by Jeff Strand
“Who did this to you?” I demanded.
He resumed shrieking.
“Michael, who did this to you?“I repeated, even though I could barely hear myself over his screams. He continued like that for another thirty seconds or so, then died down and began whimpering again.
“We need to get out of here,” Roger whispered.
“We can’t just leave him like this,” I insisted. “You go getJennifer, I’ll stay here and see if I can get through to him.”
“Think he has any more bullets in that gun?”
Michael lifted his hands and began to rub his eyes. I could see that his fingers were raw and bloody, the nails cracked, and a quick glance at the bottom of the coffin lid revealed that it was covered with deep scratches that hadn’t even come close to breaking through. Once again he started in with those nerve-shattering screams.
Then, without warning, he curled his fingers into claws and ripped out his own eyes.
“Jesus!” Roger gasped.
My stomach gave a horrible lurch as I jumped up and rushed over to the grave. Michael’s head lolled back, bloody sockets glistening, and he almost looked as if he were going to smile. Then he collapsed.
I could barely bring myself to touch him for fear that he might spring back to life, grabbing for my throat, but I worked up the courage to reach down to his wrist and check for a pulse. There was none. His heart probably gave out.
Roger’s hand was pressed tightly over his mouth and I actually expected him to burst into tears. He just sat there, trembling.
“He’s dead,” I told him.
Roger gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“What do you think we should do?” I asked.
“Kill Jennifer.”
“I’m serious.” I really needed something to drink. I walked over to the cooler and grabbed a beer. My motor skills weren’t at their best, and it took me three tries to open it. I took a long gulp, draining most of the can. “Should we ditch Jennifer and call the cops?”
Roger shrugged.
“We need to decide something. Now, if we call the police, we’re going to have some big-time explaining to do. And if we tell them what really happened, even if they don’t accuse us of trying to kill him we’re still in serious trouble.”
“We’ll have to lie to them.”
“And say what? That we just happened to be passing through the park with our digging supplies when we heard a lunatic screaming underground and decided to give him a helping hand?”
“We could say…I don’t know what we could say. Leave me to my nervous breakdown, okay?”
I cracked my knuckles. “We need to cover this up, literally. We need to rebury him. And then find out for ourselves what the hell is going on.”
“We know what’s going on! That freaky chick buried her husband alive!”
“Maybe.But why would she have us dig him up?”
“She probably thought he’d be dead by now.”
I shook my head. “Why would she need us to get the key if she was the one who buried him? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“There may not even be a key! This whole thing could have been an assassination attempt on us!”
“Oh, sure.I know if I wanted to kill somebody there’s no better way to do it than hire him to dig up a coffin holding an insane guy packing heat. C’mon, Roger, we have to be logical.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just that my sense of logic gets messed up when I watch somebody rip out hisfreakin ‘ eyeballs! Jesus Christ! Can you imagine what it’sgotta be like to be buried alive like that?”
I was trying not to. I closed my eyes for a few seconds to clear my thoughts, and then took a deep breath. Oxygen was usually beneficial in situations like these. “Okay, the first thing we have to do is search the body.”
“Yousearchthe body.”
“Fine.I’ll search the body. You keep an eye out for anybody who might be coming to investigate.”
I took another deep breath,then jumped down into the foot of the coffin. I tried to avoid looking at Michael’s ruined face, but I didn’t have anything to cover it with except dirt, and throwing dirt on the poor guy’s face just seemed wrong.
The first thing I did waspick up the revolver and set it outside of the grave. What possible reason could he have for holding a gun? I tried to envision a scenario in which he’d been trying to kill somebody, who’d buried him alive in self-defense, but couldn’t.
Okay, that wasn’t important now. I needed to find that key, if it existed. I knelt down, knees wobbling a bit, and began to pat Michael’s jeans pockets. The left pocket felt empty. The right pocket had something in it. It didn’t feel like a key, but it could be a clue.
