by Ed Kurtz
With that, the old bitch smirked. She actually smirked at me, daring me to make something of it. For a fraction of a second, I considered it. I considered pulling that trigger and putting that inhuman woman down like you would a rabid dog. But that would have been too easy and too much trouble for me. Instead, I switched gears to what I’d really come to know.
“Your time is running out, Mrs. Parson,” I said, my voice finally breaking as I prepared myself for what I was about to say. “Probably you’re right about the cops. I made quite a racket coming in here and I doubt the nice people you live around are used to that sort of thing. So you might as well tell me now, and damnit, don’t make me ask twice—what did you do with Helen?”
Almost beyond my control the gun in my hand inched closer to her pale, stolid face. She blinked and said, “Nothing at all.”
Police sirens wailed in the middle distance. There was no question where they were heading.
“Here they come, Mrs. Parson. You’re done and you damn well know it. They already know what you’ve done. Why lie about one more killing?”
“I’ve told you, Mr. Woodard. I haven’t harmed a hair on her drug-addled little head.”
“She was my wife, you old bitch. Jake said she’s dead. What did you do?”
A small, wry grin formed at her white lips and she emitted a throaty little laugh.
“I met her in what I gather was the same way Ms. Wheeler met her, at that little theater where she worked. She proved useful to me, keeping me informed of that homosexual woman’s plans, and when I grew worried that there might be police involvement, I convinced her to hold a significant amount of money for me. Lest it be seized, of course. It’s extraordinary what you can persuade an addict to do with a little help from their chosen vices, Mr. Woodard. Though I suspect you already know that perfectly well.”
“Cora,” the other woman whispered, astonished and horrified. Finally she got it. She believed and she understood. She’d married into a family of monsters. I felt sorry for her. “Cora, my God.”
“Oh shut up,” Cora answered her. “We’ve all suffered here. I’ve lost both of my sons.”
“And you seem so broken up about it, too,” I hissed. “You’re a real piece of work, Cora Parson.”
The sirens pierced the air as they came onto the street. Through the drawn curtains of the window behind the women I could see the blue and red lights pulsing right in front of the house. As soon as I heard the shuffle of approaching footsteps, I gently set the gun down on an end table—away from Cora.
And before the police reached the door, I turned back to the old woman and looked deep into her soulless eyes, and I said, “Where is she, Cora?”
The old hen half-grinned, her age-worn lips all but cracking at the strain. She said, “For the record, that colored girl isn’t dead. Shawna, you said? Yes, I think that’s right. It isn’t as though I didn’t know my building had squatters. How did you suppose Gary found you there?”
My stomach dropped, half-turned over at the thought that Shawna’s willingness to tattle to Cora had gotten Duff—her friend—killed. I wondered if she would be able to live with herself when she found out, but pushed the thought away in favor of getting my question answered.
“Where, Cora?” I persisted. “Where is she?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea where your wife is, Mr. Woodard. In some gutter, I’d imagine.”
“Not Helen. Grace. Where is Grace Baronsky?”
Fists pounded on the front door and a deep male voice shouted, “El Centro Police Department—open up.”
Cora met my gaze and raised her eyebrows.
“Oh,” she said. “Grace.”
She told me.
EPILOGUE: GRAHAM AND JAKE
L.A., 2013
Two things I learned upon my return to Los Angeles knocked me on my ass. The first was that Jake never left town. He was waiting at the station when Shea brought me in, having gone to a hell of a lot of trouble keeping me out of jail back in El Centro. I even got a police escort the whole 220 miles back, since the cops weren’t too keen on letting me drive a technically stolen vehicle used in the commissions of numerous crimes. Jake had already heard all of it and, to my surprise, didn’t have an obnoxiously snarky comment for me when I came into Shea’s office that afternoon. He gave me a hug.
“I wasn’t going to give up on you, man,” he said in my ear, squeezing me tighter than any man ever had. “But I’d never thought you’d escape from the frigging hospital, you moron.”
