by william Todd
“Good. Glad to hear it.” Suddenly, something occurred to Dr. Arless. It was both appalling and exhilarating at how quickly his mind worked in this way. It would be a slap in the face disguised as a gesture of good will. Not to Sean; he neither liked nor disliked the young man. He merely tolerated him, the way he tolerated roast chicken when his palate was meant for fois gras. It would be a slap in the face of the good Vicar Pratt.
“Forgive me, Sean, I hope I am not being too forward when I ask this, but how is your family’s financial predicament?”
“Ye know ‘ow it is fer folk like me. Six of us t’feed an’ only me an’ Timmy able t’work. An’ not much out there fer the likes of us, other than helpin’ in the fields an’ ditch diggin’.”
A wet smile widened on Dr, Arless’s face. “How would you like to make an easy guinea for one night’s work?”
Sean’s eyes widened. “I—I don’t know what t’say. Thank ye, sir! Thank ye dearly. I ne’er held that much money in me hands all at once. That’s awfully kinda ye, doctor, sir. That kinda money can put some good food on th’table for a long while, long while, indeed! Whatcha got in mind fer me?”
“Watching over my beloved for me.”
5
The doctor returned home and, after some explaining as to why he was drenched in river water, retired to his room.
Thus dry and clothes replaced, he lay upon his bed, staring at the ceiling, hoping against hope that Gwen would stay out of his thoughts and, more importantly, out of his room.
Soon, though, a fitful slumber overtook him. He dreamt happily, at first, of travel, sun, drink, parties, and pretty ladies. Yet during a flirting dance with these unknown beauties, they would metamorphose into his wife. However, these weren’t old recollections of the two happily dancing at some festivity long past. In each instance she would bend into him smiling and whisper seductively in his ear, “I’m still alive.” And when she pulled back from the whisper, her pale smooth skin began to drop from her like melting tallow, exposing muscle and bone that dribbled blood onto his suit. The gentle touches of hands and waist transformed into boney, noose-tight clutches around his neck. She seemed hell-bent on taking him to the grave with her.
In only a short while, he awoke abruptly to a stealthy noise, a gentle ruffle and quick, dainty footsteps just outside his door.
“Olivia?” he called out rubbing his eyes. “Olivia, is that you? I am decent. Would you be a dear and come in and take these wet clothes to be laundered? I’m dreadfully sorry. I should have put them in the hallway earlier for you to take.”
More discreet shuffling but no response. Dr. Arless quickly arose from his bed with a quickly rising dread and went to the door, hesitating briefly before opening it just a sliver.
“Olivia?”
A wisp of white lace flashed quickly across his vision. He quickly closed the door, leaning on it for support, his heart an odd, quick syncopation; with only a momentary glance, he but knew that what he had seen was the dress his wife was to be buried in.
No, that couldn’t be it. It had to be yet another phantasm with which his entire day had been plagued. He rubbed the remaining sleep from his eyes and listened intently for more ghostly din. All seemed quiet now outside the door. Still, he listened another long minute.
Nothing. The doctor slowly opened the door just wide enough to reconnoiter the hallway just beyond. Less than a hand’s width away from his peeping eye was one of the same— dead, cataract, veiled in white crepe—staring back at him. A foul stench permeated the miasma between them.
“I’m still alive!” it clacked through the crack in the door. Dr. Arless slammed it shut and stuttered back to his bed. “Leave me alone! You’re not alive. You’re dead! I made sure of that! I couldn’t have been wrong. I did it myself. You are dead, and this is just a figment of my distressed mind!”
The crystal glass door knob bit by bit twisted and unlatched with a quiet click.
A creak upon its hinges whispered, as the door slowly opened. Climbing onto his bed, Dr. Arless shielded himself with his covers in a puerile attempt at protection from the ghoul beyond the door. “You are dead! Dead, I say. I had to do it. I had to! Leave me alone!”
“Had to do what, sir?” Olivia queried as she entered the room.
