Read The Remains for Free Online Page B

place bore a stillness
that disturbed me. It was a place not of comfort or sanctuary, but
of ghosts. Molly’s ghost.
    I saw the spot where her casket was rolled to
a stop by the black clad funeral directors, the place where my
broken down parents stood beside it looking old and so forlorn in
their grief. I could almost see the premature death painted on
their faces—deaths that touched them both within one year of
Molly’s. I saw the bone-colored casket like it was still there;
still in place. I saw the friends and extended family who came to
pay their respects. I heard the organ music and I saw the
heavy-set, white-robed priest, beads of sweat dripping from his
forehead as he blessed the metal casket with holy water.
    I saw it all like it happened only moments
ago.
    For me, it had.
    But that’s when I began to feel like I was
being watched. By who or what I could not say. I begin to perspire,
the droplets running down the length of my spine.
    Paranoia took over. Paranoia and
claustrophobia. I became convinced the big wood doors were about to
slam shut on me. I had to get out of that pew, get out of that
church—that house of ghosts. Standing, I slid out of the pew, but
not without tripping on the kneeler. I fell down onto the carpeted
marble. Fell hard onto my chest. But I didn’t feel any pain as I
got back up on my feet, bolted for the vestibule, through the wood
doors and out into the parking lot.
    Standing by the open car door, I inhaled
long, slow breaths and exhaled them.
    What was happening to me?
    Somehow I knew it was a question better left
unanswered.
    Back in the Cabriolet I started the engine,
threw the gear shift into first, and burned some serious rubber on
my way out the parking lot.
    Time to refocus.
    Concentrate on the present. Not the past. Not
the future. Not on ghosts.
    Turning onto Central Avenue in the west end
of the city, I decided that I needed to do something to get my mind
off myself. Something totally ordinary. Something calming. Do it
before I was expected at the School of Art.
    No more churches! No more ghosts! No more
God!
    When the neon sign for the Hollywood Carwash
caught my attention, a voice spoke to me inside my head, told me to
turn left inside the lot. I’m not sure how, but I knew immediately
that it would do the trick. I hung a quick left, pulled into the
open bay, set the tires on the tracks, threw the gear shift into
neutral and let the machines take control.
    Back when
I was a kid, the last place on earth I might find calm and peace
was a car wash. I had a real fear of them. The inside of a carwash
was like being inside the belly of some mechanical beast. The
carpet strips that hung down from the ceiling draped the car like
live tentacles. Giant rotating bristle brushes tried to rip through
metal, invade the interior along with an onslaught of white,
foamy, alien goop.
    That was back when I still believed in
God.
    Naturally Molly had no trouble going through
the car wash when we were kids, the ear to ear smile she’d plant on
her face made it seem like she actually enjoyed it. Meanwhile, I’d
stand alone inside the waiting area, closed off to the soapy Buick
and the industrial machine noise by a translucent Plexiglas
barrier. I remember following the car and Molly’s distorted face
all the way along the length of the car wash. From rinse to air-dry
to Turtle Wax. I’d still be standing off to the side when the
cigarette smoking, T-shirted men made a quick clean of the interior
with their white rags, vacuum cleaners and bottles of sea-blue
spray-on cleaner.
    Not much had changed since those days, except
that Molly was gone and now I occupied the car’s interior alone,
feeling the bucking of the machines and the relentless spray of the
water against the fabric ceiling. I almost hated for it to end.
After all, I no longer believed in monsters and I understood the
mechanical utility of machines.
    Coming away from the air-dry, I threw the
transmission into first and pulled up