by Jerry eBooks
Greg disagreed. At first, their criminal endeavors had been scary, but he’d never felt guilty about any of them. Not until he saw pictures of a young woman in the local paper. Her parents had asked the paper to run the photos of their daughter shortly after she died because they wanted people to see what meth had done to her. They had provided pictures of her as she’d looked before the drug and a chronicle of the decay she’d experienced as an addict. Her name was Marylin Verdon and in the first picture, she was a beautiful smiling teenager with long, bright red hair, a voluptuous figure and a healthy, glowing face.
What the drug had done to her was frightening. It wasn’t anything Greg hadn’t already known and seen in others, but seeing the destruction so clearly and in chronological order was upsetting. Over the course of the pictures, her face collapsed, as if her skull were being deflated. Her cheeks became more hollow as she gradually lost most of her teeth. Her eyes sank deep into their sockets, sores broke out on her face, which turned the color of Silly Putty, and her hair became thin and dry, the bright red dulling to the color of old rust. Cracks opened up on her lips and her voluptuous figure melted away to a gaunt collection of bones in clothes that had become much too baggy. In the final picture, taken just days before she died, Marilyn was smiling, but because she’d grown so bone-thin and frail, her smile appeared much too big and looked like something out of a horror movie.
He’d had dreams—nightmares, really—about those pictures, but sometimes there were other people in them, strangers who decayed in the same way Marilyn Verdon had, because he knew she wasn’t the only one. There were so many others.
“If you’re not doing God’s work,” his mother had told him repeatedly when he was growing up, almost always shouting the words while pointing a finger at him, “you’re doing the devil’s work. And people who do the devil’s work, go to the devil!” The memory of her shouted words rose up in his head often, like a corpse that refused to stay dead.
Greg spoke the name aloud before he could stop himself. “Marilyn Verdon.”
“Oh, fuck,” Kurt said, dropping his head back and rolling his eyes. “I wish you’d never seen them fuckin’ pictures. Look, it’s bad that the poor girl died. I wish she hadn’t and I feel bad for her family. It’s sad, okay? But we didn’t have nothin’ to do with it because we don’t even know if she got any of our stuff.”
“Oh, come on, Kurt. We’ve got the biggest operation in the county.”
“But not the only operation.”
“What difference does it make where she got the drugs? That’s what we sell, and that’s what it does to people.”
“Then get out of the business.”
“What the hell else am I gonna do? I didn’t even finish high school, and these days, you practically need a college degree to mop a fucking floor.”
“Sure, you could get a job moppin’ a fuckin’ floor. And you could get your GED and go to college if you wanted, ‘cause you know you’re smart enough. But the money would disappear. And what else could you do that would make that kinda money?”
Kurt was right. And Greg hated himself for it. The money was great. He never had to worry about anything. When he was a boy, he’d watched his father drink to forget his money problems, and the more he drank, the less he worked and the worse the money problems got. It was all the old man ever talked about when he wasn’t beating or ridiculing Greg: paying the bills, making ends meet. With the kind of money Greg made and was putting away, that would never happen to him. But he didn’t have enough yet.
Kurt smiled. “Uh-huh. I didn’t think you’d have nothin’ to say to that. Look, bad things happen to people. Not a fuckin’ thing you can do about it. That girl woulda died even if we never sold any drugs in our lives because she was an addict and she woulda got the meth no matter what.”
“What about everything else, though? I mean, in the beginning, we did some pretty bad stuff for Mr. Badger.”
Back when they were teenagers, Mr. Badger was a former mayor who’d left office in disgrace and had pursued a life of crime. By the time they met him, he ran most of the drugs and prostitutes in the county.
“I mean, Jesus,” Greg went on, “just to get our foot in the door, we killed for that son of a bitch.”
“And look where we are now. He’s dead and we’re on top. And we’re runnin’ this fuckin’ county better than he ever did. He was too paranoid to run a smooth operation, the guy was monkeyfuck crazy. But we’re here and we’re in charge now and things are goin’ better’n chocolate. See? We’re fuckin’ accomplished. So what’s the point bringin’ up all this shit?”
