Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels

by Michael Libling

  “All of them,” Annie said. “They’re like that poor girl. That poor girl in those books of yours.”

  “The Woodstock girl,” Jack said.

  I referenced the source. “Weird, Weirder, Weirdest!”

  Woodstock, Ontario is two hundred miles southwest of Trenton. In 1886, a fifteen-year-old girl became sick, died, and was buried. Days after, her folks had second thoughts and decided to move their beloved daughter closer to home. It was a decision they likely regretted for the rest of their messed-up lives. When the body was exhumed, the girl was discovered balled up and shockingly fetal, an arm thrown back behind an ear, face aghast in breathless agony, fingernails and fingertips worn and torn, her burial shroud clawed to bloodstained tatters.

  “What could be more horrible than waking up in your own coffin?” Annie said.

  I tried to make her feel better. “How about having your eyelids cut off, honey poured on your head, and buried up to your neck in an anthill in the desert?” She did not see the humour. “Without a hat.”

  “People don’t get buried alive anymore,” Jack assured her.

  “They did here,” Annie countered. She swung her light to either side and then out front. “Look how many. Look how many.”

  “These are old graves,” Jack said. “From a long time ago.”

  “Not all,” Annie said. “You saw . . . you saw. There was flesh on some of those bones.”

  “Catgut,” I said.

  “Still pretty old, though,” Jack insisted.

  “One more,” Annie said. “One more tarp, just to be sure.”

  “We are sure,” Jack said. “More than sure.”

  There was no stopping Annie. She was dowsing death the way she covered off that pit, zigzagging through the tarps to select her final one.

  Nothing changed.

  The last tarp told the same story as the previous seven. One coffin, two shrouds. Misshapen skeletons, calcified corkscrews of cartilage, porous bone, and hair. Faces contorted and distorted, a death worse than death. Silent screams reverberating into The Eternal. Shrouds hand-shredded to streamers. The undersides of coffin tops clawed and scored.

  Another thing, too. The extremities of the skeletons. In every case, a hand or a foot, though never more than one, was missing. Chopped. Lopped. Whatever. For whatever.

  The fifteen-year-old Woodstock girl had nothing on the corpses of Creighton Farms, may she rest in peace.

  “Who’d do this?” Annie said.

  “‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?’” I said, my attempt at deep.

  “What evil lurks in your head?” Jack snapped. “You think it’s funny, this hellhole?”

  “Funny or not, Gus asked a good question,” Annie said. “What evil does lurk?”

  Jack mumbled a grudging sorry and changed the subject. “I’d better get those pictures in,” he said, and swore as he patted down his pockets. “No, no, no. No. The flashbulbs. I forgot the goddamn flashbulbs. If it wasn’t for my stupid sisters distracting me . . .”

  We aimed our five flashlights at the best of the dead, or worst, I suppose. Our batteries had weakened by then. Jack could not guarantee the photos would turn out. He cursed himself again for the flashbulbs. He’d stopped blaming his sisters, though the pair kept their distance.

  We returned the tarps to their places. The ones that hadn’t blown away, anyhow, and used rocks to hammer down the spikes. Rain was falling as we finished, so there wasn’t any need to cover up our tracks. Mud would take care of it. We raised up the trampled section of fence and set off the way we’d come. To ration our batteries, we kept it to one flashlight at a time.

  “I don’t want to be buried alive,” Annie said, as if anyone besides Houdini ever had.

  “Aimee Semple McPherson had the right idea,” I said. “She was buried with a telephone in her coffin.”

  Annie perked up. “You can do that?” She didn’t ask who Aimee Semple McPherson was, but then Annie would know. In the ’20s and ’30s, McPherson had been a big-time radio evangelist, preaching Christianity to America. She went on to found her own church, before croaking under mysterious circumstances during the war.

  “Believe It or Not! is full of safety devices for coffins—escape hatches, alarm bells, oxygen tanks.”

  “I’d be cremated, if my parents would let me,” Annie said. “It’s our souls that matter. Our bodies are only vessels.”

  “Me,” I said, “I’m going to live forever, that’s all there is to it.”

