CEMETERY TOURS
JACQUELINE E SMITH
Wind Trail Publishing
Cemetery Tours
Copyright © 2013 by Jacqueline E. Smith
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form, by any means, or stored in a database without prior written consent of the publisher.
Wind Trail Publishing
PO Box 830851
Richardson, TX 75083-0851
www.WindTrailPublishing.com
ISBN: 978-0-9896734-1-9
Cover Design by Benjamin Durham
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.
For my mom, my dad, and my sister, who have always believed in me, no matter what.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 1
It was a lazy Saturday morning, and as usual, Michael Sinclair was trying to decide how to spend it. Throughout the long work week, he would compose a mental list of things he would rather be doing; reading one of the several books he’d accumulated over the years, taking advantage of his apartment complex’s great swimming pool, or even making another pathetic attempt at learning to ride a bicycle. But by the time the weekend actually rolled around, he was so worn out, all he wanted to do was sleep in and spend the rest of the day lounging around in his pajamas, eating cereal, and catching up on Doctor Who.
Today was no exception.
He was rummaging through his near-empty pantry, kicking himself for forgetting to go to the grocery store yet again, when a movement out of the corner of his eye distracted him.
“New neighbor alert,” Brink, Michael’s friend and occasional roommate, announced and heaved himself onto the couch, propping his long legs up on the coffee table.
“Next door?” Michael asked. Mrs. Riggs, his mean old property manager, had been trying to rent out the apartment next to his for ages. It was no secret around the Riverview Apartment complex that Building 17 was some kind of cursed. All tenants of the two-story building, at one time or another, had complained of strange noises, power failures, unexplained cold spells, and an overall feeling of unease and ill-will. Only Michael Sinclair of apartment #1723 seemed immune.
It was for that very reason that Mrs. Riggs figured he must somehow be the source of her other tenants’ discomfort. Fortunately, she didn’t have any sort of evidence to support her claims. Otherwise, she would have had him evicted right from the start.
“Yep. Young couple. Bat-Lady probably gave them a discount or something.” Although the entire building suffered from “technical difficulties,” Mrs. Riggs had a much harder time keeping the second floor inhabited than its lower level counterparts. Especially the apartment next door to #1723. “Wonder how long they’ll last?”
Before Michael could offer an estimate, a muffled thud, accompanied by a yell and the sound of shattering ceramic dishware, resonated through the hallway just outside his front door.
Cereal forgotten, Michael hurried to the door and pulled it open to see a young man sprawled across the landing. Next to him, broken plates and metal dining utensils spilled out of an old, flimsy cardboard box, held together by a substantial amount of duct tape.
“Dammit…” he muttered to himself as he scrambled to collect the shards of plates that had scattered across the landing.
“Are you okay?” Michael asked.
“Fine. Just tripped,” the young man replied gruffly.
“Here, let me help.” Michael dropped down next to his new neighbor and began to gather pieces of broken plate and silverware that had gone astray.
“Gavin?” a new voice called. Michael turned to see a young woman with dark blonde hair sprinting up the stairs. “What happened? Are you alright?” She knelt down in front of Gavin and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m fine, Kate. Can’t say the same for our dishes.” Gavin rose up on his knees and dropped a handful of shattered plate into the box.
“Oh well, they were secondhand anyway.” For the first time, she acknowledged Michael. “Hi, I’m Kate. This is my brother, Gavin.”
“I’m Michael. I’m uh, your new neighbor.” I’m also, he realized looking into her pretty hazel eyes, still in my pajamas.
“You look really familiar to me. Have we met before?”
“Um, I don’t know,” Michael replied, though he was sure they hadn’t. Most of the women Michael knew, he met through his job at the local library. Besides, he would have remembered a girl as pretty as Kate. “Maybe we passed each other when you came to check out the apartment.”
“Maybe,” Kate said, gathering up the box of broken dishes.
“Kate, let me.” Gavin took the box from her. As soon as he stood up, Michael noticed his bloodied, scuffed up knee through his torn jeans. Kate saw it too and gasped.
“Gavin, you need to get a Band-Aid on that.”
“It’s fine. Just a scrape. Besides, all our first-aid stuff is buried in one of the boxes.”
“I have some Neosporin if you need it,” Michael offered.
Gavin answered, “No, it’s alright,” as Kate simultaneously asked, “Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” Michael disappeared back into his apartment, where he immediately shed his plaid pajama bottoms and white undershirt and replaced them with a pair of jeans and a polo shirt. Then, he grabbed the yellow tube of Neosporin and a handful of Band-Aids from his bathroom drawer. Less than a minute later, he headed back across the landing where Kate and Gavin had left their door open. He knocked once before poking his head in. Kate and Gavin sat on the floor in the middle of the near empty living room, sorting out the silverware and plates that were still intact. A few boxes sat on the sidelines. They were obviously still in the early stages of the moving process. Kate looked up at him.
