Oh, God, Eric thought. What does she know? He envisioned himself being led out of the school in handcuffs. “About what?”
Carol drew in a breath, then plunged ahead. “I don’t exactly know how to put this, but has anything—strange—happened to you this week?”
Looking into her brown eyes, Eric saw pain, secrecy, and possibly fear. “Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She tried sounding casual. “Anything out of the ordinary.”
“Nothing about this week has been ordinary, Mrs. Crane.”
“You’re right. Let me rephrase that: has anything unusual happened specifically to you?”
She definitely knows something. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or worried. “Why do you ask?”
“I just thought that because you were Johnny’s best friend, you might have noticed anything peculiar that’s occurred since his death.”
Johnny. That explained it. Or was she questioning him on Matt’s behalf? “Nothing I can recall. Has anything peculiar happened to you this week?”
Her eyes stopped blinking and for a moment she appeared to wrestle with a decision. Then she offered him an embarrassed smile. “No, of course not. Don’t be silly. You can go now. I’m sorry if I wasted your time.”
“You didn’t waste it.”
As he opened the door to leave, he thought he saw her shudder.
Chapter 34
Harold Lawson frowned as he pulled into the funeral home driveway. At 10:00 a.m., Willard had not yet cleared the five inches of snow that blanketed the driveway, even though they owned a top-of-the-line snowblower and the company truck had a plow attached to it. He released a slow, exasperated sigh as he drove around the house to the attached garage. Willard lived upstairs in the house, serving as caretaker, while Harold and his wife, Kitty, enjoyed a quiet life in their Spanish-style home on the outskirts of town, complete with a grape vineyard.
Willard had been a wild teenager, and the years following his high school graduation had been trying times. He drifted from one dead-end job to another, and one summer, while in the grip of an addiction to crystal meth, he had been arrested for disorderly conduct, drunken behavior, public exposure, and vandalism. Harold and Kitty were relieved when Willard straightened himself out and expressed an interest in the family business. Unfortunately, he possessed neither the acumen nor the ambition for anything other than menial tasks.
Using the remote control, Harold opened the garage door and eased his BMW into its regular spot beside the truck, which he allowed Willard to use. The garage door closed behind him as he walked through the stark white snow to the rear of the house. His frustration returned as he turned the doorknob: how many times had he instructed Willard to keep the door locked? He saw his son’s irresponsible behavior as a chronic liability.
Inside, he hung his hat and coat in a closet, then walked the hall, turning on lights in the various rooms. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs leading to the residential unit.
“Willard?”
No answer.
“Willard!”
Shaking his head, Harold retraced his steps to the middle of the house, where he opened a wide metal door and made his way downstairs to the basement. He turned on the fluorescent lights in the embalming room, making a mental note to have Willard scrub the surfaces that afternoon, before he transferred Charlie Grissom’s corpse from the county morgue. He glided through the darkness to the refrigerated storage room, light reflecting off the polished metal door. He’d navigated these same halls for nearly fifty years, ever since his father had started the business, and he knew every inch of the house, in which he’d grown up.
He pulled the door open and the room exhaled chilled air at him. He threw a wall switch and the overhead fluorescents flickered, casting harsh light on the stainless-steel interior. Standing within the low doorway, he frowned. Two bodies lay on metal carts, covered in canvas, with six feet of tiled floor separating them.
Harold narrowed his eyes. The room should have been empty. And it stank. As he approached the body on his left, the door slammed behind him, causing him to jump. He smiled at his paranoia: in all his years in the business, dealing with cadavers and coffins, he had never been spooked.
Until now.
Stopping at the cart, he stared down at the shape before him, sizing it up with the attentive eyes of a seasoned professional. Six feet two inches, thick but not obese. Staring at the slight folds and wrinkles in the canvas, he made another observation: the body was fully clothed. But that made no sense; all bodies came to him nude. Tugging at the bottom of the canvas with one hand, he expected to see a toe tag identifying the corpse. Instead, he saw two dirty work boots housing what must have been very large feet. Grabbing the canvas with both hands, he whipped it off the body and discarded it on the floor. Staring down at the denim-and flannel-clad corpse, he recoiled.
