by A. L. Mengel
“Gaye! I’m coming!” He rushed around the bed to her side and knelt next to her. She was lying on her side, and looked up at him.
“Call me an ambulance,” she said. “I think I’m having a heart attack!”
George reached up towards the nightstand, knocking the alarm clock against the wall and sending several books and a glass of water crashing to the floor. “Where is my cell?!”
He bent down and picked up Gaye. She had closed her eyes.
*~*~*
George Stanley was raised in the forested hills of Tennessee. He was born in 1957, graduated from St Joseph’s Preparatory in 1965, and then promptly moved to Florida to work in the burgeoning fishing business at the time on the eastern seaboard south of Jacksonville. But it wasn’t those later years that transformed George into the monster that he became. It started much before then.
As he sat in the South Florida Penitentiary, he hung his head down towards his knees, and rested his chin in his hands. He closed his eyes, and thought of his father. He racked his brain for a memory, anything, just a snippet, and all he could remember was the coffin being lowered into the ground, and the pay loader shoveling dirt onto a growing mound in frigid January weather.
He remembered the day like it was yesterday.
The sun had been shining.
The air was frigid.
The smoky mountains were in the background, and he had just finished burying his father. But a man waited for him at the bottom of the hill, leaning against a running black sedan.
“I just don’t understand why you can’t go outside and play like all the other little boys.” His mother readied the vacuum cleaner, fishing the cord from the back of the machine and drawing it out towards the wall outlet. “You sit inside and look out the window. That’s all you do.”
And that’s what George was doing right then.
He was propped on the arm of a recliner, peering through some sheers, looking out the window at the afternoon neighborhood activity. And that is what he did each afternoon after school.
But it wasn’t the mundane schedule that awakened the monster within him.
No one knew.
Not even George.
But what George did know, what he always knew, was the voice. The voice which spoke to him every night when the lights went out:
Hey George…remember me?
I’m the one who follows you every night into your bed. I’m the one who waits and watches when you are sleeping.
Let’s start some trouble George!
*~*~*
No one in the neighborhood knew what happened to George Stanley.
When his house was raided, he heard the windows shatter, the door busted in, and the police shouting and announcing their presence. Most of the men who had gathered in his house were arrested in the front yard.
But not George.
Because he knew of things that the others did not.
He knew of the areas in the house that were yet unexplored by others, but they were areas that George knew of from the years of living in the house. He knew that the basement sometimes wasn’t really a basement, that sometimes one could wander deep and beyond, and leave this dimension altogether. He knew that there was a door at the base of the stairs that would open whenever his mind willed it to do so; and when he slipped through the open basement door, tip-toed down the stairs, as he listed to the arrival of the police, his mind willed it to open.
And the door was open.
It was a door that, when opened, the walls crumbled and became of the earth, the floor turned to dirt and moss, and the darkness would permeate the room. For when the door was opened, there was no returning.
But on that fateful day in June, when George’s prostitution operation was put to a halt by the Miami PD and the FBI, he slipped undetected through the door that his mind willed to appear, the door that carved itself through the dirt and soil and green shrubbery, the door that led into total darkness and mystery.
But George went through it without hesitation.
*~*~*
Why hello there.
Here I am again. You already know me, The Mortician’s Mortician. I’ve been here the whole time you have been sitting there, and I have been here waiting for you.
For you.
Come, here, and step into my room.
See the gurney below you? Go ahead, step up and lie here. I am ready for you, I will keep everything nice and warm.
But of course, I don’t really do that to you. You aren’t ready to die…right?
But what I can do is paint you a picture…
…I can paint you a picture of my latest victim. I can show you what he looked like when he was rolled in here on the gurney in the dark plastic bag. Yes, it’s just like you saw on television on the crime shows.
It looks the same.
The dark plastic that they show on television is the same dark plastic that comes rolling in here every day.
I always smile every time a new body comes rolling through the door. I love my job.
Yes, I do this day in and day out.
Today, the body that came in, however, looked familiar. I saw the mountainous black body bag on top of the wheeled gurney rolling in the back door, and when it stopped in the middle of the stark cement room I stopped. I stopped in my tracks and placed the scalpel that I was holding on the stainless steel cart that was beside me. This time it was different. The body bag was the same, the two white coat gentlemen with long sideburns who hoisted the bagged corpse onto the nearest counter were the same, but something was different.
I couldn’t put my finger on it. I had to see who was in that bag. Most times, the body is placed on the nearest counter for check in and ID, and then washed and transferred to a rolling gurney for placement in a refrigerator for preparation. I usually would handle the check in process. But this time, I wanted to see. Like I said, I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Hi Chester,” I mumbled, grabbing my clipboard with the roster, and a ball point pen. “Who is this one?”
“Name’s Wilkes,” he said, transferring the body from his gurney to mine. “Found down south – south of the Gables – dried and drained. This one’ll be tough.”
