A Piedmont Porchlight Story
X. The Eighteenth Burial
On the morning of October twenty-ninth, Daniel Mercer discovered that his photograph was missing.
Not the glass plate from Piedmont Springs.
A photograph of his father.
It had stood on his bedside table for as long as he could remember, in a cheap wooden frame with a crack across one corner.
Now the frame was empty.
The glass remained.
The cardboard backing remained.
Even the little metal clips holding everything together remained.
But the photograph was gone.
Daniel examined the frame.
He checked under the bed.
He looked behind the chest of drawers.
Then he sat down.
Because the strangest part wasn’t that the photograph had disappeared.
It was that he could no longer remember what his father looked like.
He remembered Christopher Mercer.
Remembered the man’s name, his laughter, his terrible singing, and the way he’d always called him Buddy Boy.
But when Daniel tried to picture his face, there was nothing.
Not darkness.
Not a blur.
Simply an absence where a face ought to have been.
Daniel picked up his telephone.
He opened the family photographs.
His mother at Christmas.
His grandparents on their anniversary.
Daniel himself at various ages.
And there, between a photograph of his sixth birthday and another taken at the county fair, was an empty space.
The telephone displayed a small gray square.
Beneath it appeared a message:
IMAGE NOT FOUND.
Daniel stared.
Then another message appeared.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO RESTORE THIS MEMORY?
He dropped the telephone.
It struck the carpet and lay faceup.
The message remained.
Daniel backed toward the door.
And from somewhere inside the house came three soft knocks.
Rebecca Mercer was standing at the kitchen sink when Daniel came downstairs.
She wore a faded blue housecoat and was rinsing a coffee cup.
“Morning, honey.”
Daniel stopped in the doorway.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Do you have a picture of Daddy?”
She turned.
For a moment, her expression was perfectly ordinary.
Then something changed.
“A picture?”
“Yes.”
“Of your father?”
Daniel nodded.
Rebecca dried her hands.
“Well, of course I do.”
She opened the drawer beneath the telephone.
Daniel watched her remove an old envelope.
She tipped its contents onto the kitchen table.
Photographs scattered across the wood.
Rebecca and Christopher on their wedding day.
Christopher holding baby Daniel.
Christopher standing beside an automobile.
Christopher asleep in a recliner with a cat on his chest.
Daniel reached for the wedding photograph.
Then stopped.
His father’s face was missing.
Not cut out.
Not scratched away.
The photograph showed his mother standing beside a dark suit.
A shirt collar.
A necktie.
Two hands.
But above the collar was nothing.
The wallpaper behind him continued uninterrupted.
Daniel stared.
“Mom.”
Rebecca looked down.
Her face went pale.
“Oh.”
She sat slowly.
Daniel picked up another photograph.
The same thing.
A man holding a baby.
Except the man’s head wasn’t there.
The background simply continued through the place where it ought to have been.
Daniel looked at his mother.
“What’s happening?”
Rebecca began crying.
“I was hoping…”
She stopped.
Daniel felt his stomach tighten.
“Hoping what?”
She looked toward the window.
“That it wouldn’t follow us home.”
They sat at the kitchen table while the morning sunlight crept across the floor.
Rebecca had made fresh coffee, although neither of them drank it.
At last Daniel asked, “What do you remember?”
His mother looked at her hands.
“The hotel.”
He waited.
“The verandah. The clocks. That dreadful tall man.”
“The keeper.”
She nodded.
“And the professor.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“You remember?”
“Not everything.”
“What do you remember?”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
“I remember asking for you.”
Daniel felt a terrible sadness.
“Mom…”
“I remember being frightened. I remember somebody telling me I could have a son who would never be taken from me.”
She opened her eyes.
“And I remember saying yes.”
Daniel reached across the table.
She took his hand.
“But there’s something else.”
He waited.
Rebecca swallowed.
“I remember a man telling me that promises don’t disappear simply because somebody stops believing in them.”
Daniel frowned.
“Who?”
She shook her head.
“I can’t remember his face.”
A silence settled between them.
Then Daniel looked at the photographs.
“Samuel released the bargains.”
Rebecca nodded.
“Yes.”
“Then why is this happening?”
“Maybe the promises are gone,” she whispered, “but the memories they changed are still trying to find somewhere to belong.”
She stared at the empty place where Christopher’s face should have been.
“Maybe he released the promises.”
Daniel felt cold.
“But not the memories.”
Rebecca looked up.
And somewhere in the house, the knocking came again.
Three soft taps.
From the hallway.
Then the living room.
Then the front door.
Rebecca gripped Daniel’s hand.
“Don’t answer it.”
