by Harvey Click
It was so hard to undo the damage, but at the very least she could fix up these flower beds to look nice again. Of course she should okay it with Ben first.
She liked the farm, liked the long secure driveway, liked her old-fashioned bedroom, liked the shooting range and the backyard. And—uncomfortably—she was beginning to like Ben.
She stepped on the brake and sat there with the mower idling, feeling deeply ashamed of herself. Howard had died because he helped her. What if Ben ended up dying for the same reason? She had been staying here for purely selfish reasons, and now there was a new selfish reason—the imp of sexual desire.
She put the mower back in the barn, took a quick shower, and wrote a note for Ben because some things are easier to write down than to say out loud. She folded it, wrote his name on the front, and left it on the kitchen table where he would be sure to see it. Then she got her car out of the garage and left.
***
When Ben got home he wondered where Sarah was, and for some reason he was reminded of that awful day a year ago when he had come home and wondered where Isabel was. Probably she was buying groceries, and he wished she wouldn’t do that. It wasn’t likely that the wrong person would see her at a grocery store in Lancaster, but it was possible, and he didn’t think groceries were worth the risk.
He didn’t notice the note on the kitchen table because he went straight to the computer in his bedroom, wanting to check on an issue involving one of his patients. There was a long email from Ed Hardin:
Hey, Ben, I have some local news that should interest you. Do you remember that brick mansion with the interesting watchtower that you saw across the road & just a little north of the Dietrick place? Maybe you noticed a small old family cemetery on the property? Well, somebody recently robbed a grave in that cemetery!
The young couple that lives in the brick house discovered the vandalism yesterday, but there are shoe prints in the ground that make the police believe the grave was robbed while the ground was wet. It hasn’t rained here since that big storm Thursday when you and Sarah were here, so my guess is that the grave was robbed Thursday night, maybe just a few hours after you were here.
Police say the shoe prints belong to three people, two men & the third maybe a man or woman. Could the maybe man or woman be Darnell/Angel? You told me the casket they found in his/her apt probably was Gus Dietrick’s. Has this 2-sex psycho now dug up another grave just across the road?
The casket was still there, but the body was gone. The casket looked like a homemade job built of very thick oak with steel rivets & screws, sturdy enough to keep the dead from rising on Judgment Day. Even stranger, this was an unmarked grave & apparently nobody knows who was buried in it. Maybe now you’ll believe what I’ve said about strange things occurring on that road. The whole road may be haunted after all!
The Stonebrenner house, as the place is called, has its own interesting history. It was built in 1891 by a wealthy railroad magnate named Fenton Brown. Brown’s son & family lived there after the old man’s death & later the grandson & his family. The small cemetery that was vandalized contains the family cadavers, though no family bones were known to be resting where the vandals dug their hole.
The grandson’s fortunes declined & the house being costly to maintain, he put it up for sale in 1962. The property was purchased by a stranger named Isaac Stonebrenner, who remained equally a stranger after moving in. He kept entirely to himself, his needs from town taken care of by 2 servants, a husband & wife who, by all accounts, were pretty strange themselves. Rumors & legends circulated that he was some sort of witch or warlock, but the villagers never stormed the castle to discover a Frankenstein monster or a coven of devil worshippers engaged in a spicy sex orgy.
Stonebrenner disappeared in 1973. Maybe no one would have noted his absence if the 2 servants hadn’t appeared at the McClosky law firm with a letter in Stb’s handwriting requesting that McClosky initiate some pre-arranged trust proceedings. The letter said that urgent business matters required Stb’s attention in Europe & he’d be gone indefinitely. The 2 servants, by the way, proved unable to care for themselves with Stb. gone & were placed in a mental institution. Both were diagnosed as suffering senile dementia, though they were only middle-aged. They were both dead within the year.
I told you, it’s a strange road.
The details concerning this trust are supposed to be privy, but the current McClosky, son of the attorney who drew up the original agreement, has a tongue that’s easily loosened by a few glasses of wine & I confess I’ve learned several interesting secrets about our little town by wining & dining him, more wine than dine. He’s a harmless & likable fellow, though rather piteously lonely & melancholic, which is maybe why he takes so readily to the cheering fruits of the vine. (Folks around here rather snidely call him Son because he’s too cheap to change the McClosky & Son sign, even though his father is long dead.)
I’ve gathered from his loosened tongue that Isaac Stb. prescribed very unusual arrangements regarding the property. In the case of Stb.’s death or disappearance, both the farmland (500 acres) & the house were to be rented, together or separately, & these monies, together with interest from a separate fund, were to be applied toward taxes & upkeep so that the property could be maintained indefinitely by the fund, to be claimed (& this is the interesting part) at any time by any person meeting certain secret criteria (which criteria, to his credit, no amount of wine will loosen from McClosky’s tongue).
In other words, this mysterious man Stb. must have anticipated that he would eventually disappear & wanted the property to be maintained for some unknown heir or for his own return.
