The Graveyard Shift (4 page)

“Aren’t you going to call the police?” Joanna asks. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but maybe that’s what’s best. Maybe he’ll finally leave us alone, even if they just scare him a little.”

“It doesn’t sound like him. Those knocks.”

I know this sounds crazy, but they aren’t erratic, frantic. They’re calm.
Rhythmic. Practiced even. There is someone else at my door.

“I’m just going to check,” I tell her, as I lift myself up and plant a kiss on her cheek. “If it’s him, I’ll come right back and call the police.”

“Do be careful, dear.”

I skulk to
the front entry, pressing my eye to the peephole, and I see, with much relief, that George is not there. It’s a policeman, or rather two of them, and they both wear concern on their faces. The lead officer, a pudgy man with thinning hair and a mustache, arches an eyebrow as I open the door.

“Are you Kenneth Parsons?”

“I am,” I breathe.

“We’ve had a call about a disturbance,” the officer says. “We need to ask you a few questions.”
I am both excited and terrified at the same time. “Yes!” I cry. “There has been a huge disturbance! George Robinson has been here all day, and I think he means to kill me!” I feel my heart begin to race. “Please, help me.”

“Sir, can you tell us about the bloodstain on the bumper of your car?” asks a second officer, a young man with whitish blonde hair.

But I don’t understand. What does this have to do with George?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. But this man, this man is harassing me—”

I’m quickly interrupted by the lead officer. “And is it true that you have Joanna Robinson here with you?”

“Her name is Parsons now,” I say. “We’re married, but yes! He’s harassing her too!”

“So she’s here?” confirms the second officer.

“Yes, and we’re just trying to enjoy our honeymoon in peace,” I insist. Only now do I see that George is standing on the sidewalk, being restrained by two more police officers.

“I told you!” he screams. “He has her, the sick fuck!”

“Please step aside,” the blonde officer says. I do, and he brushes my shoulder gruffly as he storms inside my house. I can only assume he wants to interview my wife, to seal George’s fate.

But I am wrong.

“Jesus Christ!” a voice yells from my room. “Ron, you’ve got to see this!”

The lead officer enters our bedroom and takes the Lord’s name in vain as well. Another officer barges in the door and grabs me by the arm, slams me face first into the wall and shoves handcuffs over both of my wrists. A lot is being said. There’s so much screaming. George is crying.

“This man is trying to kill me!” I yell, but no one is listening. “He was following us around at the funeral! He’s stalking us!”

I don’t understand what’s going on until two men with a stretcher wheel Joanna out of our room plugging their noses.

“The smell was just awful in there,” the first man says. “He was using this perfume to try to mask the smell, but… it’s really bad.
Like rotten trash. Mr. Robinson, please be warned of this.”

But George pays no mind.

“My wife,” he cries, as he throws himself at her. “My wife has been returned to me.” He pauses, glances at her face, and begins to weep even harder. “My God, what has he done to you?”

He peels back the sheets to reveal a wedding dress. The wedding dress I picked for her right after the funeral. She had never wanted to change out of it. She told me this.

“Joanna!” I call out. “Please, clear this up with them! This must be a mistake!”

But they can’t hear her. They can’t hear her like I do, and she’s wheeled outside to the coroner’s van that has just arrived in my driveway. Mrs. Whitaker is beside it, her mouth agape and her skin ghostly white. She has a plate full of cookies in her hands.

“I told you,” George screams, as he points his fingers madly at me, “I told you I finally got the proof I needed. He admitted it! He ran her over, he killed her, and then he…” He chokes out these last few words. “He stole her fucking body after the funeral and brought it here to turn into his… his toy.” He leans over in the bushes and vomits.

“She’s not a toy!” I scream, thrashing against the wall. “She’s my bride! I liberated her from you, and at the funeral she called out to me! She
wanted
this!”

The police take George away and walk him into my front yard, and by now, all of my neighbors are out in their own yards staring. This doesn’t concern me. My only concern is Joanna,
being wheeled toward the county coroner’s van. Being taken away from me.

“At least let her have her perfume!” I cry, still flailing against the officer’s hands. “She loves it! It reminds her of gay Par—
ee
! We’re going to vacation there when she gets better!”

But no one is listening to me.
No one but Joanna. And I can see her smile at me one last time as the van’s rear door is pulled shut.

She’s calling out to me, and no matter what they do with her, no matter where they bury her, I will find my love and I will bring her back to me.
Right where she wants to be.

Because death can’t keep us apart.
Death will never keep us apart.

Interlude: Relativity

I've been sitting in this chair for 20 minutes now, staring through this window, wondering if they can even see me.

