by David Connor
"Know what, Franklin?"
"Him."
"Freaky Frank. Freaky Frank." There was surely more to Renny than that.
"The boy will be cremated. The girl will be buried. We will have much work to do for an open casket."
"Yes," Frank said. Though her dress was quite pretty beneath the brown paper, her face looked nothing like it should. "I'll help you, Vaughn. We will do it together. I'll deliver Mr. Gifford's ashes to the post office later on."
"Are you certain, dear boy, it will not be too difficult?"
"It would be an honor, Vaughn. Something I can do to repay her for her kindness." Frank would do anything possible to make Melissa as beautiful deceased as she had been when alive. He closed his eyes to picture her smiling, the radiance of it, the joy and the loveliness. "I insist."
"As you wish," Vaughn said.
Chapter Three
May was finished, and June, July, and August over as well. It was Labor Day, 1965. Frank was walking home from visiting Melissa's grave, something he did quite often. He had run into her mother once, when he'd stayed a bit too long. She had told him her daughter spoke of him often. Mrs. Baxter must have known Frank by the scars, he figured. Surely Melissa had mentioned those.
"We were friends," Frank had told her, and they had shared a moment of quiet grief.
He had personally delivered Renny's ashes to the Watson home, something he never did. When he'd carefully handed Renny's mother the cardboard box, she had thanked him curtly. Though Frank had waited for more, standing there in heavy, uncomfortable dress clothes and silence, that had been it. It was as if they were strangers, like all Frank had ever been to her and her son was tradesman, not someone both had known since before the two boys had started kindergarten. Mrs. Watson had held Frank's hand once on a field trip, something he couldn't even recall his own mother ever doing. She had dropped him off at the mortuary following some afterschool event in junior high when he and Renny were still friends.
The anguish must have been overwhelming, or else her distaste for Frank was as strong as her son's in the present day. Though this wasn't about Frank's feelings, going there had been a mistake. Twelve weeks later, the ashes he'd delivered had likely been scattered, or perhaps they still sat on the mantel. Everyone's life had somehow gone on without Melissa and Renny.
Frank's had, what there was of it. He was having dinner with the Helliers that early September evening. Finally meeting Marion Heller face to face, that was something new. He'd recently heard her voice. "Vaugh-an!" She would holler down from the private residence upstairs, never more than her husband's name, and she always made it two syllables. He would call back at first, "Just a moment, sweetness," but lately he rushed up the moment she beckoned. Once Frank had realized Marion was real, he started to wonder if she was ill. That would certainly explain Vaughn's sudden urgency to get up to her. He would soon find out.
Frank knocked. The door opened. Vaughn seemed fidgety from the start. "Did you bring my cigarettes?"
Frank had stopped for them on the way, where the new checkout boy, Carl, still looked at him funny when he put the two dollars on the counter instead of handing it over. "Here you go." Frank passed them to Vaughn the same way, placing them on the table just inside the door. He did things similarly at work, and Vaughn never questioned why. Frank sometimes wondered if his father figure knew. Though Frank had grown too old for hugs once he'd gone off to college, there had once been occasional handshakes. They'd been easy enough to avoid since July of last year, but surely Vaughn had noticed Frank kept his distance more.
"Thank you, Franklin." Vaughn immediately lit up a Winston. "I needed that. I seem to have smoked more than my usual today. Please, sit." He offered a cigarette as a large floral chair nearly swallowed him like a biblical whale.
"No, thank you." Frank sat on the edge of the old-fashioned sofa with a scalloped back and wooden trim. He looked around the room. The drapes were heavy velvet. There were several Tiffany style lamps on shiny, polished wood tables, and a single painting hung on each of three walls, every one flanked by lit bronze sconces—electric ones. The figures in each portrait looked identical to one another, all the spitting image of Vaughn Hellier, only costumed in attire from different eras. "Relatives of yours?" Frank asked.
"Yes." That was the only answer he got.
