When I Am Laid in Earth (Damnatio Memoriae Book 3)

by Laura Giebfried

  “No, no, I didn't want to interrupt,” the priest said, not moving from his spot on the threshold, which, given the state of the place, I could hardly blame him for. “I've just had a call from Officer Martin; I rather hoped to get your version of things, if you had a moment.”

  “Oh, right.” Jack circled where I was crouched on the floor and gave the priest a nod. “Yeah, I – I can tell you about it, sure.”

  He left the room and followed the priest down the hallway; their footsteps creaked on the old wooden staircase as they went downstairs. I paused midway though lifting one of Jack's shirts, debating whether or not to follow them, before making up my mind and going to the door. Creeping out into the hall, I reached the top of the stairs as quietly as possible and eased myself down on the topmost step in order to listen. Their voices floated up from the room below.

  “...such a good path that you've been on as of late.”

  The priest was speaking gently, but the reprimand was heightened given his position. Had I been given the choice between hearing anyone else – including my father or Barker – shout at me for doing something wrong or having him berate me in his kind way, I would have chosen the former time and time again.

  “I know. It was a mistake. I shouldn't have been sneaking around.”

  Jack's voice was as direct as ever, but there was a definite note of apology in it that I so seldom heard. I vaguely wondered if he had changed since the last time that I had seen him properly, or if Father Taggart was just especially good at getting people to feel remorseful for their actions. If it was the latter that was true, then I both wished that he could get an apology out of my father and that I would never be in position to give him one myself.

  “I know how hard you've worked to find a place in this town,” the priest continued. “And no matter how much you've done or how far you've come, you know as well as I do that it'll do you little good if you're on the wrong side of Jim Perenna.”

  ”I know. I – I'll apologize to him properly tomorrow.”

  “I think that that would be a good idea,” Father Taggart agreed, his voice still very low. “You know that I don't fault you for any of your past misconducts, Jack – they brought you here, after all. But I would hate to see you go down the wrong path again.”

  “I know. I won't.”

  “So what made you go into the Perenna's house today?”

  “Nothing. I mean – Mrs. Coffey had asked us to bring up some food for the after party, and so we did. And … since we were already inside, we just sort of ...”

  “Just sort of what?”

  “We looked around a bit. We were – I was curious.”

  “About the family?”

  “About Anna, mostly. I guess I was just … surprised that she had died.”

  “We all were,” Father Taggart said. “But we all didn't feel the need to go into her room.”

  “I know it sounds bad,” Jack offered, and though I couldn't see him, I knew that he was giving the priest a shrug. “But it's not. We weren't trying to do anything wrong.”

  “I know that you weren't, Jack. At least not consciously.”

  He paused, seemingly in thought.

  “Whose idea was it to go through the house?” he asked.

  “What? I – it was mine, I guess,” Jack said.

  “Was it?” The priest asked the question thoughtfully, but it was clear that he was wavering on whether or not to believe what Jack had said. “You're sure?”

  “It was my idea,” Jack repeated. “I just dragged Nim along.”

  “I see.” He was silent for a few moments more. “I just find it odd that you haven't gotten into any trouble in so long, and now that your friend is here, you're immediately in it once again.”

  I raised my eyebrow disapprovingly. In all the years that I had known Jack and all of the mischief we had gotten into, it had never once been suggested that I was the instigator and he was the one who had been tagging along. The idea was both ridiculous and a bit insulting, and I was relieved when the sound of a laugh came up the steps.

  “No, it was my idea, Father,” Jack said, the grin returning to his voice. “Nim would rather have nothing to do with it – believe me.”

  “Alright,” Father Taggart said, his footsteps creaking as he took a step away. “And I do.”

  I hurried back to the room and hastily dumped Jack's clothes into the laundry bag to feign that I had been there all along while Mea gave me a sluggish look from the bed. As I tossed a few empty cigarette packs into the trashcan, the door reopened and Jack came in.

  “I've got to head over to work,” he said. “But I'll be back around eight – it's only a half-day since the funeral was today.”

  “Alright,” I said. “I'll have this cleaned up by then.”

  “See you then.”

  Once he had left, though, my desire to straighten out the room all but vanished and I sat back on the floor with a tired, hollow feeling in my head. There was a draft coming from the glass and the sky had darkened even though it was only mid-afternoon. In the crack between the two short curtains hanging over the small window, I could just make out the last bit of light leaving the sky for the day, and the long stretch of snow outside was dotted with the gray, regular shapes of gravestones.

  “What am I doing here?” I muttered, rubbing at my eyes with the palms of my hands as I tried to shake the exhaustion from my form. The sound of music had begun to float up from the floorboards, but after a moment or so of trying to recognize the tune, I realized that it was not a hallucination but rather the choir practicing on the floor below. They were singing in high-pitched voices that mimicked something rather angelical, but the noise was intrusive and only seemed to add to the new-found silence.

  Mea whimpered from the bed, her head resting against the edge of the ruined mattress as she looked over at me with huge blue eyes. I sighed.

  “Right, I'm supposed to feed you.”

