Ten Open Graves: A Collection of Supernatural Horror

by David Wood

  (“They shit everywhere.”)

  Santa can’t bring one this year. Maybe next Christmas, she’d say. Throughout the year he would lobby, research, plant pictures of dogs all around the house. Once he even bought a water dish and a leash, left them in his room in a conspicuous spot where she was sure to see them.

  She saw them. But Christmas came and there was another excuse.

  (“They’re filthy fucking things. I won’t have a goddamn animal in my house.”)

  She said they were broke. Or that they would be moving soon.

  Maybe next Christmas. If not then, the following one.

  By the time of that flea market, Craig had come to accept that he would never have a pet of his own. He’d resigned himself to a lot by then. By then not having a dog was the least of his worries.

  But then like magic, there was Duke. Perfectly free and tiny enough to move. With big bright kitten eyes and white kitten whiskers. Playful and friendly and completely litter-trained.

  For three full summer days they played. With yellow yarn, with tin foil, with a fresh pair of Craig’s balled-up white and blue tube socks. He’d stroke Duke’s soft white belly. The kitten affectionately licked Craig’s hands and face. Even Craig’s mother got in on the scene, snapping a photo with her old Polaroid now and then. Tossing a sock as Craig tried to teach little Duke to fetch.

  Three full days of play. Three nights of tiny Duke lying beside him on his twin bed, purring Craig to sleep. The kitten even accompanied Craig in his dreams.

  Then came that awful Tuesday evening.

  It was sometime after nine o’clock, sometime after Craig had dressed in his Superman pajamas, brushed his teeth and otherwise readied himself for bed.

  It was then that something happened, something that stayed with him to this day.

  As he gathered Duke’s toys, he heard a small clawing noise coming from the living room. Not quite a tearing sound—more like a pulling of fabric. A lump formed in his throat. Craig knew his mother was out there. He had seen her in the kitchen when he put away Duke’s crunchy seafood treats. He listened. He knew she’d heard it too.

  Craig rushed into the living room, but it was too late.

  He could barely see the scratch mark where Duke had run his tiny kitten nails down the arm of the couch. Even when he sat up close and studied it, that night and every night from then until fall, he could just barely make it out.

  Yet it was enough, enough to make his mother release a blood- curdling scream, to make her go after the kitten, to chase little Duke from room to room.

  Craig tried to intervene. He cried and shouted, begged for mercy, pleaded for the infant cat’s life. “It was my fault,” he screamed. “Punish me. Hit me. Kill me.”

  He wept so hard he popped a blood vessel in his left eye. The eye turned blood-red and stayed like that for days, maybe weeks. He couldn’t remember.

  But no amount of crying tore her from the chase.

  And she caught Duke, of course. When she did, Craig howled and threw himself in front of the door.

  “Out of my fucking way,” she said. She was breathing hard, had Duke held tight by the nape of his tiny neck. “Out of my way or I’ll rip its head off right here.”

  Craig tossed his slender body aside, curled himself into a ball on the floor and let the tears stream down his face and fall into the rust shag carpet.

  She flung the door open and carried the kitten outside. Down the stairs.

  And Craig never did see Duke again.

  (Oh yes you did.)

  Yes, he did. It was six days later on Market Street. Less than a mile from their home in Elmwood Park. In the middle of the two-lane roadway. In the dead center of the double yellow line.

  His skull was crushed down the middle, his eyes pouring out from either side. His furry white belly was split open, his insides scattered around him on the street.

  Craig collapsed onto the blacktop. He lay in the road and shrieked, hoping a car would strike him out of his misery. But no car ever came. Now, as he watched the scrawny dog scrounge for food in the alley, Craig’s eyes grew moist again. He lifted his head off the glass and wiped the tears away with his sleeve. He was tired, exhausted really. He hadn’t slept since his brief nap on the plane.

