The Ashes of an Oak

by Bradbury, Chris

  ‘Better safe than sorry,’ piped up Steve.

  ‘I guess,’ said Frank. ‘Which kind of brings me on to the other thing that’s been worrying me.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Emmet.

  ‘I have to ask. You think I could’ve killed those people?’

  A gush of air rushed from Steve. It wasn’t a laugh. There was no smile.

  Startled, Emmet sat up in his chair. This was a bolt out of the blue. It hadn’t even crossed his mind.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know. I’m just not an expert on this sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, think about it for a moment could you, Em?’

  It was difficult for Frank to hide his impatience.

  ‘I’ve got this hallucination dragging me all over town finding dead bodies where no one else has found them - in a furnace for Christ’s sake. I was found unconscious next to the latest victim. I don’t know what happened. I thought I’d got into the middle of a knife fight and it turns out I was probably arguing with a fucking wall! How do I know that some dark part of me hadn’t abducted that poor girl, plucked her eyes out and then suffocated her? How do I know it wasn’t me threw poor old Mrs Dybek over the balcony?’

  Emmet crossed his arms. ‘Evidence for a start,’ he said. He was quite calm. ‘There were scratches around the girl’s eyes, probably from nails. Was there any blood on your fingers or thumbs? On your clothes? Yeah, you could’ve washed them, prior to moving the body, but the killer hasn’t left any evidence prior to this, so he’s unlikely to leave it in this case. Do I think you’d kill Mrs Dybek? No, and at the time she died, you were working. With a policeman. That’s a pretty good alibi.’

  He crossed his legs and relaxed a little. ‘Listen, Frank, there’s no way on earth that I think you’d do any of this. I can’t recall any case where a man or woman with a brain t…' He quickly corrected himself. '...golf ball in their head, turned into a crazy because of it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Steve. ‘You’re stressed out. Forget about it.’

  Frank wasn’t convinced they were being totally honest with him. They were too close to the whole thing, to him, to Mary. If they took a step back, maybe they would see the whole picture a little more clearly. If he was investigating himself, he’d be watching every move he made.

  ‘All the same,’ he said. ‘Go to my place and take my clothes and get Milt to check them out. Get someone in here to take some nail scrapings…’

  Emmet flung his arms up. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I’m sick, Emmet. You have to indulge me. Come on,' he implored. 'Exclude me, for my sake. For my piece of mind. I don’t want to go under the blade thinking I might be the one we’re looking for.’

  Emmet shook his head. This was preposterous, he thought. Yet a small part of him told him it made sense, that no one was ever off limits. Everyone was human and humans could do very bad things. ‘Okay,’ he relented. ‘I’ll get Milt to deal with it. Keep it under his hat. Does Mary know about this?’

  ‘No.’

  Emmet puffed out his cheeks. ‘Great. Thanks, Frank. I’m going to turn up your doorstep demanding your dirty laundry and she’ll be fine about that? She’ll cut my balls off.’

  ‘She’ll understand.’

  ‘She’ll cut my balls off and I don’t blame her.’

  ‘Will you just do it?’ moaned Frank.

  ‘Sure,’ relented Emmet. ‘Anything else you want to share?’

  ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact. Our killer is almost certainly male, has a harelip on his top right lip and is probably Caucasian, maybe of mixed race. Oh, and he’s probably a newly diagnosed diabetic, but Steve knows about that.’

  Emmet turned to Steve. ‘You do?’

  ‘Only the diabetic stuff,’ said Steve defensively.

  Emmet glared suspiciously at Frank. ‘Where did that all come from?’

  ‘A reliable but unofficial source,’ said Frank.

  ‘That’ll be Milt then,' said Emmet without surprise.

  Frank locked up his mouth and threw away the key.

  ‘So if you know all this, then how come you want us to check you out? You don’t have a harelip and you aren’t diabetic.’

