“We made almost no noise.”
“Doesn’t matter. Light sleepers can’t help themselves. That’s not what worries me.” She glanced at Robert and made a downward sweeping gesture at her clothes. “The last time they saw me, I was a little girl of twelve and with my parents. They’ve never seen either of us before.”
“Do you think they’ll call the police?”
“No. If anything they’ll call Morgan Security first and have them come out for a look. If the cops have to be called, then the Morgan guys’ll do it.” She let the curtain drop back into place. “Which gives us roughly fifteen minutes. Come on.”
She led him through the downstairs of the house. Scattered about were boxes of various sizes and a baker’s half-dozen pieces of small furniture: a coffee table, a couple of chairs, a small television set atop a wooden crate, other pieces that made the house look like its new owners were still waiting for the rest of their furniture to arrive.
“How long have you been here?”
“Long enough that I’ve had no choice but to make my parents interact with the neighbors—nothing too dangerous, a ‘hello’ in the morning, maybe a conversation about football when they run into each other while taking out the trash, stuff like that. The houses at this end of the development have been around the longest—this place is about twenty years old—and there’s not a lot of traffic.”
“Is that why you picked this house?”
“That, and because it was the only empty one with an insulated sub-basement.” They had crossed through the living and middle room and were now in the kitchen. Sephera opened the refrigerator door, bent down, removed the vegetable drawer, and detached a set of keys taped to the bottom. “Basement’s over there,” she said, pointing to an arched doorway. Robert followed her, anxiously looking over his shoulder for the glow of headlights as she unlocked the basement door, turned on a dim stairway light, and gestured for him to follow.
The basement was divided into two sections by a thin paneled wall. Sephera used a second key to open the door there, and they entered the room where the washer and dryer would have been. Turning on the single bulb that hung from the middle of the ceiling, she took hold of Robert’s hand and squeezed it. “You can feel it, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
From the moment they’d entered the basement, Robert’s entire body—especially his head—had thrummed.
Memory. Ancient and tired. In this place. Deep within it. He knew it. Felt its imprint all around him. Recognized it. Was part of it. Wanted to know it. Be it. It wanted him. Wanted to give to him. The need to merge. Calling. Come. Please. Hurry.
Sephera led him to a third door, unlocked it, and flipped the light switch on the other side. “Remember your promise, Robert. You cannot hesitate one second.”
Not waiting for a response, she started down the cement stairs toward the sub-basement. Robert followed. To keep himself calm he counted the steps. Nineteen. Nineteen steps that seemed to go on for an eternity, ending at a fourth and final door. Sephera unlocked it, turned the knob, and pushed it open.
The room was surprisingly large, nearly as wide and deep as the entire house. Robert’s shoes echoed eerily against the cement floor as he stepped inside. The lights down here were dim but warm, giving the whole place an atmosphere of intense restfulness. It felt like the viewing room at the funeral home.
He was positively terrified. It wasn’t so much fear for himself, although that might have been a footnote to the greater terror that threatened to engulf him; but he knew that he was standing in the middle of a great, ancient secret, one that on the physical level wore the shape of the blackest, most mind-crumbling nightmare, something that crushed even the most primitive notions of what constituted humanity.
Lining the walls on both sides of the room were bodies. Some lay on their backs, glassy eyes staring up at the beamed ceiling; others sat with their backs against the rough stone wall, arms and legs akimbo, marionettes whose strings had been cut in mid-dance. These, too, stared at nothing, unblinking. Some were women, some were teenaged girls, others were children, and all of them were naked. As he moved forward, looking at all the ladies from his life, sweat beading on his forehead and upper lip, it was not so much their nakedness that Robert noticed but their faces; Penny Duffy, Debra Jamison, Linda McDonald, Tracy O’Rourke, Yvonne Carlson, others he recognized but whose names had long ago been forgotten, abandoned with the detritus of youth and its cynicism, drinking, selfishness, and easy promiscuity of a failed romantic.
