Cemetery Club

by J. G. Faherty

  For his part, John had pilfered an oversized flashlight, matches, two bottles of wine and a two-burner camp stove from his garage. He knew his parents would never miss the items. They hadn’t gone camping in ten years and they had something like six cases of wine in the basement.

  But it was Todd who’d done the lion’s share of turning the dusty, creepy space into a totally cool hangout. Every day he showed up with something new: cards and poker chips, a portable radio, even a roll of heavy black material to hang on the inside of the window so the light from the lamps didn’t give them away at night.

  Best of all, he always managed to snag some food and soda from the canned goods, crackers and soft drinks his father collected each month as donations for the local soup kitchens and shelters.

  “Don’t you worry about getting caught?” Marisol had asked one day, as they’d unpacked several cans of Beef-A-Roni and a liter bottle of Coke.

  Todd had shrugged. “Nah. There’s cases of this shit down in the church basement. And it’s not like we keep track. People bring it in and stack it themselves. Once a month my dad drives around delivering it. At least this way it’s not going to feed some alky bum.”

  “Got that right,” Cory had said, hefting a bottle of wine and taking a drink. Everyone had laughed.

  So when Todd showed up with the cardboard carton, everyone had expected more of the same.

  They’d been wrong.

  “Check this out,” Todd said, his voice full of excitement. He reached into the box and pulled out a smaller box, this one flat and long. At first John thought it might be Monopoly or some other board game, then he saw the name.

  “Ooji? What the fuck is ooji?”

  Cory laughed. “It’s Ouji, not ooji. Wee-gee. Where’d you get it?” he asked Todd.

  “It was with the donations. Beats me why anyone would give it to a church.”

  “What is it?” John asked. “Some kind of board game?”

  “It’s supposed to be a way to communicate with ghosts. My cousin had one but we never got around to playing with it.” Cory opened the box, revealing a board with fancy letters on it and a flat, heart-shaped object with a hole in the middle.

  “Get the fuck out of here!” Marisol pushed her way between Todd and Cory to check out the game. “That’s too cool!”

  “I don’t think it actually works,” Cory said with a bemused smile.

  “Only one way to find out.” Todd placed the board on the blanket and motioned for them all to sit down around it. “Let’s conjure ourselves a spirit!”

  Just then, a loud CRACK! echoed through the crypt. Marisol screamed.

  “Something’s in here!”

  * * *

  John sat up, his heart pounding, his teeth clamped down on his own terrified shout. The banging sounded again, only this time it was just knuckles rapping on the bedroom door.

  “John? Rise and shine buddy. Dinner’s almost ready and the others will be here soon. I’ll meet you downstairs in a minute; I just have to bring my mother her dinner.”

  “Okay.” John rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes as Todd’s footsteps receded down the hall. His heart was beating so violently it actually made his head vibrate against the cool plaster.

  Christ, it felt so real, almost as if I time-traveled back into my own body. Even now he could smell the musty odors of the crypt beneath the tantalizing scents drifting up from downstairs.

  His hands still shaking, he levered himself from the bed and pulled on the sweatpants and t-shirt he’d taken from Todd’s closet. The sweats were kind of short on him but they’d do. He looked in the mirror, almost expecting to see the sixteen-year-old boy he’d been in his dream. Instead, the sunken, bloodshot eyes of his present day alcoholic self stared back at him, their clear blue color dimmed by too many bottles of cheap booze and too many nights of no sleep. He combed his longish, sleep-flattened hair back with his fingers and headed downstairs.

  He’d just given the gravy a stir and snuck a fingerful of mashed potatoes when a knock on the back door made him jump. He replaced the lid on the potatoes, feeling foolishly guilty, as if he’d been caught stealing rather than tasting the food at a friend’s house.

  “C’mon in,” he said, seeing Cory Miles’s face through the window.

