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Kevin Crisp

The May Selected Story is by Kevin Crisp

Please feel free to email Kevin at: kevincrispwriter@gmail.com

Kevin Crisp

MURIELLE
by Kevin Crisp

Two customers entered the flower store.

“Where’s the Christmas bear?” the little girl asked, with the perturbation typical of a five-year-old finding something amiss.

“The Christmas bear?” I repeated, looking to her mother for interpretation.

“The old lady who owned this place before you used to put a big white bear with a Santa cap in the window display around the holidays,” the mother said.

“Right next to Murielle,” the girl added, and she scurried off on hands and knees after something that hopped away desperately.

“Who’s Murielle?” I asked.

In a lowered voice, the mother said, “The woman who used to own this place…she had this manikin with long blond hair. She used to tell the children its name was Murielle. It was missing most of its parts. Horrible thing! Just a torso with a head and an arm, really. She used to dress it up and put it in the window displays.”

“A manikin?” I hadn’t seen anything like that.

“That’s right, a manikin,” the woman told me. “The old lady used to spend hours sitting in the rocker by that front window, brushing its hair and calling it Murielle. I don’t think the old lady was all there toward the end.”

I had bought the flower shop a month earlier on a whim from the old lady’s next of kin, a niece named Magda who seemed interested in tying up loose ends as quickly as possible and heading back to Peoria. I knew little about flowers, but after my wife Beth left me, I desperately needed something to do and someone to be. 

I looked around the store at all the arrangements that, despite containing all the same elements in similar juxtapositions, still looked nothing like the displays in the floral catalogs. “I thought I had found all the Christmas decorations in the crawlspace underneath the floor,” I told the customer. “But there’s a lot of stuff down there. Guess I’d better go back down and find the Christmas bear before the children get upset!”

The little girl and her mom left with a small bouquet for a sick grandmother. I told them that I hoped they’d come back soon, before turning the “Open” sign to “Closed” behind them and locking the front door.

The previous owner died quickly and without warning. Princeville is a small town, and when somebody noticed that the store had not opened for a few days, the sheriff drove down to the old store and let himself in. The niece put a for-sale sign in the shop window when she came to town to oversee the funeral arrangements. 

I was in the market for a new life. A quiet little shop in a forgotten rural town seemed idyllic as I drove across Illinois aimless and lost, not sure what I was looking for but hoping to find it somewhere. Impulsively, I signed the papers as fast as I could, purposely not giving myself time to reconsider. The business was mine almost overnight; the flowers she had arranged on what must have been her last day of life had barely wilted before I was around to water them again.

The old lady’s crap was still everywhere. Old packets of brown mustard in a pile by a nine-inch black-and-white TV set that only got one station, and that station only seemed to play re-runs of The People’s Court. Stacks of old mail order catalogs and Southern Living Magazine were knee high along the walls. Late bills and ribbon clippings covered the plywood workbench behind the sales counter. The air smelled green and musty.

A few creaky steps in the back went down to the crawlspace where the off-display inventory was kept. It wasn’t a basement so much as a half floor. There were wooden crates with never-refilled bottles of Pepsi collecting dust. Was she saving those as vases, or did she think someday someone would come back to refill them?

A long crawlspace that seemed to go on endlessly in all directions under the floor was accessible from a removable panel next to the stairs. It had a packed dirt floor and low wooden support beams holding the floor just above my head. Fragments of broken concrete and stone tore at my knees when I crawled through it. 

It was hard to see in there; the ceiling was so low that I had to crawl on hands and knees, sliding the flashlight along in the dust as I went. There were faux tombstones with silly names in one box, and heavy heart-shaped candles in another. A mouse had chewed through another box and made a nest in the inside corner next to a leprechaun’s hat. The hairless mouse pups in the nest wriggled about in the light and looked like little squirming baby fingers. I swept that entire area several times with the flashlight, but there was no sign of any Christmas bear. 

I squatted back on my haunches to rest my aching back, when the light accidentally rested on strange marks in the earthen floor. It looked as though something had been dragged off into the far corner from this point. Alongside this trail, there were a few distinct hand prints. The one nearest me was a perfect print, flawless and clear; a slender hand with long, feminine fingers.