  ‘No,’ said Frank. ‘I’m neither of those things, but I found the bodies. I was led to them by an apparition. I woke up next to one of them in a broken down building. The whole thing about the lip and the diabetes isn’t certain and it’s also borderline inadmissible. I’m just about the only lead we have on this thing. If I wasn’t me, you’d be going through my life with a fine-toothed comb and you know it.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll get that sorted by the end of the day. You sure you don’t want my job, Frank? You’re being awful bossy.’

  Frank ran his hand over his tired eyes and across his craggy, unshaven face. He felt a mess. He was a mess, inside and out. ‘Not for all the tea in China, Em. Did we get any ID on the girl yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Steve. ‘Not yet. We’re circulating her picture. It’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘Unless she came from Indiana or some such.’

  ‘Don’t be belligerent, Frank,’ said Em. ‘You know how the game’s played.’

  ‘I’m sorry, guys.’ Frank gazed tiredly at the walls and the windows. He could feel the walls closing in. He was almost looking forward to the anaesthetic just to get away from the claustrophobia he felt. ‘I feel like I’m in a cell waiting to visit Old Sparky.’

  Emmet got up and looked into the single tarnished mirror over the sink. He straightened his tie and took in the wrinkles and grey hair that, in any other line of work, wouldn’t have appeared for another ten years. ‘That’s okay. By the way, how does Milt know this stuff you told me?’

  ‘Let’s just say,’ said Frank, ‘he had to milk someone for the information.’

  Chapter 12

  Frank couldn’t sleep. The more he tried, the less it happened. He wished he had some alcohol to take the edge off. There was only so much a cigarette could do and he was pretty sure that by now there was very little blood left in the sludge of nicotine that flowed through his veins.

  There was also the idea that in less than forty-eight hours someone was going to be drilling through his shaved head (he already mourned the loss of his hair before a strand was gone) and stabbing their chubby fingers into his brain. Suppose they couldn’t sleep the night before surgery? Suppose they tied one on and came in half asleep with fingers of jello?

  Suppose they were the killer and this was their golden opportunity for an easy hit? Seriously, he reasoned, doctors already had that whole God thing running through them. Why not take it that one step further and have the power over life or death? Better still, create something new out of your victim. Cut the wrong nerve, no one would know, and watch the patient wake up drooling or laughing like a maniac or speaking Italian for no good reason. You could have a ward full of zombies in a week and no one would bat an eyelid.

  Now he needed to take a leak. It was bad enough to lie on an unfamiliar mattress, designed, he was sure, to aid the killer doctor in his effort to cripple, but now, after he had finally found his optimum sleep position (the position was there if not the sleep), he had to get up and go into the skanky bathroom where who knew what diseases lay in wait for the innocent abroad.

  The things, the people, the deaths, this room must have seen. How many now stayed? How many of those that never quite made it had stayed in the fabric of the building and wandered the corridors at night, in search of peace, in search of the killer physician?

  He got up and went to the bathroom. The floor was cold, the wrong kind of cold. It didn’t refresh on this airless, dripping night. It was like slapping your feet onto a slab of ice. He felt his toes curl, his knees bend, and waddled off to the bathroom looking like an old man.

  The light flickered on like a small storm. He caught himself in the mirror and curled his lip in disgust. A few hours in hospital and he had become ordinary, mortal, no different from the billions of others on this
rotten, dying planet.

  ‘Fuck you,’ he said defiantly to his image. ‘You two-faced bastard. I never expected this of you.’

  He held his own gaze for a moment, then turned away, unable to tolerate his self-betrayal.

  When he had finished, he turned the light out in the bathroom and went to the window.

  Everything was distant now, detached. However temporarily, he was no longer a part of it. It was a forbidden zone and life, in all its colours, with all its smells, with its infinite permutations, rolled on, one islet-strewn, winding river, from spring to estuary to sea.

  Where was he on that journey from freshwater fount to salty end? He dreaded to think. If he looked hard enough, would he see the horizon of his days stretched out before him and know that he was at the final tide, to be consumed by the dark depths of the unknown sea.

  ‘Quite a view, is it not?’

  He turned violently and brought a web of dizziness upon himself.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  He leaned against the windowsill to steady himself. The room was dark after staring out at the city lights. In his pyjamas and bare feet, he felt vulnerable.

