In Silent Graves
Page 1
In Silent Graves
Or
The Indifference of Heaven
By
Gary A. Braunbeck
JournalStone
San Francisco
Original Version Copyright © 2004 – Gary A. Braunbeck
Author’s Preferred version Copyright © 2015 by Gary A. Braunbeck
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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ISBN: 978-1-942712-32-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-942712-34-3 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-942712-35-0 (hc)
Printed in the United States of America
2nd Edition
JournalStone rev. date: May 27, 2015
Cover Design: El Art – 99designs.com
Edited by: Dr. Michael R. Collings
Endorsements
“It would be wrong to say that Gary A. Braunbeck, with In Silent Graves, has succeeded where most horror novelists have failed; rather, Braunbeck has succeeded where most novelists have failed. It is a restoration of faith to read a work of such genuine pain, stark terror, and profound beauty. If you don't have the guts to face the intellectual, aesthetic, spiritual, and emotional challenges of In Silent Graves, you don't have the guts to face that of which fiction is truly capable.”
— Michael Marano, author of Dawn Song, winner of the International Horror Guild and Bram Stoker Awards
“Good Lord, what a novel! I'm still reeling! This is remarkably powerful on so many levels... it got under my skin in a big way. Gary A. Braunbeck is an incredibly talented and sensitive wordsmith. With In Silent Graves, he has created a tender and intimate nightmare, a hypnotic and ghostly story of suspense and dread; of longing for that Which Might Have Been, and the horror of that Which Is. A literary nest of matryoshka dolls in which each new layer opens onto new terrors, this story haunts my dreams. A splendidly disturbing gem!"
— Elizabeth Massie, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Sineater, Welcome Back to the Night, and Desper Hollow
“The language Braunbeck uses is lyrical and complex, yet not overblown. The narrative is a mixture of supernatural surrealism, police procedural suspense, emotional characterization, fairytale fantasy so dark as to put the grimmest of Grimm's to shame, and social commentary handled with far more resonance than seen in the comparatively ham-fisted efforts of most child-advocate writers. This is an incredibly ambitious novel, and it is an absolute wonder. Buy it right now or I'll beat you about the face and neck with a wet LA phone book.”
— Mehitobel Wilson, Gothic.Net
“Employing both harsh hyperrealism and majestic mythic fantasy, the novel swoops and soars in and out of philosophy, theology, and the very meaning of time and life... Ecstasy is a glimpse of the infinite; horror is its full disclosure – In Silent Graves is an indelible experience that balances between the two.”
— Paula Guran, DarkEcho
“Though not for the squeamish, Braunbeck's first solo novel nevertheless presents a compelling and disturbingly graphic exploration of grief and redemption that should appeal to fans of dark fantasy and psychological horror.”
— Library Journal
“Every so often a book comes along which completely redefines the genre by challenging its borders, by tossing aside all its overused trappings, by reshaping and reinventing what we perceive to be genre fiction while moving us to reexamine the world in which we live. In Silent Graves does these things in spades. I'll never be able to look upon the line ‘Once Upon a Time’ again without thinking of Gary A. Braunbeck and the children of Chiaroscuro.”
— Bram Stoker Award-winning author Brian A. Hopkins
“Braunbeck's debut as a dark fantasy novelist shows the same passion and originality as his short fiction collection, Things Left Behind. The novel bursts with moving insights about grief turning one's world upside-down and about the restorative power of love.”
— Publishers Weekly
“I just finished Gary A. Braunbeck’s In Silent Graves, and this thing is dynamite, people. The emotional resonance that permeates his short fiction is on full display here. It’s an intoxicating blend of stark reality and dark fantasy. It’s got brains and it’s got heart to spare. Add to that its utter unpredictability and you've got a real winner here. As Joe Bob Briggs would say, ‘Check it out.’”
— Masters of Terror
“The deeply emotional quality of Braunbeck's work pulls you in, makes it almost impossible for you not to sympathize with his characters. Braunbeck combines brutal, horrific events and incredible tenderness in his character's reactions ... [some scenes] just plain gave me the creeps — I mean hairs-on-end, chill-down-the-spine, what's-that-in-the-corner-of-my-eye kind of creeps. This novel should not be missed.”
— Dark Planet
“A genuinely disturbing book. Braunbeck taps into a power cable.”
— The New York Review of Science Fiction
In Silent Graves
“‘A fine setting for a fit of despair,’ it occurred to him. ‘If only I were standing here by accident instead of design.’”
—Kafka, The Castle
“My neighbors’ bodies are neat and clean,
but their brains are caked with the dust
of generations of low hopes and ignorant fear
their lives were fossilized well before birth.”
