Dead Voices

by Rick Hautala

“Well, I — uh, I found evidence to suggest a connection between Roland Graydon and that incident of grave robbing you and I stumbled onto a few weeks back.”

  Norton chuffed with laughter. “Stumbled ... yeah, I guess that’d be a good word for it.”

  “What?” Frank said. “You know something more about it?”

  Norton remained silent. His eyes gleamed. coldly in the light from the dashboard. Frank sensed that, if he was going to try something, he would have to try it soon because with each passing second, Norton’s confidence about his control over the situation was rising.

  “You aren’t so fucking stupid you think you can get away with this, are you?” Frank asked, not really expecting Norton to reply.

  “I mean, even if you kill me, whatever it is you’re involved with is gonna come out sooner or later. Why don’t you put the gun away, and we can talk about it?”

  Norton burst out laughing, then quickly regained control of himself and said, “Yeah, right ... sure. I’ll reholster my gun so you can haul my ass in. That’s rich!”

  Frank opened his mouth to say something else, but a sudden explosion of pain caught him in the side of the head. He yelped as a flash of light shot through his brain. For just an instant, he thought he’d been shot; then he realized Norton had nailed him with the butt end of his revolver. Dazed, he brought his hand up to his head. His fingers came away sticky and warm, and he felt a trickle of blood run down to his collar.

  “Why don’t you just back the fucking car on out of here,” Norton commanded roughly. “Head out on Mitchell Hill Road, so that if I do end up wasting you, I won’t have to disturb any of the neighbors.”

  “What — ?” Frank said, but that was all. Blinding pain still rippled through him. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it, then eased the cruiser into gear and backed out of the cemetery. He bit his lower lip, wishing to hell he could think more clearly as he gripped the steering wheel with both hands and drove slowly down Brook Road toward Mitchell Hill Road. As much as he was worried and concerned about how-or if-he was going to get out of this situation, he couldn’t stop wondering what in the name of Christ was going on back there at Oak Grove Cemetery ... and what the fuck Norton had to do with it.

  3.

  Moving quickly, Graydon went from point to point of the pentagram and, using a cigarette lighter, lit each black candle in turn. In spite of the wind blowing high in the trees, at Caroline’s grave not even a slight breeze disturbed the flames. The candles burned with a cold, yellow light that illuminated the area, casting the surrounding area into deeper darkness. With the addition of each candle’s light, Elizabeth saw with increasing clarity her daughter’s name and birth and death dates carved into the stone. Waves of dizziness threatened to knock her over.

  “Step into the center of the pentagram. Quickly!” Graydon said. He waved his hand anxiously at her as he knelt beside the bag and loaded his hands with an assortment of items. In the glow of the candlelight, Elizabeth again saw, along with various other implements, the long blade of a knife. Cold fear gripped her as she considered what use it could possibly have during the ceremony.

  Elizabeth stepped into the center of the design, careful not to kick or smudge the white outline. Then she waited, her stomach tightening as her eyes flicked back and forth between Caroline’s headstone and Graydon. She was burning to ask him what she should expect next, but fear held her tongue.

  “Now remember,” Graydon said, entering the design and standing behind Elizabeth, so close she could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck. It raised goose bumps on her arms. “You must not say anything until I indicate that it’s all right. And you absolutely must do what I tell you to do-without hesitation. When you first see Caroline, you’ll be —”

  “I — I really will see her?” Elizabeth asked. She choked on the raw burning in her throat, surprised that she could speak at all.

  “Oh, I assure you,” Graydon said. “You’ll see her, and soon. For now, just be patient.”

  With that, he slipped his hand into his left coat pocket and removed something; she couldn’t quite see what it was. He approached the two candles pointing toward the headstone and, bending down, reached out with both hands and sprinkled onto each flame a fine powder that glittered in the moonlight. With a sudden, blinding flash, accompanied by a dull whoosh, two green flames shot at least six feet into the night sky. Startled, Elizabeth jumped back. Only after her pulse slowed was she aware that Graydon was muttering something softly under his breath. She caught herself before she spoke aloud to ask him what he was saying.

