Feeling shunned in their new neighborhood, a family attributes the cold attitude of the neighbors to prejudice—but a little investigation unearths a more shocking motive. A conniving widower finds a new wife through a foreign dating service, but the bride turns out to know him much more intimately than he imagined. A young man enlists a shaman to exorcise a terrifying spirit from his apartment, and as he learns more about the supposed ghost, he begins to form a strange and tender bond with her. To the Solemn Graves presents thirteen illustrated stories that, while laced with the supernatural, remind us that most horror comes from the all too natural.
Feeling shunned in their new neighborhood, a family attributes the cold attitude of the neighbors to prejudice—but a little investigation unearths a more shocking motive. A conniving widower finds a new wife through a foreign dating service, but the bride turns out to know him much more intimately than he imagined. A young man enlists a shaman to exorcise a terrifying spirit from his apartment, and as he learns more about the supposed ghost, he begins to form a strange and tender bond with her. To the Solemn Graves presents thirteen illustrated stories that, while laced with the supernatural, remind us that most horror comes from the all too natural.
“Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”
-W. Somerset Maugham, recorded in Robin Maugham’s Conversations with Willie
Milagros’ fortunes changed when her husband decided that he didn’t want to be dead anymore. It was a common problem at Widow’s Peak, one that I discovered in a most gruesome way—and by then, it was too late to help her.
My family moved to Widow’s Peak shortly after the millennium. My wife and I were doctors, she a gynecologist and I a psychiatrist; we had both drawn good salaries for some time, and we decided to start reaping the benefits of our hard work. My wife was the one who found the magnificent house off of Sutton Avenue.
From Sutton, a steep drive led up to a wooded cul-de-sac. Five homes stood at the top—grand houses on an immense stretch of land, with expansive lawns and expensive cars gleaming in the driveways. The houses below could be described as upper-middle class, but this was an elite and hidden neighborhood on the vast peak of a hill. The open house was the second on the right, an Italianate structure in varying shades of tan and chestnut, the picture of elegance. I saw the interior and felt that I was destined to live there. The rooms had the same clean and opulent look, with a profundity of windows that allowed the scent of pines to blow through the house. Outside was an abundance of nature, and I was heartened by the sight of gleeful children running through Sutton Avenue below—teens and preteens like my own children. It seemed such a happy place.
When the tour of the house was finished, we went outside and met some of the neighbors. They had noticed our arrival and come out to greet us—in their own way.
We met Emma Dalton first. She stood a few feet from the front step, waiting for us with a scowl. “You’re here to see the house, are you?” she said, and without introducing herself she continued: “I hope you’re not fool enough to buy this old place. Worst money pit I ever saw. Just wait until all those extra bills start piling up. If you’re doing well now, you won’t be after a few months of living in this shit hole.”
Her language startled me. Emma was the oldest woman on the block, about sixty-five, elegantly dressed in a summer suit and matching hat. I suppose I expected her language to be just as mature and distinguished. Moreover, the house seemed completely updated and functional. I couldn’t see it as a money pit, but her words made me wonder.
Then we met Victoria and Iris. Iris mostly stood by and sneered while Victoria listed off the evils of the neighborhood: children who delighted in pranks and harassment, astounding property taxes, a faulty sewer system, and much more. “We have a procedure in place to let new people into the neighborhood,” she added. “Kind of an informal neighborhood association. People don’t just move in. Usually, we find a candidate.”
I thought I understood her implications perfectly. The neighbors’ unwelcoming attitudes likely had everything to do with our skin color or our religion, and there were other ways in which we didn’t fit in. These neighbors were white ladies who lived alone and drove fancy cars—BMW, Lexus, Mercedes—though one neighbor preferred the more practical Honda. My wife and I were born in India, and my well-used SUV bore a “Masha’Allah” sticker from the local mosque. I guessed most of the ladies to be Christian, though on closer acquaintance, most of them showed no religious inclination.
We moved in anyway. Truly, I loved that house. The first thing to delight me about it was the smile on my wife’s face as we walked through its rooms and gardens. I couldn’t have dreamt up a better home for us. I felt certain that our kids would love it, too, and that the neighbors would naturally come to respect us.
As I hoped, the children settled in nicely. They made friends in the neighborhood and spent the summer exploring the local hotspots: the northern woods, the southern woods that bordered our own property, the bike trails, the hidden river that ran through the forest, the furniture shop that housed a petting zoo. Every one of these places had a legend—including our own house. We had barely settled into the place when the kids came home and burst into the kitchen with exciting news.
“We live in a haunted cul-de-sac!” Yasmin blurted. “All the kids in the neighborhood have seen the ghosts of people who lived here before.”
“This used to be a cult neighborhood,” Aamir added. “That’s why every house has a safe room. People built them to survive the end times.”
“And then the end times didn’t happen,” Yasmin continued breathlessly, “so they killed themselves, and their spirits still haunt the woods. It’s true, Dad—even the grown-ups said that this was a cult neighborhood! Sarah’s mom told me about it. She said that all of these houses were owned by cult members.”
“Hmm,” I replied, trying to sound disinterested. Truly, though, their claims perturbed me. “Have you seen any ghosts?”
“Not yet,” Aamir admitted grudgingly.
“You’re not likely to. But fantasy is entertaining, so feel free to pretend.”
Yasmin rolled her eyes as she walked away. “Dad, you make everything so boring.”
“Tragedy shouldn’t be exciting,” I replied coolly.
My wife, Nadira, pointed out that we were living in one of these supposed cult houses “—and there’s no end times room, or safe room, or whatever you called it.”
Yasmin turned around with a gasp. “There is! You don’t know about it yet, but we do.”
“It’s behind the cupboard,” Aamir said. “Anna and Andrew have been inside of it. The whole cupboard pulls out, and there’s a staircase behind it.”
“Which one?” I asked, still trying to sound unruffled. The kids didn’t know, so I made a casual inspection of the most likely cupboard, the tall one that stood against an inner wall. Nadira paced down the hall and back, and pointed out that there wasn’t enough space for a hidden room behind any of the cupboards.