  Amy stepped out of the bedroom. She looked good, dressed in a pretty pink sweater and jeans. But her nose was noticeably swollen, and the flesh beneath her eyes was a bit darker than it should have been. “I’m going to run out and pick us up some breakfast,” she said. Craig nodded, squeezing the last tears from his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I had something in my eye.” Craig quickly changed the subject. “Have you called your mother?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.” Her eyes darted toward the door. “I’ll call her when I get back.”

  (She’ll call while she’s out, tell her she’s coming home.)

  “All right.” He reached into his pocket and handed her some euros. “Be safe. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  “I know.” She started toward the door.

  Craig wanted to stop her, to sit her down and have a long talk. He wanted to explain how everything would change now that they were in Europe. To convince her they would find a great apartment and decorate it any way she wanted. That they would be happy together in Portugal. He just needed some time to prove it. He just needed to persuade her to stay.

  But before Craig had a chance to articulate his thoughts, the door was closed and Amy was gone.

  He bit his lower lip and turned toward the window again.

  Chapter 9

  Amy was frustrated. Her head ached and for the second time in less than twenty-four hours she was lost. There was no one on the street to ask for directions. And even if there had been, she couldn’t speak the language. This while Craig sat on his ass back at the apartment. Probably curled up in bed with his laptop looking at Internet porn. She was about to give up, to turn around and head back, when she spotted a small grocery shop at the end of the street.

  It didn’t look like any grocery shop she had ever seen before. Certainly not like any grocery in the States. It was set back from the street in an old decaying building. There was no storefront, there were no windows. Only a narrow wooden doorway with a few crates of fresh fruit stacked outside. She squinted and walked toward it.

  It had always fallen on her to get the groceries. In Manhattan, in Honolulu, and now here in Lisbon. Craig said he simply couldn’t deal with people anymore. Couldn’t wait in lines and make small talk with cashiers. He couldn’t even call to order a large cheese pizza.

  At first she figured he was eccentric. Now she wondered if he wasn’t just plain lazy. She wondered if he wasn’t using what had happened in that Battery Park apartment as an excuse. An excuse to sit at home and dictate to her what had to be done.

  A relationship was supposed to be a partnership, but what she and Craig had was something else entirely. She bought the food. She cleaned their apartments. And she was the one who had gotten up every morning and went to work.

  Sure, Craig wrote every day. But it was like her mother said: People get paid to work. And Craig wasn’t getting paid to write fiction. He had written three novels and sold not a single one. And even now that he’d sold a memoir, there was no guarantee that his next novel would sell. He could waste another year—they could waste another year—and be no better off when they returned to New York.

  Amy stood in front of the grocery shop, thinking. Staring up into the dreary gray Portuguese sky. Her mother was right. Why should she help Craig pursue his dreams? What about hers? What about the life her mother envisioned for her? The life her mother was unable to lead herself.

  She stepped inside the shop.

  It was tiny, like one of those cruddy old bodegas near Yankee Stadium up in the Bronx. Not much of a selection either. A few fresh loaves of bread, some cheeses and fruits. And of course, a number of bottles of port wine.

  Craig
would want a piece of pound cake. She wasn’t going to find that here and that made her anxious. Craig was a picky eater. If she brought back the wrong thing she would never hear the end of it. Like the time she picked up Stouffer’s frozen French bread pizza instead of Ellio’s. Or the time in Hawaii when she purchased the wrong kind of pancake mix. No, it wasn’t a good idea to guess. Not where Craig was involved. Better to wait. Better to pick up nothing at all.

  Well, maybe just a couple of bottles of port for tonight. The rest they could go out and purchase together after the movers arrived. That’s the way it should have been to begin with. Craig should have offered to come along. Or better yet, he should have offered to go all by himself. Why should she be his gofer?

  Besides, she had no appetite, thanks to this hangover. She paid for the two bottles of wine and left.

  It was time to stand up for herself. It was time, like her mother was always telling her, to start looking out for number one.

  Back at the flat, the plastic yellow telephone rang, startling Craig as he dozed in his clothes on the bed. He craned his neck to see the dusty second hand clock. It was already a quarter to ten.

