Caraliza

by Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick

  The only room inside the building where there remained a lock; Yousep was thankful it would be of use from inside, where he wanted them to be. They made the climb as quietly as they could, she, wrapped in their blanket, and he, carrying their gathered clothes. He counted the items in his head as they made the stair, it would prove their undoing, to have clothing left behind where they slept. She held her treasured pendant; it seemed he caught all clues they were there at all.

  Not waiting for any hint he was in error, and they might still be safe, Yousep locked them into the room and sought the darkest corner, behind some large boxes. There they made a nest inside the blanket, and there he held his terrified Caraliza; they waited to be discovered, and prayed earnestly they would not. She could not hold him closely enough, and her tears were wetting his neck.

  He soothed her with gentle caresses, which otherwise would have inflamed her desire for him again, but for the horrible dread of whom might seek them so quietly in the dark of the night. Yousep strained his ears and still heard nothing more than the shuddering breaths they took, as they held each other in the black corner.

  But they left the picnic meal and its palette for the studio floor; those were gathered near the divan and they might appear a lump unless investigated. If indeed the lump were inspected, it would be apparent they might still be secreted somewhere inside as well. His panic at his error nearly caused him to cry out. If they were alone still, he was sure he could steal down, and recover the things which might give them away, but his love for his Caraliza kept him where he was. He would not leave her to her lonely panic.

  Instead, his thoughts turned to which things might be used to defend them, should someone burst their door and dash in among them. He had boards enough from the shelving, but those would make a sound to retrieve. They had some glass, but that would be more helpful only if broken into knives, something that likewise could not be done, and they remain hidden. His panic was hurting his thoughts, making him confused.

  Then he realized there would be chemicals, which they used in the closet for the plates and films. Some would be quite painful should they be cast into a person's face, or eyes. It was a terrifying thought; such a person who just threw the door, would be too dangerously close for chemicals alone to halt their advance; they were in peril - with nothing which seemed up to the task of giving them defenses.

  Yousep began to pour his tears onto Caraliza's hair. Their wait was painful, and they still held each other dear, afraid to move and soothe their hurtful limbs. Yousep heard no single sound in the building at all; he prayed he was utterly wrong. She was trembling against him, shuddering with small sobs, burying her face on his neck in shame; she wet them, and the blanket, in her fear, now they would have the awful, damp cover to offend them as well. He touched her face and turned her tears to his lips, to kiss them away. She wanted his mouth, and was soon soothed enough to wait more quietly, but not in less fear.

  There was a noise. Not a gentle, natural noise, as houses are want to make as they rest. This was the noise of a thing beneath them, being moved. They were justly hidden - they were being sought; only one person under heaven could have such a task to his need. If he made the stair, he would surely try the door. Caraliza was numb with terror.

  Yousep was unsure of his emotion, the rage was so hot he supposed he might fight with some success, but his dread was making him doubt his strength; the man, who wanted Caraliza, was twice Yousep's shape. Yes, there would be a fight! They would only escape if Yousep killed the man, and the thought exploded in Yousep's heart such as no other dread had ever been felt; Yousep must murder whoever approached the door. The size of the brute would be his own enemy, should he be made to tumble backward down the flight of stair. If not damage him utterly, it would perhaps make his next charge too weak to escape a length of wood to the skull.

  The thought of a crushing blow from above, and the result of it strewn on the floor below, nearly sent Yousep to vomit his food. But he understood…he could not aim to hurt - but must attack, to take the other's life, with such force as he could make.

  The stair beneath them felt a weight, and made a sound Yousep heard every normal day. Bile was rising in his throat and Caraliza was nearly in faint from the trembling, her fingers digging his flesh until it bled. But her trembling was ceasing - her hands were loose…her head fell to his breast; he released his darling and sought her lips…but they would not kiss him.

  Her faint was too deep; his embrace to severe, her breath would not come.

  Yousep began to whimper in his despair, he shook her and squeezed her, but she would not hold him. The cry he made gave them away and he pulled her to his face to weep and beg God to stir her heart. The fear of an attack vanished, the fear he had crushed the breath from his angel broke his mind. His cry was louder than the splintering of the doorway; his grief more powerful than the pain as rough hands lifted him with his hair. He could not hold her body, he was being pulled away and his grip failing, the sound that drove him to madness was his love Caraliza, as she fell lifeless to the boards.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Some spirits find rest and trouble no one, even if they linger for a time where they once lived out their lives; some others, who have no rest waiting…will trouble all those whom they may, until their task is completed, and will not cease troubling - until the living find them out….

  ***

  The street was pleasantly still at dawn. Skies wanted to threaten rain but none had come, the clouds might perhaps break and offer a bit of sun to a street which was not yet aware of the unholy fight in the Reisman Portraits. Papa Menashe Reisman did not open his store. No one was alarmed; no one was waiting for the door to be unlocked. Passersby would glance into the dark window, but not wonder at why the old man or Yousep were not yet in the display, scaring the dust. No break in the clouds, still no pause in the clock; it was passed nine, and two figures walked to the shop with a quick purpose. A man, and a woman - his wife. Two parents. Yousep’s.

