Suspenseful Tales (2011) Read online

  "What page are you on?" she said.

  He cleared his throat. "Well, lately, I've been doing some outlining, working out some of the fuzzy story elements. You know how I write. I need to have a clear sense of direction before I move forward."

  "You've been outlining for months. Your deadline is only three months away, Andrew." "I know my deadline. You don't have to remind me."

  "Right, but like you said, I know how you write. You always do several drafts before you're finished, and you haven't completed a first draft yet. I'm worried about you." Her big brown eyes reflected genuine concern.

  Andrew idly stirred the straw in his tea. Her pointed questions and insightful comments touched him--and annoyed him, too. For many years, he'd longed for a relationship with a woman like her: she was smart, ambitious, loving, pretty. She admired his talent for spinning tales and supported his writing career not for the money and fame it brought him, but because she understood that writing was his labor of love. She wanted him to do well, and he loved her for it.

  But sometimes, he wanted her to back off and let him be a neurotic writer--with all the loopy work habits, unpredictable creative impulses, and paralyzing bouts of angst that came with the role.

  "It's fine," he said. "The book is coming to me slowly. It works that way sometimes."

  Her lips curled. She didn't believe him; worse was that he didn't believe himself.

  The book was not merely coming to him slowly. It was not coming to him at all. This book, his second novel, was like an headstrong dog that refused to be cajoled or punished into obedience. The more he pressed and teased, the more it resisted. It was maddening.

  It hadn't been that way with his first novel, "Ghostwriter." He had written "Ghostwriter" in a searing creative heat, burning through five hundred pages in only seven months. And it was good. The first agent he queried wanted it; the first publisher they sent it to bought it, plunking down a six-figure advance that enabled him to quit his day job as a programmer. Books by black authors were hot, and industry people were calling him "The African-American Stephen King," a derivative label that he despised but tolerated because it gave the marketing people an effective handle. Film rights were sold for a hundred grand; lucrative foreign rights sales to eight countries followed soon afterward. The book had been flying off the shelves since it had hit stores five months ago. Readers were asking for the next book. His editor was ready for the next book. So was his agent. Add his girlfriend to the list, too.

  But no one was as ready for the next book as he was--and he couldn't write it. Writer's block, which he had long believed was a myth made up by wanna-be authors who'd never finish anything anyway, had fallen like a crushing brick onto his hands, rendering them numb and useless. Each morning, he sat at his brand-new Dell computer, a bright and painfully blank screen staring back at him, and after an hour of fitful typing and story outlining that led nowhere, he'd log onto the Internet and spend the rest of the day surfing the web under an alias so none of his online writer-buddies could ask him what he was doing, shouldn't he be working on the next book--

  "Did you hear me, Drew?"

  He blinked. "Sorry, I spaced out. What did you say?"

  "I said, you need inspiration. Something to get your creative juices flowing."

  "Maybe I could start drinking. It's worked for some writers." He chuckled.

  She didn't laugh. In the past, she would've found humor in such a joke. He wondered if she didn't laugh then because she worried that he just might take up the bottle to loosen up his creative muscles.

  "I was thinking about you immersing yourself in a place that fits the stuff you write about," she said. "Somewhere scary."

  "Like your parents' house?"

  That time, she did laugh. "Oh, you've got jokes now, don't you? No, silly, I mean, you write about ghosts, haunted houses, stuff like that. Why not go somewhere creepy?"

  "Go to a haunted house?"

  Her eyes widened as if she'd had a revelation. "The cemetery. At night!"

  He laughed and shook his head. "I know which one you're talking about. Girl, you are crazy. "

  "It's the perfect place," she said. "And it's so close. You wouldn't even need to drive--

  "Ain't no way in hell I'm walking around a graveyard at night, Danita."

  She grinned. "See? That's why I know it would inspire you--because the very idea scares you. It'll put you back in the mindset you need to write your book."

  "You're a better lawyer than you are a psychologist." He sipped the iced tea, then grabbed a tortilla chip and scooped a gob of salsa. His appetite had returned in a rush.

