He walked amongst them, greeting each one by his or her name. At the very end, on what seemed to be a throne, sat his mother. They all looked life-like and peaceful and in so many ways, so very much alive.
'Bury me,' a voice whispered.
Tom shooed the insect off his nose. But again, something tickled his face. He woke up, he sat up. There, on the edge of his bed, sat his mother, barely dressed, with black circles under her eyes in her pale face.
'Bury me,' she said.
Tom tried to push the armchairs. They would not budge. He thought of covering their earthly remains with blankets. Stupid Willy would look underneath. Jesse would be drawn in by the beauty of the room and the expensiveness of its furniture.
This room and the safe ? are my vulnerabilities ? thought Tom, once more clenching his right hand and biting down hard on the knuckles of his fist.
Why am I always forced to ? do it again and again? he wondered.
Chapter 13
Jesse and Willy felt confident enough to park in front of the house. No one had seen them or their car leaving the diner. There were no security cameras locked onto the parking lot out in the boonies. Luck played a huge part in getting away with crime. Or something else was cooking. It gave them time, time to figure things out. First and foremost, how to stay and eventually, even profit.
A chill crept up Willy's spine nonetheless when he saw a beautiful blonde standing on Tom's porch, fiddling with the doorbell which clearly wasn't working. She shifted her weight in a nervous giddy way from one high-heeled foot to the other, as if she had to pee.
"Ma'am, can we help you?" Willy asked, retrieving two shopping bags from the trunk of his car.
"Who are you?" the young woman asked and stared.
"Well, I'm Willy ? and this here is Jess'?"
"Since when does Tom have anyone over?"
"Since now," answered Jesse in a flat voice.
"Are you the new housekeepers?"
"We're his assistants."
Suppressing a laugh, the woman introduced herself:
"My name is Heather. Heather Rickerson. We own the factory. Rickerson - Retail Display LLC."
Willy let out a low whistle.
"Pleased to meet you," he said.
"Is Tom home?"
"Don't know. Not his babysitter."
"Please tell him I was here."
"Sure, lady."
Following Jesse along the side of the house, he called back:
"Now beat it!"
Jesse put her shopping bags down on the table in the kitchen. Willy came in after her and slammed the door.?
"Is she gone?" asked Jesse carefully.
"Hope so."
"Don?t need competition right about now."
"Tom?s a loner, obviously."
"He was a very shy boy. Nice looking, though."
"He still looks good in a manly sort of way," said Willy, opening a bottle of beer.
"A little early, isn't it, Will?" cautioned Jesse.
"Never too early," said Will with a grunt and a fart. He drank eagerly.
Jesse nibbled thoughtfully on a piece of cheese.?
"Let?s take a tour of the house. It?s daytime."
"He?s lurking around up there somewhere. It?s not like he has a job."
"You never know, Will."
"True. You can't tell."
"His folks ran the local funeral parlor, but they did stuff on the side, too, if I remember correctly. Which I don?t really. I was still a kid."
"Funeral parlor? Well, isn't that perfect for a creep, a recluse."
"Hey, Will ? let me clean up these things. Then we can take a walk through this old house. If we do run into Tom, we can ask him if we can use his computer."
"Say, Jesse, have you heard voices in here? Like someone is whispering?" asked Willy, opening his second bottle of beer.
"No."
"It's my nerves, huh?"
"That stupid dream, Will. A nightmare."
"Feels different. I know stoned, drunk, high, nightmare. This is ? something else."
"Oh fuck."
Jesse took Willy's hand and they strolled through the house. The house was beautiful and mysterious despite the layers of dust and the corners full of clutter boxes and junk. Tom had an obvious distaste for organizing. And no one from the outside came in to care and clean.
Jesse sat down on a velvet stool in front of the mahogany grand piano. She twinkled the keys but did not know how to play. The house came alive with the piano notes; the silence was broken while ghosts rose from within the walls to dance to the richness of the sounds. Willy heard someone whispering directly behind him. He jabbed at the back of his neck with an empty beer bottle, as if a mosquito had bit him there.
Jesse, ever in denial, did not want to believe what she saw: passionate spirits escaping the wallpaper. She slammed the hood on the piano keys and continued wandering dreamily through the house. She ran a finger longingly over the antique furniture. Willy grew restless, paranoid. He rushed up the stairs to the third floor.
Behind the glass door to the Gallery, he saw a dark figure slumped on the carpet. He started to pound on the thick sheet of glass.
"Tom! Tom! Are ya in there? Is that you?"
"Who else would it be?" asked Jesse.
"Go down to the toolshed, woman, and get me the ax."
"Now yer talking like Will again!" she exclaimed merrily.
Willy glared at her, and she stopped chewing her gum. She turned and hurried down the stairs.
"Tom, hold on. I'm comin' for ya."
"Is he dead?" asked Heather.
"Now where the hell did you come from?" growled Willy.
Heather snuggled up to him, and seeing that Jesse was not anywhere near, she wrapped her arms around his neck and tried to give him a long, wet kiss.
Willy pried her arms off.
