Chapter 41
“Come on Matty, I dare you to go in there,” the boy with the cleft lip teased.
“Yeah, Matty,” the fat kid reiterated. “Go inside. Don’t be a pussy.”
Matthew’s eyes drifted to the door in front of them. His two classmates had already managed to pop the lock using a piece of metal they’d found buried in the snow. The thick door was wedged open nearly a foot.
Matthew didn’t want to go inside. He didn’t want to be anywhere near this place.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said softly.” He was bigger than even the fat kid, had him by at least three inches and thirty pounds.
But Matthew was soft, and Rick and Damien were the two biggest bullies in the school. There were rumors that they’d killed Mrs. Montgomery’s cat after she’d given them detention three days in a row.
People said they’d lured the animal into an alley with a can of tuna and then smashed its skull in with a brick.
“Go inside, pussy.” Rick bumped Matthew with his shoulder. His cleft lip gave him a bit of a lisp, but no one dared make fun of him.
It was freezing outside, and Matthew cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew on them. His feet ached. His running shoes were too small and the glue that held the soles together had long since worn out. He couldn’t feel his toes.
But no matter how cold it was outside, it was colder inside the rear entrance to the morgue.
Frosty air billowed out from the foot-wide gap.
“Listen, Matty, if you don’t go inside, we’ll tell everyone at school that you tried to suck Damien’s cock.”
“What?” Matthew gasped. “I didn’t —”
“Do it,” Rick ordered. He had that look in his eyes, the one that suggested that if Matthew refused, they’d give a beating.
Matthew was used to beatings. Just this past year, his dad had split his lip open with a slap and broken his left arm when he’d pushed him down the stairs.
And it was only February.
Matthew could handle beatings.
But if these boys told the entire school he was gay, and his father heard that rumor? He’d be lucky if he only ended up in the hospital.
His mom, too.
“Do it,” Damien sneered. “Do it, you fucking pussy.”
“Yeah, go inside. What’s the big deal? You scared of ghosts, Matty?”
The truth was that Matthew was scared of ghosts. After his grandmother had gotten ill, she’d moved in with them, taken up residence in his room. His father had grumbled something about how the hospital bills had forced them to sell her home to be able to afford to keep the ‘old bitch’ alive.
Matthew slept on a leaky air mattress on the floor. His grandmother was hooked up to a ventilator, which hissed and beeped all night.
He barely slept.
But then, one night, the beeping had intensified.
His grandmother had gasped, struggled to breathe.
Matthew had woken up from a light slumber and hovered over the frail woman. She’d reached out to him, her wet eyes begging him to call for help.
Matthew just watched as his grandmother suffocated to death in front of him.
He thought this would make his father happy—no more bills, no more expensive medication or equipment—but his old man was anything but.
The man was furious.
He yelled at Matthew, calling him a freak, a pervert, a psycho.
But his mom had gotten it worse.
Now, even though his grandmother and all the equipment that had once kept her alive was gone, he still couldn’t sleep.
Every time Matthew closed his eyes, he heard the horrible croaking sound the woman had made as she desperately tried to fill her diseased lungs with air.
“All I have to do is go inside for one minute, right?” his voice was timid, belonging to a kid half his age and a third his size.
Rick looked down at his watch, a cheap Timex, pressed a few buttons, and then held the face up for Matthew to see.
“One minute. That’s it.”
Was it a big deal? he asked himself. Just duck inside, stay there for one minute and come back out again. Then they’ll leave me alone. And tomorrow, I’ll throw a fit in class, make sure I get detention so there’ll be no chance I’ll run into Rick and Damien on the way home from school again.
Matthew shrugged, his heavy shoulders rising and falling beneath his thin jacket.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
Matthew took one step toward the door and then he felt two hands on his back, shoving him forward.
“Wait!”
But they didn’t wait. Both Rick and Damien started pushing him, forcing him through the narrow opening.
It was a tight squeeze and when he finally made it through, Matthew fell hard on his knees.
“Hey!”
He scrambled to his feet and rushed toward the door only to see the light from the outside blink out.
Matthew pounded his fists against the metal.
“Open up! Open up, please! ”
They were laughing outside.
Matthew grabbed the handle and pulled. It didn’t budge.
“ Please! ”
His desperate cries were met with more laughs.
“I changed my mind! I don’t want to be in here! Let me out! You have to let me out!”
This time there was a reply.
“Watch out for the ghosts, pussy.”
Matthew went silent and listened. He heard boots crunching snow.
Receding.
“No,” he moaned.
The stark realization of where he was suddenly came over Matthew and he redoubled his efforts to try to open the door.
But Rick and Damien had done something to it. It was stuck.
Hysteria rose up, bubbled over.
Matthew hammered on the door until his hands no longer felt attached to his body.
He switched to kicking but his foot was frozen solid and after just one blow, he thought he’d broken all his toes.
That’s when he heard the sound.
The beeping followed by a hiss.
It was his grandmother. She was here.
She was back.
Back for him .
In his mind, he could see that horrible expression on her face, the realization that she was going to die.
A thin whine escaped Matthew’s throat and he turned around.
The interior of the morgue was pitch black.
And it was freezing .
A tremendous shudder coursed through his body and once Matthew started to shake, he couldn’t stop.
“Grammie?”
Nothing.
“Grammie? Is that you?”
Matthew spun back around but the darkness was so all-encompassing that it was disorienting. His left foot struck something—at least he thought it did; he’d lost all feeling in his limbs.
Something fell, metallic at first, but this was quickly followed by a dull, almost organic thump.
Oh, god, that was a body. That was a body .
Matthew scrambled forward even though he knew it was best just to stay still.
Something hard and metal blocked his path, and he held his hands out in front of him, blindly groping the darkness as he tried to navigate around it.
He had to find a way out. It was too cold in here. He was going to freeze to death.
Matthew managed two steps before he tripped and sprawled forward, landing on all fours.
Get up, his mind screamed. Get up!
Instead, he crawled.
His numb mind registered that his hands had come up against something, even though he could barely feel what it was.
But it was warm, warmer than the air, anyway. It wasn’t quite pliable but not as unyielding as the metal object.
What was the metal thing?
A table? A chair?
No, a gurney.
Matthew nestled up against the pliable object. He pulled it close, wrapped it around him.
And then, his teeth chattering like those gag dentures with feet he’d seen at the local Dollar Tree around Halloween time, his mind went blank.
Matthew Nelson Neil fell into something reminiscent of sleep for the first time since his grandmother had invaded his space.
Sometime later, he was awoken by the sound of scraping metal.
Sunlight suddenly flooded the morgue, warming his frozen face.
Matthew opened his eyes and saw a man in uniform make his way inside. He tried to say something, to call out, but his lips were frozen solid.
All he could manage was a dry croak.
But it was enough.
The man—a cop, it was a cop—looked down at him and his face filled with a mixture of shock and fear.
“Jesus Christ.” Cold breath puffed out of his mouth. “Jesus Christ, boy, are you cuddling up to a corpse ?”