  "Make jokes if you want, you know I'm right," she said. "Try going to the cemetery for only one night, Drew. I know it'll help you beat your writer's block. I can feel it."

  "Okay, I'll think about it," he said, which was his way of signaling that it was time to change the subject. Danita and her crazy ideas. Why in the hell would he want to creep around a graveyard at night? What would be next--visiting haunted houses? Participating in seances? Simply because he wrote about such things didn't mean he wanted to experience them first-hand. He didn't need to. His own imagination, nourished over the years with a steady diet of horror flicks, novels, and the nightly news, supplied all the details and inspiration he needed for a tale of terror. . . yet, what had it done for him lately? He had been fiddling with the novel for ten fruitless months. The deadline thundered toward him, like an unstoppable train. He could request an extension, but an extra three months would mean nothing if he didn't defeat his block. He had to do something drastic to rekindle his creativity.

  By the time they finished lunch, without mentioning her idea again, he reluctantly

  decided that Danita was right. He would visit the cemetery.

  Tonight.

  * * *

  After his agent sold movie rights for "Ghostwriter," Andrew moved out of his apartment in Atlanta and purchased a stylish, two-bedroom condo in the suburb of Marietta. The condominium community was located next to Magnolia Memorial Cemetery. He hadn't minded because the condo was great and he got an awesome deal. He found it oddly fitting that a horror writer would live next to a cemetery, too. In fact, an area newspaper had mentioned it when they interviewed him: "Local Horror Writer Finds Inspiration In His Backyard."

  Of course, he'd never so much as set foot in the cemetery. Why? No one he knew was buried there. The idea of living near a graveyard was more morbidly attractive than the reality.

  The reality was that wandering into the cemetery, at night, scared the shit out of him. He couldn't explain it; it was a primitive fear that seemed to be biologically wired into him, the same way an irrational fear of the dark affected some people. Was there a psychological term for graveyard phobia?

  An hour before midnight, after spending yet another evening meandering at his keyboard, Andrew stood beside his Nissan Pathfinder. He wore a light jacket and gripped a yellow flashlight. In front of him lay the deep, dark forest. Beyond the woods--the cemetery.

  Looking out there, he shivered, and his chill had nothing to do with the cool March breeze that swept across the parking lot.

  A pale, full moon gazed down at him from the night sky. His mind, so attuned to the ominous meanings of full moons, dark forests, and graveyards, churned out a carnival of nightmarish images: hulking werewolves creeping through the forest, stalking their prey; rotted corpses struggling out of the earth, moaning with inhuman need; phantoms drifting like smoke across headstones . . .

  "Okay, cut it out," he said. "Go in there, walk around for a few minutes, and come home. Save the macabre imagery for the book."

  Heart thrumming, he entered the forest.

  Viewed from the lighted parking lot, the woods had appeared to be dark. But when Andrew actually stepped into the forest, it seemed to be much darker, as if light could not penetrate the area.

  He resisted his immediate compulsion to flick on the flashlight. Artificial light would ruin the mood. The whole point
of this creative exercise was to help him tap into the spirit of the night, if there was such a thing. The flashlight was for an emergency only.

  He crept through the undergrowth, grass crunching underneath his boots. Leaves brushed against his face, and twigs poked him like probing fingers. The darkness was alive with the sounds of nocturnal creatures: crickets, owls, and who knows what else. There were things out there he couldn't begin to identify.

  He didn't change direction; he walked in a purposefully straight line. The cemetery lay ahead, bathed in soft moonlight and shrouded in mist.

  As he moved to step out of the woods, a length of barbed wire snagged his jeans.

  "Shit." Stepping back, he tore the denim loose from the wire. There goes a pair of good jeans. He noticed, concealed in the shrubbery at the edge of the forest, a low, barbed- wire fence that seemed to run the entire length of the woods on this side. Was it there to keep the forest-dwelling creatures out of the cemetery? Or . . . was it there to keep something in the graveyard out of the forest?

  He laughed at himself. Danita had been right. This little jaunt was filling his head with all kinds of strange ideas.