Am planning to invite McClosky for dinner soon to see if I can learn more. Also I have many notes and stories I’ve collected over the years regarding the Stb. house & I’m going to spend the next few days poring over them, trying to see if there’s any possible connection between Stb. & Darnell/Angel aside from the obvious connection that he/she lived right across the road.
Ben, when will you meet me at the club for some shooting? I’ve recently acquired a .22 caliber Anschutz Silhouette that I believe will put your beloved off-the-rack Savage to utter shame. Let’s see who wins the trophies now! Or better yet, why not come up & stay for the weekend? & bring that charming Sarah by all means! She’s pretty & smart & pleasant. I hope you won’t be offended by some well-intentioned meddling from an old friend, but it’s time, Ben, to stop licking your wounds and latch onto her!
Keep your powder dry,
“Bullseye” Ed
Ben looked at his watch: after 5:00 already. It shouldn’t take this long to buy groceries, and he realized he was feeling very uneasy. He went downstairs, and while he was pouring a glass of iced tea he noticed Sarah’s note on the table.
Ben,
I’m off to look for an apartment in Lancaster. I think an apartment here makes sense—I don’t think Darnell or Peter or any other creep will find me this far from Columbus. I should be back by 6:00 or so. I guess you’ll have to put up with me again tonight, but if I can find a place today I’ll move my stuff tomorrow and get out of your hair. I’ll bet you were wondering is that girl ever going to leave?
Ben, I’m no good at saying this sort of stuff. You’ve probably saved my life, and you’ve also kept me sane (sort of). I don’t know how to say thanks for all you’ve done. Words aren’t enough. I hope I can somehow repay you some day. At the very least I’ll buy you some better bourbon than that swill you drink.
–Sarah
Ben called her cellphone and she picked up.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m looking at an apartment right now. It looks pretty nice for the money. I think I’m going to take it.”
“Have you put down any money yet?”
“No.”
“Please don’t.”
“Why not? I’m afraid if I wait somebody else will snatch it up.”
“Sarah, just come back and let me talk to you before
you do anything.”
“Well, okay.”
After she hung up, Ben wondered exactly what it was he wanted to tell her. He filled a big pot with water and put it on the burner. He dumped a jar of pasta sauce into a pan and put it on low heat. He peeled some garlic and onion and sautéed it in a skillet. When it was starting to turn color he added some ground beef and stirred it around. The beef had already cooked and he was adding it to the sauce when he finally heard her bad muffler pulling up the driveway. He was surprised and a bit ashamed at the excitement he felt.
“Smells good,” she said when she came in. “Want me to set the table?”
Ben had cleared the magazines and books off the dining room table a few days ago, and that’s where she set the plates and wine glasses. Ben had told her that he wanted to talk, but he couldn’t think of much to say while they ate. He considered telling her about Ed’s email, but that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about. When they were done eating they drank Chianti and she talked about the apartment.
“It’s nice and sunny,” she said. “It has two big window air conditioners—I think I’ll be pretty comfortable there. Since I’ll be right there in town, maybe we can meet for lunch sometimes.”
He looked at her green eyes, which seemed to catch the light even in this dim room; he looked at her delicate chin, which gave her face a lovely cat-like shape; he looked at her lips, which maybe frowned more than they smiled but the smile was always worth waiting for.
They weren’t smiling now. They wore an odd expression that Ben couldn’t read.
“I don’t blame you for wanting to get out of here,” he said. “It’s a gloomy house with a gloomy barn and some very gloomy paintings in the second living room. And I guess maybe I’ve been pretty gloomy myself.”
“In fact I think you’ve been looking rather cheerful lately,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to say something about it.” She stood up and picked up the dirty plates.
“I want you to stay here,” he said.
“Well, are you really sure you want to put up with a roommate?”
“I don’t mean as a roommate,” he said. “I mean I want you to stay because I’m in love with you.”
“Oh.”
She put down the plates, took his hand, gently pulled him up from his chair, and kissed him. Her lips felt very different from Isabel’s, so soft and warm.
“Well then, maybe we should take the wine up to my room,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Tuesday while Angel was still too sick to be moved from her bed, Stonebrenner ordered the poet to drive him to the public library.
The city was even uglier than when he had last seen it, grotesque hamburger and pizza dumps wherever he looked. How idiots loved ugliness, he thought, like insects crawling over one another in their struggle to make the planet repulsive. It was a pity that the Third Reich hadn’t conquered the world. The riffraff that he saw through Hamelin’s van window would be dead or toiling in the factories where they belonged.
The library building was a welcome relief with its Grecian pillars and marble facade. But Stonebrenner soon saw that brainless scum had invaded its sanctuary as well. Fat sow-like women clutched thin plastic boxes in their blubbery arms. He went to the room that stored the plastic boxes and saw that they were the movie DVDs Angel had told him about. A glance at the boxes showed him what garbage they were. Stupid movies for people too stupid to read, but determined to take advantage of any free trash that the government stooped to provide.
