a draft (cont'd)
Chapter II.
II
As it turned out, the strain of logic that backed Lucas’s organizational system was anything but apparent. Jonathan’s first step in combating this fact was to make a cursory sweep through the rows to get a sense of the place, but there did not appear to be one. Occasionally he caught sight of a group of objects that had something in common, like a few rows of glass and silverware or a selection of old doll clothing and miniature furniture, but for the most part things gave the impression of having been heaped together on the nearest shelf by an overenthusiastic blind man. Some rows were crammed so tightly he couldn’t see to the other side of the shelf; others barely held anything at all, as though this china teapot or that old jewelry box was temperamental and really needed its personal space. There were things piled on the floor as well, regrettably too tall or wide or generally bulky to fit between two shelves-phonographs and writing desks, huge mahogany trunks and framed mirrors four feet tall.
Some rows were better lit than others. Not that Lucas had shown any signs of neglect, leaving burned out bulbs in place or buying his illumination in different wattages, but some rows hoarded light and others shunned it. Some absorbed and others reflected, and it was then, going through the shelves that first time, that Jonathan began to feel something was not right with the curio shop. Like its owner, it had an aura, something oppressive that, between the shelves, weighed down on his chest and made the air thick and close. It spooked him to be there alone, walking the rows with Lucas’s scribbled schematic clutched to his chest, trying to convince his memory each item was worth storing. It spooked him worse whenever the intercom would buzz and Lucas’s voice would cut through the silence of the shop with all the violence of a switchblade.
Those times were fortunately few. The first days melted into the first week, and Jonathan passed it in relative quiet. He got used to that, gradually, and to the not-quite solitude afforded him by the inanimate denizens of the shop. He learned that the collectible spoons were kept mostly in case four, on shelves C through E. Antique furniture was kept against the wall adjacent to cases six, seven, and eight. Thimbles, cameos, earrings, and other things precious and easily slipped into pockets were kept in their own squat glass cases in the back. A grudging sense of familiarity developed, hard-won, and while Jonathan suffered a dream or two of vicious number-letter combinations, it was worth it. He was ready, quite confident that, if asked, he could take a customer to any piece of merchandise they wished to see. He had even found the bathroom.
The only problem was that there did not appear to be customers. Jonathan learned the shelves quickly because he was uninterrupted by either the jingling of the bell or, for the most part, the crackle of the intercom. It was lonesome work, junk-watching. He walked the rows a little, even touched things if he felt daring enough. He leaned on the counter and stared out the front windows and wished for people to watch. He daydreamed about what Lucas did all day down in the basement and sometimes imagined paging him and starting some sort of conversation to pass the hours. Lucas was the one thing about the shop that did not get easier or more comfortable with time. If forced into interaction in the mornings or at closing time, the most Jonathan could expect from him was a barked list of instructions for the day. He began to preface it with a silent “Hello, Jonathan, how are you today?” and answered in kind.
It had looked to be an unusually exciting job from the phone call on. The circumstances of his hiring, his new boss’s disposition, and even the shop itself-they were eerie. They were just left of center, and that had given Jonathan certain expectations. He was promised a discomfort which would keep him on his toes and stave off routine, but his second week found him feeling betrayed. Then the lurker showed up.
It was Tuesday morning, and Jonathan was sweeping. He’d found an old broom in the bathroom’s closet, and while the floor didn’t need it, he swept for lack of something more productive to do. When he came from between cases 15 and 16, minding his elbow around the corner of a rusted copper lunch box, an impulsive glance out the window alerted him to the presence of another living, breathing human being. Granted, this human being was living and breathing all the way across the street, but there was a sudden lightness in his chest at the sight of a face that was not Lucas Lowsley’s.
It was a man on the opposite sidewalk. He was tall and sallow-faced and stood with his shoulders hunched up around his ears and his hands held clenched at his waist. He stared at the shop front. His eyes moved up and down as he traced the letters in the window. He didn’t much look like a man in the market for quality knickknacks, but Jonathan leaned on the broom handle and watched and prayed for him to cross the street. “Welcome!” he would call in a booming ringmaster’s voice he wasn’t sure he possessed. “Welcome to Lowsley’s Curio Shop! Priceless antiques are our forte here, sir. Can I interest you in a collectible spoon?”
