He holds his breath.
There’s a click.
The first light comes up on the left, on a pod that’s four or five down the row. The second light comes up on the right, and it’s the pod closest to Greg. Then more and more flicker on up and down the rows on either side. The lights are soft, a pale yellow that reminds Greg of the nightlight he had as a child. The lights chase away the dark, but only just, the shadows held at bay just beyond the pods.
There are so many of them.
Each is at least the height of Greg, and the width of two or three of him, when he was at his biggest. They’re egg shaped, the fronts made of glass slightly frosted over. They’re perched on flat metal platforms, with dozens of wires and tubes coming out the rear, trailing off into the shadows.
He thinks, My god.
The gardener says nothing, just watching his reaction.
He starts on the right.
He can see them, the people inside the pods. They’re positioned so they’re sitting, but reclined back at an angle, arms and legs propped up, head kept facing straight on either side by a padded support. There’s a headband on each of them, attached to wires that lead behind them to the back of the pod. Their skin is pale, almost ghostly so. Their cheeks are gaunt. Their arms and legs twig thin, some more so than others.
There’s vague recognition for some of the people, names on the tip of his tongue that he can’t quite remember. It itches at the back of his mind, but he doesn’t push.
He walks slowly down the row, glancing side to side.
He stops when he sees someone he remembers.
He says, “Mrs. Richardson.”
She looks ancient in her pod. Preserved.
“Ah yes,” the gardener says from right behind Greg, causing him to jump. “Her. She’s… intricate, I think. A marvel. Her name is Tia Piper. She was in a car accident seven years ago. Killed her husband and her child. She’d been drinking. Apparently, she did that quite a bit. They were the only family she had left.”
Her minions are spread out on either side of her.
Greg doesn’t know what to say.
He moves on.
Doc is next. “Barry Davis. He was a doctor in real life too,” the gardener says. “Though he’d lost his medical license toward the end. Writing scripts for prescription narcotics that he would later sell, the poor man. Tried to hang himself rather than facing charges. Didn’t quite work out the way he wanted. His body lived. His brain, not so much.”
Donald. “Edward Johnson. Drowned. Well, not on his own. He was actually planning on raping a woman after he’d dragged her off a running trail toward a river. He didn’t know her boyfriend had been trying to catch up with her and had seen him attack her. He stopped it, just in time. Held poor Edward under water until he stopped kicking. No one even thought to send the boyfriend to jail. They called him a hero. Turned out our dear Mr. Johnson had raped seven other women over a period of four years.”
Calvin. “Arthur Hill. Trailer park fire. Smoke inhalation. See those burns on his hands and arms? They cover eighty percent of his body. What a tragedy. Then again, maybe he shouldn’t have been making dirty bathtub meth, you know? Or, at the very least, learned to make it right. The fire spread rather quickly. Killed six people, including two children.”
Happy. “Stephen Scott. Nice man he was. Had a stroke. They didn’t find him for three days, because no one cared enough to check on him. His dog had begun to eat his toes. Rather odd, that. But it wasn’t the most shocking thing they found. No, the most shocking thing they found were the hundreds of Polaroids in a safe in the back of his closet. Polaroids of naked kids, if you can believe that shit.”
Walter. “Kenneth Trueman. One of my favorites. Had just tried to rob a convenience store. He shot and killed the clerk who refused to give up the thirty-seven dollars he had in the register. He didn’t get the money. Took off on foot. Made it onto the street when he was struck by a delivery truck on its way to the very same convenience store. Karma is a very strange and wonderful thing, don’t you think?”
Greg doesn’t know what to think. He knows these people, flashes of them bursting in his mind. They’re little pulses of clarity coming in through the haze. He can remember the way they sounded. The way they laughed. The way they spoke to him, clapped their hands on his shoulder, tipped their hats when they said good morning. Donald and Happy and Calvin, sitting at the lunch counter. Happy singing about pizza pies and amore. Walter slinging hash on the grill, Donald cutting his hair. Calvin rolling his eyes as Happy leaned drunkenly against him. Mrs. Richardson clicking her tongue at him, telling him he couldn’t
possibly consider wearing that, my word, you’re not a heathen, Mike Frazier, so stop dressing like one.
He hears, Hey, big guy.
There’s a stutter in his heart.
He knows that voice too. It should mean nothing to him.
It doesn’t.
It doesn’t.