Slow Funeral

by Rebecca Ore

  Maude went into the kitchen and scrambled eggs in a frying pan that was the real model of the ghost frying pan Sue had been holding.

  She was just cleaning up breakfast when the Essex pulled up. The key screeched against the lock plate, then went in. Cylinders turned and the front door banged open. She heard two people come in. “Is it still snowing?” she asked.

  The door banged shut. Luke came in and said, “You bitch.” He came toward her. Maude raised the frying pan. He murdered Sue.

  Betty came in and stripped off her gloves, then unpinned her veiled hat. “Maude, your technological world strips people of personality.”

  “Where’s Doug?” Maude put the frying pan back on its hook.

  “He’s following us, but slowly. He doesn’t have snow tires or chains.”

  Maude looked out the window to see if it was still snowing, but it wasn’t. “How was Partridge’s surgery?”

  “Your allies have no real power,” Luke said.

  “Can’t we be just normal people for a few minutes, even if you have to fake it?” Maude wanted a truce in this battle for Partridge. “I’m losing my grandmother.”

  Betty smiled. Luke smiled. That’s how they could put me to sleep last night, Maude realized. She’d tired of hating and had relaxed.

  Doug’s car pulled into the driveway. Luke smiled deeper, his teeth showing. He turned and went back to the front of the house to let Doug in.

  Doug shimmered with glamour, his skin glowing, his eyes as though he’d seen his first naked woman or his body’s first sexual erection. Maude knew Luke and Betty laid the glamour on him, but the spell more underlined his own beauty than gave him something unnatural. The sexual vulnerability of the male, balls and beard dangling to be grabbed, Maude thought, memories of statues coming to mind: the Trojan priest and his sons strangled by the god-sent snake, a dying Gaul, bodies twisting in marble.

  “So, you dressed him for me,” Maude said. His vitality lay close to his skin, in the play of the neck tendons, the movements of his nostrils, the blue veins over his wrist bones. A rip in the wrong artery could cut the vitality out.

  “We won’t fight you over Partridge’s treatment anymore,” Betty said. She put her hand on the small of Doug’s back as though presenting him to Maude.

  “Doug.” Her voice spoke his name as though saluting a sacrifice.

  “Partridge is in intensive care,” Doug said. “She’s not speaking to anyone.”

  “I’d like to go see her,” Maude said. “We need to get snow tires for your car.”

  “You can drive the Essex,” Luke said.

  “Doug needs to be able to get around,” Maude said. “I’d like to drive the Essex,” Doug said.

  Maude almost told him to drive by himself. No, Essex would eat him. She felt the Reverend Springer turning in his dreams, exhausted after his night vigil. He’d painted her a place to fight, but she had to do the fighting. The two ghost women hid from the witch couple. Maude felt out for Esther and felt needles against her fingers. Esther’s church circle quilted away. Maude wondered if she should let her aunt and uncle take Doug, a trade to give Partridge the death she wants. “I’ll get my purse and coat,” she said. “We’ll see her, then I need to go home.”

  Outside, Doug said, “Luke thought I ought to call Follette and tell him I’ll take his research job.”

  “Why don’t you wait?” The snow was powder underfoot. Doug opened the passenger-side door. “I might as well get on with my new life here.”

  “Luke wants John to have the work monitoring job, then.”

  “That’s only a temporary job.” Doug turned on the Essex engine and began backing around his own car.

  “The research institute could lose its funding when Follette dies.”

  “Luke said he’d help me.”

  “They’re gonna sacrifice you to Help John.”

  “Maude, maybe you should see a therapist.”

  “They’ve laid a glamour over you.”

  “Maude, you’re awfully inhibited for a woman who picked up strangers in Berkeley bars.”

  “You think you naturally glow like a young god?”

  “Maude, don’t be ashamed to be sexually aroused while your grandmother’s dying. Death sometimes does this to people.” He squirmed slightly under the steering wheel, thigh muscles outlined through his wool pants. The pudge around his waist was invisible.

