AHMM, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Masks?"

  "Yeah, I already got mine picked out."

  "What about me?"

  "You buy your own."

  Buy his own mask? Cripes, he didn't have enough money to pay next month's rent and now he was looking at added business expenses just to do what Beaumont called a simple job. Okay, fine, he'd find something.

  Later that evening, after much soul-searching and several glances into the kitchen to ensure that his wife would be occupied with fixing supper for some time, Yarnell snuck into the bedroom of their three-room flat. Standing at the front of their six-drawer dresser, the one with the large mirror attached to the back, he hesitated for a moment before finally opening the top drawer on his wife's side.

  As he saw it, making some quick cash was paramount to his future happiness. He didn't like stealing from his wife, but if he didn't damage anything, and he returned what he borrowed, before she missed it of course, then it wasn't really stealing, was it? He ran his fingers over the silk, nylon, and other items inside her top drawer. Eventually, he chose a pair of dark beige pantyhose. These should do nicely.

  With one ear carefully tuned to the sounds of his wife still banging pots and pans in the kitchen, Yarnell eased the selected pantyhose out of the drawer, inflated his courage and pulled one of the nylon legs down over his head. Quickly he glanced in the mirror. Everything was slightly blurry. He leaned closer to the silvered glass.

  One eye stared back.

  The nylon was obviously too tight. His right eyelid was stuck down in the closed mode, while the left eyelid was hung up in the wide-open position. The resulting image resembled a lecher's prolonged wink. He tried to blink. Nothing moved.

  With his wide-open left eye drying out from lack of tear duct moisture, he quickly abandoned the idea of using a simple pantyhose mask. Besides, the second pantyhose leg hanging empty next to his right ear looked outright ridiculous. He might be missing a professional point here, but he just couldn't see how bank robbers successfully worked under these strained conditions. The beige pantyhose went back in the drawer where he'd found them.

  Now what?

  His next money-saving idea concerned his teenaged nephew's full-faced werewolf mask acquired for Halloween. One of them rubber things you pulled down over your head and peered out of the eye slits to see where you were going.

  It seemed the mask had been conveniently stashed here in the bedroom closet of Yarnell's apartment. The nephew's idea being that his parents wouldn't wonder where their wayward son had suddenly obtained enough money, on the small allowance they gave him, for him to be able to buy what they considered as totally unnecessary when a cheaper mask would do. After all, as the parents had lectured their son, Halloween was only one night out of a whole year, so why waste your money when people would freely give you candy anyway? Thus when his distraught nephew showed up at the apartment requesting a personal favor, Yarnell remembered his own hard life as a kid and agreed to hide the purloined thing for a few days until needed.

  Yarnell now dug the floppy rubber face out from the shoe boxes on the closet floor and tried it on. He adjusted the eyeholes and looked in the mirror. Oh yeah, this was obviously a mask for the occasion. He wouldn't need to carry his usual gun on the job because this monstrosity would scare the bejesus out of anyone. And, for that very same reason, he rationalized that his nephew shouldn't be wearing the thing out trick-or-treating on the neighborhood streets anyway. Just a glimpse of this gruesome face was enough to give some old lady a heart seizure right there in her own doorway while handing out candy. Yes sir, he told himself, by taking possession of the mask, he was saving some old lady's life and keeping his nephew from acquiring a charge of woman slaughter on his juvenile rap sheet. Yarnell jammed the mask into his burglar bag.

  If his young nephew wished to argue the point later, Yarnell could always explain that possession was nine-tenths of the law. Besides, his nephew's head was probably small enough to get the pantyhose concept to work if he really needed to disguise his face in order to rake in copious quantities of candy.

  The burglary was now a go.

  Late the next evening, Yarnell found himself stepping off the bottom rung of a storm sewer ladder onto dry cement beneath the alley that was located behind the designated jewelry store. He immediately froze.

  Beaumont, coming second down the same ladder, missed his next rung down and stepped on Yarnell's shoulder.

  "Ow."

  "Well, get out of the way. I nearly dropped my bag of tools on your head."