At various points between the bodies were metal racks of women’s clothes. There was the purple dress that Robert remembered as sliding slowly off a pair of creamy shoulders; a set of children’s sneakers whose soles he once saw Yvonne slam into a catcher’s gut when she slid into home base during a back-lot baseball game; a thin, off-white blouse that he’d bought for Linda as a birthday present; a pleated beige skirt that Penny Duffy had worn on their first date; jeans and dress slacks; business suits and nightgowns; winter coats and autumn wind-breakers—the wardrobe in which love had entered his life and followed him throughout all of his days.
At the far end of the room was a wide folding partition decorated with painted birds resting on summer branches. From behind this came a muted symphony of sounds: whirring, clicking, dripping, buzzing, thumping, and something that sounded like an amplified breeze. To the left of the partition was another group of bodies, these piled haphazardly against and on top of one another. There were children here, and young girls, and women of Robert’s age...but there the similarity between them and the ladies of his life ended.
Here there were babies with the full breasts of grown women, young girls with vertical mouths on their cheeks, women with fleshy animal-like limbs in place of their arms or legs; there were heads with two overlapping faces, torsos with eyes, vaginal cavities that were three times too wide and filled with circular rows of teeth; hands with a dozen fingers; feet that at first glance looked to have been crushed, but on closer examination more resembled hooves; another face that was no face at all, only a hollowed eggshell of skin filled to overflowing with eyes and tongues.
Robert lost track of how long he stood there, gaping in revulsion. He lost track of his own body, fully realizing for the first time in his life how impossible and miraculous the human form was, how easily it could be perverted—though perversion was not the intent with these piled bodies. He was now merely a pair of eyes attached to a brain that floated in the oppressive air like a lost balloon whose child-owner cried loudly in the lonely distance. When at last the horror of the sight threatened to send him flying away like a spray of vapor, Sephera touched his arm, and he fell back into the cocoon of flesh and tissue and bone that was his body. It was his body, wasn’t it? Yes—he touched his chest, throat, face. Yes, it was his body.
“Early on,” whispered Sephera, “Denise had to make the forms from memory. Creation was difficult and painful and the results...”—she looked at the piles—“...the results were horrible. She almost gave up once. These aren’t even the worst of the mistakes.”
Robert’s voice crawled out as if it were afraid of the light. “Where are the rest?”
“Buried or burned. Some were lost on the way to being disposed of. A few years ago, a couple of them turned up in jars of formaldehyde at a carnival freak show. I don’t like to think about what kind of person would dig up something like that and put it on display and charge people to gawk at it. Even mistakes like these deserve dignity in death.”
Robert nodded, then looked back to the forms of the women he’d known. Tears welled in his eyes but he held them back. “My whole life,” he said softly. “She was with me for my whole life.”
“She’s loved you for your whole life. From the moment you met, she’s loved you.”
Robert blinked, and cursed silently as some tears spilled down his cheek. “God, Sephera, I wish I could remember when I met her.”
“She remembers.”
“Does th
at mean you remember?”
“Yes. But I promised not to tell.” She faced the partition and took a deep breath. Robert locked on her face, looking for a sign, an emotional touchstone, something that would prepare him for what he was about to see, but the look on her face was one of ferocious intensity that said nothing. Or maybe everything.
“Okay, Robert. Time for the formal introduction.” She spread her arms, grabbing each end of the partition and folding the halves together.
“Robert Londrigan, meet the love of your life.” Her voice cracked on the last two words. She gathered the partition in her arms and carried it to the side.
Robert stood alone.
There was so much to absorb that comprehension was beyond a simple, all-inclusive glance, so he focused on details, working from the outside in.
