Muldoon's Nursery

"I'm sorry, Lenny. I don't want to do this any more than you. Just get out of the car."

Deputy Crackle stepped from the cruiser into a puddle that buried his polished shoe in six inches of watery mud. "Ah...Jesus Christ, Jake. Why we gotta do this today, of all days?"

"It's just a little rain, Lenny. If you melt, I promise to put you back together again." Jake was three times heavier than his partner and took twice as long getting out of the cruiser. He slammed the door, shifted his belt to a comfortable position and looked at a hillside sparsely dotted with grave markers as lightning illuminated the gray afternoon. "Come on. Let's get this over with."



Clarence loathed the idea of going out there in this downpour; the earth would be a mess to shovel. He rolled the body's remains from the ice tray onto a white sheet covering an old hickory tabletop, tied up the corners, grabbed the balled, knotted mass of linen and heaved it to the ground.

The ice tray had been his wife's idea. Refrigerated vaults were too expensive so she'd suggested that a coffin filled with about fifty pounds of ice could keep a body until a grave could be excavated.

Brilliant Jessica.

She'd taken the business reigns of the cemetery, had kept it from going down the tubes. Clarence had loathed marriage but...hell...she'd saved his ass. Besides, he'd gotten her pregnant and marriage was the right thing to do. Too bad his child had died at birth.

Clarence drug the sheet across the basement floor and started up the steps, taking them one at a time, feeling the rheumatic strain in his fifty-year-old back as the body thumped the steps at his feet. The pain reminded him of the workout he'd given Jessica the night before. She'd been nagging him for fifteen years for another child and until a week ago he'd declined. How could they face another dead baby? The trauma had been bad enough the first time. "Both of our time clocks are running down," she'd said. "We have to at least try." Then she'd pressed her body against him in ways that sent newborn electricity to his loins, raising his ancient member with fresh curiosity. They'd been hot for each other since.

He toed the basement door open and dragged the body into the hallway toward the back door, huffing and wheezing with each exasperated step. "Jessica," he called. He grabbed a rusty shovel that leaned against the wood frame and thumbed the latch. Lightning flashed in the door's single glass pane and Clarence jumped at the sight of his wife, sneering a mouthful of big yellow incisors—the expression that told Clarence she'd dug up some more business. How wonderful. As if his back could take any more of this. He swung the door wide, grabbed the shovel and stepped into the rain. Through the tree line several yards ahead, the rising creek was inches from spilling into the graveyard. Clarence said, "I don't know if I'm going to have time for this, pumpkin. Probably be better off getting the pump set up in the basement." His wife grunted and her sick perfume assaulted Clarence's nose before the wind and rain could wash it away.

"I know, I know. It's bad for business to leave dead bodies lying around. Can't let work pile up on us, can we?"

Jessica nodded and followed him, offering no assistance as he dragged the white sheet through the mud down a short hill to a vacant plot of ground between headstones of gray boulders. He smiled at her, reminiscing their sex, and brought the shovel down.



"I don't get it, Jake. Why would the sheriff suspect poor old Clarence Muldoon? He ain't never done nothin' wrong." Lenny shook water from his yellow slicker, stepped cautiously around a small stone cross, stopped at the top of the hill and offered a hand to his partner.

Jake huffed and puffed, struggling for control over slick ground, and grabbed Lenny's open hand. "No other leads in the disappearances, Lenny," he wheezed. "Sheriff's just trying to cover all the bases. What better place to hide the evidence than in a cemetery."

"Clarence wouldn't do anything like that. He's too...simple."

"Yeah. Since when did you become the county psychiatrist?"

"Hey. I talk to him when he comes into town. The guy's a lonely old dude. He ain't got nobody but the ghost."

"Don't start that old ghost crap with me again. I told you not to be taken in by Muldoon's crazy stories. The guy's a little looney—has been ever since his kid and wife died."

"We'll just see, won't we? I told you this is a waste of time. Gettin' all damned wet for nothin'."