  Time seemed to dilate, to stretch out like a looping strand of Silly Putty and lose all meaning, as Elizabeth stood in the center of the design, watching and listening as Graydon went on with his ceremony. Several times, he threw the fine white powder into the flames of the candles, making green fire flash into the air like bolts of hissing lightning. Heavy smoke wafted up into the sky, masking the stars and hanging like a rippling black curtain above the grave. The air was filled with a nauseating smell of sulfur that parched Elizabeth’s lungs with its thick, cloying fumes.

  Elizabeth never understood a word Graydon was saying; it sounded as though he was muttering snatches of Latin; several times she had the impression he was saying things backward, and her nervousness only intensified when she recalled the backward voice she had recorded with Eldon Cody’s white noise.

  “Watch,” Graydon said suddenly, making Elizabeth jump. Knowing or sensing that he meant for her to look at Caroline’s grave, Elizabeth let her gaze drop down to the ground. The yellow flames of the candles deepened to orange. Mixed with the brilliant green flashes, they made the white lines of the pentagram vibrate with a hallucinatory intensity. Elizabeth found it difficult to focus and had to blink her eyes rapidly to dispel the illusion that the pentagram was actually floating up off the ground. At first, it looked to be no more than an inch or two above the close-cropped grass; but even as she stared long and hard at it, it seemed to rise higher and higher, until it was hovering more than a foot in the air.

  I’m imagining all of this! Elizabeth told herself, and the thought crossed her mind that the smoke she had inhaled from whatever was making the candles flash green was some kind of drug. Maybe that was how Graydon achieved his results-by drugging his clients and working with the power of suggestion and hallucination.

  Either that or I’m asleep, dreaming, she thought.

  Whatever the explanation, it sure as hell looked like the pentagram had magically levitated. And Elizabeth was positive it wasn’t simply the power of suggestion that made the ground in front of Caroline’s gravestone look like it was moving. At first there was nothing more than a subtle motion she could have easily dismissed as the result of the flickering candlelight; but the longer she stared at the ground, the more violent the movement of the grass .and soil became. She had the impression of a large, tangled knot of black worms or snakes seething on the grass, growing larger with each passing second.

  “Is that —” she started to say, but Graydon hushed her with a sharp hiss that seemed oddly magnified in the darkness. Magnified by what? Elizabeth wondered, feeling wave after wave of frantic fear clawing at her mind. What the hell is happening?

  She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the ground over her daughter’s grave. The longer she looked, the wider and more active the seething blackness became until she was convinced the dirt itself had magically come alive. She wasn’t sure quite when it happened, but at some point she saw — and fully accepted — that the ground over Caroline’s grave was thinning out, becoming almost invisible. She had the sense that, if she bent down and reached out her hand, her fingers wouldn’t be stopped by the hard packed soil and sod; they would pass right through it and down ... down into the earth all the way to the smooth wooden surface of Caroline’s coffin!

  Oh, Jesus! she thought, resisting the truth of the illusion and fighting her mounting terror that Graydon had drugged her and was playing with her mind, ca
using this hallucination to happen.

  But she couldn’t deny what she was seeing; there was no way she could be imagining this. The ground covering Caroline’s coffin — even under Elizabeth’s own feet — was now nothing more than a heaving, churning black tangle, like storm clouds being ripped apart by gale-force winds. Elizabeth resisted a dizzying wave of vertigo as she looked down, imagining she was floating high in the sky. Her awareness was drawn inexorably down, into the black void below her.

  Through the darkness, she could see with nearly mind-numbing clarity that something was struggling to emerge from the black maelstrom at her feet. Long, thin, and white, at first it looked like some kind of strange insect or creature, scrambling upward toward her. Her eyes struggled to pierce the pitchy blackness, to focus clearly on what she was seeing, but for long, drawn-out seconds, all she could perceive was a white smear of activity fluttering like helpless birds caught in a storm. And then, in a jolting instant, she saw what it was-two hands, reaching up toward her out of the darkness beneath her feet.

