Blood Samples

by Bonansinga, Jay

  It was hardest on Timmy. He couldn't understand why his grandmother had stopped being a grandmother... and had started gazing at him with such contempt.

  This last memory struck Sally flat in the nose and practically knocked her off-balance.

  "You OK?" asked Jack. He was standing next to Sally now, his arm cradling her spine.

  "Yeah... I was just... remembering something."

  "Remembering?"

  Jack studied Sally's face. He could see only traces of the debutante he'd once courted, her windblown hair now pulled back in a sensible braid and her milky complexion beginning to wrinkle. Still he loved the hell out of her and couldn't bear to see her cry. "We've done enough remembering for one day," he said softly, urging his hand down the small of her back.

  "Have we?" she asked and looked through him.

  He met her gaze and saw new tears welling in her eyes. He touched her neck, running fingertips along her collarbone. An anxious feeling crept into his groin. Something about the way she was crying, something about her helpless look made him want to be inside her. He pulled her to him. "We need to go to bed," he murmured.

  Sally looked away for a moment, swallowed back her grief and slowly surrendered to Jack's sweaty embrace. He carefully led her across the dining room to the stairs... where darkness awaited them.

  Timmy was almost asleep when a toy Frankenstein began to talk. "You half-pint bastard!" it chirped in a monstrous little voice. "Don't you understand anything?!!"

  Timmy sat up and glanced across the room to his bookshelves. A miniature Boris Karloff was lumbering past a goldfish bowl toward the edge of the shelf. The monster's tiny fluorescent face glowed angrily in the moonlight. It's mouth vibrated magically. "You didn't say goodbye to her!"

  Sudden chills.

  The toy monster was telling the truth. Three days after Grammy's death, Timmy had decided to be sick. Not violently ill, but sick enough to avoid Grammy's funeral. Unfortunately, the plan had backfired. All his moaning histrionics hadn't fooled Sally for a second. She had promptly ordered him to bathe, and get into his Sunday school suit, and wait in the car.

  At church Timmy had been seated between his parents. It was the dead of summer and the heat in St. Vincent's had been unbearable, thick with the aromas of candle wax and body odor. Five minutes into the service, Timmy had begun to watch other women in the congregation. He saw fat ladies dressed in black, fanning themselves, tracks of perspiration creeping down their enormous breasts. He saw corset seams beneath one woman's blouse. He saw another lady scratch herself, absently running fingertips along her thighs. It had filled Timmy's mind with feverish white noise.

  Anything to avoid looking toward the front of the sanctuary. Toward the box. The box contained someone pale and withered and cold. Someone who bothered him now more than ever.

  Grammy.

  As Hail Mary's flitted through the pungent air, Timmy had begun to lose control. His mind started wandering toward inevitable taboos. He'd begun feeling the sick satisfaction, laying in the pit of his stomach like rotten candy. Feeling glad Grammy was gone.

  "We're next," his father had whispered.

  When Timmy's head had snapped around, he'd seen his mom and dad shuffling off the edge of their pew. Panic ran through him as sharp and metallic as needles. Next for what?! All around him, mourners were shuffling from their seats and heading down the aisle. He forced himself to glance toward the front, toward the casket. Members of the congregation were lining up next to the coffin, taking communion, moving to the body and touching it. Kissing it. Saying goodbye.

  "Honey," his mother had whispered, "let's go." Her eyes were rimmed with red. Had been for three straight days. Timmy couldn't remember having ever seen her cry so much. But he couldn't budge.

  "You couldn't budge," chirped Frankenstein, reading Timmy's mind.

  "No!" Timmy yelped.

  "You couldn't!"

  "I loved her," Timmy lied.

  "No you didn't."

  "I did."

  "Liar."

  Sally was trying so hard. She struggled out of her pajama top and pulled Jack on top of her. She could smell the remnants of Johnny Walker on his breath, old Aqua Velva, traces of cigarettes. She opened her mouth and drank him in. She could feel his heat.

  "Let's take it nice and slow," she whispered, wanting him to carry her away to that dark and feathery place.

