He staggered forward, teetered on the edge of the open hole. At the bottom of the space, tom out of the earth by the emerging coffin, he could see the side of the second casket, itself beginning to shake and worry itself upward.
The first coffin had exploded, had destroyed itself, and the body inside with it; and now the second was to follow suit. Nathan whirled about with the intention of running all the way across town, without pause, until he had reached his own home. Ben would be waiting up for him.
He had taken two shaky steps forward, when he was knocked solidly to the ground by a large dead weight falling across his shoulders. His first thought as he raised himself dazed was that the coffin—-had there been a bomb inside?” had broken a branch of fee live oak that stretched above. To lift himself from the ground he placed one hand firmly to the earth, but it pressed revoltingly down on another, thin and lifeless.
Nathan scrambled away. Turning, he saw the strangely reposed face of Evelyn Larkin only a few feet away. Her body lay twisted, in a soiled white shift, at the edge of the grave. The corpse, whole despite the explosion, had evidently caught for a few moments in the branches of the tree, and then dropped down upon him, Three dozen half-digested oysters boiled up out of Nathan’s stomach.
He pulled himself farther away, found he had twisted his ankle painfully. He stuttered, saying nothing, not knowing what he had intended to speak, when there was only the dead woman to hear him.
Behind the old woman s corpse, the clods of earth above the other grave had begun to tremble.
“No!” cried Nathan, but he stared away from the grave, at the corpse of the old woman. A thin bile of black water bubbled out of her mouth onto the earth. He thought , he could make out his name in the disgusting gurgle.
Nathan hacked away, stumbling over a low concrete curbing surrounding a family plot. He wanted to stand and run, but remained as he was, in the sharp grass above an old sunken grave. The old woman’s corpse was sprawled in a patch of bare earth littered with the fragments of her coffin.
The eyes of the corpse struggled to open. Nathan realized that they had been sutured shut by the undertaker. He watched the flesh of the lids as they were tom raggedly apart. The black pupils, reflecting the moon, gazed at Nathan.
The mouth clamped open and shut. More black water spilled out onto the black earth. Slowly, in a motion that was wholly uncharacteristic of Evelyn Larkin in life, the entire body trembled into motion, undulating with a ghastly sinewy grace. It had lain on its side, and now began to snake toward him, curving bonelessly through the dank weeds. The head arched back, and that terrible stare was directed away, but a second later, the head was thrown forward again hugging the earth, to look on him with calm malevolency. Black water flowed intermittently from the mouth, and the lean frail corpse whispered his name, ever more distinctly, as if learning to speak again.
Nathan scurried crablike away, his hands scraped by sharp stones and nettling vegetation. This close to the ground, he could feel the second coffin as it continued to work its way to the surface. Behind the sinuous advancing corpse of the old woman, Nathan saw the now violent seesaw motion of the ground above Jerry Larkin’s casket.
Evelyn Larkin rose from the earth in a graceful spiral, a motion that was at once beautiful and hideous, because no one living had ever moved so.
Entranced, Nathan rose also. Evelyn Larkin, or rather her ambulatory remains, began to turn softly, in an easeful slow spin, her arms bent at the elbows and her hands folded lightly before her. Her head was tilted at a pleasing, almost coy angle; the linen grave-gown dropped in thick folds to the earth. Her bare feet turned without friction on the uneven ground. She would have seemed a fine picture of an old woman, dreaming in the light of the moon, had it not been for the damp earth that stained her grave clothes, for the torn flesh about her eyes, for the impure water that still poured from her mouth, blackening her chin and neck.
Nathan rushed forward, and pushed the corpse violently toward the open grave. His hands sank sickeningly into the soft flesh, and almost to his surprise, Evelyn Larkin’s body was pitched backward. A second, less powerful shove knocked it over into the gaping hole. It lay still at the bottom. The open eyes stared up at Nathan, and black water spilled between the colorless lips that syllabled his name. But just to the side, and shaking clods of earth over the old woman’s corpse, the second coffin broke through the surface of the earth. Nathan turned and ran.
