Midsummer Dream House

 

Here or There

Lawrence sat on a stone bench supported by two angels placed back-to-back. With their eyes closed and heads bowed, wings stretched out behind them, and arms held above to keep in place the simple slab of limestone they carried, with the words ‘In Memory of David and Harriet Ellis’ engraved into the stone along its edge. Lawrence sat in the same spot every day, staring across the granite headstones that rose from the grass. It was an excellent place to think and enjoy the well-manicured lawns, flower beds, and old, carefully pruned, well-tended trees. He’d never had a fondness for cemeteries as he grew up but found this one peaceful and an excellent place to contemplate his life.

Today, it was snowing. He looked out across the space and watched the large, fluffy flakes slowly drifting down to collect on the blades of straw-colored grass and gathering across the tops of the monuments, softening the hard edges of the polished granite slabs, and coating the bright plastic flowers left by visitors at their fronts or flanking the sides of each of the headstones. He had memorized most of them at this point.

There was Frank Albany, who had died in Vietnam at the ripe old age of twenty, whose stone had a large emblem of the Marine Corps logo and had, written beneath his name and life dates, the simple phrase, ‘Oorah,’ whatever that meant. He only knew that it was a Marine thing. Once a Marine, always a Marine.

There was Rebecca and Bertrand, the Schwartzes, ‘together for eternity’ with oval-shaped, porcelain, black and white photos of each of them, looking very elegant in the nineteen thirties styled clothing they wore. These, mounted above each of their names, complete with swiveling, engraved covers to protect them from the elements yet somehow, never closed, and a pair of cast metal vases to hold flowers mounted to the stone support base in front and at each end; there was a large Star of David engraved into the center between their names. Visitors placed small stones across the top edge of their shared marker.

A smaller headstone sat directly behind and told of a child, Walter, who had died in infancy and been placed here – near to where his parents would eventually join him.

There was Mark Haney, ‘Taken too soon,’ with praying hands engraved at each corner and a death date of nineteen fifty-six.

There was Milton Baggett, ‘gone to Jesus,’ whose polished black slab was like a dark mirror, reflecting the tattered silk roses of the wreath staked to the ground in front and showed that he had lived until the age of ninety-eight years. Milton was one of the oldest lived members of any of the stones within view. Lawrence wondered how much the world had changed during Milton’s life. His birthdate showed that he had been born early in the nineteen hundreds, so he had seen two world wars, various more minor wars, the assassination of JFK, and the moon landing. Yet here he was with the others, reduced to letters and numbers carved into stone and only perhaps remembered by a few remaining descendants, who continued sporadically replacing the fading artificial flowers that graced his well-tended plot.

Patricia Mayhew was a ‘Loving Sister, Daughter, and Mother’ whose pink granite stone held the classic motto ‘Rest in Peace,’ the only one to do so of all the headstones Lawrence had seen. The earthen mound in front of the stone was still in the long process of settling into place.

In the distance, Lawrence could see the mausoleum with its narrow, peaked, stained glass windows and beautifully decorated wrought iron gate covering a worn and corroded brass door safely held behind the locked bars, which was perpetually ajar.

There were the large, raised block letters reading ‘BENNETT’ on the limestone lintel above the entrance.

The Bennett family must have done well for themselves during their lives to have invested so much money in building their miniature, familial corpse castle constructed of stone blocks. Lawrence could never determine how many of them shared the place in death, being unable to read or even count the wall plaques of the dim, inside chamber, the available light subdued by the colored and dust-coated windows or by the light cast through the three-inch space left by the slightly opened door. Each sunny day threw a bright vertical shaft of sunlight through that cracked opening, falling across a different plaque throughout the day as the sun crept its arced way across the sky. As he stared toward the mausoleum, he saw mounds of snow gathering at the edges of the peaked roof, clinging together until its own weight would cause it to slide those few remaining inches and fall to the ground below. Lawrence could also see something that he seldom witnessed from the bench where he sat day after day. He noticed a slender man in a well-tailored, wool, charcoal gray suit and tie, carrying above him an opened umbrella, the black canopy dusted with white and showing beneath it the handsome face of a middle-aged man with short-kept, graying hair. He looked at Lawrence and, as he walked straight towards him, picked up his pace ever so slightly until he was standing directly in front of Lawrence, then stooping slightly, he brushed the snow from the bench seat opposite Lawrence with graceful sweeps of his bare hands.

“I take it that you’re Lawrence,” he said in a pleasant baritone, sounding like a man practiced at professional speaking, like a professor, lecturer, or perhaps a television or radio host.

“I don’t suppose you will mind if I have a seat here across from you for a moment, will you? The snowfall makes everything so beautiful, and I’d like to enjoy it for a moment,” the man remarked, as he tugged up his trousers slightly from the knee before sitting carefully and crossing his legs in front of him.

“Not at all,” Lawrence replied, looking at him questioningly. “How do you know my name?”

“I was sent for you,” the man remarked, and smiled ever so slightly as he offered a business card to Lawrence, extended towards him, and held between his index and middle finger. Lawrence reached forward to receive the small rectangular piece of parchment-colored card stock, turning it until he could read the words embossed into its satin-sheened surface. Maximillian Voskós -Retrieval Specialist. “Precisely, how long do you plan on staying here, Lawrence?”

