Chapter Twenty-Five

She could see herself. There was an odd reality to the image. There was no mirror to give it to her, and yet, there she was. If she were looking through the lens of a camera, this is what she would have seen: her face planted in the sandy bottom of some body of water. The water was pale blue, bordering on turquoise, as if underwater lighting had been used. Her dark hair flowed behind her, a medusa of waving black locks, lifting and twisting in the water’s current. Her eyes were open, and her nose was buried in the sand. She could not see her body. She knew her thoughts, which were rational enough to tell her she could drown within minutes. Her thoughts told her she needed to turn over, that the struggling was in vain because she was making her body move the wrong way. She needed to go up, to reclaim the air that would prevent her from dying. And yet she struggled, moving downward, burying her face deeper and deeper in the sandy bottom. Rational thought told her to turn over, but whenever she tried to do so, she found she couldn’t. There existed within her a dull panic, a certainty that her lungs would become iron bands across her chest, and in the end, she would open her mouth, filling her lungs with water and sand.

Helene awakened from this troubled image, sweating. For a moment, and only a moment, she had forgotten what had happened before she fell into this fitful slumber. And then it all came back: the intruder in the darkness, the flash of bright light, and finally, seeing Timothy. Timothy, who had been dead and buried for years. She tried to move and couldn’t, and then she recalled when she had first heard of his death. It had come to her as lightning, striking swiftly and surely, the harbinger of the life that was to come, a life in which she was a prisoner of her own depression.

It was August. Chicago may boast bone-numbing wind chills and feet of snow in the winter, but the summers can often be tropical, with highs hovering around one hundred degrees and the humidity at the same level. Helene had been in a different place then. Life was far from good, but she still had her friends and some semblance of a life. She played tennis, she swam, she didn’t drink nearly as much. When she returned home from shopping, the light on her answering machine was usually blinking. Her mailbox held postcards and letters.

The phone call had come in the morning. Helene, in her air-conditioned refuge of a house, had just finished breakfast, her waffles accompanied by Vivaldi on her favorite classical music station, WFMT. The announcer had just informed her that the day’s highs could break a record and warned that the elderly and those in poor health should stay indoors. Inside her air-conditioned sanctuary, the day outside looked falsely pleasant: a bright blue sky, with just a few strands of cirrus, the sun making everything outside look bright and clean if one didn’t look too closely at the grass, which was turning brown in spots. The sun also made a great contrast, a play of light and shadow that was remarkable. Blinding brightness merged with deep darkness under the trees.

When the phone rang, Helene was just loading her breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. Expecting it to be her friend Claire, with whom she had a lunch date for later in the day, Helene was completely unprepared for the call. Later she would think that no one is ever prepared for sudden bad news and the way it can turn one’s life inside out. One never knows what awaits around this or that corner.

“Hello.” Helene’s voice was cheerful, sounding almost decades younger than the voice she now possessed, one scarred by too many cigarettes and a desire not to be noticed.

It wasn’t Claire. It was a man who identified himself as Michael Shaunessy, with the Chicago Police Department. Helene thought at first he was soliciting for donations or even calling to question her about a break-in that had occurred earlier in the week down the road.

Such innocent concerns were not to last long. “Ma’am, do you have a nephew by the name of Timothy Bright?”

Helene paused. She and Timothy had not been on speaking terms in many years. What now? What had he done now? And how much bail would be required to get him out of jail? Would she need to cancel her day’s plans to go down to some godforsaken precinct?

“Yes, he’s my nephew. Is something wrong?”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to have to do this over the phone…” The officer paused then, and Helene’s nerves tingled. Everything went tight within her. Gone were the mundane concerns of the day.

“Has something happened to him?” she rushed out, breathless and her heart beginning to pound.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to have to be the one to inform you, but a body fitting your nephew’s description was found early this morning in his apartment.”

“Oh God.” Suddenly Helene forgot all the problems the two of them had had in the recent past. All she could think of was how much she loved him. In anything other than name, he was her son. She had raised him, and a mother’s worst fear was hearing that her child had died before her. “What happened to him?”

“It appears that he was killed.”

“No. Are you sure?”

“Well, ma’am, we have every reason to believe this is your nephew. However, I would need you to make a positive ID. Do you think you can do that?”