“He’ll be going back, too,” Shea put in. “The smart money says you haven’t done your well-being any favors with this little adventure of yours, Graham. You’re going to have to pay the piper for that crap.”
“I know,” I said. I felt like I was in the principal’s office just then. It didn’t help that I was leaning awkwardly to the side with my knees pressed together like a scolded kid. Actually, I was just in a lot of pain and my coordination was shot to hell.
“And that’s not even mentioning the inquest,” Shea said. “You’ll be fine, but you’re going to want to get yourself a lawyer.”
“I’ve already been cleared,” Jake beamed. Like we were thug-killer brothers now, or something. I sighed and decided not to dwell on it.
An officer brought in some more of that lovely police station coffee for the three of us and, after Shea thanked the kid and politely kicked him out, he asked both of us to sit down. I sipped at the sludge and waited for bombshell number two, though I didn’t know it at that exact minute.
“Graham, Helen has been located, and she’s alive.”
I froze and the office tilted a little as my stomach plummeted and then righted itself again. I said, “Oh, my God.”
And I erupted into tears.
There’s nothing in the world wrong with a man crying when it’s called for, but the amount of tears I’d shed between Grace Baron and my ex-wife, who I’d believed dead for much too long, was enough to fill my quota for a lifetime. Jake squeezed my shoulder and both he and Shea waited me out. I was a good deal embarrassed to break down like that in front of them, but goddamn, it felt good.
Once I managed to stop blubbering, Shea gave me the not-so-good news.
“She was picked up in Venice. She, uh, she had half an ounce of coke on her and she was so blitzed she could hardly see straight. She’ll be doing a little time for that, I’m sure. I’m sorry.”
“Christ, Helen,” I murmured.
“It’s better than what you thought, bud,” Jake said.
He was right. But still.
* * *
We talked, the three of us, for most of the afternoon. A lot of it covered everything that had happened, from each of our perspectives and experiences, and though Detective Shea couldn’t express enough how much he wanted to slap Jake and me for getting in so deep, he proved himself to be a genuinely warm and upright guy as far as I was concerned. He assured me that Cora Parson would never live to see the outside of a prison again, and though it couldn’t undo the unholy wreckage she’d left in her wake, it was good to hear. I liked Donny Shea. Maybe that was why I felt so guilty for keeping one little bit of information from him. At least for the time being.
Jake, on the other hand—my partner in all of this, for better or worse—came along for the ride on this one. I might have expected the coordinates to some remote spot in the San Gabriel Mountains when I asked Cora Parson where Grace Baron was hidden, but to finally find her all we had to do was take a cab out to the crumbling remains of a once grand mansion.
“Joseph March’s house,” she’d said simply in the moments before I let the El Centro police in and, temporarily, experienced handcuffs for the first time in my life. “That is where you will find Grace. Where she belongs.”
The name was vaguely familiar, but a quick Internet search filled me in on the finer details. Joseph March was a minor director in the silent era whose career tanked once the Talkie came around. At the height of his success he occupied the
mansion in Malibu, which had passed from owner to owner over the years, eventually left to rot by the dawn of the eighties. It was prime oceanside real estate, though, so by the mid-nineties the entire property was scooped up for a song by someone with more money than I’d ever see with plans to restore the house to its original condition. One look at the place upon our arrival was all we needed to know those plans had been greatly delayed.
“Christ, what a dump,” Jake opined.
I was inclined to agree. The place looked like a haunted house from some old B horror picture with its sagging roof and rotting eaves. The overstated columns in front were choked by creepers and the steps were falling to pieces. A swimming pool on the side facing the Pacific was filled almost to the top with dirt and tall, intersecting weeds. I figured the guy who bought the place must have had second thoughts about restoration; the house was wrecked and probably just needed to be knocked down. But not before we did what we came to do.
“I don’t know, Graham,” Jake said as the cab pulled away. “It doesn’t look exactly safe.”
“You can wait out here,” I told him. “I don’t mind.”
“Forget that,” he countered. “In for a penny, man.”
“All right.”
