† † †
“Where the hell have you two been?” Chris said, when they pushed their way back inside the building.
Alex walked over to one of the drawers and opened it, pulling a pair of old but clean towels from inside. He threw one to Johnny.
“Us? Where the hell were you?” Johnny demanded. He was staring at Chris’s sneakers, noticing how dry they were.
“I was in the car.” He held up a sheaf of papers. “You were right about the song being too country, so I rewrote the lyrics. Anyway, your soldier idea is better.”
Johnny went over and took the papers, but he didn’t look at them. Water poured from his hair and his clothes. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“Dude!” Chris exclaimed. He snatched the papers away again. “You’re dripping on them!”
“I think it’s time to leave,” Johnny whispered.
“What the hell, man. It’s just a little rain. You’ll dry.”
“I’m soaked, Chris! I don’t want to play anymore, can’t you understand that?” He looked over at Alex, but the older boy had covered his head with the towel and was drying his hair.
Johnny leaned over and lowered his voice. “I hate this place, man. It freaks me out.”
“It’s a morgue. Of course it freaks you out. That’s the point!” Chris turned to Alex. “Hey, dude, are you ready to try the new song with words this time?”
Alex lifted his head and nodded.
“No,” Johnny said. “I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
“Something’s not right. I think I just saw—”
He stopped when Alex walked over to them.
“What are you two talking about?”
“Nothing,” Johnny said, quickly moving away.
Chris noticed how he seemed to shrink the closer Alex came.
“What happened out there?” he asked.
Alex shrugged. “Nothing. A little mudslide is all. I think Johnny thought he saw a little ghostie-whostie.”
“Shut up!” Johnny screamed. He threw the towel onto the floor and began to pack up his stuff.
“Oh, come on, man” Chris begged. He waved the papers. “Just one time through.”
Johnny shook his head.
“Damn it, Johnny,” Chris spit. “Sometimes you really are such a wuss!”
“Shut up,” Johnny said. He pointed his finger at Chris and repeated it. “I hate this place! I never wanted to come here in the first place.” He grabbed his backpack and headed for the door.
“Would you wait a minute—”
“Let him go,” Alex said. “He’ll be back.” He went over and plucked the papers from Chris’s hand and looked through it, nodding approvingly. “This is pretty good stuff. Let’s give it a try.”
Chris ignored him. “Johnny?”
But Johnny was already at the door and was pulling it open. He turned once more and gave Chris a baleful look. Then he was gone and the door thudded closed behind him.
It was the last time anyone saw Johnny alive again.
† † †
“Any word?” Alex asked Chris on Sunday night.
They were in Chris’s garage, half-heartedly playing their guitars. The amp was unplugged. Chris wasn’t in much of a mood—hadn’t been in one since Johnny disappeared Friday night.
“You can’t blame yourself, man.”
“It’s my fault,” Chris said. “Something bad has happened, I just know it, and it’s all my fault.”
“He’ll turn up.”
“I should’ve driven home with him instead of staying.”
They practiced the new song, running through it a half dozen times and making minor tweaks. It wasn’t the same without Johnny there, as the drums played such an important part. Finally, Chris gave up and went home around eight-thirty. His mother was surprised when he walked in, remarking that it was still early. He told her he was tired and went straight up to bed.
By early Saturday morning, everyone in town knew that Johnny hadn’t shown up at home the night before.
The police came and asked Chris some questions. He didn’t want to get Alex in trouble, so he didn’t tell them about the old morgue and that they were using the building to practice in. Or even that Alex was living there. Besides, he wanted to believe that Johnny was just angry and had holed up somewhere else. Maybe he’d broken into the school library.
But just to be sure, Chris walked the entire length of track between town and the old cemetery, hoping he would find his friend, yet hoping he wouldn’t. There was no sign of Johnny anywhere.
“He’ll show up soon,” Alex said. “Tomorrow’s school. He won’t risk missing school just to prove a point. Would he?”
“He was pretty upset,” Chris said. He told Alex about the fight they’d had over the lyrics.
When he was finished, Alex nodded. “Johnny mentioned it, too,” he said.
A week passed, then two, and still there was no word. The police came again and inspected the van, but they found nothing inside of it that seemed suspicious. Chris moped about the house, driving his parents crazy.
He heard them whispering to each other one night in the kitchen.
“Maybe he just needs to find a new drummer,” his father said. “He needs to get back to a normal life.”
“Give him time,” his mother insisted.
He went back upstairs and lay down on his bed. Maybe his father was right. Maybe he just needed to move on. Whatever had happened to Johnny, maybe they’d never know.
Another week went by. It was now mid-November and they’d gotten their first real snowfall. When Chris showed up at Alex’s, a thin layer of it covered the ground, a clean, white blanket that masked that scars on the land and muffled everything.
“Want to jam?” he said, when Alex answered.
Johnny’s drum set still stood in the corner. Chris avoided looking at it.
