Grave Markings: 20th Anniversary Edition

by Arnzen, Michael A.

  Lockerman spit, cursed, continued his swaggering journey to his doorway. Sticky wet glass crunched beneath his feet like tiny rocks.

  Roberts dragged his fingers through his hair, and then grabbed the knob on the front door. It was locked.

  He craned his neck back to look for Lockerman, who was jabbing at his own front door with a key, missing the lock. “Hey, John! Isn’t Dan here?”

  “Nope,” he slurred back. “Place was locked when I got there.” His key hit the lock, and Lockerman fell forward on the door, pushing it open with his weight and stumbling inside. It slammed behind him.

  Roberts entered his living room, nearly tripping over Schoenmacher’s bedroll. He entered the kitchen and took two beers out of the refrigerator. “Now it’s my turn to have a few,” he said to himself, exhausted.

  Roberts slumped into a recliner, wondering where Schoenmacher was. Birdy’s flown the coop, he thought, and found himself chuckling aloud.

  He stared at the blank television screen in front of him, thinking for some odd reason that it was on. No…it wasn’t the television—it was the VCR, its tiny red indicator light glowing from the shelf below the TV, a ruby eye that spied on him as he slurped on his beer.

  Roberts picked up the remote control, turned on the equipment, expecting to see Schoenmacher’s advertisement for the tattoo convention.

  Judy Thomas came on-screen, reading the news about the new gambling laws in Cripple Creek, a script Roberts himself had written last week.

  Instantly, Roberts knew that Schoenmacher had been taping the news to watch Judy, to fuel his obsession for her. He felt genuine pity for the weatherman; watching the news just to get a glimpse of the woman he could never have was sort of like a high school kid peeking into the girl’s locker room…taping the news was like filming cheerleaders in the showers.

  Is this why he didn’t want to help us with the convention? To sit at home just to watch Judy?

  “That’s silly,” he said aloud, surprised at the gruffness of his own voice. “Why watch a videotape all day when he’s gonna see her when he goes back to work tomorrow?”

  See her…maybe he went to go see her now.

  Roberts grabbed the phone and called the station to get Judy’s number. He dialed it, let it ring six times and then finally hung up, puzzled.

  “Maybe he got lucky?” he asked aloud, though the sound of his own voice echoed doubt in ears.

  He looked up at the television screen. Judy smiled with teeth that were overeager and mumbled something to Rick Montag. Such a fake, Roberts thought, recalling the time he went to visit her for Schoenmacher like a high school kid. She was a fake then, too, pretentious and cold. Not willing to see Schoenmacher again…ever. “He almost date raped me,” she’d said. “Next time I’ll scream sexual harassment…”

  Birdy’s getting himself in trouble.

  Roberts slammed back the rest of his beer and grabbed his keys. The day—such a long, grueling day—was not over yet. Lockerman had fucked up, he himself had fucked up, the convention was a total fuck up…and now it was Schoenmacher’s turn. Maybe this time, Roberts could stop trouble before happened.

  FLASH

  The explosion of light fades, sizzles like the grainy picture tube of an old television. Sounds—static snow, vibrations on air, washing waves, pulsing particles—all sparking, all singing. Fireflies with cathode tube stingers in the darkness as the picture in his mind develops, dissipates, fades into flaming flakes of dust….

  She has been better than Mommy, better than Ida. Miss Hackman is beautiful, rich, understanding. She appreciates Mark for his art—she is more than just a former art teacher, more than a guardian. She is private; she does not share her secrets with anyone but Mark. She is his only friend.

  “I know you’re too old for them, but I brought you a balloon and an Icee Cone anyway,” Miss Hackman says as she walks in the door.

  “Thanks,” Mark says, putting down the Sunday comics, and rushing to grab them from her hands. He thinks she is silly—but he’s never had these things before, and he will try to like them.

  They sit together in her living room. Mark has cleaned the house for her, and she is nodding in approval. “I’d say you’re like the son I never had, but that would be a lie.” She licks her own Icee Cone; her tongue turns green. “You’re like the man around the house I never had.”

