by Page, Wayne;
The scheme was Dimitri’s idea. His close connections to the newly empowered Russian mob, combined with Serge’s artistic skills resulted in a dozen small paydays. There had been no glitches. It was all so easy. The aging ethnic population in Buffalo produced a monthly supply of burial shipments back to Mother Russia. Serge would perform his cosmetic magic. A beautiful Buffalo memorial service would end with caviar, vodka, and dancing. The casket would be closed, crated, and shipped to Dimitri in St. Petersburg. The Panolov funeral home would Skype the internment in the family plot and local Buffalo mourners took final solace that grandma rested in eternal Russia. The old folks needed to be back in the U.S.S.R.
Only Serge and Dimitri knew that grandma’s body cavity harbored a treasure of diamonds, rubies, and U.S. greenbacks‒ all duty free. Russian mob money laundered from Serge through Dimitri. Business was booming. Grandma did indeed look, ‘oh so natural.’
When it was time for Gladys Pushkin’s service, Serge and Dimitri agreed to go for the mother lode. Gladys would deliver $2 million in cash.
Gladys was radiant, not easy for a Russian babushka corpse. Serge had performed another miracle. Her hands folded neatly on the peach knit suit that graced her tummy, only Serge knew what she was protecting. The service was lovely. Serge stayed in the shadows, pacing a little nervously. This casket was different. This shipment would be his last. He and Dimitri would retire and distance themselves from the mob. They would skim just enough of the $2 million to make it worth the risk.
As the last mourner left the Buffalo funeral parlor, Serge smiled at Gladys and stroked her cheek. “Safe travels, my dear,” he said as he deftly closed the casket lid. The catch of the lid clasps sent a brief chill down his spine as the ‘click’ was swallowed by the plush parlor carpet and soft brocade drapes. Serge turned out the lights one last time. Fred and Tom would crate the casket and drive Gladys to the airport in the morning.
Serge slept in. He dreamt of caviar, full-lipped Russian women, and how he and Dimitri would live the high life. Mid-afternoon, he stopped by the funeral home to confirm that Gladys was on her way to St. Petersburg. To his surprise, Fred was pushing a casket through the courtyard to the storage shed.
Puzzled, Serge inquired, “Isn’t that the Pushkin casket?”
“It was,” Fred responded.
“Was?”
“Yeah, the family changed their mind,” Fred said. “When they saw the shipping charges, they changed their mind.”
Still not fully comprehending, Serge asked, “Changed their mind? Where’s Tom?”
“Oh, Tom’s on his way to the airport with the Gladys Pushkin box. The family had her cremated this morning.”
☁ ☁ ☁
Over The Mars Horizon
It took a little less than a year, 260 days to be exact, for the Walston Expedition to flip from Earth orbit via what’s known as the Hoeman Transfer Orbit to ease into the Martian orbit. A trip of 249 million miles. The voyage could have been as short as 150 days if NASA had dangerously loaded up on fuel. A precautionary rescue and supply vehicle had been launched immediately after the Walston Expedition deployment to orbit Mars during the planned exploration of the red planet. NASA had a ‘Plan B’ for even the most remote contingency.
Six astronauts, including a married couple, due to the planned Martian conception experiment, had successfully become Martians on October 1. There were no border agents to stamp their passports. No Native Americans to teach them how to fish, grow maize, or a sleek Pocahontas to lament the felling of a mighty sycamore. It had taken a month to construct their living pod ‒ quite an ingenious contraption. NASA had conducted a global contest won by an eight year-old autistic boy from a rural community in Iowa. His thousand square foot living pod was basically a transformer constructed of Lego-like Teflon blocks. The million dollar tax-free prize was invested in gold futures that would accrue to the young inventor on his twenty-first birthday.
Even though the Martian days were twenty minutes longer than those on home Earth, the labor seemed easier as Martian gravity was sixty-two percent less than Earth’s. The Martian 687 day year was irrelevant as the surface mission would only last six Earth months.
One of the more interesting adjustments came after sundown. Hopeless romantics might wax poetic about a Martian moonrise. It occurred three times nightly for Phobos and every 1.3 nights for Deimos. Two moons; weird, oblique, not round. Both Martian moons were captured asteroids slung in very low orbits. At only 5,827 and 14,562 miles above the Martian rocky surface, they were almost “duck-your-head” events.
