Death and Douglas

by J. W. Ocker

  This year, her Back to School decorations hardly had time to greet the returning students before being retired for the year. The card-stock rulers and books and globes that adorned the walls, the poster on the bulletin board of the shiny apple with a protruding worm in a graduation cap and glasses, the long WELCOME BACK banner that ran almost the width of the chalkboard with words spelled out in pencils—they’d all been replaced before September was barely halfway over.

  Now, the sixth-grade classroom was a darker world. Chains of black construction paper bats hung in loops from the ceiling tiles. Fake spiderwebs stretched along the edges of the bookshelves. Paper ghosts, mummies, vampires, and werewolves danced across the beige cement-block walls. Miss Farwell had covered the back of the students’ chairs with large paper gravestones bearing their names under the letters RIP. She’d put a four-foot-tall inflatable Frankenstein’s monster in the back corner of the classroom. Her bulletin board was festooned with flyers for this year’s Cowlmouth Fall Carnival. And, of course, there was the orange plastic jack-o’-lantern with its glowing light bulb brain that sat on the corner of her desk, staring straight at Douglas in his unfortunate front row seat.

  In six weeks, it would be Halloween. In six weeks, everybody would be as okay with death as Douglas Mortimer was.

  Except that Douglas wasn’t really okay with death anymore. Not since he learned a week ago that murder wasn’t just a video game plot point, that it wasn’t always the natural end that he’d thought it to be, and that, maybe, it never had been.

  Murder scared him, of course. It was something that made you think twice before staying out too late and hurry past dark alleyways. It was one of the reasons every child was told never to talk to strangers.

  But, more than being scared of it, murder bothered Douglas.

  He looked down at the test on his desk. He had finished it a good five minutes ago. All except for one question, a fill-in-the-blank:

  Good is to Evil as Clean is to ___________.

  Douglas knew that the answer Miss Farwell was looking for was “dirty.” But that’s not the answer that made sense to him.

  Good. Evil. The words, themselves, seemed to tell their own tales. Good looked insufficient, monosyllabic, almost goofy, and very round like Reverend Ahlgrim. Evil was all pointy, strong and deadly looking, and somehow, with its long E, pleasant to say.

  He didn’t like it one bit.

  M for murder. M for monster. Douglas couldn’t even sign the test without the large M of his last name standing out to him in ominous strokes. It was as if the letter had been cut into his own brain instead of Mrs. Laurent’s cheek.

  With effort, he tried to ignore both the heavy thoughts weighing on him and the scrutiny of the jack-o’-lantern as he halfheartedly filled in the answer to the question. When he put his pencil down to wait for Miss Farwell to call time, he saw something strange out of the corner of his eye. The view outside the classroom door window was usually of the large bank of red lockers across the hallway, but now, a small, round, furry head with big black eyes and two tall brown horns like a bull’s horns slowly rose past the bottom edge. It stopped, glanced back and forth, and slowly slid along the pane before disappearing past the side of glass. It then reversed course, moving back across the lower part of the window before disappearing again.

  Douglas almost had to stick his pencil back in his mouth to stifle a laugh. A few echoed titters around the room told him he wasn’t the only one who’d seen the joke, but he was probably the only one to recognize its source. The furry head came into view again, confirming his suspicions when a third eye, this one small and clear and blue popped up under the hair … and widened in terror as the door opened.

  “Mr. Pumphrey, what are you doing?” Miss Farwell looked down at Lowell, a stern expression on her face, the one she’d patented sometime in the last few years and only rarely meant.

  Lowell, on his knees, a pair of sunglasses pushed up in his yellow stack of hair and a pair of plastic horns planted on his head, missed only enough of a beat to stammer out an “Uh …” before explaining, “I dropped my books.” He gestured around where, surprisingly, there were indeed books and papers scattered around him.

  Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I see. Nice horns.”

  “Thanks. Family heirloom.” He took them off to give her a better view of the two pieces of plastic connected by a black arc of headband. When she ignored it, he popped them right back onto his temples.

  “Well, hurry and pick up your things. The last bell will ring soon, and it’s Friday, so I can’t make any promises about controlling the sixth-grade stampede.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Before the door fully closed, Lowell was able to squeeze in a quick monster face at Douglas.

