Cemetery Lake

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

For the longest time I can’t move. My breathing becomes shallow and I start to sweat. The house is cold and the air slightly damp because of the busted window in the lounge. There is a restricting pain in my chest. On Monday they are going to find Sidney Alderman buried on top of the coffin of his wife. He’s going to look like he died hard. There’ll be plenty of evidence that I’m the one who killed him. It won’t be like Quentin James, where they knew I did it, but didn’t try looking too hard to prove anything. This time they’ll make an effort because the man I killed was innocent.

I walk outside to the garage and find a piece of plywood and some nails; of course, I have no hammer. I use a drill and some screws to hold the plywood over the busted window. The work helps to calm me, at least for a few minutes. When the last screw is buried, I start to go through my options, and the one that keeps coming up is that I ought to call Carl Schroder and tell him to come back here. We could sit down and he could listen to my sins.

I sit down at the table and eat some more pizza, staring blankly at the wall, the act of eating a mechanical one that has no enjoyment. I need to start making the most of good food, since I won’t be seeing any for another ten years. On the other hand, Schroder was right. I should be joining a gym. Or at least running. Doing something. I reach down and grab a handful of stomach. Two months ago I was lean. Now I’m not. I reach up and find extra padding around my neck and jaw that shouldn’t be there either.

I finish off the pizza and drink the rest of the Coke. Daxter comes wandering down the hall, probably hoping I kept him some pizza. I give him his usual and he seems placated by it. I head to bed and set my alarm clock. I slide it to the far end of the bedside table to kill the risk of my reaching out and slapping the snooze button while still in some dreamlike state. I stare at the dark ceiling and the dark walls and I think about Sidney Alderman and the expression that will be on his face. This strange image comes to me, of where they dig him up and there is still one more breath inside of him, one breath in which he can tell the police that it was me who did this to him.

When I fall asleep I end up dreaming about my wife, about Emily, and in my dream they are both alive. They talk to me, but what they say makes little sense, because in the dream I seem to be burying my family while they’re still alive. Rachel Tyler appears-she’s a younger version, one of the Rachel Tylers on display in the hallway of her parents’ house. She accuses me of being a murderer, and in this world of dreams as well as outside of it that’s exactly what I am.

When the alarm goes off it’s two o’clock in the morning and it’s raining. Daxter is curled up next to me, the first time he has done that in two years. I wonder if this means something. My house is cold and my mind is full of bad ideas. I get dressed and step out into the night.