by Greg Iles
Catholic Hill wasn’t actually much of a hill, just a few feet high at the front, but at the back it dropped off about eight feet at some places, where a cracked masonry wall held in the old graves. Between this wall and the kudzu-filled gully behind it was a narrow strip of grass, maybe fifteen feet wide, where a couple could lie in the shade on a hot day, shielded from the eyes of cemetery visitors, the only risk of discovery coming from the grass-cutters or another couple seeking privacy.
Waters walked up the steps and past the massive cross to a wooden gazebo built over an old cistern. Here the black men who eternally battled the cemetery grass and made good on the promise of “perpetual care” ate their baloney sandwiches from paper bags. The cistern was filled now with Fritos bags and RC Cola cans. Waters walked beneath the gazebo to the back of the hill and looked down at the grassy strip where he had lain so many hours with Mallory all those years ago. Nothing had changed. A few masonry cracks had deepened, a few more bricks had fallen. All else remained the same. What had he expected? The sun shone, the rain fell, the grass grew, the mowers came, the dead stayed dead.
He glanced to his left and felt a fillip of excitement. Across the lane, shaded by drooping tree limbs, lay two low-walled rectangles that bordered very old graves. Behind one of those walls Waters had once buried a mason jar beneath six inches of earth. If he or Mallory arrived late at a rendezvous—or early and had to leave—they would leave the other a message in the jar. Sorry I missed you. I love you SO much. Or I’ll come back at 3:30. PLEASE try to be here. I need you. All the infantile gushing and obsessive logistics of clandestine lovers. He wondered if the jar was still there.
“What the hell,” he said. He strode across the hill and down into the deep shade below the overhanging limbs.
He heard a scuttling in the undergrowth as he approached, probably a possum or armadillo startled by the drumbeat of his feet. A faint scent of flowers hung in the air, and as he stepped over the low wall, he had the sensation of entering a dimly lit room. Leaning over the far wall, he saw a thickly tangled web of weeds covering the ground. Though it had been almost twenty years, his hand went to the exact spot where he’d dug the hole, and in the act of reaching, he felt the same thrill he’d felt years before, the delicious anticipation of reading a declaration of love or a frank expression of lust. He also felt fear. He had nearly been bitten by a coral snake here, a beautiful harbinger of death sunning itself in the weeds beside the wall. You almost never saw coral snakes in Mississippi, but they were here, and far more lethal than the moccasins and rattlesnakes you bumped into during summer if you spent much time in the woods.
Beneath the weeds, Waters’s fingers found a depression in the cool earth, like the shallow bowls that form over decomposing stumps. He drove his forefinger down through moist soil until it hit something flat and hard. Widening the hole with his finger, he scraped away some dirt, gripped the round lid, and pulled. The mason jar slipped easily from the ground, a translucent thing coated with a brown layer of soil, its once shiny brass lid now an orange-brown cap of rust. He was smiling with nostalgia when he saw a piece of paper lying in the bottom of the jar. Not a moldy yellow scrap, but a neatly folded piece of blue notepaper that could have been put there yesterday.
Powder blue paper…
His heart began to pound, and he whipped his head around, suddenly certain that he was being observed. More frightening, he had the sensation that he was following a trail of bread crumbs laid out by someone four steps ahead of him, someone who was pulling him along by the twin handles of his guilt and regret. If so, that person knew all his secrets, and Mallory’s too. At least he knew she always used blue notepaper. He peered anxiously up at Catholic Hill, but he saw only gravestones, empty lanes, and gently swaying trees.
Looking down at the jar, he felt a sudden urge to shove it back down the hole and walk away. That would be the smart thing to do. But he couldn’t. What man could?
He gripped the bottom of the jar with his left hand, the lid with his right, and twisted hard. The rusty lid squeaked but came off easily. Waters inverted the jar, and the notepaper fell to its mouth and stuck. He fished it out with his fingers and unfolded it. The flowing script sent his heart into his throat. Those words had been written either by Mallory Candler or by an expert forger with access to papers she’d left behind at her death.
