by Gideon, John
Matthew Kronmiller owned one of the few crematories in the area, which he operated as a sideline to his funeral home, even though, like most funeral directors, he hated the very concept of cremation. Not enough profit in it. Unless of course the surviving family wants embalming and a traditional funeral before cremation. But these days more and more people were choosing direct cremation, forgoing the horrendous expense of showpiece caskets, embalming, and all the other costly malarkey commonly associated with American funerals. Kronmiller had installed his crematory as a hedge against this irksome trend, knowing that other funeral directors in the area would use his services when clients were “disrespectful” enough to demand cremation, direct or otherwise.
Mitch left the preparation room and went a few steps down the corridor, fingering the retractable ring on his belt and looking for the key to the padlock that secured the walk-in cooler. As he inserted the key, he caught a mental glimpse of himself astride one of Liquid Larry’s bar stools, his hand wrapped around an icy mugful of triple threat, his brain awash in blessed fog. That’s where he’d be in a couple of hours: astride that stool with nothing more on his mind than ordering his next drink and adding another thickness of foggy insulation against reality. Fuck reality, with its Matthew Kronmillers and Cannibal Streckers and (Craslowe?), the real owners of Mitch Nistler. Astride that stool in Liquid Larry’s, with eyes aglaze and jaw gone slack, Mitch Nistler would be nobody’s slave.
In just a couple of hours—
Craslowe. Something writhed in Mitch’s innards as he pulled the cooler door open. Cold, disinfected fumes crept out of the darkness and embraced him. His hand groped for and found a switch, and the dead-silent cooler filled with harsh light from a bare bulb.
Metal walls, close and gray. White-tiled floor. A trio of gurneys abreast, one of which held the sheeted body of a woman. A trace of smell that spoke of death, despite the aerosol disinfectant.
The something writhed again, but Mitch tried to ignore it. He took hold of the gurney and wheeled it from the cooler; and he nearly jumped out of his skin when the compressor kicked itself on, filling the cold air with an unfriendly whir. He hit the light switch and slammed the door home, shutting off the source of darkness and the whirring sound.
He pushed the sheeted cargo into the preparation room and parked it next to an embalming table, then readied the slings that were attached to the body lifter, an electrically run device that moved on tracks in the ceiling. Using the body lifter, one man could easily move the heaviest corpse from a gurney to the embalming table, and afterward from the table to a casket, Wonderful invention, the body lifter.
He drew the sheet off the gurney—
The writhing again (Craslowe!). Mitch fought back a swell of nausea.
—exposing the pathetic, death-ravaged body of Lorna Trosper.
She lay on her back, naked. A bundle of beggarly clothes lay between her knees where the medical examiner had left it the previous day: threadbare jeans, wretched underclothing, a beige smock spattered and encrusted with water paint. Her facial skin was ashy white, her blond hair wild and stiff with dirt. Agonal dehydration had slackened her lips and loosened her facial muscles, giving her once-delicate nose a severe, pinched look. Her eyeballs had softened and appeared sunken. Her skeletal muscles had gone flaccid and had flattened under her body weight. On the undersides of her emaciated limbs and along the buttocks and back, the skin was a startling cherry -red—the mark of blood-pooling, which is typical of carbon-monoxide poisoning.
Mitch’s nausea subsided a little as he gazed at the tragic, inert form that had been Lorna Trosper. Though filthy with its owner’s neglect and wasted by the agonies it had suffered, the body was strangely beautiful to him. He knew now why Lindsay Moreland had looked familiar a few minutes ago: She shared her dead sister’s beauty. And, contrary to what Matt Kronmiller had told him on the first day of his job, when the old undertaker had whisked the sheet off a gurney to expose an elderly man dead of a massive heart attack, Lorna Trosper’s body was not “garbage.”
“What you see here, Mitch, is nothing but garbage,” Kronmiller had said, apparently relishing his new employee’s unease over such close proximity to death. “Let it stand awhile, and it’ll start to stink, same as any other garbage. The man who owned it is gone, a mere idea, a memory. This heap of garbage contains no more of him than the dirty underwear he left on his bathroom floor. No need to worry bout sinking needles into it or cutting holes in it. It’s useless to him and to everybody else.”