Lenny led the way toward a wide sign hammered high between two wooden posts. A split rail fence wrapped away from either post to the north and south, up other short hills and disappeared. Between the two posts, a pebbled, puddle-filled path also mounted a short hill and disappeared. Lenny looked at the sign and said, "Damn kids won't leave the poor fella alone." He shook his head and passed under the chiseled board that had once read MULDOON'S CEMETERY. The word CEMETERY had been covered by a line of what looked to be red, drooling paint. Above the line deletion, Nursery was painted in childlike cursive.



Three feet into the dig, Clarence heard the familiar echo of chisel on rock. Jessica was preparing a headstone for the cemetery's newest acquisition. He'd built her a small workbench next to the mausoleum and it's thick stone wall provided the acoustics for the clicking of her handiwork. Such a comforting feeling: he with his shovel, chop-swoosh...Jessica with her chisel, tick-click...together, making music to the beat of the dead.

Clarence realized a foot from finishing that water was filling in the hole faster than he could shovel it out. He casually leaned the shovel against the muddy wall of the six foot grave and yelled, "Jessica! Pumpkin! Could you bring me the ladder please?" The tick-clicking stopped and Clarence waited calmly at the bottom of the grave where brown water quickly rose to his waist.



"You here that?" Lenny exclaimed, stopping midway up the path.

"I don't here nothin' except the rain hittin' my head and the wind rushing from yours." Jake pressed his knees with the palms of his hands to help his ascent and stopped a few feet behind and below Lenny.

"Shit. It's gone now. I swear I heard something."

"Muldoon's ghost, Lenny? Christ, I hope so. Maybe she'll help me up this godfounded mud slide."

"Come on, Jake. No foolin'. I heard it coming from right over the hill."

Jake dropped his hands to his hips and almost lost his balance. "Go on then, Lenny. Don't let me keep you," he said to his wild-eyed partner then added under his breath, "stupid kid. Why do I get stuck with all the rookie infants?"

Five minutes after Lenny disappeared over the hill, Jake hoisted himself to its apex. The clapboarded Muldoon house sat on a small grassy hill a thousand yards ahead. Arranged in neat rows in front of the house on the forward slope of the hill were what looked to be small boulders, at least fifty of them. To the left of the house, the Waybash Creek had run its banks and a small stream from the overflow had etched a path into the cemetery. The stream ran among the boulders only inches deep then trailed off through the valley that separated Jake from the graves. Halfway between the shallow valley and the Muldoon house, the door to a stone structure the size of a large tool shed opened and someone entered. Seconds later, a sharp scream erupted from within its gray walls.



The mausoleum smelled of death, and nausea assaulted Lenny the moment he opened its door. Darkness pervaded all and in its shadows the tomb felt forebodingly deep, almost endless. Whispers and moans danced within the mausoleum's courtyard; the gentle rasp of lamenting souls. Moisture slapped Lenny in the forehead and he stepped aside, letting the drops hit the floor—tick...click...tick...click. He abruptly decided that Muldoon's ghost story was not worth investigating and he backed cautiously toward the open door, keeping his eyes forward, believing that some living nightmare would attack once his back was turned.

The mausoleum door slammed shut. Two small candles flickered on, dully illuminating the back wall and a large stone table. Spiderwebs clung in disarray from the candles to a grayish skeleton resting at odd angles on the table. On the skeleton's head was a wig; circling the skeleton's jaw was a wide line of lipstick.

Jake had been right, Lenny realized. Old Clarence was a fruitcake. He'd dressed up his wife's skeleton right nice. God...how could he have been so stupid as to have actually given the old man his time of day?

Adding to Lenny's mounting horror, the skeleton rose, gazed upon Lenny with empty sockets and licked its painted jaw-line with a seductive tongue."Lenny," it said. "Come here, my husband. Give your Jessica a big fat kiss." Something invisible pushed him forward and shoved his head toward the skeleton's face. The closer he got, the more reality faded. The tongue became a fat, purple worm. It wriggled anxiously as Lenny's lips approached, then stretched out and touched the corner of his mouth.

