Toy Cemetery

by William W. Johnstone

  10

  Jay stood by the stairs leading to the second floor and to the attic. He let his mind dwell for a moment on Aunt Cary. His aunt had disliked him intensely. And Jay had never understood that hatred. He had done everything in his power to win her favor. But nothing seemed to work. The old woman simply did not like him.

  Yet, she had left him this house, her properties, her considerable wealth, and the priceless collection of dolls.

  Who could understand it?

  He remembered that Fletcher had told him he would have to see Parnell about the will. He’d do that tomorrow. Hopefully.

  He checked his pockets for wallet and money clip, then locked up the house and drove to the edge of town to Roper’s car dealership.

  A beauty, Jay thought, looking at the car.

  “A beaut, ain’t she?” Roper said. “And you, you lucky dog, you’re gettin’ it for free!” He laughed and slapped Jay on the back.

  Jay smiled, wondering what in the hell he would do with it back in New York. He said as much aloud.

  “Well, why don’t you drive it as long as you’re in town, and then, if you don’t want it, I can sell it for you.”

  “All right. Is it ready to go? I mean, insurance and all that?”

  With a grin, Roper handed him the keys.

  But Roper’s eyes lost some of their twinkle as he stood in the lot, watching Jay drive off. His face hardened. “I never did like you, Clute.”

  Jay glanced at the dash clock. Lots of time before he met Deva and the kids. He drove to Aaron’s office and caught the man in. Jay was waved to a seat.

  “Nice lunch, Jay. I’m lookin’ forward to Saturday night. It’ll be like old times, won’t it?”

  “Close to it, at least.”

  Aaron’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re all older, Aaron. Everyone has gone their own way.”

  “Oh! That. Sure.” There was a note of relief in Aaron’s voice that puzzled Jay. “I thought you meant ...” Aaron trailed that off into silence.

  Jay looked at his old high school buddy. “Meant ... what, Aaron?”

  “Oh ... nothing. Forget it. Hey!” His face brightened. “Are you and Deva getting back together?”

  “We’re old friends, Aaron.”

  “Sure, sure, Jay,” Aaron said with a wink. “That’s prime stuff, Jay. I mean,” he quickly added, “I guess it is.” He glanced at his watch. “I got to meet a fellow, Jay. Have to cut this short.”

  “Sure, Aaron.” Jay rose from the chair. “See you Saturday night, then.”

  “Yes, sir, boy!” There was a falseness in Aaron’s voice. “Lookin’ forward to it. Really lookin’ forward to it.”

  Jay left the office. He’d been brushed off and knew it.

  He slowly drove the streets of Victory, getting used to the luxury automobile. It drove like a dream. Then he remembered Gordy’s telling him about Aunt Cary’s mail at the post office. He headed that way. Might as well do it.

  Gordy took him on a tour of the post office. Jay knew some of the men and women working there. And, as he had noted in other places in town, many of the workers had a very blank look in their eyes. Dull voices and mechanical movements. Jay wondered how in the hell Gordy could not see it.

  Or maybe he did see it.

  Jay was glad when the walking tour was over and the mail stacked in the back seat. Most of it was boxes. And Jay felt he knew what was in those boxes: dolls and clowns and toy soldiers.

  * * *

  “Good God!” Deva said, looking into the car. “Aunt Cary’s mail?”

  “Yes. Where are the kids?”

  “At the clubhouse. They’ll ride their bikes over. Nothing ever happens during the day, Jay.”

  “As yet,” Jay amended.

  He told her about Piper driving over from St. Louis. She’d arrive mid-morning, tomorrow.

  Deva took the news well, with a smile.

  “Still carrying the torch for her, Jay?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “If we don’t see each other too often, we get along fine.”

  “Wish I could say the same for Lawson.” She did not elaborate and Jay didn’t pursue it.

  “I looked inside the doll rooms,” she told him. “Fabulous collection.”

  “Where’d you find the keys?”

  “I didn’t. It was unlocked.”

