by Ivan Blake
“I don’t know, but all those pictures—Paris, The Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and Wall Street in 1929—they sure looked like Rose,” Chris replied.
“Maybe her family members all bore a striking resemblance to one another. Maybe that’s how she convinced herself they were her.”
“And all the documents—that tax roll from Amsterdam, the list of arrivals at Quebec—every time it’s Rose DuCalice.”
“So the Monsegur family likes to reuse names.”
“And her brother? He hasn’t said so, but he drops lots of hints he’s been around for centuries as well.”
“Maybe craziness runs in the family.”
“Geraldine told me Rose was in a mental institution for several years after she lost her husband, so maybe she never really got well. And yet this amulet, it sure seemed to work when Rudy Dahlman poured gas on me.”
“So you think...it might protect us...if we...you know?”
“God, I hope so.” Chris grinned across at Gillian.
“I have to admit, I’m really scared. Not of Mallory. I’m scared because I’ve dreamed about holding you again ever since the morning you first hugged me and said Mallory might be spreading rumors about us. Your hug took my breath away, and I want the next embrace to be as magical, and I’m so scared something may happen to prevent it.”
“Like what?”
“Like a Goth attack or a ghost plunging through the ceiling or a newspaper writer snapping pictures of our first kiss?”
“Look, how old are we? I’m nineteen and you turned eighteen last September. We’re adults. We can handle this. We’re going to kiss and hug and…whatever. Why shouldn’t this be perfectly pleasant, relaxed, and normal?”
“Nothing about our relationship has ever been normal. We’ve battled grave robbers, made enemies of an entire town, and had a demon keeping us apart for almost two years. Besides, I’m so deeply in love with you, I never want anything about our relationship to be relaxed or normal, ever! And that sure as hell includes our first kiss, Mister! So tell me, how do we do this?”
Chris pulled up to the back door of the cottage, turned off the car, and said with a broad smile, “I guess we go inside...and we touch.”
“Right! Let’s do this!”
They stood facing one another across the huge bed. “Judging by what happened when Rudy poured gas on me,” Chris said, “the amulet seems to protect from harm both the wearer and anyone else within a certain radius. So once we touch, we have to remain as close together as we can and for as long as we can, so we’re both inside its circle of protection. Okay?”
“Okay, as close together as possible, got it. Do you think that means...we shouldn’t have anything between us at all...like clothes?”
“Good thinking.”
“Okay then.” Gillian pulled her powder blue Irish knit sweater over her head and tossed it onto a nearby armchair. Chris pulled off his fleece and did the same. Gillian then began unbuttoning her blouse and Chris his shirt.
“I bought this underwear with my birthday money right after I got out of the hospital. I’ve been waiting six months for the right time to wear it.” The tops of her breasts swelled above her bra’s lace trim. “Looks like I’ve gained a little weight.”
“In all the right places.”
“Oh, so you prefer the bustier look? Sorry if I disappoint you,” she said, hands on hips as she turned first this way and then that to allow Chris to better appreciate her profile.
“Gillian, let me be serious for a moment,” Chris said. “I first fell in love with you when all I had seen of your figure was hidden under dungarees and heavy sweaters. I don’t think I realized what a gorgeous figure you have until you walked into the detention center dining room back in the fall. You were wearing a crocheted minidress and you could have knocked me over with a feather.” Gillian had pulled off her jeans and was standing stock-still in her pink lace panties and bra, smiling, with tears running down her cheek. “You have always been this fascinating, smart, courageous person, and I fell in love with you for that. Now I discover you’re also an incredible beauty with long legs like a model, skin that glows with a faint rose hue, and breasts that couldn’t be more perfect if they’d been sculpted by some Renaissance artist.”
“Chris, I—” Gillian started to say as Chris pulled his t-shirt over his head. “My God,” she gasped as she saw for the first time the extent of Chris’s injuries.
“My scars. They don’t put you off, do they?”
