D. Gilles - Colder Than Death

I reached my hand to the wall and flipped on the light only to discover that I was in an Embalming Room. My heart started to pound. It wasn’t as spacious or sophisticated as the Embalming Room at the Home or in most of the embalming rooms I’d seen. There was only one embalming table and instead of a large utility sink, the one in here was much smaller. But all the tools of an embalmer were there.

What Nolan was doing with an embalming room in his basement I didn’t know, but what I saw on the walls caused me even more concern.

There were a couple of dozen articles dealing with the preservation of bodies, including several on Eva Peron. I checked them out quickly. Some were yellowed with age, others seemed newer. I could tell by the color and texture of the pages that some had originally appeared in newspapers, while others had been in magazines, undoubtedly embalmer trade publications. Like everything else in Nolan’s house, the room was spotless and orderly. And again, like every other room I’d been in, the temperature wasn’t cooled. The only place I hadn’t seen was the attic. And even though the door was locked, I was determined to get inside.

I felt in my bones that the innocence or guilt of Nolan had something to do with whatever was in that room.

I headed up stairs, knowing I would have to break down the locked door. I got to it, shook the doorknob again, hoping that maybe it wasn’t really locked.

But it was. Using my right shoulder as a battering ram, I slammed against the door several times. It wouldn’t budge. I was sweating even more now. And panicking. I’d forgotten to keep track of the time. I wasn’t sure if Nolan would have reached the Home by now. If he did and didn’t find me there I wasn’t sure if he would wait. I pounded against the door several more times. Nothing. And not only was I getting out of breath, but my shoulder was starting to hurt. I lay on the floor on my back and, using the bottoms of my feet, tried to kick open the door.

Again, nothing.

I sat up and leaned against the wall facing the door, breathing hard, feeling nervous and scared and still filled with the shred of doubt that this was all a mistake and that Nolan would not only be hurt but angry at me. I was actually seriously trying to break down his door. What would I say if when I got up there I found nothing except junk that belonged in an attic? Or what if he had paintings or artwork or something that needed climate control? And what if he’d turned on the air conditioning accidentally?

Moreover, what was I looking for? What did I think he would have up there? I was getting more confused, but something inside told me that I had to get into that attic, if for no other reason than to appease my curiosity.

I stood up, took several deep breaths and was again about to try slamming into the door when I saw it nestled precariously on the top rim of the door.

A key.

I grabbed it and slid it into the lock. It opened easily. The moment I stepped through it and started up the stairs I felt the coolness of an air-conditioned room. I ran my hand along the wall, looking for a light switch, but found none. The only light available to me as I moved up the stairs was from the den and the further I went the dimmer it got. By the time I reached the top of the stairs it was virtually pitch black and I still hadn’t found a light switch. I decided to move around the room. Maybe I would find a lamp.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I tried to find a window, but I found none. I moved slowly, hands outstretched like a blind man.

I bumped into what I thought was a wood table, about waist high. I moved a foot or so to the right expecting to go around the table, but it was still there. I moved to the left, again giving myself enough space to go around the table, but it was still there. It was odd because I was in the middle of the room and a table that seemed to be about seven feet long was blocking my way. Not wanting to knock it over I lifted my hand and raised it a few inches over the table to see if there was a lamp or a knick-knack that I would make sure to avoid knocking off.

That’s when I felt what I thought was the face of a doll. Cold, not so much wooden, but like Formica or plastic. I ran my right hand over the contours of the doll’s face, clearly feeling the nose, lips, eyes, cheeks and chin. But what didn’t seem normal was the size of the face. It seemed too big to be the head of a little girl’s doll.

It seemed life-size. And it seemed to be setting neatly on this unusually long table. Not setting. Lying horizontally. And not on something, but in something.

I ran my hand from the chin to the chest, gently sliding over a pair of life-sized breasts. I pulled back my hand because the horrible truth was beginning to dawn on me.

It wasn’t a doll. And it wasn’t a table. It was a coffin. And the body was that of a full grown woman.

I knew there had to be a light somewhere, so I backed away, my heart pounding, sweat forming on my brow despite the coolness of the room. I wasn’t sure if I would vomit or pass out from the fear that was growing in the pit of my stomach.

I stepped backwards toward the stairs, feeling more carefully on the wall for a switch. After grasping frantically I finally found it and quickly flipped it on. Although only a soft, pink glow came from the track lighting on the ceiling, my eyes took a moment to adjust to the light.

Then I saw them.

Five coffins, about ten feet apart, containing the bodies of five women. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what I was seeing. As I moved slowly back towards the first coffin, the one I’d bumped into, I saw that it was handmade, undoubtedly the work of Nolan in his basement workshop.

I stepped up and gazed at the face I had touched. She looked about nineteen or twenty. Very pretty. Dark brown hair. Had I not touched her face moments ago, had she been laid out in a Viewing Room at a Funeral Home I would have assumed she had died recently, maybe the day before, and that she had been embalmed either that same day or even today. But from touching her face, non-pliant and firm, I knew she could’ve been dead for weeks or months. Even years.

I turned to the four other corpses in the room. I had a fairly good idea who I was going to find inside at least one of them. I started to shake as I approached the next coffin. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before looking down. I hoped I wouldn’t be staring down into the face of the only woman I’d ever loved.

It wasn’t Alyssa. Again, I didn’t recognize this face either, but she was in her late teens or early twenties and her hair was a lighter brown than the first woman. Could she and the first girl been the two names Perry had pinpointed on his computer search?

I moved to the next one, again holding my breath. This one I recognized. It was Virginia Thistle. Because I knew she was thirty-two when she vanished twenty-four years ago it was easy to calculate that she would be fifty-six, but she looked seventeen. I wanted to cry for Gretchen, but before I would shed any tears for her, I needed to know if Alyssa was in this room too.

The next one I also recognized, but only because I had just seen her picture hanging on the wall next to Nolan’s family crest. It was Nolan’s wife, Patricia. She looked older than the others, perhaps twenty-five.

I moved to the last coffin. I was shaking, my teeth were chattering. I hadn’t laid eyes on Alyssa Kirkland in fifteen years. I hoped to the God I had stopped believing in years ago that it wouldn’t be her. I would rather know she was alive and out of my reach, than to see her dead.

I looked down.

It was as if time had stood still. Her face looked pure and unblemished. Her brown hair, longer than she used to wear it, was spread out across her shoulders. The oversized freckle on the tip of her slightly upturned nose was still there. Nolan had managed to shape her lips into the ironic pout I had found so cute. I wanted to touch her, but I knew that what I would be feeling wouldn’t be the warm flesh I’d once kissed. It wouldn’t even be the freshly embalmed corpse still pliant. It would be like touching a piece of plastic.