Hole: A Ghost Story Read online

  Sue had brought some food, and so did their cousin’s wife Terri. Billy Joe swept Hank into a big bear hug and the two of them went outside on the patio to knock back a couple beers while the “women-folk” threw some lunch together for the clan. Steve slipped out with them, but shook his head when Billy Joe offered him a Pabst.

  Billy Joe was a stocky guy with more than a passing resemblance to the King. He looked incongruous with his thick, slicked-back black hair and big sideburns, but he was an Elvis impersonator, so he was stuck with the seventies hairstyle.

  Hank couldn’t resist teasing his cousin about the ‘do.

  “I’m gettin’ too old to do Hawaii Elvis,” Billy Joe laughed, touching his sideburns self-consciously. “I have to do Las Vegas Elvis now, but it puts food on the table. The only difference is the cape and the beer gut. That, and the size of the bras they throw on the stage. They just keep getting bigger and bigger.”

  Hank spit his beer laughing.

  Travis and Rebecca and their kids arrived at 2:00. Brandon pulled into the drive a few minutes later.

  “Hey, buddy,” Travis said, giving Hank a quick hug. He was already wearing his black dress suit and tie.

  Billy Joe had met Travis a few times before. “Beer?” he asked.

  “Just one!” Rebecca said sternly as she walked past, headed into the house. She was balancing a couple Tupperware containers in her arms. More food.

  Travis winked. “You heard the boss. I can have one.”

  Travis drank a beer with Hank and Billy Joe (“To Mary,” he said gravely, before upending the bottle) while Steve and Brandon flirted at the other end of the patio. Billy Joe took note of the two talking quietly together, and raised an eyebrow at Hank. Hank just shrugged.

  Hank’s honest opinion was, love is love, and you better grab hold of it when you can… because time was going to steal it back from you soon enough. It didn’t matter if it was a man and a woman, or two men or two women.

  With his home filled with his cheerful and unassuming family, it was easy to pretend that Mary wasn’t gone, that they were all just having a get-together and Mary was inside with the rest of the women, gossiping while she helped prepare the midday meal. It was such a sweet, seductive fantasy, he didn’t want to let it go, but the empty hole in his chest, and the rawness of his eyes—the tears right there behind them, close and ready to gush at the slightest provocation—put lie to that deceit.

  They ate, entertained the children. Hank pretended Mary was in the kitchen, helping with the dishes.

  Soon enough it was time to put fantasy aside and go upstairs to dress for his wife’s funeral.

  “It’s 3:30, Hank,” Steve said gently, sidling up beside him.

  Hank had allowed his mother to talk him into eating a chicken salad sandwich. He wiped his mouth and excused himself, acting as though he didn’t see the sympathy in the eyes of his kinfolk as he crossed the house to go get dressed for his wife’s funeral service.

  Hank marched upstairs like a man going to the electric chair. His gut started churning. His legs turned to rubber. In his bedroom, he shut the door and leaned against it.

  This is too much pain, he thought. I can’t do it!

  And the worst was yet to come, he knew.

  When he felt he could support himself, he stumbled to the bathroom and got ready. He trimmed his beard, shaved his neck, combed his hair and brushed his teeth. He splashed on some cologne and smeared his armpits with deodorant. His face in the mirror was a stranger’s face: gaunt, lined with pain, eyes red and swollen from crying. He averted his gaze, turned off the tap. The water swirled around and disappeared down the drain.

  From the mouth of the dark hole in the sink, Mary’s voice issued.

  “Hank…”

  He stared at the drain, scowling. Shook his head as if to clear it. He waited a minute to see if she would say anything else, but the dark hole remained silent.

  “I’m going crazy,” Hank said aloud.

  He walked to his closet and got out his black suit. He’d bought it when his dad died. At the time, he never would have imagined he was going to wear it next for his wife’s funeral.

  Mary had picked out the suit. The tie that went with it, too. Who was going to keep him in matching clothes now? he wondered, his head spinning. He’d never been very good at that.

  He finished dressing, slid his feet into a pair of uncomfortable black leather dress shoes and stood to return downstairs.

