by Natale Ghent
“‘Cleanse the pin in the fire and prick the deceased’s name in the skin of the apple, promising to resolve the conflict in your heart. Eat the apple and bury the core in the earth.’”
The pin made tiny puncture sounds as it pierced the skin. When she was finished writing John’s name, Sarah started to eat. The apple tasted dry and slightly sour. She couldn’t finish the whole thing but made sure to eat the parts with his name, placing the rest on the altar beside the candle. She closed her eyes, the way the book said, and thought about John. How did seeing him make her feel? She sat in silence for several minutes, allowing images to flicker through her mind. She wasn’t sure, really, how to summarize the way she felt. John’s ghost beside the bed; his face reflected in the bathroom mirror; the constant, unsettling feeling of being watched … Was that what the book meant? Sarah opened her eyes and peered at the page in the candlelight: “What message do you wish to convey to your loved one?” Her mind was as blank as the piece of paper in front of her. She could think of nothing except her own fear at seeing him and the niggling guilt over her errant thoughts when he was sick. The candle flame sputtered. A shiver ran like a millipede up the ladder of her spine. What message would he want to hear? she wondered. What would make him forgive her? I love you, a voice in her head said.
“I love you,” she wrote in heavy letters on the page, then added several Xs and Os as an afterthought.
She folded the paper in quarters around the photo, the way the book had said to do, creasing the edges neatly with her thumbs. Holding one corner of the bundle to the candle, she watched as the fire leapt to consume her message, the paper curling and blackening quickly, the photo burning more slowly, blue and green flames moving over John’s face like phosphorescent liquid, blistering his eyes, his smile, his hair. She held the photo, the smoke rising to the ceiling of her room, until the flames threatened to singe her fingers, then dropped the bundle into the glass ashtray, the fire ebbing as the photo withered into a small pile of delicate ash.
“Recite a prayer,” the book said. There were so many to choose from. Sarah finally decided on one called “Releasing the Spirit.”
Earth, relinquish this soul
Wind, carry this soul
Sky embrace this soul
No longer of this world
Free of pain
Of mortal concerns Take flight
The wings of love shall carry you
Set you free
So mote it be
The weight of silence bore heavily upon her as she spoke the final words of the prayer. Was that all it took to relieve the dead? It didn’t seem like enough. She looked at the altar. The postcard of the three women stared back at her. Picking up the card, she held it to the flame. It resisted burning, but the cold faces of the women succumbed at last to the heat. A spoonful of your own medicine, Sarah thought, dropping the card into the ashtray and watching as the women were reduced to cinders next to the remains of John’s photo. Feeling she should do more still, she leafed through the book again, stopping at a page marked “The Wisdom of the Dead.” “The living,” the book instructed, “can benefit by divesting themselves of earthly trappings such as clothes to experience the true freedom of surrender.”
Removing her clothes for the sake of ritual seemed strange at first, but by the time Sarah was completely naked she had to admit that she felt surprisingly light. She laughed as she licked her thumb and finger to snuff the candle before tucking herself beneath the blankets. Lying in bed, the sheets felt cool and comfortable against her bare skin and she found herself feeling somewhat relieved, even hopeful. If the ritual worked, she would be free of John’s ghost—and maybe even her own guilt. She began to think about him, about the months he’d spent in bed. His hopelessness. The fire of life guttering inside him. Waiting for the end to come. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. It wasn’t the big things that got you in the end, she knew, it was the little things, innocuous little bugs and invisible viruses that normal people could easily fend off.
“A cold can be fatal to a chronic care patient,” the nurse carefully explained. “The immune system, already ravaged by disease, can’t muster the forces to battle a simple virus. Most of the patients that enter the chronic care ward die from pneumonia or some other unrelated illness,” she added. And perhaps it was better that way. Better than waiting for the unconditional surrender of a heart that didn’t know enough to stop beating. The body, long since decayed by disease, could give up weeks—sometimes months—before the heart stuttered to a halt.
The announcement that the nurses had detected fever made her delirious with worry, and then, surprisingly, shamefully, hopeful. If there was the chance to slip quietly into unconsciousness, to die peacefully while asleep, wouldn’t it be better for all of them? But it was unbearable to think about, now that it was a distinct possibility. Rounding the corner to find the empty bed newly made, the floors scrubbed, curtains drawn to let the sunlight in.
In the morning it was business as usual, though, the irritation and anger rising before the nurse arrived with the morning meds. The fever descending slowly throughout the day, stabilizing by dinner. The priest showed up all the same, sparking terror throughout the ward, gliding silently down the hall in his blackfrock, a benign expression described artfully on his face. Sitting in a chair beside the bed, he didn’t talk at all about death or dying, or even God, but spoke instead about horses and Ireland.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The ritual didn’t work. Sarah knew that when she woke and found John sitting on the edge of her bed. He was hunched over, face in his hands. She would have screamed right away if she hadn’t glanced at his feet. He was wearing blue dress socks, no shoes. Wasn’t that how it had been in the end? His feet, too swollen with illness for anything but socks or a pair of knit slippers. There was something innocent and sad about his sock feet, as though he wasn’t quite ready for the trip he was supposed to make. Haven’t you got your shoes on yet?
