Shallow Graves (The Haunted Book 1) Read online

  Robert held the man’s arm fast, his breathing coming more rapidly now.

  Covered—as if she were asleep.

  “Mr. Watts? You have to sign off on the body, and I can’t let you do that if you don’t take a look. It will be quick, I promise. And your wife looks…she looks fine.”

  This confused Robert.

  Fine? How can she look fine when she’s dead?

  The pathologist shook his arm free and he pulled the door wide.

  “We can wait for as long as you want before I pull back the sheets, but please, we must get out of the hallway.”

  The man gestured for Robert to enter as he held the door open. Robert reluctantly shuffled through, his eyes nervously darting about the viewing room.

  It was a plain room, with blue walls lined by several black filing cabinets. There was a door immediately across from the one that they had just walked through, and beside that a large section of glass with a small ledge in front of it. Robert purposefully skipped over the glass and turned his attention to the ledge instead. On it were two pieces of paper and a pen.

  “Mr. Watts? I’m going to go into the room now. I won’t pull back the sheet until you are ready, okay? You just give me a signal. Then you have to sign the sheets and that’s it. You can set up the funeral arrangements right away. You just have to sign the papers, okay?”

  Robert swallowed hard and nodded. The pathologist reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder, drawing Robert’s gaze. His brown eyes were soft, sad. Not terribly unlike Officer Dwight’s had been last night.

  For a second, Robert wondered if he knew about Wendy—Wendy and Landon. The woman at the desk had had that same pathetic, puppy dog look.

  Did they all know? Am I just a huge joke to them?

  “It’ll be okay, Mr. Watts.”

  And then he dropped his hand and went into the other room, leaving Robert alone.

  It took almost five minutes for him to gather the courage necessary to walk up to the window. It took another two before he could open his eyes.

  The area behind the glass looked to Robert like a typical, sterile hospital room. In the center of the room were two gleaming silver gurneys, both covered in plain white sheets. The pathologist stood by the larger of the two tables, his hand on the sheet by what Robert assumed was the head. He was staring patiently, waiting for his signal.

  Robert drew in a deep breath and then nodded to the man with the round spectacles. The gesture was returned, and then sheet was immediately raised and pulled down just enough to reveal Wendy’s face.

  For a second, nothing happened. Part of him had expected blood and gore, stitching like Frankenstein’s monster all over his wife’s face.

  But it wasn’t at all like that.

  Instead, his wife looked serene, peaceful even. Robert tilted his head to one side to get a better angle, trying to view her head on.

  Wendy’s hair had been pulled away from her face, and it looked a little damp, which was fine by him; it looked darker this way, less trashy, less bleached blonde. Her eyes were closed, and her cheeks were a little bit rosier than usual. Robert assumed that they had put makeup on them to cover the gray pallor that he had seen in movies and on TV. When his gaze fell on her lips, things went south.

  Quickly.

  He felt a knot form in the pit of his stomach.

  Wendy’s lips were too red, a shade of cherry he didn’t recognize. Robert’s own lips twisted into a sneer and a vision flashed in his mind.

  It was Landon, and he was hovering over Robert’s desk back at Audex.

  “So, uh, Robbie,” he said in a velvety voice as he scratched at his thick beard. “You almost done the Butternut file? Need that before the weekend, Robbie.”

  Robert’s eyes flicked to the numbers on his computer screen. They were all wrong, all symbols and hieroglyphics, a jumbled mess that seemed to swell and shrink before his eyes.

  “Yeah, almost done.”

  He looked back up again and was shocked to see that Landon was naked. The man snaked a hand between his legs and he began stroking his cock, which was impossibly huge. His white teeth broke through his black beard.

  “Good, ‘cuz I gotta get out of here, Robbie. Gotta go get Wendy’s cherry lips on this here cock. You know how it is.”

  Robert gagged, but even when he returned to reality, the man’s laughter continued to echo in his head.