  The shadow stepped out of the corner of the room. It stood in front of the door. Frank could see it had taken the familiar pose, the arms folded across its chest, its ankles crossed as it leaned against the door. He could see the black outline of its hat against the paler door.

  ‘How’d you get in here?’ he demanded.

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’ It had a silky, precise, almost English accent, the kind that was found in the educated American, the Yale and Harvard boys of this world who saw ivy as a step up, not something that left a rash on the skin.

  Frank took a step forward.

  ‘Do you want to fight again?’ asked the shadow.

  He said nothing.

  ‘Do you want to end up on the floor again, a cold, quivering wreck?’

  The voice was flat, emotionless, without accent or emphasis. It was like no voice Frank had ever heard and yet like every voice that had ever caught his ear.

  ‘Do you want to wave your arms like a man possessed at something that, quite simply, isn’t there?’

  Frank felt his dizziness grow. He lurched towards the bed. Before he could get there, he fell forward, his legs unhinged, and found himself straddled across the edge of the bed like an old man who could no longer hold himself up.

  ‘You’re dying, Frank,’ said the man in the sharp, dark grey suit. ‘Don’t fight it. It happens to us all. We wake up one day, not knowing that it could be our last, and then, like smoke upon the breeze, we’re gone, carried away to be dissolved in the ether.’

  Frank clung onto the bed, his fists curled around the counterpane, his white knuckles almost shining in the shadows.

  ‘You’re not even real,’ he spat. ‘You don’t even exist except inside the lump of jello inside my brain. You’re a faulty electrode, that’s all, a crossed wire. In a couple of days, you’ll be a nightmare in a kidney dish. That’s all.’

  ‘Really?’ said the shadow. ‘You think so little of me? After all the help I’ve given you?’

  Frank felt sweat roll into his eyes. He bent his heavy head and wiped them on his pyjama jacket. All he had managed to do was rub the salt in. Now, his eyes stung and everything became a blur.

  ‘Help?’ He laughed feebly. ‘How the hell have you helped? I found those bodies. Not you. You’re just a figment of my imagination.’

  The shadow looked silently on, defiance emblazoned rigidly in his crossed arms and legs, his broad shoulders, the way he leaned, the way he remained immovably pinned to the door.

  ‘You think I didn’t help you? Are you stubborn or stupid, Frank? Would you like to know a secret, Frank? Would you like to know who the girl is? Would that prove to you that I’m more than an apparition, more than a figment of your tumorous imagination?’

  ‘Get away,’ hissed Frank. ‘Get the hell away from me. You’re not real.’

  The shadow moved rapidly forward and knelt upon the bed, leaned its body down until their heads were barely and inch apart.

  Frank smelled him. For the first time he smelled him and he had smelled that smell before. Oh, yes. At Mrs Dybek’s apartment, that unidentifiable something that had leaked into every surface and every other smell and yet could not be extracted, pinned down and given a name. Even now, in his certainty of its existence, he wasn’t sure. Was it aftershave? Was it soap? Was it the smell of the dry cleaner’s where the man in the sharp, dark grey suit had his suits cleaned? Was it food or mouthwash or toothpaste or…what?

  ‘Jennifer Hamblett,’ said the shadow. ‘Her name is Jennifer Hamblett. She is nineteen years old and always will be. She’s from Brownsville, Frank. One of yours. She moved there when she became a nurse and decided to go independent of Mom and Pop and desert that Long Island lifestyle. She wanted reality. She wanted the browns and the greys and the rough, tough ways of the streets. Their money was no more than a set of golden handcuffs and longed to break free. Oh, that rebellious streak that runs through in those kids. Her momma sells ladies clothes in a department store and her Daddy plays with other peoples’ mommies. He’s a nasty piece of work, that man. Holds himself up as a good Christian, then fucks the holy hell out of anything that so much as glances at him.’ He leaned a little further in. ‘You know what he does for a living, Frank?’

