The Devil's Graveyard

by AnonYMous

  Leaving a baffled-looking Jacko behind he headed to the reception desk. By the time he got there his mood had become so foul that he pulled a gun on the receptionist. He made it very clear to her that he wanted his car keys handed over to him, rather than have a valet drive the car round to one of the hotel’s entrances. It took less than thirty seconds for her to locate his keys and hand them over.

  The parking lot at the rear was jam-packed with buses that had shipped in hordes of fools from out of town. These were all parked at the rear, so he was pleased to find his black Firebird parked in the front row of cars just a few yards back from the hotel’s rear exit.

  He opened the driver’s-side door and was just about to climb in when he saw a chopped Harley-Davidson cruise around the side of the hotel from the front drive. It caught his attention because the rider was carrying not one but two passengers, one on the seat in front of him, the other behind him. And he recognized them all.

  He sat down behind the steering wheel and quietly closed the driver’s door. What were these three jokers doing at the hotel? And why were they together? The first one he recognized was the fat bastard at the front – Sanchez, the bartender from the Tapioca in Santa Mondega. Behind him was the rider, a huge, shaven-headed biker, and behind him Elvis, a hitman from the same town. Two of this trio had been intrinsically linked to the Kid’s night of evil a decade ago. When he had gone to church to pick up his younger brother up from a late-night service, he’d arrived to find Elvis and Sanchez there with a bunch of dead vampires. Elvis and a preacher named Rex had killed the vampires and apparently, hard though it was to believe, Sanchez had shielded his brother from the vampire attacks. That’s what they’d told him anyway, and he had no reason not to believe them.

  The third man on the Harley, driving the bike sandwiched between Sanchez and Elvis, was its owner, Gabriel Locke. A New Age Disciple and probably a pretty decent guy, but given what had happened in Plainview recently, probably a bit pissed with the Kid. Murderous, even.

  He watched the three of them climb off the chopper and head over to the fire exit at the rear of the hotel. Sanchez the buffoon tried to open the door a few times before realizing it only opened from the inside. Then the three of them headed back round to the front of the hotel.

  But why were they here? Elvis was a hitman, but might well be there to sing in the show. Sanchez was a buffoon, not worth worrying about, but Locke – he might well be there to do the job the Kid had quit on. The job that involved killing Emily. He would want to ensure that Julius won the show and signed the contract. Yet Gabriel Locke was a religious type, of a kind, which meant that he would probably try to avoid killing Emily. Wouldn’t he?

  The Kid opened his car door and got out. He drew a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and pulled one out with his teeth. Then he sat back on the hood of his car and sucked on the end of it. It lit up brightly in the cold night air. There was some thinking to be done. What exactly was going on in this hotel? And in the desert that surrounded it?

  As he sat looking up at the moon, he heard another vehicle approach. Its tyres were screeching as if it were racing around a banked concrete track at high speed. In a moment it appeared around the same corner from where the Harley chopper had arrived. It was a large blue camper van, almost long enough to be classed as a bus, and it was travelling so fast that it nearly tipped over as it sped around the corner of the hotel. The Kid couldn’t make out a face on the driver, but the van careered over towards him and slammed to a stop outside the fire exit. At once the doors flew open and two dark figures jumped out from either side of it. They rushed to the fire exit and tried the door, much as the Kid had seen Sanchez do just a few minutes earlier. They too were unsuccessful.

  Then they turned and saw him where he sat on the hood of his car. That was when he spotted that their eyes were glowing. One had red eyes, the other yellow, and they shone with a sinister phosphorescence in the dark night.

  Undead muthafuckers.

  The Bourbon Kid put his cigarette carefully down on the hood, slid forward off the Firebird and walked towards the two creatures. He heard them hiss at him, and then they tentatively approached, fanning out one either side of him, both eager for flesh.

  The Kid had to consider the facts of the situation. He only had two bullets left, and they were far too valuable to waste on killing a pair of zombies. So, as he walked towards them, he reached his right hand into the left side of his jacket for another weapon.

