by Adam Vine
I examined the vomit stains on his pants, trying to avert my eyes from that horrible, distended blue face. He was so scared he puked on himself, but he went through with it anyway.
The thing hanging from the bathroom doorknob was Mr. DeLucio, Benny the Piano Man, our weird neighbor who had stalked and harassed the love of my life. The part that made him Mr. DeLucio was gone. But his flesh, his husk, was the same.
I had never thought deeply about death until I saw Mr. DeLucio’s corpse. Not even when I tried to end my own life. Back then, I just wanted to go somewhere else, anywhere else, to escape the pain of being fat, greasy, nerdy-to-a-flaw Drew Brady. But I had never given much thought to where we go when we die.
At least he didn’t piss himself, I thought. That always happens in the movies.
“I knew Benny a long time,” Officer Skoakland said quietly.
“How long?”
“About twenty years. We used to live together, back when we were in college.”
I know. Back in '93, next-door, at Sunny Hill. Except you had long, blonde hair, and half the muscle you've got now.
Officer Skoakland said, “He was a weird guy, Benny. Chubby. Terrible with women.” He chuckled, but it was a sad chuckle. “One time, I dared him to talk to this girl at a party, a beautiful brunette with knockers like pumpkins. Polish exchange student – some diplomat’s kid. Benny was so scared when he went over to her, I thought he was gonna cry. Looked like he’d already been shot down. Shoulders hunched over, sad look on his face.” Officer Skoakland imitated the expression. “She was such a sweetheart, she said yes! Can you believe it? The whore asked Benny to dance, and he turned her down, because he was too insecure. Ha! Ha. You fuckin’ pussy, Benny, you coward…”
Officer Skoakland’s laughter trailed off. He nudged Mr. DeLucio with the toe of his boot. Mr. DeLucio swayed, kept swaying, slowly twisting on his belt, like he wanted to take back what he’d done but couldn’t, because the door was in the way.
“Had to punch your own ticket, didn’t you? Couldn’t live with yourself after all that’s been going on, huh, you bonehead?” Officer Skoakland said softly. He crouched down so he was eye-level with Mr. DeLucio’s corpse. “I’m surprised you didn’t overdose on blueberry ice cream from Mary Anne’s. God, we had some good times, didn’t we? And this was the way you wanted to go? Good for you, buddy. At least you found a way out, huh? At least you found one,” he repeated, so quiet I almost couldn’t hear him.
“A way out of what?” I said.
Officer Skoakland stood up and smiled at me as though he’d forgotten I was in the room. “He’s in a better place now.”
“Drew, where you at?” I heard Carter’s voice echo from the front door. “Saw you walkin’ over here with a god damned fire poker in your hand. Wassup? Everything cool?”
“We’re in the bedroom,” Officer Skoakland said.
Carter’s voice deepened. “Who?”
“SCPD. Your neighbor committed suicide. Don’t be shy, buttercup. Come on back.”
“The fuck?” Carter said.
I heard Jay’s voice, too. “Drew, you all right?”
“DeLucio’s dead,” I said. “But other than that, yes,” I said.
“Can I see?” Bea’s voice echoed.
Natalia was uncharacteristically nervous. “Drew, is he... is it… gross?”
“I don’t know if you should see this, Bumble,” I said.
“I want to.”
Officer Skoakland sounded irritated. “Hey! Come in, or get out, but either way, stop yelling.”
Carter’s voice was closer now, inside the house. “Man, this place stinks!”
“Aw, hey kitty! C’mere! Here, kitty kitty,” Natalia crooned.
Jay warned, “Don’t touch those things, they’re probably rabid.”
Bea said, “Jesus Christ. Look how fat they are.”
Officer Skoakland shook his head. “Hold on,” he whispered to me. “I’m gonna go make sure they don’t accidentally stumble into old Ben’s porn-and-sodomy dungeon. Might cause your friends some mental trauma.” He winked.
While Officer Skoakland was in the other room fetching the rest of the group, I finally took my eyes off Mr. DeLucio’s corpse and noticed the rest of his bedroom. It was covered with dozens, maybe hundreds of Polaroid pictures, as well as newspaper clippings and printed Internet articles. They all related to Sunny Hill.
