Lych Way

by Ari Berk

  He closes his eyes.

  He sees a meadow covered with flowers. Asphodels bloom all the way to the distant mountains. He sees their buds open like stars, their waving stalks. He hears an infant crying. A man is running through the meadow.

  Remember?

  Remember?

  Then the man is crying too.

  His father is crying.

  Then his father begins to sing in a broken, desperate voice:

  Hush-a-bye, little one, aye, aye;

  Hush-a-bye, little one, aye.

  The night birds are singing,

  The bells are ringing

  And it’s time for you now to fly,

  Little bird,

  It’s time for you now to fly.

  Fly with me, fly with me, aye, aye;

  Fly with me, little bird, aye;

  Your parents are waiting,

  For ages a-waiting

  Little bird, to their waiting arms fly!

  The youth opens his eyes.

  The women put flowers in his hands, then sift them slowly over him and the stars are falling. Welcome home! one says. In the distance is a small figure who casts no shadow and extends his hand to the youth.

  Remember.

  The smell of the asphodels is all about him, clinging to his skin and clothes. He wants to lie down in the field, in the street, upon a bed of petals.

  Yes! the women chant, Yes! Yes!, upending their baskets over him.

  Sleep here among the stalls, among the petals of asphodels. Sleep and dream and remember what was lost, the women sing.

  But before he lowers himself to the street, far above the market, a falcon flies in wide circles and quickly stoops to pass lower over the stalls, over the youth’s head. The bird screams, its high cry shattering the strains of the women’s song. The youth rises. Something in the falcon’s cry reminds him of his mother’s voice. He sees the falcon fly off, away from the night market, away from the tombs and all the abandoned parcels of the forgotten and the lost. And the dark figure in the distant fields of asphodel draws back his hand and turns away.

  Silas found himself staring up at the small slice of empty sky visible above the columns and walls of the mausoleums. All the blue had gone out of the evening, both in the clouds and behind them. There was only the oceanic black of night flowing indiscernible from the dim, unseen sea, and no moon yet. A moment before, he had taken his thumb off the dial, and the death watch began ticking, its tiny mechanical heart leaping again to life. The path through the night market had scraped across his losses, making them raw. His chest felt hollow and the emptiness of it ached. Whatever he’d lost remained apart from him.

  He could see movements now within most of the tombs. Granite slabs slid from atop their monuments and sarcophagi. Tomb doors, long closed, were pushed open from the inside. Corpses slowly ascended the steps from lower chambers.

  The Restless were coming.

  Without looking back, Silas turned on his flashlight and started running down the lane, through the great arch and across the plots, moving swiftly past the overgrown gravestones and out of Newfield, coursing like a small distant comet out of the dark toward Temple House.

  THE REMAINING INHABITANTS OF THE houses on the far side of Temple Street have always been a nervous lot. Perhaps it’s because they live too close to the walls of Newfield Cemetery. Or perhaps because the houses on that street, while large, are not so large as to be considered fine. So the families of the Temple Street homes close to Coach Street occupied a precarious place within what society remained in Lichport. It is known that those families all made a little money and came up from the Narrows. Not so far that they wouldn’t be able to sup with old friends, but not far enough as to be accepted by the Upper Towns folk either. Precarious, nervous types. The sort of folk always looking out their windows and finding fault in what they see.

  She’d spied the Umber boy before. More than once. Wandering his way, following some punky lights, far into Newfield. Mrs. Halliwell had seen him with her own eyes, and told a few folks about it. “Leave it be!” they told her. “Them Umbers have their own ways, and those ways ain’t our ways, but in a pinch, they’re the only thing for it. So let the Undertaker be. His father was a queer one too, and no mistake, but a useful man.”