Mitch had not known Lorna Trosper personally. Occasionally he had caught sight of her as he ambled past the tiny gallery on Frontage Street, but he had never spoken to her, never even traded hellos. Yet he had admired her, had thought her the prettiest lady in Greely’s Cove. He liked the way she held herself, so straight and confident, and the way she dressed, so casually grubby and unmindful of her own looks. When he dared to fantasize about having a woman of his own one day, he visualized not the spread-eagle sluts who adorned the pages of his porn magazines but someone like Lorna Trosper.
And here she lay, naked on an icy sheet of stainless steel, wrapped only in silence. Despite the body dirt, the signs of suffering, and despite the fact of death itself, she was still beautiful. She was not garbage.
Mitch’s vision began to blur. The nausea sharpened again, and a ghastly stink flooded his nostrils and throat, seemingly welling up from his own gullet. He staggered against the gurney, jarring Lorna Trosper’s body, flinching from a bolt of pain in his chest.
“Fuck a bald-headed duck, Cannibal must’ve really hurt me!” he wheezed, almost aloud. He righted himself and somehow managed to stand up straight on watery legs. He became aware of the darkness behind his eyes, blacker now than it had ever been, invading the edges of his vision, inflicting appalling glimpses into a deep well within his own brain, a well he had visited under the guidance of a doctor named Hadrian Craslowe. And hidden in that well, secure in its lair of bottomless darkness, was—something. Something or someone alive, alien and yet a part of Mitch Nistler.
The stink became a taste now—the same one he had suffered upon waking from yesterday’s hypnosis session with Craslowe. It had gagged him then, had made him want to vomit. But now, vile as it was, the taste had a strangely clarifying effect. He saw things he had never seen before and possibilities that he had never dared contemplate.
Who owns Mitch Nistler? asked a voice from deep within the well.
Not Corley the Cannibal Strecker. And not Matthew Kronmiller. Not even Hadrian Craslowe.
Who holds the papers on Mitch Nistler?
Even with his newfound clarity he could not answer the question. But he now knew something better. The answer didn’t matter. Just as nothing in Cannibal’s world mattered. And nothing in Kronmiller’s, either. (Craslowe’s?) What mattered was the hunger.
His gaze floated over the dead form of Lorna Trosper and lingered on the cold, gray-white flesh of her face and neck; the bluish hillocks of her breasts with their flaccid, colorless nipples; the pitiable ridges of her rib cage and the sunken depression of her stomach and abdomen.
He stepped back from the gurney, breathing with great, spittle-laden gasps. God, could I really do it?
He was alone. Kronmiller would not come back, for he was glued to a television set at home, watching golf. The other three employees of the funeral home were family types, jealous of their precious weekends, and none would darken the door of the mortuary until Monday. Until tomorrow.
He had until tomorrow.
Mitch Nistler had assisted Matt Kronmiller in something like 500 embalmings over the course of six years at the Chapel of the Cove. He knew the procedures, the high and low drainage points on a body, the use of instruments like the motorized aspirator, the trocar, and the gravity percolator. He knew how to apply the various hardening compounds, sealers, and preservatives that embalmers use to guarantee a reasonable “viewing life” for a corpse. And he prided himself on his skill with the cosmetic
dyes, humectants, and perfumes that render a corpse presentable, if not beautiful. Though he lacked formal training, he considered himself a good embalmer. He knew that he could make Lorna Trosper physically beautiful again.
But first things first.
A “cremation” must take place. The cremation of an empty casket. And the packing of ashes into the “suitable vessel” that Lindsay Moreland had chosen from Kronmiller’s impressive selection.
No one would ever know the difference.
Mitch Nistler would have his woman, and she would give him what no living woman ever had.