She saw his ashen face, muscles twisted and contorted in fear. She ran to him. “Sir, what’s come over you?” His speech was quick with fear. “You saw her, yes? Gwen. Just outside the door. In her burial gown. You saw her, didn’t you?”
She gently unlatched the blanket from his grip and helped him down off the bed. “Sir, the missus is down stairs, in her room, waiting for the casket and the mourners for the service. I am sure she is not wandering the halls.”
“So you didn’t see her then?”
“No, sir.”
With a blank stare, almost absentmindedly, he said, “Di—did you need me for something?” “No, sir. I was just coming up to tell you the vicar’s wife has finished dressing her. I wanted to know if there was anything I could do for you before I start getting ready. Everyone will be here at six and Mr. Timmons with the casket sometime before that.”
She grabbed a small, red velvet stool from Mrs. Arless’s vanity and sat it by the open window and opened up the drawn curtains. She gently led him to the chair. “Come, sir. Sit. What you’re seeing are the ghosts of a troubled mind. You loved the missus. She is dead. It is proper to think she is still alive when she is not. The day is bright and warm and the breeze, most pleasant. Sitting here will clear the cobwebs from your mind, if you let it.”
“So I shall. Yes, only ghosts of a troubled mind. Yes, I think I’ll sit for a while.”
Dr. Arless sat motionless, hands on his knees, staring blankly out into wheat fields and the church just beyond.
And Olivia left the room with new tears falling from her cheeks.
. . . . The doctor was roused some time later by the clapping of horses’ hooves along the cobbled way in front of his home. However, his eyes never strayed from the graveyard beyond the wheat field—Gwen’s new permanent home; a residence in which she could not take up soon enough, as far as he was concerned. He had squeezed what little life she had left from her and ever since had been tormented by a putrid spirit who claimed she was still alive. Her body had not miraculously revived since he lifted the pillow from her head more than eight hours ago. She never stirred when they cleaned and powdered her flesh and dressed her for burial. Yet, he now wondered if indeed she was still amongst the living, in a deep, unconscious slumber from which she could wake at any moment and tell the tale of his black transgression.
The thought of being found out made his heart leap almost as much as seeing the decaying form of his wife. His constitution was not one that could bear the hardships of prison and his neck, too weak to hold a noose. The sole purpose of his foray into medicine was to attract someone of higher caliber than he otherwise might have warranted because of the lowly situation he had been born into. He was put into this world to be in comfort not to toil. To think that he might end up like those with whom he grew up appalled him beyond anything he could endure.
He had worked too hard, harder than most, to attain the standing he now had. Even though he had grown to love her in his own way, his wife was but a means to an end. An end he now possessed and would fight to keep.
It was these feelings that sparked within him the courage to do what needed done for the better aim of both of them. That is, at least, what he had told himself, as he wrenched the pillow around his sick wife’s face.
Now, however, his weak constitution and love of life’s better comforts haunted him as much as did his dead Gwen.
There were struggled footsteps on the front porch that fully broke him from this grim reverie, and he looked away from the church for the first time. This must be the special casket finally arriving. Shortly, they would be rearranging the sitting room and placing the body within in preparation for a hasty viewing before burial. He would stay in his roo
m until the morbid display was ready.
. . . . The doctor got dressed without looking at all in the full length mirror for fear of the possibility that the dead/not dead abomination would be staring back at him from beyond the glass.
He rang Olivia up so he would spend no time alone between his bedroom and the sitting room, which now housed the casketed body of his wife.
When he finally appeared at the top of the staircase, several sets of forlorn eyes stared unblinkingly, waiting his descent: There was Gwen’s best friend, Ellie Todd, who accompanied the Arlesses on many of their trips to the continent; Sarah Terrill and her husband, Gwen’s cousin and the only relative within a short enough distance to attend the hastened service; three close acquaintances from the church, Mary Aslip, Dorcas Pelham, and Maddie Ives; lastly, there was the vicar, his wife, and Mr. Timmons. In total there were eleven souls, including the widower, himself, and Olivia.
With the doctor thus descended and given consolations from all there, the vicar waved silence to the small crowd to begin his hastily prepared sermon.
