THE TESTIMONY OF CHARLES LAMB: By Michael J. Suhar
Monday, October 19th, 2009No, sir. I can’t tell you exactly what happened to Billy. It’s like I said, I was asleep when it happened. And no sir, Billy didn’t have any enemies, ‘cept the ones he made that night. But I can tell you, I got a pretty good idea what happened to him.
My grandaddy Miller was a gravedigger, and Ma used to help him sometime when she was just a little girl. He used to tell her stories of all sorta eerie goings-on that he’d see workin his shifts, and one that she told me stuck in my mind forever; somethin grandad used to call ‘grave scars.’ She told me people who’d go around wreakin havoc on graveyards, knocking over headstones and spittin on graves, when they’d go home they’d wake up the next day with all sorta scratches and cuts all over ‘em. Wouldn’t feel it when they got ‘em, no tellin how they got there, they just had ‘em.
Ma used to tell me it was the spirits of the disrespected, exactin’ their pound of flesh. I can tell you, from then on, I never stepped on a grave in my life.
So it’s two in the mornin and Billy and I, we’re walkin home from Cutter’s Bar, and he’s just roarin drunk. Shoutin and screamin and cussin up a storm from the minute we left the place. I try to get him to shut up but he won’t listen, so I decide we’re gonna cut through the old Beechwood cemetery. Get us to my house quicker, and less chance of us getting picked up off the street and arrested on account of his screamin.
So we’re walkin through and I’m stayin on the gravel road, but Billy’s just stumblin all over the place. He starts walkin all over the graves, so I yell at him, I say “Billy, get the hell offa them. Have some respect for the dead.” And he starts up even louder, just screamin and yowlin at me. “Don’t be an idiot, Charlie, the dead’s just dead, they don’t deserve no respect from me.” And I could stand Charlie yellin at me, I figure he’s just a drunk and don’t know what he’s talkin about, but then he turns around and pitches his beer bottle at a mausoleum, drops trow and starts pissin on a grave. The whole time he just keeps screamin “Go cry to mama, you dead sonofabitch!”
So I’ve about had all I can stand, and I go up and grab him around the shoulders right as he’s about to fall over drunk. He ain’t screamin anymore, just mutterin and babblin under his breath. I carry him like that the rest of the way back to my house, and I drop him on my couch to sleep. Figure ain’t no way in hell he can drive home, the state he’s in. Then I lock up, turn off the lights, and head to bed.
I slept straight through, didn’t hear no noises or anything, but when I woke up the whole house stunk like a dirty slaughterhouse. I get outta bed and go out to the livin room to check on Billy, and well… there weren’t much left of him to check. The skin on his arms is pulled back so far I can see his wrist bones, his cheeks are ripped so bad I can just about count his fillings, and most of his neck is just ripped to shreds. Blood’s seepin down into every inch of my couch cushions, already drawin flies. But the worst of it I think was his eyes, just as wide open as I’d ever seen them, like he’d watched it all happen.
No sir, I can’t explain to you why every door was still locked and there weren’t no windows broken. And no sir, I can’t tell you how it is there weren’t no knives or cutlery missin from my kitchen. But I can tell you this much: it ain’t nothin of this world could have cut those words so deep in Billy’s chest without a knife.
(Submitted for jury consideration is photographic exhibit B, displaying the victim, shirt removed, deep lacerations across the abdominal region forming the words ‘Go Cry To Mama.’)
———
©2009 Michael J. Suhar
