Writing on the Wall
They call them "dog days," those hot, humid summer days when you can feel beads of perspiration trickle down your back. With the temperature and humidity both uncomfortably high in the nineties, many residents prefer to remain indoors and turn up the dials on their air conditioners.
It was on such a scorching day that Doug Chaffee, a computer repair technician, left the cool oasis of his workplace late one morning to visit a customer whose contract entitled him to on-site service. After installing the latest version of Windows on the customer's computer, he bought a cold bottle of Coke from a vending machine and drank it all before opening his car door and subjecting himself to the intense heat that had built up inside the locked vehicle. By the time the Mustang's air conditioner was putting out cold air, Doug's shirt was drenched with perspiration.
Anxious to get back to his office, he opted to take one of Robert Frost's roads less traveled rather than battle midday traffic in the center of town to get to the interstate. As he drove down the sparsely populated country road, enjoying the cold air from the vent that was pointed toward his face, he paid no attention to the temperature gauge on his dashboard. Thus, he did not notice the needle hovering in the red zone.
Minutes later, when his car overheated, forcing him to pull to the side of the road, he cursed his ill fortune. In the time it took him to get his cell phone out of his pocket and contact AAA, the temperature in the vehicle rose to an uncomfortable level.
"We'll have a tow truck out to you in about an hour," the dispatcher informed him.
"That long?" Doug asked with dismay.
"We've got a lot of calls on account of the weather."
The next phone call was to Stan Overman, his boss, informing him of the situation.
"Just stay cool," Stan laughed.
Waiting in his car was out of the question since it was much hotter there than it was outside. Still, he did not want to stand on the roadside under the merciless sun. There was only one option that offered respite from the blistering heat: the Woodland Cemetery directly across the street. While a graveyard was not exactly one of his favorite places to spend a summer afternoon, at least there were plenty of shade trees.
Once through the gates, the sweating technician headed toward a bench beneath a well-established maple tree. Looking for a way to pass the time, he took his phone out of his pocket to play a game. He spent fifteen minutes launching angry birds at unsuspecting pigs before getting a low battery warning.
"What's wrong with me lately?" he asked himself. "I forgot to charge my phone, I didn't pay attention to my heat gauge and I can't remember the last time I checked the coolant in my radiator. I'm getting as absent-minded as my grandmother!"
Doug looked at his watch. He still had half an hour before the tow truck was due to arrive, assuming the dispatcher had accurately predicted the wait time.
"What's there to do in a cemetery for half an hour?" he wondered.
He got up from the bench and walked down one of the tree-lined pathways toward a two-tiered fountain topped by an impressive statue of a young child. A brass plaque on its base read IN MEMORY OF OUR DAUGHTER ANN MARIE.
Apparently, Ann Marie had been dead for more than a century. She was no doubt interred in the immediate area. Her mourning parents and any siblings she might have had were probably buried nearby as well.
As Doug walked around the vicinity of the fountain, reading the names on the headstones, he spied an isolated grave set in a copse of trees. He walked up to the large rectangular slab of stone and read the writing engraved upon it:
He that was sweet to my repose
Now is become a stink under my nose.
This is said of me,
So it will be said of thee.
There was no name or date on the headstone, only the strange epitaph. Was it really a grave or just a decorative wall with nobody buried beneath it? Either way—wall or grave—he found the verse morbid and somewhat offensive.
Moments later, he heard an engine and saw the tow truck pulling up behind the Mustang. He forgot about finding Ann Marie's grave and hurried out of the cemetery toward his car.
Forty minutes later Doug walked through his office door.
"Car fixed?" Stan asked.
"Yeah. The mechanic replaced the thermostat and added Prestone to the radiator. Anything happen while I was out?"
"Mrs. Quentin brought in her laptop again. She claims it has a virus."
"Another one? When is she going to learn how to work her antivirus program?"
"Never, I hope," the boss laughed. "Think of the business we'd lose if she did."
After a quick stop at the men's room, Doug went to his workbench and powered up Mrs. Quentin's laptop. After the Windows logo blinked off and he typed in the password, the desktop appeared. He was surprised to see that the usual picture of Mrs. Quentin's cat was no longer set as the background photo. Instead, it was a grayish screen covered with calligraphy. It was hard to read the writing because of all the fancy swirls and flourishes. However, when he eventually deciphered the first few words, an icy chill came over him, despite the warmth of the day.
"He that was sweet to my repose now is become a stink under my nose," he read.
Doug got up from his workbench and went into his boss's office.
"Hey, Stan, what time did Mrs. Quentin bring her laptop in?"
