Head Wounds

by Dennis Palumbo

  My every nerve rebelled at the thought of the unspeakable task ahead. The desecration demanded of me. Made even more horrific by the creaking of tree branches in the ceaseless wind. By night shadows clinging like webs to every jagged rock and spindly bush, under a leaden sky swept clean of stars. It was as though my very surroundings had become a palpable manifestation of Maddox’s twisted mind.

  Get a grip, I thought. This is what he wants. Don’t give it to him…

  Steeling myself, I deliberately straightened, despite the pull of bruised muscles. Then I swung the flashlight beam across the hedgerow marking the end of the main road, aiming it toward the side path I recalled from former visits. Although the wooden sign at its head was weathered and hard to read, it confirmed that the J-designated plots lay in that direction.

  This narrower, sloping trail was overhung with unruly branches and pockmarked with mud holes stiff as hardened clay, evidence of how poorly the cemetery was now maintained. With every other step, my foot caught, nearly sending me stumbling to the ground while sharp twigs and nettles scraped my face.

  As I trudged on, the tree canopy became thicker, obvious from the abrupt change in terrain beneath my feet. The sudden gluey softness of the mud. Little sunlight had penetrated the foliage above after the rains, and the ground was still sodden.

  It was slow going, and I began to worry about the time. A quick glance at my watch revealed that there was still a good ninety minutes before midnight.

  Permitting myself a moment’s rest, I stopped to wipe the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve.

  Just then, the smartphone rang. I picked up. Maddox.

  “You’re doing fine, Danny. But it must be lonely as hell up there in those woods. So how about I entertain you with some interesting factoids?”

  I didn’t reply, just stared at the phone in my hand. Then I slipped it back in my breast pocket.

  I continued clambering up the muddy path, guiding myself by flashlight through wiry brush and under low-hanging branches. With Maddox’s voice a muffled-though-insistent rasp.

  “Do you know what happens to a body after twelve years in a coffin? Fascinating, really. Of course, rates of decomposition vary, but it all starts pretty much right after death.”

  I told myself not to listen. To somehow stop up my ears.

  “Since the blood’s no longer circulating, the body starts changing color. Usually it looks kind of ashen. Like David Bowie after his Ziggy Stardust period.”

  Losing focus for a moment, I almost slipped in the dark on a patch of viscous mud.

  Fuck him, I thought. Don’t answer. Don’t say anything.

  “But, Danny, here’s where it really gets weird. Soon after death, blood settles in those parts of the body that are closest to the ground. The top part turns a waxy, grayish white, while the underside darkens. Yuck, eh?”

  My foot slipped again and I fell to one knee, immediately soaking my pant leg in soft mud. Using the shovel for leverage, I pulled myself up again.

  “Then, over the weeks and months following death, all these microorganisms in the intestines go to work. They’re sorta like Scrubbing Bubbles, you know? Ever see that commercial? Anyway, from the corpse’s standpoint, things go from bad to worse.”

  The words tore from my lips.

  “Shut the fuck up, Maddox!”

  “Hey, man, I studied up on this, and I hate to think of all that time wasted. Anyway, first the bacteria starts chewing through the gut, and then putrefaction spreads down to the chest and thighs. This produces gases that push the intestines out through the rectum, while fluid from the lungs oozes out of the mouth and nostrils—”

  “I’m not listening…”

  “Suit yourself. But, hey, you know what’s crazy? They even categorize this stuff. You start with your garden-variety putrefaction, right? Where the body is swollen with gases and has this godawful odor. Then we level up to black putrefaction, when the skin turns—you guessed it—black, and the corpse collapses as gases escape. Then comes fermentation…”

  “I’ll smash this phone, Maddox. I swear. And then you won’t get your fucking picture.”

  “True. But then you end up reading about one of your pals in the obits.”

  I stopped again, pounding my palm against my forehead. As though his voice was in my skull, in the marrow of my psyche, and I was trying to force it out.

