by J. W. Ocker
Also a great night to avoid becoming one of them.
Atop the outer wall, the innards of the jack-o’-lanterns flickered with hot souls. Later that night, Moss and Feaster would douse them, as surely as they buried bodies at any other time. The boys vaulted over the wall, decapitating it of a few of its jack-o’-lanterns, which hit the soft turf on the other side and rolled to a halt at the foot of some of the gravestones, prematurely snuffed.
As soon as Douglas’s feet hit the well-fed grass, he found his second wind, as if he were being energized by the cemetery he knew so well.
They continued running, Lowell half a grave plot ahead, both boys deftly avoiding the tombstones and statuary. Douglas heard a heavy thud near the bare spot in the jack-o’-lantern line atop the wall. He didn’t look back. Despite his renewed vigor, he felt as if he weren’t running fast enough, as if the dead were reaching from their graves and grabbing at his ankles, slowing him down. Any second, the Day Killer would pounce on him.
“Hide,” Douglas whisper-shouted at Lowell’s back as he dived behind a tall, thick obelisk. He saw Lowell pull a controlled fall on the far side of a large sarcophagus topped by a pair of stone children, one at each end like they were riding a seesaw.
Douglas leaned back against the obelisk, trying to silently catch both his breath and his courage. He tilted his head back and saw that the large, pointed column was topped by a delicate stone angel eternally blowing a long trumpet. It was meant to represent the Last Trump, the divine blast at which the dead were supposed to rise at the end of the world.
Right now, Douglas could use the help of a cemetery full of the resurrected dead.
As he continued to stare up at the statue and the clouded sky above it, he felt small bits of cold hitting his face. Looking down at his costume, he saw a galaxy of tiny white stars blinking into existence on the black cloak. Snow. In October. On Halloween.
He risked a peek around the obelisk.
Against the light from the lampposts outside the cemetery gates, he saw the tall silhouette of their pursuer, the lightly falling snow a meager buffer between them. Seeing him standing there like a piece of funerary art, there was no doubt that this was, as Moss had said, a different type of monster. A human one.
Suddenly, the murderer’s arm arced quickly upward and then sharply downward into a small pumpkin perched atop a tombstone. Whatever was in his hand stuck deep into the pumpkin’s flesh. As he brought back his hand the skewered pumpkin came with it. He pounded the pumpkin hard against the tombstone with a dead-sounding thud, and another, and another, until the pumpkin fell away in two rough halves. The Day Killer had found his knife.
Douglas knew he and Lowell couldn’t stay where they were. They needed to find a better hiding place. He also knew exactly where that was. They just had to get to it.
Slinking back away from the obelisk, Douglas crawled toward Lowell, who was sitting with his back to the stone coffin holding his head in his hands. As Douglas got close enough to whisper in his ear, Lowell jumped.
“It’s snowing,” Lowell whispered in surprise.
Only a couple inches of space separated their faces. Lowell looked pale and lost and his eyes seemed slightly swollen. “Grassley,” was all Douglas said to him. Lowell nodded slowly.
The boys tried to keep as many monuments between themselves and the killer as they could. Moving slowly from tombstone to tombstone like grave ghouls, they finally found themselves in front of a row of mausoleums cut into the side of a hill. The large stone houses for the dead were all about the same size, although they varied wildly in design, from simple, blank facades to church-like structures dominated by stained glass windows. Toward the end of the row was a relatively unnoticeable-looking mausoleum with a copper door green from age. It was embossed with grapevines that dangled down its surface like the tentacles of an octopus. The name Grassley was inscribed above the door. Like the rest of the mausoleums, this one was supposed to be locked, but as long as Douglas could remember, it never had been. He opened the door.