If only the man would move. If only he would unclench his hands and pull his head out of his neck and walk. But he just stood there. He flexed his fingers and gaped at the storefront, and for a moment Jonathan entertained the possibility that something was on fire. Then, as suddenly as he’d come, the man tugged his coat close around his body and walked around the corner.
The initial disappointment was fleeting. Jonathan felt robbed of an opportunity to talk with someone who might actually be interested in conversation, but by the time Lucas emerged from the basement and told him to go home, he had forgotten the man, having replaced him with fantasies of cheap take-out and Ghostbusters from the worn comfort of his futon.
The next morning, Lucas surprised him by joining him in the shop proper with several cardboard boxes marked FRAGILE. New merchandise, he was told, and Jonathan would be helping him place it. What this really amounted to was Jonathan putting things in various cases, on various shelves, and swapping them about until they were “right.”
“No, no, no,” said Lucas. He stood at the end of a row, schematic splayed open in his hand. “I said shelf C, not shelf E.”
Jonathan dragged the casket radio in question off of shelf E, hefted, and slid it anxiously on to shelf C. “Isn’t this a little big to be over here? I mean, this thing must weigh about-”
“Next.”
Jonathan dropped down to the open box at his feet and pulled out a yellow Bakelite clock. It had been that way for the last hour of shelving. Jonathan had been so sure that the situation would require some actual talking, but every attempt he made was quelled effortlessly by Lucas’s monosyllabic strikes-things like no and quiet and, worst of all, that wordless and slant-eyed rebuke that crested over the top of Lucas’s notebook. But he kept trying, and it wasn’t the mark of perseverance so much as an inability to keep his mouth shut for more than ten minutes at a time.
“Case 21,” Lucas said, and made a mark in his book. Jonathan about-faced. “Shelf B.” Jonathan stood on his toes and pushed the clock into place. Looking between the shelves, past the rounded dome of an army helmet, he could see out the window. Across the street. There, in an uncomfortable moment of déjà vu, he saw the man from the day before.
He lingered today with hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, collar upturned and head peeking out like a wary turtle’s. His mouth moved, shaping words Jonathan could not hear, and his whole body leaned forward toward the empty street as though he were doing his level best to goad himself into crossing it. Jonathan held his breath and waited for that significant step down from the curb.
“Are you listening, Stillwell?”
“Uh-huh?” Jonathan turned to meet Lucas’s arched brows and pursed lips.
“I told you to move the clock down a shelf. It doesn’t work there.”
But Jonathan had already angled his body back toward the case, his eyes drawn again to the gaunt figure on the sidewalk. “Yeah,” he said, and his blind fingers swept the smooth plane of B until they collided with the base of the clock. He squinted into the space between shelves. The man had pulled his hands free and plowed one into his tousled hair, the strands forced up into wild sheaves between his fingers. His lips worked furiously, and Jonathan was so invested in trying to read them that he failed to notice Lucas move down the row to peer across the street alongside him.
“What the hell are you looking at?”
Jonathan jerked away, his hand nearly sending the clock tumbling to a splintered, undignified end at his feet before it found a safer occupation clutching at his chest. “Jesus Christ.”
“Jesus Christ is outside my window?”Lucas drawled.
“What? No, I just-” Jonathan huffed and smoothed out his shirt, avoiding Lucas’s face as he felt his own grow warmer. He nodded toward the store front. “There’s a guy out there.”
“And a tree grows in Brooklyn. What, are men loitering on corners prime entertainment now?” Lucas rapped his pencil smartly against Jonathan’s ear. “Clock. Down a shelf.”
Thursday was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. When Jonathan, reacquainting himself with the shelves and their altered contents, glimpsed that familiar coat and anxious hunch for the third time, he pounced. He tossed the notebook on to the counter and surged toward the door, driven by an irate curiosity. What was the point in showing up day after day only to fidget and chew your nails like a kid plucking up the courage to confess the F on his report card? Lucas had dismissed it, and Jonathan supposed he had anticipated as much. “People don’t make sense,” he’d said. “They never have.”
Jonathan was clear of the door and bounding across the street before the man saw him. “Hey! Excuse me!”