—Lucy A. Snyder
“Permian Basin Blues”
“Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist,
and into them enters suffering, in order that they
may have existence.”
—Leon Bloy
INVOCATION
...later—after the sirens died down and the area was cordoned off, after the strobing visibar lights blinked out and everyone was questioned, after shock and horror slowly transformed into disgust and grief, after the crowd was dispersed and the coroner’s wagon pulled away with its grotesque, grim cargo—one of the officers made a last sweep of the scene and found a neatly-folded sheet of stationary tucked into a corner of the bureau’s chipped and dingy mirror. This discovery would lead detectives to search the ruins of the motel room again, this time to find a thick envelope taped to the underside of a drawer in the writing table. Inside this envelope were hundreds of pages, both handwritten and typed, which would answer all of their questions—forget that the answers did not fit neatly into the cubically-contained prison of their consensual reality.
But, for the moment, there was only this small, neatly-folded piece of paper, taken from the corner of the chipped and dingy mirror.
The script was delicate and exquisitely feminine, the spaces between each word painstakingly exact, the angle of her slant almost Elizabethan in its fluid grace, each letter a blossom, each word a bouquet, the sentence itself a breathtaking garland: Send me a picture of the daughter we never had, the bright little girl with chubby pink cheeks and wistful smile and wide gray eyes that say, I used to feel lonely but it’s all better now....
Most of the world t
hinks that’s where Robert Londrigan’s story came to its end, but we know better, don’t we?
It’s time now. The moon is full and high above; there are sounds out there beyond this warm firelight, lonely and semihuman; and around your feet swirls the fog, nightbreath of the river, come to hide you from the things making those lonely sounds.
Don’t be afraid. Remember the words you were taught? They’ll protect you, if in your heart you truly believe.
Do you remember?
Fine; all together, now:
Come forward, Robert Londrigan, and bring your memories and the gods and heroes of your childhood with you; come forward for the wonder of men and women cleaving to one another and the children who spring forth from the coupling; step from the shadows of the past and tell us what the good American man you once were did that was so bad in the eyes of God and humankind that you were forced to flee the company of people; come forward eager to cast light all about in the dark corners of the last thirty-seven days of your existence and make clear to us what happened once upon a time; you don’t need a muse to tell your story, you need a voice that stands in front of you like a sign marking the end of your journey, one filled with compassion and some touch of pity and hardened with anger to a shine; come forward and give body and entitledness and boldness to your tale before it falls victim to those who would make it myth, give it life with a voice that now takes its place in front of you, ready to begin, to weave the strands together, to paint your portrait in just detail, to reveal with which doll the nesting set truly begins; come forward! Let us speak the man you once were back into existence.
PART ONE
PRETTY PICTURES
“Perhaps more of her still moves
in the scattered elements her soul shed;
she’s in the ground, she’s in the air,
and as her blood once thrilled
at hearing exotic tales of travel
to places that she could never see,
now she travels in a slow, millennial
circulation around the continents,
pulled by the sun and moon, and now
she knows what Ocean really means.”
—L. A. Snyder,
“Photograph of a Lady, Circa 1890"
FEBURARY 13
Cedar Hill Division of Police
Homicide Unit
Inter-Office Memo
From: Bill Emerson
To: Ben Littlejohn
Hey, Pard,
First of all, happy Valentine’s Day. Sorry I don’t have a box of chocolates for you, but here’s a little present, nonetheless. Montrose homicide decided to overnight this to us instead of faxing it piecemeal like they’ve been doing. I guess they were sick of me calling them half-a-dozen times a day (I can be a big pain in the you-know-what, no surprise to you, I’m guessing). I have their guarantee that this is a “full and complete copy” of the contents of the envelope they found taped to the bottom of the desk drawer. Tell you the truth, after reading this, I don’t know what the hell to think. I should also warn you that they had extra sets of photographs made, and the Polaroids are even worse than the few they made public right after it happened. Cap’n Goldstein informs me that after we all have ourselves a looksee, this stuff is to be sealed and never opened again, case closed, cha-cha-cha. The investigation is now officially in limbo and, considering what you’re going to find in here, maybe it’s best that some cases be left alone. I don’t know. Didn’t sleep too well last night after finishing it. The Polaroids in particular are pretty gruesome. Considering that you and Cheryl just found out about her being preggers (congratulations, by the way!) it maybe wouldn’t be the greatest idea for you to look at them. But you’re a big boy, you can make your own decisions. Okay, that’s it for me, pal. By the time you’re reading this tomorrow, Eunice and me will be on our way to London. She’s really looking forward to the trip and keeps reminding me that I haven’t had a vacation in four years. I hope I enjoy it; from what I understand, they serve their beer room-temperature over there. Oh joy.
