Candlemoth

by R.J. Ellory

  I felt something I could not have described. Loss? Anger? A sense of worthlessness?

  I walked towards the front door, went up those same steps where I'd stood and been showered in snow. I remembered the Christmas lights Benny Amundsen had hung along the front, the way Eve Chantry had leaned from the window and hollered at me.

  Hell of a thing, Mister Ford.

  Hell of a thing, Mrs. Chantry.

  I remembered everything. And it hurt.

  I reached for the handle, felt the damp mouldy surface of swollen wood, and when I turned it, the rusty latch creaked against the striker plate. I shoved the door and it gave, and pushing it back against the raised carpet I stepped inside.

  This was no longer Eve Chantry's house.

  Everything had been taken away, the furniture, her personal effects. The atmosphere.

  That was the main thing. Eve Chantry's house had been the way it was because of her. With her gone it was just a house. Nothing more.

  Perhaps the rumors she herself had created had been sufficient to convince people the place was haunted.

  I had a fleeting thought: that I should sell my mother's house and buy this one, restore it, recreate the atmosphere that was present when Eve was alive.

  Do that for her. For myself. I smiled. It was a crazy thought.

  I surveyed the hallway, saw through the door into the kitchen where she had baked those cookies, the ones that tasted of nutmeg and sweet cherry and something else indescribable that made you want two or three more.

  I stepped forward and looked into the room where we had drunk Christmas punch and smoked cigars, where we had remembered Jack and Jennifer and a terrible day in the summer of '38.

  All these things.

  I turned and looked up towards the landing. Taking each riser slowly, testing my weight with care, listening to the creak of the damp wood beneath my feet, I went up.

  I stood in the upper hallway, and when I moved I could almost see her there, see her lying on her bed, the tray of food untouched by her feet, that smell of lavender, the sense of losing…

  I stood right where I had when I'd come to see her.

  I remembered Dr. Backermann, his words, his platitudes, and how I'd wished I'd had all the money in the world to send her to Charleston State and have people who knew what they were doing give Eve Chantry back to me.

  I remembered the candlemoth.

  I turned at the sound of a car engine. Reaching that same broken window I had seen from the path below I lifted the net curtain aside and saw a dark sedan pull along the path and approach the house.

  I frowned.

  I released the curtain and went back to the upper landing. I started down the stairs, quietly, slowly, and without asking myself why I was going with such care. If I had stopped to think I perhaps would have been puzzled by the coincidental appearance of someone else. The house had been empty for years. Perhaps this was a buyer. A real estate agent. But it was Christmas Eve.

  Back in the lower hall, I approached the front door and, as I reached for the door handle, I saw a silhouette through the frosted glass of someone out there on the porch steps.

  Something tight and cold clutched at the pit of my stomach.

  I stepped back as I realized whoever was out there was coming in. I was at the kitchen doorway by the time they had turned the handle and opened the door.

  A man stood there. Tall, dark hair, long overcoat. He was not alone. I glimpsed a movement to his right.

  'Mister Ford,' he said, and smiled.

  I felt like someone had slapped my face.

  'They knew your name?' Father John asked.

  I nodded.

  'But you'd never seen them before?'

  I shook my head. 'Not that I could remember.'

  'And the second man came in alongside the first?'

  'Yes, but he sort of hung back, like he didn't really want to be seen as much, like he was trying to avoid showing his face.'

  'But you did see them both clearly?'

  'I saw them both clearly.'

  'And you remember what they looked like?'

  I frowned, puzzled. 'Why d'you ask?'

  Father John leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. He looked like a schoolteacher explaining something once more to a slightly backward child.

  'I'm just fascinated,' he said. 'It's like gangster stuff. You go down to this house and these two guys turn up, long overcoats, menacing, all this kind of stuff. And also the thing that this guy Schembri told you about Mister West being in the employ of Senator Goldbourne.'

  'Robert Schembri was a lot of things,' I said. 'And just plain crazy may well have been one of them.'

  'You don't want to believe that Mister West knew something about what happened with Nathan?'

  'What I want, what I believe, none of these things count for much right now. It doesn't matter whether Mister West knew anything about it or not…'

  'Doesn't matter?'

  'Say he did. What the hell am I gonna do about it now? I'm here, right here on Death Row, and he's doing whatever he does and there's nothing that's gonna change our places, right? It was what it was… I said all along that that's what happened. I went down there, they said what they came to say, they left.'

  'And they threatened you?'

  'Not directly… they didn't say they were gonna kill me or anything, but their purpose for coming down was clear.'

