Jokers Club (3 page)

“Said you were looking for dinosaurs.”

He grunted, shaking his head. “Not dinosaurs. A fish. Thought to be extinct, dating back to the Mesozoic era.” He pointed out toward the center of the lake and my eyes followed. “This lake was formed by glaciers. Its depth is unrecorded. It’s virtually bottomless. No one knows what could be down there. The possibilities are unfathomable.” He looked at me and winked.

“It’s funny,” I said, looking out over the rippling water. “I wrote a story about a prehistoric fish in this lake. It attacked some fishermen in a rowboat.”

“Oh, are you a writer?”

I hesitated, laughed a little. It was a question I had wanted to answer for such a long time. I just wasn’t sure of the answer.

“Yes,” I said, before I realized it.

“What have you written? Maybe I’ve read you.”

At least a dozen book titles ran through my head; books that were supposed to be; books that should have been; books that I just never got around to writing. What had happened? I had such high hopes for myself, such ambitions. I was going to make it big. I had fled to New York City ready to ignite my imagination. But the stories never came. There was nothing there. I was in the biggest city in the country, full of millions of people, full of stories. It was there that books were born. But I had lost it. I couldn’t find the stories that had driven me since I was a boy. Somewhere along the line, in the process of growing up, I had lost them.

“No,” I said. “You haven’t read me. I don’t have anything published.” Yet, I wanted to add, yet.

“Oh,” the old professor acknowledged. He seemed to understand.

“I haven’t tried too hard.”

“Then why write?”

I smiled. “For the fun of it.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then dismissed himself, starting his motor. I wished him luck and watched him head out to the middle of the lake. I stayed on the dock, keeping my eyes on him in his boat, playing with all the knobs on his sonar detecting machines. It reminded me of the scientists in old B-movies I used to love watching on Saturday afternoons. As I turned to go, I could almost imagine a prehistoric fish leaping out of the water and eating him.

I smiled.

As I walked downtown, I decided I needed a bite to eat and something to drink. I found a new place, the Loon Tavern, and stepped inside.

The bar was dark and it took my eyes a moment to adjust from the bright outdoors. During that fraction of a second of sightlessness, a combination of broiling beef and stale beer provided a mental snapshot of the place. When my gaze focused, I saw a scattering of tables before me and a long bar against the back wall. An arched doorway to the right led to a dining room, but I ignored it and walked straight to the bar.

There were a couple of tables occupied, but the rest was empty. I settled on a stool, placing my feet on the brass rail that ran along the bottom of the sticky surface. The bartender, a bald burly man with a handlebar mustache, came over and wiped the countertop in front of me with a rag.

That stained damp-looking rag reminded me of the many years I tended bar. It was the only job I had when I got out of college. It was a way to make good money while giving me time to write. A lot of friends, and even Meg, used to ask when I was going to get a real job. Didn’t they understand writing was a job, that it was hard work? At least Meg should have understood.

I ordered a beer and asked for a menu.

I was on my third drink when my meal was set down in front of me. In the city I’d had many meals served to me on a bar countertop. When you’re alone, there’s no need to occupy an entire table.

After eating, I ordered another beer and glanced at a pay phone I noticed earlier in the corner. I pondered doing something I had thought about many times on the ride up here, but didn’t quite know if I should. Unsure, I left my stool, went over and picked up the phone book with sweaty hands. I began thumbing through it slowly, hands shaky. When I got to the R’s, I ran my index finger down along the names.

I was holding my breath, heart pausing in its beats, but I let it out when I saw there was no Rand, Meg.

I stared at the space on the page where the name should have been. Either she was married now, or she didn’t live around here anymore. I didn’t know what I would have done if her name had been there. I doubted I would have had the nerve to call. I wanted so much to see her, talk to her. But I didn’t know what to say.

I wondered what time it was and headed outside. I didn’t want this weekend to go too quickly. I needed time. Walking along the storefronts, I stopped in front of one and glanced at the sign.