  “Hello,” he answered. Then quickly, “I mean, ola.” “Movers,” the voice said. “Senhor Devlin?”

  “Sim, yes,” Craig said, still groggy. “We’re on the third floor.

  Apartment 306. You can use the lift at the end of the hall.”

  He was about to place the receiver back onto its cradle, when he heard the voice counter, “No, no, senhor.”

  Craig put the phone back to his ear. “Excuse me?”

  “We are not to bring your items upstairs, senhor. Only to the front door.”

  Craig smirked. “That’s absurd. The movers in New York came upstairs to collect our boxes, and they’re supposed to be delivered directly to our flat.”

  “Sorry,” the voice said without emotion. “We can no come upstairs.

  You, senhor, must come down.”

  Then Craig heard a dial tone. He slammed the phone down and leapt from the bed, cussing at nothing but air. Then he called out Amy’s name and received no answer.

  He stepped into the living room, quickly pulled a pair of flip flops from his luggage and slipped them onto his feet. He headed out into the hall.

  Goddamn movers, he thought. A thousand bucks to ship two dozen boxes from New York, and the lazy bastards wouldn’t even bring them upstairs. Was it any wonder he wanted nothing to do with people? That he simply desired a quiet life with as few distractions from the outside world as possible? Was that really so difficult for Amy to understand? Couldn’t she see that everything was such a hassle? That everyone they met was vile? That nothing ever went as planned?

  He punched the button to summon the lift. The car creaked and shrieked and jerked its way up to the third floor. When it arrived, he slid open the rickety brass gate, took a deep breath and stepped inside. He slid the gate shut, pressed the first floor button and stepped back.

  The lift suddenly dropped.

  Not far. Just a few feet. But it was enough to make Craig feel as though his stomach were barreling up his throat. He stumbled backward into the wall but kept his footing. The lift had frozen somewhere between the second and third floors.

  He waited, his pulse racing. He could feel it in his chest. Worse, he could hear it in his ear. The pulse was louder than it was earlier, twice as loud as when he first heard it on the plane.

  Craig stepped gingerly to the panel and pressed a button. Then he pressed another. Nothing happened. The lift was stalled.

  He started to panic.

  Even in New York Craig never took the subway. Even as a lawyer having to crisscross the city, from the courthouses in downtown Manhattan to Queens, from Brooklyn to the Bronx, he took taxis. Sure, the cabs cost a small fortune, but that was nothing compared to the alternative. Being trapped in a cramped subway car somewhere beneath the ground.

  (“Work!”)

  He typically avoided elevators, taking the stairs whenever he could. Nine flights to his office, five to his apartment in Battery Park. It was good exercise, he said, whenever Amy shot him a dirty look. He just didn’t like closed-in spaces. He couldn’t tolerate feeling trapped.

  (“Work!”)

  Nothing unusual about that.

  But Amy, of course, thought there was. And over the past year that was all that mattered. When he returned to New York from Honolulu, he promised her he’d change. So he stopped using Purell every time he touched something in public. (At least until he was out of Amy’s sight). He rode the subways whenever he was with her. He started using elevators. He even started driving again.

  (“Work!”)

  Amy had her theories, of course. He had told her about the sports memorabilia store, the one his mother bought from a former employer when he was eleven. The Point After, a tiny shop located in a small mall in Fairfield, where Craig had toiled away the last six years of his youth.

  (“Work!”)

  Sure, it was a hellish place for a child. A cage lined with banners and jerseys and baseball caps—a prison, really. A ten by twelve cell in which he spent his evenings and weekends during the school year, and in which he spent his days—ten a.m. to ten p.m.—during the summer months while the other kids went out and played.

  (“Work, you little son of a whore!”)

  Craig had had no choice, of course. And neither had his mother. She was a single parent. She already worked one job; it was only fair he worked one, too. There were times he didn’t want to, sure. Times when he would have preferred to die than sit alone in that cramped and cluttered, stifling store. But who would have worked the register?

