Father of the Deceased Read online

  Neil lost the shape for several seconds and scanned for the small figure in the distance. He caught it, running through the cemetery toward the south end. The key resting in the ignition turned and his car started. Driving while holding a camera in his lap was tough. But the man was on foot, this was a doable thing.

  Ignoring a stop sign, Neil wheeled around a corner and toward the shape. It continued down the street turning toward Neil’s car once the individual saw the lights, it stopped briefly, tools in hand.

  Snapsnapsnapsnap, Neil shot. The man gunned it through a residential yard and out of sight. Neil drove around for nine minutes looking for the man. No luck. Even if he did find someone, it was an especially dark night, all sorts of men up to all sorts of everything might be out.

  Neil parked and dialled Chester’s home number.

  “What?” Chester asked, groggy.

  “It happened. Shit hit the proverbial fan.” Neil’s words came out quickly on the rhythm of excitement. This was the story of a lifetime. “Someone was in the cemetery. I think he dug up the body and then put someone else in it. I am going to head back to the scene for pics, but I bet it is all back to normal, but I got him. I got him.”

  “Whoa, whoa, back up, Neil. From the beginning.”

  Neil explained step by step as he walked through the cemetery, so excited he gasped for air. Chester’s end remained quiet. It was a big deal, big news, national stuff, international terror.

  “I’m back now. It looks as it did, but if I am correct it was the Genner girl’s spot that got dug up.” Neil looked in the grass a foot from the recently filled hole. “Ah! What’s this?” he asked and snapped six shots in succession.

  “What, what?”

  “Ocean Spray.” He pulled a flashlight from his pocket. “A little lighter than any cranberry juice I’ve ever seen.”

  “Don’t touch it. That’ll be evidence once you go to the cops. But, first things first, you have to email me the entire collection.”

  “I must’ve taken two-hundred shots, all in RAWs.” Neil tapped his finger on the body of his Hassleblad. “Gotta be ten gigs, most in night vision.”

  “Pick thirty shots. And quick! Send them to me. I’ll text once they’re are up on the site and then you have to go to the police.”

  “Good call. I can go in the morning.”

  “Too late, they’re already going to give you the full spiel for not calling them during the incident and take a copy of the card. They’ll confiscate your camera and I can’t afford another sixty thousand to replace it.”

  “Plus, lenses,” Neil added, a smile on his face while he listened.

  “Plus lenses. We don’t need that kind of trouble. You’ll have to follow this. See if you can’t weasel information from the cops, maybe they know the guy you followed. They’ll know the kids for sure, the kids were likely just drunken asshats, but I want, check that, I need to know this other guy’s business, and if there are two bodies in that hole, I want the world to hear it from us first.”

  “All right. Give me thirty, forty, minutes, maybe an hour and I’ll have them to you.”

  “How about twenty, move it!”

  Neil hung up and got to work, the glow from his laptop flooded the interior of his car. He switched thirty-five of his most revealing shots from RAW to JPEG and pasted his byline in the bottom right corner of every shot. It took twenty-seven minutes—close enough to twenty—to make the changes and share the files on the email server. Nine minutes later, Neil was on his way to his motel room to hide his camera before heading to the police station, armed with copies of all the shots he’d taken on a secondary memory card.

  12

  Maurice arose smooth and easy motion to avoid waking his wife. He picked up dirty jeans and a dirty t-shirt from the floor. They smelled fine, within reason. The Marlboros poked at his leg from the pocket. He’d forgotten he bought them, old friends. The clock read after one.

  The night was dark, clouds pushed through the sky, he walked under the streetlights blazing a shadowy glow over the sidewalk. Cats prowled in silence. Dogs slept, birds slept, and humans slept. He had no way of telling how long he’d walked. The pace wasn’t his typical, his mind nestled itself into a dark corner and surfaced only enough to mind sidewalks and crosswalks.

  A 7-Eleven appeared over the horizon and he licked dry lips. The store was vacant aside from the girl behind the counter. Never in his life had a simple decision appeared so utterly impossible. Nine different companies offering pure spring water. Which one would satiate?

