The Telegram, Chapter I. The Stranger at the Cemetery*
September 24, 1910. San Francisco, CA.
“Please, Sam, if you’ll be ever-so-kind as to inform me of the precise reasoning for your choice of location-“ Ava cries, her normally charismatic voice lilting up to a slight hysteria. She hitches the picnic basket up to the crook of her inner elbow and lashes out with the other arm, violently displaying the bleak landscape. “A…a cemetery! ”
Sam simply replies with a wide smile as he steers her towards the front gate of Laurel Hill Cemetery10, the largest gravesite in the city of San Francisco nestled at the northern flank of Lone Mountain and home to a series of knolls that roll beneath tombs, mausoleums, and statues. Here, the brisk September weather has stripped the flora of much of its verdancy and beyond the painstakingly overseen lawns and occasional evergreen there remain only naked, skeletal trees and the fathomless expressions of marble angels. Hardly a desirable location for a picnic.
“Ava, darling. You know how unbecoming it is when you flail so. What would Brady say if he could see you now?” Sam lightly catches the wrist of his companion, then draws her in as he pats her hand. She opens her mouth to defend her long-term fiancé, Brady Gough, but Sam interrupts, “Now, I didn’t really come here for a picnic. How morbid do you think me?”
“But you said- “
“I said I fancied a picnic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I had one in mind for our afternoon jaunt.” Sam adds, “Besides. If you knew of our destination, you wouldn’t have come.”
“For obvious reasons!”
Sam drags her over to the iron-wrought entrance, plastered smile never budging from his face, but even as he holds the gate open Ava stands her ground and makes a small cry of reluctance.
Finally, he relents-pulls back and lets the gate clang shut, the sound reverberating through the wintry air. “Here is the thing, Ava. I have undertaken a personal project alongside my work, and for this project, I shall require your ravishing, beguiling ways.”
Flattery will get a man anywhere, and Sam knows his childhood friend well. Predictably, Ava’s irritation recedes and she adjusts her hatpin11, mollified for the time being. “If you had just said so,” she huffs. “All right then, sir. What wicked thing shall you have me do this time?”
The task is simple-Sam merely wishes to examine the gravesite of Caleb Warren. His first attempt had proved unsuccessful; he had come to Laurel Hill a week prior, but his search had been quickly nipped in the bud. Police documents failed to disclose the minor detail that the Warren mausoleum is available for visitation solely by members of Warren descent. Caught off guard, Sam had been promptly turned away…
Turned away, perhaps, though not empty-handed. Before leaving, Sam had dutifully observed the profile of the cemetery caretaker-young man (only a bit older than Sam), unmarried (ring-less fingers), with a weakness for the fairer sex (if his leniency on the young, flustered lady asking about burial appointments proves to be a habit)-the perfect candidate to be recipient of Ava Wilson’s talent for persuasion, which has been honed to an art form over the years. This latest entreaty of Sam’s is but another on the long list, accumulated over the entirety of their friendship, as he has called upon her help many a time. Sometimes, all it takes is a woman’s touch.
Sam quickly explains the situation to her as they pass through the gate-“I need to see the tomb of Caleb J. Warren. You’ll have to affect kinship with the man, perhaps a niece or distant cousin?”
“I’ll be fine, dear. Now would you take this basket for me? I shall hardly look convincing with sandwiches and lemonade, if I am to play the distraught cousin.”
Ava transfers the basket-heavier than it looks, as Sam fumbles with the handles-before she shoos him aside, hissing, “Get back, the clerk will recognize you!” Sam promptly moves out of sight as Ava musses the curls framing her face, tips her hat to an ungainly angle, then trips into the office with a fling of the door. Sam hears snatches of loud, furious French before the wooden door closes behind her.
Like clockwork, she leaves the office triumphant with the caretaker in tow, who struts about like a pompous peacock as he jangles the keys to the mausoleum in one hand and grandly gestures about the lot with the other, no doubt imparting some great wisdom. Sam shoves the wicker basket into the shadow of a large, weeping angel and ducks behind it, then tentatively peeks out from behind a marbled wing. Beneath Sam’s fingertips, the stone is icy to the touch.
He watches the two small figures recede into the distance as Ava follows the caretaker up the crest of the hill to an ominous stone construct, within which the Warrens have laid their bones for nearly a century. Sam climbs after them, eyes riveted on Ava and the caretaker as they carry on an inaudible conversation. The man unlocks the wooden door-Ava gestures wildly, nearly smiting him across the face, before the man finally ducks his head in deference and turns to leave. Perfect.
In less than five minutes, Sam is once again beside his friend. “Incomparable talents, as always,” he praises as Ava throws back a cocksure grin-utterly unfeminine, yet charming all the same. Sam steps off the trimmed grass and onto the stone platform-“Are you coming, dear?”
