The House by the Cemetery

by John Everson

  Chapter Seven

  “You are my favorite Asian zombie ever!” Jeanie said as Bong walked into the living room of her small apartment. She threw her arms around him and kissed him as if she hadn’t seen him in weeks. Never mind that they’d gone out to Teehan’s just last night for drinks.

  “Wha—” he said, between her frantic kisses.

  “I got it!” she said. “I got the haunted house job!”

  Bong smiled. “Ah. And here I thought you were just happy to see me.”

  She slapped him on the shoulder. “Well, I am, silly. It was the makeup I did on you that got me the job. Plus – and here’s the coolest thing – they said that they wanted you to work as one of the actors who scare people at the house. Can you believe it? We can be together all of October and you can get paid too!”

  She took in his look of dismay and put a finger to his scowling lips before he could say a word. “Say that you’ll do it? Please?”

  “Why would I want to be a spook in a haunted house?” Bong asked. “I already have a job, I don’t need another one.”

  “Because we’ll get to do it together!” she said. “They want me to do makeup, but they also want me to be a spook too. So, we can haunt the house together. How awesome will that be?”

  He looked up at the ceiling, and then back at her. He couldn’t complain too much. He enjoyed being with Jeanie. And to be with her while she was in her element, having fun….

  Bong nodded in a hesitant yes.

  “Oh, I love you!” Jeanie said, bouncing up and down on her toes and planting kisses on his lips with every move.

  “I’ll cross off every free minute in October,” he said. “But as for today….”

  “Oh, that’s what I wanted to tell you,” Jeanie said. “There’s a meeting today for everyone who’s going to work in the house. I thought since you were coming over anyway, maybe we could go.”

  “But we had a date….”

  “It’ll still be a date, silly,” she said. “Only we’ll be with a bunch of other people who love haunted houses as much as we do.”

  She looked at his face and quickly corrected herself. “Okay, as much as I do. But we’ll be together?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Good,” she said, and walked across the room to pick up her makeup kit. “Can you drive? Because the meeting is in fifteen minutes.”

  * * *

  They pulled up in front of a tan duplex house in Oak Forest as dusk was setting in, and clearly, they were not the first to arrive. The street was filled with cars on both sides of the street.

  “How many people are coming to this?” Bong asked.

  Jeanie shrugged. “I dunno. But I know that anyone who works on haunted houses on the south side wants to be part of this, since it’s at Bachelor’s Grove. So, I’m not surprised if it’s crowded. This is so cool. It’s a total honor to be part of this.”

  Bong couldn’t hide the fact that he didn’t put the experience on quite the same level she did. But she grabbed his hand and dragged him forward down the sidewalk to the doorway of the host house. There was a picture of Jack Skellington from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas on the window.

  “This is it,” she enthused. She lifted her hand to knock on the door, and a face appeared in the window. A black man with almost no hair, and a t-shirt that featured the steel claws of Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street, opened the door.

  “Do you know the password?” he asked. “I have just one clue for you: Haunted.”

  Jeanie grinned. “House?”

  “You’re in,” he said, and pushed the screen door open wider.

  “Hi, I’m Lenny,” he said, extending a long thin hand once they were inside.

  Jeanie took his hand and introduced herself and Bong. “Is this your house?” she asked.

  Lenny laughed. “Oh no,” he said. “I don’t play that way. I live in an apartment down on Harlem Avenue. This is my pal June’s place. She’s got the big corporate job and mortgage and all, but I don’t rib her about it too much. Because, well, she likes haunted houses and shit still.”

  “That and the fact that I let you sleep here most of the time,” a woman’s voice said from behind him.

  A thin girl with pale features and long auburn hair walked up behind him and smacked him in the back of the head before smiling and ducking left down a hall.

  Jeanie and Bong followed Lenny into a crowded kitchen that connected to an equally crowded living room. There were at least thirty people in the house, and half of them seemed to be wearing shirts from horror movies.

