by C. F. Waller
I observe as he comes directly at Jennifer. Although he sees me, it’s clear Jenn is the target. Possibly, he isn’t aware of my minor-immortal status. This would seem to be good for me. Jennifer pushes up the sleeves on her hoodie and hooks her hair back over one ear with a finger. I’ll give her this, she doesn’t look afraid.
“Yek zabân kâfi nist,” he offers sweetly.
“Absolutely,” she replies as he snatches her by the arm.
There’s a pop as if an old fashioned flash cube went off. He starts to back away, but she pulls her arm free from his grasp and locks her tiny hand around his neck. I expect a struggle, but he barley puts up a fight, dropping to his knees. As I watch transfixed as tiny particles of light begin coursing up her arm and into her chest. They aren’t actually in the air and don’t appear to be inside of her. I’m zeroed in on this when she begins shouting.
“Open the lid,” she howls, holding out her other hand, but unable to reach the casket.
When the man backed away she was pulled a few feet in his direction. My opening the lid now would be pointless as her fingertips are at least five feet short. The rolling dolly it rests on has giant casters for wheels. Each one is individually locked in place by tiny pedals on the side of each caster. I frantically stomp on them in an effort to release the wheels, but am unable to sort it out. What evil genius designed these wheel locks? Jennifer’s voice screams out in pain, causing me to freeze.
The tiny particles of light pulse in her chest now, the flow seeming to have stopped. As I watch, they begin to slowly reverse and move back down her arm. Seeing no other way to help, I put my shoulder under the bottom of the casket and overturn it. It crashes on the cut stone sideways, spilling her mother’s head and one arm out of the top section, while the bottom three quarters remains closed. I’m locked on the image of her blouse, which is cut down the back and held together with moldy safety pins when Jenn reaches out and takes the corpse by the hand. The pop is loud enough to hurt my ears and flash of green light is blinding.
The light now pulses across Jenn’s chest and down the other arm, disappearing into the coffin. It moves lighting fast, as if sucked through Jenn into the corpse. On all fours, I crawl around the side for a better look and see the man looking pale, almost translucent. Jennifer’s back is arched as if she’s having a seizure, but she holds tight to the man and her mother’s forearm. Her mother’s skin pulls away from her tight grip, oozing a dark slime from between Jennifer’s fingers. With a sudden jerk, she lets go of the man’s neck. He is thrown by some unseen force several feet away, rolling to a stop on his back. The last of the light escapes her hand, but she holds tight to her mother’s limp appendage. Tiny wisps of smoke trail off her forearm as if she was a pie left to cool on a window ledge.
“Nothing,” I exhale, almost relieved. “If there is a God, then thank you for that.”
The dead open palmed hand suddenly flips over and latches onto Jenn’s forearm. She tries to pull back, but only manages to drag her mother’s body farther out the top door on the coffin. I scramble over and haul Jenn away by her free hand, in turn dragging the moldy body of her mother free of her box. The now animated corpse lies on its stomach, one arm latched on to Jenn. The smell is strong enough that I release my grip on Jenn and cover my mouth and nose. Finally breaking free, Jenn crawls over me, holding on to my jacket in an attempt to use me as shelter.
We both freeze on our knees as her mother struggles to hers. A long ponytail is matted to her back as if by a dried tar substance. She falters and struggles like a new born baby deer trying to get up on four legs. When her face turns up, there is a smothering sound followed by jets of purple fluid spraying out of her mouth and onto the floor. Her mouth is sewn shut and she’s drowning in formaldehyde. Her back arches as if she was trying to vomit, but only thin jets of the toxic fluid shoot out.
“What’s wrong?” Jenn cries.
“We have to cut her mouth open,” I croak, pulling my letter opener out of my jacket.
“What are you talking about?”
I would rather do just about anything except approach Jennifer’s un-dead mother, but the sickening sound of her lungs trying to force the fluid past her sealed lips is too much to ignore. I have to pull away from Jenn’s grasp, then in the absence of a better plan, I grasp her mother by the hair. She flails in the growing pool of fluid, but I manage to pin her head sideways on the stone tiles. She’s struggling, but appears far too weak to overcome me. Let’s hope she stays that way. As she strains to open her mouth the yellowed sutures are visible. I push the razor sharp implement between her lips and jerk it from side to side. Instantly a gush of foul purple fluid pours out of her mouth covering my pants as I kneel. I push myself back on my butt, kicking my feet on the wet stone. Foul liquid is ejected violently from her dusky bloated lips.
