Sleepers Awake

by Patrick McNulty

  He was coming.

  Norman opened his eyes, leaned against the window frame and watched the shadows of skeletal branches and drifts of snow flash across the yard. There were other shadows too, staring up at the bright yellow square of Norman’s window. Shadows that belonged to the voices that relentlessly whispered one name in Norman’s ear, a name he hadn’t heard in over thirty years, a name that brought him back to that first night. The night where his old life ended and his new life began.

  The year was 1976. Norman’s parents had died in a car accident at the beginning of 1974, leaving him the Danaid cemetery to run. It turned out to be more than Norman could handle. Over the generations, the Conklin family had earned a reputation for class, dignity and respect; however, young Norman seemed committed to tearing that reputation down as quickly as he could.

  Since the night the sheriff gave Norman the bad news about his folks, he seemed content to climb inside a whiskey bottle and shut the rest of the world out. During those days he spent the bulk of his time in his bedroom on the second floor. On that particular night, young Norman got himself completely shit-faced by 6:30 PM . Quite an accomplishment, considering his day, which consisted of lying in bed and eating handfuls of Cheerios while he watched an endless parade of game shows.

  When Duke (Norman’s first dog, who was put down in 1987) barked in the yard outside, he rolled out of bed and kicked an empty beer bottle, sending it spinning across the hardwood toward his bedroom door. He swore as he hobbled over to the window.

  Rain had hammered the ground all day and continued into the night. Thick black clouds hovered close to the earth, smothering the dim light of stars. Norman leaned against the window frame and watched the black Mercedes as it crept slowly up the private drive. Headlights swept the two-story brick home, its one white shutter flapping in the wind like a single sail not properly lashed down. On the right side of the house, next to the garage, stood a doghouse, and as the lights swept past, two yellow eyes flashed in the darkness.

  The Mercedes pulled to a stop and the engine died. Over the rustling of the trees and the falling rain that slashed at the sleek black car, Duke emitted deep guttural growls as the big German Shepherd inched its way out of its doghouse.

  After a moment, the driver’s door opened and a huge man wrapped in a heavy overcoat stepped into the storm. He was six foot five at least, with the shoulders of a football player. His face was a sliver of moon beneath his wide-brimmed hat. The interior light in the car revealed a thin pale woman in the back seat. She never turned to look at the house, the growling dog, or even in the direction of the windows. She wore a simple black veil that obscured her features.

  As the man stepped toward the house, Duke barked, pulling and tugging on his chain, digging his claws into the muddy ground, begging for the chance to rip into the trespasser. The man turned to the dog and hissed, his breath like smoke in the freezing air. Duke yelped, turned tail and ran back inside his doghouse as if he had been jabbed in the snout with a hot poker.

  With the dog silenced, the big man stepped through the puddles toward the front gates of the cemetery. Just before he passed out of sight beneath the eaves, the man looked up. Norman’s breath caught in his throat, his heart lurched. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t move, frozen in that stare. The stranger’s face tilted up into the rain, droplets of water gleaming on the pale skin like water on the moon, but it was his eyes that held him, black lifeless eyes that kept him prisoner.

  When the man passed beneath the edge of the house and out of sight, Norman kick-started back to life. First a gasp of air filled his lungs, then his heart chugged into a steady rhythm. He stepped closer and pressed his cheek to the cold glass, looking for his night visitor. A moment later the rusted hinges of his garage door groaned as the door was pulled open.

  “What the hell?”

  Norman left his window and stalked down to his parents’ old room where the view of the garage was better. The garage was open.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Norman couldn’t hear much from all the way up on the second floor, but the garage light was on. The big man’s shadow flickered and danced over the concrete floor as he searched for something.

  Suddenly, the light was extinguished and the mountain wrapped in the black raincoat emerged from the garage holding one of Norman’s shovels. Norman’s breath caught in his chest.

  “Jesus tap-dancing Christ,” he whispered fiercely. “Goddamn grave robbers.”

