Chapter Three

I never believed in ghosts. At least not usually—not during the daytime, anyway. But at night, in the dark, sitting outside an old graveyard, I’d have to say I was much more open-minded about the subject.

I reached over nervously to pet my dog, Nugget. He was the little puppy I’d saved from Willie a few years before and I’d given him that name optimistically, both because he loved chicken nuggets and because I was hoping he’d stay little and cute.

Unfortunately, not so much.

Nugget hit a growth spurt early on in our acquaintance and then just kept on hitting them. At this point I wasn’t even sure Nugget was fully canine. His ancestry was mysterious, but I thought it surely included some English mastiff or Irish Wolfhound, with a little Great Dane thrown in for good measure. Actually, I had long suspected he might even have some donkey blood in the mix too. Something about his loud, goofy, braying bark, I think.

He had coarse, gray hair; he came up to my waist, and he weighed at least a hundred and forty pounds, but that was as high as my veterinarian’s scales went, so we weren’t absolutely sure. Thank the gods he had a sweet, calm temperament, which made him really good with kids when we saw them on our walks. They always wanted to ride him around like a pony, and he never refused or got cranky with them.

Anyway, I had brought him with me tonight, not for any real protection—he’d more likely lick a would-be attacker to death rather than hurt them. But he gave me an illusion of protection that was comforting and made me feel safer.

Actually, this wasn’t a graveyard we were sitting in front of—the proper term was cemetery. Most people don’t know but there’s a difference between a graveyard and a cemetery. I read once that a graveyard is on the grounds of a church, while a cemetery isn’t. I think it maybe goes even further than that though. To me, the word cemetery isn’t even scary, but the word graveyard… there’s something about that word that makes my imagination go wild, conjuring up images of eerie old mausoleums, with crumbling bits of architecture, moss dripping down off trees and low-lying fog covering the ground.

Which is why I had no business being in this place so late on a work night. Or ever for that matter. I’d told my boss I needed to borrow the old truck he used to get stuff from the warehouse where he stored things, and he had reluctantly agreed, giving me plenty of stern warnings about what would happen if he found any damage or scratches on it when I brought it back. Like the truck wasn’t already older than I was and in rough shape.

My dog, Nugget, had draped his body over the seat. He looked up at me as if to ask why we were there so late after dark, but I had no good answers for him. I was there because of Willie Watusi.

It had been two days since I’d last seen Rolf Degan outside my apartment. I’d bombed the audition, by the way, because I had gotten there late and forgotten the two lines I had to say. I blamed all the stress that Rolf had put me under. It was as good an excuse as any.

Rolf Degan hadn’t called either, and I didn’t know whether to be relieved or upset about that.

I’d heard from Willie though. Willie had come by the café and told me he needed me to help him out, along with “his friends.”

“Doing what?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow night when you get there. Meet us outside Shady Pines Cemetery out on the highway just before midnight. Park outside the gates and cut your lights. Don’t be late and don’t stand me up.”

“Midnight? I don’t even have a car.”

“Borrow one. Just be there.”

“Willie, some people have to get up early to go to work.”

“Some people can get their faces rearranged too. Would you like a demonstration?”

I wondered what he’d do if I said yes and just jumped him? I’d get my ass kicked for sure, but maybe it would be worth it.

“If you ain’t with us, then you’re against us,” Willie had told me in his gravelly voice, leaning in close enough that I could smell the onions he ate for supper on his breath. “Are you against us, Levi?”

I sighed, shook my head and reluctantly told him I’d be there.

I had parked the old truck beside the closed gate when I arrived at a little before midnight and waited for Willie and his friends to show up. It was a cold night and there was a steady, stiff breeze whistling past the old truck’s windows. There was no sign of them yet. It was as silent as—well, as a tomb. The only sound was the slow tick-tick-tick of my truck’s engine as it cooled down. I sat behind the wheel, my doors locked, and my windows rolled up as tight as I could get them, and my hand on the back of Nugget’s neck. I was craning mine, hoping to see some lights coming my way soon. It was pitch black beyond the gates in the spooky, old cemetery and the gloom only decreased the distance I could see along the wide path through the tombstones. What might be lurking there in the dark? And what possible business could Willie have in this place anyway? What kind of business had to be conducted at midnight?

