by Ivan Blake
“You think I’m doing this to hurt you?” He caught his breath. “I couldn’t give a damn about you. I’m doing this to hurt Mallory. It will kill her to see you at the corner of her coffin. Oh yeah, she’s already dead!” He started laughing again and hung up.
Chapter Eighteen
Sunday, December 15
Chris arrived early for the service. He got a lift into town from Mrs. Willard because he didn’t want to draw attention by driving the Roadmaster. Outside the church, he got instructions from the funeral director, put on the cheap gray cloth mourning gloves the pall bearers all wore, and took up a position at the curb to await the hearse. To his surprise, the other pall bearers didn’t say a word to him. Only Billy said anything at all. He was pale and shivering, moaned several times and kept rubbing his bandaged arm.
“Hurting?” Chris said.
“It’s killing me. The doctor says it got infected somehow.” Ah, Mallory, one more offering for the road? Then Billy looked up, realized who’d asked about his arm, and said, “Piss off.” After that, nobody spoke.
People entering the church were somber and silent, each moving in his own small bubble of grief. If someone did register Chris’s presence, it was with a confused glance and a hurried, disapproving whisper to friends.
The hearse pulled up to the church and the Minister, Mrs. Dahlman, and Rudy stepped out. No Captain Dahlman after all. The Minister took Mrs. Dahlman’s arm and helped her up the stairs. Because of her heavy veil, Chris couldn’t tell whether grief or alcohol made Mrs. Dahlman unsteady. Rudy followed some distance behind and made no effort to help. For an instant, he glanced in Chris’s direction and grinned.
The funeral director shuffled the pallbearers to the rear of the hearse, slid the coffin out on rollers, and instructed the six on how to raise it to their shoulders. And into the church they marched.
At the end of the service and interment, all Chris could recall were several meaningless details: the many elderly aunts who wept so loudly one could hear nothing of what was being said; the huge, rose-colored marble cross Mallory’s mother in a drunken stupor had ordered for her grave; the ridiculous lies inscribed on the cross: Cherished daughter, beloved sister, and treasured friend; and finally, the screeching sound the clockwork motor made as it lowered Mallory’s coffin into the grave. A final insult came when the funeral director suggested the pallbearers might like to keep their gray mourning gloves as a souvenir.
Chris turned away in disgust and headed out of the cemetery. Only as he passed the hearse did Chris realize Dr. Meath was its driver that afternoon. Meath grinned through the window. Icy fingers ran up and down Chris’s spine.
* * * *
Chris set off for home along the old railway line. Mrs. Willard had offered him a drive home, but he’d declined. He needed time to himself, so he could either walk the highway or walk the tracks. He dared not take the highway because of all the traffic heading to the Dahlman home for the reception. The rail line passed far closer to the Dahlman place than the road, but no one was likely to notice him creeping along the rail bed in the gray light of an icy afternoon.
As soon as Chris cleared the town limit, he felt better. Attending the funeral had been the right thing to do. He’d done his duty, caused no trouble, and held his head high throughout. It had given him a kind of closure. Mallory was gone, and the dark place into which she’d drawn him was now history. On a small trestle over a tributary of the Roan River he stopped, ripped off the mourning gloves, and threw them out into the current. Then he dug his hands deep into his coat pockets and pushed on for home. Tonight, he might even try explaining to his mom and dad what had actually happened the night Mallory died.
After the trestle bridge, the rail bed meandered inland for a mile or so through woods and across fields before it again picked up the shoreline. Chris was trudging along a straight stretch of track just a few yards above the water’s edge. This piece of the line was one of the reasons the railway had been closed, because it flooded often in spring runoff.
Between the track and the beach were dunes and sea grass, and above the track, a huge swathe of low marshy ground covered in blueberry bushes—now withered by the autumn chill. Late afternoon, the wind had weakened, the sun was setting behind the coastal mountains, and the overcast sky was streaked with a burnished gold which usually augured snow.
