"Doug? Dougie? Come on, baby, open the door for Mommy."
"Go away," Doug whispered. "Please, go away."
Over his bed were three movie posters from Friday the 13th, Parts 2, 3, and 4. Though none of the boys were old enough to see the films at the theater, they all knew the story. Doug stared at the sinister image the killer, Jason, with his bloody machete. It was preferable to what waited outside his door.
"Doug? I know you're awake. Open up."
"Go away and leave me alone."
"I've got a present for you. It's a surprise."
He bit his lip and fought back tears.
"Can you guess what it is? I'm wearing it. Let me in and we'll do some new things." He stayed silent.
"Doug? Open this door. Quit being a baby. I've told you before. You're not Mommy's little boy anymore. You're Mommy' s man. And Mommy needs a man. Mommy needs a man bad."
She shoved against the door with all her weight, but the deadbolt he'd installed held firm. He'd purchased the lock at the hardware store; paid for it with money he'd earned raking the neighbor's yards last fall. Timmy and Barry had teased him about it, not knowing its real purpose.
"Douglas Elmore Keiser, you open this door right fucking now." She hammered on the door with her fists. Doug heard a glass bottle roll across the floor. He stifled his sobs so that she wouldn' t hear. He plucked a tiny yellow Lego block from the floor and squeezed it until his knuckles turned white. The hard plastic contours dug into his palm.
Eventually, she stumbled back into the living room, but not before telling Doug through the closed door that he was just as worthless as his nogood, limpdick father. Doug knew why his father had left, knew why he'd run off with that waitress. It didn't matter what he told his friends; he told himself the same lies during the day. At night, he understood the real reason.
He fell asleep, crying and nauseated.
He also dreamed of monsters.
Timmy lay in bed with his headphones on, tuned in to 98YCR out of Hanover, but they were playing "Pass the Dutchy" by Musical Youth, which he hated, so he switched over to 98Rock out of Baltimore, and listened to "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" by Kix instead. That was much better. His parents didn't like him listening to that type of music, especially Ozzy Osbourne (whom Reverend Moore had deemed a Satanist) so, of course, Timmy listened to it every chance he got. Kix had played at the York Fairgrounds the year before. He' d begged his parents to let him go, and of course, they hadn't.
Earlier, he'd been watching a movie on his little blackandwhite television, The Car, which had been corny but sort of cool, too. At least it had taken his mind off things for a while. But then his mother had told him to turn it off and go to sleep. He 'd obeyed the first command, but found the second one impossible.
He was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but Timmy couldn't sleep. His mind kept running through the day' s events, playing back the funeral. When he closed his eyes, he saw his grandfather lying in his coffin. His mother 's voice echoed in his mind. "It looks like he's sleeping."
Timmy turned on his flashlight, careful not to let the beam shine under the crack of his door, which would alert his parents to the fact that he was still awake. He shined it around the room.
G.I. Joe and Star Wars action figures stared back at him. A toy motorcycle and his baseball glove stuck out from under the bed. Posters adorned the walclass="underline" Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and The Empire Strikes Back, Madonna lying on her back, pouting for the camera; Joan Jett, sexy with a guitar; the album covers for Iron Maiden 's Powerslave and Dio's The Last In Line (much to his mother' s chagrin); all of the heroes and villains that populated the Marvel Comics Universe, as depicted by John Romita, Jr.; dinosaurs pulled from the pages of National Geographic.
His bookshelves overflowed with books, magazines, and comics; Hardy Boys hardcovers, Paul Zindel paperbacks (Zindel was the boys' version of Judy Blume), back issues of Boys Life, Mad, Crazy, and others. Other treasures sat atop his dressera model of SpiderMan fighting Kraven the Hunter that his father had helped him build, his piggy bank that doubled as a globe, a blue glass race car that had once held Avon aftershave, and a small wooden box that his grandfather had given him. Inside were his most secret possessions: a wooden nickel and pocketknife (also both given to him by his grandfather), a rubber whoopee cushion, fauxgold collector 's coin featuring the Hulk, the rattle from a rattlesnake his grandfather had killed while hunting, marbles, some of his father' s old fly lures from when he was a boy, and buried in the bottom, a dried dandelion and a note. Katie Moore had given him the last two items at a church picnic when they were much younger first and second grades, respectively. The note simply said, in a childish scrawl, I like you Timmy. He' d been embarrassed by it at the time, still under the firm belief that girls were infected with cooties. Despite that, he 'd never thrown it out, nor shown it to anyone else.
In the darkness, he reread the latest issue of G.I. Combat with a flashlight, until his eyes finally drooped, then closed. The flashlight slipped from his limp hand and rolled onto the floor. Eventually, the batteries died.
Timmy's breathing grew shallow. Tears soaked his pillow as he slept. He dreamed about his grandfather, and in the dream, Dane Graco' s grave was an empty hole in the ground. In the distance, he heard a woman screaming.
Closer to him, something growled.
Although he didn't want to, Timmy shuffled closer to his grandfather's empty grave. When he looked closer, he saw that it wasn't empty after all. The hole was full of monsters.
Chapter Four
The dead slept, too, but did not dream.
James Sawyer was fortythree when he died of complications from Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Before that, he' d worked second shift at the paper mill, where he operated a forklift in the shipping and receiving department. In his spare time, he enjoyed going deer hunting and putting model cars and airplanes together with his sons, Howard and Carl. He ' d met his wife, Marcia, in high school, fell in love with her instantly, and had never been with another woman. Never even considered it. He was active in the Golgotha Lutheran Church, and in the local Lion's Club. He never smoked and rarely drank. James was a man of gentle humor, and his spirits remained high, even in the final stages when the cancer ravaged his body.
He passed away in a sterile, bland room at the Hanover General Hospital. James and Marcia were holding hands when it happened. He gave her one last squeeze, whispered that he loved her, and then he was gone. His family laid him to rest in the cemetery; he was buried in a gorgeous mahogany casket, beneath a black marble stone with gold lettering that proclaimed him a loving husband and father. George Stevens's death was more sudden and less peaceful. He drowned in the old abandoned quarry located halfway between Spring Grove and Hanover on the summer of his fourteenth birthday. He 'd been swimming there with friends, and earlier, they'd shared their first beerpisswarm Michelob, stolen from one of their older brothers. There were rumors that the old quarry was haunted; that the remains of a mining town still stood at the dark, murky bottom, and the spirits of the townspeople still lurked in the waters, waiting to drag unsuspecting swimmers beneath the surface. Will Marks, his voice slurred by the beer, had told them about how he 'd seen a figure under the water oncea boy their age, pale and bloated. George didn ' t believe the story, so when Will Marks dared him to dive down and see for himself, he did it, egged on by his friends and the warm, fuzzy feeling with which the beer had left him. He leapt from the tire swing and into the inky depths, unable to see anything, plummeting ten feet before striking his head on an old refrigerator that someone had thrown into the quarry. Even underwater, he heard his own neck snap.