  He leaped over the fence and into the cemetery. Soupy fog, faintly aglow with moonlight, enveloped the grounds. He saw, on his left, a huge mound of dirt, like a man-made hill. Ahead, he made out countless graves, most of them marked by footstones on which stood metallic tubes filled with sprays of flowers, several others by tombstones, fewer still by large monuments. The funeral home lay in the distance, barely visible through the mist.

  Silence cloaked the night, as if the fog absorbed all sound. He could hear his heartbeat pounding.

  "Alright," he said to himself. "Walk around for a few, soak up some atmosphere, then go home. That's all I need to do."

  He began walking. The churning fog seemed to thicken as he moved. He was tempted to turn on the flashlight again, but he decided against it. Certainly, a caretaker patrolled these grounds at night. A light shining in the darkness would be a dead giveaway of an intruder. He could imagine how he'd explain why he was there. "Well, I'm a horror writer, mister. I came here seeking inspiration for my novel. My name is Andrew Graves. Graves is roaming the graveyard. Pretty funny, huh--"

  Wrapped in mist and his amusing thoughts of what he'd tell the caretaker, he didn't see the dark pit yawning ahead of him. His feet plunged into the emptiness, and he was taken by such surprise that he screamed as he fell to the bottom of the hole.

  Except it was not an ordinary hole. It was a freshly dug grave.

  * * *

  "Hey, are you okay down there?"

  Lying on his side on the hard, damp earth, spinning in a world of pain, Andrew thought he imagined the voice. It was a woman's voice--soft, musical, soothing. Like something out of a dream.

  "Hello?" she called again. "If you're conscious, please say something."

  "I'm here," he said, shakily. He sat up, winced as pain snapped through his shoulder. He didn't think he had broken any bones, and though his shoulder ached, he doubted that it was dislocated. He'd suffered a dislocated shoulder when playing high-school football, and this pain was not nearly as bad as that had been. Falling into the grave had only rattled him.

  He looked up. The woman's face, a featureless black oval, peered at him over the lip of the plot.

  "Can you stand?" she said. "Give me your hands and I'll help you climb out of there."

  "Okay." Who was this woman? The caretaker? She sounded young. For some reason, he assumed that anyone who served as caretaker in a cemetery would be old, grizzled--and only a couple steps away from the graves over which they presided.

  He stuffed the flashlight into his jacket pocket, and struggled to his feet. The hole was six-feet deep; the edge was a couple of inches above his head.

  The woman's hands seemed to float toward him, as if they belonged to a spirit reaching for him through the mist. His heart clutched . . . and when he moved closer, he saw, clearly, that her hands were not the hands of a ghost, but in fact were the color of caramel, and certainly belonged to a young woman. A young black woman working as a cemetery caretaker? Well, anything was possible.

  He grasped her hands--her soft, warm skin sent an unexpected thrill through his spine-- and she pulled him up. He worried that he'd be too heavy for her, but she tugged him upward with ease. Standing, he knocked mud off his clothes.

  The woman was a few inches shorter than him, with a slim build, wrapped in a knee-length, silvery jacket. Her dark hair spilled to her shoulders. In the darkness, he couldn't see much of her face.

  "Thanks," he said. "Don't ask me how I fell in there. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going."

  She shook a cigarette out of a pack and struck a match. When she brought the flame near her face, his heart missed a beat. This woman was absolutely gorgeous.

  She seemed oblivious to his momentary astonishment. Slowly, she took a draw from her cigarette. "I wasn't going to ask you how you fell in there. I was going to ask you what you're doing here."

  "Do you work here?" he said.

  She laughed--a low, throaty chuckle. "I asked the first question."

  "So you did," he said. He motioned behind him. "I live in a condo back there. I'm a writer and . . . uh, well, I guess I was looking for some inspiration."

  "Why would you of all people need to visit a cemetery for inspiration? Andrew Graves, the best damn horror writer of the decade?"

  When she noticed the surprise on his face, she laughed again. She took his hand.

  "Come with me, sweetie," she said. "We've got some things to talk about."

