"Something pushed us," one of the others said, getting to his knees. There was a slight quaver in his voice.
With a frown the first boy stopped spraying. He looked to the headstone the others had been working on.
It was just an ordinary hunk of rock. All around was nothing but shadows and wind and swaying pines. They were the only living things at Wildwood Cemetery.
"Don't pussy out," the first youth growled at the others. He returned to his spraying.
The two kneeling boys glanced at each another. "You must've pushed me," one accused.
"What the hell do you mean?" challenged the other, his nerve returning. "You pushed me."
They scurried back to the headstone.
The frozen ground at the base of the stone seemed suddenly to have gone all brittle. One of the boys felt the ground crack beneath his right foot. With a jolt, he sank ankle deep in the earth. When he tried to pull his foot out, it wouldn't budge. It was only then that the honor set in.
"C'mon, hurry up," his companion groused. He had his back braced against the stone.
The second youth refused to move. He just stood there, his foot stuck up to the ankle in a gopher hole. When the boy at the grave marker glanced up, he found that every last drop of blood had drained from his friend's face. A look of fear like none he had ever before seen in his young life had flooded the boy's features.
The silent youth's lower lip stuttered in place. It was as if he were trying to speak but couldn't.
With an angry expression the second boy straightened. "What's the-" He sniffed the air. "Dammit, did you piss your pants?" he demanded.
Before his friend could manage to respond, the angry youth felt the earth grow brittle beneath him. His own foot abruptly cracked through the frozen surface. The first hint of concern had barely brushed his soft features when he felt something cold and unseen wrap around his ankle.
It felt like a hand.
His face grew ashen. He tried to scream but no sound came. And suddenly the world turned upside down and the two boys were flipping backward onto the frozen ground.
The boy with the spray can glanced over once more. "What the hell's wrong with you fag-"
The words died in his throat.
As the three boys watched, frozen with fear, the ground before the haunted headstone cracked and split apart. Clods of hard-packed dirt fell away. And with an unearthly silence that seemed to dull the beating of their very hearts, a dark figure rose slowly up into the chill night air.
The ghost was dressed all in black. His T-shirt and chinos were shadows that enveloped his lean frame. The face was like an accusing skull, with eyes set so deep in their sockets they seemed little more than empty hollows into an angry soul. A bare arm extended, finger unfurled. The specter pointed accusingly at the three terrified youths.
"Boo," said Remo Williams.
That single spoken syllable was the key that unlocked three frozen larynxes. In horrified unison the three boys let out a chorus of bloodcurdling screams.
Hearts thudding, synchronized by fear, they tried to run. The ghost appeared before them.
"Keep it down," Remo said. "You wanna wake the dead?" As he spoke he tapped a spot in the center of two foreheads. Two of the vandals promptly went as rigid as any stone angel.
The third boy suddenly felt the spray can pop from his fingers. So panicked was he, he hadn't even realized he was still holding it. His mouth was wide in shock. Remo took it as an invitation.
"Dead people have simple wishes," Remo instructed as he stuffed the spray can into the youth's mouth. "Really, all we want is to be left alone."
He jammed the can so far back that the little plastic button compressed against the soft tissue at the back of the boy's throat. With a muffled hiss, clouds of black paint began discharging from both of the boy's nostrils.
As the can hissed, Remo considered. "Maybe some flowers once in a while. A wreath at Christmas. That'd be nice. After all, corpses have feelings, too. But it's guys like you that take all the fun out of being dead. I mean, how would you like it if me and my friends zombied our way into your houses in the middle of the night and started knocking over your Nintendos and spray painting crap on your personal computers?"
"Fffsssss!" said the boy with the paint can in his mouth. With plumes of black paint coming from his nose, he looked like a snorting cartoon bull.
"That's right, you wouldn't," Remo nodded. "Well, we dead people aren't any different than you, except we waste less space."
The can fizzled empty. Remo pulled it out of the kid's mouth, tossing it in some bushes. Wet paint drizzled black from the boy's slack mouth.
"Now, here's what you're gonna do," Remo said. "When you leave the cemetery, you're going to flag down the first cop car you see and you're going to confess to what you did here tonight. Then you're going to pay for every last bit of damage. If your parents are like all the others these days, they're gonna try to blame your actions on your buddies, your schools or the NRA. You are not going to let them do that. You are going to stand up for what you did, and you are going to make it right. If not, the next time I grab one of you jerks by the ankle, I won't stop pulling until you've got the room next to mine in the Motel Hell. Got it?"
His darting finger tapped the foreheads of the two paralyzed youths. As one, the three boys nodded numbly. Three sets of knees knocked audibly.
"Good," Remo said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go knock over some furniture and rattle some chains at Dan Aykroyd's house. It's all pretty childish stuff really, but if it keeps him from making Ghostbusters 3 it's worth it."
With that he slipped into the shadows and was gone. It was as if the night had swallowed him whole. For a moment the three boys just stood there. Eyes wide, burning from the cold. Their panting breath curls of white in the chill winter air.
All at once they seemed to reach some inner decision.
Wheeling around, they ran for all they were worth. Screaming in fear, they stumbled out of the cemetery gates and raced down the cracked sidewalk. Feet pounding, they quickly disappeared from sight.
Once they were gone, Remo slid out from behind a concealing knot of pines. He turned in satisfaction at the grave from which he'd appeared.
There was a man-size hole in the ground behind the headstone. Remo had only had to burrow a few inches below the surface to come up on the far side of the stone.
He knocked the clods of overturned earth back in the hole, tapping them down with the sole of his loafer.
"It might not be what I was after, but it still felt good," he said in satisfaction. He turned from the grave.
Out of respect for the dead, he didn't start whistling until he reached the street.
Chapter 3
The ancient Bell UH-I Huey raced along the jagged length of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Swirls of snow flew up in its frenzied wake.
Eleven nervous men lined the rear of the helicopter. Although they all wore bulky headsets, the radios in most of them didn't work. The headphones were to dull the eardrum-rattling noise of the screaming rotor blades.
Anxious eyes stared out the scratched windows. Below the belly of the racing Huey stretched the pipeline. It ran eight hundred miles down from the wastes of the north. Most people thought it followed a perfectly straight line from point A to point B. Not so. The huge pipe had been built in staggered sections to allow for certain elasticity during earthquake shocks. From the back of the Huey, it looked as if some giant vandal had taken great strides south, twisting the pipe as he went.
Right now, most of the men in the chopper would have preferred a giant. At least it would be something they could see from a distance. What they were actually after was unknown.