  Before he went downstairs, however, he returned to the bathroom and leaned over the sink, bracing himself with his hands on both sides of the basin. He stood staring down the drain for several minutes. He waited, but no voice issued from the black throat of the pipes. He put his finger in the hole and swirled it around. Finally, feeling like a man in a dream, he spoke quietly.

  “Mary, if you’re there, I just want you to know that I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’m sorry for being such a complete prick. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you whatever it was you needed. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when I should have been. I don’t have any excuses. Only that I was hurting, too. I’m selfish and no good, but I just want to tell you that I’m sorry. Um... That’s all.”

  He waited to see if she would talk to him again, hoping she would but afraid if she did he would lose it completely—just start raving like a madman—but she didn’t say anything else.

  “I have to go now,” he said quietly. “Tonight’s your visitation.”

  Feeling foolish but strangely content, he left the bathroom and returned downstairs.

  He rode to Morgan Funeral Home with Steve in the Kia. All the way there, he congratulated himself on how well he was doing. He didn’t break down. He didn’t barf. His stomach was rolling over and over and he felt like he couldn’t breathe, but all in all, he was doing good.

  Arthur Kelley, the funeral director, came out to meet him.

  “Right this way, Mr. Stanford,” he said.

  “Come with me, Steve?” Hank asked.

  Mary’s brother nodded, his face pale and drawn, his eyes wide and full of pain.

  They walked inside together, down the burgundy carpet and past all the flowers and potted plants and framed photos of Mary. He paused to look at the photos.

  There was Mary as a baby, Mary as a little girl, Hank and Mary’s wedding photos. He reluctantly turned away.

  A moment later, Mr. Kelley pushed open the sliding doors to the viewing room. Hank peered inside, saw his wife lying in the rose-colored casket he’d bought for her, and he cried out as if shot, his knees buckling. The mortician and Steve and the funeral director’s assistant closed in on him, expecting just such a reaction, and they helped him walk up the aisle to his wife’s casket.

  Hank howled, giving vent to his grief.

  “No, God!” he wailed. Then he screamed through gritted teeth, in outrage at her death.

  His wife looked like an angel in her casket, her hands folded across her breasts. She was wearing a light blue dress her mother had bought for her to be buried in. Her hair was beautifully arranged upon the blue satin pillow beneath her head, dark glossy curls framing her delicate features, then fanning out to spill over the sides of the pillow. Her dark lashes lay upon her cheeks as if she were sleeping, a Mona Lisa smile on her lips, like death was a secret she found slightly amusing.

  Steve tried to hold his brother-in-law on his feet as he cried himself. “Oh, God, Mary, why didn’t you call me?” he sobbed.

  Hank tried to bring his grief under control. He inclined his head and kissed her faintly smiling lips. They were cold, like wax. Smiling and crying at the same time, he brushed her bangs back from her cool, smooth forehead.

  “I only loved you,” he choked. “I swear! I only loved you.”

  Kelley and his assistant helped Hank to a seat and brought him a glass of cold water in a styrofoam Dixie cup. He drank, coughed, finished it off. “Thanks, guys,” he said shakily, smiling up at them, his bloodshot eyes shining, his lashes wet with tears.
“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to lose it.”

  They tutted and patted him on the shoulders.

  “It’s completely understandable.”

  “Don’t worry about that one bit, Mr. Stanford,” they said.

  The smell of her flowers was choking him. Their fragrance was so thick and sweet it stank. Steve was standing over the casket, shoulders shaking. Harriet and Jim Klegg strode in a few minutes later and Harriet threw herself onto the casket, caterwauling like a drowning water buffalo. Jim merely stood beside the casket, holding onto the handle of his oxygen tank, wheezing with his tubes dangling from his nose. He looked at his daughter glumly, his face blue, then gave Steve a hug and murmured something in his ear. Steve nodded, kissed his dad on the cheek, walked quickly from the room.

  “Oh my beautiful baby girl!” Harriet bellowed, then she threw herself on top of Hank.

  Dean and his clan arrived a little before 5:00 p.m..

