The Frighteners (8 page)

“Door handles take a bit of getting used to,” Frank said.

“How do I get out of the car, then?”

“This way,” Frank said, and shoved Ray through the door. He tumbled onto the ground, then yelled, “Ow!”

Bannister expected Lynskey to stay on the ground at least long enough to get around the car, but it wasn’t to be. Still an athlete even after death, Ray was up like a shot. He scrambled to his feet and ran through the cemetery gates. Far away across a sea of headstones, his funeral was under way.

“Ray! Wait up!” Frank yelled, and began to run after him.

Lynskey had gotten a few paces inside the gates when a huge, ogrelike spirit that Bannister knew went by the name of the Gatekeeper rose up out of the ground in front of him. This being was the size of a Toyota someone had stood on end. It had fangs that stuck out of puffy jowls, and claws that projected from the ends of fat fingers. But it glowed pure white and didn’t ooze ectoplasm.

Ray stopped dead in his tracks and screamed.

“State your business,” the Gatekeeper growled in a voice as deep as a tiger’s.

Trembling with fear, Ray was unable to speak.

Frank ran up behind him. “He’s with me.”

“You’re not welcome here, Bannister,” the ogre growled.

Frank held his ground, and even stepped in front of Lynskey to protect him. “It’s the guy’s funeral,” he said. “We’ll only be ten minutes.”

Frank took Ray by the arm and pushed past the Gatekeeper, who puffed out his mammoth chest as a threat but did nothing.

“What in hell was that?” Ray gasped.

“Take it one thing at a time, Ray,” Bannister said. “Get used to the idea of being dead first and then we’ll deal with the kinds of customers you’re going to meet down there.”

By way of illustration, Frank swept his arm across the horizon. As Ray looked around the cemetery he found that it was filled with creepy emanations scuttling furtively among the tombstones. Some were humanoid and wore regular clothes. Others resembled clouds, toadstools, skeletons, dead trees, or bits of tumbleweed. They had one thing in common. They all hurried around the graveyard hiding from Hiles—the ghostly cemetery master they all feared.

“Get back in your graves,” this newest figure growled, backing up its words with a burst of machine-gun fire.

The emanations that had been creeping from headstone to headstone across the cemetery suddenly dived back into their graves like frightened gophers as the burst of ghostly machine-gun fire echoed over their heads.

Ray and Frank whipped their heads in the direction of the sound. Hiles was a wiry little authoritarian spirit, wearing what looked like a ghost’s idea of army fatigues and carrying a ghostly Uzi. Unlike Frank’s decomposing emanation friends, heavenly spirits like Hiles glowed with a radiant white light. They seemed to be in a permanent state of physical perfection.

“Bannister!” Hiles growled.

Frank told Ray, “Keep going . . . I’ll deal with this.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Lynskey said, and headed toward his grave site.

“What are you doing in my graveyard?” Hiles asked Bannister. “You have been told to stay away.” The spirit walked slowly and determinedly toward the man, carrying the smoking Uzi with its muzzle pointed skyward.

“It’s a public place, Hiles,” Bannister said.

“I don’t like you,” the spirit yelled. “You cannot bring your spooks in here without my permission.”

Hiles shoved Frank, sending him staggering backward. Frank angrily lashed out at Hiles with a left jab and a right cross, but his blows passed right through him.

“I’m not one of your shitty emanations, Bannister.” Hiles sneered. “You can’t push spirits around.”

“I don’t want any trouble, Hiles,” Bannister said.

Hiles gestured around the cemetery. “You have no understanding of my situation here,” he said. “We got a lot of lowlifes here . . . a lot of gutless creeps who are too scared to meet their Maker. I provide an armed response at the first sign of trouble. They must be contained.”

“For God’s sake, Hiles, I get this speech every time I set foot in the place.”

“You are scum!” Hiles screamed. “Exploiting a lower species for your own material gain . . . using spooks to put the frighteners on people . . . That makes me physically ill.”

“See you, Hiles.” Frank turned his back on the strutting little spirit and walked confidently toward Ray’s funeral service.

