Coffins (22 page)

“Father! What should I do?” the younger Jasper pleaded.

“You might stand back!” his father suggested.

Before our very eyes the cadaver was visibly swelling with the gases of decay. As the flesh filled and stretched it caused the limbs to move and twitch, in a disturbing mockery of life. No, it was not as if we saw Tom Coffin's ruined body come back to life. Ghastly as that might have been, the reality was much, much worse. There was nothing lively about the shuddering twitches of the corpse. Rather, we saw him getting deader by the second, his flesh putrefying and splitting apart, as if the normal, six-week process of corruption were being compressed into a few intolerable minutes. We watched in silent horror, made mute by terror and disbelief, as muscles and ligaments tightened, then relaxed, then unraveled from the bone. We saw the skin writhe as it sloughed away from liquefying organs, the whole running mess of it bubbling, foaming, blackening, yes,
blackening
, with flesh-rot and bone-mold and jellied excrescence. His eyeballs dissolved in their sockets and leaked like tears through his closed eyelids and ran down his now-black face. Fingernails ripened, exploding softly from the digits. His brain melted, spurted from ears, nose, mouth. And when, somehow, the calcifying ligaments pulled taut, wrenching the spine free of the flesh and sitting it bolt upright, Tom Coffin's jaw suddenly dropped away from Tom Coffin's skull, and the scream that came from where his mouth had been, the scream that quivered the air and shattered the softened bones and dissolved the corpse into dust, that scream was mine.

4. Beneath the Paint

When I staggered from the undertaker's parlor I was a changed man, and not for the better. Everything I knew and believed had rotted away with the unnatural decay of Tom Coffin's remains. There was no rational explanation for what I had witnessed, no possible scientific theory. It made me see the world in a different way. Or rather it was as if I were suddenly looking through this world into another, as if the place I'd lived, worked, thought, and loved was nothing more than a trompe l'oeil, a clever, pleasant little illusion painted upon the horror that lurked just beneath it. I was unmoored, a soul loosed from the earth, and I did not soar, no, but plummeted into a feverish, waking nightmare.

For a time my senses became strangely enhanced. The drab, winter monochrome of a coastal village became vibrant with colors so bright and intense that my eyes ached. Signs and images seemed to sing or scream, as if color had a musical or vocal component. The cold, salty air carried a thousand piercing odors, some so fragrant I wept with physical pleasure, others so repulsive it made me choke on my own bile. The bloom of life, the stench of death, both intertwined, and so powerfully experienced that I thought my brain might boil away while I still lived.

Surely I was seen in this state, lurching like a drunken sailor through the narrow, winding streets of White Harbor, but I can't recall seeing another human being until at last I found myself once more at the Coffin house, scarcely comprehending how I got there. Barky the cook, observing my distress, urged me to lie down while he fetched a doctor. I threw off his gentle hands, reminded him that I was a doctor and would heal myself, whereupon I cackled like a madman and then fell to weeping.

“We are doomed,” I told him. “All of us, doomed.”

“Course we are,” he agreed with a click of the tongue. “Every man must die. That's a given. But God made heaven for us, so we needn't despair. That's a given, too.”

“Barky,” I said, grasping his huge wrist and drawing him near. “Barky, what if there is no heaven?”

“There must be heaven,” he squeaked. “It's in the Bible.”

“What if there is no heaven?” I insisted. “What if hell exists all around us? All we have to do is scratch through the paint and there it is. Terrible things hiding behind the paint. Awful things. Waiting to leap out at us. Things that can cut men to pieces and freeze babies and shape themselves in lightning. It's true, Barky. I've seen it! Like the Captain sees it. Things behind the paint!”

“I wish you'd take this brandy, Dr. Bentwood.”

“No! No brandy! It smells vile! Can't you smell it? Stinks like swamp fire! Get it away!”

“Easy now. I'll put the brandy aside, maybe you'll want it later.”

“You must believe me, sir! I thought I knew what the world was, but the world you see is a trick of paint. An illusion. I thought there were rules, laws of physics. But there are no rules, there are no laws! Hell is right here!” I screamed, banging the table with my fists. “It waits beneath! Under the paint, Barky, under the paint!”

