By Mathilda Zeller
Emmaline Jones was an old-fashioned woman. She loved to wear crinolines under her dress and a starched white pinafore on top. Her gray streaked hair was always immaculately pin curled, and she always wore bright red lipstick and her great grandmother’s pearls, even when she was just cleaning around the house.
Butch, her husband, insisted that it was silly and impractical to dress this way in the Year of Our Lord 2023, but as it was one of the only things in Emmaline’s life that she felt she could control, it was the only thing that he could not shame her out of doing.
She had never seen anyone outside of Photogram dress this way. At least, that was the case until she answered the door on a rainy October afternoon to the handsomest man she had ever seen.
He wore a three-piece pinstripe suit, a red silk tie, and his patent leather shoes shone like they had never seen a dusty road in their lives. She took in his tall, handsome form and knew in her heart of hearts that underneath that double breasted blazer and smart vest, there were suspenders. Underneath those pants were shirt stays, keeping his shirt tightly tucked in. Both thoughts sent a shiver of pleasure through her.
When he lifted his fedora and bowed in greeting, she nearly collapsed at the sheer elegance of it all.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said in a voice that would have melted butter. “Are you in need of a new vacuum?”
She was not, but that didn’t stop her from inviting him in to sit at her Formica kitchen table for a nice cup of tea and some gingerbread men. It was the least she could do, after all, to get the poor man off his feet and out of the miserable, dreary weather outside.
She passed the afternoon in a trance, plying him with every ounce of hospitality she had to muster while he spoke to her of Venice, Paris, Prague. Yes, he was a traveling vacuum salesman, but he was a cultured traveling vacuum salesman, who seemed to have lost all interest in selling her a vacuum. If he was lying about his travels, she was far too enchanted to care.
“Emmaline! Emmaline, where’re you at?”
Emmaline and the vacuum salesman both jumped, rattling their teacups. Butch was home early from work.
“Emmaline, didn’t you get my text? I told you they shut down the hog slaughter plant because that idiot Jim went and got his leg caught in the meat grinder. He says the working conditions are unsafe. There’s going to be a damned investigation and everything.” Butch reached the kitchen doorway and froze, taking in the dapper form of the salesman sitting opposite his wife, nibbling a gingerbread man and staring him down with narrowed eyes.
Butch snapped his hands into fists, and Emmaline flinched. Neither of these things were lost on the salesman, whose eyes narrowed further.
“Who the hell is this?” Butch demanded.
Emmaline looked from Butch to the salesman, her entire mood deflating like a chilled balloon. “A…vacuum salesman.”
“You don’t even know his name, and he’s sitting in my house with my wife?” Butch’s voice dropped dangerously.
The salesman stood, pressing his fedora to his heart. “A thousand apologies, sir. I do not wish to impose upon your hospitality, and I do not wish to go where I am unwanted. I’ll see myself out.”
“The hell you will, you pansy,” snapped Butch. “What have you been doing with my wife, pal?”
The salesman allowed Butch to grab him by the arm and drag him from the kitchen, the angry tirade increasing in pitch and fervor as Butch stomped off with him towards the front door. Emmaline sat frozen, utterly mortified.
When Butch’s shouts died down, she stayed in the kitchen, trembling as she tidied up the tea things. He would return to the kitchen, sooner or later, and he would be angry. She removed her great grandmother’s pearls and put them in the little China dish by the stove. She didn’t want them damaged if he was very angry.
She washed the dishes, wiped the counters, scoured the stove and mopped the floor, but Butch never returned.
With great trepidation, she ventured out into the living room, and found Butch asleep in his motheaten recliner, mouth hanging open. Two drops of blood clung to the skin folds around his neck–poor Jim must have splattered on him during that unfortunate accident at the meat plant. She tucked one of her hand crocheted afghans around him and returned to the kitchen to make supper.
Right around suppertime, the doorbell rang again. It was the salesman.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you, dear Emmaline, but I seem to have forgotten my briefcase when I last left your house.”
Indeed he had. It was right there by the front door, but as she handed it to him, his hands closed over hers. A wave of longing overtook her.
She couldn’t. It wasn’t worth the risk. The price she would pay, the price they both would pay, would be too high. She took a deep breath.
“Please stay for dinner.”
The salesman lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t wish to impose.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t be imposing at all! Poor Butch is so tuckered out from that accident at the plant, his dinner will go cold if you don’t eat it!” She glanced over her shoulder to where Butch lay, inert, in his recliner. “I don’t think he’s going to wake up at all this evening.” It was a prayer, a wish, an impossible thing, but in that moment, she felt if she could just wish hard enough, even her wildest private dreams could come true.
