“Okay,” Marisol said, her relief evident even through his cell phone’s tiny speaker. “Have you heard from Todd and John yet?”
“No. They’re probably at the library by now. I’m sure they’ll call soon.”
“All right. Are we still meeting back at Todd’s for dinner?”
“Unless we hear different. It’s my treat tonight. How’s Chinese sound?”
“Make mine sweet and sour chicken with brown rice. I’ll see you there.”
“’Bye,” Cory said. He thumbed the disconnect button, surprised to find the words “Love you,” sitting at the edge of his tongue. He’d almost said them out loud; the only thing that had stopped him was a feeling that the time wasn’t right. He was certain Marisol liked him, perhaps even loved him. He knew he loved her. He also knew that telling her too soon might send her running for the hills, especially after how badly her marriage had ended.
There’s no rush, he thought. When this is all over and we can spend time together without worrying about the town falling apart around us.
Of course, who knows when that will be?
With a sigh, he opened the next file and started reading.
* * *
Beneath Rocky Point, in tunnels and caverns both man-made and natural, the Horde opened its many eyes in response to a disturbance on the surface.
The cemetery. One of the appendages had come upon humans near a point of egress.
“Return home,” the Horde told itself.
Dozens of faces frowned as one. The Horde remembered the last time humans had descended below the surface. Many decades ago but still the memory burned, as painful as the damage the interlopers had wrought.
The Horde considered the possibilities. Their numbers were strong again but not strong enough. Not yet. It sent a message throughout itself, imprinting the orders in the minds of all the appendages.
“Do not use the cemetery to exit or enter the home.”
The Horde considered the town above and the humans that infested it.
Soon, it thought. Soon we will be free. Free to grow.
And feed.
* * *
John threw his hands up, cushioning his fall just enough that he didn’t hit his face. He felt like he’d taken a bowling ball to the chest but was still able to move. He rolled to the side, kicking out with both feet, expecting to find the reanimated cop clutching him with dead fingers.
Instead, all he saw were the gnarled, bulging roots of an old tree rising from the dirt path Todd had chosen.
“John!” Todd’s frantic voice seemed like it was a mile away. It took a moment for John to realize that was because the pounding of his pulse in his ears was overpowering all other sounds.
“I’m...I’m okay,” he said, fighting to get the words out while his lungs struggled to take in enough oxygen.
“C’mon.” Hands grabbed him under the arms. “I don’t know why but that thing stopped chasing us and turned around. I don’t trust it though. I still think we should take the long way back into town. We can come back for my car later.”
“Whatever you say.” John coughed and wheezed as Todd led him up the hill. When they reached the top, he saw the old church standing there, its whitewashed walls stained a dismal gray from decades of exposure to the elements. Those same elements had stolen several shingles from the roof. Plywood covered the windows and front door, and the cement steps were cracked and broken.
Todd paused. “John, if you’re feeling up to it, maybe we should go into the church and check the old records. We might find something about that crypt.”
John held back a groan. The last thing he felt like doing was going inside a run-down, spooky old church, especially after they’d already been chased by one monster. Who knew what was waiting inside for them? But the look on Todd’s face told him his friend was going in with or without him.
And friends didn’t desert friends.
“I’m fine. Let’s go.”
As they walked up the crumbling stairs, he hoped they weren’t making a mistake.
Two hours later, John’s worries had changed from sudden death by monster attack to slow, lingering death from toxic mold poisoning. Digging through the file cabinets and boxes in the church storage room - not in the basement thank God; he didn’t think he could have dealt with that - had churned up clouds of dust and fungal spores worse than anything he’d endured living on the streets. Thanks to years of abandonment, a leaky roof and too many humid seasons, half the papers they needed to look through were stained black and gray with mildew and worse.
“Jesus, this place reeks.” He opened another drawer, exposing more yellowed, mildewed files. The upwelling of fresh dust tickled his nose and throat, sending him into yet another coughing fit.
“I know, I’m sorry. But we have to find out who that crypt belonged to. There must be a reason those creatures chose it for their lair.”
“A reason?” John let out a short laugh that turned into another cough. “What makes you think there’s a reason? Maybe it was just the first place they came across.”
“No, that’s too random for me to believe. I’m thinking perhaps it lies over a mystical place or the owner was someone who...Hello, what’s this?”
“What do you have?” John dropped his files to the floor and joined Todd by another file cabinet. Todd’s dirt-encrusted hands were busy flipping pages in what looked like an old-fashioned ledger.
“It’s the old caretaker’s book. It lists all the graves in the cemetery.” A note of excitement crept into Todd’s voice. “The information about that crypt must be in here!”
“But how are you going to find it?” John pointed at a column, which held nothing but dates listed in day, month and year order. “It’s in date order. And we don’t know what year the mausoleum was built.”
