The Alabaster God © Luther Albright
A symphony of anger flows adjacent to the funeral procession lining Old Clarke Road. This anger comes from those denied the proceedings, people regarded as scum of the earth. Vagrants and hookers line the street on either side, angry because they aren't allowed to ride in the cars headed to Springdale Cemetery, where little Alyssa will soon be buried.
A melancholy comes upon me as I look out the hearse's window into the angry eyes of a gray haired woman. Let us grieve, too, she shouts. I turn my head to Elaine who glares through the tinted glass.
How could our little girl have affected so many? Likewise, how could she have run away from home? From our home with its six stories, the peaked gables overshadowing slanted ceilings in A-frame peaked rooms. Alyssa used to love to bathe in the fresh scents lingering above the gardens while playing on east side balconies, or drop flower petals through the baluster on the gardeners below. Innocent with a dash of mischievousness, Alyssa's smile lit up rooms and hearts. If science could have captured Alyssa's glad demeanor, it would have cloned it to transform the world into a utopian paradise, for there was no malice within our little girl, no sense of vengeance.
Until we forbade her from seeing THAT boy, Jimmy Johnson, who lived on the wrong end of town, whose father was a bricklayer. He'd brought his son to do a job for us, and that was how Alyssa had met Jimmy. Smitten immediately, the boy wouldn't leave Alyssa alone, even when we threatened to contact our lawyer.
The two of you just don't belong together, we told her. You're only sixteen, honey.
I'm old enough to know what love is, she shouted from behind her bedroom door. Old enough to feel love grow into a living thing, a substance.
So romantic, our Alyssa. So poetic. We left her that night, ignoring the sounds of her sobbing, and headed downstairs. Snifters awaited me in my library where I planned to delight in getting drunk while reading something from my Gabriel Garcia Marquez collection. Elaine went to Country Club Estates, as she always did as Chairwoman over planning.
The next morning the maids woke me. I'd fallen asleep in my reading chair. Elaine was screaming down the hall. Where is she? When I finally roused, it became obvious that Alyssa was missing. The limo driver said she'd given him the day off because she wasn't going to private school. Kidnapped? No, there was no ransom call. We realized then that our little girl had run away.
Elaine and I knew exactly where she'd gone, and we called the police to send them to Jimmy Johnson's house. Paramedics and ambulance already responded, the dispatcher said over the phone, but she refused to tell us more.
In a panic, worried that our little girl had suffered an accident, we drove over a hundred miles per hour. At the small ranch style house, we found police cars and the ambulance. Elaine went to speak to a paramedic, while Mr. Johnson tried to slug me for killing his son. Police held him off, and Elaine came rushing back with bad news: young Jimmy had committed suicide the previous night, his body still up in his bedroom. Alyssa had sneaked into the backdoor and made her way up to Jimmy's bedroom, where her screams alerted neighbors. A call to Mrs. Johnson brought her home from work. In Jimmy's room, Mrs. Johnson found Alyssa reading Jimmy's suicide note left just for our daughter, reading and weeping quietly.
By the time we arrived, Alyssa had already given a statement to the police and left. Why did you let her go? we demanded. She's only sixteen!
Because she has your last name, a detective explained, and whatever Alyssa wants, Alyssa gets.
Not always. And Elaine and I didn't always get what we wanted. That much was obvious as we went back home, waiting for our little girl. The hours slid past, sad with regret for us having been so hard on Alyssa. Elaine yelled when I went for my fourth glass of scotch, and I yelled back for her always being away at that damned country club. Somewhere around midnight, exhausted by blaming one another, we fell asleep in each other's arms on the couch. The sound of the grandfather clock ticking seconds away forever, seconds we could never again retrieve, lulled us into restless sleep.
Alyssa never came home again.
Outside the hearse, the downtrodden and destitute continue to traipse along Clarke Road. Elaine sips rum from a decanter. I deign sobriety for the funeral—a first—for I knew what will soon happen. I can't help looking into the eyes of passerby, the vehicle slow and steady like death. Filth and grime cover faces, pale visages of reapers, miniature Deaths in their shabby clothes, coming to attend our daughter's funeral. Uninvited, but too strong in number to be turned away for fear of riot, they press on, steadfast, for they know as well as I do what made Alyssa special. One bum has pointed ears and alabaster skin, hair like spun gold. Although the window is tinted, he grins when our eyes meet.
I reach for the liquor anyway with a trembling hand. From the bar I pull a bottle and neglect a glass.
“Drunk,” Elaine calls me.
I don't disagree.
