by Weston Ochse
Cold Grave
Gabino Iglesias
The sky was dark despite it being noon. Winter was rearing its ugly head and it looked like it had woken up with an attitude. There was an uncomfortable chill in the air that made you zip up your jacket the second you stepped outside and then sweat a little when you walked indoors. Roberto’s stomach growled, signaling lunchtime, but the man driving the truck didn’t look like he was considering taking a break any time soon. The man’s name was Vitali, and he looked like something made out of rock. He’d been training Roberto for two days now, uttering maybe a hundred words in the process. He had a thick Russian accent that seemed perfect for the job he’d been doing for thirty years. Roberto was grateful he got all the instructions he needed from Mark, the chubby man with the bad combover who made him sign the paperwork for the gig, because most of what Vitali had been saying was either confusing or simply unintelligible.
The radio was on. Two guys argued about the dangers of letting Muslims into the country. Roberto thought about the last time a Muslim started some shit in his neighborhood and came up blank. The truck’s heater was on, but it was losing the battle against the sharp wind sneaking though every opening in the old vehicle’s rusty frame. Hart Island is only about a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, so water can bee seen regardless of where you’re standing, and being surrounded by it provides the cold wind with extra teeth. Roberto looked out at the water and then at some tall Bronx buildings in the distance. The truck and his stomach complained again, this time in unison.
The cold made Roberto think about his daughter, Andrea. Low temperatures were not good for her lungs. The doctor said cold air constricts her bronchi. Living somewhere warmer would do her good, but they can’t afford to move. This new job was great because it would allow them to apply for a better apartment with better heating. Mark also mentioned something about the health insurance and apparently the co-pay would be lower, which meant they’d be able to afford better medicine instead of the generic garbage they’d been giving Andrea since she started needing respiratory therapies. On top of all that, Roberto planned to hustle and save until they could get the hell outta New York.
“Now we pick up the shipment,” said Vitali. It was a statement. Roberto knew it required no reply, so he remained quiet. Outside the window, Roberto saw large trenches on the ground like dark wounds and hundreds of corpses in bare wooden caskets already laid out. Vitali told them the trenches were dug by Rikers Island inmates. He also said he was not supposed to interact with them when they came to the island. They even dug special holes for severed body parts, according to Vitali, but those were beyond the trees and couldn’t be seen from the dirty road they were on. Roberto knew this gig his drug dealing cousin got him was going to take some getting used to, but the money he’d be making on the side was all the incentive he needed to work hard at adapting. Hell, for Andrea, he’d dig those damn trenches with his teeth.
The truck shuddered to a stop in front of a dilapidated red brick building with gaping holes where the windows used to be. Vitali pulled the key from the ignition, opened his door, and stepped into the cold air in a single fluid motion that didn’t look quite natural for such an old man. Roberto took a deep breath and joined him outside. They took a few steps and stood in front of the water on a small pier on the west side of the island. There was a van waiting on a gravel road that led to the crumbling edifice. Roberto spotted several tiny white angel statues along the rotting pathway around a nondescript garage building about twenty feet from the van.
“Any minute they will be here,” Vitali said without looking at his watch.
Roberto stared out at the water and thought about Sundays spent fishing with his father and the wild stories the old men his father knew always told. Fishing out body parts, fetuses, fish with two heads or four eyes or strange rhythms coming from their gaping mouths. The stories went on and on. Some he laughed at, but some he had listened to in silence and then they’d come back to him to haunt his dreams at night. What he was doing in Hart Island was something that could just as well be one of those crazy old fisherman stories.
Vitali stood there, next to Roberto, unmoving, like something planted long ago that had turned unshakeable. A few seconds later, a small ferry chugged its way out of the fog that still clung to the water despite the time of day and approached the island. In a couple of minutes, it reached the pier, slowed down, and started turning sideways. The name of the city was painted in yellow and blue letters on the side of the ferry. A tall, heavyset black man wearing a blue hoodie appeared starboard and threw Roberto and Vitali a rope.
With the boat gently bobbing up and down against the pier, the big man with the hoodie and a smaller, bearded guy with blue eyes jumped off the ferry.
“Hey, V,” said the shorter guy. “We have fourteen boxes for you today. Want them here or near the van?”
“Near the van is okay, Michael.”
Vitali didn’t introduce Roberto and the two men didn’t ask about him. They turned around and jumped back into the ferry. A few minutes later, they came out with the first box and hauled it onto the pier using a yellow cart with a hydraulic lift. On the first trip to the van, the big man looked at Roberto and gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
Roberto looked at the unpainted pine boxes and wondered about their contents. He was thankful there weren’t any small boxes being unloaded. He didn’t think he could have managed a dead kid on top of everything else going on in his head. There were almost a million bodies on this small stretch of land. Roberto tried to imagine them under his feet. He thought about the boxes full of random limbs and the shorter trenches dug to bury kids. He tried hard to toughen himself up, to become the man he needed to be to do what he had to do at some fast-approaching moment of the day.
The two men finished stacking the fourteen pine boxes near the back of the van and made their way back to the ferry.