There were Polaroids of the storage area in various stages of emptiness and clutter, each marked with bright circles drawn by a red felt pen. I knew immediately those denoted places Mr. DeLucio had thought there might be graves. There were pictures of the backyard and orchard, too. There were newspaper clippings about city council meetings held every five years between 1994 and 2014. I read the headlines: Council denies tech millionaire’s request to excavate under local home; Tech millionaire sues for right to continue mass grave search; Mass grave search condemned by local diocese.
Mr. DeLucio had sued the city for the right to dig for bones under 1006 Sunny Hill Drive. The articles were small, back page fodder, but they were all from local newspapers. Why hadn’t any of this come up in Bea’s search?
There were dozens of history textbook cutouts covering myriad topics about Northern California, from the history of the Catholic Church on the Central Coast, to the status of dock-workers, prostitutes in Santa Cruz during the 19th century, and the burial practices of a dozen different Northern Californian Indian tribes. There was even a small paragraph about the first Beach Boardwalk performers, which mentioned Scudds Gurney by name. There were civil records copies concerning Sunny Hill and its surrounding properties: water parcel bids, construction permits, electrical contracts, blueprints, and maps.
The piles were strewn haphazardly across Mr. DeLucio’s bed, desk, and floor. But the most important pieces were pinned to a cork board over his desk. Fat strings of colored yarn connected the pins like murder movies or police procedurals, but the connections didn’t make any sense until I saw the sketches.
The first was of the dead girl I’d seen dancing in the garage. Her portrait was rendered perfectly in colored pencil, except, where the girl I’d seen dancing at Scudds’ Gurney’s zydeco humdinger was missing a cheek and had her head bashed in, the girl in Mr. DeLucio’s drawing appeared very much alive. She was rosy-cheeked and had clean, shining, walnut-brown hair. A soft light twinkled in her eyes. She was pretty, but sad. The dead girl’s name was scrawled under her portrait in red pencil. Annabelle Leigh’s portrait was linked to a cutout about teenage prostitution in Santa Cruz during WWI and the Roaring Twenties with a piece of crimson thread.
I recognized the next portrait, too; a blonde kid wearing a shit-eating grin under a filthy newsboy cap. It was the pickpocket boy who’d robbed me of the wallet I wasn’t carrying while I watched Annabelle Leigh dance and lose her foot, then spilled his guts for me when I tried to leave the garage. All cleaned up and smiling, the little turd looked like he could’ve been one of my younger cousins. The name on the pickpocket’s picture was Carl, no surname. A green string linked Carl’s picture to an academic article about the abuse of orphan boys in the church in the late 1800s.
I recognized the other portraits, too. The five dead men drinking beer on the sofa in their suspenders, who’d stood and clapped Annabelle Lee along while she was dancing: Dutch Evans, Spots Allman, Benjamin Sykes the first, Irish Bill, and Chinese Lee (just Irish Bill and Chinese Lee; no last names noted). Their portraits were all linked by yellow threads to an Internet article about the usually avoidable deaths suffered by migrant railway workers on the Central Coast.
I finally realized what I was looking at. I’ve been reading these old articles so long I’m beginning to sound like them, Bea’s voice echoed in my mind.
The Potter’s Field. The teenage prostitutes, the abused orphan boys, the migrant workers killed on the job. I was looking at the faces of the people buried under Sunny Hill. There was a mass grave underneath our house, a forgotten place, filled wi
th the bones of those so unfortunate the world did not let them die with their names. The land used to belong to the church, and what would the church sell first when it fell on hard times? The cemeteries. And what part of the cemeteries would be the first to go? Those that held people with no families, no names – those who would never be remembered.
After the church sold the land at auction to Scudds Gurney, Scudds must have revealed something with his mirrors that had let them in, and what he saw must have driven him insane. I heard the lyrics of his song again in my mind’s ear.
I opened a hole, I opened a hole,
The broken pieces go in the soil,
Down they fall, and never touch dirt,
There are many holes under the earth!
