“An auto— This is a morgue?” Chris said, gasping. “You’re sleeping in a morgue?”
“Was a morgue. And crematorium. It’s not used anymore, obviously.” Alex gestured for them to follow him over to one side. In the dim light, it looked to Chris like someone had painted a grid pattern on the wall. Up close, he could see that it was a series of small square doors, four high, four across. Some of the doors had stainless steel handles; some of the handles were missing.
Alex grabbed one and pulled it open. He reached into the darkness. A long steel tray rolled out, rattling on its tracks. He reached up and lifted a guitar from the tray. Even from where he was standing, Chris could tell that it was old and he whistled with appreciation.
“I’d say I use the drawers for cold storage,” Alex said, “but the motor’s burnt out.”
Johnny laughed nervously.
Alex handed the guitar to Chris, who took it reverently. “It’s an Audiovox 736,” he said, “one of the first electrified basses ever made. About a hundred of these were made, back in the mid-nineteen thirties, but very few survived till today. This one’s been in my family the whole time. It’s had a few…modifications.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this place sooner?” Chris asked.
Alex laughed. “I had to be sure I wanted to stay with Ten-Forty.”
“You weren’t sure you—“ Chris stammered. “You didn’t—With us?”
Alex laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m sure now. I like you guys.” He gestured around him. “Great acoustics, don’t you think?” He shouted to demonstrate. The sound bounded back at them, amplifying before dying away.
“So, what do you guys think? Is this perfect for us, or what?”
“Are you kidding me?” Chris shouted, not noticing how pale Johnny’s face was and how he was backing up toward the door. “It’s freaking awesome!”
† † †
All of Chris’s doubts about Alex seemed to vanish in that instant. Everything was falling into place. They had talent, and now they had a place where they could not just practice—who was going to complain?—but where he could easily envision maybe throwing a concert or two. Small, of course. And probably highly illegal. But the kids at school would absolutely kill to come here to listen to some music.
Chris borrowed the van from his mother the next day so they could move their equipment. She didn’t bother asking where they were going, being simply content to know that she was getting her garage—and blissful silence—back.
“Straight there and back,” she told him, handing him the keys.
It took two trips to transfer the instruments and electronics. Chris made a third trip to the local home improvement center to pick up a replacement padlock for the one he ended up snipping off the gate with pair of borrowed wire cutters. Johnny had been horrified.
“How else are we going to get the equipment inside, man?” Chris has reasoned. “Not through that tiny hole in the fence.”
By the time he’d returned with the new padlock, the others had gotten everything plugged in and tested. But then it was too late to practice. They agreed to meet up at Alex’s at three-thirty the next day.
A cold front blew in overnight, erasing the Indian summer they’d been enjoying the past few weeks. The guy on the weather channel was even predicting frost by the end of the weekend. Wind buffeted the sides of the building when they arrived, clacking the windows and spinning the fans and making them squeal. Chris turned up the amps as loud as they would go, thrilled that there was no one around to tell him to turn them down. The music drowned out any noise the building made.
They jammed until five, when Johnny abruptly announced he had to leave. Chris had suspected he might, the way he kept glancing at the windows, at the slanting rays of light that now passed almost parallel over their heads. Only the windows on the southwest wall glowed now with a weak glint of gold. The rest were in shadow. At best, they had an hour before darkness. And once the sun went down, it’d be much colder.
Johnny gave the others a look that made it obvious he didn’t want to walk home alone.
Chris wasn’t looking forward to the two-mile walk back into town either. And he certainly didn’t want to make it alone, so he could understand where Johnny was coming from. On the other hand, he was getting more and more frustrated with how little practicing they were getting in.
“Ten more minutes,” he said.
Johnny didn’t say anything.
“All right. Fine,” Chris said. “Let me pack this up.”
“Wuss,” Alex taunted the two, but Chris ignored him and started unhooking his guitar. Johnny was already waiting by the door, nervously twirling his drumsticks. He had the door cracked and was looking out into the amber light of the late afternoon.
Another blast of wind knocked at the walls and rattled the windows.
“So, listen up, guys,” Chris said. “Tomorrow’s Friday. I’m going to try and borrow my mom’s car. What do you think, Johnny? Then we can play as late as we want to.”
Johnny gave him a distracted nod, but it was clear he wasn’t really listening.
“You guys are such wusses,” Alex continued to tease.
Chris whirled on him, getting in his face. “Nobody’s a wuss, okay? Especially Johnny.”
“Hey, no need to get testy.”
“I’m not testy!”
He stomped over to the door.
Alex followed them out. All he was wearing was a thin shirt, and it was rippling over his gaunt frame in the wind.
Without saying anything to the other two, he walked over to the side of the building bordering the graveyard and stood on the berm. He wrapped his arms around himself, but it didn’t seem like it was because he was cold. The wind tossed his hair about his face. He didn’t even flinch.
“Coming into town with us?” Johnny shouted over to him.
“Forget him,” Chris muttered. “Come on.”
Alex turned. “Either of you ever been in there?” he asked, not answering Johnny’s question. He pointed his thumb in the direction of the cemetery.
