After Death (35 page)

One thing that he knew was that his head no longer hurt. And that he felt… He felt… somehow very
different
… He tried to hone in on this further.
What was different?
He couldn’t feel the ground for one thing. Matter of fact, he couldn’t even feel his own arms and legs. He knew he couldn’t see but was it because it was dark or because he was blind? He pulled air into his nose in a big, long draw. He couldn’t smell anything. The only sense that still seemed to function was his hearing and even that was altered — The sounds were muffled, reduced… everything somehow distant… The answer was slow to puzzle itself out and he strained for a better conclusion but there was only one:
he felt almost
nothing
. He felt oddly hollow… Barely a trace of what he once was… He felt like he was somehow vastly
reduced
. Diminished.

He strained his eyes and tried to turn his head but it was as if he no longer had eyes or a head to turn. He had no control over his movements or —

An indistinct form flew past and he could see it! But his vision was different than before — the form shimmered like a thermograph but instead of reds and oranges it left a cool green and blue gaseous trail in its wake. Then another form floated by, smaller but of similar make-up. He tried to follow their progress but was unable. He could only see what was in front of him, nothing else.
What were these odd creatures?

Yet another shape floated past and stopped momentarily before him. It appeared to be in the shape of a person.
Was it staring at him? Was that its mouth that was moving, trying to say something to him?

The form turned and seemed to pulse in a way that somehow clearly conveyed fear. It flew away quickly leaving color dancing in the air.

Another hazy shape approached, larger and more purposeful. It launched directly at Frank and stopped right in his face. From within the haze, a head mushroomed, then a transparent face rapidly bloomed — Eli, grinning ear-to-ear.

“Wakey, wakey, Franklin — you’re home!”

Frank was unable to speak — as though he had no mouth and no will to use one if he did. The other shadowy shapes now circled around them in a flurry, buzzing and vibrating with a palpable sense of anxiety.
Was he now one these unformed creatures?
He wanted to raise an arm or hand to look at it and see that he still owned flesh but could not.

Eli reached a wispy hand from the unformed haze that constituted his “body” and removed his shadowy hat with the newly coalesced appendage. He smirked.

“So much faceless hunger, Franklin. Doesn’t it just kill you?”

Under his removed hat, a plastic zip-lock bag sat squarely on his head. The bag looked distinctly different from all else in the room, seeming to pulse with vibrant color from something sloshing inside — something a deep and gleaming crimson.

Eli lifted his other wispy hand, quickly snatched the bag off his head and tore it open with a fingernail in one precise motion. The contents flowed onto the ground and the hazy wisps flitted around it more frantically —their whispers growing eager and forming a cacophony of excited gibbering echoes.

Frank watched the wisps of all shapes and sizes dart for the fluid that was now obvious to him as
blood
. The ones that reached it first descended and hovered — until the blood showed signs of dissipation while the shapes themselves began to conversely change, growing less transparent and more defined.

Throughout, Eli floated directly before Frank’s view and commented as though playing the consummate showman. He pouted with mock sympathy.

“Poor souls. Hungry for what they cannot have again.
Life
.”

One of shapes turned and faced them, and Frank saw with a start that it was Rachel — her brow arched severely, her eyes glaring. She seemed to speak angrily, her lipstick snarling across her face. Her voice was barely audible.

“How could you?” She said, and then it was as if she willed her voice to be more insistently powerful and he heard her much louder: “HOW COULD YOU!”

Several more smaller wisps gathered around the blood that seeped into the ground and they now became visible as children. Frank recognized many of them from the photographs he’d seen in the newspapers as the missing or murdered children, both from Eli’s past and his own present. One in particular took up a position beside Rachel and turned and glared at them. It was little Ricky.

Eli ignored them all, simply laughed and continued his narration.

“From an early age I was fascinated with blood.” He said, as though teaching a studious pupil. “Little did I realize what true value it would later have… Because in the end, Franklin, it all comes down to just a few things and without blood, it just won’t coagulate.”

Here he giggled at his own joke, his floating head and shadowy arms bouncing with the eerie motion.

“Get it?” He asked, then continued without waiting for an answer. “You see, hate and blood are the catalysts, Franklin. Hate, blood, and let’s not forget that little ol’ promise you had me make.”

The glaring wisps of Rachel and Ricky now began to fade and soon they had returned to their former murky shades. Their forms seemed to look towards the blood on the ground but by now it was fully consumed. They diffused still further until they drifted off like puffs of dark smoke and blended with the background blackness.

“Think of it this way…” Eli continued. “The
promise
opens the first door, the door to return.
Hate
gives you the push to do it, the motivation to cross over. And
Blood
gives you the life, the physicality — temporary but there’s always more where that came from.”

Eli laughed and Frank wanted to respond — to ask so many questions. But he could not — He felt strangely dizzy in a way he had never felt before.

What was happening to him?

Eli began to fade from his view as though slipping behind a black veil — Frank was unable to concentrate, unable to keep focus on Eli or anything else and soon nothing made sense in the world around him… Before he dissolved — for that’s exactly how he felt — like he was
dissolving
into the air around him — He heard Eli speak one last time and it was with great difficulty that he made any sense of it.

