After Death (10 page)

He was still a bit shaken and it was a greater shock to see this woman that was now barely recognizable. Her eyes bulged and she looked fearfully back down the hall and put a thin finger to her lips for him to be silent. She indicated for him to close the door with another sharp movement of her arm and waited until he pulled the door completely shut.

When she faced him, he saw the flesh at her jawline twitch — like a cable pulled so taunt it could barely sustain the strain.

“You were talking to him again, Frank.” She whispered. And then, with almost an accusatory hiss; “You were talking to him again!”

What was going on?
Frank thought.
Is everyone here off their meds? What’s made her so agitated?

She leaned in towards him and spoke conspiratorially.

“I tell you, he’s as bad as sin, that man.”

He tried to placate her with a consoling hand on her shoulder and whispered back.

“Who, Rachel? Eli?”

She nodded emphatically.

“What makes you say a thing like that, Rachel?” He asked.

She trembled for a moment, flesh jangling at her neck and arms. She glanced around, seemingly paranoid that there might be someone else inside the room that could overhear them.

“Nobody likes him, Frank.” She whispered. “I bumped into him once and he’s said horrible things to me ever since. He’s obscene. If I told you what he’s said…”

She struggled for control, eyes momentarily wild. After a moment she calmed and continued.

“And he’s got no shadow. Means he has no soul.”

Frank forced down the sudden urge to laugh but couldn’t hide a rising smile. She noticed and her eyebrows arched severely as she scolded him.

“And his teeth! Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed his teeth!”

She glared and searched his face.
What was wrong with everybody today?
He thought.
He had had enough — time to get these people under control.
He spoke as soothingly as he could.

“Now, Rachel, I do believe you’re jealous of the time I spend with him. Well just to make it up to you, I brought you something.”

He had planned on wrapping it and giving it to her another time… Still — given the circumstances, now seemed a better idea…

He brought the pint of rum from his coat pocket. From the moment she saw it, the fears of a few moments before seemed forgotten.

“You know I’m not supposed to do this, Rachel, and I was gonna wait until Christmas but…”

He handed her the bottle and she accepted it with reverent hands. Her eyes glassed over with emotion.

“You’re a wonderful man, Frank. God bless you.”

Her gaze floated adoringly from the bottle to Frank and then back to the bottle. He still hadn’t let go and she adjusted her position and tightened her grip on it.

“Now I don’t wanna hear any more stories about old Eli, you hear?” He said with a lightly reprimanding tone before he released it into her grasp.

Her gaze remained fixed on the bottle when a loud pounding sounded at the door and then Fernando’s voice outside.

“Hey, Frank? Hate to interrupt again but you better get out here!”

Now what?
Frank thought as he moved to the door and paused to make sure Rachel had time to safely stash the illegal contraband in her dresser drawer. He opened it to find Fernando looking almost as rattled as Rachel had been earlier.

“I don’t know what you said to old Eli, man, but he started fadin’ the second you left. I think he’s gonna croak.”

Was this a joke? Was Fernando trying to exact his revenge for their earlier treatment of him? — No, there was nothing here to suggest anything other than complete sincerity.
Frank felt like he’d been punched in the stomach.

“Bullshit.” He replied. “He looked fine when I left a few minutes ago…”

Fernando shook his head solemnly.

“Not anymore he don’t.”

***

Eli lay absolutely stiff on his bed, now in his best suit and tie (those that he had prepared when Frank had last been with him), his hat perched at his preferred rakish angle on his head.

Frank leaned over him and started at the drastic change in his appearance from just a few minutes before. Eli’s skin was suddenly a grayish hue and his features were now sunken — the flesh drawn tight against the bone — more reminiscent of an Egyptian mummy than a living person. Only his eyes remained lively and bright and they lit up when Frank came within view.

“What’s happened to you..?” Frank mumbled. “What’s going on..?!?”

Frank took a seat on the bed next to him and addressed Fernando and a nurse who remained motionless in the doorway.

“Can I have a minute alone with him?” He asked.

They somberly nodded and exited quietly into the hall.

Frank glanced around the room. Outside it was a nice bright sunny day; something that to him seemed completely incongruous with all the mayhem that was going on inside this hospital today. Bright shafts of sunlight streamed across the bed from the opposite window and across Eli’s face, a face now so strangely withered and skeletal.
What was going on here?
Frank thought
. What was wrong with this place today?

Eli suddenly beckoned Frank closer with the tiniest bob of his head and a slight twitch of his long-fingered hand and Frank jumped, startled. It was amazing that Eli could move at all when he looked so obviously weak and faded…

A hiss of air escaped from deep inside him and his almost lipless mouth trembled.
Eli was trying to speak!
Frank slid closer and leaned down and put his ear close enough to hear — and one of Eli’s boney hands shot up and clutched his face. The thin fingers turned Frank’s head so that they were staring eye-to-eye from a rancid breath away.

Eli spoke with great difficulty, voice a hoarse whisper — and punctuated the two words he spoke with fierce jabs of his other hand’s stiff index finger into Frank’s stomach.

“
Remember, Franklin
…” He grated out.

Frank waited, his face squeezed in a talon-like vice grip — but nothing more came. Frank struggled to speak.

“Remember… what, Eli..?” He finally managed through pinched cheeks.

Eli’s mouth twisted into a thin smile, the veins on his neck standing out like cables. The sunlight in the room seemed to dim for a moment as Frank squirmed to get free from the dying man’s grasp.
What is this? What’s happening?

And then Eli’s strength abruptly gave out and his grip released— His head fell back to the pillow and the light returned to normal in the room. His dead eyes remained fixed on Frank, that small smile still frozen on his lips.

