“‘Yes, I see them. So many children. Your brothers and sister...and I despair. Yes, I despair!’
“Upon the Prince’s death, Siempre’s mask-face was thrown into a vat of bubbling clay in hopes the fiery temperature would destroy it. When later the vat was emptied, the Harlequin’s mask-face, now forever encased in clay, tumbled onto the floor.
“A servant whose duty it was to dispose of the mask-face claimed that, as she lifted it from the floor, its still lips suddenly formed a benevolent smile. Terrified, she hurled the mask-face against a wall, where it shattered into thirteen pieces. These pieces were gathered and distributed among the most trusted of the Prince’s guards—myself included. Each of us was given a map of a different continent, then instructed to take our section of the mask-face, journey to our assigned continent, buy a horse of the strongest and noblest lineage, and travel as far as our horses could carry us. When neither we nor our horses could move any farther, we were to dig a hole thirteen feet deep, bury our section of the mask-face, and fill in the hole so that no one would be able to tell it was there.
“Each soldier carried out his duties to the letter.
“Except for one.
“Me.
“I knew in my heart that the palace must be left with some reminder of what the Prince had done to Siempre, so on the night before I was to leave on my journey, I stole into the courtyard in the middle of the night and buried my section there. In the morning I left with the others, so as to not arouse suspicion.
“But that one section of the mask-face remains buried in the ruins of the palace. And every night, when the moon is high and the animals fall silent, know that it is because the Harlequin walks the ruins, searching for the piece of his One True Face, buried beneath the rubble.”
His tale finished, Hazlitt rose, picked up his pack, and wished everyone in the square a good night. It was only as he neared the edge of the village that he turned and saw a young boy following him.
“You would be the orphaned boy, Rael?” asked Hazlitt, for a dream the previous night had told him he would meet this child.
“Yes, sir, that I be.”
Gesturing the child closer, Hazlitt reached into his pack and removed a long, thin, shiny object, which he placed into Rael’s hands. “This, boy, is the very flute which the Prince often played to signal his guards it was time to begin the torture of one more innocent child. I took it from his fat, disgusting body that day. You take it now, Rael, and learn to play only the most beautiful of tunes upon it. Then, for me, play those tunes as often and as well as you can.”
“But the villagers,” said Rael, “they might grow tired of my playing.”
Hazlitt smiled. “That is why you cannot remain here, boy. Come close, and I’ll tell you a secret.”
And the old guard told the boy where lay the thirteen places on this earth that the pieces of the mask-face were buried. “Each is buried at the base of a mountain, boy, and you’ll know these mountains because each of them will open for you if you command them to do so.” Hazlitt then told Rael the words he must speak to make the mountains open up. “I’ll show you the first,” said the old guard, “for it’s right there, easily seen from the village square. The rest you will find easily enough on your own.
“Find others such as yourself, Rael, and let your music bring joy into their lives. And if you find the music is not enough, then take them with you into the mountains, to the special world that waits within.”
Patting the boy’s head and pointing him toward the place where the mountain would open on his command, Hazlitt wandered into the night to find a suitable place to die. He was never seen or heard from again.
As for the orphan boy, Rael, he did as Hazlitt told him, and eventually found all ofthe opening mountains. He lived a long life, filled with friends and music and many great adventures—perhaps you’ve even read about some of them. He once played his music for the children in a village called Hamelin. But that is another story for another time.
Until then, look there, up toward the ruins. See the shuffling, hunched figure making its way over the collapsed walls and piles of stones? Could that be Siempre, still searching? So quiet are the animals. So still. Do you think they have known the treasure of the old rose? Perhaps the Harlequin is not looking for his face, at all; perhaps he searches for dusty petals, or jagged sections of an ancient, smashed vase.
Perhaps he has forgotten what he is searching for.
We can only wonder, and listen to the echo of a sweet, distant music....
At the bottom of the last page, written in the same sloppy, childlike script as the rest of the story, were two sentences: Did she ever tell you this one, Willy? Hope you decided to stop and smell the Old Rose!
As soon as Robert finished reading those words, the pages, the covers, the yarn, all crumbled to dust in his hands, drifting through the air and down between his fingers, vanishing before even one particle touched the floor.
This neither shocked nor surprised him, because the only thing he could think at that moment was: The fucker was here! He was in this house!
This house where Lynn and Eric and Danny slept.
“Why bring them into this?” he whispered. “They’ve got nothing to do with—”
—he suddenly doubled over, sobbing loudly, the repressed grief snarling to the surface and joining hands with his fear and growing paranoia, dragging steel hooks against his suddenly-pliant soul, shredding him to ribbons. He stumbled backward and collapsed onto the bed, his nose bleeding again as he wrapped his arms around one of the pillows and pulled it close to his chest because he needed to feel something against him, near him, part of him, something other than this pit where his memories felt like cement and every emotion turned into a straight-razor that slashed his guts into pulp—
—he shuddered once again, the tears like metal shavings in his eyes as his grief, at last undammed, gushed through him until his nostrils were clogged and his throat was raw and choked with backwashed blood from his nose—
—ohgod, what was he going to do? Who was this crazy fuck who’d broken his nose and stolen the body of his daughter, and why did the bastard have to break into Lynn and Danny’s house, and there was no way he could explain this to anyone and not sound like he’d gone off the deep end, he had no proof, the book had just poof’d away into nothing and why did he have to look for something to read in the first place, all he wanted was to sleep and he’d almost made it, he’d almost made it to the funeral without letting it get the better of him. Who the hell did he think he was kidding with his “I can’t cry for them” crap? There was no can’t about it. He simply wouldn’t allow himself.