“Oh, my poor darling, no! I want to hold you in my arms and wash away your pain with my kisses.”
Chris pulled down his briefs, and stood up as straight as his many injuries and his damaged spine would allow. Gillian’s gaze was drawn from his scars to his engorged manhood, and she whispered, “So the thought of my kisses pleases you.”
“Oh yes,” Chris replied. Then he watched in wonder as Gillian slipped off her panties. As she stood back up, her long golden hair bounced gently on her shoulders and shimmered in the soft yellow light of the bedside lamps.
“Gillian, whatever happens next, you have to know I love you with every part of my being.”
“And I love you,” she said with a smile, “now and forever.”
They knelt on the bed, and moved forward so their naked bodies were mere inches apart. They smiled into each other’s eyes. Chris touched the amulet dangling on his breast bone, whispered, “Beloved Companion, protect us,” and enfolded Gillian in his embrace.
The room became a maelstrom. Winds howled, mists swirled around the bed, and bed sheets were torn to shreds, their ends whipping about in the gale like flags in a hurricane. The air crackled, the light turned from yellow gold to icy blue, like the water in a glacial lake, and bursts of white hot electricity flew in every direction. In the middle of the fury, a pair of ebony eyes appeared, and in the irises, flames of rage and malice. Then amid the bursts of electricity, there appeared a blood-red mouth that opened in a scream filled with pain and frustration and misery and longing.
In the center of it all, the two young lovers clung to each other as if their very lives depended on the intensity of their embrace, which indeed they did. Gillian’s long hair flew about in the raging winds but wasn’t torn away. Knife-like nails reached out from the swirling mists to dance across Chris’s back like fingers on a piano keyboard but left no wound. The lovers’ lips were pressed together, their bodies molded to each other, all their loneliness and longing now washed away by their passion.
Folded in each other’s arms, the lovers tumbled sideways onto the torn sheets, their lips still pressed together. Furniture toppled, splintered, and then flew about the room, first a chair, then bedside tables, and finally drawers from the enormous dresser. The winds howling around the bed were now filled with shirts and pillow cases and towels. Sheets were singed by the bursts of electricity, and there was a distinct smell of smoldering cloth in the air. The bedside lamps shattered. Pictures were ripped from the walls and flung about. A pillow was torn apart and duck down flew about in the wild winds like some freak snow squall. On the bed, the two lovers were oblivious to the madness. Chris rolled atop Gillian, drew his lips away from hers and whispered, “Magical enough for you?”
“Not quite,” she replied with a grin and raised her hips from the bed to grind her abdomen against Chris’s groin. “More magic please,” she said, and pressed her mouth to his once more.
Chapter 15
Saturday, March 14
Seemed like everyone and everything was against him, every shortsighted idiot in town and every rotten pipe and board in the theater. The goddamn Mayor was always on his case, insulting him, threatening him. Some of the cast were now openly defiant, questioning his direction and second-guessing his artistic decisions. Christ, he was forever fighting fires, never able to get ahead. Just when his plays were fully cast, people quit. Just when ticket sales picked up, the plumbing failed. He’d caught some lawyer talking to the cast earlier that afternoon, and now there w
ere rumors Doctor Shadow’s parents were planning to sue the theater. And the Chandler guy, waltzing in and demanding bones the whole company had slaved to dig up? Not going to happen!
He’d talked to Blood and Sweat about Chris’s threat. The only folks he could rely on, they’d agreed to stand guard over their haul until Gilbert could ship it out on Monday. The twins had turned the mechanical closet into their den, and the bones, all wrapped and ready to send, were now stored safely beneath their cots.
And Dolli. Would she never shut up about money? Okay, yes the theater was a money pit. How like his dad to stick him with a legacy that raised his hopes and dashed them at the same time. The stink in the place was like his old man had come out of the grave to fart in his face. ‘Gotcha, loser!’ his dad seemed to be saying.