The salesman regarded her for a long moment, and a slow smile came over his face. “I don’t think he will, either. It is quite tempting. Are those lamb chops I smell?”
Emmaline nodded. “Cooked rare and bloody, just the way Butch likes them.”
“I suppose that is something Butch and I have in common,” the salesman doffed his hat. “Alright then. If you insist.”
Emmaline thought her heart would burst from her chest. “I do. I absolutely do insist.”
By glorious happenstance, the traveling vacuum salesman had a bottle of Bordeaux that paired splendidly with the rare lamb chops.
When they were nearly finished, she clasped a hand to her mouth. “How rude of me! I’ve never even asked you your name!”
The man smiled. “The name’s Norman. Norman Whipple.”
Emmaline faltered. “That’s…quite the name.”
“Do you not like it?”
“Oh no! I do! It’s just that you don’t meet many men with names like that anymore.”
“It is old-fashioned, I’ll admit. But I am an old-fashioned sort of man.” Norman took a sip of wine. “Say! Whatever happened to those lovely pearls you had on earlier?”
Emmaline blushed. “Oh, those things? They’re not practical to wear when housekeeping, you know. My Butch always tells me so.”
“Your Butch won’t mind.” Norman spotted them in the little dish near the stove. “May I?”
Emmaline’s palms were sweating and her voice quavered. “Yes.”
It was bold. It was a terrible idea. But in that moment, she wanted nothing more than to feel Norman’s hands draping her great grandmother’s pearls around her neck. As he put them on her, he leaned in towards her, inhaling deeply. Oh, he was so close, every inch of her skin prickled.
“I have a confession to make,” he said. “I’m not a salesman.”
Emmaline’s breath hitched in her throat. “I suspected as much.”
“And I’m old, Emmaline. Much older than you.”
Emmaline turned towards him. He was beautiful, with his sharp jawline and cheekbones, his colorless wide eyes, his full, pale lips. She would never have invited him in if she had thought Butch would wake up; she couldn’t put it to words, but she knew. She had known.
“Are you going to kill me?” She wasn’t sure she minded, especially not after he’d given her the finest hours of her life over afternoon tea and supper.
He raised his hands to cradle her head, his thumbs sliding upward along her jaw, the tips of his fingers tangling in her pin curls. “Oh, my darling lady. Our kind are bound to the sensibilities we had in life before we changed. More than anything in the world, I loved good manners, and yours are exquisite. I came to kill you, yes, but after the hospitality you’ve shown me, I could just as soon burn down the Sistine Chapel.”
“And you loved the Sistine Chapel,” Emmaline breathed. She had been paying rapt attention that afternoon as he’d lovingly described it to her.
He drew even nearer. “And what is life, if you are denied its chief pleasures?”
“WHAT THE HELL, MA?” Emmaline’s son, Butch Junior, entered the kitchen just as Norman’s lips were closing in on his mother’s.
Butch Junior’s beady eyes darted between his mother to the dandy man embracing her. He picked his teeth angrily, wiping the bits he got onto the sleeveless Grateful Dead t-shirt that he hadn’t changed in a week. His ratty mustache and soul patch quivered as he attempted to grasp the perfidiousness of the scene before him.
Emmaline’s stomach lurched.
Finally, “Momma, I always knew you were fat, old, and a little stupid, but I never took you for a whore.”
“He–he’s my friend.” Tears welled in Emmaline’s eyes.
Norman’s lip curled back as he released Emmaline and advanced on Butch Junior. “I’ll thank you to show your mother a little more respect.”
“Or what, pretty boy?” Butch Junior shoved Norman. “You gonna dry clean me?”
Norman moved faster than Emmaline thought possible. There was blood, but the entire thing was a blur. A minute later, Butch Junior was pale and unmoving, his blood smeared across the lips of a very abashed Norman.
“I do apologize,” he muttered. “I forgot myself. That was so very…rude of me. Particularly after you’ve treated me to the finest lamb chops I’ve had in years.”
Emmaline tore her gaze from the beautiful man to her son, dead on the floor, the same tiny pinpricks of blood on his neck as were on her husband’s. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
Norman wrung his hands, biting down on his own bloodless lip. “I really am dreadfully sorry. As I told you, I am bound by the sensibilities I had in life, including my sensibilities surrounding rudeness. In my deploring of your son’s behavior, I forgot myself, and did a very rude thing myself. I am in your debt, dear woman, and I will do whatever I must to atone. Or, if you wish, I can simply leave.”