“Thank you so much.” She stood to greet him. He handed her the Band-Aids and Neosporin. “Can I get you something to drink? We have… water.”
“I’m alright, but thanks,” Michael answered.
“I’ll go to the store once we get my truck cleared out,” Gavin announced, taking the medical supplies from his sister. “I need some more of those little energy drinks.”
“You’ve got to start weaning yourself off that stuff. It’s not good for you,” Kate said.
“Do you have a sister, Michael?” Gavin asked.
“No.”
“You want one?”
“I’m serious.” Kate crossed her arms. “You throw those back like an alcoholic at an open bar. Gav, that stuff is going to kill you.”
“Kate, you’re paranoid. And exaggerating,” Gavin told her, applying Neosporin to his injured knee. Although Michael agreed that Kate was being a little extreme, she may have been onto something. Gavin didn’t look very healthy at all. Although he couldn’t have been more than a year or two younger than Michael’s twenty-seven, his light hazel eyes were sun
ken and surrounded by dark shadows. His messy hair and five o’clock shadow were the same dark blonde color as Kate’s, but his complexion was much paler, even a little gray in comparison to her rosy glow. He looked almost like someone going through some sort of withdrawal.
“No, I’m not! Your addiction to that stuff is probably the reason you’re so tired all the time. It’s like being hooked on over-the-counter pain medicine. Eventually, it’s going to make the problem worse.”
“Says the girl who can’t function without three cups of coffee every morning. Caffeine addiction is no joke, Kate,” Gavin patronized.
“Fine. Drink your little energy drug. But don’t come crying to me when you need a new kidney.”
“Kate, do you work in medicine?” Michael asked.
“She’s an interior decorator,” Gavin remarked. “An overprotective, germaphobic, control-freak of an interior decorator.”
“I’m not a control-freak. I just think you need to take better care of yourself.”
“I do take care of myself. But we’ve been moving stuff since six o’clock. If I don’t get some sort of energy boost, I’ll be unconscious by noon.”
“Well, it’s 11:10 now. Guess we better get a move on.”
“Do you have anyone helping you?” Michael asked.
“No. Our father’s out of town and our mother has a bad back. We had a few friends come over last night and they helped us haul some of the heavier stuff down to the trailer we rented, but they all had plans today,” Kate explained.
“Do you need an extra hand?”
This time, it was Kate who said, “Oh Michael, we couldn’t ask that of you,” while Gavin replied, “We’ll pay you.”
“You don’t have to pay me. I don’t have anything to do today. If I wasn’t here, I’d be wasting the day in front of the television.”
“Well, we can at least buy you lunch,” Kate said. “Is Subway okay?”
Michael wasn’t sure what it was about her, but he had a feeling he would have agreed to anything she offered him.
“Subway’s great,” he told her.
~*~
An hour later, they’d just about cleared out Gavin’s truck and all three were starving. Kate and Michael assured Gavin that they could handle the last few boxes while he got ready to run to Subway and the supermarket.
Michael was making his way back down to the truck when he noticed something. A stack of laminated flashcards, hooked together on single silver ring, lay in the middle of the sidewalk. Michael stooped down and picked them up. The word RED was scrawled in red marker across the top card. Below that card, the word ORANGE in orange marker, YELLOW in yellow marker, and so on. Michael was so busy wondering what they were for, he barely noticed Kate approaching him.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Nothing. I think a neighbor kid must have dropped them.” Michael showed them to her.
“Actually, those are mine,” Kate admitted, taking the cards from him and stuffing them in her pocket. She must have seen the curious look in Michael’s eye because she explained, “About a week after New Year’s Eve, I was in a car accident. I hit my head pretty good and when I woke up, I couldn’t remember the names of any of the colors. I still recognize them. I know that the color of a fire truck is the first color in the rainbow. I just can’t for the life of me remember the names. The doctors call it Color Anomia. Ironically, I have no trouble remembering that.”
“I’ve never even heard of that,” Michael told her.
“Brain injuries are funny things,” Kate replied, climbing into the back of Gavin’s pick-up truck and handing Michael another box. “Anyway, that’s the reason Gav and I moved in together. Our parents didn’t want me living alone after my ‘head trauma’ and since I really didn’t want to move back in with them, Gav offered to be my roommate.” Kate grabbed the last box and duffel bag and jumped down next to Michael.
Once they reached the apartment, Kate dropped the box and duffel and collapsed onto the floor, right in front of the giant box fan that Gavin had set up amidst the plastic bags and cardboard boxes heaped all around the living room.
“You know what’s going to be a lot of fun?” she asked, closing her eyes and savoring the blast of cool air emanating from the fan. “Dragging that couch up here.”
