Tombs of Endearment

by Casey Daniels

  “Stories that might not be so silly after all.”

  “Whatever.”

  Quinn had been willing to swallow his pride and call me. I figured the least I could do in return was meet him halfway. “Look,” I said, “we could do it another time.”

  “I thought this was the other time.”

  “It would have been the other time if you gave me time to make time.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You said that before.”

  “You make me lose track.”

  “We can do it again?”

  “Sure.” Before my ego and those pesky hormones could rejoice, he qualified the response. “But next time, you’re going to have to call me.”

  “But—”

  “I’m erasing your number from my cell phone.”

  “But—”

  “I’m taking you out of my Rolodex at the office.”

  “But—”

  “Goodbye, Pepper.”

  “Goodbye,” I said, the reply automatic even though the sound of the dial tone was already blaring in my ear.

  So that was that. One live guy down and one dead guy to go. Could my love life get any more pathetic?

  There was only one way to find out.

  I checked the clock, grabbed my sweater, and went out in the pitch-dark cemetery to look for my date.

  Chapter 4

  I had recently observed my six-month anniversary as an employee of Garden View Cemetery. On my own, this is not something I would have noticed, and if I did, it sure wasn’t anything I would have celebrated. But Ella being Ella…well, she made a big deal out of it. She took me to lunch and gave me a mini-review. In it, she pointed out that although I still had a long way to go when it came to mastering the ins and outs of the cemetery business, I had made what she called “great strides.” According to her, every day I knew more about the history of Garden View and the folks buried there and, she pointed out, I’d already planned and researched two tours on my own, written articles for the newsletter, and been an all-around team player. She even went out of her way to mention that ugly period the summer before when I’d been laid off from my cemetery tour guide job and still stepped in to do her a huge (and, as it turned out, dangerous) favor.

  I was learning a lot, she told me, and though I wasn’t nearly as jazzed about all this as she was, I couldn’t dispute any of it.

  One of the things I’d already learned was that I didn’t like to be in the cemetery by myself after dark. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a chicken. It’s not the dark part that bothers me as much as it’s the myself part. I have my Gift to thank for that. After all, I know better than anybody: Just because I’m by myself doesn’t mean I’m alone.

  I thought about this as I listened to the main door to the office building swish closed and lock behind me. Automatically I checked the parking lot and the long, silent stretch of cemetery I could see beyond the glow of the nearby security light. One ghost at any one time was more than enough, and I already had Damon to deal with; I didn’t want to be waylaid by some other specter who needed my services.

  The coast was clear, and breathing a sigh of relief, I hopped into my Mustang and locked the doors. I wasn’t fooling anyone but myself; I knew from experience that if they wanted to, ghosts could get past the locks and materialize in my car. But hey, whoever said hope springs eternal must have known something about avoiding pesky spooks.

  There are no streetlights in the cemetery, and the roads through Garden View are as picturesque as the rest of the place. They sweep over stone bridges and curve through groves of trees. The road I was on wound its way through the newer sections of the cemetery, and I followed it for a while, then turned. I wasn’t headed for the front gate and the older sections where Cleveland’s once rich and powerful are buried with pomp, circumstance, and elaborate monuments, but down into the valley that borders one little corner of Garden View.

  “Creepy.” The word whooshed out of me as, both hands on the wheel, I maneuvered the Mustang through a hairpin turn on a narrow stretch of road and went down, down, down. At the bottom of the hill, the valley opened up to a field where people from the surrounding neighborhoods brought their dogs to run. On my right was a line of tombs built into the side of the hill. Once upon a long time ago, they’d been showplaces. But years had passed since anyone was buried in any of them, and the families that had once carefully tended to their dearly departed were now dearly departed themselves. The Garden View grounds crew took as good care of these tombs as possible, but as Ella had enthusiastically pointed out, I’d learned a lot in the six months I’d been there. One of those things was that there would always be a certain amount of natural decay in a cemetery (no pun intended). The other was that no matter how hard anyone wished it would stop, it was impossible to eliminate vandalism. The tombs I passed had seen better days. Their front steps and pillars were cracked and patched. Their stained glass windows were missing or broken. The gaping holes left behind had been filled with cement, and in the gloom, the squares of lighter-colored material stared at me like unblinking eyes.

  I told my overactive imagination to shut up and crept along carefully, following the map to Damon’s grave that I’d printed out at the office and left on the front seat next to me. It was dark and way too quiet in the valley. Exactly, I reminded myself, why Damon had been buried there, far from the hustle and bustle of the more active parts of the cemetery. According to what I’d read in our archive files, Damon’s business manager and agent, who’d arranged the burial, decided that the more out-of-the-way his grave was, the less likely it was to be overrun by fans.

  In theory, it was a good idea. But that agent should have known that it’s hard to keep wild and crazy rock fans down. When I cruised up to the grave, there was a group of people standing around. I saw in a moment that these weren’t die-hard fans, though. They were carrying flashlights, cameras, and, oh yeah, Geiger counters.