Still, something had to be done about the awful smell in the place or all Gilbert’s plans were going asses up. A plumber’d come by earlier in the evening, but all he’d said was, “Pick a number,” and shrugged. Gilbert had pressed the bastard and he’d finally agreed to do what he could for ten grand. Ten grand! Where the hell was Gilbert going to get ten thousand dollars? And in April, when the theater opened, the stink was only going to get worse, because April rains a lot, and according to the plumber, the whole town’s sewers might flood back into Gilbert’s basement. Great, the whole damn town shitting in his theater. Par for the goddamn course!
He’d lain awake for hours, until...not ten minutes ago...when a sudden stroke of genius came to him. So now he was up and rifling through Dolli’s business files.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dolli grumbled from their bed. “It’s three in the morning.”
“Where do you keep the orders we receive for bones?”
“In the file marked Orders.”
“Oh, right.”
“Man eyes,” she muttered. “Don’t mess them up for Christ sake; they’re organized by body part.”
“By body part?”
“You know, legs with legs, skulls with skulls.”
“So, what about the weird stuff, like the request we got for the whole family?”
“At the very back of the file.”
“Okay. Found it.”
“Found what?”
“You remember we got a letter from some guy who wanted to watch us kill someone, like on a video, then prepare the skeleton and ship it to him, and we thought, what a sicko? Well, maybe he’s our answer. Hey, what do you know? It’s the same guy who ordered the family, so he knows our work. Christ, did you see how much he’ll pay?”
“You’re not serious.” Dolli pulled Gilbert’s pillow behind her and sat up.
“With this kind of money, we could rebuild the whole goddamn theater. It’s perfect.”
“Kill somebody on camera? You’d really do that?”
“Think about it. We’ve got more weird torture stuff around here, and accidents happen all the time. I read how the Grand Guignol Theater in Paris lost three of its actors to fatal injuries over its hundred-year history. We don’t have to kill anybody. We just have to have a camera rolling when an accident happens. There are plenty of people in this town I’d like to watch die.”
“After an accident, the body would be taken away by the authorities, so you’d have nothing to send your client. Besides, we’d probably be shut down.”
“Only if the death became public. So we do it during some late night rehearsal, and then tell the cast we can’t report the accident or we’ll be closed. They’d shut up. Right?”
“But the dead guy would be missed.”
“Not somebody like the Chandler kid, or maybe we find some bum hitchhiking out on the main road, or even Emelia Tombstone. I’m getting so sick of her snide remarks, and no one would come looking for her.”
“Helluva lot safer to find some guy on the road, and do it in the woods. Keep the whole thing secret.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
Dolli looked at Gilbert like he was some kind of revolting bug, “I wasn’t serious, you idiot! The whole idea is sick.” She slid back down into the bed and pulled the sheets over her head, muttering, “You may have finally lost your fucking mind.”
Just keep it up, Dolli. Nobody in Vermont would ever miss some smart-assed yazzy from Arizona.
* * * *
The night sky was filled with stars. A waxing gibbous moon bathed the landscape in its pale gray light. The pond, its surface rippled by a light breeze, glistened like hammered silver. Chris was seated in an armchair by the window, wrapped in a blanket, watching Gillian sleep. What a wondrous sight she was, her naked back, her slender neck, her glorious breasts pressed into the mattress. His heart was filled to bursting. Then Gillian rolled over, realized Chris wasn’t beside her, and raised her head from the pillow. From behind a curtain of golden hair, she said, “Hi. What’s wrong? Are you trying to get away from me?”
“Absolutely nothing’s wrong. I’m trying very hard not to caress you so Mallory doesn’t bring the roof down.”
Gillian pushed the hair back from her face, grinning. “Might be worth it.”
Chris tossed the blanket aside and was about to jump back into bed when, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed for an instant a tiny point of light across the pond, moving through the woods in the direction of the cemetery.
“Huh,” he said and stood there in the window waiting to see if the light reappeared.
