by Ron Ripley
He sat in an Adirondack chair in the backyard, swatting away a particularly annoying mosquito. Jenny was beside him, her hand in his, and Shane sat a few feet away. In a new fire pit, several large logs burned brightly. Sparks occasionally shot up when a knot in the wood burst and embers drifted up once in a while.
The three of them were drinking red wine, which Brian’s cardiologist said he could drink. In moderation.
Shane’s arm and hand were in a cast, and they would be so for a while. Brian was waiting for a couple of partial dentures to come in. Josephus had knocked several of them out.
Jenny had been forced to get a prescription sleep aid. Her nightmares about Josephus were sufficiently violent enough to force Brian to sleep in the spare bedroom.
The one who had suffered the worst, aside from the man who had been possessed, was Jacob Wurbach. Josephus had killed him. Shane, who seemed to have friends everywhere, was able to get Jacob buried in a small lot down in Nashua. Far, far away from Wood’s Cemetery.
Brian was worried about Josephus, and he had even asked Leo to inspect the crypt before he sent the spelunker in. But the malicious ghost hadn’t been there.
Nothing had been there. Leo hadn’t even been able to find the shadow world Josephus had created.
Brian didn’t trust it. None of it.
“You okay, babe?” Jenny asked, squeezing his hand.
“Hm?” He asked, looking over at her.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“Yeah,” Brian replied. “Just wondering where Josephus is.”
“I hope he’s in hell,” Shane said. He drank the last of his wine and set the empty wine glass down on the ground. “I mean, I really, really hope he’s suffering in hell right now.”
Jenny nodded her agreement.
Brian did the same as he let go of Jenny’s hand and stood up. He set his own glass on the arm of his chair and picked up the duffel bag. He carried it over to the fire, squatted down and reached into the bag. One by one, he withdrew Josephus’ bones, and he tossed them onto the wood. The smell was harsh, bringing tears to his eyes. Yet he continued to burn Josephus’ remains.
Dark, oily smoke rose up from the flames, and the bones cracked as they burned. It took him a long time.
When he finally stood up, Jenny said from behind him, “Burn the bag too, Brian. Burn it all.”
Wordlessly, Brian lifted the bag and tossed it onto the logs. As the fire ate at the fabric, he brushed his hands off on his jeans, walked back to his chair and sat down. Once more, his hand found Jenny’s, and he took another drink of wine.
In silence, Brian, Jenny and Shane watched the flames.
Chapter 72: St. Joseph’s Cemetery, Milford, NH
Rich Deering stumbled out of the parking lot for the Milford Steak House. Annie, the bartender, had taken his keys. She had also called Kristy, his wife.
And Rich really, really didn’t want to listen to Kristy complain about him being drunk. It was a man’s right to be drunk.
Hell, he thought, a man’s got to get drunk once in a while.
He had used the argument before. With limited success. Rich and Kristy had a fundamental disagreement as to what once in a while actually was. She believed it meant once or twice a year. Rich was a firm defender of several times a week. It made for some loud discussions at the house. Not to mention, him appearing in the police section of the Milford newspaper a couple of times a month for drunk and disorderly.
Rich wasn’t going to wait for her to arrive. She’d complain the whole way home, then scream and yell at him once they were in the apartment, and eventually the cops would show up.
Nope, Rich told himself. Not today.
He looked around and saw the gate to St. Joseph’s Cemetery was open. The weather was warm, he realized. A hint of summer in the night air.
No one will bother you in a graveyard, a soft voice whispered to him.
Rich nodded his agreement. No one ever went into cemetery’s, not after dark. Too afraid. It would be a great place to sleep one off. He could always make his way home in the morning after Kristy left for work. No, the cemetery was looking good.
Damn good.
Smiling happily to himself, Rich walked to the edge of the parking lot. He wasn’t drunk enough to not look both ways. When he was certain the way was clear, he crossed the road and fell when he reached the break-down lane. For a minute, he lay in the sand of the shoulder, looking up at the night sky. The stars and the moon were bright, and Rich smiled.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. He closed his eyes. He was tired.
