How Sweet It Is

by Dylan Newton

  Mr. Clark banged the crowbar against the bolt cutters in three loud, sharp cracks, making Kate jump. Then, he put a hand to his ear, pantomiming that he was listening.

  “They don’ appear to be easily disturbed,” he said. “Are we openin’ this crypt or not? I got a grave to dig over yonder. The ground’s gonna freeze if I don’t get it done today.”

  “I think I’ll wait for you out here.” Kate scrambled for an excuse, looking down. “I’m…I’m not really dressed for, uh, crypt…things.”

  Drake looked to be hiding a grin. “What? I thought you didn’t scare easily. Are you superstitious, Kate?”

  “I don’t scare easily, and I’m not superstitious—just a little-stitious,” Kate said, giving a wan smile as they laughed at her joke. “All the same, I think I’ll wait out here until you’re done. Give you the time you need in there, and then we can talk when you’ve finished.”

  Drake shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ll likely be around an hour. That time frame’s still good?”

  Kate’s mouth dropped open. An hour? She’d be standing out here—in heels and a skirt—for an hour while he explored a tomb? Before she could process this, the older woman grinned, bobbing her head.

  “Absolutely,” Mrs. Scanlon said. “I’ve cleared my calendar for the next two hours to help in your research. I’m a big fan—we’re all big fans of yours.”

  Drake smiled. “I appreciate it. A writer is nothing without readers.”

  Mrs. Scanlon used a key to open the barred door that acted as an additional deterrent to trespassers over the crypt’s original white marble doors. Then the tall Mr. Clark used his bolt cutters on a rusty padlock as long as Kate’s hand.

  “Lost the key to this one five years ago when old Yancey was mowing, so we gotta put a new lock on ’er when you’re done.”

  The lock broke open with a loud snap, and the rusty chains looped around the door handles clattered down onto the stone pavers at the mausoleum’s threshold. Now, all that was between them and the dead was a pair of white marble doors, their brass handles tarnished to a dark brown-black.

  Mr. Clark raised the crowbar, and Kate gasped.

  “You’re not using the crowbar on those marble doors, are you?” She knew it was none of her business, but she couldn’t stop the protest. “That’s probably Tuckahoe marble, quarried right here in New York State.”

  Everyone gave her a blank stare.

  “Tuckahoe marble,” she said, enunciating it. “The same one they used to build St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan and the Washington Monument. It became very popular in the late 1800s—they even built Sing Sing prison next to the quarry to get free labor to pull the stone from the ground. I know all this because I’ve married two couples at St. Patrick’s, and I had the task of matching the linens to that marble. It’s a big deal since it’s all white with no veining and few blemishes. You can’t use a crowbar on it! If you crack it, you’ll never get a piece to replace it. The quarry closed sometime in the 1930s.”

  “Great detail for the book.” Drake chuckled, scribbling on his legal pad. “Tuckahoe marble. Quarried by prisoners. Who knew?”

  “No, the doors will open jus’ fine,” Mr. Clark said, looking down his sharp nose. He hefted the crowbar. “This is for the rats.”

  “Rats?” Kate squeaked, taking a giant step backward.

  The cemetery groundskeeper took hold of the handle for the door on the right side and pulled. Iron hinges squealed in protest, but the doors opened.

  Kate held her breath, ready to sprint back up the hill, suede heels or not, if she saw even a whisker. But nothing came out of the tomb except a swirl of leaves from the gust of wind created by the door’s opening.

  Craning her neck, Kate saw a dirty floor covered in some sort of decorative tile. No skeletons lay by the doorway, and no zombies staggered out. The morning was alive with the sounds of birds chirping and squirrels chittering and scolding each other as they sped between the memorials of the dead.

  Her heart stopped its frantic attempt to escape her chest, and Kate released her breath in a whoosh of relief.

  Drake laughed. “Did you think because I was here, something supernatural would happen?”

  The other two laughed, joining Drake, and Kate gave a weak smile.

  “Well, I’m not a zombie hunter by trade. It’s not every day I break into a mausoleum.”

