Death and Douglas Page 7

  Douglas gave his friend a serious look while simultaneously trying to ignore Lowell’s ridiculous backpack. “Aren’t you at all scared that there’s a murderer running around town?” As soon as he said the M word, he regretted it. It wasn’t the kind of word you said out loud in the dark.

  “Sure … to a point. But Dad’ll find him. Until then, it’s kind of exciting. How often do people get an actual bad guy in life? Let’s go.”

  The walk was nerve-wracking for Douglas, even after they got beyond the dogwoods, but it remained uneventful. Once they entered the towering gothic gates of Cowlmouth Cemetery, Douglas felt safe again. He always did. Nobody except for Moss and Feaster knew the cemetery better than he and Lowell did.

  Cowlmouth Cemetery at night was a particularly special place. This late, he could believe all the stories of monsters that Moss and Feaster fed him as they buried the dead. Tombstones seemed to glow in the moonlight, as though they were having trouble holding back their ghosts. Mausoleum doors turned into gaping maws grown hungry since their last feeding. All the statues seemed to come alive: the grieving women, the saviors and angels, the animals.

  Sometimes, the stories of monsters scared Douglas a little, not that he’d ever admitted that to anybody, and not so much that it ever stopped him from visiting the cemetery at night. Tonight, however, these monsters—the ones that populated his imagination—kept out that other monster—the one that was leaving mysterious marks in its victims.

  Moss and Feaster had locked the front gates at dusk as usual, but the stone side walls were only about four feet tall, easy enough to climb over. As soon as they’d conquered one, both boys turned on their flashlights. Lowell led Douglas through the maze of funerary art deep into the cemetery to a large flat gravestone shaped like a tree stump. The name on it was R.T. Foard. It was one of at least six in the cemetery, all marking the graves of members of some sort of secret society: the Woodsmen, Douglas remembered somebody telling him once.

  As they arrived at the strange grave marker, Lowell unslung the frog-covered backpack and set in on the top of the stump. As it hit the stone with a soft thump, green lights sewn into the backpack lit up and the whole thing erupted in a loud bull frog croak. Lowell cursed and started unzipping the pack.

  Behind him, a twelve-foot-tall obelisk gave directions to the night sky, in case anybody needed them. From this angle, the pillar seemed to be the center of the universe, the entire sky balancing on its point. It was dizzying.

  Suddenly, Douglas felt all the bones in his skeleton freeze. Behind the obelisk, a shadow seemed to fidget furtively before slowly emerging. He tried to warn Lowell, but fear choked his throat.

  The shadow came right for them.

  A person has quite a few options for reacting to an ominous shadow bearing down on him or her in a graveyard in the middle of the night. Douglas chose paralyzing terror and an awkwardly hefted cane. Lowell went with a friendly greeting.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  As he spoke, he pulled a small florescent lantern out of his little brother’s backpack, hit the oN switch, and set it down on top of the stone tree stump. It flickered to life after a few seconds, lighting up a small area around the tombstone and making the rest of the cemetery even darker by contrast. As the shadow entered the luminous circle, it took the form of a girl. She was casually holding a wicked-looking knife with a black blade and bright orange handle. She was about Douglas’s height with straight black hair, an oversized dark brown jacket, and a purple ring that looked black in the soft lantern glow. Douglas decided to stick with paralyzing terror.

  “Hey, Low,” returned the girl, folding her knife with a snap and shoving it in her jacket. Douglas saw the blue asterisk of an emergency medical services insignia on its handle before it disappeared. “This Doug? Where’s his tie?”

  “Probably hanging neatly on a rack in his closet with about three dozen others.” Lowell turned to Douglas. “Doug, this is Audrey Maudlin. She’s in my class. I told you about her. Her dad’s an ambulance driver, remember? Actually, I’m sure you do.”

  Douglas shot Lowell a look that roughly translated into an IOU for a punch in the neck.

  Lowell ignored it and turned back to the new arrival. “You didn’t bring a flashlight?”