LAKESIDE MEMORIALS

And beneath that: Mr. Under, proprietor.

I stood in front of the store staring through the display window at all the headstones. I tried to imagine my name on one of them. I tried to envision it in my mind. What would it say?

There was another sign that read: Distinctive Quality in Granite, Marble, Bronze and Fieldstone.

Another read: Plan for the Future.

Plan for the future? For what kind of future? What was there beyond to plan for?

A door opened and Mr. Under himself stepped out, took in a deep breath and then fixed his gaze on me. I couldn’t help but look back at his narrow eyes and long, thin nose that pointed at me. He looked younger than he ever did before, his hair so jet-black from dye it looked like it would melt and run down his face like hot chocolate syrup.

I had written a story about him, about how in the middle of the night people could hear him carving a name into a tombstone with his hammer and chisel. But he would carve the name before someone died and everyone would wonder who was next.

“Looking for something special?” he asked, not removing his gaze from mine as he lit a cigarette.

“No, just window shopping.” He looked me up and down. “How’s business?”

“Slow.” His eyes stuck to mine. “For now. But, it’ll pick up.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It’s fall. Fall is the season of death. Everything dies in the fall. The leaves die and fall off the trees, the flowers die, the grass dies, gardens die. Everything prepares for its winter coffin. Death is in the air. Death is everywhere.” He studied my face for reaction, blowing out a puff of smoke. “People die.”

I pulled my gaze from his. I had to get away from those eyes. Across the street, Nick stood in front of his barbershop, arms folded across his chest, looking up and down the road.

“Looks like you’re not the only one looking for customers,” I said.

“Everyone’s looking for something. What are you looking for?”

I returned my gaze to him. I could remember my story. When the town was quiet, in the middle of the night you could hear Mr. Under in his shop. You could hear the
ping, ping, ping
of his hammer and chisel as he carved out the name of some poor soul’s headstone. It was like a death toll ringing throughout the town.

“I think I know,” I said, and moved away from Mr. Under, down the sidewalk.

I crossed Main Street, to the gazebo, and climbed the steps that led into it. Standing in the middle, I surveyed my surroundings. Answers came to me.

It was here all the time. I had been looking, but I was looking in the wrong place. It was here in this town, this quiet New England town that I had always perceived as dull when growing up. But beneath its surface there were hundreds of stories to tell, right here. This is where the stories had begun. This is where they were all the time. Right here, on these streets. Back in New York, I had stared at that blank page and had not been able to find my way. Right here in the past was where there were countless tales hiding. I could create, just like I used to when I was young. I could find my  book  here.

I ran from the gazebo as fast as I can ever remember running in my life except for that night long ago, running down the road toward the inn, the wind pushing at my face, shoving the breath back down my throat. I was ten again and running from someone during a game of Relievo. But no one could catch me.

As I approached the inn, I noticed in a second floor window the face of a woman, whom I presumed to be the guest Mr. Wolfe mentioned. There was something familiar about the way her face peered out through the glass, but it was lost in my thoughts. There was so much to do.

When I got to my room, nearly breathless, I sat at the desk and rolled a blank piece of paper into my typewriter. When I retyped that first line, I automatically expected my fingers to stop. But they kept on going, and I didn’t know if I could control them.

Ever since my June visit to Paul Woodman at that awful place, I had wanted to write a story of what happened to him. But I knew it had to begin with what happened to Jason Nightingale.

Jason Nightingale didn’t realize that horrible events would follow once he joined the Jokers Club.

He was excited the boys in his new neighborhood had asked him along that Halloween night. He hated moving to a strange new town and was mad at his parents for putting him through this. His dad said it couldn’t be helped; it was a career move.
His stupid job always came first
, Jason thought.

Now he had to try to make a new set of friends – again. He had seen the numerous boys in the neighborhood after his family settled in that summer, but they kept their distance. He could tell they were checking him out, sizing him up. He knew what that was like. It wasn’t until school started that he got to meet them.

