Caraliza

by Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick

  She came to the bottom of the stairs and nearly rushed across to her love, but Yousep held her back and begged her wait until Evan could speak the name. He nearly lost the time to make the sounds, so quickly did the man lunge to grab him, but as Evan spoke and began to die, Caraliza pulled the beast away, the plate drew the name onto the glass, and their tormentor faded to dust in her hands.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “I think it’s sweet you can’t say no,” Shelly cooed in his ear, as she tried on the largest ring on the counter.

  Evan violently shook his head, and his eyes watered from the pain in his throat. But he relented, and sought her smile to kiss her and get her to leave, before she found a larger ring; the one he purchased the day before, and the jeweler craftily placed into the box Shelly clutched vigorously as she left with her treasure, and the guy who bought it. He forbid her to wear it from the shop. She fumed at him about it all evening, but he knew it was a ruse. She would put it on when he went to sleep anyway, and that was fine with him. But her engagement ring would be presented for real on the opening night.

  While he recovered on the divan, and finished his catalog, Shelly completed the kitchen rehearsals, and tempted him with dishes he could not swallow. She was merciless. When she kissed him in passion, she would bite his throat to test his strength, and invite a smack on the behind. She would never accept such a thing without deserving it, and deserved it often. Evan almost wished he had been put in the hospital again, for the rest. But she would bring him cool drinks, and wonderful smooth chocolate shakes which would make his mouth water to see. The one thing he was told not to do, for no less a harm than perhaps losing his voice, he must not use it at all. He could not speak, and it sparked a torment she most loved to unleash.

  No gesture or expression was good enough to answer the question; did he love her? She would pout at his lack of return, she teased him he never meant it, but he would take the ring from his pocket and her eyes would gleam and she would go back to work with a smile. After teasing him for hours on end, she would finally put her arms around him and he would feel her tears on his neck, she all but lost him, and she would whisper she was thankful he had not died while she stood helpless.

  He wondered if she would have kept him as a ghost. She said he had died. The brilliant glow of his soul in their mouths as Caraliza prevented its escape into the air. Three times Evan perished in her arms, and she prevented the light from passing his lips. What Shelly saw, she could never put from her mind. She would dream it every night, but the terror which came before would not trouble her mind, or enter her dreams. Caraliza and Evan sharing his soul with each kiss, and the light escaping would blind her eyes. The angel was dead. It was not his time to die. His living soul could not pass her lips. Caraliza pulled Shelly to him so his soul could feel her love instead, and understand, Evan belonged in her arms, not in the arms of a ghost. Shelly wanted to feel that kiss from him again and again, with his life in the taste, and his soul in the touch. Evan wondered if ghosts have any choice. He liked to think he would have stayed with Shelly as long as she sought him in the darkness.

  Three days to the opening of The Studio, and the glass was installed. Shelly was ecstatic. They erected a large plywood covering so the public, gathered outside, could not see into the place. She put the paper back up and the crowd disbursed, and Shelly pirouetted in the middle of the store until she was dizzy. Evan could whisper, and would tell her he loved her and nothing else. She adored it.

  But the work was not without event. The attic had to be cleaned, and the stair to that awful place as well. She and Evan first walked there again before sending the staff. They could not risk losing a single person to those frights, such as they felt in that room. It was utterly and completely empty to their eyes. They felt no doom, no pain. It was bright with the sun from the bricks next door. Shelly smiled and Evan tried. It would take him time, more than she. She might be positive, he could still but only hope.

  Screams and frights there were, the place was still haunted, but Shelly and Evan never heard it. Papa did not bother those whom he would have called grandchildren, but the wait staff was in mutiny about the front of the shop; guests could not be seated at the window table. They could not even set the places but the old man would raise their neck hairs, and drive them from the room. He was insane as ever, and the foul screeching about keys. Shelly had no clue and Evan was beside himself to learn that last evil truth. Had Papa the keys to that awful place? What evils kept him out when he knew Caraliza was hidden there?

  Evan read the notebook so many times he knew every stroke of her hand with the pencil by heart. He could not understand the last few words she had written. She fell hard to the ground under his body. The answer came to Evan nearly in a dream, but in a daydream as he sat in the studio. The brute stank when he thrust his great hands around Evan’s throat. A drunken bastard, and a frail young girl, weak from lack of food. He had fallen and crushed her underneath. If Yousep knew any plan to help her, this would have changed everything, and he would have done the rash thing, and not the wise thing. He would have pulled her out unprepared.

  Papa may have never known there was a plan to help her. Papa may have never known she was clinging barely to her young life in that pitiful basement hole. Papa would surely rage in grief at her loss, as one who held her life dear, not as one who turned his eyes away from her prison, to make the lie he had not known.

  Evan never read all the documents under the display. The municipal bonds and the plates took all his energy, beginning the very day they were discovered. They alone nearly resolved every question he desired to find an answer for. He took the last few days before the opening to read, and make a plan to get next door to the wicked stair. He could not talk well enough to phone the police himself. He needed help. One of the waiters phoned, and made the request for him, but Evan made the fellow promise, on his very life, he would never tell Shelly. The police would come the very next day and let him under the grate. Thankfully, the heavy paper would not be off the great window, and Shelly would not know there was more activity over there, but the neighborhood would know.

