by David Irons
From then on, it was just Jennifer vs. the world. Having a huge tax bill from last year, and zero income from the business this year, she started on her scrabble to start over from the bottom up. That's why her career in Blitzer's Funeral Parlour began — cash to keep her afloat.
Jennifer sighed. There was no attachment there for the man walled in his wooden tomb. She was merely an observer, a viewer at a stage play where she could just sit back and watch the proceedings. She had borne witness to the life, the death and soon the burial of Gregory Blitzer and who knew, maybe she could make a few bucks in the process.
For some reason, something bothered her, an offbeat feeling she just couldn't shake. She thought that maybe it was just echoes from funerals of the past playing tricks with her mind. On a deeper level an alarm bell was ringing. Distantly, far away in the depths of her soul, something was trying to catch her attention.
All morning, just like that day she found Keith Connors’ bullshit website, the tattoo she kept hidden from the world was itching. It always seemed to when trouble was coming, it was like a beacon, warning her… No, it wasn't a surface itch, it was a below the skin itch, one that she could not satisfy anymore with her filed nails. It felt more like… a pulse.
The winking red-faced devil she had inked on her left forearm stared up at her, the same face from that old odd tarot card that saved her all those years ago that saved her from…
'Night Creepers — Night Creepers, creeping through your hair, running down your body, running everywhere!'
The slogan underneath his grinning face on a scroll curled at the edges, "Come on Down!"
She became itchy at the memory's thought; finger nails drawing over the inflamed tattoo. His horned head, screwed up face and car salesman grin, were, for some reason, glowing brighter than a hot coal. The tattoo wasn't new, but for some reason, today, it felt as irritated as the day she had it done.
She rubbed the grinning, winking red face once more, and put her hand on her slick pink tongue taking a wad of spittle to moisturize Old Nick's face. For a second this seemed to work and she went back to her red lips for another lap of saliva.
Looking up to the limo's rear view, she saw the mirrored glasses of the driver looking at her, reflecting her own image of herself licking her own hands back towards herself. She pushed the button on the driver passenger divide and cut off his gaze from her. Safe from his glare she gave him the finger behind the blacked-out glass.
'Keep your eyes on the road, asshole,' she thought, as the car made a huge bump around to the left. She realized they were turning off, finally at their destination. The passengers of the five, slick black limos all looked up in awe, staring at the huge granite wall in front of them. A jigsaw puzzle of various worn greys, standing thirty feet high and spanning sixty feet across; a wall that would have looked more in place in an old Universal horror movie than in real life.
'Jesus,' Jennifer whispered, as her limo pulled towards a giant iron gate. 'Looks more like a portcullis.' Watching it automatically draw apart either side, it split in the middle with a great iron shriek as her limo, with its four followers behind, all began to slowly pull inside. Each of the funeral guests awe struck; soon they would all learn that this was a place none of them would ever forget.
CHAPTER 4
The afternoon light flickered, forming a menacing nimbus around the huge ancient stone archway like an archaic shadowed god that loomed over them. Slowly, almost apprehensively, the five limos drove beneath it. Each car bumped over the gate's small metal track used for guiding the gates with a quick 'Thwump' of front and back tires. Inside the cars, everyone in his or her individual world was suddenly joined as one in this eerie spectacle. Alison and Alex were pulled from their negative thoughts; Kristi and Kelly forgot their sullen attitude to one another. Matt dropped his one-sided conversation with the driver and Jennifer swung her legs around and slipped the storyboards back into her satchel.
Beyond the grinding gates was a long yellow dirt track. Squinting, wrinkling her nose with non-understanding, Jennifer looked out of all the windows of the limo; transfixed on what looked like swaying seas of red velvet either side of her, she tried to make some sense of the vast crimson blanket that moved in the afternoon breeze. Her eyes adjusted, understanding what she was looking at; hundreds, thousands, maybe millions, of bright, blood red roses that undulated and intermingled next to each other in tightly packed density.
