The Gray Place
by Mark LaFlamme
The smell was horrible. Mark expected it to be bad, but this was like no stench imaginable. And it wasn’t an odor your nostrils could identify and accustom to -- rather, it was an unsavory mixture of aromas, each which assaulted and disgusted the senses.
There was the high, sweet smell of rot; a green smell. It conjured up images of spoiled meat (which, if fact it was). A musty, damp stink was underlying and that roiled memories of old books, old papers molding in a basement chest.
Then there was a gaseous smell. That, most of all was cloying and putrid and if filled Mark’s throat.
He forced his thoughts away from the richness of those scents with some success. The corpse he clutched in his fists appeared to be sitting impassively with mild amusement over the facial features.
But those features, of course, were no longer recognizable. The skin had peeled back, turned a dark shade that may have been a blue or a dark green and it had mostly rotted away.
The skeletal face was yellow and pitted, nothing like those Halloween skulls at all. A wide, mortal sneer spread across the entire face and the chin seemed to jut abnormally, like that of a brute.
This was not Dean’s face. Dean had been one cool and smooth dude right up until the moment Mark ran him down in the driveway, crushing him beneath the car tires with a mashing sound.
Dean had even been smiling that cool, Brando smile when he looked up to see his older brother whipping into the driveway, license still warm in his pocket, beer on his breath.
“Dean,” Mark whispered into the night’s still. That one word was very loud --- like a screech in the silence. It shook him out of his thoughts at once. Thoughts had a way of carrying a person away and Mark knew this fact very well. Like his dreams, simple thoughts could lead him to strange places and give glimpses of madness.
His knees hurt from kneeling on the lower lid of the coffin. His fingertips hurt from gripping the lapels of the rotting suit so tightly. His muscles ached all over from the dig which had taken him much longer than expected.
And the smell was fucking horrible.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Time to get you outta here. Time’s a-wasting right, Dean?”
With that said, he pulled himself to his feet, standing unsteadily on the lower portion of the coffin and hauling his brother up with him. Mark stood on the rotting wood of the coffin, still well below the edge of the grave.
The corpse slid easily through the opened section of the casket. The slacks around Dean’s legs had rotted extensively -- more so than the clothes on the upper body for some reason.
Only small tatters were left clinging to the legs, which had been stripped to bone. These bones looked exactly like those seen on a biology room skeleton -- exactly. Mark couldn’t quite remember the terms for these bones, except for one -- the knee cap; the patella. And those were very visible.
Now the corpse... Dean was standing to full height. The feet hovered just over the coffin lid. Mark would have to look up to stare directly into that skeletal face -- Dean was three years younger than Mark but a full four-inches taller. The only tall one in the family, their mom would have said and had said often before her youngest son was killed. After that, she stopped speaking altogether for the most part. Thirteen year old son, dead and buried. Teen-age son dead at the hands of his older brother. Why, that could almost drive a mother insane.
“We’re outta here,” Mark repeated into the night. Not even a night bird or a breeze answered him back. The moonlight tonight seemed to spill from the world into this grave.
Mark hoisted the corpse up and over the lip of the grave, giving it a firm but gentle push so it would not sag back down into the pit. It made a dry, rustling sound as it settled on the ground over him.
Mark spared one last glance at the gaping coffin and then pulled himself out. The smell followed him and it was still pretty damn horrible. He stood next to the open grave, brushing himself off instinctively. He stared down at the crumpled pile on the ground below him.
The hair looked silver in the moonlight. It had grown down around the shoulders. Did it keep growing after death? Or did it just appear that way? Mark thought he might have read something about that once but he couldn’t remember what.
He looked away, studying the rest of the abandoned grounds. Grave markers surrounded him, not quite in rows but close enough to matter. They were mostly simple gravestones, paled by years and leaning in various direction and degrees. Some had broken n half and crumbled to the ground. Time and the elements had no respect for the dead.
Mark scanned all this quickly. It was a small cemetery, discontinued three years ago for future burials. Dean was the last.
To get here, you had to park you car at the John Deere dealership and walk up a footpath, battling with errant tree branches that slapped at your face. The graveyard was rarely. There was a big squabble over whose responsibility it was to maintain it, the Catholics or the Protestants.
From the way things looked, neither side was winning and the cemetery was losing. It was ill kept, weed-grown and seemingly forgotten. But, Dean was always fascinated by the cemetery and they’d buried him here. Mark was distantly grateful for that now -- it was just right if a person had to get in and out without drawing suspicion.
Mark had lain a heavy, blue tarp here with him after hauling it out of the woodshed at home. Now he carefully trundle the copse into in, kneeling to roll his brother’s bones carefully.
As cautious as he was, though, he still managed to snap one of the fingers right in half like a twig. It snapped with a loud crack and Mark winced. He plucked the section of bone with his own fingers and absently placed it in the pocket of his jeans before finishing the task at hand.
With the corpse rolled into the tarp, it looked like a bundle of camping gear or baseball equipment. It didn’t look like the skeletal remains of a teen, at any rate and Mark cocked it over his shoulder like a rifle. He started for the path and the high stink of death followed him.
The woods were very dark around him, but he maneuvered deftly over the rocks and roots on the path. Fifteen minutes later, he reached his car. It was not the same car that had struck and killed his brother -- God no. Mark had rid of that promptly after his brother’s funeral.
