Sean Paul Murphy, Writer

Sean Paul Murphy, Writer
Sean Paul Murphy, Storyteller

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

CHAPEL STREET - Chapter 8 - A Mourner


Here's another sample chapter of my novel Chapel Street. Keep checking back for more!


Chapter 8

A Mourner

I was on top of the world as I drove away from the restaurant. It was hard to process the wide range of emotions I had experienced over the last twenty-four hours. I went from haunted to heartbroken to happy. Amazing.
Despite my assurances to the contrary, I was already imagining what it would be like to date Teri, but I had no illusions. I would never violate our agreement by asking her out romantically unless she sent some very strong signals in my direction. I learned the hard way during my thirty-six-years that dating wasn’t my strong suit. Friendship was a reassuringly open-ended thing. Dating wasn’t. Every date was a pass/fail audition. I wouldn’t risk a promising open-ended friendship with an attractive, like-minded woman for an uncertain romantic future. Still, I was already hoping that Teri would come to Gina’s wedding with me. Going to her wedding alone, provided I was actually invited, was too pathetic for me to even consider.
My thoughts were so focused on Teri that I didn’t put too much active thought to where I was driving. I planned to head straight home, so I was surprised when Eternal Faith came into sight as I crested a hill. I felt an instant pang of fear, as if some alien hand reached deep inside of me and twisted my intestines. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for as long as my position in traffic allowed. When I opened my eyes, I took solace in the bright sunlight. It dispelled the evil. There were no ghosts or spirits. No undead. No haunting. No supernatural. Once again, my rational pride took over. I refused to become a victim of superstition. I decided to face my fear head on.
I turned into the cemetery. There were few cars in sight. Sunday was a big day for visiting the dead, but most people made their appearances after church services. It was three-thirty now. The rush was over. People had left their flowers and returned to the places of the living.
“What am I doing here?” I asked myself but quickly dismissed the thought. I had every right to be here. After all, one day, this place was going to be my permanent home.
The road took me past the rise where my immediate family was buried, but I tried to ignore them. My Catholic upbringing was to blame. I always remembered the lesson old Father Isidore gave us before our first confession. People who died with mortal sins on their souls, like suicide, were damned to hell. Although I turned my back on mother church decades ago, those words still haunted me, especially after the death of my brother. What cruelty! Lenny never had a chance in this world, and, if Father Isidore was right, he was damned to hell in the next one. The fate of my mother was even crueler. She lost a husband and a son and had to deal with cancer too. Now she was damned to hell because of one decision she made in a moment of weakness? A God who would do that was no God at all—even if He did exist.
Father Isidore’s words got my blood boiling again, but I couldn’t deal with those emotions now. I kept driving on the main road past the office. It was closed, but the mausoleum remained open until five o’clock. I often wondered about that. Did one of the employees actually drive into the cemetery and lock the large glass doors at five o’clock?  I doubted it. I suspected that they only posted the warning signs to discourage curiosity seekers or possible vandals.
“What if they really locked it?” I asked myself aloud.
I shuddered at the possibility of getting locked inside the mausoleum overnight. I imagined hearing the click of the lock and racing toward the door to see Jose Garcia, the groundskeeper, driving away. That would be a true nightmare. With the mausoleum looming ahead of me, I quickly checked my watch again. Three-thirty-two. Still plenty of time for a quick visit.
But whom was I visiting?  Why had I even driven there? This was definitely not something I planned to do. I drove those questions out of my head. Once again, my rational mind pushed back against my superstitious fears. There was no rational explanation for why I had driven to the cemetery, but I refused to turn away. Nothing in that mausoleum could hurt me. The dead were dead.
I should have invited Teri, I suddenly thought to myself. “No,” I immediately answered myself aloud.
Why would I think that?  That was crazy. I had no desire to involve her in this madness. I had even stopped her from looking at the Kostek memorial online.
I calmed considerably when a brown, four-door Mercedes sedan parked in front of the mausoleum. At least I wouldn’t be alone inside. I didn’t think I could face that prospect now, even in the bright light of day. I parked behind the Mercedes, grabbed my camera, and hurried over to the large, swinging glass doors of the mausoleum. I saw the other visitor, an elderly white man, walking slowly toward the Kostek vault.
I stepped inside as quietly as possible. I kept my distance, feigning interest in the other vaults as I slowly followed behind the old man. The same palatable sense of gloom that I felt the day before still filled the place, despite the fact that most of the dead flowers had been safely swept away. New flowers, recently placed by mourners in the decorative bronze vases alongside the vaults today, were already withering. They clearly wouldn’t last the afternoon.
I discreetly returned my attention to the mourner. He was balding, but a few uncombed gray hairs made their presence known. He wore a bushy moustache and an old, navy blue suit. His overcoat might have seemed out of season, but it was quite appropriate in this marble-lined refrigerator. It made me wish I had worn a jacket. Goose pimples rose on my arms.
The man walked up to the Kostek vault and stood silently for a moment before he knelt briefly and placed a small bouquet of roses on the floor in front of it. Standing up, he quickly turned around before I had the chance to look away. We made eye contact. I’m not sure exactly what I saw in his eyes—indifference or disdain as he pointedly turned away and kept walking toward the door in a path that would bring him alongside me. It was unavoidable.
Over the course of the hundreds of hours I spent in cemeteries, I made it a point never to disturb a mourner. Often mourners asked me to help them find a grave, but I never approached someone on my own. I knew I had to break my rule this time. I needed to speak with someone who actually knew Elisabetta Kostek—and who could explain her strange hold over me.
As I started toward him, the old man pointedly turned his face further away from me. He veered toward the opposite wall, but there was no way for him to leave without passing me.
“Excuse me,” I said. “May I ask you a question?”
No response. No eye contact. But he was passing me.
“Sir, may I talk to you for a second?”
Without even giving me a glance, the old man unexpectedly slapped my camera out of my hands. It hit the marble floor with an expensive-sounding crack. I raced after it as it skidded awkwardly across the floor in the direction of Kostek memorial. When I finally caught it, I noticed a large crack in my fifty-millimeter lens. There was no fixing that. The body of the camera seemed unscathed, and I still had my expensive telephoto lens in the case.
I looked up from my wounded camera to find Elisabetta staring at me from the photo on her vault. Her smile was smug, as if she had been expecting me.
“Who are you?” I asked aloud.
She didn’t answer, of course. She just continued to smile.
I turned away. The mausoleum was now empty. The old man was gone. For a moment, I was tempted to check and see if he left any kind of note with his flowers, but I was afraid to go any closer to the vault. No, the door was the safer option. I started walking.
In a strange bout of paranoia, I thought I could hear movement in the vaults alongside me. It was a gentle rustling at first as the dead rose from their supposedly eternal sleep. Then they began struggling when they realized they were trapped. They banged the lids of their coffins against the roof of the vaults as their anger grew. As the glass doors loomed before me, I imagined the dead would soon break their coffins to pieces and then batter themselves against the vault doors until they were free. By then, their anger would be unquenchable.

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My eyes remained glued to the door. I was afraid what I would see if I turned either right or left. Suddenly consumed by an additional fear that the old man had locked the door while I was inside, I began to run. I knew I needed to get the hell out of that mausoleum—or I would die.


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