He reached the cemetery gates, and heard behind him, another explosion. The second coffin had freed itself, and in a few moments more, Jerry Larkin’s corpse, animated, would be in sliding pursuit.
The door of the Lincoln stood open. The key he was sure he had broken in the door was in the ignition. He slammed the door shut and turned the key, staring all the while into the blackness of the graveyard. Not bothering to look ahead of him, Nathan slammed his foot on the accelerator, and barreled off in the direction of John Glenn Avenue. Out of the corner of his eye, he had caught sight of an arm, thin and black-sleeved, reaching around the brick post of the cemetery gates.
Part VII
Precarious Safety
Chapter 38
Speeding toward his home from the horror in the cemetery, Nathan hadn’t even the presence of mind to work out whether it had been real or imagined. His fright had been genuine, and fee couldn’t at first think beyond that. His mind whirled not on the animated menacing corpse of Evelyn Larkin, but flickered with images of other murders he might commit. He thought of strangling his father in his bed, drowning Ben in the pool, running down Ted Hale in front of the town hall, hanging Belinda from one of the ornamental pines on the patio. He had no motive for say of these crimes, but he laughed aloud thinking of the relief they would bring him. With all of them dead, he would be rich and untroubled.
Over and again, as the wheels spun down the pavement of Babylon’s dark streets, the trembling rich images clicked across his mind, silent and bright and richly colored as a slide show in a darkened room: his father with bulging eyes and wagging black tongue, his brother listing beneath the surface of the water, the sheriffs broken body beneath the Lincoln, the gentle shadow Belinda’s hanging corpse cast against the side of the house.
Nathan pulled the car into the lighted garage. He took the key from the ignition and held it close before his face. Outside the cemetery he remembered breaking the key in the lock; the key was whole now. Obviously it had never been broken; obviously then, all had been imagined.
He swung out of the car, ran to the edge of the garage, and swatted out the light. Above, in the black starry sky, the moon seemed absurdly gray and small; but it also appeared exactly the right size, and Nathan told himself that it had never been any larger than it was now, had never shone white and icy upon his back.
The episode was a mental fiction from beginning to end, or rather, only the beginning was real He had taken a wrong turn somewhere in Pensacola; concentrating so on all that had transpired in the last two weeks, he had not noticed his mistake for some while. His discomposure on looking up and thinking himself lost had thrown him into a kind of trance, in which he had imagined—it was best not to think now of what he had imagined.
Nathan entered his house the back way, and was disturbed that Ben was in neither the den nor his own room. But drawn to his father’s wing of the house by the sound of a television, Nathan was very much surprised to find his brother and his father watching Johnny Carson together.
The old man glanced at Nathan suspiciously, and greeted him with an almost imperceptible nod. Ben looked up sheepishly, and said: “Hey, Nathan, Daddy and I was just wondering when you would get back—”
“No we weren’t,” said James Redfield.
“—and I’ve been keeping Daddy company all the evening, we’ve been watching television and talking—”
“Nathan,” said James Redfield: “Soon as it was dark, and ’fore Nina had even gone home, Ben came in here with a TV-tray and his supper on it, and sat down, and hasn’t hard
ly got up since except to go to the bathroom, and I asked him what he meant by it, and he said—”
“Daddy!” protested Ben: “I didn’t mean anything by it! Like I said, I was just coming in here to keep you company.”
“Then why haven’t you kept me company in the last ten years, that’s what I’d like to know!” cried the old man, “Why are you suddenly starting up on it now?”
“Daddy,” said Nathan, actually pleased with this argument, for it brought him further away from that silence in the cemetery, just as the vividly colored television screen provided a great and welcome contrast to the harsh expansive whiteness that had ruptured his mind: “Daddy, I don’t think Ben had a ulterior motive in coming in here, just like I don’t. We just thought you might want some company. But you don’t really mind if we just sit down and watch a little TV with you, do you?”