  Since the ghostbusters seemed hell-bent on looking at their instruments and nothing else, I slammed my car door to announce my presence.

  “Cemetery’s closed,” I said. My voice echoed through the valley like a disembodied thing. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

  “You’re just saying that so you can do some ghost hunting on your own, right? You want to get the scoop yourself.” A guy who was apparently the leader of the merry band approached me, his hand out. “Brian,” he said. “And this is John, Theo, Angela and Stan.” The other ghostbusters barely spared me a look, which was fine by me because though I waved to be polite, I really didn’t care about them, either. “You must be investigating, too.”

  “I work here,” I told him. “I’m not investigating anything.”

  If I didn’t get rid of the ghost hunters, it would be true. No way could I chat with Damon while they were around. “I stayed late at the office and decided to leave the back way.” I waved in some vague direction to make Brian think I just happened to pass by on my way out. “What are you guys up to?”

  “Looking for Damon Curtis, of course.” The answer came from Stan, who was holding a yellow Geiger counter. He pointed it right at me and took a reading. It didn’t beep or buzz. I was grateful. Stan lost interest. He did a circuit around the simple headstone I saw illuminated by Theo’s flashlight.

  Damon Michael Curtis, it said. There were no dates listed and nothing about Mind at Large or platinum albums, world tours, and the adoration of millions of screaming fans. Behind the stone where Damon’s name was carved was another stone. This one was flat and as large as a twin bed, and over the years, the fans who’d been plucky enough to make the pilgrimage down there had turned it into a shrine. Candles winked from colorful glass cups, their light glinting off a bottle of Johnny Walker Black, a dozen Mind at Large CDs, a Styrofoam cup with the words City Roast printed on the side, and a bong.

  “I’ve worked here for like forever,” I told Brian. “I’ve never heard one story about Damon Curtis haunting this place.”

 
“But he has to.” Angela caught wind of the conversation and hurried over. “A young rock star. A tragic death.” She was carrying a digital camera that she held to her heart. “This is the stuff great hauntings are made of!”

  “Maybe, but—”

  “You mean you haven’t heard anything about Curtis? From anybody?”

  The question came from Brian, so I turned back to him. He was wearing one of those vests I’d seen fishermen wear, the kind with about a hundred little pockets all over it. Even as I turned, he patted down his pockets. He took out a notebook from one and put it back, a pen from another and put that away, too. Finally he found what he was looking for, a couple of AA batteries, and he handed them to John, who was standing nearby with a tape recorder that was apparently out of juice.

  I did a double take. “Tape recorder?” I wondered out loud, and maybe ghostbusters are used to this kind of skepticism; John didn’t take offense.

  “For EVP,” he explained, slipping the old batteries out of the recorder and popping in the new. “That’s Electronic Voice Phenomenon. Sometimes you don’t see a ghost or get any readings from the other equipment, but if you talk to them, they talk back. Not that you can hear them while it’s happening. But later, when you play back the recording…well, let me tell you, it’s wild. We’ve recorded some amazing things!”

  A few months earlier, none of this would have worried me. Like most people of sound mind, I figured ghostbusters were nothing more than nutcases. Sure they were dedicated, and some were scientific, too. But in the months I’d worked at Garden View, I’d seen my share of them, and I knew what they were really all about was the equipment. Yep, techno-junkies, every last one of them.

  And like I said, I wasn’t worried. I knew ghosts were real, but finding ghosts with the help of things that went beep in the night? Not a chance!

  Or so I thought.

  Until Dan Callahan bushwhacked me at a party.

  Okay, a quick explanation is in order here. Dan is a brain researcher. At least I thought he was a brain researcher. I met him at the hospital after I clunked my head on Gus Scarpetti’s mausoleum and Dan told me that my brain scans were odd and that he wanted to study me. I thought he was nothing more than a nerd, but that was before the fateful day he saved my life. After that, he started following me around. Only I could never catch him at it and ask what he was up to. Until the aforementioned party.

  That’s when Dan showed up out of nowhere and shoved a photograph under my nose. It was a picture of me, and in it I was standing with two misty white blobs.

  They were ghosts.

  I knew that, but Dan shouldn’t have, and though he didn’t come right out and say it, it was clear he did.

  Disturbing, yes? Especially when I didn’t know there was a camera sophisticated enough to take a picture like that. When Dan left me at the party, he gave me some cryptic advice: I was messing with powers I couldn’t possibly understand, and it was dangerous, he said. More specifically, he told me that if I was smart, I’d back off.

  Oh yeah, and that it was the only warning I’d ever get.

  Good thing a shiver scooted up my back. It forced my mind away from worrying about what Dan was up to these days and back to the matter at hand.

  Ghostbusters.

  Who, if past experience meant anything, just might be lucky enough to capture evidence of a certain ghostly client of mine.