Frank fiddled with his glasses, and then ran a hand over his wavy hair, wanting it tidy for when he met Mrs. Hellier. When his fingers brushed the irregular skin on his cheek, he decided the rest hardly mattered.
"Marion is busy at the stove." Vaughn still squirmed. "Supper will be ready soon."
Frank was quite nervous too, not only about meeting Marion, but also with worry about how many electrical appliances she may have been using. He had never caused a power surge at work. The Helliers lived right upstairs, where he had heard Marion—or someone else—vacuuming once or twice within the same four walls. All of the electrical circuits downstairs and upstairs connected to one another, he assumed. So, he should be okay as long as he stayed out of the kitchen. Right?
"We would like you to meet our son," Vaughn said seemingly out of nowhere.
"You have children?"
"One." Vaughn rose and moved to the mantel for a photograph he held out to Frank. "He is very handsome, yes?"
Frank stood, but did not take the frame. It was metal. "Quite."
What was likely a senior class photo could have been a movie poster. The Helliers' son was the spitting image of a young Omar Shariff, and Frank couldn't help but compare his unfavorable reflection in the glass to the image behind it. He hated his thick-lensed, Buddy Holly glasses, his big nose, his imperfect front teeth… Frank looked up at Vaughn. "I never knew you had a son. He is… striking."
"He attended boarding school throughout his entire education."
"Even in summer?"
"He and his mother often traveled abroad. The photograph is old."
"So, what age is he now?"
"I never mentioned him for a reason." Vaughn's response seemed defensive and evasive as he stared at the picture as if it was new to him too.
"I see," Frank said. "In other words, we were kept apart on purpose?"
"Of course not."
Frank shifted fretfully. "It's odd we never came across one another when I was here—downstairs, at least—more than I was home. That's all I'm saying, Vaughn."
"He's older. I wish you had met him years ago." Vaughn turned down Walter Cronkite, who, at such high volume, was impeding their conversation. "I wish you could have known him your whole life. Now, he is not well, I'm afraid."
"Oh."
"Marion wants you to…" Vaughn trailed off.
"To what, Vaughn?"
"He lived upstate." Vaughn moved back to his chair. "He was in an accident last winter." Cigarette smoke came out with a sigh. "Like those others back in May, the girl you pine over and the young man you knew."
"I'm sorry."
"Marion hopes you can bring him back to us."
"Bring him back?"
"He is only slightly older than you and your childhood friend. That accident… those deaths… Marion had quite a reaction. She has become obsessed at the notion of… retrieving our boy from his current state."
"Which is?" Frank grew more unnerved with every passing moment and cryptic word.
"I will show you. He is here."
Vaughn headed for the stairs, but Frank stayed planted beside the fireplace. "I will certainly pray for his healing, Vaughn. Otherwise—"
"It is not your prayers we ask for. It is your hands, Franklin, that can possibly be of aid."
"Vaughn." Frank finally averted his gaze from the picture in the frame. He paced. "My hands? I am not a doctor. You… you're a doctor. Why have you come to me?"
"Because of that hunter in the woods. You must try the same here. For Marion. She has not been herself for some time. Your gift can set everything right again."
"Gift." Frank snorted. "What gift?"
<
br /> Vaughn's eyes fixed on Frank's. "I think you know."
Frank turned on him. "How do you? How does Marion?"
"You share your secrets freely with the trees and the wind. You talk to yourself quite often, son."
"Oh." Frank felt his cheeks get warm. "Yes." He'd never realized anyone had been there to hear him do it.
"That is how I know many things about you which you have never told me. There was a bird in the backyard not long ago."
Frank knew precisely the day in question. A wren had hit an upstairs window. "It was just injured, Vaughn. Had it broken its neck…"
"It hadn't. But it was deceased."
"I'm not certain it was. How could Mrs. Hellier be from so far away?"
"She wasn't that far, son. She heard every word you said. You told the mother you would try to bring her back for her nestlings… back to life. Those were your words."
"According to Mrs. Hellier?"
"Were they not?"
