Love, Undying

“Love, Undying”
By Andrew Polewarczyk


         He is rank with dried sweat and piss and shakes like a heroin addict; sitting across from Detective Robinson is one young man who wishes it was as simple as withdrawals. The two are mirror opposites; the detective sits straight in his chair, like a toy soldier at awaiting inspection, while the young man huddles with his knees pulled to his chest and hands clasped around his legs, rocking back and forth in the plastic interrogation room chair.

         “Look, we found the old man and it is only a short time before the D.A. gets here, and believe you me, it will go a lot easier for you if I can tell him how cooperative you have been,” the detective grits his teeth into a strained semblance of a smile, a movement that has gone largely unpracticed.

         The young man, barely blinking, continues his muted stare at the gray undecorated wall, unfaltering. With exasperated impatience, Detective Robinson shoots up from his seat and slams his chair and he pounds his hands down on the table. Leaning in close to the youth, “Ok buddy, you better start talking right now!”

         Unmoved, the youth just continues his trembling.

         “Don’t think he heard ya, detective,” a sardonic voice slices from behind Robinson. The detective turns to see a man stepping from the corner shadows. He is on the lower side of average, standing only around five and a half feet tall, with broad, yet unmuscular, shoulders. He is draped in a drab, dirty gray trench coat and matching, dingy wide-brimmed fedora.

         “You,” Detective Robinson guardedly accuses, covering up his momentary surprise.

         The man reaches into his inner coat pocket; the detective instinctively places his hand on the piece strapped to his side, but the man just reveals a crumbled pack of Lucky Strikes. Popping one out of the top of the pack, he grabs it with his lips while striking up a match.

         “I do not allow smoking in my interview rooms,” the detective snaps.

         “And I usually don’t tolerate asshole, but we’ll both jus’ ‘ave ta play the hand we’re dealt,” the man removes his hat and tosses it on the table. His short brown hair is greasy from lack of sleep, but he isn’t concerned if anyone cares or not.

         “What are doing here, Simon?” removing his hand from his side, Detective Robinson straightens his tie, recovering his composure.

         “Let’s just say your boss called in a favor. This him then?” Simon, switching hands, begins shrugging off his coat, exposing a white button down shirt, hastily tucked into his pants. The first two buttons are undone and the rim of the collar is yellowed from too many late nights, ending in early mornings.

         “What are you going to do? Rough him up some?”

         Simon’s thick lips curl to one side in a deadly smirk, “No . . . worse.” He pulls out the detective’s abandoned chair and seats himself, rolling up his sleeves; he presents his cigarette before the youth, the orange embers point towards the ceiling.

Simon begins to mumbles softy in a language that sounds to the detective as Asiatic, yet more guttural, with sharp, pointed clicks.

         Immediately the youth’s eyes latch onto the lit cigarette and follow its motion from left to right and back again.

         “Good, I’ve got your attention now. Let’s start off easy, what’s your name kid?”

         “Kevin . . .”

         “Kevin what?”

         “Kevin Miller.”

         “Where do you live, Kevin Miller?” Simon takes a drag.

         “362 Highland St.”

         “Good. Now, where do you work?”

         “Gobain Manufacturing and . . .”

         “And . . . ?”

         The youth remains silent. Simon leans forward, a shadow passing over his face, and with steeled authority repeats the inquiry, “And ?”

         “Hope Cemetery.”

         “The one with the high iron fence, taller than a man, right?”

         “Yes.”

         “Tell me about it.”

         “It . . . it was ter-terrible, it . . .”

         “Start from the beginning,” Simon leans back in his chair and runs a hand along his unshaven chin.

         “It was about two months ago-

         Work at the factory was slow and I was looking for a second job to hold me over until the next big contract. Looking through the newspaper I found a posting for a part-time grounds keeper at Hope Cemetery. It is clear across town from where I live with my brother and I was five minutes late to the interview.
         The full-time caretaker-

         What was his name?

         Adams. Bernard Adams. He was a grisly old man with an unkempt peppered beard and stark black hair. He walked with a slight limp and his eyes, his blue eyes, always staring off as if he was watching something that was going on far away that no one saw but him.

