Erased From Memory (28 page)

“Listen,” I say to Walt, “I’m looking for my dad. You remember him? I’ve looked everywhere. I need to get down in the crypt.”

We do some jockeying where Walt says, “Oh, the crypt,” and I say, “My dad forgets. Suppose he was locked in down there?” And the minute I say that, my stomach clenches again so I have to turn my head away.

Walt says, “Locked in. Oh, Jesus.” And pretty soon he has gotten the electronic keys from their secret stashaway and we have fought our way through the crowds in the main room and the lobby and we’re at the closet with its access to the downstairs staircase. “Now watch it on the way down,” Walt cautions. “I gotta get back. You can get out at the other end.”

It’s dark on the staircase, but he turns a switch that produces a halogen glow that bleaches everything white. Then he slams the door. It closes behind me and right away the air gets eerily silent, a complete TV mute-button effect. All gone, the clamor from upstairs. We have stillness and stone and glare, plus the scuffle of my feet. And that intrusive medieval church cold rock smell, with something extra—incense, maybe.

A scary combination. I remind myself: I’m looking for my father. Later I can think about being scared.

I’m scared about him.

Also about who else is down here.

An enemy? Sure. Maybe.

Somebody sent him poison. Somebody sent him my mother’s picture.

Somebody means ill.

I grab the metal handrail and take the steps slowly and listen to my own footsteps and try to stay alert for other sounds. The scrunch of a little, scared person in the dark.

The steps are stone.

 
 
Maybe he’s not here at all. Maybe, if he’s here, he can’t . . .

I won’t go there.

At the bottom of the stairs is the passageway with the recessed cubbyholes and the skulls. Ceramic skulls, that’s what Egon assured our tour group. The recessed places are painted blue. There’s no light in this passageway and none ahead in the black crypt-space, but the glow from the stairs shines down the passage for a while.

I take a minute to wonder about building something that imitates the Paris charnel house. Skulls and femurs, ribs. A claustrophobic avenue of skeleton pieces poked into a wall. Was it Egon or his grandmother that wanted this art piece?

If it was his grandmother, she was a pretty weird old lady.

I do not have a flashlight. I remember that Rita brought a flashlight when she came down here. I wish you were here, Rita. I wish your flashlight was here. The dark is marching closer, tighter; I have to feel ahead for each step.

I don’t see another light switch.

Daddy, dear. Maybe I do have that sixth hunch sense. I think I’m having it now. I know you’re in here, parent mine. You’re frightened. When people are scared, they freeze and don’t make noise. They lie clenched on themselves, waiting for someone to find them. Hey, old trooper, I’m coming. Hang in.

Thinking stuff like that is something to do besides freaking. I almost don’t feel like throwing up.

A pause, holding on to the wall, which is too slick to hold on to. The passage has gotten so dark my feet are lost. Blue jeans on my legs, then nothing. Ahead another nothing; the world just stops. Maybe a bend in the passage. Midnight. Then maybe the crypt.

There’s got to be a light switch. What did Egon do when he took us down here? Did he make a magic gesture with a remote?

I keep going, feeling ahead with each footstep. The ground isn’t level; maybe it was carved from the same rock as the walls, uneven, slippery. I stretch my right hand out, grasp rounded as if for an imaginary flashlight.

At the bend in the passageway I’ve reached it. The point of no return. Around the corner it’s totally dark. If he’s in the crypt, I won’t be able to see him.

How did Egon turn on the lights? I scour my memory.

And what’s the floor plan of the crypt? Memory does better here. The crypt is circular. Or maybe octagonal, with columns marking the eight sections. In the middle is the sarcophagus, in two parts like a giant double wedding cake, one layer below, one above. There’s carving, and columns, and a separate lid for each bit. Egon’s grandmother lies below and Egon himself will rest above.

Cherie and I shared a joke about “grandmother below.”