  "It's dark down here."

  "Then turn on the miner's lamp I gave you in the van."

  Yarnell reached up to the vicinity of his forehead and flipped a switch. A small beam of pale yellow light projected onto the nearest cement wall. He immediately felt a little more relaxed about his surroundings, but then his right ear tuned in. “Wait a minute, I thought I heard something."

  Beaumont climbed down the rest of the ladder until his rubber-soled boots touched the cement floor. The white beam from his lamp flickered on and stretched into the darkness of the cylindrical-shaped tunnel. “Probably just a rat or two."

  "Rats?"

  Yarnell scrunched back against the wall to make room for Beaumont to pass him in the narrow enclosure.

  "C'mon, this way,” said Beaumont, inclining his head forward. Three steps in, he stopped and turned around. “Better hand me the tape measure."

  Yarnell felt around in his pockets. “You didn't give it to me. It must still be up in the van. Want me to go get it?” He found his feet independently inching toward the ladder.

  Beaumont hesitated and glanced at his wristwatch.

  "Never mind, I'll just step it off. Two of my paces comes out to be about five feet in length."

  He turned back into the tunnel.

  "Five, ten, fifteen, twenty..."

  At the count of ninety-five, Beaumont stopped, took a can of red spray paint out of his nylon burglar bag, and sprayed a large “X” on the left hand wall.

  "Start here."

  Yarnell dropped his own burglar bag onto the rounded floor and took the proffered pickax. His backswing immediately hit the opposite cement wall. His forward swing, having lost all momentum, barely chipped the large red “X."

  "This isn't gonna work."

  Hand on chin, Beaumont studied the width of the tunnel.

  "You may be right. Let's try our backup set of tools."

  With a large battery operated drill, several charged-up batteries for the drill, and a long cement bit, Beaumont sank four holes through the rounded wall, then handed Yarnell a small sledgehammer and stone chisel.

  "Okay, your turn, connect the dots and we'll get this project rolling."

  With sweat soon dripping off his nose and forehead, Yarnell chiseled his way in relatively straight lines between three of the drilled holes. “It's a good thing this is old cement and crumbles easy or we'd be here all night.” He handed the hammer and chisel back to Beaumont. “I'm tired, you'll have to finish."

  As Beaumont banged away with the sledgehammer, Yarnell plopped down on his burglar bag for a rest. He alternated between checking out Beaumont's progress with the cement and trying to keep a watch on both ends of the tunnel, at least as far as he could see. Lately, he'd noticed that his light beam didn't penetrate the darkness as far as it used to. The batteries must be going. Leave it to Beaumont to forget to put fresh batteries in his, Yarnell's, lamp for a new job.

  One last time, Yarnell swung his head away from the ladder they'd used to come down into the sewer and turned his gaze back toward the far end of the tunnel. Hold it. Now there seemed to be four red shiny dots at the edge of the darkness, or more correctly two pairs of red glow-in-the-dark orbs. Strange, he hadn't noticed them before.

  Then two of the dots moved.

  Yarnell leaped off his burglar bag and pointed.

  "Beaumont, we've got company."

  Beaumont swung his miner's lamp toward the red orbs. His stronger beam of white li
ght showed two large rats hunkered down on the tunnel floor.

  "I told you there were rats down here."

  "Gimme that hammer,” muttered Yarnell. He also grabbed for the chisel in Beaumont's other hand. “This is like being in a grave, and them guys look hungry."

  With renewed fervor, Yarnell quickly removed enough cement to make a hole for a large man to crawl through. Beaumont then handed him a shovel to remove dirt. Six feet in and still laboring under the urgency of leaving the sewer behind him, Yarnell hit a brick wall.

  "That's gotta be the jewelry store's basement,” exclaimed Beaumont. He then passed the sledgehammer and chisel in to Yarnell. “Hurry up, we're behind schedule and I want to get out of here before the sun comes up."

