The Body Departed (2009) Read online

  “My name is James,” I said.

  I think.

  He watched me some more, then finally spoke, his voice small and hesitant, barely reaching my ears. “I don’t remember my name, mister.”

  I nodded. “That’s okay. Sometimes I don’t remember mine, either.”

  He next surprised me by confidently and boldly moving toward me, drifting straight through the pews. Perhaps he sensed a friend. As he came toward me, his slightly mussed hair never moved—and would never move again. And neither would mine, no matter how hard the wind might blow.

  His cheeks were still chubby, and I saw the ghostly hint of freckles. His eyes were bright. The brutal damage to his head made me want to look away, but I forced myself not to. Now, of course, he did not feel the pain, just as I did not feel the bloody wounds that dotted me from head to toe.

  And, perhaps most amazingly, he looked familiar.

  I think.

  “You got all shot up,” said the boy.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Were you bad, too?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

  “I was bad and I had to die.”

  Sweet, sweet Jesus.

  “Why didn’t you go to heaven?” I asked.

  “Daddy says there is no heaven,” he answered.

  “And you believe your daddy?” I asked, surprised, since I had found the boy in a church, after all.

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  He paused long and hard. “I think so, yes. A brother.”

  “Do you have a mommy?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  And then he did something I was completely unprepared for. He burst into tears and threw his little arms around my waist and hugged me hard, burying his nose in my hip. His deep shudders rippled through me as he cried long and hard.

  I put my arm hesitantly around him. “You miss your mommy, don’t you?”

  “I want to go home,” he said, his voice muffled. “Please help me go home, mister.”

  We sat together in the front pew.

  The image of Jesus Christ hovered above us in all its contorted, bloody glory. The boy rested his wounded head on my shoulder. From this angle, I could look down into his broken skull. I averted my eyes.

  I wasn’t sure what to say to him or how to console him. I was certain that his lack of belief in the afterlife was keeping him grounded to the church, the place of his death.

  So I asked the obvious question: “If you don’t believe in heaven, then why did you go to church?”

  He wiped his nose, although there was nothing running from it. Strictly a human habit. “Mommy made us go.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes, me and my brother.”

  “I see. But your dad didn’t believe.”

  He screwed up his little face. “I can’t really remember anymore, mister. But that sounds about right.”

  “So your teachers taught you one thing, and when you came home, your dad taught you another. And you believed your dad, because he’s your dad.”

  The boy nodded eagerly, but I was certain I had lost him, and I was also certain that he had lost the specifics of his own life, just as I was losing the specifics of mine. Luckily, talking often to Pauline—about my life, about my past—helped me remember who I was. I suspected the boy didn’t have the benefit of a powerful medium. The boy, for all intents and purposes, had been completely forgotten.

  “Who killed you?” I asked.

  “Some boys. Older boys. Big boys.”

  “Why did they kill you?” I asked.

  The little boy shrugged. “I don’t remember. But I did something bad. They kept telling me I was a bad boy and that I deserved to fall.”

  To fall?

  Suddenly, a series of violent, flashing images—all coming from the boy’s own memory—came to me. As they did so, the boy began rocking back and forth on the pew.

  Two older boys, both dressed in traditional Catholic uniforms—black slacks, white button-up short-sleeve shirts—were laughing at him. The images were distorted. They appeared in the boy’s thoughts rapidly and probably out of order, as if a film editor had gotten a movie’s sequence all mixed up:

  An image of the older boys laughing at him…

  Being dragged up a dark flight of steep stairs…

  Boys and girls playing on the playground…

  Two boys waving him over to a drinking fountain…

  Being hauled through a dark doorway…

  Hanging over a wooden beam—a rafter…

  Looking down to the sanctuary far below…

  Children skipping rope outside…

  Kicking and screaming, begging for forgiveness…

  One of the older boys screaming that something had been stolen. Blaming the little boy…

  Children running to a drinking fountain, jostling to be first in line…

  The older boys reaching down for the falling boy, horror on their faces…

  The altar rapidly approaching below…

  Rapidly…

  Blackness.

  And then the boy, confused and terrified, hovering over his own broken, dead body, blood everywhere…

  The older boys appearing now at ground level, out of breath, their faces pale with shock and horror…

  And then they are running, dashing through the church…

  The boy stopped rocking next to me. I looked at him and found him absently probing his crushed skull, slipping his fingers inside the deep gash.

  Sweet Jesus.

  “Jesus was just a man,” said the boy, picking up on my thoughts. “He wasn’t really God. That’s what my daddy says.”

  I nodded, and we were quiet some more. The boy’s thoughts were mostly quiet, although occasionally a very old woman would appear in them. I sensed love radiating from her, and so did the boy, but he was confused and did not remember her.

  “I’m sorry you died,” I said.

  “It’s okay. I mostly don’t remember it. Just when I’m reminded of it.”

  “I’m sorry that I reminded you.”

  “It’s okay,” he said again. “Sometimes it feels like it happened to someone else, you know? Like I’m remembering a movie or someone else’s memories. Does that ever happen to you?”

