by J. R. Rain
The fire alarms went off, and all the lights in the place strobed off and on. It was like being inside a nuclear submarine during a DefCon 3.
Jasmine Farah Di Angelo was framed by light every few feet down the hall; her stride was rapid, athletic, and deadly silent. As she moved, she glanced up at the ceiling to see if she could spot her husband, Rocco. She was worried. You never knew what could go wrong on the holidays.
At least she didn’t have her in-laws to deal with this year, thank God. When you were undead and they weren’t, that could be pure hell. But she’d been looking forward to a quiet evening out with her hub on Christmas Eve now that the kids were getting older. Instead, all hell had broken loose. It was her own fault—she shouldn’t have played such a cruel practical joke on Rocky. She hated it whenever he got killed…
But it happened. It had happened to her, too, once or twice. It was always a shock to wake up on the autopsy slab, but you got over it. Over the years, they’d even had some romantic moments down here. For one thing, it had been one of the few places they could get away from the kids. Not tonight, however.
So, for one reason or another, Jazz’s temper was short when she burst through the acetate flaps of the autopsy room. “All right, you two,” she said. “I hope for your sakes you have a good explanation for yourselves!”
The two children turned to face her, their shoulders visibly slumping.
From where she cowered, still sobbing, on the floor, Mary Lee peeked out through her fingers. Framed in the pulsing lights, the children stood with their backs to her, looking hangdog, as a woman who might have been a movie star berated them.
Jazz strode over to the autopsy table and unzipped the body bag. “Where’s your father?”
“Mom, Tink’s having a hunger attack,” Ari said. “And you just made it worse by making her smell blood again!”
It wasn’t his sister’s fault. Whenever she got too hungry, her system went into overload; it was like having the world’s worst case of hypoglycemia or something. Only it was warm human blood she required—she couldn’t digest anything else. Mom and dad had kept her fed since birth by robbing blood banks, but occasionally Tink left the house without an adequate supply. Or just got over-excited.
To Tink, the poor woman huddled trembling in the corner under the sink was a glowing, pulsing, sweet-smelling sac of honey, like a soft fruit, a fig or a plum, maybe, veined with life-giving warm blood. The kid couldn’t be expected to resist temptation forever.
“Has she actually attacked anyone?” Both Ari and Tink shook their heads. “Okay, good. But that’s not what I’m mad about, and you know it! You two snuck out of the vault behind Krystle’s back, and she and your uncle Crawley are worried sick. Not to mention me. You are so grounded!”
“We took Walkie with us,” Tinkerbell muttered.
“It’s Christmas!” Ari protested. “We’re not supposed to be alone. She’s a family counselor, and she said so.” He pointed at Mary Lee, who closed her eyes again, very tightly, and prayed.
“Well, she’s right,” Jazz said. “But when their parents are out doing last-minute Christmas shopping, good children, children who expect a visit from Santa, are supposed to wait for them at home. Retract your fangs when I’m speaking to you, young lady. This minute!”
“I can’t, Mom. I’m hungry. Really hungry.”
“Okay, okay. Ari, go see if you can dig me up a razor blade from one of those cabinets, and I’ll feed her mine until we get home.”
“No, I’m sick of yours and Dad’s. Dead people’s blood tastes gross. And Ari’s tastes even worse.”
“Mom! That’s not fair!”
Jazz sighed heavily. What had gotten into the girl? God only knew what things would be like when she was a teenager. “Tink, Ari’s right. You aren’t being fair. You know he’s a Jaguar Baby.”
Jaguar Babies. Firestarters. When provoked, they turned to stone all the way to their hearts. Their blood was as bitter as battery acid in order to course through their veins. In such a state, he would hunger for the fatty flesh, rather than the blood, of human victims. Normally, however, he was placid, sweet-natured, and loved to read. “Besides,” she went on, “Christmas is a time for giving, not taking. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Well, you and Dad were out taking,” Ari muttered. Something had gotten into him, too. It had to be the atmosphere here.
