by Brian Keene
So he ran. He was in good shape for his age, but the voice of his pursuer had pegged him as much younger. The mouse in the maze feeling rose again as he lurched around turns and sprinted down dozens of hallways. He’d never seen a mausoleum such as this—it looked like a library, with rows upon rows of oversized books and urns that resembled more decorative vases than containers for the ashes of the dead. Words and dates flashed past as he fled, but he didn’t have time to stop and ponder those who had been immortalized in this exquisite, multi-roomed building. Fine statues and fountains, benches and small trees, luminous stained glass windows and opulent plants—everywhere he turned was beauty that he could not take the time to appreciate. At last, nearly at the end of his stamina, he rounded a doorway and faced, of all things, a fireplace.
And froze at the sight of the figure standing next to it.
Tommy cursed under his breath. He’d stopped running a while ago, thinking that would make him able to hear the footsteps of the man as he was fleeing. That hadn’t worked—either the place was super soundproofed or it was so huge the killer had gotten away. Still he searched, going from room to room, trying to put himself in the other guy’s shoes and figure out which way he’d gone. What a crazy way to be buried, he thought as he hunted. Get your body burned up and then poured into a box that looked like a library book, like your relatives could check you out and take you home for a couple of weeks. Would there be an overdue penalty if they were late bringing back the dead? He would’ve laughed at the idea if his circumstances had been different, but right now he needed to find that murderer. If he didn’t, his plans to have everyone know who he was were going to fall apart.
Tall and stick-thin, the man was bald and had skin so white it seemed to glow. He wore a loose-fitting black suit and tie, exactly the garb one would expect an undertaker to wear. His eyes were so deep-set that their color was ambiguous, and the lips on his hairless face were a strange shade of unhealthy gray. His hands, folded placidly in front of him, displayed fingernails that were the same disturbing color.
“Who are you?” His voice came out as a whisper, but somehow he wasn’t surprised.
“I am the Guardian.”
He winced. The words had slipped into his mind but the mouth of the man standing by the fireplace hadn’t moved. “Excellent.” He somehow made his voice almost normal. “I seem to have become turned around. Perhaps you can direct me to an exit.”
“There is no exit for you.”
He opened his mouth to protest, then realized that he had moved to stand directly in front of the fireplace against his will. The Guardian or whatever he claimed to be was only a few inches away. “I-I’m s-s-sorry?” It took everything he had to say the words, and even then they came out as a thick stammer, barely understandable even to his own ears.
“No,” the Guardian said. “You’re not sorry at all. You’re evil, which is why you will never leave this place.”
He tried again to speak but found he couldn’t. His tongue had become as unresponsive as his limbs, and although inside his mind he was screaming, the only thing he did was tilt his head a little to the right, like a dog that didn’t understand its master’s command. Without knowing why, he had a death grip on his black bag.
“The young woman you murdered will be buried nearby,” the Guardian continued in a placid voice. “It is unspeakable that you should be free to repeat your atrocities upon others. She would never rest if I did not ensure that was not the case, nor do you deserve … shall we say, recognition for what you have done.” The pale man shook his head. “No one will ever know you were responsible for the depravities visited upon her.”
His breath hitched in his throat as the Guardian leaned over and extended two fingers towards the fireplace. The tip of the flames swirled, then reached out, curling around his hand and settling on the tips of his fingers as though they were living matchsticks. The Guardian stepped back from the fire and turned to face him. His voice was soft but as cold and flat as an arctic night.
“And you shall never be named.”
He could do nothing but stand, paralyzed, as the Guardian bent and brushed the bottom of his slacks.
The flames consumed him.
Shaking, Tommy hid on the other side of a doorway, trying to process what he had just seen. He was lightheaded, barely breathing because he was so afraid he’d be heard. All thoughts of fame and heroism were gone, burned as fast as the killer he’d been following. Now the only thing he wanted was to get out of here as a whole person rather than the pile of white ash that the so-called Guardian had scooped up and was carrying away.
Instinct made him want to run in the opposite direction, but he knew better—he was as hopelessly lost as the now dead murderer had been. He would follow the Guardian he decided, because when the strange man was done disposing of the ashes, he would have to leave. Surely the Guardian wouldn’t want to be here at dawn or whenever the daytime property caretakers arrived, and at that point Tommy would find his way out. His father’s backlash be damned, he was going straight to the nearest police station.
More turns and hallways, left, then right, maybe even doubling back on himself. He kept the Guardian just in view, hanging back as far as was safe without losing the other man. After a good quarter hour—was the building really that large?—Tommy finally came around a corner into a room that led nowhere …
Except face to face with the Guardian himself.
He cried out and scrambled backward, then spun and leaped—right into a solid wall. The doorway through which he had just stepped was gone; in its place was heavy floral wallpaper and walnut wainscoting. The space where he’d slammed against the surface was flanked by a pair of matching gold brocade wing chairs, standard funeral home style. He turned back, twisting in each direction, but there were no exits—no doors, no windows. The .38 had come out of his waistband and gone sliding across the carpet until it was out of sight. He was unarmed and trapped.
