Caraliza (27 page)

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Authors: Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick

BOOK: Caraliza
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The garden was cleared to be excavated for the basement. If anything else were found during the work the police could be notified and the Reismans would only be delayed a day, maybe two. The coroner thanked Sareta for her caution, and the care she displayed for the person they found. He said it was sad, but it was very common, remains would be dug, and no clue ever turned as for whom the grave had been made. This one person likely had a name, and now his due respect.
Evan told Sareta the Kogens packed out of the slums and moved to Chicago within months of Yousep's murder. She had not known, but it made no difference, unless they raised no other child and no trace of any relative was possible to find. If Yousep was alone again, she would see him buried, and a space would be made for his girl, in hopes she could be returned to him to rest. Evan did not know how to control what he felt, so he didn't. Sareta was sure he was the lad she hoped Shelly would someday find. His heart was very good, and very kind.
She was ready to go home. It had been more terrible a day than she thought possible. She kissed him on the cheek and told him goodnight, then handed him her key. “I do not want to know what you look for next. I cannot be here with you. I can feel them in every shadow as they watch us. Shelly will be away for five more days. The thought of her here, with them? It is more frightening than the remains of this tragedy. You must hurry, Evan.” Then she walked back inside to call Shelly's contractor. If he could be on the site to begin excavating tomorrow, she planned to double his fee.

 

Evan was unable to go home. The police were very interested to speak to him again, this time, across the street. He last stood at that exact spot nearly four months before, wondering whom the beauty might be, who was charging out of the Reisman Portraits. He hoped desperately she was the owner. He remembered wanting to be further against the wall from the curb, he felt he needed more room to catch the best image of the Reisman building and its partners, which loomed over it, across the street. But a huge, rusted metal grate prevented him. He could not set his stand safely upon it, and remembered the darkness that fell away under the covering. He now stood there with the police and looked at the grate, and realized it for what it actually was. It was the stair.
The one person whom the police were most interested to question when people vanished on that poor street in 1919, that person lived down this hole. It was grotesque. The police wanted to know; did Evan know who owned the building, how many times the basement was searched? He told them, at the time of the murders, it was also a Reisman possession, but he did not know who owned it now. They thanked him, and marked the grate with crime scene tape. The neighbors surely noticed the police swarming the shop all afternoon; they now saw tape on the walk to draw them over after the police left the street. Those poor neighbors, they were likely ready to see the Reisman Portraits pulled down almost as eagerly as most of Shelly's family.

 

When would Evan be able to hold Shelly and ask her forgiveness? She might have answered with reassuring clarity, had she but been inside the studio when the skull was found. Shelly would have known instantly what the spirits thought when the earth outside was moved. But Shelly agreed to five days isolation at her parent’s home. Evan had another five days to wonder. He had met Yousep. Yousep was ready with a gift of dreams.

 

The girl stood before his camera, timid and eager. She wanted to be near him but he was busy with the stand, and the plate he inserted into the back of the camera. She stood silently before him, next to the brick wall, wanting to touch him, and a wisp of cloud, which had been refusing the sun, blew away on a fresh breeze. Her dress was off in an instant and she rose on her toes into the sunbeam, her arms behind her head as angel’s wings, her dress a billow behind her, and she smiled the smile Evan waited to see. It lifted his heart and his eyes were drawn to her, he could not look away. The shutter was accidentally tripped as she received the sunlight into her skin and gave back a glow that dazzled his eyes. They laughed, they embraced, they covered her tiny, naked body with the filthy dress, and they kissed. Evan knew the bliss that Yousep took back to his work with his spade. The smile Evan wore, the gift from the dream, was the smile Menashe recorded with another camera, Yousep smiling as he planted rose bushes, which would later shed petals onto his grave, for as long as those roses lived over the place where he rested.

 

But the dream turned. This time they were in the alley, they were happy still, but she must run across to the awful stair under the stoop. He held Shelly so close he felt he would crush her frail body, but she gripped him tighter still. They were in terror at her leaving; she had taken an awful chance. Yousep did not know when Shelly could be freed. They hoped it could be soon. She whispered into Evan's ear, a music he desired to hear again, when he awoke from the dream. He lay still and sought the music with his heart. He did not understand what the girl said; she did not speak English.
Evan realized the torment Yousep felt at every touch of her fingers. They could not speak to each other. They could not say the simplest words to soothe one another. They could only speak with glances and with fleeting moments like the one in their dream. Yousep was desperate to know her speech, and it suddenly sent Evan into a sweat, and a panic. Shelly had spoken words in his apartment that Evan could not understand.
In his dream they were so intertwined he was lost, but for the emotions. Was he Yousep? Was Shelly the girl? They were moving in and out of each other's feelings and terrors. Evan had been drawn into their lives through a dream; the building drew Shelly into it. If the other spirit was there as well, was she still lost in the secret with them, to be tormented?

 

Shelly dreamed of a garden as well that night. A garden so large she could not find the end of it, but at that end, Evan would be waiting. As she ran to find him, rose thorns would catch her dress and tear her skin. They seemed determined she should not reach her goal. She was being called back, to somewhere else she understood Evan could not reach. The roses wanted her to go back, the voice that called to her wanted her go back. Evan wanted her to stay away. She awoke in her childhood bedroom, damp, confused, the taste of blood on her lip. She awoke calling to Evan, pleading he should take her back; he should allow her to return, that he should desire her and want her to join him once more. The laughter was beginning, as she struggled to run and reach Evan to beg him. The same laughter she heard upstairs in the attic where she wept for him. The same laughter she heard in his den when he collapsed onto his face from the blow to his head, and she wept that he was dead. Shelly screamed, he was not dead, and she screamed in her bedroom and woke the house, and as people rushed to her room to save her from fright, the roses withered. They shrank before her and the laughter died. She heard no laughter and Evan was just a little way farther, he could be seen. And he called her name.

