Satisfaction

Just in time for Halloween, I thought I'd post this story since it fits the time of year. Stephen King hasn't got anything to worry about, though. Enjoy.

Satisfaction

Grigor spied a concrete-edged grave with his flashlight and sat down, confident he could do this. Still, “this is creepy.” He said.

“Of course it is.” Mal agreed sagely and sat next to him. “It’s a grave yard. They’re supposed to be creepy.”

Grigor turned to his new friend. “You do know this is terribly cliché of us.”

“Yep. But we wouldn’t be teenagers if we didn’t drink in a graveyard, tell scary stories and freak ourselves out. It’s dew jaw.”

Grigor snorted and reached under his jacket for his flask. “It’s what?” He unscrewed the dulled silver cap and breathed in the red wine. He had no idea what type of red wine it was, only that it had a hint of blackberry in it.

“Dew jaw.” Mal pulled a half-bottle of Jack out of his backpack. “You know when they say,” he put on a snooty voice, “it’s soup dew jaw. Well…”

“I get it, I get it. I just didn’t know you knew. And it’s du jour. D. U. J. O. U. R. Pronounced ‘du shore’.”

Mal squinted at him. “That’s what I said.” He opened his bottle and took a mouthful. He swallowed it manfully and Grigor watched as his cheeks puffed out and little noises squeezed through his mouth until he couldn’t contain himself and began coughing.

Grigor’s smile was smug. “I told you to get something with less kick.”

Mal coughed and hacked and wheezed. “Jaysus… wept!” He lifted an arm and wiped his eyes with the sleeves of his jacket. He turned to Grigor. “I never thought a rich boy would want to hang out with the likes o’ po’ ol’ me.”

Grigor grinned and affected the same posh tone Mal had used. “We like to know about the less fortunate than us. It is an education.” He resumed his normal tone and shrugged. “I get fed up with the ‘you should know this person’, or ‘don’t talk to him/her, they are not of our class.’ Bloody Hell, I want to choose my own friends, not who the folks think of as acceptable.”

Mal laughed. “If they only knew what you were up to.” He looked around, his grin wide enough for Grigor to see the shine of his teeth. “Waddaya reckon they’d say about you hangin’ in a graveyard?”

Grigor put the back of his hand to his forehead and spoke like his mother. “ ‘Oh, Grigor, how could you? He’s so, so, common!’” They both laughed.

“You rebel, you.” Mal giggled.

“Now this.” Grigor held up the flask. “This flask belonged to my great, um, great? Grandfather. See,” he offered the flask, “you can see were the silver is slightly worn; been handed down from generation to generation.”

“So why’ve you got it? We’re too young to drink, remember?” Mal took another slug of bourbon with the same result.

“Jesus, pal, you’ll make yourself sick.”

Mal leaned to the side, blocked one nostril and blew. Then he did the other side. “Yeah, but it’s got a nice flavour, once you get past the…” He broke off and tilted his head. “Did you hear that?” He asked softly.

Grigor listened, but all he could hear was the breeze through the trees. “Nup.”

Mal shook himself. “I could have sworn I heard… Nah. Don’t wanna think about it.”

But both sat in silence and listened anyway. Grigor looked around, searching for the noise Mal had said he’d heard, but saw nothing unusual.

“Did you know,” Grigor leaned towards his friend and spoke softly, “that the trees don’t rustle?”

“What?”

“The wind in the trees, it don’t rustle. You know how we’re always reading at school about ‘leaves rustling in the wind’? Well, they don’t rustle.” He spoke slowly and failed to squelch his smirk.

“They don’t?”

“No. If you listen carefully, it’s the sound of steam.” He leaned closer until his lips almost touched Mal’s ear.

“Steam.”

“Rustling,” he whispered, “is a momentary event. The leaves, in a constant breeze, make a sssss sound.” His whisper rose and fell as he drew out the sound. “It’s the sound of a…” he softened his voice until the last word. “Hiss.”

Mal jerked away from him. “Crap!”

Grigor snickered. “It’s true.” He said, his tone more normal, and yet still hushed. Maybe it was because they were in a graveyard. He took a sip of the wine, clutched his jacket tighter around his thin body.

“You are such a dick.” Mal griped and took a tentative sip from the bottle.

“That’s what we’re here for.” Grigor snickered. He aimed his light behind him to read the headstone. “Here lies the faithless Adam Paul. He’s dead and buried and with the Lord. One wife to many and died in a brawl.” Grigor grinned.

“Hey, they spelt ‘to’ wrong. Isn’t it supposed to have two ‘o’s’?”

“Yeah, good to know you paid attention in English, but look at the date.” He shone the flashlight lower. “1720 to 1748. Twenty-eight. He was a young’un.”

“Shoulda kept his pecker in his pants then.” Mal agreed.

Grigor got up and walked to the next headstone. It held nothing of interest and he moved on. Mal followed him.

“This is boring.” Mal complained as they hunted for more entertaining headstones. “I thought graveyards were supposed to be, you know, haunted or something.”

“They are. I saw a thing on PBS one night? This guy, he left a tape recorder turned on in the middle of a graveyard and when he replayed it, he could hear voices on the tape.”

“That’s bullshit, man.” Mal said from behind him. “Some asshole probably spoke into it.”

Grigor shook his head. “Nope, he had a video camera hidden so he could watch.” He put the flashlight under his chin and turned slowly towards his friend. “No-one showed up. Only the voices of lost souls.” He intoned.