  Mark blushes. It is the first time anyone has called him a man out loud. It sounds even better when she says it than when he tells himself the same thing.

  Something tickles his leg. He looks down and sees Bushy. Bushy is Miss Hackman’s cat, a black-and-white tabby with large clumps of uneven fur—scars from alley fights before she found him, according to Miss Hackman.

  “I think Bushy likes you,” she says, picking the tabby up and placing the cat on Mark’s lap. The cat purrs and curls itself down beneath Miss Hackman’s petting fingers.

  “Miss Hackman…”

  “Oh, call me Polly, okay? We’re not in school here. We’re both adults, right? So call me Polly.”

  “Okay, Polly.” Mark smiles and blushes, his tongue feels numb from the Icee. “I just wanted to say thanks for taking me in like this. I had nowhere else to go.”

  “Yes, Mark, I know. As long as you help around the house and remember not to tell anyone about our little arrangement here, there’s no need to thank me.”

  “But no one’s ever…”

  “Treated you with the respect you deserve? Well, I’m sure you’ll discover over time that we artists have to look out for each other. No one else will—especially the government. No…we artists have to help one another or we’ll starve. From either lack of food or inspiration.” She faces him, smiling. “It’s my duty to keep you fed.”

  Mark just nods, not knowing what to say.

  She stands. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  Mark follows her up a ladder of creaky old wood that leads out through the kitchen ceiling. He tries not to look up at her secret parts as her legs open and climb above him.

  They reach the end of the ladder and are in a small dark room that smells of oil—Mark thinks it smells like Dad’s garage, only more feminine. Like perfumed grease.

  “This is my secret place,” she says, waving her arms about her. “Every artist must have one. This is my studio, the only place where I can truly create.”

  Mark looks around the room: framed oil paintings wallpaper the walls, a room of drab green and dark black. A few twisted red-white-and-blues capture his eyes like blindfold flags. Rolled and crushed paint tubes litter the room, some spitting oils which splotch the hardwood floors like bloodstains. Sketches everywhere, dark charcoal slashes on torn newsprint paper. A single yellow bulb lights the room, giving shapes to the shadows, emphasizing the darkness of the paintings, dark life.

  “Cool,” Mark says.

  “Yeah…it is cool.” Polly tosses her hair back. “I’ve never shown this room to anyone. You’re the first to see it. Most of these I couldn’t show anyone—I’d be labeled as an ultraliberal, I’d be censored. No one wants a junior high art teacher who paints such shocking visions. Someone who can see the truth of this world. True art frightens those in power, because their job is hiding the truth and making life comfortable for the masses. True life is not comfortable. I like to show that in my work.”

  “Show me,” Mark says eagerly.

  She leads him to the far corner of the studio, their shoes clomping the floorboards like dull heartbeats. She shuffles through a stack of stained canvases, pulling out a few. “I think you’ll appreciate this series,” she says, propping them up against the wall.

  Mark focuses his eyes on the blurs of paint on canvas, and then sees the image: each painting is of an object stretched into the shape of the United States, as if on a map. The first one is of
a naked man, bloated and slimy on his knees, his genitals the tiny dangling nubs of Florida and Texas, his decapitated head Alaska, his Maine neck all carnage, spraying the dark red blood that creates the surrounding ocean, his continent all gashes that leak and trail rivers of veins red and blue.

  “I like it,” Mark says, thinking of Dad.

  Polly puts an arm around Mark’s shoulders. “I knew you’d appreciate it.”

  The next painting is another U.S. map shape, similar in appearance: this time a nude woman, impossibly formed, twisted. Paintbrushes protrude from the canvas, stick out like long darts, and Mark notices that they are darts, paintbrushes with feathers glued on the ends, the brushes needle-formed to stab into the woman’s body. The feathers are the colors of the US flag, the tips of the brushes hardened gold paint. The woman screams in agony, her secret parts impaled by the dartlike paintbrushes, oozing golden rivulets.

