The Love of the Dead

by Craig Saunders

  But the spirits weren’t done with her.

  Some things could never be understood, like the nature of the man that was coming to kill her. The spirits’ purpose in showing her these things, with no answers, was as much a mystery to her as the man himself.

  Faith, they sighed as they showed her the last thing that she needed to do.

  She rebelled and pulled away with all her will.

  Sat up in her body and cried.

  Sometimes there were no answers. Not even the dead had the answers. Sometimes you had to guess and trust.

  Faith was the hardest thing. Faith that when you died you would go to a better place than this. A world without guilt and pain and the terrible losses, those things taken away that could never be given.

  Faith asked for sacrifice, but it was too much. Faith asked too much of her. No less than everything she had left. They wanted it all.

  But she owed them. When the Devil came for her, it would be what she deserved.

  She owed the spirits, and the Devil’s price would be what she paid.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Mooney left Coleridge at the door. A cigarette dangled from his bottom lip, waiting for a light.

  “I’ve seen him already,” he said. “Once is enough. I’m going back to the station.”

  Coleridge checked his watch. His partner’s watch. 1:45. He was cutting it fine. But he needed to see this.

  It might make a difference and it might not. But he had to see. Needed to understand what kind of man could kill all those people and then kill himself, surrounded by such nightmares.

  He pushed the clinically cold door open, and for the second time in less than a week Coleridge looked down at a body on a cold metal table.

  Freeman looked up at him. His usually stern expression was gone. In its place was a look that Coleridge didn’t like on the pathologist’s face.

  Confusion.

  He looked at the body and wondered if he wore the same expression as Freeman.

  “Weird, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Me either. I’m stumped. I’m not often stumped. I know my job, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t know where to begin.”

  Gregory Sawyer’s body was a withered mess. Sores covered his body, his ribs showed stark through his chest. His bone’s structure gave a hint of what he must have been, like he was once a strong man. But all he’d left behind was a husk, bones held together by skin and sinew and nothing else. All muscle, all fat, was wasted away.

  His eyes seemed massive in his shrunken face, and Coleridge got chills, imagining that somehow Sawyer’s corpse watched him. He could imagine him sitting up, right now, and pointing a finger. Telling Coleridge he was going to cut his feet off, cut his head off, use it to...

  He didn’t need to go there.

  Sawyer’s mouth gapped open. Coleridge peered inside. His teeth were corroded, down to yellowed stubs. Like an old man’s, worn thin by long years of living.

  Sawyer’s nails were long and yellowed and thick, too.

  There was more. His hair, receded, was almost white. His body hair had turned white. His face was old, the skin sagging so much Coleridge couldn’t discern wrinkles, but he knew they were there. There were liver spots, and the joints poking through the skin were twisted, somehow, like someone with bad arthritis. His knuckles were twisted in, his knee joints swollen.

  Coleridge couldn’t help but notice the dead man’s penis. It was massive and thick, but even in death the killer’s scrotum was sagging. He remembered one of the old wits on the force when he’d joined, saying you knew you were getting old when your balls hung in the toilet bowl instead of your cock.

  Wished his mind would just shut down, right now.

  Everything about Sawyer said he was an old man. Very old. And yet they had checked and double checked. He was thirty-four years old. There was no doubt.

  “How can this be?”

  “I don’t know. The skin is sagging like that because he’s been starved. The muscles have wasted and left excess skin. But the rest couldn’t happen. The body would eat itself, if starved for long enough. But it wouldn’t age. I haven’t cut him open yet, but the body appears to be in advanced old age. I’d say in the eighties. Maybe the nineties. This is the body of an old man. There can only be some mistake with the identification. It’s the only explanation.”

  “Would his organs give some kind of clue? Could he have something like, I don’t know, an aging disease?”

  “There’s a disease that causes premature ageing, but that presents itself early, and he wouldn’t have developed fully. You can see from the bone structure, the width of the shoulders, the pelvis, the thickness of the wrists—he was once a powerful man. To have cut off people’s heads must have taken great strength. In one blow. There’s no doubt about it. A young man might have the strength to do that, but not a man this old.”

  “I don’t get it. I thought I’d get some answers. But all I’ve got are more questions.”

  Freeman shrugged.

  “Sorry, Coleridge, but join the club. I’ve got no answers. Just a body on my table that doesn’t make sense. You want to hang around while I cut him open?”

  Coleridge checked his watch again. 2:00 PM.

  To stay would be cutting it too close. Dark wouldn’t be far away, and he had a drive ahead of him.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said, shaking his head. He couldn’t take his eyes off Sawyer’s corpse.

  “Please yourself.”

  “If you find anything in the meantime, give me a call. Anything that makes sense.”

  “I will. But I don’t think this is going to make sense. I’d almost want to write it up for a journal, but I fear I’d just be laughed at.”

  “Sit on the results for a while.”

  “I don’t know if I can. Everyone’s breathing down my neck on this.”

  “If you can’t, you can’t. But try.”

  Coleridge left and hurried down to his car as fast as he could. He was panting by the time he got behind the wheel. He was starving, too, but he didn’t need to think to drive.