  But it wasn’t just the Umber boy, it was the whole family. Just last night, hadn’t Dolores Umber fallen right down in the street? Then before anyone could be called, the body’s gone. Picked up and carried off by one of them! Mrs. Halliwell couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Now, one night later, Silas Umber just walks into Newfield, back straight and determined. What for? His folk are in their own plots on Prince Street and Fairwell, thought Mrs. Halliwell. Yes, he was the Undertaker. Maybe he had business there. But there had been no deaths of regular folk Mrs. Halliwell had heard of, and wasn’t the father’s body planted on the Beacon? Then, a while later, out comes young Umber running like he’s being chased by the devil himself. Then came the lights about the old fancy tombs of those Put Away Folks, moving around on the other side of the wall. Voices. Old voices. And the sounds of things being dragged up stairs from who knows where. And the lights. Queer lights seen through holes in the walls. What did he do in there?

  Upon seeing those lights and strange doings, Mrs. Halliwell closed her curtains on the night and stoked up the fire. A chill had come over her. There was no good in any of it. She could feel that.

  Later, she rose from her chair, half-asleep, and parted the curtains for a last look out onto the street. Her mind twisted with fear at what she saw. A procession of corpses slowly made its way toward Temple House. “It is the Umber boy,” she muttered to herself. She knew, knew sure as the dead could walk, that Silas Umber had something to do with this. She knew. He was the cause. He would bring evil upon the town. Corpses and corruption, plague and pestilence! It had all happened before. That is why the corpses were put away. That is why they do not live among us anymore!

  “Leave the dead where they lie. . . . ,” she said, her uneven breath whitening the dark, cold window glass. “Leave them be! God preserve us! God Almighty save us from the Restless dead!”

  LEDGER

  One for the rook

  One for the crow

  One will wither

  One will grow.

  —TRADITIONAL

  AT THE PORCH STAIRS, SILAS paused.

  Temple House was silent, and shadows wound about its columns like creeping vines. A wind had risen, and it bit at Silas’s face and hands. At his approach, a bird called desperately from somewhere close by: cree cree, and in that sound he heard a warning. High above, he could just see the silhouette of a falcon perched atop one of the chimneys. Before him, a dim glow washed the lower windows that faced the street. Inside the house, candles had been lit. Silas came up the stairs slowly, one at a time, but stopped once more at the front door. Grief held back his hand. He couldn’t look at his mother’s corpse again. He tried to conjure her in his memory, some moment from their lives together . . . her talking to him, or walking with him, or when he hugged her on Fort Street before his father’s funeral. He could see the scenes in his mind, but a veil was always before her face. She was a body with a dark blur about her head that spoke to him, walked with him, but he couldn’t really see her.

  Silas’s hands began to shake and his heart beat into a panic.

  The front door opened.

  “Good,” his great-grandfather said, looking relieved. “Were you able to see to the arrangements?”

  Silas stood before the open door but didn’t answer.

  “Silas!” the corpse said, loud enough to break his wave of panic.

  “Yes . . . ,” Silas replied. “Yes. They are coming.”

  Augustus Howesman walked past Silas to the edge of the porch and looked up at the sky, then peered from one end of the street to the other.

  “I think it won’t be until tomorrow morning that the others arrive from Newfield,” said Silas. “They are not moving very quickl
y and there’s much to be seen to.”

  “It’s not them I’m looking for.” The corpse looked up once more. “Bad weather tonight. Hopefully, it will break by tomorrow. Let’s get inside.”

  Many candles had been lit and some of the furniture had been moved. Most of the chairs and small settees from the parlor had been turned to look down through the open pocket doors into the dining room, as though an audience might arrive to sit and look at his mother’s body. His great-grandfather had been busy. Some of the antiques had been brought back downstairs out of storage, mostly Egyptian things: a black basalt statue of Isis, the infant Horus suckling at her breast. There were also many smaller figurines, Egyptian ushabti, carefully arranged on the mahogany buffet.

  Silas looked at all the decorations, the ancient things, and couldn’t hold back. “Great-grandfather, I need to know what’s happening. I don’t think my mother would want anything like this . . . anything so elaborate. She wouldn’t want to see these objects. She hated them.”

