by M Dressler
But that wasn’t me; that was her pretending to be me.
“She’s a riot, your Emma Rose.”
“Just a soul needing peace.”
“So you’re saying this is normal. For a ghost to torture you while giving you useful information.”
“I wouldn’t call it normal. Distressed, would be closer to it. But again, revealing. Which brings me to why I’m here. I have a request.”
The poor constable, uneasy, adjusts his belt. “What?”
“I need to look into the Lambry coffins. Obviously.”
Even with all his weight, Knightley nearly jumps out of his chair. I have to stop myself from dancing a little waltz on the window sill. What a satisfying feeling it is, watching a Benito constable squirm.
“Are you insane? Are you saying that, at the suggestion of a ghost, you expect this county to exhume—”
“Yes. Which is exactly what you’ll do, Knightley, if you really want this thing finished once and for all, and the tourists to come back. Yes, I can see you don’t want to believe me. But here are the facts: it’s sometimes wise to do as the spirit directs. Why? Not because we want to be a slave to it, but because, when a ghost tells you to do something, it’s usually telling you more than it means to. It’s telling you more about itself than it should—and about how to deal with it. It’s telling you something about its organization or lack thereof. Understand that some ghosts have endured so much trauma in their lives, so much death, that, like some of us living, they aren’t entirely stable, or whole. They don’t know what will ease their pain or even how to ask for it to be eased. So they fight the ease they want.”
Poor, confused Pratt. What a ridiculous thing to imagine. As if anyone wouldn’t want pain eased, their suffering ended.
Knightley looks like he might burst. “So now you’re saying we dig graves up because a traumatized ghost tells us to?”
“Think of it differently. Think of this more as a matter of chronology. Think how the severed arms of a starfish can live on and grow into separate entities, each unaware of its starting point but still attached to it, by history. Where’s the origin of this haunting? That’s what we need to find out. We need to do the exhumation. To try to put the pieces together. We need to look underground.”
“And who is it exactly you want to take a look at?”
“As I said, the Lambrys.”
“But which ones?”
“All of them.”
Knightley explodes. “Impossible! Make do with the scanning technology. The coroner has it; you can see straight through the ground. That’ll have to satisfy you.”
“It doesn’t,” Pratt says and stands. “We’ll need to dig them up the old-fashioned way, I’m afraid. I need to get close to them. And as soon as possible.”
“But there are a dozen graves under that monument!”
“Contact the heirs right now. Explain. They want this done and over with, too. They want their money. You’ll want to have the coroner on hand and a funeral director or two and some deputies. Tomorrow, let’s say. Unless you want the tourists to keep vanishing?”
Knightley stands, amazed. “But what is it we’re going to look for?”
“Clarity.”
“And what if I tell you my deputies are too afraid?”
“I won’t ask them, or you, to cross the line. Just order the exhumations and provide a few people for perimeter security. Send the bill for everything to Charles Dane.”
“And he’s going to pay for all this?”
“He told me this morning no one living or dead is going to best the Danes. I’ve told him it takes money to separate the living from the dead. So that’s settled.”
It’s a polite look Pratt gives to the clerk behind the hotel desk as he passes by it. The same look I gave at that very same burled desk at the Main Street Hotel a hundred years ago, the night I left Quint at his car and walked toward my freedom. And it’s the same suspicious look I got back, as Pratt does now. The look from the innkeeper that says: I know you, but I’m not sure I trust you anymore.
That night, I put my money down for a small room on the first floor, at the back, facing the wash-yard. Not for me the fine suites on the second floor; I needed to save my silver. Inside, I shut the door and turned up the lamp to ward off the dark and set my valise down. I reached for the pitcher and basin, to wash my face and my neck where Folde had grabbed it. Then I took off all my clothes and lay down on the bed and slept.
But maybe it would be better not to think of all this, right now…
About how I lay for so many hours, with nightmares of Folde’s weight thrashing on top of me, and of his bleeding head, and of Quint’s face coming like a slick angel out of the darkness, both of us waiting for the bells of St. Clements so we could find out what was going to happen next, what our wills were going to decide.
No, let me not think of that long night or stay to keep watch over Pratt’s rest. I’ve trailed him long enough, all day today. Let him be, for a while, alone. It’s all he and I have in common.
I need my rest, too. I fly back to the Lambry House and glide inside, up the polished banister and into the welcoming arms of the crystal chandelier, and then through the plaster rose in the ceiling, the small opening at its center that carries its electric wires into the sealed, modern attic, stuffed with batten; here I hide myself. In this attic Ellen said had no room for even a hand to fit in. Unreachable. Suffocated. The same way I died. No room to breathe.
We must do the things we’re afraid of, in the end; go, if we want to last, into the very places they think we’re not strong enough to face. As I let my thoughts settle and drift away, I whisper to Alice: You know that we’ll never be able to share this house again. No more. Never, ever. This house is mine alone now. It was mine to haunt, long before you ever came and were left here; long before I told you my name, the way I tell all Lambrys, at the end, and then set the pillow to your face, only to help you across, because you were suffering, and not in the vengeful way you imagine that I suffocated you. You have no right to be angry with me. So you go now and keep company with your Manoel. Keep him close to you—since that must have been what you wanted all along. And if you think that from wherever it is you’re hiding now you’ll trick Pratt and write the rest of my name for him in iron and lead him on to kill me so you can come and take my place—well, you’ll find you’re wrong. As mistaken as I was, when I boarded the Lorna and thought I was free. For sometimes, though it hurts to say so, there can be no life together, for two people. One, or the other, must sink.