Probably I should have told Cherie what I’m doing today. It’s time to get over my Cherie reservations.

I think I hear something, maybe a tiny scrape, maybe something moving. You don’t get building-settling noises in a carved underground tomb, do you? Not unless you’re having an earthquake. And I won’t go there, either. The sound could be rats. Or my imagination. Or my dad, lying damaged, curled, moving his legs a little.

Or it could be somebody creeping quietly.

With or without a light, I’ve got to march on into that dark space.

 
 
But first, I’ll search my backpack. I don’t know for what. I’ve been wearing it over my shoulder and I’ll give it the old police run-through, maybe hoping for a matchbook because there was a time, way back then, when I would have had plenty of matchbooks. Once upon a time restaurants gave matchbooks.

I slide the pack down with an appalling crash and start throwing stuff out on the floor. But then I can’t see what I’m doing, so I scrape it all together again and maneuver back up toward the better light. And squat. Once more I upend the pack and right away get a mound of anonymous paper: bills, receipts, ads, mail, a mashed photograph of me and Rob. After that the hard stuff: lipstick, phone—oh, good grief,
phone
, but then I punch the button and it doesn’t work down here—credit card case, wallet.

At the bottom of everything are crumbs, Kleenex, a ginger candy. And another lipstick. I haul that out and examine it and it isn’t a lipstick. My heart goes plop. It’s Rita’s cigarette lighter. “Hang on to this in memory of me,” was what she said that time in my room.

 
 
A cigarette lighter is a whole lot better than nothing in a crypt, but it still isn’t ideal. This kind, which has a flint, wants to die out after each energetic wheel-spin. Scratch, flame, subside, scratch again. Still, it lets me proceed down the passageway, foot by foot.

Feeling along and being apprehensive. Listening for my dad. Yes, I do hear that slight noise again. Now I decide, definitely, yes; it’s the one someone makes lying down and scraping their leg on an uneven surface.

I am almost at the crypt now.

The lighter has a transparent chamber to hold the fluid. And I can see that it’s getting low. Hell and hell. I leave longer spaces between crunches. But each flare doesn’t show me much. A wavering vista of carved rock, flickering sidewall. Skulls grinning, like skulls.

Me stumbling, foot, by foot. Crunch, flare.

 
 
I’m in the crypt now. More shadows, more rock floor, a shadowy shape that could be the tomb. And at the foot of it something. A shape. A huddled human shape. I start to move as fast as I can, still being careful, saying to myself,
oh, thank God
, and
oh, be all right
and,
honey, I’m coming
. I’m almost there.

A protrusion that could be a foot. A mound like a person, folded into a heap. Two more lighter-tries and I’ve almost reached it. And it’s not my imagination. There is somebody. A body. Somebody folded into a U.

My dad, my father. My brave old crazy parent. Down here and scared. Sick. Just as I thought.

But I do another lighter-flash and another view of the figure and I know something’s the matter. Everything. The leg appears, wearing battered dark fabric. Dark blue fabric. Jeans. And the foot’s too big and is wearing a sports shoe. I kneel beside it, frantically pushing the lighter-wheel.

I move the light farther along.

The person on the floor isn’t my father.

It’s Scott Dillard.

My lighter is down to zilch. A tiny fire-bubble at the end of a cotton string. Scott Dillard is unmoving. He’s sprawled out across this rock floor. His head’s half thrown back. His arms are outspread. His hands rest, palms up.

My light is about to go. I know Scott is the enemy, a murderer; I should be wary of him, but my response is autonomic. Not in my control. I reach out and seize one of his outflung hands and try to hold it.

My cigarette lighter dies.

 
 
But Scott, whom I had thought to be dead, isn’t. He grabs me by the wrist. He holds me, very tightly and painfully. He says, “Get offa me, you goddamn bitch, before I knock all your teeth straight down your throat.”