"Mother of god, what's gotten into you?"
Heather laughed a happy upbeat kind of laugh which was out of place and more than slightly off.
Willy scowled. He looked at her sideways.
"You okay?"
"Yes."
"Need a glass of water or something?"
"No."
At that moment, Jesse reached the top of the stairs with the ax.
"How did she get here?" she asked, motioning at Heather with the blade.
"Must've followed us in when I told her to scat."
He took the ax out of her hands, and was about to work on the glass door, when Heather caught his arm and shouted:
"Wait! Do you have to wreck the door? We could get a locksmith, or at least call the police."
Willy tore his arm away from Heather; she was knocked off balance and fell against a wall. She went tumbling towards the stairs. Jesse did little to help, she simply got out of the way. Had Heather had enough momentum to go rocketing down the staircase, Jesse would not have intervened.
Heather held on to the bannister. She pulled herself up. She shot Jesse a dark look and rubbed her bruised thigh. Willy started to pound on the door with the ax. He was using the blunt end of the blade. With each blow, he was adding more pressure. Jesse and Heather moved back and out of the way instinctively. After the fifth blow, the glass shattered. A hole was formed.
Willy worked on the jagged edges of the glass jutting out from all sides of the door frame. Soon, these too crashed to the floor, and they had a view into the room. At first, the scene resembled a shopping window display filled with beautifully dressed mannequins.
On closer inspection, - Willy studying the hands of the dolls intently -, it became obvious, these were mummies.
"Fuck," said Willy.
"These are his aunts and uncles."
The embalmed corpses sat rigid and silent, all with a regal air about them. Further back, in front of what must have been the most beautiful and most important corpse, half sat, half lay Tom, slumped over, his head bowed, seemingly unconscious.
Jesse got to him first.
She shook him, she felt his pulse. He murmured something and twitched, but did not come to. Willy kicked him. No reaction.
"I'm calling the police," said Heather.
Willy whirled around and grabbed her by the hair. Heather screamed and tried to wrestle free. Willy only pulled harder.
"I have had it with you, bitch!"
"No, no, please, I will go."
"Yeah, that you will."
Willy dragged her by the hair to the stairs and pushed her hard. She went toppling head-over downwards, bumping various body parts and screaming and shouting Ouch.
"Ugh, good riddance," declared Jesse.
She sat by Tom's side, stroking his cheek and forehead.
"Got a feeling she'll be back, though."
"We'll just seat her here with the whole family and see to it she stays put with some duct tape."
Willy grinned.
"She's a hot-looking woman, what's she doing in a dump like this?"
"You're right about that," said Jesse, scratching her chin.
"There's plan behind it."
"The property?"
"Hide drugs here?"
"Or corpses!"
"These here don't look too recent."
"The house is big. So is the yard."
"Something's up."
"And we don't need it."
Jesse and Willy high-fived each other, just as Tom's eyelids fluttered.
Chapter 14
So it has happened once again ?
The darkness invaded me, rendered me helpless. I could not fight it - although I really tried. And the whore and the brute came back ? they found me, they found me alive in the Gallery! They came charging in here like wild animals! Why can't they just leave me alone? Why do they torment me with their presence?
It is all coming to an end. Perhaps that is for the best - I will finally be out of it and the bodies will be laid to rest. Even given a Christian burial. No one will ever whisper 'bury me' again.
Again ?
"Tom, are you okay? Tom, answer me!"
Willy and Jesse pulled him up, empty shell of a young man that he was.
Tom coughed. He averted his gaze.
"Tom?"
"I'm fine."
They walked him to the door, but he resisted.
"Please! I have to say goodbye."
"To the ? dead people?" asked Willy.
"They are my family."
"No, not no more."
"Please!"
"Goodbye Grandma," Willy mocked.
"Don't do that!"
"Or what?"
Tom tried to regain full control of his drained body - flailing his arms, shaking his head, trying to rattle his way out of it.
"Whoa, Mr. T., watch it!" yelled Willy.
"Let me say goodbye, Will. This is like a graveyard, don't you get it?'
"Except I just smashed the door ?"
"They want to be buried," Tom mumbled, the color back in his face.
"I can do that," said Willy.
"But ? they want more ?"
"Burning them is also a good idea."
"No! You're impossible, Mr. Will!"
"I need air. I gotta smoke a cigarette or something."
"That one," Willy added, pointing at the most prominent corpse, "has been staring at me this whole time."
"She is beautiful," exclaimed Jesse full of honest admiration.
"I'd say someone went to great lengths, to keep them from rotting away. But this is fuckin' sick. After all, they're dead."
Willy spat out. Tom's eyes grew wide.
"Must you do everything to provoke them?"
"Meaning ? they can be provoked?"
"He's trying to tell you they are haunting this house because they have not been properly buried."
Jesse looked up at Willy with pleading eyes. Tom nodded.
"Well, you can't do that, because of the cops. You probably had no business keeping them here anyway, unless they requested it, while they were still alive."
"We had an agreement - sort of," explained Tom.
"But something went wrong."
"What went wrong, Tom?"