“There’s one somewhere,” Yasmin insisted. “Anna is going to come over and show us how to get inside.”
I ceased to take the claim seriously. The next day, when the kids brought Anna and Andrew to seek the hidden room, I was preparing dinner alone; Nadira had stayed late at the clinic to help with a difficult birth. Anna was just a year younger than Yasmin, a pale, freckled girl. Her brother was twelve, like Aamir, and just as freckled. I greeted the kids and invited them to stay for dinner, and then I resumed chopping vegetables. Anna politely asked me to stop. When I put down the knife and stood back, she crouched down and reached under the island.
Beneath the island were two sliding latches. Anna released them and gave a slight push, and the entire island glided quietly toward the stove, revealing an opening in the floor and stairs leading below.
I was stunned. It wasn’t until the kids began to descend the stairs that I acted. I ordered them to stay in the kitchen, and then I went down the staircase myself, testing each wooden plank before trusting it with my full weight. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling; the light flickered on when I pulled the cord.
The stairs led to a single concrete room, roughly thirty square feet, empty except for its artwork. I flipped a light switch, and the whole room became illuminated. Across its walls were scattered several crude images in the style of ancient Egypt. Most of the paintings were unfinished, but on the far wall was a completed mural. At its top, a large, featureless disc emitted rays toward two crowned human figures below. The figures were surrounded by smaller people with raised arms, rendered in yellow, red, and blue.
Yasmin had descended the stairs behind me. She peered over my shoulder and gasped. “It’s a cult room! See, Dad, I told you!”
“Stay upstairs,” I said, urging her away. “Now. Go back up.”
I spent only a minute or two surveying the room, just enough to get a sense of what was there. I ventured to the mural and studied its details. In the center of the stream of rays was an ankh—from what I knew, a symbol of life.
Dinner was abandoned. I told the kids to order pizzas. While we waited for them to arrive, I sifted through the papers the realtor had given us. In the stack were several disclosures stating that there were no wells or separate structures on the property, but there was nothing about a basement or a hidden room.
By the time Nadira returned, Anna and Andrew had shared everything they knew about the house, devoured a whole pizza between the two of them, and returned home. I forgot all about Nadira’s emergency birth and bombarded her with stories.
“They said that the man who used to live here before us—Ross Gates—supposedly died in a boating accident, but his relatives insisted that his wife had him murdered.” I repeated the tale that the kids had shared: After Ross’ funeral, his wife invited the guests to the house for a memorial. One of Ross’ cousins took the opportunity to bring a psychic along. The psychic claimed that Ross had never left the house, and that his body was buried beneath the kitchen. This was how Anna had come to learn about the moving island: Ross’ cousin, already aware of the secret passageway, had opened it and started to descend. Chaos ensued as the two families realized what was happening. The wife had the cousin and the psychic thrown out, and then she collapsed. She died soon afterward from heart failure.
“And before that, another guy killed himself in our basement—the guy who had this house built. That’s what the kids said.”
“I wonder if we should look up the house blueprint,” Nadira replied, unfazed by my stories. “It’s possible that the county has a record of the basement, but the realtor just didn’t know about it.”
“I hardly think it matters now. Even if it started out as a secret room, the neighbors seem to know about it. I’m going to see what I can find out from them.”
A slight smile played on Narida’s face. “From which neighbors? The ones on our street? Good luck with that.”
“I will get them to like me first,” I said with confidence.
From then on, I buttered up the neighbors as best I could. We regularly held barbecues on the front lawn and invited the others to eat with us, and to come and go as they pleased. I made a habit of going to each door and politely inviting each lady, putting on my friendliest manner as I entreated them. In those short greetings, I also complimented their lovely homes and asked a casual question or two, hoping that conversations about the houses and neighborhood might become commonplace. My family cooked our most delicious recipes, though Nadira suggested that we avoid too much spice; the ladies didn’t seem the type to tolerate it. The food didn’t draw the neighbors in. We tried a variety of menus: Aamir thought the ladies would prefer “meat and potatoes drowned in gravy,” Yasmin recommended “meat and vegetables drowned in butter,” and Nadira suggested orange-glazed chicken with seasoned new potatoes. Still the neighbors stayed away, with the exception of Milagros—who, if not the most welcoming, was the least chilly of the neighbors. She was younger than the others, but had a guarded and tired face that made her look advanced in years. When she first showed up on our lawn, she refused to sit, and only stood and chatted with Nadira for a few minutes. When I mentioned the discovery of our hidden room, Milagros explained that the house had originally been built with a basement, but that it had been closed off and made accessible only through a secret entryway.
“Does your house also have a hidden room?” I asked.
She lowered her gaze and folded her arms over her chest. “Not that I know of.”
Nadira excused herself, saying that she had to go inside for a while. The kids followed her, leaving me alone with the neighbor.
“They’re going to pray,” I explained. “They’ll be back in a little while. You’re welcome to stay and eat—or if you would like something to drink, I can get you something from the house.”
Milagros gave me a questioning look. “Aren’t you going to pray, too?”
I wasn’t one to keep to a prayer schedule. I hadn’t grown up performing salah, though my family kept to the other main pillars of the religion.
“I usually don’t pray at all of the scheduled times,” I said. “My parents always bundled their prayers into the evening prayer, and I got used to doing it that way.”
“Oh,” she said. “So, you’re not a real Muslim.”
I bristled at the remark. “I consider myself a real Muslim. It’s like any other religion: people follow the core principles, but the ritual elements often depend on the culture.”
She nodded absently. Then she gestured to the sticker on the back of our SUV. “What does ‘Masha’Allah’ mean?”
“Well, literally, it means ‘What God has willed.’”
“What God has willed?” she repeated slowly. “Is it like . . . when something bad happens, like a death, and people say, ‘It was God’s will’?”
“No, it’s generally meant as an auspicious term. It means that God has helped something good to happen.”
“Oh.” She frowned. A far-away look clouded her brown eyes. “So, not something bad, like . . . a death.”