Up ahead, the blueberry marsh ended, and the land rose away from the shore in a wide plateau affording sweeping views of the beach and the bay. Not far now to the Dahlman place. Chris couldn’t see the house yet, but he could see the lawn running across the back of the building and a few of the cars parked there for want of space in front. He decided to walk the shore instead of the track to be on the safe side; he’d pick up the rails again on the other side of the Dahlman property.
Then he saw the girl.
A good hundred yards or so ahead, just beyond the marsh, she stood in the middle of the track, motionless. And she was staring right at Chris, as if waiting for him.
He couldn’t make her out or anything much about her. The sun had just disappeared behind the line of hills. A few clouds near the horizon were still edged with gold, but the shoreline was fast disappearing into night, and a mist was rising from the blueberry marsh. Chris couldn’t see her face or tell what she was wearing, or even the color of her hair. Even so, he sensed something about her, something familiar.
The way she stood there...so weird. And surrounded by a kind of greenish glow. Chris felt uneasy. His skin grew clammy. He tried to calm himself. Probably someone from the reception, a family relation out to get some air or to get away from the stifling grief inside the house. Or maybe someone from school, one of Mallory’s friends. He stopped and stared back at the figure.
“Hello,” he called, “do I know you?”
No reply.
Then he noticed the image of the girl appeared to shift and turn, the way images seem to twist in the heat rising from asphalt in the blaze of summer. Yet the night was freezing cold. Was the movement a trick of the twilight, or maybe the mists from the marsh?
The last thing Chris needed was a shouting match with some distraught relative or school friend of Mallory’s, out here on the tracks in the cold and the dark, not after what had happened at Floyd Balzer’s visitation. He would have some reputation if that happened a second time.
He took two or three tentative steps forward, to get a better look at the figure. Then it hit him, the nausea.
Chris doubled over and almost lost his lunch, then straightened up and tried to move forward. The closer he got to the figure, the worse he felt, heart pounding in his chest, hot bile rising in his throat. Then he realized what he was feeling—anger, fury even—but not his own. He was feeling someone else’s emotion, someone else’s anger—and the anger was directed at him!
He tried to make sense of what was happening. Something…something had overwhelmed him, like a stench that made one sick the closer one got, but it wasn’t a stench, it was a feeling. “That’s crazy,” he murmured. Then the anger turned to rage. He felt a roiling pain in his gut, then a burning thirst for vengeance. Fury rose in his throat like acid.
“Who are you?” he cried out. “What the hell is going on?”
The scream, when it came, was ear-splitting, the scream and then the howling wind. At that moment, the figure started moving toward him. Then it took off in a blinding rush, racing along the track like a wave of scorching heat exploding from a blast furnace.
The force of the wave threw Chris a dozen feet backward. For a moment, he lay sprawled across the rusted rails and the splintered ties, stunned. A great weight then fell on him, crushing him against the rail bed. He was kicked about like a rag doll, lifted into the air and flipped over, and his face ground into the gravel rail bed like a cigarette butt in an ash tray.
The attack ended almost as quickly as it began. Chris lay winded, bruised and bloodied.
Someone or something appeared above him. A face, eyes burning with
hate, stared down into his. Hands grabbed his throat and squeezed. At the icy touch, he heard a deafening cacophony, maddened cries of rage and wild screams of hatred, and in the whirlwind of noise, one singular accusation: “You were supposed to come! You were supposed to come!”
Oh hell no! Mallory! And he passed out.
* * * *
When Chris came to—sprawled across the tracks, head half buried in the rail bed—everything hurt and night had fallen. He raised his face from the gravel, spit out dirt and grit, and tried to look around. No one, nothing, only darkness, the rustle of sea grass, and the wash of the surf. He tasted blood in his mouth and one eye was swollen shut. He struggled to his knees. His ribs ached and when he coughed, a lancing pain shot through his chest and he tasted blood again. When he tried to spit, a tooth wiggled beneath his tongue.
What the hell had happened? Mallory? No, not possible. He must have been mugged. Probably Billy and friends. Had they caught him by surprise, maybe hit him over the head? Or, maybe he’d hallucinated, had a stroke or a breakdown, or something like that.
