Dead Voices

by Rick Hautala

  No matter if it was against her will or not, she fully intended to meet Graydon at Caroline’s grave in Oak Grove Cemetery just before midnight — just to see if he could really do what he said he could!

  2.

  The phone rang just as Elizabeth was stepping out of the shower. She quickly wrapped a towel around her head and put on her bathrobe as she dashed over to the nightstand beside her bed and picked up the phone. Covering the mouthpiece with one wet hand, she held the receiver tightly against her ear and listened.

  “Hello,” she heard her mother say on the downstairs phone.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Payne, but I was wondering if Elizabeth’s home yet.”

  Elizabeth recognized Frank’s voice and held her breath, waiting for what seemed like five minutes before her mother replied.

  “I’m sorry, Frank,” she said at last. “She still hasn’t shown up.”

  Frank’s exasperated sigh came over the line as clearly as though he were beside Elizabeth in her bedroom. Standing weak-kneed beside her bed, the gentle tug of blood flowing deep in her belly, Elizabeth felt vulnerable; she wondered if she was more threatened by Frank or by Graydon. A spark flickered in her mind, and thinking she might truly be able to trust him, she had a sudden urge to let Frank know she was listening on the line.

  What she should do right now, she told herself, is ask her mother to hang up so she could talk to Frank — or better yet, ask Frank to come over to the house so she could talk to him face to face. Maybe that would help convince her that she wasn’t losing her mind. She should be able to trust Frank with everything she had figured out about Graydon’s involvement with what had been happening around town — the digging up of her uncle’s grave, the ceremony done over Caroline’s grave, and — possibly — the murders of Barney Fraser and Henry Bishop.

  “Ohh, that’s too bad,” Frank said. “I really need to talk to her.”

  “Is there — do you want to leave her a message? I can tell her when she gets home,” Elizabeth heard her mother say. The halting way she spoke seemed, at least to Elizabeth, to reveal the truth in spite of her words.

  “No — I just wanted to talk to her,” Frank replied.

  There was most definitely an urgency in his tone of voice. After Graydon had taken advantage of her weakness this afternoon at his office, all Elizabeth could think was that it was Frank’s need for sex. He — like Graydon — was nothing more than a hungry wolf, wanting to feast on her, to suck the lifeblood from her!

  “I’ll be sure to tell her you called, though,” her mother said. “I — uh, expect she’ll be home any minute now.”

  “She can reach me at the station,” Frank said. “I should be here — oh, another hour, at least.”

  “Fine, then,” her mother said. “Thanks for calling.”

  “Thank you,” Frank said and then hung up. Elizabeth waited to hear the second click of her mother hanging up before she gently cradled the phone. Letting a deep sigh escape her, she sat down on the edge of her bed and started to towel-dry her hair. In spite of her cozy bathrobe, gooseflesh rippled over her arms and legs. She tensed, waiting, and then, as expected, heard the tread of her mother’s feet on the stairs. Then came a quick rapping on her door.

  “Yeah?” she said shakily, dropping the towel into her lap. A cold band seemed to tighten over the ridge above her eyebrows, and blinding pressure built up behind her eyes. The goose bumps spread up over her shoulders, and her teeth chattered.

  “That was Frank on the phone,” her mother said through the closed door.

  As if you didn’t already know, Elizabeth thought, suspecting that her mother knew she had been listening on the extension.

  “Yeah ... ?” She said. The tension in her head increased along with a steady, pulsing beat in her temples.

  “He sounded like he really wanted to talk to you.”

  You could have told him you were there, Elizabeth added for her.

  “So?”

  “So — I think it wouldn’t hurt you to give him a call.”

  And you know damned well I heard him say he’s down at the police station.

  “I really don’t want to talk ... to him or anybody else right now,” Elizabeth said. A headache was unfolding behind her eyebrows, mushrooming like a heavy, fast-moving storm cloud. She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering as the chills racing through her body intensified.

