The House by the Cemetery

by John Everson

  “Emery couldn’t do this herself,” Katie said. “I really need your help.”

  “Help to do what, exactly?” Mike asked.

  Katie’s eyes wouldn’t meet his right away. She looked at the ground for a long moment, before they finally rose up, big and desperate looking.

  “I need you to dig up my mother’s grave,” Katie said.

  Mike’s eyes grew wide.

  “It sounds weird, I know,” she said. “But it’s really not. I told you my family was kind of messed up. Well, my mother took most of our family’s money to the grave with her. She was buried with a family jewel, and I need it back.”

  “Oh no, no, no,” Mike said. He dropped the shovel on the grass. “I’ve dealt with just about enough dead bodies this month. I am not about to dig one up on purpose. It’s not right.”

  Katie shook her head. “I wouldn’t ask you to help with this if it wasn’t really important,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Katie, but…I can’t. I just can’t.”

  Katie stepped closer, and leaned into him as she gave him a hug. She rested her head on his shoulder and whispered, “I promise you that if you do this for me, I’ll do whatever you want tonight. Anything at all.”

  She raised her head up and met his eyes. “And I know what you’ve been wanting the past few nights. I’ll do that for you, everything you’ve been thinking of. I’ll be glad to do that with you. Just do this one thing for me before all those people start working on this house. You said this place is going to get crowded pretty soon, and it’ll be impossible then.”

  The lights of a car passed by just a few dozen yards away on the turnpike.

  “We’re awfully close to the road to be digging up a grave,” Mike said.

  “That’s why Emery couldn’t do it alone,” Katie said. “We need to do this fast and stay out of sight.”

  “I can’t believe you’d want to dig up your own mother,” Mike said. He still sounded unsure, though Katie’s promises had nearly leveled any sane reservations he’d had. Beer and the promise of what he knew would be heaven had worn down nearly all of his will.

  “She was buried with a family jewel that must be worth tens of thousands of dollars by now,” Katie said. “And at the moment, I’m about to lose my house. If I can get the jewel back, I won’t lose the house. You don’t want me to lose the house I grew up in, do you?”

  She looked at him with wide, dark eyes. For the first time since he’d met her, he saw the glint of panic, or at least, desperation, in her gaze. “I don’t want to end up wandering the turnpike at night without a home like those lost ghosts you told me about.”

  Mike shook his head.

  “Please,” she begged, holding his shoulders. “Just get it out of the ground for me, and Emery and I can take care of the rest.”

  The night seemed to move like liquid around Mike’s head, and he shook away the sense of disorientation as he reached down to retrieve the shovel he’d dropped. And then words came out of his mouth that he didn’t think he’d say. But he heard his voice say them.

  “Only for you,” he said to Katie.

  She smiled and leaned up to kiss him. “Thank you,” she said. “I owe you. And I will pay you back.”

  Mike pushed the spade into the earth already loosened by Emery, and threw a load onto the small pile next to the grave. Emery herself held a shovel and did the same on the other side of the hole. Between the two of them, the piles on either side of the grave grew to be three feet high in almost no time.

  A couple times they dropped their spades and ducked when cars passed on the turnpike, but it was later now, long after dark, and traffic was rare.

  Mike dug until the sweat dripped off his forehead and onto his arm. At one point, the tip of his spade hit the iron of Emery’s tool with a clang, and he looked up at the girl to apologize. Her face was flushed; her shirt covered in dirt and perspiration.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  As usual, she said nothing. Emery only pulled her spade away and dug in to a new area of the grave.

  Mike’s spade hit the hollow sound of wood first, but Emery’s was only a few seconds behind. And then her thrusts rang with the empty sound of hollow wood below. Together, they began to scoop instead of slice down, and in a few minutes, they had completely uncovered the surface of the casket.

  “That’s perfect,” Katie said, standing watch nearby. “Can you lift it out?”

  Mike looked at Emery, who had dropped her shovel and stood silent, arms at her sides.

  “Want to give it a shot?” he asked.

  The girl moved to the foot of the grave and reached down to find the handles they had exposed on the sides of the casket. She began to pull before he’d even bent over, and he hurried to get his hands placed on the other side of the wooden box from her.

  The thing did not want to move.

  Mike yanked and groaned and swore but it did no good. Finally, he pushed back from the edge and told Emery to stop. “We have to clear more from the sides.”

  He slid his legs back into the hole and stood on the top of the casket, and with the spade edged out the sides all the way around the wood farther than they had before, careful not to go too far so that the wall of earth above collapsed down. When they tried lifting it again, the casket moved. A little.

  After shifting and moaning a few minutes more, the heavy box of wood finally jerked and shifted upward. Mike and Emery dragged it to the side, away from the hole and onto the grass. As soon as they stopped, Mike fell back to the ground, panting. When he opened his eyes again, Katie and Emery stood there looking down at him. Their eyes were simply watching him. It was a little unnerving. Mike sat up.

  “There you go,” he said. “You can open it and get whatever you’re looking for but…I’m not going in there. I dug it up, but that’s where it ends.”

