Benny smiled, despite the fact that he was scared shitless. “I suppose you’re right. We need to get that key, though.”
“Remember that scene in Jaws when Richard Dreyfuss was fucking with that tire? The head pops out on his ass?”
“Fuck yeah. Scared the shit out of me.”
They stared at the deceitfully calm surface of the lake, both of them trying to structure a reality that just wouldn’t fit. In the distance, Benny thought he saw bubbles breaking the surface just about where Grundy probably was.
“You know anything about this Grundy fuck?” Rico asked.
“Just that he used to be a made man. The Pope caught him embezzling some money, had him whacked. He was a pretty dangerous dude, too. Heard this story about where Grundy had a man dismembered and mailed him in like five different packages to Africa.”
“Why Africa?”
“How the fuck should I know ‘why Africa’,” Benny said, a pained grimace stretching his face. “Who cares? The point is the man was dangerous.”
It was decided that they would flip a coin to see who would have to go down and get the key.
Rico, the loser, stood knee deep in the water, his hardened gangster face on the edge of tears. “I’m scared out of my fucking mind, Benny,” he whined. “What if he bites me, or something? What if he gets out of them ropes and drowns me.”
“Sucks to be you.”
Rico smiled nervously, placed the goggles over his eyes and adjusted the oxygen tank. “If I come out of this alive, I swear you’re gonna get a fuckin’ backhand for your heartlessness.”
Turning towards the water, his heart beating like a tribal drum in his chest, Rico reentered the lake and made his way back to Grundy.
Benny watched Rico until his head vanished underneath the surface and said, “You are one crazy bastard. I wouldn’t have gone down there even if I lost.”
* * *
Rico, floating in the water, was staring at the round, illuminated face of Grundy’s corpse, thinking how perfect Benny’s moon comment was. Grundy’s head nodded, like he was listening to some sort of beat heavy music—the eyes radiating so much hatred that Rico almost turned around. For an unsettling moment, Rico had the impression that Grundy was bobbing his head in time with the beating of his terrified heart.
One of Grundy’s hands was free and he was digging around in his pants. With a vicious grin, he pulled out the key Rico sought and held it out before him, letting it gleam in the flashlight’s beam before shoving it in his mouth and swallowing it.
Rico’s eyes widened and he resisted the urge to swim over and choke the dead man. Stifling a scream, Rico swam down and picked up a piece of rusted metal off of the bottom, floated closer to Grundy, and began poking him in anger.
Grundy grabbed the metal rod, bubbles streaming out of the bullet hole in his forehead, eyes bugging out furiously. Rico, realizing the dead man was not going to let go, began the laborious process of dragging him towards the shore.
Grundy shot an arm out, clutching his pale, worm-like fingers at Rico’s face. A wave of water pressure shot into Rico’s face as the hand sailed by. Rico could hear Grundy’s bubbling screams, yet he resisted the urge to drop his burden and flee. Dirt clouded the water around them, making it nearly impossible to see.
Rico doggedly continued swimming towards the shore, Grundy’s enraged screams boiling the water around him.
Chapter 3: The Lime Graveyard
It seemed unusually quiet in the front yard. Tim and Francis walked about one hundred yards and then looked back at the Lime house. Both of them were silent.
Tim studied the second floor window, surprised to see a silhouette of a woman. He tried to think of an episode that even remotely resembled the events inside the house, and failed, miserably. Even the time Psycho Mike-O accused me of stealing his mother’s corpse doesn’t come within shooting distance of this, Tim thought, shaking his head as the silhouette moved away from the window.
“Timmy, did that just happen in there?” Francis asked. “I want to know seriously, because I’m fighting the urge to kill myself here.”
Tim checked his guns to make sure they were loaded. “I’m not sure. Maybe the house had some sort of acid fumes in it. Maybe we hallucinated it.”
“Maybe,” Francis said, not sounding entirely convinced. He, too, checked his guns.
“Of course we have one problem with that,” Tim said, turning away from the house and walking towards the cemetery.
