Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 8

by Michael Kelly

  Our father’s bedroom no longer smells of him, of the salt tang of his skin, but of the deep, animal smell of Helene’s sweat. “He told me it would be simple. Like drawing breath,” Helene whispers to the wall, and I turn my body away from her and wonder if she will pull me apart now. My uselessness laid so bare. I cannot help her. I cannot even find the door. I cannot speak the dead tongues of the house.

  The night passes, and my sister does not tear me apart, and the vines twine against my calves, holding me weakly in place. It is easy to break free of them, to keep myself from their thorns, but they’ve encased Helene’s chest, her throat, and she sighs and bends into them as if they are an answer to a question she dare not voice.

  I know her question. It is burned into my own lungs. Where are you? Why haven’t you gone? When will it be my turn?

  I close the door and go to get Helene’s water. I test her questions with my own tongue, but they fall like dead things at my feet, and there is nothing in the silence to answer. Nothing in my sister’s voice belongs to me. I cannot claim any part of her body, not even the pieces of her I have collected in the glass jar. Not even our shared blood, pumping through our veins in thick, reddened surges, cycling again and again through the empty spaces of our hearts.

  It rains throughout the day, the pattern beating over our heads as we sit together in the cooled dark of the house and wait for something we cannot name. We can feel it gathering, shimmering somewhere beyond our vision, caught and tangled and choking the damp chlorophyll of the vines. It breathes out when we are breathing in, and Helene tries to hold her breath, tries to catch its slight sounds, but the vines squeeze tighter when she does this, and I was never any good at holding my breath, and even when I try, my heart pounds in my ears, and the rest of the world drops out. Whatever is trying to come through doesn’t want us to hear it, to see it’s aching, slow movements.

  I whip my head around and around, and Helene’s eyes are large and liquid, catching in the dim light, but there is nothing reflected there. No doors opening. No large forms stepping through and straightening into a body that reaches and reaches. A body for which there will never be any end. Our father come with his hands crushed into fists. Our father anointed in shadow, wearing the weight of his daughter’s like the heaviest of garments.

  As if we needed his crumbs. As if we needed the remnants of his shriveled heart.

  Inside of that sound, my anger roars into life. “We can’t stay here,” I tell Helene, and in the distance, there is the dulled crack of lightning, but I do not see it as an omen.

  “He’s coming through. And he’ll take me into the house. He’ll show me,” she says, and a tendril shoots along her neck, curling against her collarbone as if it could pierce the thin flesh there and flood her sternum with green.

  “Look at what he’s left us, Helene. This house. Does any part of it tell you he’s interested in sharing? We’ve been left behind. Even if he comes back, he won’t see us. We won’t matter compared to what he’s found. We aren’t magic. We never have been.”

  “If you say another word, I’ll tear out your tongue.” Helene hisses, bares her teeth at me, and there are thorns against the pale pink of her gums. She tips her head, her hair falling across her face, so I cannot see her eyes. “He should have pinched your nose shut when you were born.”

  Her arms are wasted. The length of her concaved into itself, the bones stretched against skin, her vertebrae sprouting tight knots up her back. It would be so easy to pluck her up and carry her out of this place, but there are still her teeth. She would not allow anything other than bloodshed.

  That night, I try to sleep as I listen to the vines breathe instead of Helene and wonder if it would be better this way. For her to draw the life out of me in one great act of violence rather than waiting for the vines to choke us, or for our father to return and create for me a tomb from hands I no longer recognize. I pull the blankets around me, and they are warm, and I sweat, and I smell the scent of myself, and in the morning, my eyes ache with not sleeping, and my head feels swollen, but I go downstairs. I get Helene her water. I wish for poison.

  The deaths available to us would be messy. Painful. I cannot face such a death, and I am shamed by my own cowardice, that even in the bravery of contemplating such an act, I am still tethered to this body by my fear. Helene would laugh to hear it, so I fold this secret tight into the hidden parts of myself and hope instead the vines will kill her so I do not have to. If they are merciful, they will take me next.

  Throughout the afternoon, Helene eats the portions of the house she can reach, and I wonder that the walls do not fall into tremors as it tries to throw off my sister’s careful, insistent scraping. Whatever heart lies in the center of the house must still be buried too deep. She is no true threat. Her mouth is filled with grit; it amounts to nothing. Helene must understand this, but she doesn’t stop, and I watch her craft a hole for herself in the wall, watch as she creeps inside.

  That night, Helene falls into a fairy tale sleep. A princess who will not wake no matter what the damsel who has come to save her does. Screaming her name, pulling her hair, kissing the green tint of her mouth, biting at the soft flesh of her upper arm, none of it is worth the energy it siphons from me. She slumbers, and I work quickly, untangling the snarl of vines and thorns from her inert body, ignoring the pricks against my own flesh, the slow trickle of blood.

  “Count it as an offering,” I say. And for good measure, I lift my voice and hope my father can hear. “Then kindly fuck off.”