  Jeanie squeezed Bong on the arm and gestured at the group with a grin. “I feel like I just came home,” she said. “And I don’t know any of these people.”

  Bong smiled. “So…what are we supposed to do here exactly?” he asked.

  Jeanie shrugged. “I don’t know. But I guess we’ll find out.”

  At that moment, a guy in a shirt dominated by a decayed face with gnarled teeth and maggots crawling from a rotted eyeball (the text beneath the photo said Zombi) stood up in front of a widescreen TV that was playing Halloween III: Season of the Witch with the sound turned off. Jeanie could hear the ‘Silver Shamrock’ theme from the movie instantly play in her head. The thing was so obnoxiously addictive.

  “Hey everyone!” he said, calling out to still the room. “Some of you know me and some don’t, but we’re going to be working together a lot over the next few weeks. My name is Lon, and I’m the production manager for Bremen House, the Bachelor’s Grove Haunted House attraction. I’ve done a lot of work on stage design, and worked for a couple seasons on the Stateville Prison haunted house. Plus I’ve always put together a haunted house in my garage for the kids, so I’m really psyched to be working with you on this. It’s going to be awesome.”

  He looked around the room for a minute and then grinned. “There you are. June, come on up here.”

  The auburn-haired girl slipped between a couple guys in Metallica and Anthrax t-shirts, and joined him at the front of the room. She hung her head a little, clearly uncomfortable with being the center of attention.

  “This is June,” Lon said. “For any of you who haven’t met her, she’s the best monster makeup artist you’re ever going to meet, and she’ll be leading all of you who are here to work on makeup and costume design. She’s really amazing, and if she didn’t hang out so much with Lenny, I’d ask her to marry me and turn me into a zombie.”

  June looked up at Lon, clearly mortified.

  “I’m kidding,” he said. “But she is really good. And in a couple minutes, I’m going to ask all of you who are here for makeup to follow her for direction. But some housekeeping first. I’m your official ‘stage manager’ for the next few weeks, so if you have any problems or questions on anything, I want you to let me know. We’ll figure out how to fix it. Or kill it. Whatever it takes.”

  He motioned for a thin guy in a Suspiria t-shirt to step forward. “This guy calls himself Argento. You’ll always be able to find him – just look for the Suspiria or Opera or Four Flies on Gray Velvet or Deep Red or Phenomena t-shirt. I don’t think he owns a shirt that isn’t a Dario Argento movie. Don’t ask me what his real name is; I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  He pointed at another wiry guy with brown hair standing nearby. “And where you find Argento, you’ll also find Lucio. I’m guessing that’s not his real name either. All I know is they make amazing sets – if you went to the Rob Zombie Great American Nightmare house in Villa Park last year, you know what I mean. Argento’s going to be in charge of designing all of the rooms in the house. Anyone who’s doing painting and set stuff, you’ll be working with him. And please feed him some ideas – because we can’t have every room in this place end up looking like a set from Suspiria.”

  “I don’t see why not,” the guy who called himself Argento said,
but Lon just shook his head. “No. But I don’t want to see a Sharknado-themed room either.”

  “This is a twister…with teeth,” someone yelled.

  Lon held up his hands and smiled. “So, here’s the way it’s going to go down. For the next month or so, there’s a guy out at the house fixing it up. Don’t go out there; you can’t get in. He’s putting down new floors and shit and fixing it up so the place is useable for us. While he’s doing that, we’re going to be planning out the room themes. We want every room to reference a really cool horror movie. I know the people who walk through in October probably won’t always get half the references, but if the rooms are good – really good – then they’ll have an awesome time anyway. And for those who are really big horror movie fans…they’re going to be in heaven. So once we have the themes all mapped out, the set folks are going to work with Argento to figure out how to make the rooms look real. And the makeup peeps are going to plan out their spooks based on the room themes. We’ll have a couple big group meetings between now and September, but mostly we’ll be working in smaller groups and we’ll communicate what’s going on with everything in a private Facebook group. Before you leave here tonight, make sure you write down your Facebook ID on the signup sheet in the kitchen so we can add you.”