  The shovel-stealin’ bastard slipped quietly across the gravel driveway and through the wrought iron gates of the cemetery. Beyond the gate, the would-be grave robber disappeared and Norman lost sight of him.

  “Now we got a problem, Norm,” he could hear his father say.

  “You’re darn tootin’,” Norman replied.

  An artillery blast of thunder shook the house. Norman jumped and banged his head off the glass, rattling the window in its frame. He stepped back from the glass and a thought zipped through his mind, leaving a trail of acid that seemed to seep all the way to his stomach, curdling the contents.

  Cult.

  What if it’s some sort of weird cult? Grave robber? In a Mercedes? Not bloody likely. But a satanic, devil-worshipping cult, now they had money. Or at least he had heard they had money. From somewhere, he wasn’t sure where. Maybe he heard it on the news, or in town. But the sad truth of it was that either way, rich devil-cult worshipper or grave robber there was a man in the yard with one of his shovels. At—he checked his watch but it was gone—very late, way past visiting hours.

  Norman was rooted in place. Should he go down, check it out? For a moment he almost talked himself into taking a step toward the hall and down the stairs. Then he remembered those black, lifeless eyes.

  No way in Hell he was going down there half drunk and in his robe, at least not without something to give the big fella pause.

  Norman crossed the room to a closet and pulled the chain, snapping a light bulb to life near the ceiling. He reached up over some sweaters and brought down an old Winchester shotgun, a double-barrel job. He cracked the shotgun and inspected the barrels.

  “Goddamn devil worshipper. You picked the wrong yard to fuck with,” Norman muttered as he spun away from the window to track down his coat and his boots. Dressed and sufficiently armed, he made his way to the side door, the door closest to the cemetery. He grabbed the handle and his hand cramped severely. He cried out as he pried the twisted claw that was once his hand off the doorknob.

  “Jesus,” he whispered through gritted teeth. He massaged his hand and slowly found he could move his fingers again. He made a fist, shook his head and reached for the doorknob once again.

  Don’t.

  The word flashed in red across his brain like a Las Vegas neon sign, fifty feet high and blazing red.

  Don’t go outside, Norman.

  But he ignored the command, ripped open the door and stepped out into the rain.

  The plastic hood of his pancho covered his head and kept slipping over his eyes. He pointed the shotgun at the ground and moved quickly to the Mercedes parked in the driveway. He told himself that he would talk to the woman first. No reason to make a bad night worse. He hoped it would all be a misunderstanding and that he would be laughing about this very soon. He felt more confident as he approached the car.

  “Hello?” he said, as he tried the door handle. The door swung open with a soft click. Norman peered inside and found the back seat empty. He poked his head toward the front and frowned when he found the front seat empty as well. He softly closed the door and turned in a slow circle, looking for the woman he had seen sitting in the back. He scanned the gravel drive, the garage, the cemetery gates and found only darkness and rain. After a final glance around the darkened grounds, he headed toward the gate in the fence.

  A moment later, following the swish of the shovel blade as it cut through the sodden earth, Norman saw the big man in a grave. The thin woman stood next to it.

  Nor
man blinked repeatedly as the rain blurred his sight. It couldn’t be real, but he saw it. The big man bent over and pulled a body out of the grave—a grave that Norman himself had dug just six months ago. The body looked like a jumble of sticks inside a leather bag. He set the body down carefully beside the grave, and pulled himself out of the hole. Norman watched, crouched between a pair of tombstones. His view through the rain wasn’t perfect, but he could clearly see the body lying awkwardly on its side. Its arms were folded behind, the head tilted up to the sky. Rain beat mercilessly on the corpse’s papery skin, filling the mouth that hung slightly agape.

  Thunder rolled overhead, lightning tore at the boiling clouds. Norman shivered, stuffing his hands deep into his pockets. He watched the corpse, unable to look away, as it was lit in strobes of lightning. The man’s pale face looked almost serene, as if he’d been sleeping.