  Audrey retrieved a small orange one from a pocket in her jacket and held it up. “Turned it off when I got close. Wanted to make sure you guys weren’t grave robbers or murderers or something.”

  “Yup,” Lowell replied, “Just us guys. The grave robbers reserved a spot three rows over.”

  Audrey looked around at the few tombstones that the lantern illuminated and the pressing blackness of the cemetery beyond. “Do you guys do this often?”

  “All the time,” replied Lowell. “This is like our kingdom. Here, let me give you a quick tour.” Lowell used his bat as a pointer. “The chapel is that way—it’s got a great crypt beneath it. There’s a covered bridge over there if you want to cross the stream without getting wet. And the only unlocked mausoleum in the entire place is over … there. The Grassley mausoleum. It’s great for hiding, because nobody else in the entire town knows that it’s unlocked, not even the cemetery caretakers.” Lowell paused and aimed his bat at Audrey. “Please don’t tell anybody about it.”

  Douglas spoke up. “What are you doing here?”

  She shrugged. “Not sure, honestly. I guess I came here to find out why I came here.” They both turned to Lowell.

  “I think it’s going to take all three of us to catch this serial killer.”

  “Serial killer?” Douglas asked.

  “Yup. There’ve been two victims, and he’s probably planned more. He’s a serial killer.”

  “That’s an ugly phrase. Remind me to congratulate him on his promotion, though,” said Audrey. Douglas looked at her, and she dropped her eyes to the ground, embarrassed.

  Suddenly, Douglas realized he’d asked the completely wrong question. “Wait, Lowell, you expect us to … catch … the murderer—serial killer?”

  “Hot cider.” Lowell reached into the backpack and pulled out a metal thermos and three plastic cups, ignoring both the croaking noise the movement triggered and the strange look from Audrey. “Autumn blood.” He filled the cups and passed them around.

  After taking a little too long and then waiting even longer while everybody had a sip, he finally said, “We won’t catch him. But we can help.”

  “How?” asked Audrey.

  “By keeping our eyes open during the day, sneaking out at night, and trying to figure out what’s going on. By investigating.”

  “Why aren’t we leaving this to your dad?” asked Douglas.

  “We are, but we can’t completely trust the coffee-drinkers. This guy’s already killed two people on their watch. Who knows? Maybe the next victim will be one of our classmates. It’s up to us.”

  “I can’t see that there’s very much we can do, other than get in trouble,” said Audrey.

  “And we certainly will do that, but there’s other stuff besides trouble that we can get into. We have two things going for us. One, we’re kids. We can be in places and find out things no adult can. Most coffee-drinkers don’t even see us unless we break something or get in their way. The second element going for us is access to information. My dad’s the police chief. Doug’s is the mortician. You’re the spawn of an ambulance driver, and that answers your question about why I invited you here tonight.”

  “Aren’t we just a bunch of ghastlies,” mumbled Douglas.

  “We keep our eyes and ears open, and we sure as hockey sticks will learn something. For instance,” Lowell took another sip of his cider and looked at each of them before continuing. “I know what the letters mean.”

  Douglas glanced quickly at Audrey. Lowell caught his look. “I told her about the letters already. Tell Doug what you told me.”

  “Just that I hope this guy isn’t trying to put together the alphabet. That’d be a lot of dead people.”

  “She c
alled him the Sesame Street Killer.” Lowell laughed. “But the good news is, he’s not,” Lowell reached into the backpack again, gingerly this time to avoid setting off the electronic frog, and pulled out a small calendar, the type they give away free at local businesses. This one said “Mortimer Family Funeral Home, Est. 1809.” Beneath the name and year was the slogan, “Rest for the Departed, Relief for the Bereaved.” Lowell looked at Douglas. “Swiped it.” He laid the calendar on the stump. “Check this out. Do you know when Mrs. Laurent was killed?”

  Douglas looked at the calendar. “I’m not sure. I know her funeral service was on September 17.”