Greg felt another involuntary comment rising up his gullet. He had time to stop it, but he did not have the will.
“What about . . . Mom?” he said quietly.
Laughing, Kurt said, “You fuckin’ kiddin’ me? That was the biggest favor I ever did for you, the best thing that ever happened to you, man.” On the word “happened,” he emphatically pounded the steering wheel. “Have you forgotten what a crazy, toxic bitch she was? If we hadn’t done that—“
”We?”
“Okay, okay, I did it, but you helped, and afterward, you did everything you could to go along with our cover story, so don’t get all holier’n fuckin’ thou on me. If that hadn’t happened, you’d still be under her thumb to this day. You’d probably be crazier than a bag a wet cats, and you sure as shit wouldn’t be workin’ with me in this business and you wouldn’t have all the money you got now.”
“How do you know Mom would still be alive? She might’ve died soon enough on her own.”
“She wasn’t that old. Oh, no, uh-uh, I know lotsa people like your mother. Believe me, people like that live a long time. You know why? ‘Cause makin’ everybody else miserable makes them happy, and that happiness keeps ‘em alive for fuckin’ ever. ‘Sides, what the hell’s any a this got to do with an orgy in the graveyard?”
“Because it just doesn’t feel right. And we’re due.”
“What the fuck’re you talkin’ about, we’re due?”
“I mean things have been going too well for too long, and we’re due.”
Kurt roared with laughter. “Jesus Christ! You sound just like your crazy fuckin’ mother! If I hadn’t bashed that bitch’s head in when I did, you’d probably be her by now.”
Greg’s frown did not relax and he fidgeted in the seat.
“For fuck’s sake, man, cheer up!” Kurt shouted as he pulled to the side of the road across from the cemetery. He killed the engine, took the keys from the ignition, then turned to Greg, slapped his thigh hard and shook his leg. “Think about it, dude. It’s Halloween and everybody’s out there partyin’ their asses off, and that means they need party supplies. And our company representatives—” He barked a laugh, as he did almost every time he referred to their dealers as “company representatives,” like they were travel agents, or something. “—are out there gatherin’ up lotsa fuckin’ money to put right in our pockets. Then we can introduce our new money to our old money and everybody wins! Our customers get what they want, our company representatives get paid, our money makes new friends and we get richer. Now quit soundin’ so much like your fuckin’ batshit mother and let’s go get laid in the graveyard!”
It was a crisp, cold night and clouds as thin as woodsmoke gave the stars and slender crescent moon a ghostly glow. Kurt had parked in back of the graveyard. Tall cypress trees stood like sentries along the entire perimeter of the cemetery, just inside the wrought-iron fence. The gate at the front was locked at night, but ever since they were kids, there had always been a small gate at the rear of the graveyard that, for whatever reason, was never locked. Kurt brought a small but powerful flashlight and they went into the dark, silent cemetery.
“It’s Halloween, so don’t be surprised if the cops do a drive-by with the spotlight, or somethin’,” Kurt said.
“There was nothing in the invitation about where they would be in the cemetery.”
“This place ai
n’t that big. I’m guessin’ they’ll be the only orgy here.”
As they walked across the lawn, the moon and stars peeked at them through the branches of the maple and pine trees that gave shade to the dead during the day. The cemetery had become a bit sloppy and unkempt. The grass was not trimmed as regularly as it was when they were kids who sometimes wandered through the place at night for fun, stopping to smoke a joint at the foot of a statue of Jesus.
Greg smiled at the memory, but the smile was brief. He’d been tense all night, but being in the graveyard only made it worse. He thought it would be different now that he was a full-grown adult, but the damned place still gave him the creeps, just like it had when he was a kid.
“I thought I saw some movement over that way,” Kurt said quietly, veering to the right. Greg veered with him.
It was unnervingly quiet. Greg could hear crickets and frogs, but they were a good distance behind them, probably across the street from the cemetery.
