"Exactly," Brandon said.
"Do come in," she gushed. "There's always a vacancy at the Dead Inn, especially for a nice young couple like the two of you. My name's Mabel, by the way, and you can't believe how you're going to enjoy my cookin'."
Brandon grinned at Jennifer, more smug than ever. He loved being right because it meant she was wrong. Jennifer waited until the old woman turned away before she stuck her tongue out and flipped Brandon the bird.
Mabel led them upstairs. The room was decorated with Victorian-era furniture, elegant and beautiful. Jennifer was so impressed that she felt a rush of emotion toward Brandon she hadn't felt in quite some time. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. The move caught him off guard. He wasn't used to the display of affection.
"It's great, huh?" he said. "Maybe we can stay here a couple of days before we head out. This might be what we need, a little time together in a romantic setting. Who, knows, we might be able to get along."
"By all means, stay as long as you like," Mabel said. "Dinner has already passed for this evening, but feel free to come down to the kitchen for a snack when you've settled in. Edgar and I are always prowling about if you should need anything."
When Mabel was gone, Brandon and Jennifer explored the room. Jennifer was attracted to the bathroom straight away, decked out as it was with a huge claw-foot porcelain tub, golden fixtures, and thick towels.
While Jennifer drew a bath, Brandon nosed around the room a bit more. He was a little disappointed by the absence of entertainment. No TV, no radio, nothing but a couple of old books lying on the dresser.
He looked outside. It was pitch black. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and when a flash of lightning cracked the darkness, he was able to glimpse a courtyard out back of the house. He was about to turn away from the window when another shard of lightning shattered the darkness. This time Brandon caught sight of a gazebo further out, and he was sure he'd seen a human figure briefly illuminated and standing beside the gazebo.
"What thea""
Maybe he'd imagined the figure. He was tired, after all. Walking wasn't his strong suit. It was highly likely his eyes had played a trick on him.
"Hey, stud, why don't you join me?" Jennifer called from the bathroom.
He considered it. They hadn't made love in a long time. In the end, he decided against it in favor of resting his eyes.
"I think I'm going to rest a little bit," he called back.
"Have it your way," Jennifer replied, and then he could hear the gentle swish of water as she settled back in the tub.
Brandon stripped off his shirt, shoes, and socks. He threw himself onto the bed, sighing as the mattress enveloped his body like a soft hand. It wasn't long before he was completely out.
When he woke up, he wasn't sure how much time had passed. The room was pitch black. He remembered seeing a tiny lamp on the nightstand beside the bed. He felt for it and turned it on.
Jennifer wasn't in bed with him. He called her name, afraid she might have fallen asleep in the bathtub, then swung his feet to the floor and went to look for her.
She wasn't in the bathroom, so he figured she decided to go downstairs for something to eat. She was always eating. Never gained a pound, thank God, but she was always snacking on something.
Brandon went downstairs. The house was dark and quiet. He had no clue where to find the kitchen, and what the hell had happened to Mabel and her husband, what was his name, Egbert, Eddie? Hadn't the old woman said they were always prowling around?
He kept one hand planted against the wall, feeling his way through the dark. He couldn't imagine Jen down here by herself, but he wasn't sure where else to look for her.
He suddenly felt like a lab rat trapped in a maze. The house was creepy. He hadn't thought so earlier, but now, moving around its darkened hallways, he swore he could feel it breathing. There were noises too. Strange rustling sounds all around, shadows drifting across his path.
Then he bumped into something solid. There was a sharp scratching sound and the smell of sulfur. A match flared, casting Mabel's face in flickering light as she lit a slender candle.
"You've decided to have a late-night snack?" she asked, sounding very much to him like Opy Taylor's Aunt Bee.
"No, I was looking for my a""
"Nonsense," she said.
"What's with the lights?"
"Storm knocked out the power. Don't you worry, though. There's plenty of candles in the house to last us a lifetime."
She took him by the arm and led him to the kitchen.
"You sit," she said. "Let me fix you a bite to eat."
She took a pie and a quart of milk from the refrigerator, placed them in front of him, and sat across the table to watch.
"Eat, eat," Mabel insisted, folding her hands one on top of the other, her eyes glistening with excitement. "Try the meat pie. It's my own secret recipe. You'll die for it."
He tried it, and damn if it wasn't good. He suddenly felt famished and began shoveling meat pie into his mouth. He polished it off, nibbled a celery stick, and ate a hunk of cheese, washing it all down with several big gulps of milk, all under the watchful eye of Aunt Bee.
