Chapter 51 fifty one

A pungent smell rushed straight up, and Louis stepped back, feeling a little suffocated.He stood on the edge of the grave, breathing heavily, and just when he thought he had controlled his breathing, the huge pile of things that he ate at night in his stomach spurted out and spit out on the edge of the grave.After vomiting, he rested his head on the ground, panting.Finally the feeling of throwing up passed.Louis gritted his teeth, took out the flashlight from his armpit and shone it into the open coffin. Louis was terrified, it felt like he had just had his worst nightmare. Louis saw that his son's head was gone.

Louis' hands were shaking so badly that he had to hold the flashlight with both hands, like a policeman sweeping the target area with two hands.The flashlight flicked back and forth restlessly, and for a long time Louis could not shine its light into the tomb. Louis said to himself: "This is impossible, remember what you thought you saw just now is impossible." He slowly projected the flashlight light on his son's 3-foot-long body again, from the clothes The feet of the new shoes, shining on the trousers, and then on his little clothes, the light of the flashlight was projected on his open collar, and then on...

Louis suddenly wanted to yell in anger, almost out of breath, the kind of grief and anger over his son's death suddenly came up again, suppressing the fear just now. Louis fumbled for a handkerchief in the back pocket of his trousers, held a flashlight in one hand, and bent down into the grave again, almost losing his balance and falling in.If one of the sleeve-tomb covers that had been raised just now fell, it would surely break his neck.With his handkerchief he gently wiped away the wet moss that had grown on Gage's skin, so much and so thick that it covered Gage's head.Under the cover of moss, he thought just now that his son's head was gone.

The moss is wet, but no more than a layer.He should have expected it, it had been raining for the past few days, and the sleeve vault was not waterproof.Using a flashlight, Louis found his son's coffin soaked in a shallow puddle, and he could see his son clearly in the muddy water.The undertaker knew that Gage would never be opened after being hit by a car and buried in the coffin, but he did his best to put some makeup on Gage, as undertakers always do made.Louis looked at his son as if he were an unsuccessful doll.Gage's head was bulging with lumps, his eyes were sunken under closed lids, and there was something white protruding from his mouth, like an albino tongue, which Louis thought at first had been used by an undertaker. Too much antiseptic perfume's sake.

This can be tricky to get your hands on, especially for a young child, and it's nearly impossible to know how much to use... so it's probably too much.Only later did he realize that the white stuff was nothing but cotton.He reached out and pulled the cotton out of his son's mouth, and Gage's mouth opened strangely, looking large and hollow, before closing with a pop.Louis tossed the cotton in the puddle, and the cotton floated and gleamed obnoxiously white.One side of Gage's cheek was sunken, sunken like that of an old man. "Gage," Louis whispered, "I'm going to get you out now, okay?" After speaking, I prayed in my heart, I hope no one will come now, for example, the night watchman will come to inspect the cemetery after 12 o'clock or something .But instead of facing someone spotting him with a flashlight in his face, if someone actually saw him standing in a cemetery doing it, he'd grab a bent shovel and cut through offender's skull.

Louis put his hands under Gage's armpits and felt his son's body sway as if it were boneless.Suddenly a terrible affirmation flashed through his mind: when he picked up Gage, the body would scatter, leaving nothing but broken bodies.He was probably standing by the slab of the tomb, looking at his son's broken body, screaming, and that's probably what he looked like when they found him. Louis seemed to hear a voice say: Do it, you coward, do it! He picked up his son, and picked up Gage as he always did.Gage's head dropped to his back, and Louis could see the stitches that held his son's head to his shoulders.For some reason, Louis gasped, smelling the smell of the grave, feeling his son's broken body that was as soft as a bone, and his stomach convulsed again.Louis lifted his son's body from the coffin and finally climbed out of the tomb; he sat on the edge of the tomb with his feet dangling in the air, his son's body on his knees, his mouth trembling with fear, sorrow, and love .

"Gage." Louis said and began to hold his son's body and shake it. Gage's hair was scattered around Louis' wrists like lifeless wires. "Gage, I swear, the plenum is going to be okay, Gage, it's going to be okay. It's all over, tonight. Gage, I love you, Daddy loves you." Louis rocked his son. At a quarter to two, Louis was about to leave the cemetery.In fact, picking up his son's body was the saddest moment, like an astronaut floating to the farthest point in the illusory space, and his mind also flew into a void.But now, resting, his back hurting, his tired, tense muscles twitching, he thought maybe he could go back and walk all the way back to the car with his son's body.

Louis wrapped Gage's body in a tarp, taped it down with long strips of duct tape, cut the rope in two, and tied the ends of the wrap.He can have a rolled up package again and nothing else.He closed the coffin, and after thinking for a while, opened it again, and put in the bent shovel.Let Pleasant Cemetery keep this, it will have no more sons of his.Louis put the lid on the coffin and lowered a concrete cover over the tomb.He wanted to simply push the other piece down, but he was afraid of breaking it. After thinking for a while, he tied his belt to the iron ring on the cover and gently pulled the cover over the tomb.Then he filled the hole with the shovel again, but it couldn't be restored, and maybe someone would notice, maybe no one would notice.Maybe someone noticed, but dismissed it.Whatever it was, Louis wouldn't let himself think or worry, he had a lot to do tonight!More crazy work to do, and he's tired enough now.

