Her version of a smile—something between a snarl and a smirk—appeared on her face. “I’m glad you can still recognize me.”
Her strawberry blonde hair was shorter than it had been when she and Robert were together, but aside from that—and her having lost a little weight—she still looked the same: same placid face covered with creamy, wrinkle-free flesh; same perfectly-shaped lips; same heavy eyebrows that she always spent at least ten minutes plucking and shaping every morning; and the same haughty, distant, almost condescending glint in her light green eyes. Robert remembered that glint well, its chilly, unspoken “I-Deserve-Better-Than-You-But-You’ll-Do-For-Now” that had been the last thing he saw as she packed up what few belongings of hers she’d agreed to bring to his apartment and walked out the door without so much as a “See you around” or backward glance. Though their relationship hadn’t been ideal—especially toward the end, his having lost all genuine passion for her—it was nonetheless the only thing Robert had had in his life besides his job at Channel 7. When Amy Wilder had walked out of his life, it had shattered him, poisoned his hopes of ever falling in love again (or at all), and left him in that dark, cynical no-man’s land where it was simple to lapse into the easy promiscuity of the failed romantic. How odd that the heart makes no sound at all when it cracks.
But then came the day some months later when he found himself in the newly-built health club of an insurance company, watching Denise sprint toward the parallel bars, and all the Amy-hurt had vanished.
“I know we didn’t part under the best of circumstances, dear Robert, but don’t I at least rate a hug?”
“Of course.” He embraced her. For a moment, she did not move—such was her way, calculated to make you want her returned embrace even more—then slowly, lifelessly, she put her arms around him for just a moment before pulling away and smoothing her coat. It was like hugging a department store mannequin, only without the overpowering affection.
“You haven’t really changed a bit,” he said.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Flat, toneless. “I hope you know that.”
“I appreciate your—” No. He wouldn’t do this. Not with her. “Why are you here, Amy?”
“Ah, there’s my dear Robert, always getting to the point. At least where we were concerned.”
She held out the piece of paper that he’d seen in her hand. “I came to give you this.”
It was an envelope with his name written across the front in Denise’s handwriting. The ”t” at the end glistened as if the ink were still wet—Denise had always used either her calligraphy pen or an old-fashioned fountain pen for all her cards and correspondence, claiming that they gave her letters an old-world quality that she hoped made them special.
She had used a fountain pen for this.
He brushed his thumb across his name and watched unbelieving as the “t” smeared almost to the far side of the envelope’s face.
The ink was still wet.
But that couldn’t be. This was Denise’s handwriting, yet the ink was still fresh, as if the letter had been penned only a few minutes ago, with no blotter handy.
“Remember that article she once told you about, the ‘extinction’ piece? She never got around to telling you about the part of it that dealt with the two types of time, did she, dear Robert? No, of course not. The ancient Greeks believed in two kinds of time, dear Robert: chronos and kairos. Kairos is not measurable. In kairos, you simply are, from the moment of your birth on. You are, wholly and positively. Kairos is especially strong in children, because they haven’t learned to understand, let alone accept, concepts such as time and age and death. In children, kairos can break through chronos: when they’re playing safely, drawing a picture for Mommy or Daddy, taking the first taste of the first ice-cream cone of summer, when they sing along to songs in a Disney cartoon, there is only kairos. As long as a child thinks it’s immortal, it is. Think of every living child as being the burning bush that Moses saw; surrounded by the flames of chronos, but untouched by the fire. In chronos you’re nothing more than a set of records, fingerprints, your social-security number, you’re always watching the clock, aware of time passing—but in kairos, you are dear Robert and only dear Robert.”
He was only half-listening to her, his confusion replaced by a terrible fear, flavored with a pinch of anger. “What the hell is this, Amy?”
“I think you should read that right away,” was her only reply.
He snapped up his head and glared at her. “I asked you a question!”
“And I answered it.”
“Goddammit you didn’t! All you said was simply what you wanted to say instead of answering me.”