  “I call this series ‘The United Rapes of America.’ What do you think?”

  “Brilliant,” Mark says. “I had no idea you were so good!”

  Polly begins to stack up the paintings, taking extra care with the nude woman and darts, putting it on top of the stack. “I just paint what I see, Mark. Just like you.” She turns to face him. “You don’t have all the complete nuances of craft down yet, but you capture the darkness quite well. You’ve got that spark of talent; call it intuition, call it whatever you like. Your art will be important someday.”

  “Thank you, Polly.” Mark’s face is on fire, his body tingling with pinpricks of embarrassment.

  Something dribbles down his face, a hot trail of wetness. Tears.

  Polly squats in front of him, looking up into his eyes. “My God,” she whispers.

  Mark wipes his forearm across his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry…”

  “No, Mark,” she says gently, pinning his arms down at his side. “Let me look at you. You’re beautiful…I must paint you, I must capture this moment.”

  Mark convulses in sobs. “But I’m crying like a baby!”

  Polly’s eyes dilate. “It’s wonderful. Please, let me paint you. Your innocence, your beauty…”

  The look in her eyes convinces him. “Okay, if you want to.”

  “Excellent,” she says, standing, walking over to an easel and propping up a fresh canvas in its wooden frame. “Grab that chair over there in the corner and sit underneath the light, okay?”

  He obeys. The chair is metal, ragged, like the one Dad punished him with.

  Polly dabs oils on a palette. “Now don’t move,” she says, raising a brush to the canvas. “I want this to be perfect.”

  She is in the shadowy corner of the room. Mark can barely see her. The light above him—once seeming so dim—now is blinding, blurry in a pool of tears. He is thinking of Dad, of Mommy….

  Polly shifts in the darkness. Rustling sounds of fabric whisper in the room. “That’s it. Keep crying.”

  Mark sniffles, tries to blink away the salty water that clouds his vision. He sniffles and snorts, not caring anymore if Polly sees his weakness. It feels good to cry, as if it were the first time he’d ever done so in his life.

  “Don’t move now…” Polly says, wiping brushes violently against a canvas in the darkness. He remembers Dad’s words: never look away.

  He lifts his head and faces her in the shadows, letting the tears run free.

  “You know,” Polly calls pensively from the darkness, “all great artists have self-portraits done of them. Or they have their colleagues paint them, like I’m doing now. It is important—the true artist must become one with his craft. A painter should be captured in paint. It makes natural sense, you know. I’ve done a few of myself. I’ll show you later, after we’re done here.”

  His eyes are drying. “I’d like to see them.”

  “I bet you would,” her voice replies. “They’re all nudes.”

  Mark giggles, sniffles.

  The room turns silent, except for the sound of oils smearing and splattering wetly. Like the sounds Mommy made.

  “Would you like me to do a nude of you?” Polly interrupts.

  Mark’s face feels like concrete. “Of course,” he says. “If you think I should.”

  The smearing sound stops, and Polly steps out from the shadows. “Why don’t you get undressed?” She is naked, her smooth, goose-pimpled flesh reflecting the dim yellow light from the bulb that dangles above him.

  At first he thinks it is Mommy. “Polly!”

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” she says. “I always paint in the nude. It’s the only way I can feel free. I can’t work restricted in clothing.”

  “Well…okay, I guess.” Mark tugs off his T-shirt. The chill hardens his nipples. Blushing, he pulls open his jeans.

  Polly is standing in front of him, wiping her waist as she watches him intently. The hand that smooths across her hip leaves a trail of yellow behind it, like a paint brush, and Mark suddenly realizes that it is paint and not light that makes Polly’s skin shine yellow and gold all-over like the woman in the map….

  The crystals of light blacken, spin like embers. Kilpatrick lunges, tries to hug the swarming cloud of dots into himself, to get the moment back—but it’s gone, framed by the white border of photo paper, trapped in its own light, its own world, no longer his.