It’s only a matter of time and then I’ll have Pratt find her. Truly, I couldn’t have planned it any better. Because now he’ll do, really, what I only wanted him to believe he was doing before. And when she’s done and gone, this woman with no face who haunts me, I’ll be free again. Maybe, if I decide to, I’ll wrap myself quietly and without a whisper around small, waiting Ellen, the next of the Lambrys in line, and we’ll grow old together.
26
Evergreen Hill swarms.
I sit on the Lambry monument, high as a crow’s nest, and look down on the staking and digging. It’s curious, isn’t it, how much the living like to gape at buried things. I think it’s because they so love uncovering mysteries. Or maybe it’s because they want to feel their advantage. No, that isn’t me there, being hauled by a crane out of grubs and mud.
Half of Benito has turned out to feel how much better off they are than a dead Lambry. The grass lies trampled. Even a few tourists are getting more than they bargained for, this trip, snapping photos of crumbling coffins. It’s as big a crowd as we used to see on the Fourth of July. The headstones outside the circle of yellow tape are being used as benches. Mr. Hannan of the Crystal Palace watches, quietly, from one of them. Mrs. Fanoli pushes through on her cane, saying she wants to get close enough to see her future. The constable and his deputies guard the yellow line. The black-suited director from the Chang Funeral Home waits off to one side. Beside her is St. Clements
’ new priest and his leather-bound Bible. The workmen swing up the last coffin. The crane lowers it to the ground. The groundskeepers unhook it. A dozen boxes now, all in a pretty row. Not every Lambry chose to stay and be buried in the village. Knightley should be happy about that, at least.
Pratt stands beside him, ready.
“Knightley.” He looks suddenly past the constable’s shoulder. “Have you seen Ellen this morning?”
“Who wants to look at their family’s corpses being paraded? Now that we know she’s their kin?”
“She’s a Lambry. I told her some family should be here.”
“The heirs gave their permission, Pratt. What more do you want? Get those gawkers back over there.” Knightley turns to his deputies. “And tell these people no more picture-taking, for God’s sake.”
The crowd complains as it’s pushed to one side. A tourist gets his foot caught in one of the animal burrows and lets out a strong word. Mrs. Fanoli thanks him kindly to remember where he is.
The funeral director, Mrs. Chang, calm and even, makes her way toward Pratt and the constable. “As we expected, some of the older coffins are lead. It’s the material the wealthy preferred a century ago. It’s why they’ve been slow coming out.”
“Scanning technology wouldn’t have worked, you see,” Pratt says to Knightley.
“That’s correct.” Mrs. Chang nods. “You’d never have seen inside. But they might take a moment to open. Lead is bolted. I expect you know all this, constable?”
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Knightley mutters.
Mrs. Fanoli whispers to her neighbor. “Lead coffins. As in life, in death. The Lambrys always pretended to mingle with the rest of us, the salt of the earth, but they never really meant to, did they?”
Knightley wheels toward Mrs. Fanoli, irritated. “Back, please.”
“Oh, keep your temper, George. I’m not the troublemaker here.”
How forlorn the coffins look, baking in the midday sun, with the mud still married to them and their decorative corners all scratched where animals tried and failed.
“All right.” Knightley motions to the coroner. “Let’s get on with this.”
The expert slips his gloves on and pulls a hospital mask over his shaven face. Pratt and the director come along, also taking gloves and masks.
“Anything you need before we open them, Mr. Pratt?” Mrs. Chang, her smooth hair held back in a tight clip, asks.
“No. Everything look intact according to your records?”
“Perfectly sealed. My men have the tools to open each receptacle as required by its design and condition. Any particular order?”
“The oldest first, please.”
She checks her tablet and nods to the black-suited men at her side. “Grave 211. Augustus Lambry. There.”
Her men step forward and lean on the curved crypt. They pound in pins. They twist and screw bolts. They slide keys into dusty fittings and turn them and nod all together and heave their shoulders into the moaning lid.
I’ve a nice view of dry bones and dust whirling away in the sun.
The coroner steps forward. Pratt goes with him.
“I’m not sure,” the coroner says, “what you’re looking to find, but I can tell you that at least on first impression, this skeleton is intact. No obvious marks to the bones. No obvious disturbance, no grave robbing. I’m surprised the pieces of his spectacles have lasted so long. And the laces of his shoes. That strikes me.”
“And what do you make of that?”
“Desiccated clothing. Chemically, it—”
“No.” Pratt reaches a gloved hand in. “I mean this.”
The coroner takes something from his pocket and lowers his mask to speak into his device, leaning in. “On closer … inspection … what at first appeared to be frayed clothing is in fact woven rope of a sturdy material. Possibly left or tied around the deceased’s extremities.” He stops, and his glove grazes the dead man’s ankles, carefully.