  Besides, what was the point of thinking? He’d thought about the case in every way imaginable. Nothing made sense.

  Apart from the unthinkable. Beth.

  That the killer wasn’t human, something else entirely. Something he could never understand. It didn’t sit well with him. Not at all. He didn’t doubt that tonight he would meet the man, the beast. Not for a second.

  Maybe Sawyer had a partner and maybe not. Something strange was going on, though, and he didn’t like it one bit.

  But he was a man without choices. Whatever this was, he’d promised Beth he’d be there. Whatever that meant for the both of them, he couldn’t avoid it.

  If he came, Coleridge would be there. He wouldn’t leave her alone.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  What preparations could you make to meet the Devil himself? Beth was clean enough. She didn’t think he’d care if she’d had a shower or not. She was fed. She had a cup of coffee before her. Even today of all days, she wouldn’t drink until it hit five. If she didn’t make it that far, then so be it. She’d go out sober for once.

  She sipped her coffee in the front room, away from the somber policemen and women in her kitchen. Other cars pulled up outside her front window. She didn’t go and greet them and they didn’t come in. She half expected them to want a peek at the freak.

  There was a small depression in the couch next to Beth. Her arm was slung out over the top of the couch. Miles nestled against her chest, his weight against her more of a comfort than all the bodyguards the police combined.

  He didn’t fidget much. He’d never been much for fidgeting. When he’d been alive they used to spend hours in front of the television, the three of them snuggled together. In the winters they would bring their big quilt down and put Miles between them. It didn’t matter what they watched. That was in the old house, though. Peter ha
d never lived in the beach house. It was Beth’s and Miles’. Peter was gone.

  Gone. There was nothing she could do about it.

  Miles looked up at her, as though he could sense her darkest thoughts. Sense her loss.

  He didn’t seem angry at her today. He was calm, his face soft. She could almost forget his wounds, forget he was dead. She looked down into that beautiful face, once so full of joy, now bearing nothing but sadness. For her and for his dad. But in spirit Miles could not affect the outcome, and in life Beth could do nothing either. Sometimes things just happened. They may not be for the best. They may hurt. But you can’t change fate. You can’t beat God.

  You can’t beat the Devil, either, for that matter.

  What preparations could she make? Only one that mattered.

  So Beth spent the afternoon curled up on the sofa next to her dead son. Her coffee went cold, but she didn’t want to move and break the illusion. Outside, police patrolled around her house, around and around, in an endless circle. Some of the policemen were armed.

  Farther back, beyond the sawhorses shutting off the road, she saw a TV van pull up. Now it was truly a freak show. She was a circus exhibit.

  Miles took her hand and stroked her palm, his finger tracing a gentle circle. Like she used to do to him to make him sleep when he was a baby. It brought tears to her eyes, but it made her smile, too.

  Beth snuggled with Miles. The policemen circled. The sky darkened and night approached. Coleridge hadn’t shown. She wasn’t worried. She knew he’d be there if he could. She kind of hoped he wouldn’t make it, but she felt he would. Somehow he was a part of this, a trinity.

  She thought back to her reading when this had all started. The High Priestess, The Hermit, The Hanged Man.

  Her, Coleridge, Peter.

  Without a doubt.

  But him?

  She knew his cards. It didn’t help, but she understood his nature.

  The High Priest. The Magician. The Devil.

  Three and three.

  Miles tugged her hand. She suspected he sometimes knew what she was thinking. She looked at him, and he pointed to himself.

  Don’t forget me, he seemed to be saying.

  “I could never forget you,” she said, and kissed the top of his head.

  What was Miles in this? Did he have a role to play?

  There was no sense in worrying. At the end she would have her family back, and dark just brought their reunion closer.

  The dark, coming now. Rising out of the sea. And him, riding it like a black horse to her.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  The speedometer read sixty as Peter hit the Horsey Road, heading north through the Broads. He knew he was going too fast for the road, but he knew that he was going too slow for Beth. The road twisted, treacherous curves, narrow stretches with few passing places. The line blurred, the landscape became indistinct as night rolled across the flatlands.

  He flicked on his headlights. Pushed harder. Up to seventy on the straights, breaking hard into corners, accelerating out, working his tires hard, the engine growling.

  He noticed a car behind him, coming up fast. Someone driving as hard as he was. He put more pressure on the accelerator and the car leaped forward. The car behind flashed its headlights at him, gaining.

  He turned his attention away. He couldn’t afford to be distracted.

  He felt the cold again. Miles, maybe. He couldn’t see him, but he could feel something unnatural. He tried to concentrate on the road, ignore the feeling of being watched. The night wasn’t about the dead. It was about the living.

  He’d never felt anything like this. He was so certain that Beth’s life was in danger. He was being pulled toward her, his love drawing him on. He could never stop loving her, no matter what she’d done. She would always be his wife, even though they were long divorced. She’d kept his name. He’d kept her in his heart.

  He couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t let her down.

  At 4:00 PM, headlights high and the distance hidden already in gloom, Peter rounded the last bend at 75 mph.