  The weatherman is complete, part of the series, imprinted, colored, his bright, blinding hues in stark contrast to the patterned carpet on the floor. Kilpatrick unsnaps his pants and his secret part falls out, solid and heavy, guiding him toward the multicolored body that lies still on the bed….

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I.

  Roberts found Schoenmacher’s car parked in front of Judy’s house. He pulled up behind it, turned off the ignition, and stamped out a cigarette on the edge of his brimming car ashtray. Embers spilled off the side, landing on the carpet and fading, stinking. Roberts cursed.

  He jumped out of his car and slammed the door shut. Night asserted itself around him, the city feeling darker than it should have, a thick blanket of shadow. And then he knew why he felt this way: no lights were on in Judy’s house.

  He rushed up her front steps and punched the doorbell button with a jab. No answer. He punched it again.

  And then he noticed that the door was slightly ajar, a black line of empty space inviting him inside.

  He entered. The living room was all shapes and outlines without form. He found the light switch, flicked it on. Blinked away the shock of light.

  The living room was immaculate, homey—overtly feminine. Judy had obviously been pouring her paychecks into Yuppie creature comforts: the modular sofa was thick with plush gray mohair, her television was extra-large with the requisite cable box above and a library of videotapes lined up beneath…but there was no VCR that he could see. “Judy?” he called out, feeling nervous, intrusive, and ashamed for just walking right in.

  He checked out the kitchen (just as fancy), and headed slowly into the hallway that led to the more private rooms of the house. This is what a burglar feels like, he thought as his footsteps mashed the diamond-patterned carpet, each step as amplified in his ears as a walk on broken glass.

  Roberts put his ear to the door at the end of the hall, expecting snores or moans of pleasure, but hearing the dead ring in his ears of absolute silence.

  What has Dan done? Where is he?

  He pushed the door open with his fingertips. It did not creak, but swung swiftly, well oiled on its hinges. In the dark bedroom he could see a lump on the bed, covered in shiny sheets—he could not tell if it was one body or two.

  He turned to leave, but thought twice about it. He knew that he was invading her privacy, but she’d left her door open—something could be wrong. If not, then he should at least explain why he was there in the first place, shouldn’t he? And
he had to know where Schoenmacher was, what he’d gotten himself into.

  Feeling foolish, guilty, he flicked the light switch.

  Under the shiny glare of red satin sheets was a woman, but not the right one. A black woman was sleeping in Judy’s bed.

  Holy shit, am I in the wrong house?

  The woman did not wake up, which was odd. Roberts crept closer to double-check, to make sure he wasn’t crazy.

  The black woman had Judy Thomas’ face.

  “Judy?” he asked, rushing forward, hoping that it was just a cosmetic mud mask and not the prune-like bruises of a battering from Schoenmacher….

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  Roberts backed away.

  What Judy Thomas had become stared up at the ceiling like a corpse, unblinking, empty, vacant—as if something had scraped the person out from inside the body.

  Roberts’ blurred vision of her focused—the blackness on her skin was not natural pigment. Her flesh was crowded with words, tiny letters scrawled across every pore of her body; on her eyelids, on her lips, on her nipples….

  “Judy!” Roberts slipped the red sheet up to her neck, covering up her letter-riddled chest. He positioned his face over her upturned eyes, looking for the person inside. “Judy, what happened?” It was a stupid question; he knew what had happened—the Tattoo Killer had done this thing to her.

  She did not reply.

  Roberts searched her face as if hoping for an answer there. And it was, in its own way, spelled out in the tattooed words: MY LETTERS, FUCK ME, FUCK YOU, FUCK THE WORLD, JUDY BITCH, LOVE SLUT, NEWSNEWSNEWS….

  Roberts turned away, covering his eyes. The Killer had been sending her fan mail the whole time—he’d possibly even held one of them in his own hands that day she’d bitched him out about Schoenmacher.