  Jack was anxious. He stroked himself, quick and hard. His erection was immediate. He opened her legs and searched for an opening, breathing thickly.

  She tried desperately to make it last. She guided his face to her breasts and writhed gently under him. When he entered her, she moaned softly and felt insincere. She was performing a ritual now, doing her duty. As Jack pumped mechanically, a wave of anger began to build within her. She needed to forget, to lose herself, but their lovemaking had become a chore. Jack came instantly, his orgasm squirting through her and sending them into convulsions. Sally rode the wave for a moment. Then it was over. She settled back, unsatisfied and cold.

  "I'm sorry I came so quickly," he muttered.

  Sally didn't answer. Her mind was already a million miles away. She found herself thinking about Timmy, about his nightmares. Something suddenly touched off a powder keg within her. At first she didn't even recognize it, didn't understand it. Then it exploded.

  Jack slid off her and mumbled, "You alright?"

  "Timmy."

  It was all she could say.

  In a flash she was moving across the bedroom to her robe. Jack sat up and watched, a puzzled look tightening his face. Sally wrapped the robe around herself and stumbled into the darkness of the hallway.

  Jack followed.

  Moments later, they found themselves standing at Timmy's doorway, gawking in horror at an empty room. His trundle bed sat in one corner, holding only a gob of tangled blankets. The window was wide open, a gentle wind tossing its gingham curtains.

  The road to Lakeside Cemetery came alive with voices.

  Down around the corner of Main Street and Howell, where the poplar trees converged on a row of sleepy ranch homes, Timmy first heard them hissing from the darkness. They came from the trees, from the alleys, from the shadows. Voices from last Friday's patio party.

  "Dance with me," said the leaves.

  Timmy kept walking.

  "Dance," moaned the wind.

  Timmy tried not to remember, but it was hopeless. An image of Grammy had already appeared on the road before him. She wore a pink chiffon scarf and fuchsia lipstick and smelled of gin and Estee Lauder. Timmy made no effort to alter his course or avoid her. He knew she was only a memory.

  "Come over here, sweetie... I won't bite." She spoke with the honey clear quality of dreams, like a motion picture slightly out of sync. Her face was as cold and wooden as a puppet.

  Timmy remembered. He remembered saying no, turning his face away and burying it in his beach towel. He remembered feeling that drunken, vacant stare upon him. Streaks of mascara running. Fuchsia lips snarling.

  "Dance with me, goddamnit!" The image in the road shrieked. "Dance!"

  Timmy felt his stomach burn. This was how it always started. In the moments where the fabric of family life is ripped apart and awful things emerge, grown-ups act like animals. Parents hurt each other.

  Grandmothers had nervous breakdowns.

  "Goddamnit!" the Grammy-image shrieked. "Why won't you dance with your Grandmother?!" She began to move toward Timmy, but tripped on her own drunken feet and tumbled to the flagstone floor. Her arms flailed against the surface of the patio and her legs pumped convulsively. A look of rage twisted her face.

  The shadows of familiar people gathered around her. Timmy saw his mom's pale face, hovering, fighting back tears. He heard his father's voice straining above the confusion. He saw Chinese lanterns trembling on their strings, sparks raining against the patio.

  "Watch out for the fire!" a distant voice cried.

  A lantern struck the ground near Grammy's
legs and ignited her dress. Flames licked her body obscenely, fueled by sterno and booze. In an instant she was engulfed. Her scream came next. Timmy remembered it more vividly than any other detail. It was the pleasure/pain scream he'd heard from naughty girls in naughty movies, a scream he'd just begun to understand.

  Timmy covered his ears, and he shook off the memories, and he started running. He began to feel an urgency propelling him forward through the neighborhood, a tunnel vision leading to Lakeside. Empty cars and dark houses rushed meaninglessly past him on either side. The few lights that burned were as fleeting as fireflies on the wind. Everything was becoming focused on the cemetery.

  Only a mile away.