Oh, that face, no, God, his features!
Fear squeezed his heart, and his knees weakened.
My boy. My dear boy!
Willard’s flesh had turned white. His bulging, lifeless eyes remained open, his features anything but peaceful. At first, Harold thought his son wore a red shirt, but then he saw the holes, dozens of them, riddling his torso through fabric and flesh alike. For a moment he thought Willard had been machine-gunned or jackhammered to death, so intense was the trauma to his chest. However his son had been murdered, little or no blood remained in his body. Harold tried to cry out but his throat had turned to sandpaper.
Then he heard heavy fabric rubbing behind him, and the hollow echo of something moving on the other cart. Even before he turned around, he knew what he would see, and it terrified him. But he had to look.
The other body rose in a slow, deliberate manner, the canvas making it look like a ghost. The corpse sat rigid for a moment, then turned its head in his direction with almost painful slowness. Did it see him through the canvas? An arm moved beneath the cover, and a male hand, pallid and blue, freed itself.
Harold’s terror increased to levels he never imagined possible during his worst nightmare. The hand reached up and clawed the canvas, pulling it down. Two milky eyes ringed with decomposing flesh stared at him from a tangled mass of black hair. Confusion clouded Harold’s mind—he recognized that face, at least the half that wasn’t falling off its skull. He had worked on it—had improved it! Had made it look alive …
How—?
Someone had vandalized his artwork, had desecrated one of his masterpieces. To him, the deep gouges and torn eyelid on the right side of the face were like graffiti on a beautiful painting.
Johnny Grissom grinned at him.
Impossible! Grissom had died and Harold had embalmed him. Harold staggered back, away from the unholy creature. Reaching out to steady himself, his left hand grasped something cold and rubbery, like leftover chicken. Crying out, he jerked his hand away from Willard’s face and wiped it on his jacket.
Johnny threw the canvas aside and hopped off the cart, his boots stomping the floor. “I bet you never thought you’d see me again,” he said in a raspy voice. “Especially not like this. Take a good look at your handiwork.”
Harold’s jaw quivered like that of a baby suckling its mother’s tit, but no intelligible sounds came out, just a mild whimpering. He collapsed on one knee, then sprang upright, eyes searching the storage room for an escape route.
“Don’t bother.” Johnny stepped forward, his shadow darkening Harold’s features. “You ain’t going anywhere.”
Unable to breathe, Harold splayed the fingers of his right handacross his chest. “Aauurrgghh!”
“AAUURRGGHH!” Johnny said, ripping the chords of an air guitar.
Harold’s eyes rolled up in their sockets. As he heard Johnny’s shrill and freakish laughter, he prayed for death to take him quickly.
Harold’s eyelids fluttered open, bright white light filling his vision. For a moment he believed his prayers had been answered. Then he felt cold metal against his naked back,
and the overhead light came into focus. He blinked, trying to remember what had happened to him. Nightmarish images filled his mind, impossible to rationalize. Then the rotting thing named Johnny Grissom leaned into his field of vision and stared down at him.
“I was afraid you died on me. That wouldn’t have been cool.”
Harold turned his head from left to right. Light reflected off gleaming tiles and metal instruments. Craning his neck, he looked at his feet. His clothes had been stripped and his naked body tied with clothesline to the embalming room’s drainage table. The white rope had been wound around him two dozen times, from his biceps to his ankles.
Johnny pressed the PLAY button on the CD player and the sound of Babs singing “The Way We Were” issued from the speakers. “Oh, fuck this.” He pounded the boom box and the top loader sprang open. Snatching the CD, he flung it across the room like a Frisbee and it shattered against the far wall, causing Harold to flinch. Johnny cleared his throat and spat putrid phlegm into the sink.
Harold twisted against his bonds, knowing he could never escape them.
Johnny shook his head. “Forget it.”
Harold gave up.
“Why do I look this way?”
