A Strange and Savage Garden Read online

  He’d said something to her in the dark place, hadn’t he? The memory of his words was already becoming fuzzy. She wasn’t sure she—

  Now listen close, because I don’t repeat myself. First off, despite everything you might believe to the contrary, you’ve been a good daughter and granddaughter, hear? Second, pick up the rock and put it in your pocket.

  She frowned. There was something else…

  Got one last thing to say: look in your glove box.

  Weird. But then, that’s how dreams were, right? They hardly ever made sense.

  She took her keys out of her pocket, inserted the car key into the ignition and started the engine. She pressed the brake and reached for the gearshift—but then paused before putting the car in D.

  She looked at the glove box and wondered.

  “Don’t do it,” she told herself. “Only an idiot would look.”

  She hesitated a half-dozen more seconds before taking her hand off the shifter handle and reaching for the glove box. She flipped the black plastic catch, and the heavy door fell open. Inside were the operator’s manual, the registration, insurance papers, some napkins from fast-food restaurants, and on top of them all, a small black lacquer box.

  She looked at the object for a long moment before removing it with trembling fingers. Its surface was smooth, and despite the desert heat, cool. It was a jewelry box, she guessed, though a small one that fit easily in the palm of her hand. It was rectangular with rounded edges and a dome-shaped top. Pictures of cranes and bamboo adorned the sides, making the box seem Japanese. She held it up to her face to inspect it more closely and caught a faint whiff of spice. Ginger, maybe, or perhaps something more exotic that she couldn’t name.

  She held the box for several moments, watching it closely, half-expecting it to vanish any second. But it wasn’t a hallucination. It was quite solid, quite real.

  Did that mean Johnny Divine was real, too? She didn’t own a box like this and certainly hadn’t put it in the glove box. She didn’t see how anyone else could’ve put it there during her trip without her knowing—anyone but Johnny Divine, that is. But if he was real…she decided not to think about that right now. She wanted to see what was inside the box.

  She opened the lid.

  Or rather, she tried to. There were small hinges in back and an obvious seam running around the sides and front of the box, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t pry open the lid. There was no keyhole, so it wasn’t locked. The damn thing just refused to open.

  After a while, she gave up in frustration and started to throw the box out the window and let the desert have a crack at opening it, but she hesitated. Finally, she put the object back into the glove box and closed the door.

  As she drove away from Joe’s Gas & Gulp, she thought she heard the faint sound of an old man’s laughter, but she told herself it was only her imagination and kept driving.

  It should be obvious what killed your father, child. You did.

  Harsh words, and untrue, at least in a medical sense. On the way to the church, her brother had whispered the real cause of Dad’s death in her ear—an embolism, the word sounding exotic and without meaning to her, like a term from high mathematics. But leave it to her grandmother to use her son’s death as another opportunity to make her granddaughter feel guilty for leaving.

  A line of sweat traced the curve of Lauren’s spine and ended in a pool at the small of her back. She hadn’t been certain that her sun dress was appropriate for a funeral, had planned to change into something else, but back at the house Grandma had told her to leave it on, they were late enough as it was, and now she was glad. The church windows were closed, and the atmosphere inside was oppressive—in more ways than one, she thought ruefully. She knew it wasn’t exactly the height of summer yet, but would it have hurt to open…?

  A sudden wave of dizziness passed over her, and her vision began to gray at the edges. She thought for a moment that she might pass out, and she took hold of her brother’s elbow to steady herself. Mark gave her a look that was a mixture of concern and irritation, and she gave her head a slight shake to let him know that she was okay, even if she wasn’t certain she was. She didn’t want to disrupt the ceremony. She owed her family that much, at least.

  She wiped her forehead with her fingers, but all she succeeded in doing was smear the sweat around. Getting through this was going to be hard enough without having to fight off heat exhaustion. She wondered how scandalized everyone would be if she interrupted the ceremony and asked Pastor Albaugh if she could open—

  She blinked, suddenly confused. The windows were open, every last one of them. But she’d been so certain they were closed! Was she so upset that she was starting to see things that weren’t there?

  What do you mean, “starting”? What about Joe’s Gas & Gulp? What about Johnny Divine?

  A small breeze wafted through the church then. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t cool, but it was a damn sight better than no breeze at all, and Lauren decided not to worry about why she’d thought the windows had been closed—grief or mental illness, it didn’t matter. She was just grateful they were open.

  She sat in the front pew, Mark on her right, Grandma on her left, her mother on the other side of her brother. Grandma turned to look at her, a hint of a scowl on her face. Lauren gave her a questioning look, but Grandma was no longer looking at her, was instead looking past her at the windows. The open windows. Her scowl deepened, but then she returned her gaze to Lauren and smiled. She patted her granddaughter’s hand and turned her attention back to the pastor. Lauren felt she had missed something, but exactly what, she didn’t know.

  “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall not die forever.” Pastor Albaugh intoned the words with the proper solemnity from behind the simple wooden lectern that served as his pulpit. He wore a black suit and a string tie, but his shirt collar was too tight. Fleshy jowls spilled over the collar, and his face was beet red. Lauren wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a stroke any minute, turning the ceremony into a burial built for two.