  “Besides, I didn’t get to tell you about that last stage. The one with the really strong odors and the surface mold—”

  With a guttural cry, I grabbed the smartphone out of my pocket and threw it to the ground. It stuck in the mud.

  Eerily, his voice floated up at me from the phone.

  “Did you just get rid of the phone? I thought I heard something like a thud. Did you throw it, Danny? Because if you did…Whoa, look at the time! And you’re not even there yet—”

  “Okay, dammit!” I shouted. “All right…I’ll pick it up…”

  Using my flashlight, I quickly retrieved the phone, wiped off some splotches of mud, and put it back in my breast pocket.

  “I…I’ve got it again, Maddox.”

  By now, I barely recognized my own voice. It was ragged, hoarse. Stretched as tightly as my nerves.

  “Good.” Maddox went on, oblivious. “Because now we fast-forward through the years, during which the bacteria are joined by an army of insects. All kinds of creepy-crawlies. Hungry little bastards, too.”

  Gripping the shovel by its handle, I swung it over my shoulder and began moving as fast as I could up the path. I no longer cared if I stumbled, or if a spiky branch whipped across my face. I just had to keep moving.

  “Until, after a dozen years, we come to today.” His tone sharpened. “To this very moment. When you get to be reunited with your late wife, the woman whose betrayal pierced my heart. Ruined my life. As Boethius said, ‘The worst sort of misery is to have once been happy.’”

  I pushed my way past a hanging tangle of branches and found myself standing before a grassy field. An open expanse like a smooth, unfurled flag, stretching to the horizon. Even without much of a moon, I could make out row upon row of headstones.

  Gathering myself, I walked stiffly toward plot J-191. Barbara’s grave. Her father was buried next to her.

  Against the noise of the blood pounding in my temples, Maddox’s voice had fallen to a low, droning buzz. Though as I approached Barbara’s burial site, and its simple, unadorned headstone, I could just make out his final words.

  “Here you are, Danny. Thanks to me, you’ll get to see Barbara again. Though I don’t think she’ll look quite like what you remember. After twelve long years, she’ll be—how does that phrase go again?—I doubt she’ll be much more than a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair.”

  Standing beside the grave, I loosed the shovel from my shoulders and angrily drove its metal nose into the dirt. Holding it upright by the handle with both hands.

  I couldn’t seem to move.

  “What are you waiting for, Danny boy? It’s nearly ten-thirty. You better start digging.”

  Still I couldn’t move. My head throbbing as though about to explode. My arms and legs stiff as marble.

  “Not much time left, and a pretty big hole to dig.” A cold malice edging his words. All amusement gone.

  “Or else somebody you care about dies…Tick-tock, Rinaldi. Like the bad guys say in the movies. Tick-fucking-tock.”

  It was without thought. Without feeling.

  It was sheer, mindless will.

  I began to dig.

  l l l l l

  It must have been the recent rains, because the dirt was surprisingly loose and easy to dislodge.

  I’d thrown off my jacket and was sweating through my shirt, the bandages around my ribs coming away from the skin. Back muscles protesting as I bent to my task. Pulling shovelfuls of earth up and tossin
g them aside. Without checking my watch, I guessed that I’d been digging for about twenty minutes.

  And had scooped out a sizeable rectangular hole about three feet deep. That’s when I realized I might not make it.

  Gasping, winded, I pulled the smartphone from my pocket.

  “Maddox, I can’t! There’s not enough time—”

  For once, there was no caustic response from my tormentor. No mocking quote from the ancients. His only answer was silence.

  I went back to digging.

  Tick-tock, he’d said. Words I’d begun to silently repeat to myself. Feeling them form on my dry, cracked lips as I dug.

  After a while, as the thrown dirt piled up beside me, and the wind whistled restlessly through the trees, and my hands grew raw from their grip on the shovel’s handle, I lost all track of time. No longer imagined the clock ticking away in my head. Was aware of nothing but my numbing, panic-driven labors.

