The thing is, Mark reminded himself, and let’s be honest for a moment here, you have to do whatever it takes to protect yourself, and the goddamned cops were getting a little too close for comfort. Putting the saw under all that dirty laundry in Rich’s bedroom closet was simple enough, and the police wouldn’t think anything about the fact that there were no fingerprints on it; after all, Rich had worked hard cleaning it, right?
But the real killer for poor Rich—pardon the pun—the thing that sealed his fate, would be the strands of hair from Victim Number Three and Victim Number Seven Mark had tossed haphazardly into the closet as well. It was a real shame he had to do it, to Mark they were cherished trophies not easily parted with, but again, sometimes you have to take extraordinary measures to protect yourself in this world. No one else was going to do it for you.
Mark had no doubt whatsoever the police would find the hairs and that they would serve as the final nails in Rich’s painstakingly constructed coffin, or perhaps more appropriately the final gas in Rich’s execution chamber. And as far as those hairs were concerned, Mark consoled himself with the knowledge that he still had plenty of other trophies left to admire in the privacy of his new home, wherever that might end up being. Then, for just a few dollars at an anonymous hardware store in an as-yet unknown new city, he would be able to re-supply himself with a brand-new rip saw and get back down to business with his unusual but highly rewarding hobby.
Mark packed his few meager belongings in a single well-worn suitcase and for the final time walked through what was left of the mahogany front door the police had blown right off its hinges, stepping carefully around the chunks of wood and shards of glass scattered throughout the home’s entryway.
Outside, the sun shone brightly and the birds serenaded Mark as he hailed a passing cab. It was a beautiful spring day. He settled comfortably into the back seat, watching the scenery, smiling all the way to the airport. It was great to be alive.
The Bridal Veil
I grew up in a tiny hamlet in central Massachusetts, and in one of the town’s centuries-old cemeteries was a crypt with a fairly substantial crack in one of its ancient concrete walls. Local legend, at least among us kids, was that if you put your eye to the crack at just the right time on a sunny day, you could see the skeletal remains of the crypt’s occupant, complete with long fingernails and hair growing all the way to the ground. If you’ve ever been a kid you know that getting up the courage to look into this crypt became an important rite of passage for the children in my town. It also serves as the basis for “The Bridal Veil,” which first appeared in the June, 2009 issue of the print magazine, Twisted Dreams.
“Honestly, I don’t know why you think this is going to be scary.” My sister, Cassie Hayes, shrugged her shoulders, a smug look on her pretty face as if to say that her brother and her boyfriend weren’t capable of giving her a fright.
We paused at the entrance to Whispering Pines Cemetery. Whispering Pines—has there ever been a more perfect name for a boneyard than that? We waited a long moment without speaking and finally I said, “If you’re too afraid to go in, Cass, that’s cool, we’ll just go do something else.”
She shot me a glance that was more than a little frightening in its own right. If looks could kill, as the saying goes, I’d have been on my way underground. “Fine, just go,” she snapped, wrinkling her nose like she smelled a dead body or something.
The three of us had agreed to check out the Wentworth gravesite, located almost exactly in the center of Whispering Pines. Legend in our tiny town had it that if you looked through a crack in the door of the gigantic Wentworth crypt at just the right angle, you could see the skeleton of Josiah Wentworth’s long-dead bride.
Josiah had been one of the town’s founders more than two hundred-fifty years ago, and according to the universally accepted local legend, his young wife, Mary, had died of diphtheria within two weeks of their wedding. The story went that Josiah had gone insane with grief, burying Mary in her wedding dress before killing himself. Supposedly, if you looked through that crack in the crypt’s door, you could see Mary, her white lace bridal veil still perfectly preserved, hanging delicately over her skull.
The counterpoint to the tale, and the reason we had never checked it out before, was that the legend also stated in no uncertain terms that anyone who dared view poor Mary Wentworth’s remains would soon suffer a horrible, violent death. No one we knew of had ever tested the legend. Tonight that was going to change.
