“Doesn’t it all seem a little too coincidental? The Judge gives you a slap on the wrist. Nobody’s guarding the Orifice on this side when you want to cross over. Royce could have any girl in Darkmeet, maybe Marilyn Monroe or Princess Grace, yet he goes for you.”
“I’m not exactly chopped liver.”
Though I looked like it when that UPS truck got done with me.
“Something’s going on, and you’re in the middle of it,” Tim said.
“What happens in Darkmeet isn’t my problem,” she said. “This isn’t my world. I don’t belong here with losers like you.”
“Just killing time, right?”
“I’m not done over there. Clothes and candy and guys and entertainment and all the new versions of the iPad. The way I look at it, I got cheated out of a good 60 years of fun and Facebook.”
“Nobody gets cheated. None of us were ever promised anything.”
“You’re such a downer, Tim.”
“You can’t go.”
“And you can’t stop me.”
Bone drifted to the mausoleum, the sweet aroma of grass and flowers giving way to the musty funk of moist masonry. Vaults lined the walls, the marble doors held by giant brass screws. They bore etched names, but it was too dark to make them out. Bone wondered if any Tweeners would come sliding out of their holes before she slipped through the Orifice and back to Earth.
“Bonnie,” came a voice, too deep to be Tim’s.
Nobody else in Darkmeet called her “Bonnie” except the officials. Which meant—
“Um, I’m fresh out of Milk Duds,” she said. It was a lie but not her first, and it was only a minor sin.
The Judge stepped out of the shadows of the mausoleum, his robe seeming to merge with the darkness of night. “I heard a rumor you were prepared to trespass.”
Tim, you little twerp. Ratting me out like that.
“Nah,” she said. “Just going for a stroll to get a little fresh air.”
“Your lungs no longer function.”
Busted. “Old habits die hard.”
“You walked in midnight graveyards back on Earth?”
“Hey, I was a quirky chick.” She glanced behind her but Tim was long gone, probably safely back in his casket, reading comic books.
The Judge spread his arms, holding out the folds of his robe as if he were a bat about to take flight. He must have ditched his shades. His red eyes glowed in the vacant hole under his hood and cold mist rose as he spoke.
“’Was’ is the operative word,” he said. “You keep forgetting you belong to us now.”
She looked up at the surrounding treetops, where small creatures fluttered and squeaked. “So, I guess a few Milk Duds bribed you for the past, but didn’t pay it forward?”
The eyes glowed a deeper shade of red, and tiny yellow sparks glinted in them. Bone thought she smelled sulfur, or maybe the Milk Duds hadn’t agreed with his digestion. Tim had babbled something about good and evil. She didn’t know which side anyone was on, including herself.
Why couldn’t Darkmeet do the whole harps-and-haloes thing and give the bad guys pointy tails and pitchforks?
“You’ve violated several provisions of your probation,” the Judge said, flapping his concealed arms and stirring a graveyard wind that whispered through the underbrush and stirred the musty air in the mausoleum.
She was mulling another snappy comeback when she noticed movement on the top of the mausoleum. A Poot Owl could have spied her and then summoned the Judge, though she hadn’t heard the tell-tale screech.
It wasn’t a Poot Owl. Tim was crouched on the edge of the roof, his deathly white face lit by the moon and showing his cracked grin. He gave a little wave.
What are you up to, Twerpness?
“The Graveyard of Second Chances is sacred ground,” the Judge droned. “And surely you understand the need for balance. One soul in the wrong place tips the scales.”
“Drop the Darth Vader bit.” She was buying time, mulling her options: bluff her way past the Judge, flee for the woods, or back the Hooded One up enough until she could figure out what Tim had in mind.
She glanced up at Cancer Boy. He bobbed his head and beckoned her forward, and as much as she hated to rely on him, she was curious about his game.
“The dead are restless,” the Judge said in his booming voice, his robe shaking as if he were rubbing his hands—or claws—together. “If one goes back, then soon they all want to go. Life and death lose their meanings.”
