A Fine and Private Place (2981 Words)

1

Bill Hastings, on his usual lunch-hour bike ride, marveled at the blue autumnal sky, enjoyed the temperature in the low 70s, the soft breeze and clear air, leaves just turning from green to yellow. He’s been blessed with a good life, he thought, a university professor, working in the world of ideas, mostly master of his own schedule. In good health. A bit unlucky in love, but maybe that was for the best; he reported to no one at home, kept his own course and counsel.  

The bike route wound through an old downtown cemetery, an interlude he always appreciated. Stately trees and manicured grass, smooth winding roads dappled with sunlight, few cars and fewer people. He’d always liked urban cemeteries, dedicated green space in the heart of the city, and found it hard to understand people who avoided them. After all, before modern city parks people used to picnic in them.  

As he was about to do.    

He stopped at a favorite spot near the center of the cemetery, its oldest part. He leaned the bike against a tree and settled on a weathered stone bench beside a timeworn tombstone. He set his water bottle on the bench and pulled a sandwich and bag of cherries from the bike’s pannier, taking a moment to ensure his cell phone was on and charged, so he wouldn’t miss any important calls, though he didn’t really expect any on a Friday afternoon. Not many emergencies in the world of academic philosophy. 

As he ate he studied a nearby gathering of cars, including a long black hearse, parked not far off, beside a large limestone-walled mausoleum. The capstone above the door was inscribed with the year 1920. The name carved beneath the date was “Holzhaufer,” a large local family, prominent in city history and in modern days as well. The brass double-doors were propped open, and he heard voices from inside.

He’d read about the recent passing of J. Robert Holzhaufer, third-generation patriarch. From his perch on the stone bench Bill saw far enough inside to notice electric lights reflecting off a polished marble floor. The drone of voices died out, and he heard the soft mournful tones of a string quartet. The music stopped and people began to walk out, all well-dressed, some looking somber, others seeming to regard their visit more like an afternoon excursion or fulfilled obligation. One older woman, likely Mrs. J. Robert, wept softly as she hung on the arm of a middle-aged man. All were shepherded out by a tall cadaverous man, looking appropriately somber, while another, younger, man with actual color in his cheeks stood at the doorway, collecting what Bill presumed were hymn sheets and maybe reusable funeral guides.   

Funerals had always fascinated him, a fascination that no doubt helped motivate him to become a philosopher of religion. As a younger man he had presumed death to be simply the end of everything; as an educated man he promised to entertain any evidence to the contrary. As he grew older he found himself with growing interest in, and hope for, the possibility of life after death, but still found no evidence of it. A careful and educated writer, a solid empiricist, he had long ago stopped believing in ghost stories. He considered them childish or primitive superstitions, perhaps providing solid data on the human subconscious, but useless as a source of real, measurable, valid, experience.

Certainly nothing that kept him up at night. 

The last stragglers emerged from the mausoleum, and the groundskeeper piled a few stacks of folding chairs on a trailer, climbed up into the cab of a tractor and drove off, leaving the building’s doors propped open. Bill studied the open doors with interest. He’d never been inside a mausoleum. But he hesitated to take a closer look, lest the groundskeeper return and find him inside. It would be hard to explain his presence, he’d either be seen as one of the local eccentrics or accused of trying to steal some of the brass or stone artwork. His cynical side smiled at that idea; maybe someone should steal it, such a shame and waste to have all that shut away in almost perpetual darkness.  

He seriously wondered if he should venture inside.  

That decision was made for him when the sky suddenly blackened and the wind kicked up, heralding a fast-moving storm that seemingly arose from nowhere. He started for his bicycle but stopped when a flash of lightning split the sky, followed by a loud crack of thunder, followed by sheets of water. He dashed into the mausoleum, standing in the doorway, listening to the continuing thunder, and looking out at the lashing rain. The lights flickered behind him, went out briefly and came back on, suggesting how ultimately dark it must be inside when the lights are off and the doors closed.  

As the storm continued he felt grateful to have found such a welcoming refuge. Not to mention a solid source for new stories over drinks at some conference. Here I am, he thought, probably the only person ever left in a mausoleum with the intention of leaving it again. Feeling more at home, and wanting to kill time while the storm raged outside, he wandered into the further recesses, reading the plaques on the crypt doors, admiring the stonework and brass, smelling the dry dust of time.  

Such a beautiful, solemn, place, he thought, too bad it’s wasted on the dead. 