  I stood and went over to my bag, the only thing in the room that she had not managed to get at given that I had put it high up on the table, and sifted through it for the bag of kibble. Karl had taped a note with feeding instructions to the outside of it and marked a cup to indicate how much food to scoop out, and I took a bowl from Jack's limited set of dishes to put it in.

  “It's good,” I told Mea as she sniffed at the dry meal and put her nose in the air. “It's the same stuff Karl feeds you.”

  She gave me a look and took a small bite, her teeth cracking against the food as she chewed. It must have frozen slightly in the cold; I still hadn't taken my coat off because of it.

  “I don't have anything else,” I told her as she pawed my leg. “I don't. Sorry.”

  She continued to stare at me with her huge, bright eyes, and I stood and went to the window, unable to look at her for a moment more. My father should have known better than to have gotten me a dog: it was clear that I was incapable of taking care of anything.

  There was someone making their way through the cemetery below, and I pressed my face up to the window in order to see who it was. Her hair was mostly covered by a dark wool hat, and her face wasn't discernible in the distance, but I recognized her long, fur-trimmed coat from the funeral earlier that day. Mrs. Perenna was making her way out of the graveyard at last. She must have stayed long after everyone else at her daughter's burial site.

  I pulled my face away and shook my head. The girl was dead, and the cause of her death was nothing different than what everyone else thought. She had killed herself – plainly, simply, and probably fairly painlessly – and though I didn't particularly like the idea, I gave her credit for doing it right. If my mother had done so, then maybe things would have been different now; and if I had done so, then they certainly would have been. There was no mystery to it as Jack wanted to think, and nothing else to do that would change any of it. She was gone – dead and never returning – and though Father Taggart might have lost sleep as he considered her soul being trapped in eternal damnation for a
ll of time, I knew that there was something far worse in store for her: the nothingness of existence that would come to everyone upon reaching the end of life.

  The choir was still practicing their song, and the repetition of it was enough to scratch at my mind the way the song from Turandot had for so many years before and after my mother's death. I should have never come to Kipling in the first place: I had known from the first mention of what was in store that it would only set me back again, and it was clear by now that whoever Jack and I had been back at Bickerby had altered and severed too greatly, and we simply weren't on the same path anymore. He would be fine here with Father Taggart to sort him out and talk sense into him, and I would be fine back in Connecticut with Karl – just as soon as I could return, but that amount of time depended on my father.

  I switched on my phone and wrinkled my nose as the bars depleted in the remote area, though one finally appeared when I stood on the table next to my bag and held it up to the ceiling. Quickly dialing Karl before the signal was lost again, I pressed the phone to my ear and waited for him to answer.

  “I didn't expect you to call so soon.”

  He was outside, I realized, recognizing the sound of the the wind in the background. Given that it was a Saturday afternoon, he was undoubtedly at the cemetery as per usual. The thought of him standing at my mother's grave as we had the conversation pulled at me uncomfortably.

  “Yeah. I didn't want you to worry, so ...”

  “How's Jack?”

  “Fine. He's at work right now.”

  “Oh, that's good. That's good.” Karl seemed to be nodding. The concept of learning that Jack still had a job was evidently as surprising to him as it had been to me. “And Mea?”

  “She's fine. She doesn't seem to like the food, though.”

  “It's the same as always.”

  “That's what I told her, but it must be too cold or something.”

  He instructed me to hold the phone out to her so that he could order her to eat it and, despite feeling ridiculous for doing so, I put it down next to her. Her ears perked up upon hearing his voice.

  “Mea, eat.”

  She obeyed almost instantly, and I put the phone back to my ear as I watched her crunching away on the dry kibble, a sense of pointlessness coming over me.

  “So you're having a good time?” Karl asked.

  “What?”

  “With Jack,” he said, shaking me from my thoughts.

  “Oh, right. Yeah, I'm … fine.”

  He waited for me to elaborate for a short moment before accepting that that was all that I had to say.

  “And how's Kipling? It looked nice.”

  “Yeah, it's … it's interesting, I guess.”

  “Did Jack show you around?”

  “Not really.” I paused. “There was a funeral going on today, so most of the shops were closed.”

  I could almost hear Karl frowning.

  “Well, that's … You didn't go, did you?”

  “To the funeral?” I paused, weighing how the truth would affect the conversation. “No, of course not.”

  “Oh, good. I just never know, you know, with Jack's ideas of entertainment.”

  “True.”

  He seemed appeased enough to think that I hadn't gone to the stranger's funeral when I had not even gone to my mother's, and the familiar sense of comfort that I obtained from lying to him edged its way back into my skull.

  “But you're doing well? You – you still want to stay for a few weeks?” he asked, his voice wavering uncertainly.

  “I … yeah. Just for a few weeks.”

  The flatness in my voice was even more pronounced than usual.

  “Enim, I can come get you if you'd like,” he said quietly. “I don't mind. You don't have to stay.”

  My teeth were chattering just slightly, and I locked them on top of my tongue to lessen the uncalled for movement. There was no logical reason to be upset other than the fact that I was keeping something from him, and I couldn't place if I was frightened that he would be unsettled without me there, or if I was frightened that I would be so without him.