  Hank was sitting in one of the seats reserved for the immediate family, his hands between his knees. He was talking to his Aunt Barbara and didn’t see his brother-in-law at first. Barbara was telling him a story about Mary when he noticed the man standing at the entrance of the viewing room.

  Dean...

  Hank felt his stomach clench in hatred. He narrowed his eyes, scowling.

  Dean glanced toward him, smiled faintly, then made his way to the casket with his family, all of them waddling behind him like a parade of penguins: his wife Elle, who had a fat piggish face and dyed blond hair, his oldest son Elijah, who looked like an Amish cabinetmaker in training with his black pants and vest and long scruffy ZZ-Top beard, then his oldest daughter Elizabeth and their two youngest children Esau and Emily.

  Dean was a stunningly good-looking man, with thick salt-and-pepper hair, combed back straight from his brow, a chiseled chin and eyes the color of basalt. His eyes were dark like Mary’s. They were so similar it made Hank shudder. Hank looked from his brother-in-law to the man’s children, wondering if he raped his kids like he had raped his sister and little brother.

  As Dean approached the casket, Hank decided he couldn’t stand to be so close to the man. He rose and marched from the viewing room, trying not to notice the way his brother-in-law’s shadowy eyes turned to follow him down the far aisle.

  “Is Dean here?” Harriet asked, entering from the hallway. “I thought I saw his car…”

  Hank brushed past her without answering. He pushed through the main doors and stepped out into the parking lot.

  “You okay?” Steve asked. He was sitting on a bench, smoking.

  Hank twisted his head back and forth. Pop! Crunch! “Aside from wanting to kill your brother?” he asked.

  Steve frowned.

  “Don’t worry. I know what I promised. I’m trying to control myself.”

  Steve nodded.

  “How are you doing?” Hank asked, sitting down next to him. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess. It’s hard to be strong. I just want to break down and cry like a big baby.”

  “Me, too.”

  “It’s so unfair. Mary was such a good person. She never had a bad thing to say about anyone. All she wanted to be was a good wife and have some babies she could love and take care of. Would God give her that? No… And then I look at… at him, and I think, there can’t be a God, unless He’s a cruel, wicked God, because it seems like only the good people suffer. I mean, look at Dean. He’s got a big family, everybody respects him, he’s got money, a nice car.” Steve snorted, stabbed out his cigarette. “If there is a God, He’s got a lot of explaining to do. That’s all I have to say about it.”

  “Maybe,” Hank sighed. “My granny always said, ‘The devil takes care of his own.’ I guess we’ll find out someday. I better get back inside, though. I just stepped out for a breather.”

  “Okay. And thanks, Hank. I know how hard this must be for you.”

  “He just better not say anything to me,” Hank said in a low voice, pushing back through the main doors. “Not a word.”

  Dean was gone when Hank returned to the viewing room, thank goodness, and by 7:30, the funeral home was packed with mourners and he didn’t have time to worry about his wife’s perverse older brother.

  Hank stood beside Mary’s casket and greeted everyone who’d come to pay their last respects: family, friends, acquaintances. Dotty old aunts shuffled by to tut over Mary’s body, then hugged him and told him how beautiful she looked, what a tragedy this all was, and my goodness, you sure have gotten fat, Hank Stanford! First cousins, second cousins and third cousins trundled by. Relatives he hadn’t seen in a decade, even an old boyfriend he knew Mary had dated in high school. That was a weird one, but he hugged Hank and muttered, “You were a lucky man to have her, Henry Stanford.” Hank was so touched he hugged the guy back and agreed.

  He talked for a little while with his mother and stepfather, drank a Coke with Billy Joe in the lounge. The night passed slowly, but it passed nonetheless, and by the end of it, it had become so dreamlike and unreal, he stopped breaking down every time he looked at her in her rose-colored casket. It didn’t even seem like it was really his wife anymore. It was just a mannequin that looked like Mary.

  He was completely exhausted by nine and relieved the night was almost over. He was even happier that Dean had not come within ten feet of him. He’d promised to avoid a confrontation with the man so long as he kept his distance, and so far Hank had managed to keep that promise. After tomorrow, he’d never have to see the bastard again.