The lurker’s eyes widened comically and he attempted to shrink down into his coat, tugging the lapels up against his chin. He looked scared, Jonathan realized. Terrified, even, and when his coat failed to swallow him up or provide sufficient camouflage, he took a shuffling step backward and rolled his eyes wildly, searching for the nearest avenue of escape.
Jonathan stopped a few feet away and raised his hands in supplication. He didn’t understand the fear he was seeing; he couldn’t even pretend to cut an intimidating figure, yet here was this man cowering away like he was Hannibal Lecter swinging a bottle of Chianti. “Whoa, okay. I just wanna talk to you. I mean, I’ve seen you out here the past couple days, and-don’t you wanna come inside or something? We are open.”
This close, the man was hard-edged and haggard. The lower half of his face was dark with several days’ worth of untended beard, and the skin beneath his eyes was a bruised purple. His hair was limp and dull against his skull, his eyes shot through with red, his whole countenance vaguely rumpled. He reminded Jonathan of the first shirt tossed into the hamper, left to languish beneath a steadily-growing mound of dirty laundry for two weeks before seeing the light of day. It provoked in him a surge of bewildered pity, and he tried to make his voice gentle.
“Look, sorry if I startled you. My name’s-”
The man did not stay to hear the name of the stranger accosting him. Like a terror-stricken rabbit, he turned from Jonathan and half-ran down the sidewalk and away. He did not slow, did not crane his neck to glance behind him, and soon he rounded the corner at the end of the block and was out of sight.
“-Jonathan.” Jonathan sighed. So much for first contact. Thwarted and a little unsettled, he looked both ways, crossed the street, and went back into the shop.
The lurker did not return the next day. Jonathan kept a weather eye on the window, but the sidewalks remained empty except for the occasional pack of dead leaves skidding across the concrete. He had scared the visitor off. Not that it was a real shock; he had anticipated as much after watching the man put such desperate distance between them. But that didn’t keep him from feeling let down. He was much more interested after yesterday’s scene, but now he was certain he would never learn why the man came and stood and stared with the hollow gloom of a Dachau survivor.
Bringing it up to Lucas again seemed futile, and though he didn’t try, he couldn’t put the confrontation out of his mind. He was listless at first, trying to invent stories as he leaned over the counter, doodling tiny stick figure scenarios on a roll of unused receipt paper, but the continued absence did dull his interest after a few days. It was finally overshadowed entirely the day Lucas came upstairs and took his coat and tweed cap from the rack by the door.
“I have an appointment,” he said, and dropped a brown paper sack on the counter before thrusting his arms through the sleeves of the coat. “A Mrs. Merriman will be stopping by in-” He looked at his hand. Jonathan could just make out the pocket watch before it was tucked away. “-half an hour. If I’m not back yet, you’re to give her this. She’s already paid, so all you need to do is see that she leaves with it.” He started toward the door, settling the cap on his head, and glanced back as he turned the handle. “The instructions are in the bag. They should be perfectly clear, but if she has any questions, she can call me.” Jonathan nodded his understanding, and the door closed softly after the shop owner.
The bag was perfectly unimpressive, but still Jonathan found his eyes on it. There was nothing written on it. It was smooth and straight-sided and uncrumpled, and the top was folded over and rolled down so that it looked like someone’s lunch sack. Normally, purchases were carried out in plastic bags-or would be, if there were any purchases. They had newspaper for wrapping the more delicate pieces and even some boxes for lots of little items, but never had Jonathan been instructed to brown bag something.
He felt the familiar creep of the curiosity he had resisted after first being hired. While he still didn’t have a real feel for Lucas, was still a little afraid of the man for reasons he didn’t exactly get, he’d grown somewhat used to him. As much as he believed was possible in the amount of time they’d known each other, anyway. He didn’t jump at the intercom anymore or feel so totally cowed by a few sharp words, and that was certainly something. The fear of rebuke had diminished with the absence of it.
He behaved for a while. There was no running clock in the shop, so he kept time with his cell phone, watching the minutes slip by and watching the bag sit on the counter like a blue-collar Pandora’s Box. Twenty-three minutes until Mrs. Merriman’s arrival. Seventeen minutes.