"Right before lunch. Must have been around eleven o'clock, maybe a few minutes later."
That was before my car overheated and way before I found those words in the cemetery.
"Anyone tinker with it since it was brought in?"
"No. Why?"
"Nothing. I was just curious. That's all."
"Can you fix it?" Stan asked.
"I'm sure I can," Doug replied and headed back to his workbench.
As he approached the virus-infected Toshiba, he saw the slightly crossed blue eyes of Mrs. Quentin's Siamese cat staring at him from the desktop.
"I must have been out in the heat too long. I'm seeing things that aren't there," he concluded and went to the water cooler for a cold drink.
At five o'clock, Stan poked his head into Doug's office.
"Time to pack up shop," he announced.
"I'll be done in a minute. I just finished up with Mrs. Quentin's laptop. Let me shut it down and lock it in the cabinet overnight; then I'll be ready to go."
* * *
It was at least twenty degrees cooler the following day, thanks to a heavy downpour the night before. The rain had also driven the humidity down. The weather was so pleasant that Doug did not turn on his air conditioner during the drive to work, preferring to feel the fresh air blow through the open windows.
As he neared the center of town, he drove past a succession of fast-food restaurants, a strip mall, a bank and two gas stations. Vehicular flow on the busy street was regulated by three traffic signals. The first two lights were green, but Doug had to wait for the third light because the car in front of him stopped on a yellow.
His eyes wandered from the intersection to the Dunkin Donuts on the corner. A sourdough breakfast sandwich and a cocoa mocha latte would hit the spot.
"I wonder if I have time to ...." He stopped mid-sentence and exclaimed, "Oh, no! It can't be!"
On the billboard just beyond Dunkin Donuts, he saw a now familiar verse: He that was sweet to my repose now is become a stink under my nose ....
As he stared at the words in disbelief, he heard the blare of the horn from the car behind him. His eyes went to his rearview mirror and then to the traffic signal, which had turned green. He put his foot on the gas, and as he crossed the intersection, he looked up at the billboard. There was an advertisement for the local Ford dealership where the epitaph had been just moments before.
"What the hell is going on?"
Rather than stop to chat with his fellow employees when he arrived at work, he immediately went into his office and closed the door behind him.
Ramona, the secretary, looked at Stan with raised eyebrows.
"I wonder what's wrong with Doug," she said.
It was a question several people would ask before the workday came to an end. Even Stan noticed his technician was not acting like himself.
"Are you feeling all right?" the boss asked when Doug emerged from his office at five o'clock.
"No, not really."
"Getting one of those summer colds? They can make you miserable."
"I don't think it's that. I can't really put a finger on it. I'm just feeling run down."
"You have plenty of vacation time available. Why don't you take a week off?" Stan suggested.
"That won't be necessary. I'm sure I'll feel better after a good night's sleep."
"Well, take it easy this weekend. Get plenty of rest, and I'll see you Monday morning."
Instead of heading directly home after work, Doug went back to Woodland Cemetery. He did not know what he was doing there or what he might be looking for, but he could not fight the compelling force that drew him to that odd block of marble.
As he entered the peaceful copse of trees, his eyes were once again drawn to the writing on the wall:
Even dust as I am now
And thou in time shall be,
Such one was I as thou.
Behold thyself by me.
"That's not the same verse."
He walked up to the wall, and his fingers traced the letters. No one could have changed words engraved in stone, and it was highly unlikely that the entire wall had been replaced.
"What's wrong with me?" he wondered fearfully. "Am I losing my mind?"
His hand went to his pocket and removed his cell phone. He pointed it at the wall and snapped a picture. When he returned to his apartment, he took his phone out again to look at the photo, half-expecting to see nothing but the copse of trees. But the wall and the writing were both clearly visible in the photograph.
"At least the wall does exist," he said with a modicum of relief. "I didn't imagine it. I've touched it and photographed it. I'm not completely insane."
Of course, he still had no answer as to why the verse had changed or why he imagined seeing the epitaph on both Mrs. Quentin's computer and the Ford billboard near Dunkin Donuts. Maybe the explanation he had given his boss was correct. Perhaps he did just need a good night's sleep.
* * *
On Saturday morning, no alarm sounded to wake Doug at six, so he slept until nine. He planned on taking Stan's advice to heart. He was going to relax the entire weekend. In fact, he did not even bother to make his bed or wash his dirty coffee cup.
After putting on a pair of old jeans and a Celtics T-shirt, he stretched out on the couch with his remote control. He passed over CNN and the sports channels and went right to the Saturday morning cartoons.