The bundle fit easily across the back seat. Mark started the engine and drove away, leaving the stink of death in the air.
Ten minutes later, he was pulling into the driveway at his quiet home. He pulled in slowly and cautiously as he always did now and would so forever more.
Silence enfolded him as he turned off the engine. The house where he lived his entire life was dark and still. Sometimes it looked to Mark like it sneered at him, accusing. ( Accusing like no one had on that day long ago. No one had smelled beer on his breath even as he sobbed.) Tonight, it was just a house.
Mark opened the car door and hefted the bundle into his arms, The stench filled the car and now it wafted out. On the short ride here, Mark had cranked the windows down but still the tenacious smell assailed him, even as the wind tugged it away.
He carried his burden up the walk, managed to work the doorknob and stepped inside. Utter silence. It was only a house of only the softest sounds at any time of any day, as it was. But this was complete and deafening silence.
“Home,” Mark uttered and gazed down at the bundle in his arms. The kitchen already reeked of sour decay but now he didn’t find it so offensive. It clung to his body like cologne but it was the smell of a job near completion. Essence of Fate, maybe, a fragrance sure to vanquish horrible nightmares and the overwhelming stab of guilt.
“Upstairs, Dean. Got to get you upstairs.”
Mark hurried through the living room and up a flight of stairs which deposited him into a dark hallway. The stench followed him like the train of a gown as he moved into his bedroom, into their bedroom.
Twin beds were set on either side of the room, one made up impeccably, the other rumpled and strewn with blankets and pillows. Mark set the bundle gingerly between the two beds on the floor and knelt beside it. He pulled the tarp open and Dean stared up at him from the floor. Mark gazed back and powerful emotions stirred. A tear crept from the corner of his eye.
“Dean,” he whispered. “We’re home. See?”
He bent and hoisted the corpse up by hooking his hands under the bony armpits. The skeletal form sagged. Mark paused, gazing around the room. Then a slight smile crossed his features.
He gently laid the corpse on the unmade bed (which was where it belonged -- Mark had known that from the start). He rested the head on the pillow and it lolled to one side. Frowning, Mark righted the skull again and positioned it so that it stared straight ahead.
“Your bed, Dean. Hasn’t been moved in all this time.”
Mark occasionally slept in the bed himself when the nightmares became too bad. But he didn’t usually remember moving there the following day. And now, the rightful owner rested in the bed and that was just as right as rain.
As an afterthought, Mark went to the closet, rummaged though a box full of his brother’s belongings and pulled out a book. It was an espionage thriller. Dean was fond of them.
Mark placed the book on the thin chest of the corpse, enfolding the bony hands around it. Now he smiled broadly and stepped away, considering. He decided that this was just right. Even Dean seemed to be smiling. Flies had found their way to the source of that stink and they buzzed around, lighting on the decaying flesh but that was okay. Mark had spotted other bugs crawling along the dark, rotted meat and the eye sockets were somewhat filled with multi-legged creatures. They didn’t seem to be a bother and Mark left them alone -- this was right; this was how it should be.
Well, almost.
He turned away towards the door, paused briefly and stared back into the room. Silver moonlight poured in through the window, illuminating this comforting scene. Once again, Mark smiled.
“Goodbye, Dean. Glad you’re back.”
Mark left the room, walking downstairs only dimly aware now of the high stink. He made his way through the dark kitchen and out the door, stepping into the cool air. He took a deep breath -- the smell was still thick, even out here. Mark thought that was just fine.
He hurried down the walk, eased into his car and backed down the driveway. He spared one last glance at the house, nodded and drove away into the moon-washed night.
The smell clung to the night and it was one that would linger long, high, sweet and cloying. It was a smell that Mark found he could make his own.
Fifteen minutes later he was back in the cemetery, lowering himself into the vacant coffin. The interior was slime-coated and rotted and legions of bugs lived there. Mark pushed past them, working into a comfortable position. The smell enveloped him and now it was a smell he truly loved.
He reached down into his pocket and pulled out a small bottle. Inside were tiny pills he knew only as “my little nerve pills” and he had taken them from the medicine cabinet at home.
One “little nerve pill” usually did the trick for his mother, but Mark didn’t mess around. He wasn’t going to a gray place like she so often did, oh no! He was going to a place blacker than black -- a place perhaps the color of black when split open.
He emptied the bottle contents into his mouth and swallowed them with some effort. The pills were chalky but otherwise, not bad.
“Blowing right past the gray place,” he muttered and took a final look at the blameless stars in the silvery sky. He lowered the lid of the coffin and a seamless blackness swallowed him. In no time, sleep was filling his head as the pills began to take effect. The pills were the tools of a god who knew he had made a mistake.
Sleep took him and he tumbled into the gray place, heading for the darkest of realms where he rightfully belonged. Dean was at home in his own bed and all was right with the world again.
In the last of his thoughts, Mark understood that this was the way it was suppose to be and all was well. He understood that the order of things had been set right and he drifted deeper into sleep.
Before he succumbed completely, he was dimly aware that the creatures of the coffin were moving in -- moving in with legs and teeth and claws to take what was rightfully theirs.