The expedition had entered its third month. A hydroponic greenhouse fueled by astronaut excrement and water recycled from urine was producing spinach, hybrid turnips, and a mush-like grain they joked probably tasted as blah as manna. The conception project, nicknamed Genesis, was energetically pursued with natural success by the honeymooning astronaut couple.
The third month also signaled the planned delivery of a surface rover from the orbiting rescue and supply craft. Holdover technology from the last three Apollo missions in the early 1970’s, this updated rover buggy would enable the astronauts to finally cross the mountain range over the horizon. Aaron the geologist and spouse Elisabeth, the archaeologist, would lead a three-day dig in the foothills surrounding an ancient sea-bed. Contingency plans were confirmed and off they went. Conjugal duties and experiments aside, this was their first time alone, together, in almost a year.
The solar-powered rover performed as expected. At programmed intervals, the intrepid explorers gathered samples, banged on rocks, and used instruments designed by adult autistic scientists who didn’t have gold futures trust accounts. All was as rehearsed. When something appeared unnatural, a gauge or nuclear instrument solved the mystery: this glass-like blob is a ten million year old meteor from another planet, or the composition of this rock is representative of molten lava, probably volcanic. Evidence of ice or water was particularly exciting.
On the last day of their adventure, it was Elisabeth who discovered it. The ‘it’ would define their mission. Ever the archaeologist, dig she must. She had removed two feet of surface dirt, dust, and rock when her titanium pick hit ‘it.’ A gentle vibration of a quiver was sent through her wrist and settled into her elbow; there was a spark. No sound, as the predominantly carbon dioxide atmosphere wouldn’t carry a sound, even if there were one. Another stab. Another spark. Unusual. Elisabeth pried, dug, dusted away a greenish fuzz, almost like dried moss or mold. ‘It’ was hard. The shard belonged to a larger something that was not to be found. Its surface had fossil-like rivulets, designs like a fern. But it was ordered, not random. Elisabeth secured it in the rover buggy trophy pouch for the drive back to home base. She pondered her find as Aaron bounced over the red planet’s rugged terrain. What could it be?
Elisabeth let Aaron do the heavy lifting to unload the rover buggy. She was pregnant and would play that card often over the ensuing months. She was eager to seek out Adam, the philosopher astronaut. She placed her ‘it’ on the lab table in front of Adam.
“What do you think?” she queried.
“Interesting,” he said as he fingered the playing card-sized mystery.
“Look at this corner, like it’s broken off,” Elisabeth puzzled.
“Where’s the mate?”
“Wasn’t any. I searched a three foot radius.”
Adam gently nestled the ‘it’ in the carbon dating chamber and keyed instructions. After a whirl and a blip, the number 100,000 appeared on the screen. “Huh?” he pondered.
“Huh, what?”
“I would have expected some of your dig crap to be a hundred thousand years old. On earth, but not Mars.”
Adam extracted the ‘it’ from the carbon dating chamber and laid it on the scientific table. He rubbed a common cotton swab over a corner of ‘it.’ “That’s not a fern fossil,” he observed.
Elisabeth’s pulse quickened as she gasped, “Oh,
my God.”
“Ditto,” Adam agreed. “You better sit down.”
Adam’s cotton swab revealed something specific. Something intentional. No random fern design here. “It looks like . . .” Elisabeth stammered, “That first squiggle looks like an . . .”
“Yeah. An ‘s’.”
“Then,” Adam scrubbed, “a ‘u’.”
Elisabeth was ready to throw up. Letters were forming a definite pattern. “Not words,” she said. “More like code.”
“Maybe the Mayans or Aztecs beat us here,” Adam laughed.
Goosebumps rose on top of other goosebumps already staked out on the back of Elisabeth’s neck. “Very funny,” she said.
Adam was done with his scrubbing. The shard gave up the entire code: sueD tivaerc oipicnirp ni. They each fumbled and failed to make any sense of ‘it.’
“My first shock is the English alphabet,” Elisabeth observed. “Latin, actually,” the philosopher turned astronaut corrected. “But this is gibberish.”