“No, but people often say ‘It was God’s will’ to help them cope with difficult events, like a death.”
“But, don’t your people believe that if something bad happens, it’s because God has willed it?”
I hesitated. I suppose I was thrown off by the question. This wasn’t the first time Milagros had questioned me about religious matters. She was a Catholic, and the portico of her house was decorated with numerous Catholic-themed reliefs: the Virgin Mary, Christ, and the saints. I had assumed that the topic came up simply because we were surrounded by its symbols.
“And even if someone does something wrong, it’s all predestined?” she added. I saw something desperate, something urgent, in Milagros’ face—some need for reassurance.
“I don’t think that’s for humans to know,” I replied. “Our duty is to do our best, I think—our best to follow God’s laws, and to treat one another as brothers and sisters. My wife put the sticker there to remind us that we’ve been blessed with fortune. We have two healthy children, our parents are—”
“But, let’s say someone has done something,” Milagros interrupted. I realized she hadn’t been listening to me. Some other matter weighed heavily on her mind. “Something immoral. Is it really that person’s fault? Or are we not at fault because God already planned it for us?”
I searched her troubled eyes, wondering what nagged at her. “Are you asking for yourself?” I asked. She didn’t answer, so I added: “Since you’re a Catholic, you could go to confession and talk to a priest—or a counselor.”
Milagros chuckled nervously. She averted her gaze. “No, it’s not for me. I just wonder what other people think about these things. Life is so complicated. Isn’t it?” She turned and gazed at the houses at the end of the cul-de-sac. “I never imagined it could get this complicated.”
She thanked me for my invitation, and then made a slow walk across the street and disappeared into her house.
The next evening, Nadira sent me to Anna and Andrew’s house to round up the kids for dinner. I had some trouble finding the place, but after a couple of mistakes, I ended up at the right home. Anna and Andrew’s father answered the door. “The kids went out to the hill,” he told me. “They were here earlier, making pens. Do you want to come in? I can show you their work.”
Steve led me to the wood shop at the far end of the laundry room. Among the tools and benches were elegant-looking wooden pens in various states of assembly, carved from exotic scrap wood. We spent several minutes there as I mused over the varying colors and patterns of the wood, and over the tools themselves.
He gave me a tour of the basement. In the center of the room was a pool table, and at the far end was a dartboard and a built-in bar with mostly empty shelves. Steve also had an exquisite coffee table made from scraps of oak and locust wood, cut and patterned to form a series of Celtic designs. He explained the nuances of the different types of wood and how they endured over time. I was fascinated; my father had been a skilled carpenter, and I had many fond memories of his shop.
“So,” he said, “I heard that my daughter showed you the hidden room under your house. You didn’t know about it?”
“We didn’t. The realtor never mentioned it, and I looked through our contract papers again, but it isn’t mentioned there either. The kids insisted that it used to be some sort of cult room.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.” Steve peered at me for a moment and asked: “Has anyone told you about Hank Dalton? He was the founder of your infamous neighborhood cult.”
I said that I had never heard of him.
“Hank started a church that was all about surviving the end times,” Steve explained. “His wealthiest members bought the property up there and had homes built with safe rooms where they could ride out the apocalypse. He lived in the house at the end of your cul-de-sac. To the members with less money, he started selling these ridiculous concrete domes that they could set up in their backyards.”
“You mean . . . to take shelter from the apocalypse?”
“Exactly. Biggest con man I ever met. Before he disappeared, he made a lot of money by charging tickets for his conferences on extraterrestrials and eternal life. The couple that lived in your house were members, too. You’ll want to hear the story, if you’re living up there.” Steve went to the bar and reached into the mini fridge. “Do you want a beer? I have Guinness and—oh. Do you drink?”
“Um, no. I don’t.”
“I have this carbonated water that my wife likes.” He held up a green bottle. “I think it’s horrible, but you can give it a try.”
“Sure.”
We sat, and he told me all about Hank Dalton and his Church of Eternal Life. “Right before he started his church, there was a news special about churches that offer eternal life on Earth to its members. Turns out there are plenty of those churches: The Church of Perpetual Life, People Unlimited, the Raelian cult . . . I don’t know all the names, but the report mentioned that some of the founders had become enormously wealthy. Well, suddenly Hank was spewing all sorts of shit about how—pardon my language—about how God is an alien, and the second coming will be an alien encounter, and the aliens have advanced technology that allow their followers to live forever. Hank said that some of these other cult leaders had already met the aliens and had the technology. Oh, and he claimed that the ancient Egyptians knew all about it.”
“That explains the hieroglyphs,” I said. “They’re all over our basement. Is it true that someone died down there?”
“Well . . . yeah. The guy who lived there was about to go to prison for fraud and sexual assault of a minor. Hank’s right-hand man. Used his position to take advantage of people. He supposedly killed himself in that room. Another guy killed himself to join the aliens, and another vanished from his boat during a fishing trip. Everyone assumed he drowned, but there were die-hard members who thought he took off with the aliens. And there was one more who got a sentence for fraud. He died from a heart attack on his way to prison. That’s how that hill got its nickname.”
“What nickname?”
“People started calling it Widow’s Peak. Those guys aren’t the only ones who died. Most of the church members couldn’t afford to live there anymore, and after they left, some other couples moved in. All of the men died in accidents within the first few years. Boating accidents, car accidents . . . .”
“You mean Milagros’ husband, and Victoria’s husband, and the others,” I clarified, and Steve nodded. “You said most of the church members left. Did anyone stay?”
“Hank and Emma stayed.”
“Hank, the founder? Emma was his wife?”
“Is his wife. I don’t think Hank is dead.”
I hesitated to ask the question that was forming in my mind. I had to reassure myself that Steve didn’t believe Hank’s claims. “What do you mean?”
“The neighborhood kids sometimes sneak around up there, and they started saying they’d seen his ghost. Anna saw him, too, but he ran off into the woods.” He looked at me with a knowing smirk. “That was no ghost. Not aliens, either. It’s life insurance fraud. That’s why Emma could afford to stay: she got a multi-million-dollar payout after Hank supposedly died in a hiking accident in Venezuela. I think Hank was still living at Widow’s Peak, happy and rich as can be. A house with a safe room—perfect place to hide if anyone comes looking.”