  “There’s no vandalism here. It’s an authorized visit.” The groundskeeper gestured for Drake to go inside. “There’s the empty crypt by the far wall. Always been there—nothin’ in the record it was ever occupied.”

  “Yes, it’s very authentic and undisturbed. We don’t let just anyone into our crypts!” Mrs. Scanlon said, looking very pious. “You’re welcome to poke around—whatever you need for your book. I brought along a lantern and a flashlight for you. And I have a whistle too.”

  The woman retrieved a brown paper bag from the side of the building and handed it to Drake. When it became clear nobody was going to ask, Kate couldn’t stand the suspense.

  “A whistle? What’s that for?”

  “Cell phones don’t work in the old section of the cemetery,” Mr. Clark said, gathering his bolt cutters and crowbar in one hand. “You want to be let out before the hour’s up, you’re gonna want to blow that so Wendy here can let you out. I’m heading to the west side, if you need help. Jus’ don’t break anything, and let the dead sleep undisturbed.”

  Drake clipped his pen to the top of the yellow legal pad. He glanced at Kate.

  “You coming in to help me research?” he asked. “I can take notes and discuss launch plans at the same time—that was our deal, wasn’t it?”

  Kate sighed. Her choices were stand out here for an hour in the cold, shouting her ideas through the marble doors at him like some sort of lunatic, or be an adult and go inside, endure the graveyard vibe, and get her spreadsheet plan approved. What option did she have, when she was the one who’d agreed to help with his research, after all?

  “Coming.” Clutching her Strathberry tote to her chest, Kate climbed the two stone steps, her heels clicking on the marble.

  “After you,” Drake said, gallantly sweeping his hand for her to precede him into the tomb.

  Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders.

  “I don’t scare easily,” she muttered to herself, and led one of the world’s most infamous horror writers into a crypt.

  Chapter 8

  Drake stifled a laugh as Kate came to a dead halt just inside the mausoleum’s marble doors. Clearly, the day had taken a turn she wasn’t expecting. He, on the other hand, was thankful he’d downed a whole pot of coffee this morning, because now he was raring to go with his plan: use Kate’s muse-goosing powers to write the hell out of this romance. Exorcise the damn book from his mind—and his heart—so he could return to what paid the bills. His first run-in with her had produced an exhilarating almost-all-nighter at the keyboard. Who knew what spending another hour together would bring? His hands itched to write. But first, he had to convince her to stay with him in the old building.

  “C’mon, Kate. This is nothing.” Drake gestured with his chin at her purse. “You’ve got your sparkly crystal pen in there, don’t you?”

  Kate nodded, looking confused. “Yes. My pen is still in here. Why?”

  “Whew. Then we’re safe! It is your lucky pen, after all.”

  Kate made a noise of amused annoyance so subtle, he wouldn’t have heard it unless he hadn’t been hyperaware of her reactions. It was like his subconscious had absorbed their random physical closeness two days ago and decided it all meant something. Now, his every internal antenna was tuned in to Sweet Radio, like a satellite orbiting Earth.

  He smelled the scent of her light floral perfume as she swept by him into the mausoleum.

  “See you in an hour,” Wendy Scanlon said as she shut the marble doors behind him, grinning so wide, the skin at the corners of her mouth wrinkled and dramatically folded in on itself, like a shar
-pei’s. They were plunged in a sea of inky black, and Drake heard the metallic clang as the outer metal doors were also secured, locking them inside. Before his eyes adjusted to the darkness, a piercing blue-white light shot up like a laser in the old crypt.

  Kate had activated the flashlight app on her cell phone.

  “You look like the Statue of Liberty.” His voice echoed in the small space, and she jumped, whirling to shine the light at him, blinding him momentarily.

  “I feel like a girl in a B-rated horror film,” she said, her voice a little breathier than her typical tone. “The girl who when she appears, everyone in the theater yells at the movie screen, trying to warn her she’s made some dumb decision that’s about to get her eaten by zombies.”