  “None is about? Why the closed door?” Mr. Kogen asked peering into the darkness through the glass. “I see nothing inside,” he rapped on the glass with his knuckles and put his hand to shield his eyes and see inside. “This is not right. We go to the back.”

  With a frown, he took the hand of his wife and they looked at each window as they walked the alleyway to the garden, and the back stoop. A sight met their eyes, and their hearts leapt in fear. Papa was upon the stoop, weeping; Yousep’s roses in ruin and the garden torn.

  “They are gone!” he cried, and the sound of his wail sped the alleyway to the street in the front. Passersby noticed the cry and stopped.

  “I cannot find them!” and he spilled dirt from his hands.

  He had torn out the roses, his panic so extreme, they joined his distress with their own, and Mr. Kogen ran into the alley shouting for the police.

  “Have you a photograph of the missing youth?” they were asked. Papa wept continually and could barely answer, but he brought them a photograph. Here was young Yousep, digging these very roses. Mr. Kogen made a gesture with trembling hands over the ruined garden.

  “My son planted these just, and in his distress Menashe has pulled them. We have searched the place upstairs where they cowered in hiding. They are not inside” he was near to breaking, but strove to contain his emotion, his wife needed him. “There was evil done here, and blood remains….”

  At those words, Yousep’s mother lost her spirit and sense. Rough men, who battered drunkards and thugs, answered the frantic calls for help; those police, were gentle as lambs, with the mother who cried for her lost son. The Kogens were helped to their home; they could not remain in the midst of the crime’s ruins.

  The store would not open, Papa’s eldest son brought his mother, Papa’s wife and they helped the old man calm enough to tell the police the tale. Such a thing they never heard escape his lips, he had told his family nothing. But Papa was able to tell, his clerk and the girl were hidden, from the brute fro
m under the stoop. The police stormed that hole at the stair, and produced no person to question. But who was the girl? Where was her home? Who were her parents? And Papa was senseless in his replies.

  “Gone, the bundles are gone, the keys are gone!” and he would fall in faint. His family was unable to prevent his grief overcoming him, and they laid him to his divan in the studio, while the police searched every corner they could.

  “What of this mess back here?” asked the beat officer of his Sergeant. “What’s in this dirt?” He was kicking in the ruined garden.

  “Not likely the kids. The old man pulled them roses all up in his panicked search for them. The boy just planted them. His own papa just told us.”

  “Well, there is scuffle up the stairs and blood at the bottom. Too bad the old man keeps a clean shop, we can’t tell if they were dragged out the front, or the back here, ‘cause he leaves no dust.”

  “Poor old man. Just stand ‘em back up and kick some dirt back, they might be okay if it rains,” the Sergeant said, nodding at the roses. “Then get some lads to the sump over there, see if anything has been stuffed.” And he pointed through the shop and across the street.

  The beat officer understood; they searched that way before, when a street urchin left his friends and never returned. At least the old drunk who occupied the foul space was not home, but he was seen at the pub for his dinner, and caused trouble, so he might be about. As the beat officer stepped cross the street, dirt from the garden fresh upon his boots, it began to rain. It was not a shower, but poured.

  The next two days were sad with rain on the offended neighborhood. The roses would revive, but nothing else there ever would. The Reisman Portraits would close until the children were found, or given as lost. The reports would say murder. The broken room, the blood on the floor at the foot of the stair. Someone suffered terrible blows, and the brute across the street had been suspect before.

  Yet, he was vanished; it was supposed because he had done now too much harm in Papa’s store, and did not want to swing for it upon any gallows. People were gathering outside the shop as the days moved quietly by the store, constantly watching the police, as they patrolled the morning street. Reisman’s closed for a week, rumors were horrid, and the neighborhood would shout questions when police would walk by.

  “Where are the murdered children?”

  “Help us find our young.”

  “What suspect has been taken? Who is blamed?”

  No answers were given. There was nothing to say.

  Wanting some word, and not silence, the public began to cry out to the neighborhood, and to the community, then the city. The papers asked the same questions; there had been murders - what of the criminal? The policed were hard pressed to keep their good name, as a week passed, then two, then a month and not a word of who committed the crime. But the worst shame of it came in four little words the police could never answer, and neither could any who shouted it into the street as the police might walk by.

  “Who is the girl?”

  She was claimed missing with the boy, Papa and the boy’s parents each swore she once had breath, and they loved her; but no neighbor could prove it, by saying they beheld her too. She was nearly a ghost, but yet lost with the boy… and the whole tale made no sense to the police.