“You mean it might not be him?” Helene was suddenly hopeful. No, more than hopeful, she was certain this was all the result of some grim mix-up, that the body discovered was one of Timothy’s lovers, never mind how he’d ended up in Timothy’s apartment or the role Timothy might have played in his death. This had to be the answer. Timothy could not be dead. He just couldn’t be. She would have sensed it.

“I wish I could say so. But we’re almost certain this is your nephew. Making the ID is probably nothing more than a formality, but we have to do it. Now, do you think you can help us out, or is there someone else we should call?”

“No, no. I’ll do it. I want to see.” Helene was sure she would walk into the morgue and see the body of some other, yet similar, young man.

“We’ll send a car around for you. Can you be ready in about a half hour?”

Helene was about to tell him she would drive herself but then thought better of it. Some part of her rational mind was still functioning, and that part wondered how much longer it could maintain itself. Deep down, she knew this was Timothy, but denial overruled her and allowed her to cling to the hope that this was all some dreadful mistake. It also delayed the despair and the pain of loss which that tiny rational part told her would come eventually.

Before he hung up, Helene asked the officer, “What’s happened to him?”

“We can discuss that when I pick you up.”

“No, I want to know now!”

“Please, ma’am. It’ll be better if I brief you in the car.”

“But…”

“I’m leaving the station now. I’ll see you within the half hour.”

And then the line went dead.

*

Helene was tied to a chair in her den, one of the ladder-back chairs from her breakfast set. Timothy had wrapped her in rope, pinning her arms to her sides, her ankles painfully welded to the hard oak of the chair legs.

He’d said nothing. And when Helene persisted in demanding an explanation, he withdrew a roll of duct tape from the large black bag he had brought with him.

“Do you want me to use this?”

“No, but….”

“Then shut up. One more word and you’ll find yourself unable to talk.”

Helene had acquiesced. She had no choice. Terror threatened to send her screaming and gibbering over sanity’s brink. But for a while, shock kept her levelheaded, numb. Having a dead person tie one up and breathe foul breath in one’s face tends to remove emotion.

Outside, the day’s gray light had faded. Long shadows fell across the beige carpeting of her den. How long had she been sitting here? It must be hours now. She turned her head and gazed out the window. The sky was purple near the top, but the sun still peeked, a caul-covered golden ball, over the horizon, making the trees, now almost bereft of leaves, blackened silhouettes. Absurdly, she craved a cigarette and a Bloody. Food was far from her thoughts, even though she hadn’t eaten since the night before.

Timothy was somewhere in the house. Occasionally, she could hear a footstep or a drawer being opened. Once she heard the TV click on, listened to canned laughter, an argument, a scream, sports scores being announced and then abrupt silence.

What kinds of programs do the dead enjoy?

That awful day back in August, Officer Shaunessy had stood with her outside the stainless steel doors of the morgue. The air there in the basement was cool, causing goose bumps to rise on Helene’s bare arms. She didn’t want to go into that room that housed the dead, didn’t want to be faced with the prospect of having what little vestige of hope she retained ripped away.

He gave her a sympathetic smile. Helene wondered how many times before this balding, going-to-overweight man had been in this situation, how many hysterical loved ones he had supported on his beefy arm when they looked down at the violent end of a life. He said, “This won’t take long. One quick look and I’ll drive you home. Is there someone you can call? Someone who can come and stay with you?”

“Officer, we don’t even know if that’s necessary yet.”

She caught the policeman’s condescending look, a look tinged with sadness. Oh yes, he had been here before.

“Are you ready to go in?”

Helene snapped at him. “No, of course I’m not ready! I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready, whatever the hell that means. Is anyone you bring down here ever ready?”

The officer nodded. “Point taken.” He cleared his throat. “Should we go in now?”

Helene looked once more at the doors, and a churning rose up in her stomach. She was afraid she would be sick. She swallowed the burning bile at the back of her throat and took a deep breath. “Let’s get this over with.”

The officer held the door open for her and followed her inside.