  And then, so suddenly that it shook me out of my mental stupor, the tip of the shovel sliced through a layer of dirt and hit something solid. From the dull thud, it sounded like wood.

  Glancing at the illuminated dial on my watch, I saw that I still had fifteen minutes. Still had time to get the coffin open by midnight. And prevent a murder.

  Furiously now, I scraped away the final layers of dirt on the wooden lid, then dug a sort of trench around the sides of the coffin. Heart banging in my chest, breath coming in hoarse gasps, sweat literally pouring from my brow.

  Yet the faster I went, I realized with a sharp inward pang, the sooner I’d have to pry the damned thing open.

  And see what lay within.

  Finally, the lid was totally exposed. Another glance at my watch. Mere minutes to go.

  Half out of my mind with grief and rage, my body spent and wracked with pain, I took the smartphone from my pocket.

  “Maddox! Are you there, you son of a bitch? I made it.”

  This time, he answered.

  “Not yet, Danny. Not till you open the lid.”

  “I know, I…”

  My voice faltered. I let it. Why not? I didn’t have the words to alter what was about to happen. What I had to do.

  The phone fell from my hand.

  With agonizing slowness, as though in a dream, I reached for the flashlight from where I’d positioned it on the edge of the opened grave. Then, shovel in my other hand, I slipped down into the narrow space I’d dug beside the coffin.

  Breathing hard, I let the flashlight beam play along the dirt-streaked sides of the coffin until it rested on a bolted hasp. Solid brass, it looked like, and intricately carved.

  Pushing the butt of the flashlight into the soft dirt wall behind me, I aimed its harsh white beam directly at the hasp.

  Then I gripped the shovel with both hands, held it above my head, and brought it down with all the strength I had left.

  The hasp made a startling, pinging sound as it broke.

  I wrestled it free from its brackets.

  I threw the shovel down.

  Then I put both hands on the lid, and, with an anguished cry, pulled it open.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  It was Barbara.

  Unchanged. Whole.

  Her long black hair, her glasses, the Pitt jacket…

  Stunned, I stumbled backwards, falling against the dirt wall. Feeling with trembling hands behind me for the flashlight I’d embedded there.

  It couldn’t be, it—

  It wasn’t.

  Leaning forward, I shone the light directly into the coffin. And saw what it was. What he’d done.

  The wig, styled as she’d worn her hair when I first met her in grad school. Same with the glasses. And the Pitt jacket, still sold at the campus store today.

  He’d even gotten the outfit right. The simple sweater and skinny jeans. The Kate Spade sandals.

  I gripped the edge of the coffin, staring at the manikin.

  Until I heard his dry chuckle coming from above me. From where I’d dropped the smartphone.

  “Congratulations, Danny. You made it with two minutes to spare. Eleanor Lowrey lives to eat pussy another day.”

  The last vestige of energy drained out of me, and my chin fell to my chest. Still holding fast to the coffin’s sides, I fought against a sudden, rubber-legged swaying.

  Somehow I found the words. “I…I haven’t taken the photo yet. You said you wanted—”

  “Aw, to hell with that. Who cares? What I wanted was to see your reaction when you opened the coffin. And let me tell you, dude, you didn’t disappoint.”

  “You…you saw me…?” Finally steadying myself. “How?”

  “I watched you on the monitor. As it happens, I’ve been here in the security kiosk for the past half hour. The guard doesn’t seem to mind. He’s busy being dead.”

  I looked up, squinting in the darkness at the skein of tree branches. Then I saw it. One of the cemetery’s security cameras, aimed at this row of burial plots.

  My head clearing, I also realized something else. Why the gravesite was so relatively easy to dig. It wasn’t due to the rain. It was because Maddox had been here earlier, maybe days before, and had already dug down to the coffin. So he could substitute the manikin for—

  I scrambled up the side of the opened grave and snatched the smartphone from the dirt. Glaring at his gleeful face.

  “Where is she, Maddox? Where’re Barbara’s remains?”