  When I lift Helene’s body, she weighs so little that I ache for the woman she used to be. The depth of her. How her presence filled whatever container it found itself in and threatened to swell, to drown, with every breath she drew. I force myself to stand, to step forward, and still, she sleeps against me, her head tipped back so I can see the milk of her throat, the veins so blue as they push to escape. Around us, the house makes no sound.

  I pause, waiting for the walls to crash in, for the floors to rise in a great tidal wave and swallow us, for the doors to close, for the windows to rain glass over our heads, but there is nothing except for the slow creak of a door opening from somewhere within the great belly of the house.

  “Helene?” the voice calls, and I run.

  Through the kitchen, and the great room where we ate breakfasts; the lemon curd our father made the color of a young sun, spread in thick gobs over dense scones, then toward the great oak door that carried the prints of all of us, and over the threshold and out into the glittering night.

  Our father put Helene to sleep for him. His Beauty. He would have her sleep for a thousand years in the bower he created, only to return when he wanted and strip away everything that belonged to her. To pare her away until all that remained was a single, burning bone. There was no holiness, no evil in such a diminishing, but we were his daughters, and we were not his alone.

  I run with my sister tucked against my chest, my lungs and thighs burning, but I do not drop her. I dare not let her body touch the ground, the arching, needing roots and leaves that thirst for the girl I’ve stolen away.

  Behind me, a voice howls into the wind, and I run faster. There are hours until sunrise. I will run until my feet bleed, until I cannot feel anything except our hearts beating against one another.

  Again, our father lifts his voice; it is more distant, and I understand something he didn’t think of when he vanished behind that door. He cannot leave the house. His salvation has become his prison. I could laugh, but there is no breath for it.

  I will find a hole to curl our bodies into, and we will sleep together, our arms wound round each other, our legs and hands undistinguishable from the other.

  And when my sister finally wakes, I will whisper her name in her ear.

  “You are Helene,” I will tell her. “And you belong with me.”

  Workday

  Kurt Fawver

  • • ∞ • •

  MEMO

  CORIVDAN INCORPOR
ATED

  To: All Hourly Employees

  From: Human Resources

  Subject: Holiday Party Attendance

  Date: Nov. 20, 2018

  Please RSVP to the holiday party by Friday afternoon. The event will be held the evening of December 21. Our caterers need an exact count of the number of people attending so that we don’t run out of food and refreshments. We will have a buffet-style meal and an open bar throughout the night. Please remember also that attendance at the holiday party is mandatory for all employees.

  Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you there.

  *

  Message scrawled in permanent marker in the unisex restroom on the twelfth floor of the Corivdan Building. Found Nov. 20, 2018. Painted over Nov. 21, 2018.

  DO NOT attend the holiday party. You are all in grave danger. By working at Corivdan Inc. you’ve put yourself in the sights of a monster. Stay away from the party. YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.

  *

  MEMO

  CORIVDAN INCORPORATED

  To: All Hourly Employees

  From: Jonathan Chadwick, Executive V.P.

  Subject: Holiday party

  Date: Nov. 21, 2018

  I want to personally invite you to this year’s holiday party. 2018 has been a massive success for the company. We posted our highest earnings EVER in back-to-back quarters and topped Corivdan’s best year to date. None of it would have been possible without you and your work. You’re the lifeblood of the company and you deserve to be celebrated, which is why we insist you come!

  On tap for the party we have a full buffet, an open bar all night, karaoke, special prizes, and some surprise entertainment! It’s going to be a blast! I can’t wait to see you all there. And, again, thank you for continued excellence in your work.

  *

  Fragment of essay found taped to the microwave in the mailing department break room of Corivdan Incorporated. Found Nov. 26, 2018.

  The QO Murders: A Conspiracy of Wealth

  In December of 1898, a pair of pheasant hunters stumbled upon twenty-five dead bodies in the forests outside the smoke-shrouded limits of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The sheer obscenity of so much unexplained death in one location would have been sufficient to make the discovery notable, but the corpses also exhibited bizarre and unexplained modifications. To wit, each of the bodies had its eyes scooped out and replaced with silver dollar coins; all the fingers of every body had been cut off and rolls of dollar bills had been stuffed into the gaping stumps; and when authorities attempted to move the deceased, they found the task nearly impossible, as the corpses weighed several times more than they should have. Ultimately, it took four stout men to lift each one of the bodies onto the wagons that transported them to the city, where they were examined by doctors and law enforcement officials. Autopsies revealed that the internal organs of the deceased had been entirely removed and their remaining hollow cavities packed full of gleaming, freshly-minted pennies. The back of each penny, despite its newness, bore two machine-cut capital letters—Q and O—that obliterated the “Indian head” design that adorned all pennies at the time. The amount of money stuffed into the bodies totaled exactly the same in every case: 210 dollars and 21 cents—an amount that would equal over 6,000 dollars today.

  No one doubted that what happened to these individuals must have been murder, yet an investigation into the crime never began. City police filed a report concerning the incident, but declined to assign any officers or detectives to collect evidence from the crime scene, identify the victims, or interview potential witnesses. Sheriffs in the outlying municipality where the bodies were found also turned a blind eye to the murders, choosing to delegate all responsibility to city officials.