The morgue was just like she had expected, just like in the movies and the TV detective shows. Several stainless steel tables held bodies covered with crisp white sheets. A couple even had feet sticking out at the bottom of the sheet, tagged with cardboard identifiers. Along one wall were banks of large, heavy drawers, kind of like filing cabinets. File this one under c for car accident, this one under s for stabbing, this one under g for gunshot… Oh, stop it!

“Where is he?” Helene’s voice came out in a tremble, wavering. Her legs suddenly felt weak. She feared she would faint and wanted nothing less than this public display of weakness.

The officer led her to the table farthest from them. He gripped the top of the sheet in one of his hands. He looked at Helene, waiting.

“Just go ahead.” Her voice was a whisper, barely a croak.

He pulled back the sheet, and Helene’s hand went over her mouth, holding in a scream, lowering its impact to a gasp. The room seemed to move for an instant, and Helene grabbed the steel table for support, then snatched her hand away.

The officer began to put the sheet back, and she slapped his hand away. “No! I’m not ready yet.” Helene leaned closer, peering down. The blond hair hung back, away from his face, lank, dull, almost devoid of color. His eyes were closed, almost shriveled, and around each one was dark purple tissue, savagely bruised. The lower lip was cut, and another bruise ran along the jawline. “He’s been beaten.”

Helene hadn’t asked in the car what had happened to Timothy. She had suddenly not wanted to know, and the officer, she thought, was relieved not to have to talk about it.

Shaunessy nodded. “I’m afraid so. Ma’am, I have to ask you, for the record, is this your nephew, Timothy?”

Helene shook her head, wanting to wail and holding it in. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Yes.”

*

“So, Auntie, what are you thinking about?”

His appearance in the room startled her, and she stared at him, her eyes wide. The contrast of seeing him alive and, in memory, dead, was almost too much. She actually wished for the comfort of insanity, wished she could just go catatonic, released from this sudden hell which was worse than anything she had ever known. She had never experienced this before, but she was at a complete loss for words…almost like forgetting how to speak.

Timothy walked up to her, grinning. She thought he was going to kiss her. His hand whipped out so fast she had no time to prepare herself for the slap that came. It didn’t even sting until a few seconds afterward, when her mind had a chance to register what had happened.

“I asked you a question, Aunt Helene.”

“If you must know, I was remembering when I went down to the morgue to identify your body.”

He laughed at that, threw back his head and laughed, his sides shaking and his face flushing scarlet. He reined in his merriment. “Must have been quite an ordeal for you.”

Again, Helene could think of nothing to say. Even if she could, she wasn’t sure she could coordinate the muscles in her tongue, mouth, and jaw enough to speak. She wanted to ask him what was going on, to offer her some sort of rational explanation for what had happened. This just simply could not be. She had been inches from his bruised face in the morgue. She had attended his funeral and had stood at the coffin on another hot day in August, leaning over to whisper a prayer for his soul, trying not to look too closely at the heavily made-up face and the hair that was combed the wrong way. She had kissed his cold cheek. She had endured the flashes of cameras and the hushed voices in the background, trying to swallow her shame and grief in the presence of the media and ghoulish strangers who wanted a look at the murdered man.

“How can you be alive?” she managed to whisper.

“Who said I was?” His manner was completely wrong. He was breezy, almost cheerful. Helene thought he was enjoying himself.

She wanted to reach out and touch his flesh, to see if it gave way beneath the pressure of her fingers, if the blood would rush back in where she had gripped him, wanted more to see if the flesh was warm. She stared at his chest and noted that it moved as he took in air and breathed it out again.

Do ghosts breathe?

She remembered the slap; the hand had felt real, alive. Perhaps ghosts aren’t ectoplasm, as she had read in countless gothic stories; perhaps they come back as real people.

It couldn’t be. This person couldn’t be her nephew, he couldn’t.

Helene wished she could make herself believe this was an imposter. But she knew Timothy’s face, his stance, his walk, just as much as any mother knows those things about her son.

This was Timothy, of that there could be no doubt. She wondered, if she went to Rosehill, if she’d find the place where he was buried yawning open, the grave a dark and desecrated hole, the earth in an untidy pile beside it.

He leaned close to her and kissed her. Helene was too surprised to recoil. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered.

And then he was gone, and Helene was left to her ponderings in the darkness, her tongue growing dry and thick in her mouth.