In His Hands, page 2
As he took a break, he examined his progress. The hole was approximately four feet deep. Haskim wondered just how deep coffins were actually buried. He imagined that it most likely was not the typical six feet everyone assumed.
With waning energy, he resumed his digging. Suddenly the shovel clanged, stopped short by a solid object. Through the hole left, he saw glistening metal.
Reaching the casket energized Haskim. He began digging frantically now that he was so close. Quickly he exposed the top of the coffin and clawed with his hands trying to find the latch. He finally located it and pulled as hard as he could, but it would not give way. He shook the casket and beat on the side of it and still the latch would not give. The pounding alerted the dog once more and this time he would not relent. Haskim pressed on. Filthy, dirty and sweating profusely, he stood on top of the casket and jumped up and down trying to dislodge whatever dirt might be blocking the path. When he returned to the latch, it finally gave way. The lid popped open slightly. A small gushing sound, like a lover’s whisper, emanated from inside the coffin.
The hinges creaked and groaned, but the wall of the hole was not dug out far enough to allow the lid to rise to a sufficient height. Lying over the coffin, Haskim clawed desperately, digging away the earth that blocked his progress. After clearing the space, he tucked the flashlight under his arm and began raising the heavy metal hood. As the lid reached chest level, he shifted the position of his hands and began pushing up with his palms. A terrible stench rose up snatching his breath away. With a powerful last thrust, the last mound of dirt blocking the opening gave way. The lid swung open and rocked back and forth on the rusty hinges.
Haskim shone the flashlight down into the box.
In the cabin the caretaker’s patience had worn thin. Willy would just not give it up. Something was disturbing the dog and it was obvious that his master wasn’t going to be able to get to sleep until the matter was investigated. Most likely some nocturnal rodent was making a ruckus. Perhaps two animals were vying for territory among the marble head stones snarling or growling at one another. It was not unusual for deer to invade from the woods on the far side of the cemetery, especially at night. But something about Willy’s persistence alarmed the grave digger.
Could it be possible some raucous teenagers intent on vandalism had returned to the cemetery?
The year before in the middle of the night, two troublemakers had come through knocking down headstones and spraying graffiti on others. Their shenanigans had caused him a lot of work and didn’t endear him to the cemetery owners either. He had learned a lesson from that debacle. He had ways of dealing with critters or vandals who wanted to do damage to the cemetery. The caretaker lumbered over to the corner where he kept his shotgun. Willy stopped his protests for a moment and froze in his spot alerted that finally his master was going to act.
The withered corpse rotting inside her lovely sky blue dress leered up at Haskim. A huge diamond brooch sagged from above her breast. The stench of decay rose from the coffin encircling him as he gazed down. The woman’s head was shrunken, the remains melded into the silky pillow. The face was almost entirely skeletal except for a few black patches that clung, here and there, to her skull. Her left eye, set in a blackened recess, glared out. The shriveled orb seemed locked on Haskim. The unpleasant smell and the vision of the emaciated body unnerved him.
The corpse’s wedding ring, now oversized on the bony finger, glistened in the glow of the flashlight sending prisms of yellow sparks all about the soft white padding. Haskim searched around the coffin but did not find what he was after. He cursed and pulled the body up to check beneath it. The remains sagged beneath him falling in on itself like stiff gelatin. By now Haskim was panting furiously. He swung around and reached his hands down into the bottom part of the coffin. He shivered as his hand ran along the side of a bony thigh.
It was no use. His hunch had proved wrong. It was not there.
Haskim swore. He pried the ring off the finger and pulled the brooch off the dress.
Their value would be some reward for all his hard work. His thoughts scattered now. He felt himself losing control. He had to get out of there. The combination of terror, smell and claustrophobia was becoming overwhelming.
He climbed out and rolled sideways to escape the hole. Down the road a flashlight illuminated the front door of the cabin. The dog’s incessant barking suddenly increased in volume. The door to the cabin opened and the flashlight flickered in jiggling swirls at the cabin’s doorstep.
A voice rang out. “Who’s there?”
Haskim hugged the ground and waited. The dog continued barking and the man moved a few steps out from the doorway. This time Haskim noticed that the man wore boots.
“What is it, Willy?”
The man flashed his light out into the night, but he was too far away from Haskim to observe anything. The dog ran along the fence line now back and forth barking furiously. The man retreated into the house, but the door remained open.
What now? Haskim thought. Should he make a run for it or wait it out? He decided to wait and see what would happen next. A few moments passed and the dog calmed slightly resorting to interspersed growling between bursts of barking.
The man came back out of the house this time with a jacket on and something in his hands. He closed the door and with the flashlight shining before him made for the gate entrance. Willy began spinning around in his spot anxious to get at his prey.
Haskim had seen enough. He got to his feet and ran for the fence.
The caretaker spotted him. “Hey ... hey you!”