You know what gets to me the most? I talked with this guy maybe four, five times, and not once did my yo-yo alarm go off.
Maybe, to quote Danny Glover from any of the Lethal Weapon movies, I’m getting too old for this s--t.
Bill
Chapter 1
To whoever eventually finds this, please understand this one thing above all else: I never intended to do harm.
But I guess that old Philosophy 101 adage is true: No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
* * *
When I was a young boy and sick with fever, my mother would sit at my bedside and read stories, usually fairy tales or mysteries. I preferred fairy tales but she liked mysteries the best—especially Sherlock Holmes and Raymond Chandler—because they were, she said, like a flower: “Imagine that the solution is what’s at the center of the flower, but you can’t get to it yet because the bell has to bloom and the petals have to open one by one. I always like to think of it that way: the truth is the fruit in the middle of the flower.”
Whenever she said that, my gaze would inevitably wander to the sets of nesting dolls that she collected and that littered my childhood home; if there was an empty space on the mantel, or a bureau, or table, or bookshelf, my mother would fill that space with her nesting dolls.
It wasn’t until later, after I had grown into something resembling a responsible adult and gotten married to a woman who shared my mother’s fascination with the little mothers, that I learned the proper term for them was matryoshka dolls.
Still, the more I thought about it while sick with fever (and I had been a sickly child, seemingly always in bed with a fever, or infection, or migraine, or some injury sustained while feeling healthy and having decided to push my luck too far with a game of football, or tag, or simply tossing a Frisbee), I realized that my mother’s interpretation of the Mystery Flower could just as well be applied to her matryoshka dolls: Imagine the solution is the final, smallest doll contained within all the others, but you can’t yet get to it because the rest of them have to be disassembled one by one.
Such taxing metaphors often proved to be too much for my young mind, so I would ask her to read something from the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson and would lose myself in the worlds of Once Upon a Time.
The myriad deceptions inherent in “Once Upon a Time” are seductive even to adults, for the phrase implies no boundaries to the possibilities of events. In a “Once Upon a Time” world anything can happen...except, of course, to you. I used to wonder at what point in our childhoods we come to realize and accept that those four words led us into worlds that never existed, introduced us to people who never were, and described adventures that never happened, and so had no significant bearing on our actual lives.
As a child I longed for “Once Upon a Time.”
As an adult I dismissed it.
Now I have no choice but to embrace it.
Look, over there, and whisper to yourself: Once Upon a Time—
—a small group of ghost-children moved across the street under the diffuse silver light of the October moon, bags in one hand, flashlights in the other, each giggling in anticipation at the treasures waiting for them—the chocolate bars, the bubble gum, the licorice sticks, and the who-can-imagine-what wonders—as they chanted: “Tonight is the night when dead leaves fly/Like witches on switches across the sky....”
The man in the park stared at them, then shook his head and glared downward as if the ground were the sole source of his troubles.
Of all the lame-brained and half-assed pearls of so-called wisdom that turned a person’s intellectual landscape into the razed ruins of Dresden after the war, none, the man decided, was more imbecilic than You have to take the bad with the good—may the person or persons who dreamed up that one languish in Purgatory or wherever it was God (or whoever was in charge of this freak show) sent those whose propensity for new buzzwords and catch-phrases reduced the ma
ss I.Q. to less than a child’s shoe size.
The bad with the good. Uh-huh.
And so he sat on this bench in Dell Memorial Park on this Halloween night stewing over the argument he’d found waiting for him when he’d arrived home from work forty minutes ago, trying his best not to get annoyed with the sights and sounds of the trick-or-treaters as they made their happy way from house to house, noting with amusement that there were even some adults and teenagers who’d donned masks and costumes, much to the delight of the younger ones.
He watched them for a few moments, his annoyance transforming into gratitude; at least they gave him something else with which to occupy his thoughts for the moment.
And now as I look on that still figure, the me of a mere thirty-seven days ago, as I look down through the darkening tunnel of nearly three million, two hundred thousand seconds, I cannot smile at him. He embarrasses me. He fills me with sorrow. He shames me. I regret the things he did and the things he did not do; I shake my head in pity for the things he didn’t see happening and for the things he should have seen coming. I blush at his desires. I can no longer share—let alone understand—most of his dreams. The child may be the father of the man, but who is to say we must love our children, even as we sit next to their sick bed reading Flower Mysteries or fairy tales?
I wish I could say that I miss him.
How to convey some sense of what he was like?