His hand brushed against a tombstone. Tall but crooked, it protruded from the earth in the same haphazard way his teeth sat in his jaw. He staggered between others, moving stone to stone. He was getting a feel for where he was now, and the rise in elevation meant that—
Sulfur...
Warren stopped, inhaled through the gaping hole where his nose had once been. Definitely sulfur, a whole lot of it. And hydrochloric acid. A mixture of fertilizer chemicals, too. Stuff that shouldn’t be here, out in the open like this. The only thing that would explain it was the plant. He was approaching the side of the cemetery which faced Kettner’s land.
Warren Bigelow had been a patient man in life. He knew he could be so in death.
He felt his way to the hill’s crest and back down again, like a blind man without a cane. He navigated the graveyard by touch, each subsequent row of tombstones marking his progress. When he finally set foot on the gravel road that snaked through the old cemetery, he knew where he was. He filled his shriveled lungs with the cool, night air.
And the stench. The stink of chemicals and pollutants.
Warren heard the sound of running water. It was faint, but it was there all right, if you listened hard for it. The Bluetail? Had all the poison Kettner had been pumping into the river finally choked it? It had to be. It was the only body of water for miles. The knowledge made him smile.
He was right where he wanted to be.
Town. He’d make it to town, and go from there. Collins, and his boy. Kettner’s two sons. Then, the big man himself, if he was still alive. Some of them would be.
And they had a reckoning coming. A reckoning with a very, very patient man.
DARRYL’S STAND
Darryl lay in the box, sweating profusely even though the temperature in the room was somewhere in the mid-sixties. Most folks would’ve found it uncomfortable, but Darryl didn’t mind the cold. No one in the back had ever complained, and this was a hell of a lot cheaper. For the viewing tomorrow, he’d throw the heater on for a while, but not too long. This wasn’t the kind of place you wanted getting too warm. Nope, that was, he had learned the hard way, one of the few things that was truly bad for business.
So he lay there, doing his thing, grunting and arching his back, thrusting his hips, snarling, "Who's your daddy?” over and over. Occasionally, he threw in a, “Who's your daddy now, huh, bitch?" to spice things up a little. He pumped his cock furiously, the buildup of carbon dioxide making his head spin.
"Take it, you slut! Take it all, you filthy little whore!”
He dug his fingers into the mini pillow, working the end with the hole in it over the tip of his dick. He was on the verge of blowing his load when the sound of an approaching car pre-empted his climax.
The doors were locked, of that he was certain. He always double-checked before taking one of his little breaks. A close call shortly after he’d taken over for his old man had set him straight concerning the dangers of being lax in his new profession. He’d been religious about checking the doors ever since.
A thought occurred to him. What if it was the cops? Locked doors didn't mean shit to anyone with a badge these days. Didn’t they go wherever they wanted? What if they’d come here to talk to him? Even more worrisome, what if they had a search warrant? He watched plenty of crime shows—he knew what was what when it came to Johnny Law.
His cock continued deflating as he strained to hear. Definitely a car engine. Only, the sound was receding now, not approaching. Whoever was driving had passed the mortuary, heading up the road towards the old cemetery.
"Ballsy fucking kids," he grumbled, shifting in the casket Melissa Anson had ordered for her father.
"I like this one for my Daddy," she'd said through her handkerchief, tears rolling down her pudgy face. Darryl pretended to listen as she outlined what she wanted for the wake and for the services. Tried to move her along as she droned on and on about how he’d been so thoughtful, planning ahead and putting money aside to pay for everything. It was a struggle to keep from sneering. Every time she whimpered and referred to "Daddy," he wanted to reach across the desk and smack that jiggly, porcine face of hers. He managed to restrain himself. He’d eventually learned the tricks of the trade, no thanks to his own father, who hadn’t bothered to teach him diddlysquat about the family business. Not before the stroke landed the geezer in Twin Pines, anyway. Darryl had grown accustomed to putting on his work face no matter who the client was, regardless of how much he despised them. And in a town like Dunkill? He despised just about everyone. Case in point. Melissa Anson, who’d ignored him all through high school, had turned him down every time he’d asked her out. Even when she’d really started putting on the weight. Still, he’d offered to take her to the prom. No one else had asked, he knew that from one of her friends. Eventually, he’d given up. Assumed she wasn’t going, on account of her getting big and all. But that wasn’t the case. She’d been at the prom. She’d just chosen to go alone.