"I haven't watched these since I was a kid."
At noon, he made himself a grilled cheese sandwich. He felt even more like a child as he licked the gooey melted Velveeta from his fingers.
After lunch, he surfed through the channels until he found a station showing Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny was followed by Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Doug's favorite animated characters. The coyote's harebrained plots to capture the roadrunner never ceased to amuse him. However, when the coyote opened a large crate that contained an Acme rocket launcher, the screen momentarily went black. The Looney Tunes broadcast was replaced by an image of a marble wall inscribed with the words Even dust as I am now and thou in time shall be ....
In the time it took the speedy desert bird to avoid his enemy's trap, the cartoon returned, and the hapless coyote was riding a speeding rocket through a tunnel and into an oncoming train. As Doug watched Wile E. walking away from the crash on wobbly legs with his head spinning in a whirl of cartoon stars, he knew what the poor animal was feeling.
"This can't be happening!"
He sat on his couch for ten minutes with the television turned off, not knowing what to do. Finally, he put on his shoes, grabbed his wallet and keys, and went out to his car.
"I'll go to the mall and do a little shopping. Maybe it will take my mind off that damned wall in the cemetery."
As he approached the center of town, however, he headed north, not south.
"Where am I going?" the confused technician asked himself. "The mall isn't this way."
Still, he kept driving north. He soon knew where he was headed. All his attempts to turn the car around proved futile. He did not want to return to Woodland Cemetery, but he was powerless to stop himself.
"I'm like a zombie. My body is acting on its own, not at the command of my brain."
As though the Mustang were driving on autopilot, it pulled through the cemetery gates and parked in the visitor's lot.
"Why fight it?" Doug said, resigning himself to another visit to the mysterious wall.
This time he barely took notice of Ann Marie's fountain as he headed toward the copse of trees. There was no fear or surprise when he read the verse, which was different from the other two:
Stop, reader, and view this stone
And ponder well where I have gone.
Then pondering take thou home this rhyme.
The grave next opened may be thine.
Having read the words on the wall, Doug was released from the strange compulsion that had brought him to the cemetery.
"I guess I'm free to leave now."
On the way back to the parking lot, he encountered an elderly groundskeeper pushing a wheelbarrow. The old man nodded in greeting and then began trimming hedges along the walkway.
"Are you the caretaker here?" Doug asked.
"That's right. Can I help you?"
"I have a question about the wall at the end of that path, just beyond the fountain."
"Wall? Oh, you mean the grave across the way, the one surrounded by trees."
"Is it a grave? There's no name or date on it."
"That's the grave of Ambrose LeBlanc," the old man said with a laugh. "He always was one for mystery."
"You knew him?"
"Not personally. He died back in 1885. He was a bit of a crackpot in his day—so my grandfather told me. He was a regular Aleister Crowley, that one."
"Aleister Crowley? Who's he?"
"A famous mystic who believed in the occult sciences."
"And Ambrose LeBlanc was a mystic, too?"
"He preferred to think of himself as a wizard."
"A wizard? You're kidding me, right?"
"No, I'm serious. He wrote several books on the occult. He claimed he knew the secret of life and death. Before he died, he swore he'd come back. Maybe that's why there's no name or date on his headstone." The old man laughed again and continued, "I've been working here almost sixty years, and I haven't seen the soil on that grave disturbed yet. I guess Ambrose didn't know as much as he thought he did."
That night Doug searched the Internet for any reference to Ambrose LeBlanc. Several old newspaper articles confirmed the caretaker's claim that the man buried in Woodland Cemetery dabbled in the occult. One of the articles compared him to the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York, whose teenage antics resulted in the spread of spiritualism. Whereas the girls claimed they could communicate with the dead, LeBlanc went one step further, boasting he would overcome death when his time arrived.
Although Doug found the idea of a self-proclaimed wizard being buried in Woodland Cemetery fascinating, he was no closer to understanding how or why the epitaphs on the grave were able to change not once but twice.
* * *
The next day, Sunday, Doug drove to Engelbert's Diner for breakfast. The owner's mother had been an Engelbert Humperdinck fan and thus stuck him with the unusual moniker. Too bad she did not take more of a liking to Tom Jones. It would have made her son's life much easier.
As he waited for Engelbert—Bert, for short—to cook his pancakes, he tried reading the Sunday paper; however, he was unable to concentrate on the news. His mind kept straying to the grave in Woodland Cemetery, wondering what words would appear on Ambrose LeBlanc's headstone next. His curiosity eventually got the better of him. After finishing his pancakes, he got into the Mustang and headed north.