  “Well, I damn sure didn’t unlock them!”

  She shrugged. “Maybe Kelly did while we were having lunch, you suppose?”

  “I doubt it. But we’ll ask her.”

  They stacked the boxes in the doll room. Deva looked at the rows of toys and shook her head. “I get the strangest sensation while looking at the dolls.”

  Jay looked down at the Viking warrior. Frozen still like the toy he was – or was he? “What kind of sensation?”

  “It’s ... like I’ve seen them all before.”

  “Hell, Deva, you have. You’ve been in this house dozens of times.”

  “I guess that’s it.”

  “You ready to go?”

  She knew where they were going as soon as Jay turned off onto the rutted old patched-up bumpy blacktop road. She had been silent since leaving the house. “I deliberately avoid this road. I haven’t been on it in years.”

  Jay was feeling a bit of tension himself, heading for the old Clute house, just a few miles outside of Victory. “I had to see it.”

  He had always wondered why Cary kept the taxes up on the place; his dad had told him she’d done it for years. But she refused to allow anyone to live in the huge old rambling house. She did only enough repairs, on the outside only, to keep the place from falling down.

  And then the house loomed up in front of them, on their right, as they headed north.

  “We’re going to stop?” Deva asked.

  “I think we have to start somewhere, and this is as good a place as any.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Explanations. Reasons. Hell, Deva . . . I don’t know.”

  Jay braked and carefully swung into the drive, all weed grown and rutted. They rattled over the cattle guard.

  “Do you have a gun, Jay?” Deva abruptly asked.

  “No. I haven’t owned one in years. Why?”

  “Just curious. That’s odd. I mean, you hunted as a boy.”

  “Oh, there have been plenty of times in the city when I wished I did have a gun. But maybe it’s just as well I didn’t have one.” Stopping the car, he looked at her and smiled. “You used to be a good shot with a pistol.”

  “Tin cans and snakes down at the creek. I remember it well. Guns aren’t sold in Victory, Jay. The town passed a law banning them years ago. Only the police and . . . selected individuals own firearms. Pistols, that is.”

  “Your father’s guns?”

  “Being a good, solid law-abiding citizen, I turned in the pistols. Kept the rifles and shotguns.”

  “Ammo?”

  “Boxes and boxes of bullets.”

  “Cartridges and shells, Deva.”

  “Whatever. When’s the last time you had a fist fight, Jay?”

  What an odd question. “Vietnam. My sergeant and I stepped out behind the hooch one night and duked it out. It was a draw. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious.”

  “You ready to inspect the house?”

  “No. But, like you, I think it’s something we have to do. I’ll tell you something, Jay.” She pointed at the house. “I think that ... place is the source.”

  “The source of what?”

  “The source of whatever has changed and is changing Victory.” She got out of the car and banged the door shut.

  Jay followed her. “Who does, who did, Aunt Cary get to work on the house?”

  “Some people in Victory. Same men have been doing it for years.”

  Jay felt something crawling on the flesh of his arm. He looked down. Nothing was there.

  But something was in the air. Invisible,
but yet real.

  It was the same sensation he’d felt after lowering the car window the night before.

  He looked up. Deva was watching him.

  “Evil,” she said.

  Then Jay felt his world tilt just a bit. He experienced a change in the way he felt. He leered at Deva. Stepping to her, he cupped a breast and squeezed. She gasped and pushed him away.

  “Let’s do it, Deva.”

  “Jay, goddammit! Stop it!”

  “Ah, come on, baby.” He walked toward her and she backed up. “You know you want to.”

  Quickly bending down, she picked up a heavy stick and brandished it menacingly. “Jay ... I’ll bust your head!”

  “You wouldn’t hit me, Deva. You know you want some lovin’. How long’s it been?”

  She stepped close to him and hit him on the arm with the stick.

  Jay hollered as the pain waved through his arm and shoulder. His world righted itself once more.

  He could remember nothing. Only that Deva had struck him.