"I'm stuffed," he said, leaning back and making a production of rubbing his belly. "I better be getting back. Jen's probably looking for me now. Thanks for the pie. It really was delicious."
"Oh, you're quite welcome," she said, standing up as Brandon did. "I love to see a young man eat."
She walked him to the stairs and let him find his own way back to the room, which he did without benefit of light.
The tiny lamp was still on, and Jen was still missing . . .
Wait a minute, hadn't the old woman said the power was out?
Brandon tried the bathroom switch. Soft yellow light illuminated the toilet, the sink, and Jennifer's headless corpse in the claw-foot tub, with strips of flesh taken away down to the bone.
"Oh, God," Brandon moaned, backing up several steps.
He fell to his knees in front of the toilet and gripped the rim. His stomach was churning because he suddenly knew the secret ingredient in the meat pie. Just as that realization dawned on him, he emptied the contents of his stomach into the bowl. The meat pie came up again, only this time he knew he was tasting Jennifer.
He wiped vomit from his mouth with the back of his hand and headed for the hallway. Mabel was at the bottom of the stairs, her frail grandma hands clasped in front of her, looking for all the world like Aunt-fucking-Bee again. "Leaving so soon?" she asked.
Brandon tore past her, almost ripping the front door from its hinges in his rush to get as far away from this nightmare as he could.
"Do look out for Edgar," Mabel called in a sing-song voice.
Brandon was almost to the top of the driveway when something huge and solid stepped from behind a row of hedges. He collided with the shape and nearly collapsed when he got a look at the huge deformed thing standing between him and his escape route.
The deformed thing with gnarled features and elongated, tree-limb fingers grabbed Brandon by the throat and lifted him off the ground. Brandon caught a glimpse of its twisted face in the moonlight.
Brandon opened his mouth to scream. Nothing came. Those skinny, bent fingers tightened until the cartilage in Brandon's neck began to snap.
He'd never wanted anything in his life more than he now wanted to die as quickly and painlessly as possible.
He got his wish.
His tongue rolled from his mouth, his eyes bulged and leaked blood, and his larynx disintegrated, but he was no longer aware of those things.
He was just dead.
"It looks kinda spooky," Teresa said, following Jeremy to the door.
"Yeah, well, it's better than no place at all," Jeremy said.
He knocked on the door. The old woman that answered was a sweet little thinga"somebody's grandma for sure.
"Come right in," she said, greeting the unsuspecting couple with a smile. "There's always a vacancy at the Dead Inn, especially for a nice young couple like the two of you." She turned and started back inside. "My name's Mabel," she went on. "You're just in time for lunch. Meat pie is my specialty. Secret recipe, you know. . . ."
Toxic Shock.
"Turn the lights off, for chrissakes," Darnell said.
"Why you so damn jumpy, Arn?" Frank asked. "There ain't nobody gonna see us up here in the middle of the night."
"I'd just as soon not get caught with a truckload of hazardous waste. Those people we're haulin' that shit for, I don't trust 'em." Darnell jerked a thumb toward the back of the truck. "There's somethin' funny about that stuff back there. The shit glows. You don't find that sort of disturbin'?"
"I don't ask questions. I dump it and collect my money," Frank said.
"Maybe we oughta ask questions," Darnell said.
"The money's tax free. You ever heard the expression don't look a gift horse in the mouth?"
"Yeah, I've heard it," Darnell said.
"Rule to live by. This here's a gift horse." Frank turned off the main road and headed in the direction of the creek. "We got ten barrels of that stuff to dump, then we head over to MoJo's and grab us a couple of? beers and some pussy. How's that sound?"
"Sounds pretty good, I guess," Darnell answered. "Still wish you'd cut the lights, though. I don't like the idea of gettin' caught with that stuff."
Frank cut the lights and drove the rest of the way to the creek in the dark. It took twenty minutes to dump their toxic cargo. They returned the empties to Heartland Chemical, then it was on to MoJo's for the much-anticipated beer and pussy.
Jimmy Ray, Freddie, Roscoe, Patty, and Marcie were standing outside the iron-gated entrance to the Rest in Peace Cemetery, ready to party their asses off. Patty was spooked. Something about having fun in a place where dead people spent eternity didn't sit right with her.
"We really wanna do this?" she asked.
"Are you kiddin'?," Jimmy Ray said. "This is the best place in town to party, baby. Ain't nobody to wake up."
"Fuck yeah," Roscoe agreed.
