I lay awake until the moon slipped away and the sun eased up, rose and gold and already hot.
* * *
Florida was still asleep, and so was Leonard, when I tiptoed into the kitchen and started coffee. By the time the coffee was beginning to perk, Leonard was awake. He came in wearing his gray robe and some grungy bunny-rabbit slippers. You know, those silly things with the ears on them, white cotton tails at the heels. Personally, I’ve always wanted a pair.
Leonard yawned, sat at the table. “Where’s Florida?” he said.
“Still sleeping. We were up late.”
“Contemplating the universe, of course. What’s this?”
He was pointing at his painting. After I got the coffee going, I had brought it into the kitchen and propped it up in a chair. I had the copy of Dracula on the table. I had a pencil and paper there too. I had drawn on the paper.
“I been thinking stuff over, Leonard. I believe I’ve come up with some ideas.”
“Like what?”
I poured him coffee, poured myself a cup, and said, “I’m looking at this now from your standpoint. Your uncle isn’t guilty. Once I could get myself to think that way, I began to get some ideas. That’s all they are, though, ideas.”
“Let’s hear them,” Leonard said.
“Your uncle was a fan of mysteries. He wanted to be a cop. He was a security guard. He claimed to have information regarding child murders, and wanted to have his own personal investigation with assistance from the police, but he didn’t want them in complete control. We know from what Hanson said that the child disappearances here on the East Side weren’t exactly given top priority, and now, even if someone came in and wanted to pursue them, like Hanson, it’s such an old case, it would still be a back-burner operation. We know too racial prejudice most likely affected the conclusions of previous investigators.”
“Bottom line, my uncle didn’t trust the police, but he saw himself as an investigator. It was his big chance to solve a real mystery.”
“Let’s say Illium, who was an ex-cop, met your uncle through one of his personal programs. Bookmobile, the recycling, whatever. They became friends, and they began to investigate this business. I don’t know why they began to investigate. Some little pieces of evidence got them curious, and they were bored, and they went to it. Or they found the skeleton by accident, and your uncle brought it here because he wanted to examine it, try and figure what happened. Thing is, though, if he was investigating with Illium, and they were serious about what they were doing, they must have made notes. But where are they?”
“You’re right,” Leonard said. “Uncle Chester would have made notes.”
“Let’s hold our water there and back up. Your uncle began to lose it. Alzheimer’s, not enough blood to the brain, whatever, but he began to experience problems. He got his will straight through Florida, left his stuff to you. But his thinking continued to muddle. Say he couldn’t work on the case anymore, and that just left Illium. Your uncle wanted this business solved, but it was different now. His brain was melting. He couldn’t hold his thoughts. I think that’s why you have that bottle tree out there. A part of him knew there was something corrupt about, but he couldn’t remember what.”
“So he translated it as something supernatural?”
“Something evil. If he heard about bad spirits when he was a kid, it could have come back to him as real, his mind messed up the way it was. He might have thought he was actually doing something that could protect him. And in clear moments he wanted to tell you about it, or write it down, but he couldn’t remember long enough, so the things that were important to the case became all the focus he had, and those things became symbols rather than thoughts.”
“The coupons. The book. The painting.”
“In a way, he was giving you a mystery to solve, not on purpose, but because those elements, those clues, were all that remained of his thinking on the matter. He might not even have known what those clues related to anymore, but they were important to him, and you were important, and he had enough savvy left to put those items together and have them stowed away in a safety-deposit box.”
“It really is Agatha Christie shit?”
“Let’s see what we got. The book, Dracula. I don’t think it means anything particularly. I believe your uncle was thinking about Illium. Not directly, perhaps. But the book had to do with Illium, and it merely indicates a connection.”
“Illium has, or had, the notes, is what you’re saying?”
“Could be. If he did have them, I figure whoever left him the little present of the kiddie pornography and the clothes found them and destroyed them. The coupons, now. Both Illium and your uncle had them, and they seem important, but not so important Illium’s killer took note of them. We certainly found them easy enough.”
“Meaning, if they were important,” Leonard said, “Illium’s murderer didn’t know they were.”
“Yeah. Your uncle gave some coupons to Florida to give to you, and he put some in a safety-deposit box. Illium had coupons in jars. But what’s it all mean? I haven’t come up with a thing on that.”
“The painting?”
“That one’s up to you, Leonard. Tell me about it.”
“I painted it when I was a kid, for my uncle. It’s of the old Hampstead place.”
“It’s a real place?”
“Yeah. It’s behind the house here, back in those woods. I used to go there now and then. The house was abandoned years ago. Hampsteads were white folks, and they owned all the woods back there. Used to be a couple hundred acres. The black community ended right behind the house here, where those woods begin. Guess it still ends there, but I don’t know if all that land’s still owned by the Hampsteads. They may have sold some of it. I really don’t know anything about it anymore. Just that the house was once a fine house, there was some tragedy in the family, and they moved out, but kept the land and the house, but didn’t attend to it. I been inside a couple of times. When I was a kid. Climbed through a window. It was a pretty spooky place. I don’t even know it’s still standing.”
