Ante Mortem

TINY FINGERS Aaron Polson

Isaac Bauer’s fingers twitched, looking for something to hold. He’d quit smoking a month ago, but Anne was late. Anne was never late. He shoved a hand in his pocket and rummaged for a pack of gum. The gum would have to do. The sky over Springdale faded from pale grey to granite as he waited at the corner of 15^thand Arthur, scraping the cracked sidewalk with the side of his shoes. Forty-five minutes after their planned meeting time, Isaac surrendered.

He had already left two messages, but he tried dialing her cell phone again. “Shit,” he muttered as Anne’s voicemail greeting sounded in his ear. He snapped the phone shut and breathed a long slow sigh, counting slowly in his head to steady his frustration. His nervous fingers found the small jewelry box in his jacket pocket and traced the corners and angles of its soft surface. She stood me up, he thought, and then, maybe she’s in trouble. “No. Nothing ever happens in Springdale,” he said to himself, shaking off the thought.

Before Isaac turned toward his apartment, he traced the path Anne would have taken to meet him at the corner. He walked down dark neighborhood streets and felt the closeness of the houses. He walked as far as the new playground, a slab of concrete with two looming lamps reflecting an odd orange hue from the sea of grey. A slight chill forced him to flip his collar around his neck and rubbed his hands together for warmth. Isaac surveyed the playground for a moment. He thought of Anne and felt a pit grow in his stomach. The grey air iced over, and Isaac walked home.

Isaac called Anne thirty times over the next few days. Nothing. Anne was gone. He drove to her house only to find black windows and her car in the drive. Without the car she couldn’t have gone far. His initial frustration had burned away, giving space to a solid fear, a growing unease about her safety.

“Springdale Police. Can we help you?”

“Yeah. I need to report a missing person.” Isaac’s hand trembled as he spoke. Calling the police made her disappearance serious, and that frightened Isaac.

“How long has the person been missing?”

“About three—” Isaac glanced at the calendar on his refrigerator. “She’s been gone about a week.”

“Name?”

“Excuse me?”

“What is the name of the missing person?”

“Oh… yeah. Anne. Her name is Anne.” Isaac’s neck started to burn and his stomach tightened.

“Last name?”

“Sorry. Renner.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, trying to see Anne’s face, her smooth strands of maple hair, her green eyes, and porcelain smile. “Anne Renner…” he repeated without thinking about his words.

“Sir, are you a member of Anne’s family?”

Isaac sighed. “No, no I’m not.”

“Relationship to the missing?”

“I’m her fiancé—er, boyfriend.” Isaac slumped to his bed. “She doesn’t have any family. No close family anyway.” One hand held the phone while the fingers of the other raked through his cropped hair. His eyes scanned the room, resting on the jewelry box on the edge of his desk.

Isaac drove past Anne’s house every day after work. He walked in the evenings, sometimes taking long, meandering trips through dark, quiet neighborhoods that would lead him down Anne’s street. He placed signs bearing her photocopied picture around town—little handmade posters that included his telephone number. The signs seemed unnecessary; Springdale was a small town, and news of a missing person traveled faster than a flame across an oil slick. Isaac called the police repeatedly, usually receiving an explanation that adults pick up and leave all the time; it wasn’t a crime.

Four weeks—almost a month—burned from the calendar, and his phone rang.

“Hello,” Isaac said.

“Yeah, uh, are you the one who left the flyers up around town,” a voice said on the other line. “Uh… Isaac?”

He had dealt with pranks before, people who would call, harass him, joke about seeing Anne. “Yes,” he said.

“Look, I’ve got something for you. I’ll meet you at the bakery—you know the one downtown, Tasty Pastry. Tuesday, 7 AM. My name’s Nick.”

Isaac opened his mouth, but the line was dead.

Isaac arrived early. The late October air grew colder each day, and he was dressed in a simple blue sweater with an insulated flannel jacket. He stepped into the bakery and staggered in the warmth. Taking a seat with his back to the wall and next to the front window, he slipped from his jacket and waited.

Most of the bakery patrons were old—retirees out for coffee and socializing on a Tuesday morning. An occasional younger man or woman would rush in, exchange a pleasant but hurried exchange with some of the retirees before snapping orders at the clerks, paying quickly, and zipping from the place. The door swung open, and a young man, probably in his twenties although not a native of Springdale—Isaac didn’t recognize him from high school—stepped into the bakery and moved his head from side to side, surveying the room.

“Nick?” Isaac asked.

He turned, showing a lean, long face, pale cheekbones at contrast with almost black hair, and foggy grey eyes. The man sat in a chair opposite Isaac, almost gliding like a ghost.