His mind wandered back to his days at the local college prep school, and a long-ago, long-lost classmate, Lydia Holzhaufer, daughter of the recently-deceased J. Robert. A pretty but pitifully shy girl, with whom he’d struck up a friendship. Rather shy himself, he found her easy to talk with, and she’d seemed to reciprocate. Almost a shared, mostly unspoken and certainly unconsummated, need for affection, for companionship. Though they never went further than exchanged pleasantries and banalities. As far as he knew, he was the only male classmate with whom she ever spoke, and for that he’d had to put up with some snide comments from his male friends. 

But whatever they had shared, it all ended suddenly, in their freshman year, on the day she went home and never came back. As far as he knew, he’d been the last person to speak to her at the school, as they stood together on the front steps, waiting for their respective rides home. When she turned toward her ride she’d looked back at him and said, simply, “see you later.” But she never had. Next morning, apparently just before time to leave for school, she fashioned a noose out of her silk bedsheets, and hung herself. 

He hadn't been invited to the funeral and, as far as he knew, neither were any of his classmates. So she left his world the same way she arrived, a mysterious presence on the perimeter of his life. He later gleaned from his own parents’ comments that she’d always had an isolated life, dominated by a hard-driving businessman and hard-driven mother. School gossip held that her mother had been too drunk to realize her daughter was late for school that morning, and her father, as always, had left for work long before. It fell to the housekeeper to find her, a few minutes too late.

She must be interred in the mausoleum. After a bit of wandering he found her crypt, though he nearly missed it, tucked on the bottom row. He had to squat to make out the inscription. The date surprised him, amazing that 30 years had passed already. Beneath her name and dates, the plaque bore two lines from To His Coy Mistress, a poem by Andrew Marvell,they’d read in English Literature during that shared freshman year.

“The grave’s a fine and private place/ 

but none do there I think embrace.” 

He’s always found those lines clever, even amusing, but in this place they struck him as morbid and disgusting. And cruel, engraved on the tomb of this sweet girl who’d no doubt died without ever experiencing any real physical relationship. Against his will he pictured long-dead decaying corpses embracing in a sea of overwhelming stench. The image made him uneasy in that sepulchral place, and he shook his head, trying to clear it of such thoughts. He tried to calm himself by drawing on his philosophy, but found all his rational thinking more like mere rationalization, useful only in daylight or controlled situations, wholly irrelevant in the mausoleum.  

A sense of panic began to grow.

He looked back to the doorway. If only the storm would let up. But all he saw were the roiled and rolling clouds, frequent flashes of lightning, and trees whipping in the wind. He felt cold and clammy and realized wet clothes couldn’t keep him warm for long. He had to get out, even into that maelstrom of rain and noise.

Over the storm’s rumble he heard the sound of a loud combustion engine. The tractor. He saw a figure in a yellow slicker climb down and out of the cab and dash toward the doors. Bill decided to risk getting caught, anything rather than being inside this place a moment longer. The man didn’t seem to see him. Bill shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the storm. Before he reached the doors they clicked shut, with an echo that filled the entire chamber. He jiggled and pulled at the handles, pushed against the doors, but nothing budged. He banged on the doors and shouted. Again, and again.

The lights clicked off.

2

Once the shock of sudden darkness wore off, he forced himself to stay calm. First thought, his cell phone. He reached back but found his pocket empty. Feeling all his pockets with a growing sense of dismay, he pictured the phone in the carry-bag on his bike. A cold tightness seized his chest and he felt light-headed. He put his back to the wall and let himself slide to a sitting position, beside the doors, in blackness so total he struggled to be sure his eyes were open.   

He heard only the faint echo of his breathing, and the scratch of his back against the wall whenever he moved. He thought he heard faint thunder from outside, wondered if it was faint because the storm was fading, or because the doors were well insulated against sound. Wondered if he really heard anything at all. 

He tried to think logically. Someone will find the bike out there. But they wouldn’t make the connection. At most they would presume the bike stolen and take it to the police station storage area. It was licensed so they would try to contact him. But not on a weekend. And then by email, or snail mail.  

Someone would report him missing. But this was a Friday afternoon, he lived alone, and had no scheduled event until a faculty meeting Monday morning. Two and-a-half days away.  Maybe there was an inside light switch. A release for the doors. Or an emergency phone. He searched his memory but recalled nothing. Maybe in modern mausoleums, but building codes were much more lax in 1920. To be sure he stood and faced the wall, standing maybe a foot away. He slowly moved his hand along the wall along the edge of the doors, feeling for any bumps or cracks that might suggest a switch or button or anything. He worked his way around the doors, the brass and stone cold to the touch, occasionally swiping across a cobweb. No switch. No button.   