No, the little voice in his head whispered, you can’t sleep here. She might find you.
Rich’s eyes snapped open. He definitely didn’t want to be found on the side of the road by Kristy. He would never hear the end of it. She would probably start in on the whole rehab clinic again.
Like I’ll ever go there, Rich snorted. He rolled onto his stomach and managed to get himself up on his feet after several attempts. He brushed the sand off of himself clumsily, and stumbled his way into the cemetery.
Now, he thought, looking around. Where to sleep?
Several mausoleums looked good. He could tuck himself in behind one and get some decent shut-eye and not have to worry about Kristy. She loved to wake him up when he had a hangover.
Rich headed for the closest building, but as he did so, the little voice spoke up again.
What if she comes in here? the voice asked. She’ll look at big places. The places up front. You should go to the back. No one ever looks out back.
Rich couldn’t argue with the voice’s logic, and he wondered, for a minute, how he had gotten so smart.
Must have been the Schnapps, he thought, grinning.
Usually, he didn’t drink it, but Matt had been buying. And when someone’s buying, you drink whatever they put in front of you.
Rich wandered through the cemetery, which was bigger than he had suspected. The moonlight lit up the headstones and the grass, the paved roads. He made his way steadily to the back, and he saw newer markers. Bright, polished stones. In the far right corner of the cemetery, he saw the perfect spot.
A new headstone. Not too tall. But nice and wide. Perfect to hide behind.
Rich was able to read the name on the marker. Dylan Mailer.
“Hope you don’t mind company, Dylan,” Rich said, chuckling.
But as he sat down at the grave something strange happened; Rich lost control of himself.
His body twisted around so he was on all fours. He ripped up handfuls of grass until the turf came up in sheets. The smell of fresh earth filled his nose as his hands plunged into the dirt. He dug quickly, and steadily, and he was unable to stop himself. Rich tried to get his hands to listen, to make any part of himself listen, but as he did so, the little voice which had told him so many excellent ideas, spoke up.
And it wasn’t little anymore.
I don’t need you for long, the voice said. Only for a short while, I promise. We have some digging to do.
Why? Rich thought, panic welling up in him.
I need something, something in the coffin. But don’t worry, the voice said, it will be easy to find.
What is it? Rich asked.
Just keep digging, the voice said soothingly.
Rich’s hands continued their excavation. He had formed a rough rectangle and worked down, casting handfuls of dirt out onto the grass.
Is it in the grave? Rich asked, horrified.
Yes, the voice said.
Somewhere in the casket? Rich said.
Indeed, it is, the voice said, chuckling.
Will it be easy to get? Rich asked, desperately hoping he was having a nightmare.
It depends on how you might view the task, the voice said. Have you fished before, Richard?
Yes, Rich answered.
Has a fish ever swallowed a hook? the voice asked. And have you had to retrieve it?
Yes, Rich replied. Did you lose a hook?
; No, the voice laughed. Not at all. But what I need is in Dylan’s stomach. Let us hope, for your sake, that they did not stitch him up too well. I would hate for you to have to chew your way in.
Rich screamed within his own head as his hands continued to dig.
Yet even as the stranger forced Rich’s body to dig faster, Rich felt something happening within his head. A pulsing and throbbing in his right temple. He didn’t know what it was, but he could tell it was bad. The farther he dug, the worse it became. Beneath the stranger’s control, Rich could feel his heartbeat changing, thundering erratically. It felt as though his heart was a fist and it sought to batter its way out of his chest. The vein in his right temple continued its own mad rhythm, and then one in his left temple joined in.
He felt his fingernails crack, and the pinky finger on his right hand broke. Rich’s lungs screamed for oxygen and his stomach rebelled at the labor. He threw up. The vomit, a foul mixture of alcohol and bar snacks. It turned the dirt into a muddy mixture as mucus ran from his nostrils and tears streamed from his eyes.
Rich’s arms shook and he knew it wasn’t from the digging.
