The Gravedigger's Brawl

  Wyatt contemplated saying he didn’t, just so he could take Ash’s and have a reason to come back. But he couldn’t do it. He nodded instead and patted his pocket. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find him.” He folded the note and slid it into his pocket.

  “Thanks. Tell him I’m sorry; Caleb’s not here tonight so neither of us can really leave.”

  “He’ll understand.” Wyatt placed the documents into the bag and looked up, freezing when he met Ash’s eyes.

  Ash gave him a small smile. “When you have time to finish your story, give me a call.”

  Wyatt blinked at him. “I uh . . . I don’t have your number.”

  Ash met his eyes for a few tense moments before taking Wyatt’s hand and pulling it across the bar. He wrote a number on Wyatt’s wrist. His grip was warm, and Wyatt knew Ash could feel his pulse racing. He didn’t know if this was a second chance or just a peace offering, but either way it felt good.

  Wyatt was still staring at Ash when he released his hand. “Thanks,” he whispered.

  Ash nodded, a smile playing at his lips as he began clearing up the glasses. “See you around,” he said, and moved away.

  Neither Noah nor Wyatt ever called the bar to tell them what happened, and Ash was annoyed and worried by the end of the night. He was also annoyed by the fact that despite everything, he still found himself thinking about Wyatt.

  He had to admit, if given the chance again, he would still take Wyatt home. Likely tie him to the bed this time to make sure he didn’t bolt, but take him home nonetheless.

  “Hey!” Ryan called from across the room.

  Ash looked up, startled out of his thoughts and embarrassed to have been caught staring into the void. Ryan had come in late that evening to help out after he’d called and learned that Caleb wasn’t there. Where Caleb was, no one really knew. But as the boss, it was his priority to not show the fuck up for work whenever he wanted.

  “What?”

  “Closing time, bitch,” Ryan said with relish as he sauntered over to the door and turned the handmade wooden “Closed” sign around.

  Ash snorted and opened the hidden electrical panel next to the back mirror. He switched off the power to the outside lights and the sound system, then closed the panel door again. It made a hollow sound as it secured.

  Delilah was stacking chairs on the tables. “Caleb told me that someone’s coming tomorrow to take the fridge upstairs away.”

  Ash nodded, wiping down the bar distractedly. That damn refrigerator had been more trouble than it was worth. They had to have one upstairs, though, to store all that beer. Ash was glad it had died, regardless. He had been questioning his sanity. Ever since Ryan had unplugged it, they hadn’t heard any tapping or banging from upstairs.

  “They having a new one delivered?” Ash asked as he tossed some used napkins into the trash.

  “A big one. They’re doing all the lifting, so you guys don’t have to worry about anything but letting them in,” Delilah answered. She began sweeping up half-heartedly.

  “Oh, thank Christ,” Ryan grumbled as he gathered glasses. “I could just see myself hauling that thing up those steps on my back.”

  Ash snorted and shook his head. He heard the “clink” sound of the panel closing again and looked over at it with a frown. It was still closed, and when he stepped over to it and gave it a poke, it didn’t move.

  “What are you doing?” Ryan asked.

  Ash shrugged one shoulder and reached for the broom in the corner, staring at the panel a moment longer. “Nothing.”

  They cleaned up quickly and efficiently, their routine well-practiced, all three of them ready to go home and sleep—or whatever it was Delilah did with her time because she was a hopeless insomniac. When they were done inside, they gathered their belongings, shrugged into their coats, and went outside to tilt the chairs on the patio against the tables.

  When they finished, Ryan surveyed the façade of the building to make certain everything looked closed up and suitably spooky. He nodded in satisfaction. “Lilahbelle, how far are you parked?”

  “Far enough I won’t turn down a big strong man to walk me there,” Delilah said with a wry twist to her lips. Ash rolled his eyes. He knew she could take care of herself because he’d seen her do it, but she enjoyed playing the maiden every now and then. And the furtive dalliance Delilah and Ryan had been trying to hide for the last three months was old news. She looped her arm through Ryan’s.