Frank got shakily to his feet, his mind in a daze. His stomach hurt where Eli had poked him and his thoughts were a swirling mess.
Remember what? — There’s no way it could’ve been about… C’mon! — The old guy must’ve been delusional!
…
And what was that darkness? Clouds passing overhead —- It must’ve just been clouds passing overhead…

He moved past Fernando and the nurse in the hall as if in a dream…
What made him go so fast..? I don’t get it….He was fine…Five goddamn minutes ago he was fine..!

He found himself in his old VW bug without even remembering how he got there or when he had even unlocked the door. His head felt like it was wrapped in gauze — the events were murky and surreal and he just couldn’t seem to sort out the details in the proper order of all that had happened…Only one thought was clear and stark —
Eli was dead — He had made the promise and died, as if that’s what he was waiting for before he made his final departure…

Night and Day Cemetery was about the smallest and ugliest cemetery Frank had ever seen and on this particular Tuesday, with the looming rain clouds and the chill wind pushing rustling trash through the sparse headstones, it looked even worse.

The cemetery was tucked into a small part of Inglewood, wedged between two rundown industrial buildings covered with graffiti and next to a vacant piece of land piled with discarded furniture, appliances, and trash. Frank had had a hard time finding it, not expecting it to be in an area like this. Even the plastic sign out front was ugly; discolored and cracked with the “g” and “h” missing so that it read “Ni__t and Day Cemetery”.

Frank drove past the rusting gates that were propped open by cinder blocks and down the badly cracked asphalt road to the squat bunker-like operations building. His cheap plastic dash compass was spinning away randomly and he tried not to think about the odd circumstances of Eli’s death or his own part in this strange scenario but coming here now made that impossible. Somewhere in the back of his mind the old adage kept echoing “Be careful what you wish for…” and it was inherently laced with a measure of menace that made the hairs on the back of his neck lift. It conveyed a foreboding — He had desperately wanted to capture the creepy notion of a dying man that had promised to come back after death and that’s exactly what he had gotten — and now it felt terribly wrong — as if he had transgressed against nature.

The road ended almost immediately behind the building and there were five parking spaces, two taken by cars that were so old and rusty, they appeared to have been abandoned. Frank parked and felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift again.
Two cars?
He thought.
If one was for whoever was handling the ceremony and provided that the other wasn’t actually abandoned, it meant there was only one mourner besides him…
Could Rachel have been right about nobody liking the guy? Ridiculous — Eli was incredibly nice and charming...!

Frank exited his VW and from the parking area, he could easily see across the tiny cemetery to where a clergyman stood at the head of the gravesite. One other person stood in attendance.
It was confirmed then
, he thought.
Only one other mourner — Only one!
He put his head down against the wind, walked briskly towards them and arrived in a matter of moments.

He stood opposite the other attendee and looked down into the hole. The cheap wooden casket was already in the ground — no lowering device or pulleys in evidence — this was obviously too low budget an affair for that. Frank kept his head lowered respectfully while the ancient clergyman mumbled a few words from the bible by rote, barely audible above the whipping wind. He seemed in a hurry to get out of the cold and raced through the passage without any pretence of feelings or emotional connection to the deceased. Frank stole a glance at the other attendee across the chasm, trying to be discreet. He was short and barrel-chested, with a scrubbly round face and completely bald head except for wild strings of hair that fluttered at the sides. Even at a glance Frank took him for an alcoholic — his ruddy complexion and the swollen red bulb on the end of his nose as well as the puffy bags under his eyes all seemed clear identifiers…He huddled in a parka that looked as though it had been donated from the Goodwill and was possibly not even for a man (for a boy? A woman?).

The clergyman finished his task and quickly put the bible and his hands into his pockets. He gave Frank and the other attendee a slight nod and strode away for the squat building without even as much as an Amen.

Frank was surprised —
When would they bury the casket? Where were the grave diggers?
His face must have reflected his concern because the man opposite stared at him with an odd look of interest.

“Know him well, did you?” The man asked.

Frank shook his head and answered in a low voice as though afraid to disrespect the dead man sealed in the box just below them.

“Not well… But what I knew, I liked.”

The man opposite looked at him even more strangely.

Frank paused and then ventured: “Are you a relative?”

“Not that I’ll admit to. Came to pay expenses, nothin’ more.”

The man gave him one last harsh look (disdain?), turned abruptly, and hurried away.

Frank watched him go, puzzled. The sky made a deep rumbling growl and it abruptly started to rain.

***

The hospital seemed a completely different place to Frank when he returned; colder and more somber. Whatever life and luster there had been in the place seemed gone and his associations were now darker and tinged with melancholy. Even the hospital itself seemed steeped in gray rather than beiges and off-beiges.

He wanted this to be a quiet and unnoticed hit-and-run, get in and get out — No awkward goodbyes or getting into why he was leaving or where he was going… He’d been careful to pick lunch hour so that he wouldn’t run into many of the staff (none if he could help it).

He strode to the back of the Nurse’s station to the desk Katherine had assigned him when he had first taken this job. At the time, he’d thought he would be there a lot of the time and had brought the typical odds and ends he guessed he would need. Now he quickly packed the unused small radio, pencil sharpener, pens and pencils, and multi-pack of post-it notes into the cardboard box he’d brought and was back down the main corridor and almost to the lobby in a flash. So far, so good — he’d been lucky — the only ones he’d passed had been too far gone to either notice, recognize, or remember him and it seemed he’d made a clean get-away. He had his shoulder against the front door and was just pushing it open when Fernando called out to him from down the hall.