“My contract runs another eighty-five years,” Hiles yelled at Frank’s back. “There’s a piece of dirt here with your name on it! I’m waiting for you, Bannister.”

Hiles was still ranting and raving when Bannister made it across the cemetery to the funeral, but was now too far away to be heard. When Frank got there, Lucy was standing next to her parents, sobbing quietly. Her boss, Dr. Kamins, stood nearby. George Zmed scowled at the sight of Frank, and several mourners whispered among themselves at the sight of him.

Frank watched from a distance as Ray tried to put a comforting arm around Lucy, but it simply passed right through her. Bryce Campbell, Ray’s best friend, was saying a few words.

“There were times when people have accused Ray of being less than generous, but I am sure that deep down, the man possessed a heart of gold and a generous spirit,” Campbell said.

Ray burst into tears. “It’s all true,” he said. “He wouldn’t lie—not at a time like this.”

George Zmed pushed the button to start the coffin on its journey into the ground. As it began its descent, Lucy stepped forward and tossed a flower on top.

“Good-bye, Ray,” she said tearfully.

Ray moved to Lucy’s side again, and this time said, “Oh Jesus, what a waste! It’s a goddamn tragedy.”

He reached out to touch her, to comfort her, but tumbled straight through her and fell into the grave. He passed right through the coffin and landed at the bottom of the pit. His back made a thud that Frank could hear even where he stood outside the ring of mourners.

Lying on his back, Ray screamed as the black shape of the coffin descended over him. Hearing the screams, Frank pushed his way through the crowd. But by the time he got there, the descending coffin had passed right through Ray. Lynskey found himself sprawled on top of his own dead body.

He screamed again and sat up, and as he did so his head and shoulders rose through and above the top of the coffin. He saw Frank standing there looking down, and called his name.

“Frank! Get me outta here!”

But Bannister was preoccupied with another voice, that belonging to Sheriff Walker Perry. He had sidled up to Bannister, who was looking at his emanation friend seated sticking out of the top of his coffin. Frank was trying not to attract attention, but he got it anyway.

“Hiya, Frank,” the sheriff said.

Frank turned to the sound of the voice. “Walt!” he said, caught off guard.

Perry was a friendly-faced man of forty or so, slightly overweight a few years back and now seriously heavy. If he had, in fact, asked Ray to help him get back in shape, Lynskey’s death was doubly tragic. Bannister’s relations with the sheriff had been cordial over the years, although Perry remained one of those Fairwater citizens who were more than a little suspicious about him.

“I’m surprised to see you, Frank,” the sheriff said. “I guess you’re here on business?”

“Not exactly,” Bannister replied.

Perry put an arm around Frank’s shoulders and took him off to one side. “You’re not handing out your little business cards, are you?”

“Not today, Walt.”

“George Zmed complained about that after Chuck Hughes’s funeral. It looks bad, you know? Kind of like those lawyers that hand out their cards at car wrecks.”

“I’m innocent,” Frank said.

“I heard you had a run-in with Lynskey, the night before he died,” Perry said. “The fact is, apart from his widow, you were the last person to see him alive.”

Bannister gave the sheriff a wary glance. “It sounds like you’re the one here on business, Walt.”

The sheriff chuckled. “Lord, no,” he said. “Ray and I met at the gym. In fact, he’d just become my personal trainer. I guess now I got to find someone else.”

The sheriff looked around furtively, then lowered his voice. “Folks don’t have respect for the law unless you look like a TV cop.”

Frank was still looking at Ray. The gravediggers had begun to fill in the hole. Dirt was piling up around Ray’s chest.

“Frank!” Ray said worriedly.

Ray was in danger of being buried, but Frank was powerless to help as long as he was under the sheriff’s gaze.

“Did you ever hear of a guy called Milton Dammers, Frank?” Perry asked, speaking up and beginning to sound official.

Frank shook his head.

“He’s some psychic freak the FBI is sending to help us out. These deaths are causing a lot of concern. Ray is just the latest one. They look like heart attacks, but when the coroner opens them up, the arteries are as clean as a whistle.”