“What is it?”
“I thought I saw a light near the cemetery.”
“Really?”
“Yes, there it is again.”
“So, I take it you’re torn.” She sat up and pulled the sheets across her chest. “Me or some graves.”
“To hell with graves!” Chris said and jumped back into bed.
“Whoa there.” Gillian scooted to the far side. “Men! Just the chance of sex and they can think of nothing else. But we’re Mortsafemen, remember? We have responsibilities!”
“We do?”
“Of course, we’re a team. We fight grave robbers together or not at all.” Gillian hopped out of bed and started pulling on her clothes. “So, are you coming?”
They heard nothing, not a whisper, not a rustle, not a cry, as they crept closer to the cemetery, so it likely wasn’t the whole gang from the theater. At the edge of the cemetery clearing, they hid behind a fallen tree and Chris peered into the dark.
“It’s Rose,” he whispered. “She’s sitting on a stump, staring at the graves.”
“Rose? Is she alone?”
“It’s okay you two,” Rose called to them. “I know you’re there.”
They joined Rose, apologized for intruding, and explained they’d seen her flashlight and felt they had to investigate. She was glad for their company, she said, and asked with a twinkle in her eye, if the amulet had worked. They both blushed, grinned at each other, and said yes.
“That’s nice. I’m pleased.”
“Rose, why are you here at three in the morning?”
“I wanted to know if my friends would recognize me.”
“And do they?”
“See for yourself.”
Chris and Gillian stared at the graves. Chris was the first to catch sight of a figure, the merest outline...in silver...of a woman.
“Over there,” he whispered, “a lady.”
“That’s Miriam. She was a nanny in Boston. She died in a fire saving the children. We were best friends.”
“She’s weeping.”
“She doesn’t see me.”
“I think there’s a man over by the little pine,” Gillian said.
“Arnaud d’Orlhac. He taught Latin in our village. Such a kind man and so smart. Later became a doctor. He got killed when the roof of his hospital in the Congo fell in and he threw himself across a patient to stop her being crushed by a beam.”
“And there...and there,” Gillian said. “It’s true! They’re all crying. My God, it’s so sad.”
“Yes, they’re all here...and none of them sees me.”
“I don’t understand,” Gillian said. “Why is Mallory so aware of Chris and his actions and everyone he comes into contact with, and yet these spirits are completely oblivious to the people around them? And why can Mallory throw things around and hurt Chris, and they can’t?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Chris said. “I’m certain Mallory and Braida saw each other the other day. She looked right at Mallory. So she must be aware.”
“Perhaps if you did something they’d remember,” Gillian said, “from their past I mean. You might catch their attention. Something from long ago.”
Rose sat in silence for a moment, thinking, then began to sing. Her voice was sweet, soft, like a gentle breeze.
Bela Domna•l vostre cors gens
E•lh vostre bel olh m’an conquis,
E•l doutz esgartz e lo clars vis,
E•l vostre bels essenhamens,
Que, can be m’en pren esmansa,
De beutat no•us trob egansa:
La genser etz c’om posc’e•l mon chauzir,
O no•i vei clar dels olhs ab que•us remir.
“So beautiful,” Gillian said.
“It’s a love song by an Occitan poet, Bertran de Born. We all sang it.”
“What does it mean?”
“O pretty lady, all your grace and eyes of beauty conquered me, sweet glance and brightness of your face and all your nature has to tell. So if I make an appraisal, I find no one like in beauty; most pleasing to be found in all the world, or else the eyes I see you with have dimmed.”
“Look!” Chris said. “When you stopped singing, the man over there, he looked around, and then the lady who saved the child, she looked up as well. They both heard you. I’m sure of it. Sing another.”
Ben es mortz qui d’amor no sen
Al cor calque dousa sabor!
“They’re moving, coming this way!”
E que val viure ses amor
Mas per enoi far a la gen
“Rose, they see you!”
Ja Domnedeus nom azir tan