by Anne Frasier
I hadn’t taken the time to set up my tripod. Kneeling on the ground, I tried to keep the camera steady.
“She told me they buried a buncha people in one grave,” Harold said. “Mothers and kids. Just dug a big hole, threw them in, and covered it back up.”
Graham glanced at the camera, then back to Harold. “What happened to the people in the grave? How did they die?”
“My mother was just a little girl. Maybe seven. Her friends were murdered. Mother hid under the bed, but she heard the whole thing.” His mouth trembled. My eyes teared up, and I had to blink to clear my vision.
“Later she watched the burial.” He let out a snort. “If you want to call it that. Guess nobody was really paying attention to a kid. She said they just dumped the bodies in a big hole.
“Right after that everybody moved. Everybody left Tuonela. Somebody killed Manchester. A woman, my mother said. Name was Florence. Whenever she told me that story, she had fear in her eyes. And what makes me so mad is that nobody believed her. Said she was crazy.”
He got a faraway look on his face as he drifted off. “The youngsters rising. The folks coming up.”
“What happened after?” Graham asked, bringing the old man back to the story.
“Her fear never went away. She died with it. With that fear. I had to go see her in the funeral home. She was cremated. She wanted to be cremated. ‘Don’t throw me in a hole,’ she always said. But they still lay ’em out beforehand, you know? I had to lift her eyelids. I had to look at her eyes. Do you know they glue them shut? The eyelids? I didn’t know that, and I tore the skin. But I had to know if the fear was gone.”
I swallowed. Jesus.
“Was it?” Graham whispered.
Harold zeroed in on Graham. “No.” His expression shifted as he thought of something else. “There aren’t any records of those poor dead people in the hole.” He became agitated. “They wanted to forget it ever happened. They wanted to move away and start over. Pretend those people never died. Pretend Old Tuonela never existed. But I can feel them out there; can’t you?” He looked directly at me. “Rising up.”
I could see him staring at me through the viewfinder.
There was something so wrong here, so skewed and wrong and off, like a digital image that had somehow picked up distortion. Video didn’t tell the truth. A photo didn’t tell the truth.
Could the truth be told in a fractured second? Could the truth be told in pixels?
And yet for all the weirdness, I couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement over the footage I was getting. Footage Claire knew nothing about.
Would this be the year to unfuck my life? So far I hadn’t had much luck with that. But was I on the threshold of something? Was the footage I was capturing a way to make my life happen?
“Like a buzz on your tongue,” Harold insisted. “Like the wind creeping across the top of your skin, just skimming it.” He hovered a palm over one arm to demonstrate. “Don’t you feel them?”
“No.” For a minute there he’d almost tricked me into thinking he was sane. That he was talking reality.
But what about the little girl? The little girl in the woods?
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
I raised my head to look him in the face without the interference of the camera. “Why would I lie?”
“Because this place was built on lies and deception. That sidewalk under your feet? A lie.” He pointed to Graham. “Him? A lie.”
“I’m not from here,” I said. That should be enough to protect me, to keep whatever it was away. “I don’t live here.”
“You don’t have to be from Tuonela to hear the whispers. You don’t have to be from here to be touched by what’s out there. Was that woman who died the other day from here?”
“She was killed by animals.”
“Was she now?”
How had it gone from an interview to this off-camera confrontation?
“You believe that? That’s what they’re telling people, sure. And maybe that’s what they want to think, but it was something from Old Tuonela. Spirits who aren’t happy about the Pale Immortal being given a place of honor in the town. You don’t honor a mass murderer. You don’t honor a man who killed innocent women and children.”
“I don’t think anybody is honoring him. He’s just on display.”
“When the people he killed weren’t even given a decent burial? When nobody even made a record of their deaths?” He looked into the distance. “And what about that? If you think nothing’s off-kilter.”
With his cane, he pointed to a crowd gathering near the river. “Gloria Raymond was found floating facedown in the water this morning. People say she had a smile on her face. And that her eyes were wide open, staring at something in the next world.”
He closed his eyes. “‘Come by night all on its own and in the dark secretly unheard by the wicked one, by the bad one unspotted.’” Still quoting the Kale-vala . . .
We left the old man and headed across a wide expanse of grass to find Claire and the others.
This trip was suddenly making sense to me, and my heartbeat quickened. Yesterday I had no future, but today I could see it. This was something I could do. This was something I could do well and right. My vision, not Claire’s.
I grabbed Graham’s arm. He stopped and turned, surprised.
I knew he liked me, even though he’d told me he had a girlfriend. I’ve never been one to use that kind of knowledge to get what I want. I hate girls who do that.
“You have to let me interview your dad.”
He recoiled. I could see he was irritated that the subject had come up once more, disappointed that I was still using him after our bonding beerfest and bed snuggle.
“Please.” I stared, trying to make him see how much I needed this.
You don’t know how lost I’ve been. How unfocused.
