Night screams, p.24
Night Screams, page 24
Flick.
The woman shook her head and smiled ruefully.
“And he still keeps your picture in his wallet. You’re standing on the rocks by the shore. You’re wearing a halter and jeans and the waves are crashing white foam and you’re smiling.”
The flat of the blade moved down across her belly. The blade felt warmer now. She could feel the woman’s breath on her cheek. It smelled of rain and fresh open air. The woman was beautiful.
They had all, in their ways, been beautiful.
“Dora. Don’t you feel guilty?”
She couldn’t help it. She began to cry.
“Oh. No need for that,” said the woman. “Just step back.”
She felt the point of the knife in her belly now, pressing her gently toward the wooden structure behind her. But the woman was wrong—there was plenty of need to cry. Whether the tears came out of guilt or fear seemed almost irrelevant now, they were practically one and the same.
The woman knelt and fitted her ankles into the soft black leather manacles at the base of the structure and strapped them tight. When she parted Dora’s legs to set the second strap she felt all volition leave her, expelled in one long breath.
“Raise your arms.”
She felt the manacles tighten over her wrists, smelled leather and rich scented oil. The woman stepped back.
“And the others, Dora. Have you thought about the others?”
She hadn’t.
She had.
Of course she had.
She gazed at herself in the mirrored wall, and then at the woman’s long sleek back. I’ll see everything, she thought. Everything.
Both of us. All the while.
It was terrifying. Also thrilling. As though she and the woman were part of a single entity and both were Dora—essentially Dora—the punisher and the punished.
“You killed them. You were going to kill me.”
Her heart pounded. In the mirror she saw the rise and fall of her breasts, nipples hard and aching beneath the thin filmy surface of the bra.
The woman sighed. “You’ve been a very bad girl,” she said. “They didn’t deserve it. Certainly not because of you and Howard. I think you’ve got a lot to answer for. Don’t you?”
In the mirror she watched herself respond. She nodded.
And thought, I was only looking for some redemption.
She watched as the knife slit through her skirt from waist to hem, the sweat of the day cooling suddenly on her as the skirt fell away, then moved up to the final two buttons of her blouse and trailed up along her arms to slit the sleeves, so that blouse and skirt formed a pool on the floor in front of her like a snake shedding its skin.
The woman paused and stepped away and allowed her a moment to see herself in the mirror.
That was good. She found that she needed to see.
She walked to the linen cabinet, took out two black sheets, and spread them around Dora’s feet both front and back. She unbuttoned the jumpsuit and shrugged it off her shoulders. Beneath it she was naked. She placed the jumpsuit neatly on the back of the chair, then took a long pearl-handled straight-edge razor from the table and opened it. The razor gleamed in the track lighting. She thought that it was very much like her father’s.
“This is going to take awhile,” she said. “And it’s going to get somewhat messy. But we’ll get to the bottom of you, you and I. I promise you that. Your own true inner self.”
When the razor plucked through the straps and center of her bra and the sides of her panties, she felt a sudden rush of freedom bound tight to a sudden sense of dread. It was perfectly right that this should be so.
“We’ll set you free,” said the woman.
For the first but not the last time, the razor descended.
The Graveyard Ghoul
by Edward D. Hoch
“My friend,” Simon Ark told me as we sat waiting for our host’s arrival, “it has been said that everyone has three lives—the public one, the private one, and the secret one. Certainly the secret life is the most interesting, especially in a person of some renown.”
“You’re thinking of government leaders, statesmen, generals?”
“Or mere poets and essayists like Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
The idea made me chuckle. “I’m sure a preacher and philosopher like Emerson had no secret life. He was a very open man.”
“Open indeed! Are you aware that his first wife, Ellen, died of tuberculosis at the age of nineteen? He took to walking to her tomb every morning, and one day after she’d been dead for thirteen months, he opened her coffin.”
“My God! What did he find?”
Simon Ark shook his head sadly. “We can be thankful he didn’t tell us. His journal for March of 1832 records only that, ‘I visited Ellen’s tomb & opened the coffin.’ After thirteen months in her coffin, even the most beautiful of young women would have been terrifying to behold, especially by the young man who had loved her so deeply.”
“Why would he have done that? Why would he replace the living memory of her with—”
My question went unfinished, for at that moment our host walked through the wide double doors of the club library. He was a slender gray-haired man named George Mitchner, and after shaking hands with them he led the way to the dining room. “I though my club would be the best place to dine, gentlemen. We won’t be disturbed here.”
I knew Mitchner slightly because our firm, Neptune Books, had published a slender volume of his on old cemeteries. It hadn’t been a big seller, and another editor had handled it, but I’d met him once when he was in the office. It was this fact, and my well-known friendship with Simon Ark, that led to the present dinner invitation at one of Manhattan’s more exclusive clubs.
After the drinks had been ordered he turned to Simon, openly examining his black suit and aged face. “I understand you’re something of a psychic detective.”
Simon Ark smiled slightly. “Only to those who must categorize everything. I am merely a mortal in search of evil—in search of the devil, if you will. Sometimes I find traces of him in the most unexpected places.”
