The Body Departed

The name on the card was mine, of course.

James Blakely.

28

Pauline and I were kneeling together in the front pew.

She had come to light a prayer candle to save the souls of those languishing in purgatory—that, and to see how the hell I was doing. Personally, I think she and I were connected somehow. And my own internal anguish had registered on her psychic radar. Or not. Maybe she really did miss me after just a few days.

Also, I wasn’t so much kneeling as floating next to her in a kneeling sort of way. She lit another candle, mumbled something that I couldn’t hear.

“Say a little prayer for me, too,” I said.

“Already did.”

“What did God say?”

“He’ll get back to me.”

“It figures.”

We weren’t alone in the nave. Jacob was nearby, miming playing the piano onstage with big, exaggerated movements that he might have learned from various Bugs Bunny cartoons. Every now and then, he actually struck a real key and a real note erupted from the piano, and the handful of worshippers would gasp and look up and cross themselves immediately. Pauline would just giggle next to me. Jacob himself seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he was sometimes scaring the hell out of the parishioners. Instead, he would often stop his pseudoplaying and sob uncontrollably, his little shoulders shaking violently, the sound of his weeping reaching my ears—and Pauline’s ears—quite easily.

“The boy misses his music teacher,” said Pauline.

“Yes.”

“And he misses something else.”

I looked over at her. Damn, she was perceptive.

“Yes,” I said. “I imagine he does.”

“He had a twin brother,” she said.

“Yes, he did.”

Between my own telltale thoughts and the boy’s erratic memories, I was willing to bet Pauline knew most of what was going on already.

I said nothing. In death, events in my past had mostly stayed forgotten, unless I was reminded of them. Being here, in this church, I was reminded of them. Powerfully. And ever since I had found the wallet, memories of Jacob’s death had been flooding back all day. Haunting, horrible memories. And with them returned the terrible feelings of guilt.

I didn’t mean to drop him, I thought.

I was just going to scare him into telling me where my wallet was.

“You killed that little boy,” said Pauline. Despite herself, despite our friendship and her love for me, there was a note of accusation in her voice.

I nodded. I could feel the weight of Pauline’s stare on me.

“Yes,” I said. “I and one other.”

“Tell me what happened.”

I did. As best as I could remember, I told her how someone had spotted Jacob going through my backpack, stealing my wallet. Because we were in a K–12 private school, we sometimes mixed with the younger kids. Jacob, if my sketchy memory was correct, had been about eight at the time. I had been sixteen, just beginning my junior year of high school.

I had grabbed a friend of mine, a friend whose name I could not recall at the moment. Together, he and I found Jacob in one of the bathrooms. We told him that the piano teacher wanted to see him, and followed him into the empty nave. Once inside, we grabbed the boy and dragged him, kicking and screaming, up a flight of stairs to the rafters above the sanctuary. Rafters meant only for the lighting guys—not for cruel teenage boys.

We hung Jacob over the railing. Demanded he tell us where my wallet was. The kid was hysterical. Didn’t know where the wallet was—claimed he didn’t know what we were talking about. But he was lying! I knew it! He had been caught red-handed by someone I trusted. We were furious. Well, I was furious. My friend was just caught up in the moment.

So I hung him farther out over the railing, demanded that he tell me where my wallet was…

And then it happened.

I couldn’t believe it at first. One moment he was in my hands, struggling, fighting, scared out of his mind. The next he was falling through the air, reaching up for us, eyes wide and terrified. I lunged forward, reached out for him, but he was gone.

Gone.

And if he had landed on the carpeted stage, he would have probably suffered only a broken leg or two. Instead, he hit the sharp corner of the heavy altar, and his head burst open, spraying blood and brain matter across the sanctuary. He jerked once, twice, and then lay still.

I watched him die from the rafters.

Pauline was silent, digesting.

Jacob’s death was a memory I had relived a million times. To some degree, my own death had been a welcome relief, for then the memories of the falling boy had abated—at least for a few years.

Now they were back again.

A million and one times, I had watched Jacob fall; a million and one times, I had watched his head explode, saw the blood, his brains…saw it all again.

And again.

I looked up toward the rafters now.

And it had all happened right here, in this place. I glanced to my right. And there he was now, the dead boy, silently playing the piano, his head eternally broken open.

All because of me.

Sweet, sweet Jesus. What have I done?

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, James,” said Pauline. “I have a feeling you’ve beaten yourself up enough over this.”

I didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what to say. Beating myself up over this was a natural pastime for me. Hell, I had killed a kid. I deserved to beat myself up over this, right?

“No,” said Pauline. “You need to forgive yourself.”

“No,” I said. “I need him to forgive me.”

We both looked at the boy. Jacob was flamboyantly playing the piano in a ghostly imitation of Liberace.

Pauline dipped deeper into my thoughts. “But that’s not the worst of it, is it?” she asked.

“No,” I said. Pain coursed through me. So real and powerful that I wanted to sink down into the floor and keep on sinking forever.

“Jacob didn’t steal your wallet, did he?” she said.

“No,” I said, looking away. “It was his twin brother, Eli.”

29

“The same twin who later killed you?”

“Yes.”

“The same twin who killed the music teacher? Her name, by the way, was Mrs. Randolph.”

Ah. The name resonated deep within me. Pauline continued probing my mind. She was a hell of a prober.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said. “I think. Anyway, why did Eli wait so long to come after you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Does it matter?”