At a quarter after eleven, Jonathan caved. It wasn’t as though Lucas had told him he couldn’t have a peek inside, after all, but he unrolled the bag as surreptitiously as he was able. The crinkle of stiff brown paper was deafening, drowning out Jonathan’s quiet attempts to justify his snooping. But the bag was already open, and he looked down into it and was confused. There were no antiques in the bag. No jewelry or old Coke bottles or action figures from Happy Meals gone by. There were only a folded slip of paper, a photo, and a Mason jar filled with something dark.
Jonathan took the items out one by one. He spread the paper open flat. Lines of words were scrawled across it in a neat, slanted hand he recognized as belonging to Lucas. These, he supposed, were the instructions:
You will need:
- the contents of this bag
- a shovel (providing the deceased has been interred)
- surgical needle and thread (depending on the state of the body)
Steps:
1. Move to the location of the deceased.
2. If laid to rest in a cemetery, the deceased must be exhumed before beginning the resurrection process.
3. Make any necessary repairs to the body.
4. Lay the photograph included in this bag face-down on the chest of the deceased. (You will need to keep the photograph after the process is complete.)
5. Distribute the contents of the jar evenly over the body of the deceased.
6. Three times, slowly recite the following: timor mortis conturbat me.
Note: If at any time you decide not to go through with the process, you must burn the photograph and bury the contents of the jar. Similarly, if you wish to undo the process after its completion, you must burn the photograph.
When he hit the bottom of the page, Jonathan’s brow was furrowed with such intensity it was sparking a headache. Resurrection process? Exhuming the deceased? It read like an exceedingly grim, decidedly unfunny joke. Insofar as Jonathan knew, Lucas didn’t make jokes, and staring at his hand sliding in graceful curls across the page, Jonathan felt the stirring of nausea in his gut. He picked up the jar. It looked like it was full of dirt-rich, near-black soil that would crumble, moist, between fingers. He didn’t remove the lid to confirm this.
In the photo was an older woman in a floral-print dress and a straw hat. Jonathan pegged her as a young sixty, hair already gone grey in smooth sheets that billowed out behind her. She was smiling, mouth open, showing teeth. She looked happy. But the scene was ruined by the swath of rusted red-brown that cut through her laughter and her dress and soaked the photo in gruesome sepia.
It was 11:30. Deeply disturbed, Jonathan packed the things back into the sack. Photograph. Jar. Instructions. He rolled the top down and shook his hands out, worried they were shaking, and the bell tinkled as the door opened.
In walked an elderly lady in shabby houndstooth. Her hair was dry and over-permed, and despite her being rather plump, her face was thin, worn. Her cheeks drooped to show the bones, but the skin all shifted up in a smile when she spotted Jonathan behind the counter. She hurried over, purse swinging in the crook of her elbow.
“Mrs. Merriman?” he asked feebly.
“Yes, yes, I’m June. Is that-?” She didn’t say it. Jonathan stood for a long moment, waiting, wanting desperately for her to say it. Is that what? She looked at the bag with big, hopeful eyes and worrying hands, but she never filled that blank. The silence grew like a mold, toxic between them, until she turned her face toward him.
Jonathan hadn’t seen any customers since he started work. As far as he could tell, the shop did no business, but Lucas never seemed bothered about it. They still had boxes of new wares shipped in and put up. There were no promotions, no mark-downs, no special sales to drum up customers. This part of town was dead.
So how did Lucas stay in business? Was this what he was doing? Preying on the grief-shaken citizens of Ashwick Chase, the people so consumed by recent loss that they would believe anything that promised to return the loved one they were sure was ripped so unjustly away?
Resurrection kits in brown paper bags. It was a hoax. A terrible, unfeeling, inhuman hoax. The nausea blossomed. This woman was being taken advantage of in the worst way he could imagine. He had to help her. He had to explain.
“Please,” Mrs. Merriman whispered. Her eyes were misty. Desperate.
Unable to speak, Jonathan pushed the bag across the counter toward her. She snatched it up and clutched it to her breast like a child with a precious favourite doll. There were tears now, clear streaks shining and breaking wetly into age-drawn lines.
“Thank you,” she croaked. She struggled to give the words sound enough to be heard over the rustle of paper. “You’re an angel. Thank you.”
She all but ran out the door. Jonathan wanted to go after her. Wanted to wrench the sack from her, wanted to talk to her, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. He stood behind the counter and waited for Lucas to come back.