Daddy this and Daddy that, she went on, in that pitiful, fat girl voice. Yeah, everybody in town knew about Daddy, all right. The rumors had started back when they’d both been in high school. How Big, bad Ben Anson couldn’t deal with his wife’s passing. How he’d become a shut-in, how he needed his little girl around all the time so he had someone to talk to. How she’d stopped going out with her friends on the weekends, staying home to tend to dear old Daddy.
Then Chris Winkler, the paperboy, started telling people that he’d seen Big Ben doing things to his daughter no daddy ought to be doing. Boy, that had set off some fireworks. The rumors spread like wildfire. Like Melissa’s hips, once everybody’d figured it out and turned their backs on them. Now that the old bastard was finally croaked, the best Darryl could come up with to get back at them was to use the box first. Let Anson rot under six feet of sod and soil, with the stink of Darryl's cum locked in there with him. He’d considered digging up Anson's wife—she’d been a looker before the breast cancer’d gotten her—but she was already eight years in the ground. It wouldn't be worth the effort just to paste those hollowed-out eyes shut again.
Thinking about piggy Melissa got Darryl's cock stretching towards the hole in the pillow, but he was wary. If kids were driving to the old cemetery to party, it surprised him. Every kid in town knew that up the extension road a ways was a hole in the fence, and plenty of room to park. The North side of the cemetery butted up against the Kettner land, where the fertilizer plant used to be. With the plant shut down, the cops didn’t bother cruising the extension road any more. What would be the point? Catching some testosterone-charged teenager with his hand down some honor student’s bloomers? Unless some parent who’d forgotten their own time spent parked up on the extension road wanted their precious darling found, the cops were more than willing to let them disappear…at least for a couple hours.
This was different, though. Even though Darryl only chased kids out when he was in a bad mood—or couldn't get it up—they knew better than to drive right by the mortuary and stick it in his face. No one wanted the cops up here, least of all Darryl. But if folks saw headlights and taillights coming and going at all hours, sure as shit they were going to start making calls and blaming him for letting it go on. Darryl went flaccid, the Vaseline buildup growing tacky between his fingers. He threw open the casket and climbed out, secreting his discharge pillow in a cabinet. On his way up the aisle, he dipped his hand into a vase holding an arrangement for the following afternoon. A ribbon trimming the bouquet read: Dearest Grandma. He wiped his hands on some paper towels and pulled on his suit jacket, grabbing the keys to the car. He’d show those kids who was boss. Up here, at least, that was still Darryl Bowman.
Thanks to two speeding tickets and four DWIs, Darryl's severely-restricted license only allowed him to drive for work. As a result, the only vehicle he could legally operate was the hearse. He hated the car—a ‘station wagon for stiffs,’ he liked to call it—but it did have its benefits. Namely, a big block V8 and plenty of horsepo
wer. Though he’d never gone above thirty for a procession, he’d taken it out after hours a time or two. True, it guzzled gas the way the lap-dancers at Gentleman Jimmy’s Bounce House guzzled Rumple Minze and Jaeger bombs, and it didn’t handle worth a shit, but man, could that Caddy fly when you got her on the highway!
No highway driving for him for a while, though. Certainly not tonight. He hopped in, gunned the engine and started crunching up the gravel road, passing through the gates that marked the entrance to the old cemetery.
He wouldn’t be in the car long, but turned the radio on to drown out the silence. He couldn’t stand the old cemetery, especially at night. He wouldn’t admit it, not to any living man, but the place gave him the willies. The hearse, which his father had purchased second-hand back when Darryl was in grammar school, hadn’t come equipped with a radio. Part of his father’s first disability check had gone toward rectifying that particular problem. Darryl found out that he could actually charge extra to pump the dearly deceased’s favorite music into the back, justifying his investment in speakers capable of handling the job. The sound quality inside a casket, after all, was hardly up to Dolby standards.
