The Illuminati Garden Club

Chapter 3: Through the Cemetery Gates

"Thank you, Mrs. Cagwin," my mother said as we left. "It was delicious."

She smiled from the top of her stairwell and waved from the Juliet-style veranda as we walked home. As she turned away, Mom's smile disappeared quickly before she lopped me upside the head.

"Ow, Mom! What's that for?"

"What the hell were you thinking? We were her guests."

"What? It was just an honest question, Mom."

"Well, it was rude. Mrs. Cagwin is a member of the Eastern Star. You totally insulted her."

"What's the Eastern Star?"

Mom huffed before stopping in her tracks. "The Eastern Star is an organization related to the Masons that includes women. Haven't you ever seen that gold necklace she wears?

"The pentagram. So? I thought she was a Wiccan, or something. I wasn't insulting her religion."

"I swear to God, Sam," she huffed. "It's not a pentagram per se. It is the symbol of the Eastern Star, which has been a fine and upstanding organization for two hundred years. So...congratulations, you made an ass out of us to the closest thing we've got to family."

It took everything for me not to lay into her about actually having real family that she chose to ignore, but I managed. Barely. Needless to say, we didn't talk for the rest of the night. The next morning wasn't much better. I grabbed my backpack, and headed out the door for school. I slammed the door a little harder than usual in an effort to say F.U.

But the damage was done. Mom did get under my skin. All morning I thought about what Mom said. I didn't pay much attention in class. Instead, I was googling Eastern Star, and Freemasons. Good thing Mr. DeGennaro was focusing on another student's choice for an upcoming book report.

"Firestarter?" He said. "The assignment is to read a classic."

"Stephen King is a modern classic," argued the student. "Firestarter was a best seller."

Mr. D. wasn't buying it.

"Firestarter is what it should be used for."

Not only did I spend the rest of the day surfing the labyrinth of conspiracy theories about Freemasons, I spent the afternoon, evening, and well after Mom went to bed. There was a lot to process, and I mean a lot.

Web entries ranged from those claiming the Eastern Star as being a respected club that began in the 1850s, with hundreds of thousands of members who did a lot of nonprofit work, especially with children, and especially in hospitals. Nice enough.

Sure, there were other sites that claimed it was a Satanic organization, with a pentagram as a symbol (which, technically it is), but pretty much everything else about those sites were amateurish, and seemed as though it was written by a lunatic.

The more I read, the worse I felt about what I'd said to Mrs. Cagwin. She really was a nice lady. She'd lived alone for as long as we knew her. Her husband died when she was much younger, and her only son lived two thousand miles away in Chicago. She spoke so highly of him, but I never remembered seeing him come around. In truth, all Mrs. Cagwin had were her soap operas (or her "programs" as she called them), tabloid magazines; my Mom and me.

But to tell you the truth, the sadder I was for Mrs. Cagwin, the madder I became at Mom. Here's an old lady whose own son never comes around, which makes my Mom feel for her. Okay, that's noble, but then my mother refuses to call her own living, breathing family in Savannah. Every time I tried to talk to her about it, there she goes changing the subject again. Believe me. I tried.

"Let's go for a run at the cemetery," she said.

Mountain View Cemetery is not what you think of when you think of a cemetery. Yes, there are graves, but they are mostly hidden behind trees, chapels, water fountains and azalea bushes. The place is hardly spooky, especially when it's constantly filled with people walking their dogs, or jogging like we were that day.

"Have you given more thought to applying to Cal?" She asked halfway up the hill.

"I'd rather go to Rutgers, or NYU, or somewhere back east."

"Oh honey, why do you want to go so far away? Berkeley is right here."

I guess I answered her with my silence, because she continued to try and convince me.

"Okay, I get it. You want to spread your wings. That's cool. I did when I was your age too. But why not consider UCLA, or Santa Barbara, or even San Diego? I mean, the out of state tuition alone is going to double your costs."

She continued to drone on about college, blah blah blah, until she was just white noise. Instead of listening, I was looking at a guy wandering around the graves. He caught my eye, because he looked so creepy, rambling around the graves on the hill like a colorized version of that opening scene in Night of the Living Dead when the ill-fated brother says, "They're coming to get you Barbara."

I say colorized, because the man's blue sweater stood out against the granite graves. He looked just as out of place as he did the day I saw him eating all alone in the corner at Fenton's. And it was the same outfit as a few days before. Gross. I tried to shrug it off. I mean, Mountain View Cemetery was right down the street from the ice cream parlor. Still, I couldn't help but get the feeling he was watching us. So when the moment was right, I turned to get a better look.

He wore a white collared shirt under the bright blue V-neck sweater. Cerulean Blue I believe is what Meryl Streep called it in The Devil Wears Prada. He was clean cut, but in a Ted Bundy/Norman Bates kind of way that reminded me of an inbred version of that famous top hat wearing wooden dummy from the 50s, or that cult character "Bob" that was so popular in the 90s.

"Sam," Mom stopped. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Oh. Yeah," I lied. She started her speech again. When I looked back, the man was gone.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm listening."

"What are you looking at?" Mom demanded.

"Nothing."

We ran towards the cemetery gates on our way home. Against my better judgement I took one last glance over my shoulder. There on the hill I saw him; the man in blue among the grave markers. And this time there was no doubt about it. He was definitely watching us.