  “Not so. These preparations are her express wishes. I understand your concern. For some time, she bore no great love for Lichport or its ways, or even for me. But more recently, she must have had a change of heart, because when last we spoke, we discussed this day in some detail.”

  “You mean she knew something was going to happen to her?”

  “I don’t think so . . . but perhaps she had a premonition. Who can say? Silas, surely, here in Lichport, it is no surprise that every third thought of most folks is their graves. In any event, she asked me to be sure that you knew she wanted a funeral in the ‘old style,’ so that is what she will receive. And you have a very important role to play. You’ve already begun.”

  “I will oversee everything. The wake, everything.”

  “No, grandson. This is different from what you’re used to. Far older, I think. The others, when they come, will direct the rite. Be patient. They’ll know what to do. For tonight, it’s best we just keep our eyes open and watch for trouble. This night, we sit vigil for her, for the winter nights can be long and sometimes the darkness does not stay outside where it belongs . . . ,” he whispered. “If all goes well tonight, tomorrow the funeral rite will proceed.”

  Silas nodded. “Mother Peale sat vigil over my father’s body.” Augustus Howesman made a small smile, but Silas could see he was nervous, and asked, “What could harm her now?”

  “Silas, there are many uses for the dead.”

  “Are you saying someone would try to do something to her?”

  “I am saying, particularly for those of our family, the time just after death is a very special time. And it can be a dangerous one. This is what I’ve heard. I have never sat over a body like this before. But we’ll keep a good watch, we will not sleep. We shall be vigilant. We’ll watch, and everything, come morning, should be all right.”

  Silas looked about the room and went to the windows. In the dark glass of the dining room, he saw, softly illuminated, the reflection of his mother’s body. Moving closer, peering outside, he saw that the wind moved through the bare trees. Their branches scraped against one another like dry bones, filling the night with rasps and clatterings.

  Without looking away from the window, Silas said, “Do I seem sane to you, great-grandfather?”

  “Indeed, yes.”

  “I don’t feel sane. It’s like I’m trapped in the same dream. Every night it comes. . . . A few faces change, but the story keeps looping back on itself, and someone is always dying.”

  “Someone is always dying.”

  “And I can’t help them.”

  “Grandson, as I understand it, your job is not to keep people from dying, but to help those who don’t die well to find peace, and ease the passage for others who ask for it. The world rolls along and does not stop. Not for you, not for anyone.”

  “It stopped for you.”

  “Silas, it only looks that way because we’re not looking back on it all yet. What I’m saying is just don’t you worry too much about your sanity at this very moment, all right? You are the most remarkable person I know,” Augustus Howesman said, echoing Silas’s own words about him. “Now, perhaps you should light a fire in the fireplaces, here in the parlor and across the hall. I’ve stacked them with wood. Then we should settle in. It’s likely to be a long night. When our dead are close by us, so do our memories press in, and all those folks of the past come back to us, in one form or another. The corpse attracts them. Or maybe it’s the mourning of the living that pulls aside the veil. I am no expert, like you, but this is what I’ve heard and what I feel to be true.”

  Silas looked down at his mother’s corpse.

  “Oh, son, this sort of thing is in your blood, whether you’re happy about it or not. I see you’re uneasy. I am too. Listen, it’s the hair of the dog that helps the most. Those things that frighten us, we have to look them in the eye to get past them. Even when they fill our hearts with cold, eh?”

  “I’m not scared of ghosts. Not anymore.”

  “And what if there are worse things than ghosts?” He looked out the window. “I happen to know there are, and I know you do too. The Howesmans are a queer lot, I can tell you. Our successes and prominence made us our share of enemies in life, and our . . . enduring bodies have been despised, as you saw at Arvale. And as you can see”—the corpse patted his own chest—“even Death keeps his distance! We have always been fashionable, but not always popular.”

