Seven For The Slab - A Horror Portmanteau

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Book excerpt

One

There are few things as startling and, thereafter, as unsettling as a ringing telephone in the dead of night.

It repeatedly stabs the air, then the ear, then the psyche, driving deeper and deeper, until finally it reaches and awakens the conscious mind. It pulls the innocent from the blissful peace of sleep into a dark cold world of reality in which someone wants something from them, or needs to deliver life-altering news to them, or is compelled to level a shock from which they might never recover. Even if the call rescues them from the throes of a fitful sleep, or the bizarre terrors of a nightmare, it hardly feels the rescuer. For, until it is picked up, the ringing phone is a harbinger of the unknown.

What is more frightening than the unknown? How many phone calls bring good news in the middle of the night?

To even consider those questions makes it difficult to understand Herb Flay's glee, his absolute delight, at being roused from sleep by his ringing phone. But once he was awake, sitting up in bed and could identify the incessant noise, once he'd scooped up the receiver and managed a gravelly, “Hello,” once he'd heard and recognized the voice on the other end and gathered the incoming message, he was delighted indeed.

It was the call he'd been waiting for, waiting and waiting. It was the call he'd given up hope of ever receiving. Now it had come. It mattered not a whit that it was one o'clock in the morning. It mattered even less there was at that moment a torrential downpour taking place outside, a fierce thunderstorm into which that call would force him to venture. Nothing mattered now. The call had come. He was relieved beyond words. He was happy as a lark.

Two people had been found dead!

Herb Flay worked for a funeral home, the Fengriffen Funeral Home and Crematorium to be precise. It was a revelation that frequently caused queasy twists in the listeners' stomachs or the feeling of cold fingers climbing their spines, but it needn't have. Flay was used to the reactions, the discomfited pauses, the wary looks, the interesting and alarmed noises people made, involuntarily or on purpose, when they learned he worked at a funeral home; that he worked with the dead. “Hey,” Flay would tell them with a smile, “it's a living.”

For the record, Herb Flay – and his boss, Mortician Marlowe Blake, and their Fengriffen Funeral Home – resided in the mid-sized Illinois town of Sturm's Landing (population 32,000). It was named after its founder, Mark Von Sturm, a ferry operator on a mighty river that, in the century and a half that followed, had shrunk to a trickling creek. Over those same decades, the local economy did likewise. So had the funeral business. It all seemed to drain away. But it wasn't finished, not yet, not that night.

The remains of what once were two human beings lay in a house in the sleepy village of Cedartown, thirteen miles away, awaiting removal. There was much to do. Flay scrambled for his clothes.

He wasn't the only one.

The bodies had been discovered by Sheriff's Deputies Christopher Maitland and Philip Grayson nearly two hours earlier, well before the Witching Hour. The Sheriff's Department had been alerted by a neighbor who reported, “Something (at the house on the end of their block) seems amiss.” Maitland and Grayson responded, in separate squad cars, from separate ends of the county; Maitland arriving twenty minutes ahead of his brother officer. Unable to get a response from anyone inside, Maitland was suspicious of trouble and, more to the point, alarmed by the condition of the house. When Grayson arrived, Maitland shared his concerns. The deputies notified their dispatcher, who roused the sheriff and called an ambulance and the Cedartown Volunteer Fire Department.

A Fire Department engine and ladder truck, and an ambulance from the Sturm's Landing Rural service, arrived on the scene at a small split level with a mock colonial front porch built on a hill over top of its own garage in a quiet residential section of the village. The sheriff would begrudgingly be on his way, the officers imagined, though neither had heard from him personally. They decided not to wait for their superior. With the aid of the ladder truck driver, and a weighted bar from one of the truck's compartments, the lock on the front door of the house was gingerly knocked in.

The door flew open. The decayed breath of Satan, a rotting stench from the deepest pits of Hell, escaped past them out the door.

With the ambulance crew waiting anxiously by the door, holding their collective breath against the stink, the deputies entered the house by themselves. They did a quick search up and down, found what they found and, without disturbing anything further, made a hasty retreat. Back outside, they gulped air to keep from vomiting and told the ambulance and fire personnel the acute nature of the emergency was past… long past. When he could breathe again through his mouth, Maitland took up his portable radio and asked their dispatcher to notify the coroner that his services were required. That was as far as things had progressed.

Without going into details unnecessary for the present, suffice to say that the two corpses the county deputies discovered inside were… in bad shape. The pair, as yet unidentified, had evidently 'passed on' some considerable time before. They looked it. They certainly smelled it. And, now that the seal had been broken on the front door, the entire neighborhood was quickly taking on the same odor; the air stunk to high heaven of rotting human flesh.

