Cemetery Dreams

Cemetery Dreams

  A Collection of Short Horror Fiction

  by N.R. Allen

  Copyright 2012 by N. R. Allen

  Cover art by N.R. Allen

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons or events is purely coincidental.

  N.R. Allen would like to thank all those who

  have edited her work and given her encouragement.

  Table of Contents

  Digging

  The Fifth Painting

  Those that Come After

  A Song for Miss Cline

  The Wolf at the Attic Door

  About the Author

  Digging

 

  Tim Price fully expected to go to Hell when he died. And he did. But it was a very pleasant surprise that there were no demons with pitchforks. No brimstone. And no devil.

  Tim was just sitting in a narrow hole, deep in the ground, with his dead, all-too vocal grandfather. Far above him, he could see the blue sky and clouds. Maybe that was supposed to make him wish that he had led a better life so that he could stand in the sunlight or something cheesy like that.

  "And here I thought that churchin' didn't take, boy. You was worried about some guy in a red suit that likes skinny dippin' in fire," his grandfather said with a soft laugh. He had a smug look on his face and Tim just wanted to slam his fist into it.

  You gotta rattle a few teeth, sometimes . . . Isn't that what Tim's father had always said?

  His father had never hit him. Instead, his dad had just spent most of his time in a chair, propped up in front of the television. He died of a heart attack in that chair. As a child, after it had happened, Tim had often envisioned a heart attack as a bulbous, rippling, reddish thing creeping around the house, hiding behind the furniture so it could spring on people.

  He'd cried at his father's funeral, but he wasn't sure why. His father had never done anything with him. Maybe he had known he'd miss the habit of his father—that constant presence in the chair. The guy had never held down a job but had smiled at Tim and encouraged him from time to time.

  Now, in the hole, Tim heard a sound that wasn't from a memory—digging.

  For some reason, Tim remembered how, when he was a kid, he and his grandfather would fish. The night before every Saturday fishing trip, they'd dig for worms—the large, fat ones he always called nightcrawlers. He remembered how the flashlight's waxy, yellow beam would cut through the darkness. And how the bats would squeak above his head, calling to each other and pinwheeling through the night sky after bugs.

  "Memories be the music of the soul—" the old man said.

  The digging sounds grew louder.

  "Things are fine. They're smoky," Tim replied suddenly, needing to hear something besides those muffled, scratching noises.

  That's what Aunt Myrna had always said. She'd sit in her robe on the porch and grin with tobacco-stained teeth, puffing on her cigarette. And she'd rasp out in her gravely voice, "Things is smoky."

  She had hopes for Tim, had always told him that he'd do great things with his drawings and maybe become a famous artist.

  As a child, he'd watched her grow weaker. Her eyes had dark, smudgy circles around them that she tried to hide under cakes of makeup. She was just sagging skin wrapped around bones. He thought that she'd just laugh her wild laugh and end up splintering apart.

  But she didn't start off that way. The cancer worked away at her, like how her brother, Uncle Larry, used to take his knife and cut slivers out of a piece of wood. A little here. A little there. Like how something was now digging, scraping the dirt away, handful by handful.

  "There ain't no way—" Tim stopped himself. Ain't no way? He hadn't talked like that since he'd been a teenager. He could still remember his mother in the kitchen. Her kitchen always smelled warm, like fresh-baked bread.

  "If you talk like a little street hood, then that's all you're going to be. You're smarter than that, Timothy," she had said that day.

  She had worked two jobs to make sure Tim had enough money to go to college. In return, he had graduated and received a nice little square of paper with his name on it. It was weird that four years of college had essentially been mashed down into a handful of letters on a piece of paper.

  But the robbery business was just too good. He needed the money. No, he just liked money.

  That is until he had broken into the wrong house—the nice one with the crape myrtle trees out front and the grandfather clock in the dining room—and gotten shot in the chest. He had to admit, when he'd stepped out of his body and moved on, he had been a little bit afraid of Hell.

  There was, however, nothing to be afraid of because there was no devil.

  He heard more dirt fall and could see rotted fingers pushing through the dark brown earth, like the thick, swollen nightcrawlers he used to catch with his grandfather.

  "You was always right, boy. There ain't no devil," the old man said. "It's all as clear as Judas. Your grandmama hated when I put things like 'at. But this ain't about religion. Not anymore. Living's all about religion, but being dead . . . it's a whole different animal than God and 'postles and grape juice. She hated when I'd say that, too—"

  The things started to crawl through the dirt toward Tim. And he saw one was his aunt. Her face was just a skull filled with sharp teeth. His father and mother were behind her. And Uncle Larry. All of them pushed through the dirt, clawing at him.

  "The living, they shape us when we're alive by giving us memories and guiding us this way and that. Ain't so with the dead." The old man laughed, showing his own razor-like teeth. "When you down among the dead, boy, they judge you. We have. And then they shape you. We will. You see, boy, that's what teeth are for down here. And well, there's more than dirt to dig through. There's you."

  The Fifth Painting

  Charlotte Kincaid picked up the knife.