  “Where they belong.”

  “Goddammit, tell me—”

  “No! I’m the one who tells, who says what to do. You’re the one who does it.”

  I shook my head at him. “No more.”

  “Brave words, but, under the circumstances, meaningless. There are still plenty of targets on my list. But don’t worry, I’ll let the Lowrey bitch live tonight, because a deal’s a deal. After all, what is a man if he has not honor?”

  “Which Greek said that?”

  “Not a clue. Coulda been Jimmy the Greek, for all I know. But enough chit-chat. You still have some work to do.”

  “What work?”

  “I want you to toss that phone into the coffin with the manikin and close the lid. I can’t let you take it with you, so you and your FBI buddies can scour it for forensics. I mean, I think I was careful, but why take chances?

  “After that, you need to fill the grave back in. Including covering it with the grassy sod, just the way I did. I’m sure you want it to look nice for Barbara.”

  I didn’t move.

  “I’m waiting, Danny. Remember, I’m watching you right now on the monitor. I can see whether or not you do as you’re told.”

  I let out a long, dispirited sigh, and threw the smartphone into the coffin. Then I climbed back down into the opened grave, closed the coffin lid, and retrieved the shovel and my flashlight. I wearily levered myself back up.

  Maddox had fallen silent again, but I could almost feel him watching through the security cam as I began shoveling the soft dirt back into the grave.

  In maybe an hour I’d re-covered the coffin and filled in the rest of the hole with the dirt I’d removed. Then I lay the sod across its surface, tamping it down with my foot.

  It was hard to tell, judging only by the flashlight, but I thought the grave looked all right. Like when I’d come upon it.

  Shouldering my shovel, I took a moment to shine a light on Barbara’s headstone. Wondering again what Maddox had done with her remains. Though some of the possible answers I came up with sent bile burbling in my gut.

  I started back down to the cemetery entrance.

  l l l l l

  As expected, when I reached the kiosk, Sebastian Maddox was gone. So was the iPad that had hung from the knife still buried in the security guard’s chest. By now, the blood on his shirt-front had congealed somewhat, though drople
ts occasionally fell to the floor beneath him. Like the slow drip of a leaky faucet.

  Using some scrap paper from his desk to hold the kiosk phone’s receiver, I dialed Gloria’s cell back at the motel.

  “Christ, Danny, what the hell happened? Lyle and I were just about to try and find you—”

  “I’m fine, but I’ll explain later. Now listen. You need to make an anonymous call to the police. There’s been a murder at the Bassmore Cemetery in Beechwood. The security guard.”

  “The guard? But—”

  I hung up on her. Then balled up the scrap paper and shoved it in my pocket, to be disposed of later. I also scooped up the broken pieces of the throwaway cell, and used my sleeve to wipe the back of the guard’s chair from when I’d turned it around. I was sure Maddox hadn’t left any fingerprints on the knife, nor anywhere else here in the kiosk. I didn’t plan to, either.

  Before I left, I took a moment to actually look at the dead man in the swivel chair. The sagging mottled face, with the spittle of red-tinged foam on his fleshy lips. Rheumy eyes. I guessed his age as late sixties.

  For the first time, too, I noticed his hands, resting lifelessly on his lap. Rough workman’s hands. Whatever he did before becoming a security guard here at Bassmore involved physical labor. Perhaps this was one of those part-time jobs that some people take after retiring.

  Then there was the plain gold ring on his finger. Maybe his wife was still alive, maybe not. I remembered that I’d worn my own wedding ring for a good while after Barbara’s death.

  I sighed heavily. If the guard’s wife was still alive, she’d soon receive terrible news. From which point her life would never be the same.

  Sebastian Maddox had made another widow.

  l l l l l

  It was almost three a.m. by the time I got back to the motel, assured Barnes and Gloria that I was all right, and showered. I’d promised them the full story of tonight’s events, but not till I’d cleaned up, taken two pain pills, and put on fresh clothes.