  Cory entered, a wide smile on his face. John tried to return the man’s enthusiastic greeting but instead of making him feel better, Cory’s presence brought back the fear he’d felt during his recent trip down memory lane.

  “John? John Boyd? Todd didn’t tell me you’d be here. Man, it’s good to see you. Jesus, you’re as skinny as you were in high school.” Cory patted the slight roll of his own midsection. “I haven’t been so lucky. What’s your secret?”

  John backed up, putting the corner of the table between them. “Alcoholism and living on the streets.”

  Cory’s face froze and then his expression slowly grew serious, as if someone held a match to a wax smile. “Oh shit. I didn’t know. John, I’m sorry. If there’s—”

  “Forget it.” John opened the ‘fridge and pulled out two sodas, wishing he had the power to turn them into beer. “Todd can fill you in another time. Tonight he wants to talk about something else.”

  “What’s happening in town.” Cory opened his soda. “Todd thinks...he thinks it’s like twenty years ago.”

  “It is.” John sat down. “I’ve seen them. In the graveyard. The Grays.”

  “C’mon John. That alien shit didn’t cut it in high school. You don’t still believe it, do you?” Cory sat down across from him.

  “Oh, so it’s okay to believe in demons and ghosts but not aliens?”

  “I didn’t say I believed in them either. Just because something weird happens doesn’t mean there’s a supernatural cause. I’d rather focus on a rational explanation.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  Cory frowned. “That’s kind of why we’re getting together tonight, to figure that out. But offhand, I could say toxic gasses, drugs, a cult of Satanists or even just some psycho serial killer.”

  “None of that explains what we saw in those tunnels.”

  “Christ John, we were sixteen and scared shitless. Even if there wasn’t some kind of toxic waste down there, our imaginations could have conjured up anything and we’d have believed it.”

  “Then how come what Todd did...why did it work?”

  “I don't know. But it does kind of disprove aliens, doesn't it? Maybe it was a mass psychosis.”

  “That kind of closed-minded thinking could get us killed. I—”

  “Hey, calm down you two,” Todd said as he entered the room. “We’re gonna talk this all out tonight, in a calm, rational way. But first we’re going to eat dinner.” He opened the oven and pulled out a square cake pan covered in foil.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Marisol?” Cory asked.

  As if in response, someone knocked on the back door.

  “Come in,” Todd called out. He grinned at Cory and John “I saw her pull into the driveway just before I came downstairs.”

  John watched Cory’s face as Marisol entered the kitchen. Shit. He still hasn’t gotten over her. And judging from the way she’s staring at him, she’s carrying a major torch too.

  Marisol greeted Cory with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Something about the way the two of them said hello - the inflection of their words, the nonchalant way they touched - told John it wasn’t the first time they’d seen each other recently. Her demeanor with Todd was different. She squealed like a little girl and wrapped her arms around him.

  “Todd! It’s so good to see you! I heard what happened. It was terrible but I’m so glad you called Cory to get you out.”

  “It’s good to see you too,” Todd said. He was obviously uncomfortable with her display of affection. After patting her once on the back, he gently escaped her bear hug and took a step backwards.

  Marisol either didn’t notice or chose not to comment; instead, she turned her vibrant energy
in John’s direction. “John? Oh, my, God! I can’t believe you’re here as well!”

  She held out her arms but John backed away before she could reach him. He didn’t even realize what he’d done until he saw the happy smile fade from her face, leaving a bewildered look in its place.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m not used to people wanting to get close to me.”

  “What?” She turned towards Cory, who shrugged.

  Todd saved John the embarrassment of explaining. “Um, until recently, John was...staying in a shelter.”

  “A shelter?” She looked from Todd back to John.

  “What Todd’s trying to say is that I’ve been a homeless bum for a while now. Today was my first shower in months. If you’d run across me this morning you wouldn’t have wanted to be within ten feet of me.”

  “Oh.”

  For a moment none of them spoke. Then Todd lifted the foil off the baking pan, filling the kitchen with the mouthwatering odors of meatloaf and roasted vegetables.