  When the shop opened again, Papa could not come to do it, his eldest son and daughter and their mother, Sarah, brought him each day, and returned him home each night; he failed for a week to complete his daily routine. He would be found on the back step, the shop never opened, or he would do his day’s work as if he were well, and Yousep but late in his own morning walk. Without help, the shop would stay closed…so he was walked, within their grasp, and they tried to sell his cameras. They would starve if the shop never opened. Papa’s son vowed it would not be allowed; so another youth, but a year older than Yousep’s tender fifteen, became master of the Reisman Portraits.

  The police could turn no trace of the thug who lived in that awful basement hole under the stoop. The man quit his pubs, his mates never saw him, and he made no footprint in the grime at the bottom of his stair. The three people vanished from the street, and many said that at least two were gone from this world. With duties to uphold, the police questioned at least five who were known to do mischief in the neighborhood. The urchins, who lost one of their own, were questioned, for hope of clues. Papa was tormented the instant police came into the studio, hats in their hands and apologies on their lips, but please…could the old man but recount the awful tale again? We must learn what might help, and we have learned nothing -

  Mama Sarah would try to comfort Papa, but those were the worst times for him, he would be ill the remainder of the day on the divan. But he was not always insensate, not always unable to walk. He would speak in volumes about the hiding and plans that the authorities would be called in the morning, but he would speak these things to the air in the room - not to persons around him, and he would be found standing amid the roses, wondering if Yousep were going to water that day. Papa was not completely mad, but he could not do any work.

  Only a week after the shop was opened in his family’s care, he was found screaming in the darkroom closet. He did develop a plate, but wept for an hour, and would not let anyone have it. His son found Yousep’s camera on a stand in the studio within another day, and Papa forbid that it be moved.

  Perhaps, they chanced to hope, he would find his lens and feel comforts from them, but his camera only looked into the empty room, never anything more. They let him try to work, yet the developing of the plates he exposed would bring a terrible rage, and it would be worse when the task was complete. Hours he would spend, in the closet, weeping at broken glass. They must leave him alone at those times, because to intervene was simply to do more harm. He would surprise them, by making a plate, then breaking the image, and would perhaps repeat his pains again a week later, perhaps two.

  Several months passed in this fashion and the police no longer visited. The Kogens were gone, never to return to the shop. Papa would sit on his divan and speak with spirits, and he stepped to his camera almost never. He was far older in only the space of the summer turned to crisp fall. When the roses died off for the winter his grief came anew, and he cried, saying Yousep would miss them, they meant so much to the boy. Papa’s senses were leaving him.

  In spring, he seemed much improved, suddenly about again, and walking the neighborhood. He was closer to his appointed times and could be expected to open the shop some days, but he still would often wander away when his children would come. Evening would fall, and Papa would enter the door before closing, and seem weary. The hope of spring did not last; he did not strengthen so well again. The weariness was seen more often after his walks, and then he stopped leaving at all, and he would not open the store.

  Where had the Kogens gone? They fled the city; their sorrow unabated, and the questions caused too much pain. Mr. Kogen refused to admit the police into his home; he refused to return to the shop for interviews. Mama Sarah Reisman was blessed for her visits but after a time she was also turned away. Yousep’s mother took to her bed, with ill grief; they mourned their only son, and could not be comforted. They packed, and left for Chicago, and they would never see New York City again.

  Papa found a use for his hands and it was never cameras again. But he would saw a little wood on the back step, and began to carve it. Even on cold days he might be out there, making his designs. When he finished his family was well pleased, he made two sturdy boxes with lids hinged in brass, and two delicate locks on their face. They were beautiful as Yousep’s Waterbury, and the same color of stain. Papa loved those boxes, for they had a purpose and he guarded them well. To move them would make him cross, so they were not touched. On his best days he would putter about the shop, ask for a bit of paper, once he begged for some fine silk. His daughter would run his small errand, find him his little things to busy his hands and he would take them and smile, calling her “Malekh,” Angel, something
he was never known to call her.

  Soon the Waterbury left the dusty stand in the studio, and Papa was seen to place it in one of the chests, satisfied he had done very well; the camera was perfectly fit. Into this chest were placed two glass plates, and they were wrapped in a fine red cloth, but other cherished things were placed thoughtfully inside. The image of Yousep at his roses, and the smile of love upon his face, that paper went in as well. Nothing else came out of the chest, once hidden within it. Papa would remove the photograph often and show it to his family, speaking gentle words he would not be cross, when the boy returned to his work.

  His devotion to the dead child made them weep to see it. He would not believe Yousep was dead, but they must - the boy never returned to his home. That clerk was not a lad to leave his parents in torment unknowing. Only a dead child would never go back home for the comfort of his grieving parents. A living child would do no such thing. But Papa spoke to Yousep often and to a girl he would not name, and he spoke as sweet to this child as he might one of his own. Papa spoke to ghosts, and the neighborhood was becoming aware, the old man was fading into madness.