CSI Fan Fiction - Dead Man's Party: The Ghost in the Machine Chapter Two
Title:Dead Man's Party: The Ghost in the Machine
Chapter: Two (of Four): Sematary ( Chapter One)
Author: smilesinc aka WitchGirl
Fandom: CSI
Characters: Archie Johnson (Greg, Brass and Lab Rats make appearances)
Pairings: None
Rating: Teen/PG-13
Genre: Supernatural/Horror/Mystery
Time Line: This story is meant to take place in October of 2010, or the beginning of season 11. Tiny spoilers for "The Panty Sniffer," otherwise, none so much.
Warnings: Mild sexual content (prostitution), grave robbing, practical jokes, a plethora of 90s references, and an original character in a significant role.
Disclaimer: Own nothing, making no money.
Summary: [#2 in the Dead Man's Party Anthology of Horror] Archie receives strange and frightening messages and video on his computer. This spurs him to venture to a cemetery at night, to "dig up" a little evidence. But is Archie just digging his own grave?
Author's Note: Dead Man's Party is a CSI version of Tales from the Crypt, or The X-Files. They consist of short horror/supernatural stories starring our favorite CSIs, and each one can be read individually and stand completely on its own. Upcoming titles after The Ghost in the Machine and The Wendigo include Mother Dearest (Catherine), and Underneath (Grissom). Keep an eye out for them, as well as the third batch of my Lab Ratz icons.
Chapter Two: Sematary
The night was cloudy and moonless, which made it darker than ever as Archie pulled up to 342 West Dover Drive, but that didn't stop him from knowing exactly what it was.
"Aw, man!" he groaned. "Like this couldn't get any creepier!"
Libby seemed confused. "I don't get it. Archie, is this where we're supposed to go? Are you sure?"
Archie sighed, regretfully, but he knew this was where he had to be. "Yeah, I'm sure. You want to stay in the car?"
"And let you walk into a cemetery at night all on your own?" Libby scoffed. "As if!" As if to make a point, she got out of the car first. It almost made Archie smile. He was glad he brought her along.
He got out and closed the car door, looking over at the cemetery. In classic horror movie fashion, a thin layer of fog hovered over the hallowed ground beyond the black iron gates. There was a knife-like quality to the brisk October air that Archie was breathing, and as far as he knew, not a single sound. It was unnatural, especially in this part of town, which often had sirens blaring at all hours of the night, or the loud cracks of gunshots or backfiring cars. But it seemed that at this hour, not even the residents of West Dover were awake. Or perhaps it was just that none of them dared to go near the cemetery, which seemed like an isolated gothic island in an ocean of graffiti and decay. Other than the massive padlock and chain around the gate, it showed no signs that it was worried about trespassing gang members tagging tombstones.
"You getting a Michael Jackson Thriller vibe from this, or is it just me?"
Archie jumped again, having forgotten that he was with Libby. He turned to see her grinning at him and relaxed a little. "How come this place is so… clean?" he asked.
"How do you mean?" Libby asked.
"Look where we are," Archie explained. "Every other wall in sight is vandalized. This place doesn't even have a plastic bag floating around its grounds."
"Maybe it's haunted," Libby said in a spooky voice. "Oooooh."
"Not funny," Archie said. He approached the gate and gestured at her to follow. He took a close look at the padlock, then stepped back and looked up at the height of the fence. "Give me a boost," he said to Libby.
Without questioning it, Libby stepped forward and dropped down, knitting her fingers together into a foothold for him. When he was up and over he looked at her through the bars. It might have been the guilt of trespassing, but he felt like he was looking at her from the wrong side of a jail cell. "Ah, I didn't think about getting you over."
"Don't worry about me," Libby said. "Do you know what you're looking for?"
"Not exactly," Archie said. And then, he remembered something Sunshine94 had said about a shovel and shivered. "Aw, I hope it's not a body!"
Libby chuckled. "If you're looking for a body, you've come to the right place. Go on, now, I wanna know what the next chapter of this story is!"
Archie rolled his eyes. "You're way too happy about all of this. Cut it out."