  “Lead the way then, milady. See you tomorrow, Ashcake,” Ryan said. They shook hands and hugged, then Ash gave Delilah a kiss on the cheek. Ryan and Delilah began making their way around the corner of the building toward the small parking lot behind the bar.

  Ash started to walk away as well when he heard the faint, eerie sound of classical music coming from inside the bar. He stopped short and looked up at the darkened windows, frowning.

  “Hey guys!” he said, his voice coming out a harsh whisper. Ryan and Delilah stopped and turned, and Ash pointed to the door.

  “What?”

  “Shhh! Listen.”

  Ryan cocked his head and frowned.

  “What is that?” Delilah whispered, breath frosting in front of her. “Music?”

  “What the hell?” Ryan dug into his pocket for his keys and unlocked the door. Ash and Delilah were right on his heels. Gravedigger’s wasn’t often the target of pranks or vandalism no matter what was going on in the neighborhood, mainly because everyone knew that Caleb wouldn’t bother going to the police to resolve incidents. He and his staff took care of things on their own. But occasionally a stupid kid would think he was brave and try to get in.

  They all stopped short and stared into the dark room. It was creepy in here without lights or people. It didn’t look like a tavern, full of life and personality. It just looked like a creepy old house. The music was louder inside, but it didn’t seem to be coming from the speakers. Ash knew he had turned those off. He thought he had, anyway. Hadn’t he?

  The sound of a tortured violin seemed to be filtering up from the floor and through the walls, but it was distant, as if it were coming from very far below. It began to fade as Ryan took another tentative step into the room.

  Ash realized he had heard the song before, but he couldn’t remember its name or where he’d heard it. The haunting melody still somehow retained a quick tempo.

  “You turned off the sound system, right?” Ryan asked as the music grew weaker.

  “Yeah, I cut the power to it.”

  The music faded until it was gone and Ash and Ryan were left standing there, frowning and unsettled.

  “Well?” Delilah asked from behind them, and they both jumped at the sound of her voice.

  “Don’t do that!” Ash said.

  “Do what?”

  “Sneak up on us.”

  “I’ve been right here!”

  “Get in here,” Ryan said.

  “Fuck no.”

  “What?”

  She pulled her coat sleeve up and held out her arm to show them the hairs standing on end. “This is some freaky shit.”

  Ash nodded. Ryan groaned at both of them.

  “Should we check it out?” Ash asked.

  Ryan inhaled noisily and seemed to hold his breath as he listened. “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  Ryan gave him a look and Ash shrugged. He didn’t mind admitting that he was freaked out.

  “Wait, don’t leave me here alone,” Delilah said as she hopped into the room and grabbed the back of Ash’s shirt.

  “Oh, now you’re the helpless girl?”

  “The smart ones are scared when necessary. Shut up.”

  They moved together into the bar, staying close to each other. Everything was as they’d left it, though. Ryan went to the power grid and checked to make certain the power was off. The distinctive sound of the panel shutting made Ash shiver.

  “Off?”

  Ryan turned around “Off.”

  Ash moved to the door that led t
o the kitchen and pushed it open, flicking on the lights. It was empty and spotless. There had been a fire in the kitchen over the summer that had prompted the extensive renovations. Ash was relieved to see all that stainless steel gleaming in the light. There was nothing eerie about stainless steel.

  He walked to the back door and checked it, noting that the dead bolt was still turned and the chain was still latched. He turned to find Ryan watching him. He shrugged, and Ryan peered around the room. Delilah followed, scowling at everything.

  “It’s a ghost,” she said.

  Ryan sighed. “Seriously, Crazytrain, that’s not helping.” He walked over to the long stainless steel shelf above the stoves and tapped the old radio that sat there. It began blaring classical music. Ash and Delilah jumped and grabbed each other as if they might be able to save themselves by clinging. Ash grunted and looked away in exasperation as the music stopped again. Ryan gave it another tentative poke and it blared to life once more before shutting off.

  Ash wriggled away from Delilah and walked over to put his finger on one of the speakers, nudging it. The DJ’s soothing nighttime voice emitted from the radio, vibrating Ash’s finger.