As I knew from our previous acquaintance, the huge man had the patience of a saint, and he somehow managed to restrain me without doing me any harm, or letting me harm myself. Like any nightmare the details are vague, but I think I was trying to scrape away my own skin to show him what was underneath. Then I must have fainted, because the next thing I remember is lying on my bed in my chamber, and Lucy holding a cool, moist cloth to my brow.

“Lucy,” I muttered. “Your perfume. I can barely smell it.”

“Not perfume,” she murmured. “Rose water. It has, I'm told, a very light fragrance.”

“Good, good. You smell lovely, really.”

Then I slept.

By the next day I had recovered my composure, such as it was. Colors no longer blinded me. Odors no longer electrified my senses. I stopped raving and scratching at my skin. But what I confessed to Barky remained essentially true, as it does to this day. My recent experiences had convinced me that another world existed, an invisible world that might at any moment make itself known in the most horrifying way. For this was not the harmless sort of afterlife world described by spiritualists, where dead relatives milled about eager to communicate, or the cook's biblical heaven, but a place where demons dwelled among us, separated by the merest gossamer. Nothing else made sense. I had to believe it or go insane.

Fortunately I was clever enough to keep my own counsel. Captain Coffin had seen that world beneath, and for raving about it he'd been locked in a tower, or he'd locked himself in, which amounted to the same thing. I was determined that that not happen to me, even if I had to pretend to be the same supremely rational fellow who had first arrived in White Harbor. I told myself I must appear rational and reasonable, therefore I would act rational and reasonable, and if anyone asked what I'd been raving about I would feign loss of memory. Fever dreams, I would say, common delirium, pay no attention.

Anything but admit the truth. The new truth of the new Davis Bentwood.

The glimpse I'd seen was not enough to satisfy me. Not that I wished to return to that state. Far from it. But I wanted very much to know what, exactly, Cassius Coffin had done to scratch the paint, as it were. If I wanted to retain my sanity, and keep what was happening to the Coffins from happening to me, I must find out, and soon. One thing was certain: it had to be more than the grave sin of slavery, for if that was all it took, half the houses in the nation would be haunted.

“You look yourself again,” Lucy said when I came down to breakfast, and found her eating alone. “I'm glad of that.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, fiddling with the pot of coffee. “I'm quite recovered, thank you. And I do apologize for frightening you last night.”

Lucy smiled. “Oh, Davis, you did not frighten me. You were quite sweet, really. Why, you told me I smelled like roses and heaven.”

“Did I? Oh, but you do, I'm sure.”

She gave me a long, lingering look with her icicle-blue eyes, as if trying to read my secret thoughts. “I see that you're embarrassed. Please don't be. There's nothing unmanly about suffering a nervous disorder. You'd been through a terrifying experience aboard the schooner and you'd taken everything upon yourself, trying to help us. You were exhausted. You had to deal with the remains, and I'm sure that was awful. It's no wonder your mind decided to take a holiday.”

I was astonished. “Is that what you think happened? My mind took a holiday?”

“What else?” She raised her eyebrows, as if waiting for me to disagree, or to supply an explanation of my own. Instead I accepted her description of what she perceived to be my breakdown, and then endeavored to change the subject.

“So. How do your cousins fare?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Well enough, considering. No, I do not tell the truth. This home lies under a pall,” she said, with a gesture that seemed to describe the oppressive silence of the great house. “The Captain is mad again, they say, and Jebediah is not himself. Benjamin does nothing but pray, and Nathaniel frets for his wife.”

“What other news is there?” I asked, indicating the newspaper she'd put down when I entered the dining room. “How goes it with the rest of the world?”

“More gloom, I'm afraid,” she said with a sigh. “The train has been gathering speed and now, it seems, no one can jump off.”

“More states have seceded?”

She nodded. “Nearly all those below the Mason Dixon line. And worse, they are spoiling to prove their independence, looking for any excuse to confront federal authorities. Which is something of a problem.”

“How so?”