Harold swallowed and opened his mouth, but hesitated.
Johnny stared at him. “Don’t tell me it’s because I’m dead. What I want to know is, why am I already falling apart?”
Tears formed in Harold’s eyes.
“Cry later. Talk now. I need to know how to slow down this decomposition. I want to keep some skin on these bones. Once my muscles go, I’ll be the world’s worst paraplegic.”
“O-o-ox-y-gen …”
“Yes?”
“M-m-moisture …”
“Uh-huh?”
Harold squeezed his eyes shut. “P-p-putrefaction …”
“Okay, Porky Pig. Don’t strain yourself. I get the picture: there’s nothing I can do to preserve my pickle.”
Harold nodded. For an instant, relieved of the burden of speech, he actually felt better.
“That wouldn’t be because you watered down your embalming fluid, would it?”
Harold’s heart skipped several beats. How did Johnny know that? For a moment, he wished his heart wouldn’t start up again, but it did.
“I broke in here last night to find a cure-all. All I found was this.” Johnny picked up a jar of massage cream Harold had left on the counter. “And Willard.” He set the jar down. “Do you know that big goon beat the hell out of me when he was a senior and I was just a freshman?”
Harold tried not to imagine Johnny killing his poor boy, but it was impossible. He couldn’t shake the image of Willard’s bloody corpse stretched out on the cart in the refrigeration room.
Johnny stepped closer to the table. “Let me clarify things for you. Yes, this is really happening. No, you’re not getting out of here alive.” Reaching into a tray, he held up a pair of plastic eye caps. “Should I stick these in your eyes, like you did to me?”
Gulping, Harold shook his head.
“I don’t think so, either. I want you to see what I’m doing to you.” He tossed the caps away and picked up the jar of massage cream. Opening the jar, he dipped his fingers into the cream and rubbed it into his exposed flesh.
Harold moistened the roof of his mouth. “Wh-wh-why—”
“—am I doing this? Because I feel like it. And because I can. I’m going to teach this town the meaning of fear. Anyone who’s ever so much as looked at me the wrong way is going to answer for it.” Johnny grabbed a handful of cotton balls and shoved them into Harold’s mouth. “You like how that feels?”
Harold’s eyes widened.
“I was conscious the whole time you worked on me. Can you imagine what that was like? You fucking traumatized me.”
Gagging, Harold tried to eject the cotton from his throat. Johnny went to the counter and returned with the injection gun, which he clutched like an Uzi. “Oh, no, you don’t.”
Harold twisted his head away, but Johnny jerked it toward him and shoved the injection gun inside his mouth. He squeezed the trigger and barbed wire chewed into Harold’s upper gums, slamming his head against stainless steel. Blood spurted from the impact point, and Harold unleashed an agonized scream that circumvented the cotton. Barbed wire protruded from his gums, forcing his upper lip against his nostrils.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. A voice said, “Willard?”
Johnny and Harold turned in the direction of the creaky voice, and Harold’s tear-stricken eyes widened even more.
“Harold?” Lawrence Lawson entered the embalming room at a slow gait, dressed in his usual black suit. The old man froze in midstep, stunned by the sight of Johnny’s reanimated corpse poised over Harold’s naked body with the injection gun. Blood spurted from Harold’s mouth, decorating his pale skin and graying body hair with dripping crimson. Harold emitted a high-pitched whistle through his nostrils and shook his head. Lawrence’s mouth fell open, the color drained from his face, and he stopped blinking. Without making a sound, he toppled to the floor and lay still.
Harold’s head fell back on the table. First his son, now his father.
Wasting no time, Johnny aimed the gun at Harold’s lower gum, beneath the roots of his teeth, and squeezed the trigger again.
Ka-chunk!
Blood sprayed from Harold’s gums in clots this time and he pressed his body against the rope with such force that it dug into his flesh. In his mind, he heard a long scream, but he had no idea how he actually sounded. The pain in his mouth overrode his other senses. It got worse.
