Unbury Carol(93)

And the sound of Hattie hammering was the sound of Carol’s casket closing. As earliest morning became morning in full. As the beast wheezed on the bench above her. As light added details to the inside of the coach, Carol had already accepted that a coach is like a casket, its wheels rolling through the grooves of an individual trail, one for each and everybody, as the legends of their own names rose, then fell, then rose with the terrain again.

She closed her eyes. Peace. The end.

Then, without deciding to keep fighting, she opened her eyes again and looked to the beast wheezing on the bench. His indeterminate face did not obscure his eyes and Carol said, without parting her lips,

I am not you. You are sadness, you are the end of things, you are rot.

Then her heart beat, not one beat per minute, but two.

I am not.

And the terrible thing trained his eyes on her, detecting the second beat, aware of the fight in the woman on the floor of the coach.

And in his eyes Carol saw concern. Worry.

Carol saw fear.





Already concerned with the gravediggers’ complaints of a prowler, Manders, wanting both the Carol Evers and Winifred Jones funerals to be without blemish, woke at daylight and walked the grounds close to the home. He traveled the main floor quietly then took the stone steps to the basement, where Norm dressed the bodies. All was quiet and all was as it ought to be. There had been no break-ins, no defamation. As he took the steps back up to the foyer, his shoes sounded crisp against the stone. Then they echoed off the parlor’s shining floor. He exited under the recently painted white trim of the front doorframe, and walked quietly past the plot directory to the graveyard itself.

Before he came close enough to tell what it was, he knew the prowler had come the night before after all.

Something was on the ground surrounding Carol Evers’s grave. It was a big black something that at first looked like tossed garbage, but was soon unmistakable.

Manders passed under the wood arch proclaiming official entrance to the cemetery.

It was a burn was what it was.

The grass was charred to ash and the exposed dirt was hard under his black shoes. Whoever the prowler was, Manders noted a purposeful design: Four black circles surrounded the plot, connected by a single black path. He knelt to the grass and pinched some of the soot between his fingertips, letting the ash fall and wiping the morning dew on the hem of his pants. He smelled oil. Burnt oil. And he wondered what kind of man thought it prudent to waste oil on something like this.

A cult, he thought, rising.

Manders didn’t like this at all. A cult meant more than one member and a cult meant rituals that might come again, annually, monthly, daily, who knew. This could become a serious problem. Nearby he spied the remains of a small fire and he pieced together the scene from the night before.

Worshiping the grave, he thought, wiping his hands together. Who knows what they may have sacrificed…

He walked to the grave’s edge and nervously peered within but saw it was as clean and empty as Lucas and Hank left it.

And that was nice. The sort of thing he needed to see. The diggers would arrive shortly and Manders would see to it they made the grounds as presentable as possible for the morning’s ceremonies. It was a small relief, finding the grave empty.

The director turned and looked across the graveyard to where Winifred Jones would be lowered. He detected no foul play, no black oil circles, and felt hopeful that what he’d found was the only damage done.

He left the unsettling scene and passed back beneath the wood arch and up the grassy hill. In his office he made preparations for Carol Evers’s ceremony and looked out the window consistently, hoping the diggers might pick today to show a bit earlier than normal, knowing it was a big day…the lowering of two prominent Harrowsers before noon.

Now, Manders thought nervously, on top of their usual duties, they had a mess to clean, too…



* * *



—

…Opal arrived before the diggers did and Manders was surprised to see him. He left the office and met the lawman on the circle drive at the foot of the funeral home steps. Opal was still upon his horse.

“Mornin’, Manders.”

“We had a prowler last night.”

Opal raised an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“Somebody burned circles in the grass surrounding Carol Evers’s grave.”

“You see, Manders, that makes me suspicious all over again.”

“Were you not anymore?”

“I was paid a visit by the one and only Doctor Alexander Wolfe.”

“Really?”

“He corroborated Evers’s story.”

“Story, Sheriff?”

“He gave the same reasons for Carol’s passing as what he’d stated in the letter you read.”

“Well,” Manders said. “That’s at least some good news.”

“Turns out he’s more of a fruit-doctor than an imaginary one.”

“You mean a spiritualist?”

“That I do.”

Opal looked toward the cemetery. Even standing among the white lilies framing the home’s front walk, he could make out the desecration in the grass.

“Take a look at the body when she comes in,” he said, without turning to Manders. “I’m not asking you to examine her, but give her a look. Anything jump out at you, let me know.”