         The first day I arrived there for the interview, Bernard met me at the gate to let me in. Being an older and private cemetery, the gate was locked most of the time to keep kids and bums from hanging out and messing the place up. As he showed me around, Bernard explained that I would be given my own key and work during the day, mostly by myself, cutting the lawns and planting flowers. The portion of the cemetery along the road was smaller than the depth of the plots that extended back into the dense forest. Ancient willows hung low and melancholy throughout the grounds, giving the place a quiet, shaded sort of separate world feeling to it. There were all sorts of lilies and tulips and all kinds of other flowers whose names I didn’t yet know.

Bernard kept the grounds extremely manicured and took great pride in their condition, but getting older in years he was finding it more difficult to keep up with all the demands. So he placed the newspaper ad and seeing how I was the only one who showed up, he told me that I was pretty much hired. The job seemed good enough, the pay was right, and although rather tightlipped, Bernard appeared normal enough for someone who dug graves for a living.

Continue-

Well for the first few weeks I hardly saw him. He would leave a list for me at the gate, along with my pay in cash, and I would just go in and do the tasks he left for me. I knew that he actually lived on the cemetery, but my tasks never took my far enough back into the cemetery, by the forest, to actually see where he stayed.

Then one day there was a note at the bottom on my usual list that told me to show up the next day, at sunset, to help him dig a grave and that there would be an extra hundred in my pay that week for it.

So-

So I showed up just like the note told me and Bernard met me at the gate. He instructed me to follow him and despite our slowed pace, because of his limp, we didn’t talk. He led me past the usual markers and mausoleums to where the graveyard backed up into the forest. There stood a simple wooden shack crouched against the woodland, shielded from the rising moon by long draping limbs of pine.

“This is my house,” he grunted, “wait here.” Patiently I loitered around as he disappeared inside for many minutes before returning with a large package wrapped tightly in brown butcher parchment.

He tossed the package to me and I nearly toppled over under the surprising weight he bore so nonchalantly. Bernard motioned again that I should follow him and did so obediently. He took us behind his shack and into the forest. As the tree line crept up on the graveyard, there was a solitary grave stationed faraway from all the others.

The stone was completely blank and Bernard halted before it. He bowed his head in seeming reflection, and respectfully I did the same, making the Sign of the Cross with my free hand. I watched expecting him to do the same, but instead he traced some bizarre symbol in the air before him. He then turned to me and I must have had a puzzled look on my face, but he ignored me and continued on.

Next to the lone, segregated marker was a dirt path well concealed from the sight of the other paved walkways. We followed the well worn path into the woods and after only a few yards the path ended abruptly in a small clearing, in the center of which stood a single massive oak tree. The curious thing was the thick rope wrapped around the tree limbs. On the end of the ropes was a dangling metal hook, hanging down to about a foot above my head.

“Here, we’ll do this together,” he said and untied the package in my hands. As the brown parchment fell away I saw that the package was actually a large chunk of meat and bone from the side of an animal. I quickly looked around and noticed a multitude of differently shaped bones strewn about the small clearing. As he said, together we hoisted and secured the meat onto the hook, letting it twist in the slight breeze.

Immediately he turned away and began hobbling back down the path towards the cemetery. 

         “Hey, Mr. Adams,” I called out, having to catch up to him, “Uh-what’s the um meat for?”

Suddenly he halted and shot me a glare as if I had asked a tabooed question.

“Coyotes,” he continued limping along, “Heh, big mutha coyotes. Don’t want them nippin’ atcha while yer tryin’ ta dig ah grave.”

While we walked along in silence, I was puzzled about this, I had never heard of coyotes coming this far into the city before, but with the woods so close by I convinced myself of the possibility. This time I noticed that Bernard did not halt before the solitary grave, but hurried past it as if it was the cause of his near menacing mood.

He had the whole matter of digging the grave already laid out for us. There was a single, yet sturdy spade, lantern, a pick and tarps for covering it over when we finished. At once Bernard set about showing me the ins and outs of excavating a gravesite. He participated little in the brute work himself, citing that his aged bones were no longer capable of such exertion. This too struck me as odd at the time, since just earlier he seemed to carry the whole side of meat effortlessly when it had almost knocked me over. Soon my concerns were lost to the sweat of the morbid task. Again and again the pick sliced into the earth, tearing root structures and making the soil loose for the spade. The whole time the old man held the lantern over my shoulder with the care and attention of an aging doctor overseeing a critical procedure.

