Toy Cemetery Read online

  “Because you will resist arrest. It’s happened before, Jay. You remember Alex Graham?”

  Jay nodded.

  “He did what you’d like to do. About three weeks ago. He’s out of the hospital now. Oh, Jay, he’s a most happy fellow. Smiles all the time. His concentration isn’t what it used to be, but he’s a happy, happy man.”

  “Then call the state police in here, Deva!”

  She smiled. But her smile was a bit lopsided. “And tell them what, Jay? That I believe the town is possessed by the devil? Oh, sure. Then they’d put me in the bug factory. Tell them that people are milling about the streets at night? They haven’t stolen anything; they haven’t vandalized anything; there is no law against walking.

  “Jay, my daughter has discussed this with me Just a few days ago. This very issue. We sat down with pads and pens and listed what we might tell the state police. And do you know what we came up with?”

  “Nothing,” Jay said wearily. “Nothing at all.”

  “Right.”

  Jay looked at Kelly. “Your mother is winding up a tour in St. Louis in a few days. I’ll call her agent and find out exactly when that is and where she’ll be staying. I’ll drive you over there and you can fly back to New York with her.”

  “No,” the girl said.

  “It isn’t open for debate, short-stuff,” the father informed her.

  “I’m not leaving, Daddy. And I mean that.”

  “For God’s sake, Kelly!” Jay shouted at her. “You don’t have any idea what might happen to you, to me, to any of us, if we stay in this town.”

  “Then you come with me.”

  Jay shook his head. “It’s going to take me at least a week to settle up matters here. You go on, I’ll join you.”

  “I’ll stay with you, and with my friends.” She looked at Jenny and the others.

  “Why, Kelly? Why are you fighting me on this?”

  “You said it yourself, Daddy.”

  “What?”

  “For God’s sake,” the child replied simply.

  9

  Jay dropped off Carla and the others, one by one, after asking Deva if she and Jenny would like to come over to his house and spend the night.

  She thanked him, but declined. It was past midnight, and they’d be all right.

  “This is incredible,” Jay said, driving back to his house. “The streets were full a half hour ago. Now they are deserted.”

  “I forgot to give Miss Deva her cross,” Kelly said.

  “What cross?”

  They pulled into the drive of the Clute house in town. Kelly took the crosses out of her pocket and slipped the chain over her father’s head, tucking the cross under his shirt.

  Jay smiled at her. “Is this going to protect me, baby?”

  “If you believe and try to help yourself, it can’t hurt, now, can it?”

  “No, baby. It can’t hurt.”

  * * *

  Jay awakened in the middle of the morning’s early hours. He lay in the dark, his head on the pillow. He opened his eyes as a sound from the hallway reached him.

  His eyes were glowing with an insane light and slobber leaked from one corner of his mouth. He threw back the covers and squirmed out of his pajamas. His erection stood hard and throbbing. He could hear a very, very faint squeak, squeaking. Old Man Milton’s rocking chair.

  Jay’s head hurt.

  Go on and do it, a voice spoke to him. There is nothing wrong with it. You want to, don’t you?

  “Yes.” Jay mouthed the word, more slobber oozing from his mouth.

  You’re back home now. Everybody does it here. Here, you won’t be condemned. Isn’t that nice.

  “Yes.”

  I’ll just watch. Do you mind if I watch?

  “No.”

  Now!

  The door to the bedroom opened. Jay turned his head, his slobber wetting the pillowcase.

  Kelly stood in the doorway. Her eyes were glowing with the same light that now sprang from Jay’s eyes.

  “It’s all right.” Kelly’s voice reached him through the pounding in his head. “It’s what I want.”

  “All right,” father spoke to daughter.

  Kelly slipped out of her PJs to stand pale and naked by the bed.

  She slipped into bed, beside him, and put her arms around him.

  Kelly’s breath was hot on his face. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “I want it this way.”

  A small clink entered Jay’s head. He looked down. The two crosses had touched in the darkness. They gleamed golden in the light coming through the window.

