The House by the Cemetery

by John Everson

  “What about a Re-Animator set?” Lenny asked. “Or Dead Alive? That scene mowing down the zombies with a lawnmower is classic.”

  “Maybe,” Argento said. He clearly had other thoughts and pointed at the corner of his diagram. “On one end of the aisle, there’s another enclosed area that we could turn into a wax museum.”

  “And where the heck are you going to get wax figures?” Jeanie asked.

  “They don’t need to really be wax,” Argento said. “I’ve got a couple manikins that look like wax…and I know Lon has a dead whore that we could use.”

  “What?!” Jeanie yelped. “What do you mean he has a dead whore?”

  Lon laughed. “It’s a conversation piece I got last year for my Halloween party. It’s a latex body, but damned if it doesn’t look completely real. You should see the detail in her toes. She’s got bruises all over her and she’s kind of scrunched up. When you walk into a room and see her lying in bed, she looks completely real. My parents walked in and saw her at the party last year and, I kid you not, they stood there waiting, watching for her to finally take a breath or jump up at them. They really thought I’d hired someone to lie there in the bed and spook people.”

  “That’s fucked up,” Lenny said.

  “And having a bloody girl hanging from the ceiling over your bed isn’t?” Lon asked. “Give me a break.”

  “That’s a Nightmare on Elm Street homage,” Lenny argued. “It’s not the same as having a fake dead whore in your bed. And showing your parents!”

  Lon grinned but said nothing.

  “So where are you going to get all of these manikins and sets and everything?” Jeanie asked.

  “Well, Lon and Lucio and June and I all have a bunch of stuff we can use,” Argento said. “I’ve also got a lot of my own lighting equipment that I’ve bought for other houses I’ve worked on.”

  “And we do have a budget for buying stuff,” Lon offered. “But it’s not huge, so we really have to try to build or borrow as much as we can before we spend it.”

  June looked at Argento and Lucio. “Are you guys going to be able to build all of those sets? If we have an aisle of different exhibits downstairs, that sounds like a lot of false walls and stuff. We only have a few weeks.”

  Argento grinned. “That’s why we have a carpenter on the payroll. We just need to tell him what to build.”

  “Within reason,” Lon cautioned.

  “So, when do we start decorating?” Jeanie asked.

  “Tonight,” Argento said. “I’m going there after work. Anyone who’s free after eleven is welcome to join me.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Did you miss me?”

  Katie’s voice echoed in the empty room. It sounded as if she was right behind him.

  “Yeah, actually,” he said. “Can you reach over my shoulder and hold this in place while I screw it in?”

  He had just finished cutting the drywall to size and was holding it up to the wall joists.

  “Sure,” she said. Suddenly he felt the soft weight of her breast on his shoulder, as she draped her body over him and pressed her fingers next to his hands.

  “I could hold it like this for you,” she said.

  “You could,” he said. “The problem is, I need to move. The drill and screws are over there.”

  He pointed to one side, but made no attempt to leave the shelter of her chest. You took what you could get. And he was definitely taking this for all he could milk it for. So to speak.

  “Emery can get it for you,” she said.

  As if on cue, a pair of hands held out his drill and box of drywall screws. When he took them from her, Emery leaned in front of them both and pressed her hands to the wallboard.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She didn’t answer.

  A moment later, the whir of the drill cut the air. Emery kept holding the board, but Katie let her hands drift back to Mike’s neck and side. She ghosted his movements from behind, her arms draped over his, her chest pressed softly against his back; he found himself growing uncomfortably aroused as he punched screws through the drywall. He was pretty sure that he had never gotten a hard-on while working on drywall. Then again, nobody had ever touched him like that while he was working. He feared he was going to be incapable of work in a few more seconds. Which only made him work faster.

  When he punched in the last screw, Mike leaned back into Katie’s embrace.

  “That’s it.” He looked at Emery and said, “You can let go now. We just have to mud it in and we’re all set.”x

  “Did I help?” Katie whispered in his ear.

  “Couldn’t have done it without you,” he answered.

  “Good,” she said. “I wanted to help. Because I have something I need your help with later.”

  “What is it?” he asked, turning in her arms to look at her.

  She kissed his lips and then sat back, releasing her hold on him. “Later,” she said. “After you’re done here.”

  “Just gotta slap on some mud, and it’s Miller Time,” he said.

  “You don’t drink Miller,” she said.

  “It’s a figure of speech.”

  She smiled. “Should I go get a shovel from your truck?” she asked.

  “Why?” He looked confused.

  “For the mud,” she said.

  Mike laughed. “No, no,” he said. “It’s not that kind of mud. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He got up and led her out to the truck. Once he let down the bed, he picked up the can of drywall joint compound and a spreader. When they got back in the room, he popped open the lid and showed her the white paste within.

  “If you like, you can spread it by hand,” he said. “You just want to fill in all the cracks and cover and smooth it enough so that when you sand, you’ll have a nice smooth surface. But you don’t want to put so much on that you have to sand a lot, because then it’s a pain.”

