by Eli Constant
It’s still hard to think about him.
Grandmother Sophia said I was special, stronger than others of our kind that still existed. But I think that’s because the strongest of us were killed during The Rising. Or maybe her words were that of a grandmother to a beloved granddaughter.
If I am really so strong, then a spirit would never be able to use my gift against my will. If I am really so strong, no more bodies would rise on my table without my express say-so. If I am really so strong… then I would have had the strength to let Adam go instead of making him feel his body rot around him. I am not strong.
God…
I hate thinking about him.
Shaking my head, I focus on the road in front of me, steering the red bronco towards home. I’m only a few miles away now.
I swore I’d never force a soul to stay in its body again, even if I could make the body appear and feel alive for longer than it should. And I’ll never let a stubborn spirit stay in its body past the turning point either, when their eyes begin to lose their humanity. I’ve pushed a soul out before, crimson dripping from my wrist, and slung them away from the flesh and the bones to become wisps of shadow again. As they yelled and they protested and they begged to be alive, I’d bind them out of their bodies with salt and blood.
Some souls do not give up without a hell of a fight. Another reason I’m grateful to not be your average girl-next-door necromancer.
The other day, I hadn’t felt the little girl’s spirit when her body had been transported to my funeral parlor. So, I hadn’t bound her from reentering her body, thinking she’d moved on to the ether and found peace. But she’d woken up right after her mother left. That little dead girl had reached for my hand and asked me why she felt so cold.
I used to think that I had to leave the spirits free to enter their bodies so that I could do what I was destined to—help the dead move forward to the afterlife—but now I know that I can save myself (and them) the insanity of feeling the deadness of their old vessels. And I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to raise zombies.
Shit, that’s what started The Rising in the first place.
A right turn onto my driveway and I’m pulling ever closer to the Victorian two-story house with the circular attic window that is both home and place of employment. I’ve just paid to have the exterior painted. The grimy white siding with black shutters had seemed so dreary. I’d kept the white, but opted for a rich hunter green on the shutters with matching paint splashed across the front door. A large brass sign, newly made, now hangs to the right of the entrance.
Cage’s Funeral Home. Bonneau, South Carolina. Established 1945.
Parking the Bronco in the port attached to the right of the Victorian, I swing open the door and cringe when a scent of fertilizer slaps me in the face. There is a small farm not too far off, really great soil thanks to Lake Moultrie, but the owner insists on treating the fields twice a year. It’s nearing autumn, the nights cool, but comfortable—except for days like today where the wind raged, cutting through light sweaters to chill a person to the core. I cover my nose momentarily, breathing in the faint scent of the lotion on my hands, and then I stand out of the vehicle, drop my fingers, and muscle through the stench. The farmer is a great guy; I just really wish I wasn’t downwind from his land.
The storm is making it worse, of course, the wind carrying the potent smells. If the day were better, my eyes would probably not be watering, my lungs protesting the air quality I’m sucking into them.
Jesus, I’m craving sunshine. My pores scream for it. It seems we’ve had nothing but gloom and doom for weeks now. That’s the fall though, tropical storms and hurricanes disrupting the blue sky and golden sun. Of course, it’s also Bonneau. The small town seems to be placed perfectly in some insane vortex of nearly permanent depression. Honestly, I wonder when we’ll get to the point where children are given days off from school to experience sunshine.
Pulling the collar of my sweater over my mouth and nose, I move to the back of the Bronco and open the tailgate. Three bags of groceries wait for me. Enough dry goods to last me a month, fresh food to last me a week. I never overbuy. It’s only me. Lonely little necromancer.
I slam the tailgate closed. The entire Bronco seems to rattle with the impact, its old bones protesting the force of closure. Someone had offered to buy the old heap last year, said something about it being a classic and had offered a good deal of money. I didn’t know about it being a collector’s item or having the original paint job and all numbers matching, but I couldn’t sell it no matter how fat the check was. My father had given me this car when I was sixteen, right before I’d gotten my license (after failing the driver’s test three times).
The SUV had cost him a lot and I knew it, but never said anything aside from telling him how much I loved it. We’d never had much growing up, stockings at Christmas and decent food in our stomachs. Years had been lean for a long time at the funeral parlor. We’d nearly lost it to the bank more than once.
Of course, all that is different now. Dad hadn’t had the gift like Grandmother Sophia. It sometimes skips a generation. She helped run the business with dad after Grandfather Piero died, but when she’d retired, succumbing to the limitations of age, families hadn’t been compelled by the spirits to use our establishment.
Now that Dad is gone and I am in charge, I’ve more than enough work to keep in business. I often wish Dad was around to see that the place is doing more than surviving, it is thriving. Maybe he is watching from the other side.
For the millionth time, I think about how I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to Dad. He’d passed away while I was off at college, an accident during a camping trip. They’d said it was quick and painless. And it must have been, because I feel like he would have contacted me as he lay dying otherwise. He’d been a happy man in the end, with no unfinished business to keep him around. And I couldn’t force his spirit back from the ether to say my goodbyes. Not just because of the pact I’d made after I’d finally had to release Adam’s spirit. I couldn’t do it because he’d made me promise not to, so many years ago.