  “And you’ve been listening to ‘La Danse Macabre’ by—”

  Ash removed his finger and the radio silenced once more. He and Ryan looked at each other. “The dance of death unites us all,” Ryan said.

  Delilah smacked him on the arm as she stomped out of the kitchen.

  “What? It’s not my fault!”

  “It’s always your fault!” Delilah called from the other room.

  Ryan reached up and removed the radio’s batteries. He tossed them into the trash and growled at them, then flicked off the lights as he left the kitchen.

  Ash took a step to follow out of the kitchen, and from the corner of his eye he caught a shadow moving, as if someone had stepped onto the back porch and was looking through the door.

  He whirled around, but found himself staring at his own opaque reflection in the glass of the door. He was breathing hard once more and his heart was pounding, but he knew he was just letting himself get carried away. The streetlight outside flickered and then returned to full power as he stood there trying to calm himself.

  “Goddamn you, Wyatt. Fucking ghost stories,” he muttered as he turned to go back to the main room.

  Ryan was heading for the locked door that led to the upstairs.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Going to check upstairs,” Ryan said as he unlocked the door.

  “But we found the radio,” Delilah said.

  “We’re here, we might as well.” Ryan pulled the old door open by its glass doorknob. Ash jogged to catch up to him.

  The floorboards creaked under their feet with every step, and when they got to the landing, they both stopped and searched around. Ash wondered if Ryan felt as uneasy as he did.

  “If anyone was up here, we’d hear them,” Ryan said as he looked over his shoulder at Ash.

  “Yeah.” He was surprised to find his voice was hoarse.

  “Why’s it so cold up here?” Delilah asked.

  Ryan and Ash both jumped again.

  “Don’t do that!”

  “What?” She shivered and glanced at the front windows. They were closed. The A/C unit that had killed itself earlier this week was long gone, and they had never replaced it. “It’s freezing up here.”

  “Ghosts,” Ryan said with a grin.

  “Shut up,” Ash said.

  “Scared?” Ryan teased.

  Ash glared at him. A loud bang from the far side of the landing made them all jump, and Ryan grabbed Ash and turned around, hiding behind him. Ash held his breath, frozen as he tried to make his eyes pierce the darkness. He was too scared to even question the fact that the bigger, supposedly braver man was hiding behind him.

  “Is the fridge still unplugged?” Delilah asked in a small voice.

  “I don’t know. Go check.” Ryan prodded Ash in the back with a finger.

  “Fuck you, man,” Ash whispered, his voice embarrassingly high-pitched as he backpedaled into Ryan.

  “Okay, we’ll both go check,” Ryan whispered as he pressed Ash from behind.

  Ash took a tentative step forward and reached for the light switch. The lights flickered on, revealing the foyer of the upper level. They’d left it mostly untouched during the renovations downstairs, and it could almost be called decrepit. Old furniture was stacked here and there, the floorboards were creaky and unpolished, and the heavy scent of mothballs and old wood hung in the air. The only thing used regularly up here was a room Caleb had converted into an office, and he only used it maybe once a week.

  Caleb had plans for the upper level, but they had to wait until their down season. The refrigerator they used to store all the extra beer sat opposite the head of the stairs, beside one of the front windows. Ash edged closer to it, feeling Ryan and Delilah behind him as he moved. Halfway across the landing, they could see the plug in the socket.

  “Caleb must have plugged it back in,” Ryan whispered.

  “Huh-uh,” Ash grunted. “I heard him up here calling its mother a cunt. He was done with it.”

  The refrigerator gave another loud bang and then began to grumble rhythmically. Ash jumped and backed toward the stairs, not caring that Ryan was still behind him. The lights flickered, as they were known to do when the refrigerator was sucking power from them, and then went out.

  “I want to go home now,” Ash said, unashamed as they stood in the dark.

  “Me too,” Delilah said, voice small.

  “Yeah,” Ryan said hurriedly. None of them moved, though, unwilling to turn their backs on the dark room and unable to descend the steep, narrow steps without looking.

