Burial Read online

  Jim’s kindness hadn’t been the only problem in their marriage. Jim had wanted children, but after what had happened at the Sisters of Jerusalem Karen hadn’t been able to face it. Jim had been one of those men who desperately wants a son. He was the last of the Hartford van Hoovens: he had wanted Karen to bear him at least one heir, so that the line could continue into the next century. He was now married to a lady professor with wild, hay-coloured hair, a strident line in home-knitted sweaters, and good child-bearing hips. It tickled Karen to think that both she and this academic Valkyrie shared the name of ‘Mrs van Hooven.’

  Eventually we reached East 17th and climbed out stiffly onto the roasting sidewalk. I didn’t know this area very well, although I used to have a girlfriend on East 15th who wrote for the Voice and I often used to meet her for drinks at The Bells of Hell. I looked up and down the street. It stank of garbage and fumes and something else: something sickening and sour. A blind man with white stubble on his chin was leaning on a white stick playing Funeral Blues on a key-of-F harmonica.

  The Greenbergs’ house was a flat-fronted brownstone, with two dusty bay trees on the step outside the front door, both of them heavily chained to the stone balustrade. On the west side of the house there was an envelope factory, which looked as if it had been built around 1914, livid brown-and-white bricks and dusty blacked-out windows. On the east side stood another brownstone, much larger, with squatter proportions to its windows, and soot-scale on its brick. A red neon sign over the porch said Belford Hotel. It was the kind of hotel you would walk the streets all night rather than stay at — the kind of hotel with used needles in the lobby and all night long the sinister surreptitious rattle of people trying your doorhandle.

  Karen pressed the bell marked M & N GREENBERG and after a while a strained voice said, ‘Karen? That you?’ over the intercom.

  ‘I’ve found Harry,’ she said; and immediately the buzzer unlocked the front door.

  We climbed up the gloomy staircase. At least it was carpeted, and the smell of cooking was reasonably fresh. Somebody was having fish tonight, unless I was mistaken. Fish simmered in lavender furniture-polish.

  We reached the Greenbergs’ apartment and Karen knocked. The polished mahogany door was opened immediately. We were ushered in by a short balding man with a beard and black-rimmed eyeglasses. He wore a beige turtle-neck and jeans that were too short for him, revealing inside-out white socks.

  ‘Michael, this is Harry Erskine.’

  Michael pumped my hand. His palms were sweaty, but I guess mine were, too. ‘I’m so pleased you could make it, Harry. You don’t mind me calling you Harry? Karen’s told us so much about you.’

  ‘She hasn’t exaggerated, I hope.’

  ‘Well … she was very complimentary. If there’s anybody in the United States who can deal with your problem, it’s Harry Erskine, that’s what she said.’

  Karen went ahead, into the living room. Michael held my sleeve for a moment, detaining me.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘my wife is a mess. She’s practically gone off her head. The doctor’s got her on medication; the shrink makes housecalls every second day. I think she saw a whole lot more than she’s been willing to tell us, but she won’t say what it was. If you can be gentle with her, that’s all.’

  ‘Okay,’ I nodded, feeling more of a fraud than ever. ‘I’ll be gentle with her.’

  Michael Greenberg said, ‘I don’t know what you did for Karen. She won’t talk about it to anybody. I know it’s something to do with that scar on her neck, but that’s all I know. All I can tell you is that — whatever it was — Karen thinks the world of you. She really does.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I think a lot of Karen, too.’

  Michael Greenberg said, ‘Please … come this way.’ He led me through to a stuffy middle-class living room, with a few ornaments and knick-knacks that immediately gave away the fact that the occupants were Jewish, such as a silver Star of David on the mantelpiece and an amateurish oil-painting of children working on a kibbutz. The furniture was oversized and the upholstery needed a clean. I knew a man on 53rd Street who would have brought this kind of wool fabric up really well, but I didn’t think that this was an appropriate time to recommend him.

