In Silent Graves

by Gary A Braunbeck

  After a moment, he reached over and took one of Robert’s hands, squeezing it.

  “Goddammit, Mr. Londrigan,” he said, finally meeting Robert’s gaze. “God. Damn. It. I am so sorry about your wife and kid. It’s a terrible thing. A tragedy. I...I don’t know what to say to you so you’ll know just how awful I feel for you.” He looked like he was going to burst into tears. “I just can’t imagine how...I mean, what...I mean...goddammit. God. Damn. It.”

  “Thank you,” croaked Robert, releasing Emerson’s hand.

  The detective produced a handkerchief from yet another pocket, blew his nose, then got back to business. “I’m not going to be long here, Mr. Londrigan—partly because there’s only so much I can ask, mostly because you look like the painkillers are gonna knock you for a loop any second now. I’ve talked to the nurses and Doctor Steinman and the morgue attendants and a bunch of other people and think I’ve got most of the information. What I need to know from you is, did you get a good look at the guy’s face?”

  “Not really. He was wearing a Halloween mask.”

  “Oh joy. Can you describe the mask?”

  Robert did, in as much detail as he could recall. As he spoke, it seemed to him there was something else he ought to be telling the detective...something about...pictures? He couldn’t remember.

  Emerson finished writing it down, then looked up with his melancholy puppy eyes and asked, “This may sound stupid, but did you ever see this guy before he attacked you in the morgue?”

  “Yes. I saw him in Dell Memorial Park earlier this evening—I mean, yesterday evening, last night—”

  “I understand. Did anything happen that might have made him angry with you? Anything that he might think needed to be avenged?”

  “I said ‘hi,’ complimented his mask, and he told me to go fuck myself.”

  “Is that all? Nothing else was said, there was no other exchange between the two of you?”

  “I....” Robert’s throat felt tight and dry. “Could I bother you to hand me that cup of water, please?”

  “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry,” said Emerson. “Didn’t occur to me that those painkillers’re probably making you dry as a bone.” He held the cup while Robert sipped through the straw. “You good to go, then?”

  Robert nodded his head. “You’re very kind.”

  Emerson took his seat on the metal stool. “So tell me, was there anything else said between the two of you?”

  “Yes. He kept calling me ‘Willy’ for some reason—both at the park and when he attacked me in the morgue. He also said something else, something that I’m sure was a quotation of some sort.”

  “Can you remember it? Doesn’t have to be word for word.”

  As best he could, Robert repeated the words to Emerson, who copied them into his notebook, sat back, ran a delicate hand through his thick white hair, and said, “Huh.”

  Robert tried to sit up. “What is it?”

  “I’ve either heard or read this somewhere before.”

  “I thought the same thing.”

  “Could be it’s a line from a famous song or poem or something like that. Huh.” Emerson closed his notebook.

  “Can I ask you a question, Detective?”

  “You bet.”

  “Why did he steal my daughter’s body?” Robert’s voice cracked on the last three words. Bill Emerson reached up and squeezed his shoulder.

  “My guess, Mr. Londrigan, is that it’s some sort of sick Halloween fraternity prank. Pledges have been known to pull shit like this in order to get in. That’s the assumption I’m going on for the moment.” He looked at his watch. “In a couple of hours, after the sun’s up, officers with search warrants are gonna start sweeping through every frat house, kitchen, and dorm room at OSU and Denison University. A pledge who’d do something like this isn’t exactly in danger of becoming a member of MENSA. He’s probably got the thing—uh, excuse me—your daughter’s body, stashed in a freezer nearby so he can produce it quickly when his potential frat brothers demand evidence. I just hope we find your daughter fast, before word of the searches gets out. ‘Course, once we find out who it was last night that wore this mask you described...well, I don’t think it’s going to be long before we have your assailant and your daughter. Meantime, you try to rest.”

  Despite the throbbing pain it brought, Robert shook his head. A single tear slid down his cheek. “Not here,” he whispered. It was almost like a prayer.