I slipped my fingers inside the pocket, still unable to shake the eerie feeling that Michael could lurch at me at any moment. With my other hand I checked his pulse again to be sure.Still dead.
I got a hold of what was inside his pocket.A piece of paper. I pulled it out and saw that it was the best kind of paper: Cash.A twenty dollar bill.A perfectly normal thing to have in his pocket. I shoved it back inside, not wanting to steal anything from the dead that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Yeah, yeah, I know that defiling a grave is much worse for theol ‘ karma than stealing twenty bucks, but I didn’t want to push it.
Slowly, I unzipped his jacket, thankful that no blood had spilled anywhere I needed to touch. I opened it and checked each of the inside pockets, finding a stack of about ten business cards held together with a brass clip. In oozing red letters were the words “Ghoulish Delights.Michael Ashcraft, director,” along with an address and phone number. I pocketed the cards, and then closed his jacket.
I grabbed hold of Michael by the waist and rolled him over. His neck made a sickening sort of cracking sound as something twisted that shouldn’t have.
Once Michael was on his stomach, I patted his back pockets and found nothing, not even a wallet. Damn. With all the pockets searched, I was going to have to move on to less appealing possibilities.
But not his mouth yet.
I stood up. “I need your help,” I told Roger. “I’m going to lift him up, and you look to see if the key is lying underneath him.”
Roger walked over and crouched down next to the edge of the grave. I grabbed the top of Michael’s jeans and grunted as I lifted him up, his body doubling over at the waist.
“Nothing there,” said Roger.
I gently lowered Michael, and then sighed. “I don’t know what to do. I’m not going to strip the guy naked to find this stupid key.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here,” Roger suggested.
“Not quite yet.” I bent down again and pulled up the left leg of Michael’s jeans, exposing his white tube sock.Nothing hidden there. I untied his tennis shoe, set it aside, and removed his sock.Still nothing except for some blatant evidence that toenail hygiene had not been a major part of Michael’s life.
I removed his other shoe, and something dropped out.
A tiny silver key.
“All right!“I said, picking it up. “Now let’s rebury him and get out of here.”
I shoved the key into my pocket and climbed out of the grave. With my foot I shut the lid of the coffin. It didn’t close all the way, but Michael was just going to have to deal with it. Silently, Roger and I began to shovel the dirt back into the grave.
JENNIFER’S CAR was waiting at the gate, and she hurriedly got out as we approached. “Did you get it?” she called out.
“We’ll tell you all about it after we put this stuff back in your trunk,” I said.
“Yes or no, did you get it?”
“Hey, we’re just a pair ofgraverobbers trying to relax after a hard night at the office, give us a break. Do you have the money?”
“Of course.Do you have the key?”
“By `the key,’ you would be referring to a small silver object, maybe an inch and a half long, three triangular serrations on the end, smells heavily of foot odor, right?”
“That’s the one,” said Jennifer, obviously starting to lose her patience.
“I’ve got it, but I want some answers first,” I told her. “How did your husband die?”
“I told you.Suicide. He blew his brains out, or did you not notice?”
“Is that so? Then why was his head lacking a bullet hole for the aforementioned brains to exit from?”
She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying that he wasn’t shot.”
“That’s ridiculous. Of course he was!”
“Jennifer, sweetie, we just dug up his coffin. I saw his body. His head was intact. He didn’t shoot himself. Now why don’t you explain to me what really happened, and I’ll decide if you deserve the key.”
Jennifer chuckled without humor. “I have to say, you’re a much better human being than I expected. I did plenty of research, and the impression I got was that you’d do anything for money except get a real job.”
“What? Who told you that?”
“None of your business.”
“Well, that’s wrong,” I insisted. “I didn’t dig up your husband because I’m some money-grubbing jerk! I did it to keep my wife from finding out that I had to pay off the guy I hit without insurance! That’s not greed, that’s an honorable motive!”
