her chair before Lester landed on her, his added weight sending the recliner reeling over backwards.
“Help! He—aack” Patty’s scream ended in a wet, choking gasp as Lester wrapped his hands around her throat, just below her second chin. She beat her hands ineffectually against her attacker’s shoulders as he leaned close and squeezed the soft flab of her neck. Lester’s face remained expressionless while he choked her, and even as her consciousness faded, she still couldn’t believe it was really happening.
Duffy Walters paid no attention to his wife’s struggles. As his back hit the ground, he rolled to the side, his body still remembering its military training from Vietnam. But while his body knew what to do, his muscles, forty years older and wasted away from years of bad food and cheap booze, couldn’t keep up with the orders being sent to them.
He was still on his stomach when Pete grabbed him by the shirt and pants, lifting him up and back, like a farmer preparing to toss a bale of hay.
“Nooo!” Duffy watched the TV move away from him in slow motion and then come towards him again as Pete swung him forward. Duffy’s next scream was silenced as his head crashed into the glass screen with a sound like firecrackers going off. White flashes of light detonated around him, accompanied by crackling sounds and a pounding in his skull.
Lost amid the noise and pain was the single, sharp sting of the jagged glass shard that sliced his throat open. His blood sizzled on exposed wires and electronic boards as it ran from his neck but Duffy never noticed, just as he never noticed when the darkness inside the television set blended into the darkness of death.
Pete dragged the old man’s body out of the fragmented screen and dropped it on the floor. At the same time, Lester removed his hands from Patty's neck and stood up. They both stepped away from the bodies as a swirling cloud of grayish-black matter entered the room and rapidly coalesced into a twisted parody of a human form, like a skinny ghost caught in a miniature tornado. The red-eyed apparition dropped onto Patty’s face and proceeded to drag itself into her mouth and down her throat.
Patty’s eyes opened and she gasped for air, clutching at her throat. After a moment, her hands fell away and an emotionless expression came over her features, matching the ones worn by Pete and Lester. Patty sat up, her overweight form showing a grace of movement she’d never had while alive. Red marks in the shape of thin fingertips marred the pale color of her neck. She looked to the side, where Duffy’s corpse was slowly staining the carpet dark crimson.
A thin string of saliva escaped from between her lips. Without hesitation, she bent over and attacked her husband’s body with her mouth and hands.
Pete and Lester stood up and exited the house.
Patty ignored them as she continued to eat the man she’d been married to for almost fifty years.
Down the street, Pete and Lester kicked in another door, their night’s work just beginning. Not long after, more cries for help echoed through the warm night air.
Sometime after midnight, five blood-soaked people followed Pete and Lester back to the Gates of Heaven Cemetery.
Not one of the neighbors thought to call the police.
In the Lowlands, people made it a habit not to get involved.
* * *
It was just before noon when John Boyd sat down at the farthest booth in the McDonald’s dining area. He didn’t need to see the looks the other patrons cast his way to know he wasn’t welcome; he was well aware of his current state of repulsiveness. His clothes gave off the rancid cheese smell of weeks-old perspiration and layers of dirt had combined to stain everything he wore to the same dun-colored brown. Even the hot, greasy odors of grilling burgers, sizzling French fries and steaming buns couldn’t overpower the acrid reek surrounding his body. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t made a fuss when he’d been given a wide berth while waiting in line for his food.
Even now, sitting only a few feet from the bathrooms, his own stink seemed more than a match for the antiseptic pine scent and stale urine odor that drifted past him each time someone emerged.
Fuck ‘em all, he thought with a mental smile as he tore a huge, dripping bite from his Big Mac. Sauce, lettuce and melted cheese dri
pped onto his thrift store sports jacket and he scooped it up with a filth-encrusted finger, ignoring the black specks that rested atop the spillage like cinnamon on rice pudding. I got just as much right to eat here as they do.
Besides, he was starving. It had taken him two days of collecting bottles and cans to make enough money for this meal. The shelter provided coffee all day but unless you got in line before seven a.m. you missed out on the free pastries. Thanks to booze and exhaustion, he rarely got up before nine. Of course, sleeping late was just one of many bad habits he’d developed since joining the unwashed masses.
In fact, when he really thought about it, the only things in life he could still be proud of were his ability to not shit himself the way some of his shelter-mates did and the fact that no matter how polluted he got, he never forgot Susie’s or Kyle’s birthdays.
Thinking about his ex-wife and child created a pain in his chest, a knife inside him that twisted and turned, digging a little deeper each time he thought about them. In response, John forced those thoughts back down to that deep place where the booze and years held them at bay and focused on his burger. He knew he only had a limited amount of time to finish his food before the manager, a pimply-faced little jerk with a penguin nose and a Hitler attitude, did his supposed civic duty and chased him from the restaurant.
And while John had no problem eating his food outside, the chance to sit in an air conditioned room on a sweltering day was a pleasure almost as great as filling his stomach.
Another glob of sauce slid off his bun and onto his shirt. Using two fries, he scraped the dressing up and popped the fries into his mouth, then washed the whole mess down with a big sip of orange soda.
He was just unwrapping his second burger when Adolf Pimple-face served him with his eviction notice.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave, sir. Your...odor is offending some of our other customers.”
Cemetery Club Page 6