Perry lowered his voice one more time and continued, “But there’s been this tremendous pressure on the heart. It’s like it’s had the life crushed out of it. Any theories, Frank?”

Now panicked as the dirt continued to pile up on him, Ray yelled, “Frank!” He was up to his neck in soil, and still too uncertain of his emanation powers to get himself out.

Bannister said to the sheriff, “I have to go, Walt. I want to pay my last respects to Ray before they finish filling him in.”

Sheriff Perry nodded and stepped respectfully to one side. When he did so, Frank bent down and grabbed a handful of dirt. He tossed it onto the rising pile of dirt in the hole. As part of the same movement, he grabbed hold of Ray’s arm and hauled him out of the hole. Then, as subtly as he could, Bannister marched the just-rescued emanation away from the dispersing mourners.

If Bannister hoped to get Ray clean away, he was disappointed. For Lucy Lynskey spotted him and called out, “Mr. Bannister? Can I talk to you?”

Frank and Ray spun around at the sound of her voice. They saw her walking away from her parents toward Bannister.

Ray was excited. “Oh God, she can see me!” he said excitedly. “Lucy!”

He broke away from Bannister and held his arms straight out as Lucy arrived. But she walked straight through him.

“Mr. Bannister,” she asked, her voice carrying a hopeful tone, “did you want to see me?”

Frank looked wary.

She continued, “When I saw you here, I thought perhaps . . . you might have a message from Ray.”

Ray was excited. “Tell her, Frank! Tell her I’m here,” he cried.

“Everyone says you’re a fraud,” she continued, “but I’ve seen what you can do.”

Bannister didn’t know what to say, caught as he was between the deceased and his widow.

Ray screamed, “Frank!”

Lucy had a different reaction to Bannister’s silence. She looked sad.

She said, “You must think I’m very stupid . . . Excuse me.”

As she turned and began to walk back toward her parents, Frank thought quickly, then said, “Ray says he loves you very much.”

Lucy spun around. She could see only Frank standing there, looking a little awkward.

She looked at him, then back at her parents, who were glaring at Bannister. Of course, she couldn’t see Ray at all, even though he stood right beside Frank.

“He told you that?” she asked, lowering her voice.

Frank nodded.

“We have to talk, but not here,” she said.

Lucy looked especially beautiful in the candlelight of the corner table at Bellisimo’s, the restaurant that had been her and Ray’s favorite. She was watching nervously across the crowded room for Bannister, who was late, as usual. When he finally did make his way between the other tables to reach her nook, she noticed that he was unusually well dressed. He had found a better suit in his closet, and for this occasion managed to locate a tie that didn’t look like it had been run over by a truck. Ray, too, had spiffed up for the night. His hair was slicked back, and he had wiped off as much excess ectoplasm as he could. He lagged behind Frank, looking as nervous as a teenager on his first date.

“Hi,” Frank said, quite taken with the sight of Lucy.

“Hi, Mr. Bannister.” She got to her feet.

“Please . . . call me Frank.”

“Don’t get too friendly,” Ray whispered in Frank’s ear.

“Is Ray with you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Frank replied.

“Tell her she looks great,” Ray said to Frank.

“He says you look great,” Frank said.

Lucy sat back down, and Frank helped himself to the seat across from her. He also pulled out a chair for Ray—the one next to Lucy.

She said, “I’m so glad you could make it. Frankly, I was nervous about meeting you. So many people have said mean things about you.”

“I understand.”

“But you seem so nice, and since you and I were the last ones to see Ray alive, I feel we’ve shared something.”

“Me, too,” Frank agreed.

“I warned you,” Ray added.

“I’ve never done a séance in a place like this before,” Frank said.

“Shut up, Bannister,” Ray said, suddenly testy. “Today is our anniversary. We come here every year.”

“Is Ray sitting beside me?” Lucy asked.

“He’s right here.” Frank pointed at what, to Lucy, looked like an empty chair.