Ante Mortem (3 page)

“
Don’t you think it’s a little weird that no one is out here after the sun goes down? Hell, not that many people use the playground during the day.” Jarrod watched Isaac for a moment, reading his face. “Two other people disappeared here. One was a kid, a little girl about nine. Her folks were on a walk, pushing a stroller with her little sister around the corner.” Jarrod pointed to a nearby intersection. “She ran away, started to cross the playground, cut the corner. Poof, gone.”

“
Gone?”

“
Gone. They took their eyes off her, and she vanished. Whole town went nuts for months. That was about a year ago.”

Isaac looked at the playground and scrutinized the slab. “I saw something about it in an old paper at the library. I didn’t make any connection.”

“
Yeah, well, who really would? I learned the town doesn’t get so excited when an adult vanishes. It happened about six months after the girl. She was a nurse up at the county hospital, not from around here. Nick showed me the video. He was kind of a perv. Always watched the women from the security room after they left the store.” Jarrod stopped for a moment and brought one hand to his mouth. His voice cracked as he said, “she just vanished... right there... in the middle of that goddamn court.”

“
Did you know her?”

Jarrod’s shoulders slumped as he nodded. “We were sort of dating. Nobody said anything. The cops wouldn’t believe the video, called it a hoax.”

Isaac took a few steps onto the slab. “I don’t understand.”

“
I don’t either, man. But I know what’s under that slab. Goddamn Evergreen.”

Isaac turned and looked at his old friend.

“
Do you remember that creepy spot out west—we called it Diphtheria Hill or whatever?”

“
Yeah, the legend. Kid’s stuff. We scared our girlfriends in high school, brought them out there to make out. The story was that a bunch of pioneer kids were buried out there... they all died of diphtheria... a sort of mass grave on top of the hill. Nobody ever found anything, like gravestones.”

Jarrod took the envelope in one hand. “Where do you think The Legends was built, huh? And the graves weren’t on top of the hill, Isaac. They found them, all these little bones—dozens of bodies, maybe hundreds—right where Evergreen was digging foundations for the condos.”

Isaac frowned, looked back at the court. “I still don’t...”

“
Look, what would happen if somebody found out? Evergreen would lose the land—historic location and all that. Red tape out the ass, Isaac. They had to do something with those bones, and they found a
lot
of them. They pledged a new playground to the city council that week.”

Isaac’s face bleached white.

“
I was there, man. I helped pour the cement over those bones, no questions asked.” Jarrod’s voice broke, and he stopped for a moment, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. “I don’t know how, there’s a lot of crazy shit in this world I don’t understand, but three disappearances in one year—something is not right about what we did. Something isn’t right about this goddamn playground.”

Isaac backed onto the sidewalk.

Jarrod handed him the envelope. “Here. You take a look. Do what you want with this shit. I’ve had enough of it.” He turned and walked into the darkness.

When Isaac tore open the envelope, a pile of papers and even a few photos slipped out onto his kitchen table. Most of the papers were copies of emails sent from executives at Evergreen to a foreman at Conco—
Jarrod
. The text of the emails verified Jarrod’s tale about the bones. The pictures looked like they could have come from an archeology site, not the ground work for condos. Isaac collapsed on his bed, trying to understand anything and pushing any wild thoughts of what could have happened to Anne from his mind. He lay in bed until dawn forced through his blinds.

In the morning, he reviewed the video again, pausing on the frame just before Anne seemed to sink into the concrete. Jarrod’s story stabbed at his brain. Isaac squinted at the monitor, studying the strange blurs at Anne’s feet. The realization hit like cold needles jabbed into his neck. Those small blurs looked a little like hands. Something—Isaac shuddered to think what—had
pulled
Anne into the solid concrete slab.

Isaac called in sick to work and composed a letter to the
Kansas City Star
. He wanted the story told, wanted people to know about Evergreen’s destruction of a historical site and the attempted cover up. He wanted somehow to tell the world about the impossibility of what happened to Anne, the nurse, and that little girl. No one would believe that story, but he could at least blow the whistle on Evergreen’s fraud. After packing the letter, Jarrod’s emails, and the pictures in a large envelope, Isaac walked to the post office and sent it all away.

But he couldn’t send Anne away. She was out there, yanked down by those tiny fingers.

Anne.

Isaac sat at his computer and watched the video one last time before deleting the file. He leaned on his hands and cried until his body ached. Utterly spent, he floated to his bed like a ghost, collapsed, and fell asleep.

He slept most of the afternoon. As the sun slipped beyond the horizon and his room darkened, Isaac rose, put on his shoes, and grabbed his jacket and the small jewelry box resting in a desk drawer. He left the apartment, not bothering to lock the door, and walked into the night.

The playground looked the same as it had on other evenings: a wide, pale expanse washed with an odd orange light under the streetlamps. Isaac stood on the sidewalk for a minute, opened the little jewelry box, and pulled out the ring. He turned it over in his naked fingers, the cold air biting at his skin. Isaac walked out into the middle of the concrete slab, sat down approximately where he watched Anne slip under the surface, and waited for the tiny fingers to find him and pull him down.