The morgue was sensually exciting, especially with the lights blinking and the alarms going off. It felt so cozy and seasonal. Of course, Jazz realized her perceptions were influenced by her own happy memories of the place. But maybe her kids had picked up on it.
“You were out robbing stuff from the King Tut Exhibition. We heard you telling Walkie Talkie.”
Jazz laughed. “We were stealing DNA scrapings! And your father didn’t even know I’d followed him in there and set off the alarms.”
“DNA? Huh? But why, Mom?”
“Well, I guess you two are old enough now to know about this. Your father and I have tried to hide our shape-shifting from you, because we didn’t want to confuse you when you were little. It’s a side-effect of the horogauncy. We can take the shape of any life-form whose DNA we sample. So, we thought it might be, you know, fun to be King Tut and Queen Nefertiti for the night. It’s kind of like a role-playing game,” she went on, seeing their bafflement. “Married people like a little variety in their life. You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“Aw, you always say that about everything.”
“But why did you get Dad shot?” Tink asked. She sounded shocked and upset at her mother.
Good, thought Mary Lee. Maybe they’ll all get too distracted now to kill me. Through her fingers, she saw Jazz’s face turned pink and embarrassed. The undead could still blush?
“Because I wanted to meet him down here afterward. At the morgue. This is where we spent our first night together. Jeez, guys—don’t we get to have any secrets?”
As she spoke, there was a rippling, a bulging distortion in the ceiling behind her. A dark shape moved along it, framed every other second by the blinking alarm lights. It looked like a huge black spider. It came closer and then, with incredible speed, detached itself from the metal runners holding the ceiling soundproofing panels, and flipped to the floor. It was a man, also dressed like night, with a large pack strappd over his well-built shoulders. He was barefoot and had been running along the ceiling upside down, using his hands and feet as claws. Mary Lee could glimpse his daughter’s stubbornness and his son’s sweet face. But his eyes, she could see even from where she lay, were those of a killer.
“You’ve set off every alarm in the entire complex,” the man said. He seemed unsurprised to see his entire family gathered there. Maybe he was used to surprises like that. He and his wife looked at each other and exchanged a brief hungry kiss. “The police and the fire department will be here in two more minutes. Come on, kids, let’s get out of here. We can get out through the crematorium chimneys.”
Vehicle sirens wailed in the distance.
“First wipe off any prints you’ve left behind,” their mother said. DNA wouldn’t matter; no lab would believe theirs, anyway. “Does anyone here know who you are? Did you tell your names to anyone?”
The two children glanced guiltily at Mary Lee. The note Jackie Sprewell had written the children’s names on lay beside her on the floor. The man gazed down at her without pity, with eyes that judged pressure points and body weight.
His wife turned to him. “It’s Christmas,” she said in an imploring tone.
Mary Lee started trembling again. She thought about screaming, but what use would that be?
Tinkerbell crossed the floor and squatted down beside her. Her fangs were showing again. “We don’t have to kill you,” she said, stroking the woman’s hair. “Not tonight. Not on Christmas. I could let you drink some of my blood—then you’d be a vampire, too. Just think, you’d be immortal then. You could live forever! Of course, you’d have to live on hum
an blood like I do. And Mommy and Daddy would have to stalk you and probably kill you, because that’s their job. But you could leave the country and go far away and be safe…”
“Or she could come home with us and be our nanny!” Ari said. “We need one—she said so herself.”
No one said anything for a few moments. The sound of the sirens grew louder.
“It is Christmas,” Jazz said.
Her husband nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But let’s get out of here before I end up having to take on the cops again. I really hate doing that.”
Hands grabbed Mary Lee, pulling her to her feet.
Her new family was dysfunctional, but at least they were together for the holidays. This was a good start.
t was Tommy’s stupid idea to go to the cemetery on Christmas Eve.
Me? I like to keep a healthy distance from cemeteries. Just thinking about all those dead bodies beneath my feet gives me the heebee-jeebees.
