Mortal Remains

by Mary Ann Fraser

  “Come on, Mal. I’d better get you home,” said Evan. “Lily, you’ll have to get him to his room on your own, and don’t let Mom and Dad see him. They’ll freak.”

  “I can’t do it,” I said.

  “Sure you can,” said Evan. He and Mallory climbed back into the van and drove off, leaving me standing in the driveway with my arms wrapped about me as if I might fly apart.

  With my back to Adam, I said, “You should have told me sooner.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  Right, because what’s wrong with not being human? “I wasn’t referring to your injury.”

  “Oh. That.”

  I reeled to face him. “I feel so . . . so . . . I don’t know what I feel. I thought . . .” I looked away. There were no words. I was in some kind of denial and wanted to keep it that way, but I was also deeply wounded. He betrayed my trust.

  And yet wasn’t I doing the same by not telling him about Miles Devlin?

  “I tried, but what was I supposed to tell you? That I’m a living, breathing by-product of Neil’s thievery and experimentation? How could I possibly expect you to accept such a thing?”

  “You give me so little credit. You could have at least given me a chance.”

  “Is it too late?”

  When I didn’t answer, he gripped the storm drain and pulled himself to standing, exposing the telltale dark stain as the towel dropped away. “Adam. You’ve lost a lot of . . .” I didn’t know how to finish my sentence, because I had no word for the fluid seeping from his chest. “Can you walk?”

  He nodded and stumbled forward as though to prove the point.

  “Okay, let’s get you to the prep room.”

  “To prep me for what?”

  “I’ll know better once I get a good look. Here now, lean on me.”

  The touch of his cold, clammy skin was unnerving. I was used to corpses, but he felt like something in between living and dead.

  I guided him inside and down the hall. We staggered and weaved, occasionally running into a wall. Each time Adam moaned. I was doing no better with him than with that wretched gurney of ours.

  I switched on the prep room’s overhead lights and immediately averted my eyes from the garish substance that had soaked through his shirt. With a feeble wave, I motioned for him to lie on the table.

  “I’d rather have a chair,” he said.

  “There aren’t any. People don’t sit much in here.”

  I snapped on a pair of blue latex gloves, then pulled my shears from a drawer. His eyes grew wide, and he fought to sit up, causing the wound to bleed more. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “Relax.” I pushed him back down. “I’m going to cut away your shirt.”

  For most morticians, I imagined it would help that he was stretched out on this cold, metal table. They would be used to distancing themselves from a body in his position. For me, it made matters worse. This was where I best connected.

  I took a deep breath, made a snip, and ripped his shirt up the front. The wound was deep and ragged. “Oh, Adam. This is my fault. I should never have forced you to make that promise.”

  “You didn’t force me to do anything. I got what I deserve; I must be breaking at least half a dozen laws of nature. How much did you tell Evan and Mallory?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “I don’t know, but you can’t hide something like this forever.”

  He winced. “That has become painfully clear. Do I frighten you?”

  “A little,” I confessed. Okay, a lot. But as I studied his body—so perfectly molded, a modern-day kouros—I had to admit I was also a bit awestruck. I prodded his flesh. It was cold to the touch but otherwise no different than my own. “Does that hurt?”

  “No,” he said, flinching.

  I thought he couldn’t lie. “Well, it’s a fairly deep gash, but I see no need for a doctor. Like they’d know what to do with you anyway.”

  “Is that supposed to be comforting?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  I rooted through the supply cabinets, withdrawing a small packet of gauze, a roll of medical tape, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. “Keep in mind I’m a desairologist in training, not a doctor. I do hair, nails, and makeup for the dead. I’m not used to working on . . .”

  “Whatever I am,” he finished for me. “Do what you have to do. I can take it. Can you?”

  “I think so.” I assured him I would do my best and repeated that this was totally out of my realm of expertise—anyone’s realm of expertise—which was why I’d decided to fix him up myself. “It’s a cut, after all. No big deal.”