I would grovel if I had to. I could do it. “Please.” My grip tightened, the lock I had on his arm conveying my desperation . . . and maybe more. Maybe a promise.
He broke, defeated.
So that’s how it was done. Just like that.
Yep, sometimes I really hate myself.
Chapter Fourteen
“I’d hate to see this road in the winter,” Kristin said. “How do you get home when it snows?”
The car bottomed out, and Graham slowed to a crawl. “I don’t know. I haven’t lived here in the winter.”
He suddenly found himself looking forward to introducing Kristin to Evan. After Evan’s little trick the other morning, his father deserved a surprise guest. Let Kristin ask Evan for an interview. Graham was sick of protecting him. He could do his own talking. And company might not be a bad idea. Having someone else in the house might create a buffer and put Evan in a less hostile mood.
As the car crept up the rocky, rutted lane, Kristin ran the camera. It was early evening. Dark, but not the middle of the night.
Before they made the final turn, Graham stopped the car. “Shut it off, okay? I don’t want you to film the house. Not without his permission.”
She lowered the camera.
“Off,” Graham said, recalling her bit of trickery at the museum.
She sighed and shut it off. “I’m putting the lens cap on too.” He heard a snap. “See?”
He gave the car some gas. “No, but I believe you.”
It had been raining off and on all afternoon, and now it was getting foggy. He put on the brights, but that made it harder to see, so he switched back to dim. They took a dip across a rocky, shallow stream, made a final turn, and headed up the hill, the engine struggling as he pulled to a stop in front of the sprawling house.
Not a single light.
Welcome home.
Every time he returned to the decaying mansion perched next to the border of Old Tuonela, he felt a dread that came from not knowing what the hell or who the hell he would find when he stepped in the door. Would Evan be the old Evan? Or would he be the exhausted, b
affled, angry Evan?
And then there was the other stuff. The undefined and unexplained that was everywhere. In the walls, in the ground, but mostly emanating from the woods at the edge of the clearing, the woods that hid Old Tuonela and its secrets.
The secrets Evan was digging up.
In the old days with his mom Graham had learned that very often a cooling-off period was all it took for things to revert back to normal. Just stay away or lie low, be invisible, and by the time she noticed him again all the crap and tantrums would be forgotten.
A reset button.
He liked that button.
But Evan was a new mystery.
His dad hadn’t even known of Graham’s exis -tence until recently, and Graham had been living with him only a short while. He didn’t yet know how to play it. He didn’t yet know what was needed to keep this particular adult pacified. Once he figured that out things would get better.
His cell phone beeped, indicating a text message. He fished the phone from his coat pocket and checked the readout screen.
Isobel.
Sometimes his cell worked here; sometimes it didn’t. A text message got through easier than an actual call.
England is so cool! We visited the Tower of London today. Tomorrow we are going to the palace. We might even have tea with the queen.
Tea. With the queen. Could anything be more removed from Graham’s current world of deep shit?
Proof that life went on outside Tuonela and Old Tuonela. Life went on without him.
When Isobel first left she’d text him several times a day. Now it was every few days. Soon it would be never.
Snap.
He pocketed the phone without replying.
“Who was that?” Kristin asked.
“A friend.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No.”
He didn’t want to go into it with her. Being with Kristin made him feel guilty and good. Kinda like banging your head against the wall when you had a headache. The pain made you forget about the headache, at least for a while. Isobel was off munching on scones; he was hanging out with a strange girl named Kristin Blackmoore. Someone he wasn’t even quite sure he liked.
“Wait here,” he said. “I have to see if it’s okay if you come in.” He started to get out, then paused. “No filming.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it.”
“Don’t insult me. I’m a professional, not some paparazzi.”
“We’re all professionals.”
When had he gotten so bitter? Even when his mother was alive and beating the crap out of him, he’d never been bitter. But at that point he’d still been able to delude himself into thinking things would get better once he met his dad. Once he met his dad, he’d have a normal life.
What a fucking moron he was.
His dad should be put in a straitjacket, and his girlfriend was halfway across the world having tea with the goddamn Queen of England.
And she wouldn’t be back.
He refused to delude himself. He couldn’t go through life being an idiot.
He got out of the car and approached the house, moving half-blindly, his eyes wide open but seeing nothing but the darker shapes of a few shrubs.
It was raining again.
Droplets fell so lightly they didn’t make a sound. Instead their presence seemed to shrink his world even more, giving him the feeling that nothing existed beyond his immediate space.
He went around the back. The kitchen door was unlocked. He’d gotten after Evan about that.
He reached inside and turned on the light, his gaze immediately dropping to the floor where the eggs had been.
Cleaned up.
That was a good sign.
He tried to move quietly, but the house was old and the floors creaked. Upstairs, he found Evan’s bedroom door ajar. He pushed it open, wincing at the noise.
“Evan?” he whispered into the blackness.
There was no answer, so he backtracked, turned on a hallway light, and rechecked the bedroom.
The bed was empty.