“Be that as it may, I need your advice about some unexplained events on my estate.”
“Grave robbers,” I said, getting right to the point. I’d already told Simon that much, which had brought to mind his story about Emerson.
“Let us wait until after dinner,” George Mitchner said with a gesture of his muscular hands. “It is not a topic to discuss before eating.”
Over dinner Mitchner went at his food with determination, his angular brow dipped toward the thick steak on his plate. When he spoke at all, it was of other meals he’d eaten in distant places. “The best food in Cairo, you know, wasn’t at Shepheard’s Hotel but at a little cafe off Ramses Street.”
Simon perked up at mention of Cairo. “You lived there?”
“During the war—World War II. I was very young then. I helped the British build a wall of bricks and sandbags under the chin of the Sphinx. It offered some protection against air-raid damage, though the city had no serious bombing even when the German tanks were only a hundred miles away.”
After dinner, when the plates had been cleared and we were almost alone in the large dining room with our cups of coffee, George Mitchner announced, “And now to business. I live on the family estate up in Duchess County, with my wife and son. The Mitchners have owned land there since Revolutionary times, and we have a family cemetery on the property.”
Simon Ark interrupted with a question. “How many are buried there?”
“Counting babies who died at birth, I suppose there are about fifty. My parents are both there. Lately, there’s been a rash of grave robbing, coffins dug up and opened, the main crypt invaded. The local police put it down to vandalism by teenagers, but I think it’s something more. Certain Satanic symbols have been found nearby.”
“This interests me,” Simon admitted, “though even Satanic symbols can be painted by teenagers.”
George Mitchner shook his head. “No, this is a clear case of grave robbery, or at least desecration.”
“There are two motives for grave robbery,” Simon told him, taking a sip of coffee. “One is to steal valuable objects that were buried with the deceased, as in ancient Egyptian tombs. The other is to steal the body itself, as Burke and Hare did in nineteenth-century Scotland, for sale to medical schools.”
“The bodies were not taken. Nothing was taken. It’s as if the vandal simply wanted to view the remains.”
My mind went back to Emerson again, opening the coffin of his dead wife after thirteen months. “What sort of a sick person would do that?” I asked.
A flicker of pain crossed George Mitchner’s face. “That is why I appeal to you, Mr. Ark, to come see for yourself. I have every reason to believe that the graves are being opened by my son Andrew.”
When we finally met him, in the big old house at the end of a tree-shaded lane in Duchess County, Andrew Mitchner hardly seemed like the classic representation of a grave-robbing ghoul. He was a personable, mild-mannered young man with a ready smile and a firm handshake. Some of his father’s features were apparent, especially in the shape of his brow and the curve of his shoulders.
“I’m pleased to meet you both,” he said. “Father tells me you’re here to suggest some security measures for the family graveyard. We’ve been troubled by vandals lately.”
“Have you seen anyone in the area?” Simon Ark asked.
“Not at night. The graveyard and crypt are over the hill. They can’t be seen from the house.”
If we had wondered at the source of the Mitchner family income, it became obvious the moment we walked into what must have been the drawing room. The walls were hned with black-and-white photographs of giant cargo ships, and a scale model of one occupied a place of honor on a side table. “We’re a maritime family,” George Mitchner explained. “Always have been. Andrew’s learning the business.”
I guessed the son’s age in the late twenties, a bit old for youthful pranks. I was still studying him when his father announced, “And this is my wife Abby.”
If Simon and I expected to be greeted by a woman of Mitchner’s age, we were startled by our first glimpse of her. She was a second wife, of course, a woman closer to Andrew’s age than his father’s. Her red hair may not have been natural, but her smile was warm and sincere as she greeted them. “It’s a pleasure to have visitors here,” she said, striding up to shake our hands. “We’re too far from Manhattan for most people.”
“It’s wonderful country up here,” I said. “Those Italian cypresses are like something on a picture postcard.”
“All credit for the landscaping belongs to my father,” George Mitchner said. “He remodeled the house and greatly improved the grounds. But we should get moving if you wish to see the cemetery while it’s still daylight.”
I thought for a moment that all of us would be going, but Andrew and Abby Mitchner stayed behind. Simon Ark had been unusually quiet during our time in the house, but once outside and striding through the crisp April air, he seemed to return to his usual self. He often claimed to be two thousand years old, and at that age I suppose anyone can grow a bit quiet at times. Still, I suspected there was more to it than that. The Mitchner family hadn’t been what either of us expected.
“There’s one of the Satanic symbols I told you about,” Mitchner said.
We’d approached the old family cemetery, bounded by an iron fence. There were stone posts where a gate might once have been, and it was on one of these that a crude pentagram had been spray-painted in red. Simon made a sound of derision. “Anyone can draw a pentagram. The dictionary tells you it’s an occult symbol. True Satanists would be much more imaginative.”
“Are there any teenagers in the area?” I asked Mitchner.
“Sure, there are a few on neighboring estates.”
“How about the one next door?”
“A boy named Ronnie, around sixteen. He likes to ride horses. Ronnie King. Sometimes I have to chase him off my property.”