  Emerson leaned closer. “I beg your pardon?”

  Robert blinked, then focused on the detective as best he could. Right now, this beefy man with the sad eyes and white hair and disparate hands was the only friend he had, and, like it or not, Robert had to trust him. “I don’t want to stay here, Detective. My wife died here. My daughter’s body was stolen from this place. Doctor Steinman said I don’t have a concussion, so I’d like to go home, but I’m in no shape to drive and I don’t want to call my sister or anyone else to come get me because I don’t think I could stand all their tears and embraces and wringing hands, and I don’t mean to bother or annoy you but you seem like a very decent man so I was just wondering if—”

  Emerson gestured for Robert to stop talking. “I’ll tell the doctor I’m driving you home. My pleasure. Be right back.” He started out the door, paused, then turned back and said: “This has got nothing to do with anything, and maybe isn’t the most considerate or sensitive thing to say to you right now, but you seem like you could use a few moments’ distraction and maybe this’ll be dumb enough to take your mind off your grief for a second or two, but...I heard a couple of orderlies talking before I came in here and...did you know that two nurses with scissors can make an unconscious man naked in eleven seconds? Isn’t that the most useless piece of information you’ve heard this week?”

  Robert smiled at Emerson, even though it hurt like hell…a genuine, grateful smile. “Thank you for that.”

  “I suggest you try not sneeze whilst I run my errand. Could be uncomfortable.”

  Chapter 3

  It was well after three a.m. by the time Bill Emerson’s car pulled in front of the house, and Robert made no move to open the passenger door; instead he sat there, quite still and more than a little buzzed on the painkillers, staring out the window at the front door of the structure that he now could no longer think of as home.

  After a few more moments of silence, Bill Emerson cleared his throat and said, “I got the right address, didn’t I?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah...sure. This’s where I live.”

  “You okay to walk on your own? I could give you some help if you—”

  “No, no thank you. I think I’ll be able to....” The thought collapsed inward, and he fell silent once again. He pressed his hands into his lap. The steps to the front door looked so far away. The house looked so empty. The night could not possibly have been any blacker.

  “You know what I was thinking on the way over here?” he finally said.

  Emerson said nothing; he seemed content to sit and listen.

  “I was thinking about all the pictures of Denise that I don’t have.” Robert turned his head toward the detective. “From the first day I met her, Denise had this thing about having her picture taken. I had to beg her to have a photograph taken of us at our wedding, can you imagine that? Christ, I can remember times when we’d be at a party or some social function the station was having, and she’d spot someone with a camera and practically run from the room. One time I tried to sneak up on her and snap a picture with an old Instamatic. I swear, I think if she’d had a gun in her hand, she would have shot me. I have never in my life met someone so violently opposed to having her picture taken.

  “Last Thanksgiving, we went to her mother’s house, and I figured that while I was there, I’d dig around and find some pictures of Denise—hell, I mean, she and her mother didn’t much get along, but the woman had to have some pictures of her own daughter, right?” Robert shook his head. “Not a goddamn one. In fact, aside from one picture of
her own wedding, the woman had no photographs whatsoever in her home. Not on the mantel, on any of the little tables next to the sofa or chairs, none. What the hell kind of family has no photographs of their kids? A child’s growing up, it happens so quickly, most parents have tons and tons of pictures, y’know? To mark each moment before it’s gone forever. Not Denise’s mother. I suppose Denise got her objection to photographs from the woman. And I was thinking that I’m pissed as hell at both of them right now because all I have to remember what my wife looked like is the one—count it, one—photo she allowed to be taken at our wedding...that, and the picture on her driver’s license. Those have to last me the rest of my life.

  “Guess I’m...I’m feeling a little sorry for myself.”

  “I think you might be entitled to it, all things considered.”

  Robert smiled at Emerson. “You have pictures of your wife?”

  “Yes. And she’s got lots of pictures of me.”