Cassie and I were about as close as a brother and a sister could be—no surprise there, since we were twins and had been virtually on our own since our mom and dad died in a fiery car crash a couple of years ago—and when she had begun dating Wade Collins I was less than thrilled. He was older than we were by a year and just didn’t seem trustworthy to me. I didn’t like the way he looked at her when he thought nobody was watching and I felt she could do better.
It had been my idea to make this midnight excursion to visit the tomb of Mary Wentworth and when I broached the subject to Cassie, she readily agreed. Wade had seemed much less enthusiastic, but given the fact that my sister was so stoked, he couldn’t very well wimp out without looking like a total wuss.
So there we were, standing at the gates of Whispering Pines Cemetery at a couple of minutes before midnight. When Cassie finally gave the go-ahead after appearing as though she might have changed her mind, we walked right in, climbing over the single heavy chain hanging between the two wrought-iron posts at the only entrance and weaving our way around hundreds of headstones, moving steadily deeper into the massive graveyard.
As we walked, it became clear how Whispering Pines had gotten its name. Although the night had seemed clear and calm on the way over, inside the cemetery the wind seemed to dance through the ancient trees, moaning softly like the gibbering of restless spirits. We had been laughing and joking before arriving at the cemetery, but now a tense silence fell over us like a death shroud.
I led the way, followed by Cassie, with Wade bringing up the rear in a single-file procession. This section of Whispering Pines was the oldest, with barely enough room for us to clear the precariously tilting granite headstones of long-dead and long-forgotten citizens, as we moved steadily toward the Wentworth crypt. We were all jumpy and nervous and I noticed with satisfaction that Wade seemed even shakier than Cassie.
Eventually Mary and Josiah Wentworth’s final resting place materialized out of the inky blackness, the crypt looming above the neighboring gravesites like some absurd monument, perhaps an eighteenth-century version of class distinction, except instead of the rich guy showing off by driving a Beemer or a Lexus, he had constructed a gaudy, oversized building in which to store his remains after his death.
By now our nerves were threatening to get the best of us. I flicked my flashlight up to Cassie’s face and she seemed pale and washed out, although that might have been a trick of the light. A similar look at Wade revealed a horizontal slash of a mouth, his lips pressed together so tightly they were almost invisible. “Get that light out of my eyes,” he snarled.
I went first. It seemed only right; after all, it had been my idea to come out here in the first place. I knelt in front of the crypt’s door and shone my light through the half-inch seam at the hinges, while simultaneously pressing my eyeball against the keyhole-sized crack under the cold iron doorknob. I sucked in a short breath, gasping at what I saw, before leaping backward and falling flat on my back.
Cassie took my place at the door, moving quickly; as if afraid she might lose her nerve if she didn’t go NOW. She repeated the sequence—flashlight at the hinges, eyeball to the door—and screamed in terror before backing away and covering her eyes with her hands. “Hurry up and do it,” she moaned to Wade, “so we can get out of here.”
Barely concealed terror was now plainly evident in the body language of my sister’s boyfriend. It was obvious he didn’t want to look, but he really had no choice. After all, his girlfriend had done it. He re
luctantly knelt down in front of the grave of Mary and Josiah Wentworth, long-dead and long-since returned to dust, and when he did I smashed the grapefruit-sized rock I had been holding into the back of his skull with all the force I could muster.
Wade Collins’s crushed skull imploded with a crack! as his body dropped to the damp ground. He groaned once and was still. There was very little blood, surprisingly. While my sister watched closely, I bent behind the Wentworth crypt and lifted up the iron pry bar I had placed there earlier in the day. I used it to force open the door of the crypt—it was heavy and resisted the movement at first, but eventually opened wide enough to permit entrance—and dragged her dead boyfriend’s body into the cold and clammy space. I knew no one would ever think to look for the bastard here; he would never be found.