* * * *

The Good Friend

Natalie L. Sin

Hyun tried sleeping on the couch but Joon’s rhythmic moaning, along with the Vietnamese woman’s more frantic pitches, made it impossible. Resigned to a late night, Hyun slipped into a pair of house shoes and padded out onto the deck. The resort Joon chose for their vacation, a graduation gift from his father, was the sort of place most traveler’s could only dream of enjoying. Set in a secluded patch of forest in Vietnam, the rooms consisted of twelve luxury cabins encircling a private lake. Each cabin had a sitting room and small kitchen, in addition to the bedroom, and a deck overlooking the water.

Joon and Hyun’s cabin had two full beds, with the understanding that if either guy brought home a girl the other would take the couch. As Hyun sat down and dipped his feet into the lake, he reflected that Joon would likely not be spending any nights contorted on narrow cushions.

“
Aren’t you afraid of a turtle biting your toes?”

Hyun was startled to find he had company. In the cabin to his left, a woman regarded him from her hammock. He thought she must have just woken up: Her long, dark blond hair fell in all directions across her shoulders and face. She pushed the worst of it away from her eyes and warned him again about turtles.

“
Seriously, your toes probably look like little fish to them.”

Though not convinced his feet were in peril, Hyun stood up and waved shyly to the woman.

“
That’s better. I’m Mai, by the way.”

“
Hyun.”

Back in the cabin, Joon began to roar dirty talk in Korean. Mai cocked her head.

“
Wow. Your friend is having a good time.”

Hyun felt himself turn red. “I’m sorry. He met a girl and…”

“
Don’t worry about it.”

Mai swung her legs over the edge of her hammock. Her first few steps were wobbly, and for the first time Hyun noticed the wine bottle in her hand.

“
I had a roommate in college like that. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear her telling some frat boy she was a bad girl and needed a spanking. Traumatized me for life.”

“
You are lucky you don’t speak Korean.”

Mai smiled. “Want to come over here? We can have wine and wait for your friend to wear himself out.”

Hyun hesitated. He didn’t want to disappear on Joon, assuming he ever emerged from the bedroom. Then again, he would probably fall asleep as soon as the woman left.

“
OK, I’ll come around.”

“
You could jump over. Much quicker.”

Hyun eyed the distance warily. It was over five feet from his deck to Mai’s, and he would have to jump from the railing.

“
You can do it.” Mai encouraged him.

It was a stupid idea, Hyun was nearly convinced of it. Yet coming out of a pretty girl it sounded much more sensible.

“
You really think I can make it?”

“
Yes. But don’t fall in.” Mai giggled. “The turtles will get you.”

Hyun wasn’t afraid of turtles, he was afraid of getting hurt. Landing wrong on Mai’s deck could result in broken bones. Hyun tried not to dwell on it as he stepped up onto the railing, his right hand clinging to the edge of the roof.

“
Count of three?” Mai asked.

“
Yes. No. I mean, I’ll do it.”

With a deep breath, he went for it. For a split second, Hyun was sure he was going to land on his feet. Then gravity grabbed him by the balls and plunged him under water.

When his head popped up, Mai was reaching for him. She pulled him onto the deck, where he flopped onto his back like a dead fish.

“
Are you all right? Did you swallow a lot of water?”

Hyun shook his head. He was about to speak, when Joon’s voice rang out, this time in English.

“
Harder, I’m a bad boy!”

Hyun and Mai looked at each other and burst out laughing. When his eyes teared up, she wiped them away with her thumb, then leaned in to kiss him. She tasted like white wine and cilantro. A long trail of wet clothes later, they were adding their own sounds to the night.

“
What happened?” Hyun asked drowsily, when he awoke to Mai brushing his hair with her fingertips.

“
You fell asleep.”

“
I did?”

He didn’t remember falling asleep. He remembered her lips on him, all over him, until they met his again and he was inside her.

“
It’s all right, you’re cute when you sleep. Can you stay?”

“
Let me leave my friend a note, so he doesn’t worry.”

“
That’s sweet.” She kissed the tender spot below Hyun’s ear. “Your clothes are still wet, better take my bathrobe.”

With Mai’s robe cinched tight around his waist, Hyun walked over to his and Joon’s cabin. At first he was relieved not to hear any noises, but soon the silence became disconcerting. Joon usually snored like a bull.

“
Joon?” Hyun called out.

Frightened that his friend had gone looking for him in the forest, in which case he would surely become lost, Hyun pushed open the bedroom door. Inside, he saw Joon pinned to the mattress by what looked like a monstrous insect. Long serrated legs, bent backwards like a cricket’s, braced the beast on the floor while, on the other end, smooth mandibles jutted from beneath a shovel-shaped head to wrap around Joon’s throat. A bulbous thorax hung between Joon’s splayed legs and thrust viciously into him.