Frank said nothing. His heart pounded so, he was sure that Vaughn could hear it. He began to perspire.
"Did you not revive the bird?"
"I didn't." Frank shook his head, making his eyeglasses crooked. "Maybe I did. But certainly not in any way miraculous. Had her internal injuries been severe…" Frank raised his palms. "I shook her gently. It brought her around. There was no… magic to it."
"I've watched you for many months. I've offered my hand many times. I've offered an embrace. Did you think I would not notice you no longer accept them? The lightning, last July, it gave you the gift."
"Gift!" Frank laughed without humor. There was that damned word again. "It is hardly that." He straightened his glasses. "No miracle for certain."
"Marion believes it was something akin. I too believe it can be. I knew of another, back in the old country. Ivan was his name, and it happened to him. He used it precisely as I am asking you to do now."
"You have known all along?"
"Not so long, no. But now that I do, will you help us?"
"I ask you once again, Vaughn, help you how?" The conversation was ludicrous, and Frank wondered why he was engaging. "A bird stunned unconscious and a human post-accident are two very different situations."
"Those with oddities tend to find one another, Franklin. As one who is considered a spook just by the nature of my profession—somewhat of an outcast—I attract a certain element. You…" Vaughn said. "You found me, and there were others, those with other abilities or afflictions."
Frank considered arguing the fact that he was already "one of them" back when he and Vaughn had first met, but what was the point? If he wasn't before last July, with the scars and one ear, he certainly was afterwards. "That's possibly true, Vaughn. Though it's not exactly what I was asking."
"There was a storm in the distance, Marion said… the day with the bird."
"Yes." Frank wondered then, and again now, why the bird had not exploded like the fly. "It's not something I have control over, not something I know how to regulate or utilize in a precise sort of manner."
"But you have it?"
"'It?' You seem to know the answer, which has me wondering... Was dinner a ruse? If we do eat, at least I can set my mind at ease you have not set my place with silver, but plastic, I presume."
"Not all metal at all times causes a surge. You use the mortuary tools."
"My point exactly, Vaughn. Why can I? I have accidentally grabbed for one without the wooden or rubber tips. What would happen if you took an end of one of those whilst I held the other? Any given situation is always unknown."
"You have worried about inadvertently reanimating a corpse. I have noticed your squeamishness from time to time when it storms."
Frank laughed again, trying to make it seem genuine. "Vaughn! That is nothing short of ridiculous!" His denial apparently rang false.
"Is it truly? I know a great many things about you, things which you have never told me. Our son is attracted to gentlemen, as are you."
Frank was silent.
"The girl's heart and sweetness were attractive to yours, but the boy's body was more to your pleasure. I, myself, have heard you say as much at times you were unaware that I lurked."
"Yes. 'Lurked.' There is a word," Frank said angrily, turning on Vaughn. "It is like you followed me around just to hear my confessions."
"When one uses the outdoors as a church and its creatures as their priest, they are likely to be overheard. When one pleasures himself, speaking in fantasy to a phantom mate in the middle of the woods, he runs the risk of being discovered."
"Vaughn!" Frank couldn't look at him, his embarrassment overwhelming.
"I am not judging. It matters not what gender arouses you or who you wish to make your companion. I simply desire for you to be happy."
"Fine. Yes. There is no reason to deny such." The dialogue, the plotline, even the Helliers' old-fashioned looking living room—Frank was back in a fictional spooky tome set far in the past, not real life. "This secret power you feel I have, however—" Frank jumped, startled as a loud clap of thunder shook the entire house.
"You did not sense it before it came?"
"I often do. The distraction at the moment took my focus. If we're speaking confessions, mine includes a plan to play ill by the time the storm worsens. Yes, I knew it was coming. My intention was never to sit down to dinner tonight."
"It was never mine that you would."
"The timing is perfect." Marion burst through the swinging kitchen door, making Frank jump once again. "It's time, Vaughn. It's time."
"Marion! I told you to stay out of sight."