I said as much to Tommy on the way over to Oak Park Cemetery. We were driving in his old Ford Explorer past the disgustingly festive displays that I was certain—damn certain—would pick tonight to break down in the middle of the goddamn cemetery. I said that, too.
“Jesus, Bill… have you always been such a worry wart? Good God, man, live a little!”
“By hanging out with the dead?”
“Exactly! It’s called irony. They’re dead. We’re alive. It’s a beautiful thing!”
Tommy took a right down a side street, away from all the boozy merriment, past lines of cold, lifeless fence around a local military base. It wasn’t far now. The cemetery on the hill was coming up on the right. That it was coming up wasn’t exactly good news. Then again, maybe Tommy was right. Maybe I was a worrywart. It was just a cemetery, after all. The dead were dead. The place was usually empty at night, anyway, as far as I could tell. Meaning, I drive past it often at night and I never see any lights on. Once or twice I’ve heard about kids from our high school partying in the cemetery, but that doesn’t happen very often. But this was Christmas, and the odds of meeting another dumbass dwindled to… zilch.
You see, we came here tonight because we’re idiots.
And we were also bored. Not to mention, neither of us had girlfriends. In fact, I’m certain it’s a universal equation:
Bored + idiots - girlfriends = jail time.
Anyway, Tommy slowed, then made a right into the dark cemetery. Oh, joy. He killed the headlights about halfway up the hill; headlights, after all, could have been seen for miles around. At least from the cemetery. Yes, we might be idiots, but we weren’t stupid. Okay, maybe a little stupid. Still, we didn’t want the sheriff sniffing around.
Now driving in the dark with only the December moonlight guiding our way, we hit some rough ground, the Explorer juddered.
“I think you veered off the main road,” I said.
“There is no main road; it’s all dirt.”
“There’s a dirt main road, and then there’s grass. I think you’re on the grass.”
“I think I would know, Billy. I’m the one driving. Besides, there’s a lot of moonlight—”
He stopped when the truck went over something big. I bounced in the passenger seat. I looked back and saw it lying flat in the grass, gleaming in the faint moonlight. By it, I meant—
“Jesus, Tommy. You knocked over a tombstone!”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” I said. “We have to go back.”
“Forget it. Those things weigh like a ton.”
“We have to do something. We can’t, you know, desecrate a grave.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Tommy. “I didn’t shit on no grave.”
“That’s defecate and a double negative and you’re an idiot.”
“Whatever. We’ll leave a note and say we’re sorry.”
I always knew when Tommy was fucking with me, and he was fucking with me now. But there wasn’t much we could do. Yeah, the thing did look like it weighed a ton. I sighed, rubbed my face, not liking the idea that we had just knocked over someone’s tombstone.
“Well, keep this thing straight.”
“No, problem,” said Tommy, grinning, “we’re almost there.”
By there, he meant, of course, the back parking lot next to the big, central tree. That tree, if you asked me, had to be the most haunted tree in the world. Then again, out here, late at night—and having just run over someone’s tombstone—it was easy to believe in haunted things.
Which is why, of course, we were here in the first place.
To test our ghost radar apps on our phones.
Did I mention we were idiots?
Tommy hit the brakes and we came to a stop next to the Spook Tree. He killed the engine.
“We’re here.”
The night was quiet. Too quiet.
Okay, fine, the night was actually as quiet as it probably should be on a holiday. A normal amount of quiet. But, dammit, it still sounded too quiet. As if someone had used a giant remote control and turned the sound way down. And why the control had to be giant, I don’t know. And who had access to this control, I didn’t know that either. But that was the visual I received, and I was sticking with it.
And, yes, I did have an overactive imagination. At least that’s what my mom was always telling me. Then again, I’ve lived on this island my whole damn life and I have never, ever experienced a night so devoid of sound, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s, or otherwise.
“Where do you want to do this?” Tommy’s voice pierced the night air like a gunshot blast. I squealed and nearly lost control of my bladder. He laughed at me. “Jesus, Billy, you need to relax.”