A smile broke on her face at the tranquil sight, the confines of the church completely walled in by the sea of red. She spotted a slight clearing of what looked like freshly dug dirt in the thick deep redness. Standing over it, a time-greyed — almost blue, gravestone that jutted through the earth curled with gargoyle designs; foul winged things, all tongues and teeth embracing it with almost erotic ecstasy. From the back of the car the name on the grave was unreadable. For some reason, seeing this lone gothic stone put a shiver up her spine, either with an invisible wave of either deja vu or some other psychokinetic power that reached in and electrified the inside of her head.
Jennifer was not a twenty-first century girl. Instead of grabbing for her smart phone to take a picture of the image of the grave she reached back in her satchel for her sketchbook. Quickly, she drew the lonesome stone, surrounding it by scribbled roses. The sketch, although done at a fast clip, represented exactly what it was: her memory of the single grave, as she watched it disappear slowly into the distance.
'Wow!' exclaimed Kelly, turning to her mom, who stared out of her own window. The little girl marvelled at the shimmering sea of scarlet all around them.
'Son of a bitch,' Alex Lomax muttered, put out at another show of Blitzer's opulence.
Matt turned to his driver, once more watching his reaction, acknowledging the constant blank expression even when confronted with such a sight of wonder. 'Look at this,' Matt said with awe. The driver stayed silent, as the red from outside reflected up onto the front window screen, washing over it like wine and turning the driver’s face a devilish shade of ruby. 'Doesn't faze you a bit, does it, buddy?' Matt said, sitting back in the leather seat, giving up on the deadpan driver, knowing if he continued this line of questioning, he'd be likely to pop the guy in the mouth just to get a reaction.
Alison Johnson, at the back of the queue with her mouth agape, looked at the endless red roses. Her normally cold heart flickered sparks of warmth. Her lips parted, showing slightly yellowed teeth through her already cracking cheap lipstick.
Love, she thought. 'Gregory Blitzer was a man filled with love.' She knew he was developing a luxurious funeral complex, but seeing it at this time of day draped in the luxurious red of roses was something else. This was going beyond everyone's expectations, beyond what she had expected, but simultaneously, was exactly what she would expect from him, Love. Love. Love.
The limos pulled forward, driving past almost a mile's worth of roses and granite wall. Then, slowing down, the elongated cars pulled towards a T-junction in the yellow dust track, where towering over them was a huge church spire outlined by the corona of the falling sun. Each car pulled to a stop next to one another in its pointed shadow; lining up perfectly next to an already parked limo like a parade of Tonka toys in a game only a child could tell you the rules of.
Standing centre stage in front of the building was a priest dressed in traditional garb of black suit and white dog collar, holding up his right hand as if bringing them to a stop. The man looked early thirties, his bright blonde hair a stark contrast to the gloomy building behind him. His face, well looked after and almost crease free, matched his soft unworked hands.
The occupants of the limos sat in silence, gazing up at the abstract architecture. This building — a stone's throw away from Bandon — was everything aesthetically that place wasn't. Here was a building that wove signatures from different cultures and religions. Its front a traditional church spire, directly behind it, twin Islamic domes, followed by another dome blazoned with the Jewish Star of David.
On either side of the building, minarets and small replicas of cathedral spires sprouted out, and round them, foul popeyed stone gargoyles grimaced and sneered to the ground below. The main creature chiselled into its walls was a hideous snake-like beast, its length immeasurable as it wound and bound the building together with its serpent grip, holding these multicultural religious icons in place, with its loathsome, staring venomous head perched above the front door.
Not only did the building bear out of place religious icons, but also cultural references. Around the first few feet of its stone’s walls were what looked like Native American symbols, crudely carved deeply into them. The building, worn through time, dark and foreboding, felt both beautiful and frightening at the same time.
Suddenly, the drivers of the limos simultaneously sprung from their seats, swinging around to open the back doors for their passengers. One by one they all stepped out feeling the sun warmed dirt floor beneath their feet radiating up around their ankles. No one took their eyes from the building in front of them, astonished at the secret project Blitzer had been working on.