As the fluid becomes less forceful, her retching stops. When she peers up her eyes are solid white from lid to lid. It’s grotesque, as if she had hard boiled eggs wedged in her eye sockets. Her muscles tighten and her entire body seems to clench up. Slowly she begins to sweat off a yellow discharge. It’s not from any one place, but rather her entire body. She remains on all fours, the sticky yellow sap running down her forearms and off her nose forming a puddle around her. She’s sweating out the chemicals. It’s as if her body was forcing them out by any means necessary. More to the point, the immortal’s life force is cleaning house.
“We need to go,” Jenn whispers in my ear as she grabs me from behind. “Please, let’s just go.”
I shrug her off harshly, furious that she did this thing and now wants to abandon whatever is left of her mother. Ragged breathing can be heard and it grows stronger as yellow puss runs off her bottom lip. One hand claws at her own eyes, tearing one eyelid completely off and causing bile to come up the back of my throat. Are her eyes sewn shut as well? I scan the floor for my letter opener, lost in the tussle, but can’t find it in the puddle of purple and yellow fluid. She claws at the torn eye lid, then a small plastic dome pops off and lands to my right. Not sewn shut but propped up under the lids with the tiny plastic device. To avoid sunken eyes at the funeral no doubt. I start to move forward to help with the other side, but she suddenly locks her one lidless eye on me.
It burns a bright green. So bright in fact that I glance away briefly. The glowing aperture follows me, then, a hand comes to her other and carefully draws out the plastic cover with a shrunken finger and tosses it aside. This leaves two glowing green orbs glaring at me. I fight the urge to soil my already ruined pants and push myself farther away. Her mother appears confused when she tries to stand. She wobbles badly, then falls over on her back, the thud of her skull on the stone causing me to wince. Almost immediately, she flips back over on her knees and uses the coffin to push herself to her bare feet.
“It worked,” Jenn blurts out behind me.
“The difference between worked and success being an important distinction,” I warn, unsure which this might be.
Jenn’s arms come over my shoulders hugging me as we watch Rahnee Ben-Ahron find her footing. With her back to us she pulls on her ponytail, but it breaks off, the better part of it still stuck to the reverse side of her blouse. Turning back to us, she feels behind her butt and then lowers herself to a seated position on the overturned coffin. While her face was originally bloated and pasty, she seems to be sheading fluid. At her feet, more purple fluid puddles, although not in the quantities it did before. At least the yellow puss seems to have stopped. Her hands, once shrunken in appearance, have filled out some, the nails still molded over and black. She picks at her lips, spitting out stitches on the floor between us.
“Who?” she coughs in a gravelly voice.
I don’t answer assuming Jenn will jump in but she doesn’t. I elbow her to no avail.
“Where?” she coughs, the black tar substance I saw from the plane landing on the stones.
“Germany,” I croak. “You’re in Germany.”
Her blazing gr
een eyes study me, but seem confused. She holds up a hand and picks at the nail on the index finger, but it falls off, landing in the purple soup at her feet. I expect her to be as horrified as I am, but she seems unaffected. Then I notice an odd thing. Her skin has slowly started to soften. The eyelid, so roughly torn earlier, has somehow returned. She picks a stitch out from between her yellow teeth, but when she brushes against them a white mark is left behind.
“She’s healing,” Jennifer whispers in my ear as she huddles behind me. “I told you the donor would fix all that.”
“You could stop hiding behind me and do something,” I snap under my breath. “This was your plan. She is your mother.”
“You,” the recently dead Rahnee Ben-Ahron suddenly points at me with the damaged index finger. “Edward from the pictures, Edward Grey.”
“Apparently everyone but me has a copy of those pictures,” I sigh, and shake my head at my new found celebrity status.