  Annie ignored my declaration of immortality, and returned to the scene none of us would ever fully leave behind. “Someone knows what went on back there. One person didn’t do all that.”

  “If it was a person,” I said.

  Jack ended his brief silence, shared what he’d been mulling. “Creighton Farm is over a hundred years old, easy. Whatever the people who lived here were up to, it was passed on, from father to son, mother to daughter.”

  “A family tradition of killing,” Annie said.

  I asked the obvious. “Know any Creightons?”

  “Crates,” Jack said, his mouth dry. “He’s a Creighton.”

  “He is?”

  “First name or last, not sure which. Don’t know if he ever lived on the farm, though.”

  I squinted into the dark, behind, ahead. Crates could be on us before we knew it, slit our throats, slice off a souvenir limb, and shovel us under in the grand Creighton tradition. Either way, he’d be at school next day. Like Susan Burgess, he had a perfect attendance record, though he never received an award for it. Malbasic was said to deduct a day from his “stellar attendance“ for every hour Crates spent in the principal’s office. My guess, Crates was so far into negative territory he’d never dig his way out.

  “He works for my dad in the summer,” Annie said. “Dad would have let him go, too, a long time ago, because of how he sneaks up on people—how he’s nowhere to be seen, and then he’s standing right next to you.”

  “It’s the moccasins,” I said. “He’s always wearing moccasins.”

  “But then Dad put him to work on the grinder, sharpening tools and knives. That’s all Dad has him do now. Dad says Crates is the best sharpener he’s ever had. Especially scythes and mower blades.”

  We picked up our pace as the rain intensified. At Keating Woods, Jack again: “Aimee Semple McPherson was born in Ontario. Did you know?”

  We didn’t. Nor did we care much at this point.

  “A town called Salford. And Salford, if you want to know, is only ten miles from Woodstock where that girl was buried alive. . . .”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Stop talking,” Issie said.

  “Please,” Abby begged.

  Annie put the light to her watch. “My parents will kill me if they catch me out this late.” She started jogging and we jogged with her. We ran all the way to Pilots Hall. And it didn’t have a damn thing to do with what Annie’s parents might do to her, either.

  We didn’t see the hobo and his campfire on our return pass. We saw the peel of the orange Annie had tossed him. The Ford Fairlane hadn’t moved, though the doors were shut, the windows fogged over, the chassis creaking.

  Owls. There was no shortage of owls.

  Annie’s house came first. The lights were on. All the lights. She didn’t know what to say to Jack and me, touched our arms, hugged Abigail and Isabel. “Well,” she said, her laugh caustic and unexpected. “‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done . . .’”

  “What?” we said.

  “Nothing,” she said, and consigned herself to the longest mile.

  The front door swung open. Her dad yanked her inside, muddy droplets splashing, shooting stars under porch light.

  Jack and I stalled at the crossroads. “So?” he said. “Premature Burial or Tales of Terror?”

  “Creighton Farms,” I said. “Vincent Price will play me.”

  “Guess I’m stuck with Peter Lorre, then.”

&n
bsp; “There’s always Ray Milland.”

  “I’ll stay with Lorre, thanks.”

  “Debbie Reynolds can play Annie,” Issie said.

  “Hayley Mills is better,” Abby countered.

  “Annie can play herself,” I said. “She’s good at that.”

  “Sweet dreams, Gus,” Jack said.

  “In whose lifetime?” I said.

  Eighteen

  Heavenly luxury with a two-car garage

  The interrogations were intense. If anybody was going to squeal about our ghouling, you’d have expected it to be Abigail and Isabel. “Annie Barker isn’t going to tell and neither are we,” they swore to their brother. “Annie’s so nice.”

  The punishments varied. Two weeks with no Saturday morning TV for the girls. A month of hard labour at the Marquee, and no TV or Odeon for Jack. Two weeks of early bedtimes and three Hail Marys daily for Annie.

  I’d come in through the back door. I could hear Mom laughing. The Tonight Show. The new guy, Johnny Carson, had been growing on her. She called to me in the kitchen. “Is that you, Leo?”