A scream like that of a murder victim ripped across the night, echoing off the tombstones and statues and mausoleums. Douglas felt his blood turn to powder and his own cold fear merge with the cold of the dead and the cold of the night. An automatic look at Lowell revealed his friend’s similar reaction. He hadn’t realized how loud those ancient hinges were when he and Lowell had hung out there in the daytime on their many adventures. Douglas ducked inside, followed close by Lowell. Each wincing, the boys tugged the door closed behind them with a second screeching murder.
Inside were two concrete sarcophagi, a his and a hers, each labeled with names and dates from the 18th century, William Grassley on one side and his wife Morgana on the other. In the walls were interred other members of the Grassley family. Douglas knew that from memory, though. All he could see right now was solid darkness. He felt his way for the bench he knew to be built into the back wall and sat down heavily on it, brushing some of the snow off his cloak and pulling out his flashlight. As he dragged its beam around the tiny interior, he felt Lowell drop down beside him.
The pale light slid across the walls and the two sarcophagi and the inside of the brass door, which was unadorned except for a few intersecting lines of studs. All the boys had for company was a family centuries dead and their own terrified thoughts. For Douglas, as seemed to be the way for the past month and a half, all of those thoughts were questions: How did this happen? Was Audrey safe? What did sick of sun mean? He chose an easy one to start with.
“Did you bring your flashlight?”
“I lost it when I jumped off Death House.” Lowell’s voice sounded odd.
“Are you okay?” Without thinking Douglas aimed the light at Lowell’s face. Lowell squinted and tried to wave the beam away. Douglas moved the light elsewhere with a mumbled apology.
“Am I okay? Are you okay? We’re being chased by a killer … We’ll probably die tonight.”
Douglas didn’t respond. He watched the pale circle of his flashlight beam as it haunted the inside of the mausoleum.
“I don’t get it,” Lowell said in a low voice, standing up and leaning against William Grassley’s sarcophagus. “It’s a Monday. He shouldn’t have been out tonight. We never should have even seen him. Never tracked him back to Death House. The whole town thought he wouldn’t be out tonight. Halloween was ours.” That last sentence came out almost as a whimper.
“I shouldn’t have said anything when I saw him,” answered Douglas.
“Nope. You weren’t wrong for that. You haven’t been wrong since this whole thing started. I’ve been the one who’s been wrong. I mean, I’ve been acting like the murders were the best thing to happen in this town since I moved here. I was excited by them. Felt like I was in a movie. Sure doesn’t feel like a movie anymore.” Lowell was silent for a moment. “Man, I really should have listened to you. We should have gone right to my dad after the killer chased you to your house. I’m such an idiot.”
“Hey, I didn’t even listen to me. We made the same bad calls together.”
“Bad calls,” Lowell hissed. “He could have killed Audrey tonight. You’re sure she got away?”
Douglas shined the light on his own face so that Lowell could see him nod. He didn’t offer any details.
“I’m sorry, man. I can’t believe I was having so much fun.”
They let the conversation die out. After a while, Lowell asked, “What are we going to do?”
“Wait, I guess. Wait him out. Wait until morning. Wait until the police find us. Or Moss and Feaster.” Douglas knocked the heel of the flashlight on Morgana Grassley’s sarcophagus. “The patience of the dead.”
Douglas continued to let the flashlight beam roam free. In its wanderings, it highlighted the curved ceiling, the inner handle of the door—a feature that had always amused him, giving him images of the dead going outside for a breath of fresh air. The light played along the rounded corners of the sarcophagi, the names on the lids. Grassle
y was engraved into each surface in large, ornate letters. Beneath each was a simple epitaph. Loving Father, Loving Mother. On the walls were the tombs of loving sons and daughters, beloved wives and husbands. As the light moved across the epitaphs and names, Douglas felt as if he were deciphering a coded message. He moved the light backwards across the epitaphs and they became foreign words. The circle of light wavered on a prominent D that led the word Daughter.
And Douglas remembered.
He remembered a dark shape lit in an eerie flickering blue light. He remembered the flash of a nasty knife. He remembered an eerie whispering like the monster was talking to his victim. And he remembered Audrey’s odd battle cry, a statement that had made no sense. Douglas, a D! It was a letter he himself had carved into a pumpkin rind earlier that night.