Her smile grew wider and more lifeless. “Ah, that old chestnut. One of our greatest hits, wasn’t it? ‘That’s a response but it’s not an answer.’”
Robert bit down on his reply, still trying to catch his breath from the shock of seeing his late wife’s handwriting. Breathing steadily to slow the pile-driver pounding of his heart, he fumbled with the envelope until it opened, cursed his shaking hands as they unfolded the single sheet of stationary inside, and read: Send me a picture of the daughter we never had, the bright little girl with chubby pink cheeks and wistful smile and wide grey eyes that say, I used to feel lonely but it’s all better now....
“Where the fuck did you get—?” The rest of it died in his throat when he looked up.
Amy was gone.
He looked around for some sign of her but she was nowhere to be seen—and there was no way he could have missed her in that black Joan Crawford outfit, not against all this snow.
Her footprints.
They came down the hill, crossed the plat alongside his own, and stopped directly in front of him.
Poof. No more Amy.
Someone began whistling “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?”
A chubby basset hound came romping out from the trees surrounding most of the north entrance, barked three times, and ran toward him, covering the distance by diving in and out of the snow like a dolphin moving through water.
Robert stuffed the note from Denise into his pocket as the dog came closer.
“Suzy...,” he whispered.
There was no mistaking that torn left ear, or the limp that favored her right side because her back left leg, which never properly healed, had been broken when Robert was six.
The eyes, thought Robert. Look at her eyes.
A moment later the dog was upon him, all paws and excited scratching against his legs—pick me up, pick me up!—then a cold nose against his cheek and a warm, sloppy, happy tongue all over his face as she squirmed and barked and kissed him, her tail wagging nonstop.
He knelt in the snow, cupped the dog’s head in his hands, and looked at its eyes.
The right one clear, the left slightly obscured by a milky white cataract.
Suzy, the only dog he’d ever owned as a child.
“Well, hello, you,” said Robert.
“Hello yourself, asshole,” replied the dog.
Robert was on his feet immediately, staring in disbelief.
Then came the cackling laughter from somewhere to the left. “You should see your face! Bo-Bo the Dog-Faced Boy looked more intelligent.” One of the squatting gargoyles guarding a nearby crypt leaped to the ground. “Old ventriloquist gag a magician once taught me, I couldn’t resist. But I was right—she’s happy to see you.”
Split-Face waved at Robert—We have a secret, you and I....
“How’s it going, Willy? Nice nose decoration you’ve got there. Do you despair yet?”
Ignoring Suzy’s insistent pawing against him, Robert fisted his hands, ready to defend himself.
“Take it easy, Willy, I’m not going to hurt you. In fact, I sort of wanted to apologize for our last couple of encounters.”
“You broke into my sister’s house!”
“Guilty as charged, but you shouldn’t let that get in the way of our beautiful friendship.” He was only a few
yards away now, and Robert clearly saw that Split-Face wore no mask.
There was little soft tissue on the upper portions of his face, and what flesh there was had hardened until it resembled scales on a lizard’s back; in places this scale-like flesh was semitranslucent, allowing Robert to see the red and blue veins that spiderwebbed the areas where most people had cheeks. Split-Face had no nose, only two tear-shaped caves through which he breathed, both of which seemed to leak constantly. His left eye was a good half-inch lower on his face than his right, and he had no ears to speak of, just bits of dangling flesh on either side of his head. Though his jaws were intact, he had almost no chin; the flesh under his lower lip had only the smallest of rounded bone fragment beneath it, the rest blending into his neck like melted candle wax, creating a thick, disturbing wattle that pulsed with every leak from his nose-caves.
The worst part, though, was the overall shape of his face and head. His skull seemed to have been wrenched apart with a crowbar, then pieced back together by someone with no knowledge of human anatomy: there were lumps where none should have been; craters where there should have been lumps; and one section, beneath his too-low left eye, where the cracked and yellowed bone was actually exposed. Robert caught a glimpse of something metal and realized there was a rusty pin holding those two small sections of his face-plate together.
“What in God’s name happened to you?”