She hacks a huge loogie of black tar, then struggles to her feet. We start to rise, but the door flies open behind us. A second man in an identical dark suit bursts in. I scan the floor for his partner, but cover my mouth when I locate him. His suit bags around him. He’s shrunken to half his size. Not shorter necessarily, but bone thin. His skin is dark and looks almost burned. I’m sure he’s dead, but then he takes a ragged breath before falling silent again. This thing is still alive?
“Lo ti conosco,” the man stammers as he gets close enough to see Rahnee. “Non si può essere qui.”
“What did he say?” Jenn begs.
“He knows your mother,” I translate from Italian. “I’d say he’s surprised to see her alive.”
“She’s probably going to have to get used to that.”
The man takes a step closer, now within ten feet. Rahnee studies him with her blazing green eyes and I notice they match his, although hers seem far brighter.
“Che cosa è questo di stregoneria,” he stutters. “Tu sei il diavolo.”
“Correre a casa a tua madreche cosa è questo di stregoneria,” Rahnee suddenly coughs out, aggressively, spitting black tar at him.
“What, what,” Jenn exclaims into my ear as she clings to me, fingers twisted in my jacket sleeve.
“Uh, well, he said something about witchcraft and the devil, then, your mom told him to run home to his mother.”
She spits again and he backs up to avoid the sticky shrapnel. Her point seems to be made, and he turns and jogs to the door, turning briefly before disappearing. Once he’s gone, Rahnee returns her gaze to me. She glances around her at the mess, then runs her hands down her matted and moldy clothes.
“We should go,” Rahnee croaks scanning over the pictures of Pontiffs. “Somewhere, anywhere but here.”
“As good a plan as any,” I agree, turning to Jenn. “Anything in your plan tell us what to do with him now?” I whisper, pointing at the shrunken corpse on the floor.
Jenn remains shell shocked at first, then, looks from the body to the coffin. I see her intension and nod in return. She wants to lock his un-dead corpse inside and bury him six feet under. It would give Father Michael something to bury. While Rahnee Ben-Ahron picks her dried out pony tail off the back of her shirt, Jen and I place the donor’s body in the coffin, but are unable to reset it on the dolly. It’s far too heavy, so we leave it next to the disgusting pool on the floor. I make sure to lock the coffin, then leave the tiny wrench on one of the chairs. Once we get her mom to the car, we can instruct Father Michael to replace it in the ground. Peering around at the soiled floor it seems a mop and a bucket are in order. Jenn slips up next to me, her eyes glued to her mother.
“What do we do about the mess?” I inquire, the floor covered in dead woman soup. “They might never get the smell out.”
“I’ll throw some money at them.”
“It’s an entire wing,” I point out.
“Who do you think paid for the expansion?”
She stares at me until the answer dawns on me. Arron Foust probably funded this entire wing, or at least a renovation. It’s unlikely the Church would make a stink over some clean up. Although we have left quite a stink in here. I nod my understanding to Jenn, who bumps her shoulder into mine.
“Is she what you thought?” I sigh.
“I can’t say,” she shrugs. “I’ve only just met her.”
Chapter Thirteen
Rahnee won’t eat anything, instead she demands alcohol. With nothing to offer, Jenn shoes her into the shower and makes a beer run. The steam that emanates from under the shower door stinks of embalming fluid, or whatever she is sweating. I sit quietly writing in a small notebook for forty-five minutes. Having observed the shower situation at the cottage previously, I’m aware the hot water lasts less than twenty minutes. This would indicate the temperature change to ice cold was lost on her. What have we done?
She emerges from the bathroom wrapped in a white towel that is tucked under her armpits. Running both hands over her head she wrings out her hair, which has lost it’s dry and brittle appearance. Its broken off unevenly at her shoulders, but looks passable. We left the remnants of her ponytail in the chemical puddle, as it didn’t appear to be recovering once it broke off.
I receive a head bob of recognition as she paces around the large front room air drying. Her lack of clothing seems as lost on her as the water temperature, so I avert my eyes and turn sideways in my chair, re-crossing my legs to the other side. Her skin is darkening in color, but still bears some of the pasty white areas behind her knees and the backs of one calf. These areas also appear waxen. Are these dead spots permanent or will they heal eventually? I’m trying not to stare when she suddenly turns back in my direction.