“Like that’s a bad thing? I suspect it’s you control freaks that get all uptight over the details. The rest of us just want to party.”
“Rules are rules.”
“Okay, you win,” Bone said. “But let me offer a plea bargain.”
“We’ve done that already. You have nothing to offer. You’re guilty.”
“I can prove I’m on the winning team,” she said. “Bop over to Earth, do a few good deeds, set things right. Take care of unfinished business.
Like I could ever erase that thing I almost did to Crystal.
“It’s never that simple,” the Judge said. “There’s black and white, even in Darkmeet, but it’s mostly shades of gray.”
He swept one rodent-like paw out to indicate the grim graveyard, the bleak sky, and the suffocating mist. He had a point.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Here’s the deal. I’ll show you where I pass through and you let me go in peace.”
“We are curious about your passage. But we need more than information.”
“I can score you some Goobers and Raisinettes, and maybe some sour gummy worms.”
His deep voice squeaked a little. “Ooh. The kind sprinkled with sugar?” Recovering, he went somber again. “I mean, we have interest in what’s happening on Earth, because it helps us prepare for souls yet to arrive.”
Tim had crouched back into the concealment of night again, and Bone resisted the temptation to float up and see what was going on.
She pointed into the mausoleum. “There’s a loose brick in the back. You remove it and then go into a tunnel, and before you know it, pop goes the weasel.”
The Judge turned and peered through the steel bars of the mausoleum gate. “How do you get through the bars?”
“Move closer and I’ll show you.”
Bone risked a glance up and moved forward, the Judge close behind. The gate had always been unlocked before, and she realized this must be some kind of test.
So much for trust.
She grasped the bars and shook the gate, trying to remember some of the spells Crystal had practiced. Nothing. She’d always been lousy at tests. “Mumbo jumbo, I’m a dumbo.”
The Judge fumbled in his robe and pulled out a key. He held it aloft and it was gilded by moonlight. “Looking for this?”
Something scraped above, the scruff of movement across stone. “Look out below,” Tim shouted, causing the Judge to glance up.
A black foggy liquid oozed down from above. Bone skittered away as the gunk poured down on the Judge’s head. He wriggled his hood in an attempt to flee, but the hem of his robe was caught in the marble stonework. He squeaked and groaned.
A couple of drops of the tar bounced onto Bone’s cheeks, and she flinched in expectation of a good scorching. Instead, the gooey substance was cold and hardened instantly against her dead flesh.
Within moments, the Judge was encased in the tar, frozen like a statue, leaving his outstretched hand holding the key. Bone plucked it away and stuck it in the mausoleum gate. She was just swinging the squeaky gate open when Tim appeared by her side, wearing his skeletal grin.
“What do you think?” He raised his puny arms and flexed flaccid biceps.
“Not bad. What was that stuff?”
“A bucket of instant karma residue,” he said. “The groundskeeper was mopping up around John Lennon’s grave and just left it lying around out back.”
“Christ, don’t they know kids hang around graveyards? What are they trying to do, poison them with toxic
waste?”
“Well, you got your key.”
“Yeah.” She looked down at it, then at Tim’s wan, wistful face. “Appreciate the help.”
“Sure. Anytime.”
“About this Royce thing—”
He waved his hand. “Never mind.”
“I got to run. I’ll be late for the party.”
“Yeah.” He lifted his chin as if listening for Poot Owl wings in the night sky. His eyes glistened under the moon, and she figured it was probably the wind, not tears.
Probably.
She ducked into the shadows of the mausoleum and vanished before he had a chance to say anything else.
Chapter 7
Dempsey Van Heusen rubbed his hands together. The gesture was melodramatic, the gimmick of a B-movie mad scientist about to open Pandora’s Box, but it was satisfying nonetheless. And a measure of showmanship was expected by his little coven, though they were a little distracted by the smoke of wolfsbane and datura. The burning herbs were just for show, along with the blood-red candles scattered around the room, and he’d weakened their resistance with a Dempsey Van Heusen movie marathon.