  Minutes later, the tests collected, the homework assigned, and every student’s bottom shifting on the edge of his or her seat like rodeo cowboys behind a gate, the bell signaling the end of the school day clanged out its metal cry of freedom. A glorious cacophony of books being slammed shut and paper being crumpled and supplies being gathered and crammed haphazardly into backpacks filled the room. It was a happy hullabaloo.

  Douglas slipped out the classroom door to find Lowell waiting.

  “I didn’t hear you drop your books.”

  “Ha. I didn’t. Spread them around real quiet-like to give myself an alibi in case your teacher saw me. Funny, though, right?”

  “Yeah, good one.” Nobody is better at faking alibis than a police officer’s son.

  The duo held their own in the torrent of students pouring down the school hallway and through the heavy doors at the front of the building. Outside, the bright sky was taking on the slightest tinge of twilight, warning of the much shorter days to come. They walked across the central lawn, and past the school building where Lowell spent his time when he wasn’t playing around outside of sixth-grade classroom doors.

  As they meandered toward the parking lot, a sudden dark spot cropped up in Douglas’s vision. One blink later, the spot resolved itself into a short, pale girl with long dark hair and a purple stone on her finger. She waved as she passed. Lowell nodded a silent greeting but kept walking.

  “Who was that?” Douglas asked without really meaning to.

  “Audrey. Interested?”

  “Shut up. Just curious. I saw her at Mr. Stauffer’s funeral.”

  “Yeah, she’s in my class. Her father’s an ambulance driver or something.” Lowell slowed his pace and squinted an eye at Douglas. “You were in the same school building with her last year. Like me.” A large grin slowly broke out on his face. “Uh-oh. Sounds like somebody’s radar got recalibrated over the summer.”

  “Again, shut up.”

  “It’s okay, man. The Fall Carnival’s coming up soon, you know.” He pointed to a series of posters tacked to a wall of the school. One said GATHER YOUR FAMILY FOR A FUN PHOTO AT THE COWLMOUTH FALL CARNIVAL. COSTUMES PROVIDED. A picture on it showed a family of five all made up to look like characters from Alice in Wonderland. Another had an image of Godzilla holding a pumpkin above his head. The poster read COWLMOUTH FALL CARNIVAL MONSTER PUMPKIN CONTEST. $5,000 IN PRIZES. “You could ask her to go with you. Say the word, and I’ll introduce you.”

  “I’ve got a few words. Real nasty ones. All for you.”

  “You’re definitely going to the Fall Carnival, though, right?”

  Cowlmouth was a nice place, but Cowlmouth during the Cowlmouth Fall Carnival was perfection. During the festival, it was as if every business and house and park and citizen shifted slightly in time and space to fit together exactly as they were meant to. The carnival had been tradition since the town’s founding. Cowlmouth could have been the birthplace of two astronauts, four movie stars, and Wi-Fi, and its welcome sign would still have read HOME OF THE COWLMOUTH FALL CARNIVAL.

  “Of course.”

  “What’re you up to tomorrow afternoon? Cemetery?”

  “No. Mom wants help with some errands—groceries, funeral business at the
church, nothing exciting. I doubt my folks will let me out after that. They’re being real protective, what with Mrs. Laurent and all.”

  Lowell’s eyes brightened and the horns that were for some reason still on his head seemed to perk up. “The monster.”

  Douglas grabbed Lowell by the arm and stopped walking. He looked around to make sure nobody was within earshot and then lowered his voice. “Has your dad found out anything new?”

  “Nope. Not that I know of, anyway. I’ve listened at the vent every night this week, but nothing.” If Chief Pumphrey ever found out that his son was eavesdropping on his work conversations, no alibi would save him.

  “Maybe that’s good news. I almost don’t want the murderer caught. I wish he’d just vanish forever.”

  “Oh, Dad’ll catch him. He just needs the killer to strike again.”

  “What?” Douglas grimaced at his friend.

  “Simple math, man. Two murders are twice the evidence, twice the chance the monster might make a mistake …”

  “Twice the murder victims. That’s a rotten thing to say.”

  “A murderer is on the loose. The whole situation is rotten.”

  “What if he’s already left Cowlmouth?”

