Returns and Regrets
Chapter 1
Rocky Point, present day
Todd Randolph looked at the door to his mother’s house and sighed. The weight of the suitcase hanging from his bony hand was nothing compared the emotional baggage he carried inside him, a burden he knew he’d never be free of.
Even though he’d never been inside the home - there’d been a fire in the old place not long after his hospitalization and his parents had moved instead of rebuilding - there was a strong sense of familiarity to the modest structure, thanks to the pictures his mother had sent him over the years. The old house had sat behind the Rocky Point Episcopalian Church, overlooking the Gates of Heaven Cemetery like a sentinel straddling the line between life and death. Todd got the same feeling looking at the current house, as it occupied one of the streets that divided the upper middle class neighborhoods to the east and the problem areas to the west.
During the twenty years he’d been incarcerated in Wood Hill Sanitarium, he’d kept up with the events at home through his mother’s sporadic letters. A new appliance for the kitchen. New wallpaper for their bedroom. Always with pictures, until she’d written of his father’s passing four years ago. In that letter she’d mentioned how the few remaining friends and relatives had gathered in the living room and Uncle Ron had spilled coffee on the rug.
For some reason the mental image of that spot had occupied a great deal of Todd’s thoughts, even after Uncle Ron had joined Father in the great beyond, leaving only a set of cousins on the West Coast as Todd’s last living relatives.
Except for Mother of course. And according to the doctors she didn’t have long to go either. Her emphysema required her to use an oxygen tank at all times and she spent a good portion of her day lying in bed because too much walking robbed her of her ability to breathe. Luckily, Father’s insurance plan had been a good one, which paid for a private care nurse to come out each day and help Mother with her daily living tasks such as bathing, getting dressed and making breakfast and lunch. Todd’s only contributions as the newest member of the household would be to clean, make dinner and do the shopping.
Seeing as how he was terminally unemployable, he figured he could handle those tasks. And it would leave him plenty of time to continue his research.
In a way, it wouldn’t be all that different from his prolonged stay at the sanitarium, the only difference being he could actually take a crap in private.
He wondered what would happen to all the other patients of Wood Hill, especially the ones not eligible for release into the real world. The closing of the area’s largest mental health facility was bound to have serious repercussions on the surrounding towns; ever since he’d found out about his impending release, he’d thanked the heavens the doctors hadn’t decided to place him in one of the many group homes that would no doubt be springing up in Rocky Point.
A curtain moved in one of the front windows, a dark face peering out for just a moment before the gauzy material fell back in place. That would be Mrs. Clinton, the home health aide. She’d come to Wood Hill the previous day to introduce herself and give Todd a key.
She knows I’m here. Might as well go inside. He realized he’d been unconsciously putting off seeing his mother.
Your first face-to-face with her in almost seven years. Of course there’s bound to be trepidation. The best thing to do is just get it over with and start down the road to renewing your relationship with her. Before it’s too late. Doctor Sloan’s advice, delivered in their last session.
He’s right. Time to start my new life.
With a heavy sigh, Todd started up the steps.
* * *
Doctor Eli Sloan stared out the window of his office and wondered at the irony of it all. Past the perfectly-manicured back lawn of Wood Hill Sanitarium lay the Gates of Heaven cemetery, the largest and oldest cemetery in Rocky Point. A strip of woods separated the sanitarium’s property from the back of the graveyard, the section where the oldest graves - some dating back well over a hundred years - looked down a rolling hill at their younger neighbors.
All they had to do was spend a little money. The cemetery probably would have cut them a deal. But no. Instead, they’d buried their dead in secret and covered up the whole mess just like the administration before them.
The news was all over the papers. It was the reason the sanitarium was closing. Gruesome discovery beneath insane asylum!
Over a hundred bodies buried in the ground under one of the old hospital buildings, one that hadn’t been used since the seventies. Patients without relatives or friends.
They should have cremated them. Then there’d have been no evidence.
Instead, the whole mess had been uncovered by two teenagers who’d snuck into the building and down into the basement with a digital camcorder, hoping to film a scene for a home-made horror movie they were making.
They’d gotten all the horror they imagined and much more.
Sloan was fairly sure he couldn’t be tied to the scandal, even though a good portion of the patients had been part of his special treatment group. He’d kept all his notes on the clinical trials at his home rather than in the office, just in case the sanitarium ever got audited. Running human trials without permission was a federal offense; he’d taken great care to make sure the nurses at the sanitarium never knew he’d been injecting certain patients with his various formulas for two decades. Most of his secret test subjects had responded surprisingly well.
Only a small percentage had suffered any side effects.
But those side effects had been pretty bad: convulsions, agonizing joint pain and death from seizure were the three most common. One out of twenty had responded adversely to the last version of the medication. Not nearly as bad as his first trial, twenty years earlier, but still bad enough that he knew he’d never get federal approval for human trials. So as far as anyone at the clinic knew, his testing was still being done on rats and mice, which unfortunately, were showing similar side effect ratios.