  Yarnell was set to complain about doing most of the hard work so far, but the sound of a rat squeaking out in the tunnel changed his mind. Three blows from the sledgehammer and the old mortar between the bricks disintegrated into dust. Yarnell pushed his way through into the basement. Loose bricks tumbled out of the wall opening and clattered to the floor around him.

  "Are we in?"

  "I'm in."

  "What's it look like?"

  Yarnell rotated his head, playing the weak yellow light from his miner's lamp over the walls. He seemed to be in the back corner of a room.

  "Looks like a basement."

  "I mean, what do you see?"

  Yarnell stood up and dusted himself off.

  "Well, there's a lot of wooden crates and some long boxes and a metal worktable and some kind of machine contraption with small hoses hanging out of it."

  "That must be where they repair watches and do work on the jewelry,” replied Beaumont. “I always wondered where they did that stuff."

  Yarnell took two steps forward as he detected a rustling in the newly dug tunnel behind him just before he heard the words, “Watch out, I'm sending our bags through."

  Plop. Plop.

  Two black nylon bags hit the floor at his heels.

  "Do you see any security cameras in there?” came Beaumont's hollow voice from out in the sewer.

  "No."

  "Well put your mask on anyway. I'll be right in."

  Yarnell dug the rubber werewolf face out of his bag. He then removed the miner's lamp from his head, donned the mask and tried to place the miner's lamp back on over the werewolf's forehead. With the extra material from the mask, the lamp's headband was now too tight, it no longer fit. He settled for jamming the band over one wolf ear and part of the forehead, except that awkward position forced the eyeholes out of alignment and gave him only partial vision.

  "Okay,” said Beaumont behind him, “I've got my mask on. You ready?"

  Yarnell turned around to find he was confronting some version of Frankenstein, but the look wasn't quite right. The face seemed too flat. It was too—what was the phrase?—oh yeah, too two dimensional.

  "You're wearing a cardboard mask."

  "Yeah, I cut it off an old cereal box I found in my uncle's cellar a few years ago when we had to put him in a nursing home. Of course, the rubber band's new. The original one lost its elasticity a long time ago, and the cereal was stale, so the only good thing I got out of the deal was the mask. C'mon, let's go."

  Beaumont led the way up the basement stairs, where he tested the doorknob at the top. The knob turned. Cautiously, he pushed the door open and stepped into the main floor room.

  "Keep it quiet just in case somebody's close by the building,” hissed Beaumont. “There may be some trick-or-treaters passing on the sidewalk outside."

  "Yeah, I know,” came Yarnell's low voice, then he followed his partner in.

  They both stopped short to take in their surroundings.

  "This don't look like the inside of a jewelry store,” whispered Yarnell.

  "You're right, it don't."

  They moved noiselessly past several long boxes just like the ones Yarnell had seen in the basement, only these seemed to be set up on display for some reason.

  "I hear music somewhere,” whispered Beaumont.

  Yarnell rolled up the right side of his rubber mask to free that ear.

  "I don't hear nothing."

  "Maybe they got piped-in music and forgot to shut it off for the night."

  Yarnell rolled up the left side of his mask.

  "I still don't hear nothing."

  "Forget it. Just keep your eyes open."

  Yarnell figured he might have an eye and a half worth of vision, if he was lucky, with these misplaced eyeholes. He'd try, but it wouldn't be easy, which left him wondering. “So where are we if we're not in the jewelry store?"

  "Hold on.” Beaumont stopped by a small wooden table in the hallway. “I'll see what it says on one of these brochures they left out."

  "Well?"

  "Well, it says here this is a quality funeral home."

  "Funeral home? What happened to the jewelry store?"

  Beaumont shrugged. “Evidently I paced off the wrong number of feet before we started digging in the sewer."

  "So now what? We don't have time to make a new tunnel."

  Beaumont held up a pacifying hand. “No sense wasting all our efforts, we'll just have to capitalize on our mistakes and see what valuables we can find here."

  "You mean rob the dead? On Halloween night?"

  "I was thinking more of looking for a safe in the office. But, since you mentioned it, I'll check out the office while you have a look in the coffins."

  "Coffins?"

