P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

Charlie pushed on the gate, and when it wouldn’t give, he started to climb over it. Louis pulled him back down.

“Charlie,” he said, “what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

“This is where the apple babies are!” Charlie shouted. “This is where they come from.”

There was a wood sign stuck on the ground: SHADY TRAIL APPLE ORCHARD amp; CIDER MILL. CLOSED DECEMBER- JUNE.

Louis wasn’t sure what the hell to do. But something in his gut told him to just keep going, just ask questions.

“Charlie,” Louis said, “what are apple babies?”

Charlie was standing knee-deep in a snowdrift. “They’re apple babies and they bring them to the hospital! They bring them in baskets.”

“Can I make them?”

Charlie looked at him, confused. “What?”

“Are they dolls or something? Can I make them?”

“No, no. Only the ladies can make them.”

“I can cook,” Louis said.

“They’re not cooked, Mr. Kincaid,” Charlie said. “They grow.”

“On trees?”

Charlie hung his head and moved away from him slowly, like he was giving up.

It hit Louis how weird it was that Charlie was the one getting frustrated with his inability to understand. Louis came closer, making an effort to keep his voice normal. “Charlie, what do the apple babies look like?”

Charlie’s hands were curled around the gate, the tips of his fingers red. “I’ve never seen one.”

“But you saw the baskets?”

Charlie nodded. “The baskets come in trucks.”

“Like an apple truck?”

“Yes. It has apples on it.”

“Do you eat the apple babies?”

“No. That would hurt.”

“Hurt who?”

“The apple babies.”

Charlie’s face was raw, his eyes teary, and all the laughter that had been in him during the song was gone. It was freezing out here, the wind a brisk wash across the open farmland, and Louis knew he should take Charlie back to the car. But he didn’t want anything to distract him. Not yet.

“Charlie, are the apple babies real?” Louis asked.

Charlie looked at him. “Real? Of course they are real. They’re changeling babies. But they’re not sick. They get taken away because they’re perfect. The sick ones are left so the perfect ones can go away.”

Louis studied him, trying to remember everything he had said about apple babies and the Shakespeare book and the baskets. “Is that why you came here, because you were sick?”

“Yes.”

“And when you came, an apple baby was taken away?”

“I was a changeling child. I told you that.”

Louis touched his arm, and Charlie turned to look at him.

“Charlie, how do you know there was a baby in the apple basket?”

“I heard it cry.”

“Like you heard the graves cry?” Louis asked.

“Babies don’t cry at the graves. Only girls.”

Louis ran a hand over his face, sniffing from the cold. Charlie seemed unfazed, his gaze moving back to the bare trees.

“Charlie,” Louis said, “will you come to the cemetery with me? Will you show me exactly where you hear them?”

“Okay.”

Louis took his arm and led him back to the Impala. Charlie glanced back at the orchard as they climbed inside, but he seemed calm now, almost as if he couldn’t remember why they were here. The two-lane highway was empty, and Louis pulled away from the snowy shoulder and did a U-turn, heading back east to Hidden Lake.

He let Charlie go first, prepared to follow him wherever he went. Spera’s equipment still sat at the corners, and there were some open empty graves. Donald Lee Becker’s was one of them, his concrete liner sitting in a frozen pool of black ice.

Louis watched for movement in the trees, wondering if there were troopers posted out here. But he doubted it. It was too open, with no place to hide, and it was too exposed to the weather. Not likely the killer could bring any more victims here.

Charlie headed to the middle of the cemetery. To their left was a row of trees behind which Louis could just make out the spires of the Hidden Lake infirmary. To their right, more trees that dwindled off into open farmland and orchards, and far ahead of them, up near where they had found Sharon Stottlemyer, more trees and thick brush.

“Where are you going, Charlie?” Louis called.

Charlie just pointed to the north end. He paused where they had found Sharon Stottlemyer’s remains. The shallow grave had been carefully excavated. It didn’t look like the other graves, and Charlie seemed to notice it was different, but he said nothing. He just moved on toward the back of the cemetery. Then he stepped into the brush and reached for a tree limb.

“Charlie, what are you doing?”

“Climbing the tree. This is where I hear them.”

Charlie scaled it easily, his thin body squeezing through the branches and finding a perch about ten feet off the ground.

Then he sat and waited.

After a few minutes, Louis spoke. “Do you hear anything?”

“No.”

Louis looked around. The only sound he could hear was the whistle of the wind in the trees. From back here, in the brush beyond the north boundary of the cemetery, he could clearly see the iron fence surrounding the back perimeter of Hidden Lake. He could see part of E Building through the naked branches and above its roof, the spires of the infirmary just beyond. He knew there had to be cops stationed up in E Building, and he wondered if they could see him right now.

“Can I come down now?” Charlie asked.

“In a minute,” Louis said. He stepped farther into the brush. It was sharp and tore against his jeans as he crunched through it. He came to some small trees and pushed through them, glancing back to check on Charlie.

“Anything?”

“No,” Charlie called back.

Louis went a few more steps, and the trees suddenly stopped. There was an area of brush that had been tamped down, like someone had walked on it. But he could see the brush was loose, like it had been carefully positioned. He knelt to push it aside but drew back, pricked by thorns. He pulled at the brush. Suddenly, his hand hit something hard.

Metal.

He was standing on a platform of some kind. Old, red-brown with rust. It looked like a door set in the ground.

“Charlie!” Louis called. “Come here.”

Louis started yanking at the remaining brush. When Charlie saw what he was doing, he knelt to help. In a few minutes, they had cleared away a ten-foot area.

There were two metal doors, about eight feet wide, embedded in the ground. One hinge had rusted off, leaving one of the heavy doors slanting downward slightly. Nearby, coming straight out of the ground, was a pipe that looked it might have had controls or a lever on it at one time, but it was broken off now.

“Charlie, stand on that side over here and grab the edge,” Louis said.

Together they lifted the slanting door, letting it fall backward with a spray of snow.

Louis looked down inside. He could see the bottom of the hole, down to another iron platform. But that wasn’t all that was down there. Louis could also see the beginnings of a tunnel.

“This is where the bodies come out,” Charlie said.

Louis looked up at him. “You knew about this?”

Charlie looked at him from the other side of the hole, frowning at the sharpness in Louis’s voice.

“Not anymore. It’s closed now,” he said softly.

Louis looked back into the hole, holding his frustration. It was his own damn fault. If he had spent more time talking to Charlie instead of dismissing him as crazy he would have found this sooner.

Louis stood up. “Charlie, I need you to do something. Go back to the car. There’s a flashlight in the glove compartment. Bring it to me. Can you do that?”