The problem was rats and mice weren't humans. It was conceivable he could come up with a formula that didn't work in rodents but meshed well with human physiologies. Certainly the opposite was true when it came to clinical trials. And when you worked with compounds intended to affect psychological function rather than a disease state, well, the only true test was how the drug worked in people.
His thoughts returned to the irony of the situation. He’d caused more than sixty deaths since coming to Wood Hill but no one suspected his patients – many of whom suffered physical as well as mental ailments - had died from anything but natural causes. And yet he was still losing his job, because the state was shutting down the facility for illegal burial practices.
At least I can honestly say I had no idea what they were doing with the bodies after I signed the death certificates. He’d been as shocked as anyone when the news broke. He’d assumed the corpses ended up in cheap wooden caskets at the ass-end of the cemetery, a step up from a Potter’s Field burial.
Assholes.
Sloan turned away from the window and finished packing his desk. He’d signed the release for his last patient yesterday, Todd Randolph. Now there was a true success story, one he could write about someday: How I cured Rocky Point’s Reverend of Death.
The boy had come in at the age of sixteen, only a month after Sloan’s near catastrophe with his first trial of his drug. Thirteen patients, thirteen dead. If he hadn’t thought quick and set the wing on fire, making sure all the bodies were in one of the group therapy rooms, he’d have spent the last twenty years locked away, just like Todd Randolph.
Instead, he’d ended up as the psychiatrist in charge of one of the most sensational criminals in the town’s history. The local preacher’s son, accused of murdering dozens of people, found in his secret lair surrounded by the corpses of his victims and clutching a Bible, Holy water and a cross all stolen from his father’s church.
In their first session together, Todd had admitted his guilt, cla
iming he’d “raised a demon” and the demon had killed everyone.
It had taken Sloan fourteen years to rid the Randolph boy of his delusions and another six to convince the state he was no danger to society. That decision had only come about when the closing of the sanitarium seemed imminent, leading Sloan to believe they’d finally agreed to release Todd because it was easier than relocating him to a new facility.
Sloan was confident Randolph would live out the rest of his life in relative normalcy. All his issues had stemmed from his relationship with his over-bearing, ultra-conservative religious father. Now that the dad was dead, there was nothing for the adult son to rebel against.
That would be a good theme for the book, he thought, as he closed his office door and headed for the exit. Modern psychiatry, wiping away the sins of the past.
* * *
Todd Randolph walked past the front desk of the Rocky Point Library, pretending he didn’t notice the cold stares cast in his direction by the two old women behind the counter. Their animosity didn’t surprise him. He’d received the same glares everywhere in town, from the post office to supermarket, and even at the Chinese takeout place. He’d only been home three days but he was already Number One on everyone’s most-hated list.
Twenty years and no one’s forgotten. Of course, he hadn’t expected they would. People tended to remember mass murderers.
Let them stare. I have work to do.
Locating an unoccupied cubicle with a PC, he sat down and initiated his first Google search of the day.
“demons+underground”
A few minutes later, the feeling of being watched and judged went away as the library’s patrons returned to their own tasks.
But Todd’s guilt and self-loathing remained as strong as ever.
* * *
Pete Webster scooped another shovelful of dirt and tossed it into the wheelbarrow. The hot, muggy June day had evolved into an even hotter, muggier June evening. He felt like he’d sweated out a gallon of water from all the shoveling and planting he’d been doing.
What the hell does the cemetery need more plants for? he thought, pausing to wipe his arm across his forehead. The dirt and grime on his forearm were like sandpaper across his face. Damn place has more bushes than hippie porn.
Of course, these bushes were different. They were being planted around an old mausoleum in an effort to hide the cracked stone exterior. Someone in management had decided the whole damn cemetery needed sprucing up and it was a lot cheaper to have the groundskeepers plant flowers and shrubs than to actually fix the physical structures.
Next to him, Frank Adams, his shift partner for the past five years, leaned his shovel against the mausoleum and took his gloves off. “Christ, it’s fuckin’ hot as an oven. Why’d they pick summer to do this shit?”
Pete gave a sarcastic laugh that caused drops of sweat to fly off his face. “’Cause their brains are in their asses. But just think how good the beer’ll taste later.”
“Fuck later; I need something right now, before I pass out.”
“There’s still a couple of Cokes left,” Pete said.
“Good. You want one?”
“Naw, I’m saving mine for when we’re done.”
“Suit yourself.” Frank walked over to the cooler that sat next to the old green pickup truck and opened a can of soda.
Pete leaned on his shovel and tried to catch his breath, no easy task when there seemed to be as much moisture in the air as on his skin. As he inhaled, he caught a whiff of something nasty, a stink that reminded him of the beer bottles they’d sometimes find after kids partied in the cemetery. Every now and then a mouse would crawl inside of one and drown in the leftover beer, producing a sickly-sweet rotten smell.
Turning around, Pete sniffed at the air, trying to determine where the odor came from. Something that strong had to be bigger than a mouse. If there was a dead animal in the cemetery they’d have to get rid of it before morning. People preferred to visit graves without actually being reminded what death looked and smelled like.
