Ten Open Graves: A Collection of Supernatural Horror

by David Wood

  She tailed him through the living room. “I’m telling you, Craig,” she said, her voice breaking again, “something about this is wrong. Dead wrong.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, Amy.” He dropped to his knees in front of the door. There was a very narrow space underneath. Maybe just enough. “In case you haven’t noticed, sweetheart, I’m trapped in here right along with you.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.”

  He pushed the yellow paper under the door, then rose from his knees and turned to face her. “Then what the hell are you saying, Amy?”

  Her cheeks were now red and thin, her eyes moist with tears. “I’m saying this fucking place is—”

  “Welcome!”

  Both of them jumped and swung their heads in the direction of the laptop on the table. Craig’s heart raced again. The pulse returned to his ear and he suddenly became aware of a fierce thumping on the right side of his neck. He waited a beat.

  “You’ve got mail!”

  Then he made for the computer.

  Chapter 23

  Amy turned from the door to follow Craig as he hurried toward the laptop but her knees buckled and she dropped like a rock to the floor, crying out in pain.

  Craig planted a foot and spun around to help her but she frantically waved him off.

  “No, no,” she yelled. “Just go. Send a message while we still have a connection.”

  She watched as he tossed the chair aside and stood himself in front of the laptop. Then she began pulling herself toward him, clawing with her hands at the worn gray carpet. Slithering across the living room on her elbows, scraping them raw. Her legs felt as though they had been trampled. Soon her arms, too, began to ache, as though she had spent the past three days lifting heavy weights.

  Craig tapped away furiously on the keyboard, his face set, his bright blue eyes intense.

  “Who are you writing to?” she cried. “My mother.”

  His mother. Amy had only met her once, and once had been enough. The three of them gathered at a restaurant near his mother’s home in Wall, New Jersey. His mother, she had been sweet at first, not at all like Craig had described her. But as the evening wore on and the talk turned to careers and where he and Amy might decide to settle down and raise a family, she became something else entirely.

  “San Diego?” his mother had said, making a face. “California’s shit. Nothing but wildfires and earthquakes. And southeast Florida? Don’t even consider it. It’s too fucking hot and lousy with Jews and spics.” She pushed aside a plate of fresh warm bread and reached for her wine, already her fourth glass of the night. “Besides, you don’t go to Florida to live, you go there to die.”

  Craig had folded his hands and stared down at the starched white tablecloth. His face flushed. “Ma, we’re just talking,” he said. “Just tossing a few places around at this point.”

  This was that November, a few days after Danny, a few weeks before they had decided on Hawaii.

  “We’re also thinking about Honolulu,” Craig went on. “Maybe even Portland, Oregon.”

  “Oregon?” She scowled. The wrinkles in her face formed sharp, severe lines. In the candlelight she looked old, with too much make-up caked on her face. “And Honolulu? Is that even part of America? Are you both out of your fucking minds?”

  Amy felt queasy, excused herself from the table. She went to the ladies room and almost started to cry. She feared she might vomit. It had been a difficult week to say the least. First it was Craig’s best friend Danny, and then she had to break the news to her mother that Craig had proposed marriage.

  Her mother had not taken it well. “Proposed? I have never even met him,” was her response. She reminded Amy of all the times Craig had backed out of plans to meet her family. And now Craig was hellbent on moving them away. And Amy, having finally met Craig’s mother, was beginning to see why.

  When she returned to the table, Craig and his mother were still going at it.

  “I told you not to go to that goddamn law school,” she was saying. “I told you after college to go out and get a damn job, to go to work.” She fiddled with her butter knife then dropped it onto the plate. People at neighboring tables glanced over then quickly looked away. “Now you don’t want to practice law anymore? What are you going to do? What the hell are you good for? How are you going to pay back all those student fucking loans, the ones I had to co-sign for? Don’t tell me she’s going to help you.”