He tuned in a college station, suffering through a pair of public service announcements before the DJ returned to back-list the previous set. Her voice made him instantly hard. She cued up a song by some group or artist he’d never heard of, and promised to be back on “the other side,” whatever that meant. He rubbed his crotch while listening to the tune.
He said, all things pass, into the night.
And I said—oh no Sir, I must say you're wrong. I must disagree. Oh no Sir, I must say you're wrong. Won’t you listen to me-e-e-e?
Darryl could understand that. Could identify with the message. No one much listened to him, either. Didn’t matter what he had to say, or on what topic. Just like the person in the song. Somebody’d be listening soon enough, though. Once he tracked down that carload of kids, they’d be all ears.
He left the headlights off, not wanting to draw anyone’s attention. He knew the winding gravel track well enough, he’d practically grown up here. He could drive it blindfolded if he had to, and given tonight’s slim moon and lack of stars, that’s pretty much what he was doing.
By the time he pulled up alongside the Ford, his palms were damp and he was getting anxious. He waited for the song to finish, then killed the radio and got out.
He recognized the car. It belonged to Aileen Monroe, a bona fide Grade-A piece of ass. She’d graduated a couple of years after he’d gotten out, but he remembered her. Wasn’t anything wrong with looking at freshman; Darryl didn’t care what anybody else thought. Plus, Aileen had sure been fun to look at...
Darryl peered into the darkness, cursing himself for not remembering to bring a flashlight. It occurred to him that he could go back to the mortuary and get one, it would only take him a few minutes. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t likely to be over and done with before he got back. Still, he hesitated. What was going on? Monroe had her own place. Why would she need to come up here? Certainly not to get laid. Unless…
Feeling nostalgic, maybe? It was possible. He’d caught folks a hell of a lot older than Aileen Monroe, commemorating an anniversary or looking to recapture the glory days. Most times he let them be. Wouldn’t even let them know he was there, so long as the show was good enough.
Probably lookin' for that dumb-ass nephew of hers, he thought, grinning. Couldn’t have been more than an hour ago that he’d run the kid off again, after catching him prowling around the chapel. Must have been the third or fourth time in the past few months. The kid had been so frightened when Darryl jumped out of the shadows to yell at him that he’d run right out of his shoes. Darryl had gotten such a kick out of it that he’d decided to disable the lock on old man Anson's box and leave the sonofabitch a little something to remember him by. He wondered if maybe Aileen Monroe could be enticed into something similar. She was trespassing, after all, and had a kid she was responsible for. Wouldn’t do to get arrested, now, would it?
He stayed off the gravel, not wanting his footsteps to give him away. His expression soured as he neared the chapel. Whoo-ee, but something stank! It reminded him of a cross between swamp gas and rotting stiff—two smells he was intimately familiar with.
He glanced toward the hill, thinking back. This was how it had smelled when the plant was open, pumping out fertilizer and a line of supposedly-natural pesticides. He half expected to see the lights on, people driving in and out in panel trucks, the way it was before everything had gone wrong. But no, the grounds were dark, the parking lot empty, the buildings still boarded up. Funny, he thought. Most places like that would’ve attracted teenagers. Guys would have parked out back just to get their girlfriends nervous, telling ghost stories and talking about the restless spirits that haunted the grounds. It would’ve attracted the curious for sure. Urban explorer types. The kinds of people who preferred searching abandoned buildings and underground structures to caves and rock formations.
But it didn’t. People tended to keep their distance, kids and adults alike. It was as if the plant didn’t want any visitors. Would rather keep its secrets to itself.
He tried to shake the thought off, nonsense that it was. But he couldn’t. Just like he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. That somebody down there was staring back at him. Someone he couldn’t see, but who could see him just fine.