“What the hell for?” Chris said. He looked at Johnny, who shook his head.
“Do they even still bury people in there anymore?” Johnny asked. “I thought it was just the one on Dunbury Hill.”
Dunbury Memory Park was Edgemont’s other cemetery, the one at the top of the hill in the center of town. Chris was pretty sure it was the only one in town that was still in use. He remembered going to a funeral there last year, some kid who’d been a grade or two behind him in school. He couldn’t remember the kid’s name, just that he was supposed to be this great baseball player and that he’d died of cancer. That, and that the kid’s younger brother had become totally screwed up because of it.
Alex nodded. “Every once in a while they plant another one here. Poor folks mostly, people who can’t afford a nice casket and headstone. Homeless people.”
“Like you?”
Chris immediately regretted saying it. He’d not meant it to be spiteful, but that’s how it sounded.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Yeah, like me.”
There was a grim set to Alex’s face. He nodded once, then spun on his heels and headed back inside. He closed the door without saying good-bye.
“Strange,” Johnny whispered.
Chris shrugged. “Come on. We better get going before we lose all our light.”
Friday morning dawned dreary gray. By second period, it was sprinkling. By noon, the rain was coming down hard. It quickly turned to sleet, and the sleet tried desperately to freeze, but the ground was still too warm for any of it to stick. The water pooled on the hard-packed ground, which resisted letting it soak in. Puddles formed and grew and turned into ponds that soon became lakes; gutters flooded.
When he got home, Chris asked his mother about borrowing the car so he could drive him and Johnny to practice.
“What about Alex? Can’t he pick you up?”
“He
doesn’t have a car.”
“Oh, honey.” It was obvious from the tone of her voice that she wanted to say no.
“Please, Mom. It’s raining, and we haven’t had a chance to really practice.”
He hoped she could see how anxious he was.
Looking out through the rippled kitchen window, Chris could see the wind blowing in the trees. Slush and leaves plastered against the glass, then slipped away. The old swings in the backyard were whipping around like crazy.
“The roads are slippery, honey.”
It was one of the drawbacks of having a parent who worked for emergency services. His mother tended to be overly sensitive to road hazards, overly cautious about letting him drive.
He promised to be careful, to not speed or otherwise drive recklessly.
“No drinking, or…anything else.”
“Mom, you know I don’t do any of that st—”
She held a hand up and stopped him. “Don’t! Just…don’t. I don’t want you to lie to me.”
“I’m not lying, Mom.”
She sighed and nodded. “What time are you going to be home?”
“Midnight?”
“Make it eleven.”
“Aw, Mom—”
“And I want you to call before you leave to come back.”
“You’ll be asleep.”
She shook her head. “Trust me, I won’t.”
He went over and wrapped his arms around her. He’d never been much of a hugger, and he felt her stiffen for a moment before relaxing.
“Christopher Michael,” she said, pushing him away. She sounded exasperated, but her face was flushed red. “Go on, get out of here.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“But don’t get used to it,” she warned. “I’m going back to nights soon and I’ll be needing the car again.”
Chris picked Johnny up and the two of them drove out to Alex’s.
They started the rehearsal with a couple warm-up tunes before launching into their own material. Chris handed out sheets of music for a new song he’d been working on, and they slowly stumbled through it, refining the melody, dropping a few notes here, adding others there. Johnny and Alex came up with some kickass rhythm and bass. There were lyrics, but Chris wasn’t ready to have Alex sing them just yet.
It was the song he’d started working on a couple days before, the one prompted by Johnny’s idea. But except for it being about a soldier dying in war, Chris had changed it to be about a man whose wife had died in the Twin Towers. Year after year, the man watched over her grave, which was shaded by a small oak tree he’d planted at her headstone when he buried her. Each year, the tree grew taller and the pile of leaves falling onto the grave would grow deeper. And each year, as if obscured from him, her face would fade a little more from his memory. Then, one day, he came and the headstone was completely buried beneath the fallen leaves, and the man found that he couldn’t even remember what she’d looked like anymore. But even as he stood there, even as the leaves continued to fall and her face was finally forgotten, the pain remained, just as deep and sharp as the day she had died.
He’d shown Johnny the lyrics that morning in homeroom, hoping to get his friend’s approval.
“What happened to the soldier?” Johnny had asked. “I thought it was going to be about war? This is…”
“I liked this better.”
“I don’t. I’m sorry, man, but—”
Chris had snatched the sheet away. “What do you know about it?”
“I’m just saying. It seems kind of…I don’t know. You’re not going country on me, are you?”
“Country? This isn’t country! Just because you’re better with words doesn’t mean I don’t know a thing or two about writing songs.”
Johnny had quickly nodded. “Okay. Okay, you’re right. It’s good.”
But it was too late. Chris had already begun to doubt himself.
“Time for a break,” he announced, after they’d refined and polished enough that it became obvious there was little more to do than to add in the lyrics. Chris had caught Alex humming and mumbling during the practice, as if he was imagining the words already.