  “Suit yourself,” her mother said through the closed door. “But I’I! tel! you one thing ...”

  “What’s that?” Elizabeth asked, feeling a wave of desperate exasperation. She was suddenly fearful that if she spoke or heard too many more words, her head would explode.

  “I think that if the two of you are ... are seeing each other, if you know what I mean, both you and he are fools. I’m not saying I don’t like Frank, but until you straighten out a few ... other things in your life, I think you’re both jumping the gun.”

  “Don’t worry,” Elizabeth snapped. “Frank Melrose and I are not seeing each other. If he ... if he —” For a moment, that was all she could say as her anger at Frank suddenly exploded like fireworks in her mind. “If he ever calls again, tell him to leave me alone! Do you understand?”

  “If you have any message for him,” her mother replied, “then I expect you’d better deliver it yourself. I’m not about to become your messenger girl.”

  There was a slight pause, and Elizabeth could imagine her mother leaning close to the closed bedroom door.

  “Good night, Elizabeth.”

  “G’night,” Elizabeth said, letting her body unwind as she listened to her mother’s footsteps going back downstairs. They were barely audible above the steady pounding inside her head. As wave after wave of confused, black, and tangled emotions swept through her, she collapsed back onto her bed and closed her eyes so tightly they began to hurt. When she chanced to open them, the light in her bedroom was shattered into a dazzling display of yellow spikes and swirling patterns. From the comer of her eye, she caught a glimpse of her alarm clock and just barely made out the time.

  “Six-thirty ... “ she whispered, with a voice as dry as sand. Five and a half hours to wait ... five and a half hours that she knew would seem like forever!

  She wished that she could slip into a nightie, climb in under her covers, fall asleep, and forget ... forget everything! Let Graydon go out to the cemetery and wait long enough to realize she wasn’t coming. Let him wait until dawn! Let him go straight to hell, for all she cared, and let him take his manipulative, scheming, bullshit male ego with him!

  “I’m going crazy!” she rasped aloud as she thrashed about on the bed, pressing her fists against her throbbing head. ‘‘I’m going absolutely, stark raving out of my mind!”

  Whimpering softly, she covered her face with her hands and, closing her eyes again, pressed as hard as she could against her forehead. That still didn’t stop the heavy fisted hammering in her skull. She hated what she knew, but just as surely as Caroline was dead, she was positive she would never get a wink of sleep ... not now — not tonight — not ever unless she went out to Caroline’s grave with Graydon.

  And she knew, even if it meant her own death, she would do exactly what Graydon told her to do if only she could talk to Caroline one last time. Only then-maybe would she find some peace and calm inside herself.

  3.

  “You’re obsessed,” Norton said, glancing over at his partner as he took the turn onto Brook Road. Even before the wrought-iron cemetery gate came into view, Frank slowed the car to less than ten miles per hour.

  Leaning over the steering wheel, Frank scanned both sides of the road. It was well past nine o’clock. The bone white full moon rode high in the sky, casting a silvery light over the woods and fields. As they approached the cemetery, its moonlit tombstones spread over the hazy gray hillside looked like a distant city. The trees behind the cemetery were hard-edged black lace against the dusty night sky.

  “I’m not obsessed,”
Frank said softly. ‘‘I’m just checking things out, like we’ve been told to.”

  Norton snorted with suppressed laughter. “Yeah — right. As if anything else is gonna happen out here.” He, too, glanced over toward the cemetery but then looked quickly back at his partner.

  “This makes — what? Four times you’ve been by here tonight. What the fuck do you think you’re gonna see, anyway?”

  Frank eased the patrol car to a stop in front of the closed cemetery gate. He snapped the switch on his side-mounted spotlight and swung it in a wide arc across the graveyard. Thick shadows weaved dizzyingly as the light swept back and forth. The names on a few of the closest tombstones jumped out in high relief, but everything else about the place looked peaceful and quiet.

