Caraliza (40 page)

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Authors: Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick

BOOK: Caraliza
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“
I dug your bones and you are not here,” Evan said again. He could barely see the closet from the corner of his eye, but the candle could still offend him by casting light upon the form looming over the body between them and the body gripped into his fist.
“
I buried you. I made your grave.”
“
You lie. I can do what I want.” And he stepped backward onto the body in his hand. Sounds came from her lips as he bore down with his foot.
“
I put you under a stone.” The candle flickered and the brute looked to the closet for the first time. Evan knew the plate was bringing its image in the developer. The damned candle needed to go out, but refused. The brute bent to place his hand on the body between them, and Evan gasped, without control of his lips or his heart.
“
Shelly!”

 

He could not take another breath; the beast was upon him, bearing him back with his size, both hands empty, both hands reaching for Evan’s throat. As they closed, and the lights went out in Evan’s eyes, he hoped with his soul the candle had been put out, he could not control his tongue to make the word well but he squealed as the air refused his crushing windpipe “I buried you, Toby Hoath.” And Evan felt himself disappear into darkness.
The plate Evan made, of the stone above the brute’s grave, lay quiet in the cool bath in the closet. The candle went out as the image appeared. The cross had no significance to Evan, but the brute had been Irish, perhaps he had been catholic as a child. The marble was simply engraved - nothing more than,

 

Tobias Hoath
Died 1919

 

 

The gentlest of warm hands caressed Evan’s brow, honey lips were helping him draw breath through a wrecked throat. There was blood in his mouth and she lifted him to her breast to help him sit and breathe. There was no light by which to know the angel, who held his soul, lest it leave for fear of other deaths in that place. Evan tried his eyes, and felt only tears, from the face above his, and hair washing his cheeks as the tears fell. He wanted her mouth, and she gave it. He wanted her warmth, and she warmed him. She held him until, his lungs burst for want of air and his life rushed back from the edge of his dreams. She gave the aroma of fragrant dust, new sawn cedar, and her hair was fine as cobwebs against his face.
He could see nothing in the blackness of the room, but her presence was so warm, he knew it was Caraliza. She licked his lips, tasted his tears, and kissed him again so he might draw another breath. There was no time in her arms, she had nothing of time in her embrace, and it could last as long as his dreams. He wanted to see her eyes, and he loved the honey taste of her. She bent to his mouth the third time he died, and held his soul in his mouth until it gasped for more air. She gave it, and kissed it to make it stay once more.

 

“
Hij probeert het niet, Yousep.” He is not trying, Yousep.
“
He thinks he loves you, my angel.”
“
Hij kan niet komen.” He cannot come.
“
Kiss him with her mouth.”
The taste in Evan’s mouth was sweet but it was burning his flesh in tingles, which felt like shards of glass; his body was dying for want of air. Shelly kissed him and sweeter tears fell to his face. She kissed him as he died and she held his soul within his mouth so it could not leave. When it screamed again to breathe, she filled his lungs and there was no honey in the kiss. It was life.
“
Say the name of his love.”
“
Shelly. Zij kan niet zonder jou,” She needs you to stay.

 

The darkness left his eyes. The candle in the closet cast
enough light into her eyes he could see the tears. She was a fountain of tears onto his lips and cheeks. And when she spoke, it was not to him but to his dream, the angel fading from his sight.
“
Dank je, dank je! Caraliza.” Thank you.
Evan could not speak; the hands, which lingered long enough nearly to kill him, crushed his throat, but help was coming.
Shelly was neither on the floor, nor in the closet, but she had been upstairs. She was lured there by dreams so sound, she walked without waking. She came before the spirit dance repeating that deadly night began, as it was danced every night of the near century of time. The two lovers would make their way up the stairs, hide naked in the corner, from footsteps that returned every night; cries and grief every night, as Caraliza fell crushed to the floor, and Yousep was lifted away by his hair.

 

Shelly was there and watched in dismay as the two lovers covered her in the corner with their forms. She saw Caraliza clawing for release; her breath squeezed from her body. Shelly fainted when Yousep was lifted and the brute pulled him away. The agony on Yousep’s face broke her heart, and Shelly fainted when his anguish became hers. But the dance was changed. Yousep knew what the brute could not know.
The plates in the closet held the truth, held release, held a bond the lost soul could not shake. He owned soil in which to lie, and his name forged the lock. The fiend could not stay. They brought him down the stairs, and told him lies so Evan could do the work. Evan could not be told, his calm face would have shown like a bright flame, in his terror he was as dark to the beast as the shadows.

 

Caraliza lay battered on the floor, but had also gone to the attic room and endured so many blows her body was crushed. And the brute believed it, long enough Evan could pull the man’s name from the image in the plate, opening the brute’s door and causing his soul to be pulled through. It was Evan’s voice pulling Shelly from her faint. But Evan was downstairs, and she heard him curse the brute and call it down
She came to the bottom of the stairs and nearly rushed across to her love, but Yousep held her back and begged her wait until Evan could speak the name. He nearly lost the time to make the sounds, so quickly did the man lunge to grab him, but as Evan spoke and began to die, Caraliza pulled the beast away, the plate drew the name onto the glass, and their tormentor faded to dust in her hands.

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

 

“
I think it’s sweet you can’t say no,” Shelly cooed in his ear, as she tried on the largest ring on the counter.
Evan violently shook his head, and his eyes watered from the pain in his throat. But he relented, and sought her smile to kiss her and get her to leave, before she found a larger ring; the one he purchased the day before, and the jeweler craftily placed into the box Shelly clutched vigorously as she left with her treasure, and the guy who bought it. He forbid her to wear it from the shop. She fumed at him about it all evening, but he knew it was a ruse. She would put it on when he went to sleep anyway, and that was fine with him. But her engagement ring would be presented for real on the opening night.