She just smirked. Archie tried not to smile back at her before turning away from her and looking out at the misty graveyard that lay sprawled out at his feet like a corpse on a table. He walked further along an aisle of tombstones and felt something crawling on his neck. He brushed at it quickly, but when he looked around, he could see nothing on the ground. He brought his hand back to his neck where he discovered several tiny bumps scattered across his tingly skin. He blamed the cold. Seeking reassurance, he turned around to look at Libby, but he could barely see the gate through the dark and fog, let alone anything beyond it.
"Libby?" he called out, but there was no reply. Shaking it off, he kept going. He pulled out his cell phone to use as a flashlight, his eyes scanning the horizon for something other than an endless field of granite and dust. He began to run his fingers over the tops of the headstones. They were cool and moist beneath his fingertips. Some were porous and crumbling, others were as smooth as ice, but they were all chilled. His eyes flitted from left to right, looking for anything out of the ordinary that might catch his eye. The only sounds he could hear were the grass and mud squelching beneath his feet and his own slow breathing. He licked his chapped lips and swallowed as his heart did jumping jacks in his chest.
He meandered through the gravestones, down one aisle, then another. He felt like this was lasting for hours and thought it was maybe time to just give up and go back to the lab. Maybe he shouldn't give the hacker the satisfaction of walking right into some humiliating practical joke. Maybe he was being filmed right at that moment, and it would air on World's Dumbest Lab Technicians. His blood boiled at the thought of being played like that, but anger was a far more welcome emotion than fear and he embraced it. He almost laughed, and wondered if the hacker was here in the graveyard with him, hiding behind a headstone.
The anger fizzled away like water in a frying pan the second he heard a step behind him. Archie stopped dead in his tracks and listened. He strained his ears until they ached, but he heard nothing. He spun around anyways, just in case. There was nothing behind him but endless aisles of headstones and grass. He couldn't see the fence from here, not behind him. He looked from left to right and saw no end to the landscape. He was stranded in a green and gray desert of death and putrefaction. His chest tightened as he thought of the bodies beneath his feet, slowly rotting and permeating their coffins and the soil that surrounded them, their stench rising into the air, and for a moment, Archie could smell each and every one of them.
Archie shook his head hard to snap himself out of his panicked daydream. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that dead bodies were nothing to be afraid of. This wasn't Stephen King's Pet Sematary, and corpses couldn't hurt him. He had only ever seen one freshly dead body, and that was bad enough. He wondered if this were Nick or Greg out here if they would be this distressed. Assuring himself that they would probably be laughing at him right now, he tried to man up. He swallowed again, and turned back around to continue on his search.
He ran headfirst into a shovel.
"Ow!" he exclaimed, rubbing his forehead and grumbling. He had forgotten where he was for a moment, but then he remembered. He looked at the wooden handle that had whacked him in the head and followed it down, where the blade was hidden beneath the earth. Someone had stuck the shovel into the soil so that it now stood perpendicular to the ground. And Archie could have sworn it hadn't been there a second ago, when he had looked.
Sunshine94's words shot into his consciousness like a bullet. I'll provide the shovel.
Archie looked around desperately for the hacker, or whatever it was that had left the shovel in the ground. He sprinted down the aisle but could see no sign of anyone, then ran the other direction. Taking deep breaths, he gave up and went instead to inspect the shovel. With some effort, he hoisted the thing out of the earth and examined it. It seemed like a fairly average shovel, with a finished wood handle and a good steel blade. Archie didn't know what he had expected to find, but he didn't find it.
He took a step back and looked at where the shovel had been placed. It stood right in front of a short, modest grave marker. He dropped the shovel as his stomach lurched.
"Hell no, I am not digging up a body," he groaned. He needed to call someone. He was clearly out of his depth here. He should have never come here in the first place. He was about to turn around and leave, when curiosity got the better of him. He looked over his shoulder at the gravestone and kneeled down in front of it. He held up his cell phone to illuminate the name written there.
Unknown Female, 15-20 years old. Died November 4, 1994.
Archie's jaw dropped. This was where she was buried. The body of the girl in the library. She was here, and somebody wanted him to dig up her body. He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes as resolve set in. He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't disturb the grave of a girl who had died like that.
