Father of the Deceased

by Egon Grimes

  He’d forgotten Rhoda sitting in the kitchen. He’d had two terribly leading, one-ended conversations in her presence. He pretended to continue to a reasonable spot.

  “They are going to dig up Rosalind, just to make sure that sicko didn’t do, something.” Didn’t deflower her dead body. “Going to check her out first thing when the regular day starts.”

  “Why didn’t they check her when they found Tammy’s body?” Rhoda asked.

  “Judge has to agree to it. I have to go out for a while.” Maurice stood up from the table and chugging back the second half of his coffee.

  “Wait, do they know who did it? Do they have a suspect?”

  Maurice continued to walk toward the door.

  “Maurice! Talk to me, please!”

  Maurice looked back at his wife, calculated the odds, she’d think he was crazy if he told her what went on the night before, both sides of his brain agreed: bat shit. Stress, she’d call it. Maurice had considered it, but it was everywhere around him. The world was different and you had to see the underside to believe it was there.

  16

  Lou got to work immediately after putting down the phone. Photos printed from the scene sat in a scatter on his already overwhelmed desk. The first few showed glowing silhouettes, but as he flipped through them—about thirty in—he saw familiar faces: Little Stu and Scott running from the cemetery gates, bottles in hand.

  You’d better have something for me boys, or I’ll give it to you little shitheads every chance I get.

  He looked up the numbers of the families and dialed Scott’s first.

  While it rang, an unwelcome thought re-emerged: what if it was one of my kids? The idea sickened him, envisioning the faces of Wayne and Ronnie, pale and painted for burial, playthings for a necrophile. That mysterious man, digging them up, performing unspeakable acts on the bodies. Gripping tightly to the phone’s receiver was all he could do to keep from smashing something.

  “Who in Hell is this?”

  “Mr. Wood? This is Detective Lou Hill, Scott and Stu don’t happen to be there, do they?”

  “What did those little bastards do? Egging houses again? I’ll tear a strip off the both of them and be sure they’ll be sorry,” Riley Wood said, Scott’s father.

  “No, no, they didn’t egg anything. We just want to speak to them about an incident at the cemetery. Can you bring them in?”

  “When do you want them?” Riley heard a din coming from the garage. “Hold on.” Lou wasn’t used to holding on and was about to say so but a clanging brought the conversation back. “I’ll bring him right over. I don’t know how good he’ll be. Little shit is right drunk. You said you needed Stu too?”

  “Yes, I need to speak with both.”

  “I’ll drop them off. You can put them in a cell for all I care. Teach them a lesson, wasted little shits.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wood.” The dead line gave Lou the okay to laugh, wheezing free the anger he’d harbored only seconds earlier.

  Fifteen minutes later, two drunken, sleepy-eyed teens stood amidst the stone walls of the station, looking with identical idiotic gazes. Bags hung under their bloodshot eyes, their clothes were smattered with dirt, and they both seemed overwhelmed by it all.

  “Sit down. Tell me everything you saw at the cemetery last night,” Lou said in a cordial voice. Good cop.

  “I swear the grave was open when we got there,” Stu said, quickly.

  “The grave?” Lou asked. “Rosalind Genner’s grave?”

  “Yes, sir,” Scott said and he began an account of what happened. It was short.

  “So the grave was open before Tammy Watson died?”

  “Tammy’s dead?” Scott shouted.

  Stu whimpered and shook.

  “Well, fuck,” Lou said and sat back from his notepad. He shuffled for a grainy, night vision still. “Are you sure you haven’t seen this man before? Take a long look.”

  “I swear, we didn’t see nothing,” Stu said.

  “All right boys, follow Officer Knorr, he is going to type this up and you will have to sign it and then he will take you home. Chucky, type this up, these two need to sign it and once you’re done, take them home. I don’t think they’d make it in lock-up.” The boys stood and followed Officer Knorr. “Oh, boys, from now on leave the drinking to adults. You have a long life to get plastered, do it later. I don’t want to start having to watch out for you and I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean that in a you’ll be sleeping behind bars kind of way, got me?”