Dear John,
I knew you’d come here sooner or later. I knew you’d look. You and I used to laugh at ideas like predestination, but I wonder if, even then, when we lay here kissing on the grass, what would happen to me in New Orleans had long been ordained, and even that you would one day be standing here with this note in your hand, wondering if you were going insane. You’re not, Johnny. You’re NOT. God, I love you. I LOVE YOU.
Mallory
“This isn’t happening,” Waters said softly, his hands shaking.
“Yes, it is,” answered a low female voice.
He whirled.
Eve Sumner stood twenty feet behind him, as still as a stone angel. She still wore her work clothes, and her hair was still pinned up from her neck. As he gaped, her lips spread in a languorous smile, and fear unlike any he had known since Mallory lost her mind gripped him. The compulsion to run was almost overpowering, but some primal impulse held him in place. He would not let this woman see she had the power to drive him to flight.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
Eve shrugged and walked a few steps closer, down to the low wall that bordered the graves. “I knew you’d come.”
“Do you know what this is?” Waters held out the note.
“It’s the letter I left here the day after I saw you at the soccer game.”
He closed his eyes and tried to keep his mind from spinning out of control. Facts, he thought. Who knew about this jar? Did I ever tell Cole about it? Did Mallory ever tell anyone? She must have. How else could Eve know about it?
“Why don’t you just tell me what you want, Ms. Sumner? It would save a lot of time. Surely it can’t be worth going to all this trouble.”
“I want what I’ve always wanted. You.”
Waters blinked. This was exactly what Mallory would have said, had she been standing before him.
“You want me how?”
The languid smile again. “Every way. In my life. In my bed. I want you inside me. I want to have your children.”
The mention of children made Waters’s stomach flip over. “You’re not Mallory Candler. Your name is Eve Sumner.”
“Legally, that’s true.”
“What do you mean? Were you born under another name?”
“I was born Mallory Gray Candler, on February fifth, nineteen sixty.”
“You got that off her gravestone.”
Eve looked skyward. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to listen to what I have to say.”
“I’m listening now.”
“You say that, but your mind is closed. To hear what I have to say, it’s going to have to be open. To anything. Everything.”
“I’m open.”
Eve smiled sadly, then without a word turned away and walked toward the strip of grass behind Catholic Hill. Waters stood in the shadow of the woods, his eyes following her vanishing figure as though chained to it. He hesitated for nearly a minute. Then put the jar and the note back in the hole and went after her.
He found her lying on the grass, her eyes open to the sky, her arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. The navy skirt suit seemed totally incongruous with her relaxed posture.
Without looking at him, Eve said, “Ask me anything you like, Johnny. Things only you or I would know.”
“I’m not playing that stupid fact game with you. God only knows how you found all that stuff out, and it doesn’t matter anyway. No matter what secrets you know, you can’t negate the single most important fact: Mallory Candler is dead, and has been for ten years.”
Eve sighed and turned her head to face him, her eyes empty of artifice. “
That’s not true.”
The boldness of her statement left him speechless for a moment. “Are you seriously trying to tell me you’re Mallory Candler returned from the dead? Are you mentally ill?”
Eve bit her bottom lip, and Waters had the eerie feeling that he was talking to a small child concealing a secret.
“I’m not back from the dead,” she said. “I never died.”
Waters shivered at the conviction in her voice. “What?”
“I never died, Johnny. Not for more than a second or two, anyway.”
“You may not have died, but Mallory Candler had an open casket funeral.”
“And her body lay in it.” Eve rolled up onto one elbow and propped her head on her hand. “Do you think that’s all a person is, Johnny? Has science jaded you so much? A woman is the sum of her flesh?”
“What else is there?”
“What about the soul? For lack of a better term. The spirit?”
“You’re telling me you’re the soul of Mallory Candler?”
Eve bit her lip again, as if seriously considering this question. “Maybe. I don’t really know what a soul is.”
“If you’re the soul of Mallory Candler, where is Eve Sumner’s soul?”
“Here. With me. Only…”
“What?”
