That’s when I felt what I thought was the face of a doll. Cold, not so much wooden, but like Formica or plastic. I ran my right hand over the contours of the doll’s face, clearly feeling the nose, lips, eyes, cheeks and chin. But what didn’t seem normal was the size of the face. It seemed too big to be the head of a little girl’s doll.
It seemed life-size. And it seemed to be setting neatly on this unusually long table. Not setting. Lying horizontally. And not on something, but in something.
I ran my hand from the chin to the chest, gently sliding over a pair of life-sized breasts. I pulled back my hand because the horrible truth was beginning to dawn on me.
It wasn’t a doll. And it wasn’t a table. It was a coffin. And the body was that of a full grown woman.
I knew there had to be a light somewhere, so I backed away, my heart pounding, sweat forming on my brow despite the coolness of the room. I wasn’t sure if I would vomit or pass out from the fear that was growing in the pit of my stomach.
I stepped backwards toward the stairs, feeling more carefully on the wall for a switch. After grasping frantically I finally found it and quickly flipped it on. Although only a soft, pink glow came from the track lighting on the ceiling, my eyes took a moment to adjust to the light.
Then I saw them.
Five coffins, about ten feet apart, containing the bodies of five women. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what I was seeing. As I moved slowly back towards the first coffin, the one I’d bumped into, I saw that it was handmade, undoubtedly the work of Nolan in his basement workshop.
I stepped up and gazed at the face I had touched. She looked about nineteen or twenty. Very pretty. Dark brown hair. Had I not touched her face moments ago, had she been laid out in a Viewing Room at a Funeral Home I would have assumed she had died recently, maybe the day before, and that she had been embalmed either that same day or even today. But from touching her face, non-pliant and firm, I knew she could’ve been dead for weeks or months. Even years.
I turned to the four other corpses in the room. I had a fairly good idea who I was going to find inside at least one of them. I started to shake as I approached the next coffin. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before looking down. I hoped I wouldn’t be staring down into the face of the only woman I’d ever loved.
It wasn’t Alyssa. Again, I didn’t recognize this face either, but she was in her late teens or early twenties and her hair was a lighter brown than the first woman. Could she and the first girl been the two names Perry had pinpointed on his computer search?
I moved to the next one, again holding my breath. This one I recognized. It was Virginia Thistle. Because I knew she was thirty-two when she vanished twenty-four years ago it was easy to calculate that she would be fifty-six, but she looked seventeen. I wanted to cry for Gretchen, but before I would shed any tears for her, I needed to know if Alyssa was in this room too.
The next one I also recognized, but only because I had just seen her picture hanging on the wall next to Nolan’s family crest. It was Nolan’s wife, Patricia. She looked older than the others, perhaps twenty-five.
I moved to the last coffin. I was shaking, my teeth were chattering. I hadn’t laid eyes on Alyssa Kirkland in fifteen years. I hoped to the God I had stopped believing in years ago that it wouldn’t be her. I would rather know she was alive and out of my reach, than to see her dead.
I looked down.
It was as if time had stood still. Her face looked pure and unblemished. Her brown hair, longer than she used to wear it, was spread out across her shoulders. The oversized freckle on the tip of her slightly upturned nose was still there. Nolan had managed to shape her lips into the ironic pout I had found so cute. I wanted to touch her, but I knew that what I would be feeling wouldn’t be the warm flesh I’d once kissed. It wouldn’t even be the freshly embalmed corpse still pliant. It would be like touching a piece of plastic.
I couldn’t bear to do that. So I just stared. And cried.
“Closure,” I thought to myself. Is that what this is? I finally found out what happened to her, but it wasn’t over. I knew who, but before I got closure I needed to know why. As I stared at Alyssa’s face, truly looking as if she were sleeping, my thoughts turned to the only person I could help at this stage: Quilla.
I wondered if Nolan had gotten to her yet.
“Go ahead and touch her,” said Nolan, his voice causing me to almost jump out of my shoes.
I turned around. He had a gun in his hand, pointed at my head. I wanted to kill him so bad I was shaking.
“Her cheeks just had a treatment, let’s see… three days ago. Alyssa’s day at the beauty shop is Tuesday.”
“You sonofabitch!” I screamed.
“Don’t go screaming so late, Del. It’s late. The girls are sleeping.”
“Do you have Quilla?”
“Don’t worry about her.” He shook his head back. “Boy oh boy, Del. Imagine my surprise when I come in the house and find the back door open. I figure I’m being broken into. I’m saying to myself that it’s a good thing I had to come back for my glasses, I’m gonna nail the burglar. And imagine my surprise when I hear footsteps upstairs.” He shook his head again. “And how do you think I felt when I saw it’s you.”
“Where do you have Quilla?”
“She’s sleeping now.”
“Where? I looked all over the house.”
“Right in here,” said Nolan calmly. “By the way, Del, put your hands in the air. I know you probably hate me right now and would like to kill me, but I don’t want to kill you up here and make a mess. The girls like neatness and beauty. So, raise your hands slowly.”
I did what he told me, then with the gun still pointed at my head he walked to a door in the corner of the room with a deadbolt, undid it and turned on the light to reveal a tiny room with bed in it.
“Go ahead,” Nolan said, stepping back from the doorway. “Move slowly. Take a look. I’m not a mean person.”
I walked to the doorway of the room and looked inside. Sleeping on a single bed was Quilla. She was tied to the bed with two leather straps. She breathed evenly. I detected a slight snore. I guessed that Nolan had her drugged.
“What’s the deal, Nolan, is she next?” I asked.
“She’s not here to get away from her folks.” Nolan laughed. “Alright, let’s go. Downstairs. C’mon.”
“Why?” I stood my ground.
“Why what?”
“Why Quilla? Why Alyssa? Why all of them? Jesus. Your wife?”
“How’d you know she was my wife?”
“I saw her picture on the fireplace. Why, Nolan?”
“With regard to Patricia, it was a matter of not wanting her to leave me. No matter how much I begged her to stay, she wouldn’t, so one night I got this crazy idea and, well, there was never anymore talk from her again about leaving me.” He turned off the light in the room Quilla was in, then closed the door. “There’s no sense dragging this out, Del. Move.”
Nolan nudged me in the back with his gun, almost knocking me down the stairs. “Why is she in that room?”
“She’s too skinny. Needs some fattening up. The best preservation is done with bodies who have some meat on them. That’s why I’ve always had such a hard time making them damn anorexics look good. I never kill them right away. I want them to look just right when they die, especially their faces, since that’s the area of the body I’m primarily interested in. The girls I pick usually need to be a tad fleshier, considering all the experimentation and work I do on their faces, so I fatten them up a little.”