“I s’pose not,” said the old man crossly, and leaned back on his pillows. It was apparent that he still did not trust his sons to have come to his room without some deviousness in their minds, and that he was angry with himself for not being able to find it out.
Ben glanced at Nathan thankfully for backing him up, but Nathan nodded blandly in reply. Nathan realized that Ben had gone to his father’s room because he was frightened of remaining alone. Since the deaths of Evelyn and Jerry Larkin, Ben had rarely left the house. He worried constantly that his part in the deaths of the grandmother and grandson would be discovered, and it required all his courage just to answer the phone during the day.
He hid whenever the doorbell rang, demanding that Nina say that nobody was at home. Every night he required of Nathan the reassurance that no one in town suspected them of the murders, and that there was no possible way to connect them with the overturned automobile at the bottom of the Styx. He had been out of his wits when he found that the Larkins’ station wagon was lifted out of the river, but had been somewhat relieved by Warren Perry’s arrest, for that proved that Ted Hale had no idea what had really happened. At the same time, Ben was sorry for Warren Perry, but reflected that since the schoolteacher didn’t do it, he probably wouldn’t be convicted of the crime. Ben had it in his head that the sword was only circumstantial evidence, and insufficient grounds for strapping Warren into the electric chair.
Ben Redfield was a man of small intelligence and he was fearful, nervous, and prone to whine. It was unlikely —and Nathan knew it—that Ben could hold up under the pressure of daily exposure to the world outside that air- conditioned house. Nathan was certain, for instance, that if he had allowed his brother to work for a few hours in the bank each day, Ben would begin to imagine that all and sundry knew of his guilt: the other tellers, the customers, the children who passed on the sidewalk and peered in through the plate glass window. It would be only days before Ben, breaking beneath this unsubstantial persecution, would confess all to Ted Hale. But kept inside, Ben moved hour to hour, protected and unbothered. He watched television, ate when and whatever Nina cooked, and swam in the pool. Nathan had even given him permission to go to the racetrack alone, so long as he promised not to lose more than twenty-five dollars, but Ben had refused to travel without his brother.
For his own peace of mind, Nathan had to assume that Ben would gradually overcome this nervousness, and in his unconquerable simplicity grow less apprehensive with the passing days. In hope of abetting this process, Nathan had, after the first night, not allowed his brother to sleep on the cot at the foot of his bed.
Tonight, however, when Johnny Carson was over and the two sons had taken leave of their bewildered father, Nathan said: “Ben, why don’t you sleep in my room? The rollaway’s still set up in there.”
Ben knew better than to ask a reason for his brother’s change of heart. He nodded with unvoiced thanks. But a few moments later, when they came to the door of Nathan’s room, he ventured to say: “Nobody called. Nobody came by. Nobody called while you were gone, Nathan.”
“That’s good,” said Nathan soothingly. “Listen, Ben, everything’s gone be all right. Warren Perry’s in jail, and all the ’tention in this town is focused on him now. There’s no reason for anybody to look at us, no reason in the world. They’ll probably let him go free, ’cause after all, he didn’t do it, though I have to admit it’d be a lot better for us if they did convict him. But even if he does get off, they’re not gone be coming around here after us. There’s no reason for ’em to, Ben.”
Ben could never hear enough of such reassurance.
You’ll be all right,” said Nathan: “You’ll come out of this. In another week, you won’t ever remember what really did happen. You’ll be thinking like everybody else in town, that it was Warren Perry who killed that old woman and Jerry Larkin.”
“You think so?” said Ben hopefully.
Though having cause for fitful nightmarish slumber, the brothers slept peacefully that night, each comforted by the other’s presence.
The following morning, they were both wakened by Nathan’s alarm. Nathan sat up in bed, lighted a cigarette, and said to his brother, who turned groggily on his pillow, “Listen Ben, why don’t we go down to Navarre for a couple of days, get away from here, it’ll do us both good, and by the time we get back—everything’ll be different. We’ll feel different. You and I haven’t gotten off together in a great long while.”
