Crackpot Palace

by Jeffrey Ford

  “I don’t like it,” said the detective. “Any of it.”

  From that point on, with the exception of Groot singing along to the radio—“Heaven, I’m in heaven”—they drove the rest of the distance to Hekston in silence.

  There were quite a few cars in the parking lot, and the Windemere glowed from within. Groot pulled up behind Stan’s car. The rain had slowed to a drizzle.

  “Okay, Coroner,” he said. “That’s enough for one day.”

  “That’s plenty for me,” said Stan.

  He opened the door, and before he could say good night, the detective said, “Wait, I want you to take the painting.”

  “Why?”

  Groot reached into the backseat, grabbed the picture by the frame, and lifted it into the front. “Go ahead. Take it over to the hospital tomorrow and take a look at it with her there. I want to make sure what we’re seeing is what we’re seeing.”

  Stan touched the painting and for an instant felt the loneliness of the dark back booth where they’d found it. He got out of the car. “Driving home from Hekston with this thing in the backseat. Jeez, I’d rather climb the rock again,” he said.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” said the detective and hit the gas. The sudden velocity slammed the door shut, and the car traveled a graceful arc through the parking lot, spitting gravel in its wake.

  The moment Groot was gone, Stan felt Hekston’s dark spirit closing in. He clasped the painting hard under his right arm and made for his car. As he walked, memories of the Obalan case came back in brief flashes. Before getting in, he stowed the picture in the trunk to avoid any possibility of it appearing in his rearview mirror during the trip. Pulling out of the parking lot, he headed up the street toward the highway turnoff, his mind buzzing like one of Madrigal’s mills, weaving strands of the Wish Head, Alina, Joe Venner, the painting, scenes from that long-ago night with de Vries into a snarled and snarling tapestry. It was hard to concentrate, and he traveled slowly until he reached the town limits. The rain began to fall in earnest, and he flicked on the wipers. Once he was over the town line, his thoughts calmed a little and he picked up speed.

  There was no moon and the long stretch of highway through the woods was pitch black. Stan hadn’t seen another set of headlights for miles. He thought about his wish made standing atop the boulder. He remembered the rain on his face and the rush of the wind. The scene was vivid in his mind when a six-point buck stepped, seemingly from out of nowhere, into the beams of the headlights. He was stunned. The creature was fewer than twenty yards away and was staring directly at the oncoming car. The light gleamed in its enormous eyes. Stan jammed the brake pedal with his ivory foot before his good one was even off the gas and cut the wheel to the right with both hands. The car went into a skid, the back end hurtling toward the animal. He braced for impact, but it never came. Instead, the car snaked off onto the shoulder of the highway, over a small rise and down into a hollow ringed by oaks where it rolled to a smooth stop. The branches overhead blocked the rain. With the exception of Stan’s heavy breathing, it was perfectly silent and perfectly dark.

  He sat forward and turned the key. The car gave him more silence for his effort. He tried a dozen times, whispering strings of curses. Deciphering what might be wrong was out of the question. He was no mechanic. The thought of being out on the highway in the dark, rain drenching him, trying to flag somebody down, made him weary beyond reckoning. He slowly reached for the door handle, but before his fingers touched the metal, he felt the invisible worm begin to gnaw at the heel of his missing foot. The second he noticed it, the pain started to spread, and he pictured the scrimshaw devil dancing.

  “Not again,” he said aloud and pulled himself up to a kneeling position on the front seat. The pain moved to where the arch of the foot should have been as he leaned over the seat into the back and rummaged through his bag. He felt the small bottle of pills and pulled them out. Removing the cork stopper, he carefully poured the bottle’s contents into his hand. Then he turned and sat back in the driver’s spot. He reached into his pocket for his lighter. Like the glow from Groot’s lighter in the back booth at the Windemere, Stan’s flame revealed something startling. There were only four pills in his palm. All he had with him. He popped them in his mouth and swallowed them dry.