“I should hope that was not an attempt at humor, Mr. Winchester, because if it was, you leave me utterly un-amused. Of course I am not coming. I’ll stand watch, or have a picnic here by myself, or anything you like so long as I don’t have to step foot in-“ Ava shudders dramatically. “A moldy room full of rotting corpses. ”
“If you insist-“
“Which I do. ”
“-I shall be right back,” Sam smiles jauntily before descending down the stairs that lead underground.
The brittle sunlight quickly splinters into darkness in the small mausoleum. Luckily there are no paths or halls to lose oneself in-as far back as Warren roots may extend in American history, it is easy to forget that officially, the New World is not yet even two centuries of age. Consequently, there are really only a handful of coffins for Sam to peruse.
In truth, Sam knows not of what he hopes to discover-some insight, perhaps. Some clue as to why Caleb J. Warren and Abigail Gunther had chosen to bestow him with his mother’s youthful portrait. The possible explanations insofar do not add up on paper, but here-twelve feet underground in this ice box of a room, the smell of earth and decay permeating the stagnant air-perhaps here, Sam will find the answer; or a breadcrumb directing him onwards, at the very least.
Seven or eight coffins clutter the space near the entrance before dropping away to a series of unoccupied pedestals, clearly meant for the continuation of the Warren legacy. It is dark below ground and the unlit torches lining the walls invite a match or portable lighter to ignite them-accessories that Sam is dismayed to find himself devoid of. Nonetheless, the wan light wafting down the stairs is sufficient to make out the engravings on all the stone lids.
Sam easily finds what he is looking for-it is the furthest coffin from the front but identical to the others in its simple, unadorned concrete. Rounding the monument, Sam blinks into the darkness as he strains to read the inscription:
Here lies brother, son, and beloved
CALEB JOSEPH WARREN
March 27, 1863 - June 18, 1904
Bailecito Afrailase
Immediately, the indecipherable words that adorn the bottom of the engraving leap out at him. They adhere to no language Sam is familiar with, and the simple mockery of them is beginning to frustrate. Perhaps though, his linguistic prodigy of a friend can recognize something in them.
“Ava, dear,” Sam calls out, immediately wincing as his voice thunders through the tiny, somber space and reverberates off the coffins of the dead. The echoes eventually give way to a dull, frozen silence so thick, it feels as if Sam had uttered nary a peep. Still, there is no response-where is the foolish girl? Ignoring her for the moment, Sam turns away from the entrance and concentrates on the mysterious words, committing them to memory so he can leave the increasingly claustrophobic space and deliberate over them under the grace of the open sky and sun.
Sam shuts his eyes, mentally repeating the words, and takes care not to leave anything remiss-one letter could make all the difference between a viable lead or a dead end. When he re-opens his eyes, Sam suddenly notices a lone, charcoal-coloured rock sitting atop the coffin-it must have eluded him earlier. Frowning, Sam first drags a finger across the concrete lid, rubbing the powdery dust between his forefinger and thumb, before picking up the small rock to examine it more closely. Sam gingerly tosses it in his hand, feeling the weight of it-heavy and flat, ideal for skipping; but more tellingly, it’s clean. The rock is entirely devoid of the thick layer of grit that sleeps inside the Warren mausoleum.
Apparently, Sam is not Caleb’s only recent visitor. The thought unsettles him.
Behind Sam, a loud scuff of shoes grates over his ears and startles him to attention-there’s the quiet sound of someone breathing, low and evenly.
“Ava?” he asks cautiously. A palpable flutter grows in his gut but Sam savagely pushes it aside-he will admit to no such shortcomings in his mental constitution. He gathers his resolve and turns around.
Before him stands a man. It is difficult to discern any ostensible features but clad in an unbuttoned sack12 with contrasting waistcoat and trousers-the well-worn ensemble perilously near the end of its tether- the shadowed figure holds himself unnaturally rigid and straight-backed, swelling to full stature in the manner of a frog puffing up in aggression. The stranger steps forth.
“Who are you?” he demands, his tone unpleasantly brusque.
“My name is Sam-might I ask the same of you?”
“No,” the man says plainly. He takes another step forward in a threatening manner. “What are you doing here?”
The back of Sam’s heel hits the wall and the realization of their declining distance exacerbates the flutter in Sam’s stomach. He quickly slides out and unconsciously edges towards the paltry sunlight, which bleeds over the staircase in a dim halo. The stranger only presses closer, but at least from this angle Sam will back into the exit that leads above ground-a prospect that increases in appeal the nearer the stranger encroaches.
At this point-the man reaches behind his coat, grasping for Lord knows what-Sam is positively praying to be forced outside. He says nervously, “I was here to pay respect to an old, erm, a great-aunt of mine.”