Nick studied Isaac for a moment before speaking. “Take this. I can’t explain more. I’d be in deep shit if someone knew I copied that.” He pushed a small envelope with a bulge in the middle across the table.

“What is it?” Isaac asked.

“Just watch it. I don’t know if it will help, but it will make you think.” Nick looked into Isaac’s brown, almost black eyes before he pushed from the table, muttered, “good luck” and slipped out of the door.

Isaac picked up the envelope and tore off a corner. A little black bullet—a plastic flash drive—fell out and rattled on the table.

On the computer monitor, he watched the pixilated Anne Renner cross the street from Larry’s Market to the new playground. He looked at the picture of Anne above his desk, the smiling photo snapped at a picnic last summer. His eyes came back to the screen. Evidently Nick—or a friend of his, while operating the security camera in Larry’s parking lot, caught Anne and followed her. Isaac didn’t want to know why. The perspective zoomed closer until she nearly filled the screen. The image was blurry and a little grainy—especially after the zoom—but it was clearly Anne. Isaac recognized her coat and knew her walk. He watched as the video Anne passed behind a row of bushes, emerging on the other side as she cut across the basketball court.

And then she was gone.

Not gone as in a dark figure leapt from behind the bushes and kidnapped her gone. Not gone as in she walked out of the frame gone. Just gone, snap. Isaac’s stomach went cold, and his hand tightened on the mouse. He leaned forward, scrutinizing the monitor as he clicked the rewind icon. The mystery happened in reverse—one moment no Anne, then she walked backwards across the open slab.

He paused the video, reduced the frame rate, and played back the scene. Anne walked across the concrete again, and then disappeared. At the reduced frame rate, half of normal speed, Isaac noticed something. He reversed the clip again, set the disappearance to loop, and played back. The small, monochrome Anne vanished again and again until he clicked pause, and advanced frame by frame. One frame she took a step, in the next her face changed—a dark blotch where her open mouth would be, almost a look of surprise. Something lined and grey seemed wrapped around her ankles, but the image was too rough to make out enough detail. In the following frame, Anne’s body seemed half devoured by the court. She was totally gone when he advanced another frame. Isaac hunched even closer to the screen. His stomach vaulted and blood thickened.

He sat there clicking forward and back, entranced by the odd sequence of images: one frame surprised, the next half gone, and finally no sign of her. He studied the time stamp on the video—6:49 PM. She would have been on time.

Snatching his cell phone from his desk, he punched the number for Larry’s Market. He stood and began pacing in his small apartment.

“Hello, Larry’s. How can I help you?” a withered voice asked.

“Yeah, hi. Can I speak with Nick.”

“Nick? We don’t have a Nick here.”

Isaac slumped into his old rust-red recliner. “A security guy—Nick?”

“I’m sorry. Our security guy quit yesterday, but I don’t remember his name. Moving out of town, I guess.”

“Thanks,” Isaac muttered.

“Sorry buddy.”

“Look, calm down Mr. Bauer,” the sergeant, a ruddy-faced man with bushy moustache and eyebrows, placed one hand on Isaac’s thin shoulder, urging him to sit in a nearby chair. “We looked at the video. It must be a hoax.”

“Hoax?” Isaac’s voice was distant and disbelieving.

“Look, you get some two-bit hooligan who knows a little about digital video, and you can come up with all sorts of odd mash-ups.” The sergeant leaned on the edge of his desk. “You’ve been posting these flyers all over town, right?”

“Yeah,” Isaac said. He took the seat as the police officer suggested.

“Some wacko does a little doctoring with a surveillance video, and wham. They know they’ve got you.” He grabbed the flash drive from his desk. “We’re going to keep this, if you don’t mind. Evidence and all. But I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sorry some jerk had to yank your chain like that.”

Isaac’s face was pale, lost in thought. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah. Kind of a raw deal.”

He drove to the playground after leaving the police station. The concrete slab stretched away from the sidewalk, looking pale and insignificant in the late afternoon light. Isaac stepped from his car, looked across the street at Larry’s, and noticed the high lamppost that was home to the small, seeing eye of a security camera.

He stepped away from his car, and shivered because of the cold fingers in the air. Isaac’s shoes whispered through the grass and then tapped lightly on concrete as he stepped onto the court. The breeze faded, leaving the playground in silence. A dog barked in the distance.

“It’s not a goddamn hoax,” Isaac said aloud, kicking at the edge of the grey concrete. The wind jumped at him again, and he thought a voice whispered Anne’s name.