  The nearest zombie appeared to be wearing a tattered old polo-neck sweater, which had once been white but was now grey with filth. It also had on a pair of ruined pants, one leg of which was almost entirely missing, and, incongruously, a broken pair of heavy black-rimmed glasses. It looked like the hungrier of the two, and the Kid readied himself for it to attack first. It duly did, and as it charged towards him he swung his right arm back-handed across its throat. His hand now held a bone-handled knife with an eight-inch blade. It sliced the zombie’s throat open and, as its head fell forward, blood seeped out and ran down its chest. The dying zombie fell to its knees, a rasping, gravelly sound escaping from the wound in its throat.

  Its partner, a female, was wearing a horrendously dirty pink dress. It had long, straggly grey hair and a face only half-covered in skin. The sight of her comrade falling to his knees stunned her momentarily and the Kid took advantage, lunging forward with his blade and thrusting it deep into the pink dress at chest height. The blade slid in through the rotting flesh with ease and he pulled it downwards in an effort to slice the ribcage right open. The flesh was soft like butter in some places, but tough like gristle in others. After he’d slashed an incision about eight inches long the zombie, like its partner, collapsed forward and fell to the ground before the Kid could pull the knife back out. It slipped from his hand, the blade caught somewhere in the zombie’s ribcage.

  Both creatures were now effectively dead but, to the Kid’s annoyance, the second one had landed awkwardly on his knife. Turning the creature over with his foot, he bent down, grabbed the knife’s protruding handle and yanked it out of the corpse. Blood spurted in all directions, some of it spraying on to his hand. Of far greater concern to him was the state of the knife. Due to the impact of the handle against the ground, the blade had bent almost at right angles to the handle. He took a look at it. Besides being bent it was covered in zombie guts. The knife was ruined, and he tossed it to the ground in frustration.

  Another weapon gone.

  Not only was he now down to his last two bullets, but he had no knives left. If ever there was a sign that he should head home, this was it. But as he turned to head back to his car where his cigarette was burning away on the hood he spotted something on the first zombie’s polo-neck sweater. It looked like a cloth patch. He bent down and took a closer look at it. Sewn into the patch in black lettering was a name.

  Buddy Holly.

  He turned back to the corpse in the once-pink dress. It had flopped back on to its front, so he used his foot again to turn it over. It too had a nametag, this time sewn on to the right breast of the dress. He grabbed it and took a closer look. Again, a name he recognized.

  Dusty Springfield.

  Thirty-One

  The escape from the zombies was still fresh in Sanchez’s mind when, having parked the bike, the three of them eventually entered the hotel. The night ride would normally have been exhilarating, but after the horrors of what he’d just seen in the desert, it seemed completely inconsequential. He was still coming to terms with the fact that he’d just been digging a shallow grave for himself and his friend, and had seen two men coldly executed. And that had taken place before the undead showed up, climbing out of the ground and trying to eat him. With all these thoughts running through his mind, it was a decidedly sombre Sanchez who followed Gabriel and Elvis into the hotel lobby and through to the bar.

  Gabriel’s huge, bulky frame, leather biker gear, shaved head and tattoos made him stand out from all the other hotel guests
. From his own experience as a bartender, Sanchez knew Gabriel would be served quickly. Never keep the big, nasty-looking fuckers waiting.

  ‘Three bottles a beer,’ Gabriel called out to the girl behind the bar. Valerie took one look at him and, muttering something under her breath, quickly turned to the small fridge behind her. She grabbed three bottles of Shitting Monkey, flicked the caps off with an opener hanging from a key chain on her belt, and placed the bottles on the bar.

  Gabriel tossed a fifty-dollar bill at her, picked up the beers and turned to Elvis and Sanchez. ‘Let’s get us a table and talk through why we’re all here.’ He nodded at Elvis. ‘You can start by tellin’ me who Invincible Angus was hired to kill.’

  ‘Sure thing, Gabe.’

  Sanchez took a look around the bar. The layout of the place, with its widely scattered tables, made private conversations less likely to be overheard. And this was definitely going to be a private conversation.

  There was a raised area at the end furthest from the bar. Elsewhere in the room, many of the tables had one or two people sitting at each, but here they were all empty. Elvis led the way towards one in the corner. A large black speaker on the wall a few feet above the table played gentle background music, which would help to mask their conversation from anyone who might be interested in what a huge biker, an Elvis impersonator, and a chubby bar owner might have to say.