  “Put it back!” he shouted. “Put it back!”

  The pathologist frowned and he quickly threw the sheet back over Wendy’s face.

  Robert grabbed the pen and scribbled his signature at the bottom of the paper, not even bothering to make sure that he was signing in the correct spot.

  He felt dizzy and backed away from the glass. Even when the doctor held up his hand, asking him to stay, Robert kept retreating.

  Wendy…how could you? With Landon? Why?

  His back slammed up against the black cabinets, which clanged loudly as they rocked back and forth, threatening to topple. Robert snapped to and rushed to the door, throwing it wide.

  And then he ran out of the viewing room, down the corridor with all the doors marked ‘AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY,’ and into the main hallway.

  Even when the pathologist yelled after him, shouting that he had to come back, that he had to view the bodies, Robert kept on running.

  Chapter 6

  Wendy Watts’s funeral was a mostly private affair. It was a calm day, although if the weather reports were to be believed, the rains that had so poured down the night that she had died would be returning.

  It was the calm before the storm, as they say—or maybe the calm between storms.

  There were only nine people in attendance, including Robert. There was Robert’s best and only friend, Cal Godfrey; Wendy’s parents, both of whom were wheelchair bound; Stephanie and Julie, two of Wendy’s coworkers from before she left the real estate firm to go out on her own; and of course Amy, who was glued to Robert’s side.

  And then there was Landon, who not only had the gall to come to the funeral, but to wear that—instead of black, the man was wearing a pastel blue suit, white shirt, and no tie. Robert couldn’t even look at the man.

  While neither he nor Wendy were particularly religious, Robert had asked a local priest to come by and say a few words anyway, mostly because he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

  It had been four days since Wendy had passed, and while Robert had slowly come to grips with the fact that she was gone, he was still at a loss as to how he felt about it. He loved her, at least he thought he had, but after finding out that she had been unfaithful—with Landon no less—he was conflicted. And this made him feel strangely guilty. With time, he hoped that he could come to grips with his emotions, remember the good times they had had together, forget the bad.

  But that would take time, he knew.

  Amy had taken the news better than he could have ever hoped. In fact, she almost seemed to know that bad news was coming, as if she had just felt that something wasn’t right. If anything, Amy had spent more time consoling him than he had her.

  The priest finished his short eulogy, something generic that Robert, lost in thought, hadn’t paid much attention to, and then he turned expectantly to him.

  A morose silence fell over Wendy’s small section of the cemetery, a silence that was only occasionally broken by Wendy’s mother’s soft sobs and a bird chirping. When Robert didn’t react to the priest, the man nodded his head at him.

  What? Robert almost said out loud, feeling his face grow hot. I told you I don’t want to say anything.

  The priest had tried his best to convince him otherwise, of course, but Robert had declined at every opportunity. He just didn’t trust himself to do it justice, to keep his anger and frustration at bay. But now, with everyone watching, the priest…what? Expected him to go up there, emptyhanded, with nothing prepared, to say something? Something nice?

  Amy was sitting in the chair next to him, but when he looked ove
r at her, he only saw the top of her head. He wondered how much at nine years old—Ten, I’m almost ten, Daddy—she actually understood about death, or life, for that matter. His conversations with her about that night had been abrupt, and the typically spritely and talkative girl had remained unusually quiet, content in mostly just nodding to whatever Robert said.

  You understand that Mommy’s not coming home, don’t you?

  A nod.

  Do you want to talk about it, Amy?

  A shake of the head.

  Are you going to be all right, Daddy?

  This line of conversation, or lack thereof, had been a recurring act over the past four days. Robert had done a quick Internet search on children grieving following the loss of one of their parents, and he was comforted by the fact that her behavior was completely normal. Even the fact that she refused to wear anything but her pink t-shirt and jeans that she had been sporting the night of the accident was normal. Unhygienic, maybe, but normal. The key was just to give her time, space, and maybe a change of environment. If that didn’t work, then counseling was highly recommended. Robert was hoping that it didn’t get to that point…for financial and personal reasons.