I’m going to die, Rich realized dimly.
Not yet, the voice said conversationally. I’m not done with you.
Before Rich could reply someone spoke.
“It’s true, Leo” a woman said, and Rich looked up.
A middle-aged, attractive woman stood on the right side of the grave. Beside her was a smaller man, and while she had a sympathetic expression, the man’s was one of polite curiosity.
“Josephus is in the man,” the woman said.
Leo nodded. “Yes, Sylvia, you are absolutely correct.”
From a darkened section of the cemetery road, a man appeared, stocky and bald. He carried with him a plastic shopping bag and a shovel. The stranger within Rich’s head began screaming in rage.
Suddenly, Leo and Sylvia reached down and took hold of Rich, their hands painfully cold on his wrists. The stranger shrieked, blasphemies and curses spewing, ricocheting through Rich’s mind. Despite the freezing grip they had upon him, Leo and Sylvia were gentle, even as the stranger tried to force Rich’s arms to shake them off. When they had taken him out of the hole he had dug, the bald man reached them, nodded to Sylvia and Leo, and dropped the bag to the ground.
Rich didn’t see any more, for the one named Leo leaned over him and reached into his chest. The sensation was shocking, a bitter chill that fished through his flesh. Rich could feel the hands digging inside him. The questing fingers searched for the stranger and finally grabbed hold of him and tugged forcefully.
Horrified, and quickly becoming sober, Rich watched as a dull white form was dragged from his chest. In a moment, it formed into the bare semblance of a man, and the stranger attempted to fight Leo. Yet even as the stranger attacked the other man, Sylvia stepped in. The three forms melded and shifted, the earth shuddering beneath them. Grass turned white and broke, tree limbs shook and frozen leaves plummeted to the ground.
The sound of a shovel, striking something hard, caught Rich’s attention and he twisted around, wincing at the pain in his arms and hands.
At the grave, he saw the bald man, who threw the shovel out of the grave. He reached out, found where he had dropped the bag and dragged it into the hole. Within a minute, the man in the grave climbed out, with the bag and nodded pleasantly to Rich.
Rich could only nod back.
The man squatted down, opened the bag and pulled out a small object, which Rich couldn’t quite make out.
“Sylvia,” the bald man said, “I’ve got it. It was just one bone, right?”
From behind Rich, the woman Sylvia said, “Yes, Shane.”
“Fair enough,” Shane said. He placed the bone on the ground, removed a container of salt from the bag and shook some of it out onto both earth and the bone. Next, he took a bottle of lighter fluid out and sprayed the bone and the ground around with the liquid. A moment later, he pulled a box of matches from the bag, and a scream forced Rich to twist around.
The stranger who had been drawn from Rich’s chest was shrieking. Leo and Sylvia were on either side of the pale form, each holding an arm. The figure had lost much of its substance, and Rich could see a great deal of the cemetery through him.
“You cannot!” the stranger howled. “You must not!”
The striking of a match was the only response.
A moment later, the sound of flames devouring oxygen, filled the night air.
The thing which had hijacked Rich’s body shrieked. A terrible, agonized sound which threatened to shatter Rich’s eardrums. The figure writhed and twisted, seeking to escape. But neither Leo nor Sylvia let go.
He rolled away from the shrieking shape and looked back at the bald man. The man lit a cigarette as the flames reflected brightly in his pale skin. He saw Rich looking at him, and he smiled.
Around his cigarette, Shane chuckled and said, “Only way to get rid of him.”
Rich dry-heaved once, and fainted, the sounds of fire and screams chasing him into unconsciousness.
Chapter 73: Brian and Jenny and the Cemetery
Brian and Jenny sat on the hood of her car, staring into Wood’s Cemetery. They were parked just outside of the gate and each of them was armed with a shotgun. Each shell was loaded with rock salt, and Brian felt a nervous flutter in his stomach.
What if the bone in Dylan’s body isn’t the last? he wondered. What if there are more?
“Are you okay?” Jenny asked, glancing over at him.