I can see them. I can see Macy Stadler, fidgeting with those delicate housewife hands of hers, next to the flabby fat-roll she calls a husband. She’s always looking at those hands. I wonder if it’s hard for her to look Bill in the eyes, ever since the handsome neighbor boy came along. She tells Bill he’s quite the handyman, and her appliances break a lot when he’s not home. Little Jeremy’s very good with his hands, I hear.

Now, I don’t think Bill’s stupid. I think he’s just got his priorities out of whack. For the past six months he’s been too wrapped up in dollar signs and imaginary numbers to see the pain his wife is in. I wonder if he even realizes his daughter isn’t there.

From this window, I can see Stella, too. So many people have been stuffed into this tiny brick room, and so too is Stella Leonard. Look at her; eyes pouched, watery from vodka and age. Dolled all up in her moth-eaten Sunday best, she’s almost the spitting image of her sister.

Stella has nothing, but you can find all of her possessions at various pawnshops across the city. Her sister is to thank for this—that, and an itch for cocaine that just can’t ever seem to be scratched. Stella’s always denied that her sister’s had a problem, but if you ask me, the problem wasn’t coke or pain killers or sleeping pills. It was that Stella just didn’t care enough. Not until it was too late, anyhow.

I can also see Father Andrews. He’s leaning his soul on his thick black book like a crutch, but no amount of praying is going to keep him in the good graces of the man upstairs…unless, of course, the Almighty’s got a soft spot for shepherds that like to prey upon the youth of their flock.

Father Andrews clears his throat and flops open his
Bible. He’s not on the other side of the glass with the rest of them. He’s standing two feet away, looking down at his book of words, jabbering. Even he doesn’t dare see me.

The only one who can see me is
Letty, out there, crying. That lustrous light is gone from her eyes. She’s angry with me. Disappointed in me. I want to tell her, my beautiful sister, that the blackness in her heart won’t last forever, but she’s being ushered from the room.

All of them are watching me in this chair, thinking about the daughter they lost. The sister they lost. And yet, Macy
Stadler’s just going to go back to the arms of handyman Jeremy. Bill Stadler’s going to go back to his imaginary numbers. Stella’s going to go back to her vodka and her denial. I wonder if their chairs bind them the same way mine binds me.

Before throwing the switch, a hood is placed over my head, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to see them, and they don’t need to see me. They can’t even see themselves.

I’m pretty sure I’ve become addicted to my own imagination.

It’s all I can look forward to these days. In fact, it’s all I can think about when I wake up in the broken, twin sized bed in my tin can-sized apartment, and then eat some random breakfast I won’t remember eating, before slugging down a pot of coffee I won’t remember drinking. It’s the only thing that keeps me whole. Not my youth. Not my
health, or my modest looks. Not my job. It’s either think about the magic—the dragons, the barbarians, the falling swords and the clashing shields—or think about my wife.

She should have died clasping my hand, in a plain, not-quite comfortable bed in the house we’d spent 60 years turning into a home. Not at the age of 25, in a hospital bed, surrounded only by a grieving husband, an indifferent night shift nurse, and the shrill, beeping machines that I’m still paying for monthly because I ripped them out of the goddamn wall and stomped them into bits.

And there I go, thinking about her all over again, as I lock up the door of an apartment I couldn’t care less about anyone breaking into and file off down the street toward work.

It’s funny, really. You see all these news stories about how green tea, or vitamins, or certain vegetables can lower your risk of cancer. How eating healthy and keeping active keeps you one step ahead of the grave. But what they don’t tell you is that no amount of green tea can ward off something like bone cancer. And what they also don’t tell you is that cancer sweeps in like a hurricane, and no matter how much warning you think you have, it’s never enough. There are no guidebooks, no instruction manuals, and no one to hold your hand through it. One day you’re walking your wife home from the hospital in tears, and the next moment you’re walking out of her funeral service, and the tears haven’t stopped, only now you’re wondering where the hell you go from here. It’s an answer I’m still figuring out three years later.

After my wife died, my therapist told me I should take up a few hobbies. So I took up gardening. And working out. And fighting barbarians. Again, that whole imagination thing. These days I live a lot of my life in my head, and out of all my hobbies, it’s the only one that really brings me any form of comfort. It’s the only one that makes me feel like I have any sense of control.

The day has barely begun and I’m already immersed in my thoughts, ignoring the world around me as my torn work boots clomp up the hilly sidewalk running along Line Avenue. Children are passing me by on their way to school, but they pay me no mind. They step silently off the sidewalk as I pass, like tiny soldiers interrupted mid-horseplay by the presence of their drill sergeant. When I’m daydreaming I look intimidating—eyebrows pinned low, lips pursed, nostrils flared. To them I’m some lean, muscular thug in a wife-beater and faded jeans and dirty boots off to sell drugs or beat someone up. If anyone told them I was really daydreaming about riding dragons or scaling a tower or rescuing a fair maiden, they’d probably laugh themselves hoarse. But that’s beside the point. I like the façade. It means they leave me alone.