“Better and better. Look here.” I picked up the pad and showed it to him. I had drawn a series of little rectangles within a series of lines.
“I don’t get it,” Leonard said.
“First day we came here, I saw a composition notebook on your uncle’s desk. I glanced at it. It had a drawing, or chart, or whatever, like this on it. I didn’t think much of it. I thought it was just doodling. For all I know, that’s what it was, but I suspicion it might be a note that didn’t end up with Illium. After the cops came, it disappeared. I guess they have it. Maybe they have more notes than we think, but I don’t believe so.”
Leonard studied the pad. I said, “I’m not sure I’ve remembered it exactly right, but that’s close. Does it make you think of anything?”
“A floor plan with six rectangles in it.”
“My thoughts exactly. What about the rectangles?”
“Furniture?”
“I don’t think so. But leave that for a moment. If it is a floor plan, it’s not to this house. Too many rooms. And the rectangles don’t correspond with your uncle’s furniture at all. Do you see what I’m getting at now?”
“If the coupons connect. If the book connects. Then the painting connects, or the location of it connects, and that location could go with this floor plan.”
“Right. We just don’t understand how they connect. Now, what comes in rectangles?”
“All kinds of things. A stick of gum. Books. He liked books, that could be it.”
“Proportion throws that. The rectangles are too big to be books if this is a legitimate floor plan.”
I hummed a few bars of the death march. Leonard’s eyes widened. “Graves,” he said.
“Ta-da!”
“You mean under the Hampstead place?”
“Could be.”
“I’ll be a sonofabitch.”
“When Florida wakes up, she’s going over to
see her mother. When she does, you and I are going to go take a look at the Hampstead place.”
24.
Late morning, a half-hour after Florida left, we entered the woods, Leonard carrying a shovel, me with a flashlight clipped to my belt, my remembrance of Uncle Chester’s diagram folded up in my pants pocket.
At first the going was easy, as the woods were made up mostly of well-spaced pines and there were soft paths of straw to walk on, but soon the trees sloped uphill and there were hardwoods, vines and brambles, and the pines grew closer, and the going wasn’t so good. It was humid too, and the smell from the pines and sweet gums became cloying, like being splashed with a bucket full of cheap perfume.
We scouted around until we found a little animal path and made our way down that. Traveling became easier. We startled birds and a deer. About an hour later the trail trickled out at the edge of a little dry creek bed. We didn’t cross. Leonard led along the edge of the creek and deeper into the woods. We fought our way through the vines and brambles, and finally, thorn-torn, tired and hungry, we broke into the section of woods that held the house hostage.
Leonard leaned on the shovel, “I was set up right here when I painted it. It’s in worse shape now. I don’t remember a damn thing about the insides. There were fewer trees around it then.”
The house was huge and had once been elegant. Two-story, with a porch that went all around, lots of windows and a railed upper deck, now sagging, like a dental plate hanging out of a drunk’s mouth. There were some fallen-down outbuildings nearby and a tumbled-over rock well frame, and around the old well vines twisted and young saplings sprouted.
Trees were growing close to the house, and it appeared as if they were holding it up. An oak had erupted through rotten porch boards and was crawling up the front of the place, poking a limb through a glassless window frame, like a bully poking a big finger in a sissy’s eye. The house’s lumber had gone gray as cigarette ash. At one side, a persistent hickory had grown to the height of the house and was still growing, and in the process, one humongous limb was lifting a corner of the roof as if tipping a hat.
We carefully mounted the porch, watching our step as it protested our weight. A burst of birds exited a nearby window with a noisy flutter. I said, “Shit.”
“Just yellow-bellied finches,” Leonard said. “Not known man-eaters.”
The front door was still intact, but when I took hold of the rusted doorknob, it budged only slightly before jamming. The hinges were rusted tight.
The window from which the birds had exploded was our next bet. Leonard kicked out the few remaining fragments of glass and broke apart the wood trim that had held the glass in the frame, and we climbed inside.
The room was large and decorated with vines and dust and a peeling, bubbled wallpaper that had a faded design on it that must have been colorful and jim-dandy about 1928. There was an old fireplace filled with trash from hunter and/or hobo camps. A chicken snake, big enough to play a starring role in a Tarzan movie, slithered quickly across the floor and disappeared in a gap in the wood.
The first-floor ceiling was mostly gone, and you could clearly see the roof was pocked with holes, and the shadowed sunlight through the gaps was like spoiled cheese oozing through the splits in a food grater. The flooring was also gapped, and there were sections where it was bowed up and the boards had popped and split from weathering.
We made it across and into the next room without falling through, and the flooring there was better because the ceiling was complete and less water had dampened it. The room was smaller and contained an old-fashioned chifforobe. The wood of the chifforobe had swollen and cracked. There was a bird’s nest on top of it, and dried birdshit streaked its sides. The wallpaper here was good, and you could recognize the pattern as a series of pale green shamrocks.
In the next room, the kitchen, there was a black, dust-covered wood stove with white porcelain facing, and a long table shoved up against the wall. The table was weather faded but sound, with thick carved legs that terminated in lion’s feet. Above the table, on the wall, the wallpaper—sick beige with no pattern—had water-stained itself in an interesting manner. The stain was dark and shaped like a face and there were darker dots on the face, like splash marks, and the shape of the face was familiar.
