AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Not that I know of. But someone was there, I'm sure of it. I didn't pay any attention to it when I arrived. I was on the phone with the boss,” he says, shaking his cell phone tensely. “It was when I came out that I realized I'd never opened the door!”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No,” he replies sternly. I'm not kidding you! The door was already open! And then—”
“It's got to be her!” intervenes the Don Juan, regaining his color, not caring that he’s interrupting his colleague. “Follow me!”
I rush outside just in time to see Believ’s motorcycle fade into the horizon. That was a close one!
When the coroner enters, I hold my face in my hands, bending over the remains stretched out before me. I don't even need to fake tears; the relief of having completed the rescue of my forever-lost loves sends salty waves rolling down my cheeks.
He approaches me and puts his hand on my shoulder as if to comfort me, all the while maintaining a professional distance. In this epidemic context, it can't be all that unusual for this man to see a parent crying for an entire family in his fridge.
With great delicacy, he invites me back to the manager's office, the only one authorized to press the ignition button on the oven. He has to explain to me in greater detail how the next day's events will unfold.
Convinced that I've given my children paradise, I listen with a distracted ear to a multitude of useless options, which I decline one after the other. Ashes will always be ashes. I might as well not fatten up that monstrous, self-interested little man in the process.
Eltz's journal
11
Believ
I would love to go for a ride on my motorcycle and accelerate to the horizon, but after what's just happened, I'd better keep a low profile on the roads and either walk or take a car. There's no doubt that, even if I'm careful to avoid the cameras, the idiot at the police station will remember my license plate or, at least, the model of my bike, and if I get stopped by a police roadblock, I won't be able to help anyone.
After parking in a discreet corner of a shopping mall parking lot and hitching a ride to my bed & breakfast, I find myself flaked out on my bed, staring at the ceiling as if counting the cracks might trigger a lightning bolt and point the way out of this inextricable situation. But no matter how many times I turn the problem upside down, I'm so mired in trouble that a happy ending seems out of the question. At best, I end up within four walls. At worst...
Better not think about it...
Despite his translucent nature, I can feel the ghost's gaze on me. Is he trying to read my mind, or is he merely scrutinizing me as I scrutinize the ceiling?
How does it work, anyway, these intrusions into my thoughts? Is it spontaneous or does he choose to do so?
Speaking of which...
“What happened at the morgue? I thought you were too unstable to interfere with the matter of this world.”
“I projected myself.”
Doesn't he want to use even more obscure words, in case I manage to decipher snippets of what he's saying? Seriously, who talks like that?
“What do you mean by that?”
“I had to get you out of there.”
“I've never needed anyone. That's not going to change today.”
“I was hoping to create a diversion, if you will. It's the only way I've found to intervene without showing my face.”
I'm grateful to him for keeping his promise. I can't imagine what state the poor coroner would have been in if he had seen a ghost. I remember parts of his conversation, especially the “epidemiological research” he mentioned. Whoever's trying to hide that body frankly doesn't know what to invent to divert attention.
This doesn't tell me where they might have dropped it, and I'm clearly running out of inspiration.
“Let's get a few things straight,” begins my stiff. “My body has vanished into thin air for the second time and left the judicial premises for an unknown destination, most likely a secret one. We also know that the Church is aware of the problems affecting it and that this is detrimental to its plans. If you were a man of the Church, where would you hide a body?”
“Instinctively, I'd say a crypt, but the church we went to yesterday is too central. It would lack discretion, or else all the villagers would have to know about it, which I doubt.”
“Everything can be bought, you know...”