  'And what was that?'

  'Your friend,' the first man said. 'Your negro friend, Mister Ford.'

  He took a step towards me. There was something in his face that I would recognize years later in that of Mr. West.

  These people possessed dark aspects. They carried shadows and ghosts. Ghosts of what they had done, what they were about to do. Ghosts of what they would like to do if there was some way they could.

  'Who the fuck are you?' I asked. I could hear the tension and fear in my voice. I sounded like a frightened ten-year- old.

  'Let's say we are associates of an interested party,' the first man said. 'Anyways, who we are and who you are isn't the issue at hand, Mister Ford. The issue at hand is a certain Mister Verney who happens to be spending a little too much time and showing a little too much interest in a particular young lady.'

  He smiled, and again there were dark aspects, shadows beneath his eyes that seemed to flicker out from someplace and return just as swiftly.

  'So who the fuck are you?' I asked again. 'You're like paid fucking thugs or something?'

  The second man appeared to emanate from behind the left shoulder of the first. He was slightly taller, he wore a wide-brimmed hat, and the light from the frosted pane in the front door cast a shadow that obscured all but his chin. It was a strong chin. Clean-shaven. I could see the muscles along his jawline tensing and relaxing back and forth as if something was alive and breathing inside his mouth.

  I felt nauseous.

  'We're no-one,' the first man said. 'We're messengers, nothing more than that. There's no threat to you, Mister Ford, none at all. We merely bring you a message that we would appreciate you passing on to your negro friend.'

  'Message?' I said. 'What message?'

  The first man smiled. 'I think you have the message loud and clear, Mister Ford… loud and clear.'

  He turned as if to leave.

  'Hey wait!' I said. 'What are you saying? That if Nathan keeps on seeing this girl there'll be some kind of problem for him?'

  It was a stupid question, and even as I said it I felt awkward and naive. They had delivered a message, I had received that message loud and clear, and these people were very simply the kind of people that stayed over their side of the field and you didn't proffer invitations.

  The first man turned back.

  He smiled, but there was something so sinister in that expression, that slight flicker of tension around the lips and eyes.

  'We're not here any more, Mister Ford… we're gone… we were never here in the first place…'

  T
he second man had already backed out through the front door and was standing on the porch.

  The first man went then, slowly, deliberately, his eyes never leaving me, and even as he reached the door the second man was walking away towards the sedan.

  People didn't operate like this without a great deal of practice.

  I was gripped by an indescribable sense of terror that seemed to pervade every nerve, every sinew, every muscle, everything inside of me.

  The first man nodded, smiled again, and then he turned and closed the front door behind him.

  I watched his silhouette as he went down the front steps and started along the path.

  I walked to the stairs and sat down on the third riser.

  I heard the sound of the car pull away towards the road.

  I listened until the sound vanished into nothing, and then I buried my face in my hands and started to shake.

  'And you didn't see them again?' Father John asked.

  'Not that day, no.'

  'Later?'

  I nodded.

  'And you were sure it was the same men?'

  'Sure then, sure now… always will be sure it was the same men.'

  'No question about it?'

  I shook my head.

  'The second man… you never saw his face clearly?'

  'I saw his face clearly enough as he was leaving. He walked backwards towards the front door, and there was a moment when the light from the side window in the hallway illuminated his face.'

  'So you saw them both clearly?'

  'Jesus,' I replied. 'This really is the third degree.'

  Father John laughed. 'I'm sorry, Danny. The whole thing intrigues me. The fact that Goldbourne would send two heavies down to threaten you because his daughter was seeing someone…'

  'Not just someone,' I interjected. 'Seeing a nigger.'

  Father John looked at me. 'Right, right, of course… that really was the issue at hand, wasn't it?'

  I shrugged. 'I don't know whether that was the only issue, maybe there was something else going on, but sure as hell if the rumors about who he was were true it would be an awful slur on his reputation for his daughter to be seen with a black guy.'

  'The rumors?' Father John asked.

  'That he was Klan… that he was Grand Wizard of the Empire or Grand Dickhead of the Realm… whatever these fuckers call themselves -'

  Father John was laughing.

  'What?'

  'I like that,' he said.

  'What?'

  'Grand Dickhead of the Realm.'

  I smiled. 'You know about these characters?' I asked.

  'Some.'

  'They're fuckin' nuts, man, fuckin' nuts. Grand-this and Grand-that, and the Invisible Empire, and the Union of the Snake. Robert Schembri told me all about the shit they used to do…'

  'Still do,' Father John said.