“Tragic shaving accident when I was very young,” replied Split-Face. “I don’t like to dwell on it.” Pointing at his face, he said, “What about this? Does this make you despair, Willy?” Not waiting for an answer, he wiped the sleeve of his coat across his caves. “Hey, at least this cold weather keeps them running. Most times they’re blocked and I have to breathe through my mouth. That dries up my throat and makes it hard for me to swallow. I also get hoarse and cough a lot. But I guess I don’t have to tell you what that’s like, do I?”
“Leave my sister and her family alone.”
Split-Face shrugged. “I have no interest in them, Willy, I just wanted to rattle your cage and let you know that I can find you anytime I want.”
The questions came out of Robert in a rapid, deadly cadence: “What the hell do you want with me? What happened to the woman who was just here? Where did the note come from?”
Split-Face held up his hands. “Whoa there, Willy! One at a time.”
Suzy plopped her butt down in the snow, looked up at Robert, and whined.
“Where did she come from?” asked Robert, kneeling and petting his childhood dog. “I thought she was dead.”
“Why? Because you woke up one morning and she was gone and your dad was passed out in the wreckage of the living room?”
Robert nodded. “I always figured Dad must’ve gotten mad and accidentally killed her. He’s the one who broke her leg, you know?”
“I know,” whispered Split-Face, his voice filled with genuine compassion.
“He was always kicking her out of his way whenever he’d get on one of his mean drunks—and most of his drunks where mean. Oh, he felt like hell about it afterward—he even bought her a new dog house—but I’ll never forget the way she screamed when he kicked her that night. I was out on the back porch and I heard the bone snap. Poor little thing.” He scratched the top of Suzy’s head. She licked his hand and moved closer to him. Then something occurred to him: “Jesus! It’s been over thirty years since she disappeared. She should be dead.”
“Don’t say ‘should’ here in kairos, Willy. It’s strong in animals, too. Why do you think actors never want to do scenes with children or dogs? Kairos is so strong in them that you can’t look at anyone who exists in boring old chronos.”
Robert pulled Suzy close to him, hugging her. She wiggled and wagged in delight.
“Right now, Willy, I’m pulling a couple of old parlor tricks—and I abhor parlor tricks, for the record. Right now we’re frozen in kairos—otherwise known as the ‘Once Upon A Time’ world. I can do almost anything I want or need to do here—mark the ‘almost.’ So, if you’re worried about your sister and her family, as of right now, here in our ‘Once Upon A Time’ world, it never happened. Oh, you’ll remember the story, the book, the way it crumbled into dust, but in the chronos world of your sister and her husband and Detective Bill Emerson, nothing like that happened.” He snapped his fingers. “One parlor trick, nothing up my sleeve, free of charge.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Split-Face sighed. “There’s a shocker.”
“Why did you steal my daughter’s body?”
“Because if I hadn’t, you would have killed her.”
“She was already dead.”
Split-Face laughed. “Oh, Willy, Willy, Willy—haven’t you caught on yet? There’s chronos-dead and then there’s kairos-dead. Had I left her there in the morgue, you would have buried her today along with your wife and then she would have been good and truly dead, and there would be no hope left for any of us.”
“Any of us?” Robert closed his eyes and hugged Suzy once again, wanting to never let go.
Someone giggled. Robert opened his eyes.
He was surrounded by children. Some were deformed, just as they’d been in the photographs Split-Face had shown him, others had obviously been injured or maimed, while others appeared to be quite normal—physically. One look in their eyes told him that even the normal-looking ones had experienced something awful that haunted them still.
“Puppy dog!” cried Ian, who came dancing from behind the crypt. He was twirling a baton and wearing a jester’s belled hat. He pointed at Suzy and sang out, “Pup-pee Dog! Pup-pee Dog!” while the bells on his hat jingled and jangled and the children pointed at him and laughed and giggled.
Most wore modern-day clothing but some were dressed in rags, with “shoes” that were made from sections of animal hide and fur wrapped around their feet and tied to their ankles with sections of rope. All of them were transfixed by One-Eyed Ian’s jester dance.