Another gaggle of kids pass me, a trio with hair as golden as the sun—two boys, one girl—and they all smile at me in a manner that is way too upbeat for my liking.

“Hi, Robb!” chirps the girl.

“Don’t say hi! I bet he’s gonna chop you up with his axe!” taunts the first boy. The second boy slaps him in the back, utters a loud shush, and is relieved when I pretend like I heard none of it.

I just keeping walking as Ruth, Tom, and Sam continue laughing and shouting their way to school.
My employer’s children.

Before I know it I’m rounding the next street, heading up to the house on the corner. My employer, Mr. Howard, stands outside awaiting me.

“Robb,” he says to my left shoulder, not one to make eye contact with me. “Hey, how are you today?”

“I’m fine,” I breathe. We both know I’m anything but. “How are you?”

“Good, thanks,” he says. “Hey, so before you get started I just wanted to ask you something. We’re gonna be, uh, going out of town again soon. Just for like a day. You think you can watch the house?”

Let me check my schedule,
I think—these are the kind of dark thoughts my therapist does not appreciate. “I can.”

Will
smiles, simply because he thinks I don’t know what ‘go out of town’ really means. I smile back because I do.

I am Will Howard’s gardener, landscaper, and sometimes house sitter. His house is… well, special.
Haunted. Possessed. Magical. Hell, I don’t know what to call it. But as I stand here thinking about what it feels like to put my axe through the side of a dragon’s head, I know even someone like myself can’t scoff at such things as magic. The promise of magic is all that keeps me going these days.

This ‘out of town’ trip is good news for me. Will and his family will leave for a while, and by leave I mean that they’ll disappear. They’ll just vanish into thin air and then reappear in hours or sometimes days. I’d like to think they go on adventures, the kind of adventures I have in my head.
Swords. Shields. Goblins. Wizards. Saving the world. But it’s not my job to ask questions. It’s just my job to mow the lawn and trim the hedges and maintain the flowers and the pecan trees out back. And in exchange, I get my own adventures.

“Fellas,” a voice barks from the edge of the street, drawing me sharply away from my thoughts.
“Nice to see you again.”

It’s Officer Brody, staring holes into us both from behind his enormous sunglasses, of which the sun is reflecting off of them like a death ray. You see, he knows something is strange about Will Howard, his house, and his family, but Officer Brody just can’t pinpoint it. And because of this, he likes to stop by for random visits. Just last week he found the kids playing with a sword. Not a plastic sword, or a Styrofoam sword, but a sharp, tempered, steel sword, looking so old it should have been in a museum, with the tiniest snag of green flesh at the tip.
And ever since, Brody’s come by more often. A
lot
more often.

“What can I do for you, Officer?” Will
asks. His tone is friendly, but behind that is exasperation. I imagine it’s the third time in the last week he’s asked Brody this same question.

“Oh, just following up on a call,” Brody replies, as he shifts his weight on his feet. For a small town police officer he’s in decent shape—that shape not being a complete circle. He’s tall, broad
shouldered, and a little menacing in his appearance. Beneath his gelled, jet black hair is a jet black mustache snaking down into a jet black goatee. He looks like his own evil twin.

“Uh, what kind of call?”
Will asks. His eyes glance my way, and I’m not sure whether he’s glad I’m there with him or wishing I would leave.

“Oh, just some concerned folks reporting they heard a lot of screaming.
Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Will
says. “Of course. Probably just the kids being a little too rambunctious. I’ll talk to them after school.”

Brody is leaning on his feet, trying to stare into the house’s windows from the sidewalk. I’m not entirely sure what he’s trying to achieve, but after a few moments of leering he seems satisfied and takes a step back. “Okay, Will. You take care.”

He turns to leave, but before he does, he throws a glance my way. And a smile, one that’s not entirely friendly. “Hey, Robb, buddy. You check out that e-dating site I told you about?”

“No,” I grunt.

“You should really check it out, man. It’s good. You probably won’t find Mrs. Right, but you’ll find Ms. Right-Now, you know?”

I say nothing.

“We all have to move on some time,” he reminds me, and tips his hat as he circles his patrol car to the driver side door.

Will’s glancing my way to see if I’m hurt by this comment. I am, but my expression retains its indifference. It’s a mask I wear well.

“God, I can’t stand that guy,” Will says. “Y’all don’t take anything he says to heart, okay?”

I say nothing.