“That’s it for now, V,” said Michael. “I don’t think we’ll need to make another trip today. We’ll be here at the same time tomorrow. This the guy taking over for you?”
Vitali moved his head down once, slowly. He didn’t say anything. Michael nodded a few times and told the big man to untie them. Without another word, the two men disappeared into the inside of the ferry, turned it around, and headed back to the mainland.
When the ferry was no longer visible, Vitali turned to Roberto.
“Now you will meet a ghost. He name is Giorgio. He’s the man who brings us the packages. He waits in his boat for the city men to do their thing and then comes to do his. We get rid of those first. Then we come back and take care of the boxes.”
It was the longest thing the Russian had said since they’d been together. Then the sound of a motor came from the water and Vitali pointed toward the approaching boat.
“That is the ghost.”
The small boat pulled up to the pier. A small man with a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead jumped out and tied the vessel to the same post Vitali had previously used.
“Hey, Vitali, this the new guy?”
“Yes.”
The man approached Roberto with his hand out. Roberto took it and looked at the chunk of face under the hat. The skin was almost translucent. The white and pink tone of his flesh reminded Roberto of the huge salamanders he used to see at night on his grandmother’s balcony on those summers he spent in Puerto Rico.
“I’m Roberto.”
“I’m Giorgio. Mark said you’re gonna be feeding the fishes now that Vitali is retiring, that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No need to call me, sir, man. Both of us are here to get our hands dirty, aren’t we?”
For a moment, the comment threw Roberto off. What did the man know? Then he remembered what was ahead for them and relaxed.
“Anyway, I have two packages for you, gentlemen. Let’s get to it.”
Giorgio jumped back into his boat. Roberto watched as he removed the cover under which the mot
or should have been. Instead of the boat’s motor, however, there were two black plastic tarps. Their general shape gave away the contents.
“Don’t know how much Vitali has told you, Roberto. The old goombah ain’t much of a talker. The thing about these tarps is that you have to use them all the way to the water and then remove them. Always keep a blade with you to make things easier. You can hose them down near the water and give them back to me next time I come over or stash them somewhere once they’re clean, but you have to drop the bodies into the water without them. Also, don’t keep shit. Even if the bodies are wearing something or still have a wallet on them, which will probably never happen. You get them, you push them into the water exactly where Vitali’s going to show you and that’s it. That’s the way we do things to keep everything clean, capisce?”
Roberto nodded. Now that he had two corpses in front of him, the next step once again freaked him out. He thought of Andrea. The bonus for the little extra dumping he was going to do would get him an extra three grand at the end of the day. The money was too good to pass up. He thought about moving to Florida or California. Somewhere where you could actually take a dip in the ocean and not die from some horrible flesh-eating disease two days later. He thought about warm air and how that would let his daughter laugh without her happiness quickly devolving into a coughing fit.
“Hey, come down here and give me a hand with these.”
Giorgio’s voice cut through Roberto’s thoughts. He jumped onboard and leaned down to grab the first body. Giorgio told him to swing it into the pier and, once they had both on land, to quickly stash them in the back of the van.
“On days where I’m making a delivery, the security guys will get a call and stay home. They get a bit of extra moolah for playing sick, you know what I mean? First you’ll get the folks from the city and then me, but you take care of my packages first. Always. Once you take care of that, come back for the city’s dead. The rest of the day is yours until you go home. Always ride the city’s boat in and out. The guys captaining those small boats change all the damn time, so not a damn word about this to anyone unless I tell you to, capisce? Oh, and bring a book or a cell phone or something, man. It gets fucking boring out here most of the time.”
Giorgio untied his boat as he spoke. Then he looked at Vitali.
“Happy retirement, V. Can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but it ain’t been half bad, right?”
For the first time since he’d met him, Roberto watched Vitali’s mouth curl up into something resembling a smile.
“You are a cold son of a bitch, Giorgio. Good luck to you, my friend.”
Giorgio offered a humorous salute to the men standing on the pier and turned his boat around.
Vitali walked to the van and opened the back door.
“Put the packages in there.”
Roberto was going to ask him for a hand, but then realized he’d be doing this by himself every day.
Roberto pushed and pulled the bodies into the black plastic that covered the back of the van, closed the door, and jumped in. The exertion had made him start to breathe hard. He could see his breath dance in front of his face for a second before vanishing into the cold air around him.
Vitali drove north on the dirt road. A small forest appeared in front of them. Roberto noticed there were no trenches on the side of the dirt road now. He wanted to ask Vitali if it was because they were saving this space for later or because it was already packed with boxes.
They drove through the dark trees, the van jumping from one pool of shadows to the next, the tires quietly making a thin cloud of dust and dirt behind them.
Finally, the trees opened up to a small patch of grass in front of the water. A wooden pier that seemed to have been built a hundred years ago went about fifteen feet into the cold, churning water.
“This is the place,” Vitali said.
Both men left the van and walked to the back of it. Vitali opened the door and used both hands to pull a body to the edge of the van. Then he bent his knees, hugged the body toward him, pressed his shoulder into it, and stood up, the tarp perfectly placed atop his right shoulder.
