Dust & Grim

2. baggage

“MY BROTHER SUCKS,” MOLLY SAID MINUTES LATER AS SHE STOOD IN THE driveway (also: the parking lot) with Uncle Gordo. She grunted as she hauled a steamer trunk out of the back of a broad-chested Cadillac. The trunk, onto which she’d painted in hot pink the word kosupure, thudded onto the gravel, kicking up some summer dust. “You could help, you know.”

“I am helping. I’m helping with the law.” He shrugged, then feigned a dramatic wince. “Besides. Bad hips. Sorry.”

“Uh-huh.” She hoisted her backpack out next, slung it over her shoulders. “Anyway. Wow, that Dusty dude—like, hello, judgy much? A total Judgy McJudgypants! What a jerk. I mean, the first time I meet my brother, he’s just a big snoot about everything.”

“Reminds me of your dad,” Gordo said with no small bitterness. “He always judged me. And he had no room to judge, lemme tell you. But it’s early in the process, relax. We did surprise him, and we’re asking a lot. A lot a lot.”

“Dustin thinks I’m trash. He lives in this big old house and I’m just road garbage to him. Like a dead possum.”

“You’re not a possum.”

“I didn’t say I was a possum, I just said—”

“I get it,” Gordo said, obviously tired of her. “Do you want him to respect you, or do you want the money?”

I want him to like me. That, an uninvited thought. A trespasser traipsing around her brain. Molly scowled. “So what’s the play here?”

“The play? The play is we wait. He’ll relent. He has to. Your dad owned half of this place.” At this, Gordo twitched visibly. “When your mother inherited it from her family or whatever, she put Stevie’s name on the deed, too. That’s his name over there—” He pointed to the wooden sign hanging in front of the house: ASHE AND GRIM SOLEMNITIES.

“Our name on the sign.”

Gordo grinned. “That’s the attitude I like to hear. Forget your dad. This is about you. About us.”

“You didn’t like my father very much, did you?”

A visible tension seized him. “Not a fan, no. He got himself into scrapes, but he always turned up heads, like a bad penny. I had to fight tooth and nail for everything. Him? Luck seemed to fall into his lap. Blessed little Stevie.”

“You’re not wrong, Unc.” It was like with rent. Steve-o-roonie was always, always, always late with the rent. But by the time the landlord—an old dude who had the body of a broken broomstick—came around to make a fuss, her father seemed to find the money. Someone “owed” him, or he “found” an old baseball card he could sell, or he won just enough on a scratch-off lottery ticket. Every time. Though he never managed to find extra cash when Molly needed something, like new X-Acto blades or EVA foam. Only way she afforded any of it—the gear, the makeup, the hair dye—was usually to sell his stuff to the pawnshop. Which he’d then buy back. And which she’d steal and resell again.

“I’m never wrong.”

“I don’t miss him,” she added suddenly. But she wondered if she really meant that? A little part of her did miss him. He was fun, and funny. He’d seemed to love her, maybe. He’d just loved himself more.

Well, whatever. Like Uncle Gordo said, Forget your dad.

Boom. Done. Forgotten.

Molly looked around to take stock of her new—temporary—home. The house here loomed over everything. A pointy-headed Victorian with narrow shoulders, it had the presence of a surly vicar or a grumpy bishop. Beyond that was a wooden outbuilding—a black barn with an Amish hex over the doors—its style out of sync with the house. Beyond that were the rolling hills of this part of Pennsylvania, and beyond those waited a sprawling dark forest of pine and oak. Oh, cool, creepy woods, Molly thought. She told herself: Remind me never to go there. Behind them, the driveway snaked through swaying meadows of tall grass and blotchy wildflowers, leading to a ribbon of country road.

It was all very remote. Molly had grown up in the city, a bustling, busy place. This was quiet. Too quiet. A weird thought struck her: If something were to happen to me out here, would anyone even know? She shivered at the thought.