  “That’s really great.” Robert looked once more at the front door of his house, then opened the car door and started to get out.

  “Don’t forget these,” said Emerson, handing him a white paper bag from the hospital pharmacy.

  “Oh, right. Thanks.” Robert took the bag and shook the detective’s hand. “I really appreciate the lift.”

  Emerson shook his head. “I just wish there was more I could do for you, Mr. Londrigan. I mean, what with...goddammit, you know? God. Damn. It.”

  Robert nodded his agreement, then closed the door, turned, and made his way slowly up the steps. Tucking the bag of prescriptions into his jacket pocket, he breathed the frosty October air as he fumbled the key into the lock, then turned and waved at Bill Emerson, who returned the gesture and slowly drove away.

  Robert stood there in the cold blackness and looked around; no neighbors were pulling back their curtains to see his return, and that suited him just fine. While many of the people—the ones he’d bother getting to know, anyway—were good folks, he had no desire to hear anyone tell him how sorry they were for his loss.

  He stretched slightly, touched the metal splint taped to his nose, and started to turn the key—

  —the front door clicked open about a quarter of an inch.

  He stared at it, wondering if some industrious burglar had seen what happened earlier, had seen the ambulance and his frenzied exit, and taken advantage of an Opportunity when it presented itself

  (Vulture Culture)

  or if...yes, that had to be it—he remembered slamming the door closed behind him as he ran out earlier (right?), but now he could not for the life of him remember locking it.

  Good thing this was a safe neighborhood. This was not the first time he’d left the house and forgotten to lock the door behind him; when that had happened, he’d returned to find the place just as he’d left it. There was no reason to think this time would be any different...at least as far as the stuff inside was concerned.

  And even if it were, even if he found the place emptied of all its valuables, he didn’t care right now; he just wanted a warm bath and a change of clothes and then to sleep for a few hundred thousand years.

  Upon entering, he closed the door behind him and made sure this time to lock the damn thing, engaging the two dead-bolts as well, then stumbled through the living room and went straight into the kitchen to make himself a cup of chamomile tea.

  The house did not close in on him as he’d expected. There was silence, yes, but it was not the morbid, anxious silence that descends on a house after a recent death. This was, if anything, an anticipatory silence, a hold-your-breath-someone’s-coming silence, vigilant and expectant.

  Robert found it unnerving.

  Somewhere in the basement, one of the cats—he couldn’t tell if it was Tasha or The Winnie—yowled, the sound low and mournful. Poor things, he thought; they know that something’s wrong but don’t know what they should do about it.

  He suddenly wished they’d come up here to keep him company, and damn his allergies. He wanted to feel the warmth of affectionate life against his hand. He turned on the overhead kitchen lights, called their names, waited, and when neither one emerged, he called again.

  Nothing.

  Maybe they were mad at him for what he’d said earlier about causing him to take all the allergy pills.

  He wished they’d come up; he wanted to apologize to them. Maybe a can of salmon would be sufficient to demonstrate his remorse. He considered going down to fetch them, but the idea of turning on the lights and seeing Denise’s perpetually messy work area and all of the unfinished matryoshka dolls was more than he could handle, knowing that whatever work of hers had been unfinished earlier this evening would remain unfinished forever and that it would be up to him to box it up and store it away somewhere.

  (...all of us, someday...)

  He could neither look at nor think about it now; for the time being, the cats would have to make do with his having called for them.

  He sat at the kitchen table and watched the steam from the tea create dreamscape shapes in the air. For one second the steam formed Denise’s profile, and suddenly he was seized by panic because he couldn’t recall the details of her face, so he took out his wallet and opened it to its sole photograph: their wedding. God, she’d been so beautiful. Her gaze held everything for him: promise, possibility, passion. Robert found himself remembering every nuance about the moment the picture was taken: the scent of her perfume, the slant of light, the bead of sweat that ran down his spine, the aroma of the flowers on the altar, the way she held his hand and squeezed it—not one long squeeze but a series of them, as if in rhythm with her heart, now his as well: squeeze (I Denise take thee Robert to be my wedded Husband), release, squeeze (…to love and to cherish till death…), release, the two of them exchanging themselves with every pulse, every breath, each willingly bestowing something to the other until, at the moment the photograph was taken, they were no longer Robert and Denise but a one beyond Oneness. This day; this time; this breath; this love: Immortal.