  “Victims always get lots of sex,” Maude said.

  “Losers aren’t that sexually attractive.”

  “We aren’t talking about the same thing.” Wart Mountain reached for them, but the hospital machines thwarted it. Doug, looking only normally attractive, turned into the visitor’s entrance.

  At the main desk, a volunteer directed Maude and Doug to the intensive care unit.

  Her father’s people were sitting with Partridge. One was Elehu, the man who’d brought Esther to her the first day. The other had to be his wife, a woman in a faded cotton dress. Her hair was dark blonde going to grey and her hands were rough, on her lap stroking each other slowly, as though one hand was the other’s pet.

  Maude wished they’d leave so she could talk to Partridge in private. “Thanks for sitting with her.”

  “It’s a duty,” the woman said.

  “I appreciate it.”

  “You know why we’re here?” Elehu asked.

  “To protect her soul,” Maude answered.

  “Esther called us,” Elehu said. “She said we ought to trust you.”

  The woman said, “But you can understand why we’re not leaving.” She looked at Doug as though noticing him for the first time. “He’s painfully pretty, ain’t he?”

  Maude wondered if the witch glamour clung to him despite the machines. She realized she didn’t want to see it. “Now Luke wants him to work for Follette.”

  “I am in the room,” Doug said.

  The woman asked, “Then, how did you get into this?”

  “I met Maude in Berkeley. I wanted to learn about magic.”

  “Even the decent heathen religions condemn magic,” Elehu said. “That’s enough for us.”

  Maude went to Partridge. Her left hand had a huge IV needle going into it. Partridge opened her eyes and looked at Maude. “Maude,” she mumbled.

  “I’m here.”

  “Maude?”

  “Want something?”

  “Sorry.” Partridge closed her eyes again.

  Maude wondered what Partridge was sorry about. Was it Lula? Or that she’d given up keeping herself alive at other people’s expense? “It’s all right. We’re here.”

  Elehu said, “There’re good people at this hospital.” Above Partridge’s head was.a display that showed a green light line that jerked with Partridge’s pulse. Maude stared at the machine until her vision blurred. “I don’t know what’s best,” she said.

  “You’re half ours,” Elehu said.

  Maude said, “I thought I could be a strong witch, if I gave into it.”

  “You know it don’t work that way,” the woman said.

  “At least Betty promised me Partridge gets to die the way she wants.”

  “And they lie to us,” Elehu said.

  “I’m not one of you,” Maude stated.

  “Half us,” the woman reminded her.

  Maude asked, “Well, Doug, are you sorry you followed a half-witch to Bracken?”

  Elehu said, “You don’t have to be a witch at all.”

  “I’m not going to bind myself with Jesus.”

  Partridge’s monitor began running a longer line between blips. A nurse came in and said, “We’ll take care of her now.”

  Maude went to her grandmother and kissed her on the forehead. The flesh was sweaty and cold. She said to her father’s people, “If only you had something to offer that was between heaven and hell.” She said to Doug, “Let’s go home,” meaning to the house in Kobold.

  As they drove, half the snow on the road melted. Maude didn’t know if the drive took lo
nger than usual or if Bracken County time slipped out from under the Essex wheels. She realized Doug went slow because of the chains. “We ought to get the chains off,” Doug said as he pulled into the driveway. Maude thought that sentence came out incongruously from his mouth, the glamour wrapping him. Painfully pretty, the woman had said.

  “We ought to go back for your car.”

  “I thought we’d be staying at Luke’s while your grandmother’s in the hospital.”

  “I want to be in my own house. I feel safer,” Maude said.

  “You need to be with your people.”

  “Which people?”

  “The powerful ones.” Doug took her in his arms and hugged her.

  Victims get lots of sex. Maude wondered if he didn’t, would they still kill him? Knowing Betty and Luke, the answer was yes. Maybe she had to trade Doug for Partridge. “I feel so lonely,” she said.

  “Your people will take care of you.”

