Over My Dead Body

by Dave Warner

  The first entry that bore easy reading was dated May, 1891.

  Perhaps what I have done is utter foolishness but I would damn my soul to hell if I did not try every option no matter how fanciful it may seem. I conjecture that his fall into the deep lake, so chilling cold at this time of the year, may have frozen him instantly. Only eleven hours had passed since his fall to recovery, and the body itself has not been moved from the frigid waters but dragged behind the boat into the secret cavern. Old Johann says the cavern was used as far back as the peasant war of the seventeenth century but only he and a handful of ancient villagers know of it. He is sworn to secrecy and refused remuneration, such is his esteem for our mutual friend. Remarkably, there was no physical trauma to the body, no broken bones. He is renowned for his ability to place himself into a deep trance and perhaps he managed this so that upon impact his body bore no more rigidity than a suitcoat. As the body can remain here in its secret tomb indefinitely I see no gain in attempting to move it.

  The next entry she flicked to was dated July 7, 1891.

  The desolation that I feel is indescribable, not just for my own self but for every man, woman and child in the civilized world. Without him to defend us, barbarism draws strength and confidence. I must find a way to turn my scientific conjecture into a reality.

  Georgette could not help but speculate who this friend might be: a statesman, scientist or soldier from the sounds of it. Throughout August and September there was barely an intact page but piece by piece she was able to understand that John Watson was engaged in secret meetings with scientists.

  L assures me that the theory is sound and a body stored quickly enough at a cold enough temperature may suffer no organic decomposition. With D we are working feverishly on a combination of gases that might revive our friend.

  A later entry noted:

  … can drive a turbine keeping the subject at the required sub-freezing temperature, season after season, year after year. We have time to make this succeed.

  The ensuing months were followed by calculations, equations, chemical symbols, shorthand.

  She was lying on her sofa now, her legs drawn up, unwilling to lay the book down for a minute. She had clicked on a lamp but the rest of the apartment remained in darkness. Her great-great-grandfather and his anonymous cohorts, she realized with amazement, had been using a very similar method to her, an almost identical mixture of gases, just the ratios different, with less capability than she had to insulate the subject and monitor levels.

  But progress, it seemed, had been uneven. Encouraging successes were often followed by a fallow period. On December 25, 1891, there was an entry that brought her almost to tears:

  Christmas without you, my dearest friend, is one of unbearable pain. I pray to the Lord for help in this enterprise that, if it were publicly known, would see me condemned as a devil-worshipper. I refute this. I believe in the goodness of the Supreme Being and in His help for our quest.

  And then in January of 1892 came an entry that had her riveted.

  I can hardly believe it myself. The rabbit, frozen at minus 90 degrees F and having shown no signs of life for four minutes, revived absolutely. We are on the threshold of success.

  But then three months later in April came the admission:

  Once again, our attempts were futile. What has time and again proved efficacious on a rabbit does not succeed on our subject. L says he can spare no further time on this. D will continue to help me. I pray for success.

  There were then long tracts of blank spaces with occasional notes about certain changes in formula, all finishing with FAILED. After that a great chunk of the diary was missing. But she did find a note marked July 1, 1914.

  The incident in Sarajevo has I am afraid put paid to any immediate resumption of our experiment. The sabre rattling can be heard in the butcher shops, grocers and school halls of every little hamlet in this nation, and no doubt is as bad or worse on the continent. I fear gravely for the peace we have been blessed with. Had he been alive, I have no doubt that much of this could have been avoided, almost certainly the assassination, and thereby the pit into which this world has fallen since his absence.

  So absorbed had Georgette become in her activity, making herself coffees on automatic pilot, pages of the diary still in her hand as she poured and sipped, that she was shocked to glance at her phone and see the time was well after two in the morning. The diary was almost at an end and she resolved to press on.

  It was a quarter to three when she reached the final heartbreaking entry.

  … my optimism, alas, was misplaced. After labouring nearly thirty years without success, I am forced to acknowledge defeat. At the age of sixty-seven, in less than robust health, I find I must devote what remaining time I have to my family. I am so sorry to have failed you my dear friend. I leave these notes to be read in the hope that some later generation of men and women of science may succeed where I have not. It may take fifty or a hundred years but I still believe with all my heart, weakened as it now is, that the quest is possible – and if achieved the world shall be inestimably the richer for it. Your servant, John Watson.

  There followed a biblical quote:

  Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.

  As Georgette closed the heavy covers of the book, the frustration and the futility contained therein seemed to be absorbed up through her fingertips. The curse of the Watsons, she thought to herself as she took herself to bed.

  Wham! She sat upright like a schlock vampire who had just smelled blood, checked her phone: 3.48. She’d been asleep for only three-quarters of an hour but it felt like a week. Her brain was buzzing. One big idea: WHAT IF HE WAS STILL THERE? What if the unnamed friend, this statesman, as she had come to think of him, was still lying frozen somewhere in Switzerland? For it had to be Switzerland, as Ian Watson had surmised: the lake, the name Johann, other mentions she had found of Alpine weather, the peasant war of which she had vaguely heard. John Watson had desired somebody to carry on his work, as he said, fifty or a hundred years hence. He had provided a key, literally. Somewhere, surely he must have provided the location where it was to be used.