  “Jesus, Deva! Why’d you hit me?”

  She told him. Bluntly.

  “Are you serious?”

  “I told you, Jay. I warned you. This place is the source of all the evil. And I’m just as liable to do something ... foolish as you are.”

  He grinned and rubbed his arm. There would be a bruise, he felt sure. “You pack a mean wallop, girl.”

  She smiled – slowly. “You ready to go inside?”

  “Lead on, Big Bad Mama.”

  She laughed and turned, walking toward the house. Walking behind her, Jay admired her youthful trimness. Deva had aged very well. She looked ten years younger than she really was.

  And even though her family had been rather well fixed, monetarily speaking, some of the things she’d told him had led him to believe her life had not necessarily been an easy one.

  She stopped a few feet from the porch and looked back at Jay. “Lot of memories connected with this place.”

  He nodded his head. Here, right over there in the side yard, in the back seat of his father’s car, was where they had first made out – going “all the way.”

  He grinned at her; but it was not a leer.

  “Yes, Jay. I remember, too.”

  Once more, Jay felt that oppressive thickness settle on his flesh. He struggled against it, finally reaching under his shirt and touching the golden cross.

  The thickness lifted.

  Deva was looking at him strangely. She reached up and began unbuttoning her shirt. Jay stepped toward her and grabbed her hand. “Fight it, Deva. Touch the cross Kelly gave you and fight it!”

  “I’d rather have you!” she said, her voice husky with passion. “Come on, Jay.”

  She grabbed at his fly, and Jay managed to seize one wrist. He turned her, twisting her wrist up behind her back.

  “Ooww! Jay, dammit, stop! Why are you hurting me?”

  He released her, then told her what she had just done.

  She blinked her eyes a couple of times. “What happens, Jay, if that . . . sensation, power, whatever it is, takes us both at once?”

  He grinned at her. She mock-slapped at him. “Come on, Clute! You know what I mean.”

  “I can’t answer that, Deva.”

  Deva held out her hand and Jay took it. Together, they walked up the steps and onto the porch. Jay looked around him. “Aunt Cary didn’t believe in spending much money on this place, did she?”

  “Just enough to keep it from falling down, so I’m told.”

  “I wonder if people still see strange sights out here.”

  “How could they? I don’t think anybody’s been out here, except for the carpenters, in years.”

  “Not like the old days.”

  “I don’t know, Jay. We came back here, didn’t we?”

  Then they both stood and stared in disbelief as the front door slowly opened, creaking on protesting hinges. The screen door began slowly opening and closing, slapping the frame with each shutting.

  Both of them were silent, standing very still.

  Inside the yawning darkness of the dusty foyer and the many rooms that lay waiting beyond, a faint giggling could be heard, drifting out to the man and the woman on the porch.

  “What is that?” Deva found her voice.

  A voice shouting commands from inside the house reached them.

  “You hear that, Deva?”

  “I certainly hear something.”

  The screen door opened, moving only a few inches out of its frame, then snapped closed.

  “This is ridiculous!” Jay stepped forward, extending his right hand toward the handle on the screen door.

  The door slammed open, striking Jay’s hand, bringing a grunt of pain. “Son of a bitch!”

  Deva stood very still, watching, saying nothing.

  Jay once more grabbed for the screen-door handle. The door snapped at him, coming open with considerable force. Jay jerked his hand back just in time.

  “This is insane,” he muttered.

  “It’s just evil.”

  “No. There is a logical explanation. I’m convinced of that. Maybe it’s some sort of explainable phenomenon?”

  “Right,” she said sarcastically. “Grown men and women are thrust into near-incestuous relationships with their kids; creatures roam the night; toys come alive; and the personalities of nearly everyone in town have been altered. Explainable phenomena. Sure, Jay.”

  Jay gritted his teeth and kicked at the rapidly opening and closing door. The door banged shut and remained closed.

  The giggling from within had ceased. Jay could no longer hear any voices.