Daniel looked toward the hall.
The knocking stopped.
A familiar voice spoke from the other side of the front door.
“Buddy Boy?”
Rebecca began trembling.
Daniel closed his eyes.
His father’s voice.
“Son, I believe I’ve misplaced something.”
Daniel whispered, “What?”
A pause.
Then the voice answered.
“My face.”
Daniel rose.
Rebecca caught his wrist.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“Mom, I have to find out.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“That’s what everybody said at the hotel.”
She began crying.
He knelt beside her.
“Listen to me.”
She shook her head.
“Daniel…”
“I know you’re scared.”
“Of course I’m scared!”
He took her hands.
“But we can’t keep hiding from yesterday.”
Rebecca stared at him.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
Then she nodded.
“All right.”
Daniel stood.
He walked toward the front door.
The house was quiet.
He placed his hand on the knob.
Then stopped.
“Who’s there?”
The voice answered immediately.
“Your daddy.”
Daniel swallowed.
“What’s your name?”
A pause.
“Christopher Mercer.”
“Where were you born?”
“Anniston, Alabama.”
“What did you call me when I was little?”
“Buddy Boy.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Then asked:
“What did you tell me the last time I saw you?”
Silence.
A long silence.
Then the voice whispered:
“Be good for your mama, son.”
Daniel felt tears fill his eyes.
He reached for the lock.
But before he could turn it, the voice spoke again.
“Daniel?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t open the door.”
He froze.
“What?”
The voice sounded frightened.
“Whatever you do, don’t open it.”
Daniel stepped backward.
“Why?”
The voice trembled.
“Because I’m not on the other side.”
Daniel stared.
“Then where are you?”
A pause.
Then the answer came.
“Inside the photograph.”
The knocking stopped.
Daniel stood motionless.
Then he turned toward the kitchen.
Rebecca was waiting.
“What happened?”
He looked at the photographs.
“Mom, where did Daddy get that picture taken?”
She frowned.
“Which one?”
“The wedding photograph.”
Rebecca considered.
“At a little studio in Jacksonville.”
“Who took it?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t remember.”
Daniel looked at the image.
His mother stood smiling beside the empty suit.
Behind them was a painted backdrop.
A garden.
A stone bench.
And in the far distance, barely visible, stood a building.
White columns.
A broad verandah.
Tall windows.
Daniel felt the blood drain from his face.
“Mom.”
Rebecca leaned closer.
“What?”
He pointed.
“What’s that?”
She stared.
Then covered her mouth.
“The hotel.”
Daniel nodded.
“Piedmont Springs.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“But that’s impossible.”
Daniel examined the photograph.
In the lower corner, beneath the studio’s embossed name, someone had written a date.
October 17, 1893.
Daniel stared.
His parents had married in 2001.
He looked at the photograph again.
The date remained.
Then the image began to change.
A man appeared beside Rebecca.
Not Christopher.
Professor Elias Whitcomb.
He stood with one hand resting on the back of a chair.
His expression was grave.
And beneath the photograph, in small handwriting, appeared a sentence.
THE EIGHTEENTH BURIAL MUST BE MADE BY THE ONE WHO REMEMBERS.
Daniel drove to Piedmont Springs shortly before noon.
Rebecca insisted on coming.
He didn’t argue.
The sky was bright.
The October air was cool.
The road wound through the foothills, past old farmhouses and fields where the grass had begun turning brown.
Everything looked ordinary.
Daniel found that almost unbearable.
At the clearing, the woods stood quiet.
No excavation.
No hotel.
No clocks.
Only red clay and fallen leaves.
Rebecca walked beside him.
“Where do we look?”
Daniel reached into his pocket.
The little white stone Eleanor had given him was still there.
He held it in his palm.
It was warm.
Then warmer.
He looked toward the shallow depression.
“Here.”
They knelt.
Daniel began digging with a small folding trowel he’d brought from the car.
The earth was soft from the previous night’s rain.
Daniel remembered what Whitcomb had told him beneath the canvas canopy.
The first burial would happen on October twenty-eighth.
But the professor had been wrong about so many things.
Or perhaps he’d remembered the right event from the wrong life.
Daniel no longer knew.
And for once, he didn’t need to.
Six inches.
Twelve.
Eighteen.
The trowel struck metal.
Rebecca gasped.
Daniel brushed away the clay.
A corroded tin box lay beneath the soil.
Eight inches long.
Five inches wide.
Its clasp was dark with rust.
Daniel stared.
“The same box.”
Rebecca touched his shoulder.
“Don’t open it.”
He looked at her.
“Why?”
She swallowed.
“Because that’s how it started.”
Daniel looked at the box.
