The Things We Bury - Part 2: No Big Apocalypse [Completed]

Chapter 7: Bad as Me (Part 1 of 7)

Working for Jorgenson had trained Darren to expect the unexpected. So when he got the call diverting him from his morning commute, he didn't bother asking why Jorgenson wanted to meet at his home. Darren simply told his boss he'd be there in twenty minutes.

After the phone disconnected, he cranked up the stereo. Beethoven's Archduke Trio was just at the point where the dizzying piano runs were rising and falling. The music was like cascading water. Darren let it wash over him just as he had let the warm water run down his body in the shower earlier.

Darren was in a good mood for a change. Surprising for a Thursday. He was usually in a deep pit of despondency by this point in the week—one weekend was nothing but a faint memory and the next was still too far away to give any glimmer of hope.  This many days into the week, the baggage of his work had usually built to a backbreaking load that weighed him down and made him feel as though he should be walking hunched over like an elderly man with a cane.

But this morning, even the seventeen murders at the inn were no longer bothering him. The archaeologists and their assistants were fading from his conscience. It felt wrong to get over it so quickly. It had only been two days. Perhaps it was because their deaths had been more peaceful than what most of Jorgenson's enemies received. A far better death than Darren had given to Senator Wainewright—the fool had taken the devil's money for his campaign and then refused to dance like the circus monkey he was. Jorgenson didn't just want him killed but taught a lesson.

That night in the senator's Washington townhouse had kept Darren up for weeks.

By comparison, the archaeologists and the Benbow Inn had been tame, even if he had felt like a ghoul creeping from room to room, using the compact gas canister and its rubber mask to anesthetize them.  A few of them had awoken and struggled vainly for a few seconds, their desperate eyes burning into his soul, before losing consciousness for the last time. It had been a mercy. None of them even stirred when the fire raged through the old, sad lodge. They never felt a thing.

Still, such acts were typically hard to shake off. But spending last night at home with Noelle and the girls had done him a world of good.

He had gotten home just in time for dinner. Noelle had made a rice and mushrooms dish. She had called it risotto funghi but what mattered to Darren was that it reminded him vaguely of the cream of mushroom soup his mother used to make him as a boy. Then there was chocolate ice-cream for dessert. He was in such a good mood that he didn't get upset when Noelle corrected him. ("Darren, dear. I swear you do it just to annoy me. Ice-cream, please! It's semifreddo au cacao et aux amaretti.")

After dinner, he helped Carrie with her math homework, taking the opportunity of leaning close to her to smell the strawberry shampoo in her hair. Madeline lost a tooth and he tucked her in and told her about the tooth fairy who would come in the night while she slept to reward her. She knew it already but wanted to hear it all again. When they were both asleep and a crisp bill was tucked under Maddie's pillow, he joined Noelle in the bedroom. She was in the sitting area reading one of her craft magazines.

"They're growing up," he said placing the tooth in the brass canister on his dresser. The can held a scattering of his girl's baby teeth, bone white with flecks of dried blood. Darren had a moment of disorientation and for a second they flickered from being cherished mementos to resembling grim human detritus—something found in some unmarked pit.

Noelle made a distracted sound of agreement. She had her do-not-disturb force field around her but he pressed on. He had been letting her drift away lately. That needed to change.  The course needed to be corrected. "Why don't we all head down to the shore this weekend. We can make it a mini-vacation. Rent a house."