Chapter Twenty-Six

Six Feet Under

THE DRIVE TO the cemetery was far shorter than Vincent anticipated. Every road ended too soon, every red light was too brief, and every green light was too long until he was only minutes away from Greenwood Cemetery. He wanted to know the truth and figure out exactly what was going on, but at the same time, some possibilities were far too terrible to even imagine. He couldn’t shake the fear that, unlikely as it was, Sam could be right, and if James was actually in that casket as his father had claimed, then who the hell had he lain beside in bed for the past month and a half?

He’d know the truth soon enough. He just hoped this didn’t unearth more questions than answers.

Sam was too pensive to read. In the rare instances when he found himself at a stop sign or a red light, he looked over at her. She looked out of the passenger’s side window, hands in her lap, the fingers of her right hand twisting a ring on the pointer finger of her left in a rhythmic, unconscious manner. Vincent had never noticed the ring before now. Had Tyler given it to her, or perhaps James? Half of James’s belongings were gifts he’d acquired from Sam over the course of their friendship, so there was no way to know for sure.

A few streets away from the cemetery, the streetlight turned yellow as they approached. Vincent slammed on the brakes, grateful for a little more time. The beige van behind them skidded to a stop. Sam jolted from her trance and shot him a look that informed him he had little room to comment on her driving from this point forward.

“Sorry.” He checked the rearview mirror.

Surprisingly, even though their vehicles had to be less than a foot away from each other, the driver of the van didn’t honk. The windshield was tinted, and he squinted his eyes, trying to get a good look at the two shadowed faces inside. He could have sworn tinted windshields were illegal, but he had seen an SUV with one as well when he’d left the hospital.

The light changed, and the faces inside the van were illuminated in the green light. Tillman in the driver’s seat, and Ralbovsky beside her.

What the fuck?

He couldn’t do more than stare at them. He’d only managed to tear his gaze from the rearview mirror when Ralbovsky made eye contact with him.

“Green means go,” Sam said, pointing at the light.

Vincent stepped on the pedal, and they lurched forward. The air in the car felt stale and warm as he tried to force it into his lungs. He rolled down his window to let the wind hit his face, but it did little more than fill his ears with frantic whooshing sounds. They were following him, and he had nothing except questions. How long had this been going on? What had motivated them to start, and, more importantly, what had they seen?

At the next street, he was supposed to turn right, but he continued straight.

“I think you missed a turn there,” Sam said. “Hello?”

Her waving hand appeared in front of his face, and he batted it away. “I know I missed the turn.”

“Then—what the hell is going on? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“The detectives. The ones who are investigating the attack. They’re in the van behind us.” He forced himself to focus on the road.

“What?” Sam turned around in her seat.

“Don’t look back! Pretend you didn’t see them!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her face forward again.

“Why would they follow you?”

“I have no fucking clue,” he said, but his mind was trying to work through it, piece together all they must know. Depending on how long this had been going on, they might’ve seen him and James staking out the stocky man’s house. Then, they’d know about the murder as well. No wonder they didn’t have time to find their attackers. They were too busy following him.

At the next light, he made a quick turn without signaling, and the van followed. “Fuck.”

“What should we do?”

“I don’t know, but we can’t go to the cemetery with them on our asses.”

“I mean, I got that much.”

Vincent needed a plan. He couldn’t drive in circles forever, and he couldn’t exactly lose anyone in Sam’s white Beetle. What he didn’t understand was why they hadn’t already arrested him yet. Why leave him all these messages when they knew exactly where he was and what he’d done?

Unless they hadn’t seen the worst of it. Maybe they didn’t know Vincent and James were at the motel until he’d answered Tillman’s call in the bathroom, or they’d followed Sam. Those possibilities were far too good to be true. The detectives were probably still collecting information, and they didn’t want him to know they were following him until they got what they needed to put James and him away.

Sam kept an eye on them in the side mirror. “Got any ideas?”