To the left were a set of EKG and EEG machines, buzzing and blinking as their black screens displayed waves and lines of green and red. To the right stood a respirator unit, lights blinking, engine whirring, interior pump pounding. A long, ribbed plastic hose extended from the upper portion of the unit, snaking through the air before splitting into a “Y”; the upper tube ran past two metal I.V. stands, each of which held two clear plastic bags of solutions varying in colors and density: one bag held a clear liquid, another something that resembled skim milk. The third bag bulged with a thick substance the color and consistency of gravy. The last and largest bag, two-thirds empty, held something that looked like jellied blood. The four thin I.V. tubes followed the path of the respirator tube, all of them emptying into an incubator that leaned at a slight angle against the back wall. Its positioning reminded Robert of those lidless coffins in movie westerns, propped outside the undertaker’s shop, tilted backward so passersby could get a good look at the body of the outlaw inside as the photographer’s camera flashed and smoke rose.
Almost without realizing it, he began to move slowly toward the incubator and its occupant.
Inside, the glass walls of the incubator were decorated with copies of the photographs from Denise’s files: here was Andrea; next to her, a boy with an impossibly large head; beside this boy was Ian’s baby picture, and seeing this pulled Robert’s grief dangerously close to the surface, but he refused to continue crying—not because he didn’t miss Ian, but because tears would blur his vision and it was very important to him that he see everything.
Taped toward the top of one of the walls, positioned so that the occupant could easily turn its head and read it, was a sheet of paper with a quotation written on it: “Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you; fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you; fear only the indifferent, who allow the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the Earth.”
Inside the incubator was something that bore only the most distant resemblance to a human being. A small light installed over its head glowed down, a grotesque halo illuminating every detail of its body. It hung in the center of the unit from a special harness, swaying slightly. It was naked except for a leather-and-rubber dressing that was fitted to its lower area like a diaper.
It had no legs and only one arm—the right. The stumps pulsed moistly in rhythm with the respirator pump as if they too were breathing, occasionally discharging a few globules of something that looked like a mixture of blood, pus, and water. These discharges dripped into one of six plastic bowls positioned in a circle around the figure. Each bowl had a little something in it.
Robert moved closer.
Its skin was gray, slack, and pallid, spotted with chafing sores where the diaper and harness worked against it. The small top portion of its head, covered with electrodes, was rounded, smooth, and hairless. Dark veins bulged against the flesh in spider-web patterns. Its nose jutted from the rest of its face like a hybrid of snout and beak. Its face widened at the cheeks and jaws, then angled back inward to form the sharp, small chin. Part of its lower face was obscured by the medical tape which held the respirator tube in its mucus-gummed mouth. It was only as Robert began to look up into its eyes that the shape of its head found a point of reference within him: it was a diamond.
At first the expression on its face seemed to be that of the damned, forever banished to the bowls of hell to writhe and scream in hideous, unspeakable agony, but as Robert eased toward it he saw that its expression was not one of anguish but of relief; a long journey, one filled with terror and sorrow and false hope and little triumphs, a journey that often seemed futile if not doomed, was about to end in grace.
Robert’s gaze moved to her crusted eyes, which stared at him in wonder.
“Denise...,” he whispered.
She blinked once, very slowly—so slowly that at first he thought she was falling asleep; but then, as she opened her eyes in exhaustingly small degrees, she began to lift her remaining arm. The tendons popped and the muscles writhed under her skin, fighting atrophy; Robert imagined the muscles shredding like a sheet of dampened tissue paper, and wondered what she was trying to point at.
She did not point; instead, she held out her seven-fingered hand, beckoning.
Robert did not hesitate. He stepped forward and took her hand.
Its touch. There was something familiar about this, the sensations of her too-many fingers against his flesh, and for a moment had an absurd thought; this thought too was familiar, as if emerging from the dust of the past:
It’s a spider made of skin, and it’s missing a leg.