***
After two years of multiple private detectives, paying only the best, we gave up. Alyssa was gone, a true Romeo and Juliet story—only without Alyssa claiming her life. Still, I felt her alive and sought out on my own to find her, after an early retirement from a company who, by that time, was happy to see me go. I couldn't go a day without thinking about Alyssa, and ultimately had to search for her myself, abandoning everything to do so.
The last concrete information from the private detectives showed Alyssa boarding a bus to Chicago, far enough away from home to never be discovered if she didn't want, but a big enough city to find ways to survive. I expected to find her working at a private school, perhaps at a restaurant preparing dishes in the kitchen. I knew there were businesses in Chicago that paid cash only, neglecting to take out taxes. Made it easier for the businesses as well as runaways.
She'd be eighteen now.
At the Chicago bus stop, a gang waited nearby. Tough men scrutinized my mode of dress, my fine suit and leather satchel. I pocketed my Rolex and went up to them.
“Have you seen this girl?” I thrust Alyssa's picture toward them.
“Yeah, I seen her last night in my bedroom,” one said with a grin. “Of course, she looked a lot different when I was through with her, know what I'm sayin?'”
I left them laughing and spoke with others, pleading for them to remember. Two years ago, I explained. She arrived at this bus terminal. I spoke with the clerks behind the counter selling bus tickets, with the driver of the food pantry bus parked curbside, with police officers and two vagrants.
If you really want to know what happened to her, one of the bums said, You need to speak with those who know.
I was directed to Hot and Sassy, a call girl working two blocks over.
You got something for me? she purred, leaning into my driver's window.
What do you mean?
Money, handsome.
She oozed sensuality and I realized what men found alluring about her, although she dressed in trashy leopard leotards clinging tight and revealing too much, but I supposed it was part of her work uniform. So was a hidden revolver on her person, probably, or a knife. Perhaps her pimp was near enough to do damage to someone Hot and Sassy didn't like, so I made sure not to rile the hard woman.
I paid two-hundred dollars, but she held her hand out for more. After a thousand dollars, she asked me to leave my car and took me to an alley. I looked around conspicuously, but she grabbed the lapels of my coat and pulled me in.
People don't show up in Chicago without someplace to go, she said next to a dumpster. If they do, they disappear.
I cringed at her words but felt resolve to press deeper. After all, I'd already paid her a grand.
Wh-where? My words came out halting whispers, for I was scared both for my safety and the truth. Please tell me where they go.
Where they all go: either up or down.
What is up?
Heaven, she said with a seductive smile. Something I specialize in, by the way.
She meant they died.
And down is Hell?
Not exactly.
Tell me.
Not without earning your keep and proving your trust, mister.
She grabbed my lapels and pulled me into a kiss. I tasted her lips, the scent of her skin. Her hand found me hard. I flinched and thought of Elaine. Elaine who was always at the country club, supposedly, not knowing I'd already hired private investigators to track down her whereabouts while she was always away from home. She'd been cheating on me for five years with her tennis teacher, and I put up with it for the sake of preventing a costly divorce. Drinking helped numb the pain, until Alyssa disappeared, so there I was in the alley with a hooker, not caring much about anything at all other than finding my daughter and escaping life's pain.
You're not the kind to do it in an alley, are you?
I shook my head.
Come here. She held my hand and led me through the alley and out the other side. I have a special place for fellows like you, sugar.
***
The next day, I left Hot and Sassy in a five-star hotel with the room paid for a week. Beside the grand, she bilked me for another two-thousand. I didn't care. Nothing mattered, not anymore. My wife was in an illicit affair, my daughter missing. Outwardly I seemed to have it made, but inwardly? I was as disheartened as I could get. That's the thing about appearances: you can't trust them, not ever. No cover ever made a book a best seller, no matter how good the artist, and no trappings of success ever saved a soul.
Elaine called twice a day, but I quit answering her calls. We'd just been going through the motions up to that point anyway, so why fake it now?
After turning a common whore into a high-priced call girl, leaving her in the 5-star hotel, I couldn't stop replaying in my mind the conversation I'd had with Hot and Sassy, a conversation about where the homeless go in Chicago if they don't go up.
The call girl had stood naked before the exposed window, twenty floors above the streets, unabashed and proud of her body. The lights were off, but enough neon from the skyline illuminated her body. I went to her and placed hands on her shoulders. Blond hair slid over my knuckles and I kissed her neck.
Come with me, I told her. Let me take you away from all this.
I would have done it, but she just laughed.
You're not here for me. Your little girl, remember?