7
By noon Carl Trosper was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. He and sixty other volunteers had spent more than three hours tramping through the thick undergrowth astride Bond Road, beating back the rain-heavy branches of sword fern and birch and pine, slogging through dank patches of tawny grass and climbing gingerly over fallen logs oozy with moss. They had scoured the ground for the smallest clue to Teri Zolten’s fate: a scrap of clothing, a piece of jewelry, a billfold, or (God forbid) a bloody fragment of Teri herself. Pressing ever deeper into the woods they had filled the swirling, foggy morning with their voices, calling out Teri’s name in the withering hope that she was near enough and well enough to hear. The voices that had sailed higher than all others, echoed most strongly and desperately through the tangle of trees and brush, had belonged to Sandy and Ken Zolten.
Shortly after noon Carl left the search party, thoroughly dispirited. He caught a ride back to the Old Schooner, where he went to the room that Teri had rented him the night before. After shedding his soaking clothes and taking a hot shower, he dressed in khaki slacks and a heavy Norwegian sweater, then went down to the parking lot and got into his rented car for the short drive to 116 Second Avenue.
The journey gave him little time to reacclimatize himself to his own private troubles, and too soon he was turning into the driveway of the little white bungalow that he and Lorna had bought just one week after their marriage. Too soon he was climbing the steps of the shaded front porch and pressing the doorbell button, hearing footfalls coming to answer. As the door opened he glanced around and noticed that among the cars parked out front was a flaming-red Jaguar.
Lindsay Moreland ushered him in without mentioning his abrupt departure from The Coffee Shoppe, though, her blue eyes glinted with assurance that their dealings were far from over. To Carl’s surprise, the little house was abuzz with activity. Lorna’s friends—a handful of watercolor artists, a poet or two, some neighbors—had turned up to help with the chores of cleaning and packing.
She shepherded him through the whirl of activity and introduced him stiffly to each one, raising her voice to be heard above the noise of a vacuum cleaner. Carl received condolences and warm handshakes, heard how much they would all miss Lorna, was promised help with any problem or chore that he might confront. They all seemed eager to show their love for the woman he had left more than eight years earlier.
Notable among the band of housecleaners was Hannabeth Hazelford. In place of her orange slicker and flowing silk scarves, she wore a blue jumpsuit and rubber gloves, but she still sported ridiculously heavy makeup and the blond Dolly Parton wig, which now sagged low on her forehead, slightly askew. She greeted him in her melodious British clip and shook his hand firmly, leaving cleanser suds in his palm.
“I do hope you’re not put off that I organized this gathering,” she said to Carl, blinking her luminous, turquoise eyes. “I knew that Lorna’s closest friends would want to do something to help, if only to scrub the floors and carry out the rubbish. It certainly was not our intention to intrude into your hour of grief.”
Carl gave a thin smile and glanced around at the busy people who manned mops, dust rags, buckets of suds, and scrub brushes. “I’m very grateful, Miss Hazelford—”
“Tut-tut, you’ve done it again! It’s Hannie. At my age a woman requires no reminder that she’s a dried-up old spinster.”
Carl saw Lindsay Moreland roll her eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Hannie. What you’re doing is really very nice. I appreciate it.”
His former mother-in-law, Nora Moreland, came into the living room from the kitchen, wearing a bandanna around her head and a flowery apron spattered with soap suds. She made straight for Carl and, to his astonishment, hugged him hard.
“It’s good to see you, Carl,” she said with a slight quaver. “Lindsay tells me you plan to move back here and that you want Jeremy to live with you. Under the circumstances, I think you’re doing the right thing.”
“Mother,” interrupted Lindsay, “the issue is far from settled.”
Carl sensed a budding alliance with Nora, a woman he had never cottoned to. Nora had not deemed him a good match for her daughter because of his middle-class roots. Carl had thought her uppity and elitist, a country-club bitch who was preoccupied with scaling the higher reaches of Seattle’s social scene. But now she was hugging him with genuine warmth and shared sorrow, reaching out to him through the bars of old animosities. Maybe he had been wrong about her. Perhaps she had changed. Or perhaps he had changed.
“Thank you, Nora,” he answered, incurring a dark stare from Lindsay. “Having your support means a lot.”