II
As it turned out, the strain of logic that backed Lucas’s organizational system was anything but apparent. Jonathan’s first step in combating this fact was to make a cursory sweep through the rows to get a sense of the place, but there did not appear to be one. Occasionally he caught sight of a group of objects that had something in common, like a few rows of glass and silverware or a selection of old doll clothing and miniature furniture, but for the most part things gave the impression of having been heaped together on the nearest shelf by an overenthusiastic blind man. Some rows were crammed so tightly he couldn’t see to the other side of the shelf; others barely held anything at all, as though this china teapot or that old jewelry box was temperamental and really needed its personal space. There were things piled on the floor as well, regrettably too tall or wide or generally bulky to fit between two shelves-phonographs and writing desks, huge mahogany trunks and framed mirrors four feet tall.
Some rows were better lit than others. Not that Lucas had shown any signs of neglect, leaving burned out bulbs in place or buying his illumination in different wattages, but some rows hoarded light and others shunned it. Some absorbed and others reflected, and it was then, going through the shelves that first time, that Jonathan began to feel something was not right with the curio shop. Like its owner, it had an aura, something oppressive that, between the shelves, weighed down on his chest and made the air thick and close. It spooked him to be there alone, walking the rows with Lucas’s scribbled schematic clutched to his chest, trying to convince his memory each item was worth storing. It spooked him worse whenever the intercom would buzz and Lucas’s voice would cut through the silence of the shop with all the violence of a switchblade.
Those times were fortunately few. The first days melted into the first week, and Jonathan passed it in relative quiet. He got used to that, gradually, and to the not-quite solitude afforded him by the inanimate denizens of the shop. He learned that the collectible spoons were kept mostly in case four, on shelves C through E. Antique furniture was kept against the wall adjacent to cases six, seven, and eight. Thimbles, cameos, earrings, and other things precious and easily slipped into pockets were kept in their own squat glass cases in the back. A grudging sense of familiarity developed, hard-won, and while Jonathan suffered a dream or two of vicious number-letter combinations, it was worth it. He was ready, quite confident that, if asked, he could take a customer to any piece of merchandise they wished to see. He had even found the bathroom.
The only problem was that there did not appear to be customers. Jonathan learned the shelves quickly because he was uninterrupted by either the jingling of the bell or, for the most part, the crackle of the intercom. It was lonesome work, junk-watching. He walked the rows a little, even touched things if he felt daring enough. He leaned on the counter and stared out the front windows and wished for people to watch. He daydreamed about what Lucas did all day down in the basement and sometimes imagined paging him and starting some sort of conversation to pass the hours. Lucas was the one thing about the shop that did not get easier or more comfortable with time. If forced into interaction in the mornings or at closing time, the most Jonathan could expect from him was a barked list of instructions for the day. He began to preface it with a silent “Hello, Jonathan, how are you today?” and answered in kind.
It had looked to be an unusually exciting job from the phone call on. The circumstances of his hiring, his new boss’s disposition, and even the shop itself-they were eerie. They were just left of center, and that had given Jonathan certain expectations. He was promised a discomfort which would keep him on his toes and stave off routine, but his second week found him feeling betrayed. Then the lurker showed up.
It was Tuesday morning, and Jonathan was sweeping. He’d found an old broom in the bathroom’s closet, and while the floor didn’t need it, he swept for lack of something more productive to do. When he came from between cases 15 and 16, minding his elbow around the corner of a rusted copper lunch box, an impulsive glance out the window alerted him to the presence of another living, breathing human being. Granted, this human being was living and breathing all the way across the street, but there was a sudden lightness in his chest at the sight of a face that was not Lucas Lowsley’s.
It was a man on the opposite sidewalk. He was tall and sallow-faced and stood with his shoulders hunched up around his ears and his hands held clenched at his waist. He stared at the shop front. His eyes moved up and down as he traced the letters in the window. He didn’t much look like a man in the market for quality knickknacks, but Jonathan leaned on the broom handle and watched and prayed for him to cross the street. “Welcome!” he would call in a booming ringmaster’s voice he wasn’t sure he possessed. “Welcome to Lowsley’s Curio Shop! Priceless antiques are our forte here, sir. Can I interest you in a collectible spoon?”
