But the real killer for poor Rich—pardon the pun—the thing that sealed his fate, would be the strands of hair from Victim Number Three and Victim Number Seven Mark had tossed haphazardly into the closet as well. It was a real shame he had to do it, to Mark they were cherished trophies not easily parted with, but again, sometimes you have to take extraordinary measures to protect yourself in this world. No one else was going to do it for you.
Mark had no doubt whatsoever the police would find the hairs and that they would serve as the final nails in Rich’s painstakingly constructed coffin, or perhaps more appropriately the final gas in Rich’s execution chamber. And as far as those hairs were concerned, Mark consoled himself with the knowledge that he still had plenty of other trophies left to admire in the privacy of his new home, wherever that might end up being. Then, for just a few dollars at an anonymous hardware store in an as-yet unknown new city, he would be able to re-supply himself with a brand-new rip saw and get back down to business with his unusual but highly rewarding hobby.
Mark packed his few meager belongings in a single well-worn suitcase and for the final time walked through what was left of the mahogany front door the police had blown right off its hinges, stepping carefully around the chunks of wood and shards of glass scattered throughout the home’s entryway.
Outside, the sun shone brightly and the birds serenaded Mark as he hailed a passing cab. It was a beautiful spring day. He settled comfortably into the back seat, watching the scenery, smiling all the way to the airport. It was great to be alive.
The Bridal Veil
I grew up in a tiny hamlet in central Massachusetts, and in one of the town’s centuries-old cemeteries was a crypt with a fairly substantial crack in one of its ancient concrete walls. Local legend, at least among us kids, was that if you put your eye to the crack at just the right time on a sunny day, you could see the skeletal remains of the crypt’s occupant, complete with long fingernails and hair growing all the way to the ground. If you’ve ever been a kid you know that getting up the courage to look into this crypt became an important rite of passage for the children in my town. It also serves as the basis for “The Bridal Veil,” which first appeared in the June, 2009 issue of the print magazine, Twisted Dreams.
“Honestly, I don’t know why you think this is going to be scary.” My sister, Cassie Hayes, shrugged her shoulders, a smug look on her pretty face as if to say that her brother and her boyfriend weren’t capable of giving her a fright.
We paused at the entrance to Whispering Pines Cemetery. Whispering Pines—has there ever been a more perfect name for a boneyard than that? We waited a long moment without speaking and finally I said, “If you’re too afraid to go in, Cass, that’s cool, we’ll just go do something else.”
She shot me a glance that was more than a little frightening in its own right. If looks could kill, as the saying goes, I’d have been on my way underground. “Fine, just go,” she snapped, wrinkling her nose like she smelled a dead body or something.
The three of us had agreed to check out the Wentworth gravesite, located almost exactly in the center of Whispering Pines. Legend in our tiny town had it that if you looked through a crack in the door of the gigantic Wentworth crypt at just the right angle, you could see the skeleton of Josiah Wentworth’s long-dead bride.
Josiah had been one of the town’s founders more than two hundred-fifty years ago, and according to the universally accepted local legend, his young wife, Mary, had died of diphtheria within two weeks of their wedding. The story went that Josiah had gone insane with grief, burying Mary in her wedding dress before killing himself. Supposedly, if you looked through that crack in the crypt’s door, you could see Mary, her white lace bridal veil still perfectly preserved, hanging delicately over her skull.
The counterpoint to the tale, and the reason we had never checked it out before, was that the legend also stated in no uncertain terms that anyone who dared view poor Mary Wentworth’s remains would soon suffer a horrible, violent death. No one we knew of had ever tested the legend. Tonight that was going to change.
Cassie and I were about as close as a brother and a sister could be—no surprise there, since we were twins and had been virtually on our own since our mom and dad died in a fiery car crash a couple of years ago—and when she had begun dating Wade Collins I was less than thrilled. He was older than we were by a year and just didn’t seem trustworthy to me. I didn’t like the way he looked at her when he thought nobody was watching and I felt she could do better.
It had been my idea to make this midnight excursion to visit the tomb of Mary Wentworth and when I broached the subject to Cassie, she readily agreed. Wade had seemed much less enthusiastic, but given the fact that my sister was so stoked, he couldn’t very well wimp out without looking like a total wuss.
So there we were, standing at the gates of Whispering Pines Cemetery at a couple of minutes before midnight. When Cassie finally gave the go-ahead after appearing as though she might have changed her mind, we walked right in, climbing over the single heavy chain hanging between the two wrought-iron posts at the only entrance and weaving our way around hundreds of headstones, moving steadily deeper into the massive graveyard.
As we walked, it became clear how Whispering Pines had gotten its name. Although the night had seemed clear and calm on the way over, inside the cemetery the wind seemed to dance through the ancient trees, moaning softly like the gibbering of restless spirits. We had been laughing and joking before arriving at the cemetery, but now a tense silence fell over us like a death shroud.
I led the way, followed by Cassie, with Wade bringing up the rear in a single-file procession. This section of Whispering Pines was the oldest, with barely enough room for us to clear the precariously tilting granite headstones of long-dead and long-forgotten citizens, as we moved steadily toward the Wentworth crypt. We were all jumpy and nervous and I noticed with satisfaction that Wade seemed even shakier than Cassie.
Eventually Mary and Josiah Wentworth’s final resting place materialized out of the inky blackness, the crypt looming above the neighboring gravesites like some absurd monument, perhaps an eighteenth-century version of class distinction, except instead of the rich guy showing off by driving a Beemer or a Lexus, he had constructed a gaudy, oversized building in which to store his remains after his death.
By now our nerves were threatening to get the best of us. I flicked my flashlight up to Cassie’s face and she seemed pale and washed out, although that might have been a trick of the light. A similar look at Wade revealed a horizontal slash of a mouth, his lips pressed together so tightly they were almost invisible. “Get that light out of my eyes,” he snarled.
I went first. It seemed only right; after all, it had been my idea to come out here in the first place. I knelt in front of the crypt’s door and shone my light through the half-inch seam at the hinges, while simultaneously pressing my eyeball against the keyhole-sized crack under the cold iron doorknob. I sucked in a short breath, gasping at what I saw, before leaping backward and falling flat on my back.
Cassie took my place at the door, moving quickly; as if afraid she might lose her nerve if she didn’t go NOW. She repeated the sequence—flashlight at the hinges, eyeball to the door—and screamed in terror before backing away and covering her eyes with her hands. “Hurry up and do it,” she moaned to Wade, “so we can get out of here.”