God, it was freezing. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, but long enough for salt spray from the surf below to completely soak his clothes and his eye to crust over. An icy drizzle had started to fall. Chris shivered uncontrollably. He needed help. It took him some time to stand, longer still for his head to stop spinning. There was no way he’d make it home on foot, not in his condition. A thought struck him; he’d only been a short distance from the Dahlmans’ house before the attack.
Chris staggered along the tracks past the marsh, then through the sea grass, up the dirt bank, and onto the lawn behind the Dahlmans’ house. The reception had ended; the cars were gone and the house was in darkness save for a single light in the living room.
He limped around to the front door and knocked as best he could. How foolish was this, to expect help from the family of the girl he’d let die? But what choice did he have?
Someone called from the other side of the door, “Who’s there? What do you want? Go away!”
“It’s me, Chris Chandler,” he mumbled through swollen lips. “I need help.”
The door opened a crack. Rudy Dahlman peeped around the edge of the door. He appeared pale, weak and scared. When he saw Chris, he broke into a wide grin. “Well, look at you,” he said. “Had some trouble?”
“I need to use your phone.”
“You need a lot more than that. You know it’s almost midnight?”
“Is your mother...?”
“Dead to the world, with drink I mean,” and he laughed. He led Chris inside, but made no move to help him. As Chris limped to the sofa, Rudy went to the kitchen to get something with which to clean Chris’s wounds.
Chris looked around the huge living room through his one good eye. Plates and glasses everywhere. “Bigger mess than usual, eh?” Rudy called from the kitchen. “Great crowd though, you missed a terrific party. Don’t know who’s going to clean up,” he said as he returned to the couch with a bowl of water and a dish towel. “I can’t, and Mother, well Mother.... We should just set fire to the whole place and be done with it.”
Rudy put the bowl and cloth on an end table near Chris, then left him to take care of himself. Chris soaked the cloth in the warm water, squeezed it out as best he could, and started dabbing his face. He was already feeling a little stronger. He rinsed his hands in the bowl and splashed water on his face. It stung like the blazes, but he managed to wipe away some of the gore from his closed eye and to get it open. Then he rose from the chair and staggered to the kitchen sink to rinse his face a second time and drink from the tap. He spit out yet more gravel.
“So are you going to tell me who did this?” asked Rudy.
“I…I’m not sure. Maybe I was mugged. But then Mallory…I can’t believe it....” Chris replied as another wave of nausea doubled him over.
Rudy watched Chris gag and wrap his arms across his gut. “Believe what?” he asked. Then a light seemed to go on in Rudy’s brain. He jumped from the sofa and babbled, “Oh please, you don’t mean...? Oh hell, this is great!”
“What is?” Chris limped back to the sofa.
“Mallory! You saw Mallory!”
“She said suicides have to stay here,” Chris said as he dropped down on the couch again. “I thought she was talking crap.”
“This is so amazing.” Rudy was jumping up and down with excitement.
“Unbelievable, more like.”
“Mallory’s ghost attacked you. You!” Rudy stood over Chris like he’d just landed a knock-out punch in a prize fight.
“How can this be?”
“Because she killed herself in our garage and now can’t find her damned Puya! Too cool!”
“And she died hating me….”
“That’s right! You were the last thing on her sick little mind. You, not Mother or me. Oh this is great!”
“But if she knew what would happen to her spirit, why did she kill herself?”
“Maybe she didn’t mean to. Maybe she thought you’d come and save her.”
“So I’m to blame.”
“Or maybe she wanted to kill herself so she could keep punishing you forever.”
“Okay, Mallory’s out there and mad as hell at me? I just have to stay away from here and I’ll be fine. She said suicides have to hang around where they died which means she has to stay near your garage. She’s your problem, not mine.”
“Oh hell!” Rudy shouted, and then doubled over with laughter. “Are you in for a nasty surprise!”
“What?”
“You’ll soon find out.”