And now, on this late October day, he stood at the base of the huge maple tree in Oliver Rench’s back yard with Geoffrey Thorn, Dale Carpenter, Lonny Mudge, Paul Woodman and Martin Peak and looked up.

The trap door in the bottom of the clubhouse sprung open and an impatient face spotted them.

“Hurry up,” Oliver said. “Get the hell up here.”

Dale started climbing the pieces of wood nailed to the side of the tree that formed a ladder. Geoff, Lonny and Martin followed. Jason was going to let Paul Woodman go next, but he signaled Jason to go.

“I have to go last,” Woody said. “It’s a rule.”

Confused, Jason headed up, hearing the straining creak of the wooden rungs and Woody’s labored breath behind him. As he hoisted himself into the clubhouse, Oliver explained that Woody had to go last because he was so fat, and one day he would eat one candy bar too many and would not be able to fit through the clubhouse door. No one else wanted to take the chance of getting stuck behind him, so Oliver came up with the rule that Woody always was the last one in or out.

Jason looked around.

Geoff had told him they had built the clubhouse a couple summers back. Most of the lumber had come from the Little League field when the old dugouts were torn down to make way for new ones. The boards were weathered with cracked green paint. Windows had been cut into each of the four walls and they stapled pieces of screen over them that they had found behind the Tin Man’s house. Inside the clubhouse was a menagerie of mismatched furnishings. A telephone cable spool served as a table in the middle of the floor. Surrounding the table were a wooden folding chair, a couple of overturned milk crates, a torn vinyl hassock with its stuffing poking out and a couple of other unmatched chairs, including a director’s chair. Geoff had told Jason that was Oliver’s and only he was allowed to sit in it.

The rest of the clubhouse was mostly barren, except for piles of comic books and magazines stacked on a bench in one corner. A drawing was thumb-tacked to one wall of the clubhouse. It was a court jester’s grinning face, with a black and white striped cap with little bells on the ends. Dale Carpenter told him his older sister drew it, copying it from the deck of cards they used to play blackjack in the clubhouse, one of the many things they gathered here to do. Other times they read comic books, scaled baseball cards or listened to Geoff read one of the scary stories he had written.

But other times they would gather to plot … a prank.

“Take a look at this,” Oliver Rench said, pointing to something on the middle of the table.

Jason and the others peered closely at the contents of an old pickle jar with air holes punched in the cover. There were two praying mantises in the jar. There was nothing else in there with them, just the two of them by themselves. One was twitching its front legs together, an almost applauding motion. The other held the classic praying pose that gave it its name. But there was nothing it could pray for. Its head was gone.

Oliver’s face lit up. He drank the excitement of the scene into his rugged body. Dark brows narrowed with concentration beneath the bangs of his straight black hair. “It eats one of its own to survive.” His grin broadened.

Jason looked at the headless insect, then back at Oliver. “Sweet.”

Jason sat on the clubhouse floor because there were only enough seats for the others. All attention focused on Oliver whose eyes moved patiently amongst them.

“It’s Halloween,” Dale said. “And we’ve got nothing going on.”

“Yeah,” Lonny agreed, brushing his long bangs away from his eyes, “this bites.”

“You guys don’t go trick-or-treating?” Jason asked, and instantly regretted it, wishing he could suck the words back into his mouth when he saw the look on Oliver’s face.

“Why don’t you put on your nurse’s outfit and go trick-or-treating, Florence Nightingale,” Oliver said through gritted teeth, and then laughed.

There it was
, Jason thought as everyone else joined in. The first shot.

He hated being called that and had been before in some of the other towns he lived in. It made him hate his last name – such a stupid-sounding name – so easy to make fun of.

Was this what it was going to be like? He pretended to chuckle along, to show them it didn’t bother him. He wanted this to work. He wanted to be accepted by these kids. He didn’t want to blow it.

Oliver stopped laughing and leaned back in his director’s chair and took a deep breath.