  He shook his head without looking up, seemed to be taking deep breaths. “Ma,” he said, “this isn’t what we came here to talk about. I just wanted you to meet Amy, that’s all. I wanted to let you know we’re engaged.”

  His mother took a long sip of wine. “What the hell do I care? The two of you say you’re moving away anyway. Neither of you has a fucking brain in your head. I wouldn’t leave this state in a million years. And neither should either of you.” His mother pointed her finger at him. Her nails were long and sharp and freshly painted. She wore gold jewelry up and down her arm. Bracelets chimed like death knells every time she moved her wrists. “But if you are, then this is goodbye. Then I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to hear from you, and I’m cutting you the hell out of my will.”

  Now, just as Craig finished pecking at the keyboard, Amy heard the ding of an instant message on AOL.

  “Who is it?” she said, grabbing hold of the table and lifting herself to her knees. Oh, the pain! The awful pain.

  Craig stared down at the screen. “It’s your mother.”

  “My mother?” She bore more terrible pain so that she could pull herself to her feet. She watched Craig hit send, breathed a sigh of relief at the small blue box that appeared. It read: your mail has been sent. Their email was off to Ms. Devlin and now her mother was awaiting a return IM. Something was finally happening to get them the hell out of here.

  Craig opened the Instant Message box.

  Craig, is my daughter there? I haven’t heard from her in days.

  Amy watched over his shoulder as he typed the reply.

  she’s right here. hold on.

  He quickly moved aside and picked up the chair, set it down in front of the laptop so that Amy could sit.

  In a fury, Amy started typing.

  mom, we’re in the flat in lisbon. we’re trapped in here. we need help!

  Amy’s heart raced. Her fingers were sweating. She slid them over the mouse and hit send.

  Amy kept her hands poised over the keyboard, waiting for her mother’s reply. Her thoughts were dulled by the hunger, her brain made lazy from thirst. She needed to concentrate, to convey only the relevant facts, to separate them from the scores of garbled fragments sweeping through her mind. Finally her mother’s return message arrived.

  Well, that’s good to hear. Your dad and I were starting to worry because you hadn’t called.

  Amy reread the message twice, perplexed. “What?” she finally said aloud.

  Craig, hovering over her shoulder, pointed at the screen. “Look.”

  She raised her eyes to her own message, the plea for help she had just sent. Now it read:

  mom, we’re in the flat in lisbon. everything is just fine.

  Another ding. Another message from Craig’s account to Amy’s mother’s appeared.

  sorry i haven’t called, mom. we’ve just been so obsessed with the flat. getting it pretty, making it smell good, stuff like that. we love the place though. it’s so beautiful, so peaceful. we could easily stay here the rest of our lives.

  Amy gasped. She leaned forward, her fingers jumping from letter to letter, trying to type another message.

  The keyboard was frozen. Meanwhile, her mother replied.

  Well, you know I’m not thrilled that you’re so far away, but I’m glad that you’re safe and happy.

  Amy slammed her fist on the table. Pain shot up her arm. Then she read her own reply.

  oh mom, we really are. we really, really are. but i gotta run right now. craig is
calling. we’re going out to eat. the food is soooo good here in lisbon. you’d love it. ciao!

  She wanted to scream, she needed to cry. Their only way out was about to sign off thinking everything was fine. The reality of it came crashing down all around.

  Her mother wrote back.

  Well, how can we get in touch with you? You haven’t been responding to our emails.

  Amy experienced a glimmer of hope as Craig leaned over her shoulder and stabbed at the keyboard, hammering out a message. She glanced up, saw the letters miraculously appear on the screen.

  She bit at her nails as he hit send. Silently she read their reply.

  oh, i’m sorry, i forgot to mention that our phone is on the fritz and our internet has been acting up. but our landlord amaro promised that everything will be up and working sometime next week. so we’ll talk then, i promise. all right, really gotta run. love you, mom. hugs and kisses to dad. bye bye.

  “This is bullshit, Craig. Let’s try something else—try Facebook. Status update to all our friends at once!”