Haskim didn’t know if he could make it to the fence before the dog got to him, but he was just as concerned about the shotgun he had seen in the caretaker’s hands. By the time he made it to the stone pillar he had climbed to enter the grounds, the barking had stopped and Haskim knew the reason. The dog had been released from the yard and was expending its energy chasing his prey. Haskim’s hands hurt terribly from all the shoveling he had done. That and the heavy panting his run produced made him nearly helpless for a moment. His hands would not grip the rails and he could not catch his breath.
A small burst of barking gave Haskim a clue as to the dog’s progress. He still had some time. He collected himself and began climbing. When he reached the top of the pillar, he looked back and saw the dog through the trees, its form illuminated by the moonlight in sporadic flashes as it peeled through the shadows of trees and then open ground.
“You hold on there!” the man screamed from a distance beyond the dog.
Haskim jumped down and fell into the fence just as the dog arrived. Haskim’s shoulder took the brunt of the fall and for a moment he sat immobilized. Before he could react quickly enough to pull away from the fence, the dog locked its jaws on Haskim’s left hand. Haskim screamed and pulled his hand free but not before the dog had managed to tear at his hand.
In the distance the caretaker was advancing. Haskim ran to his car. With his mauled hand he tried to pull the keys from his pocket. His bleeding fingers would not work. Finally he managed to retrieve them. As he got in, the caretaker had reached the gate and opened it allowing the dog to escape the grounds. By the time Haskim got the car started, the dog was at the side of the vehicle jumping up at the window scratching furiously. The road forward was a dead end forcing Haskim to turn the car around. As he quickly circled, the man reached the car and banged on the window. Haskim turned his head and stared directly at the caretaker just before he was able to floor it and peel off down the street.
The caretaker had seen a lot of stiffs in his time. He had cleaned them, dressed them, powdered them and buried them, but he had never seen one climb out of its grave before and drive off.
Chapter 2
October 5, 1984
Demetri Davos tapped his cane on the slick floor and waited for the elevator that would take him down to the lobby. Beside him a stiff looking executive, with black horn-rimmed glasses and blue silk tie, checked his watch and shifted his feet before needlessly pressing the already lit down button twice more. Demetri remembered a past when time cramped him as it did this up-and-coming business man. Now Demetri had nothing but free time, but it was not endless. His time was grinding down like the second hand of a watch with a worn out battery, clicking forward until that final moment when the next second’s lurch would prove too demanding.
The old man tried to dispel the desire that lurked beneath his easygoing appearance. Those feelings were trying to distort his will the way the thrust of a hammer on a hot anvil shapes the edge of a sword. Each pounding clang curled his willpower just a little more, threatening to weaken his self-control even more than it had already been compromised. A spike of anxiety shuddered through Demetri. Now it was his turn to react to the elevator’s delay by strolling over to the window.
Before him the overcast sky grayed the Chicago River as it rippled past the two pillars of Marina City standing across Wacker Drive like two large ears of corn. Below him swarms of Chicagoans pressed down the wide sidewalks, darting in and out. Some trudged on wearily while others bounced along merrily, those being the tourists, perhaps from Japan or Europe awestruck by the tangle of vertical structures, some of which in their magnificence rose to such heights that clouds obscured their tops.
Ding!
Demetri and the executive squeezed into the mirror-walled elevator and like the rest of the riders made every attempt to stare at some obscure point in the ceiling or floor where their eyes would not be forced to connect with someone else’s. Everyone holding to an anonymity that allowed them to hide their inner most thoughts from the surveying glances of the other silent riders. All held to it but the little boy who gripped his father’s hand with his right while his left wiggled the green army man up his side as if the soldier were climbing a wall. He made a “puff” sound indicating the soldier had fired his rifle and looked up at Demetri for his impression.
Demetri smiled as he wondered what it might be like to live in the mind of that little boy, obsessed with nothing more than army men, his next meal, perhaps already dreaming of the Halloween candy that was soon to come.
Staring down at the child brought the stomach-churning anxiety once again to the old man’s bowels. It had been with him in a less muted version ever since age began tearing down the walls of youthfulness as it invariably does to all human kind. Age had done its best to sag his belly, slump his shoulders, and enlarge his double chin. His continual sour stomach however now reaffirmed to him the results of the latest tests performed by Doctor Goldman. The stomach pains would get worse and there was little that could be done.
What did a seventy-one year old man expect? All the riches in the world could not halt the slow, inevitable crawl to the grave. Nothing could ... except ... And that scared him more than even the consequences of an inoperable cancer.
The doors opened at the lobby and the more industrious of the elevator’s inhabitants, including the impatient executive, funneled quickly out fanning into the throng of hustling businessmen and women. Quickly they dissolved into downtown Chicago. Demetri held back and let them all shimmy past him. His needs did not dictate a hectic pace or require anything more than a stoic stroll helped along by his wooden cane.
The vision of Doctor Goldman’s eyes came back to him, the way his blinking increased and he seemed to find excuse after excuse to look away from his patient. It had taken three or four requests from Demetri before the doctor finally came clean: there was no cure, yes his colleagues agreed with his diagnosis, the pain would get worse, time was running out. Demetri sighed deeply as he buttoned up his overcoat and fitted his leather gloves to his arthritic fingers. He moved aside of the hustle and bustle and stared out the door. A Wendella tourist boat slowly cruised past on the Chicago River, its mast just visible above the stone bridgework.