  The conversation was making Silas uneasy and a little paranoid. As he paced about the floors of the joined rooms—past the corpse of his mother, past the quietly waiting corpse of his great-grandfather—he keenly felt other eyes on him. Decorative carvings followed him with the tiny stare of birds, of griffins, of the lion-headed feet of the mahogany buffet that held the ushabtis. The flat stares of the small statues his great-grandfather had set up were on him. And the Ammit, which had been set on the floor at his mother’s feet, followed him with its carnelian eyes. The portraits looked down on him as he walked below them—his grandfather, whose house this had once been; his great-great-grandmother, who had once done her embroidery there in the parlor, Uncle had told him. Silas felt watched and judged. The long wait for morning wasn’t calming him.

  His great-grandfather sat quietly in his chair a little away from the fire. Every so often, he moved his hand, or tapped his fingers up and down for a moment, but always returned to that preternatural stillness that the condition of death afforded him. This made Silas ever more nervous because he didn’t know what to do next.

  Finally tired of pacing, he said, “Tell me a story. Distract me, please.” Silas was trying to smile. “It makes me edgy when I don’t know what’s expected of me.”

  “So like your mother . . . I wish she could have been easier in her mind about life’s starts and stops.”

  “It wasn’t in her nature to relax. But tell me anything you like,” Silas continued. “A yarn from your side of the family?”

  “Did your mother ever tell you Our Old Story?”

  “Are you kidding? She never—” Silas began to complain. He looked over at Dolores’s body again and swallowed his words. “No, sir. I don’t believe she ever did.”

  “It is an old thing, and has been told by many and not always the same way. The Grimms included a most absurd version in their collections and washed the Howesman name from the tale entirely. It’s still accounted fine by those who know it, and I think this is as good a time as any to tell it. At least it will help us pass the bitter hours of the night. Stoke up the fire, grandson, and I’ll tell it to you.

  “In olden times there was a Howesman man just making his way along the highway, when rather suddenly, a stranger leapt from the hedgerows onto the path before him, shouting, ‘Stop! Take not one step farther!’

  “ ‘What is this?’ said the Howesman man. ‘Who are you to speak so to me?’

  “ ‘I am Death,’ answered the leaper through the hedgerows. ‘I rule all. You must obey.’

  “
Well, that Howesman man refused. You know how we are, eh, Silas? Just someone try to tell us what do! So that Howesman, he grabbed Death by the arm and the wrestling began. It was a terrible fight and the Howesman man had the advantage, being a live man and all, and with a great swing, he knocked Death down by a rock. Death just lay there. And the Howesman man went on his way, leaving Death there on the side of the road, so weak and so weary that the old reaper could not pull himself back up.

  “ ‘Well, well,’ said Death, trying to catch his breath, ‘what shall follow this strange business? If I lie here in the road, no one in the world will die. No, sir! And if they don’t die, well then, the world will be too filled up with folk. But if I get up, that Howesman fellow might come back and deal me another blow. No, no. I’ll not meet that Howesman man again. No, sir!’

  “But as Death lay there talking with himself, another man came down the road. A young man. Spry, of average looks. Just a man. Not a Howesman, but still what might be called strong and healthy. The young man was whistling idly when he saw Death in the road. He looked on Death with compassion and kindness, as though he were simply a tramp stalled on his wanderings. Not knowing who lay there before him, the young man gave Death a drink from his flask, helped him sit up, and waited as Death regained his strength.

  “ ‘Do you know, young man, whom you have helped to get back on his feet again?’

  “ ‘Just another traveler, down on his luck?’ asked the young man.

  “ ‘I am Death. It is not in my nature to spare people, and one has already escaped me today. But I do wish to show you some gratitude. So, I make you this oath: I will not come for you without warning. I shall send my messengers to you before I return to take you away.’

  “ ‘Well, well,’ says the youth. ‘That is very well indeed, for then I shall know when you are coming and I may enjoy my life to the fullest until then!’ And with that, the youth walked on, whistling an even merrier tune.