Except now it did make sense.
No day of the week started with D.
Douglas understood. He had the key to the whole ghastly thing. A piece of information that had come straight from the monster, itself, leaking twice from the black hood of Cowlmouth’s own private Grim Reaper.
“We’re wrong about the murders.”
Lowell squinted through the flashlight beam, trying to make out the dark boy behind it. “What do you mean?”
“The Day Killer. He’s not the Day Killer. I mean, he is, but that shouldn’t be his name.”
“What are you talking about?”
“His pattern. The letters. We were wrong. Everybody was. Listen. When I found Audrey, the killer was taunting her.”
“What was he saying?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t make it out, but when she attacked him …”
“She attacked him?”
“Yeah, she attacked him to save me. But while she was doing that, she yelled something that didn’t make any sense.”
“There’s a lot of that in this story.”
“She said, ‘Douglas, a D.’ I think the killer told her what letter he was going to cut into her cheek.”
“Oh no. Did he cut her?”
“No. I mean, I think he might have nicked her when I threw myself at him.”
“You threw yourself at him?”
“Low … a D.”
Lowell looked like he was listing something in his head. “No day starts with D.”
“I know. But you know what does?”
Lowell looked at him, not even squinting in the flashlight beam that Douglas had dragged across him and then threw at the wall, highlighting a single word.
“Daughter.”
Lowell didn’t respond. Just waited.
“The killer isn’t counting a week. He’s creating a family. Mrs. Laurent’s M wasn’t for murder or monster or Monday … It was for mother. Mr. Rivet’s F was for father. Marvin was the son. Audrey would have been the daughter. And me …”
“Another son.” Something lit in Lowell’s eyes that was almost visible in the sepulchral darkness. “That S on the giant pumpkin must’ve been meant for you. The killer was following you at the carnival. Not sick of sun. Not even s-u-n sun. You’d have been the second son.”
Might still be, Douglas thought. “Why me?” was what he said instead.
“Man, the first time you saw him was at your house, which just happens to be where all of his victims ended up. That’s got to be it. That’s why he noticed you. You were just there, sharing a roof with his victims. Heck, he was probably at Mr. Stauffer’s funeral, too. Everybody was.”
“I must’ve handed him a program.”
A disturbing sound penetrated the thick walls of the mausoleum, as if agreeing with the statement. It sounded like metal shaking against stone. As the boys listened, the sound repeated itself and got closer. Someone was trying the doors of the mausoleums. Not someone—the Day Killer. No, not the Day Killer. Not anymore. Some other name. Not that it mattered.
Panicked, Douglas flashed the beam around the inside of the mausoleum like it was a lightning bolt, looking for anything that could help them. The room was too small to offer a hiding place. Too stingy to offer a weapon.
“The sarcophagi,” whispered Lowell frantically.
The boys tried to pry open the heavy stone lids on first William Grassley’s and then Morgana’s final resting places, but it would take a funeral’s worth of pallbearers armed with crowbars to move either of those ancient stones.
Another rattle and scrape, closer.
They slumped on the altar.
“He’s got us,” Lowell said simply.
Douglas turned off the flashlight.
The two boys sat and listened to the sounds of door handles being rattled, of chains being tugged, of padlocks being shaken, each sound growing closer and closer as the killer moved down the row of mausoleums toward the one in which they hid. Douglas put an arm around Lowell’s shoulders and could feel him shivering.
Another rattle and scrape, closer.
And the two boys sat.
Like cemetery statues.
Like grief-paralyzed mourners.
Like terrified children.
Like those who have given up all hope.
Finally, the bronze door in front of them shifted slightly in its concrete jamb with a loud scrape, and a vertical slit of night appeared. Lowell and Douglas looked at each other, and then Lowell gave Douglas a crooked grin.