Demetri made his way through the revolving door and found the stiff breeze that accosted him to be quite welcome. He wanted to feel everything now, to be absorbed with everything, to have his brain filled with whatever it would just so long as he could stop that incessant longing that would not leave him alone. It had been getting stronger as the weeks went by and his sour stomach had ached and cramped. But he knew it was nothing compared to what would be coming. It would be dangerous now, extremely dangerous, but not necessarily for him. His weakness might make someone else pay, something inflicted ominously on one of his own.
It was odd. At some moments what the doctor had told him sent an ominous chill through him shrouding out all his senses, nearly suffocating him with fear and uncertainty. He was not an overly religious man, but he had always considered himself an honorable one. That had always been an enigma to him. If he wasn’t overly concerned about what the Almighty might consider a fair retribution for the things he had done, why would he not follow the route of conceit and self-gratification regardless of how hollow and shallow they might be? Would not his world exist within the confines of grab for all you could, dog eat dog? It must be that civility and fair-mindedness were in themselves goals that in some way were pursued as a natural by-product of the motives of selfishness and egotism.
So even in that, was the self-restraint he had demonstrated for much of his life simply, in actuality, another demonstration of his self-centeredness?
And why, when he had already suspected what the team of doctors’ final verdict would be, did he mumble prayers into his pillow like a little boy who first realizes that his parents cannot solve all of his problems?
Had that been what he had turned into, a sniveling child, tucked under the covers of his huge bed, in his fashionable bedroom, in the second story of his spacious manor house? That was fine, he supposed, except for the naked exposure it brought, the fright, that could so easily turn into desperation and despair which of course could be so easily remedied, so effortlessly relieved, with so tragic of consequences.
The old man’s stomach began once again to stir.
It might be better to put something in it, he reasoned.
Using a pay phone, he called his driver, Nigel Quimby, and told him he was going to stop and grab a bite to eat. They arranged a pick up time. Demetri chose the Greek restaurant off Randolph Street. They generally had a large menu and served good, tasty food. He went through the revolving door and was greeted by a young blond-headed hostess in her mid-twenties who seated him at a booth toward the back against a window. Through the glass he witnessed scores of people headed up and down the street bustling through their busy lives.
The old man sighed and opened his menu.
Across the street standing in the doorway of an office building was a man fifteen years younger than the one he had been following. His overcoat was tattered in several sections. In its time it would have been considered an elegant coat, one that might be worn by an elite class of executives who didn’t punch a clock for their daily bread but instead worked their own hours, mixed pleasure with business over extravagant lunches, and were very unconcerned as to whose turn it was to pick up the check. A day in which a wave of his hand would get his cigar lit, a time when the waiter would address him as, Sir, and would make a point of knowing what the customer’s ‘usual’ was.
But that seemed so long ago now, before the accident, the operations, the endless stretching exercises during his months of recovery. Now his presence was as welcome as that of a coughing tubercular patient in a roomful of children. The man pushed up the sun glasses on his face, but they simply slipped down once again to the edge of what constituted his nose. A small child being led by the hand by her mother could not help but stare up at the figure slumped in the doorway. Although the man wore oversized sunglasses and his black hat low over his face, the girl could see the man’s cheeks and chin and the gnarled tip of his nose. Perhaps in later years maturity and age would combine to impose the rules of common courtesy upon her, but for now there was only the half-open mouthed, stunned expression on her face.
The man had seen it so many times that his mind no longer registered the scorn and slump in spirit that had for a period been a by-product of such obvious, yet innocent and understandable, stares. Andre Haskim had last conversed with Demetri months before on the occasion of Demetri’s last visit to the convalescent center where his former friend recuperated from his ordeal. Andre’s pleas, no matter how decidedly just he felt they were, had fallen on deaf ears. When he persisted, Demetri became more and more obstinate in his refusal. He had done what he could to alleviate Andre’s bills, but he would not agree to the real wish his former partner asked of him. Together they had made a mistake, together they wished upon a star and together they now suffered in their own way, Andre in the physical and Demetri in the mental and spiritual. Both had wrestled the demons of depression and emotional turmoil.
It had turned one vengeful and the other mournful.
The dissension between the two men had become so pronounced that Demetri would no longer agree to see Andre. The injured man had begun to scare him. In the permanently swollen socket that held now a discolored, misshapen eye, Demetri saw only intolerance for anything that would not satisfy him. Revenge and resolute conviction indicated a kind of unbalanced reasoning, a scary unreasonable thing, like that of a paranoid schizophrenic who is so certain of the veracity of his beliefs that any disagreement only gives added impetus to the realization that he was indeed correct. Yes, there were plots against him, his suspicions were valid, and he was right to be scared, very scared. And he would need to protect himself.
