by Ari Berk
He walked slowly, carefully placing each foot before following with the other. He tried to keep his back straight, not to crouch, pretending he wasn’t scared. But with each step, he moved a little more hesitantly over the carpets. His feet felt heavy, as though some wiser part of him knew that he didn’t really want to see what was down there and was trying to hold him back.
At the bottom of the staircase, the statue of the Ammit, the “devourer of souls,” stood sentinel over the foyer. The taxidermic representation of the otherworldly Egyptian monster seemed alert too, its brittle ancient lion hairs standing up stiffly on its neck. Silas brushed past the statue, his arm touching it, but he barely noticed. He moved deliberately into the large study that once held so many of the artifacts from his uncle’s collection. He walked sideways, looking out the window to see if anyone was outside on the porch. At the fireplace, he picked up an iron poker, casually, as though to examine it, in case he was being watched, then he moved silently down the back hallway and through the butler’s pantry. At the closed door to the dining room, he paused, breathing hard. He was sweating. Trying to get a tighter grip, he squeezed the handle of the iron poker so hard his knuckles went white.
He held his breath and pushed open the door.
The corpse of his great-grandfather turned toward him, blocking his view of the dining room.
“Silas. Oh, my child . . . ,” said Augustus Howesman. He stepped aside and let Silas see what lay on the dining room table.
All at once, Silas’s fingers loosed their grip on the fire iron he held. It clanged twice as its point and then its handle struck the floor. His great-grandfather’s mouth was moving but Silas could hardly hear any of the words being spoken. His mind had clamped shut, unable to take in anything more. As he looked upon his mother’s body, a ringing like the soul bell rose in his ears. Dolores Umber lay across the polished surface of the table. She wasn’t moving, and he knew from her posture and the pallor of her skin that his mother was dead. There, on the same table where his uncle had served them all those trays of preserved food and desiccated meats, was his mother’s corpse. He couldn’t look at her. He raised his eyes to the ceiling, then closed them. He knew that if he could keep his eyes shut, he’d be okay. He didn’t have to accept anything he couldn’t see. But the presence of his mother’s cold body had changed the quality of the air in the house. It hurt to breathe, and he knew that if he opened his eyes, he would see the walls of Temple House leaning in to crush him. Though the death watch sat untouched in his pocket, in Silas’s heart, time had stopped.
Hands held him at the shoulders. He didn’t open his eyes. He could feel his great-grandfather now standing in front of him. The ringing in Silas’s ears lessened.
“I can’t do this. I can’t do any of this anymore.”
“Silas, I’m sorry. You don’t have a choice, son.”
“She can’t die. Not now . . . I can’t . . . I’m not ready . . . not now.”
His great-grandfather’s face was sorrowful, sympathetic, but his voice grew firm. “Would tomorrow be better? Maybe it would have been better for Dolores to die next year? Or in ten years? When would you have been ready? Silas, if you don’t know this already, it’s time you did: Death does not care if you are ready. Do you understand me? No one is ever completely ready, especially the living. Silas, come here. Look at your mother. See her now, as she is. It only becomes real when you look. Come on, son.”
Silas allowed his great-grandfather to move him toward the table.
His mother’s skin looked very smooth, almost as though she’d had no cares in life, had never pursed her lips in anger or drawn her eyebrows together in scrutiny. Only in death had her body finally let go of its worries. She looked younger. He knew his mother had been beautiful in her youth. She’d told him so many times, and he’d seen pictures. But now the fairness had returned to her face and he could see it. Yet, at the same time, death had also added something to her looks, a sharp angle of difference. She was his mom, but something else now too. The foreignness of her familiarity unnerved him. Made him feel like he shouldn’t be looking at her as she lay there with her eyes closed, like he was intruding on a private moment.
Memories began to gather about him like onlookers at a visitation. Silas remembered when his mom brought home a cake when he graduated high school. He’d thought it was stupid at the time. He hadn’t even gone to his graduation. He’d barely qualified for graduation, he’d missed so many days. They hardly had anything to celebrate. But she had been trying to make the day special. She was trying, and he’d blown her off. Maybe she’d tried more than he noticed. His stomach clenched as the guilt washed through him and flooded everything else from his mind.
He could remember almost nothing before this moment. He had been looking for something upstairs. It didn’t matter now. All thoughts of the ghost of the millpond fell away from him. There was only the shape of his mother on the table and whatever needed to be done for her next. Everything else in his mind froze and faded. Even the desires of a moment ago watched him now from across a crevasse. It was like his fever-dreams when he’d get sick as a kid. He was a tiny spot on a vast plain. He’d stretch out his arms on the bed, but couldn’t reach anything, couldn’t feel the edge of the bed, or the wall. There were no sounds in those dreams, so when he tried to scream, no one could hear or find him.
Again, his great-grandfather was speaking to him. Words of comfort. They sounded like they were coming from another room. The world was muffled, wrapped with cotton.
Silas walked in slow circles around the dining room table while his great-grandfather spoke. He would look down at his mother’s face as he went past her head again and again. Even as Augustus Howesman was trying to give him instructions on what needed to be done next for Dolores, Silas was talking to himself out loud.