“Maybe he’s—”
But now we could see the first of the open graves, only partly filled in. Digging down to reach the coffin would have been hard work, a lot harder than spray-painting pentagrams. “This is the grave of my greatgrandfather. It was the first one to be opened, two weeks ago. A few nights later, the crypt was broken into.” He indicated what was really a stone mausoleum, built into the side of a hill. I could see from this distance that the padlock on the door had been recently replaced, shining like new.
“Exactly what does this graveyard ghoul do?” Simon Ark questioned. “I can see that the coffin has been opened—”
“He does nothing! Perhaps he looks at the bodies, but nothing more. In all cases the remains seemed intact. Nothing obvious was removed.”
“Why do you suspect your son?”
“Four nights ago I was standing by the bedroom window just before retiring. There was a full moon, and suddenly I saw Andrew coming out of the garage, heading in this direction. He was carrying a shovel. The following morning I came down here to look and discovered that my wife’s grave had been desecrated. His own mother’s grave!”
“Have you reported this vandalism to the police?”
“Of course! I’ve called them all three times. All they told me was that they’d increase the road patrols in this area. That was when I decided I needed private help. If it is Andrew, I don’t want him arrested.”
Simon and I stood at the edge of the newest grave, staring down at the coffin. “Was there evidence that it had been opened?”
“Oh, yes! The lid was still ajar. When I think of Margaret suffering an indignity like this, after all she went through—And from her own son!”
“When did she die?” I asked.
“Four, almost five, years ago. She had a great many things wrong with her. She’d been in and out of hospital, and finally it got to be too much for her poor body. She was only fifty-five.”
Simon Ark pushed a bit of the dirt into the grave with his foot. “What was Andrew’s reaction to all this? I gather you haven’t confronted him with your accusation.”
“Not yet. I wanted your opinion first, Mr. Ark. He seemed as shocked as I was at this outrage, so I made no reference to seeing him with the shovel.”
Simon nodded. “It may be good for us to depart and then return after dark. If four nights have passed since the last outrage, it may be time for this ghoul to return.”
Mitchner’s face revealed a depth of pain we hadn’t previously observed. “Why is he doing it, Mr. Ark? Has some devil taken control of him?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
We returned to the house, but now young Andrew Mitchner was nowhere to be seen. Abby was in the garden, tending to the season’s first tulips. “The magnolias are ready to blossom,” she told her husband. “One more warm day should bring them out.”
“She’s a wonder with flowers,” Mitchner said as we went inside.
“Does she know of your suspicions?” Simon asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve told no one but you two.”
“Still, I should speak with her. She may have observed something that would be helpful.”
Abby got up from her knees as we approached, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. She still held a trowel in one hand. “What do you think? Can we install a security system down there?”
“A really effective one would be quite expensive,” I told her. “Of course, a simple alarm siren would scare them off. That might be all you need.”
She rubbed a dirt-stained hand against the side of her jeans, then turned toward Simon as he asked, “Do you have any ideas about this vandalism, Mrs. Mitchner? It always helps to know if we’re dealing with wild teenagers on a lark or adults with some darker purpose in mind.”
She thought for a moment before responding, then said, “The spray-painted symbols seem more the work of young people, but I can’t imagine anyone opening a coffin years after burial. That would have to be an awfully sick individual.”
“Perhaps. If the symbols are to be believed, this could be the work of Satanists.”
“Why would they open the graves? George tells me nothing was removed. It’s not as if they wanted a skull or something for their obscene rites.”
At that moment Mitchner called her from the house. “Abby, could you come in now? Dinner is almost ready.”
“We have to be going anyway,” I told him. “I’ll phone you in the morning with a quote on the job.”
“Do that.”
We drove down the highway a couple of miles as darkness began to settle over the land. “We have some hours yet,” Simon Ark said. “Remember, Mitchner spotted his son with the shovel at bedtime.”
“You think it’ll be tonight?”
“That depends.”
We had a light supper at a restaurant overlooking the Hudson River and drove back to the Mitchner estate shortly after eight o’clock. “We’ll take up a position near the graveyard and watch until midnight,” Simon suggested. “If nothing happens by then, we’ll try again tomorrow.”
Happily, the night was not too chilly. I found a good spot on the hill above the crypt, giving us a good view of the cemetery’s entrance. “No one would climb the fence when there’s an open gateway,” Simon reasoned.
We were silent for a time, but after a while I became convinced no one would come. I started making conversation in a low voice. “I suppose Abby Mitchner is right. It would take a really sick individual to go about opening coffins.”
“But what about Emerson? Was he sick or unbalanced? He opened his wife’s coffin, remember.”
“I don’t know, but there is a possible explanation for that.”
“Which is?”
“In those days people were occasionally buried alive, by accident. You have only to read Poe on the subject.”
“And you think Emerson opened the coffin to be certain she was dead? After thirteen months?”
“Well—”
“He must have been certain of her death or he would never have allowed her burial. And he must have known that after all those months nothing would be left to stir memories of their days together.”