If only the man would move. If only he would unclench his hands and pull his head out of his neck and walk. But he just stood there. He flexed his fingers and gaped at the storefront, and for a moment Jonathan entertained the possibility that something was on fire. Then, as suddenly as he’d come, the man tugged his coat close around his body and walked around the corner.
The initial disappointment was fleeting. Jonathan felt robbed of an opportunity to talk with someone who might actually be interested in conversation, but by the time Lucas emerged from the basement and told him to go home, he had forgotten the man, having replaced him with fantasies of cheap take-out and Ghostbusters from the worn comfort of his futon.
The next morning, Lucas surprised him by joining him in the shop proper with several cardboard boxes marked FRAGILE. New merchandise, he was told, and Jonathan would be helping him place it. What this really amounted to was Jonathan putting things in various cases, on various shelves, and swapping them about until they were “right.”
“No, no, no,” said Lucas. He stood at the end of a row, schematic splayed open in his hand. “I said shelf C, not shelf E.”
Jonathan dragged the casket radio in question off of shelf E, hefted, and slid it anxiously on to shelf C. “Isn’t this a little big to be over here? I mean, this thing must weigh about-”
“Next.”
Jonathan dropped down to the open box at his feet and pulled out a yellow Bakelite clock. It had been that way for the last hour of shelving. Jonathan had been so sure that the situation would require some actual talking, but every attempt he made was quelled effortlessly by Lucas’s monosyllabic strikes-things like no and quiet and, worst of all, that wordless and slant-eyed rebuke that crested over the top of Lucas’s notebook. But he kept trying, and it wasn’t the mark of perseverance so much as an inability to keep his mouth shut for more than ten minutes at a time.
“Case 21,” Lucas said, and made a mark in his book. Jonathan about-faced. “Shelf B.” Jonathan stood on his toes and pushed the clock into place. Looking between the shelves, past the rounded dome of an army helmet, he could see out the window. Across the street. There, in an uncomfortable moment of déjà vu, he saw the man from the day before.
He lingered today with hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, collar upturned and head peeking out like a wary turtle’s. His mouth moved, shaping words Jonathan could not hear, and his whole body leaned forward toward the empty street as though he were doing his level best to goad himself into crossing it. Jonathan held his breath and waited for that significant step down from the curb.
“Are you listening, Stillwell?”
“Uh-huh?” Jonathan turned to meet Lucas’s arched brows and pursed lips.
“I told you to move the clock down a shelf. It doesn’t work there.”
But Jonathan had already angled his body back toward the case, his eyes drawn again to the gaunt figure on the sidewalk. “Yeah,” he said, and his blind fingers swept the smooth plane of B until they collided with the base of the clock. He squinted into the space between shelves. The man had pulled his hands free and plowed one into his tousled hair, the strands forced up into wild sheaves between his fingers. His lips worked furiously, and Jonathan was so invested in trying to read them that he failed to notice Lucas move down the row to peer across the street alongside him.
“What the hell are you looking at?”
Jonathan jerked away, his hand nearly sending the clock tumbling to a splintered, undignified end at his feet before it found a safer occupation clutching at his chest. “Jesus Christ.”
“Jesus Christ is outside my window?”Lucas drawled.
“What? No, I just-” Jonathan huffed and smoothed out his shirt, avoiding Lucas’s face as he felt his own grow warmer. He nodded toward the store front. “There’s a guy out there.”
“And a tree grows in Brooklyn. What, are men loitering on corners prime entertainment now?” Lucas rapped his pencil smartly against Jonathan’s ear. “Clock. Down a shelf.”
Thursday was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. When Jonathan, reacquainting himself with the shelves and their altered contents, glimpsed that familiar coat and anxious hunch for the third time, he pounced. He tossed the notebook on to the counter and surged toward the door, driven by an irate curiosity. What was the point in showing up day after day only to fidget and chew your nails like a kid plucking up the courage to confess the F on his report card? Lucas had dismissed it, and Jonathan supposed he had anticipated as much. “People don’t make sense,” he’d said. “They never have.”
Jonathan was clear of the door and bounding across the street before the man saw him. “Hey! Excuse me!”