“What did they say about me?” asked Roger.
“Quiet, both of you,” said Jennifer. “Now what do you mean, there was no bullet hole? Then how did he die?”
I folded my arms in front of my chest and spoke slowly, milking every bit of dramatic impact I could. “Until shortly after midnight, he wasn’t dead. Your husband was buried alive.”
Jennifer’s expression of shock certainly looked genuine. “Hewhat? “
“He was alive, he’d gone completely insane, and he had a gun. He didn’t kill himself with a bullet to the head; he ripped his eyes out and probably had a heart attack. So I’d like a teeny, tiny, little bit of explanation.”
Jennifer looked as if she were going to be sick. “Oh, God…I need my inhaler.” She opened her purse and fished around inside it for a moment.
But she didn’t take out an inhaler. She took out a pistol.
“I don’t have time for this,” she said. “Give me the key so I can give you your money!”
It was the first time I’d ever had a gun pointed at me, if you don’t count Michael firing through the coffin lid, and I’m pleased to report that I handled myself very bravely, in that I didn’t wet or soil myself. But the feeling rushed out of my legs and for a second I thought I was going to keel over.
“Drop it!” shouted Roger, taking out Michael’s revolver and aiming it at Jennifer. Her eyes darted toward him, but she kept her own gun pointed at me.
“Oh, give it up,” said Jennifer. “I don’t believe for a second that you’ll kill me.”
Roger shrugged.“Probably not. But I might try and shoot the gun out of your hand, and my aim sucks.”
“He’s not kidding,” I said. Actually, Michael had used up the last of the bullets during his little shooting spree, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell that to Jennifer.
Suddenly Jennifer gasped as a bit of blood spattered onto her face. An arrow protruded from her left shoulder. She let her purse fall to the ground and stumbled forward a couple of steps as Roger and I spun around to see where the arrow had come from. Whoever had fired it was hiding amid some trees near the gate.
Another arrow shot out of the darkness, striking Roger in the upper thigh and plunging deep. He let out a cry of pain and tried to make it to the sedan, but within a few seconds another arrow got him in the back. He went down.
I rushed toward a large tree close to the source of the arrows, trying desperately to reach it before I got pierced. An arrow sailed past my leg, missing by inches. After I made it to the tree, which provided sufficient cover as long as the assailant didn’t change his or her position, I glanced back at Roger. He lay on the ground, unmoving, while Jennifer threw open the car door and got inside.
A moment later she slammed her fist against the steering wheel in frustration, and I realized that her keys were in the fallen purse. She got back out of the car, rested her right arm on the roof, and fired four shots into the darkness. I didn’t hear any sound to indicate that she’d hit anyone.
For a full minute Jennifer and I didn’t budge. I could see that Roger was still breathing, though he didn’t appear to be conscious. I listened for footsteps, but heard none.
“Okay, Robin Hood, the game’s over!” I shouted. “Come out and show yourself!”
Some footsteps began to approach, and they couldn’t be more than ten feet away. I figured the person was out of arrows, but I didn’t want to test that theory by revealing myself.
“Listen to me,” I said. “I’m just the hired help, and I’m perfectly willing to talk this out.”
There was no response except for the footsteps getting even closer until it was obvious that the person was on the other side of the tree. The idea that I might be slightly screwed occurred to me, but I tried not to dwell on it.
Okay, I had to do something besides stand there. If the Mad Archer did have more arrows, it wouldn’t be difficult to get me into the line of sight and fire. So what I needed to do was leap out and get the element of surprise on my side.
I leapt out and was promptly hit in the side of the head by a metal chain, which surprised me. I would have reflected upon how much it hurt, but I was only conscious for a couple of seconds afterward.
Chapter 4
I PUT MY serious drinking days behind me after I got married, but in college I’d found myself awakening in the occasional weird location. The meat display at a grocery store springs to mind, not to mention seven-and-a-half toilet stalls (the Morning of the Urinal was not one of my finer moments).
