by Scott Cook
I nodded, “That it was.”
“Well,” Proust said with a sigh as he leaned back in his squeaky office chair. “How can I help you out? Suppose you want to know how I coulda missed three grave diggins’ in a week, too, right? I ain’t no dummy. I know the old man thinks I’m either in on it or slackin’. What do you think?”
I grinned reassuringly, “Mr. Proust… I don’t know enough to have an opinion. As I understand it, though, you’re the only guy on duty here. This is a big property and I know from hard experience that when it comes to covering the bases… a single man is almost never enough.”
He scoffed, “Which is exactly what I been sayin’ all along… long before this shit happened. But does the old wop listen? Nossir. Preciate you not jumpin’ to conclusions, though.”
“Maybe you can take me to the spots?” I asked. “Kinda show me around and give me your thoughts on the deal.”
“Okay,” He agreed amiably. “Could use a smoke anyway. Can’t light up in here.”
“Course not,” I said and grinned. “Wouldn’t wanna give one of these stiffs emphysema. Last thing we need… kind of disconcerting to the bereaved to see a corpse with a bad cough, right?”
That titillated him. He guffawed and got to his feet, “Right on! Okay, lemme give ya’ the nickel tour.”
Proust led me out of a back door and to what appeared to be a small employee parking lot. In addition to the half dozen cars was a squadron of fancy golf carts. We got into one and Proust pulled out onto the main road that wound its way through the cemetery. Here and there, smaller walking paths branched off and met with others as well as leading directly to larger mausoleums and crypts. The grounds were well cared for and, in the sunshine, didn’t quite have the creepy feeling they would in a storm or after dark.
Yet even so, a subtle but evident eeriness began to settle over me. I’ve never been a fan of death. That is to say, the ceremonies and rituals that people assign to it. We human beings have an over-developed fascination with the subject.
Naturally, since we all come to face the inevitability of our own mortality sooner or later. In spite of all the religious dogma and the flowery language, we truly know not whither we’re bound. It’s the ultimate unknown that breeds fear, curiosity and even obsession.
Shall we exist as a wispy spirit, roaming the earth or forever confined to a decrepit old mans? Will we, like the infamous Transylvanian nobleman, extend our immortality on the life’s blood of the living? Shall we become mindless ghouls who shamble across the landscape driven only by the desire to sink our broken teeth into living flesh… to live forever in a World of Corpses?
Yet setting aside the fun parts of death… the Halloween side of it, if you will, there is the hard reality of the thing and it’s this which gives me the jibblies.
Something about saving corpses in one part of town so that their family can stand above the spot where their loved one is moldering is creepy enough. Yet it neither starts nor ends there. Many cultures prop the dead up in his or her coffin and invite the rest of us to stare at them for a couple of hours. In spite of the deft work of the mortician, or perhaps because of it, the deceased seems even more dead in these circumstances. In spite of this, everybody gathers round and suggests that the person looks like himself or herself. Then people use words like “passed on” or “gone to a better place” or something equally poetic. Just to avoid the harsh truth that their loved one has passed through a doorway that opens but one way and through which no communication is possible.
Unable to accept this, they then place the body in a very expensive box and bury it underground and place a marker above. I suppose if some find this comforting then I’m certainly no one to judge… I just find the whole thing disturbing.
To my mind, once this mortal coil has been shuffled off, that’s it. The shell that remains is nothing more than an empty wrapper. Cremation is the best way to go, or even to allow the body to be used to train medical students. This is at least useful.
Those I’ve personally lost are, in a very real sense, still with me. They live on in my heart and mind and I remember them as living, breathing people. I do not want the last memory of a friend or family member to be of some dolled-up corpse resting half-propped up in a coffin.
But I digress, as I so often do…
Proust first led us to the east, to a small section of the graveyard that stuck out of the perfectly symmetrical rectangle bordered by the eight-foot wrought iron fence. This small annex was different from the rest of the grounds as it was far older.
