Lych Way

by Ari Berk

  “For money, I expect,” answered the other.

  “Oh, no, no. I don’t want any money. Here . . . I brought you this,” Silas said, remembering the offerings Mother Peale had given him. He took the bread and the glass bottle of milk from his satchel and placed them on the ground before the corpses. “These are for you.”

  All the corpses’ eyes were open now, and as they looked at him a little of the stiffness of their faces seemed to lessen. They smiled. One said, with his mouth moving almost imperceptibly, “That is well. He is not afraid of the old ways.”

  “Have you come then to leave another of our rank within this place?”

  “Yes. Tell us. Who shall come? Who will join us in the sanctuary? I have not looked. I have not seen,” said the elder.

  “Mother of the Naos, who could be left?” said the standing corpse, and he made a deep barking sound like someone with croup.

  “Dolores Umber . . . Howesman . . . Dolores Howesman is dead.” Silas heard himself saying the words. It didn’t sound like his voice. When he spoke her name, it felt like he was hearing someone else say it, and he was being forced to listen.

  “He has come for the book, then,” said one of the corpses quietly, barely moving his mouth.

  “Yes,” said Silas. “I have come to bring back the Book of the Dead for my mother’s funeral.”

  “The Book of the Dead may be consulted, though it has been years and years since any have sought it out.” She looked at Silas’s ring again. “It is your right as both kin of the deceased and Lord of the West to do so, but it may no longer be carried from this place.”

  “Lord of the West? That is not a title I know.”

  “You must be satisfied to claim your resonances as well as your relations, child,” said the eldest, perhaps smiling at him. “You called yourself ‘Janus.’ That’s not a Howesman name and not a title associated with any of our offices. Not a river name. It’s Roman. Newfangled. Frankly, a little tacky. Tell me, where is your father?”

  “Dead,” answered Silas softly.

  “And how did this come to pass?”

  “He was killed by his brother.”

  “You see!” she exclaimed. “Now that is very Egyptian. For was not Osiris, Lord of the Dead, slain by his own brother? And did not Osiris’s own son, Horus, after being reared by Isis, rise up like the sun at dawn and slay his father’s killer? Ah! There is only one story, but on and on it goes. You are a man to be reckoned with, and you come by your titles honestly—Lord of the West, Lord of the Two Lands. I am glad to meet you, Silas Umber. You may read what is here, if you wish to.” She gestured at the Book of the Dead, but didn’t take her eyes off his face. She was looking at Silas differently than a moment ago, more intently. She was interested in him now, she knew who he was.

  Silas peered at the partially opened scroll and its many lines of carefully drawn hieroglyphs. The closer he looked, the more frustrated he felt. “I can’t read this. And I don’t know how it is to be used. My great-grandfather said to bring it back with me. Please! I have come for your help and I think you are obligated to help me prepare my mother for her funeral, aren’t you? You have implied I have some authority here. So I am asking you, officially, to help me.”

  “Child, child, calm yourself. We are just met. Don’t spoil such a joyful occasion.”

  “I am not a child.”

  “No, indeed.” She looked him up and down with an appreciative eye. “I can see you are not. But come closer now, for we are cousins, distant though we may be. Your folk went north while mine favored the lands of the river delta and so stayed in the South until I was brought here by coercion. But that’s all ancient history.” She stood and held out her arms toward Silas, saying, “Don’t make me chase you, child! Come here right now and give me some sugar.”

  Before Silas knew what was happening, the corpse stepped forward and embraced him and kissed him, placing her dry mouth over his lips. Almost instantly and before he could pull away, he felt something begin to coat his tongue and the back of his throat. Dust. Dust from the corpse had entered his mouth. Silas strained to avoid choking. He glanced in all directions, wondering what to do. The corpse’s eyes were closed and she was exhaling into him, more and more dust rising up from the depths of her body and the chambers of her shriveled lungs and past his lips. It was bitter. His eyes welled up with tears, and he couldn’t reach up to wipe them or to push her away; her embrace was like being caught between two pillars of stone. His mouth went dry as the dust began to soften and coat his gums and tongue. At the very back of his throat he could feel the dust absorbing his remaining saliva and pooling there. Before he could stop himself, Silas swallowed. A thin stream of mud and grit slid down the walls of his esophagus.