Kurt stopped abruptly. “You see that?”
“See what?”
“I, uh, I’m not sure, but it looked like somebody moving through the dark up there.” He started to move forward again but Greg swung his right arm around and thumped it across Kurt’s chest to stop him. “What?” Kurt said.
“Let’s go back. Right now.”
“Why?”
Greg’s heart was firing like a machine gun, his palms were sweaty and his throat felt tight. But he couldn’t tell Kurt that.
“Let’s just do it. I’m serious, Kurt. We shouldn’t be here. It was stupid to come. Something’s very wrong. Listen.” When Kurt started to speak again, Greg hissed, “Listen!”
They said nothing for a long moment. And they heard nothing.
“There’s nobody here, Kurt.” Greg said. “We’d hear them. It’s a quiet night and like you said, the place isn’t that big. If there was a group of people here about to have an orgy, they’d make noise. There’s nobody here. Nobody living.”
He pointed at the darkness up ahead. “But I’m sure I saw someone moving around over—”
“And that makes you want to stay? If people are here to party, why are they being so fucking silent?”
Kurt slowly nodded. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” He took a couple of steps backward, then turned around, saying, “Let’s go back.”
Without me, Greg thought as they headed back for the gate, he would’ve been dead years ago.
“Are you here for the orgy?”
The question, asked by a clear and lovely female voice to their left, made both of them gasp, and they stopped so suddenly, they almost fell on their faces. Kurt turned toward the voice and swept his flashlight around in quick, jerky movements, looking for the girl.
“You’re right on time!” she said.
“Where the fuck is she,” Kurt muttered.
His light found her . . . sort of. She stood just inches out of the beam’s reach, a slender, shadowy figure with long hair.
“Well,” she said, “are you here for the orgy?”
“Yuh-yuh-yeah,” Kurt said.
Greg felt a scream pushing its way up his throat and he gulped it back. His nerves were vibrating just beneath the surface of his skin.
Kurt took a couple of steps forward and the girl did the same. She stepped into his flashlight beam.
Kurt leaned toward Greg and whispered, “She’s already naked!”
But that did nothing to make Greg feel better because as she came closer and he could see her in more detail; it became clear that there were things wrong with her. Very wrong.
Her ribs were much too visible and her skin was the wrong color and there appeared to be openings in it, like sores, or . . . something, he wasn’t sure what, but
parts of her skin actually seemed to be missing and as he realized her ribs really were visible because he could see the actual bone, that scream rose in his throat again, suddenly this time and without warning and—
It got out and cut through the quiet graveyard like a buzz saw. He did not scream because of her horrible state of decay but because of her hair. Her long bright red hair.
Marilyn Verdon, he thought, remembering all the nightmares he’d had of her collapsing, dissolving face in those pictures. But he didn’t have long to think about it because Kurt started to scream, too, as Marilyn came closer.
It looked at first like there was an appealing lopsided smile on her face, but as she drew nearer, Greg saw that part of her mouth and left cheek were missing and her teeth were exposed. One eye socket was empty and her breasts were empty flaps of rotting grey skin.
And she was not alone.
As Greg tried to regain the use of his suddenly ice-cold and mostly numb body, the darkness around them began to give birth to shapes. In one heartbeat, there was nothing there but the night; in the next, a figure was shuffling slowly toward them.
Kurt’s left hand slammed onto Greg’s shoulder and closed on a handful of his jacket. He pulled Greg with him as he began to run sideways toward the gate. Greg used Kurt’s arm to steer him around so they faced the direction in which they were running, but they stumbled to another stop because—
There were more of them. They blocked the way to the gate as they slowly materialized out of the darkness, one by one, until there was a long row of them. In the center of the row was a familiar figure that was slightly ahead of the others, a figure that lifted its arm and pointed a finger directly at Greg.
“You . . . boys . . . are gonna burn!” Mom said, her voice a rattling gurgle. “You . . . hear . . . men? Buuurn!”
Above her sunken eyes, her forehead was caved in where Kurt had hit her with the hammer.