  “Psst, Robbo, you gonna say something?”

  Robert turned to his friend, who sat on the side opposite Amy.

  Callum Godfrey, known almost exclusively as Cal, was his oldest and closest friend. And now, seeing the paltry turnout for his wife’s funeral—including only Landon of all people from Audex, where he had spent more than a decade working—confirmed that the man was his only friend. Cal was short, chubby on the verge of being fat, with thinning brown hair and wide-set eyes. Like Landon, he had chosen against wearing a suit, but unlike his former boss, Robert held no disdain toward him for this; Cal didn’t own a suit, and never would. To Cal, a suit was like giving in to the man, succumbing to the evil, corrupt empire that ruled not only the US of A, but pretty much the entire globe. That little nugget of wisdom was only one of many that the man had gleaned during hours of scouring the Internet. Cal didn’t have a job, at least not in the traditional sense. If you asked him, he would say that staying afloat with all of the most recent conspiracy theories and government secrets was like holding two or three jobs.

  “Rob?” The man’s dark eyes were wide with expectation. Cal gently placed a chubby hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to stand.

  At this point, with everyone’s eyes on him, Robert had little choice.

  He made a mental note to speak to the priest about this later.

  Robert stood, then turned to face the others, his eyes briefly bouncing from each member of the diminutive congregation. When his gaze fell on Landon, he stopped short.

  The man was crying; he was crying, while Robert couldn’t even seem to shed a single tear at Wendy’s funeral.

  None of this was fair. Landon was even out grieving him, if there was such a thing.

  Robert shook the thoughts from his head and cleared his throat.

  “I—I—Wendy will be missed. It’s a sad day when we lose someone so young, so tragically. I loved Wendy, and it will be difficult for our family to continue without her.”

  And with that, he sat, having completed the single worst eulogy in history. He imagined that executed murderers got more love than he had just expressed. But Robert just couldn’t bring himself not to say more, not with Landon Fucking Underhill standing there, crying his eyes out.

  Crying because he had lost his fuck toy, while Robert had lost his wife.

  The priest gaped at him, a look of confusion on his leathery face.

  What? I told you I didn’t want to speak!

  Cal leaned over, and Robert just knew that he was fighting the urge to say something; Cal always had something to say, and this something was usually wholly inappropriate. But Robert wasn’t in the mood. He kept his gaze straight and ignored him. Eventually, he felt his friend lean back in his chair.

  “Yes, ah, okay. It is indeed a shame, a terrible, terrible shame, but young Wendy Watts is with Our Father now, in Heaven above, looking down and over all of you.”

  With that, the priest made his way down from the small podium and turned his back to them, leaning over the grave site.

  Everyone else, including Robert, followed suit and rose from their plastic lawn chairs and made their way toward the dark brown casket. A funeral worker appeared out of nowhere and started to turn an obnoxiously loud crank that slowly lowered the coffin into the earth. Robert watched as his wife’s body moved farther and farther away from him.

  More tears were shed as the crank clicked to a halt, an audible indication that Wendy had reached her final resting place. For some reason, to Robert the coffin seemed not just six feet under, but miles deep in the earth, separating them by an infinite expanse.

  As he made his way to the hole in the ground, he started to feel dizzy. Instead of saying his last words, as others had begun doing, Robert retreated back to where the chairs were and helped push his mother-in-law’s wheelchair up close. As he gripped the back of her wheelchair, he glanced over at Cal, who was pushing Wendy’s father’s wheelchair. The man shrugged, and Robert averted his gaze.

  After Wendy’s mother was done with her prayer, Robert wheeled her back.

  Robert returned to the grave site and stared down at the dark brown casket, thankful that the disorienting sensation had passed. Still, instead of thinking about his wife at that moment and uttering some final words, he could only think of one thing.

