The Gravedigger's Brawl (13 page)

“Goddamn you, Wyatt. Fucking ghost stories,” he muttered as he turned to go back to the main room.

Ryan was heading for the locked door that led to the upstairs.

“What are you doing?”

“Going to check upstairs,” Ryan said as he unlocked the door.

“But we found the radio,” Delilah said.

“We're here, we might as well.” Ryan pulled the old door open by its glass doorknob. Ash jogged to catch up to him.

The floorboards creaked under their feet with every step, and when they got to the landing, they both stopped and searched around. Ash wondered if Ryan felt as uneasy as he did.

“If anyone was up here, we'd hear them,” Ryan said as he looked over his shoulder at Ash.

“Yeah.” He was surprised to find his voice was hoarse.

“Why's it so cold up here?” Delilah asked.

Ryan and Ash both jumped again.

“Don't do that!”

“What?” She shivered and glanced at the front windows. They were closed. The A/C unit that had killed itself earlier this week was long gone, and they had never replaced it. “It's freezing up here.”

“Ghosts,” Ryan said with a grin.

“Shut up,” Ash said.

“Scared?” Ryan teased.

Ash glared at him. A loud bang from the far side of the landing made them all jump, and Ryan grabbed Ash and turned around, hiding behind him. Ash held his breath, frozen as he tried to make his eyes pierce the darkness. He was too scared to even question the fact that the bigger, supposedly braver man was hiding behind him.

“Is the fridge still unplugged?” Delilah asked in a small voice.

“I don't know. Go check.” Ryan prodded Ash in the back with a finger.

“Fuck you, man,” Ash whispered, his voice embarrassingly high-pitched as he backpedaled into Ryan.

“Okay, we'll both go check,” Ryan whispered as he pressed Ash from behind.

Ash took a tentative step forward and reached for the light switch. The lights flickered on, revealing the foyer of the upper level. They'd left it mostly untouched during the renovations downstairs, and it could almost be called decrepit. Old furniture was stacked here and there, the floorboards were creaky and unpolished, and the heavy scent of mothballs and old wood hung in the air. The only thing used regularly up here was a room Caleb had converted into an office, and he only used it maybe once a week.

Caleb had plans for the upper level, but they had to wait until their down season. The refrigerator they used to store all the extra beer sat opposite the head of the stairs, beside one of the front windows. Ash edged closer to it, feeling Ryan and Delilah behind him as he moved. Halfway across the landing, they could see the plug in the socket.

“Caleb must have plugged it back in,” Ryan whispered.

“Huh-uh,” Ash grunted. “I heard him up here calling its mother a cunt. He was done with it.”

The refrigerator gave another loud bang and then began to grumble rhythmically. Ash jumped and backed toward the stairs, not caring that Ryan was still behind him. The lights flickered, as they were known to do when the refrigerator was sucking power from them, and then went out.

“I want to go home now,” Ash said, unashamed as they stood in the dark.

“Me too,” Delilah said, voice small.

“Yeah,” Ryan said hurriedly. None of them moved, though, unwilling to turn their backs on the dark room and unable to descend the steep, narrow steps without looking.

“Can you give me a ride?” Ash asked after a tense moment of silence.

“Yeah. Move your ass,” Ryan said as he pulled Ash back and turned to hustle down the steps after Delilah.

Wyatt stepped into the large lecture hall, taking up a spot in the back.

“Some duels over the course of history have been rather out of the ordinary,” Noah was saying to the large audience. “Because duelists would pick their locations with the particular goal of not being disturbed, some of them got interesting. In 1808, there's a documented case of two Frenchmen fighting a duel from hot air balloons.”

A murmur of laughter went through the crowd, and Noah grinned. “It's true, you can read that in
Smithsonian
,” he said with a rakish smile.

Wyatt smiled as his friend walked around the lectern. He wasn't your typical lecturer, but his talks had the highest attendance by far. Detractors would blame his off-color topics or his good looks and charming personality, but Wyatt firmly believed it was his skill and charisma as a speaker and his stellar reputation as a scholar.

“The men shot at each other's balloons with pistols until one of them was hit so many times the balloon crashed, killing the duelist and his second.” Noah pressed a button and the picture behind him changed. It was a cartoon-like drawing of two men in balloons, pointing muskets at each other. “By the late nineteenth century, the act of dueling was becoming somewhat passé. Gentlemen were beginning to think it barbaric, and when challenged, many were known to pick outrageous methods of dueling to show their disdain. Howitzers, crowbars, sledgehammers, forks full of pig dung.”

Another ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Wyatt chuckled as Noah clicked through his graphics. Some of them were very graphic indeed.

Noah glanced up into the darkness of the audience and Wyatt waved the papers he had in his hand under the red glow of the Exit light. Noah gave him the barest of nods and continued.

Wyatt slid out of the lecture room. He almost regretted not hearing the end of the talk, but he drew the line at forks full of pig dung. He waited outside, leaning against the wall, trying to look innocuous in case any of the trustees happened to wander by. He could hear the low murmur of Noah's voice, and the occasional laugh as the talk wound down.

Wyatt stood where he was and smiled and nodded as the attendees filed out of the room.

Several minutes later, Noah emerged. “Lunch?”

“Forkfuls of pig dung?”

“It's documented.” Noah grinned and turned to head for the cafeteria.

“Is dung the proper term for that?” Wyatt asked. “It doesn't change with different animals?”

