by Tim McGregor
“Oh. Did he escape?” she asked, a shred of hope in her tone.
He scratched his chin slowly. Something he did when uneasy and it unsettled Billie to see it now. “Ray, what is it?”
“He’s gone. Stabbed by another inmate last night. I’m sorry.”
She went still, trying to understand what he had just told her. “That can’t be.”
“I spoke to the prison staff this morning. A fire had broken out and when the confusion had died down, they found him face down with holes in his back.”
“Oh God.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s hard to believe.”
Billie looked up. “That’s just it. I mean, it’s Gantry. Right?”
“Yeah.” Mockler looked at his watch and got to his feet. “I’m meeting Odin at the morgue in twenty minutes. I need to see it with my own eyes.”
Billie struggled to rise from the chair. “Let me know how it goes.”
She kept the kiss brief but held onto him for a while. Then he broke away. “Say, you want to get some dinner later?”
“I’m not up for a night out,” she said, one hand over her stomach. “Can we get take-out?”
“Sounds perfect,” he said and went out the door.
~
“I thought you hated this place?”
Odinbeck was waiting on the curb outside the building, watching Mockler get out of his car.
“I do,” Mockler said. “Just want to check on something.”
They went through the doors and along the corridor. “You could do this alone, Mock. You don’t need me to hold your hand.”
“Your bust, Odin. I figured you better be here.”
The morgue attendant looked up from his computer screen as they approached the desk. Mockler took out his I.D. “Detective Mockler. I called ahead about viewing a body.”
The attendant checked the schedule. “Right. The one from the prison. Come on through.”
Escorted into one of the cold rooms, the two detectives waited while the attendant checked the number on the form before turning to the wall of lockers. Unlatching one of the small doors, he reached into the dark space of the mortuary cabinet. “This is it,” he said.
The stainless steel tray slid out on its castors. A thin white shroud lay flat on its surface. That was all.
“You sure you got the right cabinet?” Mockler asked.
The attendant checked the paperwork again. “According to this. Hang on.”
He opened another cabinet and rolled the table out. Flipping back the shroud, the three of them looked down at the body of a woman. The attendant apologized and went through every cabinet. He turned to the detectives with a puzzled look on his face.
“I’m sorry, detectives,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“How do you lose a body?” Odinbeck griped. “It’s not like misplacing your car keys, is it?”
“This is embarrassing. I’ve never lost a dead body before.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mockler said. It took a little effort to keep the smirk from showing. He nodded to the attendant and then headed for the door. “First time for everything.”
~
The funeral was held on a Thursday under an overcast sky of lead-hued clouds. The attendance was small, six in total, but that was far more than Billie had hoped for. Besides herself and Aunt Maggie, the mourning party included Kaitlin, Tammy and Jen. Mockler stayed glued to Billie’s side every step of the way. The casket was a simple pine affair, no trimmings. Funerals and burial plots did not come cheap and Billie’s meagre savings could not cover half the affair. Aunt Maggie had cashed in a retirement bond to cover the rest.
The two of them stood side by each, hands clasped together as the priest from Saint Patrick’s Church read the rite of committal. Billie hadn’t cared what kind of service they had but Maggie thought a Catholic ceremony was best and Billie went along with it. Her aunt was a mess through most of the ceremony, tears flowing hard and fast as the clergyman read from the prayer book. Billie looked on in a sort of numb fugue, feeling an odd prickle of guilt that she could not weep the way her mother’s sister did. She had never expected this day to come, laying her mother to rest, and now that it was here, the odd void of emotion in her heart troubled her.
She squeezed Maggie’s hand as the casket was lowered into the grave. The funeral director she had dealt with had tried to persuade her from performing the actual burial during the service. Most ceremonies these days, he had said, had the mourners walk away from the grave before that, sparing the family that sight. Billie insisted. And no, she didn’t know why she needed to see it done. Her gut told her that it was necessary and that was all the reason she needed.
Billie kept waiting for the grief to hit, for a tidal wave of mourning to sweep her away but it eluded her. Not at the clergyman’s words nor the sight of the coffin lowered in nor the harsh thud of soil shovelled onto the casket. She simply felt numb.
When she felt a hand on her left arm, she turned to look up at Ray Mockler at her side. She could tell that he was gauging her mood, looking for any sign that she needed comfort. He seemed confused that his help was not needed. Billie couldn’t be sure but she thought his eyes glistened, as if he was fighting back tears himself. The detective had never even met the woman and he felt moved by her burial. Why couldn’t she?
When the final words about ashes and dust had been said and the cemetery workers were spading the soil on in earnest, Aunt Maggie squeezed her hand again. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?” Billie asked.
“For finding her.” Maggie dabbed a tissue against her puffy eyes. “I had given up hope that we would ever do this for your mother. My sister. Thank you for bringing her home.”
Billie felt her heart crack briefly but it was only for the raw broken-hearted grief in her aunt’s voice. She watched another spadeful of dirt splatter over the lid of the casket.
A few of the attendees stepped away, their shoes crunching over the dry stalks of grass. Mockler leaned into her ear. “Do you want to stay for a while yet?” He looked at his watch. “We still have an hour before the reception.”