  “Who’s ready to eat?”

  Chapter 10

  Henry Coleman heard the sounds just as he lowered his aching body into his old recliner. The crushing humidity of the evening had set off his arthritis something fierce, making every movement a little slice of personal hell. Which was why the thought of getting up again annoyed him so. Sure, the echo of breaking glass and shouting voices coming from the trailer next door hinted at something strange going on, but his seventy-three-year-old bones were offering a pretty strong argument for just turning up the volume of the TV and letting the Mackleys handle their own problems.

  “Goddamned fools,” he muttered, as he tried to concentrate on the classic John Wayne movie he'd just come across. He wanted to curse his own curiosity as well. After more than twenty years of living in Lowland Gardens, the mobile home park on the south end of the Lowlands, he should have been used to the sounds of family squabbles. Raised voices were as common as illegitimate children and welfare checks. Hell, before Alice had passed away, he and his wife had been known to contribute their fair share of arguments for the neighbors’ listening pleasure. It was part of the scenery, just like the factories over the hill and the flock of pink flamingos in the Mackley’s front grass.

  Only difference between them and the rest of the trash around them was they’d never resorted to raising fists or using household objects as weapons of personal destruction.

  Truth was, if you lived in Lowland Gardens, you learned quickly that it was better to stay out of other peoples’ affairs. People who had no qualms about smacking their own kin around were as apt as not to bust a neighbor in the nose when that nose stuck itself where it didn’t belong.

  “Fuck ‘em,” was Henry’s personal motto and he muttered it now as he turned up the volume. Then he said it again for the hell of it.

  Problem was, even with the Duke’s voice blasting his aged ears he still heard the next scream that came from the Mackley’s trailer.

  “Christ, it sounds like they’re slaughtering each other.” He knew the couple well enough. Typical trailer-park trash. Both of them approaching forty but looking ten years older. She worked down at the Shop-N-Save; he mostly sat home and drank beer. No surprise if they were the type to prefer knuckles to words when it came to making a point, but in the couple of years they’d been living there, he’d never heard anything like the ruckus they were causing now.

  More glass shattered and a man shouted for help. That’s when it hit Henry that maybe it wasn’t a fight at all, maybe they were just drunk and had their own television turned up way too loud, watchin’ some goddamned monster movie or karate flick.

  “Inconsiderate bastards.” With a groan he pushed himself from his chair and headed for his bedroom window, which he knew would give him a good view of the Mackley’s living room. God knows I’ve stared at their place enough times, hoping to catch a peek of Stacy Mackley in her birthday suit. He grinned at his peeping tom tendency, one of the few joys left in his life. “Folks don’t know enough to buy curtains, they’re fair game,” he liked to tell himself, while waiting for a glimpse of Stacy’s titties. When you couldn't afford HBO you had to make your own entertainment.

  A quick look now, just to make sure they were having a party and not a brawl, and then he’d head over there and give them a piece of what for.

  Pulling the curtain aside a few inches, Henry peered across the tiny patch of so-called yard separating the two double-wides. Sure enough, the lights were off in the Mackley’s living room but their big old TV - a twenty-year-old giant - was on, illuminating the room in grayish-blue light.

  It only took a moment for Henry to determine that the TV wasn’t the cause of the noises he'd been hearing.

  Stacy’s face was pressed up against the picture window so hard her features were deformed, like her face was melting against the glass. A man stood behind her, his arm wrapped around her neck in a chokehold. Her arms flailed back and forth, trying to dislodge his grip, and her tongue protruded from her mouth like a panting dog’s, leaving snail trails of spit on the glass.

  While Henry watched, the man used his free hand to grab Stacy by the hair and bang her head against the window. The second time he did it, a crack appeared in the heavy glass. The third time, she stopped struggling and went limp. He let go of her neck and she slowly slid down the clear surface, her face stretching even more as the glass pulled it out of shape, until her body came to rest draped over the television set.