“Did you know that we’re very near one of the thirteen places on this earth where the mountains open up?” said Split-Face. “They usually don’t come out en masse like this to see someone, so you damned well better appreciate it.” He reached into a pocket of his coat and pulled out a shiny flute. “I think it’s time you and I were properly introduced,” he said, holding out his hand for Robert to shake. “My name is Rael.”
“Rael,” repeated Robert, shaking his hand.
Ian continued dancing his comical jester’s dance, but now some of the children were joining in and singing—“Ring around the rosey/ Pocket full of posies/ Ashes, ashes, all fall DOWN!”—then they were on their backs in the snow, arms and legs fanning to create snow-angels, kicking up snow-clouds that drifted around them like fog, making their figures more and more ghost-like.
“We are the ‘us’ I was talking about,” said Rael. “We need her back or we’ll....” He lowered his voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “We’ll be forced back into chronos, and it’ll kill most of us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll alert the media—look, Willy, do you think burying your daughter in Denise’s garden was your idea? I put that in your head at the hospital.”
“Why?”
“Because, whether you want to believe it or not, there are worlds within worlds that you walk through every day. There are levels of existence that you chronos-dwellers are never aware of, and one of those worlds, one of those levels, is home; home is a living thing. Not just a house and yard, but home. Home remembers all your hopes, your dreams and plans, and it can point you in the right direction when you lose the way back to your heart—and you lost your way a long time ago, Willy.”
“Pup-pee Dog!” sang Ian, jingle-jangling through the snow-clouds and laughing ghosts.
“Home will bring her back, Willy. I just needed to make sure neither of strayed too far from there.”
“Why?”
“You’re starting to sound like a stuck record. �
�Why, why, why?’ Write a new verse to that song, will you?”
“Answer me!”
“I can’t.”
“Because...?”
“Because I’m not allowed to, all right? You’ll understand why soon enough—providing you don’t fuck things up.”
The children were clapping and dancing in the midst of their Festival of Swirling Snow. Some now carried banners that flapped in the wind, others had large bottles of water cradled in bamboo baskets, a few held leather harnesses with sleigh bells above their heads, jingling and jangling along with Ian as they twirled by, and one carried a well-used bodhran, using his thumbs to strike the surface of the goat-skin drum. Suzy ran into the celebration, barking happily. Robert wished she had stayed.
“Go home, Willy, so you can find what should be waiting there.”
“I have to bury my wife.”
Rael smiled. “There’s that chronos mentality again. Okay, fine, you gotta bury your wife. So go on, then, head on up that hill and do what a man’s gotta do.”
Robert rubbed his eyes, said, “I still don’t know what happened to—” but when he looked up again, he was alone, with only one set of footprints—his own—to ground him in the world-Now.
He crossed the plat and started his climb back up the hill, but with every step his body began to scream its discomfort; his back, legs, and particularly his shoulders, arms, and hands throbbed with pain and pressure.
He saw Danny and Lynn standing near the grave. When they spotted him, Danny came over, put his around Robert, and said, “Man, I don’t know where you found the energy to take a walk after that. I’m whipped. We’d better get going; everyone’ll be over at the house waiting for us. We told them around one-thirty, right?”
Lynn was beside him, then, taking his arm in hers and leading him to the car, past Denise’s grave, now filled with earth, its smoothed surface being covered by a whisper of snow.
Chapter 5
The post-funeral gathering (Robert couldn’t bring himself to think of it as a reception) was held at Lynn’s and Danny’s and was—if the term was at all applicable—as pleasant a gathering as one could have expected under the circumstances. There was food and coffee and various rolls, cakes, and desserts (Mrs. Emerson’s brownies turned out to be, in Robert’s opinion, even yummier than all get-out), as well as hugs and tears, handshakes and warm embraces and soft words of comfort (“If you need anything, just call, anytime,” “I’ll be around if you need to talk,” “We’ll all keep you in our prayers.”). When it started to seem as if everyone there would never leave, Robert made some remark about being tired and the place cleared out in minutes.
In Silent Graves Page 14