“Aside from postal workers, the only ‘federals' located in this new Confederacy are a few soldiers stationed here and there, at long-established army bases. They're under orders not to fight unless attacked. They're certainly not attempting to enforce any federal laws. So if there's going to be war, the Southerners will have to start it.”

We discussed the subject for a while, so as not to return to the gloomy prospects of the family, but I failed to summon any passion for argument, and so we found ourselves agreeing. Gradually the conversation diminished, and I was able to excuse myself by saying that I was obliged to check in on Jebediah and Captain Sweeney.

“You'll find poor Jeb in his chamber,” Lucy informed me. “Captain Sweeney left here when you were en route to Nova Scotia.”

“Really?” I asked, alarmed. “But where has he gone? Was he well enough to travel?” I had no idea where the man might go. With his beautiful schooner destroyed, the salty fellow had, in effect, no home.

“He's boarding at the same house where Nathaniel and Sarah took rooms. My impression was that he's on the mend but not completely healed. He still had a terrible cough and could take no solid food.”

“Why, then, did he leave, sick as he was?”

Lucy gave me the strangest look, as if I'd again lost my senses. “Why, I suppose he left because he could,” she said. “Can you blame him?”

“Lucy!” I said. “Is it only obligation that keeps you here? You must not feel so. I'm sure Jeb would agree.”

She shook her head. “I remain of my own free will. It is not obligation but friendship that keeps me. The Coffins are my friends as well as my relations. They took me in when I had no place else to turn. How can I leave them in their time of need? Surely you feel the same.”

My heart warmed as I stared at this beautiful, valiant young woman. “Yes,” I agreed, with all my heart. “We feel the same.”

5. Another Kind of Dead

Mrs. Merriman's boardinghouse was a sturdy saltbox located a few blocks from the waterfront. Its narrow clapboards were painted a cheerful yellow, and each of the many small windows was fitted with a pair of black shutters. In the neatly apportioned front yard, small mounds in the snow revealed where beds of flowers would thrive, come spring. A cobbled walkway had been scraped and sanded all the way to the entrance. Despite my bleak cast of mind, I smiled approaching the door. There was something sunny and welcoming about the place, a personality that, alas, can't be ascribed to every boardinghouse, and it was obvious that Nathaniel and Captain Sweeney had chosen well.

I knew at once, upon entering the guest parlor, that the proprietress had a special fondness for cats. At least a dozen of the creatures lounged luxuriously upon stuffed cushions and braided rugs set out for that purpose. One very forward tom leaped down from an upholstered ottoman and began to writhe about my legs, purring like a little steam engine. A moment later Mrs. Merriman entered, saying, “Scat, Boozer! Leave the gentleman alone!”

If Boozer heard and understood, he gave no sign, but continued his joyous paroxysm undeterred. “I don't mind,” I told the lady. “I like a cat about the house. For the mice, you know.”

“Mice?” she tittered. “Mice know better than to venture here! There's a paucity of mice in these parts, believe you me.”

The good lady was small and slightly plump, with her iron-gray hair up in a bun. She was dressed in the kind of pleated, fussily embroidered gown that was passé in Boston, but was now, no doubt, the height of fashion in White Harbor society. This being a small town, my introduction was a formality—Mrs. Merriman already knew who I was, and seemed to have a clear idea of what had brought me to the Coffin house.

“How is poor Cash faring?” she inquired. “All those handsome sons. What a terrible thing! He was so proud of those boys. We all were, come to that. A credit to the Harbor, every one.”

We exchanged sympathetic remarks about the family, and I got the impression that Mrs. Merriman was sincerely fond of the Coffin brothers, if not exactly keen about their father, for whom she had respect but little apparent affection. “Have you come to consult with Sarah? If so I must tell you she is still greatly disturbed by any intrusion. Nathaniel has asked that visitors—and doctors—call at a later time.”

“Has Dr. Griswold been treating her?”

Mrs. Merriman seemed uncomfortable with the question, as if afraid I'd be offended by another physician's proximity. “Dr. Griswold called once or twice,” she said uneasily. “Nathaniel has requested that he not call again.”