  Only now it wasn’t. Now it was simply another What Should Have Been.

  Christ, but he’d squandered so much time that could have been spent enriching her life.

  “Aw...shit,” he whispered, closing the wallet and dropping it onto the table.

  He wiped his eyes, then sipped at his tea. It was too hot, so he carried the mug to the sink, added cold water, and took another of the painkillers Steinman had prescribed. That’s when one the cats staged a sneak-attack.

  Well, not attack, exactly, not in the usual sense of the word: The Winnie, the biggest of the two, trundled up to him, sat her over-wide, furry black butt directly onto his left foot, and meowed. Loudly.

  Robert reached down and stroked the back of her neck. The Winnie, obviously pleased by this rare show of affection from him, let fly with her small-chainsaw purr and arched her back.

  She’s probably wondering where Denise is.

  He called for Tasha again and was answered by her faint Don’t-bug-me-I’m-tired squeak from the bottom of the basement stairs.

  “Ah, hell, you two,” Robert said. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier.” He grabbed the bag of cat food from the pantry and filled their bowls to overflowing, gave them fresh water, a saucer of milk each, cracked open a can of salmon, and divided it evenly between two small plates that he set next to their regular bowls.

  The Winnie cautiously approached the feast he’d laid out, sniffed at the food, then looked up at him with wide eyes: Who are you and what have you done with the man who lives here?

  Then she ate—somewhat sloppily, as was her fashion.

  Knowing that the salmon on Tasha’s side didn’t stand a chance if she didn’t get up here to eat it (The Winnie assumed that all food was intended for her and her alone), Robert went to the basement door and pulled it open wide, calling for Tasha—

  —and saw that the lights down in Denise’s work area were on.

  He stared for a moment, wondering how
he could have missed that; when he’d come in here the kitchen was dark, so there should have been at least a small slash of light beneath the basement door. He would have noticed that, even under these circumstances; over the years, both he and Denise had trained themselves to turn off a light whenever they left a room, often doing so without even being aware of it.

  He moved onto the first basement stair, cringing at the deep groan it made under his weight. Four years they’d lived here, and still the creaky stairs gave him the willies.

  He took the stairs one at a time, slowly stooping over as he descended in order to (hopefully) get a better look before he had to go all the way down.

  He did not want to be here, not right now; he did not want to go all the way into the basement but couldn’t say why; he knew only that something in the back of his mind was warning him to take that bath and follow it with the hundred-thousand-year nap.

  The smart thing to do was turn around and go back to the kitchen.

  So, naturally, he kept descending.

  Tasha cried out again, sounding almost in pain, so Robert took the stairs two at a time until he was standing in the basement.

  He called for Tasha again, who exploded from behind the washing machine and flew up the stairs without so much as a hello. Robert shook his head—man, but was he getting loopy from the painkillers—and started over to turn off the lights.

  Then paused to look at Denise’s work area.

  Her cluttered, messy, always-in-the-middle-of-finishing-something work area.

  All of the major items were in place, the table and hutch and cubby shelves, the chair and lamp, the small filing cabinet that served as an end-table where she used to set her sketching pads or drinking glass, but what slapped a vice clamp on his spirit were the other items; the opened sketching pads, the drawings and Polaroids taped to the hutch, the pencils strewn about, the tubes of acrylic paint, the brushes lying on the edge of the table, ready to clatter to the floor if someone didn’t move them and quick, and, most of all, the new set of matryoshka dolls with blank surfaces waiting for their faces.