 

While he recovered on the divan, and finished his catalog, Shelly completed the kitchen rehearsals, and tempted him with dishes he could not swallow. She was merciless. When she kissed him in passion, she would bite his throat to test his strength, and invite a smack on the behind. She would never accept such a thing without deserving it, and deserved it often. Evan almost wished he had been put in the hospital again, for the rest. But she would bring him cool drinks, and wonderful smooth chocolate shakes which would make his mouth water to see. The one thing he was told not to do, for no less a harm than perhaps losing his voice, he must not use it at all. He could not speak, and it sparked a torment she most loved to unleash.
No gesture or expression was good enough to answer the question; did he love her? She would pout at his lack of return, she teased him he never meant it, but he would take the ring from his pocket and her eyes would gleam and she would go back to work with a smile. After teasing him for hours on end, she would finally put her arms around him and he would feel her tears on his neck, she all but lost him, and she would whisper she was thankful he had not died while she stood helpless.

 

He wondered if she would have kept him as a ghost. She said he had died. The brilliant glow of his soul in their mouths as Caraliza prevented its escape into the air. Three times Evan perished in her arms, and she prevented the light from passing his lips. What Shelly saw, she could never put from her mind. She would dream it every night, but the terror which came before would not trouble her mind, or enter her dreams. Caraliza and Evan sharing his soul with each kiss, and the light escaping would blind her eyes. The angel was dead. It was not his time to die. His living soul could not pass her lips. Caraliza pulled Shelly to him so his soul could feel her love instead, and understand, Evan belonged in her arms, not in the arms of a ghost. Shelly wanted to feel that kiss from him again and again, with his life in the taste, and his soul in the touch. Evan wondered if ghosts have any choice. He liked to think he would have stayed with Shelly as long as she sought him in the darkness.

 

Three days to the opening of
The Studio
, and the glass was installed. Shelly was ecstatic. They erected a large plywood covering so the public, gathered outside, could not see into the place. She put the paper back up and the crowd disbursed, and Shelly pirouetted in the middle of the store until she was dizzy. Evan could whisper, and would tell her he loved her and nothing else. She adored it.
But the work was not without event. The attic had to be cleaned, and the stair to that awful place as well. She and Evan first walked there again before sending the staff. They could not risk losing a single person to those frights, such as they felt in that room. It was utterly and completely empty to their eyes. They felt no doom, no pain. It was bright with the sun from the bricks next door. Shelly smiled and Evan tried. It would take him time, more than she. She might be positive, he could still but only hope.
Screams and frights there were, the place was still haunted, but Shelly and Evan never heard it. Papa did not bother those whom he would have called grandchildren, but the wait staff was in mutiny about the front of the shop; guests could not be seated at the window table. They could not even set the places but the old man would raise their neck hairs, and drive them from the room. He was insane as ever, and the foul screeching about keys. Shelly had no clue and Evan was beside himself to learn that last evil truth. Had Papa the keys to that awful place? What evils kept him out when he knew Caraliza was hidden there?

 

Evan read the notebook so many times he knew every stroke of her hand with the pencil by heart. He could not understand the last few words she had written.
She fell hard to the ground under his body
. The answer came to Evan nearly in a dream, but in a daydream as he sat in the studio. The brute stank when he thrust his great hands around Evan’s throat. A drunken bastard, and a frail young girl, weak from lack of food. He had fallen and crushed her underneath. If Yousep knew any plan to help her, this would have changed everything, and he would have done the rash thing, and not the wise thing. He would have pulled her out unprepared.
Papa may have never known there was a plan to help her. Papa may have never known she was clinging barely to her young life in that pitiful basement hole. Papa would surely rage in grief at her loss, as one who held her life dear, not as one who turned his eyes away from her prison, to make the lie he had not known.
Evan never read all the documents under the display. The municipal bonds and the plates took all his energy, beginning the very day they were discovered. They alone nearly resolved every question he desired to find an answer for. He took the last few days before the opening to read, and make a plan to get next door to the wicked stair. He could not talk well enough to phone the police himself. He needed help. One of the waiters phoned, and made the request for him, but Evan made the fellow promise, on his very life, he would never tell Shelly. The police would come the very next day and let him under the grate. Thankfully, the heavy paper would not be off the great window, and Shelly would not know there was more activity over there, but the neighborhood would know.

 

She had a secret of her own to keep, Dannie had been her helper, and Evan would be no wiser about it, than she of the search with the keys. The space at the head of the store, in the most wonderful wall of the shop, was enough room for a very large frame. Only a few shelves had ever been there, only a few photographs. Papa had been spare on decorations for the walls. So this one space, behind the new bar, held Shelly’s secret. It was a cunning device.
She installed a deeply framed mirror, and the effect was to throw the entire store back upon the guests as they sat at their tables, the room looked huge. A beautiful mantle, built all around, completed the affect of another room in the shop, just through but yet another door. Evan thought it wonderful.

 

Below the stunning mirror, a simple case of dark wood and glass was placed. Inside this case, rested the eleven silk wrapped plates Papa desperately tried to break open, to free Yousep’s angel, the broken image of Caraliza at the window of snow, unwrapped so all could see, she haunted there beyond the glow of her life. Next to his beauty at the window, the only image of Yousep that had yet been found to exist, spade in his hand, and love lighting his smile, as he dug the roses. Between their images lay the precious little notebook, which allowed them to speak to one another at last. Beside this lovely, sad display, a camera stand, and a deep blue velvet covering. Evan suspected it was Yousep’s Waterbury.

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