The moon, shining silver diadem of the night sky, was reaching its zenith by the time we were finished. It was when we were packing our tools that I heard it. That maddening, half animal howl shall ever be etched firmly into my memory. The cacophony came from the forest about where we had hoisted the meat onto the metal hook. The shrill, unnatural sound tore through me like a blast of arctic air and it took a conscious effort to restrain my legs from carrying me directly to the locked gate and all the way home. At once I looked to repugnant old Bernard, desperation scrawled across my face.

“Heh, coyotes like I tol’ ya,” he chuckled, the moonlight illuminating the deep lines on his face, making him seem more ancient and weathered than I had ever thought.

With trembling hands I began helping him carry the tools back towards his shack.
Closer now, another called, like no coyote I had ever heard, split the grave silence and tore open the night. I nearly dropped everything I was carrying, but Bernard, unmoved, opened the door to his shabby little house and beckoned me to follow him. Unhampered by the inner darkness, he struck up a match, lit a lone oil lamp and set it on the table.

“Well come in already before you get eaten,” he sniggered, the yellow lamp flame throwing awkward shadows about the one room habitation. I entered at once and pulled the door close behind me, but Bernard pushed me aside and slid three distinct locking bars across the portal. It was then that I noticed that his shack, constructed of reinforced plywood and tin metal roofing, was completely lacking of windows. The room was purely utilitarian without almost any ornamentation. As I examined a small book shelf, sloppily nailed to wall, Bernard dosed large amounts of a sickly sweet smelling liquor from an unlabelled bottle into two small tin cups.

What were the books?

They had strange names. The Greater Key of Solomon . . . Le Grimoire du Pape Honorius . . . Liber Juratus . . . The Nightside of Eden . . . I don’t remember the others.

Go on.

He sat himself in the only chair, so I seated myself on the edge of his cot bed. I graciously accepted the tin cup of liquor; it was thick like syrup and made my whole body warm when I sipped it. We sat in the awkward silence of two grown men without anything in common, sharing a drink, which I, all too quickly, consumed.

“Well, looks like you’ll be stayin’ here tonight, sorry the ‘commodations are so sparse,” he leaned far back in his chair.

“Why’s that?”

Bernard refilled his cup from the bottle and slid it across the table, motioning that I should partake as well. As I stood up to refill my cup, it was obvious how potent the stuff was as I almost stumbled taking the half step to the table. He took a deep swig from the tin cup and then answered, “Coyotes . . . like I told you before.”

“If you don’t mind me askin’, Mr. Adams-”

“Call me Bernard, for christsake, that’s what my friends used to call me.”

“Ok . . . um . . . Bernard, why do you live in the middle of like a graveyard?” this was the first non-work question I had ever asked him. The liquor was making me bolder than I usually am, but the question had been nagging at me since I had taken the job.

Perhaps it was just a trick of the flickering oil lamp light, but the hard etched features of his face seemed to soften, “Have you ever been in love?”

“Uh . . . I don’t think so, I mean there was this one chick-“

“Love, Kevin, goddamnit. Love!” he half yelled at me, refilling his cup, “Oh, trust me, Kevin, you’d know love, it’s unlike anything else. At once it is tearing you apart, but it also makes you whole, more complete than ever before, giving you the strength to do anything. There’s nothing like it in the whole world, no drug, no liquor, no magic spell that can make you feel as alive as love does!” pausing, he indulged in another generous sip, “Did you know, I used to be a professor at the state college?”

“No,” the room was becoming slightly hazy and in the lamp light, the room appeared to throb as if we were sitting in a gigantic chest cavity and the walls surged with the beat of some great, monstrous heart. Leaning forward I poured myself some more of the sweet liquor.

“Yeah, back before I had my stroke. Had to quit though, it was a shame, the bastards pretty much forced me out, saying that I was no longer fit to teach. It was Cynthia, my wife, who took care of me, helped me get myself back together. She . . .” he paused, “she worked herself ill taking care of me. Now I look after her. I moved into the cemetery af-after she . . . um . . . passed, so we could still be together. The unmarked grave near the woods where we stopped is where sh-she sleeps,” he had begun to slur terribly, “On ya weddin’ day dey sah ‘til deeth doya path, shnot troo. Nah yas shouls ah boun’ tagetha fahevah.”