  Sally slid into the BMW's passenger seat and waited for Jack to fumble with the keys. She'd taken the time to slip into a pair of jogging shoes and pull back her hair, but the terry cloth robe was still wrapped around her tense figure. The shock of being wrenched from the dampness of lovemaking had left her dizzy. "Start it up... let's go!" She bit her lip and waited for Jack to start the car.

  Jack slipped the key into the ignition, then paused, thinking better of it. "You know— maybe we should take two cars," he said, "and meet back here in an hour."

  "Fine," Sally said, quickly, not wanting another argument. Ten minutes earlier she had begged him not to call the police. She didn't want to scare Timmy, didn't want the outside world to intrude. "You take the wagon." she added, "and check out Billy Manucci's place."

  Jack took his keys and got out.

  Sally fished through the bottom of her purse, found her own set, and struggled over the stick shift to the driver's seat. Through the windshield she saw Jack, striped in moonlight, lifting the garage door and mumbling to himself. The son of a bitch isn't even concerned, Sally thought sourly as she turned the key and put the gas pedal to the floor. The BMW lurched backward down the driveway and into the street. "I'll try Detweiller Park," she called over her shoulder, quickly shifting into first and speeding off into the night.

  As she drove away, she saw Jack in the rearview. He was waving absently. The bastard doesn't give a damn about any of this, she stewed. His own son cracking up and he doesn't even care.

  She turned a corner at the base of their street and raced down Briar Road. The streetlamps on either side strobed through the windows and fueled her nerves like jolts of electric current. Her temples drummed. Something ugly and sharp was emerging in the recesses of her mind. A realization.

  "Wait a minute." Her voice was thin and shrill above the rumble of the motor. "I know where he went."

  She punched the brakes and skidded toward the median. The BMW struck a plateau of concrete and weeds, slamming her against the steering wheel. She caught her breath and maneuvered the car back through a turn-around into the opposing lanes.

  And in a matter of seconds, Sally Gebhardt was heading toward the cemetery.

  There was a gradual upgrade leading into Lakeside Cemetery. Timmy climbed it cautiously, keeping his eyes peeled for any stray grounds keeper or guard who might be patrolling the place. Fortunately, the whole cemetery was as empty and silent as the granite tombs it held. So empty, in fact, that the crunch of gravel beneath Timmy's feet seemed to announce his entrance like the thrumming of snare drums.

  He approached the top of the hill and peered through iron entry gates. In the distance he saw scattered headstones poised in the earth like rotten teeth. Beyond them were larger shapes, monuments, and above-ground tombs that housed the slumbering tenants.

  Something caught the corner of Timmy's eye. It lay several yards off in the shadows to his left. As he strained to see better, a group of geometric shapes began to materialize, white and luminous in the moonlight. They were rows of folding chairs gathered around freshly turned earth. Timmy felt a tremor of inevitability rise from the gravel beneath his sneakers. It climbed his legs and settled in his spine, cold and spidery. It was Grammy's grave.

  He approached the gates, wedged a foot between two support bars, and shimmied to the top. With a grunt he lowered himself down the other side and landed firmly between two stone lions. The stoic creatures said nothing, but gazed at him through empty stone eyes.

  Timmy took a breath and followed a path toward the assemblage of empty chairs.

  As he drew closer he began to see remnants of the afternoon's ceremonies. Forgotten hymnal sheets littered the grass beneath the folding chairs. Wilted floral arrangements bordered a vinyl walkway leading to the grave. The odor of perfume and carnations still hung heavy in the darkness. Timmy found himself absently wondering why somebody hadn't cleared it all away. Didn't the cemetery take care of those kinds of things? Weren't there caretakers who cleaned up after all the mourners? It was as o

  if Grammy's burial was put on hold midway through the service and left in this silent tableau.

  He walked past the chairs and stepped up to the grave. There were more flowers, hundreds of them, tossed haphazardly about the ground. The odor was as slick as cinnamon. Timmy felt oddly exhilarated as he stood in the shadow of an enormous granite tombstone and dutifully read its epitaph.