"I can't," he said out loud, and then rose to his feet. He began to walk away, knowing that if he just walked long enough in one direction, he'd find his way to the fence, and then he could find the gate from there. He had taken three steps when his phone buzzed. He had a text message.
Just dig. Please. I want you to.
The number said Restricted. Archie just shook his head, then looked back at the grave.
"I don't even know what the hell I'm looking for," he muttered, urging himself to call Brass, go home, and crawl into bed.
And then, another text message.
I'll tell you what to look for after you dig me up. I promise.
Archie about dropped his phone. "Jesus!" he exclaimed, looking around the graveyard. He held onto his phone with both hands and looked up at the sky, biting his tongue to keep from screaming. He looked back at the grave, afraid to even think anything. He looked back at his phone, but there were no new texts.
Swallowing his fears, doubts and common sense, Archie turned around and headed back for the grave. He stared at the shovel he had dropped and pick it up again. Shaking his head, and going against every fiber in his being telling him to drop it and run, he spiked the blade into the earth and pressed down on the edge of it with his shoe. He brought up the turf and beneath that was just soil. So he dug. And every time the blade of the shovel cut into the earth, Archie felt as if he were cutting into flesh. But with every shovel of dirt, it got easier and easier to get past his guilt. In fact, he almost got excited, wondering what exactly he would find in the time capsule that was the coffin of the Jane Doe. And as he dug, the sky opened up and rain pelted the earth like shrapnel, dispelling the mist around him and turning the dirt into mud. Archie hardly noticed. He was too focused on the task at hand. He gripped the shovel so hard that his palms grew raw and began to bleed. And then, finally, the blade struck wood.
Archie fell to his knees and wiped away the dirt and mud. The coffin was so basic it looked like a crate that her body was just dropped into. At one time, it might have been made of fresh, light wood, but now it was stained dark with mud and the grime of decay. Archie stood again and worked so that he cleared a nice hole so that the whole coffin was exposed. Again, he found himself not knowing what to do. He took a deep breath. As if sensing his ambivalence, his phone vibrated again. Archie read the message.
You have to open it.
That was exactly what he was afraid of. It wasn't enough to tell himself that corpses couldn't hurt him, Archie had to believe it, and that was much harder. A part of him was terrified that the skeleton would sit up and wrap its bony fingers around his throat. Rationally, he knew this was ridiculous, but it's difficult to be rational when you're at the bottom of a six-foot-deep hole at the behest of a computer virus. Or a hacker. Archie still couldn't decide.
He jumped as he heard a thump! behind him and spun around to see a crowbar on top of the coffin. As usual, he looked around and saw no one above him. By now, he had expected this, and that fact scared him almost more than opening the coffin. He had dug the hole wide enough that there was a niche he could get a good foothold in as he pried the coffin open. It was a difficult process, as it had clearly been nailed shut, but with a loud snap he managed the pop it open. The lid of the coffin banged against the muddy wall of the hole and Archie closed his eyes and tensed, waiting for the corpse to eat him. After a few seconds went by with no movement from the body, Archie dared to slowly open his eyes.
He managed to catch his breath before it escaped. He had seen bodies before, generally in the lab on Dr. Robbins' table, and that one time at the casino. But he'd never seen one as decomposed as this. The greenish brown skin was pulled tight across the bones of the skeleton with ripples of folds and cords in it. The eyes were gone and the sockets seemed deeper than black holes. The hair was stringy and colorless and there were holes in the white dress she was buried in. His heart rattling against his ribcage, Archie found that he couldn't look away.
His phone buzzed. Quit staring. The evidence you need is at my feet.
Archie blinked at the message on his phone, then nodded and looked down at the body's feet. At first, all he could see were her shriveled feet in white shoes. But as he held up his phone, he could make out something else beneath them. He gingerly lifted the feet and frowned at some old floppy disks and a cassette tape. Glancing around again, he grabbed them and let the bony feet fall.
"Is that all?" he asked, not knowing who would answer. His phone remained silent. He took that to mean yes, and with a sigh of relief, closed the modest casket. He looked up, squinting at the sky as the rain came down on him.
"Got to keep this stuff dry…" he muttered.
