When Graveyards Yawn by G. Wells Taylor (good books for high schoolers .TXT) 📕

I was shown through an elaborate lobby and lounge decorated with a thousand carved angels. Blood-red Persian carpeting covered many hundred square feet of floor and stair. Great leather couches and chairs held quaint positions under potted palm, or by the roaring fireplace you could park a truck in. At the foot of ornately carved columns, corpses reclined in wheeled divans and chairs—a few had books or magazines. Some were bandaged from head to toe; all had a thoroughly antiseptic smell about them. There was also the distinct aroma of money. Tobias led me past three dead people engrossed in a discussion about religion and up a broad staircase with gilt banister—then to a huge set of doors.

Embossed in the brass was an elaborate reproduction of Bruegel’s, The Triumph of Death. I wasn’t an art expert. This particular painting had become the rage since the Change. In it, people ran, terrified, through a scene not unlike my image of the Landfill. Mobs of skeletal demons performed imaginative butchery upon the living—a hanging here, a decapitation there, here a skull, there a skull—everywhere a skull-skull. Everyone died in the picture, peasant, businessman, saint and king. No matter where the people ran, they died—none with dignity worth mentioning. Briefly, I imagined a figure in a clown’s greasepaint dancing gleefully through the carnage. Tommy grew excited inside me. I felt his erection press the canvas of my coveralls.

“Beautiful,” Tobias whispered when he saw my attention upon the doors. He fluttered hooded eyes. “Mr. Adrian is a collector of rare art. He had that made from the original.” He gestured to the doors. “Morbid to the timid living, perhaps, but there is no shame in death; and, we are all aware of the denial that life is.” He pushed lightly upon the doors and they swung silently open.

“Mr. Adrian’s office.” He bowed slightly sending a shock of black hair over his brow.

I left him and entered the room. Its corners were lost to me in black shadows. I followed a tender glow from ceiling lamps until I saw the shape of a man behind a huge desk. It grew out of the darkness like an oil tanker. It was so big he would have to walk to the ashtray. I stood for a moment in feigned awe and studied Mr. Adrian in the soft light.

His head gleamed slightly over a synthetic tan. Hair curled in golden ringlets from an exposed crown. He looked at me with sharp blue eyes that were set close to a large nose. His shoulders were square and as he smoked, thick arms flexed beneath his trim-cut jacket. He wore dark green—odd—because everyone else I had seen who worked in the place was in black from head to toe.

“Have a seat, please.” He sketched a line in the air with cigar smoke. As I pressed my buttocks against the thick leather cushion, I noticed a familiar aroma. Adrian started talking.

“I don’t know who you are, or the purpose behind that ridiculous makeup; but I’ve been in this business long enough to know a dead man when I see one. You’re not dead and because you lied about that, I assume you’re not really Mr. Gingold.”

“And you’re not Simon,” I said, trying to figure out how to play the scene. “Mind if I smoke? I couldn’t help but notice the scent of your cigar. Expensive?” I lit a cigarette and watched its smoke dance on my hand like a cobra. It swayed slowly.

“Not really, Dutch, Henry Winterman Cafe Cream Mild. I’m growing impatient.” He seemed to have perfect control of his voice. He added just enough volume and emphasis to make it as much a threat as if he held a gun in his hand.

“Wildclown,” I drawled, slowly puffing smoke in an effort to seem in control. “I’m a private detective.”

“And the purpose behind that ludicrous outfit?”

“Detective disguise number 118. The dead mime costume, I’m surprised no one has used it on you yet.”

“Don’t be flippant, Mr. Wildclown. You’ll find I’m not predisposed to humor. I have friends with certain authority.” He smiled as he said “authority.” I began to feel like a rat in a barbecue.

“I’m not trying to be flippant. I’m trying to avoid being rude.” I could feel Tommy’s indignation growing within.

“Certainly,” Adrian breathed with a tangible change in tone before saying to himself. “Refinement before all else…” He looked at me evenly. “Would you like a drink?”

“I never met one I didn’t.”

“Scotch, isn’t that the usual drink of detectives,” he said scornfully as he ordered two gins neat from the intercom, and then leaned back in his enormous chair to study me. I met his gaze with as much fire as I could muster without letting Tommy out.

A few moments of study passed before the silence was broken by the whoosh of a door opening, followed by an annoying tick-tock of footsteps. A secretary clacked in on high stiletto heels she would need a ladder to get into. She had our drinks, gave one to Mr. Adrian, one to me. A twinkle of light, and I noticed a strange black and bronze charm hung from a red chain at her wrist. It looked like a swastika set in the oval part of an Egyptian ankh. I couldn’t place it. Her eyes were dark. Her lips puckered and red. I smiled. She wrinkled her nose at me and left.

I looked at my drink, clinked the ice cubes a few times, and nonchalantly sniffed it. I couldn’t smell any poison. It tasted like gin. I looked through the glass rim and saw Mr. Adrian looking back at me through his. I dropped ash on the floor, muttered an apology.

“What do you want, Mr. Wildclown?”

“Oh, you know, run of the mill kind of stuff. For instance, did you hear a baby cry last Thursday night at the Morocco Hotel?” His eyes flared white. I’m sure mine must have. I didn’t ask the question. Tommy had slipped it through all my personal defenses and placed it on the tip of my tongue where it couldn’t help