He saw the glimmer of light in Mal’s wide eyes.

“You are shittin’ me.” Mal’s voice quavered and he slurped down a mouthful.

“Nah. Scared the spit outta me when I heard those voices. They played the actual tape.” He clicked off the flashlight and whispered, “help me, help me. I’m lossst and I don’t know where I am…”

“Cut it out.”

He turned the light on and shrugged. “Just telling you what the voices said.”

“Can’t be true.” Mal muttered and took a swig of Jack.

“You don’t believe in ghosts?” Grigor asked and continued to wander though the headstones.

“Nah, s’all made up, isn’ it. I mean there ain’t no proof.”

Grigor thought Mal was trying to convince himself, that he was trying to be strong, cynical, manly. Through the gloom, he saw a low stone-built structure and smiled.

“Huh. Goober thought so too.” He sneered.

“Goober. Wasn’ he the guy who dis’ppear’d las’ year?”

Mal, Grigor thought, was getting well and truly pissed. In a show of solidarity, he sipped his wine again.

“Yeah, homeless guy who ran around screaming about the end of the world and the dead rising and stuff. Man, he was weird.” Grigor remembered the man, unwashed with food stuck in his black beard, smelly, a feral gleam in his gold-coloured eyes, ratty clothes.

Mal chuckled in response. “Guy was a nut job. Disgustin’ ol’ scrote. Prob’ly lyin’ in a ditch somew’re.”

“Could be, Mal, could be.” The beam of the flashlight lit up the stone door of the crypt. He turned back to Mal. “Whaddya think?” He leaned into Mal. “Wanna look and tell ghost stories to each other?”

Mal giggled. “You can’t scare me, Grigs. I betcha ya can’t.”

Grigor’s grin was lopsided. “How much?”

“Wha’?”

“How much do you bet I can scare the tripe outta yah? Make ya squeal like a girl?”

Mal punched his arm. “You caint. I ain’t ‘fraid of no dead house.”

“Crypt, Mal, it’s a crypt.”

“I bet there’re lots of skel’tons in there, rottin’ corpses, dead, stinkin’ zombies with hollowed out eyes jus’ waiting to suck ya brains out through your nose or somethin’.”

Mal was grinning like an idiot, slurping down his drink.

“Car’n ya wuss, let’s do it.” Grigor smirked with conspiratorial glee.

They both all but ran to the door, pushing and shoving each other.

In front of the stone edifice they paused, saw the metal-wrought handle with the bar keeping the door shut and grinned at each other.

“You do it.” Grigor nudged Mal.

“No, you do it.” Mal nudged back.

“No, you.” Grigor nudged him harder and Mal stumbled.

“It was your idea, you do it.” Mal thumped him again with his fist.

“Girl.” Grigor sneered and walked up to the door, the light firmly on the ornate area. He pulled the bar from the handle.

“Bitch.” Mal sneered and reached out for the lever, ready to push it down.

Grigor stepped aside, held the light firm on Mal’s white knuckles as he lowered the handle. He paused for a moment, then pushed.

Stone ground against stone as the door moved inwards.

“Holy Hell!” Mal coughed and turned his head. “What a stink!” With his other hand, he lifted the bottle, now almost empty, and took a swig. He covered his nose for a moment then looked back at Grigor with an impish smile. “C’mon, girlfriend, let’s party!”

Inside the crypt was dark. No, Grigor thought, not simply dark, but black. The black only the blind could know, but he didn’t bring up the light as he stood in the doorway. The smell was appalling. It stank, as Mal had said, of rotting corpses.

Mal was ahead of him, feeling his way over the cold covers of the sarcophagi, no doubt looking for a place to sit. “Shine the light, Grigs.” Mal called. “I wanna see.”

Grigor heard Mal’s trainers shuffling across the stone floor. Everything in here was stone or metal, except for one thing.

The blood in his veins iced over as he heard another, slower scrape against stone to the left of his friend. His heart began to race as he realised Mal, in his drunken state, hadn’t heard the other noise.

He couldn’t utter a sound, but still didn’t bring the light to bear. Instead he backed up, grabbed the handle of the door and pulled with all his might to close it. The steel bar leaned up against the wall. He picked up and jammed it under the door handle and door jamb. Then he back away.

He couldn’t hear Mal, but could imagine the complaints, the slowly rising voice, the shouts. He wiped his mouth and swallowed. He could clearly see in his mind the panic on Mal’s face as he realised he’d been locked in. Then Mal would hear the noise behind him and begin screaming. Probably like a hysterical girl.

Grigor back up further and lifted the light to the top of the door.

How his great, great, whatever grandfather, managed to become the living dead, he didn’t know; nor did his father, nor grandfather. Both men spoke of the man in fearful, sick and sorry tones. All he knew was that Grigor the first needed to be fed every year on this night, at this time – midnight - and it was his progeny who bore the burden of providing the meal - however that happened, or have the creature come after them.

Last year was Grigor’s first time; the homeless man.

When his breathing settled back into something resembling normal, Grigor walked back out of the graveyard, checking over his shoulder ever ten seconds. His father was waiting. His father had waited last year, too.

Without a word, Grigor the fourth clapped a hand on Grigor the fifth’s shoulder and guided him to the waiting limousine.

Once enclosed in the comfort of luxury, Grigor drank down the rest of the wine. “How many more?” He asked hoarsely.

“Until he is satisfied.” His father murmured and indicated the driver to move on.

© Jaye Patrick 2006