Chris set down his guitar. He was still troubled by this morning’s dispute with Johnny and he could tell Johnny was feeling uncomfortable, too. He wanted to make amends, but he wasn’t sure how.
Alex went over to his “bed,” unrolled a heavy blanket before settling down on it and proceeding to fall asleep.
“You’re taking a nap?” Johnny said.
“I was up all night,” he complained.
“What the hell for?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“With the wind blowing like it is,” Chris said as he headed for the front door, “I can understand why.”
“And where are you going,” Johnny asked.
“Keep your pants on. I’m just going to take a leak. That’s the bad thing about this place: no indoor plumbing.”
“You’ll freeze out there,” Johnny warned.
Chris had taken off his sweatshirt during practice and hadn’t put it back on.
“Thanks, Mom, but I can take care of myself.”
Johnny didn’t say anything.
Chris sighed. “I’ll just be a sec.”
Ten minutes later, when he still hadn’t returned, Johnny went over and nudged Alex. The bassist let out a snort and rolled over onto his other side.
“Alex. Hey, man.”
“Whuh?”
“Wake up, man. I’m worried.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Chris is missing.”
“Huh?”
“He went out to take a leak—”
“So, what? Does he need someone to hold it for him?”
“No, he’s been gone for—” Johnny checked his watch. “He’s been gone for almost fifteen minutes.”
Alex’s eyes popped open. “What’d you say?”
“Fifteen minutes. Chris went outside to take a leak and he’s been gone for fifteen minutes.”
“What the hell? It’s freezing out there!” He sat up so fast that he smacked his head on Johnny’s. “Why didn’t you wake me up sooner?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny cried. He ran his hands through his hair, wincing in pain and indecision. “I was sitting there and before I knew it, ten minutes had gone by. I just sort of lost track of time.”
Alex pulled on a jacket and the two boys slipped out. The rain had turned to wet snow, which was starting to come down sideways. It stung their faces, and Johnny wished he’d brought an umbrella, though he didn’t say so. He didn’t want Alex to think he was a wuss.
“Well? Where do you think he might’ve gone?”
Alex shrugged. He was peering at the softened ground, at a set of shallow rain-filled puddles heading toward the side of the building that was protected from the wind and rain. He followed them, but they disappeared where the ground was dry and hard. Alex’s gaze continued on in the same general direction, out into the cemetery.
“Why would he go in there?” Johnny asked.
Once more, Alex shrugged. “I’m not so sure he did, but maybe we should check it out.”
Johnny hung back a moment before following. “It’s my fault.”
“What?” Alex cried. The wind snatched the word away, but not before Johnny heard it.
“We had this fight.”
Alex waited.
“The song we were practicing just before the break? Chris wrote some lyrics. It was about a man and a grave.”
“So, you think he went in here to do a little research?”
Johnny shrugged. “No. But I think he was angry with me.”
“Why?”
“I said I didn’t like it.”
Alex frowned. “Don’t worry about it.”
They threaded their way between the tombstones, calling Chris’s name, but only the howling wind answered. Within minutes, they were soaked to the skin. Alex followed the winding gravel path. It was littered with leave
s, but it was better than walking on the grass, which hadn’t been cut very recently and so now stood a good eight or ten inches deep. Walking through it would totally soak their shoes in an instant.
Alex marched on through the graveyard with looking to either side, just walking, as if he was strolling through a park without a care in the world. Johnny kept shouting his friend’s name, even after Alex told him it was useless to do so in this wind. Nodoby’d hear him unless they were standing right next to him.
The light was quickly fading, but neither of them mentioned it.
As they came around the backside of the cemetery, Johnny gasped. It looked as if someone had reached down and torn the small hill in half. The ground seemed to have exploded outward from within. A tongue of mud swept down into a gully. But it wasn’t the mud Johnny was looking at. He was looking at the dim outlines of the coffins that had been washed out of the ground and tumbled into the shadows down below.
“Mudslide,” Alex commented, as if massive erosion in cemeteries was nothing unusual.
“Sh-shouldn’t we t-t-tell someone?” Johnny was shivering terribly by then. Not all of it was from the cold.
Alex shook his head. “They’ll figure it out soon enough.” He looked up into the sky, ignoring the lashing rain and wind and added, “I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing more of this sort of thing.”
“What do you mean? Because of the rain?”
Alex shrugged. “Sure.”
He pressed a foot against the sloping ground and added weight to it. Water gushed out of the mud like it was a sponge. “See? Ground’s getting saturated fast.” He grabbed Johnny’s arm and tugged him in the direction of the building. “Come on. It’s not safe.”
“But we haven’t f-found Chris.”
“He’s probably back inside waiting for us.”
“How d-d-do you know?”
“Where else would he be? Besides, it’s getting dark.”
Johnny stared after Alex for a moment, wondering why the boy wasn’t shivering like he was. He took one more look behind him before following. This time he noticed a set of muddy tracks leading toward the gully below. Two sets, actually, and they weren’t his or Alex’s.
Maybe they were Chris’s.
But he didn’t think they were.
Insomnia: Paranormal Tales, Science Fiction, & Horror Page 18