Tom was silent for a while. Then he stepped up to the chair his mother was seated in.
"Isn't that obvious?"
"They're still here," he added, barely above a whisper.
"I never believed in all that humbug," remarked Willy, folding his arms over his chest.
"The crosses, the holy water. Not sure I believe in it now."
"We'll help you, Tom," Jesse said.
"I want to get rid of them and lead a normal life ?" Tom squawked.
"But I need to have them here as well."
"How many people know about this?" asked Willy.
"Heather does now."
"What has she got to do with anything? Do you sleep with her?"
"Heavens, no! Her father wants this land."
"Rickerson?"
"He wants it for cheap."
"You're lucky we showed up. We'll fix things, work for you. Go shopping when you're not feeling right ?" suggested Jesse.
"We'll be good to you ?"
Willy turned and let his hand do a sweep over all the corpses in the Gallery, saying:
"And we promise not to tell anyone about these ?"
To his horror and utter dismay, the eyes of the mother corpse were now closed, he was sure of it, as if she had fallen asleep, though she had been staring straight at him the whole time. He grinned, flashed a broad smile even, to hide his thoughts, guiding Tom out of the room by the shoulders, Jesse following them.
Chapter 15
Heather was sitting at the kitchen table, holding a pack of ice to her forehead.
"You'll pay for this," she hissed.
"What part of 'get out of here' do you not understand, bitch?" Willy spat back.
"I am looking for my dog ?"
"Oh sure."
Tom stood behind Heather and put his hands on her shoulders.
"I haven't seen him in ages," he said softly.
Heather turned and looked up at him.
"But you have seen him ??"
Tom nodded. He graciously accepted a glass of whiskey mixed with Coca Cola from Willy. A menthol cigarette Jesse offered him he declined.
"Put some more ice in here, Will," he ordered.
"At your service," Will responded.
"Can I have some?" Heather ventured.
"No," said Willy, his voice firm, but not hostile.
"Well, if you see my dog ? please let me know."
"What kind of dog is it?" asked Jesse.
"He was a black Labrador, very thin towards the end," replied Tom.
Jesse and Willy looked at each other.
"He wants to come home to me," Heather said, her voice cracking.
"I have seen him in the yard, I remember it vividly," said Tom.
"Thank you," said Heather.
She had problems walking; with a limp she left through the back door.
Tom poured more whiskey into his glass.
"I'll be upstairs," he said.
Willy nodded. Jesse waved.
When he had rushed up the stairs and disappeared into a room, slamming the door for emphasis, Willy let out a sigh of relief.
"Our new home ?" he said sarcastically.
"It's free," Jesse said and shrugged.
"And who knows, now we might even get paid on top of that!"
Chapter 16
Ha! I've duped the fools. They'll find themselves buried in the backyard and twisted into pretzels soon enough! My head, my head is exploding ? A hacked-at, hacked-up watermelon, the juice all over the wall ...
I dragged myself to my study (my other study), and opened the laptop to see if there were any ? messages. I watch the Gallery at all times from all angles. Webcams serve me well. But to no avail. It usually starts happening when I fall asleep, when I am not paying attention.
Mother ? I am sorry. Things just t
urned out the way they did. Someday, yes, someday, you will have a proper burial, when I am in prison, or when I will have left. Perhaps Jesse will get me drunk and sexed up often enough and I will run away, but how can I leave this land? I want to be buried on my land. I want to. Just like Aunt Sophie.
Maybe it's all we have now.
Tom watched the close-up of his mother's embalmed face on the computer screen. He studied her features, trying to recall what she had been like when she was still alive. All of his memories had been wiped away. He had spent many hours trying to 'catch' the corpses, in the act of utilizing their bodies, but they moved or were moved when he slept, when he got up for coffee or the restroom, or when he was otherwise preoccupied.
It was infuriating. There was also a beauty to it, and peace, and a conscious decision never to really deal with death or grief. Tom owned his mother's face. Forever.
Jesse and Willy were rummaging around downstairs, but Tom did not care.
He had one more page to visit on the internet, but doing so cost him all of his inner strength and all of his courage. He nipped at the whiskey, slowly. He was not used to drinking.
Willy downstairs caused a bang after which he let out a barrage of curses. Tom scratched at his forehead while Jesse spewed forth an avalanche of words. Great housekeepers he had now, indeed! After the downstairs part of the house had quieted down (a whiskey bottle thrown at the kitchen wall, no doubt), he went to Facebook to look at what had been posted there.
The background is dark, as if in a cave or a tunnel. Seated in chairs (the same seating order as here in the house), a parallel gallery is shown. They are dead, too, and I know them well. They are buried in the yard, under the shed or the barn. They are shown in various stages of decomposition, with worms and maggots and other unspeakable creatures slithering freely around and through skeletal eye sockets and down arms, legs etc.
So, am I supposed to believe this is real? Someone has gone to so much trouble as to watch me dispose of them ? only to unearth them, moving them to a place unknown to take pictures and video? Or is this a hallucination? Or are ? the dead ? showing me their power, all of what they can do?