The lurker’s eyes widened comically and he attempted to shrink down into his coat, tugging the lapels up against his chin. He looked scared, Jonathan realized. Terrified, even, and when his coat failed to swallow him up or provide sufficient camouflage, he took a shuffling step backward and rolled his eyes wildly, searching for the nearest avenue of escape.
Jonathan stopped a few feet away and raised his hands in supplication. He didn’t understand the fear he was seeing; he couldn’t even pretend to cut an intimidating figure, yet here was this man cowering away like he was Hannibal Lecter swinging a bottle of Chianti. “Whoa, okay. I just wanna talk to you. I mean, I’ve seen you out here the past couple days, and-don’t you wanna come inside or something? We are open.”
This close, the man was hard-edged and haggard. The lower half of his face was dark with several days’ worth of untended beard, and the skin beneath his eyes was a bruised purple. His hair was limp and dull against his skull, his eyes shot through with red, his whole countenance vaguely rumpled. He reminded Jonathan of the first shirt tossed into the hamper, left to languish beneath a steadily-growing mound of dirty laundry for two weeks before seeing the light of day. It provoked in him a surge of bewildered pity, and he tried to make his voice gentle.
“Look, sorry if I startled you. My name’s-”
The man did not stay to hear the name of the stranger accosting him. Like a terror-stricken rabbit, he turned from Jonathan and half-ran down the sidewalk and away. He did not slow, did not crane his neck to glance behind him, and soon he rounded the corner at the end of the block and was out of sight.
“-Jonathan.” Jonathan sighed. So much for first contact. Thwarted and a little unsettled, he looked both ways, crossed the street, and went back into the shop.
The lurker did not return the next day. Jonathan kept a weather eye on the window, but the sidewalks remained empty except for the occasional pack of dead leaves skidding across the concrete. He had scared the visitor off. Not that it was a real shock; he had anticipated as much after watching the man put such desperate distance between them. But that didn’t keep him from feeling let down. He was much more interested after yesterday’s scene, but now he was certain he would never learn why the man came and stood and stared with the hollow gloom of a Dachau survivor.
Bringing it up to Lucas again seemed futile, and though he didn’t try, he couldn’t put the confrontation out of his mind. He was listless at first, trying to invent stories as he leaned over the counter, doodling tiny stick figure scenarios on a roll of unused receipt paper, but the continued absence did dull his interest after a few days. It was finally overshadowed entirely the day Lucas came upstairs and took his coat and tweed cap from the rack by the door.
“I have an appointment,” he said, and dropped a brown paper sack on the counter before thrusting his arms through the sleeves of the coat. “A Mrs. Merriman will be stopping by in-” He looked at his hand. Jonathan could just make out the pocket watch before it was tucked away. “-half an hour. If I’m not back yet, you’re to give her this. She’s already paid, so all you need to do is see that she leaves with it.” He started toward the door, settling the cap on his head, and glanced back as he turned the handle. “The instructions are in the bag. They should be perfectly clear, but if she has any questions, she can call me.” Jonathan nodded his understanding, and the door closed softly after the shop owner.
The bag was perfectly unimpressive, but still Jonathan found his eyes on it. There was nothing written on it. It was smooth and straight-sided and uncrumpled, and the top was folded over and rolled down so that it looked like someone’s lunch sack. Normally, purchases were carried out in plastic bags-or would be, if there were any purchases. They had newspaper for wrapping the more delicate pieces and even some boxes for lots of little items, but never had Jonathan been instructed to brown bag something.
He felt the familiar creep of the curiosity he had resisted after first being hired. While he still didn’t have a real feel for Lucas, was still a little afraid of the man for reasons he didn’t exactly get, he’d grown somewhat used to him. As much as he believed was possible in the amount of time they’d known each other, anyway. He didn’t jump at the intercom anymore or feel so totally cowed by a few sharp words, and that was certainly something. The fear of rebuke had diminished with the absence of it.
He behaved for a while. There was no running clock in the shop, so he kept time with his cell phone, watching the minutes slip by and watching the bag sit on the counter like a blue-collar Pandora’s Box. Twenty-three minutes until Mrs. Merriman’s arrival. Seventeen minutes.