Ben sat up suddenly. He could not recall when last his brother had spoken so affectionately to him, or made any invitation so ungrudgingly. “Nathan,” he said quietly, repressing his excitement, “that sounds real good to me, but you know we cain’t leave Daddy alone.”
“I’ll talk to Daddy this morning. He won’t care if we go, so long as we get somebody to stay here while we’re gone. We can see if Nina will stay, and if she cain’t, maybe Ted’ll let Belinda come over. Daddy’d just love to have a couple of days with Miss Pie all to himself. Hell, I’ll drive up to Atmore and hire a nurse out of the hospital if that’s what it takes, I got to get out of this town for a couple of days, and that's that”
“When you think we can leave?”
“I don’t see why we couldn’t go this afternoon. I got a little work that’s got to be done at the bank this morning, and then I can probably get away, I’m gone go talk to Daddy.”
James Redfield was willing to allow his sons to go off. His acceptance, however, was conditional upon either of the females agreeing to sleep over. He’d not be left alone in the house. In fact, he added at the end, he had just as soon they moved away forever, so long as they left Nina and Miss Pie behind, who were the only real comforts of his life.
Nina had arrived by the time that Nathan was finished with his father, Nathan offered her fifty dollars to stay the two nights. The black woman looked quizzically at him for a moment, wondering at the importance of the trip that would prompt such liberal persuasion. She agreed, saying: “You don’t think I’d leave Mr. Red alone, do you—by himself, when you two go gallavanting off?”
At Nathan’s behest, she went directly to James Redfield’s room, to tell him that she would stay with him until Nathan and Ben returned from the beach.
“When they coming back?” said James Redfield, with high-pitched curiosity.
“Thursday, Mr. Red.” She paused: “You know what too, Mr. Red?”
“What?”
“Mr. Nathan told me he was gone give me fifty dollars to stay with you.”
James Redfield considered this darkly. “Why you suppose...?”
“I don’t know,” mused Nina. “They say they going down to Navarre. I s’pose they are. I don’t know where else they might be going...”
Her well-understood inference was that Nathan and Ben Redfield were going anywhere on earth but Navarre.
“Nina,” said James Redfield, in a lilting wheeze: “Those two boys were in here with me last night watching TV, and you know how long it’s been since they did that. I kept expecting ’em to say something bad, to tell me that the bank was folding, or that you had gotten married and run off to Apalachicola, bu
t they didn’t say a word. I didn’t like having ’em in here either—they made me nervous. I wanted you or Miss Pie in here with me—protecting me. I don’t know where those two boys are going either, Nina. Just let ’em go, maybe then you and I can have a little peace around here.”
Chapter 39
The business that Nathan Redfield had to get out of the way at the bank that Tuesday morning pertained to the acquisition of the Larkin blueberry property. On the Sunday previous, while Evelyn and Jerry Larkin lay naked on adjoining tables at the funeral home south of town, Nathan had been alone in the bank, working with the posting machine to alter the record of loan payments made by the Larkins over the past twelve months. The falsified card showed that Evelyn Larkin had failed to pay anything at all over the last seven months, and before that had made but partial payments on three occasions. Evelyn's copy of the card had been secured by Charles Darrish on Saturday night, immediately after he had heard of the deaths of the old woman and her grandson. His wife Ginny had accommodatingly informed him where Evelyn had kept all her records, and as her executor, nothing was more natural in the world than that he should ride out to the unprotected house and take all important papers into his custody, against the possible incursion of thieves and vandals. He understood then what Ted Hale had meant when he said that the house was troubled with damp rot,
Charles Darrish assured Nathan that the original loan card was destroyed, and Nathan had prepared another in its place, and turned it over to the lawyer. This was to be used only in extremity, for it wouldn’t stand up under close inspection; anyone who examined it carefully would see that the entries had been printed up all at one time, though on two machines for contrast. But Nathan so little considered that subterfuge would be needed at all, that he prided himself on being even this circumspect.
Cold moon over Babylon Page 22
