by Brian Keene
The moment Ruth heard the bathroom door shut, she pulled the phone from her pocket and hit redial. Again, no answer. How does a wife go missing two days and her husband ignore a phone call?
“George, this is Ruth Scovone again. Your wife is here in her night clothes, covered in blood that isn’t hers. She just showed up at my door and is acting crazy. I’m getting frightened. Please call me back!” She hurried the phone back in her pocket, her eyes stopping on the knife block.
Ruth glanced at Louis’s seat at the table, imagined him there, watching her take care of the problems, one at a time. She saw his amazing smile as she decided she needed to protect herself. She swiveled as she rose, groaning at the pain in her hips and shoulder, and reached out for the chef’s knife from the block. She pushed it under the chair cushion and situated herself as benignly as possible. She reddened as her heart felt as though it would break through her ribs.
When the woman returned, her hair had been brushed and she’d washed her hands and face. Ruth tried to gauge her temperament, but the woman went to the window, her back to Ruth.
“Better?” Ruth felt the knife’s handle beneath her.
The woman nodded, standing taller, more composed. “Some of it’s coming back.” She turned toward Ruth, her fists under her chin, eyes wide. “George knew where my Mercy was, you know. They’d been talking the whole fifteen years. He saw her, knew what her life was like. But, he never told me. Not one word.” She dropped her fists to her sides, stiffening.
“How did you find that out?”
The woman threw her head back and barked a laugh. “How? I found her myself. She told me the truth!”
“What? How could George betray you that way?” In a morning of shocks, this stunned Ruth.
The woman stepped toward Ruth and slammed her palms onto the table. “Well, he will never betray me again!”
“You mean, you,” Ruth set her elbows on the table, put her chin in her palms, “ah … took care of him.”
The woman nodded, grinning conspiratorially. “That’s right. After I saw her.” The woman’s voice came steely. Cold. “I found her in Emeryville. That’s not far from here in Piedmont! She was with the same old tattooed guy. He’s my age, for God’s sake!” The woman paced, wide-eyed, fierce. “She looked awful, Ruth! Fat, wearing teenager’s clothes, her belly flabby and hanging out. And she smoked! Blew it in my face! When I started to cry and beg her to let me back in her life, she spit at me, told me I was embarrassing myself. Wasting my time!” She stepped to the window again, pressing her hands on the glass. “He sniveled like a beat puppy when Mercy punched him in the arm to get him to ask me to leave.” The woman chortled at the memory. “When I turned to go, I saw photographs on her mantle. Her and that pedophile and kids! I had two grandchildren! And George knew!” She whirled around, spitting as she shouted, “She said I was never going to see them! What right did she have keeping them from me?”
Ruth felt for the knife again. George was not calling her back.
“I knew they were there, the kids. Upstairs. It was after ten at night! I started to go to the stairs then, and he grabbed me. I turned and saw Mercy reach into a drawer and pull out a gun. A gun! What kind of people keep a gun in a house with children?”
Ruth shook her head, her resolve growing. “Low-lives. Trash. You couldn’t let her do that to you.”
The woman’s shoulders relaxed. Her tone became plaintive, almost childlike. “George … he didn’t understand how painful it was not to know where she’d been all these years. Not to know if she was dead or alive. He knew I was looking for her, but he put her before me. His own wife!”
Ruth waited calmly as the woman appeared to flip between self-righteousness and wounded victim. “So what did you do?”
The woman sat down across from her, gripping the table edge. “When I got home, I told George I found her. He got angry, said he didn’t want me hassling her. He said I should let her live her life.” She hiccupped away a sob. “He didn’t know. I already took that away from her.”
“You didn’t tell him then.” She could hear Louis in her head. Everyone’s a potential client. Put them at their ease. Make them think you’re with them all the way.
She looked wild-eyed at Ruth. “I thought how he’d feel when he found out what I’d done, and that felt good. So yah, I told him. Every detail.” She shook her head, resigned to tell Ruth now.