  No jokes! she scolded herself. That’s your father lying in that coffin up there!

  The coffin was black with a glossy surface. In a strange way, it reminded her of the jewelry box she’d gotten from Johnny Divine. Though she hadn’t looked at the damn thing since she’d stuck it in the glove compartment of her car, she could see it clearly in her mind’s eye, could feel the smooth, cool surface beneath her fingers. She felt a sudden longing to stand up, walk out of the church (and to hell with what anyone thought) and go check on the box to see if it were still there, still real—a longing so strong it was almost like a physical need—but she denied it. What did she care about a stupid little jewelry box right now? She could check on it later. Right now, her place was here.

  “As we brought nothing into this world, neither may we carry anything out of this world. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Even as it hath pleased the Lord, so cometh things to pass: blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  Murmurs from the congregation, barely audible. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

  They were all here, the entire populace of Trinity Falls. Lauren couldn’t decide if being able to fit everyone who lived in town into a single church (which happened to be the only church) was a good thing or not. She knew them all—all those over the age of eleven, anyway. There was Mr. Martindale, who owned and operated the grocery store…Mrs. Haney, who served as the town’s postmaster (postmistress?)…Mrs. Kauffman, who taught her Latin in high school…and so many more. Some she knew only by name, some she knew almost as well as her own family. But of all the faces present, there was one she wanted to see more than any other. A very special face.

  “Most merciful savior, deliver us not into the bitter pain of eternal death. Thou knowest, Lord, th
e secrets of our hearts. Shut not thy merciful eyes to our prayers: but spare us Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and most merciful savior, thou most worthy judge eternal. Suffer us not at our last hour for any pains of death to fall from thee.”

  She kept sneaking backward glances at the congregation, trying to spot—and there he was, standing way in the back by the door, half-hidden in shadow. Stephen Eardley.

  She suppressed an urge to wave to him. From this distance, and with his face in shadow, she couldn’t tell whether he was looking at her or not, but she thought (hoped) he might be.

  A sharp elbow in her ribs, then, “Pay attention, child!” her Grandma hissed. “This is your own father’s funeral!”

  Suddenly shamed, Lauren turned around like an obedient child, settled her hands on her lap and put all her attention on Pastor Albaugh, whose face was even redder than before. Evidently the mild breeze coming in through the open windows wasn’t—

  The windows were closed now. Or maybe they were still closed, maybe they’d never been open at all. Maybe she’d just imagined they’d been open.

  Lauren glanced at her grandmother and saw her face was composed and expressionless. No, not completely expressionless. A small smile played at the corners of her mouth—a knowing, almost smug smile. But then it was gone, if it had ever truly been there at all. One more thing to chalk up to her overactive imagination.

  Lauren thought then of the strange vision she’d experienced back at the house, when they were all sitting in the kitchen and eating Grandma’s BLTs: the double image of her mother, both as she was now and as a misshapen thing of earth and wood. She looked at her mother, eyes red and moist, sodden tissue held up to her nose, Mark’s arm around her shoulders for comfort. No double-image now, just a picture of a woman wracked by grief. Maybe she was losing it, Lauren thought. There were the dreams…Johnny Divine…the jewelry box…the weird vision…and now opening and closing church windows…

  “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he flieth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succor but of thee, O Lord, which for our sins justly art displeased?”

  Grandma nodded in agreement and, as if taking a cue, the rest of the congregation began nodding, too. All save Lauren.

  The pastor bowed his head, then lifted a worn Bible off the lectern and stepped back. A door behind him opened and black-robed figures began to walk into the church, shuffling slowly forward on sandaled feet.

  Lauren felt a sick fluttering in her stomach. It was time for the Offertories to sing.

  She was grateful the Offertories hadn’t accompanied them to the burial site. She didn’t think she could stand any more of their half-singing, half-chanting. They were still out there somewhere, walking through the town in their heavy robes despite the heat, continuing on their never-ending circuit of Trinity Falls and the surrounding environs. But at least she didn’t have to hear them. Their eerie vocalizations had been one thing she definitely had not missed in the last eleven years.

  Her father’s coffin lay at the bottom of a neatly dug grave, the lid closed and sealed tight. No burial vault for him, though, no extra shelter to protect against seeping water and burrowing insects. Burials were a simple affair in Trinity Falls—you put someone in a box, dug a hole, tossed them in, then filled the hole. The End. It had something to do with the church—but then, everything in town had something to do with the church, one way or another. The body must return to the earth from whence it came, yada-yada-yada. Embalming fluid was only used when the dead couldn’t be buried right away, such as when the burial had to wait for a wayward daughter to return home from the other side of the country. It was all superstitious nonsense as far as Lauren was concerned, but it really didn’t matter. Vault or no vault, her father would be just as dead either way.

