John Case - The Murder Artist

I am buried alive and someone is digging me out .

Immediately, I’m inundated by a tsunami of fear and claustrophobia. I’m buried alive!

And I’m overcome with terror that whoever is digging me out will stop. Coming out of my trance, I don’t at first remember how I got where I am or even where that is. An earthquake or an avalanche, a terrorist attack? What I do know is that I can’t see, I can’t breathe, that I’m trapped and panicked.

I try to shout – wanting to offer some sign that the effort is worth it, that whomever my rescuer might be, there’s a person down here. I want to shout out: I’m alive. I’m here. Don’t give up.

What emerges from me is nothing like what I intend. It’s not a shout, not even a scream. It’s more like a moan or a growl, so low-pitched I doubt anyone could hear it. It’s almost as if my voice lacks the velocity to break the sound barrier.

By the time the coffin is raised, and the cover pried off – a process that takes a long time – I remember how I came to be buried alive. I wonder, as they work on my exhumation, how long I was under. While I was buried, I lost my bearings in time and space. For a while, I even lost the idea of me, of Alex Callahan. Time seemed to expand infinitely. At first, I counted my breaths in cycles of one hundred, but eventually, I started losing track, and then I seemed to forget the proper sequence of numbers and then it seemed pointless. I went insane for a short time, screaming and writhing and trying to claw my way out, an effort that left my fingers raw and bleeding. I used the pain, for a while, to keep my spirits up. As long as it hurts, I told myself, I’m alive. A new Cartesian deduction. Dolor ergo sum . Or something like that.

I felt regret about it: disappearing. It would be tough on my parents and Liz. My main concern was for the boys, because I considered myself their last chance. Others might go through the motions, but everyone else had given them up for dead. That thought carried me for a while. By thinking of Sean and Kevin, by recounting every memory of them, by summoning up their faces and their voices, I was able to keep my head together for some time. And I had a vision of them, which I was persuaded was true, that I am still persuaded is true.

Somehow my mind slipped the temporal-spatial chains and delivered me to a room I’d never seen before. It was as if I were in the center of the ceiling, looking down. The boys were asleep in wooden bunk beds of the bulky, rough-hewn “western” sort. They slept under burgundy-colored fleece blankets, Sean on the lower bunk, Kevin on top.

Kevin stirred, under my gaze, and turned over from one side to the other. His mouth was open and I could see that his two new front teeth, which had just begun to emerge from his gums when the boys arrived from Maine, were almost fully in now. The edges had a vaguely scalloped appearance, ridges that must wear down over time, and the teeth looked too big for his face, as such teeth do. And then the vision vanished and I was back in the dark, trying to summon up anything, Christmas at the in-laws’, Sean’s face when he saw the bike under the tree.

Eventually, though, I suffered a collapse of the will. Diment had buried me alive. He was Boudreaux’s friend. If I thought his kind look promised anything, it was wishful thinking. I wondered if Pinky would be able to track down my grave.

And then I passed beyond regret, into a new arena, where I was beyond any interest in myself. This is the way I think I survived. I gave up. I obliterated every thought because they all circled back on themselves: “What if I turn over?” always led to “ Can I turn over?” And so on.

In a way, it was a relief to give up. To stop counting, to stop focusing on my pain, to stop thinking of Sean and Kev, to stop hoping. To stop thinking that Alex Callahan had any importance in the universe. To stop thinking at all.

As the nails are pried off, the screech is the loveliest music I’ve ever heard. When the lid comes off, I’m blinded by the light and my eyes reflexively slam shut. Hands grasp my arms and sit me up.

“Come on now, take it easy. Don’t try to open your eyes just yet. Just let the light filter in through your lids like.”

Someone holds a paper cup of water to my lips and I gulp a few sips, a messy process. I try to lift a hand to my face to wipe my lips, but the hand shakes so badly I can’t really do it; I just bat myself in the face.

“That’s okay,” says a voice I recognize as Diment’s. “You be all right. Didn’t I tell you, man? You jez have to trust. Body don’t like bein’ pinned down like that, that’s all. But you be all right, same as I promise. Just take it easy. Let the world welcome you back, brother.”

More water. It’s delicious, an elixir. As is the damp air against my skin, which provides an exquisite rush of sensations. And the sunlight through my eyelids, flickering and patterned through something I can’t see, is a revelation after the darkness.

“You a new man, now. You reborn. We gon’ stand you up, come on.”

Strong hands under my arms lift me to my feet.

“Open your eyes, Alex. Jest a little, tha’s right, now a little more. Step out onto the earth.”

The world is still bleached out, like an overexposed photograph, but I can see enough to step over the side of the coffin onto the dusty earth.

“Oh, yes!” a female voice calls.

“He one of us now!”

Their voices are sweet and wonderful, the most dulcet music. In fact, liberated from the coffin, I am drenched in sheer wonderment. The humid air against my skin, the sun, the trees rustling in the breeze, the dirt… I tremble with delight. I even start to cry, tears of joy and relief.

“Oh, yes! Now he see!”

On the ground to my right is an intricate design made out of a white powder. It’s lacy and beautiful.

“That’s a veve, ” Diment tells me, following my gaze. “That help bring the loa here.” He leans down and, with his fingertips, stirs the design into the dust.

The members of the bizango are gathering flags and drums, and stuffing the bottles and plastic plates and cups into trash bags. Some of their faces are smeary with white powder. They look worn out, as if the night was a difficult one for them, too.

Once again, it’s as if Diment can read my mind. “It not restful when the loa come into you. You shake and fall down and then you dance. We all tired now – you the only one get any rest.” He laughs his alarming laugh.

I’m outside Diment’s place, sitting on a disintegrating rattan chair in a little concrete patio hidden behind the structure. It’s just a concrete slab, with a cable spool for a table and two sagging chairs. To the right are some animal pens or chicken coops of different sizes, handmade of bamboo and interlaced with vine. One of them holds a speckled hen, but the others are empty. The hen sits compact and motionless with the exception of her bright eyes.

I’m back in my own clothes and I put in a call to Pinky from the BMW’s phone to let him know I’m all right. Now I wait for Diment to come out. Usually, I hate to wait, but for the moment I’m without impatience. The night underground propelled me into a new mindset. It would be overstating it to say that I feel “reborn,” but I do feel refreshed and alive. And free of my normal impatience, my usual restless chafing against the constraints of any schedule not designed with me at its center. I take heart from that strange vision of the boys in their bunk beds, which reaffirmed my belief that they’re alive.

“You know why I agree to help you?” Diment asks when he joins me, maybe half an hour later. The old man looks tired, his color bad, his rheumy eyes bagged and exhausted.