The odor seemed strongest near the mausoleum. Pete grabbed his shovel and headed for the back of the building, intent on finding the woodchuck or cat that was stinking up the place. As he rounded the corner, a strange feeling enveloped him, icy fingers tickling his back while at the same time a giant centipede ran circles in his stomach. The last time he’d felt something similar was when the ice started crackling beneath him as he crossed Jensen Pond on a snowy winter afternoon. He’d been terrified the ice would give way and send him to his death in the frigid waters.
A dark figure rose up from behind a nearby headstone and Pete jumped. His first thought was that a child was playing a joke on him.
Then he saw the face.
Pete opened his mouth to scream but before any sounds came out, the thing shot through the air, its stubby arms outstretched as it raced towards him like a black cat. It latched onto his face with icy-cold hands. Pete tried to grab it but his fingers passed right through as if he was trying to catch smoke. It pressed itself against his flesh and forced its head into his mouth. He fell to the ground, clutching at his neck as it clawed its way down his throat.
Frank Adams put down his soda and headed back to the mausoleum. He’d seen Pete go around to the other side of the old building. “Hey, Pete? Whatcha doin’?”
When there was no answer, he walked around the corner. As he did, he noticed a rotten meat smell. He was about to call for Pete again when a flash of movement caught his eye. There was no time to raise his arms as he realized it was a shovel coming at his head. Cold metal struck him across his cheek and temple and his whole world turned into a jumbled kaleidoscope of images as he stumbled backwards. It took a moment for the pain to register, but when it did, it was like someone had lit his face on fire and then put it out by dropping cement blocks on it.
Frank staggered like a drunken man attempting a waltz and then tripped over one of the bushes waiting for planting. His vision tripled and he fought to focus as someone came into view.
The man’s arms rose up, the shovel silhouetted against the afternoon sky for a moment before it started its downward arc. In that brief instant Frank’s heart skipped a beat. He recognized his attacker.
The shovel came down, flattening Frank’s nose and knocking out all his front teeth. Pain exploded in his face, a thousand times worse than the first blow. He tried to shout but only a raspy, choking cough came out, accompanied by a mouthful of blood and teeth. More blood streamed down from his ruined nose, mixing with the tears flowing from his eyes.
He never saw the shovel blade come down the third time but he felt its edge bite into his neck, cutting through skin and muscle and gristle until it scraped against bone.
The last thing he saw was a heavy work-boot hovering in the air over his ruined face.
Pete Webster watched Frank’s head roll away, the stump of the man’s fat neck still dribbling blood. He stared at his friend’s corpse for a moment, his head tilted as if listening to a distant sound. Then he went to the truck and retrieved the heavy pickaxe, which he used to break the lock on the mausoleum door. Inside, he raised the pick and attacked an irregularly shaped patch of cement that was a different color than the rest of the floor. It took a dozen blows before a large section collapsed, exposing a night-black hole in the earth.
Pete tossed the pick aside and went back for Frank's body. He dragged it into the crypt and tore into it with his teeth, ripping mouthfuls of flesh and swallowing them whole. Only after he’d sated his dark hunger did he drop the remains of the corpse into the dark depths of the pit. Then he closed the door, wedged the pick against it and climbed into the hole.
Frank’s head lay undisturbed for less than a minute before a crow landed near it. The bird approached carefully, ready to take flight at the first sign of movement. When the head remained still, the crow jumped onto Frank’s face and drove its beak into a soft, juicy eye.
* * *
A hundred yards away,
lying in the shade of a large elm tree, John Boyd shivered, whimpering as he chugged Old Granddad straight from the bottle. Although he’d witnessed Pete Webster attack Frank Adams with the shovel and then disappear into the old mausoleum, it wasn’t the murder that had him terrified.
It was what he’d seen before Pete attacked Frank.
The thing that had entered Pete’s body.
One of them. It was one of them!
Eyes squeezed shut, John took another mouthful, hoping the rotgut whiskey would erase his memories of the past ten minutes. Hoping it had only been a hallucination. It was possible. More than once since climbing off the sobriety wagon, he’d seen things that weren’t really there.
But it had seemed so real! The grayish-black body, shorter than a man, more like a child’s shadow against a wall. The egg-shaped head, with the round, black mouth that was like a hole in the fabric of reality.
And the eyes - ovals of red fire set at angles in the flat face, with elliptical black pupils in their centers.
It couldn’t be one of them. We killed them all. Todd killed them all.
Didn’t he?
In that instant John knew he had to get away before the grays got him too. He stood up, chugged the last few inches of bourbon and staggered down the path that led to the main gate on Hickory Street. From there it was only a few blocks to the shelter he’d been staying at lately.
“Not again, not again, not again,” he mumbled as he stumbled down the cracked, broken sidewalks lining both sides of the once-prosperous street. “The Grays are back. The Grays are back.”
Inside the shelter he let his body fall onto the first unoccupied bunk he found. By the time his face hit the stained pillow, his mind had already gone blank.
The next morning, the events of the cemetery were no more than a dim nightmare, no worse than any of the others he’d suffered for the past five years.
Cemetery Club Page 2