I was dawdling over my fifth cup of coffee at Deacon’s when
it happened.
It was just after six am and I’d been busy keeping my
counter stool warm for the last 45 minutes. I’d been at the R. A. Stranahan
Arboretum with Chester since three thirty that morning, getting B-Roll for a
piece on how the Arboretum keeps their collection of magnificent urban flora
warm and alive during these brutal Toledo winters. To be honest, I’m pretty
sure nobody cares in the slightest about trees in the cold months, but who am I
to argue? I don’t pass out the assignments, I just cash the paychecks. Next my
editor will have me doing a story about where the ducks go when the pond
freezes, and I’m pretty sure that hasn’t been a thing anybody has cared about
since the 50s.
After filming the ever-suspenseful
winterizing process for the Arboretum, (They wrap the trees in scarves and give
them giant mugs of hot cocoa. Well, that’s not true, but what do you care?) we
opted for a late-night/ass-break of day breakfast over at Deacon’s Diner. The
diner wasn’t in Toledo proper; it was further southeast, in Abingdon, near the
lake. Deacon’s is nothing fancy, but with their motto (It’s Supposed to Taste Like That) how can anybody resist?
One incredibly unhealthy (and
therefore extra delicious) breakfast and two steaming cups of Joe later,
Chester and I were satisfied and warm. We swiveled our stools around to look
out of the windows behind us. At just after five twenty, it was still black as
sin outside. The small oases of light that the parking lot lamps made where reflected
back in the countless snowdrifts around the lot’s perimeter. This led to great
views of piles of dirty snow, and little else. The small herd of parked cars
were huddled as close to the entrance as possible, to make the door-to-door
journey more tolerable for the patrons. Truck drivers weren’t so lucky. They
had to park at the far end of the lot and hope they made it to the building
before their balls froze off.
Currently, there was only one
truck parked. It was an old bruiser of a vehicle. I couldn’t see it since it
was so far from the window and the falling snow did its best to obscure
everything outside, but the distinct neon green cab and the word “Micmac” in
large, black Helvetica letters are clearly visible from the warmth of the
diner. Chester and I played a little game of “Coming From? Going To?” with the
semi, to keep our minds occupied.
“From NORAD, to Area 51,” I said.
“Neither of those places are near
here. You’re an idiot. I say Mount Rushmore to the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier,” Chester replied.
“How very National Treasure of you,” I said. How about the Overlook Hotel,
all the way to ‘Salem’s Lot in Mai…”
The discordant chime of the
entrance being opened brought us out of our game and forced us to turn our
attention to the front door. The fact that somebody was coming into the diner took
everybody by surprise, because, as far as I could gather from the nonplussed
expressions being universally worn around the room, nobody had heard a car pull
into the lot or park. And with the odd, echo-y sound effects falling snow can
create, we should have all heard a parking car as well as feet shuffling on the
wooden floor of an empty room.
A stranger entered the diner.
Which is actually a more ominous thing to say than it really is, when you
consider that besides the doughy cameraman on the stool to my left, everybody
else there was a stranger to me. Hell, who knows if there is even a Deacon? The
new customer was borne in on a cloud of snowflakes and frozen wind. He was a
tall man, though his height was most likely augmented by his large, black boots.
He was wearing a black suit with the lithe ease of a person who is probably not
used to wearing anything else. He looked like he slept in that suit. Not that
it was wrinkled, or anything, it just had an air of belonging on him, like he
was unsubstantial underneath and much like taking the wrappings off a mummy
would lead you to an empty space (if cartoons are any gauge of how the Egyptian
mummification system worked, that is) I got the feeling that if you removed his
suit, you’d find an empty space there too, where a body should be.
He walked directly up to the
counter and sat down on the stool next to me, waving the waitress over. Being next to me, I didn’t really have the
opportunity to study what he looked like, because just staring at random people
a foot away from you is usually frowned upon in society. I turned around back
to the counter and tried to ignore the odd sensation I felt when the stranger
had walked in. My eyes traveled around the room as much as they could without
me turning my head too much and making a spectacle of nosiness. I knew it
couldn’t just be me and the pervasive, shared uneasiness confirmed it. I saw
nothing but looks of bafflement mixed with dread. As if everybody in the diner
was 75 percent sure they had just eaten raw chicken and weren’t entirely sure
which end it was going to come out of, but they knew it was going to be
explosive. The room filled with the tangible weight of looming, but incoherent
apprehension.
I reined in my eyes and focused on
the cup in front of me, my conversation with Chester forgotten. That’s when the
stranger spoke.
At this point, I wish that I had
that Mary Lou Henner disease, because looking back on it, I barely remember
anything he said. And we just talked a few hours ago. Maybe my brain didn’t want
to remember his words. Maybe as an evolutionary thing, our brains are wired to
delete the really bad stuff. I’d heard stories from vets about being in war and
blacking out, their minds turning off to scenes of utter violence and
destruction. Or maybe it’s like people who had traumatizing events happen when
they’re kids, but only remember after several expensive psychiatric
appointments.