  Okay, this could be the plotline for a story, he thought. A horror writer hobbled with writer's block wanders into a nearby graveyard seeking inspiration. He foolishly falls into an empty grave. He's rescued by a beautiful woman who thinks he's brilliant.

  But then what happens?

  Feeling like a hapless character in one of his own tales, Andrew followed her.

  * * *

  Perhaps a dozen yards away from the empty grave into which he had plunged, a black granite, sarcophagus-style tomb lay, standing about six feet high, like a coffin for a giant. The woman climbed on top and invited him to join her. There, as if in the midst of a graveyard picnic, she had spread a blanket on which stood a bottle of Merlot, a wine glass, a leather-bound notebook, and a shiny Waterford pen.

  Her name was Alexandria. She did not work at the cemetery. She was a writer, she said, and the serene solitude that one found in a graveyard, at night, allowed her creativity to flourish.

  He realized that many writers were eccentric, but he had never heard of a writer seeking out a cemetery as the ideal place in which to create. It was bizarre--morbid, really.

  He would've made up an excuse to leave, but he stayed in her company for three reasons: for one, she claimed to be a huge fan of his novel, and he needed an ego boost. Secondly- -he felt an instant and profound chemistry with her that had nothing to do with her looks. Thirdly--well, she was heart achingly beautiful. He made his living with words, and he could not describe the startling impact that her beauty had upon him. Although he loved his girlfriend, when he looked at Alexandria, he found it hard to remember what Danita even looked like.

  He had never been under a magic spell, but it must have felt exactly like this.

  "I've read your book three times," Alexandria said. "You are so talented, amazingly so. Why would you need to come here for inspiration? That sort of thing is reserved for amateurs like me." She laughed, took another draw of her cigarette.

  Ordinarily, he didn't like to be around smoke, but her smoking didn't bother him. In a strange way, it contributed to her appeal, as though she were a film star from decades ago when famous actresses smoked and it was considered glamorous, sexy. Alexandria had an air of gracefulness and sophistication that recalled those fabled silver screen goddesses.

  And she had read his book three times! Now that was flattering--after completing the book, he hadn't eve
n wanted to read it once.

  "The first novel came very easily," he said. "Maybe too easily. I got spoiled. Writing this second book is like being thrown in a tub of cold water--having to face the reality that writing isn't always easy. It's work."

  "You're damn right it's work." She tapped her leather-bound notebook. "I've been working on this novel for two years, and I'm nowhere near done."

  "What's the title of your book?" he said.

  " 'A Midnight Haunting,' " she said. "It's a ghost story, and a love story, all wrapped up into one wondrous, gothic tale."

  "Sounds interesting. I'd like to read it when you finish."

  "If I ever finish. When I'm most frustrated with it, I think of hiring a ghost writer to complete the writing for me. I simply want to be done with it! But I doubt I could ever do that. A ghost writer would have to be utterly filled with my spirit to do any justice to the story. Know what I mean?" "Definitely. Our work can be so close to us that we have to write it ourselves."

  "My only wish is to complete the novel before I die--and if I die before I'm done, then I'd want to have my ghost writer finish the tale. But I like to think that I have a full life ahead of me, and that I have plenty of time. I don't have a contractual deadline like you do."

  When she saw him frown, she giggled and said, "Oh, sorry. I'm sure you didn't want to be reminded."

  "That's okay, really." He sighed, looked around. Although fog rolled across the earth, and the night was as dark as ever, the graveyard did not seem quite as forbidding as before. "You know, I've never hung out at a cemetery. How long do you usually stay here?"

  "Until I'm ready to leave." She refilled her wine glass. "I didn't bring another glass since I wasn't expecting a guest. Would you like some?"

  "Sure." She was a relative stranger to him, and here they were drinking from the same glass. He and Danita had not drunk out of the same cup until after they had been dating for a month, at least.

  He sipped the wine. It was a dry, yet smooth Merlot; delicious warmth spread across his chest. As he reeled in the wine's taste, Alexandria unloosened the belt straps of her jacket, then pulled down the zipper, too. She shrugged out of the coat.