Chapter 22

It’s so dark in the crypt that the air has texture. Souplike, as if you could drink it. I squat on the carved stone floor and Scott Dillard seems to be beside me. I can’t see him but I can feel him, all right; he’s holding me viciously by the wrist. He has just offered to push my teeth down my throat.

“Shit,” I say.

I don’t know why that one word identifies me, but I guess it does. I can hear him stirring. He says, “Carla? Oh, God, Carla? I thought you were Bunny. But you’re not Bunny.”

I tell him no, I’m not, and he says, Jesus Christ. I can hear him trying to sit up. He says, “She tried to kill me.”

“My father,” I say. “Have you seen my father?”

“Zapped me,” he says. “With that electric thing.”

“My dad,” I ask. “Is he here?”

“Why in hell,” he asks, “don’t you turn on the light?” We are not having a very meaningful conversation.

I ask him again about my dad and he says, “What are you talking about? Do the lights.” Then he explains that the light box is up ahead someplace and that once I get the box open, I will see the numbers; they glow in the dark; it’s 662 to turn on the lights. “She tried to kill me. I think I’m having a heart attack.”

It takes the two of us at least twenty minutes to find those lights, and in total-deprivation dark, twenty minutes equals four hours in the real world while I crawl, bump into sharp obstacles, claw my way up walls, every so often asking about my father, with Scott saying, “No, your voice is in the wrong place. You’ve got yourself turned around. More to the left. Oh, Jesus Christ, all right, I’m coming myself.” Followed by scraping and groaning and a crash and scream.

Until finally I find the right wall and scratch my way to the light box and push the numbers.

Ka-zowie. Electricity. I’m blind for a whole minute.

“My dad,” I say, as soon as I can keep my eyes open.

And Scott says, “She hit me with something.”

“Bunny hit you?” I’m disbelieving. I’m ready to think the worst of Bunny, but this has come on me suddenly. “How? What were you doing? Where’s my father?”

Scott is sitting up, bent over, caressing his third lumbar area. “Oh, my God in heaven.”

“I think my father is down here,” I say.

“Yeah, I think so, too.”

“My dad? You think so? You’ve seen him?”

“She zapped my memory.”

“You can’t remember? This is about my dad! And you can’t remember?” I grab him by the shoulders. He says, “Oh, God.” I tell him not to be such a baby; he looks all right.

“I’ll remember. It’s coming back. In pieces.” He’s still caressing his back; he pulls something out of there, a small spear-shaped tag. “What the hell?”

“It’s a Taser tag. Think about my father.”

But then I have to explain. I recognize the tag from a security lecture at the Manor. “From a Taser gun. It shoots these things.” I take the little red metal object. It’s about the size of a fingernail.

A Taser gun shoots an electric charge that’s supposed to stun you. Apparently it hurts a lot. And sometimes it’s fatal.

Scott puts his head on his knees. “I give up. I resign from the whole mess. I’m sick of it, sick to my eyeballs. I’m out. I resign, withdraw; I’m not here anymore; they can find somebody else to be their golden boy. I’ll go to San Quentin and they can finish me with their lethal injections and you can come witness. How about it, will you be a witness for my execution? Because they’re going to. And I don’t care.”

“Where’s my dad?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what do you mean about being executed?”

“Executed. Terminated.”

“Come on,” I say, standing up. I’m dizzy, I guess from the kaleidoscope of sensory inputs. “We should get upstairs and get you some help.”

“No.” He almost shouts this. “That’s how it started. I told them. Said I was going upstairs. Going up and making a speech.”

“Well, sure. They’re expecting you. The place is full of people from Kansas; Middle America’s waiting. Egon’s going to unveil your amazing stuff. ‘Scott Dillard’s Amazing Discoveries.’ Of course you make a speech.”

“Not that speech. Another speech. A speech about how I won’t do it, about how he’s a filthy fraud, all the stuff was fake, Marcus invented it and Egon went along. I’m out of it; I give up; I’m not doing it.”