“I should have come home! I waited too long.”
“Silas?”
“I should not have left her alone,” Silas said. “I should have gone with her.” He suddenly saw something on her arm that seized his jaw and pushed the words back down his throat. Silas squatted and looked closely at Dolores’s skin. He gently touched the spot on her arm where the curse glyph, a copy of the one Cabel Umber had placed on him, had been stitched in hair and thread onto his mother’s skin. Those careful stitches . . . tiny and so precise. He knew immediately who had made them. The three ladies from the house on Silk Street. They had somehow lifted the curse from him and set it upon his mother. He could still feel the heat of the spell on her skin. This was an old power at work. Had his mother gone to them? Is that where she’d gone last night? His mind was churning, but the simple truth broke through: The curse meant for him was taken by her. She had died for him.
This was his fault. He might as well have killed her himself.
Every part of him ached. Shame and grief covered him like a mourner’s shroud.
There was a draft moving across his heart. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was a cold stone inscribed with an equation of loss: his own name, and then a list of those that had recently been subtracted from his life. Amos, Beatrice, Lars, Dolores. All gone.
He sat down on the floor next to her corpse and began to sob.
“I did this . . . ,” he repeated through his tears. “It’s my fault.”
“No, Silas,” his great-grandfather said, putting his hand on Silas’s shoulder. The old man’s tone had changed. Silas could hear the fear in his words. “Grandson, please, listen. We haven’t much time. I need you to get up and hear what I have to tell you. There will be time for sorrow later. Please, Silas! Stand up and hear me!”
Silas rose to his feet but couldn’t take his eyes off his mother’s arm. Augustus Howesman put his fingers on Silas’s chin and gently turned his great-grandson’s face toward his.
“Listen to me now, Silas. There are things that must be seen to. Your mother is dead, yes, but she is not beyond harm. It is not yet the hour for mourning or for revenge, if it comes to that. Ce
rtain rites must be attended to, and your mother has only us to help her. That is unfortunate, because what is required stands outside your knowledge and partially outside of mine. This is not part of the Undertaker’s work. This is . . . another tradition. Part of the rites of some of the oldest families of the town. So, we must seek out . . . well, older folk. To my knowledge, even your father never attended a Howesman funeral, or one like it. You will have to trust me. We’re going to have to help each other.”
Silas breathed in deeply, slowly, trying to gain control of himself, focusing on his great-grandfather’s voice. “But why can’t I oversee her funeral?”
“For one thing, immediate family should never have to bear that burden unless necessary or asked for by the deceased. For another, as I’ve said, my side of your family has its own ways of doing things. I need your help, but you’ll need to be accommodating here.”
“Okay. I trust you,” Silas said.
“Are you going to be all right leaving the house? Because you are faster than I am, so you will have to be the one to go for help.”
Silas didn’t know how to answer. Help from whom? The numbness was ebbing, but now confusion had taken its place.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Augustus Howesman asked again.
“I’m fine. I’m always fine,” said Silas, taking a deep breath. “Everyone dies and the world is filled up with terrors that need to be settled and laid to rest, and I am always fine. Don’t worry about me, sir. I am the Undertaker. I have stood upon the edge of the abyss and called it home. I. Am. Fine.”
“Silas . . . grandson?” The corpse reached out for his shaking hands, but Silas drew them away.
“Great-grandfather, just tell me what I need to do.”
“Well, you can start by covering all the mirrors. That should be familiar. We all do that when death comes.”
“All right,” Silas said, his voice going flat as he opened a deep drawer in the sideboard and took out a stack of linens; several tablecloths and some large white napkins only slightly yellowed from age.
“That’s fine,” said Augustus Howesman, sitting down. As he spoke, Augustus shifted his chair closer to Dolores. He took her arm, which hung slightly off the table, and drew it up to his chest. Then he stroked her cold hand and gently held it and rocked it back and forth as though he was trying to help her sleep.
While his great-grandfather gave instructions, Silas listened and unfolded the linens, one after another, moving mechanically through the downstairs rooms, covering over all the mirrors. He paused in the foyer at the grandfather clock. Silas opened the cabinet and reached inside, stopping the cold brass pendulum. When he was sure the dial was no longer moving, he covered the clock with a tablecloth.
His great-grandfather called from the dining room. “Did you hear me, Silas? You know where to go?”
“I do,” he said, walking back into the doorway of the parlor and calling back to the dining room. “It will all be done just as you’ve said.” Silas already had his jacket on, and he left Temple House without another word.
LEDGER
The funeral rites among families with Restless ancestors and kin remain a subject of mystery, speculation, and general apprehension. The rites, as they are still practiced within the district of Lichport, are certainly very ancient, at least in parts, and are passed from family to family in the manner of the initiations of the mystery schools of old. Portions of these rites may include, as their inspiration or precedents, certain of the more well-known rituals practiced by the ancient Egyptians, for whom the rendering immortal of mortal flesh was a revered specialty of their priests.
Whether the similar traditions among the Restless of Lichport stretch back that far, or merely mimic the elder Nile rites, cannot be known. In either event, the mysteries at work within the bloodlines of Lichport’s oldest families remain one of the most strange and frightening of Lichport’s many extant funereal eccentricities.