“Working on it,” he said.

The only thing he could think to do was call their bluff. Pull in somewhere, park, and see if they followed him. They might have seen everything they needed to in order to arrest him, but they hadn’t tried to pull him over yet. Even if they were just waiting for him to stop, he’d rather they arrest him now than force him to keep wondering when they’d do it. Plus, if they backed off, he might be able to get to the cemetery before they knew where he and Sam went.

Vincent explained the plan to Sam. He hoped she’d tell him there was a much better way to go about it, but she just said, “I don’t know what else we can do.”

Vincent made a U-turn at the light and started toward Wine & Spirits—one of the few businesses he knew was out this way. Naturally, the van followed behind him. After a few more turns in which the van kept on them, the white sign came into view down the road on the left.

When he approached it, he put on his turn signal and slowed to a stop to wait for the opposing traffic to pass. He watched the van in his side mirror, his turn signal lighting up the front of it in brief flashes. A camera going off, capturing each second that seemed to expand to lifetimes as he waited for their turn signal to join his. A car drove past, and without another in sight, he turned left into the parking lot, watching the van behind him so intently he almost hit an old political sign that was stuck in the grass alongside the road.

The van remained in the street. Like they were deciding on whether to join them. Beads of sweat trickled down Vincent’s back. Just drive away. Then, the van started moving again. Too slow for Tillman to have done more than let her foot off the brake. The van continued down the street, rolling out of sight. He blinked his eyes to ensure he hadn’t imagined it—he didn’t think his plan would actually work, but it had.

“They’re gone,” he said, almost laughing with excitement.

“Let’s get to the cemetery before they come back.”

He turned around in the parking lot, and, once the van’s taillights had disappeared down the street, he made his way to the cemetery. This time, he thanked every green light they hit. Leaving a white Beetle on the side of the road would be a clear indication of where they were if the detectives came across it, but that couldn’t be helped. He only hoped they got their answers before the detectives found them—if they found them. He didn’t know whether he was ready to see who, if anyone, was in that casket, but never knowing was a far worse possibility.

Sam cleared her throat. “Do you think they know what you and James did?”

He knew what she was actually asking him. Are you afraid they’ll arrest you? That was exactly what he was trying not to think about right now. “Let’s just focus on the task at hand, okay?”

“Sure.”

Before long, they made it to Greenwood Cemetery. Vincent parked on the shoulder, and Sam followed him around the gate and down the road to the path on the left. No cars came down the street this time to force him into the thicket or behind a pillar. The quiet absence of any life was just as unnerving as it was relieving. The graveyard was too quiet. No animals stepping on old leaves or wind whistling through the trees lining the cemetery. No anything beyond rows of gravestones that glowed in the moonlight. The quiet before a storm or some other cliché that didn’t properly convey how strange it was to hear your own breathing and steps so close to downtown Pittsburgh.

As they walked down the trail, he kept waiting for a SWAT team to surround them with assault rifles and demand they get on their hands and knees for the crimes he and James had committed. He’d beg them to just open the damn casket before they carted him off jail, and they would laugh at his poor attempt at an insanity plea.

The thought helped motivate him to move as fast as possible just in case the detectives found Sam’s car sooner rather than later. It was too dark for him to see more than Sam’s bowed head. She seemed to be pretending his slow pace was natural. She shortened her strides and fell back anytime she got too far ahead of him. How strange to focus on such a trivial matter on the way to dig up a grave. He supposed that was the point—better to worry about that than think about what they were actually going to do.

Their destination was the toolshed he’d noticed the last time he’d come to the cemetery. There had to be shovels in it. He’d thought it was locked then, but he hadn’t given it a good look. He could’ve been wrong, or there could be a window they could easily break to get inside.

Vincent passed James’s grave and kept walking toward the shed that was tucked into the corner of the cemetery farther down the path, but the light footsteps behind him faded. He turned around. Sam stood in front of the grave, looking down at the marker.