  “Then some other town’s Mrs. Laurent will be killed. And, again, he’ll be easier to find. Every body’s a clue.” Lowell widened his eyes and waggled his fingers at Douglas.

  They continued to the school parking lot. Sticking out from all the minivans, SUVs, and compact cars was a sleek, long, black hearse taking up two spaces.

  “Looks like your ride’s here, Doug.”

  SEPTEMBER 17

  SATURDAY

  If there was one place where the word death was spoken more times than at a funeral home, it was at church. The word was never more than a grave’s width away from the topic of every sermon, and everybody who attended seemed to be okay with it being constantly brought up. As a result, Douglas usually felt more or less at home in the sanctuary, even when the church was empty except for himself, his mother, and Reverend Ahlgrim. Today Reverend Ahlgrim had a large black Bible clutched in his right hand and a four-foot-long bright green rubber snake coiled around his left shoulder like a rope.

  “No tie today, Douglas?” asked the reverend.

  They were standing below the pulpit, in the same spot where Mr. Stauffer’s coffin had been a week ago, and countless more before his. Douglas often thought of it as the dead spot of the church. Looming above them was the stained glass eye, blind now with nobody at the pulpit, and softly glowing in the artificial light installed behind the panes.

  Mrs. Mortimer tousled Douglas’s hair. “Every once in a while, I can convince him to let his neck breathe.” Douglas’s mother was tall, taller than his father and Reverend Ahlgrim at least, with thick red hair, a fine spray of freckles on her face, and a fondness for gold jewelry. The hand that had messed up Douglas’s hair had no less than four rings on it and her own neck was being strangled by three different lengths of chain, the middle one bearing a delicate casket-shaped charm with her initials on it.

  “So how’s school? You’re in sixth grade now, right?” Without pausing for an answer to either question, Reverend Ahlgrim continued, “Would you believe me if I told you that someday, when you’re older, you’re going to miss being in school?”

  Douglas smoothed his hair and shook his head, not wanting to risk the eternal penalty for calling a clergyman a liar.

  “Oh, well. You will.” Reverend Ahlgrim turned to Mrs. Mortimer. “What can I do for you today?”

  “Just dropping by to touch base. I think you’re supposed to be conducting a service next week at our chapel. Oh, and I wanted to thank you again for conducting Mrs. Laurent’s service at such short notice. On top of everything else out of the ordinary with that funeral, of course her pastor would have been recovering from heart surgery.” Mrs. Mortimer pulled her smartphone out of her purse and called up her calendar with a few taps of a blood-red fingernail.

  “Poor Mrs. Laurent,” the reverend said, casting his eyes down into the church’s dead spot and grabbing at the snake around his shoulder like it was a loose suspender. “I keep thinking about that funeral …” Reverend Ahlgrim looked down at Douglas as if he were suddenly reminded that he was there. “But I’m being too morbid for a sixth-grade boy.”

  “It’s okay. His father had a ‘talk’ with him about the whole thing.” She rolled her eyes. “Besides, Douglas is good at death.” She tousled his hair again, and he winced, although not because he was going to have to fix his hair.

  “I’m sorry. Sometimes I lose all sense of propriety when I talk,” said Reverend Ahlgrim. “Especially when it comes to death. I teach children in Sunday School about Cain killing Abel, Moses murdering the Egyptian, Elijah summoning bears to kill children for making fun of him. You get a little used to it. Sometimes, I think death is more my business than yours, Mrs. Mortimer.”

  Douglas nodded in agreement, even though neither his mother nor the preacher were looking at him.

  “What’s your schedule like this month?” asked Mrs. Mortimer.

  “I’m not sure. If it’s not Sunday, I don’t know what day it is or what’s going on. Let me get my planner from my office. Hey, Douglas, check this out. I picked it up today from the toy store for one of the Sunday School classes.” He pulled the scaly coil off his shoulder and dangled the long, springy piece of green fork-tongued rubber in front of him. “They’re doing Adam and Eve.”

  Douglas looked at his mom, who somehow communicated without even quivering an eyelash that he should accept the gesture.

  “Cool,” he said, taking the snake and the opportunity to escape from the conversation. He wandered toward the back of the church toward the giant Jesus on the wall.