I sighed. Our reflections looked ghastly white. Rain slid down the window. Something dark fluttered past, a bird or bat. I flinched and became frightened, suddenly scared like a little boy.
There are… others in this city, she said.
Others?
Not human. Collectors of souls, of sorts. Those who come to Chicago without a place to go—
They go to these… others? I asked.
She nodded.
If they accept them, everything's okay.
If they don't, I asked
She turned around and embraced me. Then it's Heaven for them, baby.
You mentioned going down to them.
Yes, I did.
She knelt before me with a sad smile. When finished, she stood and embraced me one final time. Then she gave me a business card.
Don't ever come looking for me again.
She helped me dress and ushered me to the door. Fear shone in her eyes, but she'd be alright for a week at the hotel.
Don't tell anyone where you got that card.
Now, in another alley—Chicago seemed full of them—in the Southern section of the Windy City, I remembered something Alyssa had said the last night at our house, something about love: I'm old enough to know what love is. Old enough to feel love grow into a living thing, a substance. The reason I thought of it wasn't because of love, but fear. It slid along brick walls, down the alley, drooled like syrup from the night sky. Shadows deepened as I stared into them, and no light permeated that alley I stepped into. Filth crawled along the pavement, it seemed, oozed to the edge of streetlight, harmful intentions creating ambiance reflected in eyes of scurrying rats and other small creatures I couldn't make out. It was more of a sensation than anything visual, yet things moved along the alley's pavement, and shivers turned my spine to icy water.
Still, with my hand upon Alyssa's picture in my pocket, I entered the darkness. And from that darkness I have never returned.
***
Outside the cemetery, police have roadblocks. Officers argue with the procession of vagrants lining up outside the wrought iron gate. Elaine screams at them, How dare you! I simply smile and step out, approach the officer.
Let them through, all of them.
The disgruntled officer gazes at me. Are you sure, sir?
Past him I see the man with alabaster skin and pointed ears. The ears aren't so pointed as to be obvious. More rounded cue tips than points, but I know what he is, for I've made a deal with him for my daughter. He smiles and I nod. The officer groans but lets the vagrants pass.
What are you doing? Elaine shouts from the hearse.
I ignore her and walk beside the vagrants to my daughter's grave.
***
Inside that alley I walked, crying because I know I'm going to die. But I moved forward through pure black, obsidian so thick it filled the space between walls like gelatinous ooze. It filled my ears, nose and mouth, licked tears from my face with each step into the unknown.
You are too late, man-child, came a voice in the darkness.
I'm here for my—
We know why you're here, the voice hissed. Your precious Alyssa.
Yes, I cry. Dear God, yes!
She's been with us too long and can never return. She went below the city into its dark heart, accepted our hospitality and ate our food. Our land courses through her veins now, and she won't want to return.
There must be some way, I pleaded. Please, my daughter… my only daughter.
Silence answered and I considered turning around and leaving, because whatever or whoever I'd been speaking with wasn't human. I knew that much, and all I could do was stand there in the obsidian dark and—
There is something, the voice whispered.
Anything!
A soft glow appeared, not enough for me to make anything out, but in that darkness any light was as a bonfire.
Have you heard of… changelings?
An alabaster face appeared, illuminated by soft white light. The long hair was spun gold, and pointed ears protruded on the sides of the being's head—it wasn't mortal. He stepped regally forth from the darkness, illuminated from within. Immediately I fell to my knees in that horrible alley, for I instinctively knew I was before an ancient one whom civilizations had crafted legends and myths around, but I wouldn't give up, couldn't give up.
Please, sir! Anything!
She is one of the Fey now, but it is written in our law that a mortal can be replaced with one of our kind.
A changeling?
Yes.
Who would take her place?
He smiled and placed his slender fingers upon my shoulder. Purple robes fluttered about him, then they turned into the clothing of the homeless. The Glamour of the Fey! I shuddered as his magic passed into me. My body trembled from the onslaught of energy, and I passed out.
When I woke, I was in Hot and Sassy's bed. She waited on me menially, using a wet washcloth to wipe sweat from my fevered brow.
You saw them, didn't you?
I saved my daughter.
***
He walks with me, our steps synchronized, this strange god from another realm hidden beneath Chicago. Through crunchy leaves we move, between tombstones and mausoleums. Stone angels and weeping Messiahs darken as his presence. A heaviness fills the air. Elaine is somewhere behind me, far off, her harsh voice growing faint.
Do we still have a deal? this magnificent being asks.
Weeping, I nod as we ascend the hill to Alyssa's grave. Hot and Sassy stands alone at the summit, waiting… waiting for me.
