Revival House (20 page)

“Listen,” I say, swallowing the last of the doughnut in my mouth, wiping my fingers on a napkin as I explain. “I want her back just as much as you do.” I pause for a second, swallowing again. “Well, okay, almost as much as you do. But, see, I’m not emotionally attached. To me, she’s a giant rat. And I can always get more rats.”

He snorts and scowls at me.

I shrug.

Yes, some may describe me as a cold son-of-a-bitch these days, but that’s what makes me a great scientist. I thought Caleb, a funeral director, for Christ’s sake, would be the first to understand my detachment. But, he’s actually crying over the loss of this girl. I don’t understand his ‘feelings.’

That said, we do have to find her. I need to find out what’s working and what’s not. I want to know if she can talk and understand. I mean, like I said before, I don’t think she’d be able to, but the procedure we used is highly experimental, so, you never know. She could be doing calculus and speaking Mandarin for all I know.

The ring of the telephone slices through the silence. He gets up to answer.

“Hello? I mean, Exley & Sons.”

Waiting. His eyes dart around the kitchen from the table to the counter to the sink. He slides down the wall and crouches on the floor.

“I see,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and index finger. “Yes.” His hand covers his forehead and his lips draw downward into a tight grimace. “Okay, yes. I’ll, um, I’ll have to get back to you... Five days...? Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” He punches a button and lays the phone on the white laminate counter. His hands cover his eyes.

I stare at him until he removes his hands from his face and looks at me.

“It’s, um, my aunt. She’s having some heart problems.” He looks at the floor in front of him. “She needs some kind of bypass, and she has insurance, but it won’t cover the whole bill.” He snorts. “They’re taking her to the hospital next week.”

Whatever. She’s just another distraction I’m going to have to tear him away from.

Spying a gnat buzzing around my hand, I wave it away toward the spot where Caleb cowers.

“Hey, let’s go. I’ll help you look for your heart-of-hearts, the love of your sad little life.” I laugh.

He frowns.

We trudge out the kitchen door and head for the park.

Chapter 42 – Caleb

Jogging down the block, I trip on a tree root sticking up out of the sidewalk. I don’t fall but I thrust my arms out to the side and mutter an expletive. Avery laughs, coughing out short blasts of cigarette smoke.

My mind reels with thoughts of Scarlet. Where could she be? Was she the being Four and his group saw in the tunnel? Why would she go there, how would she know how to get down there? Is she remembering?

Too many questions spin around the inside of my head as I hop the curb and step into the park. It’s dark and empty. The fountain emits a greenish-blue glow, turning the leaking Spanish moss into great globs of alien hair. I spin my head in all directions, leaning on a bench.

Would she know me? Would she remember my name, or that she’d broken my heart? Would she confuse me with Avery, remembering that she loved him even though he totally used her?

A lump of rags moves in the shadows on the opposite side of the fountain, headed away from me, toward the other side of the park. I lope in its wake, catching up. Avery stays behind, acting like he doesn’t care.

He probably doesn’t.

I approach the swaying colorless bundle, pulling even with it, stepping just ahead.

I turn to look into the creature’s face.

It’s not her. My heart sinks.

It’s a man. A black man with gaps surrounding two gold teeth. He smells like alcohol.

“What the hell you want, boy? Gimme some money,” he says, holding out a hand swathed in a tattered glove of undeterminable color.

“Sorry,” I say scanning the expansive lawns to my right. “I thought you were someone else.” I take a few steps in the opposite direction of the empty field, down the blacktop path, toward Monterey Square.

“I am someone else,” the bum yells after me, “someone who needs some money.”

I turn in slow motion, consider his pathetic silhouette, and start back in his direction.

Helium...

He grins as I step closer, thinking I’m going to give him something.

I give him something all right.

A shadow passes over his soot-colored face and his round eyes clench in a confused squint.

Then I knock his two gold teeth— his mini-grill— right down his throat, cutting my already scabbed knuckles in the process.