  Sleeping with a victim had charm. Maude could be his last lover. He’d never cheat on her, never grow old. She moved her left hand up to his neck, feeling the spine embedded in the flesh. She pressed the vertebra that bent out at the top of his shoulders, cervical vertebra five or six. Maybe Doug would become a revenant, living death, a corpse animated by John’s will.

  “Shall I unlock the door?” Maude asked.

  “If you can get your hands off.”

  “What did they promise you?” She swayed away from him and went through her purse to find the house key, found it, and unlocked the door.

  “They said they could… they’d take care of me. You’d be more cooperative.”

  Maude reached into his head for the sentence he hadn’t completed. They said they could make you love me.

  Maybe she should just give up, be a half-witch helper for the entities and witches with more power. She’d fall in love with Doug, be the mourning lover at his death. If Luke and Betty wanted, they could give him back to her, a cold corpse animated in just the right organs.

  Fuck the dying and the dead. The house door swung open and Maude smelled the growing mold, the decaying mouse urine and shit. Once Partridge left it, the house aged. Maude turned on a light and saw spiderwebs in the corners of the living room.

  Doug came in, his clothes a stain on his radiance. Maude felt annoyed that Luke could work on her this way. I’ll take him on Partridge’s bed.

  She had a moment’s fear that Partridge would die this instant, contaminating it, but the real problem was that Partridge had bled on the sheets.

  Some how and when later, they were naked between clean sheets, old fine linen ones washed almost transparent. Maude thought of all the women who’d seen a death coming and had spun for the shroud, linen from the Fates, the Norns. Her throat was making strange noises—hu, hah, huh—babbling in prehuman.

  For an instant, Doug fumbled, an ordinary human lover, then it was magic again.

  But when they were lying spent, Maude looked over at him. He looked dying already, the pulse naked in his throat, the skin chilled by drying sweat.

  Then she heard the Colt whispering and realized she’d stopped hearing it lately. Kill, kill, kill, it said. Defend and deafen with me. Grease my barrel with your magic. Your father’s people gave me to you.

  “You’re not that big a gun,” she told it. She got out of bed, leaving Doug sleeping, and opened the desk. The gun wasn’t loaded, but the bullets were beside it in a coin purse marked with a cross. Maude opened the purse and looked at the cartridges. They were almost as long as rifle cartridges, she thought.

  The gun seemed to sigh when she slid the cartridges into the cylinder charge holes. Womb of death, Maude thought, closing the cylinder.

  Instructions from childhood, from her father’s side of the family, floated up from memory. Don’t put your finger in the trigger guard until you ’re ready to fire. Pull the trigger almost back to the firing point, then aim and pull the rest of the way.

  Maude felt absurd, naked, squatting with a gun in her hands. She laid the gun down and dressed, then put the gun carefully in her purse. Don’t talk now, she told it.

  Doug rolled in his sleep. Maude looked down at him and wondered what he might have had to offer the county if the witches hadn’t seduced him. She pried off his glamour and saw him as real for an instant. I wish he was a sacrifice to someone better than John. Then he was the dying beloved again, until he woke up. The beard stubble appeared as soon as he said, “Could you make breakfast while I shave?”

  When they were eating scrambled eggs and toast, the phone rang. Betty said, “We’ve traded fair and square.” Maude knew Partridge was dying or dead. “Is she dead?”

  “Not yet, but you won’t see her again alive.”

  Maude hung up the phone and said, “We’ve got to get to the hospital.”

  As they went by the funeral home, a hearse pulled out behind them, tailgating, frustrated with the Essex’s speed. Doug said, “I should have taken off the chains.”

  “It’s for Partridge. She’s dead.”

  The hearse driver seemed to recognize them then, or the Essex, and dropped back. But as they turned in the visitor’s entrance, Maude saw the hearse turn in the emergency entrance. Beyond the emergency room doors, Maude remembered she’d seen another set of double doors, doors for the dead.

  Aunt Betty and Luke were in the general hospital waiting room. “She’s gone,” Betty said.