Sip, sip. Would you like another crumpet, my dear? Oh, thank you. Don’t mind if I do.
When was he going to learn that his life was never going to be normal no matter how much he wished it? That no matter how many times he pushed the reset button, it would always default back to fucked-up?
He wanted to go to bed.
His muscles ached, and his skin felt tight the way it did when he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. He had to go to school tomorrow. Couldn’t slack off his last year. If he didn’t do well he could kiss any chance of a scholarship good-bye. And the one thing he had to look forward to was college, because college was a way out.
And he was always looking for a way out.
He went back downstairs and found a flashlight in the kitchen. On the way to Old Tuonela, he stopped by the car.
She was smoking. In the car. Evan’s car.
Graham could see the glowing tip of her cigarette illuminating her face when she took a drag. Evan had a nose like a dog; he would kill Graham. But Graham wasn’t going to tell her to get out. He didn’t want her roaming around.
He opened the door and bent forward. “I’ll be back. Wait here.” Then he headed for OT.
The gate was open just enough for a person to slip through.
Graham paused.
Could he do it?
He hadn’t been this way since all the bad shit had happened. Maybe he should forget it. Maybe he should return to the car and take Kristin back to Tuonela.
The rain picked up, pattering against the fallen leaves. The volume increased until the sound almost seemed to be inside his head. Was Evan really down there doing whatever he did all night long? In the pouring rain?
Damn. Graham was sick of being the adult. Couldn’t somebody else be the adult for a while? He wanted to be a kid while he was still a kid. Time was running out.
Deep inside he knew it was probably too late anyway, but that didn’t keep him from embracing the resentment.
He took a deep breath and plunged forward through the gate. Willing his brain to shut off, he hurried down the muddy path, his feet slipping and sliding until he finally gained the cover of dense trees. Above his head a canopy of leaves that hadn’t yet fallen created a roof and blocked out some of the rain and noise.
He should have forced himself to come down here before. Then maybe he’d have gotten desensitized and it would seem like nothing. Just the same as any other messed-up place. It was hard enough living on the edge of Old Tuonela, but this was too much.
His footsteps faltered. He paused to look over his shoulder, back in the direction of the car he could no longer see.
He also wanted to make sure she wasn’t there.
His mother. He hadn’t seen her for a long time. Long enough to make him hope he would never see her again.
He always smelled her first.
He would wake up from a deep sleep with the scent of rotting flesh in his nostrils. And there she’d be—perched on the end of his bed, yakking away about something.
He turned and continued down the path.
He pushed aside a branch of wet leaves. The flashlight beam reflected off the raindrops, creating a brilliant curtain that temporarily blinded him. He blinked, his eyes adjusting.
Christ.
Holes.
Everywhere.
How many were there? A hundred? More?
He’d known Evan was digging out here, but damn.
The flashlight was just some cheapie, the beam weak. He panned around, looking for signs of life. Real life. Not a rotten imitation of a living being his mother liked to emulate.
What am I doing here?
He had a sudden snapshot image of the man he’d killed. Of the way he’d looked at him right before he died. That utter disbelief.
“Leave. Get out of here.”
Had that been his own voice in his head, or somebody else’s?
“Shhhh. T
here you go.”
Not in his head.
Evan? Was it Evan? Sounded a little like him, but not like him.
Graham’s heart slammed in his chest, but he forced himself to move, navigating around the holes. Bent at the waist, he leaned forward while wanting to lean back. His voice, when he finally used it, came out a broken whisper. “Evan?”
Had someone answered? Was someone talking?
Mumbling. Coming from below. From the ground.
He wanted to turn and run like hell. Instead he slid one foot forward, then the other.
He directed the flashlight beam into the holes, left and right, sweeping until he found an occupied one.
He blinked the rain from his eyes.
What he saw made his leg muscles tighten as he braced himself for flight.
Evan.
Graham stared.
This hole was bigger than the others. Probably twelve feet wide and six feet deep. Evan just sat there as if it weren’t raining. As if it weren’t cold, his shirt and jeans splattered with mud.
Graham was careful to keep the flashlight beam directed away from Evan’s face, but what the light fell on . . .
My God. Is that what I think it is?
Evan stared up at him without recognition.
Say something. “W-what are you doing?”
The rain channeled into the hole, collecting, creating a soup of mud.
A burial pit. Evan was sitting in the middle of a burial pit surrounded by the mummified remains of the dead.
The smell Graham associated with his mother wafted to him.
He was glad he hadn’t brought Kristin. That’s what he kept thinking, kept focusing on, his mind trying to distract himself from the immediate horror of the moment.
His fault. He should have gotten help. Instead, he’d been hiding Evan’s problem, hoping he would get better on his own. Because if they took him away, if they locked him up in some nuthouse, what would happen to Graham? Would he be put in foster care? Because his grandfather sure as hell wasn’t playing with a full deck either.
“Come on.” He extended his hand toward his father. “You have to get out of there.”