Leonard said, “The Wallpaper of Turin, or rather, of LaBorde, Texas.”
“I read once about this Mexican gal saw Jesus’s face on a tortilla,” I said, “but I think we got her beat here.”
“I don’t know,” Leonard said, “get tired of it, you can’t eat it.”
We went over to the table for a closer look. Leonard stepped back and glanced down, said, “Check out the floor.”
I saw what he meant immediately. A large section of the floor we were standing on was newer wood. It was dark, as if weathered, but it was, in fact, treated lumber. About the size of a Ping-Pong table. You looked close enough, you could see it was all of one piece. You might not have noticed it, you weren’t looking for something suspicious.
I got out the floor plan I had drawn from memory. I said, “According to this, if I recreated it right, and the basic design certainly fits this house, there are no graves at this spot.”
“Yeah, but I think, good friend, we have just found the doorway to hell.”
We got off the square of flooring, and Leonard worked the tip of the shovel into a corner of it and lifted. The square of wood creaked up. When it was high enough, I grabbed hold of it and helped raise it. It wasn’t too heavy.
We pulled the section back and looked down. It was about three feet to the ground. You could smell the dampness of the earth. The ground was packed down there, as if it were well traveled.
I lay down on the floor, leaned over the edge of the gap, and looked underneath the flooring with my flashlight. There had been a lot of new wood put under there for support. About three feet to my left there was a metal container about the size of a personal safe, pushed back against the rotten wood skirting that went around the house. I flashed the light in the hole some more, looking for snakes. I didn’t see any.
I climbed down there and got the metal box and handed it to Leonard. The box was made of tin. It was like an oversized breadbox. It rattled when I moved it. There was nothing but a slap-and-snap latch to keep you out of it.
I climbed out of the hole and watched Leonard open the box. Inside was a large Bowie knife, a small hacksaw, about a dozen child pornography magazines, a purple tablecloth, two candlesticks, and two new white candles.
I noted something was sticking out of one of the pornography magazines, an undersized page that didn’t seem to belong. I pulled it out. It was a page from the Bible. The Psalms. I checked the other magazines. Each contained a page from the Psalms.
“I’ll be damn,” Leonard said. “Read a little Psalms, whack off to kiddie porn, read a little Psalms. That’s some combination.”
I unwrapped the purple tablecloth. It was stained in the center with something crusty, and at either end there were white stains that were obviously candle wax.
“Let’s slide the lid back on the floor,” I said.
“Aren’t we going to look down there?” Leonard asked.
“Humor me. I need it to stand on.”
We put the flooring back. We stood on it, and I ran a finger through the dust on the table. I said, “The dust here is a lot thinner than the dust everywhere else. Now, watch this. I think.”
I pulled out the purple tablecloth and spread it on the table. It fit nicely. I took off my shirt and used it to pick up the candlesticks at their bases so as not to leave prints. I put one at either end of the table where the cloth had remnants of wax staining it. I shoved the candles into the sticks, tossed the porno magazines on the table for the hell of it.
I said, “Is a picture starting to form?”
Leonard let it cook a moment. “It’s like an altar. And if that crusty stuff in the middle of the cloth is what I think it is, could be what we have here are sac
rifices to a water stain of Jesus?”
“A water stain to some is but the face of God to others,” I said. “Remember those idiots and the tortilla?”
“Well, it ain’t a ritual we done much at our Baptist church.”
“Not my church either, though I might have missed a couple of Sundays.”
I put my shirt on, and Leonard shoveled the flooring up again. We pulled the section back, and I got down in the hole on my hands and knees with my flashlight and waved it around. I saw a number of termite mounds. I unfolded the floor plan and studied it with the flashlight. I felt certain I was close in memory to Uncle Chester’s floor plan, if not dead on. When I thought I had the plan in my head, I folded it up and put it away. I stood up in the hole and said, “Give me the shovel and just hang tight a minute.”
I took the shovel and started crawling toward what I remembered as a rectangle on the map. It was dark under there, but the trim around the house was rotten in spots and pencils of light came through like laser beams.
I got to about where I thought the map indicated a rectangle, and looked around. There wasn’t a mound there, but there was a slight depression about two feet wide and four feet long. Water had run up under the house and filled it and the water had partially evaporated.
I put the light on the ground at an angle where it would shine in the depression, and got to work. It was so low I had a hard time managing the shovel, but I lay on my stomach and poked it in the depression and sort of rolled the handle in my hands and flipped mud and dirt to the side.
About the fourth time I flipped the dirt, a smell came out of there that filled my head and made me choke. It was so potent, I crawled back from it. I must have called out too, because Leonard said, “You all right?”
“Come down here.”
A moment later Leonard crawled up beside me. “Shit, that’s stout. It’s something dead.”
“Yeah.”
We worked our shirts off and tied them over our faces, and while Leonard held the light, I crawled up to the depression and went back to work. I rolled a couple of shovelfuls out of there and came up with something. Leonard put the light on it. It was stuck to the tip of the shovel and I couldn’t move it out of the hole.