The possibility began to sink in. The women living on that hill had some shared secret. Had they defrauded the insurance companies together? Is that why they hadn’t wanted my family to move in—because we weren’t in on the scam? Iris’ words came back to me: We have a procedure in place to let new people into the neighborhood. . . . Usually, we find a candidate.
But the more I considered it, the more I doubted. “It doesn’t seem worth any amount of money to spend your life in a hidden room.”
“Well, you’re right. Hank was adventurous. He was clever, too. I’m sure he found some way to escape whenever he felt like it. Knowing him, he probably took off and started a new life as soon as he could arrange it. If he ever got caught, he’d lose a five-million-dollar insurance payout.”
I mulled over the possibility again. “But if he died in Venezuela . . . .”
“I’m sure he bought some phony documents and snuck back into the country. Before he left for Venezuela, he told me he’d found some other way to . . . how did he phrase it . . . ‘live beyond death.’ Another life of luxury and adventure. I didn’t know what he meant, and I wasn’t interested anyway. After he supposedly died, I got an anonymous letter—here, I’ll show it to you.”
He went to the hall closet and returned with a folded letter still in its envelope. The mystery was beginning to fascinate me, but I retained a morbid sense of dread, one that intensified as I examined the irregularly scrawled handwriting: Truly I tell you that no man can escape his hell and experience the kingdom of God unless he is born again. Take it from a man who has been reborn and found paradise and the power of renewed life. Afraid you missed the boat? Don’t worry—I will be in touch soon. Think it over. Heaven awaits.
“I’m sure Hank sent it,” Steve said. “This sounds just like his high-and-mighty BS. Look at the writing: it looks like someone was trying to disguise their normal handwriting style. The return address is the local library. I waited for a follow-up message, but I never got one. This letter came four years ago. It was four, maybe five months after his supposed boating accident.”
“Were you a friend of his?” I asked.
Steve let out a sardonic laugh. “Hank didn’t have friends,” he replied flatly. “He was a sociopath. If he wanted me to join in, it was because he wanted to use me for something. He probably would have demanded part of my insurance payout.”
My gaze fell on the clock above the bar. I suddenly remembered that my wife was waiting for me.
“I should go,” I said, standing. “My wife will wonder why I haven’t come back. I was supposed to get the kids and drag them home for dinner.”
“They should be home soon.”
“What’s this hill they went out to?”
“It’s over on the other side of the neighborhood. Have you been out there?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s a huge, treeless mound out in the woods,” he said. “The kids go sledding there in winter, and in summer . . . well, I don’t know what they do. I thought it might be a burial mound. I went out there with a ground-penetrating radar a few years ago to check it out, but I gave up pretty quickly.”
I was intrigued, but I restrained myself from asking questions. As I started to leave, though, I noticed a crater in the wall next to the sofa, and I couldn’t help commenting on it.
“Your neighbor’s head made that dent,” Steve said.
I probably looked confused. He clarified: “We used to have neighborhood parties down here. Have you met Milagros?”
“I have.”
“Her husband, Alejandro, threw a tantrum one night and smashed her head into the wall. We had to pull him off of her.”
I was shocked, but only for a moment. On second thought, it wasn’t very surprising. It seemed to explain Milagros’ sad eyes and perpetual nervousness.
“He was going on about the Church of Eternal Life,” Steven explained. “I can’t remember what he was saying. Something about how the eternal life technology was real, and he was going to invest in a share. It sounded like he’d been in touch with some of the church members. Milagros . . . well, that was their first time at our house. She mostly sat there looking anxious, and when Alejandro started talking about the cult, she said something about how those men were committing a sin and they were going to drag Alejandro down with them. That’s when he lost it. He pushed her so hard that her head went right through the plaster. We threw him out and my wife called the police, but . . . it sounded like Alejandro made up some excuse about falling over on her when he was drunk. He was drunk. The police found him passed out halfway up the road to Widow’s Peak. They accepted his story, even though we all saw what happened.”
“Well,” I said, “perhaps it’s a cold thing to say, but I’m glad he’s not around anymore.” I touched the broken plaster with my fingertips. “Do you want help patching this up? I have—”
“No, we’re not going to patch it up. I promised Milagros I wouldn’t.”
I withdrew my fingers. “How come?”
“She wants me to leave it there as proof that her husband was abusive.”
“Even though he’s dead? What difference can it make now?”
Steven paused before answering; he seemed to choose his words carefully. “I just want her to feel reassured. Alejandro did die—supposedly. Milagros is convinced that he found a way to come back from the dead.”
Those words stuck in my head. I remembered them as I mused over my conversations with Milagros, as I watched her movements from across the street. She looked like a woman who had once been beautiful, but whose slouched, slow figure and weary face gave an overpowering impression of pitiful defeat. I often saw her looking wistfully at our family gatherings. If she approached, she always did so with hesitance. Had Alejandro disapproved of her socializing with others? Did she fear the return of a controlling and abusive man? As the days wore on, I began to perceive Milagros more strongly as a woman who desired friendship but feared the consequences.
I had yet to win over the other neighbors. However, I had gotten as far as Emma’s drawing room; she had invited me in on a particularly hot day. I was still wearing my formal work clothes and sweating in my long trousers, and Emma kindly offered me a glass of lemonade. An urn on the drawing-room mantle had her husband’s remains inside of it, with a small plaque bearing his name.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking,” I said, “but my parents want me to help them with their end-of-life plans. They chose cremation, but I don’t know the first thing about where to go. Can you recommend a place?”
Emma raised her eyebrows. Her expression turned cold. “That’s what the internet is for.”
“Of course.” I bowed my head slightly, in apology. “I’m sorry. Death is a painful subject. I don’t usually use the internet for something so personal. We try to go by word of mouth instead.” I glanced briefly at the urn.