“You’re Edward?”
I nod, having had the impression she recalled me earlier.
“Beatrix’s Edward?”
Again, I nod, trying to look away as she picks at a dark, almost moldy, spot on her inner thigh. Were she to pull the towel up any further I would have to leave the room.
“Relax,” she sighs, noticing my discomfort, but only moving the towel higher. “Where’s Arron?”
“We believe Rhea has taken him back to her stronghold under the guise of a birthday party.”
“Interesting,” she pauses, letting her towel fall back down to my great relief. “That could work.”
“Forgive me, but I thought you might be more concerned?”
“The girl,” she starts but then coughs into her hand, leaving no tar stain this time. “The girl is Jennifer?”
“Your daughter,” I reply as the roar of the Mustang engine thunders into the driveway.
“I’m going to need you to get her as far away from this mess as possible.”
“I don’t think she’ll want to do that,” I argue. “Besides, don’t you want to talk to her? Maybe take a minute to get to know her?”
“There isn’t any time for that, besides I don’t need her getting attached.”
Jenn pushes in the door and grins. Her mother flashes a weak smile and turns back to the bathroom. Red flags wave in my mind as her words wash over me. How is it she has no interest in her own daughter? This statement makes me further question what, not who, we have managed to revive.
“You got anything for me to wear?” she remarks, letting the towel slip to the floor well before she disappears from view.
“You can wear something of mine,” Jenn chirps, dropping a brown grocery bag on the tiny kitchen table and rushing after her mother. “We are about the same size.”
The bag contains two six-packs of a German beer of which I am unfamiliar. I don’t drink beer so this isn’t breaking news. A second bag contains two bottles of wine and a fifth of scotch. Not much of a drinker herself, Jenn apparently bought one of everything. I place it all in the fridge and put some water on the stove to boil. Perhaps a hot cup of tea will help me forget what I just saw. As I sit at the table looking at the string of my teabag dangling over the edge of my cup, Jenn can be heard arguing with
her recently un-dead mother. By the time the tea kettle whistles, the volume has reached the level of a cat fight. Having experienced Jenn’s tendency to fly into a rage, I assume this trait was acquired from her mother. I’m stirring in some honey when Rahnee storms out of the bedroom.
“We have Beer?”
I point at the fridge and stir, choosing not to speak. She’s wearing a well-worn pair of Jenn’s jeans and a tee-shirt. The jeans are tight, as is the shirt. I would have expected a resuscitated corpse to be skinnier, but Rahnee is an athletic looking woman. She’s barefoot, a situation I attribute to Jenn only having one pair of shoes. On one foot, her toenails are painted an aqua blue, while the other foot sports only blackened nailbeds. When she passes by, cracking one beer and carrying a second, the smell of embalming fluid follows along behind her. Does she smell that? She paces the room drinking, then drops down in the only chair available, facing me at the small table. Finishing the first beer she cracks a second and exhales, before belching.
“It’s good then?” I ask, motioning to the empty can with my tea cup.
“Tastes like paint thinner,” she winces, taking another swig. “The water in the shower tasted the same.”
“Possibly it will take your taste buds longer to recover?”
“It figures,” she snorts, tipping up the can. “They wouldn’t want me enjoying myself.”
I nod, but have no idea what she means.
Jennifer enters the room frowning. There isn’t another chair, so she hops up on the counter to join us. Rahnee burps again and sets a second empty can on the table. Without a request being verbalized, Jenn fetches her a beer. There’s tension here making me feel like a third wheel. Should I leave?
“She wants me to run,” Jenn blurts out, arms crossed as she sits on the counter.
“Does she now?” I echo, choosing not to disclose our earlier conversation.
Rahnee doesn’t respond. She seems pre-occupied by her index finger. Using her thumb and middle digit, she’s squeezing the end over the table. Cocking her head to the side, she swings her arm away from the table as a dark red drop of liquid is pressed from under her black fingernail. She waits with her head sideways watching it, then the droplet falls onto the wooden floorboards. Looking amused, she licks her fingertip and then moves her tongue around in her mouth. Glancing back, I see a tiny wisp of smoke drift above the landing spot of her secretion.