The words to beckon off Gwen to the great Beyond were but muffled chatter in the doctor’s ears. His attention was completely given over to the queer looking casket and its contents in the room to his left. In almost all respects, it looked like any other casket; it was a polished, dark mahogany trimmed in gold leaf and polished brass, with a padded lining of white silk stitched in intricate patterns. The bottom half of the lid was lowered and latched into place over Gwen’s body, while the upper half was open for the mourners to get one last glimpse of the deceased.
There were but a few exceptions to this elegant boite de la mort: Dr. Arless noticed the exophytic, threaded one foot piece of polished brash in the middle of the opened lid, no doubt the fixture for the fresh air to be circulated from the land of the living above the burial site; and there was lastly a small, polished brass rod, at the top of which was an eyehole. This arose from the edge of the coffin near the dead woman’s crossed arms. This must have been a fixture for the rope Mrs. Arless would use when she miraculously awoke from her near-death slumber and rang the bell aboveground to be loosed from her soiled prison.
Dr. Arless shuddered noticeably at its phantom ringing in his ear. Heads nodded in unison around him as Vicar Pratt waxed eloquent on behalf of Dr. Arless’s dead wife. The doctor only began to pay attention when the old Anglican priest began the descent on his eulogy.
He was completely pulled back to this grim reality when he felt himself being pulled and prodded, as a que was forming in the entranceway to pass by and view Gwen one last time. All seemed to yield at once for the doctor to lead the que, however he had seen more of his dead wife than he’d cared to share, so he insisted that he be the last to pass her casket.
Once each person passed, they quickly went outside to their carriage and waited for the procession to the grave site.
It was Dr. Arless’s turn, in due course, and he quickly swept up Olivia by the arm. “Let’s both see her together, as she meant the world to us both,” he regarded with a slight quiver in his voice.
Olivia, knowing how troubled the doctor’s mind had been earlier, had stayed behind precisely as a comfort for the doctor, as he viewed his wife one last time. She smiled meekly and tucked her hand under his arm.
With a deep breath by one and a sob by the other, they entered the room to say their goodbye. With trepidation, Dr. Arless advanced to the casket, hesitating momentarily, almost turning to leave. Olivia, however, would not let him go. “Please, sir. Say your goodbye, or you’ll live to regret it, and you’ll never have this moment again.”
With an ever sickening mind the doctor was already regretting this moment. Yet, without realizing it, he was now at the casket looking down on his wife. Her ginger hair had been washed and curled. Heavy makeup covered the pustules on her forehead and cheeks, and rouge had been lastly added to the crusty layers.
Besides this, however, she merely looked asleep, and that is what still troubled the doctor; she merely looked asleep—a deep, unconscious sleep, waiting for that climactic moment when, for reasons unknown, her brain and heart would become active once more, she would awaken, and her haunting would then take a physical turn.
After a quiet moment, Olivia kissed her gloved hand, placed it on Gwen Arless’s heart, and sobbed into the background, leaving Dr. Arless there alone.
He looked back at her nervously, as his housemaid went back into the foyer with the men standing about waiting to take the coffin for its somber trip to the cemetery.
When he turned back to his wife, though he couldn’t be certain in his state of mind, it seemed there was now an ever so slight smile on her face where once before there was not. The makeup had ridged into crusty wrinkles about the edges of her lips where before none had been.
The dead woman was mocking him. His heart leapt into his throat, and he suddenly felt nauseous. As best he could, without casting undue anxiety, Dr. Arless turned and quickly left the room, the house, and hurried himself into his waiting carriage.
. . . . Sean Caudill was standing at the gravesite, uncomfortably kicking at the clumps of fresh earth piled to one side of the rectangular cavity when the carriages arrived. Nearby was a lantern and a stool. His tall frame cast an even longer shadow across the grass and graves from the low hanging sun to his back, beyond the wheat field.
The vicar was the first out of his carriage and cast a curious brow at Sean, as he approached the young man. “Young Mr. Caudill, are you lost, boy? You’ve come at an inopportune moment. As you can see, we are preparing to bury Mrs. Arless. She died earlier today.”