The silence hung between them as Emmaline’s thoughts came so thick and fast her lips moved silently.
Finally, she spoke. “You know, the first time Butch came home with a hickey, reeking of another woman’s perfume, I was angry. I was so very angry. I took out a very generous life insurance policy on him. I forged his signature and everything. He never even knew. He never knew about the life insurance policy, he never even knew that I knew about his affair. I stayed my own wrath, and I suffered. For Butch Junior.” She looked again at her son, lifeless on the floor. “Who grew up to be just like his Daddy.” She shook herself and cleared her throat. “That policy is in the laundry room on the top shelf with the cleaning supplies. Neither of them had a fart’s chance in a whirlwind of finding it there.”
She gave a little giggle. Norman gave a little giggle. She led him to the laundry room, and while she sorted the papers and started making phone calls about the life insurance, she watched him out of the corner of her eye, her heart swelling to see him familiarize himself with the cleaning supplies. Emmaline was an organized woman, and his careful, methodical gathering of the duct tape, trash bags, gloves, and disinfectant made her flush with appreciation. Neither Butch nor Butch Junior would ever have jumped in, unasked, in assisting her like this.
Butch, of course, was a middle-aged man of habit. Some tidying up of the wounds around his jowls, and his death could easily look like a heart attack. It had been a stressful day at the plant, after all.
Butch Junior was a little more complicated; healthy young men dying the same day as their fathers felt like a bit of a stretch. What was more plausible by far is that he had finally run up too high a debt with his meth dealer and the meth dealer had taken it out of his skin.
Norman was a kind and patient listener, and more than willing to help her slip Butch Junior into the back of his rusting old pickup and follow her in her car as she drove down to the thick darkness of Sherman Woods, where people dumped their old appliances. Once Butch Junior was snugly tucked away in a dryer at the bottom of a ravine, they parked his car in front of his meth dealer’s trailer and drove home together, Frank Sinatra crooning gently on the radio.
Norman pulled off his soiled shoes and walked her to the porch in his argyle socks. When they reached the front door, Emmaline paused, unsure what to do next. The entire evening had grown so strange and sweet and wild. She didn’t want it to end.
“I’m so sorry to have put you to all the trouble,” he murmured, “You should go to bed; I’ll clean the mud from your car.”
Emmaline shook her head. “No. I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that.”
Norman pressed her hand, sending goosebumps up the length of her arm. “It’s the least I can do; I’ve made life terribly complicated for you.”
Emmaline bit her lip. “Maybe I like complicated things.”
“Not me. You’ll regret it eventually.”
Emmaline took his other hand and stepped forward, close enough to hear the hitch in his breath, to see his pulse accelerate under the thin pale skin of his neck. “Perhaps you should let me decide for myself.”
It was an outrageous thing to ask, but she asked it anyway.
He nodded, and let her lead him into the house, into the guest room, into her life, which had suddenly become as sweet and free and wild as a Sherman Woods in the dead of night.
And in the Year of Our Lord 2023, Emmaline discovered a second thing that Butch could not shame her out of doing.
Not that he was capable of shaming her anymore.
* * *
Norman Whipple was a simple man with simple needs. He loved fine wine, bloody meat, and good clothes. Women–no. He’d been lonely for decades, but the idea of a romantic relationship never really crossed his mind. He’d known love, deep love when he’d been mortal, and he never imagined he’d know it again, not now that he was a monster and a killer.
Emmaline had taken him by surprise. She reminded him of his dear Opal in all the best ways. Her remarkable culinary skills, her impeccable sense of fashion, the way she cared so deeply–it was like stepping into the past. It couldn’t go on indefinitely, he knew that. She would age and die, and he would once again be alone and lonely.
At first, he thought it was selfish to carry on with her like this, but he quickly learned that being a mortal with a family and community didn’t mean one wasn’t lonely.
The husband and the son were brutes, of course, but it went far beyond that. The church women who came to help organize the double funeral, they gossiped behind her back. They said thinly veiled disparaging things to her face. They cast sidelong looks at him and pitying looks at the caskets until Emmaline left for the bathroom to cry in private.
Naturally, Norman had to cull the worst of them. The mother’s club president paired spectacularly with the leftover jell-o salad she had brought for the wake.
