Thirteen Phantasms (20 page)

He forced himself to take another look, and he saw this time that it was a display dummy, its hair very neatly combed and its cheeks rouged. A fly had gotten inside somehow and died, and it lay now on the white satin pillow alongside the dummy’s head. It occurred to him that he ought to point the fly out to Gladstone, just for the sake of friendliness, but Gladstone had utterly disappeared, and the mausoleum was silent but for the ticking of the entryway clock. Jimmerson ran his hand over the polished ebony of the next casket, and then walked along past a half dozen more—gold-leafed, inlaid, and carved and with handles and hasps and doodads of silver and ivory. There was an Egyptian sarcophagus, the lid thrown back and supported by a heavy-linked chain. The raised image on the lid was of a pharaoh-looking robed man with a conical beard, his arms crossed, his head turned to the side. In his hands he held a richly painted ankh and a striped serpent, and within the casket, tilted against a brass easel, lay an explanatory placard suggesting that instead of a pharaoh, the image of your loved one might be fashioned on the lid, holding anything at all in his hands—a favorite tie, a fountain pen, a golf club. The casket was extra wide, the paneled sides fit with slots that contained a pair of decorative flasks and a cut crystal tumbler. There were other slots left empty, book-size cubbyholes and a sliding glass panel suitable for a framed photograph.

“All the comforts of home,” Gladstone said, coming into the room. “Room at the foot end for a companion as well. Mr. Hemming, the car dealer from Santa Ana, was interred with his dog.”

“They killed the dog?” Jimmerson asked, horrified.

“Oh heavens no. The dog died of grief. It’s not at all uncommon. Dogs are particularly sensitive that way.” He stared at Jimmerson for a moment, as if he intended the comment to make some sort of point, a not very obscure point, and then he said, “Perhaps you’d like to see a little something.” Jimmerson followed him out of the room, back toward the rear of the mausoleum where their footsteps echoed down a long corridor lit with flickering wall sconces. There were heavy wooden doors in the stone walls on either side. Gladstone stopped at one of the doors, removed a skeleton key from his pocket, and unlocked the bolt, swinging it open on its hinges to reveal a room containing half a dozen steel tables. A cord emerged from a slot at the bottom of one of the tables, and floating like a helium balloon some few feet from the ceiling, tethered by its foot to the cord, was what appeared to be a shroud-draped human corpse, its face and bare feet exposed to the dim light of the room.

Jimmerson at first took it for another dummy, and he glanced at the ceiling, expecting to see wires. There were none. He stared at it, uncomprehending, but then with a growing certainty that the thing’s pale flesh and stringy hair was in fact the flesh and hair of a dead man. Gladstone stepped across and tugged on the cord, which wound down into the table. The corpse descended a couple of feet and then floated slowly upward again when he let go of the cord, its feet swinging around in a clockwise direction, then back again. “He’ll come down on his own fairly soon,” Gladstone said, seeing the look on Jimmerson’s face. “These cases always do. It takes about twelve hours for the spirit to flee the body after death, and then the remains are earthbound once again. Often there’s nothing left but a paper shell, easily inflatable if the family wants an open casket funeral.”

“What … what on earth did he die of?”

“A broken heart, Mr. Jimmerson. I’ll tell you that plainly. Medical science calls it ‘Voluntary dwindling’ when they call it anything at all. Which they don’t, for the most part. It’s utterly beyond the grasp of medicine. These are matters of the spirit, by and large. And it’s rare, I can assure you, that we get two such advanced cases in a single week.” He stared at Jimmerson again, who suddenly remembered the restraints on Edna’s deathbed. What had Mrs. Crandle said about Edna’s “drifting away”? Had she been speaking literally … ?

“Was Edna … ?”

Gladstone nodded slowly, and Jimmerson leaned against the plaster wall to steady himself.

“She’s out of harm’s way now,” Gladstone said, patting Jimmerson’s arm. “Let’s have a look at her grave, shall we?”