Then at his mother.
“No.”
He shook his head.
“That’s how we found out.”
The clasp broke easily.
Inside lay six photographic glass plates.
Daniel lifted the first.
The hotel verandah.
Twenty-three people.
He examined the faces.
Agnes Bellweather.
Professor Whitcomb.
Thomas.
Eleanor.
And himself.
But the figures were different now.
Thomas stood beside a woman and man Daniel didn’t recognize.
Eleanor held her mother’s hand.
Agnes was smiling.
Whitcomb stood slightly apart.
His expression was peaceful.
Daniel turned the plate toward the sunlight.
Rebecca leaned closer.
“Is that…”
“Yes.”
She pointed.
“That little girl?”
“Eleanor.”
Rebecca smiled through her tears.
“She’s beautiful.”
Daniel nodded.
He lifted the second plate.
A photograph of the hotel dining room.
Empty tables.
A piano.
A grandfather clock.
Its hands pointed to thirteen.
The third plate showed the mineral spring.
Clear water flowing over stones.
The fourth showed the hotel grounds.
No building.
Only trees.
The fifth showed a country road.
Daniel recognized it.
The road he’d driven yesterday.
And the sixth…
He stopped.
Rebecca looked at him.
“What is it?”
Daniel held the plate toward the light.
It showed a small room.
A wooden table.
Two chairs.
A window overlooking a garden.
Samuel stood beside the table.
He was smiling.
And seated opposite him was a woman holding a child.
Daniel stared.
“His wife.”
Rebecca leaned closer.
“And his daughter.”
The photograph was dated October 28, 2026.
Yesterday.
Daniel felt tears fill his eyes.
“He found them.”
Rebecca smiled.
“Looks that way.”
Daniel turned the plate over.
On the back, in Whitcomb’s handwriting, was a message.
Daniel,
If you are reading this, then you have done what I could not.
I spent 133 years trying to correct a mistake. You understood that the mistake wasn’t the ending of a life, but the belief that I had the right to decide how another life should end.
The keeper has been released. The children have been given their choices. And the world has been allowed to continue.
But memory remains.
The world cannot contain every history. It can, however, remember that they existed.
That is why the box must be buried again.
Not to hide the past.
To give it a place to rest.
There is one final thing you must do.
Turn over the first plate.
Elias Whitcomb
Daniel stared at the handwriting.
Then slowly turned over the first plate.
On the back was a list of names.
Twenty-three names.
Each written carefully.
Agnes Bellweather.
Eleanor Bellweather.
Thomas.
Elias Whitcomb.
Rebecca Mercer.
Christopher Mercer.
Samuel.
And sixteen others.
Daniel searched the list.
His own name wasn’t there.
He looked again.
Nothing.
Rebecca leaned closer.
“What’s wrong?”
Daniel swallowed.
“I’m not on it.”
She looked at the names.
Then at him.
“Maybe that’s good.”
Daniel frowned.
“What?”
She smiled sadly.
“Maybe it means you don’t belong in the box.”
Daniel stared.
Then he understood.
The photograph had once shown twenty-three people standing on the verandah.
Twenty-three people trapped in a history that should never have existed.
But the photograph was changing.
One by one, the figures began to fade.
Not disappear.
Fade into the background, as though the glass were remembering a scene that had finally ended.
Thomas vanished first.
Then Eleanor.
Then Agnes.
Samuel, who wasn’t in the original photograph, but was bound to the hotel’s bargains.
Christopher.
Rebecca.
Whitcomb remained.
He stood alone on the verandah.
Daniel watched.
The professor raised one hand.
Not in warning.
In farewell.
Then he disappeared.
The hotel stood empty.
Daniel looked at the glass.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then a final sentence appeared beneath the photograph.
THE LAST GUEST HAS GONE HOME.
Daniel sat beneath the trees for a long time.
Rebecca sat beside him.
The tin box lay open between them.
At last, she asked, “What now?”
Daniel looked at the glass plates.
He thought of Thomas running toward the blue pickup truck.
Of Eleanor asking whether she could see her mother.
Of Samuel standing beside the window.
Of Whitcomb, who had spent more than a century trying to undo one terrible mistake.
Then he looked at Rebecca.
“We bury it.”
She nodded.
Together, they placed the plates inside the box.
Daniel closed the lid.
He lowered it into the hole.
Then paused.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember Daddy’s face?”
Rebecca looked at him.
For a moment, her expression was uncertain.
Then she smiled.
“Not as clearly as I used to.”
Daniel felt a pang.
“Does that bother you?”
She considered.
“Some.”
Then she took his hand.
“But I remember how he loved us.”