“You are losing consistency — an expected occurrence.” Eli said. “Not to worry — in time you will adjust…”

And then, in a tone dripping with contemptuous sarcasm, Eli added —

“…and who knows? — By then you may have familiar company…”

Frank heard the beginning of a howl of laughter and was vaguely aware of the implications... His last distracted thought was that it was as if he was fragmenting as he had seen happen with the others —

— As if, quite suddenly, he was simply ceasing to exist…

Fernando was almost done filling out the missing person’s form, his pen poised over a question three-quarters of the way down the page when Detective Nathanial Parks showed up by his side. Parks was in his late-thirties but seemed much older and Fernando guessed by his stiff manner and perfect posture that he’d been in the military.

“You’re Fernando Puenza?” Parks asked, voice kept absolutely neutral and flat.

Fernando couldn’t help but stiffen.
They knew his name! The last thing he needed was trouble with the law.
He nodded.
Maybe he should have given them an alias at the front desk? Now it was too late.

The detective watched him carefully with those unblinking blue-grey eyes and indicated the form in front of him.

“You can skip that, there’s no need.”

Fernando was annoyed. He’d driven all the way here and the form had been a pain in the butt.

“What, you found her?” He asked, unable not to sound flippant and put off.

Parks ignored the question and continued in his formal betray-nothing monotone. His eyes never wavered and Fernando felt a bit wilted under that gaze.

“The night of the convalescent death — The night a patient sliced her wrist — You were there, weren’t you? You and Frank?”

Fuck!
Fernando couldn’t hide the involuntary flush to his face and a nervous clamping of his fists.
How did this Parks know that?
The detective leaned forward and gave him an even more piercing stare and Fernando felt one of his hands twitch involuntarily again — this time he was sure Parks had seen it. He decided to say nothing. He’d seen it in all too many TV shows — people getting scared and blabbing about stuff that got them in worse trouble. Better to say nothing and get a lawyer to do the talking for you than say something stupid.

Parks’ cheek moved like he was using his tongue to get something out of one of his teeth. He cracked his neck and, surprisingly, softened his tone.

“Look — I never said we were accusing you. But I need to know if you were there. Off the record.”

So he wasn’t sure, that’s why he was asking... But could Fernando trust him when he said “off the record? He didn’t even know this guy…”

Fernando bowed his head and thought about his position.

If he asked for a lawyer now it would make him look guilty for sure — Maybe it was better just to come clean…

He looked back up at Parks and checked him out a bit better; the graying sideburns, the perfectly ironed shirt. The guy seemed pretty damn straight. He held his gaze.

“Yeah, we were there.”

He needed Parks to see that he could look him squarely in the eyes for this next part. He made sure he didn’t even blink
.

“But we didn’t have nothing to do with her death. I swear.”

Parks betrayed nothing and his eyes didn’t waver.

Did he believe him or…? Had they found something?

Parks blind-sided him.

“Have you ever met Frank’s wife, Fernando?”

What the hell? What’s he getting at?

“No… Why?”

Parks ignored him again — just like Frank did on a regular basis. Maybe it was just a characteristic of Angelinos this age… Parks swiveled and peeled his coat off the coat rack and swung it on in a smooth precise motion. He patted his coat pockets to make sure he had what he needed, took an extra pen off his desk and slid it carefully into the interior lapel pocket and headed for the office door. He spoke over his shoulder as he went.

“Let’s go — I’ve requested a search warrant for Mr. Davis’ house. Hopefully we won’t have to wait long for the judge’s approval.”

Fernando got clumsily to his feet, rattled.

“You… You want me to —” He stammered.

“— Yes, I do.” Parks finished as he caught the eye of another officer at his desk — a muscular man that dropped his paperwork and followed them without a word.

“Search warrant…?” Fernando mumbled under his breath as he followed them out of the station. “Why do you need a search warrant..?”

***

The three men made their way to an unmarked Chrysler parked in a diagonal space behind the station. Parks got into the driver’s side while his muscular partner entered on the passenger side. There were no introductions as they thumped the doors closed and Parks started the ignition. Fernando paused for a moment outside the rear passenger door and barely had time to jump in before they pulled out of the Police parking lot in cloud of dust.

The drive was made without a word. Fernando had a million questions — but somehow it didn’t feel right to break the silence and he didn’t want to say anything wrong or call undue attention to himself. Part of it was because cops scared him—not that he’d had much to do with them himself… But from all the episodes of Cops he’d seen, most of them seemed like hard ass macho pricks with something to prove. That’s what he somehow thought of Park’s partner right away; a macho prick with a major chip on his shoulder. The guy was all crew-cut, square-jawed scowl, and bulging flexed muscle. Parks, on the other hand, was unreadable. His face rarely strayed from an unemotional mask and with his crisp movements and ruler-straight back he could almost be a machine. Fernando was pretty sure he’d been right about his military guess — everything was so
precise,
from the perfectly combed hair to the creases in his pants to his buffed shiny shoes.

After about twenty silent minutes, Parks pulled the cruiser to the curb in front of a small cottage-style house in a poor neighborhood. The surrounding fence was broken and leaning and paint had peeled off the house in long languid sheets. In the tiny front yard, the grass and bushes had all long since died except for a single rose bush that looked oddly healthy, maintained, and robust. On the more sheltered side of the shack there was graffiti that continued all the way out of sight, gang signs and obscene pictures — a clear indication of the neighborhood.

Frank lived here?
Fernando thought.
This didn’t seem right at all, they must’ve made a mistake…

Parks got out of the car along with his partner. Fernando followed their lead. Once outside, Parks faced Fernando. He spoke in a very low and calm conversational tone — almost
too
calm.

“You think you know Frank pretty well, Fernando? You think he’ll listen to you?”