Noah laughed. “What?”

“You know, like in terms of collectives: a herd of wildebeest or a murder of crows. Guano versus manure versus dung?”

“It does change, actually. Wild carnivores have scat, while domesticated animals have dung. Birds have droppings, but sea birds and bats have guano.”

“Jesus, Noah.”

“What? I know things.”

“I'm sorry I asked.”

“Only horses produce manure, unless another animal's waste is used as fertilizer, and then it's all called manure. And for some reason, otters have their very own crap that's called spraint.”

“Noah.”

“There are also different names for individual versus bulk. Meadow muffins versus dung.”

“Meadow muffins? What the hell does that have to do with dueling?”

“Nothing, why?”

Wyatt just looked at him, and Noah stared back as they both tried not to smile. “Are we eating lunch?”

“Of course,” Noah said, and they continued on to the staff cafeteria as if they'd never paused. “Collective names are fascinating, have you ever studied them?”

“I can't say that I have.”

“Some of them are pretty self-explanatory. A prickle of porcupines, a cackle of hyenas, a pounce of cats, a slither of snakes. But it's a nest of vipers, a quiver of cobras, and a rhumba of rattlesnakes. They also have a parliament of owls and a congress of baboons, which I find insulting to baboons myself.”

Wyatt sighed.

“And solitary animals are given collectives regardless of the fact that you'll never see a group of them. Groups of people have collectives too. A den of thieves. Even things that don't exist have collectives. Unicorns, sasquatches. Sasquatches?” Noah stopped walking. “Sasquatchae. Sasquatch,” he tried instead. He looked at Wyatt and shook his head, a furrow creasing his handsome brow as he held up one hand.

Wyatt pressed his lips hard together. He waited for Noah to work out the ramble. It was perhaps his favorite aspect of Noah's personality.

“Anyway,” Noah said as he began walking again.

“What are they called?”

“What are what called?”

“A collective of sasquatch . . . es.”

“Oh. A pungent. Creative, huh? My favorite is a smack of jellyfish.”

“How do you get laid as much as you do?”

“I don't know. I know things. Lots of things. Lots of dirty things. What were we talking about?”

“Dueling,” Wyatt said.

They chose a table in the far corner, where they ate and talked about Noah's vast and weird knowledge of collectives.

“So,” Noah finally said as he crunched a Cheeto.

“Yes?” Wyatt sat back and placed his half-eaten sandwich on his tray. He'd known Noah would broach the subject sooner or later.

“Wyatt!” Noah looked up as if appealing to the gods, and flopped his hands, closing his eyes and sighing. “You were at Gravedigger's last night!”

“And aren't you glad, because you
and
Caleb would have been walking home if I hadn't been there.”

“And that's why I didn't bawl you out last night. But I rode the Shadow today and I know I'll get home safe so I can bitch slap you a little and it'll be okay.”

Wyatt laughed and shook his head.

“Wyatt,” Noah said, leaning forward and pinning Wyatt with a glare. His entire demeanor had changed. His voice was lower and just this side of offended. “I asked you nicely.”

Wyatt closed his eyes. “I didn't go to get him into bed.” He glanced around and then scooted his chair around the edge of the table so they were closer. Hell, most of the museum staff thought they were screwing anyway. “I was showing him those documents I found, okay? Completely innocent.”

“Caleb said Ash could barely stand still when he showed up for work this morning. He said he was spooked by something.”

Wyatt frowned and leaned back. “I was well-behaved, I swear.”

“Just stay away from him, okay? It's not so hard.”

Wyatt hesitated, looking at Noah with a mix of pain and relief. “It is, actually.”

“Oh, Christ.” Noah smacked his forehead. “Are you telling me you're falling for him?”

“I just . . . He's—”

“I know what he is. I know what you are. And I never would have introduced you if I thought you were going to do what you did!”

“I know!” Wyatt hissed. “And if I could change that, I would. But I like this guy, Noah, I really do. And he wasn't upset to see me, I swear.”

“Then what's wrong with him?”

“Why don't we go ask him?”

Noah narrowed his eyes, then grabbed his bag of Cheetos without looking away and stood up. “Very well, then,” he said, affected and regal, sticking his nose in the air. How he managed not to smile through the performance, Wyatt didn't know.

Wyatt stood as well, inclining his head to match, and grinned. They stood staring at each other for a moment until Noah broke into a smirk. “We only have ten minutes left to lunch.”

“Meet you at five?”

“And bring your fork, sir,” Noah drawled in a horrible British accent as he turned away.

Wyatt ran late, supervising the preparations for the new exhibition. He was making frantic phone calls to anywhere and everywhere trying to collect artifacts. He'd even been in contact with a local Wiccan and a group of ghost hunters, much to his chagrin. They had mere days to get the exhibit hall in order, and Wyatt had rolled up his sleeves early on.

At five, Noah wandered into the hall and began helping when he saw how much work remained. It was well past seven when they called it a day.

They stood surveying the pieces they had finished. “These things are turning out pretty creepy, man,” Noah said.

“That's what happens when you have too many cooks in the kitchen.”

The exhibit had veered into the overly dramatic, Wyatt knew that. There were cases with mannequins made up as monsters, antique and vintage clothing floating on wires as ghostly figures. There were pictures taken from around the state showing unexplainable images, or as Wyatt liked to call them, camera flares.