  She had a secret of her own to keep, Dannie had been her helper, and Evan would be no wiser about it, than she of the search with the keys. The space at the head of the store, in the most wonderful wall of the shop, was enough room for a very large frame. Only a few shelves had ever been there, only a few photographs. Papa had been spare on decorations for the walls. So this one space, behind the new bar, held Shelly’s secret. It was a cunning device.

  She installed a deeply framed mirror, and the effect was to throw the entire store back upon the guests as they sat at their tables, the room looked huge. A beautiful mantle, built all around, completed the affect of another room in the shop, just through but yet another door. Evan thought it wonderful.

  Below the stunning mirror, a simple case of dark wood and glass was placed. Inside this case, rested the eleven silk wrapped plates Papa desperately tried to break open, to free Yousep’s angel, the broken image of Caraliza at the window of snow, unwrapped so all could see, she haunted there beyond the glow of her life. Next to his beauty at the window, the only image of Yousep that had yet been found to exist, spade in his hand, and love lighting his smile, as he dug the roses. Between their images lay the precious little notebook, which allowed them to speak to one another at last. Beside this lovely, sad display, a camera stand, and a deep blue velvet covering. Evan suspected it was Yousep’s Waterbury.

  Shelly set about to write her play, which she would perform, until the grand opening was old, and the staff were eager to hear another voice tell the tale. The Studio was created for intimate dinner, and the family history would be its theater. The lovers’ tale would be told, as much as was found out, and no play more woeful, and no theater more desperate than their flight, their hiding and their death in the beautiful old building. She hoped her guests would be weep and be terrified.

  Evan quietly took his leave of the pl
ace, some small errand, which would keep him but a few hours, it was the day before the opening, and every Reisman in the city would be gathering that evening to see what Shelly created. They would fill it until they could find no seat, and she would share what she dreamed, and what she made. The staff was beyond nervous. This was the only crowd they must please. The public would be easy. This was truly a dangerous event. What none of them knew, as they readied the tables, and Shelly checked the lights, and Evan walked into the pit under the stoop - what he might find, what he might hold, might stop them all, and crash the world about their heads. Evan had a heavy heart as he walked into the darkness under the stoop.

  The smell of that day, still in the air, hurt his nose, the dust stung his eyes, and he trod the loose boards on the floor, alone. A single officer stood in the door at the stair, and would not come in; he had been there that day and did not like the return. Evan began his slow walk, he knew where to go, and he did not want to see what might watch him from the corners of the rooms.

  His light fell upon the wasted bed and it did not waver as he made his way back. There was no light from the door. There were only the edges of gloom all too near and all too black beyond. But Evan had been touched by this filth and he did not perish. It could not harm him. His heart was not heavy with any fear for himself, but for his Shelly to learn what he suspected, after his time with the papers from under the window. Some of them receipts.

  Evan stood at the pile of rust and decay, which one time was a bed for a starving girl, and the cruel man who kept her. The bit of blue tin in the midst of that filth startled him, when he stood there last, ignorant of the tomb just beyond the wall at his left. That bit of blue tin had no place in such a defiled hole, but it was there, and he remembered it. It had not been a piece of tin, but the lid to a tin box. As Evan kicked at the crust, which had been a mattress, it parted as he moved it, and the box was more revealed. He would have to remove it, but he was prepared. A plastic grocery bag helped him gather it and what little filth he could not help but bring with it.

  The box was in his hands; he was ready to leave, and was thankful to do it. He knew the evil man was buried and his soul in other torments he could not escape. Evan was safe from him, but a murderer once lived in this place, and tormented a young woman, almost until she died. He hoped never to see the place again. As he walked into the light, the officer was at the top of the stair.

  “You know you have to show me what you pulled out of there,” Evan was told. He nodded his head, and put the box on the back of the police car, as two city workers replaced the grate and set the bolts. Evan took a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket and moved the plastic aside so he could expose the box for the officer.

  “

  Cigars? You went in there for those? What, are they like wine?”

  Evan shook his head and pried the lid. It did not resist much and he was not surprised to see a ring with three large keys.

  “This is what I went in there for.”

  “So why are those keys so important?” Evan looked at the man and gave him a simple answer.

  “They open the past.”

  Evan felt like washing up a few times before he went back into The Studio. He hated that hole, and did not want to take any of its dust back into the shop; the spirit in there did not need the torment. So he drove home to shower, and get ready for the evening Shelly waited her whole life to enjoy. He put the Ritmeester cigar tin on his seat next to him and listened to the keys slide around a bit as he headed home. Ritmeester were Dutch cigars. He saw the receipts for them in Papa’s hidden papers. Receipts for the cigars purchased in 1917, in Amsterdam, they were brought back for him.