“Well, we know it has to be before our junior year in high school.” Todd flipped back through the pages until he reached a point twenty years in the past. Then he went to a page halfway between the open page and front cover. “Now we split the work.” Gripping the book with both hands, he pulled it apart, tearing the binding. A huge cloud of dust flew into the air and more than a few silverfish fell to the floor.
“Here.” Todd handed half the book to John. “You get from nineteen-forty on. I’ll take the earlier half.”
“Damn Todd. That was church property you just destroyed. What would your father say?”
Todd gave him a weak smile.
“Since when did I ever care what he thought?”
Chapter 6
Cory was almost ready to give up and head back to Marisol’s for a shower and a beer when his cell phone rang. His first reaction after hearing about Todd and John’s near-attack at the cemetery was to call Marisol and tell her to join them, in case there were further threats. But Todd dissuaded him from doing anything hasty.
“I don’t think it was after us specifically,” he said. “We know they’ve been using the crypt. It was probably just returning to its nest or lair or whatever and we happened to be there. But none of that matters. We found out who the crypt belongs to.”
“What? How?” Cell phone tucked between his shoulder and ear, Cory hurried back to the computer he’d been using to access the town’s files.
“We got an ID number on the crypt and then found the old cemetery records in the church storage room. Thank heavens my father never threw anything out. Anyhow, it took a while, but we were able to match the number to a name. Grover Lillian. He was buried in 1922.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“Good. We’re heading to my house to wash up. Are you still bringing dinner?”
“Yeah. I’ll call you when I’m on the way.” Cory hung up and scrolled through the options in the records system until he found Obituaries. Keying in the name and date Todd had given him, he hit enter and waited for the death notice to pop up. He’d expected a standard notice, possibly a two-column layout, given that the man must have been at least fairly well-to-
do, based on his expensive burial site.
Instead, he found himself looking at a list of more than fifteen newspaper articles. He opened the first one.
Doctor of Death commits suicide in secret burial ground.
For the next twenty minutes, he kept the records room printer running non-stop.
“This is unbelievable.” Marisol put down one of the articles Cory had found on Dr. Grover Lillian.
“Not really.” Todd washed down a mouthful of sesame chicken before continuing. “In the twenties and thirties, many mental institutions doubled as experimental laboratories for physicians. And not just for mental illnesses either. Small pox, tuberculosis, syphilis, cerebral palsy - you name it and likely someone was working on a cure at an asylum. And in the absence of good government controls, many of those experiments bordered on sheer barbarism.”
“So, is that what we’re dealing with? The ghosts of all those people he killed?”
“Ghosts don’t turn people into zombies,” John said. He picked up a carton of moo goo gai pan and scooped some onto his plate, topping it off with a dollop of hot mustard.
“Well, that’s just it. We don’t really know what ghosts do or don’t do. Or,” Todd held up a hand to stop John’s argument, “even if we’re dealing with ghosts at all. I think we need to find out more about this Dr. Lillian. For instance, where under the hospital was this burial ground? The articles don’t say.”
“Good question.” Cory finished his beer. “First thing tomorrow morning, we meet at the library and do some serious research.”
“Not me.” Marisol stood up. “It’s back to work for me tomorrow, which means early to bed tonight.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to go back?” Cory stood also. “You’re stitches aren’t even out yet.”
“Gotta pay the rent,” she said. “Besides, I’ll be able to keep up with any new information the police gather. Gossip spreads faster than light in a government building.”
“Goodnight Marisol,” Todd said.
Still eating, John merely waved.
“Coming?” She looked at Cory, who glanced at the others.
“Go ahead.” Todd smiled at him. “We all know.”
“See you in the morning then,” Cory said, a relieved smile on his face.
After they left, John looked at Todd.
“You’re not really planning on waiting until tomorrow, are you?”
Picking up his soda, Todd shook his head.
“That’s why God gave us the internet.”
* * *
Doctor Eli Sloan put his car in park and stared out the windshield. In the white glare of the car’s headlights, Wood Hill Sanitarium took on a sinister appearance and he imagined it wouldn’t take long for it to gain a reputation for being haunted. Although the walls were still free of wild ivy and moss, and none of the windows or doors had been broken by drunken teenagers, it was easy to picture how the reflections of trees and clouds on the institutional glass would be interpreted as ghostly shapes. How the whispering night breeze would be construed as the voices of the dead calling for release.
Even knowing there was nothing inside except the usual detritus of Homo bureaucratis - tons of files and abandoned office furniture - Sloan still felt an almost instinctive dread at the idea of going back inside the hospital. If ghosts do exist, then Wood Hill ought to be filled with them. And more than a few would be there because of me.
Not the best thoughts to have before going inside. Except that not going in might lead to something far worse than encountering an angry spirit or two. As in, losing his medical license. Or maybe even going to jail.
Given those choices, there really was no decision.