  She bounded out of bed in the long pajamas she had found in Anchorage on one of her research trips. She had never let Vance see them but had kept them in her drawer tucked under her sexy underwear, near the unused vibrator that Simone had thought was an hysterically funny gift to give her for her thirtieth birthday, and that Georgette had been too scared to dispose of less she be caught in the act. The pajamas saved on heating. Scientists needed every cent and, heck, if you could keep a little fossil fuel from being burned, all the better. Perhaps the location of the body had been mentioned in the diary and she had missed it as she had skimmed over it. Of course, it might have become part of a rat’s nest but for now she was staying positive. She made herself a massive mug of hot chocolate and started scrutinizing the diary page by page. Halfway through her mug she found it:

  February 11, 1918. It becomes increasingly unlikely I shall be able to return to finish my mission. But the mission must not end. Brothers and sisters in Science I implore you make your way to

  To WHERE? There should have been a destination but the rest of the page was blank. No, no, no, no, NO!

  She checked ensuing pages but there was no further reference to the location. Laboriously she read right to the end of the diary but found no elaboration. Either he had slipped in a separate piece of paper which had since been lost or destroyed, or else, more likely, he had simply thought better of it, worried the diary may fall into the wrong hands.

  She felt frustrated, angry and spent. So close. It had seemed the hand of Fate had been guiding her whole life to this point, that she who had died and been revived was destined to finish the work of her great-great-grandfather. But it had turned out to be yet another of life’s practical jokes.

  She slammed the book down and went back to bed. />
  ‘I can’t believe it. Ten-thirty and you’re still in bed.’

  Simone was rustling through her wardrobe. Georgette’s brain was Swiss cheese.

  ‘I didn’t get to sleep till five.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘As it turned out, wasting my time. I was going through our great-great-grandfather’s diary looking for something. It wasn’t there.’

  Simone likely hadn’t heard a word. She turned, held a summer dress, strawberries on white, against her body.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Tell me again what you are doing here?’

  She had better get her spare key back from Simone who’d had it since she house-sat during the Alaska interlude. Sooner or later there would be a problem.

  ‘I told you. They’re not doing Cabaret now, somebody complained it glorified Nazis, so now it’s Rocky Horror.’

  Tired as she was, Georgette was not so fatigued she did not instantly suspect her sister’s hand in the change.

  ‘You were the one who complained, weren’t you? Anonymously, I guess. Because you already know most of the songs from Rocky Horror.’

  A stab in the dark really but she could see from Simone’s expression she’d drawn blood.

  ‘Hey, they’ll have more fun. Men love dressing up in fishnets. And I’ll be playing Janet, so I need something more …’

  ‘Demure.’

  ‘… frumpy. And your wardrobe is just the place to find it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll make you coffee. Maybe I can help.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘The diary. I was listening, okay? I can multi-task.’

  They sat on the sofa. The coffee had helped. It was a waste of time going through it all with Simone but she wouldn’t let up so eventually Georgette had caved and shown her the diary, explaining the dilemma.

  ‘See, blank. I think he decided not to write it down.’

  ‘So why at the end of the book does he go on about people picking up on his research? And why leave a key?’

  ‘Maybe he slipped it in on a separate piece of paper.’

  Simone got up and rummaged in the ceramic bowl on the kitchen bench.

  ‘You got a lemon?’

  ‘It’s too early for tequila, even for you.’

  ‘Hey, please, a little faith.’

  Simone found what she was after, took a sharp knife from the block and sliced. She walked back, bent over the diary and squeezed the lemon.

  ‘What the hell are you doing? This book is over a hundred years old.’

  ‘And hopefully, this is still going to work, but it’s a long shot.’

  ‘What’s going to …’ No! Symbols had started to appear on the page.

  Simone said knowingly, ‘Like you said, he was scared of being caught. Invisible ink.’

  ‘You’re a genius.’

  ‘I did the same thing with all my own diaries because you would have snooped.’

  ‘Would not.’

  ‘Would. What does that mean?’

  What had appeared was the following string of numbers and letters.

  24 12 h 7 g 17 f 24 e 22 29 12 d 13 18 8 c 11 b 18

  Georgette took a photo in case they faded again.

  ‘I’m guessing it’s a code.’

  She copied it onto a notepad she always kept at hand. Simone was tickled pink.

  ‘Oh, I love codes. I finished that book, all of it.’

  ‘About them breaking the German code in the war?’

  ‘No. Jesus and Mary Magdalene and those mad monks, the Da Vinci thing.’

  Georgette hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. She was already trying to crack the code.

  ‘The most common letter is e. 24 and 18 each appear twice. I’m going to start with that.’

  ‘But there’s an e there too?’