  Also in the receipts for that year, a bed, purchased by Papa, and delivered across the street to his property manager, Tobias Hoath. Papa employed a rent collector, who probably took whatever cash he wanted from the rents, and delivered the rest of the filthy money to his employer, who would have nothing to do with the place otherwise. Papa had a rent collector, who collected a little girl on that trip to Amsterdam.

  With no other possible reason the brute was buried behind the shop; Evan wondered if there had been a revenge murder, after the loss of the two lovers upstairs. He wondered if there would be any way ever to know. Papa seemed to have many reasons to flee the truths in his soul, and he gave up his mind instead, to escape them. Evan was numb, and wanted very hot water on his skin.

  Shelly was stunning. She very rarely wore a dress and Evan was delighted it would become part of her regular wardrobe; she planned on being in The Studio five nights a week. She was greeting her family at the front door as they arrived, the heavy paper still tantalizingly up on the new window and everyone crowding the door to finally get inside. Nothing was said to the public about this pre-opening of hers. It was another surprise, no one but the clan was present. Evan stopped counting when the number reached about sixty people. Surely a hundred came to see if Shelly was going to create another disaster for them to endure, but she won them over the instant they walked into the room. There was no finer display of early 1900s New York outside of a museum, and the Reismans wholly owned this one.

  It took nearly an hour to get the family inside, and the door closed with a security guard outside, before the evening could formally begin. It was an impeccable restoration, she designed the kitchen entrance to virtually disappear, and the bar appeared little more than the sales counter it had been in the past. As family milled about, greeting one another, Evan overheard more than once, family members were sure Shelly pulled off a stunning success. There was quite a contest taking place, as people studied the shop images she placed on the walls, to see if she replaced or forgot any items Papa used every day. But for the lack of cameras to sell, she had not missed a single detail they could find. The elders were delighted, their care and safekeeping of heirlooms preserved the Reisman Portraits so perfectly.

  Shelly was congratulated, and embraced, by a constant crowd of enchanted relatives. Of particular interest to everyone, in the studio, on silk covered tables, sat the entire collection of Papa’s hidden plates, likely the last time it would be together for many years, as so many institutions wanted their pieces. The clan heard all about the discovery, and the studio was almost impossible to navigate as people gathered there, nearly as soon as they walked in the door. Shelly began gathering everyone into the great room, telling them the bar was open and there would be massive amounts of food circulating within a few minutes.

  Her wait staff, in period clothing, was easily spotted as they circulated around with their trays of appetizers. Shelly announced she prepared nearly all her menu for guests to sample and judge at their leisure, and they would be welcome to continue to view the entire place, but the darkroom closet and the upstairs were strictly off limits. The titter running through the crowd indicated they did not need explanation. She also warned them, any dining table with a red rose in the centerpiece, might likely be in for a fright before the evening was complete. The people already parked in those places were delighted.

  The family was milling in a very orderly manner, and the great room filling up as expected as the food began to arrive. It was crowded and boisterous, but it was family and very comfortable. Evan stood in the doorway of the forbidden darkroom closet with a view out over the entire room, and before he knew what was happening, he found himself in Shelly’s arms. She smiled and pinched his sides and spoke loudly enough to be heard above the din before he could tell what she was up to.

  “I want my ring, NOW!”

  A tremendous roar of applause and cheers went up as Evan reached into his pocket, and presented her with the box. As she put her engagement ring on, and noticed which one it was, she shuddered with delight and bowled him nearly into the closet with an excited embrace, the room erupted again, and they enjoyed the loudest ovation of the night. While the food was being passed and placed where it could be sampled, Shelly made her way to the end of the bar under the wonderful mirror and the lights began t
o dim throughout the shop. It began to quiet and every head turned. The last of the guests in the studio hurried to join the rest of the crowd in the front to hear Shelly speak at last. She made a small gesture, removed the blue velvet cover, and Yousep’s story came to life.

  “I want to welcome you back into the Reisman Portraits, to enjoy its new life as The Studio.”

  She beamed back at the clan as they applauded her. And she began to tell them why it existed, and how her dreams made it so important to her, even when it seemed impossible. But there was a reason the place was still vibrant and alive, after so many years, and it was not necessarily because of ill rested spirits, but they were such a part of the history, they must be included. She silenced the room. The Reismans were about to hear about their family ghosts. The lights dimmed a bit further and Evan almost laughed, but held his breath instead.

  We have two new family members to welcome. They have been with us seventy-five years, and they have never been called family at any time in our legends. That cannot continue, because they have become family, through love and tears and grief. It is as much their story as it is ours. Yousep, and his angel, Caraliza.”

  And the mirror brightened behind her, a hidden image appeared, Caraliza stood in the glow of her new place, and the hundred people gasped as one. Shelly forbid Dannie to alter the image in any way, and she was compassionate enough to lower the lights after a brief moment and the image became a mirror again. The affect was eerie and magical. There was no doubt of the exquisite beauty of the young woman in the frame, and the audience seemed eager to have her shown again. Shelly explained why she could not.