  “Are those knives on your fingers?” Jeanie whispered. Lenny had ended up next to them. He raised his hands and flexed his fingers with a smile. His fingers were the color of milk chocolate, but the blue blades of the tattoos looked dangerous. He nodded.

  “Are you a Nightmare fan?” he asked.

  Jeanie grinned. “Freddy forever.”

  “Then you have to see this.” He nodded his head toward the back of the room, and then turned and walked.

  Jeanie and Bong followed.

  Lenny led them up a short flight of stairs to a bedroom. He grinned as he pushed a door open and gestured for them to enter.

  “What do you think?” he asked as they stepped inside.

  “Holy shit, what happened in here?” Bong gasped.

  The pale lavender walls were splattered with spots of what looked like blood. It dripped down the walls in dark, dried trails but the real disturbing part was on the ceiling. A life-size female manikin hung from the center of it, just above the bed. Her nightgown hung in tatters and her mouth was open in a silent scream.

  “June let me decorate the bedroom,” he explained. “So, I chose the film that started it all.”

  “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” Jeanie said.

  “Reel One!” he grinned.

  Jeanie smiled in appreciation, and noted that one wall appeared to have a phrase on it finger-painted in what looked like more blood. It read, ‘To Sleep, Perchance To Dream…’

  “It’s really cool, but I don’t know how you sleep in here,” Jeanie said.

  “Nah,” he said. “It’s comforting. A refuge. The world of Nightmare is way more safe than the world out there.” He pointed out the bedroom window. “Human beings, those are the monsters that you’ve gotta fear.”

  Jeanie nodded. “Can’t argue with you there.”

  He walked to a closet and opened the door. A moment later he turned around, a latex mask of Freddy Krueger covering his face.

  “Do you think you can make me look like this with makeup instead of a mask?”

  She frowned. “I dunno,” she said, hesitating. “Your skin is already pretty dark.”

  “See, that’s what I’m always talking about,” he said. “Black guys never get the good parts in horror movies. We’re always just bums or zombies or shit like that. And just look at this cast for the haunted house. I’m the only black guy in the group.”

  “I’d guess that’s just because no other guys came out for this,” Jeanie suggested. “Or…if this is like a horror movie, maybe it means you’re the only one of us who is going to survive the entire month of haunting the house.”

  Lenny shook his head. “More likely, it means I’ll end up dying in some ridiculous way on Halloween night when this thing is open to the public…and everyone will just think I’m a prop.”

  At that moment, June walked into the room, shaking her head.

  “Are we back to the poor black man bit again?” she said. “Just get over it. There are plenty of black guys in horror and they have great roles, not just victims. What about Tony Todd in Candyman? What about Duane Jones in Night of the Living Dead? If horror discriminates against anyone, it’s women. Always whiny screaming victims who can’t run more than five feet without falling down.”

  “Not true,” Lenny said, quickly warming up to what was obviously a continuing argument. “How about one of the strongest characters in a horror movie ever – Sigourney Weaver in Alien. Or even Heather Langenkamp as Nancy in Nightmare? She’s a kid but she goes up against Freddy. She doesn’t just run away and whine.”

  “Exceptions,” June said. Then she turned to Jeanie and asked, “What do you think? Who gets the short stick more in horror films, girls or black guys?”

  “I think you can make a generalization about pretty much anything to support whatever argument you want to support,” Jeanie said. “If you’re a black guy, you’re the victim of racial prejudice. If you’re a woman, there’s the glass ceiling of The Man keeping you down. If you’re a white guy…all of the minorities – and women – are out to get you. Everybody can point to some one or some group that is ‘keeping them down’. So…I just don’t go there.”