  For a second, he thought he saw a man in the road, but it couldn’t have been, because he had wings. He spread them wide and they reached right across the road.

  Peter blinked, and the man/angel was gone, and then a black bird hit his windscreen hard enough to crack it. Instinctively, Peter snatched at the wheel, even though there was nothing he could have done. He was going too fast, the road was too narrow. The near side wheels on his Mondeo mounted the dirt at the side of the road. The steering wheel bucked in Peter’s hands. He tried to correct, but he was already careening over to the other side of the road. The off side wheels dug into the high dirt. The car turned thirty degrees and flipped, once, onto the roof. The windshield shattered, and the pillars at the side crumpled. The air bag went off with a bang, cushioning Peter’s head from the blow, but, as the car flipped sideways, his head cracked into the side window. The car slid forty long yards along the road. Then it bumped and rolled a final time over the side and into a ditch.

  The airbag didn’t deflate instantly, like it was supposed to. It held Peter tight, upside-down. He didn’t realize, because he was unconscious. He didn’t feel his hair getting wet, or the water filling his mouth.

  He didn’t feel Miles next to him, holding his hand.

  Chapter Sixty

  Coleridge saw the car hit the side of the road. The verges at the side of these country roads could feel like a wall if you hit them.

  He followed around the corner, saw the car losing control, then flipping and sliding. He pumped his brakes, holding tight to the steering wheel as his weight shifted forward. His gut got in the way of the wheel. He was right behind the car, braking as hard as he could. He was going to hit it, and there was nothing he could do about it. But then the car hit the hard edge of the road again and flipped into a ditch. A huge gout of water rose into the air and then the car settled.

  Coleridge’s watched it out of his side window, skidding now, as he passed. The car rocked to a halt, and he slammed his heavy fingers into the seatbelt button, pulled it aside and rushed across the road to the car.

  The car was filling with water.

  He stumbled down the incline and into the freezing water, only up to his knees, but high enough, if you were upside-down.

  He could see the driver’s arm, hanging out of the shattered driver’s side window. The driver wasn’t moving. Unconscious or dead, it didn’t matter at this stage.

  The door was buckled and groaned as Coleridge forced it open. His feet sank into the mud at the bottom of the ditch. He pushed them down harder, trying to get some purchase.

  The airbag hadn’t deflated, so he hit it as hard as he could with his fist, and it popped. The driver’s head was under the water. Coleridge pulled the man’s head forward, out of the water, and reached awkwardly across him to the seatbelt. He fell down, and Coleridge couldn’t take his weight. He heaved, pulling him clear of the steering wheel and dragging him through the water.

  Holding the unconscious man under the arms, he struggled hard to get out of the ditch and back to the road. He was breathing hard. Way too hard. He could feel his heart giving its best, his lungs burning.

  He could feel dark rising, too, and half-hated himself for thinking it, half-hated this idiot driver for keeping him from Beth.

  But he was a policeman, and he’d never turned away from someone in need.

  He pounded the man’s chest, trying to drive the water out of his lungs. He wasn’t breathing and he wasn’t responsive. But he had a pulse. It was weak, but it was there.

  There was a chance.

  Water trickled from the man’s mouth, dribbling down the side of his face. Coleridge pinched his nostrils closed and forced air into his lungs. He pulled out his cell and dialed between breaths while he tried to save the man’s life.

  Between breaths, he got an ambulance.

  Twenty minutes, maybe, on a good run, he thought while he gave the dispatc
her his badge number.

  He checked his watch. 4:20.

  No time left. The sun had gone and the last of the light was fading in the west. No beautiful sunset to mark the end of Beth’s life. Just a dull slate gray sliding across the sky.

  He cursed the man underneath him and felt his pulse again. Still there.

  If he died he could just leave him by the side of the road. He didn’t even know this man. Some stranger tries to kill himself, and, because of it, Beth was alone.

  “Fuck! Come on, you bastard!”

  He thumped the man’s chest, hard as he could. Calmed down, breathed into the man’s mouth.

  Cursed.

  Breathed.

  Still no sirens. Nothing passing but time.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  The sirens came. So slow, so far away. Waiting for them was almost painful.

  Coleridge breathed and pumped. Water still trickled from the man’s lungs. His heart still beat, but slower now. Feathery light under Coleridge’s heavy fingers. Sometimes he wasn’t sure it was there at all.

  An ambulance pulled up behind his car. The crew got down.

  Coleridge flashed his badge.

  “What happened?” One guy said. He had a cigarette on the go. He flicked it into the ditch.

  Coleridge heard more sirens. Police. Late to the show. They were usually first. He was glad the ambulance came first. The guy might stand a chance. And he could go.

  “Idiot flipped his car into the water. Head under the water, breathed some in. Unconscious. Heartbeat’s weak, not breathing, water still in his lungs.”

  “OK,” the paramedic said, already on his knees beside the unconscious driver. His partner ran to the back of the ambulance.

  “Got it?”

  “Got it,” the guy nodded, not looking up. Working. Trying to save a man’s life. Coleridge was just in the way now.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Police are coming. They’ll want a statement.”