“I guess there’s nothing more to see, is there?”
“We can stay to the end if you like. We can always come back and visit too.”
Billie looked at the slate slab of headstone, the details chiseled into the stone.
MARY AGNES CULPEPPER.
Beloved mother and sister,
Guide to those in need.
Reaching down, she took hold of his hand and gave it a squeeze. “I think everyone wants to go. Will you come back with me to visit her?”
“Anytime,” he said.
They turned away and Billie saw her three friends waiting for her. Dressed in black, they shivered against the cut of the wind. Tammy was the first to embrace her, tightly around the waist as she whispered her condolences. Kaitlin tucked in next and then Jen.
Jen hung on for a long time before leaning back to look at Billie. “It seems odd to say I’m sorry for something you’ve grown up with all this time. But I am sorry she’s gone. I wished I could have met her.”
A twinge rippled through Billie’s insides. “I wish you could have met her too.”
“You did a good thing today,” Jen said, brushing her thumb over Billie’s cheek. “A proper burial and all. Now you know where she is.”
“Yeah. Finally.” A tiny chuckle escaped from Billie’s lips. “How’s the shop?”
Jen dismissed the notion with a wave. “Still a mess. It’ll take some work before I can re-open.”
“Well,” Billie said, “I can help. We’ll get it back to normal in no time.”
Kaitlin broke in and said, “We all will.”
The earlier flutter in Billie’s gut returned as she and Tammy and Kaitlin pledged their help to get the Doll House back on its feet. As musketeer-corny as it seemed, it felt real, this need to clasp arms and help a friend. She didn’t realize how much she h
ad missed that feeling until now.
Since the incident at the Murder House, Billie had seen Jen only once. A quick coffee at the Pinecone. Hesitant, she had asked Jen what had happened to them before waking up in the cellar of the old house. Jen was convinced that a noxious gas leak had overwhelmed them all, causing them to black out. She had no memory of what had occurred in the cellar, nor how she had awoken to find herself draped in a dusty black robe. As always, her oldest friend had found a way to rationalize away the odd stuff and Billie had no wish to deny Jen that now. What purpose would it serve to tell her friend the truth?
The priest removed the stole from his neck and stepped away to speak to one of the gravediggers. The mourning party turned away, trudging through the grass to the gravel pathway that led to the cemetery gates. Billie beamed with an odd but staggering sense of companionship with everyone who had come to bear witness to her mother’s internment.
She crunched Mockler’s hand in her own for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I wish Gantry could have been here,” she said to him. “He deserves to be.”
Mockler nodded. “He does.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“Who knows?” Mockler guffawed. “If anyone could jump up from a morgue slab and slip away, it’s him.”
They found their way to the footpath and then he turned her way. “How long is Maggie staying with you?”
“Just overnight. She doesn’t like the city much.”
“Maybe the three of us can go for breakfast tomorrow?”
Billie looked almost surprised at the idea. “I doubt either of us are gonna be good company right now.”
“I’ll take my chances,” he said.
They walked on, trailing behind the others when Billie stopped cold, the hair on the back of her neck standing up. She looked back at the cemetery. The sun had finally broken through the clouds just as it was crashing down onto the tree line at the western rim of the graveyard and Billie shielded her eyes against the glare. A lone figure stood among the tombstones, little more than a hazy outline against the falling sun. Her heart ticked up thinking that maybe it was Gantry out there, making his usual habit of materializing out of thin air but she could see now that the form belonged to a woman. The stranger appeared to be watching the funeral party as it meandered to the cemetery gates.
A foolish notion flipped through her mind. She pushed it away.
Mockler came alongside her. “What are you looking at?”
“The woman out there.” She pointed in the figure’s direction.
“I don’t see anybody,” he said.
A second figure moved among the stones. Smaller, like that of a child, it hobbled along in a peculiar way and suddenly sprang onto a tombstone next to the first figure. The woman reached out and put her hand on the smaller figure’s back, as if patting it gently. A simple gesture reserved for a loved one.
That’s when something inside snapped and the grief came full bore as if a dam had broken open. It swept her knees out from under her and Billie fell. Mockler caught her before she hit the cold ground and struggled to keep her up, the reluctant medium going limp with a racking sob. Her aunt and her three friends heard the sound of her cries and came rushing back to help, holding her upright and cooing to her as gently as they could. Together they kept Billie on her feet and walked back toward the cars parked outside the cemetery.
Sybil Culpepper glanced back over her shoulder at the lonely gravestones but the two figures were gone and the sun burned her eyes as it went down behind the trees.
Writing the Spookshow series has been an utter blast. The response to the series has left me humbled so if you made it all the way to this fourth volume, THANK YOU!
I’ll skip my usual blather about reviews and newsletters. Instead, let me just say thanks again and, if our paths ever cross down the pub, the first round is on me.
Toronto
July, 2015
Other book thingies…
KILLING DOWN THE ROMAN LINE
OLD FLAMES, BURNED HANDS
BAD WOLF
PALE WOLF
LAST WOLF
THE SPOOKSHOW
WELCOME TO THE SPOOKSHOW
SPOOKSHOW 3: The Women in the Walls
Table of Contents
Contents
title
the weird sisters
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Thanks!
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