“She’s sleeping.” Eve shrugged with childlike wonder. “Sort of.”
“Eve Sumner’s soul is sleeping?”
“That’s what I call it. I’m awake now. Most of the time, really. It’s something that’s taken me a long time to learn. Years.”
Three days ago, Waters could not have imagined having this conversation. “Is this craziness what you wanted to tell me?”
“Partly. But I knew it wouldn’t convince you. I really wanted to tell you a story.”
“About what?”
“My murder.”
“Do you know something about Mallory’s murder?”
Another sad smile. “Mallory’s, mine, whatever. But she wasn’t murdered. A man tried to murder her. Tried and failed.”
“This is pointless, Ms. Sumner.”
“Is it? You’re still here.”
He wanted to walk away, but he couldn’t. And she knew it. He sat Indian-style on the grass a few feet away from her and said, “Talk.”
Eve sat up and gracefully folded her legs beneath her, exactly the way Mallory had two decades before. Her smile disappeared, replaced by a look of deep concentration. Waters was reminded of Annelise when she tried to recall details of the house they had lived in when she was a small child.
“It was summer,” Eve said. “We were living in downtown New Orleans. I’d driven across the river to the Dillard’s Department Store in Slidell. On my way back, my Camry broke down. I couldn’t believe it. That car was so reliable. This was nineteen ninety-two, and I didn’t have a cell phone. I wasn’t too worried, though. It was only nine-thirty, and I thought I could flag down a cop. I turned on my flashers, locked the doors, and started watching my rearview mirror. After forty-five minutes, I hadn’t seen a single patrol car. I hoped my husband would come looking for me, but I’m not exactly the punctual type, and I knew he wouldn’t really start worrying till at least eleven.
“I was a mile from City Park—the projects—and wearing a fairly skimpy outfit, so I didn’t want to get out and start flagging people. But I did. After about five minutes, a truck with a blue flashing light pulled in front of me. It had a camper thing on the back, but it looked official. Like one of those canine units, or maybe a fire department thing. Anyway, I was blocked by a concrete rail on one side and zooming traffic on the other. A man got out and waved, then called out and asked if I needed help. I asked if he had a cell phone. He said he did, and I saw the little funny aerial sticking off his back windshield. He reached in and held out a phone on a cord, and I took a couple of steps forward. I knew it might not be the smartest thing to do, but I didn’t want to have to jog down into the projects if I could help it.
“When I got close enough to reach the phone, he sprayed me with something that burned my eyes. Mace, I guess. I wanted to run, but traffic was flying past and I couldn’t see where I was going. He hit me on the side of the head, and suddenly I was lifted and dropped onto metal. There was a roaring sound, and then…I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the dark. The truck was parked somewhere, with nothing but moonlight coming through the windows. I couldn’t hear any traffic—just woods sounds—and I was more afraid than I’d ever been in my life. My hands were tied behind me, and I was lying on them, so my arms were numb to the shoulders.
“I thought at first that I was alone. Then I heard quiet breathing in the dark, and I knew he was in there with me. Close. I felt something touch my leg—fingers, I think—and I realized I was naked from the waist down. He started talking to me. In the dark like that. A voice in the dark. He told me he had a knife, and he pressed the blade against my thigh. It was cold. He said he was going to free my hands, because he wanted me to use them, but if I fought, he would cut my throat. He rolled me halfway over and cut whatever was tying me. Before the circulation came back to my arms, he climbed on top of me and started—” Eve’s voice cracked and went silent, then returned. “Started to do what he wanted. It was terribly painful, and my arms were paralyzed, burning from the blood coming back into them. I could hardly see, and he was grunting and saying things I couldn’t understand—something about how beautiful I was—and I remember thinking then how strangers had been leering at me and saying suggestive things since I was thirteen, and I was so goddamn angry that I’d been stupid, that one of them was finally doing what they’d all dreamed of doing.
