newfound wealth. He wasn't doing anything wrong, he reasoned. He wasn't digging up corpses and robbing them. And it wasn't like the dead needed that stuff anymore. Why shouldn' t he be able to turn it into money at the pawnshops? Even so, he had to be careful.
Something like this ring, he couldn't sell it locally. He'd have to drive to Harrisburg or Baltimore to unload it.
Beneath the small pile of jewelry and coins was a note, scrawled on a scrap of white clothcloth ripped from someone' s burial clothes. The note was brief, only seventeen words, but Clark had to struggle to read the handwriting.
Continue to tell noone of my existence. Bring me more women. You will continue to be rewarded.
He put the items in his pockets and his pants sagged from the weight of the coins and jewelry. Clark pulled them up, readjusted his belt, and walked away. He tried very hard to ignore the faint female screams he heard coming from beneath the ground.
By noon he was drunk again, and nothing else mattered.
Chapter Five
Two weeks had passed since Dane Graco's death, and life went on for everyone else. Timmy's grief subsided, Barry's bruises healed, and Doug' s guilt faded. The boy's fears seemed to dry up, if only temporarily, in the warmth of the summer sun. They were twelve, after all, and resilient, still able to employ the defense mechanisms of childhood. Timmy still thought about his grandfather every day, especially if he passed by his grave, and he still experienced moments of deep heartache and bouts of crying. But the two weeks of summer vacation ' s start were like a new lease on life, afternoons spent fishing at the pond (Barry and Timmy caught sunfish and blue gills, while Doug usually caught sticks, and once, a turtle), hanging out together inside the Dugout, reading comics and girlie magazines, playing with Timmy 's Star Wars Death Star play set, complete with foam garbage for the trash compactor.
They'd walk the railroad tracks and finding iron spikes, which they carried back to the Dugout. They spent time shooting rats at the town dump with their BB guns, and retaliating to the opening volley of a new war with their archrivals. Ronny and Jason had stumbled across Doug on the far side of Bowman ' s Woods and had tried to beat him up, chasing him all the way to Barry's house, the boys had retaliated by stealing Ronny' s bike and hiding it on the railroad tracks behind the paper mill. They waited and watched with a giddy mixture of excitement and dread as the coal train ran it over. During the mornings, Barry helped his father, mowing the grass in the cemetery and cleaning the inside of the church. Timmy helped out at home, doing his daily chores without complaint. His father had been nicer and more patient during the past two weeks, telling Timmy that he loved him more often, and actually taking the time to talk to him about things. He was working more hours at the paper mill again, but when he got home, he made an effort to spend time with his son. Timmy wondered if maybe all the overtime his father was working stemmed from a desire to not think about his own father's death. But he didn' t ask. Instead, he weeded the garden and mowed their yard. He was glad that his father had taken an interest in him again.
With no chores to perform or a father to please, Doug spent his mornings by himself, or helped Timmy with his own duties. As in previous summers, when they' d finished, they 'd ride their bikes over to the cemetery and give Barry a hand (if his father wasn' t around) so that the three of them could hang out sooner. It was during one of these moments when the three boys were clearing the dead floral displays from the graves that they discovered the first hole.
Clark Smeltzer was working in the lower section of the graveyard, at the bottom of the hill where the older tombstones were located, fixing the sunken grave markers. He was out of sight and out of earshot when it happened.
Barry had hooked a small wagon up to the back of the riding tractor. He drove it between the rows, humming a Billy Idol tune and thinking of maybe asking his mother if he could cut his hair short and spiky to match the singer's, while Doug and Timmy gathered the dead plants and tossed them into the back of the wagon. When they were finished, they would dump the debris in the mulch pile behind the shed.
'Han Solo is a pussy,' Doug said, clutching a handful of withered flowers. 'The Doctor would totally kick his butt. You guys are high.'
'The Doctor doesn't even have a real spaceship,' Timmy said. 'He flies around in a telephone booth.'
They were arguing about who would win in a fight, Doctor Who or Han Solo from Star Wars. Barry revved the tractor, drowning him out in midsentence. Then Doug shouted in fright.
They didn't hear his cries at first, over the roar of the tractor' s engine. Doug shouted louder. Barry engaged the parking brake and leapt off the tractor, and Timmy whirled around, expecting to see Ronny and the others giving Doug an atomic wedgie or something. Instead, their overweight friend had cast his dead flowers aside and was pawing at the ground. His left leg had disappeared into the earth from the knee down. His screech echoed across the graveyard.
'Relax, man.' Barry ran over to him and extended a hand, while Timmy turned off the tractor. 'My old man will hear you.'
'Get me out of here. Something's got my ankle!'
'It's just a groundhog hole.'
'Something's biting me!'
Timmy and Barry suppressed their laughter. The entire scene looked pretty comical, Doug floundering, his arms flailing wildly, his glasses sliding off his sweaty nose, and his leg deep inside the ground.
'It's not funny, guys. It hurts!'
'Take my hand.'
Doug grasped Barry' s outstretched hand desperately, and Barry pulled him up. Fresh soil clung to his pants leg and sock. His sneaker had come off, and remained beneath the surface. There was blood on his sock.
From deep inside the hole, something squealed. It sounded angry.
'Jesus Christ!' Doug collapsed onto the grass and drew his wounded leg up, slowly peeling off the tattered sock. Five shallow but ragged scratches marked the flesh around his ankle and calf, as if he 'd been raked with long fingernails or claws.
'Are you okay?' Timmy asked, concerned.
'No, I'm not okay. I fell in a hole and something bit me. Look at my foot, man. Does it look okay? I'm bleeding.'
Barry and Timmy glanced at each other, ashamed of their initial reaction.
'Didn't you see the hole?' Barry asked.
'There wasn't one,' Doug said. 'The ground just caved in. Like it was a trap or something.'
Timmy and Barry examined the hole. It didn't look like a groundhog's den. The size was wrong. It was too big for a mole, but too small for any other type of burrowing mammal. Furthermore, it didn ' t look like it had been dug from above the ground. There was no dirt piled off to the side of the hole. It appeared to have been dug from beneath the earth, as if something had tunneled up from below, and this small portion had then collapsed. Timmy knelt by the hole. A subtle breeze blew against his cheek. He wrinkled his nose.
'There's air down there. I can feel it on my face. But it stinks.'
'Who cares?' Doug rocked back and forth. 'Look at my ankle. I could get rabies.'
'Your ankle is fine, man. Just put some Bactine on it or something.'
'But that won't stop rabies. That kills you. You foam at the mouth and stuff.' Tuning him out, Timmy focused on the strange opening. The odor was terrible, but he couldn't look away.
'You guys heard that noise, right? It didn't sound like a groundhog. I wonder what this is?'
'Sinkhole,' Barry said. 'Graveyard's been full of them lately. My dad says there must be a cave or something below. We' ve had little holes like this opening all over the place. Sunken tombstones, too.
They fall right down halfway into the ground. That squeal was probably just air rushing out.'
'Air?' Doug sighed in exasperation. 'Then what bit me, you moron?' Timmy ignored them both. His mind swam with the possibilities. An underground cavern!
Maybe even a whole network of them. If they could get inside and explore, there was no telling what they 'd find. They'd be famous. Last winter, he' d read a book about caverns, and had become enamored of the idea of finding a cave near their homes. It would be even cooler than the Dugout.
