Horror Business (15 page)

“You said that.”

“Does it work?”

“What do you mean? It’s a game.”

“Can I try?” I pause and try to think of the least foolish way of saying this. “I think Brian’s trying to contact me.”

She puts her hands on her hips and cocks her head to the side. My face burns and I look away, back at her horror books. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“Things have been happening.” I almost tell her all the other stuff. All the frightening stuff, but I leave it at that. Ally still seems incredulous, but brings the board out from under her bed.

“How does it work?” I ask.

“Place your hands on the planchette.” I do, and she puts her hands over mine. They are dry and warm. “Now, ask a question.”

“Okay. Um, where are the missing kids?”

“You have to address it. Say ‘Oh Mighty Ouija,’ and then ask.”

“Is that in the instructions?”

“It’s what they say in movies and books and stuff.”

“Oh. Here goes. Oh Mighty Ouija, where are all the missing children?”

At first, nothing. Then the marker moves to the letters W-U-L-G before stopping.

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe you need to ask a different question?”

“Oh Mighty Ouija, where is my brother, Brian Nightshade?”

Slowly, the plachette moves to the letters G-O-N-E.

“Yeah, I know, but where?”

The marker pauses and then slides over H and I. Hi.

“It’s addressing you,” says Ally. Shadows make her face ghoulish.

“What do I do?”

“I don’t know. This hasn’t happened before.”

“Oh Mighty Ouija,” I call out. “Who am I talking to?”

Nothing at first. And then the letter B.

“Ally.”

R

“Don’t.”

I

“Ally, stop it. I feel you pushing it.” This isn’t true.

A

I slide the planchette off the board and stand. My breathing’s heavy and blood pulses behind my ears. “What’s wrong with you?”

Ally stands too. Her smile looks wicked in the dull light. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“This is serious.” The heat comes back to my face. My throat swells up. “Why would you push it like that?”

She stifles some laughter. “I didn’t.” Her smile wavers. “Jason, it’s just a game.”

I look away to wipe the tears. When I turn back around, Ally’s no longer smiling. Her face contorts, frightened and disgusted at the same time. In a panicked effort to close the distance between us, or save her from the new evil that possesses her, or to take the attention away from my childish crying—anything to end the moment—I lean in to kiss her. She dodges.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her face cold and alien.

I lean in again, grabbing her by the arms. She pushes my face away, and I taste the palm of her hand. “Stop it, Jason!” Her voice rises above a whisper, and it sounds like shouting.

“God, you can be such a fucking bitch sometimes,” I say.

“Get out of my house,” she says. “Or I’ll wake up my dad.”

I leave, slamming the front door on my way out. I hope it wakes her parents.

I open the basement door. I breathe deep and move quickly down the stairwell, feeling the coolness seep into my skin. The air down here feels thicker. It’s like being in a crypt. Or an aquarium.

The baseball bat gives me a little courage. The thought of what I have to do with it, however, makes me sick.

He’s not your friend anymore. He’s something else.

“Brock?” I call out. I’m surprised at how cheery it sounds.

I don’t hear anything, not his loveable gallop or the clanging of his tags. Nothing.

I walk down the hall, past the closed door to my room and stop.
He wouldn’t be in there,
but I put my ear to the door anyway. I hear nothing, so I try the knob. It doesn’t budge. It seems like it’s locked from the inside. Someone is locking me out of my own room. I step back from the door and feel coldness run the length of my spine.

It’s not until I check the utility room that I see the broken glass. Five feet off the ground is a small window, maybe one foot by two feet wide. Below the window, tiny shards reflect up at me, creating a small constellation on the concrete floor. Blood shines off the jagged edges that remain framed in the window. Blood and fur. I double-check the height and size of the window and try to figure the physics of Brock running and jumping through it. It’s unlikely that he’d do it, but not impossible. Whatever Brock saw outside, he wanted it bad.

I rush back down the hallway, past my locked door and up the stairs, out of my house and into my yard with the bat.

“Brock!” I call out. I’m about to whistle again, but I stop. I see him, a big furry clump, lying in the flowerbeds. He didn’t make it far. Even from far away, I know he’s dead.