Something moved out on the country road just then, catching Molly’s eye. Sunlight glinted off a vehicle, a pickup truck, boxy and old. It turned off the road and bounded down the serpentine driveway, dipping and bumping into every divot, ditch, and pothole that Molly and Gordo had also hit on their approach. It roared up to the house, lurching as the driver applied the brakes at the last second. A cloud of dust came in behind it, like a filthy ghost.

“Who’s this?” Molly asked. “Dustin’s lawyer?”

“Don’t think so. Looks like Vivacia Sims,” Gordo answered. The Black woman who stepped out of the truck wore a corduroy blazer over a white tee. She was tall and thin. Severe in every way—like whoever had drawn her had done so with an X-Acto knife, not a pen or a brush.

The lady didn’t give them one look before hurrying up to the house with long, confident strides. The door slammed shut behind her.

“And who exactly is Vivacia Sims?”

“She helps run this place. You saw him—Dustin is young. Too young to really”—he flapped a rubbery hand in the air—“manage anything. So she does it. She was a friend of your mother’s.”

“You know a lot.”

Grumpily, he said, “I do my homework. I’m a real lawyer, you know.”

“Who just so happens to have his face on bus-depot posters. And on late-night infomercials.” She affected his New Yorker cadence, one she did not herself share: “If you’ve been the victim of a messenger-bike accident—”

“Now who’s being judgy?”

“Fine. Sorry.” She shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

“Besides, I’ve met Vivacia. Been some years, but she was a cold fish back then, and I’m guessing she’s one now, too.”

“We need to worry about her?”

Her uncle shrugged. “We need to worry about everything. I did my homework, like I said, but there’s some stuff that doesn’t line up here. This is a funeral home, but they don’t seem to do a lot of business. They got a license for a cemetery service and a cemetery—but you see one anywhere? ’Cause I sure don’t. And there was some paperwork wrapped up in Orphans’ Court proceedings that I couldn’t get unsealed by the county seat.”

“Okay. So?”

“So it’s just weird.”

“And is that bad for my getting a piece of all this?”

He seemed to think about it. “We’ll see. This is a pretty open-and-shut case.” His tone, though, told Molly that he wasn’t confident on that point, which made her nervous. Up until now, he’d assured her everything was hunky-dory. “But while you’re here… do a little detective work.”

“Detective work.”

“Yeah. Snoop around. You’re nosy.”

“I’m not nosy.”

“I caught you going through my office desk a week ago while I took a whiz.”

“Fine, I’m nosy.”

The two of them met when her father died. There was a reading of a will, which left Molly basically nothing at all—and that’s when Gordo showed up, said he was her father’s brother. He told her that Steve didn’t have much to give, no, but her mother? Polly Ashe? That was a different story. When Polly died unbeknownst to Molly, that triggered what she owed to Steve—but Steve, for whatever reason, chose not to claim it. Gordo said he could help Molly with that claim. With that, he helped get her emancipated and then started her on the path of, in his words, “getting what’s yours.”

They sold what few possessions Steve-o-polis had, which helped pay for her motel room and a storage unit not far from Gordo’s office. She’d never seen where her uncle lived—Gordo was pretty private about that for some reason. But it had been easy to snoop through his office. He drank a lot of coffee, which meant he took a lot of pee breaks—and whenever he did, she went through his stuff.

Just then, the door to the house opened anew. There, framed half by shadow, stood Dustin. Behind him, even deeper in the darkness of the house, stood the woman. Vivacia.

Dustin waved Molly over. “I have the room ready,” he called.

Oh boy. Her stomach gave a lurch. This she would have to do by herself. She’d tried on the car ride over to get Gordo to stay at the house with her, but he’d said it wouldn’t seem right—and besides, she could snoop a lot more if he wasn’t there. So, off he’d go. Leaving her here. Alone.

“Go get ’em, kid,” Gordo said, his eyes shining.

3. quatresomething tessewhoozit

THE WALK THROUGH THE HOUSE WAS HASTY. DUSTIN MOVED LIKE A MAN on a mission: a monorail silently and urgently gliding along. He walked in a curious way, his hands clasped at his middle and his shoulders pinched forward, his head leading the way in front of his feet. And he moved fast, walking on the balls of his feet. The old floorboards did not groan beneath him, and in fact, they seemed to barely register his presence at all.