Grudgingly, Emma followed my gaze. “Well, there’s the Cremation Society. I don’t have much experience with those things, either. Hank was cremated, but he didn’t die here. He had to be cremated overseas.”
Later, I learned from Milagros that Victoria’s husband had also died overseas. He’d once been stationed in the Philippines while he was in the Air Force, and had returned there to visit some friends.
Steve’s claim that the neighborhood was the site of life insurance fraud was beginning to hold weight. I researched the history of the homes and found that at least one of the original families had been investigated for fraud. The husband had reportedly died in Yemen, and his body quickly cremated, with no proof of his demise except for two death certificates: one issued by a hospital, the other by the Civil Status and Registration Authority. The investigation had been a heated one, with the insurance company going to all lengths to avoid a payout. Their main claim was that black-market death certificates could be easily bought in some countries, Yemen being one of them.
“It’s difficult when a family member dies overseas,” I told Milagros, encouraging her to continue on the subject. “My grandfather died in India a few years ago, and he didn’t have any close family left there. It took a while before we found out, and then we had to make travel arrangements. It’s agonizing, having to wait, and having to deal with tedious things in the meantime.” I gave a sympathetic glance toward Iris’ house. “Iris’ husband died overseas too, didn’t he?”
“Yes. Somewhere in China.” Milagros stared into her glass as she spoke. We were drinking together after another barbecue; she had brought a bottle of wine and downed more than half of it. I drank lemonade with her out of cordiality.
Nadira and the kids had taken the dishes into the house, leaving me to talk alone with Milagros. Even the kids had noticed that she opened up to me more than the rest of the family. I assumed, based on her comments, that this was because I was a psychiatrist: someone she could talk to about her troubles, and who could give sound advice. What her troubles were, though, remained a mystery.
I tried to think of a delicate way to approach the matter. A roundabout way seemed best, so I continued with the topic of spouses. “I nearly lost Nadira when she went back to India. She went on her own that time, and her taxi was in a traffic accident. She was okay, but . . . .” I hesitated, trying to work the subject in my desired direction. “I’m sorry if I’m bringing up a bad topic. I know you also lost your husband.”
“My husband wasn’t a good man,” Milagros said softly. “And I didn’t lose him.” She turned to me, looking into my eyes with sudden intensity. “Listen: You’re a religious man. You talk about morals and faith. And you’re a psychiatrist; you talk to sick people. You know when people are delusional and when they’re sane.”
“Well,” I began, but she interrupted.
“How much responsibility do you think we have to punish other people for their sins? If someone wronged me, really wronged me, it’s okay to defend myself—isn’t it? And if he puts my life in danger—if he threatens me—how much right do I have to self-defense? I was always told to ‘put up with it,’ that men are just that way, but it isn’t true. You’re not that way. You don’t hit your wife and threaten her.”
“Of course you have a right to self-defense,” I assured her. “It’s everyone’s natural right.”
“But how far can I go? If someone is really dangerous . . . .”
“Well, of course you should do what you can to defend your life. When it comes to punishment, though, we’re not meant to handle these questions alone. That’s why we have a justice system.”
The intensity faded from her eyes. Milagros looked away with a short, guttural laugh. “The justice system,” she repeated, her voice dripping with disdain. “The justice system helps those who have power. It stomps on the weak. It stomps harder when we try to survive.”
She was looking at her house as she spoke. I pondered her words, in particular her identification with the weak: when we try to survive. Was she thinking of the days she had spent with Alejandro, alone in that house?
I decided to approach the subject more directly. “Listen, Milagros, I hope you don’t mind my saying it, but I’ve been getting to know the neighbors, and . . . you are very well liked here, but no one misses Alejandro. He sounds like a brute. I’m sorry if I’m jumping to conclusions.”
She continued to stare for some time, but finally she half-turned to me. Her gaze fell on the patio table. “I’m better off without him, aren’t I? I could leave this place . . . sell the house, set up somewhere small and quiet . . . if he would let me.”
“If Alejandro would let you? There’s nothing he can do now.”
She smiled wryly, still not looking me in the eye. “There’s plenty he can do. These men don’t stay dead. Alejandro is going to come back . . . soon. It will be any day now. I hate to think of what he’ll do this time.”
I chose my next question carefully. “Did Alejandro believe he could return from the dead? I know there was a group of occultists in this neighborhood, and that Emma’s husband used to talk about eternal life.”
Her face flushed. She laughed nervously. “Oh . . . I had too much to drink. I talk nonsense when I drink.” Milagros got up from the table and stumbled.
I quickly stood and took her arm. She laughed again, saying she was fine, but allowed me to walk her to her front door.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s good to know that I have a neighbor like you.”
“Likewise. Come and see us any time, okay?”
Despite my intentions to make rounds with all the neighbors, I gave up on the other ladies and homed in on Milagros—and on Steve. My family began to comment on the amount of time I spent at his house. I was taken in by his hobbies and interests, many of which I happened to share. In mid-summer, he offered to take me fly fishing at a local trout stream, and I readily accepted.
When I came out of the bedroom in my wading gear, Nadira smiled slyly. “I see you dressed up for your date,” she said. “Do you really want to wear that today? It’s going to be hot.”
“I’m more comfortable in these.”
“Is this why you’ve been obsessing over your tackle box?” Yasmin asked. “You’ve been geeking out over it all week. I should’ve known it had something to do with Anna’s dad.”
“They’re having a bromance,” Aamir said, and the kids laughed uproariously.
I didn’t return home until late. Rain started to fall while I was still at Steve’s house, and it made sense that I should wait until it stopped—so we tinkered in the wood shop for a while, and then we played pool. It was just after midnight when I scaled the steep drive to Widow’s Peak, wearing my shorts and sandals and awkwardly lugging my rod, tackle box, and wading gear.
As I reached the end of my driveway, blowing uselessly at the mosquitoes that buzzed around my face, I stopped and listened. An unexpected sound had reached my ears: a faint sound of weeping. I stood quietly, peering into the dark. Perhaps I’d misheard; it might be a cat or some other animal.
