Wild Side (Dark Side Series: Book 2)

Ten

Ever Isle Cemetery and Funeral Home.

The name fit the vista like a glove. To my right the trees kept the rich green of pine, with very small breaks between for leafless maples and elms. To my left sprawled frozen a wide white lake. My ride rumbled past shoreline and forest, rolling to a halt at the drive of the Ever Isle Funeral Home: a Victorian mansion adorned with wreaths and garland. The home faced the snow-swept lake, while across the street a couple vehicles slipped beneath the pines, past an iron gate and into the cemetery.

"This where you want?" asked my driver, a middle-aged man with a gentler demeanor than the grungy clothes and snarling tattoos suggested. Teddy had found me standing at a small convenience store on the edge of St. Lawrence County. After witnessing several rejections courtesy the few other folks present, mostly folk driving home to see their families for the holidays, Teddy bought me an egg sandwich and offered a lift.

"Thanks," I said, passing twenty bucks into his palm. He refused, but I left it on the seat and hopped onto the plowed walkway. They'd gotten more snow than Connecticut in recent weeks. Above Teddy's tow truck, overcast skies and a nippy breeze promised more later this afternoon.

After another glance towards the forested cemetery and its gathered mourners, I clunked up the old porch stairs, past festive kissing balls and sprigs of holly, and rang the bell. No one answered, so I turned the handle. It was a day of business, and it was a funeral home, not a home-home.

I wasn't one to spend much time inside these sorts of places, and I was on edge walking onto worn burgundy carpeting. The sweet scent of floral arrangements combined with boughs of evergreen on a dark staircase brought a pleasant odor to the cordoned rooms I passed, but beneath it my nose detected something else, a trace of something uncomfortable and bitter.

An older man emerged from a back hall and greeted me. Clad in a suit that clung a bit too loosely over his heavyset build, the funeral director spoke in a mellow voice and pulled me into a currently unused room where they were setting up chairs for a wake later in the day. Apparently Rowtag had retired some years ago and left the business in the hands of this man's nephew. These days Rowtag spent about half the year here and rest tucked away within a mountainside cabin. Lucky for me, it being winter and him being elderly, he'd come home for the holidays.

The director passed along my request for a visit to a younger worker -Rowtag didn't accept many people these days- and I waited beside the director at the bottom of the dark staircase. The man leaned over to adjust the evergreen decorations as we waited. While I tried to ignore the goosebumps underneath my sweater, I could've sworn he was sniffing my hair.

Not a minute too soon his co-worker returned. A small nod was all it took and I was guided up two narrow, twisting flights of stairs, where at the end I would find a drafty oak door: the attic entrance. Here the director and worker hovered at my back, their eyes on me, their posture stiff, their heads tilted like curious crows.

I walked into the room and shut the door behind me. A heady scent of mold and paint permeated the chilly air. My breath coiled to the wooden ceiling inches from my head. At the far end of the room, a man sat hunched on a stool. His fur coat gleamed softly beneath a dim spotlight. Beside him rested a small table with tubes of paints and brushes, and beyond that, a white canvas caught between a pencil sketch and a painting. A long-fingered hand dipped a brush into a palette and mixed two colors.

"Rowtag?" I asked, inching across a mishmash collection of throw rugs. There wasn't a bed here, nor any other creature comforts beyond a tiny bookcase shoved against some boxes and covered furniture. He couldn't have lived here.

The man continued to mix colors, then lifted the brush to the canvas.

Maybe he was like Susan Walsh. Maybe his hearing had gone. I walked within ten feet of his back and called his name again, louder.