Molly did not see hide nor hair of the woman, Vivacia, who had disappeared by the time Molly got up the front steps. She did note that everything in the house seemed to have its particular place—the rooms were meticulous in their arrangement. Old photos on the walls seemed to hang perfectly level, and there wasn’t a speck of dust to be found, nor the smell of must and mold one might expect in a home of this age. In fact, the place was a panoply of smells: here, rose; there, lilac; past the kitchen, a whiff of pineapple; and then on the steps, a most curious and intensely strong smell, that of fresh soap. Basic, run-of-the-mill soap. But the scent was so strong that it formed almost a full sense reaction, as if she were standing there, washing her hands, instead of climbing an old wooden staircase.

Then the scent was lost to another mundane, more expected odor: that of basic orange oil slicking the wood.

At the top of the stairs, Dustin turned sharply into the room at his right. Molly followed.

And then she did a double take.

The walls were—

Well, they were an assault to her eyeballs, for one. The room’s wallpaper was made up of four-petaled shapes intersecting like chains, their gilded lines cast against a royal blue so deep you could swim in it. And they went on and on in every direction, each four-petal flower about the size of a cup lid. Almost 3D, even though it was clearly two-dimensional. It was dizzying. Like a camera lens that couldn’t find its focus, her eyes couldn’t get ahold of any one part of it. A buzzing arose in the back of her head. Her stomach boiled with sudden queasiness.

“Quatrefoil tessellation,” Dustin said, unprovoked.

She blinked. “What?”

“The walls. The pattern. Tessellated quatrefoil. More Edwardian than Victorian, I confess.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I saw the look on your face. It can be a bit much.”

“Yeah. It is. Do you have another room I can sleep in?”

Dustin hesitated. “No.”

The bed was a narrow thing, with a white frame whose bedposts were topped with brass fleur-de-lis. “I kinda toss and turn at night,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m going to impale myself on those.”

“You could get a motel,” he said with a bit of a sniff.

Defiant, she thrust out her chin. “No. I’ll stay here. And I don’t have any money anyway, remember?”

“Fine.”

“What’s the smell?” It hit her suddenly. It was fruity and rich. And strange. One she’d never encountered before.

At that, he seemed to momentarily loosen up. “Lilikoi. Passion fruit.” A small smile found his face. “It’s a Hawaiian fruit. Well, not Hawaiian specifically, but I associate it with that.”

“Hawaii.”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t seem like a Hawaii kinda guy.”

A flinch. “I am. I’m quite taken with it.”

“So you’ve been there?”

Another flinch.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then why are you taken with it?”

“I just am,” he said, his tone as sharp as a poke from one of those fleur-de-lis. “I’m fond of the idea. I don’t have to explain it. Never mind. The rules of the house are simple: You are not to interfere with funerary business; the funeral parlor at the back of the house is off-limits; you are not to interact with any of our clients; you are not to eat any of the food out of the refrigerator, especially any of the fruits and vegetables—I use them for smoothies and such; you are to stay in your room after ten PM except to use the bathroom across the hall, and this is because the floorboards are very creaky and groany and I will be awakened by their complaining.”

Here, he paused, only to continue before Molly could reply. “You are not to change the décor in any way; I have chosen it all quite deliberately. I don’t care for popular music, so none of that; no flushing anything down the toilet except for toilet paper and one’s… expected biological leavings; the cellar is off-limits; the forest is off-limits; the attic is off-limits; do not feed any of the stray cats, not anything, not ever; no scented candles; actually, no candles at all; you are not to bother Vivacia or myself; and you are not to interfere with funerary business.”

Molly huffed. What a load of junk. “You said that last part twice,” she grumbled.

“Because it is the most important part.”

“You don’t like me,” Molly said plainly. And I don’t care.

“It’s not—it’s not that. I don’t know you. You’re an intruder—”

“An intruder!”

“I don’t mean it like that, but you are a trespasser of sorts.”

“A trespasser. Ouch.” Okay, maybe I care a little.