“Don’t worry about Halloween night boys,” he said. “Have I got a trick for us.”

“It better be good,” Geoff said. “Last year’s prank sucked.”

“Oh, it’s good all right.” Oliver paused, reveling in the moment. “This will be a Halloween trick
and
treat.”

“Well, what is it?” Dale asked.

“We’re going to party with the Colonel.”

Nobody said a word.

Jason looked at the faces of the others. He could see something registering on them, thoughts clicking, but he was in the dark.

Lonny hopped to his feet, his long stringy hair bouncing off his shoulders.

“This’ll be awesome,” he said.

“I’m not sure about this.”

Oliver looked at Martin with contempt for saying this.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” Geoff asked.

“Yeah,” spoke Dale. “What are we going to do there?”

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Jason asked. Geoff filled him in on the legend.

Colonel James Fox was a member of a prominent family in town back in the 19
^th
century. They had a farm out beyond the local cemetery. Colonel Fox was stationed in Virginia when the Civil War broke out, and he sided with the Confederacy. He was killed in a battle, and his body was shipped back to New Hampshire for burial in the family tomb. The Fox family had a mausoleum by the woods in a back lot of their farm. It was here that Colonel Fox was first mummified, and then laid to rest in the family crypt with his ancestors. The Fox family and farm were long gone, but the tomb still stood in that back lot by the woods, which had now begun to overtake the tomb with its undergrowth, concealing it.

But many people in town knew of the burial site. In the past, pranksters had broken into it and college kids sometimes used it for fraternity initiations. Oliver told him once of how his two older brothers and some friends from school had broken into the mausoleum and partied there. They had propped the Colonel up in his casket, tied a bandana around his head and put a can of beer in his hand.

“Now it’s our turn to have some fun.” Oliver grinned.

“It sounds kinda risky,” Jason said.

Oliver stared at him. “Listen. We don’t like chicken-shits in our club.”

Jason shut up.

Oliver looked around at the rest of them. “Well, what’s everybody think?” His eyes caught Lonny’s. “Mudge?”

“I’m with you, you know that.”

“How about you, Carpenter?”

“This’ll be cool.”

Oliver turned to Geoff. “Thorn, you write all the scary stories, this should be right up your alley.”

“I don’t know why we haven’t thought of this before.”

“Woody?”

Paul had just shoved the last piece of a candy bar in his mouth, so he was only able to nod.

“Peak?”

“I’ll go along with everybody else.”

Oliver turned back to Jason. “See, that’s why we’re a club. We always stick together.”

“I guess so.”

“No guessing.”

“Okay.”

“When do we go?” asked Lonny.

Oliver looked out one of the screened windows. “When the sun goes down.”

*   *   *

At nighttime, the figures of seven young boys raced through the shadows of the tree-cluttered ravine. They came out the other end and shot through the yard between a pair of houses and out onto Elm Street, crossing it and racing up the hill to the Pines. They hesitated for only a brief moment amongst the pine trees, looking down the hill at the Little League field, the cemetery beyond it and what they knew lay even further beyond: The Fox Mausoleum.

They descended the slope and ran along the perimeter of the ball field, one behind the other. Oliver led the pack, with Lonny right behind, then Dale, Geoff, Jason, Martin and Woody bringing up the rear, a generous gap between him and Martin.

Their pace slowed to a walk when they reached the thick field of wild grass, goldenrod and milkweed out beyond the cemetery. They had to pick their way carefully through the tangle of undergrowth which seemed to  grab at their limbs and clothes. Oliver, leading the way like a safari guide, almost missed the two marble pillars covered with growth.

“Here,” he cried as the others gathered around him. He could now make out the slightly trampled path that ran between the pillars.

“Follow me, boys.”

It was just beyond the pillars that they came to the gray stone mausoleum. The front was about eight feet in height and descended sharply toward the back into the earth, the back barely a foot above the ground.

“Wow,” Geoff said.