  'Right, still do,' I said.

  Father John paused for a moment and looked away towards the window.

  'So they left,' he said.

  I nodded.

  'And you went home?'

  'Right,' I said.

  'And that's when you saw them… Nathan and Linny.'

  I nodded again. 'That's when I saw them.'

  'Tell me…'

  I was tired. Once more I had smoked too much, and now we could get coffee I was drinking too much of that as well. My guts hurt, that kind of acidic burning when you eat crap and chuck your system full of caffeine.

  Carry on like this and it would kill me.

  Irony, bitter-sweet and poisonous, filled my thoughts.

  'Danny?'

  I looked up.

  'Tell me,' Father John prompted once more.

  I nodded, resigning myself to talk until the end.

  I could do that. I could talk.

  Father John seemed willing to listen, and hell, talking to someone was better than talking to myself.

  My memories were clearer than they'd ever been, and whether this was good or bad I didn't know.

  Again, for some reason, I wondered where those memories would go after November 11th.

  Father John would keep them, I thought. Father John would keep them for a while, and then perhaps he would pass them on to someone else. Perhaps we all carried around five-thousand-year-old memories that had travelled from generation to generation all down the line. Maybe a hundred years from now someone would be talking about me, this guy from North Carolina who fucked it all up so badly he got himself electrocuted in Sumter.

  Or maybe not.

  Maybe it wasn't that important.

  I had wanted so much for my life to mean something. Something of worth, something of value, something to be proud of. Not for my parents, not for anyone but me.,' wanted to feel like I'd done something. And how would I be remembered? A white guy who killed his best friend in a fit of jealousy and rage.

  That's not how it was. Not how it was at all. And there had been a time I believed everyone involved knew that it could never have been that way.

  But now, more than ten years later, I no longer believed anyone cared.

  'Danny?'

  I looked up. 'Father John,' I said, a little sarcastically. 'You're still here?'

  'You're tired,' he said. 'We'll talk some more tomorrow.'

  'Tomorrow?' I said. 'I thought we missed a day.'

  'I'll come tomorrow,' he said. 'We don't have much time. A fortnight will disappear before you know it.'

  I frowned. 'A fortnight? I have a month.'

  'Right, Danny,' Father John said. 'But I only get to see you for the next two weeks, and then once more on the tenth.'

  I frowned. 'How come?'

  Father John shrugged. 'It's the rules.'

  'They don't tell you why?'

  He shook his head. 'No, they don't tell me why.'

  'Strange shit goes on here,' I said.

  'So, tomorrow,' Father John said as he rose from his chair.

  'Tomorrow,' I replied.

  He lifted a half empty pack of Luckies. 'You want these?'

  I nodded. 'Sure, thanks.'

  'Welcome,' he said, and reached for the buzzer to call the Duty Officer.

  I would remember that day for a little while - not because of what I'd said, not because of the clear reminder that Rousseau had given me about my forthcoming rendezvous with The Procedure Room - but because of something I saw as I left God's Lounge and waited for the Duty Second to come and get me.

  Rousseau walked away, down the corridor, a long and seemingly endless corridor that would take him out of this place. Thirty yards from where I stood he suddenly paused, looked to his right down an intersecting walkway, and then he was joined by Warden Hadfield.

  They spoke for a few seconds, and then Rousseau turned, turned and looked directly at me, and seeing me standing there he seemed to emanate a sense of surprise. It was not something I saw, more something I felt. He seemed awkward for a second, standing there beside Hadfield, and then he took Hadfield's arm and directed him down the walkway and out of my line of sight.

  I wondered what they were saying, whether they were speaking of me or something else entirely unrelated. That moment left me with a disquieting sense of unease, and I considered all the discussions, all the conversations that were taking place, that had taken place, about me. About what would happen. About who I was. About my death.

  I turned as I heard Duty Second approaching. I looked down at my shoes. They seemed a million miles away, but the sense of foreboding, of fear, was as close as anything had ever been.

  That sense of fear was within, it was now part of me, and - no matter what happened - it would walk with me all the way.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  That night, a couple of hours after John Rousseau left, Clarence Timmons came down to see me.

  He told me that he'd been assigned Duty Officer on my Death Watch. From November 4th until the end he would spend twelve hours a day with me in two six-hour shifts. He explained how I wo
uld be shackled to wall stanchions, a wide leather belt circumventing my waist and my hands cuffed to the belt at my sides. He said he had tried it once, that it wasn't uncomfortable, just exceptionally difficult to do anything but sit or lie down.