As a traveling salesman, it had been easy for Norman to disappear without a trace after feeding, but Emmaline loved her little home, and he loved his darling Emmaline. It was difficult to make the demise of each church lady look accidental, and even more difficult to spread them out over time, but Emmaline helped him plan. She was very clever at the planning and had a keen eye for detail. It was almost as if Butch wasn’t the only person she had contemplated murdering. But of course, it wasn’t without reason. These gossiping church ladies were absolutely merciless.
After the funeral of the Butches, the life insurance money came in. Emmaline cheered up considerably when she saw the check, and together they set about renovating the old house. They threw out the moth-eaten recliner, the seat worn deep with the impression of Butch’s derriere, and turned the living room into an absolute dream of pale pink and creamy teal.
Unfortunately, when it came time to remodel the bathrooms, they had to hire a contractor who scoffed at poor Emmaline’s taste in tile, blasted crude music as he worked, and told Norman to do unspeakable things to himself when Norman requested that he turn it down.
Norman couldn’t stand for it. Also, he was particularly hungry that day, as it had been a while since he had consumed his last church lady.
Emmaline was a doting woman and a wonderful lover, but as time passed, something sat uneasy with Norman. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the malaise would overtake him at strange moments—upon seeing a beautiful arrangement of fresh flowers in a bowl on the coffee table or upon smelling Emmaline in her new perfume. The way the moonlight filtered through the lace curtains in the bedroom, or the song that Emmaline put on the vintage vinyl record player she’d bought online, pulling him into a tender slow waltz or foxtrot. All of it murmured a story, or a memory, but the words were just too quiet to discern.
One day in early spring, just as they were turning over the soil in the front flower beds and fertilizing it with the rich bone meal they’d created from that rude contractor, a police officer sauntered up and leaned on their white picket fence.
“Norman and Emmaline Whipple?”
“The same,” Norman stood, and extended a hand before withdrawing it apologetically. “You’ll have to pardon my manners, officer, but my hands are quite dirty, and you look so sharp and tidy in that uniform.”
The police officer shrugged. “We’re investigating the disappearance of Julia Floundersbottom. I believe she helped arrange your late husband’s funeral, Mrs. Whipple?”
Emmaline blushed. “Yes. Yes, she did. She brought the Jell-O salad, if I’m not mistaken.”
“And what a delightful Jell-O salad it was,” added Norman. He still relished the memory of that pairing.
“And later, her close friend and yours, Michelle Snottertram, was dredged out of the river by a fisherman who thought he’d caught a large salmon.”
“Such a shame about Michelle,” Emmaline replied. “Although I wouldn’t say that she and I were particularly close. The casserole she brought to the funeral was a kind gesture, but I wouldn’t call us close friends.”
“Of course not, of course not,” replied the officer, scribbling down notes in his pad. “Where were you on the night of the nineteenth?”
Norman grimaced. They’d spent the night of the nineteenth affixing Michelle’s bloodless body to a set of cinderblocks, to ensure that she would stay at the bottom of the river where she belonged. Perhaps they hadn’t affixed her firmly enough?
“We were working on a project, officer.” Emmaline’s voice was confident and smooth.
“What sort of project?”
“Oh you know, home renovation. We’ve been hard at work, sprucing the place up a bit. Would you care to see?”
The officer shook his head. “If you don’t mind coming down to the station before Friday, there are a few more questions we’d like to ask you there.”
Norman nodded. “Of course, officer.”
As soon as the officer was out of sight, he turned to Emmaline. “I’m so sorry my dear, but I fear we must move.”
Emmaline sat back on her heels with a pout. “Fiddlesticks! They’ll never be able to pin it on us.”
“They found Michelle’s body. Suppose one of your hairs got caught in her button while we were moving her?”
Emmaline’s shoulders sagged. “I suppose you’re right, my dear.”
Of course, his darling didn’t want to leave the lovely little house they’d made together, but it couldn’t be helped. Norman blamed himself, of course, but Emmaline wouldn’t hear of it.
“You were only trying to protect me, my dear, and you have to eat from time to time. It’s a necessary part of your nature.”
“I could have subsisted on raw beef and lamb. I could have made do with a few stray cats. I could have—”
“But none of them would have been half so delicious, would they?” Emmaline asked. “And what is life, if you are denied its chief pleasures?”
They spent the rest of the night packing–of course they wouldn’t be able to bring everything, but Emmaline had an assortment of things in storage that had great sentimental value to her that needed to be carried up and sorted through, choosing only the most vital to begin their life on the run.