  Newspapers, though especially hungry for audacious stories in the late 19th century, barely covered the murders, writing of them in the abstract. Reporters mentioned few of the more remarkable details about the bodies’ mutilations and implied that the deaths were potentially self-inflicted or accidental. Editors buried any stories of the murders deep within their rags’ pages, well beyond the attention of casual readers. Without media attention, the murders soon became little more than hearsay.

  Why police or journalists seemed uninterested in investigation of the murders remains unknown, though there is some evidence that forces working behind the scenes squelched inquiry into the incident. Certain powerful and moneyed industrialists and bankers such as J.P.

  [remainder of essay missing, page torn in mid-sentence]

  *

  MEMO

  CORIVDAN INCORPORATED

  To: All Hourly Employees

  From: Human Resources

  Subject: Holiday Party RSVP

  Date: Nov. 27, 2018

  This is a reminder that Holiday Party RSVPs are now open and can be returned by email or personally dropped off with Jaylen Vernor in HR. We welcome you to invite spouses, partners, and significant others, but make sure to include their names in your RSVP under “Guest.” The more, the merrier!

  *

  Photocopied note left under windshield wipers of cars parked in the Corivdan Building parking garage. Found Nov. 28.

  They care about you as a fire cares about its kindling. Their celebration is not for you, but for the act of feeding the insatiable QO. You are neither the gift giver nor the gift receiver, but the gift itself. Resign now. Do not come back tomorrow. You do not have much time.

  *

  MEMO

  CORIVDAN INCORPORATED

  To: All Employees

  From: Human Resources

  Subject: Holiday Party Prizes

  Date: Nov. 28, 2018

  After several inquiries into the nature of the holiday party prizes, we’ve decided to give you a preview of what you could win.

  Included among the prize pool will be:

  - box seat tickets to this year’s Super Bowl

  - two additional paid weeks of vacation time

  - full personal use of a company BMW or Mercedes-Benz for a year

  - cruise tickets to the Bahamas

  - personal chef service for three months

  - newest gen smartphones and smartpads

  - and more exciting prizes yet to be revealed.

  This is our biggest employee celebration in company history! Everyone will win! Attendance is mandatory, but believe us when we say you’ll definitely want to be at the party!

  *

  Email sent to all email accounts ending in the corivdan.com domain.

  To: Corivdan Employees

  From: s7a7g7e@mailserv.com

  Date: November 29, 2018

  Subject: 1926 Baltimore Massacre

  In August of 1926, a nameless crabber checking his traps in Baltimore’s inner harbor discovered that one of the traps had snagged on something in the bay and would barely budge. A poor man, he had no funds to replace the trap, so he worked at hauling it from the depths for hours. When he finally heaved it out of the water, he found it entangled with a length of sparkling gold cable, and that the cable led to an object beneath the surface that he’d partially dredged up—a statue of some sort, he thought, human as it was in shape and reflective as polished metal.

  The crabber enlisted the aid of other fishermen in the area and, together, they worked to raise the “statue.” Once rescued from the sea floor, the nature of the object became no clearer. It was gold—that much was obvious—but if it was a statue, it was the most poorly executed statue in the history of sculpture, as the figure possessed a vaguely human form but lacked any notable features other than the letters Q and O stamped upon its chest in ornate calligraphy. Further, the gold cable that connected the crab trap to the statue extended back into the murky depths, hinting at further discoveries.

  The crabber notified authorities of his find, imagining it might be of historical significance, if not monetary value. When experts from local universities examined the statue, however, they realized it was not a statue at all. Rather, it was an impromptu sarcophagus,
a solid gold shell poured over a human body.

  The revelation of a corpse within the gold tomb triggered a police response, and soon the area of the bay where the body had been found was scoured by police and Coast Guard divers. What they uncovered beneath the waves was another thirty-five statuesque bodies, all bound together at their ankles like a chain gang, all bearing the QO stamp on their golden prisons. The gilded manacles and metallic shells weighted the bodies to the sea bed and made recovery of the deceased difficult, but, with the help of barges and cranes, authorities managed to lift the petrified dead from their watery repose within a week.

  After recovery, coroners and medical examiners determined that the bodies had been in the bay for less than a month, though more accurate dating was impossible. They also found even more gold inside the airways of every corpse, which implied, horribly, that the deceased had been covered in molten metal while alive and had breathed in the scorching ooze. They agreed that the gold overlay—whether by burning or suffocation—was the cause of death for each and every person reclaimed from the bay, and that Baltimore police clearly had, therefore, a mass murder on their hands.

  Given that experts in precious metals estimated the total worth of the gold shells and cables to be well over ten million dollars, no one was brave enough to venture a guess as to who could have committed the murders. Only the ultra-wealthy had the means to pull off the crime, and no one in the Baltimore PD wanted to anger the wrong multimillionaire.