However, no matter how intoxicated I was on any given night, I’d never before woke up in a situation as unappealing as being tied to a chair with a burlap sack over my head, which is where I was now. My arms were tied behind my back with a thick, itchy rope, and the sack effectively prevented me from seeing any of my surroundings.
“Anyone here?“I asked after struggling with the rope for a few seconds.
No answer. Behind me I thought I could hear whispering, but it was so faint that I could neither make out words, nor a voice.
“Hey, it’s me, the guy tied to the chair,” I called out. “Somebodywanna talk to me?”
Silence.
“Come on, people, let’s get a little verbal communication going here,” I said, doing a miraculous job of keeping the terror out of my voice. “My wife gets a really stinky attitude when I let somebody besides her tie me up, so we need to get this over with. Where’s Roger?”
“He’s fine,” Jennifer replied. Her voice was coming from at least twenty feet away, and she’d obviously been doing a lot of crying. “Andrew, listen to me. You need to forget about everything that’s happened tonight.”
“You’vegotta be kidding! I’m going to have a phobia of digging up coffins for the rest of my natural life!”
“I’m serious! If you want to live, you can’t go to the police! You have to pretend that you never met me, and that this never happened.”
“Let me talk to Roger, make sure he’s really okay, and maybe we’ll have a deal.”
Jennifer began to sob, a sound that was quickly muffled. The next sound I heard was that of footsteps walking slowly toward me. Each footstep was accompanied by a creaking sound, as if from wooden floorboards.
Cold sweat ran down my sides as the person stopped directly behind me. There was dead silence for a long moment, during which I held my breath and squeezed my eyes tightly shut, half expecting a bullet to explode through the back of my head.
Something struck me. Not a bullet, a fist. My head jerked forward from the blow, but it wasn’t a punch meant to do real damage. Then an open palm slapped my right ear, hard.
I didn’t say anything as I nervously awaited the next stri
ke, but it didn’t come. Instead, I felt the tip of a knife blade slide underneath the burlap and scrape gently across my throat, not hard enough to break the skin but certainly hard enough to earn my frightened attention.
“I need to know that he’s okay,” I said.
The blade swirled around in a figure-eight, and then was removed. The person didn’t step away.
“This would be a lot less awkward if you would say something. I thought people like you always had those voice disguiser gizmos.”
No response.
“Look, I assure you that your whole intimidation thing has been a rousing success! I’m scared! I’ll play along with your little game to keep you from slamming that knife through my neck! But you’ve got to give me some kind of proof that Roger is still alive.”
I let out a grunt of pain as my captor punched me in the face.
“That wasn’t proof,” I explained.
Another punch, not entirely unexpected.I decided to shut up and let things run their natural course.
Whoever it was stood in front of me, motionless.I could hear nothing but a very soft breathing and Jennifer’s muffled crying in the background. Finally, after about a minute, the person walked back to her.
Jennifer’s sobs could suddenly be more easily heard���clearly she’d beenungagged . “Please, Andrew,” she begged. “You have to promise that you won’t involve the police.”
I had to fight tears of my own as I realized that Roger was probably dead. I mean, was I really supposed to believe that I could just say “Scout’s Honor” and be released? Even if my captor really did intend to let me go, nobody could be stupid enough to trust that I would simply return to my everyday life as if nothing had happened, not without proof that Roger was still alive.
“Okay, listen, Mystery Guest, you want the key, right? I’ll give you the key. It’s right here in my pocket. I don’t want it. Take it.”
I thought I heard a snort of laughter.
“Okay, so, you probably already took the key. I’m sort of stuck working with nothing but context clues here, so cut me some slack. If you’ve got the key, there’s no reason to keep Roger. I don’t know who you are and I don’t care, so just free us and go unlock whatever it is you want to unlock!”