As if in answer, something again fell on the coffin. Archie flinched, but didn't even bother looking for what threw it. It was a black backpack and Archie shoved the cassette and floppy disks inside. He put it on his shoulder, and then reached up, grabbing the edge of the grave and sliding back down as he tried to pull himself up and out of it. He frowned and dug his fingers into the squelching mud, trying to get a good hold, but they just pulled the dirt out with him and he tumbled backwards.
"Oh, come on!" he groaned, getting up and once again attacking the dirt wall. "Give me a hand, here?"
He reached out over the grave and felt something cold and slimy firmly grasp his wrist.
He shrieked shrilly and yanked his hand away, stumbling back down into the hole and falling against the other wall. Someone above him was laughing. But it wasn't the eerie tinkling giggle of creepy little girl, or the deep chortle of a Transylvanian vampire. It was sweet, and very human.
"You scream like a girl."
Archie looked up to the edge of the hole and saw Libby standing there, her arms folded and her eyebrow cocked in amusement.
Archie glared at her. "I've had a creepy night, all right?"
"I thought you knew I was here," Libby explained. "I gave you that backpack, after all."
"You did?" Archie blinked. "Oh, I just thought…"
"What, that it had fallen out of the sky? Didn't you just ask me to give you a hand?"
"You had to wait for me to ask?" Archie returned. "Didn't you see that I kept falling on my ass?"
"I did, and it was wicked entertaining," Libby said with a grin. She knelt down on one knee and extended a bony hand out to him, which was soaked in rain water. "C'mon, I'll help you up."
Archie gratefully took and allowed her to help him out of the hole. By the time he was back on the grass, he wiped at the mud on his jeans and shirt, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. He looked up at Libby, who was just as soaked as he was and couldn't help but grin. He looked at the shovel and the crow bar.
"You didn't happen to give me those, too, did you?" Archie asked.
Libby shook her head. "I just got here. Couldn't find a way over the fence until a few minutes ago. Stood on a mail box." She smiled, smugly, obviously very proud of herself.
Archie looked back at the open grave again. "Well, we should cover her up. Get her back to resting in peace."
Libby's smile disappeared and she nodded, picking up the shovel herself.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
Dead Man's Party: The Wendigo
Chapter: Two (of Four): Sematary ( Chapter One)
Author: smilesinc aka WitchGirl
Fandom: CSI
Characters: Archie Johnson (Greg, Brass and Lab Rats make appearances)
Pairings: None
Rating: Teen/PG-13
Genre: Supernatural/Horror/Mystery
Time Line: This story is meant to take place in October of 2010, or the beginning of season 11. Tiny spoilers for "The Panty Sniffer," otherwise, none so much.
Warnings: Mild sexual content (prostitution), grave robbing, practical jokes, a plethora of 90s references, and an original character in a significant role.
Disclaimer: Own nothing, making no money.
Summary: [#2 in the Dead Man's Party Anthology of Horror] Archie receives strange and frightening messages and video on his computer. This spurs him to venture to a cemetery at night, to "dig up" a little evidence. But is Archie just digging his own grave?
Author's Note: Dead Man's Party is a CSI version of Tales from the Crypt, or The X-Files. They consist of short horror/supernatural stories starring our favorite CSIs, and each one can be read individually and stand completely on its own. Upcoming titles after The Ghost in the Machine and The Wendigo include Mother Dearest (Catherine), and Underneath (Grissom). Keep an eye out for them, as well as the third batch of my Lab Ratz icons.
Chapter Two: Sematary
The night was cloudy and moonless, which made it darker than ever as Archie pulled up to 342 West Dover Drive, but that didn't stop him from knowing exactly what it was.
"Aw, man!" he groaned. "Like this couldn't get any creepier!"
Libby seemed confused. "I don't get it. Archie, is this where we're supposed to go? Are you sure?"
Archie sighed, regretfully, but he knew this was where he had to be. "Yeah, I'm sure. You want to stay in the car?"
"And let you walk into a cemetery at night all on your own?" Libby scoffed. "As if!" As if to make a point, she got out of the car first. It almost made Archie smile. He was glad he brought her along.