  “Thirsty. Came downstairs to get a drink.”

  “Do you know how late it is, sweetheart?”

  I waited for another round of laughter, dashed behind Mom’s back and up the stairs without her noticing I wasn’t in my pajamas.

  We shared our nightmares, hoping to purge the carryover. My nightmares were as petrifying as anybody’s. And I lied about them all. I had no dreams about the farm. No dreams about any part of that night. I thought this was a good thing, made me stronger than the others, though not so good and strong I could admit my deficiency to Jack or Annie.

  Look, the episode was pretty messed up any way you looked at it. And nightmares were small potatoes. Five kids in a graveyard playing footsies with the living dead. We should’ve been traumatized numb and dumb. Abby and Issie, especially. And none of us spilling the beans, telling parents, police, anyone. I have no explanation, other than us being Trenton kids born and bred. We saw horror with a softer focus, somehow. The night on Creighton Farms was as real as it could get without ever becoming as real as it should have been.

  Mr. Moroney stuck with his building plans. The afternoon after our expedition, the land was plowed under and over. “‘Every godforsaken bone pulverized,’” Annie heard her dad say. “‘People had been snooping around. Moroney blew a gasket. No, there’s no point in telling anyone. God, no. Anybody who’s anybody is in his pocket.’”

  Next day, a Wednesday, the Record reported a body had been discovered during “recent excavations at Creighton Farms.” Although only one body was mentioned, the three of us were smug in the certainty body would be revised to skeletal remains and the total increased way way upwards. The burial grounds would be exposed, the guilty punished.

  Thursday, the paper updated the story. “I seen this black dog sniffing ’round and then I seen a hand sticking out the dirt,” said the backhoe operator who uncovered the body. The victim was “a fourteen-year-old boy who had failed to heed multiple warning signs and breached the high-security barrier surrounding the construction site.” The dead kid was Douglas Dunwood of Windsor Street in Trenton.

  “You think he followed us?” I said.

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Jack said. “People drop out of our lives like flies and there’s nothing we can do to bring them back.”

  “Dead is only a word, Jack,” Annie said. “Douglas has gone to a better place.”

  “He was my best friend,” Jack said, “until he turned into a jerk.”

  “It’s a sin to speak ill of the dead.”

  “I always liked him,” I said.

  On Friday, a special school assembly was held. Reverend James James from the Dunwoods’ church led the school in prayer and a minute of silence in memory of Douglas. Dougie’s uncle represented the family. He gave a short speech, thanked us for loving Dougie, and showed us the clothes Dougie would be wearing for his eternal rest—Scouting hat, shorts, shirt, and hodgepodge of merit badges. The school erupted with clapping and cheers. A lady from the Red Cross presented a National Film Board movie about the dangers of children playing at construction sites, with an emphasis on blasting caps. Mr. Malbasic then paraded us outside where he announced Dufferin’s Elmer the Safety Elephant flag would fly at half-mast until the new school year in September, whereupon Dougie’s Scoutmaster lowered the flag and saluted the school.

  A week after our nighttime foray, the Record ran an artist’s rendition of the “greatly anticipated” Creighton Farms subdivision. The caption: Heavenly luxury with a 2-car garage.

  “What’s so funny?” Mom asked.

  “Hi and Lois,” I said.

  The graves never made the Record.

  Jack’s photos came back blank.

  “That seals it,” he said, and pounded his fist against his garage door until Annie and I went rodeo on him, and bulldogged his arm.

  The less you like a dead kid, the tougher it is to get your head around the death. We wrestled with guilt, Dougie’s passing somehow our fault, which it was to some degree. If he hadn’t seen us outside Pilots Hall . . .

  “How do you think he died?” I said. “Bet you it wasn’t an accident.”

  My speculation rankled Annie. “Didn’t you watch the movie? You know how dangerous construction sites are. He’s gone. What does it matter?”

  “I heard they found him under a ton of dirt,” Jack said.

  “I heard nothing of the sort,” Annie said.

  “That’d be the same as him being buried alive,” I said. “Like the others.”