“Okay. Well, Robb, I’ve gotta get ready for work, but just to confirm, you’ll watch the house tomorrow, right?”

“I will.”

“Thanks. We all appreciate it.”

As
Will heads back inside the house, I step into the backyard to begin my day. It’s not much—pecan trees, a nice yard, some shrubbery that I keep well-trimmed. But my eyes are on the garage apartment situated in the far back, specifically the empty living space perched above the garage that houses my clippers, and my gloves, and my axe.

Once upon a time ago, when I first sought out the job, I asked Mr. Howard if I could stay up there. He said he didn’t want anyone living there—something about safety codes not being up to standard—but he’d be happy to let me use it to store some of my tools. I knew then he was hiding something.
A secret. And boy, what a hell of a secret it turned out to be.

You see, the irony is that Will hired me because he thought I lacked imagination. Wake up, go to work, trim plants, eat, sleep,
exist. I’m just the muscly lunkhead whose verbal vocabulary consists of standoffish, one word grunts…right? But what he didn't know was that my imagination is my everything, and inside that garage apartment it creates pure magic.

It’s calling me again—the apartment. And I can’t resist it. It’s Monday morning, and since I don’t work weekends it’s been over forty eight hours since I was last here.
Forty eight agonizing hours. I’m heading toward the garage apartment like a dead man walking toward the light of God. The kids call this room ‘The Imagination Room.’ I know this because I listen to them while I plant seeds, or prune leaves, or rake up fallen pecans. They’ve told me almost everything without saying a single word to my face. That’s the wonderful thing about children, is how much they’ll tell you when they think you aren’t listening.

I step into the tiny apartment, which is a mostly empty living room, an entirely empty bathroom, and a closet containing a few of my tools. As I approach the closet, I feel a smile creeping on my lips. Inside is my axe—a simple tool, nothing more than a metal head perched on a wooden handle. It’s often used for cutting down stray branches and chopping firewood but will today be used to cut down barbarians.

It feels so good in my hand. Lightweight. Responsive. Like it belongs there. I have no need for a sword, or a spear, or a wizard’s staff. Just my axe.

And so it may seem odd that I’m
laying down on the bare floor, closing my eyes, clutching my axe to my chest like a prom queen clutching a bouquet of flowers. It may seem odd that my nostrils are flaring as I take in the stale air of an apartment that’s hardly ever used. But by my second breath, the musk is gone. I smell the grass, and the dirt, and the lingering scent of rain. I can feel the wind pushing my hair.

When I stand I’m still clasping my axe, only my axe is longer, sturdier, with a fiery red tip. Gone is my grungy work clothing; in its place, grungy armor. I’m clad in dark leather armor and animal skins, both of which are painted in scuffs and slight tearing. They’ve held up well despite all of the battles I’ve put them through. I’ve been in many, and have not yet seen my last.

Haunted. Possessed. Magical. Again, I don’t know what it is—this room, this world—I just know that it works. I lay down in this apartment, I drift off thinking about my deepest fantasies, and then I’m here. I know it’s not real. I know with every fiber of my being that it’s just my imagination. And yet as I stand in the heart of the imperial city of Falkhaven, surrounded by dirt streets and wooden cottages and men and women in tunics and armor much as my own, it’s hard to dismiss as simple fantasy. The man who approaches me, bearded, out of breath, and pushing hot air that stinks of old ale and putrid vegetables—it feels all too real.

“Milord,” he tells me, with a curt bow, “you’ve returned. Thank the gods.”

“Have you any word of Mary?” I ask.

He shakes his long, curly black locks. “I have not, sir. I imagine she is still being held by the
Rohkai.”

I smirk, not just at his news, but because I wish I had better control of my imagination. It seems that even though my mind can create mythical creatures and warlords and entire cities, my wife is not something I can just conjure up in front of me. Believe me, I’ve tried. It all points back to the
Rohkai holding her. I don’t know what it means. I just know that I’m going to keep trying. Otherwise, what’s the point?

“They hit us hard,”
Enric says. Only now, as I glance behind him, do I see that some of the cottages have scorch marks. Hay bales are strewn into the streets. Dried blood stains coat the walls. There are less people bustling about than usual.

“Then I’ll return the favor,” I say, clenching my axe.

“The Jarl wants to see you first.”

I follow my friend
Enric through the market, past a sea of haggling vendors barking out their wares, past butchers carving the day’s selection of meats. We make our way to the stone walkway leading up to the wooden longhouse where the Jarl (or leader of this region) makes his home, along with the rest of the soldiers. I can see they’re still recovering, because they are sparse, their armor is heavily dented, and they seem weary.

“Good day, Sir Robb,” calls a bandaged soldier as I enter the longhouse.