He screamed.



Jake ran to the mausoleum as fast as his three hundred pounds would allow. When he yanked on the handle the entire door came off its hinges. The space inside was cold and stuffy and a single glowing oil lamp hung from the center of the small room. Splayed in front of him on a weathered stone slab was a skeleton. It's legs were opened wide and inviting. A small hole had been drilled in the center of the pelvic bone and a white sticky mass clung to the hole and drooled down each thick, gray femur.

"Jesus, God," Jake gasped and tripped backward out the doorway, falling hard on his ass. He wallowed in the mud before finding his feet then pulled himself upright. Rain washed the mud from his face as he stared at the clouds, praying that what he'd just seen was a dream. People didn't do that sort of thing, did they? Not even crazy people. That shit was for the movies.

When Jake dropped his eyes and peered with a shudder back toward the open mausoleum doorway, he puked. A bloody mass of hair and flesh oozed in odd formation on a wooden table next to the mausoleum. "Lenny," he screamed, wiping stray red drops of pizza sauce from his lips. "Dammit, Lenny. Answer me." His voice bounced off the mausoleum stone and ricocheted through the valley. "Lenny. Stop playing games. We'll leave right this instant. I swear."

With gun drawn, he stumbled toward the cemetery and the overflow stream which now covered most of the graves. The Muldoon house towered above him and Jake realized that if this wasn't some damned practical joke, if Clarence Muldoon really was responsible for all those kids' disappearances, then Lenny was most likely dead and he was a sitting duck.

He clicked the safety, pulled the gun's hammer and started up the hill. When he arrived at the first headstone, he nearly fainted. He had to kneel in the shallow stream to keep from falling over. The grave markers were not small boulders, they were small heads...children's heads. Those closest to him were complete bone but further up the rows many were covered by flesh—rotted in some cases, almost fresh and warm in others. Across each forehead, a name was chiseled. Dobie Muldoon was the name of the skull closest to Jake's trembling body. Beside Dobie were Shawn Muldoon, Christy Muldoon, Preston Muldoon. Jake remembered the sign, the scribbled cursive underneath a deleted word.

MULDOON'S NURSERY.

"Ah, Christ. The crazy bastard," Jake said under his breath. He stood and gazed across the cemetery plot. With the overflow stream just deep enough to cover the grass, all the little heads looked as though they had bodies, as if they were floating in a river outside of hell waiting for Jake to jump in and join them. In the last row, something bobbed in an open area beside a heap of mud.

Lenny. Oh, God...please, no.

His stumbling foot sent Dobie Muldoon's head rolling; he crushed others as he rushed in panic. He begged the Lord's forgiveness. How could he have allowed the boy to go it alone? What would he tell Mr. and Mrs. Crackle?

The body floated face down within the outlines of a fresh grave and Jake toed it, sent it rolling. "Where are you...you bastard?" he yelled at Muldoon's house. "He trusted you. He—" And Jake's throat seized as Clarence Muldoon's floating, grimaced face gazed up from the grave.

Laughter erupted from behind and Jake turned to find Lenny and a tall, lean woman standing together. The woman had big, yellow teeth that gleamed within a huge grin. In Lenny's hand was a machete.

"Hey, Jake," Lenny said. "Told ya she was real."

Jake lifted his gun and squeezed the trigger as the blade struck him.



The following day was bright and sunny, the air sweet with Jessica's scent. Lenny padded the fresh grave with his foot, tapping a rhythm that followed the tick-clicking of his lover's new etchings. Clarence and Jake...they'd make two fine sons, he thought.

"Jessica," he yelled. "They're ready." He looked toward the mausoleum and saw Jessica disappear inside. "Oh, you little nympho," he said, giggling. "Just can't wait, can you." Lenny scratched the growing urge in his crotch and dropped the shovel. It was time to add to the nursery.

***END***