  ". . . the paint is the skin . . . the canvas the bone . . ." was how Daniel had described his art in the newspaper article. But had he been really talking about his work or himself? Every painting had layers—smears of white to summon clouds from the dark blue of the painted sky and different kinds of green swirled together to form grass. If you made a mistake, you could take a knife and scrape the colors away.

  Sometimes Charlotte wished she were one of Daniel's paintings. But she was just plain old Charlotte Kincaid. If she took the knife and scratched away her layers—dug deeper than the plain brown hair, pushing past her very ordinary skin—what would she find? Could she cut through the part of her that lined up all of her pencils? Could she then dig through the part of her that counted her paper clips on every Tuesday and was afraid to leave the house after dark?

  YOU ARE INVITED was the title of Daniel's first painting. Why had she bought all these paintings anyway? It's not as if they were any good. One had children by a stream, another a boy holding a puppy. But they all had the same old mountains that had loomed over Charlotte and Daniel throughout their childhood.

  Daniel Painter—the name was more of an irony than a prophecy since Daniel had never been good at painting—had disappeared last week and the four paintings were all that was left of him.

  The last time Charlotte had seen Daniel, he'd been a teenager rooting around a small stream for crayfish. "You mean, crawdads, Lottie," Daniel had corrected her that summer day ten years ago. "How you say it is where you're from. Crawdads means you're from here. Across the tracks they say crawldaddies. If you're not from here, at least pretend like you are. I do. You have to pretend until . . ."

  "Until when?" Charlotte said aloud in her small apartment.

  Daniel's voice, from her memory answered her, "Until it's time to go home."


  She moved away from the painting entitled YOU'RE INVITED and fixed on the dark blues and velvety reds of the next—LIVING WITH MONSTERS.

  But there were no monsters. It was just a bad painting of a boy holding a fat, little grey and white puppy. The puppy's shadow was lopsided and too big. But what bothered her the most was that the boy's eyes were just a bit too large, like they didn't belong on his face.

  Like they didn't belong.

  As her fingers brushed by the wrong eyes, she felt something, like a stir of air, by her neck.

  "Until we go home," she whispered again. She hadn't left her apartment since she'd been attacked. She could still remember her attacker, not his eyes, but the knife at her throat. And how she'd been too afraid to shake, too afraid to do anything. He had taken her purse and her wallet. The knife in her hand now was a lot like his knife—a sleek, grey edge coming to a perfect point.

  Was Daniel afraid, like she was? Is that why he had disappeared?

  YOU'RE INVITED

  LIVING WITH MONSTERS

  And the next—IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE THERE ARE MANY DOORS BUT NO ROOMS.

  Slowly, she said the three names again, like small, fragile prayers. What did it all mean? Where was Daniel? Why didn't the titles make sense?

  LEAVING ON AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY was last. In its dark greens and pale blues, she recognized the river from ten years ago, but the girl wasn't her and the boy wasn't Daniel. The trees were in the wrong place and the sun had a strange, green tint to it. The children were too small, nearly swallowed by the shadows and the rocks.

  Like they didn't belong.

  YOU'RE INVITED. LIVING WITH MONSTERS. IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE THERE ARE MANY DOORS BUT NO ROOMS. LEAVING ON AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. But the newspaper had said that Daniel had been working on a fifth painting when he had vanished. Where was it? And why was she obsessed with finding it? Did she think she could reach into the painting and find him? No one had helped her in the alley. Did she suddenly now think that she could save Daniel? Help him the way no one had helped her?

  YOU'RE INVITED. In the painting, there was a small, stone wall with a crack in it that she hadn't noticed before. Two slightly red eyes stared out from the black gash in the stones. Her stomach turned to ice as she realized the eyes were watching her.

  LIVING WTIH MONSTERS contained another wall—this one just a haphazard heap of stones. And red eyes.

  IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE THERE ARE MANY DOORS BUT NO ROOMS. There was a stunted wall in the background made of small fist-sized stones covered in moss. And more eyes. Perfect eyes. Eyes that could see through her.

  She felt something move her hair. As she touched the painting, something touched her as well, its hand sliding down her shoulder to her back.

  LEAVING ON AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. In the painting, a boy and a girl kneeled on a pile of stones. She hadn't noticed before, but bloody fingers poked through the rocks in the picture.

  She reached forward. As soon as her fingers brushed the canvas, the shadows began to drip off the painting. She didn't shake. She didn't call out. Unlike in the alley, she wasn't afraid. As she watched, the inky shadows poured off the canvas and crept up the wall.

  They rippled like water and formed a square. A new painting. She found herself giggling, like on that day ten years ago. Like on the day she found out that Daniel sometimes liked to cut things, just to see them turn red. Like on the day she realized that she liked to watch.

  This shadowy square on her wall was a new painting, a fifth painting that was all grays and blacks.

  The new painting that had been her wall didn't have a name. It didn't need one.

  When she touched the fifth painting, it softened and became pulpy, like old, dead skin. It was waiting for her to sink into it, to become part of it.

  Charlotte Kincaid stretched her arms out and pushed harder into the wall until she began to slip through it.

  It was then that she realized that she wasn't going to save Daniel. She was going with him.

