Grandfather's Day
By Denise Kelly LeBlanc
Why is it that when you are in the biggest rush the world slows you down? This thought rushed through Caroline’s mind as she hurried to get to the opening of her best friend’s gallery show.
She wished that she could crawl into bed with an ice pack and a cup of tea. Head pounding, the idea of being part of a crowd was not appealing, especially as people were the cause of the pain. Unintentionally, of course. No one was setting out to hurt her. How could anyone know what she saw when she looked at a person’s face, and the energy that this vision drained from her?
A particularly long day at work had finally come to an end. Her usual solitary time in her office had been replaced by meetings and interviews, and more people than she could handle seeing without physical repercussions.
Caroline had pushed the pain aside, stripped off her accountant-wear and donned a more artist friendly ensemble of capris and a black silk tank. Meetings had so delayed her departure that from the time she ran out the door and hailed a cab, she was running very late. The opening was in half an hour and on the other side of town.
Rubbing her temples, she tried to get past the overflow of stimulus that had flooded her all day. She resisted looking at the cab driver, but in such a small space, a glance was impossible to fully avoid. In front of the well-worn, wrinkled face of an approximately sixty-five years old man, who looked to have smoked his way through his shifts for many years, was the translucent face of an aged black man. It hovered for a moment before fading and dissipating, like a breeze had blown the mist away.
This was how Caroline perceived everyone. She could not see a person’s present self without the intrusion of their previous incarnation. That’s what the black man had been; the taxi driver’s previous visage. In general, this ability did not interfere with her daily life, though she’d always wished she could just be “normal”. On a day like today when she’d had contact with a large number of people, the headaches took root, reminding her that this was not a gift that humans were meant to possess. The question of why she’d been chosen for this so-called gift had haunted her since childhood.
The taxi sat in traffic for twenty minutes before Caroline finally gave up and decided she’d come as far as a car could take her. Even in her flimsy sandals, she could walk the rest of the way and not lose any more time. She thrust the money at the cab driver and launched herself into the crowd of pedestrians with a resigned sigh. Her gaze was fixed firmly on the pavement, avoiding eye contact at all costs. It was one of the coping mechanisms she’d perfected.
By the time Caroline crossed the gallery threshold, a crowd of approximately fifty people was milling about in small cliques examining Maria’s bright, abstract paintings. She’d seen her friend’s work through all stages of development. This night was purely about moral support.
She met Maria’s eye as she grabbed a glass of champagne from a table at the door, and smiled to offer encouragement. The two people she was speaking with were making notes and Caroline assumed they were local reporters. She smiled. Her friend deserved the attention.
There were so many faces in the room, twice as many for Caroline as anyone else. She knew she wouldn’t last long but resolved to stay at least twenty minutes. She began the tour of the room and focussed on the paintings as a way to avoid eye contact. It wasn’t until she was jostled by a passerby that she was forced to see anyone’s face.
What she saw was something so horrible she was frozen to the spot.
She knew that face, the one superimposed on that of the man who had come to the opening. It was the face that had haunted her dreams as a child. The face of the man who had murdered twelve women before being shot down in a police standoff, and he was sneering a horrific, evil smile.
It was the face of her grandfather.
Caroline staggered to the side of the room and the glass to slipped through her fingers as she it on the table. She pushed her way through the crowd, following the back of the man in the expensive suit. Her mind raced. This was not her grandfather, not the serial killer whose blood ran through her veins, who had died years before she was even born yet whose very existence had colored her life. But could this man possibly be good if he carried the spirit of someone so evil?
She exited the gallery seconds behind the man, and she turned to the right to see him retreating down the sidewalk. The crowd threatened to swallow him, take him away from her hungry eyes. Caroline tore down the cement path as quickly as she could while remaining discreet, determined to follow this stranger who was not a stranger. What would she do when he reached his destination? The question hadn’t even had the chance to form in her mind, let alone the answer.
When he reached his car, a black Lexus that caused a flash of irrational thought in her mind that her grandfather was doing well for himself, she thought for a moment that the pursuit was over. She swallowed the panic lodged in her throat and searched her surroundings for a possible answer. The idea of letting him slip through her fingers was too horrible. She could not let him go while she still had so many questions.
She could not have asked for a better solution. Jamie, her ex-boyfriend, was pulling into a parking spot, arriving to show his support for Maria. It had been a good breakup, if such a thing exists, and Caroline thought of him as a close friend. She rushed over to his car and reached his door before he’d had a chance to fully emerge.
“Jamie, quick. I can’t explain but I need to borrow your car. Please.”
She looked up frantically and was happy to see that the Lexus was stuck in traffic roughly a block away.
“My car? Aren’t you going to the opening?”
He looked at her in complete confusion. Caroline couldn’t take the time to explain. She reached for his hand and took the keys in a way that only the closest of friends can.
“I’ll explain everything later, I promise. I’ll call you in a half hour, OK?”
And with that, she jumped in his car and sped off, leaving Jamie standing utterly perplexed.
She let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding and worked her way into the slow moving traffic. The pace allowed her a moment to think. She’d learned throughout the years that people could not be held accountable for their past lives. But she’d also learned that some characteristics were carried forward, and could she really take the chance that any part of her grandfather had been reborn in the man she followed?