I climbed the ruined steps with Jake’s help, using my cane to knock aside chunks of the broken stone to keep from tripping on them. The front door, a massive hunk of oak going green from rot, wasn’t locked. I pushed it open to reveal a dark, rank foyer overgrown with vegetation. Our steps echoed loudly against the walls as we went inside. Jake kept his hand at the small of my back, like he was worried I’d fall over. It wasn’t the first time it occurred to me what a decent human being he’d turned out to be. I still thought he was annoying as all hell, but I was starting to tolerate the guy.
“Big joint,” he said, his voice bouncing all over the place like a museum. “Where to?”
I heaved a sigh and went forward, stepping lightly in spite of my limp, working to avoid the weeds and detritus covering the marble floor. There was an open doorway in front of me and a closed door to my right. I looked first through the open one, which led into a large empty room lined with what once were bookshelves, but now wouldn’t even serve as useful firewood. I looked back in time to see Jake trying the closed door. It didn’t budge, so he threw his shoulder into it and fell right through. He yelled out, startled, and I came to him as quickly as I could.
“You all right?”
“Goddamn thing,” he groused. I decided he was all right.
We were in a dark hallway that smelled like a jungle and a locker room rolled up in an old rug. I helped Jake up and we peered into the darkness together, our eyes adjusting to the light. We saw the door at the end of the hall at the same time, and neither of us said a word. We just walked side by side right up to it, and this time it opened up without a problem.
I flicked my disposable lighter to see what fresh hell we’d stumbled into. Once the flame leapt up and gave a faint glow to the metal frames of tiered seats and the small window in the center of the wall behind them, I understood everything perfectly.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Jesus.”
“What?”
“Where she belongs.”
“What is all this?”
“A private screening room,” I told him. “A mini movie theater. Because that’s where Grace belongs. It’s where she always belonged. On the screen.”
“So—she’s here?”
“She has to be.”
The flame burned my thumb and I released the button. We were plunged back into darkness, but I remembered seeing an old sconce on the wall of the library. I told Jake about it and he rushed to get it. When he returned, we were both relieved to find it still held some fuel and the wick actually caught. Now we had light to work by.
It didn’t take long. Together, we pulled up the moldy old carpet to reveal a floor comprised of wood slats. Like everything else in the house they were half rotted away, so Jake passed the light over the sundry gaps between the seats and the facing wall where the screen once hung until he gasped and shouted out, “Here! She’s here. Oh my God.”
I hobbled over and peered down through the broad, jagged cracks. Looking back up at me was the hollow eye socket of a human skull.
“Jesus,” Jake whispered. “All these years?”
“Most of a century,” I said. He held the light steady so I could look at her, or what was left of her. Just a gray-white skull, only bones left barely concealed in the threadbare ruins of an ancient gown.
“I’ve got my phone,” Jake said, his voice unexpectedly choked with emotion. “I’ll call Shea.”
I nodded and he left the screening room. Left me and the light and the remains of the doomed girl who should have been the most enduring name and talent of her time, but was instead forgotten, lost to history. I’d been through so much to see her sit where she belonged, among the royalty of silent cinema to whom she truly, rightfully belonged. And I knew, now that the ordeal was really done, that the job I’d come to do in the first place was finally going to be done. I was going to make damn certain Angel of the Abyss, for all its beauty and horror, was finally brought back from the grave.
On my hands and knees in the tremulous light of the sconce, I smiled down through the holes in the floor at the bones underneath, and I said, “Hello, Grace. I’m Graham Woodard. I think I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ed Kurtz is the author of A Wind of Knives and The Forty-Two. His short fiction has appeared in Thuglit, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Shotgun Honey, Beat to a Pulp, and numerous anthologies. Ed lives in Texas, where he is at work on his next project. Visit Ed Kurtz online at www.edkurtz.net.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.
Table of Contents
ANGEL OF THE ABYSS
Connect With Us
Part One: Graham
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Part Two: Jake
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Part Three: Graham
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Epilogue: Graham and Jake
About the Author
About the Publisher