Another noise, a slight creaking, drew my attention to the far end of the cul-de-sac. Emma stood on her front step. She had opened the door, momentarily illuminating herself in the entryway. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her.
The sound of weeping continued. The source came into view: a human shape, shadowy in the darkness, clumsily lumbering toward the side door that led into Milagros’ garage. The house lamp illuminated the figure, revealing Milagros’ slumped form. She carried a shovel, clutching it close to her body. I could see mud caked on the blade.
It was concern for my neighbor that made me investigate further. I worried about Milagros. She should have been free from abuse, yet she still feared her husband. I set my equipment on the lawn and quietly crossed to her garage door. Milagros had left muddy footprints in the grass. Using the light from my cell phone, I tracked them across the backyard and into the woods. The ground was still soft from the rain, and her steps were easy to trace. Some other pattern blended with the tracks: a deep, uninterrupted line, as though a stick had been dragged across the ground, or perhaps a thin wheel. It took only a minute of walking in the forest to see what Milagros had been up to.
Her tracks led to a fresh mound of dirt, long and rectangular, surrounded by footprints. The shovel’s blade had left imprints where Milagros had tried to pack down the earth. And I wondered: What did she bury here?
Fresh in my mind were the strange images on my basement walls. I had painted over them, but in my memory they remained in vivid detail—and in the photos I had taken, which I frequently examined with a morbid fascination. The ankh, the mysterious rays, Hank’s promise of eternal life, Milagros’ certainty that her husband would return from the dead. These ideas tumbled around in my mind, and a new idea formed there: that Alejandro had, indeed, been coming back from the dead, and Milagros had to keep re-burying him.
I was still standing there, scoffing at my own paranoia, when a small figure poked through the mound of earth and disappeared again.
A cry escaped from my lips; I jumped back in surprise.
I watched for a few more seconds, and then laughed at myself. The figure had surely been an animal. A gopher, perhaps. Something small. To my anxious mind, it had looked like a human hand.
My phone light strayed from the mound as I doubled over in weak, whispered laughter—but my laughter died as the mound began to move. The hand-like figure poked through again, followed by an arm, and then another hand. And then the figure sat up in the dirt, a human figure that moaned and coughed and gasped for breath. It struggled to stand, its arms waving in a crazy dance as it tried to find its footing.
My mouth was open in a silent cry. I stepped back; a twig crunched under my foot. A sound like garbled mumbling came from deep in the figure’s throat as it turned to face me. It looked like a man. He stumbled forward and reached for me—and his words became clear.
“I don’t want to be dead anymore!” he shrieked. “I’m not dead! I’m alive! Estoy vivo!”
Before I could move, his muddy hands grabbed my arms. I tried to twist out of his grasp, and as the phone light illuminated those hands, I realized with horror that the man’s fingers were broken. The bone was exposed on one of his index fingers, poking through torn flesh. I was clutched in the grasp of a mangled corpse.
I screamed.
And then I shook him off and ran, making a mad dash for the safety of my home. Damaged as he was, the dead man followed me. As I staggered into my driveway, I heard him screaming in Spanish, and again came the defiant proclamation: “I’M NOT GOING TO BE DEAD ANYMORE!”
I burst into the house and locked the door behind me. My family was roused by the commotion. Nadira and Yasmin came and stood at the upper balcony, and Aamir gaped at me from the lower hall. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nadira, call the police,” I said.
“Okay.” She started to head for the bedroom, but paused to ask: “What should I tell them?”
I yelled something like “There’s a dead man outside!” Then I hurried past Aamir into the bathroom. Something about the man’s filth on my arms and clothes was deeply disturbing—as though he might have some sort of zombie plague, some contagious condition that was seeping into my pores. I stripped off my shirt and scrubbed the filth from my skin.
When I came back into the hall, my family was gone. The front door stood ominously open.
“Nadira!” I shouted. I ran out onto the step, scanning the drive, and spotted the shadowy figures of my loved ones huddled on the road.
“Get back,” I cried, rushing toward them. I saw the crumpled figure of the dead man, lying before them on the road. Nadira crouched with phone in hand, talking quietly with the police.
“Dad, look,” Aamir said. He had fished the man’s wallet from the filthy trousers, and now he held it open to me. “Isn’t this Milagros’ husband?”
Yasmin peered at the ID, visible through a plastic window. Then she studied the man’s muddy face. “It is him,” she said. “Alejandro Cruz.”
As if in response to his name, Alejandro’s eyes opened wide. With a groan of effort, he began to sit up. He moaned, mumbled, and then his garbled nonsense once again became a crystal-clear shriek: “I’M NOT GOING TO BE DEAD ANYMORE!”
Everyone screamed. Later, this made me feel better about my own reaction: I wasn’t the only one who screamed in terror at the mere sight of a muddy, confused man.
In conversation with the police, I learned that Alejandro had indeed never died. Instead, he had secured a black-market death certificate in Mexico City. The plan was for Milagros to collect a life insurance payment and gradually transfer the funds to him. Eventually, though, Alejandro tired of the scheme. He wanted his life back, a life with his family and friends. Determined to never spend another moment in the safe room, he sealed it shut. That night, Alejandro argued with Milagros, became violent—and she fought back.
Milagros confessed to everything, with one exception. When asked whether she had struck her husband on the back of the head and knocked him unconscious, she refused to answer.
As the details continued to emerge, they only left me with more questions. Alejandro wasn’t alone in his insurance scam. He had admittedly gotten the idea from other members of the Church of Eternal Life, now deceased and beyond the reach of the law, except perhaps for one. A man from the church was questioned and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, but of those specifics I knew nothing. I began to brood over the possibility that a similar plan had been carried out in my own home. Had the previous owner killed her husband and collected an insurance payout? Was he a threat and a terror to her—or had she simply wanted the money for herself? Though the idea of psychic powers didn’t hold much weight with me, murder no longer seemed implausible.