  So not true.

  “It’s a big deal to me,” he said, laying an unsteady hand on my arm. Without meaning to, I pulled away. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . . because it’s the humane thing to do.”

  “Interesting word choice.”

  “And because you rescued me from the rocks today, and because . . .” I looked away, unable to commit to the truth of the matter: I cared for him—or had. Now I didn’t know how I felt. I was running through so many emotions, I couldn’t sort them out.

  He held his breath as I swabbed the wound, the effects of the beer having nearly worn off. If I could keep him talking, it would distract him from the pain. “So . . . what are you?”

  “Not sure exactly. Something like a golem, I think.”

  “‘Something like’? What’s that even mean?”

  “A golem is molded out of clay and magically brought to life to serve its creator. In my case, Neil used”—he inhaled sharply as I pinched the gash closed—“clay and other organic compounds. The magic was years of scientific research and experimentation. You get the idea.”

  “But your memories of that day in the orchard? How could you . . . ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I struggled to process this. When I found my voice again, I confessed that I should have suspected something from the beginning, what with the mannequin parts and discarded molds scattered about his family’s property, the weird laboratory in the fallout shelter, the supposed accident five years ago, the strangely colored bruising after his beating at Hayden’s, his unusual strength. It was quite a list. I tossed a ball of used cotton into the biohazard waste receptacle. “And come to think of it, your hair hasn’t grown an inch since you moved in with us. Do you even age?”

  “Yes. All things wear out eventually,” he said.

  I couldn’t ignore the emphasis he put on the word things.

  “Well, at least that explains why those two men tried to kidnap you. I imagine a whole lot of people would love to get their hands on some”—I caught myself—“someone like you. And that night you were jumped in the alley? It was probably them. They must have already suspected what you were and were looking for confirmation. All of the media attention made it easier for them to find you.”

  I placed a crisscross of tape across two flaps of skin to hold them together. “Ouch,” he said, batting at my hand but missing.

  “Then hold still.” There was no humor in my voice. I taped a square of gauze over where Neil had marked him with ink, where the cut was deepest. “There. It’s not perfect, but you’ll live.” Then I helped him to the caretaker’s cottage and into bed, where he pulled a single sheet up to his chin. The night was too warm for much else. “Now sober up and try to get some sleep.” I reached for the light switch. “You know, I’ve talked to a lot of bodies on that prep table. Of all of them, you’re the only one who’s talked back.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?”

  “The highest of compliments.”

  “Lily?”

  “Yeah?”

  “There was something you wanted to tell me back on the beach. What was it?”

  “Another time.” I killed the lights.

  RULE #31


  LOSS COMES IN STAGES.

  DEAL WITH IT.

  The full impact of the night’s events and revelations didn’t hit me right away. It caught me on the second-floor landing, where I withered on the spot. Seeking refuge, I spied the nearby linen closet and crawled into its dark and waiting folds.

  When I was a lot younger and the prep room was still off-limits, this cloistered space had been my asylum. It was where I retreated when I felt beaten by the endless taunting at school or needed a good cry free from my father’s scolding eyes. Like then, I tucked myself into the bundled quilts and crocheted doilies and drew up my knees. The potpourri of cedar balls and lavender sachets, laundry soap and fabric softener, couldn’t calm the shaking that wracked my body.

  I had rules—hard-and-fast rules—and still I opened my heart to him. And the punishment for breaking my own code of conduct? I was in love with a lie—a monstrous lie.

  I summoned all my usual tricks. I listed the names of my favorite blushes: Love Me Forever, Smitten Kitten, and Nein, Nein, Oh Mein. I recited Emily Dickinson’s “Death Sets a Thing Significant.” I hummed hymns. I tried anything to distract me.

  Nothing worked, because none of those things could change what Adam was or take away the sense that I’d somehow lost the person I believed him to be. I wasn’t even sure he qualified as a person.