  Robert could only think about how much the casket cost.

  How much the entire funeral had cost him.

  It was astronomical, which was probably why he had felt like he was falling into the grave with Wendy.

  At some point, Robert realized that he was the last person standing, and eventually, when he started to get uncomfortable, he felt someone at his side. At first he thought it was Cal, or Amy, but a quick glance revealed that it was the priest.

  “Would you like me to tell the others where the wake will be held?”

  The question took Robert by surprise. He hadn’t thought about a wake. In fact, aside from the funeral arrangements, he hadn’t thought much about what would happen after.

  Except, of course, about how he would—or wouldn’t—be able to afford the house, let alone the two cars.

  “No, no wake,” he said simply. Again the man gave him a look, and for a second, Robert felt like slapping him.

  Who are you to judge me? You don’t know me. You didn’t even know her. I have enough to worry about, raising a child on my own with no money and no job.

  But Robert wasn’t a violent man, never had been.

  “We can have a small service at my parish, if you would like,” the priest said softly. “I can have something set up in less than thirty minutes.”

  Yeah, and how much is that going to set me back?

  “No, thank you, but no.”

  The priest gave him another disapproving look, then turned to the others, who Robert saw had made a single file line behind him.

  “Robert would like to thank you all for coming, but has decided that there will be no wake—that he would like to mourn his wife’s passing alone.”

  There were some minor grumblings, and Wendy’s mother had a sour expression on her face, but that was okay. After all, Wendy had delegated both of her parents to a home the second they had become wheelchair bound. The geriatric woman had earned her right to grumble.

  Cal was first in line, and he approached with a neutral expression on his face. He reached out to shake Robert’s hand.

  Robert turned to Amy, who was at his side again.

  “Go play inside the home, Amy. Please.”

  The girl, nodded, her blonde head moving up and down. She looked paler than he remembered, and he once again wondered how what was going on in the girl’s head.

  Cal gave him a queer look.

  “Robert? What about Amy? What do you—?”

  Robert shook his head.

&
nbsp; “Not now,” he said. Tears suddenly formed in his eyes. “Please, not now.”

  Cal nodded and shook his hand.

  Robert was embraced by Wendy’s two friends next, who were veritably sobbing, whispering in his ear that if he needed anything at all, to just call them. He politely thanked them for coming.

  Wendy’s mother was next.

  Robert and Yolanda Liebowitz had never gotten along when Wendy was alive—heck, Wendy and her mother had never gotten along—and her death didn’t seem to have changed that.

  “Robert,” she said simply, with a curt nod.

  Wendy’s father, whose dementia seemed to have progressed significantly in the four months since they had last seen each other, said nothing at all, content to wheel after his wife.

  Landon was next, but Robert couldn’t even bring himself to look at the man.

  “Robert, I’m—”

  Robert made a disgusted face. Like the priest, he wanted to punch Landon. Instead, he did what came most naturally.

  He simply walked away, leaving his ex-boss standing, dumbfounded, alone in his stupid pale blue suit.

  Chapter 7

  There was no wake for Wendy Watts, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t any drinking.

  Robert went to a local bar after the funeral. It was still early enough that they didn’t mind him bringing Amy in with him. They sat at a booth and he ordered a pint of his favorite IPA, and a glass of water and a plate of fries for his daughter. He didn’t have an appetite.

  When the waitress left, he turned to Amy.

  “Amy, you sure you’re okay?” he asked. He felt stupid posing the same questions over and over again, but given his own internal turmoil, he had a hard time coming to grips with the fact that she seemed to be dealing with Wendy’s death better than he was.

  “Uh-huh,” she said with a nod.

  Amy was nine years old going on fifteen, with rosy cheeks, a heart-shaped face, bright blue eyes, and a tiny mouth. She had pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail after the funeral, and now she sat in her pink t-shirt and jeans, her tiny hands folded politely on the table before her.