Isaac hadn’t been in the Springdale Public Library since high school, and that had only been because his art teacher required a journal entry detailing the interior architecture of the Carnegie building. When he asked if he could read old articles from the Sentinel online, a friendly librarian laughed and ferried him into a dark room lined with shelves full of musty folios containing the last thirty years of the local paper. He was looking for anything about that playground.

After an hour of old, yellowed newsprint, Isaac found what he was looking for: on the front page of a Sentinel from the previous year, a picture of five men in hard hats stood in the center of a vast expanse of grey concrete. The caption read, “Conco Pours Slab for Donated Playground.” As the Sentinel was a small paper, the picture was only accompanied by a brief article, but Isaac had what he needed. An old buddy from high school, Jarrod, started working for Conco after dropping out of college.

He left the dusty interior of the library after saying a cursory thank you to the librarian. Outside of the dark building, the day was cold but clear with a bright sun hanging in a brilliant blue. As he walked to his car parked on the street, Isaac flipped open his cell phone, dialed for information, and requested the listing for Jarrod Wagner in Springdale.

After three rings, a voice muttered “hi” on the other end of the call.

Isaac, now sitting in his car as a shelter from the cold outside, said, “Hey, this is Isaac, Isaac Bauer. Am I talking to Jarrod?”

“Isaac. Holy shit. Meg—you know the curly brunette down at the Tasty Pastry—she said she saw you the other day. How long have you been back in town?”

“A few months, sort of. I still commute.” Isaac felt dizzy and awkward, talking to someone from whom he had grown apart after college and starting a career. “Look, Jarrod. I don’t know if you’ve seen my flyers.”

The line was silent for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, hell of a deal,” Jarrod muttered. “Look, I’m sorry buddy, I should have called, just to send some sympathy, you know. I didn’t know what to say.”

Isaac closed his eyes. “Can you help me now? Do you still work for Conco?”

More silence, then: “No… not anymore.”

“I see. Were you working for them when they poured the playground last year?”

“Yeah. Look, if you want to know about that playground, I can’t tell you much,” Jarrod’s voice shook slightly and he rushed his words. “Conco was just a subcontractor. Evergreen Development, they donated everything, part of a deal they had with the city. That’s all I know.”

Isaac paused this time, thinking about the nervousness in his friend’s voice, trying to make sense of his apparent anxiety. “Evergreen Development? Didn’t they build those condos, The Legends, out west of town?”

“Look, that’s all I can say. We should get together some time, okay?” The phone went silent as Jarrod ended the conversation.

Isaac drove home and watched Anne disappear on his computer. The police possessed the original, but he had copied the file onto his hard drive. He watched at regular speed, he watched in slow motion, and he watched frame-by-frame as she vanished into the concrete. He watched Anne disappear every night.

Over the next few days, Isaac called Evergreen Development’s corporate offices at least five times. No one who ranked higher than receptionist would speak with him. He walked around Springdale a great deal over that time, passing the playground, and tearing down every flyer he found. Jarrod called after a few anxious and frustrating days, and he arranged to meet Isaac after sundown at the playground.

Isaac walked, trying to push Anne’s memory aside and forget the strange video that lived in his computer. He didn’t have the courage to delete the file—something about that short clip was sinister and unreal, but it somehow told Anne’s story.

Jarrod stood on the sidewalk adjacent to the basketball court. He paced slightly while smoking a cigarette. When he saw Isaac approach, Jarrod dropped the butt and ground it with the heel of his shoe.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Isaac said when he was in range.

“I haven’t seen you in a few years. A lot has happened since then.”

Isaac pointed to a large manila envelope that Jarrod clutched under one arm. “What’s that?”

“Evidence. Something for you, after we talk.” Jarrod looked at Isaac and shook his head slightly. “Anne wasn’t the first one you know.”

“First one? What are you talking about?”

“The first one to vanish here.” Jarrod looked at the slab.

“I never said she vanished here… how did you know?”

Jarrod patted the envelope. “I know. You called, asked about the playground job. Anne was gone. Cops probably told you she just left, adults do that kind of thing, right?”

Isaac nearly staggered back, away from his old friend. “Yeah…”

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird that no one is out here after the sun goes down? Hell, not that many people use the playground during the day.” Jarrod watched Isaac for a moment, reading his face. “Two other people disappeared here. One was a kid, a little girl about nine. Her folks were on a walk, pushing a stroller with her little sister around the corner.” Jarrod pointed to a nearby intersection. “She ran away, started to cross the playground, cut the corner. Poof, gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. They took their eyes off her, and she vanished. Whole town went nuts for months. That was about a year ago.”