  As his body absorbed it, his mind clouded over.

  He breathed in deeply through his nose, trying again not to choke.

  In his mind, he heard water coursing through shallow cataracts. Behind his eyes he saw a river flowing over a dry desert, past lotus-columned temples and walls deeply carved with animal-headed gods. I am the river also, a voice within him said. I am the black-earthed banks of life-giving loam. I am the reed and the rush. I am the green god who rises up, bringing succor to the dead and peace to all the land.

  Silas saw the world tilt. For a moment he felt himself subsumed below the rapids, but then he heard his name and opened his eyes. He was looking up into the face of the elder ancestress who held him in her arms.

  The ancient woman slowly drew back her head and released him. Closing her mouth with her hand, she sat back down in her chair, her eyes still closed. “You know, when I was younger, cousins could court. . . .”

  Silas staggered backward until he came up against the wall.

  “Please, please . . .” He coughed. “I just need the book.”

  “Child, we are the ever-living. We are the book. Now you carry the book within you.” She gestured toward the scroll. “There is no need for that now,” she said.

  “But I must have it! I need it for my mother’s funeral!” said Silas desperately.

  “It is redundant.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The book is in you. The words of the Lord of the Dead, the Green One of the Two Lands, whose book this is, have always resided in you, in your blood. They’ve waited in you like seeds. Now we’ve just made a little garden and watered it, that’s all. Just another parcel of your considerable birthright, Silas of the Two Lands.”

  “One of many, it seems,” Silas whispered, wiping his eyes, feeling once again drawn in an unfamiliar direction.

  “As a Howesman? As an Umber? Or do you mean as the Undertaker of this town, which I presume you are, since your father is no more?”

  “As you wish . . . ,” Silas said, turning to go, not answering her question. “So the book is within me? But how can I read it, then? I don’t understand.”

  “Silas Umber, there is no need for such a literal view of the world. Let me show you.” The corpse stood up once more, breathed in deeply, and said, “I speak, by the name Nut the bright, the glorious. Who has come?”

  Before Silas could think of how to respond, he heard himself begin to speak. The words were foreign to his ears. It was his voice, but in a language he had never heard spoken. It was an ancient tongue, but as he continued and his mind began to rework the words into English, he could smell rich spices and dark loam on his own breath, and the perfume of flowers was all about him. His back went straight and his eyes opened wide and he said in a sure voice, “I must find you, for I am Horus. I am he who shall open your mouth for you, for it is I, your son. I shall not eat. I shall not drink. I was conceived in the long darkness and born into the Abyss. I have come and brought you bread from that place.” The words stopped. Astonishment sat on Silas’s brow.

  “Lady,” he asked in a voice now wholly his own again, “who are you?”

  “Very few have spoken my true name in this land. I hardly remember it. You may call me Miss Hattie.�
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  “You are not from Lichport, are you, ma’am?”

  “No, child. I am from the South, from the lands of the river delta. But I have long been a traveler, sometimes going first-class, other times abiding in steerage. . . .”

  The other two corpses laughed at that, but she continued. “I have been carried by generations of my family from one land to another. Twice I was stolen and . . . exhibited. But I have always been recovered. Recovered, it seems, only to be forgotten here.”

  “You mean you’ve been here”—Silas looked about the dust-filled chamber—“in this tomb, since coming to Lichport?”