  I nodded. I knew what he was talking about. Probably what Alzheimer’s patients dealt with. A detachment from one’s own memories. Distrust of one’s own memories.

  A horrible, horrible feeling.

  And since we were already in a gloomy state, I decided to go ahead and get this over with, and pushed forward. “There was a teacher killed in this room,” I said. “I think this happened a few weeks ago, but I’m not sure. Maybe shorter, maybe longer.”

  “Yes,” said the boy eagerly. “She was my music teacher.”

  “Mine, too,” I said.

  “A man killed her,” he said, nodding.

  “A man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you…” I paused. “Did you watch the man kill her?”

  He nodded again. “Yes. I saw everything.”

  Now images of her murder came flashing into his mind. And because her murder was recent, the images were more concrete and vivid, and the sequence seemed to be relatively in order.

  And through the boy’s memory, I saw it all unfold…

  My ex–music teacher—and neither of us can remember her name—is sitting at the piano in what appears to be late-morning light, judging by the explosion of color that angles down through the stained-glass windows above. The cavernous chapel is empty; her music fills the entire room.

  I sense the boy’s love for music. Or, rather, her music. I also sense that he listens to her each and every morning.

  This morning is no different. He watches her from the front pew, but she is oblivious to his presence.

  A sudden, rapid shift in perspective…

  Now he’s sitting next to her on the bench, pretending to play alon
gside her. She hums softly to herself, her long fingers flying nimbly over the keys, sitting straight as a board, as she always taught me to do. I could almost—almost—smell her strong perfume. Always too strong and always a bit overwhelming.

  As she plays, she cocks her head to one side, as if listening for something, and then smiles to herself. Her lips move, and she forms a single word. A name, in fact.

  “Jacob,” she says quietly.

  And now she’s referring to the little boy sitting next to her. She senses him, feels him. She smiles again.

  The boy’s name is Jacob.

  The boy picked up on my thoughts and turned to me excitedly. “My name is Jacob?”

  “I think it might be,” I said. “But I could be wrong. Does it sound right to you?”

  He screwed up his little face, then started nodding. “Yeah, my name is Jacob. I’m sure of it.” He sat back, pleased, then snapped his head around and looked at me. “Hey, mister, what’s my name again?”

  “Jacob,” I said.

  “Jacob,” he said again. “Will you help me remember my name?”

  “Yes,” I said. “As best I can.”

  He smiled and clapped his hands and said his name over and over again.

  “Jacob,” I said gently, “can we continue with the story?”

  I didn’t want to make the boy relive such a horrible memory, especially since I knew something bad was about to happen to our music teacher.

  “Yes,” said Jacob, reading my thoughts. “Very, very bad.”

  But I was here for a reason. What that reason was remained to be seen. I had to know.

  “Are you okay remembering all this bad stuff?” I asked him.

  He nodded, and as he did so, I heard him whispering his name over and over. I slipped back into his memory, and the story continued…

  From behind the music teacher comes a noise, a cough, someone clearing his throat.

  Startled, she turns. So does Jacob. And since I’m seeing all this through the boy’s eyes, so do I. A man is standing there in the center aisle, holding a gun loosely at his side, head cocked, staring oddly at the music teacher. He sports thick eyebrows, curly black hair, and impossibly bloodshot eyes.

  It takes me only a second or two to dredge up the memory of my own murder—in particular, the memory of my killer looking oddly at me from the doorway, head cocked, holding his pistol loosely at his side.

  Perhaps even the same pistol.

  The man is also my killer.

  He is speaking to the music teacher, but the boy misses most of the exchange, although I do make out “Keep quiet” and “No one gets hurt” and “Give me the…”

  But Jacob misses the last word. He also misses nearly everything the music teacher says in response. The man, apparently not liking her response, suddenly points the gun at her.

  And that’s when she screams.

  The man pounces, hurling himself up the stage. Jacob screams, too. Images flash and blur, like a camera rolling down a flight of stairs. I have no clue what’s happening next, but I hear grunts and cries and banging.

  When things stabilize, when the dust settles, so to speak, I see the man is now sitting on top of the music teacher as she thrashes wildly beneath, fighting and clawing.

  Jacob fights, too, pounding the man furiously with tiny fists that pass harmlessly through his back. Apparently, a ghost boy and an old lady are no match for the man, as he hunches his shoulders and puts more weight into whatever it is he’s doing to her.

  The motherfucker is choking the life out of her. That’s what he’s doing.

  This goes on for perhaps another minute: the boy pounding, the man hunched, me watching in helpless frustration. What happens next is surprising, but not unexpected.

  While the teacher’s physical body still fights her attacker, her spirit, an exact replica of the teacher herself, rises from the floor and floats a few feet above the scene. Her beautifully glowing spirit looks, to say the least, completely bewildered. I know the feeling. Below, her physical self is finally succumbing to her killer. Interestingly, her spirit was released prior to physical death.

  Her spirit then looks straight ahead—and straight into Jacob’s eyes. Both recoil. Her mouth opens, and various shades of gold ripple through her ethereal body. Jacob backs away as a bright light appears in the ceiling above. He looks up.