“Gotta love the prunes that come through here.”
But then I stopped. I had seen the man before.
My mind took me back to the summer. I had been walking down the Miracle Mile, trudging slow and steady through the steamy afternoon heat, fanning myself with a pamphlet I had picked up on the previous block. The promenade was lined with vendors, setup on temporary tables with aluminum folding chairs scattered nearby; each offered their wares at rock-bottom prices – handmade jewelry, books, newspapers and antiques. I looked ahead and there was another boy handing out a pamphlet similar to the one that I was fanning myself with.
I pulled a tissue out of my pocket and wiped the sweat from my temples, and turned towards the other side of the street.
And that is when I stopped just short of a table with piles of books on top of it. Old looking books. Heavy bound, gold edged pages. There was a heavy set man sitting in a folding chair behind it, his glasses pushed to the tip of his nose, furiously paging through one of the books. His stringy hair was matted to the side of his head. I stopped, said nothing, and glanced up at the awning.
The man looked up at me. “Hello Ned.” He smiled broadly flashing yellowed teeth.
Sheldon Wilkes.
I could remember the man back in his heyday.
Back when he was on television, shortly after he arrived in Miami, promoting his church. I had remembered seeing him on the evening news, not long after, in an orange jumpsuit, led away from police cruisers in handcuffs. Sheldon sat in the chair, staring up at me, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “So you care to discuss some of these books, Ned? I have a discount on services today for the sidewalk sale.”
But I snapped out of my musing.
The shriveled, old prune.
He certainly hadn’t been a
prune that hot and steamy afternoon. He looked like he had gained weight since they released him. He smiled continuously, gestured with an open hand towards the book he had been reading, and asked me to join him in the empty folding chair next to him.
But now he was lying in front of me, the black body bag zipped open half way down, his corpse sucked dry, the skin stuck to his bones like tape on plaster.
You’re a shriveled old prune. You know that, right? You used to have your looks, you were in your heyday. You used to have your baby face and biceps, pouty lips and tits like rocks, but now, you’re old.
And just a shriveled…old…prune.
Pretty soon, you’ll be dead, right?
The young years are few and fast. You can only use your body as your means of existence for so long. And then you have to figure out what you’re going to do in this world.
*~*~*
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sometimes people have a greater purpose.
Sometimes they are placed in your life and then taken out shortly after.
People come and go…
…Antoine sat in his parlor suite.
A fire crackled, the lights were off, but the glow from the flames bathed the room in an orange glow. He rose and walked over to the bar on the side wall. “Do you drink anything besides whiskey?”
Sheldon shook his head.
“Let me show you absinthe.” Antoine held up a bottle with a bright green liquid inside. “There’s a fairy that is rumored to live in this bottle. A green fairy. That’s why they say the green color. But it’s a green fairy that takes over your soul…”
Sheldon raised an eyebrow. “And you want me to drink this?”
Antoine chuckled. “No, Sheldon, no. Not unless you want to. These are just old wives tales, things about absinthe that I actually never really believed.”
“And so you drink it?”
Antoine fished a small stemmed glass from the bar. “But of course,” he said. “It’s my libation of choice.”
Sheldon paused for a moment, examining the small stemmed glass placed in front of him, with the silver slotted spoon, holding the sugar cube, and was mesmerized as Antoine poured the green liquid over the cube, watching it drip into the glass. “Antoine, I didn’t think that you drank things like this. Alcohol, I mean.”
“I am not a vampire, Mr. Wilkes.”
“Okay, I understand we have made that determination. I just didn’t think that you even needed a libation.”
“I certainly don’t, but I appreciate the finer things. And Absinthe was distilled from wormwood, and I like it because the liqueur has a legend behind it. Of the “green fairy”. She is supposed to possess your soul when drinking it.”
“Do you believe that?”
Antoine smiled. “Do you?”
“Absinthe is an aphrodisiac, Antoine. What are your intentions?”
He smiled.
Sheldon looked the slip of green liquid in the glass. At the high level of alcohol, he questioned whether he could drink it without going on some sort of a trip. But he lifted the glass, never taking his eyes off it. He then looked up at Antoine.
“Do you cherish your soul?”
“Yes, Antoine, what kind of question is that?”
*~*~*
Later that evening, Darius dreamt of Tramos once again. He remembered.
Longed.
Wished.
Come to me, Darius.
Come and remember me.
Think about what happened next. After you saw me. After the scene behind came alive again. After the painting shifted to the next scene. Think about when you had finished your wine, after we had left together. I led and you followed, you saw my long, golden hair against my blue jacket. You saw the carriage that we entered. And then you felt the chill in the air that evening.
And then you saw the velvet, the heavy drapes, and then my face.
“Yes, I did.”