  The boys nodded, Stu wiping tears from his eyes, and continued behind Officer Knorr.

  17

  Ivan approached the bright lights of the south end of the Detroit Tunnel—Windsor Tunnel when facing the Canadian side. No other cars waited in stalls and he worried about a bored attendant.

  The car crept up to the line nice and easy, but his heart raced.

  The little sliding door on the stall he pulled into sat wide open. It was already hot and the sun hadn’t yet fully poked over the eastern horizon. The man was monstrously fat, his ass draped over every edge of the stool he perched upon, like an old housecat, the kind that fed three or four times a day. Ivan put the car in park and handed over his identification, his hand working thoughtlessly over his chest.

  “Hello, miss, place of birth?” the attendant asked.

  Miss? What, are you high? Ivan said, “Canadian honey.” This was his voice, he heard it fine, but the lilt was different. Sexy. His hand continued working from his chest to his lap, his fingers made little circles.

  “What was your business in the States?”

  “Looking for fun,” Ivan’s mouth answered.

  The attendant didn’t seem overly impressed. “Ma’am, would you step out of the car?”

  Ivan attempted to move step on the accelerator, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He swung open the door. “I’m not really dressed to come out, but you can come in.”

  The fat man looked out his window, sizing up the woman. Thin lingerie billowed over her perfectly sculpted thighs, a manicured little V patch of hair luring him in, the darkness of the perfect little nipples showing through the silk, and she was offering all of it to him. I

  van unwillingly pulled the imaginary lace away from his chest and tossed around the fictional hair on his head.

  The guard looked around, nobody paid attention and he waddled to the passenger’s seat. The front of his pants tight against his erection. When he sat, the car teetered, finding a lower keel on the springs.

  Ivan’s hands worked frantically. “You look stressed, I can help you with that.” No. No. No! his hapless mind screamed. He struggled, but his head began to pound until he gave in. Ivan’s hands stroked over the guard’s crotch. The guard tilted his seat back, took off his vest in a routine motion, allowing his fat, sweaty gut to hang over his cock. He tilted back a little further to permit easier access.

  Ivan’s mind rang with a virtually unbearable force, he would welcome death long before the disgust of the act he was about to commit. He unzipped and pulled out a long, skinny, crooked beast. Slowly, he leaned down to take as much as would fit into his mouth, while tugging vigorously at the skin of the shaft.

  Disgusting.

  Vinegar.

  The man’s groin smelled like vinegar, but he had no control, he devoured the cock like a hungry porn-star in a race to a big payday. The guard ran his hand inside Ivan’s shirt, kneading a perfect, weightless breast that wasn’t really there, rocking his pelvis as he did so. The man then placed his hands over Ivan’s head. The purple mushroom in Ivan’s mouth throbbed and pulsated, fingers tightened against his scalp and the guard applied pressure, holding him down while the river splashed against his throat.

  Ivan’s mouth was victim to a salty shower of unplanted seeds.

  Gulp.

  Inside, Ivan cried out more and more but couldn’t fight the control held over his body. The guard tugged up at the imaginary hair, bringing the finishing touch to the act. �
�I want to see you drink it all, baby,” he said and ran his finger down to his groin to gather an errant glob.

  With a smiling mouth, Ivan sucked at the finger as if it was a secondary cock. The guard smiled back, quickly buttoned his pants and hopped out of the car.

  “You know where to find me if you need another serving, you rotten whore,” he said and walked back to his little hut.

  Ivan drove a short way, the ache in his mind completely subsiding, making room for another pain. He was the aggressor and the raped, but he only claimed the latter, feeling exploited. He pulled over to the shoulder and convulsed all the semen he’d just drunk from his stomach onto the gravel. “You’re dead tomorrow,” he said. “When I find you, you’re dead.”

  He straightened behind the wheel and looked into the rearview mirror. His lips grinned.