  “No, no, child. For many years I was with my family, in our fine houses. We had a place on Fort Street, and a large mansion overlooking the sea on the south side of town. I liked it there, looking over the sea. I could watch the sunrise. How invigorating that was! There was also a townhouse in Kingsport, for the season, you understand, for the nightlife in Lichport has always been below par. But that was long ago. Who knows, maybe some of us are in Kingsport still. Sometimes I had my own room with my things about me. Then later, a small temple house was built for me ‘out back,’ and I was there, in the quiet of that place, alone with my own thoughts. Then my kin left and I was . . . installed here with some of the others. We have not been invited out in some time. Still, I look well, do I not?” The corpse ran her hand gently past the stiff hair on the side of her head as if to put a loose curl back in place.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You may one day find that tenacity is a marvelous preservative. Now, aren’t you going to give us an official invitation?”

  “An invitation? Oh. Sure. Of course. Miss Hattie, my great-grandfather, Augustus Howesman, and I would like you to come, please—all of you here and any others you know—to my mother’s funeral.” The words caught in Silas’s throat. It still hadn’t sunk in. When he got home, his mother would be sitting in her parlor as though nothing had changed. But it had. Everything had changed. And he was never going see his mother sitting in her parlor again. He began to cry, but quickly pulled his arms across his face to hide his tears.

  “We shall come. Tradition requires it, in any event. There are certain observations that must be attended to, and I am sure no one else—except, now perhaps, you— knows them. We shall oversee the rite together. Silas Umber of the Howesmans of the Mound, I will stand with you at the Great Rite. Many sacred things shall be needed. Were the chests and coffers still there in the upper chamber? We have not been above for some time.”

  Silas nodded.

  “Good. We shall bring what tradition requires. Now, if we may have your blessing, we shall travel faster for it. Haste is necessary. And the manna of kin will be needed for my mind to reach the others. Even with it, and though Temple House is not far—yea, we know it well—we will take some time to reach our destination. Morning will likely greet you before we do.”

  “Okay . . . ,” said Silas hesitantly. “What sort of blessing would you like?”

  “Speak the words that even now fill your throat. Speak!”

  And Silas spoke again in the voice of the desert, the voice of the Book of the Dead.

  “May you perform what you desire. Oh, divine souls who reside in your eternal mansions, who hold one foot in the land of the dead and the other in the land of the living, come forth as you may, and swiftly. Ascend to the sky, though you are weak. Climb upon the beams of the sun, though you are old. Be strong within your mansions! Rise up from the earth! Walk now upon the banks of the river in the lands of the dead and the lands of the living! So speaks the Lord of Two Lands.”

  Silas turned his head to the side, his eyes pinched shut. He breathed in deeply, slowly opening his eyes to look again upon his Restless kin.

  The words had immediate effect upon the two “younger” corpses. They both stood more upright and moved their arms freely. They turned and embraced each other, then introduced themselves to Silas. One was his great-great-great-uncle Archie from the Howesman side. The other, Conrad, a cousin several times removed, was the son of a Howesman/Hariot marriage, a match once thought fashionable.

  Miss Hattie did not move, but spoke again from her throne.

  “You know,” she said, smiling absently, “long ago, we might all have been considered gods. Who knows, we might be gods. . . .”

  “But now, who would care?” Silas said flatly.

  Miss Hattie shook her head, but then spoke to the others.

  “Assemble the chariot, please. And, Silas Umber, we shall come to govern over this rite and attend the passage of your mother as befits her name. But now night is falling and you must be home for vigil before midnight, if not well before. That is a dangerous time for your mother. The night before the burial is often difficult. It is wise to be watchful over the dead. More so for your mother than most, I suspect.”

  There was something very certain in her tone that made Silas nervous. He wanted to ask for more details, when she spoke again, and more sternly.

  “Make haste homeward now! Return and watch over your mother. If her corpse comes through the night unharmed, at dawn the Great Rite shall begin.”