After tossing him face-down on the ground next to Mary or Josiah—there was no bridal veil to be seen, that part of the tale was completely false, so I couldn’t tell who was who—I hustled back outside and Cassie helped me force the heavy door closed again. When we finished, the ancient crypt looked exactly the same as it had for hundreds of years. Then Cassie and I retraced our steps out of Whispering Pines for the last time.
Sure, that stupid myth about Mary Wentworth and the bridal veil was nothing more than a bunch of crap, but it made for the perfect excuse to lure Collins to his date with destiny. He had been beating Cassie regularly and lately the abuse had begun escalating out of control until she was certain he would soon kill her. After she had come to me, half-crazed with fear and pain, we developed the plan we executed tonight. As it turned out, the only part of the silly Wentworth legend that turned out to be true was the part about someone dying a violent death.
Ironic, I know.
I felt kind of bad about forcing Josiah Wentworth to share his eternal resting place with a scumbag like Wade Collins, but, hey—it’s not like he was about to complain. He’s been dead for two hundred years, and there was plenty of room inside that gigantic crypt anyway. What difference would one more body make, really?
Regrets, I’ve Had a Few
Fiction publications, especially online magazines, come and go with an unfortunate regularity that would make a Swiss watch-maker proud. One of the shortest-lived efforts was called TREI Literary Magazine. A grand total of one issue was published before the ‘zine died. “Regrets, I’ve Had a Few” was accepted for the inaugural and final edition of TREI, in September, 2008. In this story, a man haunted by a decades-old tragedy meets a stranger in a bar with a tale frighteningly similar to his own. I’m proud to say this tale was selected as one of five finalists for the 2009 Derringer Award for Best Short Story.
The man sat at the bar, downing ice-cold Budweiser. It was always Budweiser, although it was not always ice cold. That part depended upon how busy the Lucky Leprechaun was on any particular day and how often the bar’s owner, Ted, was able to rotate the stock.
The man wasn’t sure why he always ordered Budweiser, other than the fact that you could get it just about anywhere. Availability was an important consideration when you drank as much and as often as the man did. After all, he wasn’t always going to be near the Lucky Leprechaun when he felt the compulsion to slam down a beer or twenty. The man felt the King of Beers was about as close to a sure thing as you were liable to get in this world, so he stuck with it whenever he could.
He did, however, try to do his drinking at the Lucky Leprechaun when possible. He knew the lay of the land, so to speak, and since his one-room efficiency apartment was only half a block away, it was almost impossible to get lost, no matter how much he drank or how late at night he stumbled home.
Also an important consideration.
Plus which, the man liked it here, at least as much as he was capable of liking anything anywhere anymore. The regulars all knew him, and Ted wasn’t averse to opening up early for the man if he happened to be there anyway, cleaning and stocking and whatnot.
Today was a pretty typical day for the man. He had slept late and woken up hung over. His morning had consisted of dry toast and black coffee with a thin coating of grounds settling to the bottom of the cup, then quiz shows and soap operas on television while waiting for the postman to get around to delivering his welfare check.
Three o’clock found the man glued to his usual barstool, drinking the usual ice-cold Budweiser and doing the usual pensive thinking. That was the major drawback to drinking—all the goddamned thinking that went along with it. Drinking and thinking. Sounded like a game show, one that he’d probably be pretty good at, come to think of it.
On the jukebox, Frank Sinatra serenaded the nearly-empty bar, bragging to anyone who would listen about doing it his way. The man made sure to bring extra money for the juke when he was going to be at the Lucky Leprechaun, and Sinatra was the man’s artist of choice. Every day was the same for him, Bud and Sinatra; a natural combination as far as he was concerned.
It hadn’t always been like this for the man. Once upon a time, a long time ago, the man had been a sober, law-abiding, nine-to-five regular guy. An actuary, actually. In fact, that was how he used to introduce himself at parties and corporate functions in his old life. “I’m Jim Robertson, insurance guy. An actuary, actually.” This little exercise in witty wordplay would invariably earn Jim those polite chuckles total strangers reserved for other total strangers when an honest reaction would be considered inappropriate.