  Only then did Henry get a good look at her attacker, who up to that point he’d assumed was her good-for-nothing husband. Instead, the TV’s flickering light revealed a large, powerfully-built man in a police uniform.

  Jesus H. Christ. A cop just killed someone.

  Henry backed away from favorite voyeur spot. What the fuck was he supposed to do now? Call the cops on one of their own? Who’d believe him? Plus, any time you called the police, they automatically got your name and number - he knew that much from watching television - and they sent out the nearest patrol car.

  What if the lunatic across the way got the call to respond?

  Something moved behind the cop and Henry focused his attention on the Mackley’s living room again. At first he thought a child had entered the room, which was odd, since the Mackley’s didn’t have any kids. Then the figure moved closer to the TV and Henry had to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming. He’d watched his fair share of movies over the years, especially after Alice passed and he had nothing else better to do, and he recognized the creature right away.

  Aliens! It’s a fucking invasion.

  The egg-shaped head, glowing eyes and tiny arms - just like he’d seen in UFO movies and specials. As he watched, the alien reached out with its hands and grabbed hold of Stacy’s face. The cop stared impassively while the deformity pushed itself into Stacy’s throat. Her body twitched and convulsed as the dark form disappeared down her neck like a lizard squeezing into a hole.

  Stacy stopped struggling and stood up, her face now wearing the same emotionless expression as the cop.

  Shit on a stick. They’ve both been taken over. Now it made sense to Henry. The aliens were parasites and the cop already had one of the little gray bastards living inside him. He’d knocked Stacy out so his friend could have a home.

  The alien-cop bent down out of sight and when he stood up he had Stacy’s husband slung over his shoulder. Henry leaned closer to the glass, trying to see if Ed was alive. At that exact moment, his air conditioner kicked on, the whirring noise of the compressor sending his heart into overdrive. He instinctively turned to see what the noise was and in the process banged his elbow against the glass.

  When he looked back at the Mackley’s, Stacy and cop were both staring back at him.

  Shit. Shitmutherfuckingshit!

  Henry backed away from the window and ran across the small living room towards the door, then stopped. He couldn’t go outside; his front door faced the Mackley’s. That would be like jumping out of the pa
n and into the fire. He could go out the back, but he’d fenced his yard in years ago, when they'd still had their dog, meaning he’d have to either climb the fence—an impossibility with his arthritis—or use the gate.

  Which faced the front.

  “They’re gonna be coming over here any second. Think, Henry, think.” He looked around the trailer.

  And saw the picture of the dog.

  Sparky had been a big dumb-as-shit mutt Alice rescued from the pound. He’d died just a few months before Alice did and Henry often thought she’d given up the ghost just so she could be with Sparky again. God knew she loved that damn dog more than anyone, himself included.

  Most importantly, they’d never gotten rid of his doghouse.

  Henry ran for the back door and chugged across the yard as fast as his aching knees would carry him. Bending down to crawl into the musty sanctuary set his back to complaining something fierce but he ignored it, squeezing himself as deep into the dusty space as he could.

  His knees and elbows howled in pain as he pulled his legs against his chest and wrapped his arms around his shins. Breathing in heavy pants, he sat among the spiderwebs, dead bugs and dried leaves, waiting. In the darkness, the glowing face of his watch showed ten to nine.

  Across the yard, the gate squealed as someone opened it.

  * * *

  Cory and Marisol paused by Marisol’s aging Toyota Corolla. She pulled her keys from her pocket but didn’t move to unlock her door.

  “What shift are you working tomorrow?” he asked, the soft, deep tones of his voice echoing the sultry, smooth atmosphere of the warm summer night.

  “Day shift,” Marisol said, wondering if she was having the same effect on him as he was on her. It had been an effort not to reach out and hold his hand or lean her head against his shoulder as they sat next to each other on Todd Randolph’s couch for the past several hours.