“This is the original area,” Proust explained. “Probably first set up in the 1840’s or 50’s. About fifty people are buried here.”
Someone had extended the iron fence around the old graveyard, which was about two hundred feet wide and about half that in depth. Inside the new fence was a rough wall about three feet high made from a variety of rough field stone. An arch made of smaller stones acted as a gate into the old section. There were fewer tombstones than I’d have thought. A lot of wooden markers, a few Celtic crosses and a smattering of stones that looked to have been carved from limestone rather than granite as was the custom.
“Here’s Tobias’ plot,” Proust said, leading me to the rear of the small boneyard and pointing at one of the few professionally made stones.
Although the sod did seem as if somebody had disturbed it recently, great pains had been taken to set things back to rights. I stared down at the grave for a moment, being careful not to stand on the two by six-foot area that might contain a body.
“I see things have been put back in order,” I commented. “Did you guys do that or the robbers?”
“We did,” Proust said. “They just dug him up and left the grave open, same as the other two.”
I nodded sagely, “It’d take more time to fix things up properly, I guess. So… this is kind of a ghoulish question … but what did they… did they do to the bodies?”
Proust chuckled and lit a cigarette, “They didn’t snatch them, if that’s what you’re wondering. To be honest, I don’t know. This fella here hasn’t left much to be taken, if you follow me. Hundred and sixty years below the grass has pretty much left only bones. My guess’d be somethin’ was in the casket with him and they took that.”
I shivered.
“Givin’ ya’ the willies?” He asked with a bemused chuckle.
“Sort of,” I admitted. “How about the newer graves?”
Proust inhaled and shoved his hands in the pockets of his light windbreaker. “Same deal. Dug up the graves, busted the locks on the coffins and then left without disturbing the bodies… or not enough so’s you’d notice. One thing is weird, though.”
“One thing?” I asked with a crooked grin.
He chuffed, “Well… the weird thing is that the newest grave, the man… what was his name…”
“Nelson,” I said.
“Yeah, Nelson… anyways, that casket is empty.”
I shuddered. That jarred me more than I thought it could, “What do you mean… empty? Like… like maybe they did snatch the body?”
Proust looked at me from over his fluffy stash and the glowing cherry of his butt and slowly shook his head, “I seen that coffin, Mister. If there was ever a body in it, I’d be damned surprised. The lining was as new and clean as if it’d come off the showroom floor.”
I stared at him and he evidently saw the question in my eyes.
“See, the funeral industry is one of the most profitable in the country,” Proust explained. “They kind of… prey on people’s fear of death, y’know what I mean?”
“Sort of…” I said doubtfully. “Like selling expensive boxes to keep a body quote: safe for a long time?”
He laughed sardonically, “Exactly. Oh, don’t you fear, Mrs. Whoositz, this thirty-thousand-dollar crate will preserve your husband for a hundred years! Yeah… well what about the next thousand?”
I nodded, “People and their illusions…”
“Right,�
�� Proust went on. “They don’t want to think about how a body begins to liquefy as soon as the life is gone from it. How the bacteria we all carry throughout our lives begins to win because there’s no counter-balancing forces. Its nature’s way, but we superstitious Homo sapiens can’t handle it, brother. Mrs. Whoositz don’t want to think about old Irving lying ‘neath the sod there melting away to moldy bones. They don’t want to think about the worms playin’ pinochle on your snout, y’know?”
For all the man’s cracker-like manner and mode of speech, I sensed far more intelligence than he meant to let on. He was making a valid point and I thought I knew where he was going.
“Point is,” he said. “That even the best coffin isn’t one-hundred percent secure. It’s not completely airless. So after five years, even a well-preserved body would leave… traces of itself on the satin. Liquid stains, even if it’s just a little water. That guy’s coffin was as dry as… well, as a bone. What I’m sayin’ is that there had never been anybody in it.”