She's going with me, I tell him. If that's… alright.
Of course.
***
When I returned from Chicago, I told Elaine the bad news: Alyssa is dead. She cried and went on a week-long drinking binge, perplexed as to my sudden sobriety. Then Elaine left for a week. To clear my head, she said, but I knew she went to her lover's arms for consolation, probably to a hamlet in Maine or New England where she was wont to go.
When she returned, glowing and smiling, I announced that we needed to declare our daughter dead. Sign the death certificate.
Have a funeral, Elaine added.
Yes… the funeral.
***
Vagrants press against the rich and elite, those former business associates of mine, colleagues and friends. Police try to restrain them, but those disposed by human civilization have been accepted by forces deeper in the Earth, and they cannot be stopped. The tennis instructor—my wife's lover—bleeds from his nose from a vicious blow. A policeman raises his gun, but the alabaster vagrant next to me snaps his fingers and the gun remains silent.
A holy hush descends upon the gathering. Thousands of humanity's disposed press in, wanting to see. Those closest push the rich in their expensive suits out of the way.
It's time, changeling, my companion says. Call your lover.
I hold my hand out and look into Hot and Sassy's eyes. She takes my hand just as Elaine pushes through somewhere behind us.
Walter, what the hell do you think you're doing?
What you've been doing for years, Elaine—I'm finding happiness where none existed before.
The god among us walks between Hot and Sassy and myself, his hand upon ours, like some sort of priest. We close the final distance to Alyssa's empty coffin.
Are you sure? the alabaster god asks one final time. Hot and Sassy and I nod, smile.
What is your name? I ask her. Your real name.
Florence.
That's a nice name.
She squeezes my hand, nervous. Then we move to the empty coffin suspended beside the hole in the ground. A pile of dirt rises shoulder height near it. It's time.
Vagrants use tools found in the cemetery's storage shed to snap the lock on the casket. The alabaster god removes his hand from ours and steps to the casket, lays his hand upon it. Elaine's voice wails. The tennis instructor rushes to her. A heavenly voice fills the chaos, providing order—the alabaster god with his hand upon the casket lid.
Then he lifts the lid and Alyssa steps out, still sixteen years old. My former acquaintances and colleagues gasp. A woman screams, for why I don't know.
I embrace Alyssa and we hug tight. The world melts in tears. A symphony of joy plays inside my heart, delightful with its thump, thump, thump. I step away from my daughter, hands on her shoulders, my daughter who is not a day older than sixteen.
It's time, the alabaster god says.
Goodbye, Daddy. I love you.
I help Florence to the coffin. She's wearing a pretty pink dress, too tight and revealing, but I don't mind. I steady her as she climbs into the coffin. Then it's my turn. The velvet cushions are comfortable, but I'm nervous… so scared.
Daddy, I know what you did, Alyssa says. I agreed to come back, but only for awhile. I'll be seeing you again one day.
Elaine's horrid weeping calls, but from a distance, as if she's moving away faster and faster. Slender, white fingers hold the coffin lid above Florence and me, and I remember what the alabaster god told me back in that Chicago alley.
A powerful glamour will exchange your place with Alyssa's, and you the two of you will become changelings. The world will see what happens but won't be able to remember; only those who possess the heart of the Fey will remember.
And who are they? I asked. Those who are vagrants?
Those who know pain, suffering; those most capable of producing the most beautiful stories, art and music that is drawn from the midst of their suffering—they belong with us, the Fey.
The coffin lid closes. Florence squeezes my hand as it turns dark. The closing lid resonates, but the velvet cushions soak up and dull the sound.
You belong with us, Walter. Your pain cries out for salvation.
The casket lifts and moves with Florence and me inside. It lowers down. We cannot see, but we know where those beautiful homeless people are putting us. Deep in the ground now, arm in arm, Florence and I embrace as shovelfuls of dirt strike the casket's lid.
The darkness deepens.
Darkest before dawn; light after pain.
Darkness thickens, becomes heavy. Amidst being buried alive, from far-far away come voices, enchanted singing. The darkens thickens as it had in that Chicago alley a month ago, but soon the dark gives way to a soft glow of hope. And in that hope Florence and I roll, arm-in-arm, leaving regrets behind as we move into the light of the future which waits beneath Chicago.
______________________ Luther Albright has three stories out. One is at The Horror Library. One is at Dark Recesses for bizzaro and is being held for a week while the editor thinks on it. He has no published stories, but he likes cats, sharp knives and sad stories.
|