* * * * *
The initial surge of adrenaline passed through Jay after several minutes wedged between machinery. Nothing chased him through the shadows. Nothing shambled upon his heels. Nothing else but Jay disturbed the thick dust gathered in the barn. Jay gathered his breath and backed himself out of the piles. He collected his thoughts and chided himself for behaving as a child, for letting fear chase him through a barn brimming with sharp implements. He was lucky he had not tripped and injured himself. The Turners were all dead, and Jay could not allow the fear of ghosts to send him stumbling into real harm.
“My God.” Jay whispered as breath again filled his lungs. “I wonder if Jackie Turner knew what was in the center of this barn. I wonder if she knew what all this junk surrounded.”
Jay returned to the circular opening where the paraffin lantern remained cleaned and polished, where the corpse sat several feet past the lamp. Jay's steps turned heavy as he approached the dried, shrunken body seated in a wide and tall Victorian parlor chair, that piece of furniture yet another valuable antique gathered upon the Turner lands. Jay wondered how many years had passed since the remains of that deceased man had been left behind and forgotten in that round barn at the center of the Turner estate.
Jay was surprised by how much ruin and decay had left behind of that man seated in the parlor chair. White, thin wisps of a beard trailed along the bottom jaw bone. Thin, paper skin, like old wrapping paper, covered the underlining skeleton. Hands, with bulbous knuckles, clutched at the chair's armrest. The face had tightened in death and locked the thin lips into a twisted, mocking grin, in which Jay counted several brown teeth still rooted in the wrinkled gums. Jay swallowed and peered into the empty sockets where eyes once rested, their soft tissue unable to withstand the attack of time and rodents.
“You must be a Turner. You're not dressed like any poor stranger.”
Jay dated the body's moth-eaten wardrobe to the turn of the previous century. A black Hamburg hat fell low upon the brow. A navy blue Ascot circled the neck and trailed into a vest whose original cream hue was soiled with water stains. A charcoal frock coat covered most of the corpse, falling beyond the knees to blend with matching trousers. No matter the stains time pressed upon it, the funeral wardrobe remained impressive. With a little care, such garb could be refurbished for value. Cleaned and mended, the dress, once set upon a mannequin, would turn attention to a storefront window.
“You weren't handsome no matter your wardrobe.”
Despite the original elegance whispered by the wardrobe, the corpse's old deformity could not be shrouded. The length of the arms appeared far too short. The legs seemed far too long, and the head looked too massive, too tall and wide to have been supported upon such thin shoulders. Jay imagined the man seated in that chair must have had a difficult time moving when alive in the world for such deformity of scale. He feared to imagine the pain such a shape must have inflicted upon the living.
“Hey Jay!”
Gus's voice shouted through the piles gathered in the barn.
“You alright, Jay? You in there?”
Jay shouted back without turning away from the grinning corpse seated in front of him. “I'm in the center! Better look at what I've found! Just move slow through all those machines!”
Gus cursed and growled as he moved through the tight spaces leading him to the center. He stopped often to consider a machine covered in dust, or to pick up strange components while guessing at their old purpose. But he made his way all the same, and he whistled as he arrived at Jay's back and gazed upon the corpse seated upon the parlor chair.
“Now, this property certainly has everything. You're gonna have to alert the police about this.”
Jay nodded. “It's strange, Gus. This place is just teeming with all these antiques. And there's this man's corpse in the center of it. Feels like he's been buried behind all the piles.”
“First corpse I've ever found, Jay.”
Another breeze swirled the dust, and Gus looked upwards to see a dozen of windchimes dangling from a barn's beam overhead of the seated corpse.
“Have you looked closely at these?” Gus climbed a nearby tractor and pulled down a chime for closer inspection. “These are strange pieces. I think these chimes are made of bones. I'm not sure, but I think they're finger bones.”
Jay shuddered. “Who would make windchimes out of finger bones?”
“Maybe they're not windchimes at all. Maybe they're alarms. Maybe they're there for warning.”
“Seems barbaric.”
“Maybe so,” Gus grinned, “but I bet there's a collector for those chimes.”
“I suppose there's a market for everything.”
Gus winked. “Now you're thinking like a picker.”
“I'll contact the authorities first thing in the morning,” Jay picked up the paraffin lantern, “but I'm ready to call it a day. Going to take this lantern home. Something to help Kelly see the light. Anything catch your eye in the house?”
Gus's good, green eye squinted back at Jay. “Nothing in particular. There's just too much stuff to tell. Believe me, you're gonna get your ninety-grand back on this place. We'll just leave the trailer here so it's waiting for us in the morning.”
Gus and Jay turned their backs upon the seated corpse and retreated out of the barn without suffering any scrape or bruise. Working together, they succeeded in trailblazing a new path out of the acre's accumulated debris. Dusk had settled upon the late summer evening by the time Gus's jostling van pulled back upon the county highway leading home.
Jay thought his country home looked empty upon arriving at his lane after a day spent sifting through the Turner piles. He felt an unexpected pang of shame. Why had he collected so little during his time? Was it not a waste to allow so much land on his property to sit empty? In the time remaining to him, could he fill his estate as completely as had the Tuners?
The paraffin lantern proved just the relic required to help Kelly see the wisdom of Jay's investment. Even Anderson took an interest as Jay described all the cars and parts waiting to be put back together again. Jay went to bed satisfied that his family was on the verge of a wealthier future. Those deceased Turners could not take their possessions with them to the grave, and Jay thought his family did the Turners a service by making the most of what had been left behind before ruin and rust ruled the grounds.
Ghosts could no longer be collectors. Only the living relished the accumulation of so many things.
Guarded Keepsakes Page 7