Johnny tossed the injection gun into the sink. Then he grabbed the ends of the wire and twisted them around each other. “How do you like that? Pretty hard-core, eh? I used pliers to get mine out, and look what it did to me.” He drew his lips back like a horse, displaying his mangled gums.
Unable to move his jaws, Harold pushed his tongue against the cotton and felt hot blood run down the back of his throat. He gagged, tried to cough, and wheezed.
Johnny opened one drawer after another, rummaging through their contents. He returned with a scalpel in one hand. The other held an injection needle attached to a tube that ran to the embalming machine.
“Are these the right tools? I know I went under the knife, so I should know the answer, but it was an upsetting experience for me. Oh, well, we’ll find out soon enough.”
Harold raised his eyes heavenward. Dear God, make him stop!
Johnny chuckled as he set the injection needle on a silver tray, hovered over Harold, scalpel in hand, inspecting him as a surgeon might. “This should really hurt,” he said, as the scalpel descended. Harold jerked his head in spasms, but Johnny held him still. “Remember, it isn’t over until I say so.”
Harold stared at Johnny, afraid to blink, and felt the scalpel slice his neck. Blood squirted Johnny’s face, then dripped onto his own horrified countenance. He felt Johnny’s fingers moving around inside his throat, felt great pressure, then intense pain. His body no longer belonged to him.
Johnny removed his bloody fingers and plucked the drain tube from the tray. The tears in Harold’s eyes obscured his vision, but he smelled Johnny’s foul breath and felt it on his blood-slicked face. Johnny inserted the injection needle into an exposed artery and Harold winced. The wet cotton slid down the back of his throat, and his tongue pushed it up again.
Johnny picked up the clear drain tube and positioned it in Harold’s throat. Harold closed his eyes. He wished he possessed the courage to swallow the cotton and choke to death on it. He felt Johnny attaching the drain tube to another exposed artery.
Let me die, let me die, let me die …
Johnny walked over to the embalming machine and inspected it.
Harold willed himself to die. Sweet Jesus, no!
“You should respect the dead.” Johnny activated the embalming machine’s pump, which hummed to life and rattled like a dying animal. “It’s the professional thing to do.”
Ha
rold saw pink formaldehyde shoot through the tube and wind toward him. He tried to swallow, but the cotton in his throat absorbed his saliva. The formaldehyde numbed his raw throat muscles. Johnny loomed over him, watching with cold detachment.
Formaldehyde laced Harold’s quivering body, turning his veins a glowing shade of pink. Harold heard a banging sound, and realized his hands and feet were striking the table. He saw Johnny reach toward him, felt him open the drain tube. As his heart seized up, he felt warm blood gushing along the sides of his body.
Chapter 35
Matt crossed the parking lot of Lewton Hospital, which bordered Red Hill and Silver Wood on Central Avenue, with a steaming hot coffee in one hand and rubber-banded magazines in the other. The TV weathermen had predicted a storm, and his bones agreed. Entering the dark lobby, which lacked even remedial security, he thumbed the elevator call button.
On the third floor, he made his way along corridors strewn with unused gurneys. Through the open door of room #322, he saw Walt Butler sleeping with his mouth open, an oxygen line clasped to his nose. Entering the sunlit room, he heard the hiss of the oxygen machine over the morning talk show playing on the TV and he shivered from the cold.
Christ, Walt looked pathetic: he had lost at least another ten pounds since Matt had last seen him, and the remainder of his hair had fallen out. Dark splotches riddled his pale flesh.
Matt peeled off his coat, clicked off the TV with the remote control attached to the bed, and eased into the rocker.
Walt’s eyes opened and focused on Matt. Too weak to smile, he said, “You don’t knock?”
“Who says I didn’t?” Matt stuck a straw into the coffee and held it out to the old man. Walt leaned forward, sipped, then sagged back into the bed with an exhausted sigh. Matt placed the magazines on the tray. “Here’s your mail. Most of it looks pornographic.”
Walt closed his eyes. “I’m too tired to pull my pecker.”
“Everyone misses you at the station. We need to get you back on your feet.”
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