  “According to my father, she was killed five days before the funeral. That would be …” His index finger hovered above the open calendar until he found the appropriate white square. “A Monday. Marvin was killed on September 24. That’s a Saturday. See what’s happening?”

  It was Audrey who got it first. “He’s marking the days that he kills them on their faces.”

  “Exactly. M for Monday. S for Saturday. Which is why we’re all perfectly safe being out here tonight, since, as of about an hour ago, it’s officially Saturday.”

  “He already has this day of the week,” added Douglas, who couldn’t help but think, It’s still M for monster. “Wait. How do they know?”

  “Forensics, man. They know the exact hour of their death. And Mrs. Laurent and Marvin were both killed on the same day that they were found.”

  “Why would this guy do that?”

  “Who knows? Why would he kill anybody in the first place? We’re dealing with a psycho. A lot of why’s don’t have answers. But my dad says that killers often follow some kind of twisted logic, so it’s worth thinking about. If we can figure out why he’s matching up his kills with the days of the week, maybe that will help us figure out how to stop him. Or help the police stop him, at least.”

  That sounded like what Douglas’s father had told him. Mr. Mortimer had said that the important thing was that the killer be punished, put somewhere that he won’t be a danger to anybody. Douglas wondered if his father thought it so important that he’d be okay with having his twelve-year-old son running around at night with an old man’s cane looking for the serial killer. Still, the monster needed to be stopped. Lowell had that part right.

  “Are you sure he’s not just marking the random days when he gets a victim? So he doesn’t care if he gets two Mondays or three Thursdays or whatever?” asked Douglas, looking around and then trying to hide his nervousness. “Or maybe we’re missing letters. I mean, victims. Either way, that would mean we’re not safe tonight. Or any night.”

  “No to both. First, serial killers are collectors, not record keepers. Those marks are a message, and they’re telling us that he’s going to kill again, and when.”

  “Collect all seven,” said Audrey.

  “Right. And since the marks are messages, they’re meant to be received. He makes sure his victims are found.”

  “And this is what your dad and the rest of the police think?”

  “Yup. Got most of this straight from the vent itself. The vent is never wrong.”

  “I don’t know. Sounds as if you plan to make us all not safe.” Douglas didn’t think that he, personally, was dealing very well with the idea of a killer. Everybody else seemed to be doing fine, though.

  “No, we’ll be okay. We’ll have to be careful, but we’ll be okay. Mostly, we’ll come out on the nights that he’s not dangerous.”

  “His days off?” asked Audrey.

  “Right, his days off. Mondays and Saturdays … as of right now, anyway. He won’t kill again on those days.”

  “Like hunting a vampire during the day,” said Douglas dubiously.

  “I guess that’s a Moss-and-Feaster way of putting it. It sounds like a good idea, though, right?”

  Audrey looked at him, half smiling, half shaking her head. “You mean it sounds like a fun idea. Two different things.”

  Douglas had always thought that one day something Lowell half-heard from his hallway vent was going to get them into real trouble.

  Tonight looked like that night.

  As Douglas watched Lowell disappear into the darkness, he saw a flash of green light and heard a quiet croak that was followed by another of Lowell’s curses. Douglas flipped the cane upside down against his shoulder and turned to cross the street to his home and the soft bed that awaited him.

  A serial killer, the wildest idea Lowell had ever come up with. Strangely, Douglas’s mind alternated between murderers with calendar obsessions and Audrey. He wondered what kind of an impression he had made tonight. Brave? Whiny? He reached up to his neck and wished again he’d worn a tie, wished he’d called her by her name just once. He and Lowell had walked her to her house first before coming back here. It had been a good walk. Walking through the night, a friend on either side, danger on some far-off calendar square, it felt … like an adventure. Maybe’s Lowell’s crazy plan was worth going along with, for a little while at least. Despite the terrors of the night, both old and new, Douglas found himself comfortably lost in his own thoughts.

  Until the dogwoods spoke to him.

  Somewhere behind the ordered row of trunks, a short hiss of words seemed to connect the space behind him and them. They sounded hollow, inhuman, almost breaths.