“I’m trying not to think about that,” Gavin muttered from the kitchen counter as he scribbled down a list of things to get at the grocery store. “Kate, what do you want to drink?”
“Gatorade. I need electrolytes.”
“What kind?”
“This one.” Kate held up her BLUE flashcard.
“Got it.” Gavin jotted it down. “Michael, do you want some Gatorade?”
“I’ll take some red, thanks,” he said.
Once Gavin was gone, Michael took a seat on the floor next to Kate. She’d had the right idea, settling down in front of the fan. Even with the air on high, the apartment still felt stuffy in the mid-June Dallas heat.
“So Michael, tell me about yourself,” Kate said, gazing up at him from her spot on the floor.
“Um… not sure what there is to tell,” Michael replied honestly. He really wasn’t a very interesting person.
“Where do you work? How long have you lived here?”
“I work inventory and shelve books at the library. Exciting, I know,” he said. Kate grinned. “I’ve lived here for five years, ever since I graduated from college.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“UNT. I majored in Interdisciplinary Studies and minored in Psychology.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Kate told him.
“Sort of.” Michael shrugged. “What about you? I know Gavin said you were an interior decorator.”
“Yep. I graduated from SMU two years ago with a degree in Art and Design. Got my job as a decorator about a month later and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but is it difficult? You know, with the color thing?”
Kate stared at the ceiling as she contemplated her answer.
“It was pretty annoying at first, but my boss has been so wonderful about the whole situation. If she ever needs something in a specific color, she describes it to me. Like, instead of asking for a,” she flipped through her note cards until she found the one labeled GREEN, “green vase, she asks for a grass-colored vase. It’s not a perfect system, but you know, any time I start to get frustrated, I remind myself how lucky I am just to be here and that I could have had it a lot, lot worse.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Michael told her. She glanced over at him and smiled. He hoped she didn’t notice the blush creeping up his neck as he cleared his throat and asked, “So uh, what about Gavin? What does he do?”
“He’s actually between jobs right now. He used to work as a sound technician for one of the local theaters, but about two months after my accident, he started getting sick a lot. He never had a fever or anything, but he’d feel drained and exhausted, his head would hurt, he’d get the chills... I really thought he had mono, but for some reason, he just refused to go to the doctor. It wasn’t until he got so dizzy that he fell over that he finally made an appointment.”
“What was wrong with him?” Michael asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” Kate replied. “They ran all sorts of tests. Blood tests, MRIs, even a lumbar puncture. He was perfectly healthy. No mono, no anemia, absolutely no physical explanation for any of his symptoms.”
“So what did they do for him?”
“Since there was technically nothing wrong with him, they really couldn’t prescribe him anything. They advised him to take it easy and get plenty of rest. Unfortunately, about a week later, someone broke into our apartment. Neither of us slept well after that.”
“Are you serious?” Michael asked.
“Yeah. Suffice it to say, it has not been a fantastic year for the Avery family. Luck
ily for us, they didn’t take anything. Or if they did, it was something we didn’t use very often because we haven’t noticed it missing.”
“Why bother breaking in then?” Michael asked.
“Whoever it was, it looked like they were on some sort of rampage. The entire place was trashed. Furniture was moved, tables were knocked over, mirrors and picture frames were shattered. It was one of the scariest moments of my life, coming home and finding the apartment like that. I was convinced whoever had done it was still inside.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Yeah, but they didn’t find anything that could help them,” Kate explained. “I just hope that whoever it was didn’t target us specifically. I hope they just picked a random apartment and when they couldn’t find anything of real value to steal, they decided to trash it. Gavin thinks I watch too many crime dramas, but I just have this horrible feeling that it was personal.” Michael wasn’t sure what to say. He was certainly no stranger to mysterious circumstances, but he’d never felt like he was being targeted. “That’s one of several reasons I’m glad to be living in a gated community now.” Kate looked at him. “I can’t believe I told you all of that. I just met you. I should be telling you about the book I’m reading or asking you what kind of movies you like. Not dumping all my personal crises on you.”
“I really don’t mind,” Michael told her. “But if you really want to know, I enjoy historical fiction and psychological thrillers.”
“Oh! Have you seen…”
By the time Gavin returned with food and drinks, their conversation about movies had evolved into a debate over whether the Hollywood adaptation of Shutter Island did the novel justice. Gavin also brought with him about five bottles of Super-B Energy. Kate frowned as she watched her brother down one in a single gulp.
As they ate, Michael thought back to everything Kate had told him about the break-in, about how scared she was that whoever it had been was still out there. Although they’d never had a break-in at the Riverview Apartments, he nevertheless felt he should warn her about the strange things that happened in Building 17. He was almost certain that if someone had told her about the “curse,” she’d never have signed the lease.
Cemetery Tours Page 1