  “Can we bury her with her people?” Maude asked.

  “I’ve already said you could,” Betty answered.

  “I wanted to make sure.”

  “I’ll be very surprised if she can make a ghost,” Luke said. The doors to the wards opened and Maude’s other kin, Elehu and his wife, came out. They looked at Betty and Luke, nodded at Maude, and kept on going.

  Maude noticed that Betty and Luke looked frustrated. “You tried to get her up to the last, didn’t you?”

  Luke said, “You’re a weak person and we’re trying to help you. You ought to be more grateful.”

  19

  * * *

  VISITATIONS

  Maude went home in Doug’s car. “There’s so much to do,” she told him. She’d discovered the mechanical routine to a funeral—getting the insurance policies, talking to Partridge’s lawyer about the will, deciding on the coffin, talking to Terry and John about hiring a digging crew, explaining to a minister that he’d speak his final words over a private and unsanctified grave. Maude realized she didn’t have to tell the minister that. She half-thought about calling the Reverend Julian Springer, but, no, she wouldn’t challenge the witches at this point.

  First, Maude needed to find the burial insurance policy. She found a leather pouch near where the gun had been. The gun, when she thought about it, began muttering in her purse. Shut up. Not now, she thought back as she opened the pouch. All the documents she wanted were inside. Maude also found antique photos on metal—daguerreotypes, she realized. One was of Betty, looking about forty or fifty, not half as old as she looked these days. The second was of another woman. Maude recognized a resemblance to her grandmother’s grandmother whose photos she’d seen as a child. The third was of a black woman holding a white child.

  Betty was born in the nineteenth century. She isn’t really that old. Maude realized she’d been hesitating to kill Betty, if she could kill Betty, because she thought, whatever Betty had done to stay alive, the old woman did have centuries worth of memories. She’s not so unique. We’ve got plenty of testimony from the nineteenth century.

  “I’ve got a picture here of Betty,” she told Doug.

  He came over and picked up the photograph. “Antebellum?”

  “There’s a slave in the third one.”

  “If it could just double my life.”

  Maude almost told him, your life it will halve. She felt like she’d overgorged on glamour. Doug’s beauty and fragility, all the spell that made him so desirable earlier, seemed overdone and obvious now. “What would you do for a doubled life?
Kill?”

  “If I knew the person I killed was not contributing to society, was going to O.D. or kill someone himself, I’d do it.”

  Maude wondered if the gun put itself in her purse. “What if someone killed you to double…” She didn’t want to fix a gendered pronoun to the sentence.

  “I don’t think you understand your witch kin. They’re not that kind of people.”

  Maude didn’t respond, but changed the subject. “All the insurance policies seem to be here, and paid up. I guess we need to call Terry to get the cemetery unlocked for a work crew.” She went to the phone and dialed. When Terry answered, she said, “It’s Maude. We need to arrange for Partridge’s burial.”

  “Betty’s already told me. She’s hired the crew. Look, I imagine you’re really wasted. Would you and Doug like to come over for dinner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ask Doug.”

  “Doug, Terry’s inviting us to dinner.” Maude hoped she’d said it flatly enough to discourage him.

  “Okay, if John doesn’t play with his guns.”

  “We’d be happy to if John keeps his guns up,” Maude told Terry.

  “You need to be around family. And we’ve finally got my stupid hawk to fly at rabbits.”

  Maude wouldn’t have characterized Belle as stupid, just realistic about not wanting to work when she’d still eat mice regardless of what she killed. “I’d like to see that,” she said. “What time do you want us?”

  “About six,” Terry said. “I’m sorry about Partridge but she was in pain, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Betty felt it was rather crass of your father’s people to take her over the way they did. She hardly got a chance to say good-bye.”

  Maude wondered if Betty got Partridge despite all the Christian predestinarians. God’s will, if the time before Partridge died held such a concept. “I hope Partridge is at peace.”

  “Well, we’ll see you at six then.”