“What’s that?”
Tim chuckled. “Hallucinations aren’t shared, you dumb bastard.”
“Timmy?”
“Yeah?”
“I hate you.”
They broke out into nervous laughter, the sounds of their mirth carrying through the eerily silent nighttime air. The skull-like full moon shone brightly above their heads, illuminating the landscape around them in a dim, gray glow.
Tim looked up, stared into the stars, searching for the constellation Orion. He longed for the days when was able to sit back and enjoy such a relaxing view. Living in the city, it had been years since he had been able to even see the stars, let alone enjoy them. He supposed he could go up on one of the building rooftops and look at the stars, but somehow that just wouldn’t be the same.
Tim’s cell phone rang, its shrill alarm piercing the silence like a scream. They started snickering when they realized that they had both pulled out their guns.
Still laughing, Tim put away his guns, pulled the phone from the folds of his trench coat and put it to his ear. “Tim here.”
“Did you kill the traitorous fuck?” Pope asked, his deep bass voice booming into his ear. Francis had often joked that their boss’ voice sounded like Barry White.
“Uhhh…yes,” Tim said, knowing that it would be futile to tell him of their little psychedelic experience.
“You don’t sound too sure, Tim. You know how I feel about half-assed jobs.”
“I have a picture of his severed head to prove it. That sure enough?”
“Good, that blooming fuck. Did you make sure he knew why you killed him?”
“Yes,” Tim answered, his heart fluttering when he detected a shadowy movement from behind the gates of the distant cemetery.
Pope’s voice lowered. “What the fuck is going on here, Tim? I want details.”
“Pope, I’m going to have to call you back in a bit,” Tim said, turning off the phone and putting it back into his jacket. He looked over at Francis and then back to the cemetery. “Did you see something moving out there?”
Francis stopped and let his eyes scan the gates ahead. “No…did you?”
As they approached the gate the wind picked up. Piles of leaves twirled by them, colliding into tombstones with the sound of long fingernails on concrete. Tim’s dark trenchcoat billowed around him wildly and he tried in vain to hold it close to his wiry frame.
“What you probably saw was those leaves,” Francis said, scratching at his thick sideburns nervously as they continued walking towards the cemetery gate.
A few moments later, they stood before the iron gate, staring off into the darkness, heads cocked to the side as they listened for the slightest sound.
Drawing their guns simultaneously, they stepped through the gate and into the graveyard. Every time a leaf skittered by on the path before them, Tim would jump back, his finger almost pulling the trigger. Each shadow became a zombie—every noise of dry leaf on stone the sound of fingernails scratching against a coffin lid. Tombstones jutted into the air like jagged teeth threatening to eat the moonlit sky, the wind cutting through them in frigid gusts. Greenish light glowed from the window of one of the mausoleums; dark shadows flickered from inside.
The pair stopped at the gravestone of Willis Mayhue, their bodies as tense as if they were standing before the lit fuse of a dynamite stick. Tim felt a soft vibration under his feet, almost like the rapid beat of a heart.
“Why are we stopping here, Timmy?” Francis asked, staring down wor
riedly at the tombstone. “Let’s just keep going and get the fuck out of here.”
Tim shook his head. “No. Let’s give it a few seconds and see what happens. It will put my mind at rest that we just hallucinated the whole thing back there.”
“I say we don’t tempt fate and get the hell out—”
The ground exploded beneath their feet, dirt and rocks flying into their faces. Tim and Francis were sent stumbling backwards, holding their guns before them like shields.
A coffin shot high out of the ground, silhouetted for a moment against the full moon above, then arched over and landed on the ground with a soft thud about forty yards away.
Tim looked over at his partner, his eyes wide in the glow of the shining moon. “That wasn’t…”
“Willis Mayhue,” Francis answered, already getting to his feet.
Soft, guttural laughter echoed out of the darkness from somewhere near where Mayhue had landed. The mausoleum with the greenish cast began humming like a machine, the light reflecting eerily off the tombstones.