  There followed a long dark period of intense agony, which set him sweating and groaning, but soon enough he forgot about how long a time it had been. His eyes adjusted to the night and he could now make out the dials on the dashboard, the empty pill bottle on the seat, and beyond the windshield, the silhouette shapes of tree trunks. The drug, of course, had nothing to do with the pain, but it did distract him with slippery thoughts and bouts of twisting memory.

  Often, when in the throes of this pain, he thought about the ivory foot, saw its off-yellow sheen and its delicate sculpture—the cuticles, each articulated toe. He’d never experienced a twinge of discomfort from what wasn’t there until he was fitted for the prosthesis. He recalled de Vries revealing why he’d ordered that the foot be made from ivory. “I once knew an old man,” said the doctor. “He had been a sailor. He had an ivory hand, which had been made for him in Java by a native craftsman. The fingers were frozen in the act of taking something, but at the same time you swore the pale thing moved of its own accord. The old man told me that unlike modern metal prosthetics, ivory holds on to the life of the limb.”

  “And what’s so good about that?” Stan said aloud and came suddenly back to the fact that he was stuck in the woods in a dead car miles from Midian.

  He rolled down the window, took out his cigarettes, and lit one. “It holds on to the life of the limb,” he said and shook his head. “More like its death.” His hands trembled from the pain he’d again become aware of. His only escape was into memory, and he began to let his thoughts slip away to the first phantom attack, two weeks after the foot had been fitted, but something he saw through the smoke drew him out of his reverie. He tossed the cigarette and waved his hand to clear the air. Through the windshield, he recognized the dim image of a pair of eyes staring in at him. He felt a jolt of panic in his chest, and then a second pair of eyes slowly divulged themselves. Stan looked out the side windows, and more were there as well. The deer crowded around his car, staring in. He wondered how long they’d been there watching him writhe and complain.

  “What do you want?” he yelled and they bolted, vanishing into the night. He rolled up the window and locked the doors.

  Stan slept and woke later to the dark. The first thing he realized, after recalling he was stranded, was that the pain was gone. He couldn’t believe it, and concentrated hard to try to feel its bite. Not sunrise yet and the ivory foot felt fine and he’d actually dozed off. He rubbed his face with both hands, smoothed his hair back, and took a few deep breaths. No longer groggy but still somewhat giddy from the pills, he leaned forward and turned the key.

  The sudden sound of the engine coming to life momentarily frightened him. Then he let out a laugh. He put the car in reverse and eased down on the gas pedal. The Chrysler responded, backing slowly up out of the ring of trees. At the top of the rise, he cut the wheel to the left, hoping to bring the front around so he wouldn’t have to back down onto the highway. When the car was perpendicular to the incline, he felt the pull of gravity and feared the vehicle might tumble on its side, so he shifted quickly and spun the wheel in the opposite direction. Gliding down across the shoulder and out onto the road, he beeped the horn. The highway was empty and there were no deer along the tree line. Off to the east, the sky had begun to lighten.

  When he got into Midian around nine, he needed sleep, but there was something he wanted to tell Cynthia. He drove over to the library, at the edge of town, forgetting halfway there why he wasn’t heading for bed.

  The Midian County Library had been a gift to the community from William Madrigal. In the late ’20s he’d had an abandoned estate completely refurbished, from the marble floors to the gold-leaf constellations painted
on the dark blue ceilings. Handcrafted bookshelves lined the three stories, the mansion’s rooms turned into library sections. What had been the nursery now contained the library’s entire holdings on philosophy. The kitchen held crime and adventure. The master bedroom, history. Madrigal hadn’t skimped in his endowment, and the place continued to have a healthy budget even through the lean years.

  In the center of that rectangular mansion was a courtyard, sixty feet square, open to the sky. In the confines of that space, Cynthia had planted her clock garden—a circular bed, divided by white stones into twelve equal wedges, the points meeting at the center. Within each bed was planted a different type of flower chosen for the time of day it either opened or closed. Some were wild, like the hawksbeard and foxglove, and some were planted each year from seed, like the zinnias. As the flowers opened and closed around the circle, they told the time of day. Goat’s beard opened first, then chicory, and later, around six, the dandelions. At the halfway point of daylight hours, the clue to the time was in a blossom’s closing.

