Cemetery Club
By
JG Faherty
JournalStone
San Francisco
Copyright ©2012 by JG Faherty
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
ISBN: 978-1-936564-23-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-936564-24-8 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011943919
Printed in the United States of America
JournalStone rev. date: March 16, 2012
Cover Design: Denise Daniel
Cover Art: Philip Renne
Edited By: Elizabeth Reuter
Endorsements
CEMETERY CLUB is like a plastic pumpkin bucket filled to the top with all of your favorite candies. Loads of gory fun!”
—Jeff Strand, author of PRESSURE and DWELLER.
"JG Faherty nails the whole small town horror concept with a King-like flair. I definitely identified with the main characters, both past and present. All in all, I thought it was excellent."
—Michael McBride, author of Predatory Instinct and Quiet, Keeps to Himself.
"With plenty of new twists on some old favorites, Faherty's latest novel provides readers with as much fun in a graveyard as the law will allow. Ancient legends, demonic shadow-creatures and ravenous zombies—what more could you ask for?"
—Hank Schwaeble, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of DAMNABLE and DIABOLICAL.
"JG Faherty seizes his readers by the throat and drags them straight towards the grave with Cemetery Club, a nail biter in the tradition of the best scare-'em-ups from the 80s. Faherty's strong characterizations and gripping suspense will leave readers hungry for more."
—Gregory Lamberson, author of Cosmic Forces and The Frenzy Way.
"I've known JG Faherty since he was an up-and-comer. Now he's arrived. Start reading him now - as in TODAY - so you won't have to play catch-up later."
—F. Paul Wilson, author of the bestselling Repairman Jack series.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank the people who are most important in my life: my wife Andrea, my parents, and my good friends, all of whom have supported me, knowingly or not, during the writing of this book and as a writer in general. They might not like what being a writer means – the hours spent alone on the computer, the travel, etc. – but they are proud of what I do and they’re supportive in the endeavor.
Special thanks as well to the people who made this book possible: Chris Payne and the staff at JournalStone, Michael McBride, F. Paul Wilson, Hank Schwaeble, Jeff Strand, Gregory Lamberson, Shaun Jeffrey, and Stephen Owen. Also thanks to Philip Renne for the great cover art.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the individuals that have suffered in understaffed, poorly-run, and downright dangerous mental institutions across the country. One of these is found in my hometown.
The terrible medical experiments carried out there in the early 1900s are what gave me the inspiration for this story.
I’ve spent countless hours roaming the abandoned grounds and exploring the crumbling buildings, both alone and with family/friends. I’ve read through patient files that described atrocities performed before and after a patient’s institutionalization, set in dark rooms that once served as morgues, shock therapy stations and laboratories. I’ve examined medical and dental x-rays and seen the rooms where children were packed like sardines, patients were washed with hoses, and misunderstood people spent years alone, waiting for visitors who never came.
How could places like that not be haunted?
To urban explorers like me, spending an afternoon in a desolate, run-down hospital, castle or house will always be more invigorating than watching a ballgame on TV.
Thank you for reading.
JG Faherty, March, 2012
Section 1
Beginnings
Village of Rocky Pointe, 1779
“Sinners!”
The word rode through Martha’s Tavern on a gust of warm, damp summer air that made candle flames dance and sent more than one man’s hat spinning to the floor. The muggy breeze faded away as the door closed behind Nathaniel Randolph. Tall and thin, with an Adam’s apple so large it looked like he’d swallowed a plum, Randolph glanced around the room, his perpetually wild eyes wide and full of righteous fury.
“Sinners!” he shouted again, lifting one hand to wave the aged Bible he habitually carried. “Ye shall all burn in Hell for your transgressions!”
“Shut your hole, Randolph,” one of the men at the bar called out. His companions raised their mugs and laughed.
“Aye. Go preach someplace else and leave hard-working folk alone, will ye?” called out another.
One of Martha’s ladies approached Nathaniel, her hair mussed from providing pleasure to trappers and tradesmen alike the past several hours. She shook her stained skirt and gave the town’s self-appointed reverend a wink. “Say now, preacher man, if it’s sin you be worried about, allow me to demonstrate how the pleasures of my flesh might just be worth spending eternity with the Devil.”
“Blasphemer!” Randolph held his Bible out like a shield.
More laughter rose from the bar and Martha herself let loose one of her braying honks.
“Suit yourself,” the whore said. As she turned and walked away, she lifted the back of her dress and gave Randolph a quick flash of her pale buttocks.
Randolph scowled and thumped his hand on his Good Book. “Listen to me! Repent before it is too late!”
When no one paid any mind to him, he thrust his well-worn Bible into his pants pocket and left the pub, mumbling under his breath about the folly of sinners.