  “No, I … I'm fine here. I just want to stay for a bit and catch up with Jack.”

  “Of course. Well, if you need anything or change your mind, just call.”

  “Right. I will.”

  He could hear the hesitation in my voice and waited without hanging up.

  “Enim, is there something else?”

  The horrible angelic chorus was still repeating from the room below, and the high-pitched voices broke the silence as though cutting through it with short, sharp shards of ice. And for a reason that I couldn't place, though one that I put down to seeing Mrs. Perenna walk through the cemetery all alone in the same way that he was doing now, I wanted to ask him if he still missed my mother in the same sudden way that he had when she had first died, or first jumped, even, but it was such an odd question – and such a useless one – that I couldn't bring myself to do so.

  “No. I mean, there was something – but it wasn't important.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I'm sure.”

  Karl sighed.

  “Enim, I've come to realize with you that, whatever it is, most things are rather important,” he said, his voice worn. “Are you having any problems? Is the change throwing you off? If it is, I won't make you come home – I just want to figure out how to help you cope with it before it gets out of control.”

  “No, it … it was nothing like that, Karl.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He was hardly convinced, and I was hardly about to tell him the real reason that Jack had invited me up to Kipling or why I had consented to come.

  “No, I was just ...” I trailed off, my mind working to think of a proper excuse. “I was just thinking about the opera last week, and I was wondering … what your favorite was.”

  Karl paused.

  “My favorite opera?”

  “Yes.” I bit my tongue and shook my head at myself, annoyed that that was all that I had to say to him. “It's stupid, that's why I didn't want to ask.”

  He seemed to be nodding, and I suddenly wished that I could pull the question back again for fear of what his answer might be. I imagined him standing in between the rows of gravestones contemplating the question, perhaps thinking of the time when he had taken my mother to see Turandot while also wondering how I had pulled it from my mind, and it occurred to me that his thoughts were undoubtedly as neatly organized as everything else in his life, filed away and ready to be pulled out and read whenever the need arose.

  “Orfeo ed Euridice,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That's my favorite,” he clarified. “You probably haven't seen it.”

  I thanked him and said goodnight, clicking off the phone and sitting in the empty room with nothing but Mea and the religious choir music for company. I assumed that Orfeo ed Euridice was based off of the myth of a similar name in which Orpheus had gone down into Hell in order to retrieve his late wife, Eurydice, whom he was too heartbroken to live without. If I had had to have guessed, it certainly made sense that that would be Karl's favorite. He must have liked the thought of being granted the possibility of saving someone from death, and would have undoubtedly done anything in order to do so himself.

  And just as I knew that he would go down into the Underworld in order to save my mother, or given anything to bring just a hint of her back to life, I knew that Jack would do the same for Miss Mercier, just as he was trying to rectify her senseless death by looking for closure with the newly dead girl. And it didn't surprise me to consider either of them doing so, but it did surprise me that I was uncertain if I would do the same. There were countless people that I should have longed to put back in their rightful places above the ground and change the horrors that I had inflicted upon them, but I had no sense of longing to venture anywhere to get to them – not my mother, not Beringer, not Albertson, and not Ilona. My only wish
was to lie there with them in the cold and silent and thoughtlessness of death, not content but certain that no one would ever cross over the lines separating life from what came next, and knowing that that was the way it had to be.

  Ch. 7

  When the church had dissolved into silence again, I left Mea where she was curled up on Jack's pillow sleeping and went downstairs to the chilly front hallway. The place was large in comparison to the quaintness of the town, though it was probably because it had been built to accommodate all of the residents at once, and the emptiness of both it and the cemetery outside seemed to stretch on for miles.

  I wandered through a few of the rooms before coming to the main one where the service had been held earlier that day. In the nighttime, the stained-glass windows looked murky and old, and the figures imprinted on them in colorful designs took on a sinister appearance in their wrought-iron outlines. Stepping down the aisles of benches, I lingered at the base of the ambon to look up at them for a moment before moving to the organ and sitting down; it seemed to be the only appropriate place for me to do so.

  “Fucking silence,” I muttered, hating the sound of my voice in the still air. At least when I was at Karl's apartment, the auditory hallucinations filled it and made it feel as though the world wasn't quite so empty. But here, in the town that was seemingly just the remnants of what we had left behind at Bickerby, the sound of drifting music wouldn't come. Maybe the churchyard kept it away, as though the statue of the horrific angel stopped it midway in the breeze before it could make its way to me.

  I lifted my hands over the organ keys and cautiously pressed down. The notes were far louder than the piano ever was, and the high ceilings echoed them around the room in thunderous bursts beneath my fingers. Scooting a bit closer on the bench, I waited for the room to grow silent again before beginning the song from Dido and Aeneas that still looped within my skull, and the sound of it was the only comforting thing that had remained with me since arriving in Kipling.

  It was a short song, the aria only spanning four minutes or so, but I played it over several times in order to keep the silence at bay for a bit. When I finally eased up on the keys and the music sank into the walls to disappear, there was a light creaking noise behind me as someone shifted in the pews. I startled and turned around.