“And you need to not talk so loud, or give me a warning or something.”
“How the hell am I supposed to give you a warning that I’m going to talk without talking?”
I heard now how ridiculous that sounded. “Fine. Just… keep it down, man. You’re talking loud enough to…” I let my voice trail off.
“Wake the dead?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Hey, we can only hope, right? C’mon, let’s set up by that tree.”
The Ghost Tree, he meant. I hated that tree and Tommy knew it. It just felt… spooky. It also felt alive, somehow. As if all the lost souls of this cemetery somehow congregated within it, took refuge in it.
Yeah, maybe I do have an overactive imagination.
Still, I kept my concerns to myself, although Tommy knew I wasn’t a happy camper. Tommy liked to push me out of my comfort zone. Make me talk to girls I didn’t want to talk to. Try things I would never have tried on my own… like Guiness Black Lager, blech. And now sit under the world’s most haunted Christmas tree. Tommy was a dick like that. Or cool like that. You pick.
Anyway, we did just that, hunkering down under the tree, with the truck parked somewhere behind us. The tree’s thick canopy blocked out the half moon and the smattering of stars. The tree effectively cocooned us. Hell, even its branches nearly hung to the ground. A cocoon of spookiness. It doesn’t matter if someone hung festive-as-fuck streamers on it. It was still spooky.
Or not. Yes, I needed to relax. To breathe. To chillax, as Tommy would say.
I did all of that, but still felt uneasy as hell.
“Damn, bro. You sound like you’re hyperventilating.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, breathing through my mouth. “Let’s just do this and get out of here.”
Now that my eyes were adjusting to the gloom, I could just make out Tommy’s pale, smiling face. Why he enjoyed pushing me, challenging me, or seeing me squirm was something I would never understand.
“Okay,” he said, “you pull up the ghost finder app, and I’ll pull up the ghost recorder.”
I did just that—and quickly. Anything that helped get us the hell out of here. I wasn’t very surprised to discover that my hands were shaking slightly.
Get a hold of yourself, Billy, I thought to myself. The
n I immediately forgave myself, too, since I was sitting under the tree from hell in the middle of a cemetery late at night. I had every right to be damn nervous.
Soon, we had our apps up and running. Tommy’s freckled face was aglow in the light of his own phone, looking very much like a disembodied ghost himself. “Okay, so far nothing,” said Tommy. “How the hell does the ghost finder find nothing in a graveyard?”
“Maybe there’re no ghosts here,” I said. Perhaps I was a little too quick to bash his new ghost finder app, an app that supposedly could sense the fluctuations in the magnetic field around the phone.
“Like hell,” said Tommy. “This is a fucking cemetery. It’s filled with ghosts.”
I didn’t doubt he was right, but having him utter it in a cemetery, while under the ghost tree, sent an ice-cold shiver down my spine. Then again, it could have just been a ghost, too.
I moved over and looked at Tommy’s iPhone cradled in his palm. His wasn’t as big as my Galaxy Note 4. In fact, no phone was as big as my Galaxy Note 4. Perhaps nowhere in the known universe was there a phone as big as my Galaxy Note 4. Anyway, his phone was easy enough to read in the near pitch darkness. On the screen was a greenish, circular radar, with a rotating arm. The radar could find ghosts within a diameter of twenty feet. Supposedly. So far, the screen was empty. I guess that was a good thing.
“Are there any ghosts here? Jesus H. Christ,” mumbled Tommy, and I cringed at the blatant question and the taking of the Lord’s name in vain. You see, I kinda wanted Jesus H. Christ on our side on a night like this. I would ask him, of course, what the “H” stood for.
Then again, we had come here to find ghosts. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. At the time, we were bored, having just spent hours playing the latest Halo on Xbox One. Now… well, now I regretted like crazy agreeing to come. But we were here, and we weren’t going anywhere until Tommy got his ghost fix.
So I kept my mouth shut and played along… all while silently hoping we would get the hell out of here in time to get drunk on judiciously spiked eggnog.