Graveyards: A Horror Short Story Collection (3 Tales to Chill Your Bones Book 6)
Page 3
Jordan lost it. “What the hell? You’re screwed in the head, man. I didn’t sleep with your wife!”
Derek pointed his index finger at Jordan and made a come-here gesture. “Come check out the grave, kid. Then I’ll call you a truck.”
The ache in his ankle reminded Jordan to keep his cool. He needed to stall Derek as long as he could. “Okay, man, fine. I'll look at the mutt's grave." Jordan stood. "Say, why would Sandra want the grave here anyway? I mean, it was her dog."
Derek's lips twisted. "Wrong! Rookie was our dog."
Derek grabbed Jordan’s shirt and thrust the glass to Jordan's throat. "'Til you fucked everything up. My life is over. You hear? Over!"
Jordan held perfectly still. His vision going cross-eyed, focusing on the sharp glass.
"Sandra moved to her mother's last month. She can't sell the damn house with a grave in the back now can she?" Derek smiled. "So I moved it for her."
Jordan raised his brows.
"Why?" Derek coughed out a laugh. "Because, don't you know." He dug the glass in deeper. "I love her."
Jordan closed his eyes and murmured a prayer.
"Kid, you piss your pants?" Derek dropped the shard from Jordan's neck. "You’re embarrassing me." He put his arm around Jordan's shoulders steering him as they walked.
"Where were we? Oh, yes, Lisa." Derek laughed. "You see, just so happened, that Lisa came by one day when I was outback,” he wrapped his fingers into quote marks, “building my deck. She offered to mow my lawn for ten bucks."
They came to the back of the trailer. A hundred yards or so in the distance, Jordan could see a huge white marble headstone, had to be twice—he blinked—three times the size you normally see in the graveyard.
"You have to understand, kid. It was in the nineties that day. And here comes this little hottie asking if I needed something done. You better believe I put her to work."
"You slept with her?"
"Hell, yeah." Derek looked away for a second. "What the hell, right? Who knows how many times Sandra had..." He shook his head. "That's beside the point. The point, Jordan, is that I was hurting. I needed something. What booze couldn't do for me, Lisa did."
Jordan craned his neck towards the road to see where Mrs. Doober was. The trailer blocked his view.
"Anyway, Lisa and I carried on that way for quite awhile. She called it love and I played along, which was fine, 'til Sandra came home early one day. Lisa hid under the bed like a good girl until I got Sandra to leave for the store. I broke it off with her that day. And, well, Lisa didn't take it so well. She kept calling me over and over begging me to take her back. She followed me to the grocery store one day and told me that Slinky had died."
Jordan nodded. "Leukemia, right?"
"No. Road kill.”
"You're telling me he recovered from cancer and a car ran over him?"
"No, I'm telling you Slinky recovered from cancer only to get hit with a flying rock."
"Ummm... rocks don't fly."
"No shit, kid. A brat shot him with a slingshot right out the back of his daddy's ice cream van."
"So Slinky wasn't road kill."
"He spun around a couple times before he lied down in the road."
"How do you know all this?"
Derek rolled his eyes. "Lisa told me, remember? At the store? Anyway, Lisa saw it all happen. She ran out of her doorway just as the semi hit Slinky."
Jordan stared at him, unbelieving.
Derek nodded. "Road kill."
"A semi squashed Slinky?"
"No, kid, Lisa was squashed. Slinky was smooshed. There’s a difference."
Jordan shook his head. "Poor Slinky."
Derek laughed. "Yeah, well, Lisa didn't take it so well either. At the store, she got down on her knees and said she needed me and made a big scene of it. I yanked her out the door yelling that I didn't owe her a dime for my damn lawn. I shoved her in my car, drove her home, and told her I used her. I fucked her not because I loved her but because she was there, convenient. I told her to kill herself and visit Slinky in hell."
Jordan's jaw dropped.
"I hurt her, Jordan. I'm not proud of it, but she wouldn't leave me alone. I didn't want Sandra to find out—she'd leave me for sure. If people around town knew, I'd lose my job at the bank. So Lisa went home, took a sharp piece of glass and slit her wrists. Her daddy found her before too long and called the ambulance. They put her in the crazy house a couple days later. Guess she took to cuttin' herself up with any thing she could find."
"So how did Sandra find out?" Jordan asked.
"It wasn't long before they let Lisa out. She showed up at my door one day when Sandra was over at Rosie's helping to pack for their girly trip to Reno. She had these scars up and down her arms where she had cut. Just really creepy, you know? She demanded that I take her back or Sandra and the whole world would know. I thought about the day I met her, how I was in the backyard, drinking my booze looking at the...”
Jordan raised his eyebrows. "At the what?"
Derek shook his head. "I calmed her down. I dried her tears with my shirt, nice guy I am. I told her to come back the next evening, late, after Sandra and Rosie had left, and we would talk about it."
"So you—"
"Shut up, kid, let me finish my story." Derek pointed the sharp end of the bottle at him.
Jordan raised his arms. "I'm cool with that."
"So that night, after Sandra left, I got my shovel, went out to Rookie's grave and dug him up. I put his bones and shit in a plastic bag and threw it in the garbage." Derek shrugged. "A dead mutt wasn't going to know any difference. I made the hole a bit deeper, longer. I went to bed that night and slept better than... well, hell. Better than I'd ever slept."