  Silas turned and walked quickly back the way he’d come. Passing the painted and inscribed walls of the stairway and the upper chamber, he found he could read the hieroglyphs. But he did not gaze again among the prayers and charms and hopeful narratives of a glorious afterlife. On Temple Street his mother’s corpse lay on the dining room table. Still, things were already changing, or rather, no part of his life was ever allowed to settle, and everything was shifting again, making it harder and harder to find his balance. Everyone he met, living or dead, everywhere he walked, in this world or the other, every rite, the words of the ancient gods themselves—Janus, Osiris—inhered in him and became part of an increasingly complex pattern, like the indelible marks of ink upon vellum that, once made, would remain for centuries. He had become a palimpsest, layer upon layer. Maybe this, and not merely assisting the dead, was what it truly meant to be an Undertaker. If this was so, who was he really? Which name, which formula, which emanation or reflection was Silas Umber? Who was he becoming?

  When Silas emerged from the tomb, it was dark. The sky held only thin threads of azure against the wider black. Before him, the avenue of mausoleums was becoming more lively. The once darkened doorways all along the lane leading out of the Egyptian district were lit with pale lights, and he had to pass them all to get out again into the open ground of Newfield.

  He could not keep the memory of his previous visit with Bea from his mind, and he grew uncomfortable. Silas disliked how nervous even the memory of the night market still made him. Why should an Undertaker fear such a place? What was he afraid of finding there? Bea had wanted to show him the night market, but he had insisted on leaving as quickly as possible. Now, again, here were the lights of loss . . . of the night market . . . the place where forgotten things might be found. What kind of loss might such a place reveal to him?

  The lights flickered from the tombs. He could just discern, at the very edges of his sight, shadows moving along the lanes. A distant and vaguely familiar floral smell was rising on the cold air. He peered down the darkening avenue. He strained to hear the thin sounds of voices. Were they coming from the tombs? Or behind him? Silas felt watched and exposed. At least he had the power to see what was forming in the shadows around him. He took the death watch from his pocket and flicked open the jaw of the small silver skull with his thumb, exposing the dial. From the empty air just in front of him, Silas heard someone say his name. Peering ahead and breathing in sharply to steel his fraying nerves, he stopped the dial of the death watch.

  A low mist rose up between the stones of the lane. He walked into it without hesitation, though fear pinched at him. There was a distant song. He matched his steps to the timing of its rise and fall. Many voices. One song. A street song. A market song. Voices bellowed and others sweetly cooed. Footfall on the stones kept time . . . his and the rest.

 
; COME BUY! THE VOICES SING out along the lane. Come buy! Come buy!

  Lost toys! Lost toys! Once dropped, now found!

  Keys! Keys! By the basketful!

  Innocence! The swiftly spent days of summer? Three a penny!

  Love! Long ago embraces? Secret kisses? Spring assignations? All ripe together!

  Time! Time! Minutes! Hours! Days and years! Come buy! Come buy!

  Youth! Remember when? You can! Come buy!

  It is generally known that the night market should not be visited by the sensible. Only lost things adorn its stalls. Only the lost cry out their goods with wide, needy mouths. Only the lost frequent its lanes, filling their baskets with the past, wandering here and there, peering into everything just one last time. The cries of the hawkers—which rise up almost as soon as evening descends—are pathetic, as one would expect. . . .

  But you would be wise to keep your pennies in your pocket. It’s sometimes best that things go missing. For once they do, we may move on. We stop clinging to the past. We might forget. And some things, once forgotten, are best not remembered. This is why when the youth first sees the lamps of the night market being lit, his heart beats with fear. And so he quickens his pace, moving past the stalls richly hung with wonders slightly stained, a little worn. This is why he only wants to make his way home. For wasn’t there someone who was waiting for him? Wasn’t there something he needed to do?

  You see? Even those who do not willingly attend the night market succumb to the spell of the stalls . . . unable to remember what they’ve come for or why they should never have come. But there he stands, looking at a bouquet. There are many flowers at the night market, for many folk have lost their bloom. Flowers are for remembrance, and so they always sell well here.

  The youth slows his pace, wooed by the perfumed air. And the women with their baskets draw in close to him, holding their flowers up to his face. Remember? Remember? One of the women takes a dried, flat asphodel flower from her skirts and puts it in the youth’s hair. Remember, she says. He can smell the hint of perfume clinging to the gray, faded petals.