  Most of the mourners and gawkers had left by then. Night had fallen and the funeral home was quiet. His mother and stepfather were in the lounge with Billy Joe and his wife. The kids were outside playing. Hank sat with Mary, talking to his wife in his head. He just wanted to go home and take a shower and wash off all the cheap “aunt perfume” that had been transferred to his body by their well-meaning embraces. Mary would have laughed if he told her that. Hank kissed his wife on the cheek and told her he was stepping outside for a minute.

  I need some fresh air, baby. Maybe I can bum a smoke off your brother. Looks like I picked up that monkey again.

  “You know those things will kill you,” Mary would have said.

  He pushed through the main doors and realized Dean was standing a couple feet away, his back to the entrance. Dean’s two youngest children were standing in the parking lot in front of him, and he was addressing them in a lecturing tone.

  Hank almost retreated, but then he stopped himself and went on outside. He wasn’t going to run from the prick.

  “The Bible teaches us that when someone kills themself, they have no chance to atone for their sin, and since suicide is the murder of oneself, they die a murderer, and so God must condemn them to hell,” Dean said to his kids.

  He hadn’t realized Hank was standing behind him, an appalled look on his face. He went on to quote Corinthians.

  “Our bodies don’t belong to us. They belong to God. First Corinthians, 6:19 and 6:20 says, ‘Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.’”

  Esau and Emily were gaping at Hank with horrified eyes, too embarrassed to speak.

  Dean faltered, turned around suddenly, a guilty look on his face.

  “You hypocritical son-of-a-fucking-bitch,” Hank said slowly.

  It might not have come to a fight, even at that, but then Dean smiled at him—a vicious, crazy smile of pure contempt—and Hank stepped forward, balling his hands into fists.

  “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full!” Dean exclaimed triumphantly, talking fast as he backed away.

  Hank punched him in the mouth, hard as he could.

  Dean stumbled with a grunt but did not go down. His kids ran to the entrance of the funeral home.

  “Come on, you baby raping motherfucke
r!” Hank seethed, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his fists up.

  Dean wiped the blood from his mouth and held his palm out for Hank to see, grinning that mad, contemptuous grin. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” he said, his shoulders shaking with mirth.

  “You think you have everybody fooled?” Hank asked. “You think they don’t know what you did? Well, guess what, I’m going to tell. I’m going to tell everybody how you molested my wife when she was a baby. How you fucked your own little brother. I’m going to run it in the Sunday fucking classifieds!”

  Hank stepped in to give Dean another pop, and that’s when he felt his whole body seize up like he’d been gripped by a giant, invisible fist. He gasped, tried to move his arms, but they were paralyzed, pressed flat to his sides.

  “What the hell--?” he gasped.

  His head jerked back then, and he saw stars. Dean had punched him, but how? He was standing a couple feet away, his teeth rimmed with blood, his hands out in front of him to ward off another blow.

  He can’t be that freakin’ fast! That’s impossible!

  The doors of the funeral home flung open then—Steve and Harriet, Hank’s mother and stepdad and his cousin Billy Joe, all spilling out like the Keystone Kops—and the invisible fist was suddenly gone. Dean looked toward the newcomers with a panicky, cornered expression, and Hank stepped forward and slugged him again, driving him to his knees.

  Then Billy Joe and Trent grabbed Hank by the arms and dragged him off his brother-in-law, pleading with him to cool down and asking him what this was all about. Arthur Kelley was standing on the steps in front of the main entrance, wringing his hands in horror. Hank kicked his feet (losing one of his dress shoes) and yelled out, “I’m gonna tell everybody, Dean! They’re all going to know what you did!”

  “Hank, no!” Steve gasped.

  “What are you talking about, Hank? Know what?” his mother asked.

  Hank opened his mouth to tell her, and it was like someone seized his throat. He choked, flailed back. He couldn’t breath! He reached up, clawing at his throat until his stepfather grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away. Black spots swarmed in his vision. Steve stalked toward his brother, yelling, “Dean, stop it!” But no one was paying any attention to him because Hank was going into convulsions.