  Under the window an air-conditioner was whirring away at full blast. I went over and stood in front of it for a while, enjoying the chill. Then I took a few steps into the centre of the room, paused, and sniffed, and looked around. I was doing it mainly for theatrical effect, the master psychic enters the possessed property and immediately senses that some malevolence is there. But there was something there, some presence, I could feel it immediately. It was so strong that I felt what Mrs John F. Lavender had felt … icy — fingers — down — back.

  I pressed my fingertips to my forehead. ‘Hmmm …’ I said, like a wine-connoisseur savouring a vintage. Poltergeist of German origin, 1979; sourish and lacking body, probably not immediately dangerous, but with a certain threatening undertone which could give you a nasty finish.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Karen. ‘Can you feel something?’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said, looking around some more. ‘It’s like a smell that you can’t really smell. I mean, like the air’s all thick. Can you feel it?’

  ‘Well, kind of a tension. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just the humidity.’

  I walked around the living room, picking up various objects, books, vases, ashtrays. I picked up a framed postcard of the Mount of Olives. The glass was cracked in a curious zig-zag pattern.

  ‘I’ve been wondering about that, too,’ Michael Greenberg remarked. ‘It happened the same day that —’ he nodded towards the dining room.

  I put the postcard back on the table. ‘All right, then, I’d better see the epicentre.’ I liked the word ‘epicentre,’ it always sounded spiritually professional. I liked ‘paranormal’ too; and ‘metempsychosis’.

  Michael Greenberg said, ‘Harry — before you go in there —’

  I raised my hand reassuringly. ‘Mr Greenberg — Michael — I’m pretty experienced when it comes down to psychic phenomena. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t even want to have nightmares about.’

  ‘Well,’ said Michael Greenberg. He looked dubious. ‘It’s not just a smell in there, believe me.’

  ‘You had the police here, what did they say?’

  ‘They didn’t want to know. They said that there was no crime involved, and no public disturbance, so the whole thing was way outside of their field of expertise.’

  ‘And what do the shrinks think?’

  Michael Greenberg shrugged. ‘I don’t know. They use all this technical-type language, psycho-this, maladjusted-that. Frankly, I don’t think they know what the hell they’re talking about, either.’

  I perched myself on the back of his sofa, as if I owned the place. You have to make your clients think that you’re completely self-confident. I mean, we’re talking about the occult here — dead relatives who whisper in your ear, mischievous gremlins who tear fistfuls of fur out of family cats. You have to give the impression that nothing surprises you.

  ‘You don’t think the psychiatrists fully understand Naomi’s trauma?’

  ‘No way! They’re blaming her! She’s the patient, she’s the victim, yet they’re blaming her! They don’t seem to understand jack shit.’

  ‘Well, maybe they do and maybe they don’t. But you have to understand, Michael, that if somebody’s badly upset — especially a woman, for some reason — their brainwaves can actually cause physical disturbances. Minor accidents, cuts, bumps, even fires. A woman in Baltimore got angry with her husband one night two years ago and broke every goddamned window within a radius of two miles. Now that’s a proven fact: you can read it in the records. She broke every goddamned window within a radius of two miles, and she didn’t even leave her apartment. You saw Carrie that wasn’t total bullshit, by any means. In the trade we call it psychokinesis — the movement or displacement or destruction of physical object
s by nothing more than mental energy.’

  Michael Greenberg breathed deeply, and nodded, and said, ‘That was one of the words the shrinks used, psychokinesis,’ as if I had just blasphemed.

  I grasped his shoulder and gave him my best Professional Psychic’s smile. ‘I’m going to promise you something, Michael, even before I see what’s wrong. This disturbance can be cured. There isn’t a single psychic disturbance that isn’t susceptible to good psychic management. That means discipline, calm and rational procedure. It’s just like running a business. If something freaky happens in a business, if you experience a sudden and unexpected downturn in sales — well, there’s always a reason for it. And there’s always a way to handle it. We can do the same here — I guarantee it — I guarantee it — no matter what the hell is wrong. You’re haunted? I can have you de-haunted. You keep hearing voices? I can shut the bastards up.’