He led the way down the corridor again, Jimmerson stumbling along after him, until they came out into a sort of stone gardener’s shed with a lean-to roof. Mud-caked spades and shovels stood tilted against the wall, and a steel backhoe scoop lay on the floor alongside the iron debris of a dismantled engine, greasy pistons and bolts and hoses dumped haphazardly on the ground. Two yellow rain slickers hung from hooks by the door, and Gladstone stepped over the engine parts and took them down, handing one to Jimmerson. It had an attached hat with a wide brim, and the coat itself hung to Jimmerson’s knees. Gladstone passed him a black umbrella, then opened the door and stepped out into the rain, which was falling more lightly now.

Jimmerson followed him along a narrow stone path, hoisting his umbrella against the mist and turning it into the wind, which gusted through the trees, sweeping down a litter of dead oak leaves that whirled away across the grounds. The night smelled of wet leaves and clay, and the moon shone between the clouds, the headstones casting long shadows on the grass. The path wound in a wide circle toward the walnut grove, past a lily-choked fish pond and a cluster of mossy concrete benches. Gladstone finally stopped at the edge of a small, gently sloping hill where a rectangle of new turf covered a tiny grave. They stood silently for a moment.

“It’s awfully small,” Jimmerson whispered at last.

Gladstone nodded. “It’s not uncommon,” he said, “that a dwindler can fit into a casket the size of shoe box, once the spirit has flown. And it’s not without its advantages, I suppose, when all is said and done. Very conservative burial, spatially speaking.”

“Will there be a headstone?” Jimmerson asked. “I guess it’s up to me to order one.”

“One should arrive from the stonecutters late next week, actually. It was paid for by a Mr. des Laumes, I believe the name was. French gentleman. You must have known him.” Gladstone gave him a sidewise glance, then looked quickly away.

“Cancel the order,” Jimmerson told him.

“It’s too late for that,” Mr. Jimmerson. “The work’s underway. Very elaborate, too.”

“I don’t want elaborate. I want simple. This Frenchman’s got no right to order a headstone. Who gave him permission to shove his oar in?”

“Permission, Mr. Jimmerson? In the absence of any other offering …” He shrugged helplessly. “Of course, now that you’ve returned …”

“That’s right. Now that I’ve come home Mr. des Laumes’s headstone can go to hell. If the work’s already started, then I’ll pay for it. Mr. des Laumes can have it back with interest, too—on top of his head.”

“As you wish, sir,” Gladstone said. “It only has to snow once before I get the drift.” He nodded and winked, shook Jimmerson’s hand, and then moved off down the path again, heading back toward the mausoleum. Jimmerson stayed by the graveside, forcing himself to simmer down. By God, he wouldn’t let this Frenchman give him another moment of grief, not one more moment—especially not here at Edna’s grave.

It struck him suddenly that he ought to have brought flowers, something … a keepsake of some sort. His boxes of stuff were still in the Mercury, and he looked out across the hundred yards of rainy night toward the shadowy station wagon, picturing the clusters of quartz crystals they’d brought home from Death Valley and the pair of conical ceramic tornadoes from Edna’s family reunion back in Kansas.

But what would he do with them?—scatter salt and pepper shakers across the grave like amulets? He knelt in the grass and ran his hand over the wet squares of turf fitted over the grave, and he felt the freshening rain patter against his slicker. He didn’t bother with the umbrella now, but pulled the hat brim down over his forehead, closed his eyes, and tried to pray.

Prayer didn’t come easily. He tried again, trying to concentrate, to focus, but almost at once he doubted his own sincerity, and the prayer fell to pieces. His father had told him years ago that a man couldn’t pray when he was drunk, and although Jimmerson wasn’t a drinking man, he had enough experience to take his meaning. Now it seemed to him that a guilty man had an even more precarious time praying than a drunken man, and for a long time his mind went round and round with partly formed apologetic phrases, half of them addressed to Edna, half addressed to the sky, until finally he shoved the hat back off his head and knelt in the rain with his forehead in his hands, utterly defeated.

He looked up finally to find the moon high in the sky, free of the walnut grove now. Down by the fish pond there was the shadow of Gladstone waiting patiently in his yellow slicker on one of the concrete benches. Jimmerson rose to his feet, his knees creaking beneath him, and walked carefully downhill to the path, where he looked back at Edna’s grave.

She wouldn’t speak to him. She couldn’t. She had gone on.