And then it returned to him in crystal clarity. He began to tremble. Denise tightened her grip and Robert his. He did not want to let go; in her, beauty and hideousness were intertwined, at once compelling and horrifying, as only something as miraculous and terrible and majestic and unknown as her must be. Before him was something that had never before been seen on Earth, and he began to weep. As did she. What passed between them next did so in a series of silent, painful sputters. Tears fell from her eyes, slipped by the second respirator tube that was inserted in her chest, and fell onto her bulging belly. Were absorbed. Drawn in. Like a sponge. Her tears made it shine. Glisten. Moving. Was it love? Transference. Loneliness? He didn’t know. She made a sound. Warm. Comforting. Secure. Their child. Inside of her. Growing under glistening flesh. Her need. Her memory. Her hand in his. Soft. Smooth. Constant. The flow of blood. The miracle of blood. The mystery of blood. Resonating. Sighing. Vibrating. Within her. Inside him. Within them. The sound of her loneliness. The taste of his need. The kiss of her desire. To return. To heal and be healed. Her longing. The children. Chiaroscuro. Laughter in the chambers. Their songs. The children. A child. A boy. So young. Above her. His hand. So big. So tender. He remembered. Their meeting. Hello, there. Are you—
—the thought was never finished, because the man I once was nearly vanished at that moment and I nearly took his place, but then—
—a shock like an electric current jolted painfully through Robert’s body. He let go of her hand and dropped to his knees, doubled over, and wrapped his arms across his stomach, rocking back and forth, pulling in strained breaths as he tried to force the pain away, away, away. He managed to turn his head and saw that Sephera, too, was on her knees on the floor, arms crossed over her center, rocking.
“Wh-what’s happening?” croaked Robert.
“A con....contraction,” replied Sephera weakly.
It took several moments before the pain subsided enough for either of them to relax; when it did, Sephera was the first to move, crawling to Robert and rubbing his lower back.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I was watching your face when you held her hand.” A smile. “You remembered when you met her, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Jesus, this hurts.”
“Now you know why I got so bitchy in the car earlier.”
“Tell me about it.”
As the last waves of pain ebbed, they took a few extra moments to steady their breathing.
Sephera then began helping Robert to his feet. “Sure you’re okay?”
“
Yes, I’m fine,” he snapped. Then: “Sorry.”
They looked at Denise.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” asked Robert.
Sephera slipped her arm through his and squeezed his hand. “She doesn’t have enough strength left to finish the two things she wants to do. She can either carry the baby to term or transfer her lifeforce into a different Vessel of Becoming.”
“Oh, no....”
Sephera turned him to face her. “You know what her choice is, Robert. Close your eyes and think. Somewhere in that torrent of thoughts that she shared with you, she told you which. Think.”
He closed his eyes. Robert replayed everything that Denise had shared with him. And within the torrent, he found her answer.
Later, he would allow his heart to break, for now, there could be no hesitation.
He opened his eyes. “Transference.”
Sephera froze, then released her breath. “Okay then.”
He touched her cheek. “You?”
She nodded. “It’s an odd feeling, being the last in line. C’mon, we’ve got a lot to do and not much time left. We’ve been down here for over ten minutes.” She led him back to the bodies that lined the walls. “You have to touch all of them. Quickly.”
Robert began with Penny Duffy and made his way down the left wall, crumbling the bodies into dust. As he did, he and Sephera breathed in the remains and grew more powerful. Some of the flesh-dust wafted over their heads, fell on Denise’s body, and was absorbed into her system, giving her a last, small, extra reserve of strength for the final task before her.
As he was moving from the left wall to the right (where Sephera’s parents had been sitting to the side so he hadn’t see them at first), the guards began their cautious descent down the nineteen steps that seemed to go on for an eternity.
He crumbled the parents, then Yvonne Carlson, and was just about to lay hands on Tracy O’Rourke’s face when the first security guard stepped through the door.
In the hours since, when I remember the next ninety seconds, I try to imagine what it must have looked like from the security guards’ point of view; here they were, at four o’clock in the morning, in the sub-basement of a house where no one was supposed to be living, facing a man who stood over a basement filled with naked, dead bodies.
In Silent Graves Page 33