  A beep sounded over the din of the attendant’s music—quiet enough to allow voices to overpower the organized noise. Maurice took out two bottles, one of Nestle the other of Fiji—one of the cheapest and one of the priciest in the cooler—and walked across the sticky floor away from the coolers toward the attendant where the overcooked meat scent was heaviest. Everything had a yellow glow.

  In line, he kept his eyes trained forward. A tiny white haired woman preceded him, buying a pack of Kool menthols. Head to toe she dressed like a movie gypsy. There was a thin red scarf draped over her head. More cotton wound her frame. Layer after layer seemed to swim upon her body, floral designs set in deep red. She paid and walked toward the door and then stopped dead.

  “Just these?” the attendant asked, a fluffy haired chubby girl with bright blue eye makeup and an almost comical amount of blush, giving her the look of a child who broke into her mother’s makeup bag.

  Maurice nodded and pulled out a ten. The old woman eyed him steadily from near the door. He took his change and stepped around her, into the dark night. He chugged at the Nestle. Greedily, he twisted the cap from the Fiji. It was more of the same, but smoother—different minerals. A gentle hand rested on his shoulder and, surprised, he choked on the water, spitting a shower onto the asphalt. He spun, feeling at his side for a gun that wasn’t there.

  “I’m sorry,” the old woman said, blowing smoke from her nostrils. “I can feel your hurt. It’s a bad hurt, a big hurt.”

  Maurice judged her head to toe, waiting for the money grab in the form of a service. This was a grifter of some sort.

  “My name is Miss Bănică. The hurt you hold is thick. I can smell it, feel it.”

  “So what?”

  “Death is always tough and sometimes it doesn’t get any easier in the afterlife. The darkness can be there too. The darkness prefers it.”

  “Lady, I’m not giving you any money,” Maurice said and he turned to walk away.

  Getting only a few steps away Maurice stopped, a voice glutted his mind, booming loudly. “Rosalind, you can speak to her. I can make it happen.”

  Maurice turned to the woman. “Shut up, you terrible old bitch. You grifting old bitch.”

  She looked at him without speaking for three heartbeats and then said, “It is true that I charge. I am paid handsomely, but I earn it. I haven’t stolen a cent.”

  He finally noticed that her mouth hadn’t moved when she spoke.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but Miss Bănică beckoned him to follow her into her little business in the same plaza. Inside, the oddities and unnerving shapes and smells took focus, interpretation. Absurdity for the paying customers, Maurice thought, still unbelieving although the secret, or rather inconceivable, world opened a crack to show him the possibilities.

  “Not absurd, but expensive. I can feel in your wooden mind, no room for reality where a sense of logic exists,” Miss Bănică said, aloud, with her mouth. “I have a money back guarantee, but if I can conjure the connection required to link between here and there, a bridge, you will pay.”

  “Where is there?”

  “That all depends. I’ve only been here and once I die, I will be there and once you die, you will be there.”

  “Sounds like bullshit.”

  “Sit.”

  He did.

  “Hands.”

  He put his hands into the woman’s, they were cold and boney. Like bundled twigs beneath tissue.
r />   “Look into my eyes.”

  Yellowed with time, her eyes offered impossible depth. It was sickly and ugly.

  “Focus on Rosalind.”

  Her hands tightened around his as Rosalind floated into his mind. She never really left, Rosalind would stay a while. The woman’s head shot backwards, as if someone whiplash snapped her neck, it tossed to the side and began a jerky roll. Maurice wanted to stand, leave the strange show, but the grip on his hands and mind kept him cemented to the wooden chair.

  Sweat poured down the woman’s face in great drips, slow like honey, yet as clear as the spring water he’d choked up in the parking lot. Suddenly Miss Bănică’s face settled, her shoulders creaking and clamoring before they followed the lead of her head.

  She sat, her lifeless gaze open on Maurice. Her head jerked back once more, her jaw snapped open. The effect made her seem as if she was some kind of mechanical humanoid, using the projector fitted to her throat, displaying full 1080, maybe a Blu-Ray disc slot somewhere in her abdomen. A pale light showered until bright white, surrounding a small silhouette, a girl, Rosalind. The light flashed away and only grey remained. Rosalind’s face was wet from tears, her expression was heartbreaking.