Cedar trees planted at the entrance swayed in the breeze and seemed to lean over to peer inside the truck and take a long look at me, as if to try and figure out what I was doing there. A distinct chill had materialized in the air, along with the inevitable low-lying fog that blanketed the ground. It was spooky as shit and just after the witching hour by this time. I was beginning to feel colder than a witch’s titty in a brass brassiere. I wondered why I hadn’t thought to bring a jacket. Hell, I hadn’t thought, period, or else I never would have been here in the first damn place, no matter how much Willie Watusi had threatened me.

I decided to wait another few minutes and then if there was still no sign of Willie, I was going to drive back home, and the hell with it. Just then an old, battered car pulled up behind me with its radio blaring. It cut the lights and the music all at once. The doors opened and Willie and several of his friends spilled out. I got out of my truck to go talk to him, telling Nugget to stay when he tried to get out with me. He and Willie did not, as aforementioned, get along worth a damn. Willie’s friends began to clamber over the cemetery fence, brandishing various tools, including a crowbar.

“Willie, what on earth are you planning on doing with those tools?” I asked, advancing on him. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing for you to worry about, Levi. We’ve come to do a little prospecting, that’s all.”

“Prospecting? What are you talking about? I hope—surely, you aren’t planning on desecrating graves? I won’t be a part of that.”

“No one is des-a…doing whatever it is you said. We’re just here to dig a little.”

“Dig what? A grave? Oh, hell no, Willie! I’m out of here.”

I turned to run but he grabbed me by the shirt front and pulled me closer, blasting his breath in my face again.

“I need your help, Levi. We’ll be in and out before you know it. Stop being such a pussy.”

I put both hands on his chest and shoved him hard, but still only just managed to move him backward a few steps. He folded his arms across his chest and peered down at me. “You’re here to help us. I need you. So, get over that fence and start helping.” He shoved me hard against the bars of the gate, and I fell down on my butt and glared up at him.

“I’m not grave robbing to help you. I don’t care what you do.”

His voice took on a wheedling note. “Nobody is robbing anything, damn it. Not yet anyway. We’re looking for something, that’s all. We’ll put all the dirt back on the coffin once I’ve had a chance to look inside it. I promise.”

“Looking inside it? For what? And what do you mean you’ll put it all back? You want to dig people up and break into their coffins? Are you crazy?”

“Not people. Just one here in this cemetery. And you can’t leave now. I need you in case we find what I’m looking for.”

“What are you talking about? How do you need me?”

“You’re smart, Levi, and you can figure things out. You always could, even when we were little. You always read so many stupid books.”

That wasn’t true. The books I read were classics, and never stupid. It was true that I loved reading books and always had. Books of any kind, including history and other stuff, though novels were my favorite.

My mother had read to me as a small child, but even after she passed away when I was still pretty small, I used to carry a book around with me everywhere, looking at the pictures and trying to find someone to read them to me. A teacher noticed me in first grade and taught me how to read. Back then, they were just little kids’ books, but I had a real hunger for them, and eventually, when I got older, that same teacher took me down to the library and helped me get a card. They still wouldn’t let me check them out yet—I was too young—but they let me come in whenever I wanted to and read for as long as I wanted to stay.

Later, as I got older, I checked the books out. Like I said, the classics mostly, according to the librarian who helped me pick them out. I read some of them again and again to be able to understand them. As a result, I was well-spoken, according to my teachers, and sounded like I’d had a better education than I’d really managed to get. And I could still quote some of the ones I really liked. I had to drop out of school when I was sixteen to go to work and that teacher—a nice lady named Mrs. Adams—actually cried and begged me to at least keep up with my reading.