Isaac looked at the playground and scrutinized the slab. “I saw something about it in an old paper at the library. I didn’t make any connection.”

“Yeah, well, who really would? I learned the town doesn’t get so excited when an adult vanishes. It happened about six months after the girl. She was a nurse up at the county hospital, not from around here. Nick showed me the video. He was kind of a perv. Always watched the women from the security room after they left the store.” Jarrod stopped for a moment and brought one hand to his mouth. His voice cracked as he said, “she just vanished… right there… in the middle of that goddamn court.”

“Did you know her?”

Jarrod’s shoulders slumped as he nodded. “We were sort of dating. Nobody said anything. The cops wouldn’t believe the video, called it a hoax.”

Isaac took a few steps onto the slab. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either, man. But I know what’s under that slab. Goddamn Evergreen.”

Isaac turned and looked at his old friend.

“Do you remember that creepy spot out west—we called it Diphtheria Hill or whatever?”

“Yeah, the legend. Kid’s stuff. We scared our girlfriends in high school, brought them out there to make out. The story was that a bunch of pioneer kids were buried out there… they all died of diphtheria… a sort of mass grave on top of the hill. Nobody ever found anything, like gravestones.”

Jarrod took the envelope in one hand. “Where do you think The Legends was built, huh? And the graves weren’t on top of the hill, Isaac. They found them, all these little bones—dozens of bodies, maybe hundreds—right where Evergreen was digging foundations for the condos.”

Isaac frowned, looked back at the court. “I still don’t…”

“Look, what would happen if somebody found out? Evergreen would lose the land—historic location and all that. Red tape out the ass, Isaac. They had to do something with those bones, and they found a lot of them. They pledged a new playground to the city council that week.”

Isaac’s face bleached white.

“I was there, man. I helped pour the cement over those bones, no questions asked.” Jarrod’s voice broke, and he stopped for a moment, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. “I don’t know how, there’s a lot of crazy shit in this world I don’t understand, but three disappearances in one year—something is not right about what we did. Something isn’t right about this goddamn playground.”

Isaac backed onto the sidewalk.

Jarrod handed him the envelope. “Here. You take a look. Do what you want with this shit. I’ve had enough of it.” He turned and walked into the darkness.

When Isaac tore open the envelope, a pile of papers and even a few photos slipped out onto his kitchen table. Most of the papers were copies of emails sent from executives at Evergreen to a foreman at Conco—Jarrod. The text of the emails verified Jarrod’s tale about the bones. The pictures looked like they could have come from an archeology site, not the ground work for condos. Isaac collapsed on his bed, trying to understand anything and pushing any wild thoughts of what could have happened to Anne from his mind. He lay in bed until dawn forced through his blinds.

In the morning, he reviewed the video again, pausing on the frame just before Anne seemed to sink into the concrete. Jarrod’s story stabbed at his brain. Isaac squinted at the monitor, studying the strange blurs at Anne’s feet. The realization hit like cold needles jabbed into his neck. Those small blurs looked a little like hands. Something—Isaac shuddered to think what—had pulled Anne into the solid concrete slab.

Isaac called in sick to work and composed a letter to the Kansas City Star. He wanted the story told, wanted people to know about Evergreen’s destruction of a historical site and the attempted cover up. He wanted somehow to tell the world about the impossibility of what happened to Anne, the nurse, and that little girl. No one would believe that story, but he could at least blow the whistle on Evergreen’s fraud. After packing the letter, Jarrod’s emails, and the pictures in a large envelope, Isaac walked to the post office and sent it all away.

But he couldn’t send Anne away. She was out there, yanked down by those tiny fingers.

Anne.

Isaac sat at his computer and watched the video one last time before deleting the file. He leaned on his hands and cried until his body ached. Utterly spent, he floated to his bed like a ghost, collapsed, and fell asleep.

He slept most of the afternoon. As the sun slipped beyond the horizon and his room darkened, Isaac rose, put on his shoes, and grabbed his jacket and the small jewelry box resting in a desk drawer. He left the apartment, not bothering to lock the door, and walked into the night.

The playground looked the same as it had on other evenings: a wide, pale expanse washed with an odd orange light under the streetlamps. Isaac stood on the sidewalk for a minute, opened the little jewelry box, and pulled out the ring. He turned it over in his naked fingers, the cold air biting at his skin. Isaac walked out into the middle of the concrete slab, sat down approximately where he watched Anne slip under the surface, and waited for the tiny fingers to find him and pull him down.