  That invisible thickness once again touched them both.

  “Jay!” Deva yelled.

  “Fight it, Deva. Pray!”

  Both of them began whispering prayers learned as children.

  The thickness lifted.

  The screen door opened, and this time, it stayed open.

  The dusty, musty-smelling gloom beckoned silently.

  11

  “I hate for us to split up,” Jenny said to her gang. “But I’m afraid that’s the way it’s gonna have to be.”

  “My parents are out of it,” Carla said. “They’re behaving like a bunch of zombies.”

  So were the parents of the other kids.

  “Then they probably wouldn’t even know if you stayed or left, would they?” Kelly asked.

  “For a fact,” Ken said. “You reckon your dad would mind us staying over there?”

  “I doubt it. Let’s plan on you all coming over, just at dusk. Dad won’t make you go home after it’s dark. Tell him your parents threw you out of the house; grown-ups will believe almost anything.”

  They all agreed that was a good idea.

  Then Kelly had a better idea. “Let’s do it now. Let’s all ride together, to each house, and get your things.”

  “Yeah!” Ange stood up. “Super.” She glanced out a window of the two-room clubhouse. “Here comes trouble.”

  Jenny looked out. “Robert Gibson. And he’s got a bunch with him, too.”

  “Who’s Robert Gibson?” Kelly asked.

  “A thug. And those guys with him are all thugs, too. We’re in trouble, gang.”

  People were staring out of windows on either side of the Menard home. Some held looks of anticipation in their eyes. Others looked through eyes that were expressionless.

  “You know what they want, Jenny,” Robert said.

  “Yeah, I know. But he’s not getting it. Not now, not ever.”

  “You girls are stupid,” Robert called, his voice penetrating the walls of the clubhouse. “You shouldn a oughtta done what you done last night to Jane and them others. Now we’re gonna git you.”

  “Screw you, Robert!” Carla shouted.

  “Yeah,” a boy with Robert said, giggling. “That there is what we got in mind.”

  “Piggy Carter,” Robert said.

  “Piggy?” Kelly questioned.

  “Loo
k at him.”

  Kelly looked. “Yeah. I see what you mean.” She counted the gang of older boys. “Eight of them.” She turned around, her eyes falling on the knives and small hatchets piled on a scarred old end table. “What I did last night, this morning, with Daddy, I couldn’t help. And I’ve prayed to God a bunch since then.” She walked to the table and picked up a small axe. “I’m going outside. I’m going to get on my bike and ride. Anybody else going with me?”

  The children began strapping on knives and tucking hatchets behind their belts.

  “Let’s do it,” Ange said.

  * * *

  As soon as they stepped inside the gloom of the old Clute place, the screen door closed softly behind them. Jay found a box full of something – he didn’t look to see what – and placed that in front of the heavy oak inner door, securing it. He hoped.

  “Place smells bad,” Deva said, sniffing.

  Jay took a deep breath and instantly regretted it. He knew that smell from his time in ’Nam. Death. He let his eyes adjust to the gloom.

  Standing in the foyer, neither of them could see anything.

  A thought came to Jay. “Deva, you said you’ve been doing a lot of research. Have you checked your newspaper’s morgue?”

  “I had just started that this week. You want to help me?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice just audible. “Yes, I do. How far back does it go?”

  “To the late 1860s. It would go back further except the Yankees burned the office. This was Rebel country, you know.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “I’m in the process of putting the old copies on microfilm. For my own enjoyment and for tax purposes.”

  “You ready to do some exploring?”

  “Lead on, Stanley.”

  “Stay close to me.”

  She giggled.

  Jay looked back at her.

  “I’m sorry. Jay, when you said that, it took me back twenty-five years. It’s like we were kids again.”

  Memories caught him up in their embrace. “Yes, I remember. You were ... twelve, right?”

  “Something like that. But mature for my age.”

  Jay was facing her. He watched as her eyes widened and her face paled. She raised a hand and pointed toward the gloom of the huge room to their right.