  The grave robber reached out for the corpse and its eyes slid open. Norman’s breath caught in his throat. The man’s eyes were as black as the night. Lightning ripped across the sky and illuminated the emaciated face. It was no mistake, no trick of the light. The corpse’s eyes were open and they had found Norman.

  Even hidden well back behind a row of tombstones, Norman felt like he was naked in the middle of Times Square. The man’s eyes rooted him in place, bored through him. Norman struggled to move, crawling backward through the wet grass, knocking over plastic vases of flowers and pictures left by the graves. He clumsily got to his feet and turned, walking straight into the veiled woman. The shotgun slipped from his hand as he stopped dead. She stood as silent and as still as a stone angel.

  “Don’t run, Norman,” she whispered.

  Norman ran.

  The big grave robber blocked the easiest path back to the house, but Norman knew another haven. He took off through the tombstones, sticking close to the tombs that offered the best cover. He had run this cemetery as a kid, playing hide-and- seek, but that was a long time ago and at thirty-eight he was soon out of breath, his belly bouncing under his poncho, his chest wheezing like an asthmatic’s. He had to get away, had to keep moving, it wasn’t far now.

  The shed was no more than a closet near the east corner of the cemetery, a storage shed with a rake, a shovel, bags of weed and feed and an old bleach jug that Norman used to piss in when he was working out in the yard. If no one was in the cemetery he’d piss just about anywhere, but when people were grieving a couple of rows down, one had to be a little more discreet.

  He moved a few heavy bags away from the corner and crept in behind them. He found a small, rusted spade and clutched it in his right hand. He took a few practice swings and nodded at the efficiency of his makeshift weapon. He was ready. He crouched behind the bags of fertilizer and not for the last time cursed himself for being so fool stupid to drop his own shotgun. He squeezed the handle of the spade and listened to the rain beat a rhythm on the tin roof. He was prepared to wait all night, to wait forever as long as he never had to see those people again.

  The shed was old and the construction shoddy. The planks that formed the walls had split and shrunk over the years, leaving gaps between them. Flashes of lightning sent blades of light into the shed, illuminating the cluttered interior. The dark figure passed by the rotted wall to Norman’s left. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed to whoever might be listening to allow him to wake up from this nightmare. Waves of thunder crashed overhead and Norman opened his eyes.

  He turned toward the wall at his back where a crack at eye level gave him a one-eyed view of the cemetery. The bare branches of the trees shook in the wind. He strained to find some clue as to his pursuers’ location. Perhaps they had given up. It was a terrible night, and even if he were to tell anyone what he saw, who would believe him? He hated the ammonia- and-urine smell of the shed. He hated the way his wet clothes clung to his skin. He was cold and miserable and scared and he wanted to go home. How long had he been out here? How long since he had seen the shadow pass by the crack in the wall? He set down his rusted spade and turned again to the crack at his back and stared into a black eye set in a face cut from ivory.

  Before he could move or scream or even take a breath, a fist thundered through the tiny crack in the wall and grabbed the front of Norman’s coat. The giant pulled his fist back and dragged Norman with it. Planks of wood tore apart, showering splinters over Norman’s pathetic form as he lay curled in a tight ball on the wet grass.

  “On your feet,” the man growled, as he grabbed Norman by the scruff of his neck and wrenched him up off of the ground. Norman stood trembling, covered in wood dust, as blood streamed from his nose and forehead.

  The woman stepped from the shadows of a nearby tomb. As she approached, Norman felt in his bones the shroud of cool air that surrounded her. A coil of terror thrashed in his guts, kicking and snapping until he felt like he was going to throw up or pass out. But he was not afraid of death: at that moment, he would welcome it. Swift and clean, in an instant he would be far from here, far from this woman whose presence made his skin crawl and the blood in his veins run cold. Norman had always heard that there were worse things than death, and as the pale woman wrapped in black whispered through the space between them, he knew in his bones that this woman knew them all by heart.

  “Norman Conklin,” she said, “you were warned to stay inside your home, were you not?”