Brian nodded, “Worried is all.”
“Me too,” she said. She slid a little closer to him, adjusting her grip on the weapon. “How will we know if it worked?”
Before Brian could answer, the earth rumbled. A slight tremor which shook the car and caused the chain around the gates to rattle. Then, at the far edge of his vision, where the moonlight shined brightly down upon the Paupers' Crypt, Brian saw movement. Dim, gray shapes drifted up from the grass. After a moment, he saw the shapes were people. Vague outlines of those who had been buried and trapped by Josephus.
They were moving up, through the air, and towards the heavens.
“It worked,” Brian said softly, pulling Jenny in close. “Thank God, Jenny, it worked.”
* * *
Bonus Scene Chapter 1: Woods Cemetery, August 1st, 1971
Jacob Wurbach walked to the office door, opened it and went into the building.
The heat within was heavy and humid, exactly the same as it was in the cemetery itself.
And Jacob loved it.
His blood had thinned after two years in Vietnam. He had also come home with a vicious case of malaria, as well as a form of ‘jungle rot’ the dermatologists in Boston were still fascinated by.
He set Gary Winn’s order and wondered where the man was.
It was unlike Gary to be gone when Jacob brought in the goods. Jacob was the only other man from Mont Vernon who had seen combat overseas. Gary had fought the Vietcong up on the Cambodian border, and Jacob had fought them on the coast.
Terrible times Jacob would like to forget, but his nightmares kept images of the war at the forefront of his thoughts most days.
Jacob glanced out the window over the desk, saw Gary’s beat-up old Chevy parked on the grass, and wondered where the man was. The doors to the bathroom and the closet were both open.
Jacob paused.
The double barrel shotgun, Gary kept around for the raccoons, wasn’t in the closet. On the floor by the desk was a package; the brown paper ripped free to reveal boxes and boxes of shells for the gun.
Jacob reached down, took a box out and looked at it.
Each shell was loaded with rock salt.
Jacob put the box back and walked to the doorway. He looked out at the cemetery and tried to spot Gary.
Where in the hell did he get off to? Jacob wondered.
Two quick blasts answered the question.
A moment later, Gary came running from the b
ack right corner.
Gary stopped, broke the weapon down, reloaded it with shells from his shirt pocket, turned and took aim.
Jacob tried to see what Gary had run from, and stiffened.
Harold Morgen was walking up from the old Paupers' Crypt.
The problem was Harold had been killed when a tree fell on him back in nineteen thirty-three, and since the Morgen family was poorer than dirt, Harold had been buried in the Paupers Crypt.
The man’s skin was sickeningly white, his eyes blacker than night in the jungle.
He was grinning. His long white teeth, which had always scared Jacob as a boy, flashed in the morning light.
Gary fired both barrels and Harold vanished.
When Gary turned and saw Jacob, he yelled, “Get out, Jacob! Get the hell out of here!”
Jacob didn’t wait around to ask why.
He leaped out of the doorway and raced towards the exit, only to see the gates slam shut on their own.
Jacob skidded to a stop, caught a glimpse of movement out of his right eye and turned in time to see a corpse pull herself out of an old slate headstone.
The lady looked even worse than Harold had.
Her skin was dark gray, the nails as black as her eyes. The lips around her open mouth were a putrid white, and she stank of death. A smell the war had made Jacob all too familiar with.
She was a short, thin woman, and whether her slim figure was from being buried for so long or the way she was in life, Jacob couldn’t tell.
He didn’t care either.
Her gap-toothed smile was far from friendly.
The shotgun ripped the air, and the woman vanished even as Jacob let out a howl of pain.
“Jacob!” Gary yelled. “Back to the office!”
Again Jacob didn’t argue, he turned and sprinted towards the office.
There were dead everywhere. Gary was at the office door, weapon ready. He stepped aside as Jacob hurtled in, tripped, rolled and slammed into the far wall while Gary kicked the door closed and locked it.
“Oh thank Christ,” Gary said. “Catch.”