  He ran.

  Ran like he’d never run in gym class, like no game of tag he’d ever played in the cemetery. Cold terror is the best fuel for the body.

  Douglas didn’t dare look back. Didn’t even dare try to use the cane, which suddenly seemed silly in his hands. His breath came out ragged, and his feet slapped the ground even harder as he raced across the street to the front lawn of the funeral home. As he ran, he thought he could hear echoes of those sounds behind him. So close behind.

  He ran even faster.

  The night silhouette of the funeral home quickly loomed above him—a scary place for some, a safe harbor for him.

  He dropped the heavy metal flashlight and the cane to the grass and grabbed onto the ladder dangling from his window. Loose rope tied around wooden rungs wasn’t the best for speedy ascents, but Douglas took off up the ladder like a NASA launch, not worrying about the noise of the ladder slats hitting the siding of the house and hoping it woke everybody up—his family, Chris, every dead person in the morgue, the whole neighborhood, all of Cowlmouth itself. He hoisted himself through the open window, collapsing in terror.

  His first thought as he hit the hardwood floor was Pull the ladder up, idiot.

  With great effort, he reached out the window, and in the seconds that his head crossed the sill, saw below what looked like a black form. He squeezed his eyes shut, as though he were trying to get past the worst parts of a scary movie. He didn’t want to see what was down there. What was looking up at him. What was climbing the ladder for him.

  He yanked desperately at the ladder. It came up easily. No one was on it.

  Douglas finally opened his eyes and looked down. All he saw on the ground below was the long metal tube of a darkened flashlight and the black stripe of cane laying across each other like crossbones in the grass.

  The blanket twisted into a serpentine shape, wrapping itself around Douglas’s neck and chest and legs, trapping and constricting him in loops of anaconda cotton. His pillow, drenched in sweat, was a sucking, swallowing bog. His body wrestled with the horrible bedding throughout the night, while inside his skull, his mind wrestled with nightmares.

  Images of a pale face wreathed in a dark aura looked up at him from below the window as he stared down in terror until he found himself slowly falling into it. Something metal and wicked glinted in one of the fiend’s hands, and it traced letters of fire in the air. Then Douglas was racing futilely up the ladder, rungs breaking like chalk, the rope rails swaying crazily like the tails of living things, gravity pulling at him with mighty hands, every force in the universe bent on him not reaching the safety of his bedroom window. The monster’s hand tugged hi
s foot, and then Douglas dream-shifted into his bedroom. He felt a soft thump against his foot and, looking down, saw his own head looking up at him from the bedroom floorboards, seven letters scarring his cheeks and forehead.

  All night, Douglas writhed in this fever of fear, and the next morning when his mother came to wake him, she needed no thermometer evidence to let him stay in bed.

  During the day, the nightmares slowly dissipated, burned off by the rising sun, leaving him finally able to sleep.

  He woke shortly before noon, leveraged himself out of the bed, threw on the same shirt and pants he’d worn the day before, and zombie-walked down the hallway to the kitchen, where he found his mother leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee in one hand and a phone in the other.

  “Hello, Sweetie. How are you feeling?” she asked without looking up from the tiny screen.

  “Horrible.” Douglas dropped down into one of the hard, wooden chairs and laid his head on a place mat on the table that had an image of a bright red rooster. From Douglas’s current vantage the image was distorted and dragon-like.

  “How about some food?” she asked. “I picked up some fried chicken. Think you can handle that?”

  “Yes.” Tell her.

  “You want it warmed-up or cold?”

  “Cold, please.” Tell her. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s at the hospital taking care of some business.” She slipped him a plate with two drumsticks and a large mound of mashed potatoes in the shape of the Styrofoam container that had held them and then poured him a soda, her bracelets clinking the entire time. She dropped a bendable straw into the drink. “You missed the Emmons funeral this morning.”

  Douglas was surprised to discover that he didn’t care. He dug a hole in the smooth pile of mashed potatoes with a spoon.

  “I saved you a program. It’s up on your desk.”