  “Come on, man,” Norton said. “Kill the light! You’re gonna wake up the neighbors.” He laughed aloud at his own joke, then fell silent when he noticed that Frank wasn’t sharing his humor.

  “Too many things have happened around here for my own comfort,” Frank said, still keeping his voice low as he squinted, following the trailing beam of the spotlight.

  “Yeah, well, nothing else is gonna happen. D’you think anyone’d be stupid enough to come out here, just knowing how you’re hovering around the place. Christ!” He sniffed with laughter again. “If anyone sees us out here, they’ll probably call the cops on us!”

  “I’m just doing my job, if that’s all right with you,” Frank said, snapping off the spotlight and shifting the cruiser into gear.

  “Let’s go find ourselves some real action,” Norton said. “Like maybe we can catch a speeder out on Old County Road. It’s probably too late to catch ourselves any dope pushers hanging around the schoolyard, wouldn’t you say?”

  As he eased the cruiser back onto the road, Frank glanced over at his partner and frowned. “Cut the shit, all right?” he said. “I’m just keeping an eye on things in case something happens.”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen out here,” Norton said. He twisted around and looked back at the cemetery fence as it receded into the darkness. “Not tonight, anyway.”

  4.

  The hours plodded by slowly as Elizabeth lay on her bed, her mind a tumbling cascade of fear. Several times she had the unnerving sensation that someone was in the dark room with her. Every time she closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, she would feel — literally feel — cold, eerily glowing eyes glaring at her from the inky shadows in the comers of her room. Someone ...

  Who? The old crone ... or someone else?

  ... was staring at her with — what? Malevolent hatred ... or something else?

  She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was nearby, trying to contact her, wanting — but unable — to get through to her. She wasn’t sure how she knew or sensed this, because, whenever she opened her eyes and looked around, she never caught even a fleeting glimpse of anything unusual.

  Remembering the dreams she had had over the past few weeks only made things worse, and several times she bolted upright in her bed, convinced that she had been — or still was — dreaming. Fear choked her, and she expected to look down and see the Ouija board on her lap. She would watch helplessly as her hands — or skeletal hands blending out of the darkness — moved the pointer and spelled out a message.

  And what would the message say? she wondered, fearing to the core of her soul that she would see the words spelled out, blazing in slashes of raging fire.

  Help! ... Mommy!

  ... Or she would look up and see the old crone, standing there in the dark room, holding out to her the well-worn shopping bag, asking her — begging her — to look inside where she would see ... perhaps Caroline’s face, perhaps her own, surrounded by spiked tongues of flame. The blast furnace intensity would peel the flesh from her face, sear her to the bone, and then dissolve even her bones to nothing but glowing red coals and gray ash.

  ... Or maybe she would see her husband standing beside her bed. What if all along Doug had been doing this to her? What if, by planting seeds of fear and doubt deep in her mind, he was driving her slowly crazy? Could he be working directly with Graydon? Could the two of them be controlling her, forcing her closer and closer to the brink of madness out of revenge, simply because she had stopped Doug from trying to save Caroline that night?

  Sometime around ten o’clock, her parents carne upstairs to bed. She heard her father’s shoes scuff down the hallway past her door without a pause. She heard her mother pass by, too, but she hesitated at the door, obviously considering whether or not she should check in on her daughter. Then she, too, went to her own bedroom. Lying on her bed, her body rigid with tension, Elizabeth realized she had been holding her breath and let it out in a long, whooshing sigh.

  She glanced at the clock beside her bed and saw that it was only ten-thirty, still too early to leave. No longer able to lie there on her bed, she swung her feet to the floor and stood up. From the bathroom down the hallway, she heard the sound of water running and the toilet flushing as her parents got ready for bed. She didn’t want to chance turning on her light just yet, in case her mother walked by her room again and saw the light under the door. In darkness, she started pacing back and forth across her bedroom floor, still feeling as though every time her back was turned, glowing eyes materialized out of the pressing darkness and watched her.