  Michael glanced at Karen, as if he were questioning my competence, but Karen turned away.

  ‘Karen told me that you were the best,’ he remarked.

  ‘In this business, it isn’t easy to judge. We’re not talking automobile maintenance here.’

  Karen said, ‘Harry — you’re good. You know you are.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time you saw the problem for yourself,’ Michael suggested.

  ‘For sure,’ I said, and followed him closely to the door.

  He turned, his hand on the handle, and stared at me.

  ‘You still have a choice. I mean, I begged Karen to get you here, but you don’t have to get yourself involved with this unless you really want to.’

  ‘Michael — I meant what I said,’ I replied. ‘There isn’t a psychic manifestation alive or dead that can’t be dealt with. All you have to do is make sure that you apply the appropriate ritual of exorcism to the appropriate manifestation.’

  ‘All right,’ said Michael, and opened the door.

  I stepped in, and found myself in a large family dining room. It was chilly, unexpectedly chilly, and the smell that I had noticed in the living room was very much stronger. It was a really strange smell, like burned herbs and sweat and dust. It reminded me of something … I couldn’t think what … but something that you would never normally associate with East 17th Street on a sweaty August afternoon. It was a smell from very long ago and very far away.

  The dining room was dimly lit by a five-branched chandelier, fitted with low-wattage bulbs, and that was all. The dimness did nothing to enhance the decorations, which — like the decorations in the living room — were staid beyond the Greenbergs’ age — brown patterned wallpaper and thick brown carpet. But it was the furniture which caught my attention first. It was all crowded against the left-hand wall, as if it had been heaped up at a second-hand store, or a saleroom. The dining table, the chairs, the sideboard — even the flower-vases and the cutlery. Everything had been crammed higgledy-piggledy up against the wall.

  Even the paintings on the wall were hanging sideways.

  Only one chair remained in the centre of the room; and on that chair sat a woman in a grubby white towelling bathrobe. Her face was grey and papery. It looked as fragile as a wasps’ nest, as if you could have pierced her cheek with your finger. Her eyes were wide open but milky-white, because she had rolled her pupils up into her head. She was breathing steadily, but her breathing was fast and threatening, rather than peaceful. Her hair was wildly tangled and bone-white.

  I turned to Michael in shock. The room itself had the feeling of a tightly-compressed shock.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked him, in a hoarse whisper.

  Michael took off his glasses, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘That’s Naomi, that’s my wife.’

  Three

  I stepped into the dining room and cautiously looked around. This time, I wasn’t acting the part of cautious psychic. I was living out the part of shit-scared psychic. The air was unnaturally chilled and the light was oppressively dim, and right in front of me sat a white-haired woman clutching her chair as if she were determined that nobody was going to prize her free from it, no matter what.

  With her white, blank, terrifying eyes.

  With her lips stretched back across her teeth as if she were going to snatch a bite out of anybody who tried to come close.

  She was so tense, I felt that I could have hit her with a poker and she would have cracked in half. Fallen apart, like a broken bell-casting.

  ‘How long has she been like this?’ I asked Michael, leaning forward to take a closer look at her. Thinking, shit, give me Mrs John F. Lavender any day of the week — this is serious shit.

  ‘Three weeks, ever since it happened. She won’t move.’

  ‘What do you mean, she won’t move?’

  ‘She won’t get off the chair. She sits on it twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Has she eaten?’

  ‘I’ve fed her, she allows me to feed her, and to give her water.’

  ‘What about …?’

  ‘You mean hygiene? I just have to clean her the best way I can.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  Karen said, ‘Harry … you must be able to help somehow.’