“There you are,” the Guardian said. He was standing at a table in front of a wall of shelves, carefully pouring the ashes of Elizabeth Short’s killer into a book-shaped container. His voice was absurdly cheerful as his head swiveled and his nondescript gaze settled on Tommy. “I was wondering when you would catch up.”
“Let me go,” Tommy croaked. His voice was a little choppy but at least he could still speak; in his mind was the clear picture of the killer trying unsuccessfully to voice what would ultimately be his last words. He flexed his hands and shuffled around the chair, moving along the wall in the opposite direction. So far, so good.
“You have to stay,” the Guardian said. Finished with his task, he brushed his hands off. “Otherwise everyone will end up knowing about him.”
Tommy shook his head as the white-skinned man turned and carefully removed several more book urns from a shelf; the ornate containers had names and dates etched into their spines. The shelf was deeper than it appeared and he could just glimpse the dark spines of more urns hidden behind those in front. “No, I won’t tell anyone. I swear. I don’t even know who he is—”
The Guardian made a tsking sound. “Lying is never good,” he said. “You do know who he is, and you will make the knowledge public. I’m afraid that cannot be allowed.”
Tommy turned to run instead of answering, only to find himself right back where he started—the chairs behind him, the Guardian at his table a few feet away. “Please,” he said desperately. “I got nothing to do with him. My name is—”
Before Tommy could finish, his throat closed up as the Guardian suddenly raised his forefinger and pressed it over Tommy’s lips. “No,” the man said softly. “You do not have a name anymore.”
He wanted to protest—Of course I do!—but he couldn’t pull in air to form the words, he couldn’t exhale, he couldn’t breathe anymore, and his blood was pounding in his head. Tommy clawed at the collar of his jacket, then at his shirt, and finally at his skin; his nails dug in, leaving long, bloody grooves, but he didn’t feel the pai
n. He crashed onto one of the chairs when his legs gave out and his vision shifted from color to black and white, then faded quickly, as though someone was piling filmy black fabric over his face.
Tommy Milner’s final view of the world as himself lasted nine seconds.
The Guardian brushed his hands off again, his task almost complete. The old one’s ashes were now in a second book-shaped urn, a match to the volume containing the remains of Elizabeth Short’s murderer. When he put them together, he could see the previous Guardian’s name etched in ornate font along the spine of his container, and the name of the young woman’s killer on the spine of the other one. That wouldn’t do, not at all.
He snapped the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and a small, white-hot flame appeared. The old one hadn’t really needed the fireplace earlier, but it had been good for a show, a bit of momentary distraction from a task that had become tedious to him after so many decades. It took only a few moments to draw the flame down the spine of each urn and burn away any chance that her killer, or that of the old man whose place he had taken, would ever be identified. That done, the Guardian pushed the two urns to the far back of the shelf with the others, then meticulously arranged a row of labeled urns in front of them.
Because like him, there were those who shall never be named.
THE
LAST THINGS
TO GO
MARY SANGIOVANNI & BRIAN KEENE
The last things to go, Sharon Coulter supposed, were the hardest. There in her driveway, the slanting late-afternoon California sun softening the edges of a darkening world, she blew an errant piece of hair from her eye and continued scraping at the yellow ribbon on her trunk. The ribbon was the sticker kind, and not the magnet kind. Her Kia Sportage was made with fiberglass, so the magnets wouldn’t hold. That had been okay; there had been something lasting and almost superstitious about the sticker on her trunk. So long as it remained, her fervent belief in it would keep Cameron safe, keep him alive until he came home from Iraq and scraped it off himself—and thereby scrape off the war and all its baggage.
But Cameron had never come back to this home in West Oakland that they had briefly shared, a home they’d purchased just four months before his second deployment. Sharon had originally been hesitant about buying it, even though owning a home—a place of their own—had been her dream, but Cameron had convinced her, citing the more affordable housing prices and its proximity to San Francisco via the bridge and BART. Without Cameron, this home felt empty, even though it was full of reminders of him.
She still had the letters he’d written to her, and print-outs of all the emails, Facebook postings, and other things he’d sent when he wasn’t out on patrol and had access to his laptop. She had a box of dried petals from every flower or bouquet he’d ever given her, and the empty Sweet Tarts box he’d bought her at the movies on their first date, and the ceramic kitty cat tree ornament he’d given her on their first Christmas together. She had two dresser drawers full of his t-shirts, socks, and underwear, and half a closet still occupied by the rest of his clothes. His aftershave and cologne still occupied a shelf in the medicine cabinet, and a six pack of his favorite beer still lurked in the back of the refrigerator, untouched since his departure. She had a removable hard drive full of pictures of the two of them together, and a bed that felt bigger and emptier with each passing night.
She was surrounded by Cameron and yet he was gone.
The first thing to go had been his impression on the pillow. That had faded a few days after his deployment. The second thing to go had been his scent, washed from the sheets and pillowcases when she did laundry. Some nights, on the rare occasions when Cameron had been able to Skype with her, she’d found herself missing him so badly after their call that she’d spray his pillowcase with a hint of his cologne. But it had never been the same, and her longing for him then was nothing compared to the deep and mournful sense of loss she’d experienced when she learned that he’d never be coming home again.