“Jesus…” I muttered. “But something must have been, otherwise why would somebody have dug him up in the first place?”
Proust shrugged, “Something might have been buried in his place. Course, the robbers might not have known the box was empty. If they weren’t after the body in the first place, then it don’t really matter either way. I got my own theory on that one.”
I did as well. What I knew was that John Nelson had never actually existed. For some reason, Sharon’s father had been buried under a false name. However… the fact that he hadn’t actually been buried at all was more than a little odd. And worrying.
“The guy what was supposed to be in that grave never lived in the first place,” Proust said, turning more toward me and eyeing me with an odd expression I couldn’t quite place. “I looked him up, least as best I could. Kinda queer, that funeral. No open casket, no viewing, nothing like that. Just real sudden-like. Buy the plot, dig the grave and chunk the box in. Was done by us here. No service, no nothin’.”
I frowned, “That’s odd. Really odd… and how does it tie in to the other two?”
“Hey, you’re the detective,” Proust said. “I’m just curious on account of I’m a security guard at a cemetery. Lot of time on my hands, y’know what I mean? Sometimes I wander around and read the headstones. Kind of interesting what tales they tell about people’s lives and all. Especially in this old part. Guess I’m just a curious feller.”
I drew in a breath. It was time to ask the hard questions, “Well then, Clint… I gotta ask how it is you didn’t notice three separate grave robberies over the course of a week. That’s kinda queer, too, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” He said casually. Too casually. “I’m one guy. You see that I’m here in the daytime. Them graves wasn’t dug up in broad daylight, obviously. So even if I was here at night, which I am sometimes, I can’t cover all the bases. Plus two of our ten cameras is busted.”
“Convenient,” I stated flatly.
He shrugged, “I guess, but even if they was workin’… I’m gonna notice everything goes on at one or two in the mornin’? Not possible. It wouldn’t be hard at all to pull a job like this.”
“The first time,” I said. “But after the first robbery, wouldn’t you or somebody else hire extra hands to help watch over the place for a while? That explanation isn’t so simple, I fear.”
Proust spat his now dead butt out onto the grass and chuckled, “Actually, there’s a real simple explanation, Jarvis.”
He withdrew his right hand from the pocket of his jacket. In it, something hard and black and deadly pointed itself at my belly.
“Ah,” I said calmly. “That’s about what I figured.”
7
“Gad!” I exclaimed. “A firearm! Is it your intention to deposit me in one of these graves? On account of me asking about one of these graves?”
Proust’s face took on a rather satisfying look of bewilderment. I know it’s probably a character flaw, but I can’t resist being snarky to bad guys. I’d call it disdain or disapprobation or even flagrant disrespect, but on more than one occasion, female readers have used the word snarky on my Amazon or Audible reviews.
I think snarky is a lady’s word, and I’m all about pleasing the ladies. So snark on, Jarvinator!
“Are you some kinda nut or what?” Proust asked.
“How dare you,” I replied. “That’s no way to start a friendship, Clint.”
He snorted derisively, “We ain’t friends, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, we should be,” I said. “And we will be, Clintoris. Unless you plan on murdering me in broad daylight? Seems like a thing these days. Why don’t you first reveal the entire evil plan?”
He seemed genuinely confused by the fact that I wasn’t cowering in fear on account of his scary bang-bang. It’s unfortunate for Mr. Proust that he too hasn’t read my literary works. So we both stood there, I being patient and he being confounded.
“Well?” I asked. “What the Christ, Clint for brains? Are we shootin’, talkin’ or are you getting a thorough beatin’?”
“This is a warnin’, smart ass,” Clint said, waving his small pistol at me. “A warnin’ to stop pokin’ your nose into this business. You don’t need to worry about what goes on in this boneyard.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong, pumpkin,” I explained. “A very nice man paid me very nice money to do a very nice investigation. I sort of feel obligated, y’know? Seems kinda douchey to take money from a man and then not deliver on what’s been paid for. Only the sickest and most lowly of pond scum would betray his employer like that… oh, sorry… guess you might take that a smidge personally, huh?”