  Frank shook his head. He could barely see. His eyes were filled with sweat and tears. The room had retreated until all that was left in focus was the unseen face of the man in the sharp, dark grey suit.

  ‘He’s a doctor. Daddy’s a nurse-fucking, dishonourable, disloyal son of a bitch. How’s that for irony, Frank? Daddy diddles nurses. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’ The shadow chuckled deeply. ‘Of course, the other ironic thing is, this might just be the saving of their marriage. Don’t you think, Frank? Don’t you think the Hambletts might just come together in their grief and live happily ever after? There’s nothing like a good middle-upper class death to bring the fallen and the mighty together, wouldn’t you say?’

  Frank’s head fell forward onto the bed. He couldn’t hold it up any more. It was too heavy, too large, too full to stay up on its own. His own warm breath smothered him as he fought to breathe in the stifling nest of sheets.

  ‘Go away.’ His muffled voice sounded distant, otherworldly, in the covers. ‘Just go away.’

  ‘The question is,’ said the shadow, ‘What do you do with what I’ve just told you? I mean, you have to tell your buddies at the precinct, right, Frank? They have to know. The only problem is, they are going to wonder how you knew, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m innocent. They told me that.’ Frank’s head rolled upon the bed as he tried to deny what he heard, as he tried to shake the voice away.

  ‘No! They just told you what you wanted to hear. They blew so much smoke up your ass, your boom stick was sending out smoke signals. What are they going to think now? Let’s just have a wiki, wiki, wild, wild guess. How the hell does he know the name of this girl? How does he know her Daddy is a dirty old man while her mum sells dresses because that’s the only social life she can get any more? But you have to tell them, Frankie. You have to tell them. You can’t go under the knife knowing what I’ve just told you and keep all that to yourself, now can you?’

  ‘Get out!’ shouted Frank. His voice was deadened by the bed sheets and the crook of his arm. He drew in all his breath, all his strength and shouted some more. ‘Nurse! Nurse’

  ‘Oh, Frank,’ said the man in the sharp, dark grey suit. ‘Nursey won’t help you. She’ll just pick you up off the floor like a puppy that pissed itself and lay you gently back in bed. You know what? Even then, even then, in your weakened state, you’ll be wanting to kiss her neck and slide your hands up between her thighs. Oh, that old Devil. He never gives up. I wonder how many men have died thinking of pussy, Frank. More than two I’d guess.’

  The shadow got up from the bed. Frank felt the mattre
ss raise as his weight shifted.

  ‘Don’t forget now, Frank. Jennifer Hamblett. White girl in Brownsville. Shouldn’t be too hard to get to the nub of it, even for your boys.’

  ‘Nurse!’

  ‘I’m going, Frank. Don’t get yourself in a twist.’

  Frank sensed the door open. He noticed the light change on the back of his eyelids from dark to a jaundiced yellow.

  ‘I’ll see you again, buddy. There’ll be more. You know there’ll be more. You just know it, don’t you, Frank?’

  ‘By Tuesday you’ll be dead!’ screamed Frank. ‘You’ll be dead!’

  There was a moment of absolute silence in which Frank thought he had fallen into the void, then he heard multiple footsteps around him, felt people grab him under the arms and behind the knees. He felt himself float and then the hard, unforgiving mattress beneath his back again.

  Then, exhausted, he slept.

  Saturday

  Chapter 13

  ‘What happened last night?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you remember anything?’

  ‘I got up to take a leak.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then nothing.’

  ‘The nurses said that you were shouting, crying, screaming. They said that your door opened and they heard you. When they came in, you were on the floor, between the window and the bed.’

  ‘Then we’d better take their word for that, Doc. I don’t remember.’

  ‘You shouted something about being dead by Tuesday. Who were you shouting at?’

  ‘I don’t recall shouting.’

  ‘Did you have another hallucination? Did you see anything? It’s important, Frank. I’m not sure we can wait until Monday. Not now. Things are happening too fast.’

  ‘Good. Good. Cut it out. Stick those fine fingers of yours in my fucked up brain and get that fucking tumour out. I want my life back. I feel like I’m going mad.’