Thomas Creeper and the Purple Corpse, page 1
Thomas Creeper
and
the Purple Corpse
J.R. Potter
with illustrations and lyrics by the author
©2023 by J.R. Potter
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
Cover illustration by Honie Beam, 202X, licensed exclusively by The Bright Agency: www.thebrightagency.com
The author grants the final approval for this literary material.
Second Digital Version
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-68513-213-2
PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING
www.blackrosewriting.com
For Amy, who never doubted the magic in all of this even when I did.
And for all my great teachers and mentors through the years. Your kindness, wisdom, and generosity of spirit have inspired me to cultivate virtue like a vineyard in my soul.
“Seeing is the hardest and most helpful part. The truth, even when it hurts, has a healing in it, better than fiction or fantasy.”
–Thomas Lynch, Bodies in Motion and at Rest
“Your composure is so brittle
And you hold yourself so well
Inside you cling to pieces
Of a broken carousel
Tonight these streets are heaving
With young hearts on the chase
We’ll have this place on lockdown
It’s here for you to taste . . .”
–Sam Fender, “You’re Not the Only One”
Prologue
“I Want to Show You…”
He could sense the figure’s presence before the sound of footsteps.
Ever since Eddie had awakened in the dank underground room reeking of rot and brine, all days and nights had formed an unbroken circle. Only the horrifying ritual—if that was what it could be called—separated any passage of time.
It always began the same way: the sense of someone else in the room, watching from some dark, invulnerable corner, muffling their breath; then came the crunch of footsteps, crossing the piles of broken things obscured by the darkness; finally, right when Eddie feared his heart might burst from terror—the bright orange spurt of a match—revealing the palest hand, a claw of black and splintered fingernails.
In the radius of that match-light that gave little warmth the mask would appear, floating forward, the silver turning a wavy amber. As the mask drew closer, Eddie could see the blank bar of a mouth, neither smiling nor frowning, cut into the bright metal. Only the eyes—wet, twinkling—peering out from two moon-slivered slats, revealed a curiosity almost feral.
“Tomorrow, Eddie Jones,” the throaty voice would whisper, the cruel black eyes never blinking. “Tomorrow.”
Before he could scream, or even move—his body had been tied to the chair with a greasy black rope thick as his wrist, the chair bolted to the floor—there would come the prick in his arm, like the sting of a yellow jacket, followed by the sickening slump out of consciousness.
My name is Eddie Jones, he would repeat over and over, whenever he woke to find himself still alive. Whatever he’d been drugged with made his thoughts stretch until they felt thin and diluted, like drops of ink in a giant glass of water. He had to get it right. He had to remember what to say to the police when they found him.
My name is Eddie Jones. I live in apartment 3C at Tide’s End Apartments on Weiland Avenue. I’m a line cook at Sappy’s Diner. My name is Eddie Jones . . .
But this time, waking from inner to outer darkness, he heard another voice crying out behind the damp walls:
Por favor! Ayúdame! Tienes que sacarme de aquí! Por favor!
Invisible gears. Churning in the reverberating chasm above his head. And the scream behind the walls dying to an inaudible nothing. Hours—days?—passing. The gears again, this time as loud as the churn of his empty stomach.
Then, all at once, the ceiling was on fire.
A piercing halo of light—a chandelier—ringed with candles, lowering down, illuminating the slick walls covered with mold and furry-looking moss. The light coming closer, blinding him like the sun, but not warm like the sun, not enough to stop the chattering of his teeth.
The chandelier stopping . . . a few feet from his head. The searing wax splattering down, scalding his forehead and eyebrows. His eyes adjusting, away from the pain of the light and the wax, to the ground, to the piles and piles of white things splattered with dark liquid. Not bones! Shells! A mountain of shells spilling all around him.
“Y-y-you don’t have to do this! I can get you money! Please! I-I’ll get you anything! Anything you want!”
A thin rod, poking out of the darkness, dripping with something.
A paintbrush.
And the cruel voice, no longer a whisper:
“Today, Eddie Jones! I want to show you my kingdom . . . my kingdom of forever!”
Part One:
Burning Shells
Chapter One
The Exploding Mailbox &
An Occurrence on the Crosstown Bus
Thirteen-year-old Thomas Creeper dragged his fingers across the window of the Gloomsbury-Hampswich crosstown bus, tracing the beaded tracks of rain until they disappeared behind the rubber seals of the window frame. It was an ordinarily rainy day in Gloomsbury, Massachusetts, in the beginning of September, the time of year when you are either filled with schoolboy or schoolgirl promise at the possibility of a new year . . . or depressed at the slipping away of summer’s bountiful buffet of freedom.
For mortician’s apprentice and recently turned homeschool student Thomas Creeper, the first week of September arrived like a fresh corpse without any plastic sheet covering its face to brace the shock of its mortal wounds. It was pale, cold, devoid of all life. Thomas had become well-acquainted with the feeling, especially since Jeni Myers had left town.