Curious, I began to crawl along, following that trail. The dust in the air became thick and heavy, and it smelled of freshly turned earth. From out of nowhere, a camel cricket sprung into my lighted path, and then away into the darkness again. I could hear the rustling of mice all around me. The traffic driving by on the street in front of the store sounded very far away. As I approached the corner, the flashlight landed on long, golden locks of hair lying in the dust, and a chill went up my spine. 

There it was: the manikin. It lay face down in the dirt, its single, jointed limb gripped around a big, white teddy bear with a red cap. I manipulated the creaking, stubborn joints of the manikin’s arm to release the Christmas bear from her clutches and set it beside behind me.

The legless, naked manikin looked pathetic and sad. It didn’t feel right to leave her like that; it felt somehow disrespectful. Gently, I rolled her over on her back. I shone my flashlight at the face, and brushed the dust away from the baby blue eyes, the rouged cheeks and the full, red lips. I brushed the dirt from her shoulders, her stomach, and off the swells of her breasts and the ridges of her dismembered hips. 

I looked back at the big, dusty Christmas bear and saw it had a small card tethered to a ribbon around its neck. The card read, “Happy birthday to my perfect daughter, Murielle. Love, mother.” 

I can’t describe in words the loneliness I felt in that moment. My heart felt very small in the cavern of my chest. The crawlspace seemed like a tomb. This is what it will feel like to be dead and buried, I thought.

There was an old steamer trunk nearby, with a delicate white knit cloth draped over it. Faded, yellowed trunk labels depicted names of faraway places that were unfamiliar to me. I guessed that the names were from older parts of central or southeastern Europe, where ancient families identify more with blood lines than borders. That’s probably where the old lady kept Murielle’s clothes, I thought. 

With pity, I looked down at the manikin. She had been terribly scuffed up being dragged across the earthen floor. I stroked her cheek with my hand. It was as smooth as porcelain. There was a small dragonfly barrette in her hair, like a little girl would wear, and a string of fake pearls around her neck.

I pictured the old woman, tenderly brushing the hair on the manikin named Murielle as her mind fled and loneliness consumed her. Had the old woman dragged the manikin over to this corner to hide her? Did she fear what would become of her imaginary daughter after she died?

I don’t know what possessed me to do it as I ran my fingers through the silky, golden hair, but I bent over in the dark, and kissed her tenderly on the forehead, the way I used to kiss my wife Beth to wake her. Beth would groan “five more minutes” and roll over toward the wall. She wasn’t an early riser. 

I closed my eyes a moment and remembered how I used to cook Beth breakfast, bacon and buttered toast, every day. I could vividly see her disheveled brown hair as she sat on the balcony and nursed her coffee on warm mornings, dark circles under eyes that used to smile. I kept my face close to Murielle’s for a moment, so close that I could feel my breath reflected off her face and warm against my cheeks. 

There was a time when Beth loved me. That was over now. 

I opened my eyes. Murielle’s painted eyes stared up into mine, vacant, unnaturally still and dry. Impulsively, I lowered my lips to her mouth and kissed her. 

Her lips were warm, soft. Wet. They quivered at my touch. There was a little rasp, like a breath drawn quickly in surprise.

Suddenly, my blood went cold as ice. I sprang back, my head glancing against a rough support beam. Abandoning the bear and the flashlight, I turned and bolted on all fours for the dimly lit hatch, beyond which lay the landing. I thought I heard movement behind me, not the rustle of little mice, but of something larger, person-sized, struggling about in the dim and the dust. I didn’t stop until I was out of the crawlspace and on the landing again.

Through the access hole, I turned around to look back. In the indirect light from my discarded flashlight, I could see Murielle lying like a dismembered corpse amidst piles of dirt and boxes and dead potted plants.

Her head was turned toward the door now, her golden hair covering part of her face. One painted eye stared piercingly into mine. Her single arm clutched the Christmas bear tenderly to her breast, its red Santa cap tucked beneath her chin. How had the bear gotten back under her arm? 