  He cupped his hand and dug out a big hunk of mud, and demonstrated working it into the cracks around the piece of drywall.

  “Do you want to try?” he asked.

  Katie shook her head. “I think I’ll pass this time.”

  Mike grinned and slapped on a couple more handfuls before pulling out his joint knife and working the mud to an even covering across the edges of the piece. Katie sat and watched, keeping her hands to herself.

  “I don’t think I ever saw my dad do that,” she offered at one point.

  “Not something most people should have to do,” he said. “Unless someone punches holes in their walls.”

  After another couple swipes of the metal blade, he finally sat back and nodded.

  “I think that is about as even as we’re going to get. Now they can paint it black or red or whatever the hell they want.”

  “Are you ready for a beer?” Katie asked.

  Mike laughed. “I’ve been ready for hours.”

  He stood up and picked up the mud bucket, spreading knife and drill. “I just need a bag to put all of that crap in,” he said, nodding at the pile of debris in the corner. “I don’t like to leave a mess where I’ve been working.”

  He took all of the materials back to the truck and grabbed a black plastic bag to put the chunks of drywall and dirt and wood into. Katie followed him but Emery only sat in the corner of the bedroom, waiting for them to come back. When they did, she rose and took the garbage bag and he offered an end to Katie. He slipped the blade of a shovel under the pile and began moving the debris into the bag.

  “I actually found a bone in that wall,” he announced, when he recognized the long, ragged piece of wallboard that slid onto the top of his tool.

  “Not surprising,” Katie said. “They killed all sorts of people here. The walls are probably completely lined with bones. It keeps the wrong spirits out and leads the right ones in.” />
  “And exactly which are the right ones?” he asked.

  “That depends on who’s laying the bones,” she said.

  “Touché,” he said.

  He picked up the bag, bucket and spreading knife and led the girls out to the truck to put them away. He set the joint compound bucket on the bed of the truck and used a paper towel and a splash from a water bottle to wipe off the spreading knife. Then he pushed the end of the bed up and slapped his hands together to knock off the dust and paste.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Another day done.”

  “Well, not completely done,” Katie said suggestively.

  He grinned. “Nope, now it’s time for a little relaxation.”

  He walked around to the cab of the truck and pulled the cooler from the passenger’s side. “Who’s up for a PBR?” he asked.

  “I’d like one,” Emery said. Her voice was low and strangely intense.

  Mike was surprised to hear it, but glad at the same time. The girl’s persistent silence creeped him out a little. “We can accommodate,” he said.

  They walked back to the deck and he opened the cooler, handing out cans to both girls before popping one himself.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, after downing the first three gulps of the can. “That hits the spot.”

  Katie grinned. “You looked like you could use a drink,” she said, holding the can to her lips. “It was hot today.”

  “Hotter than hell,” he said. “I thought I was going to melt.”

  “You don’t know what hot is then,” she answered, looking at him with eyes wide over the rim of her beer can. She didn’t blink.

  Mike suddenly felt aroused again.

  “I think I’d like to know,” he answered.

  “I’d like to show you,” Katie answered. Her eyes still didn’t break contact with his.

  “I don’t think Emery wants to hear about that,” he suggested.

  Katie shook her head. “Em’s cool. She knows me better than anyone.”

  At that moment, Emery held out another can of PBR to him. He emptied the last sip of his current can and cracked open the next.

  “Whatever you say,” he said, between gulps. The night suddenly felt both cooler and hotter than the sweltering humid soup of the day. And he was okay with that. On either extreme.

  “So…what was the favor that you wanted to ask me for?” he said.

  “It’s kind of weird,” she answered. “It’s a family thing.”

  “Families are weird,” he agreed.

  “That’s easy to say,” she said. “Because it’s really true. But...my family was really weird. Did you ever have an uncle who collected bugs?”

  Mike shook his head.

  “Well, I did. He used to say if you listened to them, you’d understand everything there was to know about the world. Personally, I thought he was crazy.”

  Mike laughed. “He sounds a little off.”

  She shook her head. “He was the least of them. My sister used to sleep with my cousin whenever our relatives came to visit. It started out that our parents put them in the same bed because they were little. But then when we were in our teens, they still did it. And they didn’t sleep in pajamas, once our parents were in bed. Do you know what I mean?”

  “That…doesn’t sound right,” Mike acknowledged, taking another sip of his beer.

  “What’s your family like?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Not much to speak of. My dad died when I was a kid – heart attack. My mom is still around, but she’s losing it at this point. Sometimes when I visit her she asks if I’ll go tell my dad it’s time for dinner. He’s been gone thirty years. So…she’s not all there.”

  “Do you have a brother or sister?”

  “Brother,” Mike said. “But he’s out in Kansas City. I almost never get the chance to see him. And neither one of us is very good with the telephone.”

  “That’s it?” she said. “No wife, kids, pets?”