Portrait of a Failed Macho Man, undone by a fairy story.
So he lay there, the convulsions becoming progressively less severe, the flow of blood from his nose staunching itself, his sobs turning into soft, pitiful, ragged croaks.
He flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling, wondering for just a moment if there was a beam up there that could take his weight.
Denise would have kicked his ass for thinking something like that.
He listened for the sound of Lynn’s footsteps in the hall; he had to have wakened her.
Nothing: no sound, no voices, no movement.
He pulled himself into a sitting position, putting his head between his bended knees to ease the rising nausea, the tears still trickling down his numbed cheeks. He considered what he should do next. He decided to pull Danny aside tomorrow and tell him—after all, hadn’t Lynn said something about Danny owning a gun? He’d have to tell Bill Emerson about this, as well; if Split-Face was going to start stalking Lynn and her family, Robert wanted something done to stop it now. Coming after him was one thing, but this....
Not within reach of his arm. Split-Face would not harm any of them.
Never.
Sometime later, he lifted his head when the first plaintive morning song of a bird filtered in from beyond the frosted window. Stumbling like a drunk
ard and wondering why in hell this bird hadn’t flown south like it was supposed to, he lurched out of bed and to the window, rolling up the blind.
Outside it was purple-gray; dawn just creeping in, night not quite finished with the world yet. A glittering layer of ice-snow enshrouded the yard as a dispirited breeze sloughed its way through the trees.
Unable to find any trace of the bird, he closed his eyes and pressed his head against the damp window glass. The contrast of its icy temperature against his own feverish one jarred him and he pulled away, snapping open his eyes.
Denise stood behind him in the window’s reflection—naked, her hair tumbling down over her shoulders, a dark velvet cradle laying gently against the slope of her breasts. He watched as her arms slipped around him, her fingers twirling patterns into his sparse, matted chest hair, then gliding down, down, her fingertips brushing over his nipples as they swept down, slowly down, teasingly down, pausing playfully as she lay her cheek against his bare shoulder, then rolling her head around so her lips kissed the nape of his neck, then one of her hands reached below his waist with craving and purpose; he arched his back to make it easier for her, not daring to turn around because he knew she’d be gone, only in this amorphous reflection could they be together, so he was content to watch as she kissed his neck and rubbed his stomach and massaged his cock in a way that always drove him into a frenzy—
—watched, but didn’t feel any of it.
At all.
God help him, he couldn’t feel anything at all.
* * *
Lynn was furious when she saw the state of the pillows and sheets later that morning. “Dammit, Bobby!” she snapped at him over breakfast. “Why didn’t you wake me up? It wouldn’t’ve been any trouble to get fresh sheets and pillow cases.”
“Like to watch people bleed in the middle of the night, do you?”
“Oh, sarcasm, that’s good—but then, that’s my Big Bestest Brother. Always have to do it alone, don’t you?”
“Write a new verse to that song.”
She poured him another cup of coffee and placed two more strips of freshly-grilled bacon beside his pancakes. “You seemed okay last night. What brought it on? You have bad dreams or something?”
“Or something.” He speared a good-sized chunk of pancake onto his fork and stuffed it into his mouth before she could ask him for more details.
“You should have woke me up,” Lynn whispered, sitting down. She glared at him for a long moment, then her features softened as she reached across the table and took his hand. She looked into his eyes and Robert nodded his head. Words would only have diminished what passed between them.
Robert glanced through the morning newspaper Lynn had been reading when he came into the kitchen. It felt good, felt normal, to be doing this, sitting at a breakfast table, sipping coffee and flipping through the paper, just like millions of other people were doing at this moment.
He turned the page, folded the paper, then folded it again, then one more time (something that used to drive Denise crazy), and was preparing to read an article about yet more road work on I-70 when he saw the article at the bottom left, next to a used-car lot advertisement:
Donor Heart Lost In Transit
The story told him just enough to tell him nothing at all: A donor heart that was Life-Flighted from a central Ohio hospital to the Columbus International Airport appeared to have been lost somewhere en route to Johns Hopkins. All that was known for certain was that the heart—intended for a three-year-old—was inside its transport container when it was placed aboard the plane, but when the container was opened in the operating room at JH, there was nothing inside but ice and what one source described as “...some sort of decayed tissue.” The tissue was being analyzed and the child—whose name was Heather Wilson—was in guarded condition. The family was hoping another heart would become available.