  They stood at the edge of the open grave—Lauren, Mark, their mother and grandmother—looking down at the top of the coffin as if they expected to see something there, a final message from their departed loved one, perhaps, letters scratched into the cheap, soft wood. Vance Carter hadn’t been a particularly talkative man in life, and Lauren couldn’t imagine him passing along anything more than a simple “Goodbye.” The others were gone, the pastor included, leaving them to their grief. The cemetery groundskeeper (in this case that was a fancy term for gravedigger) would wait patiently until they were finished paying their final respects before driving the small bulldozer up to the grave and beginning the work of filling in the hole.

  A wave of nausea and dizziness hit Lauren, and she swayed forward, back, forward. She feared she might fall into the grave and land on top of her father’s coffin (and wouldn’t that be the ultimate funeral faux pas, a quite literal false step?). She reached toward Mark, grabbed his elbow to steady herself and struggled to fight off the dizziness.

  Her fingers black with fresh earth, soil jammed beneath her nails. Pain between her legs—a physical ache, yes, but the sense of loss, of utter and complete emptiness, is far worse. The front of her dress smeared with blood, so much blood, too much, dark and thick.

  She’s kneeling, sobbing as she digs, her tears pattering the ground, soaking into the soil. Beside her, lying on its side, facing away from her so she doesn’t have to look at its face—or worse, feel that it is looking at her—is a tiny still form, smooth skin slick with blood. Her blood. A distant corner of her mind, one that’s holding back and observing it all, notes that it’s a hot day and flies should have gathered by now, drawn by the blood. They should be crawling all over the little one, hairy little legs sticky-wet, tasting, probing, searching for nooks and crannies where they can deposit their eggs. But there are no flies, not a one. They don’t dare come near this little one. Even in death, he’s special.

  Soon, her hands are too sore to continue digging, finger joints ache, and her nails are cracked and bleeding. She figures the hole is large enough, and she turns and reaches for the small dead thing that she can’t bring herself to think of as her baby.

  “It’s okay, Lauren. Let it all out; you’ll feel better afterward.”

  Lauren sat on the ground, her relatives crouching around her, faces concerned. Her grandmother’s face held an extra emotion, though, barely concealed: satisfaction.

  Lauren was sobbing, tears streaming down her face, chest heaving with great, violent lurches. But despite the intensity of her crying, she felt disassociated from her own grief, as if she were shedding someone else’s tears. The memory (was it a memory, or just another damn hallucination, no more real than a massive, bestial thing that pursued her through the woods, or a silver-eyed black man sitting in front of a deserted diner, waiting, waiting…?) had been so intense. She could still feel the soil caked beneath her fingernails, still smell the mingled odors of freshly turned earth and drying blood.

  But that never happened! She’d never had a baby, stillborn or otherwise, and even if she had, she’d certainly never bury the poor thing in an unmarked grave in the middle of the woods, alone and forgotten.

  Her mother’s hand on her shoulder. “I know it hurts, sweetheart, but we have to try to remember that there was a reason the good Lord called your father home to heaven.”

  Lauren looked up at her mother, patted her hand and smiled, grateful for her reassurance even if it was misplaced. It was her mother’s simple act of bravery, of putting aside her own grief to attend to her daughter’s, that helped Lauren to get control of herself. The tears slowed and she found the strength to get to her feet once more.

  Her grandmother stepped forward and took Lauren’s hands. “Remember, there are no purposeless events, child. Everything happens for a reason. We just may not know what that reason is at the time.” She shrugged. “Maybe we’ll never know, but we have to have faith that it’s all part of God’s plan for the world.”
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br />   Lauren wondered if God’s plan included the loss of her sanity, but she gave her grandmother’s hands a squeeze and nodded.

  Grandma gazed into Lauren’s eyes for another long moment, and Lauren had the impression she was searching for something, but what, she had no idea. Finally, Madelyn Carter released her granddaughter’s hands and said, “We’d best be getting on back to the house, I suppose. Folks’ll be stopping by to pay their respects and offer their sympathies soon, and we should be there to receive them.”

  Mark snorted. “Feed them, you mean.”

  “Hush,” Grandma admonished, but without any anger. “Let’s go.”

  She led the way (didn’t she always? Lauren thought) and the others fell in line behind her. They trudged through the nameless cemetery—it didn’t need a name as it was the only one in town—past rows of neatly arranged headstones, all bearing surnames Lauren was familiar with: Mote, Surrey, Zimmerman and dozens of others. It was almost as if this place wasn’t merely a repository for the bodies of the dead but an archive of the town’s history as well. And now that archive would include a headstone with the name Carter on it.

  As they drew near the wrought-iron gates, a thought occurred to Lauren. As far as she knew her father was the first Carter to be buried here. She had no memories of ever coming here to visit a relative’s grave, of leaving flowers on Memorial Day as so many of the other families in town did.

  She opened her mouth, intending to ask her grandmother where their other relatives were buried, but then she changed her mind. There’d been enough talk about death for one afternoon already. It would be better to wait and ask later, and maybe she’d talk to her mother instead of Grandma. Lauren had a feeling she stood a better chance of getting a straight answer that way.