A melancholy air had descended heavily on the one room shack. I remained quiet and hung my head as it was swimming from the over potent, syrupy liquor. When I finally regained enough of myself to look at Bernard, I found that he was fast asleep in the chair. I took the blanket from beneath me, and using the table to steady myself, wrapped the blanket around the macabre, sad old man.

I laid myself down on his cot and immediately began slipping off into a drunken slumber. Perhaps it was all of that queer liquor and nothing to eat. Perhaps it was all the strange talk of coyotes and hanging slabs of meat in the forest. I was in a graveyard after all and the impact of spending large quantities of time in such a tabooed environment is bound to affect one’s psyche. Yet as I was drifting into sleep, I swear I heard a faint scratching at the door. I could hear nails scraping against the wooden door way. My blood must have turned to ice and froze my heart, indeed the whole temperature of the room seemed to plummet, and I could see each of my labored breaths evaporate before my eyes. Momentarily paralyzed, I listened to the scratching come and go at random intervals, yet always returning, unnaturally persistent. Finally I gathered the courage and in a hushed voice called out, “Mr. Adams . . . Mr. Adams.”

I could barely move, but as if in reply the scratching grew more intense applying a significant amount of pressure on the portal.

“Bernard . . . Bernard,” I whispered again, in vain. Whatever it was that so desperately desired entrance began employing so much force that the door itself was beginning to bow inwards, to the point of threatening to splinter in two.

“Bernard!” I finally dared say out loud, my voice cracking like I was some kid who just ran into the schoolyard bully. The door seemed on the verge of giving and the old man hardly even stirred at all. However, I noticed that he had begun to audibly babble in his sleep. I say babble because the words coming from his mouth were far removed from English and the only discernable syllable, repeated at uneven intervals and with strange inflections uncommon in modern parlance, was the word, “Cynthia.”

Slowly at first, the scratching started to subside and the pressure on the door was eventually receded. Whether it was the remaining alcohol in my system or my over worked nerves, but somehow I dropped off into the thick oblivion of sleep. 

Sometime early in the morning I fell out of Bernard’s cot and awoke on the floor with a throbbing headache and a mouth like a desert. Bernard was still sound asleep in his chair and with the each ringing blast of snoring, it was a wonder that I managed any sleep at all. Groggily I gathered myself together and staggered forth from the shack and made my way home.

It wasn’t until later in the day that I recalled the dead of night scratchings and the sheer terror of a denied entry. However, as the days began to pass and operations at the graveyard returned to normal, I came to chalk the memory up a combination of Bernard’s queer libation and all the talk of coyotes. If I had dared trust to that abominable recollection I would have examined the door for markings and thereby this whole episode would have concluded differently. Indeed had I inspected the door of Bernard’s shack, I would have quit the cemetery and Bernard and the whole affair. I would have even packed up myself and my brother and taken off for the deep south where our cousins live. Unless of course the sheer weight of the diabolical possibilities caused me to take my brother’s 45 and put an end to a mind that has collapsed under the truth that no sane mind was meant to comprehend.
So things continued on smoothly. In the afternoons, when I finished up at the factory, I would let myself into the graveyard and perform the tasks Bernard had left for me. The summer wound on and the evenings were long and warm, and despite my concrete denial, I still made sure to complete my task amongst the graves before sunset. The idea of being alone in that place at night filled me with a sort of superstitious trepidation.

Then earlier this week, I arrived at the cemetery as normal and found an envelope of money and note from Bernard awaiting me. His note explained how we had another grave to dig, but that he was too busy with preparations to pick up the slab of meat to hang for the coyotes and that I was to collect the coyote deterrent in his stead. The butcher he employed was up on Green St. and they knew his order, all I had to do was show up with the money Bernard left in the envelope and collect it. We were supposed to dig the grave last night; however, two days ago I had lost Bernard’s money playing cards down at Tammany Hall. I felt terrible but there was not any way I could replace the money until I got paid. So thinking the whole thing over, and of this old man spending his pension on meat for lousy coyotes, I borrowed my brother Lee’s 45 and decided that tonight I would free Bernard from this burden.