The statue atop Ann Marie's memorial fountain had become somewhat of an old friend by now, a welcome landmark. At least the writing on its brass plaque did not change. The same could not be said for Ambrose LeBlanc's tombstone. Even from a distance, Doug could see that the verse was not as long as the previous ones.
As I was, so be ye.
As I am, you shall be.
"What's wrong, Ambrose?" he said, resorting to black humor when faced with his inability to understand the peculiar situation. "Running out of things to say? Don't tell me the dead get writer's block."
This was apparently not the case, for when Doug returned to Woodland Cemetery on Wednesday, the verse was the longest yet:
Good fellow as you pass by
I pray you on me cast an eye
For as you are so once was I
And as I am so must you be.
Therefore prepare to follow me.
* * *
When Doug woke on Saturday morning, he vowed to put the matter of Ambrose LeBlanc's grave out of his mind.
"Enough is enough!"
For the past two weeks, the changing epitaphs had been foremost in his thoughts. He had a life to lead; he was not about to dwell on the mysteries surrounding a dead man's grave.
After making his bed, vacuuming the carpet and emptying his dishwasher, he drove to Market Basket to buy groceries for the upcoming week. Then, hoping to get all his chores over with early, he stopped at the bank and the dry cleaners. His final stop was the gas station.
Filling up at a self-serve pump was routine. He removed the cap from his gas tank and took his wallet out of his jeans pocket. He swiped his debit card, entered his PIN number, selected the grade of gas and put the nozzle in his gas tank. When the pump clicked off, indicating the tank was full, he looked at the meter to see how much the gasoline had cost. Instead of seeing a dollar amount, he saw the latest epitaph from Ambrose LeBlanc's headstone.
His hands started to tremble as he replaced the nozzle and took his receipt. The fact that he had no control over his thoughts upset him. Someone or something was playing with his mind, and he did not like it one bit. He was so upset that as he drove back to his apartment, he nearly ran a red light.
"I can't keep this up! I have to get to the bottom of this."
* * *
It was after eight in the evening, and the temperature was a comfortable seventy-four degrees. Doug parked his car half a mile from the closed and locked gates of Woodland Cemetery and stealthily climbed over the fence. In his backpack, he carried a flashlight with extra batteries, two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, binoculars, four bottles of Mountain Dew and a cushion to sit on.
This is every boy's dream, spending the night in a cemetery, he thought as he found a good spot where he was hidden from view yet could see if anyone approached Ambrose LeBlanc's grave.
Thanks to the long nap he had taken in the afternoon and the caffeine in the Mountain Dew, it would be easy for him to remain awake throughout the night.
At nine o'clock the following morning, the elderly caretaker opened the front gates and began mowing the lawn at the southwestern end of the cemetery. Doug put his trash and gear into his backpack and came out of his hiding spot. Then he walked to Ambrose LeBlanc's grave.
"A whole night wasted," he complained after having seen no one during his vigil. "I would have been better off ...."
He stopped when he saw that this time there was no writing at all on the headstone. He drew closer to the grave. The marble was smooth; not even a scratch or nick marred its pristine surface.
"Did I only imagine the writing?"
As he stared at the headstone, he saw a shadowy shape begin to form in its center. It took several minutes before its outline was distinct.
"It's a human hand!"
Fascinated, Doug walked up to it, reached out his arm and placed his own hand against the handprint, fingertips to fingertips, palm to palm.
The coldness of the stone rapidly spread from his hand, up his arm and throughout his body. He closed his eyes and felt the sensation of falling into a cold, dark chasm. When he opened them again, his view was clouded as though he were looking through gauze.
"What happened? Am I in the hospital? Was I injured?"
A face suddenly appeared through the veil of gray. Doug initially thought he was gazing into a mirror, for the features he saw were his.
"Thank you, whoever you are," he heard his own voice echo through the murky abyss. "I've been waiting more than one hundred and twenty years for someone to set me free."
"No!" Doug cried as Ambrose LeBlanc turned and began to walk away. "That's my body. You can't have it."
But there was nothing the computer technician could do to stop the wizard. After all, Doug was now nothing more than an incorporeal soul trapped in a slab of marble in Woodland Cemetery.
As he stared out helplessly at the statue of the little girl atop Ann Marie's memorial fountain, an unseen tool began to etch its final words on the stone:
There is no death.
What seems so is transition.
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian
Whose portal we call death.
This story was inspired by actual epitaphs that appeared on graves in Great Britain and New England.
While researching early epitaphs, I found one that was perfect for Salem!