‘When I go, I go, baby. Don’t pull me back. Don’t worry about me.’
Threading all the reusable bag handles onto my left arm, I position my house key so it’s ready to shove into the lock. The side entrance leads right into the stairwell—one door to enter the funeral parlor, or up the stairs to a second door that leads into home sweet home.
I’m breathing heavily as I mount the last stair and twist the knob to push inward into the large apartment that runs the entire length and width of the downstairs parlor.
I’ve redecorated since moving in and taking over the business. The walls are covered in my college artwork. Pretentious, colorful pieces full of thick strokes and strong angles from when I thought I’d be famous—traveling to different galleries, successful exhibit after successful exhibit. That wasn’t to be though, despite my professors saying my work was refreshing.
I’d known it, deep down. I wasn’t made to study and paint beautiful, living things.
No, I was made for death.
I’m the third generation of Cages to own the funeral parlor. I’d been pretty adamant in my youth that I’d never take it on, that I’d become something that celebrated life instead of making a paycheck off death. I wanted to be an artist, but here I am.
Grandmother Sophia had warned me against trying to be something other than I was.
She had always been right—we necromancers were most comfortable close to the dead and away from the living. And no one batted an eye when I did something strange. Because a girl who spent her days cleaning corpses and dusting coffin displays was bound to be odd.
I keep a few pieces unhung in my bedroom; they’re pushed against the rearmost wall of my walk-in closet (something else I added when I moved in. I didn’t need the fourth tiny bedroom anyways). Those are dark pieces. Souls being pushed back into bodies, the gray fog of a spirit connecting with skin and bringing c
olor back into cheeks. Portraits of souls caged too long within decomposing vessels, the eyes beginning to droop, the flesh to deteriorate. The agonizing process of becoming the true walking dead.
There is also a box of photos stored alongside the paintings; those I cannot look at, but I also refuse to destroy them. I have a top-of-the-line camera, purchased the first month the business made more than it cost to operate. I thought that that was something I could still do- capture photos of the beauty in the world. Even that though, eludes me. Each picture I took did show the beauty, but it also shadowed the spirit world. The dead. The cloudy ether of the afterlife. I’m sure if someone else saw them, they’d assume they were doctored. I knew they weren’t.
A sensation creeps up my neck and then floats away, surrounding me with an unseen coolness. I know what it is. No, I know who it is. An image flashes in my mind, fleeting and hard to grasp. How she had looked when she’d woken up on my table. Little eyes confused. Dark hair mussed from lying against the cool steel.
Sometimes, solving unfinished business is easy. A husband just wants to let his wife know where the will is or a mother just wants to say goodbye to her child. In those cases I write a note and drop it anonymously in the mail. When it’s not that easy, I do the best I can and then I force the spirit away from me. It doesn’t feel kind to do, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
I have to stay sane somehow.
“Where’s my mommy?” It’s a soft whisper against my ear. A kiss of sound that hurts my heart. I don’t whisper back. I’ve already engaged with her too much. I don’t want to give her more cause to embrace this existence rather than the ether beyond. She deserves to find peace.
In the harder cases, like this one, putting the spirit to rest isn’t so easy. It takes time. A loving or firm hand. She’s a child. A murdered child no less. She wants her mommy. God, what does a person do against that?
I’ve only ever brought someone back by force once. My fiancé. I couldn’t stand to let him go. I’d lost Adam too early, just too damn early. It’s always too early when someone you love dies before you do. It was a car crash one stormy night on his way home from Charleston. That’s where his family had always lived… before and after The Rising. Adam’s car had hit the tree head on. They said he felt no pain. Dad was still alive then. He’d told me not to do it.
But how could I not?
Adam and I had been together since high school. We’d gone off to university together. He was a part of who I was. Losing him was like shooting myself, like taking a gun and pressing it to my chest, directly over the space which contains my heart, and pulling the trigger. He knew everything about me. Everything.
And he even loved the darkness.
I should have been happy that he’d died free, without unfinished business to tether him to the world, but I’d been selfish. I’d spilled my blood and closed my eyes and I’d brought him back.
I’d lived with him for four days until I saw the light go out on his eyes. And no, I didn’t have sex with him… it… Adam. I’m a necromancer not a necrophiliac. There is a difference. Sadly, I haven’t had sex with anyone since either. I’d just needed him to be around, just a little longer, so I could fully realize what life was going to be like without him.
Laying him to rest was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Of course, when your ex-lover becomes a zombie and sees you as food, your priorities change.
Chapter Three.
“What are you making?”
I jump at the voice, nearly dropping the paring knife I’ve been using to debone the salmon. I eat a lot of fish… there’s something about them that’s less alive. I do not get the same guilty feelings as I do when consuming something like a cow, which always feels gentle and kind and sad.
“Hey, can’t you hear me? What are you making?”