“Damn it’s cold in here.”
“Want me to turn up the heater? Oh, that’s right, ain’t got one.”
They warmed up nonetheless by playing.
Johnny’s absence was sorely felt, and the songs felt and sounded incomplete and empty, directionless. It wasn’t just the missing rhythm. Johnny’s usual banter was sorely missed as well. Still, they played on until well past dark, and by the time Chris left to walk home, he was feeling a little better.
He tucked his shirt in and put on his jacket.
“Same time tomorrow?” Alex asked.
Chris shook his head. His mother was back working evenings, and his father had asked if he wanted to go to the movies. His idea of trying to help was to go sit in a darkened room and not speak to each other.
“No, but maybe the day after.”
The night was cold, but it was calm, not a breath of wind. The nearly full moon provided more than enough light to see by. Chris breathed it in, held it, then let out a puff of warm air that surrounded him as he walked home. The air felt good, clean and crisp and purifying.
To his left, the cemetery stood silent, the headstones now covered in snow, looking like goose bumps. He felt it tugging at him, and he decided to go in.
He stuck his chin down into the front of his coat, although he wasn’t cold. It was something he remembered seeing Johnny do, and he smiled at the memories it evoked.
“What the hell happened to you, Johnny?” he whispered loudly.
He followed a set of footprints that led him to another grave, and he was surprised to see that it had been dug up.
Exhumed, his mind whispered at him.
The edges of the hole were ragged, like something had clawed its way out rather that something clawing its way in. It was too dark to see the bottom.
He noticed that several other graves were similarly dug up. He remembered Alex mentioning something about the mudslide and wondered if the town was in the process of relocating the graves.
On his way out of the cemetery, his eyes caught a glimpse of yet another dug-out grave, this one loo
king like it had been opened a long time. The edges were caved in and the headstone was slanted.
He read the name and started with surprise. Alger “Texas” Alexander. Born September 12, 1900. Died April 18, 1954. It was an uncanny coincidence, being so similar to Alex’s, but what else could it be? Besides, this man had died well over a half century before and was in his mid-fifties when he had. He wondered if Alex knew about it. He probably did.
When Chris got to the trestle, he was careful not to slip on the icy tracks. Someone else had walked this way since the snow had stopped falling that afternoon, and where the snow had been pressed down, it had frozen. He was careful not to slip.
His mother told him the news the next morning.
“They found his body. They found Johnny.”
Chris gawped for a moment, unable to speak, unable to even breathe.
“Sit down, honey.” She came over and wrapped her arms around him and stood there without speaking for several moments, just holding him and rocking gently.
“Where,” he managed to gasp.
“By the river. Beneath the Eastside train trestle.”
It felt like a bolt of lightning was passing through him.
“Where?” he asked again.
“They think he tried to cross the trestle and fell into the river. It was raining that night and the water level was high. They think he went under and got stuck on something—a submerged branch or something—and drowned. When the water level went back down, his body became visible again.”
Chris was trembling. He tried not to cry, but there was no way he could hold back the tears.
“We’ll talk about it some more later,” his mother said. Chris knew what that meant. She wanted to know more about what had happened that night. After all, Johnny was supposed to have come home with him.
He was able to avoid her for a few days, but she eventually brought it up again.
“They buried him today,” she said at dinner one night.
“Honey?” his father said, giving his head a slight shake.
“Chris, you’re going to have to talk about it sooner or later.”
“Why?”
His mother sighed. “The investigation’s still open. The police are going to want to talk with you again.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“We believe you, son, but it doesn’t explain why Johnny was way out that way that night, why he was on the edge of town. They’re going to want to know where you were and if you were with him and what you were doing.”
“Why? It was just an accident.”
His mother pursed her lips.
“I wasn’t with him when he fell, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Where were you?”
“I was with Alex. We were practicing.”
“And where were you practicing?”
He didn’t answer.
“Chris, there’s nothing out that way. Nobody lives out there. There’s just…”
“What?”
“The old cemetery.”
Chris’s eyes narrowed, but he kept his face lowered.
“You were out there, weren’t you?”
He shrugged.
“Son, there’s something else you should know. Something been happening out there.”
“Out where?”
“The cemetery. The police discovered a number of graves had been disturbed. It looked like someone had gone in and plowed up a bunch, ripped open the coffins.”
Chris shook his head. “It was unstable ground. There was a mudslide.”
“Chris?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“The coffins were empty.”
Chris blinked. After a moment, he rose and stumbled clumsily out of his chair. “I need to go.”
“Chris, come back here. Christopher Michael!”
“I don’t know anything about that,” he shouted. He grabbed his coat and ran out. He could still hear his mother yelling after him.
When he got to the old morgue, he told Alex what his mother had said.
“It’s nothing.”
Chris frowned. “How can you say it’s nothing? What the hells’ happening out here?”