 

“
Shelly?” she was shaken, but gently. “Shelly, are you dreaming?” her mother gathered her into her arms. “You gave us such a fright. What a scream!”
“
Mama?”
“
What? Darling, are you even awake
? Shelly?”
“
Mom?” she clutched her mother very close and cried, “The laughter is gone. Evan needs to know! The laughter is gone!”

 

The street light faded as the morning light began to overtake it on the sidewalk in front of the Reisman Portraits. The sepia glow was gone inside the shop and the shadows came back but less deep in the corners, the building waited silent, the smell of fresh sawn wood was in the dust in the air, a fine layer of the fragrant dust on all the display coverings. Wood had not been sawn in the storefront of the building since Papa was alive, his son selling his cameras at the great window, Yousep's view of Caraliza's entire world. The building waited alone for years, generations even, for a Reisman to enter and come home.

 

The last work the building felt, and enjoyed and sought, because it gave it more life than it had known for a very long time, was the work for Yousep's windows. Bricks were broken, plaster ripped away, beams sawn and dust strewn to every corner of the shop and the building loved it. None of the dust remained for long, Yousep was diligent it should not harm the cameras, or get into the darkroom closet. But it had not been the last wood sawn in the shop.
Another window had been worked in the front, and the building did not like that work - the spirits already returned to trouble the living. Yousep was not there to clear that dust away; some of it remained yet. Now the new dust covered the old and lay still, and the building felt it should not, but Yousep was not there to remove it. The young Shelly Reisman had not returned to love the building after this new dust collected, so it waited for her to come back.
It waited as the sun warmed the alley for the briefest of moments. It waited as the sun moved away and shadows returned. The sun was finally beginning to tease the boards in the back studio through its windows, the warmth filling the room's still air, a breeze in the panes bringing the fragrance of the new turned soil through the cracks, into the studio. And the building still waited.
There had been fresh work in the garden, and not since Yousep's planting had there been a spade of soil turned, except for the grave; the pit which held a single, forgotten, human form, under the rose bushes Yousep joyfully set into place.

 

The turn of a key in the rear door, and a breeze with more warm soil on its breath told the shop, the dust might finally be removed. But it was not the young Reisman stepping onto the studio boards, with garden soil clinging to his shoes; soil which covered the secret. This one now standing, afraid, in the studio, had not been welcome when his trembling body last rushed to the narrow stair, and climbed to the attic storeroom to greet terrible harm.
He was not unwelcome now. The spirit that called him then, was tired and finally wanted its own rest, and rest was so very close. Rest under a name on a stone for a proper grave. But for the name, the rest was earned, and that spirit waited in silence, not wanting to laugh. Evan stood in the studio and trembled, the panic rising and his heart telling him to flee; yet he had work to do. He could not flee, but he could not move; never once had Evan been this terrified.
It was terror, of very real, well-understood danger, something which nearly killed him. The Reisman Portraits recognized this fear. Fear which clung to madness for relief, had been felt one time before, many years ago as two young lover's tried to hide in silence in the attic room. Evan stood below and tried to breathe, tried to remember where in the shop he last felt calm. It surprised him to recall, it was in the darkroom closet. He decided to make his way painfully to the closet, and try very hard to remember the calm he enjoyed, if he could not, he would have to flee, and that was impossible. His work was more important than his fear.

 

He left footprints, in the finest layer of the settled dust on the boards in the shop, as he willed himself to reach the closet. Just obtaining the door caused him more panic, and he was breathing very hard as his fingers found the latch. He could barely stand as he pulled the door behind him, and the darkness closed his eyes, so he slumped to the floor in the tiny space, and put his face onto his knees and pressed until colors flashed under his eyelids, and his head began to ache. His breath coming in sobs, Evan could not flee the spirits that watched him now, or the spirit reaching to touch him.

 

Cool hands caressed his back and his trembling eased as the hands lay gently against his damp shirt. Relief, like a breath, won before slipping under to drown, filled his heart, and Evan relaxed the pressure against his knees. He prayed for the touch, Shelly's hands on his body as they stood in the darkness, but Shelly was not there. Yousep brought the girl, brought her to comfort Evan as he searched for the strength to remain and do his work. He remained in the closet more than an hour, and a whisper in his ear told him he was safe, the spirit in the attic did not care he was there, its strength was gone, its time nearly done.

 

“
Why would Yousep remain, when we have found him?”
“
Yousep is er niet.” It is not Yousep there.
“
Who is it?”
“
Mijn geliefde is er niet.” It is not my love there.
“
Who is there, in that room? Will they tell me?”
“
Het is niet mijn geliefde Yousep; hij is er niet. U mag niet binnenkomen.” It is not my love Yousep; he is not there. You cannot enter.
“
Why are you here?”
“
Voor mijn geliefde, Yousep.” For my love, Yousep.
“
Where have you been?”
“
Met mijn geliefde.” With my love.
“
Where did you die?”
“
Met mijn geliefde.” With my love.
Evan's fear diminished enough he could feel sadness at these words. They were so soft, barely heard, but sung sweetly to his ear. The hands caressed his chest under his shirt, they were warm now, and the lips on his neck were moist. She tasted his skin.
“
What does Shelly find here?”
“
Troost.” Comfort

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