Eyes immediately fasten to Sam’s left hand-Sam clenches his fist and is surprised to feel the warmed rock still in his grasp. He quickly shoves the article deep into the pocket of his coat, but the narrowed gaze of the man-now transfixed on Sam’s pocket-leads him to believe that the stranger harbors no delusions of the true recipient of Sam’s visit.
Thankfully, he refrains from pressing the issue. Sam kicks into the bottom step of the staircase and throttles a sigh of relief. But before he turns to escape, an unexpected urge to fully see the stranger takes over. Sam squarely looks up.
Their eyes seize. The thin illumination washes the man’s skin to an eerie pallor, but the sun-derived freckles sprinkled over the bridge of his straight nose connote a deficiency in the lighting quality, rather than in the man’s inclination for the outdoors. Sam abruptly notices the intensity in the man’s eyes-eyes that widen to almost comical levels as green, crystalline irises track across Sam’s face. He feels warmth rise to his cheeks as the scrutiny continues-Sam quickly balks at his own weakness, knocking self-consciousness aside as he resolutely presses forward. He gathers up to his full height and glowers at the stranger, taking indiscriminate pleasure in the advantage that two or three inches lend him.
“I have given you my name, good sir; it is only proper in any civilized situation that you return the favor,” Sam demands.
Where politesse had failed, assertiveness takes up the slack. The stranger blinks owlishly at Sam, as if not used to having his height-or crude manners, for that matter-challenged. “I-my name…”
The stranger shakes his mind, clearing it from its stupor, and his deplorable etiquette returns with a vengeance. He swings in, ferociously near so that their noses are nearly touching, and growls, “Never mind my name. Now clear off-I got here first.”
The warmth from the man’s breath feels hot against Sam’s face, but refusing to retreat, Sam firmly juts his chin out, all but knocking the sneer off the stranger’s mouth. “My dead great-aunt wishes to see me,” Sam says impudently.
The sound of rustling fabric moves through the air and without warning, Sam feels the point of something sharp dig against his stomach.
“I can arrange that,” the stranger says with a brass-necked smirk. The concealed blade insidiously inches forth, the tip of it nudging through the woven twill of Sam’s waistcoat and pricking at bare skin.
While Sam may fancy himself an intrepid man, he has no qualms about quailing before a knife that is one layer of skin away from drawing blood. “Perhaps some other time,” he replies, backing off accordingly.
The confrontation quickly de-escalates. The stranger relaxes, tucking his weapon-short, gleaming dagger with a leather hilt-into the back of his belt, then covers it with a deft sweep of his ill-fitting jacket. Reluctant as Sam is to turn his back on the dangerous man, he does so nonetheless, scraping his dignity up the stairs as he ascends into the bleak, wintry sunlight.
Though Sam leaves the rude, unfathomable stranger behind in the Warren mausoleum, he does take this with him-the strange words, Bailecito Afrailase.
Cappula Acodadura. Bailecito Afrailase, Sam muses. These phrases mean nothing to him, but perhaps his good friend Ms. Wilson can demonstrate her usefulness once more.
He locates her some distance away, her large, fashionable hat standing out as a beacon of white against green grass and grey tombstones. Feeling a spot of remorse for leaving a genteel lady such as Ava-a betrothed lady, no less-alone in a cemetery, with naught but a full picnic basket to keep up appearances, Sam hastily joins her. The day’s adventure closes with Sam’s heartfelt promise for a more entertaining plan the following week-end, and Ava accepts it graciously.
-----
Home is where Sam finds himself prisoner to his own relentless thoughts-the plight of the intellectual, as some of his colleagues have put it, though for Sam, a kinetic mind had always seemed more blessing than burden.
If only Sam could back-pedal through time and berate his former, naïve self; he understands the truism now, in all its horrendous glory. Plight indeed-Sam had never been so accosted by his own mind as he has been for the past week or so.
The words-Cappula Acodadura, Bailecito Afrailase, like a mantra-have offered nothing in the ways of enlightenment. During the buggy ride from Laurel Hill Cemetery to the Wilson estate in Pacific Heights, Sam had transcribed them for Ava on a loose piece of paper; she has since informed him of her college-educated conclusion that the words are derived from no existing language. Thus, Sam has made no further progress on that front.
In fact, the entire investigation of his mother and her deceased acquaintances has braked to a lurching halt, despite its claim on a sizeable portion of all his waking thought. The rest of Sam’s preoccupation, however… if he is to give voice to un-articulated imagery (and credibility to that crack-pot, Sigmund Freud), it is something else entirely that truly engulfs him.