  Those that Come After

  "Is this one of them out-of-body experiences? If it is I can't say I'm impressed," Miriam said.

  The man outside with her didn't say anything. His black hair was clipped short. His eyes were strange and looked like they had some sort of off-white netting over them, like the frost that clung to windshields on winter mornings.

  "My momma, she died in her sleep. It was cold that night," Miriam said. Like his eyes, she thought. She then turned away from the man and looked back at the room. "It was cold, real cold. She had us clean her room right before she died. She said she wouldn't meet God with a cluttered soul and wouldn't leave us with a cluttered room."

  The room her physical self was in was too bright. She always remembered the walls as being dingy and grey. Her son-in-law sat next to her wheezing body. His twelve-year-old son sat next to her, squeezing her hand.

  "My nose is running in there. I look like I ain't even scared my hair with a brush in a week," Miriam said sourly. She then looked back at the man. "You haven't said a thing of how I'm out here and in there at the same time."

  "No, I haven't." He smiled a thin, cold smile.

  She eyed him suspiciously. Impatient, she asked again, "Well, you are God, ain'tcha?"

  "I wouldn't say that. And I haven't."

  "Well, so far you've said a whole lot of nothing," she snapped.

  The old woman in the bed started coughing harder until blood ran out of her mouth. Her hands were like hooks, clawing at the sheets.

  "That is my body right? I'm guessing I'm the soul-me and my body-me is in there," she said. "And this is me seeing things one last time before I go to where I'm going. That means I'm gonna die, right?"

  "I once heard a wise man say that every living thing is dying," the man said.

  "And I've met a whole lot of men in my eighty-years and I ain't never heard a wise man yet," Miriam replied with a laugh. "You know, I really wasn't that good of a person. I didn't kill nobody, but I sure wanted to. Isn't that a sin or somethin'?"

  "I'm not the sort to keep track of that kind of thing."

  "I'm getting that everybody in that room can't see you and they can't see the soul-me standing out here by this here window, but what I want to know is if I'm going to hell or what? I did go to church, but I did a whole lot of other stuff." She searched her pocket for a cigarette. There wasn't one. "I guess souls don't smoke."

  "Usually not. No." He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. She watched the smoke roll out of his mouth in large, grey-white clouds.

  "I remember when Dugger Johnston, that's what we used to call him, when he was down by the river and wouldn't share his smokes . . . well, if I'm making a case for me going to heaven or something, I just shouldn't be telling that story." She laughed, a little more nervous than before.

  She then heard her son-in-law's voice, "Miriam. Mother. You can die now. You know, we can't afford to keep you anymore. We're kind of done with this now. We have to get on with our lives."

  "Well, that bastard," she said. Grimacing, she turned to the man with her and added, "Tell me something real bad is gonna to happen to him."

  "It will."

  "You finally said something worth hearin'," she muttered. And then it struck her that she wasn't standing on anything at all. He, however, looked like he was standing on a mirror and had about a thousand oily reflections stretching out from his feet.

  "There is us and there is you. You are human and that which dies. We are those that come after."

  Sighing, she shook her head and muttered, "I thought this whole dying thing was about clarity. That's the right word ain't it? Clarity?"

  "It is."

  "I get that I'm old and a little on the hateful side. I got all that. And I get that I caught that stupid plague, but it don't kill nobody anymore. Them fancy doctors cured that real fast."

  "Did they?"

  With a shake of h
er head, she added, "People get sick, near death. But then they get better."

  "Another wise man said that men should wake every morning to what they call a miracle. My kind woke to what we saw as an opportunity."

  When she looked through the window, the bed and her body seemed so far away. She wanted to touch her grandson's hair and think about how this past summer he had brought her every slimy thing on the face of God's green Earth.

  "Millions of you have already died. But no one else knows except for the drifting souls like you. And the ones like me," the man replied.

  "What are you?" she whispered.

  "There is science. There are explanations. And then there is us."

  "That don't make no sense," she said. Things were so much blacker. Like she was fading. Slipping away from the room, from all that she had been.

  One of the black shadows at the man's feet inched along the ground, seeping in through the window. It crept into her body, sliding under her skin. Into the fingers her sleeping grandson was holding.

  And Miriam saw the body that used to be hers open its eyes.

  It smiled a smile that wasn't hers.

  "The night my momma died was cold, real cold," she whispered.

  The man nodded. "So are we."

  A Song for Miss Cline

  Uncle Ephraim has this weird habit of digging up the bushes in front of the M. Lauder Bank. Dead people can be crazy like that sometimes. Hell, everybody's a little crazy I guess.

  I keep hoping that someone's like me. You know, not dead. But I think whatever got Momma and Ephraim got to the town, too.

  Miss Cline is dead, but she thinks it's always Valentine's Day. Every day, she gathers up all the valentines she'd made herself and then sets them out again. Like clockwork, after the last one's on the mantle, she pets her cats. They died some time back, locked in the house, but she don't notice. She just strokes their bony backs, rubbing the fur bald. There's not much left to her face now, but she don't notice that either.

  I feel bad for them cats. And her.

  Other dead ones, like Hugh Crafter, ain't that different from what they were when they'd been alive. Hugh still cleans all the time.