He turned away, noticing something else in the air. The scent of crap. No, wasn’t any mistaking that. He wondered if it had finally gotten cold enough for the bums to return. Usually, by the middle of September he’d rousted a couple, just for the hell of it. He knew they’d be back, but on slow nights when he didn’t feel like breaking in a new box, it helped to pass the time. The vagrants hadn't been around in a while, though, which was strange. He gazed back over his shoulder. Was that it? Had they decided the plant was a better place to crash? Did that explain why he felt like he was being watched whenever he came up here?
He was practically on top of the chapel when he heard something. A shuffling sound, coming from over in the E-4 section. Critter was his first thought. Possum, probably. Or maybe a raccoon. Big ‘un, too, judging by the sound of it.
Or maybe not. He ignored the chapel, seeing as Aileen Monroe had gotten herself lost wandering around E-4.
He spat into the dry grass, his nose running and his throat irritated. It’d be a bitch if he got sick now, he thought, pausing to eyeball his surroundings. It was a full slate until Sunday. Morning wakes and afternoon burials for the next couple of days. Wouldn’t do to sneeze on any widows or grieving children.
He heard the sound again, coming from over by a badly weathered crypt.
Gotcha! He mouthed, stalking toward the crypt. Wouldn’t this make for an interesting reunion.
He came around the front of the small structure, surprised to see the rusty gate swung wide. Had someone pried it open? Somebody must have. Rusted or not, it was still wrought iron. While it would fall apart someday, Darryl’s best guess was that the time frame for that was still a couple hundred years down the road.
Scritch-scritch. Scritch-scritch-scritch.
Ahh, shit. Rats. He hated fucking rats. But now it made sense. The open gate, the noise, the pointy-toothed little vermin. Some hobo had busted into the crypt and left behind some garbage. An empty chili can, perhaps, or a moldy sandwich. Whatever, it had brought the goddamned rats, and that wasn’t good. The gate… Well, there was nothing to be done about it tonight. In the morning he’d come back and take care of it with some bailing wire, figure out what had been busted and see if it was worth fixing.
He looked for a rock and found a good sized one. He hefted it, liking the feel. Then he noticed a wooden stake-head sticking out of the ground, the remnant of a tented service held a long, long time ago. Might be good to have something with a pointy end, he thought, walking over.
The dry ground offered only token resistance. The stake came free
easily, and he gave it a quick once-over. It appeared to be in good shape. Things were looking up. He went back to the crypt, wondering if Aileen Monroe disliked rats as much as he did. He licked his lips, tightened his grip on the stake, felt the familiar stirring in his groin.
Five seconds. Ten. He listened carefully, got a fix on them from the scritch-scritch sound their claws made on the stone. He leaned into the doorway, heaved the rock in their general direction, and waited.
The rock landed with a crash, flipped over, then tumbled into the corner. But that was all. Nothing else happened. He’d expected the Monroe girl to come running out, the rats scattering, frightened and squealing in distress. The only thing that came out of the crypt was silence. It didn’t make sense. He’d heard the rats. The noise should’ve shook them up but good. No, something was wrong. He could sense it. Could probably taste it on the air, if it wasn’t for that backed-up sewer smell. He stepped onto the threshold, put his hand on the gate and leaned in, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.
She came at him with alarming speed, rising out of the stone vault, reaching for him with clawlike hands. Darryl jumped back, staying just out of reach.
He remembered now. Found it hard to believe he hadn’t put it together sooner. E-4. A tented service. It hadn’t really been that long ago. Ten years? Maybe twelve? He’d been sixteen, helping his father out on the weekends for a little extra cash. Nickel bag money. As Angie Seward lunged at him a second time, the memories came flooding back. He’d violated Angie repeatedly in the days leading up to her service, jacking off on her feet half a dozen times before slipping her gummy toes into her favorite pair of shoes, as her family had requested. Angie had always had such pretty feet. Even stiff and cold, they'd given him a massive boner…
Angie glared at him, stared him down with such hatred that he couldn’t help but think that she was remembering, too. But…that was impossible, wasn’t it? She was dead when he’d taken those liberties with her. She couldn’t remember…could she? Those eyes, though. Those cold, fixed eyes…
Dead Meat Page 5