  “Can you at least help us move it to the basement of the house?” Katie asked.

  “And just leave a big hole out here?” Mike asked. “No way! Someone would see that.”

  “Take it to the basement for me, so I can open it when nobody’s around,” she said. “I don’t want to be doing it here, when someone could stop on the side of the road at any minute. The two of you can come back and fill in the hole quickly for tonight and nobody’ll notice.”

  Emery stood on one end of the casket, grabbed the handles and lifted. Her end of the box rose a foot and she stood like that, casket partly raised, waiting. Mike shook his head, but didn’t protest. It was all a little surreal and foggy right now, and he just wanted this inexcusable exercise over with. He took the handles on the other side and lifted. Seconds later, Emery was walking backward as they moved through the cemetery and across the grassy clearing toward the house. She watched him, instead of where they were going, as they walked. He recognized that she was completely dependent on his navigation, and extra carefully guided them around the corner of the house toward the back.

  “Down the cellar steps,” Katie directed.

  Mike shifted the box to the left and said, “Let me go first.” Then he backed down the stairwell, grunting with each step. When Emery and he were both on level ground, he asked, “Okay, where should we set her?”

  “Let’s go to the old cellar,” Katie said. “That way if any of the decorating people come down here….”

  He nodded and hefted the casket higher. “You got it,” he said, and began walking backward once more. At last they stepped down a few inches to the original earth floor and walked through a door to go behind the barricade wall he’d set up. It was effectively a secret, hidden room in the cellar.

  “Here?” he asked.

  “Perfect,” Katie said.

  Mike dropped his end and sat down on top of the coffin. His underarms were soaked, his forehead dripped sweat into his eyes.

  “I’m not opening it,” he reiterated. />
  “No need,” Katie said. “Emery will help me. But…I really do need your help with one more thing.”

  Mike let out a faint moan and Katie grinned. She stepped up to him and bit the bottom of his earlobe before whispering, “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Her lips felt like an electric shock, and he straightened. He was stung but it felt like the prod of heaven.

  “What else?” he asked.

  “Fill in the hole?”

  He sighed and nodded, and then walked back through the ‘public’ basement and up the steps.

  The night felt good. The air had cooled since the hot August afternoon, and once alone, Mike was lulled by the steady oscillating hum of the locusts in the trees. Their call was warm and placating, as he scooped the loose dirt shovel by shovel back into the hole. He only ducked down twice when lights from the road announced themselves through the forest trees.

  After he patted the earth down and tried to loosely rearrange the hunks of sod on top, Mike took the shovel and dropped it back in the bed of his truck. He grabbed his cooler then, and walked toward the house. Half of him expected to find the girls gone; how many times over the past month had Katie ditched him?

  But the memory of her electric touch kept him walking quickly to the house. And as he stepped up on the porch, he found Katie waiting there, in the shadow of the doorway.

  “All done?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Then I think you’ve earned a reward.”

  Mike felt a stirring below the belt and couldn’t help but smile. “Do you want to go back to my place for a while?”

  She shook her head. “Actually, I had someplace else in mind.”

  A pair of headlights broke through the tree line, and Mike heard the crunch of gravel as a car pulled down the entry road from the turnpike. The first of the decorator crew was probably here.

  Katie opened the door to the house and disappeared inside. Mike followed, and a moment later they were walking up the stairs to the attic.

  “They’re going to be working up here tonight,” Mike said as he followed her across the floor.

  “Not where we’re going,” she said. Katie led him behind the barricade he’d constructed to hide the laundry chute secreted in the flooring.

  “Well, it’s tucked away,” he said. “But I think they’ll still see us back here.”

  She shook her head and pointed to the floor. “We’re going down there.”

  Just as she said it, the trapdoor opened, and Emery’s head emerged. She climbed up the ladder stairs and stood beside the entryway, holding the door open.

  Katie stepped into the hole and began to descend. When her head disappeared, she called up from below.

  “I don’t have all night.”

  Mike put his foot on the ladder and stepped down into the darkness.

  “Or maybe I do,” Katie’s voice whispered, as his right foot suddenly left the ladder to touch hard floor at the bottom.

  “This isn’t really a laundry chute,” he observed. He had been so focused working on other areas of the house over the past few weeks that after Katie had given him the glimpse of the trapdoor in the floor of the attic, he’d never bothered to pull it open again to look more closely inside. It simply wasn’t part of his plan.

  She didn’t answer, but her hands slipped over his shoulders, and her lips brushed against his neck. He closed his eyes, and let the feeling wash down his skin. And then he jumped as the trapdoor above them slammed shut.

  He heard Emery’s feet creaking on the ladder near them in the dark, but couldn’t see her. With the upper door closed, the room was absolutely pitch black, a silent tomb of a space. No exits, no windows. He should have felt a touch of fear, or at least claustrophobia. But all he could focus on was the tantalizing whisper of Katie’s fingers on his skin. He felt as if he were floating in an endless dark, as tiny orgasms of touch moved across his body.