Sean bowed his head and took off his hat, twisting it nervously in his hands. He was about to speak when Dr. Arless came up behind Vicar Pratt and explained. “Sorry, vicar. I guess I forgot to mention it earlier; I ran into Sean down at the river today and asked him if he would mind being the bell guard at Gwen’s gravesite tonight. I hope I haven’t stepped on anyone’s toes.”
“But I’ve already arranged for Mr. Severo to do it.” The doctor tried to hide a wry grin, quickly regained himself, and motioned the vicar to a private sidebar. “Apologies, vicar,” the doctor lied, “but surely you can’t object to giving the job to the one most needing of the generosity. You know as well as any the troubles of the Caudill family, and I promised a Guinea for the job.”
“Yes, but…” He looked around to make sure no one could hear them and whispered, “The troubles, as you say, they bring on themselves with more drink and less food with what little money they do make.”
He hesitated a moment then whispered ever softer, “You do know they are Papists don’t you?” The doctor put on a façade of irritation. “Where they attend church had no bearing in my decision,” he said in a melodramatically impenitent tone, “and it shouldn’t enter into yours, as well.”
The old man sighed, scratched his balding head, and his face reddened, as well, if only for a different reason. “Yes, yes. Your remonstration is deserved and correct. He would be precisely the kind of person to whom your wife would have steered her charity. Yet, Mr. Severo… What should I tell him?”
Dr. Arless did not try to hide his smile when he said, “That, vicar, will be your problem to rectify.” And with that, the doctor broke ranks with the vicar and sauntered over to his young sentry.
When Sean gave him a querying look, Dr. Arless assured him, “Everything is fine. The vicar didn’t know I had already made arrangements with you and had employed the services of Mr. Severo to guard the gravesite.”
The young man scratched at his surly golden locks as he asked, “Sir, you’ve yet t’tell me—what ‘zactly am I guarding th’grave from?”
“From the unlikely prospect of my wife coming back to life and ringing the bell they will be attaching shortly to her dead hand. If that happens, you will be charged with digging her up.”
Sean’s face became noticeably pale, giving more distinction to his freckle-pocked face. “I don’t mind sharin’ wi’
Mr. Severo, if that’ll help. He seems a nice man, he does, an’ looks kindly at me when we pass in th’village. Though he oft looks like he got the morbs,” he quickly added.
The doctor patted him on the shoulder. “No, no, that won’t be necessary. I’m paying for your services, and you should get the entire amount.” He fished from the pocket of his suit a gold coin. He made sure no one was looking when he gave it to Sean. “One Guinea, as promised.”
“This is most generous, sir.” The young man’s voice cracked. His eyes widened and teared when he felt the shiny piece in his hands, turning it over in admiration. “Can’t thank ye’ nuff, sir, for this, truly.”
When he looked back up, he only saw that back of the doctor, who was now ten feet away, headed back to the others.
From over his shoulder Dr. Arless retorted, “Just stay back behind a tree till the service is over.”
6
The service and burial had been the most grueling two and a half hours he had endured in quite a long while. It seemed to be a fitting cap on the head of a Jekyll and Hyde day. It had been both exhilarating and horrifying—the exhilaration of freedom from an ever-growing burden, and the horror of the haunting of a dead wife who may not be dead.
Now back in his bedroom, Dr. Arless shed his suitcoat, not bothering to pick it up from the floor, unbuttoned his collar, and charged straight to a small mahogany bar next to his dresser. He poured himself a whisky, which burned but didn’t cleans his palate of the char of the past twelve hours.
He had found within himself a darkness that had simmered just below the surface of his soul, simmered and seethed for years. In the months leading up to this morning, that simmer turned to a bubble, then a boil, until that pot frothed over with fully cooked indignation. This morning he had feasted on it. Now, he was full.
Exhausted, the doctor finally and reluctantly changed into his night clothes, although it was only just before 9:00, and donned his silk housecoat.