The man, Jim Robertson, had also had a family once upon a time: a wife, Elizabeth, not beautiful or ugly but stunningly average, and one child—a daughter named Jenny. Jenny, once upon a time, had been the apple of her father’s eye. She was bright, beautiful and athletic; incredibly, inexplicably, world-class athletic.
But all of this, of course, had been a long time ago, and in a different life. Because more than twenty years ago, a lifetime ago, the incident that Jim Robertson had come to think of as “The Thing” had happened. Robertson knew it was stupid to compartmentalize a life-changing event with its own snappy little title, like it was some Grade B horror movie or something, but it was the only way he had ever found to deal with it, that’s all. Well, that and the Budweiser, of course.
Anyway, after “The Thing,” Jim Robertson had simply ceased to exist. With astonishing quickness, Jim lost everything: job, money, family, self-respect. It all disappeared down a toilet flushed clean with Budweiser.
No longer an actuary, actually, Jim Robertson became simply the man who lived in a one-room apartment on the questionable side of the tracks, the side he would never even have considered visiting in his previous incarnation, slowly drinking himself to death at the Lucky Leprechaun. He was alone, utterly and completely alone, unless of course you included Frank Sinatra in the equation, which Jim certainly did.
One thing that made the man’s life just the tiniest bit bearable, the only thing if he was going to be honest with himself, was chatting up strangers who entered the Lucky Leprechaun and comparing miseries with them. Jim had discovered long ago that just about everyone drinking at the time of day he drank had miseries of their own. Some of them even rivaled his.
Today he had struck up a conversation with one such stranger. He was probably older than Jim but looked younger. Years of constant drinking will age you, Jim Robertson could testify to that, but the bright side was that the more you drank the less you cared about things like how you looked, anyway.
This particular stranger had walked past the Leprechaun’s entrance, pausing momentarily in front of the blinking neon four-leaf clover mounted in the middle of the big picture window that gave the drinkers a view of the world outside; the world that was humming along just fine without them. The stranger appeared to hold a short debate with himself, finally winning the argument, or perhaps losing it. He had then turned around and strutted into the tavern like he was the mayor or something.
Striking up a conversation was easy, since the only people in the whole place at this early hour were the stranger, the man who used to be Jim Robertson, and Ted. Jim bo
ught the stranger a beer and immediately began mining for miseries. He primed the pump by giving the stranger a quick rundown of his own fall from grace. He offered no specifics—he quite frankly didn’t like talking about himself—just provided the stranger a quick recap of the lowlights of his life, then waited for him to reciprocate. After all, he reasoned, he would have to reciprocate; it was only good bar etiquette.
As it turned out, though, the stranger didn’t feel he had any miseries to share. He had a good job, a beautiful wife, a happy family. A lot like the old Jim Robertson, in fact. The only reason he was even in this part of town, he said in a vaguely condescending tone of voice that was not lost in Jim, was because he had had travel to his good-for-nothing brother-in-law’s apartment to collect some money the creep had owed him for months.
The man who used to be Jim Robertson was disappointed, to say the least. He had wasted a whole beer on this guy and gotten nothing in return. In the background of the bar, Sinatra continued to sing about doing things his way. “Come on,” he said, “there must be something. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
The stranger hesitated just the barest fraction of a split-second and the man knew he had him. Everyone had a misery or two, everyone, even the happiest of people; it was just a matter of getting them to share. Finally the stranger said, “Ah, what the hell. You want to know the worst thing I’ve ever done?”
The man who used to be Jim Robertson nodded, and the stranger said, “Okay, since you seem to find it so important, how’s this grab you? I’m driving home one day, must be close to twenty years ago now, and I had stopped for a few pops after work. You know, just to relax and unwind.
Postcards from the Apocalypse Page 2