Archaeologists being code breakers at heart, Elisabeth turned pale. She removed a small mirror from the lab table drawer and positioned it for Adam. “Okay, Leonardo da Vinci, read it now.” The reversed image revealed: in principio creavit Deus.
☁ ☁ ☁
Shovel-Dug Graves
Blink twice, it’s missed. Three times, best viewed through the rearview mirror. Still Creek, Indiana wasn’t highly regarded for anything important, other than solid family values. The locals were equally split over the village name ‘Still.’ The creek bed at village edge was drier than ole-man Craft’s sense of humor. Never enough water flowing to ever settle still in any one spot long enough to wet a frog’s lower lip. Other theory hinged on copper kettles and illegal moonshine runnin’ that required considerably more water than the first frog-lip theory.
An eighth grade social studies project had Jessie Plunkett wandering all the Still Creek back alleys in 1960, conducting an unofficial census. One hundred ten, not counting dogs and cats. It took longer to conduct the census than one might think as Jessie suffered through a feigned courtesy of decades-old stories ‘bout half a dozen blacksmith shops — three still existed in 1960 — two long-gone eateries, and the haunted hangman’s tree that moaned at the slightest breeze through its hollowed trunk.
Jessie was a patient and courteous interviewer as he knew where he could get all his blanks filled in, discrepancies resolved, the truth confirmed. He saved his next-door neighbor Charlie Knox for last. Charlie Knox didn’t mind the kids calling him kept to himself. Digger Charlie had two jobs: best strawberry patch in the county and township cemetery grave digger. Digger Charlie’s life was ordered; organized into narrow, straight rows of strawberries and perfectly dug, vertical rectangles precisely six feet deep. Since Digger Charlie dug the graves, he knew every square inch of the cemetery. Jessie got an A+ on his 1960 census project.
The Still Creek old-timers respected Digger, understood him, could carry on a conversation with him. But they were a dying breed. The up-and-coming generation was scared of him, couldn’t relate. Probably the lack of eye contact. Ya see, Digger Charlie was only three feet high. Digger had spent so much time hunched over ‘tween his rows of strawberries with a hoe, he couldn’t straighten up. He might have been six feet tall, but he was bent over into two, three-foot sections. Each section at a perfect right angle to the other. A T-square’s ninety-degree angle could be plumbed using Digger Charlie as the template.
Digger spent his entire existence looking straight down at the ground. Okay if hoeing weeds out of a row of strawberries or possibly crunched six feet deep in the cool of a perfectly-spaded grave. Talking with Digger was difficult. At eighty-plus years old, he did his share of grunting, with little to no gesticulating. Unless you laid on your back and looked up into his face, lip reading was impossible and eye contact never happened. If a stranger offered a Still Creek resident a thousand dollars to create a police artist sketch of Digger Charlie, the stranger would leave with his money in his pocket. No one knew what Digger looked like, except Jessie Plunkett. No one except Jessie could translate Digger’s gruff mumbles and grunts into intelligent thoughts and intriguing life lessons.
When Digger Charlie loaded his 1949 Ford pickup with pickaxe, assortment of shovels, burlap sacks, and perched a six-foot ladder ‘cross the back tailgate, everyone knew someone had died. No need to wait for an obituary. Just follow Digger Charlie — at fifteen miles per hour — the half mile to the cemetery, yell down the hole, “who’s gonna be sleeping here Digger?” and he’d mumble something like, “Wid’r Johnson, in ‘er sleep last night.”
Jessie’s classmate hooligans would terrorize Still Creek on their bikes. You could hear ‘em coming — baseball cards clothes-pinned — flipping and flapping in the spokes. You could also smell ‘em. Mostly because bathing wasn’t perfected or even practiced on a daily basis; but, also due to the squirrel tails dangling from each bike’s handle grips. This juvenile delinquent biker gang-of-five-in-training would loiter and watch Digger Charlie tend his strawberry patch for hours. Amongst themselves they would ponder stuff like, “How the mortician gonna lay out Digger?” “Haf ta bury him sittin’ up.” Mostly ignored, stealing strawberries from Digger’s unfenced patch crossed the line. The young miscreants would scatter like fleas off a kerosene-soaked mongrel when they heard the closing breech of Digger’s double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun from his back porch.