I was never good in Math, though, and especially algebra, as I saw no reason for the alphabet getting involved with numbers. But I knew Willie had always thought I was smart. He used to come to me for help in school. Usually, he tried to enlist my aid in helping him cheat.

I turned to face Willie. “Tell me what you think I can do for you.”

“Look, there’s stolen money—real cash and maybe even gold—inside one of these graves—I think. If not here, then it’s in another coffin in another graveyard, but it’s here in Valleywood somewhere, just waiting for me to find it,” Willie said. “I just have to figure out which grave it is and I don’t know anybody else who could help me figure it out. These other boys are too dumb. And I’ll make it worth your while. When I get all that money, I’ll split it with all the ones who helped me. I swear it.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Yeah, you do. Who doesn’t want money? Don’t be stupid. I’ll either find all that money and or if worse comes to worse, and it’s all bullshit, then I can rob the bodies of any jewelry they might be buried with.”

“What? That’s awful! It’s grave robbing!”

The cemetery gate sprang open with a clang then as one of Willie’s henchmen gave the crowbar a final wrench. It creaked ominously on its rusty hinges as if protesting such rude treatment. As it swung reluctantly open, Willie took my arm and ushered me through.

“I’ll tell you the rest of what’s going on while they dig. Come on. The grave we think has the money bag is up this way.”

I wanted to shrink back, but he was like a force of Nature, pulling me up the hill the cemetery sat on. It was fairly steep, so I needed all my concentration to navigate the graves that Willie was tromping all over as he made his way up the hill. I tried not to step on any of them.

When we finally made it to the top, I saw several of the Mongrels digging furiously at a fresh mound of dirt near a big mausoleum at the top. They had tossed aside the flowers that had been covering the top of the grave and were shoveling dirt fast and furiously. It was flying out of the grave in big dark clouds in either direction.

“Willie, they’re making an awful mess!”

“They’re in a hurry. Don’t worry so much about every little thing.”

“Every little thing! Willie, we shouldn’t be doing this! It’s disrespectful and awful!”

Watching them was like watching a car wreck in progress. You knew what was coming and you knew it was going to be bad, but you couldn’t seem to look away.

I gasped as they hit the coffin with their shovels and soon, they were busily dragging it up and out of the grave. There was a smell of freshly turned earth, and maybe something else too, but that was probably just my imagination, and I didn’t dwell on that.

Mongrels were incredibly strong, like their wolf fathers or mothers, and some of them could move really fast too. But it seemed to me that as a whole, Mongrels were fairly unlucky in life. For example, most of us were born with an aversion to authority and never fit in at school. Many of us Mongrel kids spent way too much time in detention, or were sent home for bad behavior, which meant we were often uneducated as well as not very bright. Most of us were just lacking in one area or another. For example, though I had always been called smart, I had to be pretty fucking dumb for ever getting mixed up with Willie in the first place.

My grandmother said I was anti-social, easily irritated and could be as pouty and sullen as hell. Since all Mongrels could pretty much be described in that way, though, I personally didn’t see how that problem was confined to only me.

I went to live with her, my human grandmother, after my father passed away. She had come to Valleywood when we settled here so she could be closer to my dad, who was her only child. It was only for a few years until I was older, but she made me go to school whether I wanted to or not and punished my ass on a regular basis if I objected. I finally got used to going to classes and discovered it wasn’t so bad after all. After I left school, my gran’s next-door neighbor moved out and I got the apartment right next door to her. That worked out great, because she had her privacy and so did I, but I was close enough to help her when she needed it. My gran taught me manners too, or as much as she could, and if I had any sense of decency, it probably came from her. Maybe that’s why I was feeling so horrified at the prospect of digging up this poor woman’s grave. Grandma had taught me right from wrong and this had WRONG written all the hell over it. If she found out about it she was going to wring my neck.

“You’re doing all this because you think there’s an actual bag of money inside the coffin?”