  June grinned and clapped Jeanie on the shoulder. “Well said! I think I’m going to like you…um….”

  “Jeanie,” she answered.

  June grinned. “June and Jeanie. Let’s make some monsters,” she said, leading them back into the hall. Jeanie saw Bong waiting for her at the foot of the stairs and waved.

  “Black or white or Korean,” June continued, noticing Bong. “They’re all going to be scary as hell.”

  Chapter Eight

  The field grass around the cemetery was wet with dew as Mike pulled the truck down the slim gravel road bordering the old stones. It was going to be a hot one; while the air was heavy with the fresh smells of summer and a gentle morning breeze, he could taste the coming heat of the day in the air. The moisture beading on the tips of the grass right now would be burned off in an hour.

  He parked and pulled his cooler and toolbox from the back bed of the truck. He had a feeling he was going to need the former more than the latter in a couple more hours.

  Despite the outdoor weather, the basement of the house was cool and dank as he went down the steps and turned on his utility lights. As long as he had to work down here, the day might not be too bad.

  All the lights on the far end of the basement were off, and then Mike remembered that he had unplugged part of the strand yesterday when he’d been digging, because the hanging lamps kept hitting him in the head. He’d ended up laying the problem lights on the ground out of the way, and using a camping lantern he had in the truck to light the area of the dig.

  As he walked a few steps from the door, the basement turned pitch black almost immediately. Mike reached down and grabbed the extension cord that fed power across the room and used it as a guide to trace his way across the floor until its end, walking slowly step by step into the darkness. When he found the end, he felt around on the damp earth until he located the disconnected cord that fed the lights in the back half of the basement. He plugged it in, and the dark disappeared in a wash of yellowish light, though some was beaming directly into the earth, where he’d laid the lights down yesterday.

  When he stood up with the cord in hand, something thunked against the back of his head. He jumped, and then turned around.

  A dark object swayed from the joist above.

  “What the hell is that?” he whispered, and grabbed for the nearest light lying nearby on the ground. It was encased in a metal hood with a protective lattice across the open porti
on so you could drop it without breaking the bulb. The casing had a hook and typically hung from a nail in one of the joists; the open end of the case where the light came out was currently beaming into the ground. He lifted it up by the hook and turned it around to point the light at exactly what he’d bumped into. Mike felt his jaw drop as he took in what the bulbs illuminated. He slowly aimed the light from left to right, noting one carcass after the other hanging from the beam.

  They all looked like bloody lumps of fur. Three raccoons. A couple of squirrels; small striped things that he guessed were chipmunks; a rabbit. One pale gray thing with a long snout that boasted a row of sharp yellowed teeth. An opossum.

  The animals were strung from the beams in a circle all around the old coffin area that Mike had dug up and then immediately re-buried yesterday. Beneath each body, the ground was dark with drained animal blood. And in the center, above where the coffin was buried, a symbol was drawn in the earth. It was faint, but Mike could see it still. He guessed that someone had made it using the animal blood, and while it might be dry, the earth would hold that darker color for a long time to come. The symbol looked like something he’d seen in a horror movie dealing with witches and the devil. A circle, with a star inside it.

  “Okay, that’s really it,” he whispered and backed away from the scene, step by step. He could feel his heart beating, harder and harder with every second that passed.

  What the hell was going on in this place?

  * * *

  Once he got outside and could take a couple of deep breaths in the dappled sunlight that came through the trees, he dialed Perry’s number with shaking fingers.

  “Hello, Bremen Enterprises,” his friend’s voice answered.

  “Your devil worshippers are still here,” Mike growled. “The work site is full of dead bodies.”

  “Bodies, what? Is this Mike? What are you talking about?”

  Mike quickly explained what he’d seen, as he walked around the outside of the house and back up the porch steps to return to the main level. He could feel his emotions growing with every word that described the scene with the blooded animals.