Not that they’d offered much resistance. In classic brainwashing technique, the manipulator deprived his subjects of sleep, isolated them from contact with the outside world, and engaged in a long campaign of systematic depersonalization.
But brainwashing required brains, and Dempsey had chosen followers who had precious little gray matter.
“When do we get to the black candles?” Lacey Summerhill said, giving her 16-year-old pout. She was a spoiled brat, but Dempsey needed her, since her father was county commissioner. If religion failed, he could always turn to politics.
“Black candles are for midnight mass,” Dempsey said. “And it’s nine in the evening.”
“Boring,” she said. “Do the dark arts have to have so many lame rules?”
Dempsey did the thing with his eyebrows where he made them arch into arrow tips. “The coven must be of one mind,” he said. “And that takes discipline. Without discipline, there are no disciples.”
“I thought we were acolytes,” said Willard. He was sipping Dr. Pepper from a bottle, using a straw. His acne and freckles gave him the aspect of a strawberry. Willard was a social-media genius, working Parson’s Ford’s teenagers and spreading the good word about Dempsey’s movies. It was his Facebook and Twitter efforts that had brought Dempsey’s little inner circle together.
“We’re all servants, no matter the name,” Dempsey said. “This is about serving the vision.”
“The television?” Snake said, all red-eyed. Dempsey suspected the teen was a stoner, but he was in no position to judge. Right now, he needed warm bodies, grass-headed or not.
He thumbed the remote so the sound died on the movie. On the flatscreen, a monster prop constructed of trash bags and dryer hose was wallowing over the scantily clad body of a screaming woman. The creature suffered from a lack of passion, and the actress was forced to fling the dryer-hose tentacles about so they would appear animated.
Eventually she floundered and flopped until she’d succeeded in dragging the creature into the nearby lake, and then the scene cut to a sinking trash bag emitting bubbles.
It was Dempsey’s first project, “The Sickening.” He was not very proud of it, but everybody had a first time.
Snake tapped the crucible, sending a puff of gray wolfsbane smoke into the cramped room. Dempsey had a basement apartment, a little too small for taking over the world, but it would have to do. Once he released The Halloweening to worldwide acclaim, he’d get one of those cliff-side condos in Malibu.
“Dude, I think you need to fire up another bowl,” Snake said. “Some of that wizard lizard.”
“We need to focus,” Dempsey said. “Magick doesn’t work unless we’re all on the same page.”
“Don’t make me read any more dorky books,” Lacey said from the couch, arching one leg to show off her calf, or maybe her calfskin boot. “This is starting to sound like history class. More rules and stuff. Bo-o-o-ring.”
Willard waved a comic book, stirring the incense and herbal smoke. “Yeah, when do we get to the fun part?”
Dempsey let his eyebrows relax. “Our plan depends on not drawing any attention to the coven,” he said. “The movie needs to stand on its own artistic merits.”
“I’ve always wanted to get shot and die on screen,” Snake said. “Wanna see?”
Snake jumped up, clutched his chest, went wide-eyed, and let out a “Yargh“ that was loud enough to disturb the old biddy upstairs. After a dramatic three seconds of swaying and gasping, he slouched against the wall and slid down to a sitting position.
Dempsey applauded. He wouldn’t be surprised if Snake did the whole Charles Manson bit, carve a Nazi swastika between his eyes, and then wonder why he couldn’t get a job at Walmart. These clowns, as important as they were to his mission, had absolutely no subtlety.
“Watch and learn, my groovy little ghoulies,” Dempsey said.
On the TV screen, the trash-bag monster had gobbled another juicy girl in a bathing suit. Dempsey turned the sound up a little and a brass section punctuated the scene with abrasive and atonal glissando.
That was the trouble with the entire horror genre: no subtlety. It was so cheesy it couldn’t smell its own stink.
For about the tenth time since he’d entered this feels-so-good-to-be-bad phase of his life, Dempsey wished he’d applied for film school instead of necromancy, divination, and direct-to-video Armageddon.
But, he supposed, one spiritual path was as good as the next, as long as your heart was in the right place.
Plus, he had an agent.