He could still feel Jeni’s letter balled up inside the sweaty inner pocket of his rain jacket. He’d read the letter three times that morning, but for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away.
At the beginning of summer, Thomas and Jeni had done the impossible: they thwarted the plans of an undead cult called the Sieve who’d haunted Gloomsbury for over a century, preying on its citizens from the shadows like mercurial wraiths. In the process the two friends had become each other’s backbone and shield, a rock star team, and perhaps something more . . .
During Fourth of July fireworks at Town Beach, Thomas and Jeni had snuck off and found a secluded picnic table overlooking the shore. Since Gloomsbury didn’t have a grand community center that wasn’t falling down, or a park that wasn’t infested with deadly sinkholes, Town Beach served as the meeting place for all special events.
Fortunately, the picnic table Thomas and Jeni had chosen didn’t have many nasty, thigh-piercing splinters on it, a real rarity in Gloomsbury. After peeling away a few needle-sized gougers, and laying down a heavy wool blanket, they climbed on top. Trembling with awe, they watched as a barrage of rockets lit up Gloomsbury Bay, sending showering pops and fizzles all the way to Dyre Dunes, and out past the marshlands of swaying cattails that skirted Gloomsbury’s vast shoreline.
At the grand finale Jeni leaned in, nestling her head in the crook of Thomas’s neck. When she looked up again, in the explosion of green and purple light, Thomas saw a look that said maybe their decision to remain a “friend team”—as they’d christened their special relationship at the start of summer—wasn’t the final word on the mysterious electricity that seemed to pull them closer and closer together.
But as the last rockets fizzled out over Gloomsbury Bay, Jeni looked away. Before Thomas could say anything, Jeni started harping over the latest act of destruction caused by her pyrotechnically-obsessed younger brother Arnold.
“He’s really crossed the line this time, Thomas,” Jeni moaned. “I mean . . . planting Jumping Jacks on my birthday cake instead of candles? I thought that was the limit.” Jeni collapsed her face into her hands and made a sharp inhaling sound like she’d huffed a bunch of Vicks VapoRub. “Nope. Turns out he was just warming up.”
While Jeni described in detail what the full payload of ten M-80s taped to the inside of a mailbox sounds like when it goes off at seven in the morning (“I almost swallowed my toothbrush, Thomas!”), Thomas peered down at the beach. He made sure he kept nodding his head so Jeni thought he was hanging on every word of her story, although disaster stories involving Arnold Myers were really nothing new.
A blinding beam of horizontal light had gone up across the shoreline. Thomas traced the light’s source back to a pair of police patrol cars lined up along the boardwalk. Both cars had their high beams switched on, an attempt perhaps to keep people from getting tripped up in the beds of slimy kelp that washed ashore, or falling face-first into one of Gloomsbury’s legendary Portuguese Man-o-Wars, what would mean a guaranteed ticket to the emergency room.
Thomas squinted his eyes. He could actually see Arnold Myers in the distance.
Arnold was standing down by the fireworks
“ . . . and I can’t believe my parents didn’t even ground him either,” Jeni continued, choking a corner of the wool blanket as if it were her little brother’s neck. “It’s totally unfair, Thomas. I miss one stupid Sunday family meal and the world’s practically over. Arnold blows up the mailbox. Not to mention everything inside the mailbox . . .”
Thomas kept nodding. But he wasn’t listening. Not really.
He was too busy watching a pair of men the size of football linebackers lift Arnold Myers up and deposit him—kicking and flailing—into a jumble of broken buoys and fishing nets. Had Thomas been paying attention, however, he might have heard something from Jeni’s story, something that could have saved him a lot of heartache in the future. Jeni was waiting to hear back about some big news, news her pyromaniac brother may have turned to smoke and ash by blowing up the family’s mailbox. If only Thomas had been paying attention.
The next six weeks slipped by in a miserable haze of lessons in the Preparing Room at Creeper & Sons Funeral Home, brightened here and there by short adventures with Jeni—trips to the library to see their favorite librarian, Ms. Katz, who they called Ms. K for short, and acrobatic walks along Shellburne Road’s winding flood walls.
Though Thomas and Jeni had become local celebrities at the beginning of summer after discovering the bones of Thomas’s ancestor Elijah Creeper the First and his reluctant co-conspirator James Hieronymus Sneed, any positive news in Gloomsbury didn’t last long. The big feature on Thomas and Jeni that graced the cover of The Morning Mooring, the town’s newspaper, was soon bundled up for kindling, or set down for dogs with leaky bladders to soil. Sometime around the beginning of August, a sapping mist blew in from the sea fed by Mad Marge, the horrible weather system that circled Gloomsbury. A sluggish torpor set into everyone’s bones, eroding any happy thoughts or memories.
Then, in the last week of August, Jeni dropped the bombshell on Thomas.
They were scarfing down pizza at their favorite spot, Sal’s Pizzeria, one of the few restaurants in Gloomsbury that didn’t give you intestinal fireworks after eating. Jeni made use of the pause in conversation while they waited for Sal’s sister Romana to bring the check.