“There might be, yeah. That’s the story I heard.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded as he bent closer to get a better look. The Mongrels had begun to pry open the casket, and they were having some trouble. One of them was using an axe on the metal locks.

“Willie, what on earth are they doing? You have to stop! You’re destroying this poor woman’s casket. This is just so wrong.”

“Not if it gets me what I want.”

“How do you know there’s even any money in there?”

“I don’t. This may not be the right one. But if it is, I heard it from a guy I know who works in a funeral home in Valleywood. He said that a man came in when his dead wife was taken there. The man told them he wanted to put some items in with her—just sentimental stuff after she was like embalmed or fixed up or whatever. He told them he had to put it in her casket himself as the final thing before they closed the lid and made them promise they wouldn’t take it back out. He even watched them as they wheeled her out to make sure. They thought it was odd, but they let him do it. I guess they’re used to people being weird when someone dies.”

“It’s strange, all right. But I’ve heard of people sticking photos and notes inside a casket before. So what? Maybe it was just him being sentimental.”

“Nah, this guy I know from the funeral home said that what he brought in was a big satchel—like you’d haul around money in. And it was just after that big bank downtown had a robbery. Remember? It was in all the papers and the robbers got thousands of dollars. The robbers were never found either.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a coincidence.”

“Oh yeah? Then why did he tell the funeral director that he’d put a curse on her casket, so if anybody messed with it or opened it again after he put the satchel inside, they’d be cursed. See, he was expecting one of the other bank robbers to come after him, because they knew he had all the money. So he hid the money in his wife’s coffin when she died.”

It was strange, all right. Every supernatural resident of Valleywood knew about the world that existed alongside of and in cooperation with our more everyday world, though it wasn’t something any of us talked about as a general rule. I mean, it didn’t rule our lives or anything—it was just how things were. But curses? They were a whole different story, and one I wanted nothing to do with.

“Willie, stop and think about this. This whole thing is sounding more and more bizarre.”

“Look,” Willie continued, “the bag he put in with her…it was heavy and full of something and not just old letters or whatever. He said he put a curse on it so that no one could disturb her rest and take away what he put in with her. He must have planned on digging it up later.”

“If it was buried with her, how did your so-called friend know about it?”

“Oh, him? He opened the casket and found the money bag inside. He took it out.”

I must have made a shocked face because he laughed. “Oh please. She was dead—she didn’t need it anymore. And the guy that put it in was a crook anyway.”

“So was your friend if he didn’t turn him in and give back the money!”

Willie got a stubborn, belligerent look on his face. “Give it back? That would be crazy when he could take the money for himself.”

“It’s stealing! And anyway, Willie, if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. If there really is a curse, then it sounds incredibly dangerous, and that poor dead woman in the coffin you just dug up had a right to remain at peace and not have her body disturbed. Are you sure this is even the right person?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. There were only four or five possibilities though—four or five women who died and were buried around the same time in the Valleywood area. I looked in the obituaries and found all the recent deaths. We’re going to check them out one by one until we find the right one.”

“Oh, good gods! I thought your friend took the money!”

“Uh…funny thing about that. He died suddenly a couple of nights ago, right after he told me about the money bag. Crazy, huh?”

“Willie, come on. How did the money get back in the casket?”

“He was killed crossing the street outside the funeral home. He still had the money satchel on him, so they put it back.”

‘This whole thing is crazy. It’s just not right, and you know it.”

“Says who?” he yelled, getting furious. “It’s buried now, and people on television shows are always finding buried treasure and they keep it! So, I think it’s fair game. The husband just as good as threw it away, so why can’t I have it?”

“Because it doesn’t belong to you. He didn’t throw it away; he buried it with his wife! That’s a whole different story. Where is this man anyway?”

“Well…see…he’s kinda dead too. He died right after he left the funeral home that last time, my friend told me. He got hit by a truck on the street outside.”

“This just gets worse and worse!”