Hi-ho, let's go.A voice rang in Louis's head. "It's time to go," Louis murmured. The wind was up again, howling through the trees, which made Louis look around uncomfortably, laying the shovel, the obligatory pick, gloves, and the flashlight beside the freshly tied bale.He tried to use the flashlight, but controlled himself.After leaving the corpse and the tools, Louis returned to the high iron fence where he had just arrived and spent another 5 minutes on the same road.There, right across the street, was his Honda parked on the side of the road, so close and yet so far away.

Louis looked at it for a moment, then suddenly walked in the other direction. This time he left the cemetery gate and walked along the iron fence until he came to a right-angled corner.There's a gutter here, Louis inspects carefully.What he saw made him shudder.Here is a mass of rotting flowers, layer after layer, washed away by rain and snow year after year. Louis stared hypnotized at the gutter, and finally looked away with a sigh. He walked on, and it didn't take him long to find the place he was looking for, which he suspected he had deliberately remembered on the day of Gage's funeral.This is the crypt of the church in the cemetery.It is used to put coffins there in winter, because it is too cold to dig the tomb, or when there is too much business to dig the tomb, the coffin is placed first.here.

Louis knew that there were high seasons and low seasons in the funeral home business.His uncle told him before that there is a balance in human death.Sometimes many people die.If not many people died in May, surely many people died in November.But not many people die around Christmas because people are happy then and they want to live, so they do.But in February, there will be a lot more people dying, because the old people will get the flu, they will get pneumonia, and people will have heart attacks, kidney failure and so on.February is the worst month, people are tired.We are all used to it, and February is the busiest month in terms of business.But for some reason this is also the case in June and October.But never in August.There were very few deaths in August, except in accidents like gas explosions or cars falling off bridges.For a few years in February we had three layers of coffins in our funeral parlor, hoping that the weather would get warmer and the ground would thaw so we could bury them and save us having to rent a big freezer for those bodies. Louis remembered Uncle Carl laughing when he finished speaking, and he laughed too. Louis saw that the door to the basement was built on a grassy hill.The hill was just a foot or two from the spike on the high fence.Louis glanced around, then climbed up the hill.At the other end of the hill there was a clearing, maybe two hectares in total.No...not a clearing, there was a building, like a solitary shed, perhaps belonging to a cemetery.Probably the undertakers kept their tools there.The street lamps on the road shone from Mason Street through the branches.Louis saw nothing else moving. Louis slid down the hill on his buttocks, afraid to fall again and hurt his knees, and walked back to his son's grave.He almost tripped over the package containing his son's body.He knew he had to make two trips, one to transport the corpse and the other to transport the tools.He bent down, his back hurt so much that he grinned, he picked up his son's body, feeling that the body was shaking non-stop, Louis ignored the voice in his head that kept reminding him that he had gone crazy, and walked with the body Under that hill.The hill was steep, and he could see how difficult it would be to get the 40-pound body bag up without a rope, but he had to.So he took a few steps back with his son's body in his arms, and then rushed up the slope with all his strength, letting his own inertia lead him to go as far as possible.When he was almost rushing to the top of the mountain, he slipped and stepped on the grass. Just as he was about to fall, he threw the package in his arms to the top of the mountain with all his strength, and almost fell to the top of the mountain.Louis climbed to the top of the hill, looked around again, saw no one was there, put the package against the fence, and walked back to get the rest. Louis climbed to the top again, put on his gloves, put the flashlight, pick and shovel in a pile, and rested with his back against the fence.He put his hands on his knees and saw that the new digital watch Rachel had given him for Christmas indicated that it was two past one. He spent another five minutes rearranging his tools before throwing the shovel over the fence first.He heard the shovel hit the grass.He wanted to put the flashlight in his trouser pocket, but it couldn't fit in, so he threw it out through the gap between the fences. Hearing the sound of the flashlight rolling down the mountain, he hoped it wouldn't hit a rock and break it.He wished he had brought a backpack with him.Louis took the tape out of his jacket pocket again, glued the handle of the pick to the tarp, and wrapped the tape around the end of the pick several times until the tape ran out. Then he lifted the package, lifted it over the fence and dropped it. ; Hearing the soft sound of the package falling to the ground, he stepped back. It was time for him to go out by himself.He stepped over the fence with one foot, grabbed the spikes with both hands, and swung the other leg.He slipped, his toe in the shoe smacked in the dirt on the top of the hill, and he fell to the ground.He was groping in the grass as he descended the hill, and he immediately found the shovel. Under the light of the street lamp passing through the trees, the edge of the shovel was shining faintly.He struggled a little to find the flashlight. How far would the flashlight roll in the grass?He was on all fours and groping in the thick grass, his breath coming fast and his heart pounding. Finally he saw it, not five feet from where he thought it had fallen, and it was the shape of the flashlight that he recognized.He grabbed the flashlight, covered the glass with his hand, and pressed the