He’d gotten the phone call a few hours earlier, just as he was about to pour himself a nice after-dinner glass of sherry. The speaker hadn’t identified himself. Hadn’t needed to. Sloan had recognized the voice right away: Dan Remoso, Manager of Building Facilities. Not a person he’d have normally associated with, let alone known on a personal basis. But several years earlier they’d discovered a mutual fondness for a certain white powder after Sloan had walked in on Remoso cutting a line in the men’s room. Since then they’d shared many a bag, sitting in the parking lot at the end of a long work day.
“Sloan, you should stop by the hospital. Tonight. Check the files in the administration’s storage room. Sublevel One. They’re coming tomorrow morning.”
The connection had clicked off before he’d been able to ask any questions. Who was coming? The FDA, looking for evidence of misconduct? The senior administrators, intent on placing falsified evidence in the files? And what files had he missed? He’d submitted no written reports that contained anything relating to his human trials, only verbal updates. And he’d kept his data in his briefcase, not his office.
Did I miss something? Or worse, did they record me? Or maybe have meetings without me, meetings where they discussed all the aspects of my work?
And how did Remoso know about any of this?
There’d been no question of whether or not to go back to the hospital. Thanking his lucky stars his drug habit had created an unexpected confidant, he’d grabbed a flashlight and headed back to Rocky Point without even telling his wife he was going out.
Now, an hour later, he was sitting in the parking lot, suddenly afraid to enter an empty building.
Get a grip and move your ass. You’ve got six hours until sunrise and maybe an hour or two at the most after that before they - whoever they are - show up. And by then you need to be long gone.
Flashlight in hand, Sloan turned off the car and got out. After removing his tire iron from the trunk, he walked around to the building’s maintenance entrance. Unlike the big front doors, it only had one simple lock above the knob. He jammed the pry bar between the door and frame, using a rock to hammer it in. Two heaves later the door opened with a loud metallic squeal. Sloan paid no attention to the noise; the hospital was well away from any neighborhoods or streets so there was no chance anyone would hear him.
Once inside, he made his way to the nearest stairwell and headed down to Sublevel One, the lower of the two basement levels. Sublevel Two held the morgue, the Chemistry Lab and the Dental Department. Sublevel One was strictly storage and maintenance, the guts of the building. Generators, HVAC, waste disposal and plumbing took up the wide center area, with small offices along the sides.
He groaned as he saw there had to be a dozen or more storage rooms, all filled with filing cabinets and cardboard boxes. Which ones belonged to Administration? Was there an order to the way things had been stored or had files simply been carted down and placed from oldest to newest?
Sloan realized he was in for a long night.
“Well, let’s hope the room closest to the elevator has the newest files.” In the cavernous space, his words came back to him from multiple directions, bouncing off concrete and metal until it sounded like several people were mocking him from the darkness. Already creeped out by the empty building, he made a silent note not to speak out loud again.
He was halfway through the first box of files he’d opened when a sudden thought came to him.
This is the floor that connects to the old power plant.
The power plant where the bodies had been buried.
In his mind’s eye, he saw how they must have done it. Waiting until the dead of night to take the lifeless forms from the morgue down to Sublevel One and then wheeling them through the tunnel that connected the current hospital to the old building, the one not in use any more.
Dumping them in the Pit.
The bodies are all gone asshole! he chided himself. They’d been carted away by the police long ago. Still, he couldn’t shake the image of corpses piled on each other, eyes opening in the dark, hands digging their way free.
Bodies rising from the ground.
Stop it! You’re acting like a child who’s afraid of the dark.
Opening the next box, he saw the Chief Administrator’s name on a folder.
Bingo! This has to be the right room.
That’s when he heard the noise.
A soft whispering, like the voices of children playing hide-and-seek.
He paused, hand halfway to a file. Listened.
Nothing. Just endless quiet.
Deathly, tomb-like quiet, his mind supplied, and he quickly told it to shut up.
You’re imagining things. Or maybe it was his blood pulsing in his ears, an internal white noise only audible because the building was so silent.
He resumed flipping through the files, checking the papers inside each one for his name since it was unlikely anything relating to him would be conveniently labeled as Human Trials or Illegal Activities.
As he prepared to open the third box, he heard it again.
Whisper-sshhh-shush
Not words. More like distant waves lapping at a sandy shore. A sliding, shuffling sound.
Like someone scuffing their feet while they walk?
Just like that, a new picture appeared in his brain: zombified corpses dragging themselves through the pitch black hallways, seeking...
Me.
Unable to control his imagination any longer, Sloan went back into the hallway. His intention was to prove to himself nothing was there. A quick look in both directions with the flashlight and then he could return to the real job at hand: saving his career.
He aimed the flashlight towards the elevators, casting the beam back and forth across the hall, alert for any movement.
Nothing.
See? You’re being what your son would call a real wuss.
Turning the other way, he brought the light around.
For a moment, the scene before him didn’t even register; his rational mind was already telling him nothing was there. Then it actually processed what his eyes were seeing and he gasped. The instinctive areas of his brain tried to take over, tried to kick his fight-or-flight response into high gear but all that happened was his bladder emptied a stream of hot piss down his legs.
Cemetery Club Page 18