  He nodded and bent once more to the keyboard, but at that moment the instant message box closed and the internet connection went dead.

  “Goodbye!”

  They stared at each other in complete silence. Her breathing slowed. Her tongue felt thick and heavy. Her head was swimming and she had to steady herself again. She grabbed hold of the wobbly table.

  “It’s him,” Craig said finally, as though he had read her mind. “He’s hacked into my AOL account.”

  Amy shook her head, spraying her arms with sweat. “Oh, bullshit,” she said. “Bullshit. There is something more going on here, you can’t deny it now.”

  He frowned at her. His face was bone-pale, with streaks of crimson advancing across his cheeks and beneath his chin. He scratched at his beard again. “I don’t really understand what you’re saying, baby.”

  She stared at him. “Yes, you do. You know exactly what I’m saying, Craig. And you know that it’s true.”

  Something was at work here, not someone. At least not a living someone, she was sure of it. Sure as she was that she had seen herself naked and burned and bloodied out in the hall. And of that she was now fucking damn sure.

  Craig wiped some sweat from his brow then moved toward her. He ran his hand up her sweat-drenched arm.

  “Sweetie, I’m worried about you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you might be losing touch with reality.”

  She pulled away. “Reality? Craig, would you look at us? We are trapped in an apartment with no food and no water and with no way to communicate with anyone outside. And I saw what I saw in the hall. This is not just some crazy bastard with a chip on his shoulder trying to bully the new tenants or whatever. This is some...Some malevolent force, some...”

  “Stop it, just stop it,” he said, pressing his hands against his ears like a child. “I am not even going to listen to this outrageous shit. There is a rational explanation for everything that has happened here.” He pointed toward the bedroom door. “What’s irrational is that prick next door.”

  “Craig...”

  “No,” he shouted. “Now calm down, please. We’ll get out of this. I got that email off to my mother. She knows exactly where we are. We just have to sit tight for a while.”

  “We don’t have a while, Craig. We have two, three days, tops. And somehow your computer was changing the words we typed…”

  He nodded his head solemnly and turned to look out the window. Amy followed his gaze into the alley and saw the dog, lifting its hind leg to urinate on the wall of the opposite building. When it finished, it sat and scratched itself. Then the dog let out a pained howl.

  It didn’t strike Amy at first. Didn’t resonate at all until a full thirty seconds later when Craig said quietly, “How is it that we can hear him?”

  Her thoughts were still muddled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how is it that we can hear the dog but people in the alley can’t hear us?” He spoke calmly, watching the dog loiter on the cobblestones. Then suddenly, he slapped at the window, pounded at the pane with the heel of his fist. He whistled.

  And the dog looked up toward their window. Looked right at them. “Son of a bitch,” Craig murmured. “The dog can hear us, too.”

  It took Amy’s food-deprived mind a moment to process what he meant. Then her eyes welled up. The dog had confirmed what she knew to be true. That they were dealing with something much more insidious than an unhinged neighbor.

  She looked at Craig then again down toward the dog, who continued staring up at their window, its ragged ears perked up, its sickly tongue lolling out of its mouth.

  Then the telephone rang in the bedroom.

  Chapter 24

  The sound startled him. So foreign, piercing, and it seemed to be coming from inside his head. Back in Manhattan he and Amy had long done away with their landlines. Each of them had a cell, but even that Craig barely used once he stopped practicing law. The risk of radiation, sure. But on top of that he’d had no desire to speak to anyone except for Amy. A ringing phone had felt as intrusive as any late night knock on the door. An unwelcome presence. An impediment to Craig’s serenity, a hindrance to his sanity.

  Now the phone in the bedroom was screaming, making the same vicious sound that had startled him out of sleep two days ago when the movers arrived--when they had lied about not having cell service.

  He rounded the corner and took a stride toward the bedroom door. It swung closed, slammed shut with a violent report. The sound resonated in his chest and stopped him cold. Then he dashed forward and reached for the knob.