  “No pets, no kids…just one ex-wife,” he said. “She left me last year for a guy who wears a tie and takes the train into work in Chicago every day. A guy who saws wood and hammers nails wasn’t enough for her, I guess.”

  “Girls don’t usually care what you do for a living,” she said. “As long as what you do after the lights go out is good. Did you….”

  “Please her?” he finished. “I did when we first got together. I’m not a pencil dick or something. But she wanted prestige and a fountain of cash. And after a while it was pretty clear that I was never going to give her either one of those.”

  Mike shook his head and pounded the rest of his PBR.

  Emery popped the top on a new can and handed it to him. Mike didn’t think twice; he upended it and sucked half of it down before slamming it to the wood. Thinking about Mia made him drink more. And faster.

  “I was a good husband and I made a decent living for us,” he said. His voice cracked a little and Mike looked out at the deep blue sky that shone just barely through the tops of the trees all around. Night had fallen fast.

  Katie’s arm slipped around his shoulder. Her lips tickled the edge of his ear. “I’m sure you were,” she whispered. “Sometimes you just meet the wrong girl.”

  Mike nodded and took another pull from the can.

  “And sometimes,” Katie continued, “she rips your heart out like a fishing lure stuck inside the throat of a five-pound bass.”

  Mike snorted at that, and looked up from his contemplation of the deck wood. Katie’s eyes were right there, and they didn’t pull away when he met them.

  “I wish I’d met you five years ago,” he said.

  “I wish I’d met you a long time ago too,” she whispered. “But…you can’t go backward. Only forward. And you know me now. And I know you.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. Mike realized he suddenly didn’t know what else to say.

  He took a sip and said nothing, and then suddenly heard another beer tab pop nearby. The can in his hand was pulled away, and a new cold one took its place.

  “Thanks,” he said, but even as he did, Katie’s lips were on his, and her tongue tangled itself around his own. He set the beer down on the deck and slipped both arms around her. She not only accepted his advances tonight, but she made one of her own. Katie flipped one leg over his and smiled, her lips just inches from his own. She straddled him and pressed his head back to the post of the deck. Mike felt his head swimming amid the chiming hum of the crickets and locusts, and the call and response of the night birds throughout the forest, there on his deck beneath the light of the stars. He could feel her crotch shifting and grinding slowly against his as she nuzzled his lips and face with her mouth. Part of him knew that Emery sat quietly close by, and part of him didn’t care.

  “I want to stay with you tonight,” she said at last, pulling back for a moment from kissing him. “I want to show you what it can be like to be with a woman who loves you.”

  Mike felt his heart thump hard. An explosion of pressure and need and blood. “You love me?” he whispered.

  “Shhhh,” she said, and buried him in her hair. When she pulled back from that kiss, she grinned slyly and whispered, “Don’t tell Emery. She’ll be mad.”

  She moved against him then, in a way that was more than just suggestive. It brought him to full erection in just seconds. He slipped his arms around her and ran his hands down to her ass, cupping the full, soft roundness of her, and pulling her even closer than she’d come on her own.

  Her tongue slipped across his lips, tracing his smile, and she pressed him back until he lay down on the porch of the soon-to-be haunted house.

  “Yes,” he moaned.

  “I need you tonight,” she whispered, her lips just a breath away from his.

  “You have me,” he answered.

  “There’s just one thing we
need to do first,” she said.

  “What’s that?” he asked, moving his hands beneath her shirt to feel the soft curve of her waist.

  “Not yet,” she said, and slid her leg off him.

  Mike blinked his way back into focus, and sat part of the way up. The sky was rich and dark blue above them, and the sounds of night filled his ears in a humming symphony. Thousands of locusts and insects and birds hummed and chirped in the distance. The sound was lulling; with Katie lying on top of him, he could have let himself go entirely. But she had moved.

  “We need to do one thing first,” she said. “Emery tried to do it on her own, but it’s too much.”

  “What?” he asked again.

  “I need you to help me move something,” she said. “But we have to dig it out some more first.”

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Emery held out a hand and pulled him to his feet as Katie rolled away.

  “Do you have a shovel?” Katie asked. “We do need one for this kind of mud.”

  “Sure, in the truck,” he said.

  Together they walked to the bed of his truck and Mike pulled a spade out from the back.

  “Do you have a light?” Katie asked. “It’s dark over there.”

  Mike smiled. “I’ve got it all.” He reached into the back of the cab, where he kept a large battery-powered lantern. You never knew when the power was going to go out on a new job.

  “Follow me,” Katie said, and led him down the gravel path a few steps, before veering into the woods. Mike followed, though the darkness and beer left everything around him in a haze.

  At one point he stopped, and Emery slammed into him from behind. When he turned around to apologize, she shook her head and put a hand on his back to push him forward.

  They emerged from the short path through the brush at the middle of the small cemetery surrounding the pond. Katie turned around just as he realized where they were. She pointed at a small pile of dirt near her feet. A weathered gray headstone marked the top of a plot just a couple feet away. The inscription was lost in the shadows.