He got out and closed the car door, looking over at the cemetery. In classic horror movie fashion, a thin layer of fog hovered over the hallowed ground beyond the black iron gates. There was a knife-like quality to the brisk October air that Archie was breathing, and as far as he knew, not a single sound. It was unnatural, especially in this part of town, which often had sirens blaring at all hours of the night, or the loud cracks of gunshots or backfiring cars. But it seemed that at this hour, not even the residents of West Dover were awake. Or perhaps it was just that none of them dared to go near the cemetery, which seemed like an isolated gothic island in an ocean of graffiti and decay. Other than the massive padlock and chain around the gate, it showed no signs that it was worried about trespassing gang members tagging tombstones.
"You getting a Michael Jackson Thriller vibe from this, or is it just me?"
Archie jumped again, having forgotten that he was with Libby. He turned to see her grinning at him and relaxed a little. "How come this place is so… clean?" he asked.
"How do you mean?" Libby asked.
"Look where we are," Archie explained. "Every other wall in sight is vandalized. This place doesn't even have a plastic bag floating around its grounds."
"Maybe it's haunted," Libby said in a spooky voice. "Oooooh."
"Not funny," Archie said. He approached the gate and gestured at her to follow. He took a close look at the padlock, then stepped back and looked up at the height of the fence. "Give me a boost," he said to Libby.
Without questioning it, Libby stepped forward and dropped down, knitting her fingers together into a foothold for him. When he was up and over he looked at her through the bars. It might have been the guilt of trespassing, but he felt like he was looking at her from the wrong side of a jail cell. "Ah, I didn't think about getting you over."
"Don't worry about me," Libby said. "Do you know what you're looking for?"
"Not exactly," Archie said. And then, he remembered something Sunshine94 had said about a shovel and shivered. "Aw, I hope it's not a body!"
Libby chuckled. "If you're looking for a body, you've come to the right place. Go on, now, I wanna know what the next chapter of this story is!"
Archie rolled his eyes. "You're way too happy about all of this. Cut it out."
She just smirked. Archie tried not to smile back at her before turning away from her and looking out at the misty graveyard that lay sprawled out at his feet like a corpse on a table. He walked further along an aisle of tombstones and felt something crawling on his neck. He brushed at it quickly, but when he looked around, he could see nothing on the ground. He brought his hand back to his neck where he discovered several tiny bumps scattered across his tingly skin. He blamed the cold. Seeking reassurance, he turned around to look at Libby, but he could barely see the gate through the dark and fog, let alone anything beyond it.
"Libby?" he called out, but there was no reply. Shaking it off, he kept going. He pulled out his cell phone to use as a flashlight, his eyes scanning the horizon for something other than an endless field of granite and dust. He began to run his fingers over the tops of the headstones. They were cool and moist beneath his fingertips. Some were porous and crumbling, others were as smooth as ice, but they were all chilled. His eyes flitted from left to right, looking for anything out of the ordinary that might catch his eye. The only sounds he could hear were the grass and mud squelching beneath his feet and his own slow breathing. He licked his chapped lips and swallowed as his heart did jumping jacks in his chest.
He meandered through the gravestones, down one aisle, then another. He felt like this was lasting for hours and thought it was maybe time to just give up and go back to the lab. Maybe he shouldn't give the hacker the satisfaction of walking right into some humiliating practical joke. Maybe he was being filmed right at that moment, and it would air on World's Dumbest Lab Technicians. His blood boiled at the thought of being played like that, but anger was a far more welcome emotion than fear and he embraced it. He almost laughed, and wondered if the hacker was here in the graveyard with him, hiding behind a headstone.
The anger fizzled away like water in a frying pan the second he heard a step behind him. Archie stopped dead in his tracks and listened. He strained his ears until they ached, but he heard nothing. He spun around anyways, just in case. There was nothing behind him but endless aisles of headstones and grass. He couldn't see the fence from here, not behind him. He looked from left to right and saw no end to the landscape. He was stranded in a green and gray desert of death and putrefaction. His chest tightened as he thought of the bodies beneath his feet, slowly rotting and permeating their coffins and the soil that surrounded them, their stench rising into the air, and for a moment, Archie could smell each and every one of them.