  It’s the tunnel.

  Unaware of the events unfolding around him, the killer sits back and sucks wind. Apparently, it’s hard work strangling the life out of someone.

  Appearing from the stage to Jacob’s left, like a troupe of heavenly actors, are a dozen or so beautifully serene and loving spirits. From them, a kindly old woman steps forward across the carpeted dais. The recognition in our teacher’s eyes is instant, and immediately, her fear and confusion abate. The older woman, I can see, looks similar to our piano teacher, but younger. A sister, perhaps? I don’t know, but after hugging deeply and chatting briefly, they rise together to the tunnel above.

  Jacob scurries behind the altar and shuts his eyes. After an unknown amount of time, he opens his eyes and peers around the altar, but the spirits are all gone, including that of his music teacher.

  Jacob is now alone with the killer.

  The killer moves quickly.

  He repositions the piano bench, which has toppled over in the melee, then moves over to the body. He struggles mightily as he lifts her, but he’s a determined killer, and soon he has her back in a sitting position on the bench. He gently lays her face down on the ivory keys, closes her eyes, and folds her hands in her lap. I see that there is fresh blood beneath her nails. The killer’s DNA. Something for the police to chew on. Good.

  Now he reaches around her neck—the same neck he has just choked the life out of—and unclasps something. A necklace? Good God, is he just a common thief?

  Not quite. The necklace has something dangling from it.

  A key.

  And like a cannon shot, Jacob suddenly bursts from behind the altar and launches himself onto the killer’s back, kicking and screaming and punching. Although he never materializes—and I sense the boy doesn’t quite know how to materialize—Jacob somehow manages to make his presence known. The killer, who was about to turn around, suddenly pauses and shivers and looks warily over his shoulder.

  What happens next, admittedly, shocks even me.

  The killer whispers a name—a name framed as a question: “Jacob?”

  The boy, angry and spitting mad, doesn’t catch his own name being whispered. But I do.

  The killer pauses a moment longer, listening, waiting, then shakes his head, and now he’s moving again, quickly. Jacob, still screaming, moves with him, following him around the piano and over to a side door near the raised stage. The killer uses his freshly stolen key, inserts it into the doorknob, and turns. The door opens. He steps inside, and Jacob follows right behind.

  A single overhead lightbulb illuminates a small storage room packed to overflowing with all sorts of church and musical supplies: choir gowns, hymnbooks, a stack of tambourines, and what appears to be a very old drum set. The killer heads straight for the far corner of the room. There, he moves aside a vacuum cleaner and drops to his knees and fishes around inside his jacket pocket until he comes up with a screwdriver. There’s a rusted air vent located at the bottom of the wall directly in front of him, and he sets to work unscrewing it, his rapid breathing filling the small room, echoing. Sweat drips from the tip of his nose. Once he gets the screws out, he moves aside the vent and reaches deep inside the dark hole in the wall.

  Panic flashes across his face.

  And then he smiles. He pulls something out. Something small and dark and square and covered in dust. He quickly screws the vent back into place, returns the vacuum, steps over to the room’s single lightbulb. There, he examines the square object under the dim light—luckily, so does Jacob.

  It’s a very old leather wallet.

  The killer opens it—and smiles again. Ins
ide are many green bills. He removes them, shoves them in his front jeans pocket. Next, he moves quickly to the rear of the storage room and finds a suitably forgotten cardboard box stuffed with black cables and shoves the wallet deep within.

  He turns, steps straight through Jacob, and shivering, exits the room.

  Back in the sanctuary, the killer stops behind the dead woman. For the briefest of moments, I see remorse cross his bloodshot eyes, and as the man stands there staring down at her—and taking a phenomenal risk at being caught, I feel—little Jacob does something unexpected.

  The boy moves around him and faces him, then reaches up and gently touches the deep wounds on the man’s face—fresh wounds from our piano teacher’s nails.

  The moment Jacob touches him, the killer shivers, and the hairs on his forearms stand on end.

  “Eli?” Jacob whispers, so low that no mortal could have possibly heard it, and yet the killer reacts instantly. He snaps his head up and looks directly into Jacob’s eyes.

  The two stare at each other. And because I’m reliving all of this through Jacob’s memory—and thus seeing what he’s seeing—I feel as if the killer is looking directly at me, too.

  The name Eli strikes a chord in me, too; it pulls at a distant, forgotten memory.

  Jesus, what’s going on here?

  But I don’t have time to contemplate it, as the killer next shakes his head and yanks himself out of whatever drug-induced reverie he thinks he’s in.

  He heads straight to the altar.

  Once there, he uses the same key to open a back panel. I know immediately what he’s after: the church’s treasured sacraments. Jacob watches quietly as the man removes a large plastic trash bag from inside his jacket and begins shoveling in the ornate crosses, jewel-encrusted goblets, and golden communion plates. All would fetch a pretty penny on the black market—and all should keep him high for months.

  When finished, he ties off the bag and heads back behind the pulpit. And looks up. Directly above him is the massive statue of Jesus Christ hanging grotesquely from the cross.