Allowing for the moment the plausibility of Freud’s “dynamic unconscious,”13 Sam ought to re-examine the manifestation of the vivid, emerald eyes that appear to him behind closed lids-alongside the phantom nip of a sharp dagger against his belly-over and over again, in dizzying, centripetal repetitions. It has become so entrenched that when Sam casts his memory to that chilly day at the cemetery in hopes of stumbling over some as-of-yet unturned stone, the events fall away to dreary depths and all that is left is where he began-a peculiar sensation, as if Sam is teetering on the precipice of something truly in-alterable, and the green gaze of a stranger which, much like the entirety of this entangled debacle, contained something odd. Something off.
Having ruminated upon this at length, Sam has since deduced the particular quality of that gaze that nags him so: it was the recognition he saw in it. Not right away, no-initially the man’s demeanor was as guarded and armed as a fortress. But upon Sam’s delivery of a strong rebuke, that wall came tumbling down. He’d met Sam’s glare and it was as if a lever had been pulled-his eyes had widened, the man’s coquettish, thick lashes curled so high they nearly skimmed his own brow ridge-and he’d recognized Sam.
It makes not a whit of sense, of course. But in Sam’s defence, as of late, nothing has been making sense. At the end of the day, Sam is grasping at air-nostalgic portraits and nonsensical codes; eerie coincidence in the fiery deaths of three friends, and behind it all, if Sam is willing to admit it to himself, the driving force of an unpalatable but desperate need of a son for trivia on a mother he never knew. It is almost tragic, when Sam stops to think about it-tragically pathetic for a grown man who had hardly needed the support of his mater in his formative years to make a fair living for himself, to suddenly require her now.
It is quite ludicrous-the whole thing. Truly, the most logical step for Sam to take is to put this flight of fancy behind him, and to concentrate on more important matters at hand; for example, the Cavallo case he had agreed to take on at the beginning of the week.
Sam warily eyes the relevant stack of documents that peeks out from his despatch-case. Making up his mind, he quickly reaches in and pulls the bundle out, slapping it down on the wooden table.
Despite his disinclination to prepare for the morrow’s day at the office, it is not so terrible as Sam makes it out to be in his mind. Before long, he has studiously partitioned the documents into two neat piles-work done and work to-be-done, respectively.
Outside, the sun is setting and it is growing dark. Through the clear-paned window that oversees the streets of Ivy and Octavia14, where the neighbor-hood children play until the last dregs of sunlight drain away, gentle swirls of wind sneak underneath the window-sill and lazily stir the papers on Sam’s desk into a graceful sprawl. He absentmindedly picks up the nearest paperweight with which to pin them down-
Upon realization of what he holds, Sam jerks his hand back, dropping the rock onto his wooden table with a dull double-bounce. Almost guiltily, he stares at the object-it feels as if it is looking back at him. Regarding him, accusing Sam of ignoring it, and everything the rock stands for…
The worrying thing is-Sam leans back in his chair and studies the rock, idly rubbing at his lower lip with a finger- Sam is beginning to feel that he, too, recognized the stranger from the mausoleum. It is not some epiphany that struck him serendipitously, as Newton’s apple had two centuries prior, but has incurred in a more insidious fashion-the concession creeping into Sam’s mind and latching on with quiet tenter-hooks. There remains no other explanation for the ease in which the stranger has invaded Sam’s mind-if not the man himself, there must have been some attribute he exuded that resonates within Sam because this preoccupation-this wholly unnatural fascination with the stranger nearly warrants more of an investigation than even the death of Mary Winchester and her companions.
Downstairs, the front door slams shut with unnecessary force, shaking the apartment building from the ground up, through its wooden studs, and into Sam’s study. Startled, he snatches up the rock and shoves it into his notions drawer, banging it closed before the walls have time to finish their shivering.
With bated breath, Sam listens as clumping shoes make their way up the stairs, slowly and deliberately-each stair groans under the weight of its burden. Soon, next door, a latch-key is impatiently jostled into its lock, eventually giving way to the sound of a door teasing its hinges before it resolutely swings shut. It must be Mr. Clark, home from his day at the Bank.
Sam lets out a strained breath, chuckling at his own paranoia. Though he doesn’t quite know what to make of his jittery disposition, if it means that the infernal rock is out of sight (and hopefully, out of mind), he can finally attempt to get back to work. At noon to-morrow, his client will be knocking on his office door-it will simply not do to be unprepared.
Sam bows his head, locates the sentence at which he had been interrupted, and picks up where he left off.
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10“Laurel Hill Cemetery.” 08 July 2001. Western Neighborhoods Project. 09 July 2008.
11“Hatpins.” The American Hatpin Society. 09 July 2008.
12“Men’s coats.” 08 June 2008. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 09 July 2008.
13“Sigmund Freud, Theories on the ‘Unconscious’.” 04 July 2008. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 09 July 2008.
14“Sam’s apartment.” Google Maps. 09 July 2008. Search: Octavia St & Ivy St, San Francisco, CA 94102.