  “Oh, my Lord,” she muttered. She clamped her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming as her legs gave way, and she dropped to the ground. She was dimly surprised when her knees hit solid ground and she didn’t just keep falling, tumbling headlong into nothingness, but that sensation was lost in the complete horror of watching those two bony hands claw up toward her from the darkness of her daughter’s grave.

  Elizabeth groaned with the physical effort of looking away from the apparition as she glanced over her shoulder at Graydon. He had been standing close behind her, but her vision telescoped madly, and his figure receded to an impossible distance. She tried to open her mouth to speak, but when her lips moved, all she could hear was a slow, steady rumbling that sounded like huge boulders, tumbling down a mountainside in a landslide. A spark of recognition lit up in her mind when she saw something long and gleaming in Graydon’s upraised hand, but she pushed that aside as she lurched to her feet and stared down at the ground.

  The hands were coming closer, reaching up at her from the churning blackness. Fingernails, grown long and curling in upon themselves, a sickly ivory color beneath caked dirt, clicked viciously. And then, as Elizabeth watched with mind-numbing horror, a face materialized, leering up at her from the black earth. The pale face was framed by a twisting tangle of long, blonde hair; the dried flesh of the face was withered and rotten, crawling with worms and maggots. Although the features seemed somehow blurry and out of focus, as though seen through heavy layers of gauze, Elizabeth immediately recognized who it was.

  “Oh, my God!” she gasped, as every ounce of strength snapped out of her body. “Oh, my sweet, loving Jesus! ... Caroline!”

  The face floated at her feet, suspended in the whirling blackness as it drifted closer, rising from the depths of the earth. Caroline’s eyes were open, staring at her with a cold, hollow gaze, as though they were seeing nothing at all — or else piercing right through to her soul! A freezing draft of putrid air blew upward into Elizabeth’s face, making her hair stream back over her shoulders. She hugged herself and rubbed vigorously on her upper arms, but that did nothing to stop the wave after wave of numbing cold or the lances of blinding panic that skewered her mind.

  “This .can’t ... can’t be ... happening!” she heard herself say.

  “You have to hold her down,” a hard, commanding voice said from behind her. “If you are to have control over her, you must hold her down just as the book described it.”

  Elizabeth shot a terrified glance back at Graydon, her eyes widening with confusion.

  “Go on!” Graydon commanded. He had to shout to be heard above the roaring wind that raged up from the grave. “You have to grab her by the shoulders and wrestle her down. Hold her there! Otherwise, she will have control over you!”

  Elizabeth’s eyes flashed back down in front of her when she felt an icy chill encircle her ankles. Caroline’s hands and face were more clearly resolved, and her thin, dead hands were wrapped around Elizabeth’s legs, tugging violently as she tried to yank her off balance.

  “Don’t let her get control of you!” Graydon shouted. Elizabeth kicked her feet back, breaking the hold; then she dropped to the ground and, not knowing what else to do, reached out into the blackness until she felt her hands connect with something that felt like decaying cloth.

  The dress Caroline was buried in! she thought as an ache of sadness exploded in her heart. Beneath the cloth, she could feel her dead daughter’s thin shoulders, like cold, unflinching marble.

  “Do it! Pin her down! If she gets a hold on you, she’ll drag you down with her!” Graydon shouted. His voice sounded far behind her; it had a curious echo effect to it. Elizabeth barely noticed it as Caroline struggled in her grasp, trying to break the hold she had on her.

  Hot tears flooded Elizabeth’s eyes, blurring her sight as she flexed her numbed arm muscles, forcing them to come to life. Blind panic filled her mind. She didn’t see how she could resist the brutal force that was welling up at her from her daughter’s grave. There was no shaking, no violent churning, as there had been in the soil when this madness had started; just an inexorable upward push that made Elizabeth feel as though she were helplessly riding a hydraulic lift. She winced when the hooked fingernails sank into her upper arms and squeezed tightly.

  “You have to control her!” Graydon continued to yell. “She’ll only yield if you can prove that you’re stronger than she is!”

  Sweat broke out on Elizabeth’s forehead and mixed with the tears streaming from her eyes. A thick, salty taste filled her mouth. Elizabeth felt her heart stop and go ice cold in her chest as her dead daughter’s face loomed closer and closer to her own, condensing like wispy clots of smoke into a twisted, tormented expression of pain and effort.