Roberto tried to do the same thing and almost fell on his face. Luckily, the old man hadn’t been watching. By the time Roberto had the second body perched on his shoulder, Vitali was already stepping onto the pier.
Roberto walked a bit faster to catch up. He managed to get behind the old man and only dropped the body he was carrying a few seconds after Vitali.
In silence, Vitali pulled a box cutter from his right pocket and sliced the ropes that were holding the tarp in place. He then used his boot to roll the body a bit, revealing the body.
Roberto looked down at the dead man. He was a chubby guy with a head full of black curls and a goatee. His face was swollen. There was a black, slightly puckered hole above his right eye. His tongue was halfway out of his mouth. He wore a light blue shirt that was stained with blood and dark jeans. He didn’t have on any shoes or socks.
“Take him to the edge and push him into the water. Keep your eyes on him. The bodies leave no trace because these are special fish,” said Vitali.
Roberto did as he was told. The corpse hit the water with a splash and the chubby man’s arms became animated by the moving water. The body moved away from the pier for a few seconds and then something yanked it down a bit. Roberto kneeled to get a better look at the fish. The animals doing the dirty work had to be something like saltwater piranhas or medium-sized sharks if they managed to make entire bodies disappear so quickly.
Two large, grey figures moved around the body. The backs of the fish were much wider than Roberto had expected. Videos of goliath groupers he’d seen online came to mind. Then something grey shot out of the water and landed on the corpse’s chest. It looked like a toddler’s hand, except it was grey. A second later, a second hand joined the first. Roberto watched, astonished, as something resembling a human face broke the surface and looked at him. The thing had teeth that would put a shark to shame and a small, squat nose. There was no hair on the head of the fish, but it otherwise looked human. The head and neck gave way to a broad back and then the thick, grey body Roberto had already seen. There were four things around the body now, slowly biting into it while pulling it down into the dark water.
“They are always hungry,” Vitali said.
Roberto turned. The old man was standing right behind him.
“What…what are they?”
“I don’t know what they are, only what they do. And I also know why you’re here.”
“What?” Roberto asked, afraid his voice was going to give him away.
“Look at them go!” Vitali said.
Roberto turned. Then he felt both of Vitali’s hands land on his upper back like a couple of small runaway trains. Momentum took over and Roberto flew forward, splashing into the cold water.
The coldness reached into Roberto’s lungs and crushed them. His head broke the surface. He tried to inhale, but his body wasn’t responding.
“I took care of my predecessor. I’m sure no one remembered to tell Mark that. Too bad for you.”
Roberto was close to the pier. He wanted to move toward it, he was moving his arms and kicking his legs, but he wasn’t moving. He felt tiny hands, hands the size of Andrea’s, pulling at his jacket, trying to bring him down.
He tried to scream, but the lack of air in his lungs turned his attempt into a pitiful grunt. Then he felt pressure on his right calf. It was followed by a pain unlike anything he had ever felt. Teeth scraped against bone. Roberto pushed down on the water and finally got a lungful of air. The scream that escaped his throat morphed into something subdued as he was yanked underwater. He looked down and grabbed one of the tiny hands that was pulling at his jacket. He pulled on it with all his strength. Then one of the creatures bit him between his right shoulder and neck. The dark water around him became even darker as strong, tiny grey hands pulled him further down.
John Dory
D.G. Sutter
In the light of the dawn, the small wooden boat drifted over the sand bars ensconced by tall aqua sea grass. Low tide hit your nostrils the minute you left the woods. The mix of salt air and clam flats was all too familiar for people who had grown up in Ipswich, but to those who were out-of-towners the scent could be perceived as foul, off-putting, almost enough to drive one away from the shore and into the sanctity of a warm home with a bowl of chowder.
The surf was calm and there was barely any movement on the river. Halfway to the neck, the dory passed by Ed Murphy’s lobster boat, and both captains exhausted themselves with waves in passing.
“How’a’ya?” Roy yelled over the hum of diesel engines, his words nearly drowned out by the swishing of the brackish water.
The dory bounced out of the way of the crusted out lobster boat, covered with slime and chum, and Roy pulled hard starboard to steer off the dunes. The river was all his to drift, plenty of leeway and loads of open space to play. Being your own boss had its perks on occasion. Roy cut the engine and let the tide take him downstream, enjoying the sun rise on the first morning out of the warm season.
He opened the small cooler and popped a Budweiser for the beginning of the day. The bubbles teased his tongue and refreshed his palette. His calloused fingers fumbled for his lighter and Marlboros. The first drag and sip went so well together, almost better than coffee.
The pinks and greens splayed out over the edge of town and ocean opened up ahead. Small waves lapped at the shore, carrying with them masses of red seaweed and foam that was not the kind you wanted on top of a hot beverage. It would be a tough day out on the flats having to weed through all of that junk.
Roy pulled the dory ashore. He stood and stepped into his mudders, grabbed his rake, and planted his feet in the soft sand. He started on his way, treading lightly, eyes carefully searching for the subsequent bubbles to pop through to the surface. Within an hour, he had several bags down, sorting through steamers, littles, counts, and top necks. After years of doing the job, he no longer thought of these things as food, but nuisances.