  Sanchez seated himself next to Elvis in one of two cream-coloured armchairs. Their backs were to the bar, while Gabriel relaxed on the other side of the table with his back to the wall. He seemed to want to be sure that he could see all that went on in the bar. His eyes constantly darted back and forth, looking for anything of interest or out of the ordinary. After checking out all of the other drinkers (of which there were about twenty seated around the place) for any potential danger, he picked up the nearest beer and held it out to the others.

  ‘Salud,’ he said. Elvis and Sanchez followed suit, and all three men chinked their bottles together. Then each took a swig of beer.

  ‘So,’ said Gabriel, after swallowing a huge mouthful of beer. ‘D’ya know why Angus was here?’

  Sanchez had no idea. It was a question best left to Elvis.

  ‘Well,’ the King began uneasily. ‘We don’t exactly know. Sanchez here ended up bein’ given Angus’s room an’ found a hit list in an envelope. There weren’t nothin’ to say who it was from. Just photos of the four targets.’

  Gabriel placed his beer down on the table. ‘Let me guess. He was supposed to kill Otis Redding, Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash and Judy Garland, right?’

  Sanchez was impressed. This guy was a whole lot better than the Mystic Lady. ‘Whoa! How the fuck d’ya know that?’

  ‘I think Angus was my back-up guy.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘He said “back-up guy”, numbnuts,’ Elvis chipped in dismissively. ‘What are ya, deaf, as well as plain dumb?’

  ‘Right,’ said Gabriel. ‘He was my back-up. That hit was supposed to be mine. These four people in the photos were due to be martyrs. Killed for the good of mankind. When I didn’t make it here on time, the guy who hired me would have switched the job to Angus as back-up. Kinda like emergency cover.’

  Gabriel stopped, picked up his beer and took another swallow. He paused reflectively, before continuing, ‘Y’see Angus was one of the best hitmen in the world some years back, but he’s gotta gamblin’ problem. Makes him unreliable. He owes a lotta people a lotta money and it’s clouded his judgement. He gets real personal about being paid up front, an’ that means he often ends up shootin’ the messenger rather than takin’ the goddam job. Real tetchy fella these days.’

  ‘Gamblin’, huh?’ said Sanchez, tutting. ‘What a loser. How much does he owe?’

  ‘His business, I figure,’ said Gabriel, picking up his bottle of beer and taking another swig.

  ‘I guess,’ said Elvis, taking a pull at his own beer bottle. ‘But why d’ya say those four people’re martyrs? An’ who’s the guy who wants ’em dead?’

  Gabriel leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘The guy who wants them killed is the Godfather of Soul.’

  Sanchez frowned. ‘Nah. You’ve lost me.’

  ‘He means James Brown, ya dipshit,’ Elvis snapped.

  ‘Huh? James Brown? Why? Just to win a singin’ contest? Kinda extreme, ain’t it?’

  Gabriel continued, his voice still hushed. ‘Ain’t too extreme at all. Not for what’s at stake.’

  ‘You mean the prize money?’

  ‘No, I mean the souls of many innocent people. James Brown, or Julius, as he’s better known, is here on behalf of God.’

  A peculiarly heavy silence greeted this last piece of information. Even Elvis looked like he was having doubts about this. Speaking slowly and distinctly, he drawled at Gabriel, ‘Why’s a man a God payin’ to have contestants in a TV singin’ competition killed? That don’t seem right. Don’t make no kinda sense, man, whichever way ya slice it.’

  ‘’Cept it’s much more’n a singin’ competition,’ Gabriel replied. ‘You ever seen the film Crossroads?’

  Sanchez had. It was a favourite of his. ‘Britney Spears? Good fuckin’ movie, man.’

  ‘No, it ain’t. It’s shit. An’ I ain’t talkin’ about no Britney Spears bullshit. I’m talking about the Ralph Macchio movie.’

  ‘Macchio? The Karate Kid?’

  ‘Yeah. He did a film called Crossroads, back in the eighties.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Elvis said. ‘I saw it.’

  ‘Remember what it was about?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘Road movie. Had Steve Vai in it.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Sanchez. He was having great difficulty in relating to what seemed to be an increasingly confusing conversation.

  ‘Steve Vai. One o’ the greatest guitarists of all time. I jammed with him once, some years back.’