Avery stares at the ground in the half-light. No time to fuck around explaining myself to him.

Scarlet.

Is she scared? Is she a wild animal? Is she scaring other people, sending them running to the police? Oh, that bitch. Where is she?

After walking blocks and blocks, we turn into the old Colonial Cemetery. Well, we try to. It’s after dusk, so the front gate is locked. Without drawing attention to ourselves (the police station is at the far end of the block), we follow the wrought iron fence behind a small crypt and vault over into the graveyard. The few cars passing by on Liberty rumble in the distance. Patches of fog cover the ground, just like in one of those old-fashioned poorly made horror films. We creep to the front of the crypt and peer around at the shadowy headstones. This is where Scarlet always started her tours. I thought maybe she’d be here. I’m wrong. There’s no one, nothing around except for old tombstones and mausoleums.

Shit.

One more place.

We tiptoe to the back corner of the cemetery to a small broken down Savannah brick crypt. The door is shut but not locked. This is an access point to the tunnel system, usually used by Scarlet and her tour company. The squeal of the ancient door’s hinges pierces my skull and I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping no one hears the metallic wail. Avery and I slip inside the dusty little building, ignoring the moldy smell and the moss covered wooden boxes that line the walls. I slink down the narrow concrete staircase at the back of the crypt. I hold my cigarette lighter out in front of me until the little wheel gets hot and scorches my thumb. I feel my way along the damp stone wall in total darkness, hoping to bump into a cold half-dead version of my ideal mate.

Avery stayed up in the crypt. Bastard, I think he has a flashlight.

I slide along the wall feeling only the slippery stone beneath my long fingers. Pale light ahead guides me into another of the city’s Dead Houses, with the same misshapen eye of a skylight overhead. I can make out the outline of a stone slab in the middle of the room, what must be a sink against the left-hand wall.

And, on the other side of the room, in the shadows of the continuation of the tunnel, a familiar womanly shape.

At the sight of me, she utters a guttural ‘aahuugh’ and skitters off down the tunnel.

“Wait! Scarlet, please, it’s only me,” I yell after her, my voice bouncing off the walls. I stumble into the corner of the slab, bruising my hip bone, running to catch up. I run down the tunnel, following the echoing slap of her footsteps.

And, in the pitch black, I run into a wall.

It’s a T-shaped junction and I’ve lost her.

Hot copper runs onto my lips from my yet-again broken nose and I’m left in the damp darkness.

Chapter 43 – Four

“Glad to meet ya,” the dude from American Ghost Hunters grips my hand and pumps it, squeezing, showing me who’s boss. “Hey, I love your Silver Surfer T— where’d you get it?”

“I—” He looks away from me.

“Hey, Rob, get the lights from the van, okay?” Boo Larsen says, totally cutting off my Silver Surfer answer. “Maya, sweetie, find me an Evian, would you?” He tips the cute young blonde production assistant a lascivious wink that makes even me blush. I stand scratching my head, waiting for him to turn his attention back to me and the Collins kid.

“Wow, this park never fails to totally enchant me, you know?” Boo says in a heavy Yankee accent that I can’t place. “The last time we were here, I knew there had to be something going on in the tunnels. They weren’t open yet, though, and the city wouldn’t let us go down there.” He snorts. “Something about insurance or some lame-ass thing.” I think he actually flexes his arms and back. For whose benefit, I don’t know, since his little sugar-pie has gone off in search of Precious’s imported water.

I hate this guy. He smells like cologne and sweat.

“So,” Boo turns to the Collins kid, “tell me again what happened and where you were, all that stuff.” He pretends to listen. For a second. “Rob, get a camera rolling on this, okay, dude?” Collins gets two words out when Boo steps in front of the kid. “Okay, wait,” he says to Rob as much as to us, “I’m gonna do my piece first, okay? This humidity...” He waves his hands around his head and face. He taps the top of his head to make sure his hair is still spiked in a ridiculous faux-hawk. Rob rolls his eyes and heads to the van for his equipment.