  “Rosalind!” Maurice shouted. “Baby, what’s wrong? Oh God.” He looked at the human projector. “If you’re hurting her, I’ll kill you. Honey? What’s wrong? Talk to me, honey. Please!”

  Rosalind looked around her in terror, the silent show gave no clues as to what caused her fear, but Maurice could sense the fear, it held weight, heavy and awful.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  She looked at her father, cringing as if a loud noise banged nearby. His heart burned to help. Black smoke crept onto her. Around her. She looked back and then turned quickly to her father, dropping her jaw. Embalming fluid drained and she showed the hole. Her tongue was gone.

  “God,” Maurice whispered.

  The black smoke covered Rosalind and fell from the air, dissolving the image projected from the woman’s throat in a sooty shower. The woman’s head snapped forward, she saw the dirty mess and screamed, “Get out!” She got up and began pushing him toward the door.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Go now, your daughter has been marked, go!” Miss Bănică pushed with all her strength against Maurice, but he refused to move. “I don’t need this, go, go, go goddamn you!”

  “What was that?”

  Miss Bănică looked wearily at the room around her, as if something evil lurked from the vision. A change in the atmosphere settled the room momentarily, as all that was normal was gone. The jars of strange liquids began to burst one by one, showering the ashy room with wet peculiarities. The table where they’d summoned the girl burst into flame. The walls rattled, pictures smashed to the hard floor.

  “Run!” she yelled, pushing past him to the outside. “It knows! Run! Damn you, run!”

  The ceiling began to crumble and Maurice followed the woman. By the time he got outside, she was well down the block, her old legs showing more than he’d ever expect possible. Her shop occupied one unit of a seven-section block in a single building. The fire raged through the roof and windows, but never touched the neighbors. The roof came down with an unexpected volume that rocked Maurice; he fell back, covering his ears, watching as the building slipped to the ground. It didn’t stop there. It spilled beyond the solid ground sinking into a fresh chasm. Within seconds, it was as if the building didn’t exist—a blackened vacancy dipping into the asphalt.

  “Rosalind,” Maurice whispered and then began to run.

  Never in his life had such clarity and single-mindedness come to him. His legs and lungs pumped. The homes he cleared, one after another, and yet he continued. Several minutes running, Maurice noticed nothing about the world around him until he arrived on the gates of the cemetery. A long stone wall three feet high with two more feet of interwoven wrought iron embellishments. He considered jumping it and decided against it. Something told him the gate would be open, something irrational, something certain. A bright light shone in the distance accompanied by red and blue flashers.

  He rounded the gate, his feet patted hard against the asphalt, giving warning to anyone within earshot of his arrival. Six uniformed officers stood off the path several rows up and he ran toward them and the bright spotlight they had directed at the ground. He passed the first two officers who watched with dumb mugs before giving chase. They couldn’t match his pace or urgency.

  “Stop dammit!” shouted one of the officers. “Hey, get him!”

  The four standing over the grave, turned their attention from the spotlight and ran toward Maurice, slamming him, instinctively, to the ground. The air shot out of his chest and he gasped.

  “Stop right there,” the officer said, pressing a knee into Maurice’s chest.

  A flashlight approached quickly. “Hey, get off him,” demanded the voice of the man with the light: Captain D’Souza.

  The officer didn’t let up.

  “Get off him, Rooney, you shithead.”

  The man let up and backed away a few steps.

  Maurice coughed and looked toward his daughter’s grave, the dirt partially removed and the body of a girl’s body poked out of the rubble like a sick cereal box prize sticking out between sugar-coated shapes and marshmallows.

  “What happened?” Maurice gasped.

  “There was a murder here, someone attempted to use your daughter’s still loose plot as a hiding place, but we don’t know the whole story yet. We can’t move the body until the examiner gets here. Hasn’t answered his phone yet. Rooney, try him again,” D’Souza said.

  Rooney nodded and walked into the shadows.