“Oh, calm down. Shit happens, and it’s all coincidence. That’s how these curse things get started. Listen to me. We can find this woman’s grave, dig it up and then go on our way. Easy!”

“How on earth are we supposed to do that?”

The coffin lid suddenly cracked with a loud noise as one of Willie’s boys pried it open, and I jumped like I’d been shot. Willie ran over to lift the broken pieces, throw them aside and peer in at the corpse. I could barely look at the poor woman though, and a shudder seized me as I took a step closer to the casket. I took one glance and saw that her face was a peculiar shade of greenish gray, and it kind of looked like fuzz was growing on it, too. That was more than enough for me. Bile rose in my throat, so I turned away and I didn’t want to see anymore, but I couldn’t seem to look away.

As for Willie, he had no such qualms and was already picking up the body to look underneath it. He didn’t find any sign of a satchel, though he searched the coffin thoroughly. It was shockingly disrespectful. But all that was lost on Willie and his gang.

“Damn it!” Willie said, dropping the body back in and kicking the innocent casket in his anger and disappointment. “It’s not in here. Must be in with a different body.”

He slumped down on the ground and put his head in his hands.

“Willie, you must have known this was a long shot. Let’s put it all back now and then get the hell out of here before we get caught.”

He gave me a fierce, angry glare but then lumbered to his feet. “All right…come on guys, let’s get out of here.”

“Wait! Aren’t you putting everything back the way you found it?”

He glanced back over at it and shrugged. “No.”

“Willie!”

“What? Let somebody else do it. Now come on,” he said, grabbing my arm. “Levi, I’m riding with you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you got more room.”

I grumbled all the way back to the truck, but the truth was I probably wouldn’t be getting a lot of sleep tonight anyway after what we’d done. I hadn’t actually done anything, but I’d been there, and I hadn’t stopped it. I was superstitious enough and had enough conscience to think that counted. I’d be seeing that poor woman’s green, fuzzy face in my dreams when and if I ever got to sleep again.

Willie cursed as he opened the door and saw Nugget, who growled at him and showed his impressive set of teeth, but he shoved him over and got in the front seat anyway.

“Keep that mutt away from me!”

I pulled Nugget over a little to make room for Willie, more for Nugget’s comfort than Willie’s. Nugget looked at me with big, brown eyes, as if to ask, What the fuck? I only wished I knew what to tell him. We set off, with Nugget making a low grumbling noise all the way back to town.

Willie began dozing off with his head tilted back on the headrest. I guess his adrenaline got the better of him or else he’d gotten drunk or high to psych himself up to rummage through that lady’s casket. I drove as fast as I could, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror to make sure nothing had slunk out of the cemetery and climbed in the back of my truck to go home with me.

After a while, when we started to see the lights of the city again, I turned my head to look over at Willie. He opened one eye to gaze back at me.

“Just be real, man. Do you really think that crazy story could be true? That a curse is on some kind of stolen money?”

“Of course, I do, Levi.”

“Tell me the whole story that you heard then. Don’t leave anything out.”

“I don’t know exactly how it all happened. Just what my friend told me. The guy stole the money, and he must have wanted to get rid of it because the cops were closing in. He couldn’t very well bury it in his yard, or they’d find it. So, he got the idea of putting it in the casket with his dead wife. Genius, huh? The cops would never think to look in her casket. It was just bad luck that he had a freak accident.”

“Freak accident, huh? Don’t you think that was because it was an awful thing that he did?” I whispered.

“I ain’t afraid of no curse, Levi. My friend was an okay guy but what happened to him was just an accident too.”

“Then how did the bag get back in the coffin?”

“I guess the funeral home people put it back. How do I know?”

“But what if they didn’t? What if the whole thing was the curse at work? What if the funeral director kept the money for himself?”

“No, man, he didn’t. I already looked in his office and in his house.”

“You what?”

He shrugged. “Him and his whole family were in a car crash a few days ago. They all got killed. They didn’t need it anymore.”

I moaned and put a hand up to my head. “Oh, my gods, what have you got me into?”