She did look very much like the image of an old southern spinster. She was a squat blonde woman with skin the color of pancake batter, younger than Vaughn by enough years to be noticed. And now that Frank heard her speak more than a name, even her accent matched the image. It was definitely more American South than German. How such a woman ended up with Vaughn was a mystery, a story not yet shared. There was love in Vaughn's eyes, though, despite his reprimand.
"My dear, do calm yourself," he said.
"The storm is coming! The storm is coming." Like an out-of-date Paul Revere, Marion broadcast the forecast in a manner anything but calm. "It is going to be intense, like the weatherman promised days ago." She walked with a limp, at least when she flitted with fretful energy. Paying no attention to Frank, she fixated only on the weather and her son, which she showed by staring at the ceiling as if he was already in heaven.
"Machines do everything for him," Vaughn stated. "One keeps his heart beating. One makes him breathe. One circulates his blood and cleans it. What it would mean to us to be able to disconnect him and have his body do what it should."
"Vaughn. I…" Frank had trouble forming thoughts into words. "You must understand my reticence. Why would I refuse if I thought I could do you any good?"
"Why wouldn't you try?"
"Because." Frank took a swipe at his forehead with his palm. "I might make things worse."
"How could you?"
"In many ways. Many, many. And I am petrified we would find that out before all is said and done."
"Come." Marion was at the stairs. "Look at him." She started up. "At least look."
Vaughn reached for Frank's hand, but Frank jerked it away. Vaughn took him by the sleeve instead, and gently tugged, prodding him to move toward the steps. For whatever reason—curiosity most prevalent, perhaps—Frank went.
Standing on the top landing several feet from the doorway, he counted seven electrical plugs before he even looked at the bed. Marion was rolling back the covers by the time he dared zero in on young Hellier himself. He was handsome still, despite what he had been through. The fairytale before them now was one in which Sleeping Beauty's prince had taken her place.
"His name is Liam," Vaughn said.
Liam's eyes were closed, his skin quite pale. He didn't look like his photograph exactly. That was to be expected, Frank decided. His hair was quite a bit longer, for
one thing. Plus at least a decade had likely passed since the portrait had been shot, according to Vaughn's comments. "This is your son?" Frank asked.
"Yes," Marion said.
Frank looked for a resemblance. Liam was blond like his mother. Vaughn's hair had been gray when Frank met him. Maybe he had once been blond too. The shape of their faces, particularly their noses, made them look as if they might share lineage, Frank supposed.
"Liam." Vaughn touched his son's clean shaven cheek. "This is Franklin." Either Marion or Vaughn must have tended to shaving him regularly.
There were many faded scars—large and small—all over Liam's face and torso, injuries from the crash, presumably, and whatever surgeries followed to fix the damage. The crisscrosses and lines were all healing. Some had nearly faded away, in fact, only noticeable now because of the intense wattage, bright lamps connected to current.
Suddenly, lightning flashed blue off of all the white and metal in the room. Frank jumped again. More current. "How long has he been here at the house?" he asked. "Like this?"
"Only a month. We brought him home from a facility."
"His medical team allowed that?"
"With the equipment, yes. Money makes all the difference in these circumstances. Though there is only so much even our wealth can accomplish."
Marion had brought the covers all the way to the foot of the bed. Liam was naked beneath them, completely exposed to Frank's eyes. He turned away.
Vaughn noticed, apparently. "You see him as alive." He said. "You rarely have a problem viewing a body undressed once its soul has left it."
"Except Melissa. Except Renny."
"You knew them personally."
"True," Frank admitted. "This does feel intrusive, yes. But what does that matter, Vaughn?"
"It matters a great deal."
"Look at him, Franklin. All of him." Marion wore an expression so loving, Frank almost thought it was for him, not leftover from glancing away from her son just a moment. He slowly turned and scanned Liam's form with intent. Liam had a lovely build. He didn't look terribly unhealthy or withered, considering what his body had been through and how many months—how many seasons—it had been in its current condition.