As Norman lifted one box, the weathered tape on the top of the box gave out. Part of an album cover popped into view, seizing Norman once again with that strange, deeply unsettled feeling.
He set the box down and opened it, drawing out the photo album. As he leafed through its pages, years of memories, long suppressed for the pain they brought him, arose. Him, in a sharply pressed suit, standing next to his beautiful Opal on a lovely spring morning. Him, in his shirtsleeves and suspenders, smoking a pipe and bouncing their firstborn daughter on his knee. Their beautifully decorated living room, with that bowl of flowers arranged just so, sitting primly on the coffee table.
It wasn’t similar to the home he’d made with Emmaline. It was the home he’d made with Emmaline.
His hands shook as he turned the pages. Here was his daughter’s birth certificate. There, the letter the government had sent to his poor Opal when he was presumed dead in the war. He had died, of course, just not in the conventional way.
There, the wedding certificate of his daughter, the birth certificate of his grandson.
There, the wedding certificate of his grandson, the birth certificate of his great granddaughter.
Emmaline.
Emmaline, his darling, his lover, was his great granddaughter.
Norman Whipple’s stomach twisted. If it hadn’t been so long since he’d eaten, he might have vomited.
“Those were meant to be private, you know.”
Norman jumped at the sound of Emmaline’s voice. She’d managed to descend the basement steps without making a sound. Now she stood over him, peering down at his horrified face, the album open in his hands.
“Emmaline. My—” his what? His great granddaughter, that was what. Taking your great granddaughter as a lover was beyond rude. It was unthinkable.
Emmaline’s face was inscrutable. “You didn’t have to look, know.”
He shook his head. “We can’t—”
“I wanted to protect you.”
The penny dropped. “You knew.”
“Of course I knew!” Emmaline laughed dryly. “I could not believe my luck when you showed up on my front doorstep, the spitting image of the man I admired most! You! Great Granny’s husband, the war hero, the loving husband, the doting father, tragically cut down in his prime! You lived in a time when men were men, and they knew how to take care of their women! I never once imagined that you were literally him, and by the time I knew your name and immortality, it was too late. I was already sweet on you.”
“You can’t—we can’t—”
“But we have. And it was glorious.” Emmaline’s eyes were bright, her smile adoring as ever. “It makes sense that you’d end up back here, you know. Of course, instinct would have you making your way back to your home eventually. This is where you belong. Here. With me.”
Norman snapped the book shut. “I’m sorry, Emmaline. We can’t do this. You are my posterity.”
Emmaline threw her head back and laughed. “You’ll kill a half dozen people, but you draw the line at incest? Truly, Granddaddy, make it make sense.”
“It doesn’t make sense! None of it!” Norman stood up. “I’m sorry, my dear, but I must go.”
Emmaline’s face grew sober. “Oh, you’re going to abandon your family a second time, are you?”
“I didn’t—it wasn’t—” guilt rose in him as the memories, buried for decades for the pain of them, came rushing back. He’d been attacked and turned during the war, and by the time he’d come to his senses, he couldn’t fully remember the way home. By the time he remembered, his wife had remarried. So he’d buried the memory deep, so deep he didn’t realize he’d come home a second time.
“No. You won’t be leaving again. Never, ever again.” Emmaline lifted her skirt and pulled a gun from her garter. “Silver bullets. That should stop you, shouldn’t it?”
Norman trembled.
“We could have been great, you and I. We were making things great again. But you. YOU!” She barked out a sob. “You had to go and ruin it, didn’t you?”
“Emmaline—”
“I’ve got all the evidence, my dear. I was a lonely, battered wife. When a charming traveling salesman arrived, I was so stupid, I was swept off my feet. I never suspected that he was a serial killer. When he attacked me in the basement, I did what any girl would do in self-defense.”
Norman trembled. “Please. No.”
BLAM.
* * *
The investigation was short. Emmaline was an old-fashioned woman, after all. Plump, middle-aged, with an eccentric tendency to dress in vintage clothes. The fact that she’d had the presence of mind, the courage, and skill to wrest the gun from a seasoned predator and turn it against him was remarkable. She became something of a local hero. Her story blew up on Photogram, and her coffee table flower bowl arrangements became the ultimate trend in vintage home decor for a season.
As it transpired, Norman Whipple was a drifter, a person of interest in murder cases in at least twelve different states, whose date of birth could not be determined. That being said, he looked remarkably young, given how many decades were spanned by the trail the Feds traced on him.
He had excellent taste, but unlike the poor Emmaline, he was really quite terrible at planning.
* * *