We wait, basking in the glow of Boo’s orange make-up and professionally whitened, and possibly filed, teeth. Rotund Rob stumbles over, huffing and coughing, carrying a tripod and a heavy-looking silver case. There’s another guy in the van, lounging in the passenger seat with his feet up on the dash, but he doesn’t do anything to help Rob. I learn that he is the second camera operator. I wonder why he’s not helping, but, what do I care? Blondie comes back with Boo’s bottle of water, gazing up at him as if he’s Apollo or some shit. I study my grubby nails, feel the hole in the pocket of my shorts, gaze down at my red Chucks. After much cussing and adjusting, Rob declares he’s ready to shoot.

“Okay, get out of my shot,” Boo tells Blondie. Nice guy. “Take one,” he says into the camera. “We’re going to film all my questions and reaction shots first, you know, before I melt,” he says to Collins and me, “and then you’ll get to talk about what happened. Got it?” He nods his head, Collins and I do the same. I don’t know why they don’t just use two cameras, one pointed at Boo, the other at Collins and me. But, I’m not a television professional, so I just stand there watching Boo. That other camera guy, Tom, sits in the van, smoking a fatty, singing along to some song I don’t recognize.

“Rob, how do I look, man?” Boo touches the spikes of his hair, smoothes the sleeves of his black T-shirt, winks again at the blonde.

Rob grunts. “Great, dude, you look awesome.” Rob yells to the guy in the van. “Hey, Tom.” Tom can’t hear him over the radio. “Asswipe! Cut the radio, man.” Tom turns his head toward Rob, shouting that he can’t hear him. Rob gives him the cut signal, drawing an index finger across his throat. The music stops as does the off-key singing. “Okay, go for it, man,” Rob says to Boo.

“Okay, we’re here in Savannah, Georgia, investigating the darker side of this beautiful picture postcard town. If you remember, we were here once before, and we found some righteous evidence of paranormal activity. Savannah, the most haunted city in America, has recently reopened its subterranean tunnel system, and some strange stuff has been happening. This promises to be one wild ride, guys. This is Brett Collins and Four Mercer. Four runs a ghost tour here in Savannah. His tours explore the, um, the um, what? I just said it, but it’s gone.” Boo touches his forehead and flips his hand away into the air. Rob pops up behind the camera and rolls his eyes.

“The tunnels underneath the city,” Blondie says over her paperless clipboard.

“Savannah take two,” Boo says into the camera. “This is Brett Collins and this is Four, um, Merchant.”

“It’s Mercer,” Rob shouts. “Take three, dude.”

And so it goes until take six, when Boo finally gets everything right, from our names to the concerned and unbelieving looks straight into the camera’s eye. Then it’s Brett Collins’s turn.

“Well, I was, like, on this dude’s tour, you know,” Brett says to Boo, who’s not even listening, “when someone or something scratched my arm?” He holds him arm up to an electronic audience of one, showing the pink faded lines of a mostly-healed injury. “After I got scratched, me and the whole tour group got the hell out of the tunnel, you know? Dude here, like, ran ahead, trying to see whatever got me.”

Then it was my turn. I told the same story as Collins, only, way better.

“We went down to the old morgue which is located in the tunnel, between Forsyth Park and the spooky old Candler Hospital. Everything was cold and dark, everyone was a little creeped out. I was telling my group about the history of the morgue— known as the Dead House— when we heard this, this yelp come from the back of the pack, you know, kind of in the mouth of the tunnel, farthest from where I was standing.” I continue talking to the production assistant, who remains off-camera and just stands there, looking up at the trees, so I have something to look at while I’m talking. I have to imagine that Boo is there, nodding his head at me, concentrating on what I’m saying like it’s the most important thing since people discovered Area 51 exists or something. Oh, well. I try to be dramatic anyway— I’ve always wanted to be on TV.