“Oh, don’t be so stupid. It was a car accident.”

“But what if it was the curse?”

“I told you, Levi, I ain’t scared of no curse. Do you want to know why?”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”

“Because you’re gonna take the curse off the money for me.”

“What? Me? You’re crazy!”

“Your mama was a witch, wasn’t she, Levi? That shit runs in families. I know that you know things. You’re gonna take the curse off for me. Just in case.”

“My mama wasn’t any witch,” I fired back at him, but he shrugged and rolled his eyes sarcastically, like whatever.

I didn’t like that kind of talk about my mother. In the end, though, I saved my breath. Once Willie had something like this stuck in his dumb head, I knew from bitter experience that there was no talking him out of it. He’d be lucky if he didn’t get himself and his gang arrested or worse yet, get us all thrown in jail or even killed by some evil, random curse with all this foolishness.

Part of what he’d said was true. My mother had been a Conjure woman. But she wasn’t a witch at all. Not really. She was beautiful and good. She grew up dirt poor in Appalachia where they had their own version of Hoodoo magic, though she was a healer and made little potions. That’s all. She might have lived there her whole life, except one night, while she was working at a small bar and grill on the highway near her childhood home, my father, who was a truck driver back then, had taken a detour to visit his mother, who lived in town. He had stopped in for a beer and a hamburger. He’d struck up a conversation with her and the rest was history. When he left that little town a couple of days later, my mom had been with him, leaving behind a bad home situation and looking for a better life.

I hoped she had found some happiness with my dad in what was left of her short life. I wished I remembered more about her.

She kept books about her cures and her little spells. It had been a long time since I’d seen any of them, but I was sure I could find them. There were hand-written recipes somewhere for all the potions she made along with words to use to stop a baby’s colic or thrush. She could cure what my mother called the morbid sore throat or heal up cuts and burns or talk a wart right off your hand. She had potions to cure bad skin or to help with various skin rashes. I suppose I could find those books and journals somewhere and look to see if there was any mention of taking away curses. Though that wasn’t the kind of magic she did. I didn’t think so anyway. I don’t know what kinds of words to use myself, though I’d heard her when I was little. Maybe magic words or even verses from the Bible. I’d heard that said before, and my mother had been a religious woman before she came to Valleywood, so it made sense.

“This is an awful story, Willie. I think it would be best to leave this woman in peace, wherever she’s buried.”

“Yeah, but that’s bullshit. There’s no such thing as curses, and all that beautiful money would just go to waste forever. It was simple bad luck that the wife and the guy died. Not to mention my friend and the funeral director’s whole family winding up dead. I admit that. But that’s just bad luck and nothing else. No need to blame an innocent bag of money.”

“A stolen bag. Don’t you see, Willie? The same thing could happen to us. To all of us. This sounds dangerous. We could get killed just like all the others did if we keep trying to mess with that curse.”

“Maybe. But it won’t happen. That’s why I want you to help me take the curse off. You’re smart and you can kick that curse’s ass!”

“Oh gods, this is like the worst story I think I ever heard. All of this just can’t be true.”

He shrugged. “I intend to go to each and every one of those dead people’s graves I found in the obituaries until I find the right coffin that has the money bag inside. Then you can help me get rid of the curse. End of fucking story.”

I stopped trying to talk to him and just drove him back to his grandma’s house. He got out with hardly another word being said. Nugget made a go for him as he got out, but he missed. Afterward, I drove slowly back home, parked the truck outside on the street and grabbed Nugget’s leash to take him upstairs. I stopped by to check on my gran and found her watching Wheel of Fortune. We chatted a while and she wished me a goodnight.

I wondered if I’d be able to even sleep after the crazy night I’d had.

Spoiler—I didn’t very well, and every time I managed to fall into anything resembling a deep sleep, I’d be awakened by bad dreams. I never remembered exactly what they were, but it seemed to me I recalled green, fuzzy faces in the dark and black shadows dancing on the walls.