Where Chris got the strength he didn’t know. He reached up, grabbed the scrawny little bastard by his shirt front, and pulled him down. Caught off balance, Rudy fell at Chris’s feet. Chris knelt on his chest and screamed, “Tell me what you know, or I’ll beat it out of you!”
“All right, all right.”
Chris let Rudy go and eased himself back onto the sofa.
Rudy crawled away, and started to laugh again. “I have to warn you, knowing won’t help you.” He got up from the floor and sat in a chair, grinning and giggling. “You’re totally screwed.”
Rudy stroked his bandaged stump and began. “You see, our beloved father, when he heard his little princess had offed herself, he got blind drunk and did a bad thing. I thought it was all bullshit, but now…! Here, read it for yourself,”
Rudy reached into a trouser pocket, pulled out a thick wad of paper, and handed it to Chris. “I was saving this for the family Bible!” He started laughing like a hyena.
“It’s a fax,” Chris said, smoothing out the pages.
“Yeah, it arrived last night. Maybe I should explain what happened first. Last week, when Father got Mother’s telegram about Mallory, he telephoned her right away, and they had this huge fight over the phone. Father said he wanted Mallory’s body shipped to Rantekale so she could be buried with his parents. Mother said no. Father threatened to cut us off if he didn’t get the body. Mother threatened to tell his bosses about his second family in Indonesia.”
“And would they care?”
“I guess Father didn’t want to take the chance because he caved and said he’d come home for the funeral. Mother agreed to delay it until today. Then last night, Father sent this fax. There’s a machine in his office. They use it to stay in touch, pay bills, that kind of stuff. Mother was already passed out when his fax arrived, so I got it.”
Chris started reading the fax aloud, struggling at times because of the handwriting.
Freda,
“Mother,” explained Rudy.
I will not attend our daughter’s funeral tomorrow. It would have been kinder to tell you sooner, but I’m not interested in being kind to you. Tell my employer anything. I still won’t attend. Our daughter would not have wanted to be buried in Maine; you know it, and yet you insist on keeping her there. Why? Because all you’ve ever wanted was to hurt me, and keeping my daughter from me has alw
ays been your way.
Well, she’d be alive today if you’d let her come to me years ago as she wished, so I hope you’re satisfied.
With Annisa gone...
“It’s the name the locals gave Mallory when we visited Toraja...” explained Rudy.
...I will never again return to Maine. I pity Rudy having to live with you, but we both know the truth. He’s yours, not mine.
“Nice guy, huh?”
I’ll sign the house over to you, provide for you both for as long as you wish, and I’ll never visit you again. I’m sure this arrangement will please you, and I’ll instruct our lawyer to put this agreement into immediate effect. There’s one thing you must do for me in return, however. Do as I say and I’ll be out of your life for good. Refuse and your life will become even more of a misery than it is already.
I know you won’t believe what I’m going to tell you; you never did take the ways of the Torajan people seriously. Be that as it may, they’re my people and I believe as they do, and more importantly, Annisa did too. For her sake, suspend your disbelief and do as I instruct.
When l got your telegram, my ship was docked in Makassar. Despite what I told you, I had no intention of returning to Maine for the funeral. Instead I drove to Rantekale to grieve with my friends. I went to see my godfather Rahmat, the village priest, and we talked and cried and drank a lot of arrack.
I found it hard to believe Annisa killed herself because she knew what the act would mean. The idea of her spirit in torment till the end of time drove me mad. I begged Rahmat to think of a way to help Anissa find Puya in spite of her suicide, and he had an idea. We’d help Anissa die a second death.
A suicide’s only hope of release from endless torment is a second ‘cleansing’ death. It’s a dangerous ritual, and once begun, must be carried out exactly and to the very end, no matter how horrifying some parts may be. It cannot be stopped, cannot be reversed, and must be completed.
First, the family must ask the gods to temporarily return their loved one’s spirit to its remains. The Cleansing Death prayer is a variation on the prayer priests use to walk a corpse to its own funeral.