Standard Operating Procedures for a fire or crime scene with multiple responding emergency services required the establishment of a Command Post. Mind you, nothing was on fire and nobody was certain a crime had been committed. But, with more than one body and no immediate hint as to cause of death, a few assumptions had to be made until facts could be gathered. Therefore, until further notice, a crime was assumed and a Command Post established. In the big city, they'd roll in a flashy trailer for that purpose with a police or fire logo splashed across its side. But this wasn't New York City or Los Angeles, this was the village of Cedartown, Illinois (population 900). The Command Post and, owing to the rain coming down in buckets, the rest and drying off area, on this occasion would be a neighbor's garage across the street and a half-block away. It was near enough they could quickly be on scene to do their jobs but far enough away that, though they couldn't escape the stench, the distance and the storm might lessen its gut-churning effects.

The garage space was suggested and donated by the same curious neighbor who'd spotted something amiss and called the police in the first place, a fat, over-talkative fellow in his late forties with still dark but thinning hair in a comb-over, a handle-bar mustache, and wire glasses with double thick lenses. He'd be pleased and proud, he said, if they'd use his garage for their meeting place and ran ahead to make the coffee. Despite the fact not one of the cops, firemen, or ambulance crew liked him much, nobody objected to his offer. It was raining like hell.

That's how the lion's share of the police officers, firefighters, and paramedics responding to the scene came to be gathered in the nosy neighbor's garage, drying off, looking forward to hot coffee, and awaiting word and a call to action from their superiors. They included: Deputy Chris Maitland of the Dortmun County Sheriff’s Department; a brand spanking new paramedic, Lisa Clayton, from Sturm's Landing Rural; and representing the Cedartown Fire Department, veteran Firefighter John Reid and a still wet-behind-the-ears recruit, Ward Baker.

Their host could be seen gallivanting about, through what must have been his kitchen window, in an unattached house sixty feet or so from the garage. He'd left the garage's overhead door invitingly open for their arrival, a space by his lawn tools cleared away from whatever coats and gear they wanted to hang or dispense with, and a table, quickly constructed out of sawhorses and two-by-fours, with napkins, paper plates, and a tower of hot/cold drinking cups already in place.

By unanimous agreement of the gathered civil servants, the overhead door was ratcheted closed again in hopes of deadening the offensive smell just that little bit more. The thunderstorm, though, would not be denied. It continued to boom outside and flash brilliantly through the row of garage door windows.

The garage owner danced in from the darkness through the walk-in door, with a humungous serving tray (covered against the rain) in his hands. He pulled off his yellow rain slicker, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and began happily serving coffee to the wet emergency workers. Despite the rank odor in the air, he was beaming as if he'd won the lottery and clearly having the time of his life. No sooner did he get their cups full then he was back in his slicker and headed out again in search of more goodies.

He passed Maitland's partner, Deputy Grayson, coming in. Grayson closed the door behind him against the storm. The deputy's brown uniform shirt and tan pants were protected and dry but his gray plastic rain smock was drenched. He shook like a dog shedding water. The gathered gave Grayson their attention, while Maitland voiced their communal question, “Anything new?”

“No.” Grayson shook his shower cap-covered trooper's hat as the floor beneath became a modern art masterpiece of water splashed on concrete. “I left the ladder truck driver… I'm sorry, I'm terrible with names.”

“Henderson,” Baker, the younger of the two firefighters, put in. “Paul Henderson.”

Grayson nodded. “I left Henderson and… the engine driver?”

“Sandy Lund,” Reid, the other firefighter, said.

“Lund,” Grayson agreed, then added, “Boy, has she got a mouth on her?”

“Yes,” both firefighters said in unison. “She does.”

Grayson hung his slicker on the wall, with the others, and his hat over that. Turning back, he spotted the EMT, Clayton, a little blonde in a blue uniform, and was reminded, “Oh, and the other paramedic.” He held the look. “Your boss?”

Lisa didn't snort but looked as if she wanted to. “My partner,” she said, correcting him, then changed it again to reluctantly split the difference. “My lead, Abner Perry.”

Grayson nodded. “Like I said, I'm terrible with names. I left those three babysitting the rigs outside the house, watching the front door, and keeping an eye for a crowd.”

“You're expecting one?” Clayton asked.

“A crowd? Usually, yes. Make that 'always'… a crowd. But with the storm – and the stink – no one has braved it yet.”

“Except our host,” Maitland said, jutting a thumb at the wall and, by implication, at the fellow's house beyond. “The guy you just met in the doorway. The neighbor who found the bodies and phoned it in. He's getting more coffee, bless his heart.”

“What's his name?”

Maitland considered the question, then shrugged. “Heck, I don't remember. I'm not much better with names than you are. Schreck, I think, or Shock, or Shanks… it's in my notes. I've just been thinking of him as ‘the Proprietor’.”