“Good riddance, ye arsehole!” someone shouted at his back.
Outside the building, Nathaniel took a moment to compose himself, and then went behind a nearby bush where he’d stored a large sack and an oil lantern before entering the tavern.
They had their chance and they chose the path of the Devil. So be it.
He opened the sack and removed an iron bar, which he slipped through the handles of the pub’s doors. Then he took out two large jars of rum and splashed their contents liberally on each of the four walls. When he was finished, Nathaniel held up the lantern.
“Forgive me Lord, but what I do, I do for you.”
Wicked flames burst into life as he broke the lantern against the rum-soaked wood.
And in doing so, he sealed the town’s fate.
* * *
Rocky Point, NY, 1847
Flickering shadows danced against the trees as the residents of Rocky Point gathered outside the clinic. Nearly half the town stood ready, their torches lighting up the clearing until it seemed almost as bright as day.
Reverend Hollister Randolph, the only son of the long-deceased Nathanial Randolph, placed a frail hand on Percival Boyd’s arm. “Is there no other way, Mayor?”
Boyd shook his head, his silver hair turned bronze by the flames. “I’m sorry.
We cannot abide lepers near our town. We gave Doctor Charles fair warning; he chose to continue his misbegotten work. Now we have to think of ourselves.”
Turning away from the elderly minister, Boyd raised his hand. “It is time! Burn the sickness from our town!”
At his words the angry mob cheered and stormed forward. Men and women cast burning torches through windows and onto the roof of Effram Charles' Medical Clinic. Within minutes the clinic was ablaze on all sides. Screams echoed from inside the building, growing louder as the fire spread from room to room and the roof timbers collapsed.
Two hours later, nothing remained of the clinic but smoking stone, burnt wood and charred flesh.
The following day, the men of Rocky Point began digging a burial pit.
* * *
Rocky Point, NY, 1922
Dr. Grover Lillian hurried through the maze of tunnels hidden beneath the buildings of Wood Hill Sanitarium, followed closely by Hilary White. The property covered more than forty acres and the tunnels - most used for heat and water pipe access, others built so people could move comfortably between buildings during the frigid New York winters - would have stretched for more than two miles if laid end to end.
“Hurry,” Lillian urged his assistant, as he turned down a side passage that led to the burial area. “We can’t let them find out.”
White said nothing, focusing all her energy on keeping pace with the doctor while straining to retain her grip on the box of papers she carried. Lillian held a similar box, the last of the files pertaining to his small pox vaccine trials.
Trials. Lillian turned the word over in his mind as he jogged along the hard-packed dirt. It carried a foul taste and he wished he could just spit it out.
The very name implies a lack of perfection. And yet those short-sighted administrators refused to understand, bowed to public pressure. What did they expect? It’s a new drug; there were bound to be deaths.
His last conversation with the sanitarium’s Chief Administrator still echoed in his head.
“Thirty-seven children?” Wirth’s voice had reeked of false outrage. “That’s more than half your volunteers! We can’t allow this to go any further.”
Lillian clenched his jaw as he relived being made the scapegoat for the medical system’s inherent problems.
Volunteers. Hah! Another way for Wirth and his cronies to cover their involvement. Fifty children, ages twelve to eighteen, all of them suffering from serious mental incapacities. They couldn’t volunteer for a walk in the park, let alone a scientific experiment. Wirth had given him the fifty files to begin with; all minors who had no families to miss them should anything go wrong.
Nothing would have gone wrong either, if it wasn’t for that damn nurse! She'd been loitering in an off-limits stairwell, playing kissy-face with one of the orderlies, when they’d spotted Lillian carrying a body into the sub-basement for disposal. Instead of reporting it to Wirth, the tramp had suddenly found her morals and gone to the police.
And now...
Now they had only minutes to hide his research away before the police raided the building.
Lillian turned another corner and stopped so fast Hilary ran into him and dropped her box, spilling papers onto the dusty floor. She started to apologize but Lillian hushed her.
Up ahead, lights reflected off the cement walls, lights that bobbed and moved.
Someone had found the burial pit.
Pushing Hilary to the side, Lillian turned and started back the way they’d come.
More lights were heading towards them from that direction as well.
It didn’t take him long to consider his options. Being caught with the files and the bodies would be an automatic death sentence.
Why give them the satisfaction?
He drew his pistol and shot Hillary White in the back of the head.
Hot metal burned his tongue as he placed the barrel in his mouth.
What a waste. All because people cared what happened to a bunch of drooling idiots. No wonder science never advances.
He pulled the trigger.