  "Yeah, I think that's what all them long boxes are that we passed back in the display room. See if anybody's got any, you know, gold jewelry or diamonds on them. Some people try to take it with them."

  "I can't pull a ring off a corpse."

  "And while you're at it, Yarnell, check the pockets for money."

  "Money in the pockets?"

  "Yeah, some mourners feel guilty about past debts or prior transgressions, so they stuff a little folding money in the pockets just in case there's a waiting lounge in purgatory."

  "You're kidding me."

  "That's what I say, too, so when Murph died all I did was slide a check for a thousand dollars into his vest pocket at the wake. Man, his people sure knew how to throw a going-away party. Lots of food and drink there, but if'n Murph had still been alive, I'm sure he'd have hit me up for more than a thousand, what with the vig and all his other charges for a personal loan without collateral. You know how he was, a real leg breaker. Anyway, I didn't have enough cash on me at the time."

  "So you gave him a check?"

  "Hey, it cancels my debt, and I sleep just fine at night now, thank you."

  Yarnell opened his mouth, but couldn't find the right words to say anything.

  Beaumont kept talking.

  "Don't worry, if I find a safe, I'll be right back to get you. Now go ahead and search any body you find, we can't leave here empty-handed."

  Beaumont and his white beam of light disappeared down the hall.

  Yarnell slowly looked around. His yellow beam didn't reach out very far into the dark. Well, no caskets here in the hallway, so maybe he'd go back to the display room they'd passed through earlier. Not that he would actually steal from the deceased, but if he did find something of value, then he could always guilt Beaumont into doing the dirty work. After all, Beaumont was the one responsible for getting them into the wrong building.

  Moving into the display room, Yarnell shined his fading yellow beam on all four walls. Six coffins on display. Cautiously, he approached the first one. The casket lid was split in half crossways, which allowed two openings, one top, one bottom. He wasn't sure which end was which, but since he'd rather see a pair of shoes first than to gaze directly on a dead face, he took a chance and raised the right-hand side.

  Empty.

  Relieved, he almost laughed.

  But then he rationalized, it could always be a midget in there and maybe the guy wasn't long enough for his feet to show. Gingerly, he raised the left-hand side.
/>   Also empty.

  This time, Yarnell did give a small chuckle to reassure himself.

  At the second and third coffins, he continued his pattern of opening the right side first and then the left side. All empty.

  He breathed a great sigh of relief. Beaumont was right, this was merely a display room for potential buyers of coffins.

  At the fourth coffin, Yarnell screwed up his courage and this time opened the left-hand side first. Empty like all the others. But, to be sure, he also flipped up the right side of the coffin. No occupants in here either.

  Approaching the fifth coffin, Yarnell cheerfully threw up the left-hand lid, and immediately froze.

  A body lay there on the white silk. It was a thin-looking man dressed in a nice pinstripe suit, his eyes with dark, double bags underneath were closed, and his pale white hands with long slender fingers were peaceably crossed at his chest. A glint of gold with a diamond chip showed on his left pinky finger. Whoa, right here was grave trouble.

  Yarnell turned loose of the lid, took two steps back, and quickly inhaled three times. The lid stuck in the up position.

  Boom.

  He listened to his heart pound in fortissimo. The rhythm seemed to echo in both eardrums at once.

  As the booming of his heartbeat gradually lessened in volume, Yarnell became aware of soft music. It seemed to be emanating from the casket. At least that's where he thought it came from. He stepped slowly forward again and gazed down at the corpse.

  It was wearing headphones, which now posed the question of what type of music did the recently deceased prefer to listen to as they prepared for their long one-way journey? And, was this part of that waiting lounge in purgatory thing that Beaumont had been talking about?

  Very, very carefully, Yarnell reached over and pulled one of the headphones away from the ear. He leaned forward to listen.

  The corpse opened one baggy eye.

  Yarnell screamed and jumped back.

  The corpse screamed and sat up.

  "You're alive,” screamed Yarnell.

  "A werewolf,” screamed the corpse.

  Yarnell rolled the front of his mask up to see better.