Daniel nodded.
Rebecca looked toward the trees.
“Maybe that’s enough. “Maybe the promises are gone,” she whispered, “but the memories they changed are still trying to find somewhere to belong.”
Daniel swallowed.
“Maybe it is.”
He covered the box with red clay.
Pressed the earth firmly.
Then placed Eleanor’s white stone on top.
A small marker.
Nothing grand.
Nothing permanent.
Just a stone beneath the trees.
Rebecca stood.
“Come on, honey.”
Daniel rose.
They walked toward the road.
Behind them, the clearing lay quiet.
The spring ran clear.
The trees moved gently in the breeze.
And beneath eighteen inches of Alabama red clay, the little tin box rested.
For the first time in 133 years, nobody was trying to dig it up.
That evening, Daniel returned home.
He ate supper with his mother.
They talked about ordinary things.
The weather.
The price of groceries.
A neighbor’s troublesome dog.
And when Rebecca asked whether he’d eaten enough, he laughed and said he’d had plenty.
Later, he went upstairs.
The empty photograph frame still stood beside his bed.
Daniel picked it up.
He considered putting it away.
Instead, he found a sheet of paper.
He cut it to fit the frame.
Then wrote something upon it.
Not a date.
Not a name.
Just a sentence.
HE WAS HERE.
He placed the paper behind the glass.
Set the frame on the bedside table.
Then turned out the light.
Outside, the rain began again.
Soft.
Steady.
Ordinary.
Daniel closed his eyes.
And slept.
Many years later, a little girl walking through the woods near Piedmont found a smooth white stone beneath an old oak tree.
She picked it up.
Turned it over.
Years of rain had washed away the red clay, exposing a corner of rusted metal beneath the leaves.
She knelt.
Brushed away the dirt.
And uncovered a small tin box.
She looked toward the path.
“Grandpa?”
An elderly man answered from somewhere among the trees.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Come look what I found!”
The man approached slowly.
He carried a walking stick.
His hair was white.
His face was deeply lined.
And above his left eyebrow was a small scar.
He looked down at the box.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he smiled.
“Well, now.”
The little girl looked up.
“What is it?”
The old man knelt beside her.
His knees protested mightily.
He examined the corroded lid.
Then looked at the white stone.
At the trees.
At the quiet clearing.
And finally at his granddaughter.
“Something I buried a long time ago.”
She stared.
“Really?”
He nodded.
“Really.”
“What’s inside?”
The old man considered.
Then smiled.
“Yesterday.”
The little girl frowned.
“Yesterday?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked at the box.
“Can we open it?”
The old man was quiet for a moment.
Then he reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face.
“Well, sweetheart…”
He looked toward the trees.
The afternoon sun filtered through the leaves.
A mockingbird sang.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
And the old man smiled.
“…I reckon that depends.”
“On what?”
He looked at her.
“On whether you’re ready to hear a story.”
The little girl grinned.
“I love stories!”
The old man laughed.
“Well, then.”
He settled himself on a fallen log.
The little girl sat beside him.
And beneath the October sunlight, with the little tin box resting between them, Daniel Mercer began to tell her about the Piedmont Springs Hotel.
About a professor who remembered too much.
About a mother who loved too fiercely.
About a little boy named Thomas.
About a girl named Eleanor.
And about a place where yesterday refused to stay buried.
The little girl listened.
Her eyes grew wide.
And when he finished, she asked the question he’d been expecting.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Was it all true?”
Daniel looked toward the clearing.
He thought of Rebecca.
Of Christopher.
Of Samuel.
Of Whitcomb.
Of the countless lives that had been given their freedom.
Then he smiled.
“Every word.”
The little girl considered that.
Then she asked:
“Even the scary parts?”
Daniel chuckled.
“Especially the scary parts.”
She looked down at the tin box.
Then back at him.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“Can we open it now?”
Daniel looked at the box.
The clasp was rusted.
The lid was dark with age.
And beneath the corroded metal, something made a small sound.
Not a knock.
Not a ticking clock.
Something gentler.
The faint rustle of turning pages.
Daniel smiled.
“Not today, sweetheart.”
The little girl frowned.
“Why not?”
He took her hand.
“Because there’s a difference, sweetheart, between remembering yesterday and trying to live it again.”
She thought about that.
Then nodded.
“Okay.”
They stood.
Daniel took up his walking stick.
The little girl slipped her hand into his.
And together, they walked toward home.
Behind them, the little tin box rested beneath the oak tree.
The afternoon light faded.
The woods grew quiet.
And somewhere, deep beneath the Alabama earth, a clock struck once.
Only once.
As clocks are supposed to do.
THE END