When the inheritors of the great family fortunes left Lichport, those who concealed (for by that point, the Restless were little spoken of except in whispers) “enduring” members of their families sought respectable ways to dispose of them reasonably. Some left the living corpses where they were, either inside their ancestral homes, or within the more recently fashionable tomb houses. Certain of these folk have remained, mostly ignored or forgotten now, within those places.
Other families, particularly those from the old neighborhoods of Queen and Prince Streets (some of the first to leave Lichport) availed themselves of the spacious (and now abandoned) mausolea within Newfield Cemetery. Thus, some of the Restless from those families were placed within the elaborate tombs in the Egyptian style located in that cemetery’s old and derelict eastern district. It is known that other families occasionally added to the population of Restless folk within those lotus-columned tombs.
Several of the Restless there are of extreme antiquity, including one venerable lady who claims descent from those ancient Nile folk who were masters of every funerary art. I have twice tried to make enquiry of that lady, but was turned away from the tomb for lack of sufficient blood-relation. It is rumored she was brought to Lichport out of the east by the Brotherhood of the Eastern Temple and that she once formed part of their mysterious oracular rites. Others say she arrived with a circus from the south who considered her to be of “exhibit quality.” Though I plan to return, if possible, in the company of my wife’s grandfather and enquire further, I do so with trepidation, for it is also known that the Restless of Newfield, stacked and abandoned there by their families, hold little affection for the living.
—FROM THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT “NOTES ON THE DISPOSSESSION OF THE RESTLESS SINCE 1900” BY AMOS UMBER
THE STREETS OF LICHPORT WERE a gray blur that mirrored the afternoon sky where a hidden sun hung behind slate clouds. Silas could barely feel the freezing air for all the cold already inside him. There were only the words his great-grandfather had spoken before sending him on his errand. FOR YOUR MOTHER’S SAKE. Augustus Howesman’s words tumbled through his mind, though Silas could find no comfort in them.
Your mother must not be left alone.
. . . dangerous time for her.
You must trust me.
. . . a bull from Mennever . . . the Peales will know . . .
Do not seek her ghost. . . .
Do not use the watch. . . .
No questions . . .
The Howesman way . . .
. . . what your mother would have wanted.
Trust me. . . .
Our traditions . . . different from the rest of town . . .
Newfield . . . lotus-columned tombs . . . be polite.
. . . dangerous time . . . not left alone . . .
Bring the Book of the Dead, however you can,
whatever form it’s in . . .
Trust me . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Do not tarry. . . .
Hurry back. . . .
Midnight may be bad. . . .
There were few people on the streets. On the dark windows he passed, reflections of the bare trees waved Silas away. He put his head down, trying to see the sidewalk in front of him, thinking only of where he needed to go first. Anything more made him want to turn around and go home. There was too much . . . and if he began trying to sort through his feelings now . . . Keep walking, he told himself. Just keep walking. Take the message to Mother Peale. Do that first.
Silas tuned his mind to the sound of his feet on the cobbles of the street. He’d left his coat open to the cold. There was a wind coming down from the north, and already he couldn’t feel his ears. He made no effort to warm them with his hands. He wanted to be numb again.
The lights were already on at the Peales’ store. Winter in Lichport seemed to hold the sun at arm’s length no matter the hour. It was afternoon, but darkness would come in swiftly enough. As Silas entered, the bells on the door jingled and Mother Peale looked up from behind the counter, where she sat by a small s
tove with a wool blanket over her lap and another about her shoulders. She shouted, “Close that door! That wind will be the end of me!” As she saw Silas’s face, she leapt to her feet.
“Good God, child! You look half-dead!”
“Please don’t say that.”
“I only mean, gracious, Silas . . . what the devil has happened? What did they do to you out there beyond the marshes?”
He couldn’t say the words. He couldn’t tell her what had happened to him at the gate, and he certainly wasn’t going to share what he had been reading when his mother’s corpse was brought home. His private thoughts, dark as they were, were all Silas had left.
“My great-grandfather has sent me to ask you to send to Mennever Farm . . . for a bull? He said you would understand, and that he ‘will bear the cost of everything.’ ”
Mother Peale’s face paled as she put her hands forward on the counter to steady herself. “Silas! By all that’s holy, tell me what’s happened.”
His lips drew tight, and he pushed his tongue against the back of his teeth. Silas shook his head as if refusing to answer her, but finally said, “My mom—”
“Oh, Lord, no!” Mother Peale cried as she quickly came around the counter. “Child, child . . .”
She held out her arms to him but Silas stepped back toward the door. “I have to go. There’s more I have to do before it gets dark.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Newfield,” he said absently, looking away.
“Oh, Gods! Oh! Silas . . .”
As usual, someone else knew as much or more than he did. He didn’t want to talk about it or explain or have anything explained to him. His mother was dead. A funeral was to be held. Both of his parents were gone. What else was there to discuss? He needed to keep moving and just get through the blackness of the day to whatever lay on the other side of it. Then he would try to do the same tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. He turned to leave.