  Of anyone, I knew how to deal with loss.

  First there is denial: I swore it was a mistake. Adam breathed. He had a pulse. He had feelings. He had to be human.

  Then shock: I knew blood, and no human has blood like that.

  Followed by anger: He should have told me! If he cared for me, he would have told me.

  Replaced by despair: The connection I thought Adam and I shared was a fantasy conjured up by a girl so pathetic, she poured out her soul to the dead.

  Finally, I am supposed to arrive at acceptance: I wasn’t even close.

  The next morning, I crept from the closet, picked the lint from my hair, and tried to pull myself together. I was going to have to explain the van’s condition and the attempted kidnapping to my parents. Explaining why someone would want to kidnap Adam was another matter altogether and one I planned to avoid for as long as possible. I mean, what was the good of telling them? So they could call the authorities? (As if there was someone to call for such a situation.) And then what? Adam would get hauled off like some alien or monster or something? To get probed or whatever?

  He was not a monster.

  Right?

  This was nuts. I didn’t understand what was true and what was not, and until I figured it out, no way was I saying anything to anybody. Adam deserved whatever protection I could give him. He’d saved me. Twice.

  So, no on telling the parents.

  I took a tray of food out to Adam’s cottage but wasn’t up to facing him yet. I eased open the door, averted my eyes from the illusion asleep beneath the crumpled sheet, slid the tray into the room, and skittered away.

  I needed answers, anything that could help me come to terms with this new reality. Those two men were after Adam last night for a reason, a knowledge-busting, theory-crushing sort of reason, like maybe Adam was the key to how life on Earth began, or to the process of reanimating the dead, or to eternal life—any one of which would make him worth a mint to the right people or agency. There were plenty of corporations, bullied third-world countries, and zealots with a grudge and a need for expendable manpower who would give anything to have Adam’s secret. Small wonder those men tried to kidnap him.

  Here we were—about to lose our business and playing Airbnb to a gold mine.

  Neil’s research alone would be worth a fortune—if it wasn’t destroyed in the fire. But what if it was never in the house? What if he hid it? What if Adam knew where he stashed it?

  Those were a lot of what-ifs, but I was running out of options.

  I turned to my laptop and typed golem into the search bar. My search brought up several tales of creatures formed from clay and brought to life through various methods, including incantations and rituals based on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In all cases, the golem was never fully human. That was a big Well, duh.

  The oldest reference to a human conceived from clay was a variation on the creation of Adam and Eve, in which God sculpted the first man out of dust. “Adam,” I said aloud. The name of Neil’s son. A hint to a lifetime obsession?

  There was the tale of Judah Loew ben Bezalel, a rabbi living in the Jewish ghetto of sixteenth-century Prague who shaped a giant figure out of mud he’d gathered from the river Vitava and carved the word emet into its forehead. With sacred invocations, he brought that inanimate mass to life. Its purpose? To defend the ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks. Some versions claimed that the golem fell in love, and when rejected, went on a murderous rampage, forcing the rabbi to remove the sacred word from the golem’s head, thus rendering it lifeless.

  My pulse quickened at the memory of Hayden’s party. Adam was nothing if not protective.

  I stabbed the power button on my computer, but the words still filled my head. Inhuman. Adam. Overprotective. Emet. I wanted to pretend it was all some bizarre coincidence. At some point, though, too many coincidences add up to undeniable fact.

  So what was Adam? He was something like a golem. He’d said so himself. What if, buried in all those mystical tales, there was a grain of truth—a grain Neil Lassiter exploited using clay as his medium? This wasn’t a question of Adam’s humanity.

  I mean, okay, maybe his physical makeup had been fudged, and he didn’t bleed red blood, and, sure, when he first came to live with us he was (by most standards) emotionally illiterate, but in the short time I’d known him, hadn’t I seen firsthand how he adapted and changed? He learned to better manage his anger, to read faces and interpret emotions, and to put others before himself. Could there be anything more human than that?