He had instructed me to show up at the same time as before- sundown. The floor manager at the factory, though, has been riding my ass and it was already dark by the time I arrived at Hope Cemetery. Bernard was not at the gate when I arrived so I let myself in and secured the lock behind me. I went directly to where we were supposed to dig that night but found only the tools set out as they were last time. I figured that Bernard must be waiting for me and the slab of meat, at the clearing in the woods and as much as I dreaded traversing the illuminated sections of the cemetery alone, I hustled towards the dirt path and into the forest. I almost ran past him, not expecting to find Bernard by himself at that solitary, unmarked grave we had stopped before on our prior visit.

“Quickly, where’s the meat?” he asked immediately a tinge of anxiety rising in his voice.

“I-I lost the money and couldn’t afford it on my own. I’m sorry, Mr. Adams, I’ll repay you, I promise,” I attempted to explain.

“Fuck,” he swore and shook his head, “Go straight to the gate and go home, we’ll dig the grave tomorrow night.”

“No, it’s ok, look,” I took out the firearm and showed it to him.

“You fool! Run!” he shoved me as hard as he could with one strong hand.

“Come on, Bernard, we can end this-”

“No! Never!” he screamed at me. It was then that I felt the ground beneath me begin to quiver and shake.

“What’s going on?” I asked my voice a hardly audible squeak. The ground in front of the blank marker suddenly heaved upwards and in shock I took a step back and raised my brother’s gun. Bernard, however, stepped in front of me and began chanting in that same bizarre language I had heard him mumbling in the sleep. A strange aura of power seemed to envelop him as he traced unknown symbols in the air with his fingers. Terror ripped through me, though, as the temperature drastically dropped all around us, and I watched as death white fingers then arms reached forth from the soil and hoisted what remained of Cynthia’s carrion feasted body from what was supposed to be her place of final rest.

On half skeletal legs, the ghoul that was once Bernard’s lover lurched forward, a howl of both agony and excitement issued from her impossibly wide stretching mouth. Still dressed in her funeral gown, now torn and soiled from her breaking forth from the earth, she-it was the stuff of nightmares. Bernard continued chanting and waving his hands in the air to no avail and the feeling of power that flowed from his faded away and again he was but a weak old man. Upon seeing the ineffectiveness of his gestures he turned from his lover and fled past me, nearly knocking me over as he did so.

My hands were shaking badly but I empty the gun at that hell wrought abomination before me. Only a few shots found their mark and the hot lead easily sliced through her rotten flesh. The creature momentarily dropped onto one knee but otherwise seemed unbothered by the attack.

As it got back to her feet our eyes met. I guess I expected the blank, far-away stare I had seen in other dead things, but this was different, her eyes, oh god, her eyes. It was like looking into an endless well of rage driven hunger, an appetite so torrential it could only be satiated by destruction, by the utter consumption of all it despised in its own hell taught manner.

I was well on my way to catching up to Bernard when my mind finally regained a handle on the desperation of my situation. Unnaturally swift for something that should be dead; the ghoul was not far behind me. Bernard, even hindered by his limp, was closing in on the cemetery gate but my terror drove me past him and I was the first to reach the gateway. A moments bumbling produced the key from my pocket. I unlocked it and slipped out of the graveyard and closed the gate behind me. It was then that I saw Bernard only a few feet from the gate, his fiendish lover at his heels.

I locked the gate.

Bernard collided with the tall iron fence and hastily pulled once on the handles.
“Kevin!” he screamed and reached his arms out between the bars towards me, but then she was upon him.

“No, Cynthia, I-I love you . . .” were the last words I heard him choke out before . . . before . . .

You collapsed on the ground and laid there all night listening to the sounds of your boss being eaten to death.

“Yes . . .”

“This is ridiculous!” Detective Robinson slams his hands down on the table, “do you really expect me to believe this?”

“What?” Simon coolly turns to the detective, “That old man Bernard was so in love with his wife that he tried to bring her back from the dead, but lacking the necessary skill, instead raised a ghoul from hell and kept it locked in the cemetery. Pretending that it was really her, he fed her butcher’s meat until Kevin, here, screwed things up and she devoured him? Well, frankly, yes I do,” Simon stands up and places the hat back onto his head.

Before Detective Robinson can summon a reply, however, the door to the interrogation room is opened by an older gray-haired man.

“Chief!” the detective snaps to attention, saluting the older man.

“You’ve gotta stop callin’ me in on this petty shit, James,” Simon says to the chief while passing by him on his way out of the room.

“Where do you think you are going?” Detective Robinson blurts out.

“I’ve got an undying love to put to rest.”