  First he heard the sizzle, then he felt his palm and fingers burn. Smelled the seared flesh. He screamed and tore his hand away, but the damage was done. It felt as though his hand were held down to a hot stove.

  Amy came up behind him. “What happened?”

  He held out his right hand, palm up, the skin a deep pink; raw and so painful he thought he would pass out.

  Behind the door the phone continued to ring.

  Pushing away the hurt, Craig ripped off his tee shirt and bunched it up, then went for the knob again, this time with the fabric protecting his flesh.

  Although he had feared the door was locked, it opened with ease. He rushed inside, pushing against a thick, fierce blast of heat. He shielded his eyes, searched for the smoke, for the flames, but there was nothing but heat. So he tossed the shirt to the floor, went to the yellow plastic phone and lifted the receiver. “Hello,” he shouted. “Hello.” “It’s me.”

  The voice was his own mother’s and it had never sounded so sweet.

  He was panting. “Ma,” he said, “you’ve gotta help us. We’re trapped in our flat in Lisbon. Somebody’s trying to kill us. You’ve gotta call the Portuguese police, right now, please.”

  There was a pause, a moment while Craig’s bare chest swelled with relief.

  Then: “Help you? I’ve been helping you for thirty-two years, dear. And what have you ever done for me? Nothing, that’s what. Never even a thank you. You just packed your bags and moved away. I told you not to leave.”

  His stomach tightened. He worried he would lose the connection before he got through to her, before she understood.

  “Ma,” he shouted. “This is very serious. I’m not talking about financial help. We’re physically trapped in here. We’ve got no food, no water.

  We’re gonna die here unless you can get us some help right away.”

  He glanced in Amy’s direction. She looked on, chewing her nails.

  “Oh, it’s serious, all right. No one’s son treats their mother the way you treat me. And after all I’ve done for you. It’s a disgrace. A very serious disgrace. If you’ve got no food and water it’s because of the way you live your life. I’ve been telling you for more than twenty years, nothing is free. There are no handouts in this world. If you want to live, if you want to eat, then you’ve got to work.”

  “Ma,” he screamed. “Y
ou’re mot listening. Please shut up and listen to me!”

  “How dare you,” she cut in. “You don’t speak to your mother like that! It’s a mortal sin. Learn some goddamn respect. Another nasty word from you and I’m hanging the fuck up and you’ll never hear from me again.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, trying to calm himself. “Please, please, just listen to me.”

  “Why? When have you ever listened to me? I told you not to go to law school, to instead get a job and make some money, pay off all those goddamn student loans, especially the ones I had to co-sign for. Then when you graduated, I told you to go to work for some firm, to get a steady paycheck. But did you do that? No. You opened your own stupid law practice and what did it get you? Nothing. Not a fucking goddamn thing. Look where you are now. Trying to be a writer, something most people would consider a damned hobby.”

  His head was spinning. He was confused, unable to think. “I know, I know,” he pleaded. “You were right. You were right all along. But please just listen to me now.”

  He drew a breath and she broke in again.

  “Did you listen to me when I told you not to go to Hawaii with that silly whore? Did you listen when I told you to stay the hell away from Europe, to move out of that rancid New York City and come back to New Jersey to go to work?”

  He couldn’t believe this was happening, not here, not now. “No,” he cried, tears flowing, “I didn’t. I’m so sorry, so sorry, I’m sorry, Ma.. Please just forgive me and help us get out.”

  “Don’t you shout at me!”

  “I’m not shouting at you. I’m just trying to explain...”

  “Explain what? I’m tired of cleaning up after your mistakes,” she barked. “Whatever you got yourself into, you can get yourself out of. You and that whore. You know what this is really about? You’re a loser, Craig, that’s what you are. You got yourself trapped in your own apartment? That’s like something a loser would do! You deserve to rot in there with your disgusting whore. Serves you right for not listening to your own mother.”