  “Can you give me a ride?” Ash asked after a tense moment of silence.

  “Yeah. Move your ass,” Ryan said as he pulled Ash back and turned to hustle down the steps after Delilah.

  Wyatt stepped into the large lecture hall, taking up a spot in the back.

  “Some duels over the course of history have been rather out of the ordinary,” Noah was saying to the large audience. “Because duelists would pick their locations with the particular goal of not being disturbed, some of them got interesting. In 1808, there’s a documented case of two Frenchmen fighting a duel from hot air balloons.”

  A murmur of laughter went through the crowd, and Noah grinned. “It’s true, you can read that in Smithsonian,” he said with a rakish smile.

  Wyatt smiled as his friend walked around the lectern. He wasn’t your typical lecturer, but his talks had the highest attendance by far. Detractors would blame his off-color topics or his good looks and charming personality, but Wyatt firmly believed it was his skill and charisma as a speaker and his stellar reputation as a scholar.

  “The men shot at each other’s balloons with pistols until one of them was hit so many times the balloon crashed, killing the duelist and his second.” Noah pressed a button and the picture behind him changed. It was a cartoon-like drawing of two men in balloons, pointing muskets at each other. “By the late nineteenth century, the act of dueling was becoming somewhat passé. Gentlemen were beginning to think it barbaric, and when challenged, many were known to pick outrageous methods of dueling to show their disdain. Howitzers, crowbars, sledgehammers, forks full of pig dung.”

  Another ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Wyatt chuckled as Noah clicked through his graphics. Some of them were very graphic indeed.

  Noah glanced up into the darkness of the audience and Wyatt waved the papers he had in his hand under the red glow of the Exit light. Noah gave him the barest of nods and continued.

  Wyatt slid out of the lecture room. He almost regretted not hearing the end of the talk, but he drew the line at forks full of pig dung. He waited outside, leaning against the wall, trying to look innocuous in case any of the trustees happened to wander by. He could hear the low murmur of Noah’s voice, and the occasional laugh as the talk wound down
.

  Wyatt stood where he was and smiled and nodded as the attendees filed out of the room.

  Several minutes later, Noah emerged. “Lunch?”

  “Forkfuls of pig dung?”

  “It’s documented.” Noah grinned and turned to head for the cafeteria.

  “Is dung the proper term for that?” Wyatt asked. “It doesn’t change with different animals?”

  Noah laughed. “What?”

  “You know, like in terms of collectives: a herd of wildebeest or a murder of crows. Guano versus manure versus dung?”

  “It does change, actually. Wild carnivores have scat, while domesticated animals have dung. Birds have droppings, but sea birds and bats have guano.”

  “Jesus, Noah.”

  “What? I know things.”

  “I’m sorry I asked.”

  “Only horses produce manure, unless another animal’s waste is used as fertilizer, and then it’s all called manure. And for some reason, otters have their very own crap that’s called spraint.”

  “Noah.”

  “There are also different names for individual versus bulk. Meadow muffins versus dung.”

  “Meadow muffins? What the hell does that have to do with dueling?”

  “Nothing, why?”

  Wyatt just looked at him, and Noah stared back as they both tried not to smile. “Are we eating lunch?”

  “Of course,” Noah said, and they continued on to the staff cafeteria as if they’d never paused. “Collective names are fascinating, have you ever studied them?”

  “I can’t say that I have.”

  “Some of them are pretty self-explanatory. A prickle of porcupines, a cackle of hyenas, a pounce of cats, a slither of snakes. But it’s a nest of vipers, a quiver of cobras, and a rhumba of rattlesnakes. They also have a parliament of owls and a congress of baboons, which I find insulting to baboons myself.”

  Wyatt sighed.

  “And solitary animals are given collectives regardless of the fact that you’ll never see a group of them. Groups of people have collectives too. A den of thieves. Even things that don’t exist have collectives. Unicorns, sasquatches. Sasquatches?” Noah stopped walking. “Sasquatchae. Sasquatch,” he tried instead. He looked at Wyatt and shook his head, a furrow creasing his handsome brow as he held up one hand.