  She knew exactly how long she paced back and forth because she stared at the illuminated face of the clock every time she walked past the bed. At eleven fifteen, long after she had stopped hearing her parents moving around in their bedroom. she pulled on her socks and sneakers. Quietly approaching her bedroom door, she held her breath as she eased open the door and peeked out into the hallway.

  Her parents bedroom door was closed tightly, and the house was deathly quiet. Only the low-wattage bulb at the foot of the stairs was on, casting a sickly yellow glow into the hallway. Elizabeth stepped out into the hallway, and eased her bedroom door shut, praying the old hinges wouldn’t squeak, then tiptoed down the hallway, moving quickly down the stairs. She froze every time one of the steps creaked under her weight, but after listening tensely for any sounds from her parents’ room, she continued down into the entryway. After grabbing her jacket from the front hallway coatrack, she patted her jeans pocket, making sure she had the house keys, then opened the back door and slipped out into the cool, moist night.

  The full moon was high in the sky, casting thick, swirling shadows under the trees lining the driveway. A gentle breeze hissed in the leaves overhead, making the moonlight flicker. Elizabeth started down the driveway to the road, grateful-at least-that she no longer felt the presence of unseen eyes watching her. With barely a glance to the left or right, she walked briskly to the road and headed toward Oak Grove Cemetery.

  As she walked along the road’s edge, beneath the streetlights, Elizabeth watched her shadow swing around under her feet and then stretch out in front of her. It eased the burden on her mind to remember the dozens, probably hundreds of times she had watched her shadow move like this on those nights she had snuck out of the house at night when she was younger, either to meet her friends or one of her boyfriends — usually Frank.

  As soon as she thought of Frank, she cringed, unable to stop from wondering what could possibly have been so urgent for him to keep calling the house as he had. There was no denying the urgency in his voice. She tried to force this, along with any other thoughts about Frank, out of her mind. Just then, she saw headlights come around the bend in the road, aiming straight at her.

  “Oh, shit,” she muttered, crouching for a moment on the roadside and wondering what to do. She was between streetlights, and the car was far enough away so that she knew she hadn’t been seen yet, but she had to act fast.

  Her first thought was to say to hell with it — it didn’t matter who saw her walking down the road, even at this time of night. She had every right in the world to be out taking a walk. But even stronger was the impulse to duck off and hide in the woods before t
he headlights reached her and the driver — whoever it was — discovered her. It was more than a flashback to the caution she had used when she was a kid and had snuck out late at night. Considering the strange things that had been happening around town — especially in light of what she intended to do tonight with Graydon — it would be best if no one saw her out tonight. Some neighbors might consider even a late-night walk suspicious.

  Turning quickly, Elizabeth scampered down the road embankment and into the brush. Unseen branches swished at her, snapping at her face and hands as she ran deep into the woods and then, turning, crouched low to the ground, held her breath, and waited. She heard the throaty rumble of the car’s engine, but it seemed to take forever for the car to come down the road.

  A strangled little cry escaped her when the car was about fifty feet away from where she was hiding. A brilliant light suddenly blasted from the passenger’s window. At first, Elizabeth didn’t know what it was, but then she realized it was a spotlight. The car crept slowly closer, the cone of light lancing out into the darkness and weaving back and forth as it skimmed through the roadside brush.

  Elizabeth wanted to drop down and hug the ground, but she feared that any motion now would give her away. The light swung closer, pushing like a laser through the underbrush. A cold sheen of sweat broke out over her forehead as it weaved ever closer to where she hid.

  Elizabeth could see that the car was a police cruiser. The siren and lights on the car roof looked like dark bull’s horns. The car windows were open, and although she could hear the policemen talking, she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. The beam of the spotlight grew more intense, and Elizabeth fully expected to see the brush spontaneously burst into flames as it swung back and forth. Closer and closer it came, sweeping in a silent ripple through the trees, casting long shadows that weaved sickeningly. Elizabeth had to bite down on the tip of her tongue to keep from crying out.