“When I was at her house, she threw the whole last fifteen years at me. She said George thought I was crazy, that I might hurt her. My precious miracle daughter? George was the one who beat the crap out of that scum she screwed in our bed … the guy she was still with! And they thought I’d hurt her? That was insane!” The woman got up and began pacing again, wringing her hands. “I tried to make George hear how I felt. I asked him if he understood. But, he just laughed and called me delusional. Then, I just didn’t care if he understood.” She stopped, turned to Ruth. “He couldn’t tell me anyway, after I cut his throat.”
Ruth’s bullet-proof poise took over as she cocked her head and mirrored the woman’s conspiratorial tone. “You took care of them.”
The woman went blank for a moment, studying Ruth. She folded her arms and rocked back and forth in the new boots. She shook her head. “So you understand.” Unconvinced, the woman chuckled darkly.
Ruth nodded slowly, surely, furrowing her brow. She struggled not to let her gaze slip from the woman to the knives. “It was criminal what they did to you.”
The woman balked. “Mrs. Perfect thinks I’m right? Yeah, sure.” She recovered, the now familiar storm clouding her face.
Ruth remembered the woman’s wrath the day of that lunch debacle. Thought how if they’d been in her kitchen instead of out on the street, the woman might have done more than just hit her with foul words. She slowly took the knife from under the cushion and held it carefully under the table.
Ruth looked up at the woman. “I’m sorry. I failed you. You were so good to me and I …” Ruth blinked as if trying not to cry. “Can I make it up to you now?” Louis would be proud. When you screw up, you offer to fix it. Act penitent. Nothing shuts the client up faster.
The woman stepped toward Ruth, put a hand on the table. “What could you possibly do now?” She bit the inside of her cheek, eyes going wider. “What? ”
Ruth tensed, her twisted misshapen fingers howling with pain as she gripped the knife even tighter and swung it up and into the woman’s stomach. The woman pulled away and the knife fell. She grabbed her belly, screaming. Ruth bent to retrieve the knife and fell with a crack as her knee hit the terracotta floor. She felt a jagged pain go up to her hip and knew she wasn’t getting back up soon.
The woman wrestled the sweater up as if it was on fire, backing away from Ruth. Blood pulsed out onto the floor. The woman stared down at the wound, disbelieving, as the heel of one of the new boots hit the wet tile. As if in slow-motion, the woman slid sideways and hit the floor, her head bouncing hard with a hollow thud. She didn’t move. Her eyes still wide, stared blankly upwards.
Ruth pulled herself up to lean against the chair. Dazed, she thought of the phone and patted her robe. She felt the hard lump of it and pulled the phone from her pocket. Staring at it, she wasn’t sure who to call first. What would she say?
She let out a deep quaking sigh, fearing everything might empty from her head just as it had all those years ago. Then, Ruth glanced at the woman, now harmless, and remembered her name.
FOR JEAN SEALEY
WHO ACTUALLY OPENED THE DOOR
THE LIBRARIAN
2
The hooded figure closes the third book, and it is then you notice the titles etched on their spines: THOSE WHO SHALL NEVER BE NAMED, reads the first, followed by THE LAST THINGS TO GO, and finally A RAVEN IN THE DOVE’S NEST, now neatly stacked side-by-side-by-side by your guide.
Each golden book contains the ashes of the dead; amid those ashes lies the tale, and upon opening, the tale recounted.
Tales the
ashes tell, you muse.
“One story in this building goes by that name, which we’ll get to later,” the librarian says, as if reading your thoughts, then gracefully floats to the top of the shelves once again to return the three books to their rightful places, and it is in that same stacked order the librarian places them.
“There’s a story in all of us.”
Each volume fits neatly alongside the next, as if placed is in a predetermined or perhaps preternatural and not-to-be-altered order.