“I’m not exactly sure what you mean, Mr. Voskós,” Lawrence replied, a bit confused.

“I mean, isn’t there somewhere else you’d rather be, or are you just content to sit here day after day, week after week, until the end of the world?”

“I like it here. It’s very peaceful.”

“I agree that it is lovely, but you are not supposed to be here. Do you have any idea how long you’ve been here?”

“I would guess, according to that headstone next to you, around seven months so far.”

“Whatever gave you that idea, Lawrence?” Maximillian replied in that sonorous voice that Lawrence could feel reverberate in his chest and not just in his ears.

“Well, my headstone says that I died on April 15, and it has to be at least late November by now, judging by the snow and the bare trees that’ve already shed their leaves.”

“That would be an accurate guess were it not for the fact that the date of April is also followed by the year twenty-thirteen, which was ten years ago. You’ve been here those seven months plus ten years.”

“What? Really?”

“I know. Where does the time go? – Am I right, Larry? – you don’t mind if I call you Larry, do you? – You may call me Max.”

“Has it really been that long?”

“Indeed, it has Mr. Purcell. Indeed it has.”

“So, that leads us back to my question: How long are you planning on staying here exactly?”

“I’m not really sure. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Well, not sitting here, that’s for certain. You should have moved along ages ago.”

“Let me ask you – when you first came to the awareness of your – ahem – current state of being, did you not see the door? Big wooden thing; fancy brass handle, no lock.”

“I did, but I didn’t know what to do.”

“It’s a door, Larry. You turn the handle, open it, and step through. That’s how doors work.”

“But step through to where?”

“Not here, that’s where.”

“I mean, isn’t there supposed to be some tunnel with light at the end of it or something?”

“Some people indeed see that, but not all. Most people only see the door. I know for a fact that you’ve been sent the door no fewer than twenty-six times since your passing, and not once have you tried it, which, incidentally, is why I’ve been dispatched here.”

“What is a retrieval specialist anyway, Max?” Lawrence asked, looking down and once again reading the business card between his fingertips. He noticed that, like himself, Mr. Voskós showed no signs of being made uncomfortable by the cold temperature, which was surely below freezing by now, nor did he see the fog of breath that one would expect issuing into the chilled air between them as they spoke together.

“I guess another way to describe what I do would be to use the word Shepherd. I’m sent to gather missing sheep and herd them along, although I would liken it more to herding cats if I were to be frank. Although, herding goats would perhaps be a more accurate idiom. Stubborn and ill-spirited, don’t listen well, and must always be forced around.”

“He Maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing, something just now occurred to me.”

“So tell me, when you see a door again, what do you do, Larry? Continue to sit here or use it?”

“If I knew where it led to, I would use it.”

“I already explained that – Not here.”

“But I didn’t always do the right things in my life. Am I going up or down?”

“There is no Up or Down, Larry; there is only Here or There.”

“What about Hell?”

“What about it?”

“Isn’t the devil waiting there for guys like me?”

“No. Why would he be there?

“Why would you even think the Devil resides there, Lawrence? Earth is where the action is. This is where he gets things done. This is the happening spot. The Earth is his domain, all of it.

“Look, I’ll give you an example: the book of Job in the Bible, God and the Devil are hanging out talking, which is weird – I know, but dads talk to even their badly behaved kids, and God asked the Devil, (as if he didn’t already know) where the Devil had been,

“And the Devil replies that ‘he had been walking to and fro and up and down on the Earth’ Not hanging out in Hell on a throne, not poking people in purgatory with a pitchfork: The Earth. Here. And if you hang around Here long enough, he’s going to stroll through, and you’ll get to meet him personally.

“I can also tell you that if you were really all that bad, he would have shown up to collect you already.”

Lawrence turned the business card over in his fingers repeatedly as he listened and processed this information.

“Don’t let your fear keep you Here. You’ve fashioned your own private, little, personal prison. A beautiful and peaceful one, albeit a little morbid and sad, to be honest, but ultimately, it’s been time to go for years now, yet here you stay, stuck in place, afraid to go forward and no way to go backward.”

Lawrence watched as the man tilted his umbrella sideways and shook off the snow before he folded it closed, wrapped it up, and placed the crook of the handle over his forearm. He stood, lightly smoothing his trouser legs, straightened his tie, smiled, and said with that bowed, double-bass voice of his, “Don’t stay too long Larry – and you can keep the card,” before stepping around Lawrence’s bench and sauntering off in the direction that he had faced while seated.

Lawrence pocketed the business card that he had been examining, turned his head and upper torso to look over his shoulder, expecting to see Mr. Voskós walking off into the distance but found himself instead, facing a large wooden door with an ornately engraved, bright brass handle and no lock.

 

Fiction by Leland Hames (Paul Cook)

 

 

Leland Hames is the pen name of Paul Cook, a recently published short story author originally from the rural tip of Southern Illinois, now living on the outskirts of Chicago for the last 25 years. After his musical career was ended by a disabling “stroke of bad luck,” he turned his creative focus to writing short fiction. He is a husband, father of two and is adept at one-handed typing. He has a weird and often dark sense of humor. Having become paralyzed on his left side, he is “all right” now he claims.