“Fuck you, Jarvis!” he barked. “Somebody oughta teach you a lesson, you know that?”
“Give it a shot,” I said and then grinned. “Well, I don’t mean that literally. Don’t shoot me, I have a mild lead allergy. However, if you feel the urge, I do invite you to attempt to whoop my ass, as your ilk is want to say.”
He didn’t move.
“Hmm… didn’t think so,” I said. “Okay, well I guess I’ll be on my way then. You sure you don’t want to tell me who hired you and why?”
He just scowled.
“Then please tell me what the exact Christ is this?” I implored. “Are we just gonna stand here for the rest of eternity or what?”
Proust sneered, “This is your only warning, shamus. You hear me? You and that little bitch girlfriend of yours stay the fuck outta this. Or else.”
He was starting to back away now, moving slowly toward the stone arch and his golf cart beyond. Having nothing better to do, I started after him.
“Or else what?” I asked cheerfully.
“Or else somebody is gonna plant the two of ya’ here in this fuckin’ place,” Clint menaced.
“How much did the big cheese pay you for this?” I asked, striding after him but keeping an even distance between us.“Ain’t none of your concern, for Christ’s sake!” he said in exasperation. “But it ain’t nothin’ compared to what I’m gonna get when things are settled.”
Interesting… this was only the beginning of a larger plan. I sort of figured that already, but it was always good to receive confirmation.
Proust made it to his golf cart. I stood in the stone arch and watched him carefully, “We’re going to talk again, Proust.”
He scoffed, “You don’t listen too well, do ya’?”
“Huh?”
“I said you… son of a bitch!” he growled. He didn’t fire, though, which I thought was quite interesting.
“Why don’t you just shoot me?” I asked, leaning against the stones. “Since you’re making a threat, why not just kill me and eliminate the problem now?”
I could see the idea crossing his face. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think Clint Proust was a killer. I also figured that since he hadn’t already shot me in spite of my baiting him… or being snarky if you like… then he probably couldn’t even if he wa
nted to.
“You keep it up,” He said, “and that’s what you’ll get. I advise you to heed the warnin’, Jarvis.”
With that, he stomped on the accelerator and headed up one of the paths toward the chapel. To my amazement, he got about two hundred yards away and stopped!
Was he coming back?
I couldn’t figure it out for a moment until I saw Proust get out of the cart and heard him shout several phrases that seemed somewhat inappropriate for the setting, kick the cart and begin walking.
I laughed out loud, “His battery’s dead! Wow… just wow… apparently the quality of henchmen has declined of late.”
I shrugged and started walking after Proust. I could run and catch him up, but he still had the gun. I didn’t mind letting him escape, I could get his home address and track him later.
A sudden urge of mischief came over me. In a good Boris Karloff voice… well, the sort of tone that Johnny used in the opening scene of Night of the Living Dead, I said, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara…! They’re coming to get you! Look, here comes one of them now!”
In spite of the fact that it was broad daylight, I got a shiver. I swiveled my head around and picked up my pace.
“How do you like that shit, Watson?” I inquired softly. “Went and creeped myself out.”
Watson did not reply. For once, I was thankful of that. I’m fairly certain that if he had replied in those circumstances, I would’ve had to forfeit possession of both my skivvies and slacks.
When I finally made it back to my Jeep and realized that I’d left my phone inside rather than carrying it… I found that I had no less than two voicemails. Yup… everybody was lining up to snag the attention of the big man…
I’d first gone back into the chapel/offices and found Mr. Trobridge carrying on a séance and conversing with the dead.
Okay, okay… talking on the phone. His secretary gave me a file folder with printed information in it while I waited. A nice girl, not at all a vaporous apparition or a sultry vampire woman just waiting for me to take a nap in order that she might ply her unholy lusts upon me.