And then Darius looked at the clock, its red numbers assaulting his vision.
It was far too early to rise. The dream had come again. He pulled the covers up towards his neck, shifted and turned, and closed his eyes once again, making a mental note to visit Father Bauman again in the morning. Dreams of Tramos have been coming all too often lately, and he knew that it had to have something to do with George Stanley.
*~*~*
The sun was shining brightly the next morning.
After the periods of cloudiness, cooler weather, rain and thundershowers, the citizens of Miami were reveling in the sun once again.
The traffic was again clogging up the roads, the shoppers were again peppering the Miracle Mile, and all of the stores were open for business and busy with the throngs of Miamians who were rejoicing in the sunny weather. At one end of the promenade, The Astral was just opening for the day. Anthony Peterson arrived at work, just as he did each morning, and fished his keys out of his pants pocket, placed them in the door, and clicked the lock, flinging the sign to “OPEN” while raising the blinds.
On the other end, the Cathedral of the Gardens was concluding the morning service.
Father Bauman was not celebrating Mass that particular morning, although he usually did. He was under the weather that morning and still in the Rectory in bed. The previous night, he had started vomiting and running a high fever.
Darius did not call ahead to make an appointment with Father Bauman.
He cursed under his breath when there was no parking directly on the Miracle Mile, but he managed to find street side parking a block away. As he walked to the Church, he dodged many shoppers and bargain hunters browsing through open air storefront tables displaying their wares.
Darius stopped in front of the Cathedral and looked upwards.
The sun was shining through the spires which rose from either side of the building. He climbed the steps and opened the heavy, wooden door. The flowery, smoky smell of incense wafted towards him as he felt the blast of cool air. He heard the organ playing inwards in the worshipping area, which was concealed by stained glass windows. He spotted a hallway on the other side of the atrium, and headed that way. The hallway was lined with doors and offices. He ducked his head inside one, where a nun was sitting at the desk shifting papers and typing on a computer terminal. She did not look up until Darius cleared his throat.
“Good Morning. May I help you?” She adjusted her habit as she greeted him.
“I hope so. I am looking for Father Bauman. I have been meeting with him the past few weeks…and I…”
Her face shifted slightly and she looked back down at the desk. “I’m afraid you can’t see him today.”
Darius sat in a small, black chair opposite the desk. “Well…why not?”
The nun leaned back in her chair. “You cannot. He is not feeling well, and we don’t expect him better for some time.”
“For some time?”
She raised her eyebrows.
Darius leaned forward on the edge of the desk. “Well…we have been meeting about some very important things, I really would like to see him. Is he that ill?”
She shook her head. “Yes, I’m afraid he is that ill. And you will not be able to see him for at least a few days.” She stood and straightened her skirt. “Now, if you please. I must tend to the parishioners. Mass is letting out now. I’m sorry, but please, you can speak with Father Michaels if you like.”
Darius shook his head and sighed as she left the room.
He hung his head, still sitting in the small black chair in the nun’s office, wishing that he could speak with Father Bauman about the dreams he had been having about Tramos. He supposed he could wait another couple of days until he got better.
So Darius made his way back to the atrium, through the parishioners which flowed from the service which had just concluded. He saw Father Michaels standing proudly in the center of the lobby in his ivory vestments; he was far taller than everyone else, but there was something about the priest that Darius just couldn’t put his finger on.
The man was hugging everyone, smiling with gleaming white teeth, a full beard and dark head of hair. On the forefront, he seemed alright. But there was just something about him. Something different.
Something a little off.
And when Darius swung the heavy, wooden door open to the brilliant sunshine in front of the Cathedral, he wasn’t thinking about what he should have. For when he was in the nun’s office, he was far too concerned with seeing Father Bauman that he missed an important detail.
He hadn’t noticed what was underneath her habit.
Tufts of red hair.
Could it be?
*~*~*
A small, silver Porsche sped down the streets of Coral Gables that evening, taking turns violently, squealing its tires and honking its horn before overtaking slower cars. After several near collisions, it came to a stop in front a small ranch style house surrounded by magnolia trees.
Darius sat behind the steering wheel and did not bother to cut the engine.
He looked towards the quaint bungalow, and watched as the door opened. A small grey haired woman exited, pulling the door shut behind her. “Darius!” she called out, waving her hand. “I’m coming!”
Darius opened the door for Delia by leaning over from the driver’s side of the car. After some shifting and careful movement, she managed to sit in the passenger’s seat and closed the door. Darius noticed that her silver-grey hair was longer than usual. Almost down to her waist. And she had her usual warm smile, her wrinkled face, and wore her usual bright red lipstick.
“We need to exhume George,” she said as Darius jammed his foot on the clutch and sped out and towards the corner. “No one else must know about this. The usual drill, right?”
Darius looked over at Delia and shook his head. “I have some shovels.”