Kurt made a whimpering sound and his voice trembled as he said, “Oh, fuck, man, fuck!”
They turned to their right to run, but before they could take more than a single step, they saw still more of the figures moving slowly toward them, all of them naked, their skin pale, flesh dangling from the open holes in their faces and torsos.
He could smell them. The odor was nauseating.
Greg turned in a circle and found that they were surrounded. Breathing became difficult and his heart felt ready to explode.
“Are you ready for that orgy, boys?” Marilyn said. There was a smile in her bright, happy voice. “Because we’re ready! Aren’t we?”
They began to mutter to themselves in voices that sounded like clogged drains as they moved slowly closer.
Greg heard his own voice. It trickled out of him in fearful whimpers as his panic became overwhelming. He took the .38 from his jacket pocket and held it in both hands before him, arms outstretched and elbows locked, as he broke into a run. Heading in the direction from which they’d come, he began to fire again and again as he neared the blockade of reeking corpses.
He did not get the reaction he was hoping for—none of them fell or even stumbled. They did not react to the gunshots. Not even a flinch.
Hands fell on him from every direction, clutching his clothes, his arms, his hair.
The gunfire stopped and was replaced by impotent clicks.
Greg screamed as they pulled him in opposite directions, then tackled him to the ground.
More gunfire sounded behind him as Kurt—whose screams were shrilled and insane—fired his Glock repeatedly. The sounds were muffled by the thundering of Greg’s own heart in his ears.
Fingernails clawed at Greg’s clothes, ripping, tearing. He felt the ice-cold hands on his chest and abdomen as they pulled his clothes away from him in pieces. Then they began to work on his flesh.
He opened his eyes as he screamed and saw above him the upside-down face of his grinning mother—
—except she wasn’t grinning. It only looked that way because her lips were gone.
“You’re gonna buuuurn!” she growled as he felt teeth biting into his skin on his chest, his arm, his thigh.
The last sounds he heard were the satisfied moans of his captors as they noisily ate what was before them.
On October 29, the decorations disappeared from the Myrick lawn. Rubber kitchen gloves, purple and stuffed with cotton, no longer reached hungrily from the lawn beside tilted Styrofoam grave markers. A faint autumn breeze no longer rattled the plastic bones of the full-sized skeleton that formerly hung from a leafless limb of their oak tree. From the Myrick porch, the motion-sensor eyes of a black ceramic cat no longer flashed red at children as they passed.
The only explanation came from a new decoration, expressing a similarly grave topic but without the spirit of holiday fun, this one affixed by the city atop a metal post, red letters on a white background instead of the seasonal orange on black:
QUIET
ZONE
————
DEATH
IN THE
FAMILY
Jeremy was pissed about it. His stepbrother, only three years older, benefited from the lenient rules of their shared father, but Mom was overprotective with Jeremy. He had only been allowed to go trick-or-treating under his parents’ supervision, visiting barely a dozen houses on their stretch of River Street, then a pathetic consolation party at his elementary school. This party involved a few ring toss and broom race games in the gymnasium, some orange streamers and happy-face ghost cutouts stuck to the wall with masking tape. They had a costume parade, each grade lined up in turn, but no prizes since the losers’ feelings might get hurt. At the end Mrs. Rubin would read from her Children’s Halloween Treasury, lights on the whole time so kids could see the pictures, the story some saccharin fable about a monster scratching under the bed that turned out to be the family’s new puppy, or one about a colonial-era ghost that helped a girl find her missing Barbie doll.
Jeremy hated those parties, and the takeaway plastic jack ‘o lantern with its mouth and eyes falling off in black flecks of cheap paint, a single-serve packet of candy corn within, some kisses and a couple “fun size” Three Musketeers bars—tiny, puffed with air and flavorless. How could this dollar-store giveaway compete with the dirty pillowcase his step-brother brought home late Halloween evening, overstuffed with full-size chocolate bars, packs of gum and mints, jelly snakes and rats, jawbreakers shaped like eyeballs, wax skeletons filled with colored syrup.