Heaven Has No Favorites: A Novel Read Free Page B

ashes and nothingness and a little faded memory.
    Lillian looked at the coffin. Suppose she is still living, she thought suddenly. Could it not be that Agnes had returned to consciousness once more in this inexorable box? Didn’t such things happen? Who could say how often it happened? Only a few cases were known, it was true, when the seemingly dead were found to be alive; but how many might not have silently suffocated because no one came to their rescue? Could it not be that now, right now,Agnes Somerville was trying to scream in the narrow darkness of rustling silk, trying with parched throat to scream, incapable of producing a sound?
    I’m crazy, Lillian thought; I shouldn’t have come into this room. Why did I? Out of sentimentality? Out of confusion? Or out of that horrible curiosity that makes one stare into a dead face as if it were an abyss from which we hope to dredge some kind of answer? Light, she thought; I must turn on the light.
    She started back toward the door. Suddenly she stood still and listened. She thought she heard a rustling noise, very low, but quite distinct, like nails scratching on silk. Swiftly, she pressed the light switch. The strong illumination of the bare bulb on the ceiling drove back night, moon, and horror. I’m hearing ghosts, she thought. It was my own dress, my own fingernails. It was not the last feeble flicker of life stirring one last time.
    She stared at the coffin. No, this black polished box with the bronze handles, standing there in the glare, contained no life. On the contrary—enclosed within it was the darkest menace known to mankind. It was no longer her friend Agnes Somerville who lay there motionless in her white dress, with halted blood and rotting lungs; nor was it any longer the waxen image of a human being slowly beginning to be destroyed by its own enclosed fluids. No, in this box lurked nothing more than absolute zero, the shadow without shadow, the incomprehensible nothingness with its eternal hunger for that other nothingness that dwelt within all life and grew, that was born with everyone and that was also silently growing in herself, Lillian Dunkerque, consuming her life day after day, until it alone would be all that was left and its shell would be packed into a black box just as this one was, consigned to decay and disposal.
    She reached behind her for the door handle. As she touched it, itturned sharply in her hand. She suppressed an outcry. The door opened. An attendant stood there, staring at her as wild-eyed as she stared at him. “What the hell!” he stammered. “Where did you come from?” He looked past her into the room, and at the curtains fluttering in the draft. “The room was locked. How did you get in? Where is the key?”
    “It was not locked.”
    “Then somebody must have—” The attendant glanced at the door. “Oh, the key’s still in the lock.” He wiped his hand over his face. “You know, for a moment I thought—”
    “What?”
    He pointed to the coffin. “I thought you were it and—”
    “I am,” Lillian whispered.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Nothing.”
    The man took a step forward into the room. “You didn’t get me. I thought you were her in the coffin. Whew! Sure made me jump.” He laughed. “That’s what I call a scare. What are you doing here, anyway? We’ve already screwed the lid down on Number Eighteen.”
    “Who?”
    “Number Eighteen. I don’t know the name. No need to. When it comes to this, the finest name does no good.” The attendant turned off the light and closed the door behind them. “Be glad that you’re alive and kicking, Miss,” he said genially.
    Lillian dug some change out of her bag. “Here’s something for the scare I gave you.”
    The attendant saluted, and rubbed the bristle on his face. “Thank you, Miss. I’ll share it with my assistant, Josef. After a little job like this, we can always use a shot with a beer chaser. Don’t take it so to heart, Miss. Sooner or later we