* * *
Rocky Point, NY, 20 years ago
“It has to be me,” Todd Randolph said, clutching the bag to his skinny chest as the rain continued to drench the cemetery. Muddy streams cascaded alongside the blacktopped paths and cut miniature canyons between graves “I started it. I have to finish it.”
Cory Miles shook his head. “We can do it together. We should do it together. All of us. The Cemetery Club.”
John Boyd and Marisol Flores voiced their agreement. The four of them were huddled under the overhang of a mausoleum that was so old the date on the plaque couldn't even be read through the crust of dirt and corrosion. The door stood open, exposing cobweb-covered cement casket boxes to the dim light of the stormy afternoon. In the center of the floor, a ragged hole several feet wide showed black against the gray cement. A fetid odor rose up from the darkness, death, mold and wet soil all entwined into a palpable stench that seemed bent on forcing their stomachs to turn somersaults.
“No. I’m the only one who can stop it.” Todd lowered himself into the pit, his rail-thin body disappearing from view almost immediately.
“What do we do?” Marisol asked. Her dark brown hair hung in long, dripping strands. Her bra was visible beneath the pink Duran Duran t-shirt that clung to the curves she’d started developing over the summer.
Cory knew that image of her would stay with him the rest of his life, just as he knew he was more in love with her now than he’d ever been. “I don’t know.” He took a step towards the hole and stopped.
John frowned. “We can’t let him go down there by himself. The aliens...”
Cory shook his head, sending water droplets cascading in all directions. “John, they’re not aliens. There's no such thing...”
“Fine. Aliens, demons, it doesn't matter. They're all fucking impossible. But we can’t let Todd...not alone.”
“I know. But...”
“But what?”
“Maybe it’s better if we split up. That way if anything...happens, there’s still two of us to try something else.”
“Like what?” said John. “Go to the police? They’ll think we’re crazy.”
“Well, we can’t just stand here. We—”
A terrible scream rose up from the hole, the high-pitched wail reverberating off the stone walls until it sounded like a thousand people were crying out in pain. As abruptly as it started, the cry of distress cut off, leaving nothing but a mental echo in everyone’s head.
“Shit! We have to help him.” John glanced from Marisol to Cory. Even in the near-dark, the pleading look in John’s eyes was too powerful for Cory to ignore.
“Let’s go.” Cory walked to the hole and stepped into the black depths, which seemed to swallow his legs as they vanished into the darkness.
When Cory’s head dipped below the edge it was as if someone had turned off all the lights in a room. He held out his hands to either side for balance and cold, damp earth met his palms. Rocks and old tree roots made the footing tricky, forcing him to walk with a shuffle-step motion so he wouldn’t trip. Scuffling sounds behind him told him his two friends were doing the same thing.
“Cory? Can you see anything?”
Marisol’s voice came from a few feet back. Her words sounded strangely flat, as if the hard-packed dirt of the tunnel had drained all the life from them.
“No. Just keep walking slow.”
Cory followed his own advice, advancing one deliberate step at a time as the tunnel gradually sloped downward at a gentle angle. The pounding of his heart grew worse, until it felt like it was inside his head instead of his chest. He found himself breathing in rapid, shallow bursts, and he tried to force his lungs to draw in slow, deep breaths. The fear built inside him until it was an almost physical being, a creature lodged in his guts, pressing against his stomach and bladder. Never in his life had he felt so scared, not even back in June when he’d ridden the Category
Six roller coaster at the amusement park.
Something brushed against his foot and he stopped, praying it wasn’t a hand - or a tentacle - ready to pull him down to Hell. Behind him, Marisol let out a short scream.
“It was a rat.” John responded, his voice sounding close and far away at the same time, thanks to the impenetrable darkness that clouded all sense of distance.
Without warning, bright light exploded from further down the tunnel, so intense it blinded him as effectively as the darkness had. At the same time a terrible BANG echoed in his ears. Cory had time to yell “M80!” and then the ground started to shake and dance all around them.
“What’s happening?” Marisol shouted, as the rumbling in the earth grew stronger.
“I don’t know!” Dirt and stone cascaded down on them. “Hang on to something!” Cory dug his fingers into the tunnel wall, groping for a root or anything solid. Something wrapped around him and he let out a terrified shout until he realized it was only Marisol, clutching at him from behind. He felt her breasts pressing against his back and her hair falling on his neck like a wet mop.
The earth shifted again and Cory fell to his knees. Marisol landed on top of him and another body fell across them. He hoped it was John but his mind provided a different picture: a rotting corpse, its eyes glowing with putrid light, its mouth ready to sink decayed brown teeth into soft human flesh.
Cory opened his mouth to scream, and then the ceiling collapsed on them in a rain of dirt and stone.
Something hard struck his head and the world disappeared.
Section II
Cemetery Club Page 1