Grayson chuckled. “That's because you like big words.”

“What about our fire chief,” Baker asked, interrupting. “Wasn't he out there?”

“The old war horse? Yes,” Grayson said. “He's at the scene; sitting in the engine. He goes without saying. They're waiting on the sheriff and the coroner, just like us. Nothing to do but wait.”

Baker sighed. He stared out one of the windows, down the block in the direction of the house, though the darkness and the rain prevented him seeing anything beyond the diffused red, blue, and yellow flickers of the emergency vehicles' lights. “Geez,” he said. “I feel like I should be out there. But I just… Just the smell alone… I don't know how they can handle it. Three minutes and my guts were doing cartwheels.”

Grayson nodded understanding, then turned to Clayton again. “Your lead was looking a might green around the gills,” he told her. “He's sitting in your ambulance now, holding a cracked ammonia capsule, and taking hits off of it. He's not having a good time. But the other three… They've been on the Fire Department a long time.”

Reid laughed. “I'm sure they've all smelled death before.”

“It's more than death,” the young firefighter went on, “it's a horror show.” As if to highlight Baker's comment, thunder cracked outside and lightning flashed through the windows.

“You haven't seen it up close,” Maitland said. “It is a perfect night for horror, no doubt. For ghosts and ghouls, for murder and mayhem, for tales of things that go bump in the stormy night.”

Clayton blew a raspberry and returned to sipping her coffee.

“Aw, come on, Lisa.” Until then, Reid had kept his heavy turnout coat on. Now he peeled it off, hung it in the corner to dry, and stood in a blue T-shirt (a firefighters' Maltese Cross emblazoned on his left breast), yellow bunker pants, and boots, with his thumbs hitched under his red suspenders like a farmer in his field. “What's the matter? You don't like war stories? It's tradition,” Reid went on, “whenever cops, firefighters, and EMTS get together, they tell stories. At times like this, they're a professional requirement.”

Reid paused for the chuckles of agreement.

“Now they're out of bed, our bosses, the sheriff and the coroner, when they get here, will take their sweet time assessing the scene, screwing the pooch, and feeling important. When they've had enough, unless these gentlemen…” Reid pointed at the county deputies for emphasis. “…didn't see what they saw, we'll have to wait for the funeral parlor to come scoop up whatever is left.”

Coming out of his momentary funk, Baker laughed and nodded at Clayton. “He's right, Lisa. We've got plenty of time to kill. You better tell us a war story.”

“I'm a new paramedic,” she exclaimed, “as new as you are. I don't have any war stories yet.”

More laughter followed, this time from all. Then a particularly impressive arc of lightning flashed and a roll of thunder drowned them out. The garage went quiet and all that could be heard was the drumming of rain on the roof. More than one in the group lifted their cups close to their faces. Their suddenly rapid breathing made fog on the surface of their coffee and stirred the odor of fresh brew to dull the smell of death in the air.

“Okay, the paramedic needs to think about it for a minute,” Maitland called out. “Someone else then. A war story. But, in honor of the creepy night and situation, make it a horror story.”

The deputy scanned the group but there seemed to be no takers.

“How about you?” Grayson asked. “You're never short a story, partner. Start us off.”

“I can if I have to,” Maitland said. “We've had plenty of experiences.”

The walk-in door burst open. The Proprietor stumbled in, kicked the door closed, and fell against it as if holding back the storm with his ample body. He blindly pulled a fresh pot of coffee and two boxes of cookies from beneath his coat. Blindly, as his thick glasses were fogged and his face a waterfall from comb-over to glasses, to mustache, to chin. With his hands full, he could do nothing about either.

Clayton took the coffee pot. Baker relieved him of the cookies, bleating, “Hey! How appropriate is that?” He waved the boxes. “Devil's Food!”

The emergency workers chuckled their appreciation. The poor Proprietor, swiping at his watery mug with his now free hands, didn't get the joke and innocently looked his confusion.

“Don't worry about it,” Grayson told him. “He likes your choice of snacks.”

“Oh!” their host said, with no further evidence the light of understanding had been lit.

“Deputy Maitland was about to tell us a war story,” Clayton said. “And a horror story?”

The deputy smiled. “I think it fills both requirements. But perhaps our host would rather…”

“Oh,” the Proprietor said with something between alarm and delight, “don't stop on my account. I'd love to hear one.”

“You've got me curious,” Grayson said. “And we've got time. Go ahead, partner, tell it.”

“Yeah,” Baker agreed with enthusiasm. “Tell it.”

“All right,” Maitland said, accepting a hot refill to his cup. “I will.” He declined a cookie, fortified himself with a careful sip of coffee, and looked to the garage rafters above their heads as if searching for a way to begin. He found it, took on a serious expression and, quite out of nowhere, said, “The restaurant was nice.”