He went to her side. He couldn’t make out the writing in the dark, but he knew what was written on the marker. Whether or not it was accurate was the question he wanted to be answered. Sam knelt and shone her phone flashlight on the grave. There was an orange cigarette filter set at the base of the marker, stood up on one end as if it had been intentionally placed there. It wasn’t Sam’s brand, and he searched his mind for another visitor before he realized the obvious. Greta. Probably left it there to ensure James knew she’d come to visit him.

Vincent could use a cigarette right about now, but there was no time. Their answers were waiting six feet underground, and it wasn’t going to be easy to dig them up. “We should get moving.”

“Who do you think is down there? If anyone?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He just wanted to dig.

Sam followed him to the toolshed. Same as the previous night, the door was closed, and a silver lock held it shut. Vincent pulled at the handle, hoping the lock would just magically disappear, but it held the door shut. “Shit.”

“Wait.” Sam reached for the lock and twisted it. Whoever had put it on hadn’t actually closed it.

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t, but my mom was always afraid of locking us out of ours, so she just made it look locked. The sight of it is usually enough to deter people.” She took off the lock and opened the door.

He supposed it’d worked on him.

Sam handed him her phone to use the flashlight. He stepped into the toolshed. The smell of dirt and old wood filled his nostrils. A shovel hung on the wall. He handed it out to Sam and searched for another. The next best thing he could find was a trowel in the back with a few other gardening tools. This was going to take a while.

He started out of the door, and Sam stepped inside and put her hand over the light on her phone. Darkness enveloped them.

“Hey,” he started, but Sam shushed him.

He didn’t need to ask why. Footsteps and hushed voices came from the back of the shed. “I’m telling you, man. I heard something.”

“Quit acting so fucking paranoid,” a second voice said.

Both voices were masculine, and he was grateful neither of them matched the detectives, but that still didn’t explain who the hell they were. Groundskeepers? If that was the case, then they’d have the police here in no time. Vincent’s body stiffened. The woodshed was full of things that would surely make a ruckus if he backed into them. The voices were growing louder. They must be coming around the front of the toolshed.

The door was still ajar, and what little light the moon provided crept into the shed through the opening. Vincent wished Sam would just pull it shut, but he knew the sound would give them away just as much as an open door.

“I think there’s still one more hit on this,” the second voice said. “Take it. You need to relax.”

“Fuck you,” the first one said. “That shit is all ash. I’ll start the next one. But I’m telling you, I heard someone. Maybe we should like go back to your house.”

The click of the lighter. The smell of skunk and smoke wafted into the shed. A cough. “And risk Gary catching us? Come on, let’s just go back into the woods. I’m telling you, man, you’re hearing shit.”

“When the fuckin’ Slender Man takes you, I’m telling you I told you so.”

“Nah, you’ll be too busy screaming like a little bitch,” the other said with a hoarse laugh.

There was a response, but Vincent couldn’t make out what was said. They were going back from wherever they came from. Just some potheads. He’d never thought he’d be grateful to smell weed, but he’d take it over groundskeepers or policemen any day. He and Sam waited in the shed for another few minutes before they went back outside. In hushed whispers, they’d agreed to work by the moonlight to avoid bringing any more attention to themselves.

Sam led the way back to the grave. “What if they hear us digging and come back?”

“I have a feeling they’d be afraid of messing with gravediggers. Plus, they can’t call the cops; they’re high.” If they had to run into anyone, those two kids were the best option.

“We’d better get started, then.”

The dirt was far softer than it had been the last time he was here, but it had started to settle. Sam took the shovel, and he went about loosening the dirt with the trowel. He planned on offering to switch her at some point, but even doing this sent tremors of pain through his ribs.