  “Did they do something to Rosalind?” Maurice asked, his chest calming but thoughts screaming to push past and dig up his daughter.

  “Don’t know, can’t move the girl. What in the hell are you doing out here?”

  “I…that’s…that’s Tammy Watson. She babysits the girls…babysat…girl,” Maurice said as he crawled to the edge of the grave.

  “You can’t be here. You know that, right? How the hell did you know anyway?”

  “How did you know?” Maurice volleyed.

  “Some newspaper guy was going through his shots across the road and noticed people walking around. He got some shots, but it’s all in night vision.”

  “Like that Paris Hilton porno,” Officer Blakey added, a young dough-headed boy of six and a half feet and almost two feet wide, pure muscle.

  “Will you shut up?” D’Souza said.

  “I gotta talk to the guy. See the pictures. Do you know who the others were?” Maurice asked.

  “We know two of them, but we can’t tell you who. You still haven’t answered me. What are you doing here?”

  To put what had happened into words was impossible. A thousand different artists couldn’t paint the idiosyncrasies of the day in a thousand murals. It was all too unbelievable. He looked up at his boss and replied the least crazy sounding way. “I had a feeling.” A hand rested on his stomach.

  Rooney came back into the light. “M.E. says he can be here in two hours, something about a shower, coffee, shit, and pork and pudding, whatever that is,” he said.

  “Irish breakfast,” Maurice said in a dull lifeless tone from his stoop on the edge of Rosalind’s grave.

  “Moe, we’re going to have someone take you home. You need some sleep. We’ll loop you in as soon as we know for sure what happened,” D’Souza said. “Blakey drive him home, would ya? I don’t think he is in the mood for your kind of humor tonight, so keep it quiet, huh?”

  Blakey nodded and stepped toward Maurice. Although Maurice heard, he didn’t move.

  “Moe,” D’Souza said, he approached and placed his hand on the shoulder of the wrought man.

  13

  Rhoda flopped in her sleep, finally throwing her arm to an empty side of the bed. It was cool to her touch, yet dampened by the absent man’s sweat. Nothing about his disappe
arance surprised her. The burden was heavy in so many ways and everyone dealt with the pressure how they could.

  Rhoda rose and draped a thick pink bathrobe over her shoulders, tied the ratty belt, and headed out, expecting to find her husband in the living room or possibly in the backyard. She poked her head the half-empty girls’ bedroom, reminding herself that the room was still half-full. Ruby needed her more than ever.

  The stairs to the main floor were carpeted and silent. Rhoda couldn’t stand creaky noises in a house. As a youth, she lived in a very old and very loud farmhouse. The building seemed alive, groaning under every other step. The furnace rattled all winter and summer—in the winter pushing hot air and in the summer just pushing air. The old pill-shaped refrigerator spat and rumbled, the pilot spark beneath looking sinister and hungry.

  The fear had Rhoda in a way. The Potvin parents heard all about it from their very vocal daughter. At that time, Edi Potvin was a different woman. She was always God fearing, but God hid in the closet under the Halloween decorations, next to the fake Christmas tree, and the Easter egg painting gear. Silly frights only existed until they met a conqueror. Conquerors used processes to victory.

  It took three days. Just before bed, Edi escorted her daughter to the semi-finished basement, pillow and sleeping bag in hand. She set up camp in front of the furnace and across the room from the old refrigerator.

  “We are going to cure your fear, you’ll thank me later,” Edi said as she looked down the dark staircase toward her daughter her eyes glassy and drunk.

  This wasn’t a joke or a game, her mother didn’t play those, so she lied down, knowing that her mother would come get her if she spent ten-minutes quietly, maybe fifteen, but no more than twenty for certain. She glanced around the room, her eyes timid, the old stonework had crumbled and been patched countless times, the rug beneath her was muddied from dirty boots. A door ran to the outside, she’d rather have slept on the other side with the mosquitoes and the bats than around those machines. Five minutes in she thought she’d done well, the refrigerator sparked and from her angle on the floor, her eyes set on the under carriage, the light almost blinded her with panic. She fought a scream. Behind her, the furnace rattled and she flipped inside her sleeping bag.