Archie shook his head hard to snap himself out of his panicked daydream. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that dead bodies were nothing to be afraid of. This wasn't Stephen King's Pet Sematary, and corpses couldn't hurt him. He had only ever seen one freshly dead body, and that was bad enough. He wondered if this were Nick or Greg out here if they would be this distressed. Assuring himself that they would probably be laughing at him right now, he tried to man up. He swallowed again, and turned back around to continue on his search.
He ran headfirst into a shovel.
"Ow!" he exclaimed, rubbing his forehead and grumbling. He had forgotten where he was for a moment, but then he remembered. He looked at the wooden handle that had whacked him in the head and followed it down, where the blade was hidden beneath the earth. Someone had stuck the shovel into the soil so that it now stood perpendicular to the ground. And Archie could have sworn it hadn't been there a second ago, when he had looked.
Sunshine94's words shot into his consciousness like a bullet. I'll provide the shovel.
Archie looked around desperately for the hacker, or whatever it was that had left the shovel in the ground. He sprinted down the aisle but could see no sign of anyone, then ran the other direction. Taking deep breaths, he gave up and went instead to inspect the shovel. With some effort, he hoisted the thing out of the earth and examined it. It seemed like a fairly average shovel, with a finished wood handle and a good steel blade. Archie didn't know what he had expected to find, but he didn't find it.
He took a step back and looked at where the shovel had been placed. It stood right in front of a short, modest grave marker. He dropped the shovel as his stomach lurched.
"Hell no, I am not digging up a body," he groaned. He needed to call someone. He was clearly out of his depth here. He should have never come here in the first place. He was about to turn around and leave, when curiosity got the better of him. He looked over his shoulder at the gravestone and kneeled down in front of it. He held up his cell phone to illuminate the name written there.
Unknown Female, 15-20 years old. Died November 4, 1994.
Archie's jaw dropped. This was where she was buried. The body of the girl in the library. She was here, and somebody wanted him to dig up her body. He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes as resolve set in. He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't disturb the grave of a girl who had died like that.
"I can't," he said out loud, and then rose to his feet. He began to walk away, knowing that if he just walked long enough in one direction, he'd find his way to the fence, and then he could find the gate from there. He had taken three steps when his phone buzzed. He had a text message.
Just dig. Please. I want you to.
The number said Restricted. Archie just shook his head, then looked back at the grave.
"I don't even know what the hell I'm looking for," he muttered, urging himself to call Brass, go home, and crawl into bed.
And then, another text message.
I'll tell you what to look for after you dig me up. I promise.
Archie about dropped his phone. "Jesus!" he exclaimed, looking around the graveyard. He held onto his phone with both hands and looked up at the sky, biting his tongue to keep from screaming. He looked back at the grave, afraid to even think anything. He looked back at his phone, but there were no new texts.
Swallowing his fears, doubts and common sense, Archie turned around and headed back for the grave. He stared at the shovel he had dropped and pick it up again. Shaking his head, and going against every fiber in his being telling him to drop it and run, he spiked the blade into the earth and pressed down on the edge of it with his shoe. He brought up the turf and beneath that was just soil. So he dug. And every time the blade of the shovel cut into the earth, Archie felt as if he were cutting into flesh. But with every shovel of dirt, it got easier and easier to get past his guilt. In fact, he almost got excited, wondering what exactly he would find in the time capsule that was the coffin of the Jane Doe. And as he dug, the sky opened up and rain pelted the earth like shrapnel, dispelling the mist around him and turning the dirt into mud. Archie hardly noticed. He was too focused on the task at hand. He gripped the shovel so hard that his palms grew raw and began to bleed. And then, finally, the blade struck wood.
Archie fell to his knees and wiped away the dirt and mud. The coffin was so basic it looked like a crate that her body was just dropped into. At one time, it might have been made of fresh, light wood, but now it was stained dark with mud and the grime of decay. Archie stood again and worked so that he cleared a nice hole so that the whole coffin was exposed. Again, he found himself not knowing what to do. He took a deep breath. As if sensing his ambivalence, his phone vibrated again. Archie read the message.
You have to open it.