“It’s hemp?” Pratt says.
“I think so.”
“Mrs. Chang?”
“I’ll check our records,” the director says quietly, “to see if any items of this nature were buried with the interred.”
“He was buried with his legs tied?” Knightley comes closer and stares. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Pratt pays no attention to him. “We need to go on to the next, please.”
“So quickly?” Mrs. Chang looks up at him.
“Yes. Please.”
Again the pounding and turning and lifting, and again the light flooding into the shaking basket of a Lambry ribcage. Ah, poor Eugenia! Your hair in thin curls all around you. Your lips pulled back from your teeth. So angry and untidy you look now, who were once so tall and fine in your lace, with your sweeping embroidered skirt behind you.
“Ordinary decay,” the coroner says again. “But again—!”
“The hemp around the ankles,” Pratt says.
“The lead has preserved the material beautifully,” Mrs. Chang marvels. “But why?”
Pratt touches my work gently, almost tenderly. “There is, in fact, some precedent—in some places—and cultures—for this kind of practice. A tradition of tying the feet of the dead so they can’t walk the earth again. Among the old Irish, for example.”
“But,” Mrs. Chang says, shaking her head, “that’s never been a tradition here. I would know about it. My family would know. We’ve been burying people here for over fifty years, ever since we bought the Benito Funeral Home. I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
“Then you probably also haven’t heard about the slicing of the soles of the feet of the dead, so they can’t walk. Or cutting the spine in half. So they can’t sit up. Or smashing the body with cudgels. Or ripping out the organs and filling the torso with rocks to weigh it down.”
“Actually, I have, Mr. Pratt.”
“Then you know all these things have been done and are still being done, Mrs. Chang, around the world.”
“Yes.” She nods. “But not here.”
“And by what sorts of people?” Knightley balks.
“Ordinary people,” Pratt explains, “afraid of the dead. Or of what the dead have done. Or of what might have been done to the dead. Or just those who prefer … certainty. Let’s go on.”
Yes, let’s go on. One after another, they meet and prod and poke at the poor skeletons, and find my doing, my gift to each one, to keep them from ever rising or troubling the living, or themselves, ever again. I never meant to let a Lambry rise from the grave. I’d had enough of them in life. You never know what might happen.
“All right. Grave 223. Alice Lambry.”
“Keep the crowd back. This one isn’t going to be pretty, you understand,” the coroner says and turns to Pratt. “You’re accustomed?”
“The fresh dead often speak the loudest.”
“Quickly.” Mrs. Chang gestures to her men, putting up her mask.
Poor Alice. No lead coffin for you. It’s nasty black jam you’ve become, in the heat and closeness of the ground. Air is no kinder than water. Look at your face, and your poor painter’s hands, swollen and bursting, with the knuckles peeping through, like dice.
Mrs. Chang tightens her mask and presses her mouth. “I think,” she says muffled, “we can agree there’s no rope here?”
“But observe the creasing at the talocrural joint.” The coroner breathes out. “As if something was there. And then removed.”
Because it was. I removed it. And tied it around a glass float.
“I think it may have been used for another purpose,” Pratt says and looks down the long hill in the direction of the Lambry House. He doesn’t mention where the hemp is now, still lying on the flagstone path where he broke my yellow rose, my Lambry’s Ache set in glass, leaving the wreckage there. To taunt me, he thought. When it was her doing all the harm.
Knightley has drawn back to stand beside the priest. “He’s not saying this means she cou
ld be walking around?”
“Please,” the priest says. “Isn’t this enough? We dishonor the dead.”
“I’ve seen all I need to,” Pratt says.
“So it’s Alice?” Mrs. Chang asks.
“I’ve seen what I need,” Pratt repeats. “The rest is my work. I very much appreciate yours. We’re done here now.”
“All right, get these units back into the ground,” Mrs. Chang orders her sweating men. “The last first, please.”
Pratt turns to her. “‘The last to see me be the first to rejoice.’”
“Excuse me?”
“What if it’s self-deception?” he asks her, but seems to be asking himself. “Someone telling themselves their death isn’t a curse on others?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Mr. Pratt. We just honor what the deceased want written,” she says, and turns away.
“God, I hate death and rubberneckers.” Knightley swears. “Move those people now,” he orders.
“Knightley.” Pratt pulls the constable aside as the crane rolls back into place, and the crowd shifts. “Listen. This has been very productive. I need you to do something for me. I need you to stay here and make sure these caskets get back into the ground as quickly as possible. And I need you to make sure all these people don’t start wandering over to the Lambry House. Get your deputies to spread a rumor that it’s Alice I’m after, and that she’s going to be taken out at her shack on the beach. That should send people down there, where they’ll be safer. I’m going”—he glances over the constable’s shoulder, seeing Ellen’s car—“back to the house, now that Ellen’s arrived. She and I will need to be there alone for a while. Detour everyone else over to the beach, would you?”
“Where they might tear Alice’s shack to shreds?”
“Have any problem with that?”
“Not necessarily. Been meaning to raze it anyway. It’s illegal.”