  That at least was something Sanchez could relate to. ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Reckon you kin get him to play at the Tapioca?’

  Gabriel rocked his beer bottle on the table to get their attention again.

  ‘Listen up. What I’m getting’ at is this. That movie, Crossroads, was based on an urban legend ’bout a guitar player name of Robert Johnson. Rumour is that, back in the nineteen-thirties, he sold his soul to the Devil. In exchange, Satan gave him the ability to play guitar better than any man on earth. Basically, this Robert Johnson guy was the first musician or singer ever to sell his soul. Thousands’ve done it since.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw Bart Simpson do it once,’ said Sanchez, agreeing.

  Gabriel sighed. ‘Can’t you get him to shut the fuck up?’ he asked Elvis.

  ‘Sure,’ said Elvis, glaring at Sanchez. ‘But I still don’t get what all this Robert Johnson stuff’s got to do with what’s goin’ on here.’

  ‘Because it’s pretty much exactly what’s happenin’ here. An’ it’s happened every year of the Back From the Dead show. The winner gets a million-dollar singin’ contract. When they sign it, they’re signin’ away their soul.’

  ‘To Nigel Powell?’ asked Elvis.

  ‘Nope. To the Devil.’

  ‘Does Powell know ’bout this?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s in on it. See, he sold his soul to the Devil years ago in exchange for immortality, an’ this hotel and its casino.’

  ‘Sweet deal,’ Sanchez remarked.

  Gabriel shook his head. ‘Ain’t really. In return, he’s gotta get someone new to sell their soul to the Devil every Halloween. An’ that’s what the winner of this competition is doin’. Sellin’ their soul to Satan in exchange for wealth an’ fame. ’Cept they don’t know that, o’ course.’

  Sanchez frowned. ‘It’s all kinda far-fetched. Sounds like bullshit to me.’

  ‘An’ zombies?’ said Gabriel sternly. ‘D’ya believe in them? Or are they a bit fuckin’ far-fetched too?’

  Sanchez had to admit the big biker had a point. ’Yeah,’ he said. ‘See what ya mean. But why kill the four singers? I don’t get it.’


  ‘Me either,’ said Elvis.

  ‘I’m just gettin’ to that part.’

  ‘Like, can you get to it a bit quicker, man?’

  Gabriel looked irritated. ‘Okay,’ he said heavily. ‘First off, this show is rigged. The whole damn’ shootin’ match.’

  Elvis slammed his beer bottle down on the table. ‘I fuckin’ knew it! I toldya, Sanchez, didn’t I?’

  Gabriel ignored him and carried on. ‘Five singers were selected for the final months ago. In secret – only they an’ Powell know, But only the four best singers are bein’ killed. Like I say, they’re martyrs. They’re better off dead than winnin’ this competition and sellin’ their souls to the Devil.’

  Sanchez, still confused, couldn’t help interrupting. ‘So the four best singers are dead. Surely that just means that the fifth best singer wins it and signs the contract?’

  Gabriel’s face burst into a big beaming smile. ‘Boy, you catch on quick, fat guy. Yeah, that’s right. An’ Julius – the James Brown impersonator – is the fifth best singer here. So, with the other four gone he’s got a pretty dam’ good chance of winnin’.’

  ‘And sellin’ his soul to the Devil?’ Elvis queried the logic of it. ‘Why would he wanna do that?’

  ‘It’s a sacrifice.’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘But it’s one he can make.’ He suddenly seemed to change the subject. ‘D’ya know what this hotel is built on?’

  ‘The desert?’ Sanchez suggested, redundantly.

  ‘Nope. It’s built on top of a gateway to Hell.’

  Sanchez looked down nervously at the black hardwood floor and lifted his feet up. ‘Shit. I thought it was kinda warm in here,’ he said.

  Elvis slapped him on the back of the head and signalled for Gabriel to carry on.

  ‘Julius’s soul belongs to God. He signs that contract, he’s sellin’ somethin’ he don’t own, so the contract’s gonna be null an’ void. And if Powell ain’t got someone to sell their soul by the end of the witchin’ hour on Halloween, his hotel an’ him will go straight to Hell. This fuckin’ place, an’ everyone in it, will sink down under the ground like it was never here.’