  A light flickered on then in the corner of the room; just a single candle flame. Emery stepped away from it and suddenly Mike could make out the basics of the hidden space. It was very small with a low ceiling; he almost needed to duck. The walls were dark wood varnished planks, which seemed to mimic the floor, if they weren’t made from the exact same material. The result was that even with light, it was a very dark room. Stifling. You could touch the ceiling just inches above your head and probably lie down on the floor and be able to reach the far wall. There was a small dresser in the corner, which was where the candle was perched. A scattering of matchbooks and pools of wax surrounded it. Given the small size of the room, one thing took up almost the entire space.

  The bed.

  Or, maybe more correctly stated, the torture device.

  There was no mattress on this bed, though there was a headboard, and the wrinkled rumple of a blanket bunched up at the end. But it was the uncovered portion of the bed that made Mike blanch.

  The sleeping area of the bed was not a solid surface, but instead, it was made up of row upon row of thin metal spikes. They were close together, but there was no question about what the owner of the bed slept on.

  It was a bed of nails.

  “This is Emery’s bed,” Katie said. “She says all of the points remind her to feel. We can use it tonight, though I don’t think you’ll need the reminder.”

  Mike considered the potential feeling of a hundred sharp-spiked nails all digging into his back as he lay down and shook his head.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Katie laughed. “Are you afraid of a little poke and bite?” she said. “I’ll give you more than that. You’ll forget all about the nails.”

  She pointed at the blanket and another bundle of fabric lying on the far side of the bed on the floor. “Emery, why don’t you make your bed for us so it’s not so scary?”

  Katie moved in front of him and raised herself on tiptoes to press her lips to his. “It looks like it would be painful, but it’s really not,” she said. “It’s just firm. Very firm.” She pressed her hand to his belt and ran her fingers down. “Like you.”

  Mike took a deep breath and the whole room seemed to spin. He didn’t think he’d had that much beer, and all the digging should have sobered him up regardless, but….

  “You should lie down,” Katie suggested. “Trust me, you’ll be okay.”

  Mike put the cooler down next to the bed, and sat on the old blanket that Emery had pulled over the top of the nails. She was right, he didn’t feel the nails digging in at all. The nails were close enough together that with a little fabric over them, they absorbed the weight with an evenness that avoided the presumably unavoidable spiky pain.

  He heard the cooler click open and then a cold can was pressed into his hand. He saw Emery’s dark eyes for just a moment before she stepped back and out of sight. Almost without thought, he popped the tab and took a drink.

  “Relax now,” Katie said. She sat down on the bed next to him. “Thank you so much for helping me tonight. I couldn’t do it myself.”

  Mike shrugged. “You know I’ll help you however I can.”

  She slipped an arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek.

  “I know you’ve been really patient waiting for me,” she said. “And I really appreciate it.”

  She slipped a hand under his shirt, and he felt the tee riding up. Hands pulled at the ends and he lifted his arms without thinking, holding his beer can in the air. Then the can suddenly disappeared from his fingers and his shirt soon followed before the cold aluminum of the can returned.

  “You don’t have to be patient anymore though,” Katie said. “Lie down.”

  He took a gulp of his PBR and set the can on the ground before lying back on the very firm surface of the bed. Hands worked at his belt, and then his jeans were falling to the floor. It was hot in the enclosed room, and finally being
out of his clothes was a welcome relief. He closed his eyes and took a breath as his briefs slid down his thighs and away. His penis felt thick and instantly alert as it tasted the open air, and felt the faint brush of a woman’s hand.

  “I’ve wanted to bring you here since the first day I met you,” Katie whispered.

  The floorboards creaked above them, and Mike began to sit up.

  Katie pressed him back, rolling over on top of him. She bent down and kissed him and then made the faintest “shhhh”.

  “What if they hear us?” he whispered.

  “Don’t scream and we’ll be fine,” she said. “You’re not going to scream, are you?”

  He shook his head, and she smiled before melting her lips over his.

  Mike slipped his hands beneath her shirt and pulled her tight. Katie shifted against him, her lips now urgently hard on his. As he breathed, he breathed her. His thighs ached at the silk of her skin. His hands moved across her back; he wanted to feel every pore of her.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered, when she broke their kiss. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”

  Katie smiled, and with one hand fondled the evidence of his need between them. “I know,” she said.

  He moaned at the attention, and then lifted his hands to push her shirt up. He couldn’t wait anymore. He wanted to have all of her, naked, pressed against him. He couldn’t get close enough to her body.

  Katie pulled out of his embrace and lifted her arms to let him strip her.

  “There’s just one thing,” she said, as the shirt came off. The first thing he saw in the dim candlelight was that she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath.

  The second was that her chest and belly were crisscrossed in ragged scars. They still showed twists of black thread from the stitches that had obviously pulled her back together from whatever hideous accident had ripped her open.

  “What happened?” he whispered. His fingers traced a line from her sternum to her groin, and he felt the hard points of the stitches shift like stubble beneath his hand.

  “I will tell you all about that day,” she said. “But…not tonight, okay?”