They worked in silence. Just heavy breaths and the sound of metal piercing dirt. Vincent focused on these sounds to keep his thoughts from racing. They only stopped working when the giggling of the two boys made its way from the woods, and they started back again a few minutes later. The work had a hypnotic effect. Stab. Twist. Then, Sam would take the shovel to the loosened dirt. They had made it nearly two feet down when Sam tossed the shovel aside and sat on the grass, her feet resting in the hole they had carved out.

The shovel hitting the ground woke him from his trance. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and took a seat beside her. Sam pulled a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket. It was thin. Almost empty. She pulled out two, lit one, and handed it to him.

His hands shook with strain, and he squeezed the cigarette tighter to avoid dropping it. As hard as it was for him to breathe, he probably shouldn’t smoke it, but covered in dirt and sweat at James’s grave, he didn’t really give a shit what he should or shouldn’t do. He needed a smoke. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

They weren’t even halfway done, and they had been at it for at least an hour. He checked the time. Almost eleven, which meant they’d been at it even longer. They needed to dig up the casket and get it back in the ground before sunrise. Already, he was exhausted, and so was Sam from the looks of her. Her skin shone with sweat. They were going to have to pick up the pace.

Once they finished their cigarettes, they went back to work. Vincent’s fingers hurt. His chest throbbed. He kept going. Stab. Twist. Sam lifted shovelful after shovelful of dirt from the rectangular hole they were digging. Lower and lower they dug until the rest of the graveyard disappeared and four dirt walls surrounded them. A part of him felt secure in these walls. They were out of the elements. In a protected little space, like a basement or bunker, below the earth. However, they were also trapped. If anyone came across them, then they’d be sitting ducks in this hole.

Vincent brought the trowel down again, but this time it hit something solid, and there was a scraping sound when he tried to twist the tool further into the dirt.

“We’re here,” he said, looking up at Sam. He hadn’t realized how dry his mouth was until he spoke. He tossed the trowel to the side and went about clearing away the dirt with his hands before he asked for Sam’s phone flashlight to get a better look at the casket.

Rather than a wooden exterior, the light illuminated gray cement. He knocked his fist against it. Solid. Like someone had put a sidewalk underground. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s a container. I think someone called it a vault at the funeral. They lowered the casket into it.”

Vincent wanted to scream. “How the fuck are we supposed to get through cement? Why didn’t you say something before now?”

“Relax. They didn’t seal it. They just like placed the lid on top. I think it lifts off.”

“Well, we’re going to have to dig out around it then if we are going to be able to get it off.” He handed her phone back to her, took the trowel, went about loosening more dirt. Sam took the shovel to it as he went. He didn’t know why it angered him so much. Perhaps it was because it added yet another step to this seemingly impossible task, or perhaps because, regardless of who, if anyone, was buried here, he should have known what they did or didn’t put around James’s casket.

They dug out around the edges. Another few inches until the black line that separated the cement top from the rest was uncovered. Then they dug out around it to give them places to stand. Sam took the bottom of it, and Vincent took the top. He gripped the edge with his sore fingers, willing them to work just a little longer. After they got into this casket, they could fall off for all he cared.

“On three,” Sam said. “One, two, three.”

Vincent sucked in air and lifted. The cement slab moved a centimeter, but the strain of trying to hold it up ran from his fingers to his ribs and back. His tendons and muscles felt as though they would snap like overstretched gum bands if he held it any longer. “Fuck, I’ve got to drop it.”

They let go of it, and it fell back into place.

“It’s too damn heavy,” Sam said.

It was, but they’d have to find a way to remove it. “We can’t quit now.”

“I’m not suggesting we do. Here, take this.” She handed him the shovel. “Come here. I’m going to try to lift this fucker up again, and if I can get it up high enough, stick the shovel in it. We can use it like a lever.”

The handle was wooden, and he had a feeling it would snap before they got this lid off, but it wasn’t like he had any better ideas. “Ready when you are.”