Another grave nearby detonated with a loud blast of air, sending a coffin into the sky like a bullet. It hung on the horizon, almost frozen, and then it came crashing down into the graveyard below, landing on a tombstone, the wood breaking into splinters, sending a fetid wave of death-laden air into their faces.
The corpse of a woman crawled out of the wreckage, her body remarkably well preserved for someone who had been dead so long. Her hair hung off her skull in clumps, waving like thick snakes in the evening breeze. Bones rattled underneath her rotting dress. She turned towards them and opened her mouth, a sharp hiss bursting from between her brown teeth.
“Timmy, we’re going to have to go back!” Francis yelled, running. “We haven’t a chance in fucking hell to make it to the other side!”
By the time Tim started to run, Francis was already near the cemetery gate, waddling as he fled, screaming like a woman. Francis broke into a coughing fit, as he usually did when he laughed or yelled, a product of his smoker’s lungs. Once the fit was over, he shrieked once more, again forced into manic coughing. He ran through the cemetery gate and toward the Lime house.
Off in the distance, just beyond the mausoleum, Tim saw an elevator door open, throwing a white light against the tombstones that surrounded it. Inside were himself, with longer hair, and Francis, wearing massive goggles. Dodging another zombie, Tim was forced to look away and continue his flight.
Biting his lip, Tim increased his speed and tried to catch up with his partner, his trenchcoat flying behind him like a cape. Like gunfire from dirt-infested barrels, coffins started shooting into the air all around him. Instinctively, he fired both guns at the airborne coffins, laughing maniacally.
A coffin crashed into the ground directly in front of him, wood fragments and pieces of bone flying into his face and open mouth. Screaming, spitting bone chips, Tim dodged around the broken coffin, narrowly avoiding a skeletal hand that darted out, clutching at his ankle.
A zombie hurtled out of the darkness, screeching as it flew at Tim, teeth snapping, eyes bulging. Tim dropped to the ground, and the zombie sailed over him, crashing into a tombstone, smashing to pieces.
A gun in each hand, Tim leapt to his feet and continued running towards the exit.
Just as he reached the gate, another coffin smashed to the ground just behind him, sending an explosive wave of rancid air and wood chips into his back. Howling, goosebumps rising up on his arms, Tim yanked open the gate, dashed through, and slammed it behind him with a clang.
A raving corpse flew up out of the cemetery with astonishing speed, smashing into the gate so hard Tim was knocked over backwards. He rolled a few times and looked up just as gnashing teeth closed in on his throat.
Tim fired six times, both guns barking furiously, sending the corpse hurling backward with a gurgling shriek.
Francis ran up and grabbed Tim’s arm, pulling him to his feet. “Timmy, what the fuck are you doing? Run!”
Moments later, they found themselves back on the porch of the Lime house, their eyes piercing into the darkness for any sign of threat.
“You left me back there with those zombies,” Tim hissed, his face covered in sweat, his shaking gun held before him and pointed towards the dim, slightly glowing cemetery. “What kind of friend are you?”
“No, Timmy. When I see dead people shooting out of the fucking ground like cannons, I run. That’s what normal people do.”
Bones rattled from somewhere deep in the cemetery and Tim backed up slightly, biting his lip nervously. Francis, like Tim, held a gun in each hand, legs braced wide for attack.
They stood waiting like that for a moment, barely breathing. More bones rattled somewhere just to the right of them.
“Uh…Francis?” Tim asked, his voice a low whisper. “Maybe we should go into the house.”
“Yeah, because it’s so much safer in there, what with doubles and hoofed aliens and all.”
Tim kept his eyes glued to the darkness. “You have a better idea? I don’t want to go in there any more than you do.”
Back inside the house it was eerily quiet. All of the lights were off, including the kitchen. Moonlight shined in through the front window, basking the entire room in a chalky, phantom glow. A ghostly titter came from the second floor, hanging in the air a couple seconds then vanishing, suddenly halting, as though shut off by a switch, followed by the popping sound Tim had heard earlier.