“When we pass, stories remain to be told, over and over again. If a story is good, that is. The good ones are here, in The Library of the Dead. If a story is not good, well, those stories are kept elsewhere.”
The librarian glides over the floor to the next room.
“Come with me. More good stories must be opened.”
Fewer golden books fill the next room than in the previous, and some of the shelves contain urns instead of books, or other various relics. Nearly a third of the shelves are filled, as opposed to every available spot, such as in the last. Some of the books seem old, oiled and bound in leather, although they all appear metallic, as if dipped in bronze. Some books are dark brown with gold text and some are black with gold stripes across their spines, and some are completely golden and smooth-spined. Not all have labels, however.
A white cherub statue observes the room, alone, in front of a blue- and yellow-tiled wall that is still under construction.
“This is an unfinished room,” the librarian says, “but in time this room will be filled like the others; yet there are three on these shelves to show you now, one of which is a very recent addition by someone who left us recently, yet who left us with many marvelous stories.”
A covered hand reaches to what looks like a recently added shelf reaching from floor to ceiling to retrieve a book labeled I’M GETTING CLOSER; the second, A CHIMERA’S TALE, is taken from the highest shelf on the opposite wall, and the third from the nearest shelf where many books await, although he or she chooses only the middle: I’M NOT THERE.
“Let us start with this one.”
I’M NOT
THERE
KEALAN PATRICK BURKE
“What am I doing here, Joe?”
Lacy was uncomfortable, as he knew she would be, but he couldn’t afford to get hung up on that now. There were far greater concerns than her passive aggressive efforts to ensure he knew she was doing him a monumental favor, that her being here was highly inappropriate.
“I think I’m losing my mind, Lace.”
Still standing just inside the door, still wearing her coat, her Prada bag slung over her shoulder, she frowned. “What are you talking about?”
He stood a few feet away from her, the distance meant to reassure her that even though he’d meant what he said, he didn’t represent a threat to her. Given how he must look—and he had no idea how that was, exactly—he knew he had to be careful to avoid frightening her. She had never seen him this way before. Couldn’t have. He’d never had cause to be this way when they were together. The closest he could think of was maybe in the days and weeks after his mother passed away. He’d been a wreck. But that was different. It was grief, and therefore natural.
About this, there was nothing natural.
“Something’s wrong,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s happening, but I needed someone to see if they see it too. To verify whether or not I’m going crazy. I’m sorry that it’s you. I just didn’t know who else to call.”
A slightly smug look crept over her face as her shoulders relaxed. She’s enjoying this, he thought, getting off on it. Momentary regret pulsed through him that he hadn’t waited for his best friend Thad to finish work. Thad would not have judged him, nor reveled in his panic. Lacy, on the other hand, was already looking at the situation—without yet knowing what it was—as validation for her abandonment of him six months ago. Clearly, her parents had been right in coaching her away from him and his limited prospects and toward that plastic surgeon in Burbank. He wondered how long it would take before her natural beauty was stretched and lifted and tightened by her new beau, until she looked like a wax dummy.
“Fine,” she said, shrugging out of a dark gray ankle-length coat he was sure cost more than his condo. She held it in the crook of her arm and raised her eyebrows. “So? What’s the problem?”
He wrung his hands together like an old maid, found it difficult to meet her gaze, in which he saw the worst combination of things flickering in the green: pity, contempt, satisfaction. He had lost weight and his clothes reeked of cigarette smoke and bourbon, looked, in other words like the failed and desperate screenwriter she had always thought him to be. And in that moment, despite her presence, he had never felt more alone.
“It’s this way.” He turned his back on her, relieved to be free from her harshness of her attention, and started toward the bathroom.
“Wait,” she said, and he did, but turned only his head to indicate he was listening. “First I want to know why I’m here, because—and no offense, Joe—but if you think I’m going to waltz back into the bowels of your condo with you while you stink of drink, seconds after you told me you think you’re losing it, then you have another thing coming. My parents didn’t raise an idiot.”
