The Paupers' Crypt (5 page)

‘Message Failed to Send.’

What?
she asked herself. She hit send again, watched the screen, and saw the rejection come through, once more.

Bet it’s the damned location,
she thought. Jenny quickly navigated over to Google, found the number for the Woods Cemetery and dialed it.

The phone rang three times before it was picked up.

“Woods Cemetery, Joe speaking,” an old man said.

“Hi Joe,” Jenny said happily, “my husband, Brian, is supposed to be working there today. Is he around?”

“Brian?” Joe said. “Oh, Brian Roy. He’s the new boss in town, right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Nice fella,” Joe said cheerfully. “Well, he’s speaking with a family right now. Would you like me to take a message and ask him to give you a callback?”

“You know, a callback would be great, Joe,” Jenny said.

“Okay then, Mrs. Roy, I’ll be sure to tell Brian you called,” Joe said, and he sounded like the sweetest old man on the face of the planet.

“Great, thanks!”

“You’re welcome,” Joe said pleasantly, and he hung up the phone.

She would give Brian another call, or send him a text at lunchtime. She still had some paperwork to catch up on. Not to mention a ton of emails.

She put her phone down on the desk, logged into her work account and thought,
I’ll have to make sure and tell Brian what a nice man Joe is. He was really helpful and pleasant.

Jenny hummed to herself as she scanned her emails and looked for anything which could possibly be construed as important.

Chapter 10: Brian and John in the Crypt, 9:10 AM, May 2
^nd
, 2016

While Jenny had an exceptionally pleasant conversation with a man named Joe, Brian and John looked at the skeletal remains in front of them.

“He,” John said, setting the hurricane lamp down on the stone floor, “does not look like he came out on top of anything.”

“Definitely not,” Brian said. Behind him, he could hear the voices, their words lost on the other side of the iron door.

John walked forward, knelt down and looked closer at the skeleton.

It wore clothes dusty from years of solitude. The skeleton was once a man, and he had been dressed in a pair of jeans, black work boots, and a red sweater. A silver ring remained on the index finger of the left hand, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses rested on his chest. The arms of the frames were connected by the fine links of a silver chain.

John, with exceptional care, searched the man’s pockets. A few moments later, he was rewarded with the discovery of a wallet.

“What’s this?” John asked in a soft voice, which Brian suspected was more for John’s own benefit than his. John reached behind the body and carefully removed a small satchel. He scooted away from the body and motioned for Brian to join him, and Brian did.

The floor was cold and uncomfortable, but it felt good to sit down. Brian felt adrenaline drain into his stomach. And even though Brian knew the biochemical process, what it meant and the purpose it served, it didn’t make him feel any less nauseous.

Brian realized, painfully, how he and John were trapped in the crypt. Within the cemetery. By the fence and the fog. And in spite of his ability to see and converse with the dead, regardless of his previous experiences, Brian was completely and utterly subservient to the situation.

He hated it.

“You okay?” John asked as Brian adjusted his position.

“Scared,” Brian said truthfully, “and frustrated. I know what ghosts can do. Scares the hell out of me.”

“Well, maybe one of these will be our lucky door,” John said, gesturing around the room.

For the first time, Brian really took note of their small prison. It was circular, with the iron entrance behind them and half a dozen more doors in the curved walls. Each lintel was labeled with a Roman numeral, one through six, the brass secured firmly to the wide planks. The doors were painted a dark green and were narrow and short.

Brian’s skin crawled as he looked at them.

They lead to nothing good
, Brian thought.
Only variations of bad, and each worse than the one before it.

“They don’t feel right,” John said softly.

“No,” Brian agreed. “Definitely not. Do you want to open up the wallet and see who our roommate was?”

John nodded, set the old satchel on his lap and opened up the wallet. It contained an assortment of color pictures kept in a cracked plastic accordion sleeve, fifteen dollars in singles, some random scraps of paper with short sentences like, ‘the oak on Elm,’ and ‘Fire on Mulberry.’

John found the license tucked behind a YMCA membership card. The picture on the license was of a young man. Dusty blonde hair fell to the shoulders and rested easily on the plaid shirt he wore. His face was wide and open, and he had a smirk.

“Mitchell Farmington,” John read. “Age twenty-two, born April first, 1960.”

“He’s been here a long time,” Brian said after a moment of silence.

“Yeah,” John agreed. He returned everything to the wallet and placed it on Mitchell’s chest.

“Think he might have written something down?” Brian asked, motioning towards the satchel.

“Hm? Maybe, we should check it out,” John said absently. “Let’s light the hurricane lamp, though. Save some of the battery’s juice in the flashlight.”

“Sounds good,” Brian said. He passed the lamp over to John, and the man took out his lighter. He raised the shade, adjusted the wick, and then he lit it.

The flame from the lamp was strong and burned a bright blue just below the orange tip. John lowered the shade, and Brian turned off the flashlight. It was best to save it for later, and Brian hoped like hell there was going to be a
later
.

A whole lot of
later
.      

John put his lighter away, turned the wick up a little higher for more light, and then turned his attention to the satchel.

Brian watched the older man work at the straps and the buckles, which were green with age. John finally freed the straps and left smears of cleared space on the leather. He wiped off the dust and grime on his pants and glanced over at Brian then smiled.

“Well,” John said, “let’s see what Mitchell had brought with him.”

The leather flap hissed and creaked as John pushed it up and back. From the narrow depths of the satchel, he removed a pair of black and white composition notebooks, several pens, an old Hershey’s chocolate bar wrapper, and a bottle of Coke. John set them all out on the floor between them and Mitchell.

The notebooks looked remarkably untouched by their thirty plus years in the room.