"It's just creepy, that's all," Patty said.
"Gee, I wonder if that's because it's a fuckin' cemetery," Freddie said.
"You going in?" Patty asked Marcie, hoping to get a little help from the only other girl in the group.
Marcie looked at her with glassy eyes, vacant eyes, already stoned out of her mind. She wasn't going to be any help.
"Well, I'm fuckin goin' in," Jimmy Ray said. "Either join the party or keep your silly ass out here, I don't give a fuck which."
He clutched his case of beer under one arm and pushed against the wrought iron gate with his free hand. It swung inward on creaky hinges, the screech of metal causing Patty to shiver suddenly and violently. Jimmy Ray slipped past the gate, followed by Freddie and Roscoe. Marcie went next, and Patty, not wanting to be left alone, brought up the rear.
The front part of the cemetery was well kept, with newer headstones and no weeds. Most of the graves even bore fresh flowers, indicating these stiffs had not yet been forgotten. The kids kept going, though. This was too close to the main road to party.
The newer headstones gave way to worn headstones of yesteryear, most dating back to the 1800s, when the Rest in Peace Cemetery was first established. There were no fresh flowers, only weeds, dead grass and gnarled tree limbs reaching out like bony fingers.
"They say I got a great granddaddy buried out here somewhere," Jimmy Ray said. He plopped down on the ground and leaned against a chipped and faded headstone, tearing into the case of beer as he did. "Heard he was a damn fool who went and blew the family fortune, which is why we never were fuckin' rich like we were supposed to be."
"Gimme one of those," Freddie said, not the least bit interested in Jimmy Ray's financial woes.
Jimmy Ray reached into the case and grabbed a beer, tossing it to Freddie. Roscoe was squatting by the radio, trying to find a good station.
"Heads up," Jimmy Ray called out, tossing a beer to Roscoe, who caught it without looking away from the radio.
Marcie was wandering around in circles, stoned out of her gourd. Death had always fascinated her. Being here, around all these dead people, she felt at ease, and as stoned as she was, she felt horny too. She always got horny when she was high.
She straddled a headstone and began humping it, sliding her crotch against the rough stone, her back arched, her eyes shut tight as she enjoyed the pleasure of being so close to the dead.
Patty was beside Jimmy Ray, her arms crossed. "I'm cold," she said.
"How 'bout a fire, Freddie," Jimmy Ray suggested.
Freddie guzzled the rest of his beer, mumbled something under his breath, and took off to find firewood. He headed for the creek, figuring he'd find enough wood down there to keep a fire blazing for a couple of? hours.
It was darker by the creek than it was by the headstones. Streaks of moonlight kept the cemetery pretty well lit, even at night, but the stand of trees around the creek blocked the light out, making it almost impossible to see. Freddie didn't much like being in the dark, so far away from everybody else, and being in a place of rest sure as hell didn't help matters.
He heard the trickling water of the creek not far away and used it to navigate his way through a maze of trees and tangled weeds, picking up bits and pieces of dry wood as he went. As he got closer to the creek, he noticed the water had an eerie yellowish-green glow about it.
"What thea""
He squatted at the edge of the creek and stared at the weird light emanating on its surface. He'd never seen anything like it, except for in those science fiction movies he spent so much time watching. That's what it reminded him of, something from one of those late-night B movies.
Freddie was a lazy bum. He was comfortable with that. He didn't have a job and he didn't want one. The only thing he was good at was watching movies, and unless someone would pay him to watch movies, he didn't think he'd ever have a job. One thing he did know, though, was not to touch shit that glows in the dark. Shit like that was either radioactive, chemical, or biological waste, and nothing good came from touching it.
He looked at the stuff a little longer, then shrugged it off and went back to his search for firewood. Try as he might, though, he couldn't stop thinking about the water. He couldn't get it out of his mind. Maybe he was stoned and imagining it. He'd only smoked two joints, but what other explanation was there? Water only glowed in the movies, or when Freddie dropped acid, but maybe the weed Jimmy had given him was real good stuff. "Only the best" was Jimmy Ray's motto, and since Jimmy Ray had a job at the Texaco, he could afford the best.
Freddie stumbled over a piece of wood sticking up out of the ground. He bent over and grabbed hold of it, tugging hard. It tore loose with a big clump of dirt attached to it. Freddie smacked the wood against the side of a tree to break the dirt away, and what he saw then was enough to make him want to retch up his dinner.
"Jesus . . . shit . . . what thea""