That was exactly what he was afraid of. It wasn't enough to tell himself that corpses couldn't hurt him, Archie had to believe it, and that was much harder. A part of him was terrified that the skeleton would sit up and wrap its bony fingers around his throat. Rationally, he knew this was ridiculous, but it's difficult to be rational when you're at the bottom of a six-foot-deep hole at the behest of a computer virus. Or a hacker. Archie still couldn't decide.
He jumped as he heard a thump! behind him and spun around to see a crowbar on top of the coffin. As usual, he looked around and saw no one above him. By now, he had expected this, and that fact scared him almost more than opening the coffin. He had dug the hole wide enough that there was a niche he could get a good foothold in as he pried the coffin open. It was a difficult process, as it had clearly been nailed shut, but with a loud snap he managed the pop it open. The lid of the coffin banged against the muddy wall of the hole and Archie closed his eyes and tensed, waiting for the corpse to eat him. After a few seconds went by with no movement from the body, Archie dared to slowly open his eyes.
He managed to catch his breath before it escaped. He had seen bodies before, generally in the lab on Dr. Robbins' table, and that one time at the casino. But he'd never seen one as decomposed as this. The greenish brown skin was pulled tight across the bones of the skeleton with ripples of folds and cords in it. The eyes were gone and the sockets seemed deeper than black holes. The hair was stringy and colorless and there were holes in the white dress she was buried in. His heart rattling against his ribcage, Archie found that he couldn't look away.
His phone buzzed. Quit staring. The evidence you need is at my feet.
Archie blinked at the message on his phone, then nodded and looked down at the body's feet. At first, all he could see were her shriveled feet in white shoes. But as he held up his phone, he could make out something else beneath them. He gingerly lifted the feet and frowned at some old floppy disks and a cassette tape. Glancing around again, he grabbed them and let the bony feet fall.
"Is that all?" he asked, not knowing who would answer. His phone remained silent. He took that to mean yes, and with a sigh of relief, closed the modest casket. He looked up, squinting at the sky as the rain came down on him.
"Got to keep this stuff dry…" he muttered.
As if in answer, something again fell on the coffin. Archie flinched, but didn't even bother looking for what threw it. It was a black backpack and Archie shoved the cassette and floppy disks inside. He put it on his shoulder, and then reached up, grabbing the edge of the grave and sliding back down as he tried to pull himself up and out of it. He frowned and dug his fingers into the squelching mud, trying to get a good hold, but they just pulled the dirt out with him and he tumbled backwards.
"Oh, come on!" he groaned, getting up and once again attacking the dirt wall. "Give me a hand, here?"
He reached out over the grave and felt something cold and slimy firmly grasp his wrist.
He shrieked shrilly and yanked his hand away, stumbling back down into the hole and falling against the other wall. Someone above him was laughing. But it wasn't the eerie tinkling giggle of creepy little girl, or the deep chortle of a Transylvanian vampire. It was sweet, and very human.
"You scream like a girl."
Archie looked up to the edge of the hole and saw Libby standing there, her arms folded and her eyebrow cocked in amusement.
Archie glared at her. "I've had a creepy night, all right?"
"I thought you knew I was here," Libby explained. "I gave you that backpack, after all."
"You did?" Archie blinked. "Oh, I just thought…"
"What, that it had fallen out of the sky? Didn't you just ask me to give you a hand?"
"You had to wait for me to ask?" Archie returned. "Didn't you see that I kept falling on my ass?"
"I did, and it was wicked entertaining," Libby said with a grin. She knelt down on one knee and extended a bony hand out to him, which was soaked in rain water. "C'mon, I'll help you up."
Archie gratefully took and allowed her to help him out of the hole. By the time he was back on the grass, he wiped at the mud on his jeans and shirt, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. He looked up at Libby, who was just as soaked as he was and couldn't help but grin. He looked at the shovel and the crow bar.
"You didn't happen to give me those, too, did you?" Archie asked.
Libby shook her head. "I just got here. Couldn't find a way over the fence until a few minutes ago. Stood on a mail box." She smiled, smugly, obviously very proud of herself.
Archie looked back at the open grave again. "Well, we should cover her up. Get her back to resting in peace."
Libby's smile disappeared and she nodded, picking up the shovel herself.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
Dead Man's Party: The Wendigo