“Would you like to do the honors?” John asked.

“I would love to,” Brian said. He reached out and picked up one of the notebooks and opened it. Page after page of free verse poetry, most of it about life in a small city. The penmanship was neat, mistakes crossed out, and the corrections jotted above them.

Brian flipped through the entire notebook, shook his head and set it down. “Poetry.”

John nodded and handed Brian the second notebook.

The first few pages were filled with poems, but afterward, the pages were filled with word after word after word.

The opening line stated,

I am trapped …

Chapter 11: Mitchell’s Notebook, Part One, May 4
^th
, 1980

I am trapped.

I am still not quite certain what happened, or how I ended up here. It is all a terrible dream. A nightmare from which I cannot awaken.

It began in a common enough way, and I suppose the banality of its beginning is part of the horror.

I decided to walk from my room on Washington Street to Woods. The cemetery is always a source of inspiration for me. A place to think and consider life; a sanctuary in which to reflect.

I brought my notebooks; the first one, I knew I would finish with since I had only a few pages. I brought pens in case one went dry.

The morning was fine. A beautiful spring morning. I went and sat by the Greeley’s plot, the elm tree there offering shade. I wrote steadily for an hour or so. I filled the last of one notebook and had started the second. When I finally paused to stretch, I saw a fog had rolled in.

It was a strange and curious fog. Thicker than any I had seen before, except for those on the beaches of Maine. I assumed the marshes, nearby, were responsible for it. I prepared to return to my writing when I saw how the fog followed the fence line and did not pass it. It was as though I was wrapped in a cocoon.

And at first, it was a pleasant and comfortable feeling.

The cemetery had always been a place of rest and safety. Why would I be afraid of a bit of fog?

I should have been.

Instead of returning to my writing, I should have left, fled, run from the place. Yet foolishly, I continued to write, to work on my craft. It will cost me my life, I am afraid.

No sooner had I begun a new poem, then I heard laughter. When I looked up, I saw a young woman on the cemetery road. She was tall and thin, and she wore a faded yellow wedding dress.

I thought it rather odd and I worried for a moment, whether or not she was mentally stable.

Only for a moment, though, for then I realized her skin was a deathly white. Vicious, like a cold, hard snow. Her eyes were black. Not only her pupils and irises but the whites as well. The entire orb was black, and her eyes were locked on mine.

When she saw me look at her, she threw her head back and
let loose a laugh. The sound was so raw, so vile it caused my hands to shake.

I threw my notebooks back into my satchel and got to my feet. I turned to flee and saw half a dozen others. They stood before the gate, each with a terrible smile. Some had gray skin, while others were almost alabaster white. Each had black eyes, though, and I knew they sought my death.

And I knew, deep within, how my soul would suffer if they slew me.

I ran and searched for a place to hide. If you are reading this, then you, whoever you are, have found my hiding place.

My prison.

My grave.

I suffer no illusions about whether or not I shall escape from here.

He has told me this is my place of dying.

The owner of the voice, the man who spoke to me, who urged me to hide as the dead chased me through the cemetery. I have not seen this man. I know I shall soon.

I hope, if you are trapped here with my remains, I can be of some assistance. I have traveled through all six of these doors, and I can tell you what to expect within each.

None of them, let me assure you, lead to freedom, safety, or life. My return to this ante-chamber is nothing short of a miracle.

Danger sits like a fat and swollen spider in its web, waiting for the unwary.

Say a prayer for me, and I wish for you a quick death, and not the lingering starvation which I am sure is my fate.

Chapter 12: Picking a Door, 9:30 AM, May 2
^nd
, 2016

“Do you mind if I smoke?” John asked.

Brian shook his head. “Light up, John. Light up.”

John shook out a cigarette, placed it between his lips and lit it. Once he had exhaled the first drag, he looked from Mitchell to the notebook and finally to Brian.

“So, the papers from the office, they said we had to hide as best we could?” he asked.

“Yes,” Brian said. “And Mitchell here, told us there’s danger behind every door.”

“But we’re going to have to pick one to go through,” John said. He glanced at the iron entrance. “And they’ll get through, soon enough?”

“So the papers say,” Brian said, sighing. “I know the iron will hold them off directly, but they must know of another way in. I don’t hear them on the other side.”

John cocked his head, listened for a moment and then nodded. “True. Looks like we’ve got to play ourselves one hell of a game of hide and seek.”

Brian chuckled bitterly. “Sounds about right.”

John looked back at the six doors.

“Guess we’ll have to read about Mitchell’s experiences?” John asked.

“More than likely,” Brian said. He stared past John and at the six choices before them. “I really just want to know why this is happening.”

“Trying not to think about the why of it,” John said momentarily.

Brian looked over at him and frowned. “Why not?”

“Just going to take up time, make me a little more worried,” John explained. “We can’t really afford either of those, can we?”

Brian shook his head. “No. No, I suppose we can’t.”

Brian looked down at the notebook, and then he jerked his head up sharply.

“What is it?” John asked in a low voice, taking his cigarette out of his mouth.

Brian held up a finger, cocked his head to one side and closed his eyes.

John closed his eyes too, and listened.

He heard the rapid beat of his heart, the exhalation of air through his nose and the inhalation through his mouth. He felt the cold and the raw edge of fear which chewed at his confidence and threatened to overwhelm him. He smelled the musky odor of death and a bitter hint of sorrow.

And then he heard it.

A light, insistent scratching. Coming from one of the wooden doors.

With a shudder, John opened his eyes and saw Brian had done the same. The younger man pointed to the third door, and John nodded.

The scratching came from the door’s center. As John listened, he could hear the sound move down slowly, ever so slowly to the bottom. Suddenly, the scratches stopped.