  As the struggle continued, Elizabeth saw with stark horror that her blurred vision of Caroline’s face hadn’t been just the result of her own tears. There was a thick, creamy white fluid smeared all over Caroline’s face. It reminded Elizabeth crazily of vernix, the thick mucouslike substance that, along with blood, covers a baby at birth. She saw worms crawling within that curdled white fluid. Breathless from her efforts, Elizabeth wished she had enough air left in her lungs to scream. Her brain was completely overloaded as she looked down at the horribly distorted vision of her daughter.

  Vision? she thought. No! This is too damned real to be a vision or hallucination! Caroline’s jaw made a horrible clacking sound as it worked back and forth, gnashing her teeth. Elizabeth knew it was impossible for there to be any air in her daughter’s dead lungs, but she could see the thick, milky fluid bubbling as Caroline’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish gulping in water. The coiled tension in her daughter’s corpse built steadily, ready to explode up at her. Elizabeth wasn’t sure whether the explosion would be physical or mental.

  Caroline’s lips twisted and twitched as she tried to form words, but the fluid covering her face choked her, filling her mouth and throat, making it impossible for her to speak.

  How can she speak? How can the dead speak? Elizabeth wondered crazily as she heaved forward, trying to pin her daughter’s steel-hard shoulders to the ground. What in the name oj Heaven and Hell could this ... this apparition possibly have to say?

  “You have to clean her mouth out before she can talk to you.” Graydon’s voice boomed from the darkness behind her. “Remember the description in the book?”

  Frantic with fear, Elizabeth looked behind her and was stunned by what she saw. Graydon was still standing with her within the protection of the pentagram, but beyond the white lines of the star, the night was a riot of activity. Where there had been silent, moonwashed tombstones and a gently sloping hill before, now the night was swirling with strobing red and blue lights. At first, her eyes saw only confusion, but after a moment, the chaos resolved into dozens — hundreds — of twisted, humanlike figures.

  “I ... How?” Elizabeth said, no more than a strangled gasp.

  “Pi
n her with your knees and scoop it out with your hands ... either that, or else suck it out,” Graydon said.

  Behind him, the spinning madness of figures intensified. Elizabeth saw horribly deformed shapes, sick parodies of humanity with hooved feet and clawed hands, horns, and gaping, fang-filled mouths. Wicked, sparkling eyes watched the struggle unblinkingly. Elizabeth had the distinct impression they were all willing her to lose the struggle. Arms were upraised, and legs kicked high as the figures silently twisted and leaped in the flickering red glow of flames. Dimly, at the edge of awareness, Elizabeth heard the wild shrieks and doom-filled moans as the figures’ increased their frantic dance.

  “I ... can’t!” she sputtered. The pain of Caroline’s fingernails gouging into her arms was too intense; the upward thrust was unrelenting.

  “You must!” Graydon shrilled. “If you don’t, she’ll have you under her power!”

  Shifting her legs forward, Elizabeth tried to brace Caroline’s shoulders, but her daughter wiggled and twisted, resisting all of her efforts. Slowly, like two heavy-laden ships on an inevitable collision course, their two faces came closer and closer together until, nose to nose, they touched. Caroline exhaled a bubbling expulsion of rotten breath. The icy wind from the grave streamed viciously around Elizabeth’s face, pushing her back violently; but she strained her neck forward and brought her mouth closer to her dead daughter’s mouth.

  “Go on! Do it now!” Graydon shouted. His voice was almost lost in the rising cacophony of shrill wailing all around them.

  With all the effort it takes to breathe in a strong gale, Elizabeth sucked in her breath and then pressed her lips hard against Caroline’s cold mouth. There was a jolting shock as their lips met. Elizabeth exhaled noisily through her nose and then sucked hard, as though giving her dead tlaughter some perverted form of artificial respiration. The rancid taste of dead flesh and sour milk filled her mouth, making her stomach revolt.

  “She can’t speak until you get her mouth clear,” Graydon hollered.