Sam bent down and pulled up on the end with an angered grunt. The cement slab barely moved, but it was enough for Vincent to get the tip of the shovel in the space. “Got it.”

“Thank fuck.” Sam let go, and a grinding sound erupted from where the blade prevented the box from closing.

Both Vincent and Sam pushed down on the shovel, and to Vincent’s amazement, the slab began to lift. When the lever had raised the lid as high as it was going to go, Sam went to push the slab up further, and after she’d gotten a good hold on it, Vincent joined her. He pushed. Sweat poured down his body. His ribs burned like they were on fire, but he kept pushing, disregarding the pain. Before long, they had it upright, and with one final push, it fell against the wall of earth with a thud, sending a plume of dirt around them.

Once the dust had cleared, he saw the glossy dark wooden casket within. He rubbed his hand against it to wipe away the thin layer of dirt. The wood was so smooth and cold it almost felt plastic, and there was a thin horizontal line down the center where, presumably, the top and bottom half of it could open. They were lucky the cement slab was resting at the end of the longer, bottom half. He almost wanted to cry out of happiness. They had done it.

He looked at Sam. “Ready?”

She pointed her flashlight at the top of the casket. “Open it.”

Vincent grabbed one of the iron handles on the side and pulled up on it, but it didn’t open. He tugged on it again with the same result. He tried the other side with the hinge, just in case he was wrong, but it, too, didn’t open. Sam pointed the flashlight along the side. There was a large golden buckle where the two halves of the casket joined. At the center was a hexagonal hole. He ran his hands over the cold metal. A lock.

“It’s locked. It’s fucking locked,” he said, pulling hopelessly at it.

“Shhh.” Sam patted his back in a soothing manner.

Vincent shook off her hand. “Give me the shovel.”

“Vincent…”

“Give. Me. The. Shovel.”

She handed it to him. He raised the shovel and brought it down on the lock, so hard that pain surged through his sore and broken body as he hit it. He lost his balance, and the casket came up to meet him halfway. Chest to casket. The pain was so sharp it took his body a minute to inform him just how much it hurt.

“Are you okay?”

Vincent pushed himself up and pulled on the side of the casket. Still, it hitched on the lock. He picked up the shovel again.

“Vincent, we can come back. We’ll figure something out.”

“No.” He lifted the shovel and brought it down again. Metal on metal. A spark. More pain. He was pretty sure he had broken a few more ribs or at least shattered the ones that were already broken. He didn’t care anymore. He’d keep going until he was a pile of broken bones and skin if that’s what he had to do to get into this damn casket.

“Enough!” Sam was pulling at the shovel, her phone light darting around them as she moved.

Vincent didn’t have the strength to hold on to it much longer. “Please, I need to do this.”

“You don’t.”

He did. He had been through too much to quit now. Whoever was in this casket, he was going to find out. Not tomorrow or in a week when he might be sitting in a jail cell. Tonight, because it might be the only chance he’d get.

“Just put the light on it. Sam. Please.”

“Jesus Christ.” Sam let go of the shovel and shone the light on it again. The lock looked like it was hanging out a little farther than it had been when he first laid eyes on it. He couldn’t be certain. He very well could be imagining it because if it looked unscathed, he didn’t know if he could bring himself to go through the pain of another strike.

Vincent sucked in air and brought the shovel down again with all his might. No spark this time. Just a crunching sound. The shovel sank into the dirt next to the casket, beside a square box that had been the lock. He let go of the shovel. His face was wet and body shaking. He didn’t know if the cause was exhaustion or tears, but it didn’t matter. He brought his unsteady hands to the side of the casket and pulled it open.

Sam steadied the light on the pale face within. His eyes were closed. Skin waxy. Hair parted and pushed to the side like some sort of politician. He was so perfectly preserved that if Vincent hadn’t dug him up himself, he would have sworn the person lying below him was still alive. That and the smell. One of rot and chemicals that forced its way up his nostrils as he stared down at the body.

James’s body.