I studied their faces, those untouchable bones that lay buried under our house, whose names Mr. DeLucio had worked so long and obsessively to find: Annabelle Lee, the pretty teenage prostitute probably beaten to death by some drunken predator; Carl, the orphan boy who picked one too many pockets and got sent to the church for reformation, only to die of God-knows-what; Dutch, Spots, Bill, Lee, and Ben, the hard-working blue collar men killed on the job, all of whom the city buried without dignity or honor. According to the wall, there were dozens of others.
Mr. DeLucio had tried to redeem them by giving them back their names, so they could be remembered. But he had failed.
We will never be remembered. I had seen those words smeared on the bathroom mirror in fresh mud. It was a message from the dead. But I didn’t know if it was an invitation or a warning.
Mr. DeLucio’s suicide had nothing to do with us, I realized. He’d killed himself after losing the fight to heal Sunny Hill. He’d fought, and researched, and planned for years. But the city wouldn’t let him dig.
I suddenly wondered if my whole theory about the Piano Man being Bea’s stalker wasn’t just another one of my paranoid delusions, if I wasn’t having another psychotic breakdown, if my crazy mind hadn’t weaved this entire conspiracy together so I could feed off the fear and sympathy of my friends.
I stared at the portraits. It’s still possible Benny the Piano Man was Bea’s stalker and the basement sleeper, but also, at the same time, that the other part is true, too; that he felt some sense of duty to redeem the bones of the Union. Wait, what the hell is the Union?
“So, you ladies wanna see a dead guy?” Officer Skoakland’s voice boomed in the hallway.
Carter’s face appeared in the door. He choked, seeing Mr. DeLucio’s corpse. “God Almighty.” Carter did a 180 and exited as fast as he came in. “That’s a dead body. Nope. Nope. I’m out.”
Natalia peeked in, made a face, then vanished.
Bea was the next one in. Her face twisted in curiosity. “Whoa. Jesus,” she said softly. "He's really dead. You ever see a dead person before, Drew?”
I shook my head. “N-not until him.”
“His face is blue!”
Officer Skoakland took on a professorial tone. “That’s caused by the combination of asphyxiation and venous congestion. Basically, from the lack of oxygenated blood flowing to the head. The ligature, in this case his belt, trapped the carotid artery, but not the jugular. Give him another few hours like that, and his tongue will be swollen like a banana.”
Bea raised an eyebrow at me, then two at Officer Skoakland. “Actually, it’s the other way around. The noose trapped his jugular, but not his carotid.”
Officer Skoakland frowned. “Uh oh. Looks like we’re dealing with an expert over here. You’re right, Beatriz. It was his jugular, not his carotid. Fuck me. I guess I’m an asshole.”
Bea smirked.
The last one in was Jay. He jumped, almost hitting his head on the ceiling. “Damn, that’s gross! He doesn’t even look real. Bea, you okay?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m fine. This kind of stuff doesn’t bug me. I was always the kid who liked dissecting stuff in anatomy class. And at home.” Bea frowned. “Actually, forget I said that. That sounds bad.”
Officer Skoakland coughed.
Jay touched her shoulder. “This guy was stalking you. He punched you in the face. You’re really telling me you don’t… not at all?” Jay said.
Bea scratched her head. “On an existential level, I guess I feel sad for his loss, or… someone’s… his mom, maybe? On a rational one, though, I’m glad that the problem was solved before he had the chance to hurt anybody. But...”
We all looked at her expectantly.
Bea wrapped herself in her arms. “I thought I’d feel satisfied if something like this happened. Now, I realize I was just being cruel. He was a sick, lonely little man. But this feels wrong.”
A sick, lonely little man, who was someone’s nice, friendly friend, I thought.
“Let’s not say anything bad about him,” Bea said. “He can’t exactly defend himself.”
We all nodded.
Jay ran his fingers over the piles of Polaroids scattered on Mr. DeLucio’s bed. “Silver lining, Bea. Creep choked on his own belt. You’ll never have to worry about this guy again.”
“That he did,” Officer Skoakland said. He kicked Mr. DeLucio one last time with the toe of his boot. The corpse spun into the door again. It swung back, then back again, bouncing off the door each time. “That he did.”