He wondered how often the mausoleum doors might be opened. Obviously when someone in the family died, or on Memorial Day, or some family commemoration date. Perhaps there might be a funeral the next day (how many long hours away tomorrow seemed) but that was unlikely. This oldest part of the cemetery had few available gravesites, so there could be no fresh funeral unless another Holzhaufer had the decency to die quickly. Or someone in the family might come tomorrow, alone, to pay private last respects. “Might.” A thin reed on which to lean.  

Bill realized he felt thirsty, and tried to make himself stop thinking about it. Only an hour earlier he’d been eating his lunch and drinking from his water bottle. Too soon to really need more. He couldn’t help wishing he’d had the sense to wheel his bike in here, so he’d have food, water, light, and a phone. He recalled reading that a person can last three days without water. Still time for hope.   

 He moved his head slowly from one side to the other, scanning the darkness, hoping to find some chink in the wall of black, something that suggested hope. Surely a century of weather and decay had found places of weakness, maybe worn holes into or around the walls.  

He saw nothing but blackness heard nothing but the faint sounds of his breathing. He sat again against the wall, and let his eyelids close. He must have fallen asleep.

Because something jerked him awake.

3

It must have been a sound. He listened. Nothing. Then he heard it. A faint scratching from the far back of the building. It stopped. Then began again. He rose to his feet, keeping his back to the wall, his face turned toward the back. As though he could see anything.

The sound resumed. Familiarity tugged at the back of his consciousness. He heard it before. A rat or mouse. Made sense in an old structure like this, rodents could fit through the tiniest of holes. But those holes wouldn’t stay small for long. Time, tiny feet, and sharp teeth would see to that. And if there were a hole, sound and light could come in. More importantly, sound could get out.  

He began walking toward the sound, arms outstretched into the blackness. His footsteps echoed. He stopped and listened. No sound. It started again, then stopped as he moved. He made the stop-and-start trip until his hand bumped up against the back wall. He turned around, back to the wall, and listened.

It came from his left, lower down, several feet back inside. His eyes wandered the blackness, then he stopped. He could make out the faintest of light along the floor, from the same place as the sounds. He moved closer, dropped to his knees, and lowered his head.  

It was light, faint, but steady, seeming to come from the beneath of one of the crypts. Where it should not be. Not from the wall. From the crypt itself. Which made no sense. But there it was. The scratching began again. From inside. He got unsteadily to his feet and took a step back. The light spread until it covered the whole front of the crypt. His eyes locked on the name. Lydia Julia Holzhaufer. 

He staggered back and closed his eyes.

Then came the voice.

Her voice.

“You’ve come, Billy.” 

He opened his eyes. What seemed like white smoke slipped beneath the door and rose before him, coalescing into the nearly-forgotten but familiar form of the girl he had known so long ago, thin and pale, shadowy long black hair over her shoulders, piercing eyes, pupils bright like burning coals. 

“I knew you would.”

She reached toward him, her arms shadowy yet solid, like x-ray images.

He tried to speak, but the words lodged in his throat. He took two steps back. She followed, laying those icy cold arms on his shoulders, pulling him toward her, toward dark and desperate lips, breathing of decay. He shook loose and backed away. She moved toward him. His legs tangled and he fell. Half-crawling, gasping, he rose unsteadily and ran, feeling her at his back. He banged against the doors, then slumped to the floor. 

 4

“And that’s how I found him,” the groundskeeper told the detective, pointing to the man curled on the floor, arms covering his face. “I came in for routine cleaning. We had an interment yesterday.” He paused. “Don’t know who he is or how he got here, the doors were locked when I came in.”

“I see,” said the detective, watching as the medical examiner poked at the body. The examiner glanced up. “Heart attack, I’d say.” He looked around. “Strange place to die.” 

The detective smiled in spite of himself, irreverently recalling a James Thurber story in which a doctor had told a widow that “people don’t actually die in cemeteries.” This one did. Turning to the business at hand, he said, “I’m guessing this explains the bike outside.”  

“Must have came in during yesterday's storm and got himself locked in,” the groundskeeper said.

The detective noted the careful phrasing, the evasion of responsibility, but refrained from asking more. No need to complicate the case. “Anything else?”

““What gets me,” the groundskeeper said, “is why he stayed in here.”

“He had a choice?”

“Sure.” The groundskeeper grabbed the bar on one of the propped-open doors. “Just push and the latch clicks open.”  

He pushed but nothing moved. He tried the other. No movement there either. “Hmm,” he said. “I suppose when nobody uses these for a hundred years they tend to rust shut. I better put some WD-40 in there, in case it happens again.”