Alex Lomax wondered where this thing had come from; he had lived in Bandon for most of his life, but had never heard of anything like this in the surrounding area. Blitzer couldn't have built this here, he surmised, green with envy. But where did it come from? And if it had already been here, what did it cost to rejuvenate a building like this? Blitzer had polished this place like a pretty penny, and the thought of how many pretty pennies he had spent to do so splashed bitterly and enviously across Lomax's mind.
Jennifer, Alison and Kelly took it for what it was: amazing, a magnificent man-made spectacle; while Kristi, brow furrowed, wondered why her lawyer's knife didn't slice this place down the middle like a kid's birthday cake.
Matt was the only one not transfixed under the spire's looming shadow. He instead looked at the pale priest. Then he eyeballed the occupants of the other cars, recognizing them all, each one a ghost of the recent past. He watched as the limo drivers walked behind their passengers, silently ushering them forward, moving them enough to close the vehicle's rear doors. In unison, they all stepped back into their cars, slamming their doors behind them.
Droids, he thought uneasily, as a chill whispered through his bones.
'Quite something, isn't it? I haven't seen anything like it before,' the priest said in a mild and pleasant tone. 'This was quite a find of Mr. Blitzer's, quite a find indeed. I've only just arrived myself.' Halting his glowing at the building behind him, he composed himself and slipped back into priest mode. 'I'm glad you have all arrived safety. I'm sorry; I'm just very impressed by all this. It makes me wish I could have seen it before the renovation.' The attendees didn't hear his words, they were too busy eyeing one another; connections made immediately between their eyes like the lines of a connect the dots in a puzzle book.
Kristi looking at the slithering lawyer, Lomax, then to her old hired hand, Matt.
Alex cast his gaze to the redheaded girl, the girl who helped run the cartel that obviously funded this building — it was the only explanation. He watched as she threw a death glare at Alison, who in return stared straight back at her with her own death glare. Both holding back the hatred for one another in the outside world they used to package away in the work place.
Jennifer turned away from her slowly and her eyes fell on Kelly, the young girl's innocence a vast juxtaposition from the old crone. Immediately, her expression lost its harsh grimace as, with natural warmth, she smiled at the child. Kelly's eyes widened, awkward that she was being acknowledged, and then slowly, she smiled back at Jennifer.
'So, let's go inside. I'm as anxious as you are to see it,' said the priest.
'You haven't seen it yet, Father?' The group turned to look at Matt.
'No.'
'You're telling me that you're in the dark about this, as much as we are?'
'I was told in a letter from the applicant in charge of the burial that Mr. Blitzer wanted me to perform the first funeral here. I'm not sure he knew it was going to be his own.'
'How poetic,' Kristi sardonically chimed in. 'Don't you want to introduce yourself, Father?' she asked.
He smiled at the group. “Forgive me. I'm William Bexler. I'm…'
'This is the guy that married me to the schlub we're here to bury. I'd like to say it's good to see you, Father.' Kristi rolled up her veil, lighting another cigarette, blue smoke filtering up past her serpent eyes. 'But I won't.'
Matt sighed and looked around him, looking down at the road they came from, at the sea of red roses, seeing the tops of grey headstones popping through them sporadically. He took in the T-junction that went off two thirds the length of the driveway, the yellow dirt floor encased by a wall of red. He then turned his gaze to the building in front of them, studying how it stretched back. 'Well he got the shape of this place right,' he said.
'What do you mean?' Alex growled, wiping his forehead with an already sweat-stained handkerchief.
Matt walked in-between the group, taking out his keys then bent down to the sandy floor, the others all leaned in to watch; with two quick slashes he drew a stick thin crucifix.
'Old Blitzer never missed a trick, did he?' Matt said.
Alex looked around at his surroundings, realizing that the young man in front of him was right; the whole driveway encased inside the endless beds of roses was landscaped like a cross, he wondered how much the designer who came up with this little number had charged.