  ‘Probably a smokescreen.’

  An hour later she still hadn’t cracked it.

  Simone said, ‘I have to go. I have pilates. I’m sure one of the kids from St Christopher’s has some app that can bust this in like five seconds.’

  ‘I’ll text you a copy. I’m going to keep working on it.’

  Georgette felt alive again. She placed herself in her great-great-grandfather’s shoes. He wouldn’t make a code so difficult that somebody trying to follow his research would likely fail. It had to be relatively simple. Think how John Watson might have. If e is the most common letter, and he would have known this, then perhaps he would disguise it? What if all the letters shown were simply code for e? That’s what she would do in his place.

  She tried it. Now she had:

  24 12 e 7 e 24 e 22 29 12 e 13 18 8 e 11 e 18.

  Not enough to crack it but she wasn’t discarding the idea just yet. There were only twenty-six letters in the alphabet but in the code was the number 29, so perhaps he simply took a letter value, A=1, B=2 and so on, and added another number, like A = 1+5? So if you subtracted values from the numbers, it stood to reason you would eventually find the letter.

  She started by subtracting 3 from the numbers and using the new number as indicative of the letter. Nothing. But when she subtracted 4, the first three symbols became ‘the’. She was sure she had hit the jackpot. She quickly substituted the letters. Decoded, Watson’s message read:

  The Cemetery Heindegen.

  Her fingers danced over the keyboard. It took her some time to locate it. The town was tiny, near Meirengen in Switzerland. In fact, there appeared to be nothing there now but a cemetery. She checked ticket prices: doable. If she found the body, then she could use the body-transportation pods she had specifically designed. Getting the body here might present a difficulty. Hmm, she would lie, a white lie, say it was the remains of a relative who had been interred in Switzerland. Say it was John Watson himself. Mere administrative details. Her brain was gushing and bubbling now. The cemetery had some three hundred odd plots by the looks of it. How would she know which one? Watson must have left a clue on the headstone. Yes, that would be it … she hoped. She rang and booked, leaving in forty-eight hours. Her passport was in order. Simone could house-sit. She shuddered at the thought but it was only fair. She rang.

  ‘Haven’t had a chance yet to get it to my guys.’ Simone was panting hard.

  ‘Pilates still going?’

  ‘Uh uh.’

  Of course. What else would she be doing in the middle of the day but having sex.

  ‘Pilates instructor?’

  ‘You got it.’

  Maybe house-sitting wasn’t such a great idea.

  ‘I cracked the code.’

  The apartment door gave with a soft click and he eased his way in, then quietly closed it behind him. He felt a flow of satisfaction through his body. The key fit perfectly. The only light came from the glow of various electronic devices. He had taken the stairs so as to avoid any elevator cameras but he couldn’t be sure there were none in the apartment. A cop’s daughter, you just never knew. His fingers reached into his right pocket and he was reassured by the touch of the cord there. After allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark he edged forward towards the bedroom, just stopping himself in time from tripping over women’s shoes that had been scattered on the carpet. On the table was the outline of three beer bottles and there was a faint smell of pizza. Nothing should surprise you in life, he thought, but one person he would have put down as neat and houseproud was her. He was almost at the threshold to the bedroom now and her shallow breathing was audible through the open door. This time he moved right to the doorway and peered in. She was lying on her back, head to the side, hair fanning, a naked breast was exposed. But the hair was too long. It wasn’t her.

  6

  Pale blue sky streaked with white clouds atop towering mountains of lush green pasture, a temperature which here, in the middle of the day, required no more than a sweater; it was indeed a beautiful and quiet resting place. The cemetery of Heindegen, she had learned, was used extremely infrequently th
ese days for burials, most of the gravestones going back centuries and barely a handful since the 1950s. The cemetery, surrounded by pastures, was perched on a sloping hillside some fifty yards above the surface of the lake whose waters lapped the base of the cliff on which it was located. It was three miles west of the two adjoining shops that constituted the village and was, Georgette had discovered, a pleasant bicycle ride. At the suggestion of her bus driver she had picked up a bicycle in Meirengen, a further three kilometres north. Whatever traffic there was appeared to be heading to and from some scenic falls and the narrow, potholed road she took south was quite deserted. Fortunately the ride had been gently downhill. Apart from a youth on a moped who had stopped to take pictures of the scenery, she had the place to herself. The cemetery consisted primarily of normal graves and headstones but there was also a cluster of mausoleums. When she had first laid eyes on them, pedalling along the dirt track that skirted the cemetery, her heart had skipped a beat. Surely it was here, in one of these, that her great-great-grandfather had placed his anonymous dear friend?

  Having entered the cemetery by the main path, she rested her bicycle against a rotting fence post and walked purposefully to the vaults. There were about fifteen of them altogether, most grouped but a few outliers, and it was here that she ultimately found a vault bearing no name but rather a century-old depiction of two of the apostles arriving at Christ’s tomb to find the stone which had blocked the entrance rolled back, and an angel waiting. The resurrection.