I wasn’t alone in my suspicions. Soon after the incident with Alejandro, Steve invited me over for a few games of pool. “It didn’t surprise me at all that Alejandro was still alive and taking the insurance money,” he said gravely. “I suspected that was the case, but I didn’t want to speak up because I assumed that Milagros was involved. I don’t see how she couldn’t have been. She would have had to collect the life insurance money. She had been through so much already, and I knew she was terrified of Alejandro. I hated the idea of her going to prison for fraud.” He gave me an uneasy, perhaps guilty look. “It was wrong of me not to say anything. If there had been an investigation, Milagros could have been protected from him—and now she’ll probably go to prison. I should have talked to the police about Hank. I should still talk to them.”
“Milagros should have told them,” I replied. “But I suspect she had been to the police before, and didn’t get the help she needed.”
Steve hesitated, pursing his lips. I saw that he was debating whether to speak his thoughts out loud. “It’s not just his personality that makes me think he committed fraud,” he continued. “Hank talked to me about life insurance fraud. He said that if there’s no body, the beneficiaries have to wait several years to get a payout. He read an article about someone who bribed a boatman to claim that he had fallen into the ocean and drowned. Since there was no body, the wife had to wait seven years to get the money, just in case he showed up somewhere—and in the meantime, the guy got caught using someone else’s identity. He got fourteen years, not just for fraud, but for identity theft and other crimes. Hank said that a fake cremation could be a workaround to get a faster payout.” Again, Steve gave me that hesitant look. “The thing with Alejandro, though . . . it makes me wonder if there have been other murders.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I admitted. “I’ve wondered if Hank was murdered, and that’s why you never heard from him again. Not that Emma seems the murderous type, but . . . she’s certainly secretive. And the thing is, I saw Emma outside that night—the night I found Alejandro. She went into her house at the exact same time Milagros went in. Milagros confessed to everything except hitting Alejandro on the head, so it makes me wonder if someone else did it. And after hearing about the man who lived in my house, and how his relatives thought his body might be buried in the basement . . . .”
Steve nodded. “Wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were more. As for your basement, how would you like to scope it out? The guy’s relatives were never able to get access again, but it’s your call now. I can bring my ground-penetrating radar. If there’s a body buried beneath the floor, or behind the walls, it can tell us where to start digging.”
I readily agreed, but said that I would choose a time when my family was out of the house. I didn’t want to disturb them with my suspicions.
Milagros, meanwhile, was charged with first-degree attempted murder. Her sentencing took place some time later, but eventually she was convicted. Though there was evidence that Alejandro had assaulted her, and that she had acted in self-defense, the conviction rested on the fact that she decided to bury Alejandro alive instead of calling the police. Milagros was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Alejandro received a sentence of six years for bank fraud.
I grieved over Milagros’ fate. True, she had committed an evil—yet I understood her terror, her feelings of helplessness and isolation, her certainty that the law would never protect her. Surely she deserved punishment—but twenty-two years! If she served the full sentence, she would be in her sixties by the time she was released, and have spent more than a third of her life behind bars. Details about Alejandro’s abuse came out during the trial, details about years of “There’s nothing we can do” from law enforcement and “Put up with it” from friends and family. It enraged me that Alejandro received no punishment for all the times he had attacked and beaten Milagros, for the ways he had terrorized her.
Steve came over on a Saturday when neither my kids nor Steve’s were around. They had crept off to the local gravel pit, where some of the neighborhood kids went mud sliding in the rainy season. Though they hadn’t told me where they were going, I heard their whispers and saw how they were trying to hide their towels and extra clothes—and though I knew they’d be trespassing, I didn’t scold them. Instead, I called Steve and asked him to hurry over with his radar.
He showed up minutes later, with digging tools as well as the radar. Steve was a structural assessor by trade, but he was also a hobbyist who had helped the city locate a few long-buried artifacts. He started off by marking the basement floor with strips of tape. Then we carried the equipment down. The ground-penetrating radar looked somewhat like a push mower with a digital screen on the handle. When Steve turned it on, a series of black and white lines filled the screen. “It’s kind of like doing an X-ray,” he said. “You know what the image is supposed to look like, and you just keep an eye out for any abnormalities.”
I nodded, though I didn’t have the slightest idea how my basement was supposed to look on the screen. I watched closely, though, as Steve made a painstakingly slow trek back and forth across the concrete.
“Ross was really into these occult ideas,” he said as he worked. “He insisted that eternal life was inevitable—through science, or through spirituality. He got into some trouble in our neighborhood for trying to lure people into his so-called church. He’d invite them to a Bible study, or to a peace activist group, or some other event that was actually a front for the church. It would seem legit for a few minutes, but by the end of the day, it was all about investing in the Church of Eternal Life. There was a big uproar at the Bible study. The organizers started talking about achieving eternal life through science, and the Christians were upset. Because, you know, they believe you can only achieve eternal life through Christ.”
I listened with interest, but began to feel anxious that the kids would return soon—and then Steve stopped and said, “This looks like something.”
In the center of the screen, the lines sloped up and then down again. “What is it?” I asked.
“No telling . . . unless you want to dig it up. Should I get the tools?”
Hesitantly, I nodded.
“All right. Let’s gear up. You’ll want a mask and goggles. And earplugs.”
Steve used a rotary hammer to break up the concrete. Then we started digging. We hadn’t gone five feet beneath the surface when I caught the first glimpse of pale bone peeking through the dirt.
We dug a little more with our hands—reluctantly, my own hands beginning to tremble with dread and revulsion—until the form of the human skeleton became unmistakable, with a jutting rib cage and lanky arm still swathed in bits of fabric, and a gaping, empty-eyed skull. Steve stepped back and spoke quietly. “Let’s stop here. The police should do the rest.”
I sat back, gazing at the bones that peeked through the dirt, and felt a deep sense of mourning. The skeleton was positioned on its side, and I could see that the back of the skull was caved in. A murder had surely been committed in my house. It had happened to this person, this man who was probably Ross Gates. The sight of his brutalized remains no longer evoked any abhorrence within me. It just made me feel incredibly sad.