  I stepped back. ‘I don’t know … can’t the shrinks do anything at all? Jesus. She looks like she’s catatonic’

  Michael said, distractedly, ‘They bandaged her ribs … they checked her over. Then they tried to take her in for observation, but as soon as they tried to move her she threw such a fit that they decided that it would be safer to leave her where she is. I mean she went totally crazy. Arms waving, feet kicking, choking on her tongue. They keep coming up with these theories, but they still don’t understand what’s wrong with her. Dr Stein visits every two or three days. He used to be senior consultant at Bellevue. He’s given her every test he can think of. Every session he comes up with a different theory. Hysteria, deprived childhood. Change of life. He even tried to suggest that she was a secret alcoholic, and that she was suffering from DTs. God almighty, Naomi never drank more in her life than a half a glass of red wine at her brother’s bar-mitzvah. Dr Bradley’s the same, he’s been twice. He keeps saying she’s manic depressive.’

  ‘Does she speak?’ I asked him.

  Michael nodded. ‘Sometimes. It doesn’t always make sense.’

  ‘If I say something to her now, do you think she might answer?’

  ‘You can try.’

  I approached Naomi Greenberg with considerable caution and leaned forward. Her eyes were still rolled up into her head, but her eyelids had begun to flutter.

  ‘Naomi,’ I said. ‘Naomi, my name’s Harry. I’m a friend of Karen’s.’

  Naomi didn’t show any signs that she might have heard me, but her eyelids fluttered even faster, and she began to breathe more quickly.

  ‘Naomi, I’ve come here today to see what I can do to help you.’

  Still no reply, although her right foot suddenly shifted on the woodblock floor, making a sharp chipping sound that made me jump.

  ‘Can you hear me, Naomi? I need to ask you some questions. I need to know what has happened to you.’

  ‘She won’t say,’ Michael put in.

  I lifted my hand behind me to shush him. ‘Naomi … I need to know what happened. I need to know what you saw.’

  Naomi suddenly stiffened, and her pupils rolled down into sight. They were brown, filmed-over, unfocused. She stared at me in bewilderment — not so much as if she couldn’t work out who I was, but as if she couldn’t work out what I was. Maybe she thought that I was furniture, too. I didn’t have any idea how deep her disturbance went. A friend of my mother’s lived for years under the delusion that her husband was a hatstand.

  ‘Naomi,’ I repeated. ‘My name’s Harry. I’m a friend of Karen’s. Karen asked me to come see you. She thinks that maybe I can help you.’

  ‘You … can … help … me?’ Naomi slurred. Her voice had no intonation at all.

  ‘I’m going to try. But I need to know what happened to you. I want you to tell me al
l about this furniture.’

  Slowly, Naomi turned her head and stared at the heaped-up chairs and tables. ‘Couldn’t … stop … it,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t … stop … it.’

  ‘Naomi,’ I asked her, coming closer. ‘Did you move the furniture?’

  She thought about that for a while, and then gave a quick flurrying shake of her head.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Michael. ‘Last week, Dr Bradley kept on shouting at her, trying to get her to admit that she was acting hysterical. Like she was doing it on purpose. But how the hell could she? Why the hell would she?’

  ‘Please, Michael,’ I told him. ‘I need to concentrate here.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Michael. ‘But all I’ve been hearing is, “Why did you move the furniture, Naomi?” “What are you trying to do to yourself, Naomi?” “Have you been sniffing any substances, Naomi?”’

  His mouth tightened as he tried to control his distress. ‘All I know is, I went with Erwin to the synagogue that night and I left a happy, smiling, stable wife. I came back three hours later and I found this strange woman — traumatized, terrified, out of her goddamned mind. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Has she told you what happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, fragments. She said there were noises. She said there were shadows. She wouldn’t stop talking about shadows. But nothing that makes any sense.’

  ‘Nobody broke in?’

  ‘Unh-hunh. The police were one hundred per cent sure about that. The windows were barred and locked, all the security locks and chains were fastened. In fact we had to break in, Erwin and me. We called the fire department and they jacked the front door right out of its frame.’

  ‘Naomi wouldn’t have admitted anybody into the apartment of her own free will? There was no sign of that?’

  ‘What is this?’ Michael snapped. ‘I thought you came here to help me, not give me the third degree.’