There would be no more letters and no more phone calls, no more conversations about how much they missed each other or how weird the time difference was between California and Iraq. Never again would he buy her a box of Sweet Tarts or help her decorate the Christmas tree. There would be no more flowers, and the beer still sat in the fridge, unopened.
Cameron was gone.
How then, Sharon wondered, was it possible life still went on?
After finishing with removing the yellow ribbon sticker, Sharon decided to re-read some of the letters Cameron had sent her. She wasn’t sure that was the healthiest activity, given her current state of mind, but she wanted to anyway. Maybe it was like picking a scab. She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help it.
It was Friday. She didn’t have to work again until Monday. She could have gone to the movies or taken a drive to Napa for the weekend, or spent some time antiquing. But all of those activities seemed empty somehow, without Cameron there to enjoy them with her. Looking through their old correspondence was a connection—an intimacy that helped to keep her loneliness at bay.
She’d read all the letters before, of course. She’d read them so much that she almost knew them by heart. Mostly, Cameron wrote about how much he missed her, and how he couldn’t wait to get back home, and all the things they would do together when he returned. He talked about his buddies, serving over there in the desert with him—guys like Don Bloom and Kowalczyk (who everyone called Planters “because he’s fucking nuts”). These were men who Sharon had never met, but she felt like she knew them well, just from the things Cameron had told her. She wondered where they were now. After all, their stories hadn’t ended just because Cameron’s had. Were they still out there in the desert somewhere, or had they made it home? Were their loved ones waiting for them to return, and if so, were they as alone as she felt?
Sharon turned on the air conditioning as she walked inside, pausing for a moment as the unit sighed, filling the house with cool comfort. She sighed along with it, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the room seemed to spin. She reached out with one hand and touched the back of the sofa to steady herself. When she felt better, she walked down the hall into the bedroom.
Sharon kept Cameron’s letters in a box beneath their bed, alongside another box containing the dried flower petals. As she knelt, peering under the bed, she spied both boxes, along with dust and debris. She reminded herself that she needed to vacuum under there the next time she cleaned. Then she pulled out the box containing the letters and opened it.
Sharon gasped. Cameron’s letters were gone.
A sick ball of anxiety weighed in her gut. There was some superstitious part of her that had always believed words—written words even more so than spoken ones—had a kind of lasting power, that if something was written down, it was somehow more real, more concrete. It was that belief that had prompted her to keep every text, every email, every Facebook post and card and chat transcript. Hell, she even had, folded neatly in her box of letters, the last shopping list he’d written out before his deployment. She saved every “I love you and miss you,” every “You’re so beautiful,” every “You mean the world to me” because it reminded her in the cool gray-blue hours of pre-dawn that she wasn’t imagining a soul mate way on the other side of the world. He was real, and his feelings for her were real. She knew it in her heart, of course, but liked, all the same, to have it in her hand, too.
But those little mementos of proof were gone, somehow. The dizzy feeling returned for a moment, less intense but threatening all the same. Could she have moved them? She didn’t think so. But there wasn’t any other explanation for it. No one else had come to visit since last she’d pulled out the correspondences to look at, and there were no pets, no cleaning people, no children …
Sharon thought of that pregnancy test she’d taken the night after he left and tears blurred the sight of the empty box in front of her. She hadn’t wanted to say anything until she was sure, but God, how she
’d hoped that test would come back positive. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted it—had, in fact, firmly believed the opposite until the digital window had returned the result NOT PREGNANT and a wave of intense, almost biting disappointment surged through her. Now, there was no one to tell anyway, and she found herself relieved it had turned out as it did. She couldn’t very well mourn that they, as a couple—a family—would never hear tiny voices learn to laugh and talk, or small feet scampering to welcome him home, if those things didn’t exist. She couldn’t cry about their never holding curious small hands or seeing reminders of his smile in tiny upturned faces that would never be. The written words had spoken. She couldn’t dwell on something that never really was, right?
She wiped her eyes, stood up, and leaving the box where it was on the floor, pulled out a second box. In it, she found the dried flower petals of every bouquet he had ever given her and all their movie and concert ticket stubs, but no letters. She huffed, a slow leak of frustration and sadness, and peeked under the bed. Nothing but the dust bunnies.
Next, Sharon searched the night table drawer on her side of the bed, then the one on his side, just to be sure. She dug into the pile of shoes on the closet floor and sifted one by one through the contents of cluttered boxes labeled “Old Bank Statements” and “Important Papers.” She looked under the bed again, in every drawer of the dressers, and behind every major piece of furniture in the room. She repeated the same methodical search in the bathroom (although she knew nothing would be there, but just in case), the guest room, the small towel closet in the hallway, and that third spare room she had intended to use as maybe a craft room (or a nursery, if ever). As she went, she did her best to ignore the lump in her gut. Her cheeks felt cold. She thought to turn the air conditioner down, and then realized she was crying.