  On the south side of the garden, facing it, was a curved stone bench. Stan sat next to Cynthia, holding her hand, his eyes half closed. It was cold in the courtyard and the garden was devastated. Curled brown maple leaves had blown over the walls and were trapped amid the drooping stalks. Colored petals were scattered on the dirt. A handful of black-eyed Susans held on, wilted at the edges, as did most of the wedge of chrysanthemums. Time had run out for everything else, though, including Stan, who lifted his legs and curled up on the stone.

  He tried to tell her about his day with Groot and the near accident, but his mind kept veering off the highway toward sleep. “There was a painting,” he told her, “and this big rock, and we talked to an old man.” His strings of phrases ended in sighs.

  “You’re exhausted,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, blinking like a tired child.

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” said Cynthia. “What did you want?”

  “The pain in my foot, I know it’s gone. I made a wish.” He folded his arms and laid the side of his face against the cold stone. “Do me a favor and look up the Wish Head or Witch Head in local history. It’s out on the way to Verruk,” he told her.

  “What is it?”

  “A giant rock in a field.”

  “Okay,” she said. She got up and patted him on the shoulder. Turning, she headed through the remains of the garden toward the courtyard door. She looked back at him once more before entering the building. Stan lay on the stone bench, eyes closed, and dozed in the early morning sun.

  That afternoon, in the empty autopsy room in the basement of Midian General, Groot sat on a high stool, his heels hooked on the bottom rung, and Stan leaned against the lab counter, telling the detective about his ordeal in the woods.

  Groot laughed. “Well, in about two hours, I’m officially done with this case,” he said. “They’re making me move on to something new. Your Alina is bound for the Heartbreak file.”

  “Rashner’s sending his guys this evening to pick her up and take her to Albany so he can do an autopsy. When you leave, I have to bag her for them.”

  “I hope she at least perplexes the asshole.”

  “That would be sweet of her,” said Stan.

  “Go get the painting,” said Groot. “Before she’s gone I want to match the painting and the body.”

  Stan went into his office and returned with the canvas they’d picked up in Hekston. He led the way into the morgue and Groot followed.

  “The quietest spot in town,” said the detective as Stan leaned over and opened the door to the bottom slab in the refrigerated unit.

  “Alina,” he said as she rolled forth. When she was completely in view, Stan stood straight, and he and Groot were quiet for a moment, contemplating her expression.

  “She looks pissed off,” said the detective.

  “I’d say pensive,” said Stan. He held the painting at arm’s length. “What do you think?”

  Their glances moved from the painted figure to the body and back.

  “The eyes are definitely a match,” said Groot. “And the mouth is very close.”

  “I think it looks just like her,” said Stan.

  “As close as you can get with a painting.”

  “What does it mean, though?”

  “I don’t know,” said Groot. “One thing I did happen upon, though, this morning at the diner. These two guys from the factory were having coffee and talking about hunting and such in the area when they were kids. I lost track of what they were saying for a while, and then one says, ‘Some of these turtles around here live over a hundred and fifty years.’ ”

  “You think the brand on her rear end has something to do with that?” asked Stan.

  “Who the hell knows,” said Groot. “Close her up. I’ve had enough.”

  As the drawer holding the body rolled back into darkness, Stan said, “You want the painting?”

  Groot hesitated, then grinned until he caught the coroner glancing away from his birthmark. “I gotta take it back to Hekston next time I go up that way.”

  “Will you dig around any more for this case?” Stan asked, heading for his office. Groot followed.

  The detective shook his head. “This shit doesn’t make sense to me. I’d rather forget it. I’m retiring anyway.”

  Stan laughed. “Been talking with your wife some more?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Groot and took a seat near the office door. Stan rested the painting against the wall as he sat down at his desk. He swiveled the chair around to face his associate.

  “What are you going to do when you retire?”

  “My wife wants to move to the ocean. Which one she means or whether she means it, I’m not sure.”

  “You’ll miss Midian,” said Stan.