***
“Yo, is that fool really dead?” Ry said. He and Rob were standing in our driveway, smoking a joint. Ry was holding Popeye in his arms. Red glazed the pug’s drifting, unfocused eyes.
“Dead as The Doors,” Jay said. We walked down to join them. “Let me hit that.”
Ry handed the dog to Jay, then the roach. Jay re-lit it with his Star Trek zippo. He scratched Popeye under the chin and kissed his nose, sighed, and said, “Did you guys get my dog high again?”
“Whup,” Rob said.
“You assholes.”
Popeye licked Jay’s ear.
“He’s still in there, huh? They didn’t take him away yet or nothin'?” Ry asked.
“Do you see an ambulance? They don’t move the body until, there's, you know, paramedics. Body bags. They have to declare him dead before they just drag him out of there.”
“So… how do you know he is? Dead.”
“Go look.”
“Nah. I’m chill,” Ry said.
Ry stared at Mr. DeLucio’s house. “How’d he do it?”
“Hanged himself with a belt.”
“What did he look like?”
Jay shrugged. “Blue face. Eyes all bulged out. Not moving. Y’know, dead.”
Rob reached for the joint.
I felt a hand on my back. It was Carter. “You called it, Drew. I have to say, I didn’t entirely believe it myself last night, when we was burning those pictures. Thought it all felt kinda Stephen King. But I see it now. Bea told me there were hella more pictures in his room.”
“There were hundreds. Articles. Newspapers. Weird sketches. It was like Silence of the Lambs in there,” Jay said.
Carter shrugged. “I think he was planning something… a mass shooting, or a kidnapping, or a bombing, something. You know how these dudes are.”
“Carter,” I said.
“What?”
“Have you considered that maybe he wanted us to find that stuff?”
“Shit,” Rob hissed under his breath, interrupting me. “Cop. Cop.”
Officer Skoakland descended the driveway to join us.
“Relax, Boneheads. I’m off-duty. A friend of mine from back in the Cretaceous Period just committed suicide in there. I could care less about you idiots murdering a few brain cells.”
Ry and Rob gave each other a nervous glance.
Officer Skoakland yawned. “Look, this one hit me kinda hard. You party animals got any beer?”
***
As soon as I was alone, I reached into my pocket to check if the pictures Scudds Gurney’s skull had printed for me were still there. They weren’t. It wasn’t real, after all, I thought. It was just a bad dream. Unless they fell out o
f my pocket while I was searching the bedroom…
***
“Unions are a modern, Utopian expression of the base biological drive that exists in all of us for in-group self-preservation,” Bea said.
Officer Skoakland threw a peanut in his mouth, looking like he wanted to interrupt, but didn’t.
We were sitting on the sun deck, drinking Black Dog IPAs and smoking bowls out of Jay’s three-foot, triple-percolating bong. My friends were arguing about the union protests downtown, but I couldn’t think about anything other than Benny the Piano Man’s bulging blue face.
Carter shook his head. “Nah, Bea. I don’t see that. My dad runs a small business. Makes hella money, too. The unions do nothing but screw up our political system by giving mass block power to arbitrary sectors of society.”
“You think nurses and teachers are arbitrary sectors of society?” Bea said.
Carter raised his hands. “Wait. I didn’t say all that.”
Officer Skoakland waited for Bea and Carter to both finish before chiming in. “You all need to remember who is being called to maintain order at these events. Santa Cruz is a very protest-friendly town. I’ve broken up a lot of protests gone wrong. Any time these union members take to the streets to start making noise about this, that, and the other thing, bad actors show up, and start breaking the law. They smash windows, start fires, stab people, and generally try to cause as much anarchy as possible.”
“And how is that a problem with unions, and not just plain old idiots?” Bea said.
Skoakland sighed. “Because unions are about power. Too much of it, and it’s easy to lose sight of goals which may have started out as noble.”
“How very Machiavellian of you,” Natalia said.
Officer Skoakland smirked. “Machiavelli – wasn’t he the one who shot Tupac?”