  “Nah. Those girls are usually in bikinis or lacy pajamas. They’re never dressed in professional suits with heels and designer bags, so you’re safe from typecasting.” Drake fiddled inside the brown paper bag Wendy had given them, pulling out the lantern and switching it on. He pitched the bag with the other supplies by the door and moved into the center of the space, taking it all in. “You’re more like a superhero in disguise—the one the audience doesn’t realize has superpowers until danger threatens. You’re the one they cheer for when she comes on the movie screen.”

  Kate paused in her quest to illuminate every corner of the mausoleum to gape at him. “Wow, that’s a really nice compliment. Thank you. So, if I’m the superhero in disguise…does that make you the one in distress?”

  “Hmm. Maybe.” Drake didn’t know what else to say. He wished life came with a pause button to give him time to come up with a cool, snappy rejoinder. Instead, he focused on what he did best: writing. He hung the lantern on his wrist and flipped open his legal pad, ready to take notes and capture the atmosphere. Kate cleared her throat and disabled her cell phone’s flashlight to peer around the space.

  “So, what research points are you hoping to nail down in here?” she asked.

  He’d scheduled this mausoleum visit with the historical society and the caretaker a few weeks earlier, hoping it would help jump-start his overdue horror novel. But he didn’t dare confess that to Kate.

  “I’m not sure,” he finally admitted. “I wanted to see what it might be like to be…interred. Or trapped. Inside a mausoleum. It’s more of an inspiration activity versus actual book research.”

  Kate nodded, as if that bunch of BS made sense. “I do that when I’m scoping out new wedding venues.”

  Feeling as though he needed to say something, do something, to justify his visit—to Kate, if nobody else—Drake examined the white marble walls of the crypts and the names of the deceased inscribed upon them. He did a 360-degree turn with the lantern, illuminating the names as he spoke to fill what was becoming, for him at least, an awkward silence.

  “Bigger in here than I thought. There are five internments on this side. Let’s see, we have Ada Victoria Goodrich, who died first in 1898 at the ripe old age of thirty-two, and then we have Charles Goodrich, and Cora B. Goodrich, and finally…” Drake squinted to the uppermost stones. “…there’s Joseph and Jennie Wray Goodrich, who both died on the same day in 1937. Huh. Wonder what took them.”

  Kate took a breath, wrinkling her nose from the stale air. “Hopefully not suffocation from being closed in a tomb.”

  “Hmm. Not likely,” Drake said, noticing only after Kate’s reaction that the crypt did smell…funky. He set the lamp on the floor, squinting at his legal pad as he described the scent for a future horror book. It smelled like leaf mold mixed with a faint trace of ammonia. “There’s plenty of oxygen. See that?”

  Kate followed his gaze to the back side of the mausoleum where a tiny, iron filigreed window sat, cozied next to the roof. “Is that…a vent? That seems odd.”

  “Death was a messy business, especially before modern embalming. The vent was built for the dead and their escaping…odors.”

  “Eww!” Kate gaped at him. “And you know this how?”

  Drake shrugged. “Book research. When I was writing Scared Stiff, I shadowed a mortician for a few days. People think I’m the Knight of Nightmares, but all they have to do is talk to their local crematory owner to see how my fiction pales in comparison to their daily jobs. Speaking of jobs, how’d you become an event planner?”

  He’d been careful to use “event” and not “party” this time. He’d learned that lesson already.

  “I’ve been obsessed by weddings, and big events in general, ever since I was little and was asked to be the flower girl at my aunt’s ceremony. They had this elaborate affair in a grand old church, with a stretch limousine that whisked us away to a reception with glittering chandeliers over every table.”

  “Sounds magical,” Drake murmured as she paused. His footsteps echoed hollowly as he drew near a rectangular dais with a stone sarcophagus on top. He lifted the lantern to peer in, but the space appeared to be empty, except for some dust.

  “It was. At least for me,” Kate said, joining him to peek into the crypt. When she saw nothing inside, she sighed like she’d been holding her breath, and continued her story. “My aunt ended up divorcing the guy six months later. But I remember that day. I wore a pale pink ball gown and satin shoes with rhinestones on the top. I thought to myself: I want to feel like this every day when I grow up—like I’m living in a fairy tale. So, I became an event planner.”

  Drake grinned, taken with her storytelling. “I’ll bet you were an adorable flower girl.”