  “I don’t think so,” said Groot. “This case gave me the jitters.” He obviously had more to say but hesitated, closed his eyes momentarily and shook his head. “I wasn’t gonna tell you this, but on my way back from Hekston last night, I passed this woman, standing on the side of the road. In the middle of nowhere out there in the woods. Not a stitch of clothes on her. Long hair.”

  “Alina?” asked Stan.

  “It happened so fast, I never got a good look at her, but it was enough of a look to know I didn’t want to go back for another. I never slowed down. Somewhere between there and home, I decided to retire.”

  “Are you sure you saw something?”

  “No,” said Groot and stood up. “I’m not, really.”

  Stan leaned back, grabbed the painting, and handed it to him. They shook hands. “Here’s to the devil taking off till the end of the year.”

  “Good luck, Detective.”

  “Coroner,” said Groot, tipped his hat, and stepped into the hallway.

  That night, Stan lay next to Cynthia in his darkened bedroom. He had his arm around her. Her glasses lay on the nightstand, her head rested on his chest.

  “The Wish Head,” she said. “I found two brief articles about it. It was either erected or discovered by a group called the Schildpad in the late 1620s. They were a pagan group made up of Dutch trappers and traders who lived by their wits in the woods. They believed there was some kind of magical energy in the earth, you could draw its power into you by standing atop the Wish Head.”

  “The old man, Venner, said the same thing about the rock,” said Stan.

  “There was a brief piece about a witch, Griet Vadar, associated with the Schildpad, who lived in the 1800s. She was captured by settlers in the area, tried, weighted with stones, and thrown in the Hekston River. That’s pretty much all there was.”

  “The Schildpad?” said Stan. “Never heard of them.”

  “Sort of like a homespun religion, created out of the life they lived in the wilderness. Schildpad is Dutch for turtle,” she said. “They were turtle lovers.” She laughed and lifted herself up to see if he was smiling. “Sounds crazy,” she said.

  They re
sted back on the pillows. It seemed only a minute or two before he felt, in her heartbeat, her breathing, that she was asleep. He thought he’d have no problem following, but something wasn’t right. He knew it wasn’t the fact that they’d had to close the case on Alina. That was a turn of events both he and Groot favored. The mystery of what had happened needed to be laid to rest in one of the dark drawers in the basement of the hospital and locked up for good. He recalled de Vries explaining to him once, “There’s going to be times when you have to admit you’re stumped.” But he was already there, more than willing to move on. Then he thought of the word “stumped” and realized what it was that kept him awake.

  Ever since his encounter with the deer the previous night, all through the long drive that followed, sleeping on the cold stone bench before the clock garden, meeting with Groot, bagging Alina for Rashner’s flunkies, and making it through the rest of his day—all those hours and he’d not felt the slightest twinge of pain from his foot. Where there was no pain, there was nothing. The ivory piece no longer felt like an extension of himself, but just some cold block of something swinging off his ankle. It wasn’t so much painless as it was lifeless now.

  “The granting of my wish?” he wondered and pictured himself standing upon the stone head in the field. “Cured by earth magic.” He rolled out of bed, careful not to wake Cynthia, and limped to where his robe hung. He put it on and left the bedroom. On his way down the hall to his study, he whispered, “Or cursed by Griet Vadar?”

  Sitting in the same comfortable chair he had occupied during his bouts with the phantom limb, he poured a tall whiskey from the decanter on his desk. He sipped and listened to the wind in the trees outside the window and to the beat of the grandfather clock. It became clear to him that the emptiness was seeping out of the ivory appendage and invading the rest of his body. He drank faster, thinking that might stave it off. “Calm down,” he whispered to himself. “A dead woman is not stealing your soul.” He poured another drink, downed a quarter of it, and had a creeping inclination to add a couple of morphine pills to the mix. “Not smart,” he thought. “I’m getting all worked up just so I can have an excuse to take the drug.” To distract himself, he got up and walked across the room to fetch the mask, which lay atop a pile of books on a shelf. Returning to his chair, he held it in front of his face so that he was eye to eyehole with it.