  Norman nodded weakly.

  “Speak up, Norman.” Her voice was as smooth as her skin, as if it were cured over time. Her age was a mystery. She looked to be in her thirties, but her dark, half-lidded eyes betrayed her for a woman far older.

  “I ... Yes, I was.”

  She stepped closer, her breath cold on Norman’s chin.

  “But you had to see, didn’t you?” she whispered, a coy smile playing on her lips. “You had to see it all, didn’t you,

  Norman?”

  Norman whimpered, “Yes, ma’am” and sobbed. He shook in his boots. Her eyes searched his face, drinking up his suffering and fear. “Then you shall see everything.”

  She slid her smooth hands over Norman’s cheeks and lowered his face until she could place her full lips over his eyes. Her lips were soft and cold as she kissed each eye, one after the other, and when she was finished she whispered, “Sleep now.” Norman slipped from her grasp and crumpled to the ground in a pile of rags like a marionette whose strings had been suddenly severed.

  Later, when the air had frozen and the rain turned to sleet, Norman awoke curled in a tight ball, nearly frozen to the muddy ground. He struggled to his feet. His body ached, especially his nose, which he had broken when he crashed through the thin wall of the shed. For a moment he saw her, standing in a pool of shadow. His heart raced. He peered into the darkness, but she was only the ragged remains of a shrub that had survived the winter. He turned on his heel and headed back toward the house.

  As he crossed the driveway through the drizzling sleet he thought he saw the shadow of a man out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned, the shadow was gone. He stood there a moment, scanning the darkness, until the aches and pains and the freezing wind chased him inside toward the warmth of the house.

  He closed the front door and secured the deadbolt. As he peeled the soaked poncho from his shoulders he heard his name whispered directly behind him. He spun in place, one arm in, one arm out of his poncho, and saw an old woman standing at the bottom of his staircase.

  She was just under five feet tall, graying brown hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head. Her plump little hands were clasped together beneath the wide bosom of her favorite flower print dress. She smiled nervously when she saw him and whispered his name again, tears rolling over her cheeks.

  Norman’s mother took a small step toward him and he recoiled. Dead. She was dead. She is dead.

  “Yes,” she replied in his mind. “I am dead. But I’m not gone. I’m always with you. Now you can see that.”

  And that’s when it hit him. One of the million things that were worse tha
n death. The veiled woman had given him sight.

  “Look around you,” his mother said, pointing to the windows at the side of the house that looked over the cemetery. “A whole world beneath the one you know.”

  Norman stepped to the windows and stared through the rain and through the black gates of the cemetery. He waited. Soon there was a twitch, a shadow moving among the plots, and then another. Wraiths, young and old, stepped through the long rows of headstones, walking toward the house, matching his stare with their own.

  “Don’t be afraid,” his mother whispered.

  Norman sank to the floor, closed his eyes and screamed.

  10

  The Danaid cemetery spread over acres of softly rolling hills. The entire area was surrounded by a high black wrought iron fence that was heavily spiked. Bishop piloted his Ford Bronco through the deepening snow of Quaker road, scanning the plots through the gaps in the fence as he whipped by. He drove past the roadway that led into the cemetery and turned into the next driveway, which wound its way up a small hill to a house that sat back and to the left, partially hidden by a screen of trees.

  He found a small barn-style garage at the end of the driveway. The heavy wooden door was pushed open on its track, allowing Bishop to pull inside.

  Bishop closed the garage door and trudged through the drifting snow to the side door. From an interior pocket he withdrew a small wallet of thin tools used to pick locks, but he tried the doorknob and it turned in his hand.

  “Small towns,” he whispered.

  The back door led to a mudroom where the heat and the smell of coffee and bacon began to thaw the chill out of his bones. He passed through the kitchen and stepped into a sparsely decorated living room.he bo

  Sean scribbled his name at the bottom of a file and slipped the form into the OUT basket. He gathered up his coat, logged off his computer and switched off the lights to his office.