  “No!” Jay screamed. He pushed the girl from him.

  Jay jumped from the bed, to stand panting over the near-incestuous scene. Kelly tried to reach him.

  Jay slapped her, rocking her head, the mark of his palm reddening her face.

  “Love me, Daddy!” Kelly screamed.

  Jay picked up the glass of water he always kept on the nightstand and threw the contents into the girl’s face.

  She grinned at him from the damp bed. Jay’s eyes had lost the intensely glowing light. The light in Kelly’s eyes had brightened so that it frightened Jay.

  He grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her hard. “Stop it, Kelly! I won. I beat it. So can you. You said these crosses would help us. Think about that.”

  The light in her eyes faded a bit.

  He wrapped her up in a sheet and carried her down the hall to the bathroom. He pushed the girl into the shower stall and turned the cold water on.

  He tossed the sheet to the floor and said, “Kelly, you stay in there until you can think straight.”

  The light in the girl’s eyes faded even more. She nodded her head, shivering under the cold spray of water.

  Jay walked into the hall and glanced at a grandfather clock. He did a double take. “Impossible,” he muttered.

  The hands of the clock read nearly six o’clock.

  But when Jay had awakened, he could have sworn it was two in the morning.

  The phone rang. Jay padded naked back up the hall to the phone.

  Deva.

  “Jay,” she gasped. “Please let us come over there and stay with you.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s . . . disgusting and embarrassing. Jenny crawled into bed with me and tried to . . . well, I mean . . .”

  “Kelly just tried to seduce me,” Jay said. “And I’ve lost about three or four hours. Come on over, Deva.”

  “Did you and Kelly? . . .”

  “No. But it was close, Deva. Very close. Come on over. I’ll put water on to boil.”

  * * *

  “Goddamn him!” the man snarled at the others gathered around him. “Clute was never religious. What happened? It was going so well.”

  Others sat quietly, saying nothing.

  The spokesman paced the closed room. “We’re losing control. And it must be regained. Contact all your block wardens. Have them meet with their people. Control them! And have someone see Clute.”

  * * *

  The girls were put to bed, red faced, in separate bedrooms.

  “I can’t believe they would try to do, you know, with each other,” Deva protested.

  “I don’t know what the hell anybody is going to do, Deva.” He noticed the cross around her neck.

  She followed his eyes. “Kelly just gave it to me.”

  “It’s all that saved me, us, from a very ugly situation this morning. You heard a voice?”

  “Yes. A very deep, commanding, urging voice. Jenny and I, we, ah, came very close to, well . . .”

  “I know. The voice was . . . vaguely familiar to me. You?”

  She nodded her head and sipped hot coffee. “And I know where I’ve heard it before.”

  Jay snapped his fingers. “The old Clute house out in the country!”

  “Yes. Twenty-two, twenty-three years ago. Remember?”

  “I’ve never forgotten.”

  * * *

  They h
ad gone on a dare from within the group. Hell, everybody knew the place was haunted. Well, not really, but that’s what everybody said. The huge old home had been deserted for years. Ghosts ran people off, so the stories claimed.

  Then they got in and couldn’t get out. The doors would not open. The windows would not raise. Then the voice came hurling at them out of the darkness.

  The kids were frozen with fear.

  Objects came flying at them; screaming filled the huge old house. The screaming was hideous; an inhuman, hellish howling. The ten teenagers, five boys and five girls, huddled together on the dusty floor and tried to protect themselves from the objects that were flying around them.

  And the voices; a babble of voices, crying out like lost souls standing on the fringes of hell. Weeping and calling for help. For release.

  But release from what?

  And then the kids found themselves outside, none of them knowing how they got there.

  * * *

  “We managed to convince ourselves that it didn’t happen, Deva.”

  “And now?”

  He sat down heavily in a chair. “I believe it happened. I believe it all ties in with what is happening in this town. And I believe something else, too.”