“Let’s try the kitchen,” Tim whispered, walking quietly over the carpeting. “Maybe my double can help us get the hell out of this.”
Other than Tim’s double’s severed head—and the requisite pool of congealing blood surrounding it—the kitchen was empty. The head’s chin was missing, the upright skull left resting with its top teeth against the linoleum.
“That’s rather disconcerting,” Tim said, staring down at his own mutilated head.
“And it doesn’t bode well for your future, Timmy,” Francis said, his tone teasing. “Especially when that guy said he was you a week in the future. That would mean that’s going to be you. Fucked, ain’t it?”
“Thanks so much for that thought, Francis,” Tim said, his thin lip curling at his friend. “You are, and always will be, a special friend.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And that unfortunate person on the floor down there was right about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You did scream like a woman out there.”
Chapter 4: Furious Lime
“God must be punishing us,” Tim said, sitting on the ornate bed, his eyes glued to the door.
They had holed up in one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor. The Victorian era furniture gave them the unsettling feeling they had time traveled to the past. Expensive-looking paintings decorated the walls around them, providing an atmosphere that made Tim feel like he was in one of those old haunted house movies with Vincent Price.
“Please don’t bring God into this, Timmy,” Francis said, a deep grimace creasing his face and stretching out his furry sideburns. “We got enough problems as it is.”
One painting, depicting the wrinkled visage of an old man, gave him the unnerving and paranoid feeling that he was being watched. It seemed like every time he looked up, the old man was glaring at him with those beady eyes, a ghastly Mona Lisa-like smile on his face.
Francis sat on the floor, his back to the wall, the window just above his head. They had pulled the shade and were sitting by candlelight, watching the shadows dance and flicker on the wall before them like some old-fashioned picture show.
“All I can think about is those damn corpses in the cemetery. Most likely the whole house is surrounded by them.”
“Lightning-quick bastards,” Francis said, his face half in shadow.
“Definitely. Nothing like those damn zombie movies. They move like wild animals.”
Francis looked up, noticing Tim staring at him curiously. “What the hell you looking at
me like that for? It’s making me feel uncomfortable.”
“You know, you aren’t as ugly as I thought, my friend. Hell, the way the shadows darken your face like that you almost look...handsome. I’d shave those bloody muttonchops, though. They’re just plain ugly. Don’t smile either, Snaggly.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Timmy. Things aren’t bad enough now you have to go and hit on me? And then insult me beloved sideburns at the same time? And me teeth as well?”
Tim smiled, his thin, almost painted on, arched eyebrows wiggling up and down. “Don’t get your hopes up, partner. I’ve seen your mug when the light hits it. Pretty, you ain’t. Good thing you have me to attract the girlies to us.”
Francis chuckled and shook his head. “Man, I sure wish we would have questioned your double a bit more. We are so out of our fucking element here it’s almost funny.”
“We’ve been out of our element before, my friend,” Tim said, his eyes growing distant as he recalled a fond memory, his mouth creasing in a wan smile. “Remember that time we got holed up in that shack down in that bayou and that inbred little twig in the flowered overalls was accusing us of ‘killin’ his Pa’?”
Francis smiled slowly, revealing his crooked teeth. “Yeah. You almost got us killed. You had to laugh at him, didn’t you? That cat was one of the scariest, craziest bastards we ever met. He was right out of the movies.”
“How could I not laugh? Francis, the poor chap was wearing flowered overalls for fuck’s sake! And his name was Cletus! Spouting out how he was going to ‘take you in his ring and throw you a smack-down.’ The man was utterly priceless.”
“Heh,” Francis said, laughing, his eyes teary. “I forgot about that. Jesus, that must have been ten years ago.” He paused for a moment, staring at his friend. “We’ve been doing this shit too long. Whatever happened to our plans of retiring and opening up a pub on the coast?”
“I still have those plans, my friend. We’ve been planning that one since kindergarten.”
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