He went to the periodical room and read dozens of news magazines cover to cover, his eyes aching like rotten teeth. History was the same foolish blunders repeated over and over, and the only event that surprised him was the fall of the Soviet Union, though even that he should have anticipated—an inefficient system based on hopelessly misguided principles laid down by a corrupt and idiotic Jewish intellectual.
Next he found books on cosmology, physics, and quantum mechanics and raced through their pages as quickly as he had read the magazines, his eyes aching even worse now. Interesting how Schrödinger’s wave equation and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle affected the research being done in modern particle accelerators.
The plethora of big bang theories fascinated him, but the anthropic principle fascinated him more. Of course it was implied in Heisenberg’s principle. If it was true that human observation affected whether something was a particle or a wave, then even dull-witted scientists must begin to realize how closely linked the fabric of the universe was to the human brain that watched it. Science was plodding ever closer to the truths of magic, but only a handful of scientists had the imagination to recognize how close they were.
Stonebrenner wanted to read more, but Angel was too sick to be left for long in the inept care of Hamelin. He asked a librarian where there was a pay phone so he could call a cab. She stared too long at his blue-gray skin, and he planted a deep pain in her stomach that might soon turn to cancer.
After he called the cab he remembered another small chore that should be done—he wanted to have a word with someone. He dialed the phone number that Angel had given him.
“Hello?” Peter Bellman said. “Hello? Who is it?”
Stonebrenner spoke one word into the receiver. Only one was necessary.
***
The single word that the Solitary One spoke over the phone was not English or any other tongue Peter Bellman had ever heard, yet he understood the meaning at once, or at least part of the meaning, because as the word expanded in his mind its meaning grew ever deeper and more profound. The word was a sphinxlike riddle and also a command, a command so imperative that it could not be disobeyed.
Though it was a single word, its meaning couldn’t be fully expressed in a whole paragraph or maybe even in a whole book, but boiled down to its simplest essence the meaning was: “Find the Truth.”
He knew the Truth he was ordered to find had nothing to do with trivial details or facts and figures; it was Truth with a capital T, the essential Truth of the Universe. And find meant something stronger than discover, something more like expose or reveal.
Peter sat in front of the dresser in his bedroom and stared at his reflection, hoping he could find the truth there. Every man’s mind is a microcosm of the universe, he reasoned, and therefore he was looking at whatever Truth he could ever hope to know of the universe.
But Truth is an elusive thing, so after a while Peter dragged in another dresser from a spare room so that it faced the first dresser, and he sat between the two large mirrors. Now his face and the back of his head were both visible in the mirror in front of him, the kind of comprehensive perspective that he needed to solve the riddle, a picture of the whole rather than the fragment that the ignorant heathen see.
But the two mirrors added a maddening complexity: above and to the right of the reflection of his face, there was the reflection of the back of his head, while above and to the right of that was another reflection of his face, then another reflection of the back of his head, ad infinitum. He knew that the infinite reflections were part of the riddle, a reminder that if he got beneath one false image of himself he would find another false image, and beneath it another, and no matter how assiduously he might peel away the layers of appearance, he would never get to the Truth.
Like many profound riddles, this one sounded easy but was damnably difficult.
Then it dawned on him where the truth was hidden and what the single word had commanded him to do. The idea terrified and sickened him, but the Solitary One was not to be disobeyed, and seekers of the Truth must not be cowards.
It was going to be thirsty work, so he brought a pitcher of cold water from the refrigerator and set it on the dresser, and then went to the basement and brought up his rotary power tool and a whole package of diamond-edged cutting discs.
He set the tool to spin at its slowest speed, but still the disc kept getting hot because bone is a hard substance. Whenever the disc got too hot he would dip it in the p
itcher of water to cool it. By now the water was red with blood, but the work was so arduous that he drank from the pitcher every 15 minutes or so, not caring about the blood.
First he sawed a shallow groove all the way around his bald head an inch above his eyebrows and ears, sopping up the blood with a towel when necessary, and after he had made the initial groove he kept going slowly around it, cutting a bit more deeply with each pass.
His head hurt horribly, maybe as much from the heat of the disc as the cutting itself, and many times he set down his tool and wept with horror and dismay. But the Solitary One’s word could not be disobeyed, so after a few minutes he would turn the tool back on and continue his work.
The job became more difficult and exacting when the cutting disc finally made it all the way through the skull in places. Blood and fluid would ooze out whenever the disc touched the lining of his brain, and he would carefully move on to the next place that still needed cutting.
It was very difficult now to keep from losing consciousness, but the command was so authoritative that it pushed him onward. Concentration was the key, the perfect mental focus of a Zen swordsman or a fakir handling hot coals. The trick was to put aside all useless conventional thoughts and emotions: the Truth would forever hide from conventional minds.
At last the sawing was finished. Peter placed the bloody power tool on his dresser and regarded his work with grim satisfaction: a clean cut, good craftsmanship. Amazing what the human mind could do once it put aside its squeamish qualms.
He lifted off the top of his skull and gazed with amazement at his naked, pulsating brain. He had cracked open the riddle like a walnut, and the meat of the nut was revealed. But where in that meat was the Truth?