  Douglas had hung out under many Jesi in his day, waiting while his parents conducted business in holy places. He’d seen the splayed savior in all sizes, positions, and styles: looking down in death, up in supplication, straight out in accusation. He’d seen plain wooden figures with vaguely carved features, Jesus-less crosses like lowercase Ts, and surreal icons made out of wire and metal that only kind of looked like a person on a cross. The one at the back of Cowlmouth Center Church—the same one under which he had stood while handing out programs for Mr. Stauffer’s funeral—was enormous, dark, carved out of oak, and highly polished. This Jesus looked up at the ribbed ceiling of the church. Black rivulets ran from his eyes, chest, hands, and feet. On a wooden scroll at the foot of the cross were the words, Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani. It looked to Douglas like something a magician might incant before making an assistant disappear.

  Douglas settled himself beneath the cross with his back to the wall. He dropped the snake in a loose pile beside him, promptly pulling his phone out of his pocket. He was on the first level of a game that involved a zookeeper trying to corral escaped animals. The game started easy enough with turtles and hedgehogs, but eventually you had to herd wily monkeys, flying eagles, and dangerous tigers back into their cages.

  Before he could even get his first turtle into its tank, a thought struck him that made him crane his neck and look up at the cross. Jesus was being murdered. He could almost see the M forming in the creases of Jesus’s wooden cheek.

  Douglas had always known that these statues depicting a dying or dead man. Heck, it was another reason he felt at home in church. Back at the funeral home, if there was ever a day where there wasn’t a corpse somewhere on the premises, the house felt empty and odd.

  He also knew the story of Jesus. That happens when you attend as many funeral services as he had. Jesus died and rose from the dead. People like to think about that when their loved ones die. But now that he looked at the story from a different angle, the comfort seemed to drain completely out from it. The dead Christ no longer seemed like a symbol of hopeful resurrection, but of a world full of violence.

  What affected him more than the story, though, was that they blatantly displayed a murder victim on the church w
all. On almost every church wall in town, in fact. Why would they do that? He was trying to figure out a way to not think about murder, while churches tried to remind their members of it every Sunday. It baffled him. And it terrified him for another reason.

  Murder was everywhere. Even the safest places.

  Before he could go much further with the thought, he heard the familiar chime of his mother’s cell phone, and then a hurried exchange involving her, whoever was on the other end, and Reverend Ahlgrim.

  Suddenly, Mrs. Mortimer was barreling down the aisle, sweeping Douglas up by his hand, and rushing him out to the car. The snake lay where he had dropped it, evil-looking and venomous on the red carpet. Douglas neither protested nor asked questions. He had heard two words in the flurry of conversation at the front of the church:

  “Another murder.”

  SEPTEMBER 20

  TUESDAY

  Under the glowing blanket tent of his bed, Douglas held a worn paperback copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes. He was illuminating the text with a flashlight nestled between his shoulder and neck. On the cover was an illustration of a long, black train belching giant nightmare shapes from its smokestack into a moonlit sky. But he wasn’t so much reading the book as staring into its pages, churning over what had happened three days ago and worrying what was about to happen tonight as a result.

  Eventually, he gave up, tossing back the blanket and throwing the book onto his bedside table. The alarm clock that the book landed on said it was three minutes past midnight.

  Other than it being strangely neat, Douglas’s room had many of the normal features of a twelve-year-old’s room. On his desk was a pile of worn comic books. In another corner, a basket of dirty clothes took up a defensive posture. A glow-in-the-dark topographical map of the moon covered almost the entire wall above his bed. However, there were a few objects that would have been out of place in the rooms of most twelve-year-olds. Like Douglas’s collection of funeral programs, each one bearing the image of a dead person and balancing out the pile of comic books on his desk. A jar of grave dirt sat on a shelf, a present from his grandfather that had been collected from a famous cemetery in London. Strung across the ceiling was a garland of one-sided cardboard tombstones, a repurposed Halloween decoration that happened to fit the season, but which was really a perennial accent. And then there were the flowers. Douglas had more flowers in his room than a hospital patient. But all of his blossoms, blooms, and buds were plastic. Each bit of fake flora had been collected from a funeral service or a grave site. To Douglas, they were just another part of the business of life at a funeral home, as distant from wildflowers as gravestones were from actual stones.