“The ground slumped. The night of the rain, Johnny and I went out looking for you. I told you, remember? The side of the hill collapsed. The ground was saturated and there was a mudslide. That must be what your mom is talking about.”
“The coffins were empty.”
Alex shook his head. “So?”
“It didn’t just happen once, Alex. There were more. I saw them, a dozen graves at least. And they were clearly dug up.”
“They weren’t dug up.”
“What do you know?”
“Nothing.”
“Arrrgh!” Chris shouted. “You’re killing me, man.”
He stomped around inside the old morgue for several minutes, trying to blow off some steam. He just felt so helpless.
“It’ll be all right, man. You just—”
“How can you say that?” Chris screamed. “It’s not going to be all right! Johnny was my friend.”
“Are you sure that’s all you’re upset about?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“The band, Ten-Forty. You sure it’s not because of that?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” But Chris realized with a jolt that he was upset about the band falling apart. Everything was falling apart just when it had seemed like it was actually going to happen.
He grabbed blindly at something on the floor and hurled across the room. It crashed against the wall with the sound of breaking glass.
Alex didn’t say anything.
“Okay, maybe I am pissed about that,” Chris finally admitted.
“You know what’ll make you feel better? Playing.”
“No. It won’t.”
Alex ignored him and picked up his bass and started playing The House of the Rising Sun.
Chris put his head in his hands and just stood there for a while, listening. Finally he nodded. He knew it was wrong, and yet he felt compelled to play.
And so they played.
At first it was agonizing. It felt like someone was ripping out his insides. But after a while, Chris found himself getting into it. He closed his eyes and played, letting the music flow from his fingers and into his body. The notes began to infuse him, spreading into his head from inside his body. He could almost taste it. Alex’s voice melded with something inside of him, drew him up and up until he couldn’t resist it anymore.
And in his head he started hearing Johnny’s part, the drums. He kept his eyes closed and kept playing, listening to his friend play. It was the three of them again, together.
Alex stayed with Chris, note for note, until the hair started standing up on Chris’s arms, on the back of his head. The music was chilling, haunting. And the beat of those imagined drums was the most haunting thing of it all.
Finally, the song ended. Chris stood there, feeling the notes leak away from him until there was nothing more. The amps fell silent. The building hummed with the silence.
He opened his eyes and there was Johnny, sitting at his drums. His clothes were soaking wet and his hair was plastered against his face. There was mud on his sneakers.
Chris blinked at the illusion.
Johnny remained.
Next to him, Alex stood holding his bass. His eyes blazed red, and he smiled and gestured with the neck of the guitar at the door. “The magic of music.”
Chris slowly turned and saw the dead they had raised, the dead who gathered in the shadows of the old morgue, risen from their graves just outside.
And then Chris knew that Alex was one of them, too. It was his own headstone Chris had seen the other night. Alex was one of the dead. And now, so was Johnny.
“I told you they’d like it,” Alex said. And then he laughed, and it was a wicked, infectious laugh. Johnny laughed, too, and his tongue was fat with decay, stiff and
blackened by the muddy water of the river. The two dead boys laughed long and hard and didn’t stop to take a breath. And soon, the rest of the dead began to laugh, too.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Alex said.
Chris ran. He tore out through the door of that place, out through the hole in the fence and onto the tracks. The night was dark, only a sliver of a moon to show him the way. He ran down the train tracks toward town, while the laughter of the dead chased him home.
Across the river where Johnny had drowned.
Over the highway, into town.
He ran all the way home, and while he was running a car came out of the darkness, its engine revving and its headlights burning his retinas until he couldn’t see anything but a painful brightness. But the car swerved at the last moment, or maybe he jumped away in time, because it sped past, leaving him unscathed. It was an ambulance and in the driver’s seat was his mother. He didn’t know if she recognized him.
When he got home, the house was dark and quiet. He vowed he would never play guitar again.
But all the while he knew it was a promise he could never keep. He would rather die first than to stop playing.
† † †
He had begun to hear the music long before his eyes settled upon the old brick building, long before he had even left his house. It had woken him from his bed, and he’d risen to follow it.
He heard the laughter coming from inside. He heard it even though he didn’t want to hear it.
As soon as he knocked on the door, the music stopped and the place went graveyard quiet.
Alex came and stood at there looking out into the darkness, not a hint of surprise on his face to see Chris waiting.
“You’re missing a shoe, man,” Alex said.
Chris looked down and saw that he was. He also noticed that a piece of his femur was sticking out of his thigh, but he couldn’t remember how that might have happened. It certainly didn’t hurt.
“At least your hands are still intact,” Alex said, checking them out. “You can play, right?”
Chris nodded.
Alex looked over Chris’s shoulder, out to the sky over the distant hills. It was acquiring the first early stain of the coming dawn.
“What say we scare up some background vocals, hmm? Feel like playing a little Rising Sun Blues?”
Insomnia: Paranormal Tales, Science Fiction, & Horror Page 19