A thin trickle of sweat ran down my forehead and across my temple. The flashlight began to flicker, and then went out. I tossed the panel carelessly over the opening and ran out the back door outside into the alleyway, where snowflakes had started falling in the lonely twilight.

*****

In the days that followed, I avoided the rear landing that led to the crawlspace as much as possible. I played with the idea of nailing the panel over the crawlspace, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I stalled my few customers with desperate, pointless chatter, hopelessly trying to forget what lay in the dust and the darkness beneath my feet. I didn’t relish being alone in the shop. I couldn’t focus on my work. My restless eyes always wandered back to the dimly-lit landing. Every sound made me jump.

During the nights, I slept rarely and then only fitfully. I was plagued by weird, haunting dreams of far distant lands in the east, beyond the reach of road or rail, where gypsy girls danced sensuously in the firelight and mangy dogs growled at encroaching shadows. Once, I dreamed that I watched an old, half-starved fisherman haul up wicked, unnatural things in a rotting net.

These were dark, forgotten places where an oppressive antiquity blurred the distinction between life and death. I awoke from these dreams drenched in cold sweat. I counted the minutes until dawn. When my eyes closed, even for an instant, Murielle’s face was there. I tried to not even blink.

On the third day, I heard noises in the crawlspace beneath the shop. There was thunk, followed by a muted shuffling that went on for several minutes before it was silent again. 

Unsettled, I put the “Closed” sign in the window and walked quickly home. But once there, I found myself too restless even to sit. I opened a beer, clumsily spilled it and swore violently. My heart raced and my fingers were ice-cold.  I crammed them into my pockets and paced nervously about the kitchenette.

It was growing dark, and I could stand it no longer. I pounded my fist once on the frame of the door as I left the apartment and headed back up the street. 

A freezing rain had begun to fall. I tucked my chin into my coat and shuffled cautiously across the slick pavement until I reached the awning in front of the shop. The bell hanging from the door clanged forlornly as I opened the door and stepped across the threshold. I left the sign turned to “Closed” and the lights out, and I locked the door behind me. 

In the shadows of the store, I stood and listened. After a moment, I heard it: a knocking, from under the floor in the corner. It was a deliberate sound, like someone at the door. 

Then it was silent. I knelt down and put my hand on the cold linoleum. After a minute or so, I heard it again. The vibrations beneath my palm assured me that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.

Hesitantly, I walked down the back stairs to the landing and removed the panel that blocked the crawlspace. Into the darkness, I called out, “Hello?” My greeting was met with only silence.

“I know you’re in there,” I said. “You can hear me, can’t you?” 

There was no reply.

My spent flashlight, I knew, lay somewhere out of reach in the crawlspace, left there from the last time when I had panicked. I flipped open my phone and used it as a light instead. The dirt was cold beneath my knees as I crawled toward the back corner where she lay. The travel trunk was open, and the contents had been rifled through. 

“Do you not like being alone in the dark?” I asked. “Do you want me here?”   

Murielle lay still, like a dead thing. 

I stared at her for a long time. The air smelled of earth like a freshly dug grave, but I could also smell moth balls, perfume and rotting silk. In the manikin’s only hand, I noticed that she held something. It was a hair brush, very old, with an intricate bronze handle and a porcelain backing delicately painted with a floral pattern. 

Gently, I lifted Murielle onto my lap, careful not to let her scrape against the rough ground. I took the hairbrush from her hand, and began slowly, gently to brush her hair. I brushed with long, deliberate strokes, again and again in one spot before moving onto the next, the way I used to brush Beth’s hair.

The manikin just laid there, wooden and unmoving, naked, and missing most of her parts. But I knew that if I stayed with her, touched her, kissed her; that eventually she would come back to life. I was so sure that the last time I kissed her, she had responded, and someday she would respond once again. I would stay here…waiting. And as I sat with Murielle in the crawlspace, for the first time in months, I wasn’t lonely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin Crisp teaches human anatomy and has published some fifteen science articles and book chapters, mainly on peculiarities of the blood-sucking leeches. When he's not working with cadavers or leeches, he occasionally finds time to write fiction. His work has appeared in Lovecraft eZine, Frontier Tales, 365 Tomorrows, and Flashes in the Dark.