I remember only that the
stranger’s name was Mr. Brooks and he said he was a collector. Not entirely
sure what he collected. I’m pretty sure I made a joke about Antiques Roadshow
which he laughed off with a wave of a very thin, papery, translucent hand with
faint streams of blue veins peeking through the skin. He mentioned that his
collection had more to do with rare, but non-valuable items. He owned
one-of-a-kind possessions with value only to a small number of people in the
world. It didn’t make much sense to me, but then again, I collected lunchboxes
featuring cartoon characters when I was a kid and in hindsight, that doesn’t
make much sense either.
I know that I asked him why he was
in town, but his response is somewhere, lost in my foggy brain. He was in town
on business. Though, who has business in Toledo in the middle of December, is a
mystery to me. Something about flowers maybe? I think he mentioned flowers
blooming. From what I had just seen at the arboretum, I was pretty sure that
flowers didn’t bloom in the winter, but I distinctly remember the word Rosebud.
And here things get even more
disjointed. You know how in dreams you end up changing locations, or the people
around you will mutate into other people, but instead of being confused by the
environment being so fluid, you just go with it? You’ll be in your bedroom,
say, and then you turn around to walk out and all of a sudden you’re at work.
Shit like that. Well, that’s kind of how the rest of things went with Mr.
Brooks and our conversation. One minute he’s sitting next to me and I’m trying
to wash the taste of something disturbing he told me (Something about cats?
Dogs? A couch?) out of my mouth with a swig of coffee, and the next minute,
he’s gone, the stool’s empty and I’m just staring into the black abyss of my
mug of coffee, feeling uncomfortable without knowing why. Like somebody walked
on my grave. I know that sounds weird
and overly dramatic. I can’t help it. As a journalist, I’m supposed to be
entirely objective; I rarely get to tell any stories with emotional content or
depth. So please excuse my attempts to channel a better storyteller. Anyway, like
I said: disjointed.
However Mr. Brooks managed to
disappear from Deacon’s, the diner instantly let out a collective sigh of
release. We all felt better. He had taken the oppressive vibe of dismay with
him and left us to contemplate how to spend the rest of our day. Most of the
early morning customers cleared out, emptying the parking lot with them. Even
the big rig in the back left.
Fifteen minutes and another cup of
coffee later and we’re back at the beginning of the story. Life is circular like
that. Like a big old pointless circle that goes around and around, usually
trapped in place. At least wheels get to travel. Especially the 18 wheels of a
tractor trailer.
It was just after six am when I
got the call. Seems that a couple of
young girls had decided that sledding at Dark O’Clock in the morning was a good
idea. Turns out that it is was the worst idea. One of the girls went down a
hill that led straight out onto I-98. I guess they figured that by going so
early in the morning, the road would be empty enough that cars wouldn’t be a
problem.
My editor called me while I was
still at Deacon’s. He had us go over to the hill to try and get whatever
footage and interviews we could. You know how it is, if it bleeds, it leads. So,
we paid our bill and headed over to eastern Abingdon to learn what we could.
It was a horrific scene, to be
sure. I’ll spare you the gruesome details. Nobody needs to know what happens to
a 105-lb human body when it encounters an 80,000-lb monster of metal and noise.
I tried to interview the surviving girl, but she was hustled away before I
could speak to her. Losing a sibling can’t be easy, a twin even more so. I was
able to interview the truck driver, but he wasn’t much help. His words kept
sputtering and he was too dazed to get anything out other than his breakfast
from Deacon’s that he’d thrown up on the side of the road. I stayed there with
Chester for about 40 minutes, but nobody was very talkative. From the cops, to
the guys tasked with cleaning things up and getting the remains to the
hospital, it was a wall of silence. I hadn’t expected much in the way of good
quotes anyway. It was a tragedy, but not a rare one. Well, I guess an identical
twin seeing the death of their other half is a rarity, but that kind of tidbit won’t
bring in The Great Unwashed or boost the ratings.
The only thing that did stand out
to me is that at one point, after the sun had risen and the snow had stopped
falling, I looked up to the crest of the hill and even from 70 yards away, I
could see a single figure up at the top. I couldn’t make out the details of the
figure’s face, but their black clothing stood out in stark contrast to the
frigid ocean of white around them. The person was just standing there, looking
over the busy scene at the bottom of the hill, full of bright, rotating lights,
loud engines and people scurrying around, busy in their morbid work. The next
thing I knew, the figure was gone, disappearing into the snowy landscape.
It wasn’t until later that I
learned that the body of the deceased girl had disappeared from the county
morgue. Just vanished. Nobody knew what had happened to the remains. It became
quite the scandalous mystery, for about two weeks, before people lost interest.
And in the end, there was no body to bury under the tombstone for Rosemary
“Rose” Budston.