  Nothing about him changed last night. Adam was still, well, Adam. Not the boy from the orchard, but that had always been wishful longing. It was my perception of him that had changed.

  Maybe the problem was me. Could I learn to accept him for what he was—someone who skipped over childhood—and not the person I wanted him to be? Even if that were possible, could I convince him to stay? More to the point, should I convince him to stay? The two men who assaulted him were still out there, and who knew how many more people had knowledge of his existence?

  I heard footsteps down the hall and assumed Rachel and Dad were headed off to church. Dad had never been particularly religious, but ever since his heart attack he’d been letting her drag him to Sunday services. Covering his bases, he called it. I would think an all-knowing god would be able to tell the difference. Then again, maybe there was such a thing as partial credit.

  “Evan! Lily!” Dad’s voice boomed from the back door of the delivery bay. “Get out here.”

  Shit. He’d discovered the van. I went right down, knowing the longer I made Dad wait, the angrier he’d get. Evan wasn’t far behind. I stood, hands at my back, studying the cracks in the driveway as Dad’s fingernail traced a gouge running the length of the car’s side panel. He tried to force the taillight’s shattered plastic back into position. A big chunk snapped off in his hand.

  “You two mind explaining what happened to the van?” he said, waving the plastic at Evan and me. His ruddy face turned nearly purple.

  “Now, Cam,” warned Rachel. “Stay calm. It does you no good to get all worked up before you even know who’s to blame.”

  “Blame Lily,” Evan volunteered. “She was the one driving,”

  Thanks, bro.

  With a lot of stumbling and verbal self-flagellation, I gave a brief account of what happened, leaving out, of course, the part about Adam’s injuries and what they meant.

  “Why would someone want to kidnap him?” asked my father. “And why did you wait until now to tell me?”

  “You were asleep when we got home.”

  “Did you at least have the sense to call the po
lice?”

  “And say what? It was too dark to get a good look at the men, and their SUV didn’t have any plates.”

  Dad checked his anger with a carefully measured breath.

  “Maybe Adam got a look at the men,” offered Rachel.

  “Go fetch him,” ordered Dad.

  “Uhhhh.” I swallowed, imagining the inquisition that would inevitably follow. Rachel would want to get a look at his injuries and might insist he see a doctor. That wouldn’t serve anyone, least of all Adam, who couldn’t risk any more exposure. “He’s asleep. He . . . he had a rough night.”

  Rachel crossed her arms. “He was drinking. That’s why he was too sick for breakfast, isn’t it?”

  “He only had two,” said Evan.

  “It was an accident—the drinking, that is,” I was quick to add, aware that my credibility was about as intact as the taillight. “Mallory thought it was cream soda.”

  With all eyes on me, Evan ducked back into the house. The coward.

  “I swear it’s the truth,” I said.

  Dad’s jaw tensed. “You should have called the police. You could have all been killed. What’s wrong with you? Maybe it’s a good thing you aren’t taking over this place after all. Not that it matters now. You saw to that, didn’t you?”

  And there it was: the knife to my heart. Traitorous tears clouded my vision; my lower lip quivered uncontrollably. I turned to my stepmother, silently pleading for her to rise to my defense. And did she?

  No. She gave him a token pat on the back as he raked his graying hair, questioned where he went wrong as a father, and asked why kids didn’t come with manuals like appliances. He ranted until he exhausted himself, then ushered her into the van with orders for me to goddamn-get-on-the-phone-this-second-and-file-a-report. And then, to salt the wound, he said, “There’s a new arrival in the fridge. Car accident. See if you can handle it without crashing into a wall, will you?”

  My shame spilled down my face in fine rivulets, which only added to the sum of my inadequacies, as I watched them drive toward the church, the van rattling down the street like a jar of loose change.