  She met his eyes, saying nothing.

  “We need some help, Deva. And I don’t know where to look for it.”

  * * *

  Deva and Jay catnapped in chairs in the living room. Both of them awakened at mid-morning, with stiff necks from sleeping in chairs.

  They looked in on the girls. Both were sleeping soundly. They left them alone and fixed breakfast. Lunch, actually.

  “Do you do much work at the paper?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “Very little, except when I write an editorial, and I usually do that at home.”

  “I’m evading and avoiding the issue, Deva.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Deva, look outside. There are people out mowing lawns, going to work, coming home for lunch; doing all the normal things that plain old average people do every day. Why are they so blase about what is happening around them? Is it our imagination?”

  “You know better than that.” She was thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t know, Jay. But I think the kids do.”

  “Maybe. How about those of us who were in the old Clute house that night?”

  Jay ticked them off one by one. “Roper and Allison, Hec and Wanda, Gordy and Etta, Aaron and Anne, you and me. How about them?”

  “They’re all right here in town. Roper has a car dealership; Hec owns a store; Gordy is postmaster; Aaron is in insurance. They all married their high school sweethearts. And yes, they are all perfectly normal. As far as I can tell.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Expecting company?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what to expect in this town.”

  “We were just talking about the old gang. I bet that’s some of them.”

  “Let’s find out.” Jay walked through the house to the front door and looked out through the curtained side windows. A group of people stood on the porch. Jay began smiling. He knew them all.

  He opened the door to the house and the door to his past, allowing the memories to come flooding back as his old high school buddies stepped back into his life.

  He greeted them as they entered.

  “How you doing, Roper?”

  “Hey, boy!” Roper Smith punched him lightly on the shoulder and shook his hand. “Jay, you remember Allison.”

  “Allison.” Jay smiled at her.

  “You look great, Jay,” the former cheerleader and beauty queen said.

  Jay shook hands with Hec Smalling.

  “How’s it goin’, partner?”

  “Great.”

  “You ’member Wanda, Jay,” Hec said.

  “Wanda.” Jay took her hand.

  “Been a long time, Jay.”

  Jay smiled and wondered if she ever thought about that night when they both succumbed to youthful passion and got it on during a short period of time when they had broken up with their steadies back in high school.

  Jay greeted Gordy, his wife, Etta, and Aaron and his wife, Anne.

  And then he remembered something he hadn’t thought of in years: All these people were related to each other. Distantly, so he was always told, but still related. All of them.

  He was thinking just how they were related when Deva joined the group.

  “Old home week,” she remarked with a smile. But was that a bit of frost in her voice? Jay thought so. “You all are just in time for lunch.” Deva knew damn well they were all very much aware that her car had been parked at Jay’s house since just after dawn. And she was just as aware that that was part of the reason they had all “just dropped by,” as Roper was saying.

  Her invitation was met by a lot of “oh, no’s,” and “we just couldn’t put you out.”

  But they would take a cup of coffee.

  One thing led to another and soon Allison and Anne began setting the table in the dining room while Deva and Wanda and Etta worked in the kitchen. Jenny and Kelly were up, taking showers. The men, with nothing left for them to do, sat in the living room.

  “Sorry about your Aunt Cary, Jay,” Roper said. “But it happened so fast.”

  “Damn sure did,” Hec said. “I didn’t know about it until the old gal was buried or burned up or whatever. There wasn’t even no memorial service.”

  Somehow, that did not surprise Jay at all.

  “Uh . . . Jay.” Gordy wore a sorrowful expression on his face. “This is prob’ly not the time to bring this up, but what the hell, we’re all friends. There is a lot of mail over to the post office for your aunt. You want to stop by and pick it up?”

  “Sure, Gordy. I’ll stop by today or tomorrow and get it.”

  “Good, boy!”

  “And while we’re on the subject,” Roper said, “your aunt had just bought a new car. It’s paid for up front, like she always done. New Cadillac. You ever owned a Caddy, Jay?”