“No doubt you want to see your son,” said Nora. “We gave him the job of cleaning his room, but he’s probably finished by now.” She nodded toward the short hallway that offered access to the bedrooms, the bath, Lorna’s studio. One of the doors was closed: Jeremy’s.
“How is he?” asked Carl, suddenly jittery about coming face-to-face with the issue of his own loins. “How’s he taking all this?”
“Remarkably well, I’d say,” said Lindsay. “In a way, Lorna’s death may be a blessing for him.”
“Lindsay! For the love of God, how can you say such a thing?” Nora was horrified by her daughter’s remark. “How can losing his mother be a blessing to a thirteen-year-old boy?”
“You saw the condition of this place, Mother,” said Lindsay. “It must have been hell living here. Lorna must have slowly lost all control of herself—changed into another person. She was never the world’s best housekeeper, but my God, she cared about her furniture, her paintings....”
“She was obviously very ill,” said Nora, near tears.
“That’s exactly my point, Mother. Jeremy watched her become someone he didn’t know, someone who chopped up chairs and gouged holes in the walls. She even defaced her own paintings.”
Carl’s eyes darted around the room: There were holes in the plaster, as though made with a hammer, and pieces of dismembered chairs and tables stacked here and there, ready to be carted away. The sofa bed that had always stood near the picture window, now in the arms of two men who were easing it out the front door under Hannie’s supervision, was a tatter of frenzied slashing, its stuffing leaking through its wounds in gobs. Heaped in the corners of every room were Glad bags jammed with refuse—much of it organic, judging from the ripe odor that hung amid the scents of cleanser and room deodorant. And stacked in low columns were the empty earthen pots that had housed Lorna’s beloved plants—her artillery ferns, philodendrons, umbrella plants, the “green babies” she had nursed with unswerving devotion and even named, now yellowed and brittle and stuffed into cardboard boxes for disposal.
But most obscene, most heartbreaking, were the paintings: frames broken, glass smashed, paper ripped and defiled in a seemingly purposeful way.
“God, what would drive somebody to this?” breathed Carl, shaking his head, leaving unsaid his belief that Lorna could not have wreaked such travesties, especially upon the paintings.
“The same thing that drives a person to suicide,” answered Lindsay with a hint of reproach in her voice. “My sister got sick, and her life became a hell. This house became a hell. That’s what I meant when I said that maybe Lorna’s death is a blessing for Jeremy: Their hell is finally over. At least we can be thankful for that much.”
Hannie Hazelford interrupted with word that a
neighbor had offered his pickup truck for hauling the slaughtered furniture to the county landfill, and she had authorized the job. The house would be virtually bereft of anything to sit on, sleep on, eat on. But not to worry: Hannie owned a shed full of perfectly serviceable furniture—surplus from the much larger house she had owned “out East” before moving to her comfortable Tudor-style cottage in Greely’s Cove. She had ordered transport of the furniture from the shed to here, to be used as long as needed.
“Miss Haz—I mean Hannie, that’s really generous of you,” said Carl, intending to protest so lavish a favor, “but I couldn’t let you—”
“Nonsense!” Hannie declared, assuming the ramrod posture that evinced British authority, the conquest of Hindu kingdoms, the victory at Trafalgar. “It’s all oak—old but very sturdy, just the thing to stand up to whatever punishment a teenaged boy can dish out, I daresay. And quite presentable, too. You can’t very well eat off the floor, now can you?”
“I guess not,” allowed Carl, feeling foolish in the role of the taker of charity. “But I’ll send it back to you as soon I’ve brought in some furniture of our own.”
“Very well, then,” said Hannie. “Let’s get on with it. We’ve still much to do, much to do.”
Yes, thought Carl, much to do.
Like quitting his job in Washington, D.C., and shipping his household goods west.
Like mucking through the process of probating Lorna’s will (assuming she had bothered to write one), arranging to buy this house from the estate and disposing of her other property, what little there was.
Like setting up a law practice and starting a whole new life—or would it be a variation on an old life, one lost and terribly missed? Much to do indeed.
