This choice: Try out Connor's brain, and go to the cemetery • Go Back...Chapter #13The Cemetery by: Seuzz   You set your phone alarm for twelve-thirty, but you're so wound up with anticipation that it's probably a quarter to midnight before you drop off, and the buzz from the alarm sends you bounding out of a bed with a racket that you're afraid will have woken your parents. Very quietly you dress, and listen at your bedroom door, but you hear nothing. So you open your window, slip over the edge, and drop hard onto the ground below. You left your truck parked on the street so as to minimize the racket when you start it up, and you keep the headlamps off until you're halfway down the street.
Caleb is waiting in front of his house, and he hops in with a quiet yelp of excitement. "It sure is going a lot faster since we got Connor and Justin involved," he says.
"I thought you didn't like them that much."
"There'll be a few elbows thrown before it's all done," he says, "but right now I'd say we're rockin'."
You had to make a big loop around town to pick up Caleb, and you have to make another such loop to get out to the cemetery, which is on the western part of town close to the river, so it's a little after one o'clock before you pull into a lane on the far side of the cemetery wall. You don't see any sign of Connor or Justin, so you tell Caleb to call them. "They're running late," he says when he hangs up. "Fuckers. It'll be fifteen minutes before they show."
You stop the truck and shut off the engine. "You want to get out?"
"Why would we want to do that? It's cold out there."
"And haunted."
"Shut up."
So you're still sitting in the cab of the truck when, only a few seconds later, two ghoulish faces pop up and press against the car door windows. You and Caleb both yell and jump, and Connor and Justin fall back, laughing hysterically.
"You fucks!" you yell as you leap out to chase Justin.
"Hey, quiet, we don't the cops after us," he says, and lets you pummel him a few times.
"You said you were running late!"
"We can say anything we want, but that doesn't mean it has to be true," Connor chortles as he reaches into the bed of your truck to extract a shovel. "We were waiting on the other side of that wall when you call, decided to give you a bit of a scare."
"Where are you parked?"
"Inside the cemetery, over there." He grins. "We also noticed you're too chicken shit to pull inside."
"I wanted to park away from the road, so we wouldn't get spotted."
"Uh huh. You can say anything you want too, doesn't mean it has to be true either."
Justin grabs the other shovel, and you get the box of sandbags. Then the four of you hop over the low wall into the cemetery. "Book didn't say it had to be the dirt from a grave," Connor says. "Just a cemetery. Unless you want to play it safe—" He taps the turf with the tip of his shovel. "I say we do it here."
"You too scared you'll dig up a corpse?" you taunt him.
So he shrugs and marches over to a nearby tombstone. "Letitia Barnes," he says after straightening up from examining the stone. "Hope she's not a light sleeper." And he jams the shovel into the grass.
* * * * *
It's long and hot and dirty work, even with four of you. You've only got two shovels, so two at a time dig while the other two hold the bags open to accept the dirt. None of you are in really good shape—you're all scrawny and skinny—and you trade off jobs so the diggers can get a little respite. Still, even working steadily, it takes a little more than an hour to get the bags filled. After that you have to transport them to the back of the truck, and drive them back over to the basement, leaving a wide but not very deep hole in the cemetery spread over three graves. It's three o'clock before you get Caleb dropped off and get yourself back to your house. You're too exhausted to try getting back in through the upper-floor window, so you very quietly let yourself in through the back door with a key. All the lights are off, and there's no sign anyone is awake, but on your way up the stairs you get the bright idea to throw a false trail across your adventure in case you've been heard. You quickly slip into the upstairs bathroom, lock the door, and turn on the water. After pulling your clothes off, you jump under the shower water and spend a good fifteen minutes scrubbing the dirt and sweat from your skin and hair.
And when you open the door, your dad is leaning against the corner, wearing his robe and a puzzled expression. You jump a little, and force your heart to stop beating so hard. "So what are you doing up at three-thirty in the morning?" he asks.
"I couldn't sleep," you say. "I decided to get a jump on the day."
He stares at you, mutters something, and with a shrug goes back to his bedroom. You congratulate yourself on your quick thinking. Maybe you woke him up with the running water, and maybe you didn't, but either way you had a good excuse for him.
You're just not going to get enough sleep before it's time to get up again, even though your eyes fasten shut almost as soon as your head hits the pillow.
* * * * *
You're nursing a cup of coffee on your knee as you pull into the Westside student parking lot and drive slowly along behind the train of cars in front of you. When you find a nice spot, you slide in, shut the engine off, and take a long pull from the paper cup. You don't normally have time to pick up a coffee on your way to school, but with the time you saved by showering early you were able to get out the door ten minutes early and make a detour by the Starbucks. You have no idea who the girl was that served you.
But in a minute you'll know her name, if the magic works the way you think it works. Connor's brain—the piece of metal containing his brain—is sitting on the passenger seat. You stare at it, and take another sip of coffee.
Partly it's the anticipation that makes you hesitate. This will be your first real experience with the magical items crafted with the book—your book, you have to remind yourself since Caleb and Connor and Justin got involved. You haven't even been inside one of the masks. So you've got that to look forward too—a loss of virginity, of a kind.
But you're also held back by trepidation. What if you didn't craft the magic doodad correctly? There's no one here to save you if something goes wrong. What if you go a little crazy with Connor's brain inside yours? What if you forget that you're really Will Prescott and become convinced that you're really Connor Hutchison? Those are the esoteric worries. You also have some old fashioned heebie-jeebies about getting inside the head of another dude. There's stuff inside your own head that would be hideously embarrassing; there's got to be stuff like that inside Connor's.
Well, there has to be. Right? How awful would it be if you were the only person in the world with embarrassing fantasies, memories and kinks?
You take another sip of coffee, and look at the time. Eight-ten. If you're going to do this, you'd better do it soon. Classes will start in ten minutes, and Connor was knocked out at least that long when he put the blank band to his forehead, and for ten minutes after that.
Idly, you wonder what he's doing now.
Okay, enough fucking around, you tell yourself, and set the coffee in the seat. Then you lift it and take one more shot. You pick up the band --
Tap tap.
You jump as Keith Tilley chucks his chin at you. "What the fuck are you jerking around here for," he asks through the window.
"I'm trying to work up the nerve to go in." You look around. "I ran into Joshua Call at Walmart last night, and I think he'll be looking for me."
"Fuck. What did you do to get him after you?"
You roll down the window. "I looked at him," you tell Keith. "But I think he got some of my funk up his nose. He was looking at me afterward like he was thinking of all the psycho things he could do to me."
"Oh, so you shit yourself, huh?" Keith leans in through the window to sniff at you. Yeah, smells like you got soiled britches."
"Shut up. Go on in without me, unless you want some of what Call is serving."
Keith cocks his head and looks at you shrewdly, then with a shrug saunters off toward the school. You roll up the window and lie down on the bench of your truck. Now or never, you declare to yourself, and press the band onto your forehead.
The world goes wonky, as though you're falling down a deep hole, and fades.
* * * * *
The world is an off-white color. You blink.
No, it's not the world that's off-white. It's just some fabric or metal of some kind. You are feeling fragile, and you don't want to move. It's like your head is a china tea pot, and the top of yours skull is the lid. It's askew, and if you move too suddenly or sharply it fall off and shatter.
But you do move. You sit up. You find you're sitting in the cab of a truck. And the truck is sitting the student parking lot of Westside High School.
And the lid settles nicely into place.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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