switch, and the palm of his hand was illuminated immediately, and he immediately turned off the switch, no problem.Louis cut the pick off the parcel with the knife, took the tool across the meadow to the woods, and stood under one of the largest trees, looking at the road on both sides of Mason Street, which was now empty.All he could see was the light of a single lamp for the whole street, from an apartment building, probably inhabited by insomniacs or patients. Louis stepped out quickly and onto the sidewalk without running.Standing under the street lamps after so long in the dim cemetery, he felt exposed.With flashlight, pick and shovel under his arm, he stood only a few yards from Bangor's second largest cemetery, and anyone who saw him now would know what he was doing. Louis quickly crossed the road and saw his Honda 50 yards ahead.To him, those 50 yards were like 5 miles.Sweating on his brow, he made his way to the car, listening alertly for sounds other than his own footsteps. Louis finally made it to his car, set the pick and shovel down against the car, and reached for the keys.I can't find the car keys, and I don't have them in either pocket.His face was sweating again, his heart was beating faster again, and his teeth were clashing nervously against each other.He gritted his teeth quickly, terrified. He'd lost the key, must have let it out when he rolled on his knees on the gravestone as he jumped from the tree into the graveyard.His key must have fallen in the grass.How could he hope to find the key again if he had trouble finding the flashlight?It's all over, just a little bit of bad luck, and it's all screwed up. Louis suddenly thought, no, wait, wait a minute, and then look in the pockets.The pocket coins I had with me were still there...if the coins didn't fall out, the keys wouldn't fall out either. Louis searched the pockets more carefully this time, took out all the coins, and even turned the pockets inside out. Still no key. Louis leaned against the car, wondering what to do next. He figured he'd have to climb in again, leave his son's body outside the fence, climb back with a flashlight, and spend the rest of his time searching for nothing. ... Suddenly Louis' eyes lit up. He stooped to look into the car, where the keys were hooked to the ignition switch. Louis groaned softly, then ran to the driver's door, opened it, and took out the keys.His mind went back to the words of the father character Carl in a certain movie: Lock your car, keep your keys, and don't give good children a chance to do bad things. Louis went to the back of the car, opened the trunk, put the pick, shovel, and flashlight in, and closed the trunk.He walked 20 or 30 feet and suddenly remembered his car keys.This time he left the key in the lock on the suitcase. He cursed to himself, idiot, if you are so stupid, you'd better forget all about what you have to do! So he came back and took the key. Just as Louis was about to walk back to Mason Street with Gage in his arms, a dog suddenly barked somewhere.No, not just screaming, but screaming, and the hoarse cry filled the whole street. Louis stood under a tree, thinking about what might happen and what he should do.He stood there expecting the lights of every house in the street to go on.But only one light was actually on, and just across from the shadow of the tree where Louis was standing, a hoarse voice called out, "Shut up, Fred!" Woah - woof - woof!Fred yelped in response. "Shut it up, Scanlon, or I'll call the police!" someone yelled from his side of the street, and Louis jumped up, realizing what he thought was an empty, empty street. The idea that they are all asleep is dead wrong.He was surrounded by people, with hundreds of pairs of eyes.The dog was barking, Louis thought, Damn Fred, oh, damn the dog! Fred barked again, the first bark, and before he could answer the second, Louis heard the sound of the dog being hit hard with a stick, followed by a low whimper.Then there was another slam of the door, and then there was silence.The light in the dog's house stayed on for a while, then went out with a click. Louis especially wanted to hide in the shadow of the tree and wait for a while. It would be better after the noise had quieted down, but time was too tight.He dragged the package across the street to his car, meeting no one at all.The dog didn't bark anymore, Louis held his son's body in one hand, took out the key with the other and opened the suitcase. But Gage couldn't fit in. Louis put it vertically first, then horizontally, and finally diagonally, but no matter how he put it, he couldn't put it in.The rear trunk of the Honda is too small.Louis could have tucked the package in there, he wouldn't have minded that Gage was dead, but Louis couldn't allow himself to do that. Come on, come on, come on, let's get out of here, let's stop stuffing you in the suitcase. Holding his son's body in his hands, Louis stood behind the car, in a dilemma, unable to come up with any good ideas.Just then, he heard a car approaching.Without thinking about it, Louis walked to the driver's side of the car with his son in his arms, opened the door, put the package on the seat next to him, and ran to the back of the car to close the trunk lid.Louis then heard the voices of several drunks.He got in the car, sat behind the wheel, and started the car.He was about to reach out to turn on the car's headlights when a horrible thought occurred to his mind, what if Gage was in the package sitting face-back, forward, knees and hips bent, sunken eyes What about looking out the rear window of the car instead of the front window? It doesn't matter.Another tired and angry voice in Louis's head replied, Do you have to think about it?it does not matter. No, it does; it does.This is Gage sitting here, not a pile of towels! Louis reached out and began to stroke the body wrap lightly, like a blind man groping to determine what he was holding.Finally he found a protruding object, which must have been Gage's nose, and Louis straightened the package. After finishing, Louis put on the gear and started the 25-minute trip to Ludou Town.