Would she tell her mother? If it had been hard being the granddaughter of Hiram Barton, being his daughter must have been hellish. Her mother had dealt with intense guilt since the moment of his death, when his culpability had been undeniable. Guilt that she hadn’t noticed the signs sooner, and guilt that it had been her own tip to the police that had led to his death. Guilt most of all that she still loved the father who had played with her at the beach as a child, though she hated the monster he’d kept hidden. Conflicted didn’t come close to describing how her mother felt.
The Lexus finally escaped the confines of the traffic and began to speed away. Within seconds Caroline was moving as well, pursuing him as he left the downtown core and drove to a residential suburban area. A man with children perhaps? Children who would be in the same position as her mother? The questions ran in an endless stream.
She hit the steering wheel with an open palm and let out a frustrated groan.
“He is not my grandfather!”
There was no one there to hear her words, but that was not the intent. She said them to remind herself not to jump to conclusions, though realistically that had been impossible from the moment she’d seen his sneering face. She had never felt so certain that a person’s true essence had survived after death. The image of her grandfather had been more alive than any of the others she had seen before, reacting to his surroundings as a previous incarnation never had.
They passed the suburbs and entered an area where the houses sat on larger plots of land. The distance between the homes would suit his purposes well. He turned into a long driveway which she presumed led to a house. The property was heavily lined with trees, blocking any buildings from view. A man who liked privacy.
She pulled over onto the side of the main road, a little past the driveway that had marked the path for the Lexus. The need to get closer was all-consuming, pushing her to do something that many would think insane.
Reaching the trees, she dove into the foliage without hesitation. Branches scratched at her bare arms and her sandals quickly filled with dirt and dry leaves. The sun was almost completely down, far too low to penetrate the density of the foliage. Caroline stumbled through, making her way as best as she could, spurred on by the need to know more. When she emerged on the other side what lay before her was an expansive lawn and a beautiful colonial home, all brick and white-pillared majesty. A light went on near the huge wooden door and she assumed the man had entered his house.
Even if she approached, what could she learn? She knew the answer was nothing, but she could not keep herself from moving closer. She kept to the treeline for as long as possible, to conceal herself from the direct view of anyone who might look out a window. The Lexus was the only car in the drive. Perhaps he lived alone, though the house was so huge it was hard for Caroline to imagine.
She couldn’t resist the urge to get closer. Caroline crept up on the side of the house where no lights shone, and began to work her way over to the window where she thought she might be able to see the man. She pulled herself up to peer over the window sash.
The man walked through the room flipping through the mail. There was no physical similarity between him and her grandfather. This man was tall and thin whereas photos of Hiram Barton had shown him to be short and stocky. He was dark whereas her grandfather had been fair. This man was handsome, with dark chocolate eyes that held a softness in their gaze.
He looked nothing like the kind of man her grandfather had been.
A dog ran into the room, wagging his tail, startling Caroline and waking her from the depth of her thoughts. A German shepherd. The man bent down to pat its head and walked towards the front door. She realized suddenly that, in moments, the dog would run outside and discover her hiding in the shrubbery.
She ran towards the trees she had come from. They were too far. There was no way she would make it that far so quickly. Then she glanced to the side and saw something that gave her hope. The door of a root cellar lay a few feet away. Her only chance. She launched herself towards the door and threw it open enough to slide through the crack. She fell down the cement stairs, landing in a heap on a dirt floor.
It was dark and damp and she could hear the muffled sounds of the dog running around in the yard. She didn’t dare move. If the dog caught her scent, if she was found huddling in this dark hole, she would have no excuse to give.
What could only have been minutes felt like hours. She was sure that she’d heard the dog barking as it went inside, the noise disappearing as the front door closed. Caroline pushed herself to a standing position and felt along the stone wall to balance herself. She’d grown up in a house with a root cellar, so instinct caused her to walk to the center of the room with a raised hand, feeling through the air. The familiar string touched her palm and she pulled, flooding the space with the light of an unfrosted bulb.
Blinking against the brightness, it took a moment for her eyes to focus, and when they did what she saw brought her to her knees.
The walls were papered with yellowed clippings. The face in the photos was Hiram Barton. The headlines screamed of mutilation, death, horrors the likes of which no one should have to imagine. This man had sought out the stories.
This man knew exactly who he was.
She struggled to stand, a possibility striking her that she could not handle. The dirt floor was not beaten down like it had been in the root cellar she’d grown up with. The earth was darker, looser in spots. This was a graveyard!
She turned to run from the hole in the ground, but was halted when she smashed into the chest of the man she’d followed. Her grandfather briefly smiled at her, the look in his eyes hungry with need.
“My women don’t usually come to me.”
The man spoke in a deep baritone that trembled across her skin. Her mind raced through the events of the day. Jamie. He wouldn’t find her in time, but he would find her. Killing her would be this man’s undoing. She held onto the face of her grandfather, did not let it fade away.
She finally knew with absolute clarity why she’d been given her ability.
When she finally responded her voice held an icy chill.
“Go ahead. Do what you want. My mother brought you down before. Now it’s my turn.”
This time the dark smile was her own.