I turn slightly and find the little girl with the sad eyes, the one that’s lying in the storage room of the basement—the room with the independent cooling system. Her body is in a casket, awaiting her funeral tomorrow. Her family has opted for the chaining and concreting instead of cremation. I wish they hadn’t. I don’t know if I can bring myself to wrap the metal links around her ankles and wrists. And I definitely don’t want to watch the truck fill her grave with concrete. So that, if she ever does awaken from the dead, she will be unable to exit her burial place.
And that, folks, is what you call life after The Rising.
I know her name, but I will not think it. It brings the realness of her absence from the world to the surface of my mind. Yet, simply staring at her, studying her loveliness, makes her appear more solid. I hadn’t done much to her. She was already so beautiful. I only covered the bruise across the right side of her face. Added a little blush for color. Curled her hair so it fell in dark brown ringlets around her face.
“I’m making fish,” I finally reply, moving the blade deftly through the layers of scales and skin, “and a salad.”
She cringes and I almost laugh, because it’s such a ‘living’ thing to do. “I don’t like fish or salad and mom makes me eat them all the time.”
The laughter dies inside my throat before it can exit my mouth, the humor spoiled by the reality that her mother will never again make her eat foods she dislikes.
She stares at me, her voice caught in silence, as I plate my food. She continues to watch, unblinking, as I drizzle thousand island on my salad. When I am sat down at the table, fork gripped in my fingers, she speaks again.
“Why can’t I go back into my body? I did before. Why can’t I now?” Her little, see-through fists are opening and closing at her sides.
I swallow; there’s no food in my mouth, but I have to feel the sensation of movement. I have to push the sorrow down into my stomach where it belongs. “Because it’s not safe for you to.”
“Why not?” She moves to the table, perches atop it. The torn lace trim on her little jacket is stained with blood and soil. Murder victims always wear the clothes they died in when they return. They could choose something else, present themselves in their very best, but they never do. I don’t know why.
“Because of what will happen. Because you could become… something bad.” I let the last words trail off into nothingness.
“Oh.” There’s understanding in her face. “I don’t like being dead. Can’t I go back into my body again? Just for a little while?”
“No, sweetie. I did something to keep you from going back into your body.” Tears are welling in my eyes, threatening to cascade down. I hate crying, yet my life causes me to cry so much.
“Why?” Her little face twists up, as if I’ve betrayed her. “Why would you do that? I want to come back. I want to see my mommy.”
She knows the truth, but she’s also fighting against it. That’s not unusual. When it’s an adult, I have no problem correcting them, forcing them into reality. But a child is different, because I want them to be alive again, so very much.
“You know why.” My face is contorted in sympathy and I soften my response. “When you die, sweetie, you can’t go back. It’s…it’s not safe. Like I said. You don’t want to become a zombie.”
“But why?” Her voice is a whine, reality pushing against the backs of her teeth.
I set down my fork, straighten my shoulders, and steel my words. “Because you’re dead and your body isn’t the place for you anymore.”
Her contorted face crumples. She knows I’m right. “So I’ll never go back to mommy? I won’t see grandpa again?”
“Someday, I believe you will.” I had to believe in an afterlife, with what I’ve experienced and seen. If I didn’t… Jesus, I’d kill myself. When I’d brought Adam back, he’d not remembered where he’d been. He comprehended it though. He wasn’t mad at me for bringing him back. I hope now he’s safe in the ether, in some beautiful after-place.
“Promise?” Her voice is soft, a butterfly’s wing fluttering against my cheeks that melted any steely resolve I still held.
“I promise, sweetie
.”
She nods and disappears again, becoming nothingness and shadow all at once.
After I’ve eaten, I walk downstairs to the parlor. I’ve already set the main room up for the wake. Flowers were delivered just before I left for groceries. They are a mix of pink tulips and purple carnations with baby’s breath thrown in for good measure. There’s a box of the little girl’s things sitting on the floor next to the first row of chairs. It holds a blue teddy bear, a princess blanket, and a thin book about fairies. The mother wants them to go with Lilly, into the ground with her inert body like they will comfort her in death. Part of me wants to tell her that it’s an empty gesture. The other part of me thinks I’m an awful person for even considering ruining the way she’s chosen to cope with the loss of her child.
The long table behind the pulpit does not bear the small coffin yet. It’ll be moved up tomorrow with Max and Dean’s help. I’m dreading that. Seeing child coffins kills the soul a little. I’m glad I can at least make someone else carry the casket. It’s nice to have assistants.
I can feel her around me, but I know she will not come back today. Perhaps tomorrow, when her loved ones flood into the parlor. She’ll be drawn to them, her spirit recognizing theirs. I’ll have to ignore her words as I focus on her family. That will be hard. She’ll be hurt by my refusal to acknowledge her.
I keep the door to the basement area locked. Since I can’t always control when my power calls out to the recently-deceased, I’d rather not be surprised in my pajamas with an awakened body hanging over my bed asking where they are. Yes, that’s happened once… or twice.
Throwing the bolt, I push the door inward and start down the dark stairs. There’s a light dangling above me, but I don’t bother to switch it on. Shadows and night don’t scare me. At the bottom of the stairs, I take a left. The holding room is directly in front of me, the embalming area behind, the crematory area, where the ashes from the burning room above empty, is a very small space, almost the size of a dumbwaiter.