At a quarter after eleven, Jonathan caved. It wasn’t as though Lucas had told him he couldn’t have a peek inside, after all, but he unrolled the bag as surreptitiously as he was able. The crinkle of stiff brown paper was deafening, drowning out Jonathan’s quiet attempts to justify his snooping. But the bag was already open, and he looked down into it and was confused. There were no antiques in the bag. No jewelry or old Coke bottles or action figures from Happy Meals gone by. There were only a folded slip of paper, a photo, and a Mason jar filled with something dark.
Jonathan took the items out one by one. He spread the paper open flat. Lines of words were scrawled across it in a neat, slanted hand he recognized as belonging to Lucas. These, he supposed, were the instructions:
You will need:
- the contents of this bag
- a shovel (providing the deceased has been interred)
- surgical needle and thread (depending on the state of the body)
Steps:
1. Move to the location of the deceased.
2. If laid to rest in a cemetery, the deceased must be exhumed before beginning the resurrection process.
3. Make any necessary repairs to the body.
4. Lay the photograph included in this bag face-down on the chest of the deceased. (You will need to keep the photograph after the process is complete.)
5. Distribute the contents of the jar evenly over the body of the deceased.
6. Three times, slowly recite the following: timor mortis conturbat me.
Note: If at any time you decide not to go through with the process, you must burn the photograph and bury the contents of the jar. Similarly, if you wish to undo the process after its completion, you must burn the photograph.
When he hit the bottom of the page, Jonathan’s brow was furrowed with such intensity it was sparking a headache. Resurrection process? Exhuming the deceased? It read like an exceedingly grim, decidedly unfunny joke. Insofar as Jonathan knew, Lucas didn’t make jokes, and staring at his hand sliding in graceful curls across the page, Jonathan felt the stirring of nausea in his gut. He picked up the jar. It looked like it was full of dirt-rich, near-black soil that would crumble, moist, between fingers. He didn’t remove the lid to confirm this.
In the photo was an older woman in a floral-print dress and a straw hat. Jonathan pegged her as a young sixty, hair already gone grey in smooth sheets that billowed out behind her. She was smiling, mouth open, showing teeth. She looked happy. But the scene was ruined by the swath of rusted red-brown that cut through her laughter and her dress and soaked the photo in gruesome sepia.
It was 11:30. Deeply disturbed, Jonathan packed the things back into the sack. Photograph. Jar. Instructions. He rolled the top down and shook his hands out, worried they were shaking, and the bell tinkled as the door opened.
In walked an elderly lady in shabby houndstooth. Her hair was dry and over-permed, and despite her being rather plump, her face was thin, worn. Her cheeks drooped to show the bones, but the skin all shifted up in a smile when she spotted Jonathan behind the counter. She hurried over, purse swinging in the crook of her elbow.
“Mrs. Merriman?” he asked feebly.
“Yes, yes, I’m June. Is that-?” She didn’t say it. Jonathan stood for a long moment, waiting, wanting desperately for her to say it. Is that what? She looked at the bag with big, hopeful eyes and worrying hands, but she never filled that blank. The silence grew like a mold, toxic between them, until she turned her face toward him.
Jonathan hadn’t seen any customers since he started work. As far as he could tell, the shop did no business, but Lucas never seemed bothered about it. They still had boxes of new wares shipped in and put up. There were no promotions, no mark-downs, no special sales to drum up customers. This part of town was dead.
So how did Lucas stay in business? Was this what he was doing? Preying on the grief-shaken citizens of Ashwick Chase, the people so consumed by recent loss that they would believe anything that promised to return the loved one they were sure was ripped so unjustly away?
Resurrection kits in brown paper bags. It was a hoax. A terrible, unfeeling, inhuman hoax. The nausea blossomed. This woman was being taken advantage of in the worst way he could imagine. He had to help her. He had to explain.
“Please,” Mrs. Merriman whispered. Her eyes were misty. Desperate.
Unable to speak, Jonathan pushed the bag across the counter toward her. She snatched it up and clutched it to her breast like a child with a precious favourite doll. There were tears now, clear streaks shining and breaking wetly into age-drawn lines.
“Thank you,” she croaked. She struggled to give the words sound enough to be heard over the rustle of paper. “You’re an angel. Thank you.”
She all but ran out the door. Jonathan wanted to go after her. Wanted to wrench the sack from her, wanted to talk to her, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. He stood behind the counter and waited for Lucas to come back.