  John and his tape recorder were already headed back toward Damon’s grave, so I turned back to Brian. “You haven’t recorded anything here, have you?” I asked him. “You’ve never seen anything or gotten any of these ESPs—”

  “EVPs,” he corrected me. “And unfortunately, you’re right. We haven’t been lucky enough to catch anything here at Curtis’s grave. Yet. That’s exactly why we have to keep trying! If we’re the first to record some kind of evidence of his ghost, we’ll be famous. I figure they’ll put us on the cover of Rolling Stone.”

  It was dark so he didn’t see that I crossed my fingers as I said, “There’s not one ounce of evidence of Damon hanging around.” Another thought struck and I added, “Not here, anyway.”

  I was, of course, referring to the fact that though Damon had never been seen in Garden View, he had definitely been seen at the Rock Hall. By me, anyway. I hadn’t intended to distract them, but as it turned out, my offhand comment worked like a charm. As one, the ghost hunters’ ears pricked up. I found myself in a center of the circle of them and realized they were waiting for me to say more. The way I saw it, this put me in something of a pickle:

  a. I could tell them the truth and swear no one had ever reported a Damon sighting in the cemetery. But I’d already tried that, and they weren’t listening.

  b. I didn’t want to mention the Rock Hall, partly because if I did, they’d ask too many questions about how I knew Damon’s spirit was there and mostly because it hardly seemed fair to the nice folks at the Hall to sic a bunch of ghostbusters on them.

  And

  c. I had to get rid of them if I had any hopes of meeting with Damon without them catching wind of it.

  I wracked my brain for a plan.

  “It’s President Garfield’s memorial,” I blurted out. It sounded ridiculous, even to me, but I suppose by definition, ghost hunters are an open-minded bunch. Instead of telling me I was talking nonsense, they leaned nearer. I scrambled to put substance to my story. “Here’s the skinny,” I told them. “I’ve heard that Damon’s spirit hangs out over at the memorial just to bug the President. You know how those old hippies were, up against the establishment and all that.” I looked over my shoulder, up the hill, and toward the main part of the cemetery and the huge monument that dominated the landscape there. “When I drove by a little while ago, I saw another group of ghost hunters up there. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t run into Damon’s spirit. Seems like a good night for it, don’t you think?”

  Brian and the rest of them apparently agreed. They scrambled for their equipment and jumped in the SUV parked nearby. Before I could say Electronic Voice Phenomenon, they were gone.

  I was alone.

  In the dark.

  Waiting for a ghost.

  It was the beginning of October, and chilly. I wrapped my arms around myself.

  “Damon!” I hissed, and in the dark, my voice sounded small and frightened. “Hey, I got rid of the ghostbusters. You can come out now.” There was no answer, and I looked all around. “Are you here somewhere?”

  “Are any of us somewhere? Or are we lost, amoebae fighting the currents of change and time? Cursed. Driven to despair. Hollow men without morals. Dipped in blood.”

  I recognized the lyrics of the Mind at Large song. And the voice. But I couldn’t tell where it came from.

  There was no sign of Damon anywhere near his grave or in the field behind me. I peered into the dark beyond the flickering candles. “Come on, Damon. It’s been a long day. It’s kind of late for games.”

  “Too late for laboring love. Or changing zebras into moon-dark creatures. Too long overdue. Pressure. Sin. No remorse for death.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I recognize that song, too.” I wanted him to know I’d just about had it, so I sighed loud enough for him to hear. “Come on, Damon. We’ve got work to do.” A shiver snaked up my back. “And it’s getting cold out here.”

  “I could keep you warm. You could heat my body.”

  These weren’t song lyrics. At least none I knew. I spun toward the voice that had whispered in my ear, but, big surprise, Damon wasn’t anywhere near. Not that I could see, anyway.

  “We don’t have to go through this again, do we?” I asked. It was better to focus on the fact that he was pissing me off than it was thinking about the way his voice tickled my ear—and my libido. “I thought we got it out of the way this afternoon. I showed up. You played hard to get. I told you I wasn’t putting up with the bullshit. Now here we go again, and I just passed on a real, live, honest-to-goodness date with a real, live, honest-to-goodness guy for this
, so let me tell you, if you’re going to screw around, I’m not going to be happy about it. I mean it, Damon, if you don’t get your ghostly butt over here by the time I count to three, I’m gone. One…two…”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shimmer of white about twenty feet away. I turned toward it, but there was nothing there but darkness. Or was there? Another shimmer, like moonlight on pavement, and Damon appeared. He was wearing skintight black leather pants and a white shirt with wide sleeves. It was unbuttoned to his navel, and his bare chest looked as if it had been chipped from marble.

  “It’s about time,” I said. It was a less indiscreet greeting than hubba-hubba. “Get over here. I don’t want to talk too loud. In the dark, my voice will carry, and I don’t want those ghostbusters to think there’s anything going on down here.”