  “No.”

  “Well, boy, you do now!”

  The conversation drifted away from Jay and Aunt Cary. While the men talked, Jay inspected them all. They seemed to be perfectly normal. Their eyes were bright and alive, not dull like most of the other people he’d seen in Victory. Their movements were animated, not mechanical. They were all just as he imagined they would be. Most were carrying around a few extra pounds, and Aaron’s hair was thinning. But all had aged well.

  Over lunch, Jay learned more than he really wanted to know about his old high school buddies. They all had several kids, grade school to high school.

  “How’s the grandbabies?” Deva asked quite innocently.

  Jay’s fork stopped midway between mouth and plate.

  “Oh, just fine,” Aaron replied brightly.

  “Great!” Roper said.

  “Beautiful!” Etta said.

  “Fat and sassy,” Hec grinned.

  “You’re all . . . grandparents?” Jay asked. “All of you?”

  “Well . . . yeah!” Gordy informed him, very proudly. “I mean, you know, in this day and age, it happens. No mark of Cain like it used to be. Our grandparents had to be real careful, so I’m told.”

  Jay heard the kick Gordy got on the shin from his wife.

  “How about a welcome home party for Jay!” Roper almost shouted the words.

  “Hey, boy!” Hec said. “That’d be great.”

  They all agreed on Saturday night. Big cookout and all that.

  Gordy was frowning, rubbing his shin.

  And Gordy and Etta can bring slides of their vacation in New York and show them.

  Oh! You live in New York, Jay? Well, we’ll show slides of Hec and Wanda’s vacation in L.A.

  Wonderful.

  The big house emptied. Kelly and Jenny were in the backyard, sitting and talking.

  “They all behave as if nothing is wrong!” Jay blurted, just as soon as the front door closed behind th
e last person.

  “Maybe to them, nothing out of the ordinary is happening.”

  “You neglected to tell me about the, ah, grandbabies.”

  “I wanted you to hear it from someone other than me.”

  Jay checked again on the girls. They were sitting in the swing.

  Jay and Deva worked in silence, clearing the table and putting the dishes in the dishwasher.

  “They know who the fathers of the kids might be?” Jay broke the silence.

  “Oh, come on, Jay! Wake up and stir the grits!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jay, didn’t I tell you yesterday I’d done a lot of research on this community?”

  “What’s that got to do with babies?”

  “What happened to you and Kelly last night, Jay?”

  Jay stood still and stared at her for a very long time. “What you are suggesting is monstrous!”

  “If they’re doing it willingly, yes.”

  “You have evidence to prove what you’re saying?”

  “Nothing that will stand up in court.”

  Jay fixed another cup of coffee and sat down at the breakfast nook. “I was thinking, all of a sudden, while greeting them ... they’re all related.”

  “Second cousins or better.”

  “So the stories go.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “If that invitation you made last night still holds, Jay, I need to go to the house and pack some things.”

  “Of course, it still holds. Take Kelly with you and I’ll go pick up that new car. Meet you all back here at three. I’ll give you a spare key, okay?”

  “Great.”

  The big house seemed very empty with Deva and the kids gone. What Deva had intimated weighed heavily on Jay’s mind.

  He supposed he could force Kelly to go join her mother in St. Louis. And with that on his mind, he found his address book and called her agent.

  She was in St. Louis now, and would be there for the next several days. Her tour was over; she was visiting friends.

  Got the number?”

  * * *

  Jay had thought for several minutes before placing the call to St. Louis. Should he drag Piper into this? What swayed him was the thought that if she came over, maybe she could convince Kelly to leave with her.

  He placed the call.

  He’d already made up his mind how to handle it.

  “Piper? Jay. How’d the tour go? Fine. Glad to hear it. Look, I’m in Victory ... No, Piper, I’m not playing football with the boys. Victory, Missouri. Look, could you rent a car and drive over here. It’s not far. Why? Because ... Kelly needs you.”