Chapter 7: Closing the Graveyard

Henry had pulled Lee's corpse back to his spot by the window. Hypothermia drove his senility. The old bat fully expected his house to set adrift at any moment. He waited for it. He wanted to look out the window as he floated down the Ninglick river to join the Hazen Bay. And he still had a part of his brain that whispered how the water temperature would kill him long before joining the bay. Henry was having too much fun to listen to such pessimism.

Henry had grabbed a shotgun from its perch on the refrigerator and set it on a drawer next to the window. There was almost a foot left before water would cover the surface. Time was running out. Henry had no idea how his home appeared from the outside but wanted to be prepared if the government decided to try their luck forcing an evacuation. The thought hadn't disturbed him so much when he was alone. But now he had a guest, the first in decades. No one would break up their party.

He propped Lee on a chair facing the coastline and dropped a VCR on his lap to keep him in it. It was an old VCR, heavy. It did the trick and Lee sat snugly with no threat of drifting away. Henry pulled his own chair next to him. The water met his waistline sitting. But Henry no longer shivered with the chill. His body temperature had dropped significantly to numb his legs. Henry was shutting down.

Henry looked at his guest and smiled. "It's good to have you here, Lee."
Lee still had his withered cowboy hat on, no longer frozen to his skull but dripping with melted tundra. He wore his stained flannel, still dark with mud. Not much changed for being dead over twenty years. A frozen grave preserves the body better than embalming. The trick is never thawing out.

Henry's mind conjured hallucinations, an effect of the brain losing power. At first sight, Lee appeared with the friendly smile he remembered. Now, up close without the surprise, Henry saw his hat flattened and wet, Lee's head crushed and flattened underneath it. The right side of his head bent at the temple and crammed into a sharp 90 degree angle from the second blow to the skull he had received. Henry allowed himself to remember what happened. And the party began to die.

The things he had done. Old Henry Castle turned away from his mangled comrade and stared back out the window to the water that was taking his life. The view was so peaceful, so private. Newtok had given him exactly what he wanted. He had exactly what he needed here, Isolation. The old man considered these truths to justify what he done. Facing his victim brought guilt that would kill him. But the old man was dying anyway. It was time to bring the guilt.

"Lee," Henry started, still looking out at the horizon, "I truly hope you found peace. I'm the one that put you under." Henry inhaled deeply then turned to face his victim.
"I did you wrong, Lee, and I'm sorry. I did all the wrong things for the wrong reasons. I know I got a lot comin' to me."
Henry looked back to the sea and considered this. "Is that why you're here, Lee?" the paranoia asked, "Are you here to give me what's comin?" The old man's eyes were wide with lunacy. He grabbed the corpse and looked intently into his its lifeless eyes. The VCR on his lap tumbled and sank to the floor, never to be recycled.

Splashing sounds of bubbles bursting erupted from behind. Henry spun to view another body emerge from a melting grave. It was yet another painful ambush from history. Senility subsided and Henry briefly regained his senses. He felt frozen for the first time in hours. His feet ached from dying and his testicles rang with fire. Starving muscles began to jolt and contract.

A young boy bobbed up and down in the rising waters, his stone crystal hands reaching for a grip beneath the stream. Henry forgot about Lee and stood to face this regret. Tears stood in his eyes and showered his mind.

The boy was Yup'ik, a town native. He aged twelve years and simmered with likewise mischief. Henry Castle, an isolated white man from the states, was the perfect target for the mischievous pranks of boys. The boy's mother named him Bavilla Askoak, but Henry never knew that. His mother took good care of her boy amongst grave Arctic odds. His father began training him to hunt. While a boy still finds time for fun, Bavilla found the wrong place.

Henry couldn't bring himself to remember his bitterness, the rage and defiance that drove him to murder such a young boy. He couldn't admit the predator he had been, trapping the boy and burying him while he slept. Henry had to shut his eyes and remember. The jaded bastard deserved to remember.

Some graffiti and a broken fence had cost Bavilla his life. Henry baited him with kindness and drugged him to sleep. The he locked him in a frozen cellar buried under the trailer. The sleeping boy was stuffed in there with the other frozen dead. If he ever woke up Henry didn't hear it. It was no small effort to lift solid blocks of earth and open the buried door. But such a secret had to be sound proof. It should have been water proof as well.

The old man dipped into the water and glided across his sunken living room to the boy. He was bawling, begging for forgiveness. "I owe you my life!" he cried.
He plowed a beeline for Bavilla, knocking drifting furniture out of his way. His boot landed heavy and a piece of footing fell out from under him. His head submerged as he dropped with the floor.

Bubbles began to explode throughout the water as the remaining structures of flooring collapsed in a chain reaction. Henry opened his eyes under water and saw Bavilla floating only a few feet before him. The boy seemed to be smiling with his eyes closed, maybe having a pleasant dream. Henry could only hint at this forgiveness for a moment before returning to the surface to breathe.

Large clumps of mud rose to the surface, earth breaking free of the ice. Henry was floating. No foundation remained. More splashing bursts surrounded him as more corpses thawed to freedom. Some were the buried and others were hallucinations. All were victims of Henry's hand, some died as jobs and some, like Bavilla, died as a consequence of crossing the path of sociopathic recluse.

His buried crypt had swung open with the flood waters. His perfect hiding spot washed away with centuries of ice. Hands, heads, backs, and feet all playfully broke the water's surface and lingered in Henry's home. The anxiety and hypothermia resulted in gray and block spots blurring Henry's perspective of the resurrection.

The end was here. It was judgment day. Forget the government. Henry was under attack from those he had murdered. His old lungs mustered all the scream they could as the rotten son of a bitch realized his hour of vindication was at hand.

He fled in panic, swimming back to the window and Lee's floating body, now face down in the water. Henry slammed against the wall and grabbed the shotgun from the shelf. He pumped the magazine and felt ready to collapse from the effort.

Back against the wall, his hat fallen and floating in the water beside him, Henry faced his home that had become his Hell. Dead enemies and brutal regrets danced and swirled in the flood rising over him. Henry held the gun tight and waited for a direct attack. Fear made shiver what the icy water could not.

It had been a long time since Henry Castle experienced such a true sense of fear for his life. The one desired result he always achieved in his passive assassinations was a lack of danger and fear. There had only been one instance when his death had been clutched in another man's fist. It happened twenty two years ago, just before moving to Newtok.