No, Joe thought, they didn’t. They raised a sweet, smart, wonderful woman whose only flaw I could find was ambition because it didn’t include me. A woman I loved and love still, even though I don’t recognize her anymore.
And now he did turn to look at her, his head bowed a little, weighed down by the preposterousness of the words he was about to deliver. Did her face soften a little at the pathetic sight of him, at the brief flash of some distant memory of better days? Perhaps it was just his imagination. Perhaps all of this was. In a moment, he would know for sure.
And what then?
He didn’t know, and didn’t want to think of the implications for his future either way.
“Three days ago,” he said, pausing to lick the dryness from his lips, “my reflection disappeared.”
They stood together in his bedroom, facing the tall free-standing mirror in the corner next to the window. The blinds were closed but glowed like bars of hot iron as the midday sun beat mercilessly against the other side. In the mirror, Lacy was a vision, her honey-colored hair piled high on top and free falling in lustrous ringlets at the back and sides. Her makeup was light, eyes darkened by kohl to emphasize the emerald green. Lips he could still taste if he closed his eyes were parted slightly to reveal perfect teeth.
“Do you see?” His guts were aquiver.
He watched her reflection frown. “Assuming this mirror, like all others, is fulfilling its intended purpose, then yes, I see perfectly well. What is it that’s supposed to be wrong?”
Joe felt his insides collapse, a thunderous roar of water in his head as the dam threatened to break. He realized now he had put all his hope on the horror of the situation being immediately evident to anyone who looked into the mirror with him. But apparently he was there in the glass with her, as he was supposed to be, except he saw everything reflected but himself. In the mirror, Lacy stood by herself before a bed with sweat-stained sheets and alcohol stains and a nightstand piled high with screenwriting books, memoirs, and an overfull ashtray.
“You can see me? In the mirror, I mean?”
She turned to look at him and for the first time he saw a note of concern on her face. “Of course I do. You don’t?”
He shook his head, sweat gathering at his hairline.
“You said this started two days ago?”
“Yes.”
“You just woke up and couldn’t see yourself in the mirror?”
“Yes.”
“Is it just this mirror?”
“No. The bathroom mirror. The mirror in the hall. But it’s not just mirrors. Anything reflective: the faucets, the glass on the coffee table, the windows, even my laptop and TV screens when they’re turned off.”
Her frown deepened, but
cleaved the concern, and now the distance was back, the kind of cold, clinical detachment expected of a stranger when faced with someone who has clearly lost their marbles. “Have you been outside?”
“I was afraid to. I didn’t know if anyone could see me. Didn’t know what I’d do if that had been the case. But … you see me, so at least I know that now.”
“I would think being invisible to people might make things kind of interesting.”
He tried to mirror her smile but came up short, and instead returned his attention to the glass and the absence of his reflection.
“Maybe you’re a vampire,” Lacy said, her voice still tinged with humor he didn’t appreciate.
“I’m scared,” he said.
“Look, it’s whacked, there’s no doubt about that, and if it happened to me, I’d be terrified too. But whatever’s wrong is clearly something in you and not a glitch in the universe. I can see you.” She poked a finger at the place in the mirror his reflection should have been. “You’re still there. Which means that you’ve probably suffered some kind of blood pressure incident, a mini-stroke or something, and you probably made it worse by drinking so much.”
“I wasn’t drinking before this. That started when I thought I was going nuts.”
“There’s not a shrink on the planet who would prescribe that as a wise course of action in the wake of a mental…episode…or whatever this is.” She put a hand on his shoulder and guided him away to the bed, where she forced him to sit down and stood before him, blocking his view of the mirror. “Look, I know this has you completely messed up, but panicking and certainly drinking isn’t doing you any good. You need to get yourself to a hospital, get an MRI, let them poke around and be sure something serious hasn’t gone rogue up there. I can drive you if you like.”