No...thought Robert, remembering the small heart within his daughter’s chest that beat softly when his finger brushed its surface. No, it couldn’t have been hers. It couldn’t have been...please, no....
“Hey, you.”
He looked up at Lynn, blinking at the sight of her face as if emerging from a dream. “Huh? Wh-what?”
“You seemed to have wandered off the highway for a minute.”
“Uh, yeah...I guess I did.” A pitiful smile. “Sorry about that.”
Finishing his breakfast—surprised that at least his appetite was getting back to normal—he looked around for his coat and said, “I’m going to head back over to the house and take a shower. Tell Dan thanks for the shirt. I’ll return it later this week.”
Lynn quickly gathered the breakfast dishes. “Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll come with you. Eric and Danny are still asleep—Eric slept with us last night. I’ll leave Danny a note to let him know we’ll meet him at the funeral home. The babysitter should get here about—”
“No,” said Robert firmly. “I’ll be fine—wait, scratch that: I hate the thought of having to go back there by myself but—”
“—then just let me—”
“—it’s something I have to do, understand?” He rose from the table and hugged Lynn so tightly he was surprised he didn’t crack one of her ribs. “Thanks for fixing up my nose gear again this morning. You’ve been really great. I never thought when we were kids that you’d grow up to be someone I love and need so much. But I have to face the house, eventually, so unless you and Danny and Eric want to put this place up for sale and move in with me, I’ll have to do it by myself.”
“But I—”
“—already have two men in your life who depend on you for damn near everything. You don’t need to adopt me.”
She pulled back, grinned, wiped one of her eyes, then playfully slapped his shoulder. If it weren’t for the sadness behind her gaze, she could have passed for happy. “You’re right—and don’t think it doesn’t pain me to admit that.” She smoothed down the collar of Robert’s borrowed shirt. “But you tell anyone I said that, I’ll disown you.”
“No, you won’t.”
“No, I won’t—but it sure sounded full of conviction, didn’t it?” A tear slipped from her eye; she wiped it away with an angry hand. “Don’t worry about me, I can’t help it. Denise’s dying just got me to thinking about things, y’know? How it seems like the two of us were always depending on people who wound up deserting us—not that I’m saying Denise deserted you, right, but her being so suddenly not there anymore, it just reminded me of...of....”
“I understand, Lynn. Really, I do.” He was annoyed by the distress in his voice but was damned if he’d let her know it. “And you and I will...we’ll talk about things, sort through some of that old shit that should’ve been taken care of long ago. But not now. Later, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She stuck out her pinkie. “Pinkie-Swear?”
“You haven’t asked me to do that since you were four.”
“Pinkie-Swear?”
They locked pinkie fingers, twisted them once to the left, then right, then pulled apart. “May I leave now?”
“You may.”
“Thanks, Teach.” Robert kissed her cheek, grabbed his coat from one of the hooks by the back door, took his keys from the counter where Danny had left them, and left.
He did not notice the crumpled popcorn bag lying in the snow beside the back door; nor did he see the movie theater ticket stub he stepped on as he walked toward his car. Had he noticed either of these things, he might have been compelled to turn around; and having done so, he would have seen his handkerchief, freshly-washed and air-dried (and now embroidered with his initials) hanging from the hook where, in warmer weather, Lynn tied one end of her clothesline.
Chapter 3
Pieces of an incomplete device: a house, a street, a sad and confused man pulling his car into the driveway.
Robert decided the best way to deal with the house was to simply keep moving once he was through the front
door, and he did just that.
Straight into the oddly chilly kitchen, never once looking up from the floor, to feed and water the cats, then upstairs to shower, shave, choose a suit Denise would have liked from the closet (not looking for too long at any of her clothes hanging alongside his own), then to put on a tie, find his best dress shoes, and return downstairs to give each cat a perfunctory head-scratching before leaving them again to an empty and cheerless house.
Outside, cold light shone down, making the snow sparkle, making things bright enough to guard a little while longer against the trespass of black, meaningless space and time.
This house, filled with a cold breeze wafting from the kitchen; this street, snow-silent and slumbering; this hollow man driving to his wife’s funeral as two cats, both mewling for further human contact, watched him leave from their places on the window seat in the living room.
All components of the same device.
Brief, sorrowful, afterthought lives on lonely planet Earth.
* * *
She had been moved to the small ersatz-chapel in the west wing of the funeral home. Robert saw the dozens of mourners milling in that direction and knew he wasn’t ready to face things just yet, so he ducked into the cramped “coffee room” to the right of the main entrance.
Gene MacIntyre was already there.
“I figured you’d probably want to hide out for a few minutes,” said the news director, handing Robert a steaming cup of something that looked like tar. “Nice decoration on your nose, there.”
Robert said nothing as he took the coffee and sipped; it tasted a hell of a lot better than it looked, and that was a pleasant surprise. Tossing his coat onto the back of a chair, Robert sat on the small sofa while MacIntyre refilled his own cup then hovered near the door, occasionally craning his head into the hall like some nervous lookout at a bank heist.
In Silent Graves Page 11