  ABERNATHY, CIELA JANE

  B. 1925 - D. 1986

  Whosoever Believeth in Him

  Shall Have Everlasting Life

  Now the silence was everywhere, as thick and palpable as fog. Timmy wanted to scream, to break the silence somehow. Instead he knelt by the grave, shut his eyes, and prayed as hard as he could.

  "I'm sorry God," he whispered. "I didn't say goodbye to Grammy." He felt the knees of his jeans becoming damp, the smell of flowers engulfing him.

  He decided to speak to Grammy.

  "I'm sorry, Grammy."

  A new feeling came over him. It was a surge of warmth, a wave of giddiness brought on by the evocation of Grammy's name. His plan was working.

  "Goodbye... " He considered saying something else, then said it. "I love you."

  Then finally: "Rest in peace."

  Timmy's voice broke then.

  Something cold and electric swept up behind him and touched his neck.

  He sprang forward instinctively and tripped on the loose dirt, lurching past the headstone and tumbling down a small hill that bordered the gravesite. The world became dark and formless, as if the touch had sent him reeling into space... into endless corridors of shadows. And when he finally landed in a shallow ravine, his brain sang pain and terror. The impact wrenched his ankle nearly 90 degrees inward, and when he tried to move, the pain knifed through his veins and brought tears to his eyes.

  For several moments Timmy lay there in the darkness, gazing up at the gravesite. From this angle, it looked like an empty city with enormous old tenements staring down at him, a million broken windows written in stone. Within them, a million dead voices pining for his soul.

  A million dead eyes, beckoning.

  He realized he would have to twist his foot back into position in order to move. It would have to be done quickly, without emotion.

  He reached down and corrected the sprain.

  His scream pierced the silence of the empty cemetery. Pain bolted up through his tendons. Starbursts of agony ruptured his mind and sent him floating into semi-consciousness. He turned his face to the cool ground and tried to get his bearings. His brain swam with confusion.

  Something awful was happening.

  Amid the odors of moist earth and decay, the jolts of pain were transforming into shivers of ecstasy. The tang of perfume was sharp in his nostrils. Memories bombarded his brain, images of matronly women in church, their dark pantyhose stretched taut across enormous thighs, the shooshing sound as they crossed their legs, tiny gold crucifixes drowning in moist cleavage, and the smell. The rich alkaline odor of his own semen swirling around his mind, intoxicating him.

  He felt himself becoming erect.

  Then the music started.

  It began as a faint vibration beneath him, building as it came up through the ground. Reverberations at first, nearly unrecognizable. Traces of sounds. But soon
the noise was coalescing into a familiar drone. The patter of timbales, the whisper of shakers and the thump of conga drums: The Latin music from the patio party.

  His face snapped away from the gravesite. He couldn't bring himself to look, couldn't imagine what was happening. On the opposite side of the ravine, where moonlight caught the edge of a hill, he saw a shadow. It moved with the beat of the music, undulated like syrup.

  He turned back toward the grave.

  Grammy was there.

  She stood in harsh relief against the black sky, as alabaster and substantial as a bathtub Madonna. She stood in her burial dress, pristine and pale, dancing to the rhythms of a mambo. Her eyes were riveted to Timmy. She bumped and ground and shimmied suggestively. And when she smiled, Timmy saw mortician's wax flaking off her face.

  He tried to run away.

  Grammy didn't let him. She was pulling him up the hill with her eyes. Her filthy eyes. Her suggestive, naughty, seductive eyes. Dead eyes. And when her arms unfolded, Timmy saw puckered embalming scars tracking along her flesh. She twirled around, and her dress rode up over rigor-mortis-bruised legs. Still she smiled and beckoned him.

  "I need you," she whispered, her voice like metal shavings.

  Timmy climbed the rest of the hill like a robot, moving one foot after another, his gaze welded to Grammy's plush torso, her pale, pale cleavage. One final step, and Timmy collapsed into her cold embrace, and she seemed huge, and she seemed mountainous, and she seemed like magic milk. Flowing into him. Seeping into his pores. Reacting with his own blood and fluids.

  Soon he felt her spirit entering him like a magic finger probing up his bowels and rending him apart.