  18

  Maurice drove across town to Miss Bănică’s home address. It was a scant, drab little hole, in a rundown area. The building itself fit into the landscape. The lawn lived higher than the neighborhood average, yellow. The stone pathway lay crumbling. Maurice jogged up the steps and knocked the door. No answer. He knocked harder. The screen door fell from its hinges, but still no answer. The knob turned in his hand. He was well beyond needing an invitation to enter.

  An old woman appeared on the brink of death sat in a rocking chair, her eyes clouded completely white, her face spotted and her body was so emaciated she was almost transparent.

  “You’re lucky you came when you did,” the woman coughed.

  “I’m looking for Miss Bănică,” Maurice said using his officious tone. “Police business.”

  The woman cackled, her voice offering view of humor in death Maurice didn’t care to hear.

  “Miss Bănică; where is she?”

  The laughter ceased. “Do I look so different? I feel different.”

  “Miss Bănică?” There was a resemblance, but how could she have been so quickly degraded? This was terminal, a fight deep in rounds.

  “Your daughter is claimed, Mr. Genner. Someone doesn’t want me snooping about and is about to devour my earthly presence. I guess I have only myself to blame. You were reluctant, I could’ve left you be, but that almighty dollar…I no longer own myself, you see.”

  “This is all because Rosalind came to you?”

  The woman nodded, her eyes were set on a hole in her drapes allowing a glow from the street inside the dim little room—obviously blind.

  “Can we contact her again?”

  “I’m dead already, so fuck this figure.” She tapped her head. “Hear that?” she yelled without shifting her blank gaze from the light. “I’ll help you. Come to me, my eyes have gone, I see only a little orange”

  Hesitant, Maurice approached the woman and took her hands. She squared her head based on the position of his hands and felt for Rosalind, rather than seeing her through his mind. It took a little longer, but her head pitched back and the projection gleamed from her mouth.

  Rosalind had blank white eyes, just like the woman, and didn’t sense Maurice.

  “Rosalind,” he whispered.

  She looked around, waving her arms before her as if to keep balance or find a wall in the dark.

  “I’m here honey. Talk to me please.”

  Rosalind shook and opened her mouth, light bounced from her little teeth, making the contrast against her un-tongued mouth grotesque. A black cloud formed around her once again, but she refused it. Shaking and spewing a sound from within her chest.

  “Leave her alone!”

  The face of a middle-aged man formed from particles within the cloud like a phantasm, like a group of focused aphids working at their maestro’s will. The shape glared at Maurice and pitched a tiny grin. His eyes revealed a world beyond knowledge: scorched earth, blood streaming from Rhoda’s and Rudy’s pores like red sweat, Lou melting in the sun’s heat. It was his world, but at its end, an end poised to come sooner than later.

  The vision faded and the woman’s head rolled backwards around her shoulders; her neck broken, only skin holding the flesh bridge. Everything began to close, the walls of the dank little home burst into black flame. The pyre surrounded him and he acted quickly, pulled the old patchwork quilt from the woman’s lap, covering his body. It smelled of piss, but covered all but the tips of his fingers. The heat was hotter than any fire he’d felt—an accelerant doused with steroids. He flipped the woman from her rocking chair. The bay window was his only chance. He ran, chair pitched at arm’s length, and jumped through the window, glass falling in big jagged chunks. The quilt burst into flame and he rolled away, and crawled to the sidewalk.

  Within seconds, the house creaked and crashed, but instead of sinking into oblivion, the fire spread to the lawn and onto other homes. It was orange and red and green, a perfectly normal and sane burn. The neighborhood came to life with disorganized attempts to quash the destruction. Maurice didn’t need to watch. There was no time. His daughter needed him.

  —

  His cell phone rang from within his center console. He lit a Marlboro and answered. “Yeah?”

  “Moe, it is Lou. They didn’t see it fit to inform me, but a judge agreed before sun-up. They exhumed the body. I swear I didn’t know until they brought it back.”

  “Why would he…?” Maurice started to ask, his voice feeling like a distant function, no longer overly important to his goal.

  “Moe. The sicko cut out her tongue.”

  Maurice was quiet, driving toward home.