It was a foggy Thursday morning in July when Jessie saw the 1949 Ford pickup loaded for the cemetery. He yelled over the hedge but, out of character, he couldn’t understand the grunt that came back at him. It was late afternoon when Jessie got around to pedaling his Schwinn to the cemetery. ‘Bout halfway, he met the returning biker gang that informed him that Digger wasn’t talkin’.
Jessie turned his bike into the gravel lane that meandered through the hundred and fifty year-old cemetery. Flopping his bike on the lush-green grass near the monuments remembering rich farmers, he respectfully avoided walking on the graves of the fallen from the Civil and Spanish American Wars. Nearing the last section before entering the Potter’s Field area, he dangled his feet over the edge of the newly-forming gateway to eternity. Only half done, Digger was slow but methodical. His sharpened spade left crescent-shaped indents in the strangely polished clay sides of his project. It was like every grave before it, but different: perfect. Hunched to disappear into the chill of his office, he straightened — just a tad — revealing a weathered, tanned face. A toothless grin and subtle wink to his friend Jessie communicated all that was necessary.
Jessie offered a cautious, yet knowing smile in return and retrieved his bicycle. The pedal home was measured. He stomped a clod of dirt into dust between the strawberry rows and knelt down, picking a fat ripe berry. He raised his face to a warming sun as a solitary tear softened his cheek.
The Still Creek township trustees approved the purchase of a backhoe at its next meeting. Never again would a life well-lived rest in a perfect shovel-dug grave.
☁ ☁ ☁
Room 207
An easterly breeze flirted with the Spanish moss that graced the stately sycamores flanking the gravel lane. We had planned to arrive earlier that afternoon, but Saturday antiquing between Charleston and Savannah proved a worthwhile diversion. The setting sun cast long shadows as the roadside enameled sign pointing to the Pirate’s Cove Bed and Breakfast screeched a rusted plea announcing our arrival.
As I rounded one last bend through the wooded estate, I quizzed my wife, “You did insist on room 207?”
“Yes, dear,” came the insulted reply. After twenty years of marriage and countless weekends on our quest, she wasn’t about to dignify my inquiry with anything more than yes, dear.
Most of our friends agreed that our search for the occult and the paranormal wasn’t exactly normal. We didn’t have electronic gear. Nor did we wear ghostbuster backpacks or worry about crossing any streamer
beams. We didn’t traipse through haunted houses intent on bringing Casper home in a Mason jar. A rudimentary Boy Scout compass and a not-so-simple Canon SLS 35mm camera were enough. On previous adventures, we had seen the compass go drunk with confusion over true north. Our scrapbook documented a few orbs caught on film, but a clear image of an apparition had not yet developed.
After a traditional southern dinner of shrimp and grits, cornbread, and collard greens, we settled into room 207’s four-poster bed. The compass at our bedside foretold a not-so-unexpected disappointing night. We had experienced many a bust on these weekend sojourns, so we adventured to a roll in the hay that might salvage some of the trip. The old feather bed was protesting one of my better moves when lightning struck the oak tree outside our window. Crack. Sparks. Fire.
“Oh, honey,” my wife faked a moan. “I always knew it could be like this.”
That’s when it happened. With each lightning flash, it moved closer. Closer. Crack. Closer. I could hear the compass spinning, vibrating on the nightstand. The needle scratched the glass lens. Lightning etched its fingers across room 207’s ceiling. A flowing shimmer erased the darkness. There she was. Standing at the foot of our bed. Bathed in the eerie, reflective glow of the lightning. The bride of room 207. Veiled, dark, deep-set eyes. White lace and satin wedding dress caressed the hardwood floorboards, creaking a plaintive sigh, as she swayed to-and-fro. Bare feet. A ghostly drool of blood escaping from the corner of her coal-black lips.
I slipped out of bed and tip-toed to the young virgin’s side. I slid my arm around her waist as she rested her pale, chalk-like cheek on my shoulder. Flash. Click. Flash. She vanished as innocently as she had appeared.
CVS didn’t open until ten a.m. on Sunday morning. “Do you think you got it, honey?” I asked my photo journalist wife.
She had not yet won a Pulitzer, but if a picture were to be captured, my wife would get it. “Just relax,” she retorted. “I probably got five or six good shots.”