Flashing her trademark Jeni Myers sarcastic smile, Jeni leaned across the table and broke the big news: she’d been selected from a list of over five thousand applicants to attend a prestigious U-16 soccer program in Germany. As it turned out, Jeni had been right; Arnold had blown up all the mail, including her acceptance letter to the program. Thankfully, the US coordinator had followed up two weeks later in an e-mail. Jeni would be leaving in a few days.
Thomas hadn’t been paying close attention up to that point, having asked Jeni to join him at Sal’s with the intent on asking her about “the look” from Fourth of July. When Jeni got to the critical part—how she would be gone for all of freshman year—Thomas bolted straight up in his seat.
“I-I don’t get it,” he stammered as a tidal wave of anger broke over him. He snatched a piece of crust from his plate and stabbed it at Jeni’s face like a dagger. “How could you do this to me, Jen? You’re going to leave me here with . . . with just my mom and my dad? And uncle Jed? How can you even say you’re my friend?”
“Don’t you see what a big deal this is for me, Thomas?” Jeni shot back. “Why are you being such a jerk? You’re the one who’s not being a friend.”
When Thomas didn’t offer any attempt at an apology, Jeni reached over and ripped the crust out of his hand. She dunked it down into Thomas’s Pepsi, splattering soda all over his glasses. Even in all his rage, staring through corn syrup-slickened glasses, Thomas could see tears welling in Jeni’s eyes. Tears in his best friend’s eyes. He had gone too far.
He reached out for Jeni’s hand . . . but Jeni slipped away, shouting, “Don’t, Thomas!” She stormed out of the restaurant. The welcome bell on the door rattled so hard it jerked loose and clattered to the floor. All eyes turned to Thomas who sunk back into his booth, and hoped to keep sinking, until he was as tiny and insignificant as a flake of red pepper. If he were that small, he wouldn’t feel any pain. He wouldn’t feel anything at all.
A day later, Jeni sent Thomas an e-mail asking him to come with her to the airport the following morning. But Thomas, still raw from the whole incident at Sal’s, never wrote back.
The letter postmarked from Germany arrived one week later.
The letter . . .
Thomas stared out the window of the Gloomsbury-Hampswich crosstown bus. He scowled at a passing billboard for Coconut Resorts showing a man and a woman with sun-bronzed skin cradling each other beneath a palm tree with the sun sinking in the background. Even stupid advertisements made him think of Jeni. We’ve got a lot to see out in the world, Thomas, Jeni had written in her letter. I think we owe it to ourselves to go experience new things. The real dagger words in the letter had been scribbled out. But it didn’t take a budding detective and forensic wizard like Thomas Creeper to decipher them.
To go experience new things and meet new people.
There were only two other riders on the Gloomsbury-Hampswich crosstown bus that afternoon—only two living riders, that is.
To add to Thomas’s extensive list of woes—he was the son and heir to a small town funeral business run by his rigid and cantankerous father, Elijah Creeper the Fifth; he was painfully tall, a lanky lurch-a-saurus who kids around town called “Creepy Thomas” when they were feeling nice—Thomas could also see the dead everywhere he went. Ever since solving the mystery of his great aunt Silvie’s death earlier that summer, ghosts seemed to come out of the woodwork to accost Thomas who they considered a “Fixer,” a solver of mysteries unresolved at the time of a person’s death, or worse . . . their murder.
The only problem, as the ghost of his great aunt Silvie explained, was that in order to fix a ghost’s unresolved case, Thomas needed to possess their “Artifact of Unlocking.” An Artifact could be the missing revolver thrown into the ocean after their murder, or the loose nails from a faulty roof beam that shut off their lights forever.
Once an Artifact was recovered, a displeased ghost could then talk and indicate what the Fixer needed to do to help them find peace in the afterlife. But not possessing any of these items at present, Thomas was accompanied daily by ghosts who couldn’t speak, but leered back at him with yawning mouths and writhing, apoplectic fingers. They knew neither day or night and respected no boundaries of privacy. A headless ghost dressed in a pinstripe suit had even slid under the stalls at the public restroom at Town Beach to seek out Thomas’s services.
Thankfully, Thomas counted only two ghosts on the bus that afternoon: a child with sandy-blonde hair and half her face rotted away; and a soldier in faded blue military fatigues with sunken eyes who tried to get Thomas’s attention, but every time he waved, he clutched his hand back to his neck, blood squirting out between his gloved fingers. It was horror outside or inside the bus, however Thomas looked—dumb advertisements for a life he would never have, or miserable reminders of the life he could not possibly extricate himself from without becoming a ghost himself . . . and even then there was no guarantee.
He resolved to keep his eyes shut. There was still a good ten minutes before they reached the museum. In the darkness behind his eyes he would be safe, he told himself. But as his horrible luck would have it, his peace of mind didn’t last long.
“So you’re the new Fixer, huh?”
Seated across from Thomas, next to a snoring older man with his head bowed into his lap, Thomas locked eyes with the slightly blue, slightly glowing face of a ghost, a woman.