The kids showed up before the police did, still damp from their excursion to the gravel pit. They had presumably hosed off at a neighbor’s house and changed their clothes, but still bore numerous telltale traces of mud. The sight of them reminded me of Alejandro Cruz erupting from the earthen mound. I tried not to shudder as I took them into the backyard, where I quietly explained that a human skeleton had been found beneath our basement; the police would be in and out of the house, and would have to transport the remains, and we needed to let them have their space. The kids wanted to watch, but I refused to let them—so they ran off and told all of their neighborhood friends about the skeleton in our basement. Soon, we had gawkers lined up in the street.
Ross Gates was identified through his dental records. He had presumably died from being bludgeoned, a blow of such force that it had shattered his skull.
The sight of that broken skull, of the gaping skeletal mouth and empty eye sockets, haunted my dreams for some time—and that wasn’t the end of it. Only days later, the scene repeated itself when police obtained search warrants for the remaining three homes. I watched from my driveway as Hank Dalton’s skeleton was carried in pieces from Emma’s house. After a long search, the investigators also found human bones in a walled-up closet in Iris’ basement.
Nothing was found in Victoria’s house. Not yet, anyway.
As the days went on, we picked up details from the news media. We learned that Emma had received nearly two million dollars from her husband’s life insurance policy, and waited several months before beginning to make transfers to a bank account in Moldova. After only a few deposits, the transfers suddenly stopped. This, prosecutors presumed, was because she had murdered him, and thus no longer needed to move the money. The autopsy report matched the theory perfectly—but proving that Emma was the killer, that was a tricky matter. She vehemently denied any knowledge of his death.
Eventually, she went to prison.
Iris’ husband had also been murdered. His death appeared to have followed Hank’s by only a few weeks. Iris had made a significant mistake when concealing the body: she had enclosed with it the expensive Swiss sculpture she had used to bludgeon him, and the supplies she’d used to clean up his blood—all of which still bore her fingerprints and DNA. Iris insisted that she, too, had acted in self-defense, that her husband had blackmailed and threatened her, that he had assaulted her in a fit of rage.
Meanwhile, the Gates’ insurance money had been inherited by relatives. The bank filed a civil lawsuit in an attempt to reclaim it.
I watched these reports with keen fascination—mostly, I told myself, because I had to be informed about what had happened in my home and community. I needed to know for my family’s sake and my own—but knowing had drawbacks. At work, I found it difficult to focus on my patients. I was generally distracted and found myself having numerous small accidents: cutting my fingers while chopping vegetables, running a stop sign, missing my exits while trying to drive anywhere. I took a few days off from work and tried to settle down, but the reports continued to come, and they rattled me.
One night, after an evening news segment that replayed the footage of Hank’s skeleton being removed from our cul-de-sac, I went to my wife and hugged her tightly. “I love you,” I told her in a near whisper. “I love that you are good-hearted and reliable, and that you are kind, and that you are honest. Thank you for that.”
Wordlessly, she returned my embrace. The sensation of her body settling into mine gave me a sense of comfort and stability.
“We’ve made this a happy place, haven’t we?” I asked.
“We have.”
“But this entire house is built on murder and deceit, and deprivation. Every embellishment was paid for with it. It doesn’t look pretty to me anymore. It doesn’t look like our home. And what kind of neighbors do you think we’ll have now? What kind of people would want to live here?”
She tilted her head back and looked up at me. “Do you want to move? The kids love it here.”
“I know.” I kissed her forehead. “I suppose time and togetherness will take care of it. We will continue to make this a happy place.”
And so I try. That is my job, after all: to create hope, joy, and everything that is sound and beautiful in life, even when the foundation of the past contains the ugliest of circumstances. But how can you repair the spirit of a home, a whole neighborhood, that was built entirely on depravity? Is it better to raze it to the ground and start over? Despite my family rituals and prayers, and despite all of my healing intentions, I remain haunted by the image of Alejandro Cruz clawing his way up from the earth in filth and agony. I am haunted, too, by his cruelty. I can’t forget the corpse that rotted in the foundation of my own house, the grisly murders that financed these beautiful estates.
I have yet to find out if my vow to my wife has any merit—my assertion that time and effort will heal such ugliness. One part of me, the dutiful mental health professional, insists that it is more than possible. We need only to refrain from harping on what we cannot change, and to focus on what we can treat and create anew, in spite of what inevitably haunts us. Yet, the tragedy at Widow’s Peak has perhaps given me better empathy for my patients, in that I now know what it is to meet real evil and violence, and to feel small and helpless in its stead.
I often visit Milagros. She, too, has faced evil, and through her I find a strange comfort. I know that she committed a crime; I know she chose wrongly, but when I see how much better she fares in prison, I find it easy to forgive what she did to escape her previous life. In prison, her eyes are no longer anxious, and there is genuine warmth in her smile when she greets me. She is creating joy on a foundation of wretchedness. My hope lives there in her smile.
To the Solemn Graves is a book of 13 short stories. They have a diverse cast of characters with diverse viewpoints but all of them have one thing in common. They deal with ghosts in some way. Some of the stories have actual ghosts or ghost like encounters while others are more grounded in the natural world. But most of the stories have a deeper meaning and go beyond just spooks and scares.
From a family adjusting to a new home, to a "mail order bride" who knows more than she is letting on to a creaky staircase where a writer finds inspiration and something sinister, the stories are all fairly entertaining. The illustrations are well made and haunting.
Like any short story collection there are some stories that stand out more than others and much of that is based on the readers taste. In this volume it seems to me the ones that shine brightest are the ones which reveal a more human and often times more evil motive than a ghost might have. My personal favorite was the one titled Consequences which proves to be a good mix of the real, the surreal, and the supernatural.
Another aspect that is often lacking in ghost stories but is present here is diversity. The characters come for a good variety of genders, sexual identities and backgrounds making for a refreshing read. Kim Idynne excels at getting the reading into the head of her characters quickly no matter who they are and where they come from.
If you enjoy ghost stories but are looking for something with a few surprise twists and turns, with engaging characters and a decent payoff in each story, To the Solemn Graves is definitely worth reading. If another collection comes from this author I expect it will also be a refreshing read when it appears.