Page 61 of The Undead

“I lost Julie to William,” he told me in a quiet, conversational tone. “But I won’t lose any more friends, particularly not to you, Michael. Lesson four. Don’t fuck up again or I’ll break your fucking neck.”

He started the car and jammed it savagely in gear.

We coasted up, twenty minutes later, to the side entrance of Eternal Gardens. When Adam shut the engine off, the night was unnaturally silent; the freeway sounds were far and muted, and even the sounds of human habitation seemed muffled in the distance. Here, in the kingdom of the peacefully dead, no one made a sound, not even the wind.

“What are we doing here?” I asked. Adam shrugged.

“You wanted to see your grave. There it is, other side of the fence. Go ahead.” He took another look at the LCD clock. “It’s nearly five. Don’t take long.”

“You coming?” I asked Adam as I climbed out of the back. He shook his head and glanced at Sylvia.

“I’ll stay here,” he said. With her, he meant. I nodded, and surveyed the fence, seven feet of gothic wrought-iron spikes. It looked daunting. Adam saw me hesitate and sighed. “Mike. Climb it.”

I grabbed hold, and suddenly I was airborne. I’d forgotten how much strength I had, how easily it came to my call; I hoisted myself up to the top without much of an effort at all, vaulted my body over, and landed with a very soft thump on the well-fertilized grass on the other side.

“Better.” Adam nodded, and managed a smile. I tried one too, not too successfully, and took a look around.

In the night, the cemetery might have been an unnaturally well kept park, trees kept to a discreet and pruned height, grass exactly so high and no higher. It wouldn’t do for the grieving loved ones to be reminded of just where Uncle Harold—or Uncle Mike, for that matter—was ultimately going. People got so squeamish over the food chain.

Eternal Gardens didn’t allow tombstones. Too gothic, too unregimented. They allowed you discreet metal or marble memorial plaques, set at ground level and in just the right place to trip you if you overlooked one. I bent and looked at the first one I stubbed my toe on.

Harold Tanner. Uncle Harold. I’ll be damned.

My grave—monument?—would be one of the freshly spaded ones, just a little less well covered than was desirable. I spotted one of those telltale mounds and crossed to it, but the name on it was nothing close to mine. I found three other fresh graves, none of them a match, and then spotted one far off to the left, near the opposite fence and under the spreading shadows of a perfectly trimmed willow.

The plastic card—left in place of the permanent plaque that was probably on its way (ten days to two weeks for delivery) said clearlyMICHAEL KEVIN BOWMAN, born June 22, 1957, died October 24, 1991.

BELOVED HUSBAND.

The graveside looked miserable and deserted, littered with wilting flowers and fluttering black ribbon. I stared at it, mesmerized, and reached down to pick up a red rose that lay across the mound of dirt.

It smelled faintly of perfume. Maggie’s perfume. I clutched it too hard, and the thorns punched through my skin; I dropped it with a muffled curse and sucked at the wounds, amazed at the weird structure of my invulnerability. Metal bent in my fingers. Glass shattered. But I could still be wounded by something as simple as a splinter—or a thorn.

I sank down against the trunk of the willow and watched the grave for a while, thinking about the man who slept under the blanket of earth; a JD—John Doe—transient, homeless, friendless. I wondered where he’d been, and what had happened to him to bring him here to impersonate me. Probably nothing nearly so strange as what had happened to me, all in all. I saluted him and wished I had a bottle so I could propose a toast—but maybe that wouldn’t have been such a great idea, considering what I’d have to drink. My nameless friend would rest easier without it.

Jesus, I’d come so close to killing tonight, so terribly close. What if Sylvia hadn’t followed me? What if she’d waited another minute, or two? I sank my forehead down against my bent knees and took a deep breath. Colleen’s blood ran through whatever passed for my veins, adding to my guilt with every moment of satisfaction. What was I? Wouldn’t it have been better if I was under the ground instead of above it?

The sudden crunch of gravel took me totally by surprise. I pushed myself further back into the shadows as someone came around the bend in the path, a young woman dressed in blue jeans and an oversized black coat. I knew her even before I smelled her perfume. The fading moonlight was brilliant on Maggie’s hair, and it bleached her eyes the translucent color of pearl. Her skin was like satin, caressed by the light. I froze into immobility as she came closer, and it seemed that Maggie’s eyes were fastened on mine, warm and welcoming …

Then, inevitably, they slid aside. She couldn’t see me. I was too deep in the shadows. She came around to the side of the grave, less than three feet away from where I waited, and stood there in silence.

After a very long time, she took her hands out of her coat pockets. I saw the flash of gold on her ring finger, then saw her slip it off and hold it in her right hand. Maggie turned it idly in her fingers, considering, and then went to one blue-jeaned knee in the loose dirt. Her long fingers—trembling, now, just a little—reached out to dig a shallow hole in the earth over my grave.

“Mike,” she whispered, and there was so much in the sound, a world of grief and longing and love—I wanted to move, needed to move, and I didn’t dare. Her nearness was torturous and wonderful. “Hi, baby. I—I—they gave me your things and they took off your ring—I didn’t—I couldn’t—”

Her voice faltered and shattered under the pressure of emotion. She dropped the ring—my ring, much too large for those slender fingers—into the earth and smoothed it over. Her hand stilled, covering the soil, and her other hand reached out to join it. She leaned forward, weight resting on the shifting dirt as if she intended, impossibly, to pump life back into the earth itself and the silent body beneath it.

“I wanted you to have it,” she whispered, and her head bent slowly forward. “Dear God, Michael. Please don’t leave me.”

Silence. Something over my head rustled faintly, leaves whispering their gossip, wind stroking then with cool fingers. Maggie took a shuddering breath. Her heartbeat was fest and labored as she fought against tears and grief. Her fingers twisted in the dirt. For a moment I thought she was going to claw the soil out of the way with her long trembling fingers, scratching until her broken nails scraped the invulnerable slick surface of my coffin. Oh, God, Maggie, don’t, please don’t, I thought. I can’t bear it if you do.

Her whole body tensed and went still. I barely heard the words, though I knew she wanted to scream them in a paroxysm of fury. I could feel the heat of her anger, and the cold tears sliding down her face. Her voice was raw and undefended.

“God damn you.Don’t lease me, you bastard.”

Her weeping was quiet and desolate, without fanfare. It was simply the overwhelming eruption of agony she hadn’t let show during the day, when others could see, could pity her. She was strong, my Maggie. Always too strong, too controlled, steel and iron and the heart of a dove dying underneath …

I didn’t. I didn’t leave you—

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