I float over to his body. He resembles one of his victims strewn across our backyard: more blood than hair. I feel sick but it’s not from the gore. There’s pressure building in my chest, and it burns all the way up into my throat. I drop to my knees, next to the pile that used to be Brock. Despite the damage to his body, his head is still intact. Smiling and dumb as ever. Whatever evil was inside him is gone now, and his big eyes reflect my efforts not to cry.

“I’m sorry, boy,” I choke out, petting his head.

My hand comes away bloody. I can’t even rub the tears off my face. I bend my arm and the let the blood run down my wrist and into the crook of my elbow. It drips like oil and leaves trails down my arm. I watch as it darkens to black. The trails begin to sting—a vile infection excited by contact with human skin. I need to get this festering blood off my hand as fast as possible. The grass is the only sensible answer so I cross to the other side of my lawn to wipe my hands there.

A car drives by but doesn’t even slow down to look at the mangled dog. Grass keeps sticking to my hands, making them hard to clean. I look away, embarrassed to find myself literally washing my hands of my best friend. I notice the red specks on the sidewalk.

I probably wouldn’t have noticed them if I wasn’t already so sensitive to the color. Forgetting the task at hand, I scramble across the grass to look at the dots. They’re arranged in a way that reminds me of machine gun bullet holes. They’re scattered and careless, but there’s a general order to them. A trail. I follow the trail back to Brock, mentally connecting the dots, but I don’t waste time wondering why a trail of blood would lead away from him.

Instead, I think of the only person evil enough, dumb enough, and careless enough to leave evidence all over the murder scene. Brock was cut apart.

Again, the tears burn in my eyes, but this time I don’t have the sense to keep my grassy, sticky hands from rubbing them.

On a dark and stormy night, a group of foolish kids will venture into a town’s cemetery, perhaps to disprove a legend, or because of a dare, or maybe just out of curiosity. It will always be on Halloween. According to the story, the ghost will always make an appearance and harm those disturbing its resting place. Its cemetery.

Every small town has this story. It both attracts and repels kids who are too old for trick-or-treating but haven’t grown out of fearful youth. Of course, ghosts are fake, as anyone who’s brave enough to sleep in a cemetery will attest to.

However, our town is different. It’s well-known that kids don’t venture into our cemetery on this evil night. The ghost here is real, and he shows up every year. All kids know this story. Our ghost is greasy and carries a kitchen knife with him.

“What do you mean you don’t want to come with me? Are you going trick-or-treating?”

Steve’s voice sounds anxious and static on the phone. “No, man, I just don’t think that sounds very fun.” He pauses. “And my mom doesn’t really want me going out tonight. You know.”

“
Really?
” I almost shout. “C’mon.”

“I can’t. You should just come over here. We can watch
Pet Sematary
or something. One of the
Nightmare on Elm Street
s
.”

“I need to do this.”

“Do what? Go to the cemetery? Why?”

“I need to pull a prank on someone. Scare him.”

“Sorry, man. Wish I could help you. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I say, thinking,
if I see you later
. With the phone cradled between my head and shoulder, I cock the replica gun. “But I hope it will scare the shit out of him.”

***

I take the tiny pill bottle from my mom’s medicine cabinet and scan the label:

Temazepam.
…
for symptoms of mild to severe depression.
…
may cause drowsiness and nightmares.

I slip the bottle into my coat pocket and shut the mirror, catching my reflection. I’m glad to see that I recognize myself. I flash a weak smile.

Dad sits in the living room, nestled between two large pillows. He’s wrapped in a blanket, watching some show about cutting-edge sniper rifles. The volume is turned up so loud that I flinch at the sound of gunshots. I eye the bottle of beer at his feet, hoping that it’s fresh.

“What do you want?” He asks, without diverting his eyes from the television.

“Um, nothing.” I sit down next to him, fingering the pill bottle in my pocket. “What are you watching?” His glassy eyes show that he obviously didn’t hear, so I ask again, yelling over the TV.

“Oh,” he yells back. “Guns!” He puts his hand out with index and thumb extended, pantomiming a handgun. Nothing I do right now needs to be subtle. I pull the pill bottle out of my pocket, and pop the top after making the necessary alignments. Even when a slew of pills explodes out and covers my lap, he doesn’t notice. I shovel the little white pills into my hand and hold them to my side while I come to terms with the task at hand. The characters on TV are all marveling at a playing card cut in half from a bullet fired a mile away. The scene cuts to the Zapruder film of JFK getting shot.