  “Moe, are you there?”

  He rounded a corner to the final stretch of residential block until he got home, still silent.

  “Moe!”

  “Her tongue that’s why she can’t speak. Do you have an I.D. yet?” Her tongue, tongue, her tongue, of course she can’t speak.

  “No, but a trooper up north, near Huntington, pulled the guy over for speeding and let him off with a warning. Or so he says. It all sounds a little strange. The trooper said the man’s name was Alec Rollings and had unregistered plates, and extra plates in the trunk. The trooper couldn’t explain why he hadn’t questioned him further, said the guy didn’t give off the bad vibe and was respectful. Get this, Moe, the guy said he doesn’t remember letting him drive away and the first thing he thought after looking in the guy’s trunk was wondering what in the hell he was doing in Kentucky. Drove all the way to the Kentucky border and doesn’t know why.”

  “Was the tongue in the car?”

  “No idea, but the name Alec Rollings is likely a fake, could be stolen. We have the man’s picture at all the border crossings in case he thinks he can hide in Canada. He’s driving a dark blue, Buick Lacrosse, an older one. Every trooper in the country will be pulling over dark blue Lacrosses until we nab the sicko.”

  “If he gets to Canada, he’ll be gone, the place is empty north of the first three-hundred miles,” Maurice said, his feeling beginning to reignite within his core.

  “Nope, border crossings are on the lookout and if he somehow crossed before we got the word out, people are watching the tape to get a bead on him. We’ll catch him, Moe.”

  “So you have Rosalind there now?”

  “Uh huh, why? I don’t think you should see her.”

  “Have to,” Maurice said this simply, matter-of-factly, “I will need to reciprocate the damage done. I’m going to kill him. Mark my words. Now is she there?”

  “You can’t see her. Remember her all done up at the funeral, better yet, remember her running around your backyard through the sprinklers on a hot afternoon.”

  Maurice hung up on Lou and backed out of his driveway. Rhoda stood in a window watching him leave.

  19

  The rain ceased and since five in the morning, the Bantam Family Circus ran busily packing away its tents, stages, and props. The acts had become the laboring hands thanks to the economy.

  Vadrossa watched the bodies scurrying, mostly worthless, but some, like the wolf man, held value beyond his human brethren. It wasn
’t as if he understood everything about what he did or why, but having his people float in his head gave him new insight on the universe.

  It didn’t sound or appear at all irrational to Vadrossa how or why they were there, it’s just how it was and how it would be. He did as the La’aklar always had and consumed the dead, which eventually became the fate of the entire community. After they moved behind the wall of rock, the tunneling caves on the mountainside, a great many changes took place. Although they’d situated themselves in a region barren nine months of the year, sometimes ten or eleven, and difficult to reach, the first trio of outsiders were not the last. During scavenging and hunting expeditions, they came across several tribes. These people knew well enough to leave the La’aklar be.

  But the white men kept coming.

  —

  The priest had returned. He’d brought twenty men with rifles, all bent on obliterating the community for their atrocities.

  From behind the stone, Vadrossa and Dhaksa listened in silence. The men found the entrance and followed the priest into the dwelling. A slick set of stone steps driven into the frosty mud led the group into a tunnel. There were three options. The men refused to break their group and methodically took the tunnel to the right, they’d get to the others should they need to do so. The air was stale, but moved ever so slightly behind their backs, almost leading them along. The tunnel was pitch-black outside a small speck of light behind and in front of the men.

  “Be strong in the Lord,” the priest whispered. “In Him we will bring about wrath upon Satan and those that follow the hoov-ed beast.”

  The men grumbled quietly about the darkness, but continued. The world then swirled before them. They shot at figments. All broke, running blind through the horrors of the impossible things around them. The light grew stronger and brighter the further they ran, until they finally came upon a vast room, much of the La’aklar standing in wait.

  The goal was to scare away the men with trickery, but on sight, these men began shooting. After the initial shots, half of the men fell, dropping their rifles to the hard stone floor, holding their throats as if someone wrapped a noose and tightened the knot.