Jordan shivered despite the sweat rolling down his neck.
"I called in sick that day, got myself a couple of six packs, sat outback, and waited for her. I watched the willow branches sway back and forth over that white marble headstone. It looked as if those wispy tendrils were petting it or something. Ha! Just the damnest thing."
Jordan thought of the headstone sitting in the dirt a hundred feet behind Derek. He swallowed hard, aware of his adam's apple rising and falling. "Derek," he said. "How did Lisa get squashed?"
"How about that, kid?" Derek threw back his head and laughed. He gave Jordan a thumbs up. "You're starting to figure it out. So you want to know, huh? Come here. I'll tell you." He grabbed Jordan's wrist, thrust the glass into his back, and marched him toward the gravestone.
"Lisa showed up right on time that night. It was late and dark. Just so happened that it was a tad stormy out. Good for me. I told her I wanted to take her in the backyard, like the first time. Kid, if you could have seen the smile on her face. A big, beautiful, grateful smile. You'd think I'd brought her cat back to life. I led her in the yard, poured her a glass of wine. She drank. We talked. I poured her another glass, then another. It rained on us, but we didn't care. I didn't care anyways. So finally, the clouds cleared. The moon was so bright and full. I knew it was time. I asked her for a dance, told her I had something important to tell her. She obliged."
Derek guided Jordan to the freshly dug hole in front of the headstone. "It's funny what pain will make people do. I'm not talking about this kind." He pushed the glass into Jordan’s back.
Jordan yelped.
"I’m talking the kind that rips out your insides and hangs you out to dry.”
"Every one goes through that, man. My grandma died last year and—"
"Just shut up. You don't get it.”
Jordan shut up.
"So we began to waltz over the lawn. I remember watching the long willow branches sway with us. I waltzed Lisa right up to the grave. She was shaky, wobbly, laughing. She said, 'Derek what isssss ittt that you wanted toooo tell me?' We stopped dancing. I kissed her full, red lips for the last time. I leaned into her ear and whispered, 'Say hi to Slinky for me.' And then, I pushed her in."
"Oh my—”
> "I said shut up, kid." Derek shook his head. "I'll never forget how those branches seem to reach for her as she fell. She never screamed, never spoke. She just looked at me with this stare. This cold, distant stare. I pushed the gravestone on her. Lisa got squashed."
Jordan's heart beat wildly. “You killed her? You killed Lisa?"
Derek pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket, vein throbbing on his forehead. "Turn around, kid."
"No way, man. No, it wasn't me, I swear." Jordan bit his lower lip and thought hard. "How did you get the headstone out?"
Derek laughed and rubbed his lower back. "Engine hoist I had stashed in the garage. That was one hell of a job." Derek spun Jordan around. "Either way, kid, you're going to hell. You might as well tell the truth before you," Derek smiled, "get squashed yourself."
Jordan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Derek slipped the cuffs on. "How did Sandra find out? If Lisa was out of the way, your life should have been fine, right?"
“Remember what I said about pain coming back to get you in the end?” Derek snorted. "Life’s ironic. Lisa kept a diary. Her Daddy found it after she disappeared. News spread around quicker than herpes in a whorehouse. I was suspected for a while. They couldn't find the body, so they let me go. Speaking of which, I think it's your time to go."
"Man, please, no. You don't want to do this."
Derek grabbed Jordan's cuffs and pulled him towards the grave. He leaned in close to Jordan's ear. "Say hi to Lisa for me."
"Hold it right there, Mister!"
Jordan cried out. "Mrs. Doober!” then “You've got a— ”
"Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum," she flashed her pearly dentures, "and a cell phone."
A siren echoed in the distance. Twinkledoodle yapped.
Derek dropped the bottle shard and lifted his hands. "Mrs. Doober, there's been a misunderstanding."
"No, sir. I saw you dig that grave night before last." Her hands wobbled from the weight of the gun, but her feet remained planted in the dirt. "After Sandra kicked you out and Lisa disappeared, I knew something was up. Picked up this lovie," she swung the gun, "at a garage sale for self defense. Now keep your hands up and step away from my grocery boy."
Derek stepped back.
She said, “Grocery boy?”
Jordan let out a breath and slumped to a knee with relief. “Yes, Mrs. Doober?”
“You gonna thank me for this later like you did Sandra?”
Jordan opened his eyes and looked at Mrs. Doober.
She winked.
He smiled lopsidedly at Mrs. Doober, glanced at Derek.
"I told you, boy," Derek said, laughing, “it always comes back to get you in the end.” He was still laughing when the police handcuffed him and put him in the cruiser.
* * *
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About the Author
Mav Skye has never snatched bodies out of a grave, nor has she tripped the night fantastic with a dapper cadaver, but she will admit that the thought of dancing to eternity is terribly romantic. Her short stories have been published all over the web and have won several awards. She has just published her first full length horror novel, Wanted: Single Rose.
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Tales to Chill Your Bones Series
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Abyss: http://geni.us/3ttcyb5
Graveyards: http://geni.us/3ttcyb6
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Bibliography
The Stories in this collection were first published in the following publications:
Lisa Got Squashed, Toe Tags 2: Blood and Bizarro,
© 2010 by Jodi MacArthur