  “I was a terror. My parents spent the whole day chasing me around the reception. I barged in on every couple’s waltz, making the man twirl me around instead.” She laughed at the memory, shaking her head. “After that, I was hooked. And with my parents being surgeons, either one or the other would typically be called in for an emergency on the weekends, so I got to stand in a lot as the plus-one on the invite.”

  “I did my share of that, growing up.” At her incredulous expression, he elaborated. “My dad was career military and away a lot. Many times without notice. If my mom had already RSVP’d to an event with two meals, she thought it was rude not to go to the wedding, and since I was the oldest, she usually took me in lieu of my father. I became quite the connoisseur of wedding cakes. Or, at least, wedding cake frosting.”

  “Really?” Kate laughed, and her smile lit up her face, making that tiny dimple appear. “Who knew the Knight of Nightmares was a frosting fanatic? Now I have to know—do you prefer buttercream or fondant?”

  Drake shuddered. “Who in their right mind actually enjoys eating fondant? It’s pretty, but it tastes…”

  “Like sugary cardboard,” Kate finished, wrinkling her nose.

  “Exactly.”

  Kate paused, seeming to collect herself. “As long as we have a second of peace and quiet, can I ask you about the plans for the revised launch? We had an idea—”

  Drake put up a hand, nodding his head. “In a minute. Let me finish up and then we can talk. I’m getting inspiration for the next novel.”

  “Oh. It’s such a…quiet process.” Kate’s voice sounded almost, but not quite, annoyed. His previous event planner had fawned embarrassingly over him, calling him “sir” so often, Drake wondered if the guy thought he’d been truly knighted, and not just jokingly called the Knight of Nightmares.

  He found Kate’s annoyance refreshing and hid a smile as she struggled to come up with a follow-up question.

  “Do you, um, have an outline or a title yet?”

  He instantly thought of the file folder holding his notes for the romance novel he was calling Forbidden. It was a crappy title for such a beautiful love story, he realized, and he’d have to come up with something better…just as soon as he figured out the rest of his plot. But he couldn’t tell her anything about what he was really writing, so he used the name of the book he was supposed to be writing.

  “I’m calling it Twisted Twin right now, but my publisher will likely change it. They always remind me it’s my job to write the books, and t
heirs to sell them, and titles sell books.” Drake fell silent, his pen motionless above the yellow paper. He’d hoped the magic of just being with Kate would ignite his muse, just like it had after meeting her on Monday.

  But nothing was coming.

  He felt a tingle of apprehension at the base of his spine. What if he was blocked on all writing now? What would he do then? He had three mortgages. One was on his grandparents’ home, which he’d bought above market value, so his nana could afford to live in a single room in the assisted-living facility. The other two were the office buildings he’d bought for his brothers—a garage for Ryker and a ceramics studio for Zander. He had investments, sure, and he wasn’t strapped for cash, what with every new novel reinvigorating sales for his previous books. But still, no new words meant no new books. No new books meant no new cash flow coming in—a situation he hadn’t been in since graduating from college and finishing up his Marine reserve commitment, ten years ago.

  Suddenly, Kate cleared her throat. “Why aren’t you writing anything?”

  Drake snorted. It was as if she’d read his mind. Why wasn’t he writing anything? The million-dollar question. Literally.

  “I suppose it’s because I’m not inspired. Yet. Tell me, what do you see when you look around you?”

  “Um…an old mausoleum?” Kate shrugged.

  “Besides that,” Drake said, desperately glaring at his legal pad. “Pretend for a second you have a client who…I don’t know, wants to have an event here.”

  “A wedding? In a crypt? That’d be bizarre.” Kate seemed to check herself when she saw his serious expression, and she cast her gaze around the room, sizing it up. “I’m not good with words. I’m no writer. I mostly plan weddings and I’ve never done one in a graveyard. But I have to say, the acoustics in here are…interesting. It’s sort of like a church, echoing yet muffled at the same time. Close-sounding. Might be fun to have a small quartet in here, by the entrance. Guests would walk in and be treated to an orchestral-like sound in a micro-environment.”