  “Or perhaps he just fell,” Annie said. “Simple as that.”

  “You really think so?” Jack said.

  I offered up another philosophic gem. “The only good part about dying, I figure, is you get to stop being afraid of dying.” That set Annie off, all right.

  “My goodness, Gus. If you attended church, you’d know there is no reason to be afraid.”

  “But you were afraid out there on the farm. You’re saying none of this—all those bodies—has shaken your faith?”

  “Only in my fellow man. Not in God. And no matter how terribly their lives ended, they’re with Him now.”

  “But it was God who let it happen.”

  “Is that what you saw—God’s work? Poor you. I saw only the Devil’s work—what Father Gurney said, the ‘darker plan afoot.’”

  “So God only does good things and the Devil only bad?”

  “That’s a question only the Devil would ask.”

  “Something else about Dougie,” Jack said to me, when we were alone. “He was missing a foot. The police aren’t saying, but the guy who drives the cement truck was talking in the Marquee and he said it looked like an animal had eaten it.”

  Whatever else was going on, there was no dismissing Annie’s contribution to our cause. She was owed her due and we gave it. Since the events ranged over years, and the years were vague, we debated where on our list Annie’s find belonged. The top, as it turned out:

  18?? to 19?? – The ‘buried alive’ of Creighton Farms

  “I’m honoured.” Annie smiled wanly, her sincerity riddled with anguish. “I can’t fall asleep without thinking about it. Those poor people, and the murderers scot-free. And then, what happened to Douglas.”

  I shared my favourite theory. “Tons of murderers get off scot-free. Bet you anything we pass a bunch every day of our lives. Going to dance hops. Laughing at knock-knock jokes. Killing kids on Mount Pelion. Eating club sandwiches. Bowling with buddies. Pushing wives off dams. Dancing the cha-cha. Eating popcorn in the Odeon. Going—”

  “Stop. Does your brain not have an off switch?” Annie was going through one of those periods where she didn’t have much patience for me. “Why must you say such awful things all the time?”

  “Because they’re true.”

  Jack’s change of subject didn’t help. “I had another bad dream last night. Running out of air. Trying to claw m
y way out. . . .”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Me and Mickey Mental in the same grave. And Crates with a big shovel.”

  “Well, anyhow,” Jack said.

  “Uh-huh,” Annie agreed. “Yeah. Well.”

  “What is this, a funeral?” I said cheerfully. “Look at us! We’re here. We’re alive. We’re in one piece.” I had my moments, I tell you, loopy though they were.

  We celebrated, popped cream sodas, clinked bottles. To Annie and her find. To Mickey Mental, may he rest in peace. To our bright futures. To happier days ahead. To good times, safe times. To friends forever. You’d think I would have paid heed, shuddered at the flagrant foreshadowing.

  5:00 10 THINGS TO COME—Science Fiction

  During Christmas celebrations with friends and family, businessman John Cabal (Raymond Massey) dampens the holiday spirit with talk of doom and gloom. Minutes later, the whole planet goes kablooie, with war droning on for the next umpty-hundred years.

  I was mighty bugged, too. Bugged there’d been no celebration for me. Bugged by my own massive failure. No one raised the issue. Never crossed their minds, I’ll wager. Jack and Annie were never like that; they had a Three Musketeers mindset—one for all and all for one and all that goody-goody malarkey—and I tried my damndest to have it, too. Still, Annie had leapfrogged me with Creighton Farms. My dead were nowhere near as good as their dead. I’d contributed—what?—all of four bodies to the list, and two, the kids who fell from the water tower, iffy entries at that. Even should the day come and I did have a whopper to offer, I could never overtake Annie. What could be better than God-knows-how-many buried alive, severed extremities to boot?

  Jack the Finder. Annie the Finder. Gus the . . .

  I relapsed, went B&E again. Dead oldsters. Vacant houses. Yesterday’s news. Missing persons is what I was after. I’d piggyback on Annie’s find, put names to the bones on Creighton Farms.

  Jack the Finder. Annie the Finder. Gus, Kid Crimesolver of the Year.