I pretend to bend over to fetch a pillow and slip a couple pills into my dad’s beer. One, two, three. The beer foams slightly through the brown glass before returning to normal.

Dad sits through two unbearably long commercial breaks before putting the bottle to his lips. He finishes the whole thing in one swill. I go to the bathroom to fix my hair and pick at my skin before returning to the living room. Dad’s shifted so now he’s lying on the couch in a fetal position.

The car keys rest on the coffee table in front of him. Our eyes meet for a second when I reach down to grab them. A sudden wave of panic passes through me.

“Where are you going?” he asks. One of his eyelids droops, and I know the drugs are working.

“I’m going to the graveyard.”

“When are you going to be back?”

“I don’t know.”

His eyes shut, but he asks, “What are you going to do at the graveyard?”

“I’m going to fire my gun.”

“Good boy,” he says. “I can’t remember when I got so sleepy.” Each word trails off at the end. “Kind of scary that I can’t remember,” he says, before falling asleep.

I want to tell him sweet dreams, but that’s not a side effect of the pills.

***

Children in superhero costumes rush past me, screaming. It’s unsettling to see so many terrified superheroes at once. I turn sideways to avoid getting run over. I even contemplate sticking my foot out to trip one of them but reconsider when I see their parents lugging behind. It’s still early in the afternoon, but I imagine that recent events will prompt kids to forego any nighttime trick-or-treating.

I pull my jacket tighter and step out into the road, keeping an eye on the group of kids walking up to the front door of my house. I feel the weight of keys in my pocket and know that no amount of knocking is going to wake up my dad. As expected, no one answers, and the kids get no candy. Satisfied, I turn around and continue to the other side of the street.

Grand speeches float through my mind while I wait for Ally to answer the door, but I only say “Hey” when the door opens.

“Hey.”

I stand there thinking it’s not too late to sweep her in my arms and take her away. A rainstorm would be good right about now. Things are more dramatic when there’s rain.

“What’s up?” I ask, and there’s nothing dramatic about it.

She holds a large bowl of candy against her hip. “I thought you were a trick-or-treater.”

“I’m not.”

“I know that now.”

For some reason, I reach out for some candy, but she pulls the bowl out of my reach.

“I don’t give anything out to people who aren’t dressed up. Where’s your costume?”

“Where’s yours?” I snap back.

“What do you want?”

“Do you want to come with me up to the graveyard?” I ask. “There are some things I need to do, like scout scenes for the movie.”

“I don’t want to be in the movie anymore. You’re never going to finish it anyway.”

“If you come with me, you can fire the gun, if you want to.”

She switches the bowl to her other hand, shifting her stance. She looks past me. “I don’t want to come with you because I know the
real
reason you want me to come. It’s the only reason that you hang out with me anymore,” she says.

I look at my feet. A group of kids comes up behind me and Ally lets them take handfuls from the candy bowl. A weary mom trails them, grabs a small candy bar and eats it right there. “Blood sugar,” she says. They leave. Ally steps into her house and puts her hand on the door, ready to shut it.

“I’m disappointed you don’t recognize my costume,” I say. “I’m supposed to be Brian.”

She shuts me out. I tell the closed door all the things that I should’ve told her: that I’m sorry. That I wish Ally would come with me. That how the only time I feel safe is when she’s around.

I turn away from her porch just in time to see a car hit a little girl dressed as a fairy. The
thud
is audible from fifty yards away, and the little body flies in an arc, landing and crumpling against the curb. A wing from her costume flutters down to the sidewalk next to where she lies. The scene goes silent as if the director yelled “cut.” Her father—a small, slouchy man—does nothing but look around. He’s confused, in shock. A small line of blood trickles out of the fairy’s nose. The world catches up and everything spurs into motion. Mothers scream and run toward the dying child. They pull out their cell phones. I immediately hear distant sirens. The father falls to his knees, pulling his graying hair. The car that hit the little girl remains idling; its purr is scared and menacing at the same time.