“It’s so old,” Woody puffed out between breaths.

There was a white marble crest above the crypt which held some weathered and time-worn words about the Fox family that were no longer decipherable. Beneath that, Jason read the etching: Erected in 1759.

“You sure we should go in there?” Jason asked.

“We’ve come this far, Florence,” Oliver said without even looking at him. “Flashlight.” Lonny thrust it into his extended hand.

There was a heavy marble block that had been removed recently and a steel door that had been welded across the entrance in an unsuccessful attempt to keep vandals out. It was broken open. Oliver led the way in. Jason watched the others disappear through the dark entrance and then followed. Woody, who waited to go last as usual, had trouble getting through the small opening, but squeezed past by sucking in his breath and emitting a groan.

The darkness was broken only slightly by the flashlight beam. The air was thick with dust and mold.

“I can’t hardly breathe,” a voice gasped. It was Woody’s.

The brick walls were gray with age and frosted with cobwebs. Dust hung in the air and filled Jason’s lungs with every breath. Oliver played his flashlight around until it landed on a group of rotted caskets.

“This is spooky,” Dale said.

Jason looked at the coffins and all around the crypt.

“Boy, I could write a wicked story about this place,” Geoff said.

“Let’s find the Colonel,” Oliver said.

Jason was all for that so they could get the heck out of this place. He didn’t like it in here.

They approached the first casket slowly, huddled around Oliver and his illuminating light. The tops of the caskets were caved in from rot and the boys peered inside the first one.

“Nothing but dust,” Lonny said.

“Maybe,” Jason said, “there’s no such thing as the Colonel.”

“Oh yes there is,” Oliver responded, moving to the next casket and the next. These too were empty.

“Yikes!” yelled Martin as the flashlight pounced on the fourth casket. There were bones and the tattered remnants of clothes in this one.

“That’s not him,” Oliver deduced.

They moved to the next one, more bones and dust.

It was the sixth casket where the beam of light fell upon a body.

“Oh, Jesus,” someone whispered.

The Colonel was well-preserved, lying in his gray army uniform with its wooden buttons. His skin had a dark yellow tint, his chin dotted with thin gray whiskers. The thread could be seen that sewed his eyelids shut. His gray hair was matted to his head. His lips held no color.

Jason bit his lip. Nobody moved or spoke.

It was Oliver who broke the silence. “Jackpot.”

“He don’t look too good,” Martin whispered.

“He’s dead, moron, how do you expect him to look? And what are you whispering for? Afraid you might wake him up?”

“I don’t want nobody hearing us, that’s all.”

“Nobody’s gonna hear us,” Geoff said. “Nobody living that is.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Woody said, still panting.

“What do we do now?” Jason asked.

Dale cleared the dust from his throat. “Shouldn’t somebody touch him?”

“Right,” Oliver said, “go ahead.”

“I’m not gonna touch him, you touch him.”

“You’re not afraid, are you?”

“No. Are you?”

“Course not.”

“Then you go first. This was your idea.”

Oliver looked around at everyone. Jason tried not to meet his gaze, was afraid he’d make him touch the corpse. “Okay. I don’t know what the big deal is.”

The flashlight was handed to Lonny and the beam quivered a bit as Oliver’s hand reached out toward the taut dried skin.

“Careful it don’t bite.”

Oliver looked at Geoff then slowly stroked the corpse’s cheek.

“What’s it like?” Dale asked.

“Feels like my old baseball mitt.” He looked at Dale. “Your turn.”

Dale reached out, grabbed onto the Colonel’s hand and slowly lifted it a bit.

“It’s like he’s made out of papier-mâché.”

“So, now what?” Jason asked, hoping it was over and they could get out of here.

“We leave,” Oliver answered.

“That’s good.”

“And take him with us.”

“What?”

“Are you nuts?” Woody asked. “We can’t steal a dead body.”

“Listen. This is Halloween. We have the chance to pull off the biggest prank this town has ever seen.”