Just as the hinges started to scream, the two boys bolted, throwing the entire weight of their bodies, their souls, and every heavy thought that had been burdening their brains that night straight at the door.
It flew open fast at the unexpected force, the scream of its hinges sharper and shorter as the heavy metal slab rebounded against whoever was on the other side. The boys exploded out into the cemetery, Douglas’s hood and robe trailing behind him like a shadow clinging on for dear existence and Lowell like a charging bull sans horns or a scarecrow freshly unpegged.
And they ran.
Like mourners late for a funeral, they ran.
Like bodies newly risen from the dead.
Like terrified children.
Like the embodiments of hope.
And they ran in completely different directions.
At first, Douglas didn’t realize they had separated. And he didn’t know where he was running or if there was even a finish line to this race. But, as he saw the snow-dusted pumpkins on the graves, he remembered the jack-o’-lanterns on the wall. Someone would have to douse the flames: Moss and Feaster. He had to find Moss and Feaster.
Curfews didn’t apply to monsters, and they didn’t apply to those who fought monsters, either.
He risked a look back for Lowell, but didn’t see him. He risked another for the killer, and didn’t see him, either. The flakes were coming down heavier, and the entire cemetery glowed. While he’d been in the mausoleum, the ground had been coated in a thin film, not enough to sheath the dark points of the blades of grave grass, but enough that it was hard not to slip as he angled and re-angled through the labyrinth of monuments.
It was enough snow to reveal footprints, too, but Douglas figured there was nothing he could do about that. He put his head down and ran, sensing more than seeing the tombstones and statues that he nimbly steered around, concentrating on keeping his feet under him and his target ahead. Eventually, through the falling flakes, he could make out the most beautiful site in the world—an ugly, squat, triangular toolshed that was almost as old as the cemetery and twice as decayed as many of its residents. Built half-heartedly against a side wall, here was where Moss and Feaster kept all of their equipment. Here was where they were surely sheltering from the Halloween snow.
Douglas ran full speed into the warped wooden door, gray with age, and the ancient, brittle windows rattled at the impact. The door didn’t give. Locked. After quickly wiping away the film of snow from a pane with the sleeve of his costume, he peered inside. Empty. Not even a coat on a peg. The snow seemed suddenly to penetrate his skin and congeal around his heart.
Wait. Too empty. Douglas didn’t need another look in
side to know what was missing. Where was Daisy? The large yellow backhoe loader should have been parked in the middle of the shed. Douglas looked around to see if it was nearby, but the snow was coming down harder now, thickening the air.
Thickening it enough that it hid the black form until it was almost on top of him.
“Second son,” it hissed with an upraised hand that held death as surely as if it were the Grim Reaper’s scythe.
Douglas ran. The monster ran. The sky snowed. The dead slumbered.
If felt to Douglas as if his lungs were stuffed with pine needles and the bones in his legs had crumbled and his skull was sloshing to the crown with boiling blood. He wanted to pick a grave and lie down. Instead, he squinted, looking, aching for something particular.
Finally, he saw it.
On a hillock in the distance, he could make out the silhouette of a dinosaur-like head stretching into the sky against the glow of the town. He ran for it, the monster panting steps behind him. Every sudden turn was that much more distance between him and the serial killer. Between him and death.
And it was that much closer to safety. Where Daisy was, that’s where Moss and Feaster would be. He kept her raised backhoe in his sights.
Douglas charged through the cemetery’s covered bridge, slowing down to soften the sound of his shoes against the wooden planks. He risked a look behind him. He didn’t see the monster. Maybe the bridge was protection against more than headless horsemen. Exiting the other side and passing the dark chapel, he sped up again, running by another line of mausoleums and up the hill to the cemetery machine … almost skidding on the snow into an open grave.
He should have known better. Wherever Daisy was, there was usually an open grave nearby. He looked around, but saw no sign of Moss or Feaster anywhere. On top of that, Daisy was dark, all her lights off.