“Anyway, I was trying to keep my head together, to decide how best to survive. Just lie there and wait for it to be over? Or fight? I mean, it was already happening. And he was holding the knife in one hand, right at my throat. As it went on, he got more violent. It was like he couldn’t finish, and that was making him furious. He dropped the knife and put his arms around my throat and started choking me. I started to fight then, but he was so much stronger than I was. And suddenly…Johnny, suddenly I had this absolute flash of certainty that I was going to die there. Under him. In the dark. That this pathetic tragedy was going to be the last chapter of my life.”
Waters wanted to argue, but there was no denying the pain in Eve’s eyes and voice. Whatever else she might be, whatever ill intent she might ultimately have toward him, she was in this moment a woman in distress, remembering something that had actually happened to her.
Her voice dropped. “Then something very strange happened. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, the way people say it does. Memories flooded into my head, but they weren’t of my husband or my children. I saw us, Johnny.” She looked urgently at him, her eyes wet with tears. “I saw you. I had this sense of a life unlived, of the road we’d never taken together, and that now we never would. And I knew that if I was thinking of you in that moment, then I had always been right about us.”
Her words chilled him to the core, and still she went on.
“He was strangling me while he raped me, his eyes almost popping out of his head, and my vision started to go black. There was no white light or anything like that. No angels. Just awful blackness enveloping me from all sides. But suddenly in my heart, it was like this fire burst into life, this cold blue fire that screamed, ‘NO! I’M NOT GOING TO DIE! I CAN’T DIE! I’M NOT DONE!’ And then his hands loosened or slipped, because he was in the throes of finishing—I know that now—and suddenly…”
Eve’s mouth was open but no sound emerged. Her eyes had the glaze of someone who had stared for an hour at the sun.
“What happened?”
“Suddenly I wasn’t Mallory anymore. I was looking at Mallory. Looking at myself.”
He blinked in confusion. “What?”
“I was looking at my dead body, Johnny. I was…in him.”
Waters sat frozen, unable to break the spell her words had cast. If she was lying
, she was either a first-rate actress or a delusional schizophrenic. As he stared, she rose onto her knees and hobbled to within two feet of him.
“You know I’m telling the truth,” she said, her eyes pleading. “Don’t you?”
He swallowed. “I think you believe what you’re saying. But I don’t understand. It’s crazy. And it doesn’t explain how you could be Mallory.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to think about that part right now. I’ve waited so long for this moment.” She reached out and touched his cheek, and a current of heat went through him. “Will you do me a favor, Johnny? One favor?”
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
He pulled back slightly.
“Just one kiss,” she said, sliding her finger down to his lips. “Where’s the harm in that?”
“Why kiss you?”
“If you kiss me, you’ll know.”
“Know what?”
“That it’s all true. That it’s me.”
He pulled her fingers away from his face. “I think you’ve suffered a terrible thing, Eve. But I’m not some fairy-tale prince. I can’t magically solve your problems for you.”
“Yes, you can. And I can solve yours.”
“I don’t have any.”
Her eyes were serene in their knowledge. “Are you really so happy?”
He looked away.
“Kiss me, Johnny. Please. Just once.”
She took his hands and pulled him up to his knees. Now his face was above hers as they knelt, inches apart. Her eyes seemed to expand and deepen, drawing him into her. Those eyes knew him in a way no others on earth did, and he felt that he knew them. He wasn’t sure whether he leaned forward or she rose to him, but after a brief hesitation, their lips touched, and with the gentlest pressure they kissed. Her lips remained closed for a moment, and then he felt the soft touch of her tongue. He parted his lips, and she slipped her tongue inside, then took his lower lip between her teeth and tugged it toward her. A shock of recognition shot through him, and he almost pulled away, but with recognition came a wave of desire. He kissed her harder, slipping his tongue into her mouth to taste her. Eve did not taste like Mallory, but she responded like Mallory. Her mouth moved with perfect elasticity, yielding to the pressure of his lips, then reciprocating like a gifted dancer who senses her partner’s every move. He had no idea how long they kissed, but when he felt her breasts swelling against him, he suddenly found himself unable to breathe. He broke the kiss and pushed her away.