•

Jimmerson stood once again in the room with the clock and the flowers, where he had just signed the work order for Edna’s headstone—her true headstone, a simple granite slab: loving wife of Doyle Jimmerson, marriage date as well as birth and death. Jimmerson had contracted for the plot adjacent to hers, too, and paid for a twin headstone for himself.

“I’m afraid I still don’t entirely understand Edna’s death,” he said, standing finally in the open doorway.

“No less than I do, perhaps,” Gladstone told him. “These deaths are always a mystery—the secret of the deceased, you know. I’m familiar with the physical manifestations at the end, of course, but the progress of the disease itself is not in my province.”

Jimmerson nodded. “So it’s not a virus? It’s not something she caught?”

“Caught?”
He shook his head. “No more than you’d say that a fish catches a baited hook. Rather the other way around.”

“Hook? What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say that voluntary dwindling isn’t entirely voluntary, Mr. Jimmerson. It’s voluntary in the main, of course. As I understand it, no one dwindles unless he chooses to dwindle. But the process can be …
facilitated
, perhaps. Suggested.”

“Facilitated how?” The Frenchman’s face leaped into his mind again, complete with the fact of Mrs. Crandle’s apparently despising the man. He had been right!—the man was a cad; although the knowledge of having been right looked like damnation to him. Had he left Edna to some sort of murderer?

“I’m rather at a loss,” Gladstone said. “It’s my policy to know nothing more than it pays me to know. I might be able to help you, though, although the word ‘help’ …” He shook his head.

“I’d appreciate that, Mr. Gladstone. Anything you can do for me.”

Gladstone stared at him again, narrowing his eyes. “You recall the man in the embalming room, tethered to the cord … ?”

“Yes, of course.”

“He told me much the same thing once, not so very long ago. Death of an old friend, in his case. They’d had some kind of sad falling out and hadn’t spoken in years. So I’ll caution you to be particularly careful of what you learn, Mr. Jimmerson. And I’ll tell you that Mr. des Laumes has purchased more than one headstone in his day.”

•

With the help of Gladstone’s map, Jimmerson found the curiosity shop downtown. It was near the Plaza, and from the sidewalk the shop was apparently empty. The linoleum floor was cracked and buckled, scattered with yellowed newsprint and empty White Rock and Nehi soft drink bottles that hadn’t been sold in grocery stores for years. The windows were hung with cobweb, and the broad sills were covered with a heavy layer of dust and dead bugs and a litter of old business cards. Jimmerson and Edna had often remarked on the shop when they’d walked downtown. Leases near the Plaza were at a premium, yet the shop had gone untenanted since either of them could remember.

As he stood outside, looking in at the window, it seemed to him that the place had a curious perspective to it. He couldn’t quite tell how deep it was. The walls were hung with mirrors, dim with dust, and the hazy reflections, depending upon where he stood, made the store appear sometimes to be prodigiously deep, sometimes to be a space so narrow that it might have been one-dimensional, cleverly painted on the window glass. The front door, weathered and paint-scaled, was nailed shut, and a number of envelopes had been dumped through the brass mail slot over the years, many of them with long-out-of-date postage stamps.

Gladstone’s map led him around the corner, past a Middle Eastern deli and a shop selling Italian antiques. The day was windy, the sky full of tearing clouds, and Jimmerson pulled his coat tightly around him, turning another corner and heading north now, searching for the mouth of the alley that Gladstone had assured him lay at the back of the old buildings. There was the smell of Turkish coffee in the air, and of wet sidewalks and open Dumpsters, and he walked straight past the alley before he knew it. It wasn’t really an alley as such, but was a circular doorway in the brick facade of the buildings, and it opened into a sort of courtyard, a patch of gray sky showing far overhead. Jimmerson peered into the dimly lit recess before stepping over the high curb and into the sheltered twilight. The courtyard was utterly silent, the walls blocking even the traffic noise on the street. He walked hesitantly along the wall, trailing his right hand, and watching to see if there was anyone about. He felt as if he were trespassing, and he was ready to apologize and get the hell out if he were challenged at all. But the courtyard was empty, the brick pavers up in weeds as if no one had walked there for an age.