“So when do we shoot?” Snake said. “I’m ready for a little action, not a bunch of sitting around and plotting.”
“If world domination were easy, everybody would be doing it,” Dempsey said.
“When do we get to sacrifice some small animals?” Snake asked, blinking rapidly.
“Remember what I said about unwanted attention,” Dempsey said. “Why go for the cheap thrills now when you can have carte blanche later? I’m talking a free pass to Sin City.”
“Cart what?” Lacey said, standing up and strutting for attention.
“Sit down, you’re blocking the picture,” Willard said, slurping the dregs of his Dr. Pepper.
“Right, kids, pay attention,” Dempsey said. “Here comes the cue.”
He grinned, wishing he’d sharpened his incisors, but none of the acolytes were looking at him anyway. He’d brainwashed them so effectively that they all stared wide-eyed at the screen, their jaws slack. Even Snake was alert, sitting up in the ragged Barcalounger and moving his right hand to his mouth as if munching invisible popcorn.
Here it comes, here it comes…
On the screen, the brick-chinned hero, packed into tight white trunks, waded into the lake with an air tank on his back. The shot had no mise en scene, the lighting was bad, and Dempsey had allowed no look space for the actor. The dubbed audio track, which included whistling birds and lapping water, also carried the incongruous whapping of a helicopter’s rotors.
But the pitiful production values didn’t matter. This wasn’t about Dempsey’s vision, a screenwriter’s pursuit of an Oscar, or an actor’s desperate aversion to getting a real job. No, the point of the work lay in a single frame.
Royce.
The word flashed in red against a white background, and Dempsey, who’d edited the frame into the movie, was the only one in the room to notice it, but the effect was instantaneous. Willard dropped his Dr. Pepper can, Lacey quit fiddling with her blond curls, and Snake emitted a barking fart.
The scene was already continuing, the actor wading into the water, the story scrolling toward the inevitable end where the Forces of Good kicked the butt of Unspeakable Evil. But the audience members no longer followed the action, because they were suffering their own plot twists.
“Royce,” they said in monotonal unison.
“Royce,” Dempsey echoed, and they looked at him.
“In the name of Royce, we open our hearts,” Dempsey said.
“In the name of Royce,” the members of the coven repeated.
“In the name of Royce, we open our eyes.”
“In the name of Royce.”
“In the name of Royce, we open the Orifice,” Dempsey said. He wasn’t so sure of the meaning of that line, but the agent had insisted, and the agent tended to get what he wanted. Dempsey suspected it had to do with those dark, squishy holes that had appeared in the video store and the coffee shop.
“In the name of Royce,” came the collective response.
Dempsey glanced at the screen, where the hunky, squirrel-eyed actor was emerging from the water, carrying the shivering, scantily clad form of the unconscious lady.
He lifted his voice in triumph. “In the name of Royce, we–”
Bang bang bang.
Dempsey glanced up. A little old lady on a pension lived upstairs, and despite her age, her hearing apparently had not diminished one little bit. She’d introduced herself as Mrs. Vickers. Hair wild as Einstein’s and white as snow, she owned six cats and kept close track on Dempsey’s comings and goings, as well as those of his guests.
Anytime the proceedings got a little too rowdy, or it sounded like somebody might be having a little fun, she tapped on the floor with the tip of her cane.
“In the name of Royce,” the followers echoed.
“I’m not finished yet.”
“I’m not finished yet,” they said.
“Quit acting like a bunch of zombies,” Dempsey said, keeping his voice down. He wanted to shout, but he wasn’t willing to risk the wrath of Mrs. Vickers. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to draw attention at this most important and sacred time, but in truth he feared she’d beat him over the head with one of those hard old-lady shoes.
Snake sniffed, bubbling mucus. “Bunch of zombies,” he droned belatedly, not quite processing Dempsey’s request for them to shut up.
“In the name of Royce, shut your freaking cakehole,” Dempsey said.
“In the name of—”
“Quiet on the set.” Dempsey slashed his open hand like the blade of an ax.
October Girls: Crystal & Bone Page 5