A black Jimmy Choo stiletto reached over, kicking and stamping the crucifix indented in the dust out of existence. 'Alright, alright, ingenious isn't it? Enough of this crap, let's get on with the show.' Kristi grabbed Kelly's arm, dragging her towards the church's oversized front door. Her face snarled at Kelly who, embarrassed by her mom's snark-filled actions, gave Jennifer a forlorn look.
Jennifer flickered a sad smile, as their eye contact was broken, unable to imagine Kristi as the mother of a child who had so much soul in her eyes.
Matt turned around to the group. 'Well, I think none of us really need an introduction.'
Everyone drew round to stare at each other once more.
'It's just interesting to me why some of us are here. You two I can vouch for.' He pointed to Jennifer and Alison, 'but me and you, Lomax? You reading his will after the funeral?' he asked.
Alex shrugged and smiled. 'I haven't been asked, but you know me, never look a gift horse in the mouth. So far, I haven't spent a penny on our trip out here. But maybe I can make a couple.'
To their left, Alison makes a 'humph' sound. 'Well, I know I deserve to be here. All I can hope is that with all the pressure Mr. Blitzer had been under lately, he simply forgot to update his will. That's why you people are here. And you Mr. Private Detective, well I can't wait to see what Gregory would have left you, with everything you did to tarnish his good name.'
'Yeah, yeah,' said Matt.
'Well, let's go and see what your wonderful man has to offer today then,' Jennifer said.
Alison puckered her face at her like a bulldog licking piss from a stinging nettle.
Matt looked at the priest. 'Lead the way padre. This is your gig.'
The priest turned about face and walked towards the front door, looking up at the awe-inspiring building as he led them forward.
Matt turned to the limos all lined up, their motors starting and idling like growling black Dobermans protecting the place, keeping intruders out or trying to keep the funeral’s guests in.
Nearing what looked like a newly attached carved marble doorway, they stepped through it into the darkness of a long hallway. They were unaware that at ankle height, a smoky-lensed electronic eye — a hidden camera and sensor — was watching and counting. The unseen eye was connected to a computer hidden inside the building; its sole purpose on its custom-made program was to count. Just like the count from Sesame Street. Already it had counted, 'One ah-ha-haa, two ah-ha-haa,' as Kelly and Kristi had gone inside. The rest of the gro
up walked through the door as the electronic eye kept counting, processing the data in its hard drive ready for phase two of its simple assignment. 'Three, four, five, six, seven – Ah-ha-haa.' Then, with its ten-second delay, the eye triggered an electronic pulse to the computer, which in turn started its next process, firing information back to the hydraulic hinges on the marble doors.
Magically, without anyone seeing, the doors automatically slid shut on greased runners; they conjoined internally by hidden, locking, thick steel rods that crossed from one to the other; slotting into purposefully drilled holes inside their solid stone.
These luxury doors were never designed for a second use: it was a one-way deal. Once locked, that was it — they were locked, interwoven within each other in a tapestry of steel rod. Their job was done. Now, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how much they fought, the doors would never allow its seven counted guests to leave through them again.
CHAPTER 5
Their best shoes clicked in an eerie solemn silence along the barely lit blue marble hallway. Coldness filled the air, felt soothing against their skin, a contrast to the smothering Californian heat outside. Barely showing them the way forward, small white lights under oval covers lined the walls, leading further down to another marble door. In front of it, Kristi stood watching the rest of the group with the razor sharp cut of her staring eyes.
There was a new smell mixed into this old place, one of cut timber and freshly laid cement that fought with the stagnant dampness of age that lingered in the air.
'I'm as in the dark as the rest of you on this,' said the priest as he led the group forward, constantly looking down at sheets of paper in his hand. 'All I've been told is that I will be performing both the funeral service and, immediately after, a small wake. I've been asked to read the will. It's a little odd to do that at this time, so soon after a funeral and by myself, but the applicant in charge and the executor of Mr. Blitzer's estate said this was part of his request.'