Unbury Carol(84)

Clyde’s face was as white as hers now. He took hold of his glass and downed what was left, then held it out. Farrah refilled it.

“What next, Farrah?”

Farrah stared into the emptiness of the rest of the house before answering.

“Still under the bed, I looked toward the crack under the bedroom door. The footsteps got closer. He called my name again. He said, ‘Farrah, if you’re here, I’d like to talk with you. It has to do with Carol. Maybe you can help.’ On my blood, Clyde, on my blood.”

She drank. She went on.

“The bedroom door opened slowly. I saw black shoes at the threshold. I tried not to breathe. He said my name again and I started crying but I didn’t whimper. Didn’t make a sound. Even when he stepped into the room and knelt beside the bed. Yes, Clyde. Mister Evers knelt by our bed. I heard his knees touch the wood. I saw his black pants, a pair of pants I’d seen a thousand times hanging in a closet in that house of theirs. He knelt beside the bed and looked underneath it. Oh, bless the Lord in hell’s heaven, Clyde! I saw his face! He had a scratch on one cheek and he stared under the bed a long time in silence then suddenly whispered my name and then I almost did whimper, I almost screamed.

“Farrah…

“He didn’t see me. Bless the time of day. He didn’t see me. He rose again, he got up, and…and he left.”

Clyde got up, too, and went to her. He put his hand on her shoulder and she cried, full and honest. Then he stepped to the lantern and blew it out. In the dark he walked to the window and looked outside for a long time. Farrah was quiet. Clyde walked through the house, checking the other windows, the closets, under the bed. In the darkness he said, “You have to tell Sheriff Opal about this. It don’t matter how scared you are, Farrah.”

“I’m not going out there tonight, Clyde. And I’m not going to that funeral. Do you understand me? I’m not going near that man.”

Clyde nodded in the dark, but Farrah did not see him.

“I’ll go when it’s over. The moment it ends. I’ll pay my respects on my own. But I’m not going near that man.”

Clyde heard her sip from her glass in the dark.

“Do you want some more, Clyde?”

He stepped through the house toward her.

“I surely do.”





What if she were to wake…right now? What if she were to come stumbling through the front door…her hand to her head…complaining of body aches…fatigue…and the things she’d heard within? Oh, the image of Carol in the foyer, the black night beyond her, seen through the open front door! Her hair blown wild by that dark wind, a thousand buried screams…the blubbering of banshees she was so close to meeting, so close to sharing her story with, the story of her husband and how he tried very hard to bury her alive.

Dwight loosened his tie. An owl spoke outside the parlor window and he jumped and turned to the glass, half expecting to see Carol on the lawn, her comatose eyes open, her hands reaching for him still.

But Carol slept, weighed down by earth and rocks, on the floor of the black coach in the drive.

And yet…

What if she were to wake…right now? Hadn’t she woken in less time before? And she’d never sat up before…never moved.

Dwight sat down on the edge of the couch. The clock on the mantel sounded flatly in the plush, cushioned room. Seconds ticked. How many more? Thirty thousand more? Too many, more than enough time…

Dwight rose from the couch and wiped sweat from his forehead. A few minutes passed before he understood he’d been staring at a throw pillow, fantasizing about smothering his sleeping wife with it.

Another bestial sound from outside. Looking through the glass, he was certain he’d see Carol crawling out of the coach.

Dwight, she might say, Dwight…I’m awake now…I’m awake…

He went to the window and put his hands to the glass, shielding the reflected lanterns of the parlor.

The coach door was still closed.

But what if she were to wake…right now? There was no good reason to believe she wouldn’t. That she couldn’t. And what would Dwight do then? Shoot her? Smother her? Drown her in the tub? She would go to Opal first. She must. And Opal would listen and console her while loading his gun and taking from his desk the key to one of the cells in the station.

Opal would come for him.

Maybe he was already on his way.

James Moxie is on his way.

Dwight ran a shaky hand through his damp, sweaty hair. What a cruel, unfair disadvantage for Carol to have known one of the Trail’s most legendary outlaws! It wasn’t right, he felt, to have to worry about this man, this monster, approaching, splitting midnight on a black horse, coming to break open the wood coffin with his bare mythic hands!

“Oh,” he said, his voice like a child’s. “What if she were to wake right now?”

Dwight would hide. Yes, if he heard the creaking of the coach door opening he would rush to the pantry in the kitchen and hide.

The clock on the mantel ticked.

Dwight paced the parlor. The lanterns sent shadows up and down the beautiful room, a room decorated (and funded) entirely by Carol. Each shadow imitated the posture of his sleeping wife, now standing in the doorway, a thousand vengeful spirits beside her, those she met when so close to death. The friends she’d made in Howltown.