  (“Work, you lazy little godless shit!”)

  The customers thought it was cute that he had such an important job at the age of eleven. They said it was just adorable. “Ain’t that the cutest gosh darn thing you ever seen, Ted? Well, ain’t it?”

  They didn’t know that on days Craig refused to go to the store, his mother chased him around with a hammer.

  Despite her promise to put herself first, Amy felt herself hurrying back to the flat. Craig didn’t like dawdling. Don’t dilly-dally, he’d say. Don’t lollygag. He would pass it off as a joke, as he did with so many things these days. But Amy knew that he meant it.

  In three years she hadn’t been able to window-shop. Hadn’t been able to take long walks in the park. When she’d said she needed the exercise, he bought her a gym membership. When she started spending too much time at the gym, he bought her a treadmill.

  She slowed down. Looked down a narrow road that led in the opposite direction.

  She decided to go for a stroll.

  Minutes passed like hours but the lift finally started moving again, slowly at first as though it were hanging by a single steel thread that would snap at any second. Then the lift resumed the pace it had exhibited before.

  Craig’s panic eventually subsided but the pulse in his ear did not.

  When he reached the main hall he found the movers. Three young men of various sizes, waiting outside with their hands in their pockets.

  “Let me see the contract,” Craig said to the one nearest the door. “What contract?”

  He was a large man in a yellowing tee shirt and worn jeans, sweating and smelling of smoke.

  “My contract with the shipping company,” Craig said. “Show it to me. Show me where it states that my property is going to be dumped in front of my building on the street.”

  The large man shrugged his shoulders. “Look, senhor. We just doing our jobs, okay? We empty the truck. You do what you want with your stuff.”

  He said it in a condescending tone, Craig thought. Delivered it with a condescending look, as though Craig were the one being unreasonable.

  “Get your supervisor on the phone.”

  The large man shrugged at him again. “Our cell phones no work in this area, senhor. There is nothing more we can do.”

  Craig gestured toward the building. “Come wi
th me then. We’ll call from upstairs. I’ve got a phone.”

  The man frowned. Looked back at his two associates who were now pacing around the truck, one with a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. “Sorry, we no can do that, senhor.”

  “You can’t come upstairs with me for two minutes to make a call?” The large man shrugged again.

  One more time, thought Craig. Shrug at me one more goddamn time.

  He took a deep breath. He was a bit hungover, hungry and on no sleep. He wasn’t thinking clearly. This wasn’t the end of the world. A couple dozen boxes. Only half of them were heavy—the large ones and those that contained his hardcover books. Given an hour, he could lug them up himself. Once Amy was back, it would take them no time at all.

  “All right,” he said finally. “Unload them.”

  It took the movers less than five minutes. They piled two dozen boxes at the foot of the broken stone steps. They wouldn’t even haul them into the lobby.

  Craig refused to sign their paperwork, but the large man didn’t seem to care. He simply shrugged again and said, “Suit yourself, senhor.”

  Craig turned around and stared at the boxes. Wondered if he could leave them here outside. Not in this neighborhood, he decided.

  The mover folded the unsigned receipt and stuffed it into his pocket. He said, “Good day, senhor,” spun around and started toward the truck.

  Craig reached out and caught him by his left forearm. The man lifted his eyebrow and pulled away.

  “What’s your problem?” Craig said to him. “Why wouldn’t you come upstairs?”

  He shrugged, glared over Craig’s shoulder at the entrance to the building. “No reason, senhor.” Then he climbed into the cab of his truck and started the engine.

  Chapter 10

  Craig hauled the boxes one at a time up the steep wooden staircase, unwilling to risk the lift. By the fourth trip, his arms were sore, his legs burning. He was sweating profusely and running out of breath. Where the hell is Amy? he thought, heaving a box marked Craig’s hardcovers onto his right shoulder. What’s taking her so fucking long? Once the heavier boxes were upstairs, he began piling the rest on two, three at a time. He rested between landings and wiped the sweat from his eyes. Where is she?