Sarah closed her eyes and counted to ten. She must have done something wrong. Instead of freeing his spirit from its earthly chains she had invited it back. He began calling her name, his voice thick and distorted, like he was speaking with a throat full of milk.
“No!” Sarah shrieked, covering her ears with her hands. When she opened her eyes again, he was gone, the end of the bed empty, the room oppressively silent. She burst into tears of hopelessness and frustration and rage. What recourse did she have now? A flash of hatred seared her heart. Why wouldn’t he just go away and leave her alone? And then her mind flipped instantly over. This was Donna’s fault. Her and her stupid ideas.
Picking up the book from the altar, Sarah hurled it at the bedroom door. It missed its mark, hitting the wall with a loud clunk and flapping like a gun-shot partridge to the foot of her dresser. She yanked one corner of the towel, crashing the contents of the altar to the floor, the ashes spilling over the apple as it tumbled. The apple. She was supposed to have buried it. She kicked the milk crate to one side, got dressed and stormed from the room, leaving the mess behind. She was going to Michael’s. She would stay with him.
Michael slept, his hair an ebony river across the white fabric of the pillow, the gentle rhythm of his breathing as soothing as a cat’s purr. Sarah felt safe beside him. She didn’t mind that he slept while she lay awake. He hadn’t questioned her when she’d arrived, tapping on his bedroom window. He’d simply helped her through and then held her, kissing her eyes and mouth as he worked her clothes off and eased her into bed next to him. They’d slept, holding each other, until Sarah had startled awake. She’d looked around the room, frantically, before realizing where she was and settling back in again.
Inching herself free from his embrace, she rolled onto her side and casually inspected the contents of the cubby beside his bed. Her eyes rested on a small plastic bag. Dehydrated stems of some sort—maybe mushrooms. She held the bag to her nose and sniffed. She’d never done mushrooms before but knew people who had. It was an ou
tdated high, a hippie drug. She wondered what it would be like to be stoned on mushrooms, to really let go and hallucinate. She’d always been afraid to lose control—she’d seen it happen to other people. Mushrooms were strong medicine, she’d heard. Maybe as strong as morphine.
Morphine was for terminally ill patients only. The doctor had been quite clear about that. There were concerns about addiction and substance abuse. The hospital had rules.
The doctor was a hard sell. It took arguments—several of them and quite heated—before he relented and signed the release form. Moments later a haughty young nurse strode into the room, syringe in hand. She jerked the gown sleeve clear up to the shoulder, swiped the elbow joint with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball and stabbed the needle in, depressing the plunger with unnecessary force, the morphine shooting in, until it seemed as though the vein would burst. She left without a word, leaving the gown sleeve still pushed up and crumpled at the shoulder.
Michael rolled over and spooned up behind her. “You found my stash,” he said, nuzzling her ear.
“I want to try it.”
“You’ve never done it before?”
Sarah lay silent.
“Okay, babe,” he conceded, pushing her hair aside and kissing the back of her neck. “But I have rules.”
Michael moved easily through the forest, a leather bag on his shoulder. He helped Sarah along, holding branches for her, guiding her over stumps and around rocks. They walked through the cedars, the sweet green branches scenting the air with the fragrance of pepper and lemon. The night enveloped them, the moon hiding shyly behind a veil of clouds. At a small clearing encircled with stones they stopped, the cedars creating an arbour above them. “Sit here,” he said, moving her toward a boulder that shone like a bone in the dark.
He sat on a rock across from her, bag at his feet. “Do you believe in the spirit world?”
Sarah stared silently back at him. She didn’t know what she believed any more.
“Tonight, you will know for certain,” Michael continued, working the leather bag open. Pulling out four small candles, he placed them at four corners within the circle of stones. He walked in a clockwise direction, pointing his hand in front of himself, then lit the candles, one by one, the faint smell of sulphur hanging in the air as the candle flames winked against the darkness. “I call upon the four elements for protection,” he said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a small pouch also made of leather. He loosened the tie from the top of the bag and began sprinkling some kind of herb before the candles. “Tobacco,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “An offering.” He returned to his stone and pulled a length of white rope from the bag, fixing her with a stern stare. “You must be cleansed before your journey. What sexual encounters have you engaged in?” He held the rope out in his hands.
Sarah giggled. Michael remained expressionless.
“Ummm … real, or imagined?” Sarah asked, trying to match his mood.
“Real.”
“I’ve had … relations with a half-breed,” she said, smiling.
Michael did not respond, but tied a knot in the rope and then looked at her expectantly.
“I slept with Cole Olsen in eleventh grade because I had a dream that he was really good in bed,” Sarah said.
Michael tied another knot.
“He wasn’t,” she added. “I lost my virginity to our family physician. We did it on the examination table.”
Another knot.
“I’m just kidding about that.” Laughing nervously, she cleared her throat, then composed herself and continued. “I lost my virginity to my tenth grade boyfriend …” She hesitated, wondering if she should tell the truth. “It was Peter. Peter Burrows.”
She thought she saw something glimmer in his eyes, something he was trying to suppress. Jealousy, maybe? If it was, he controlled it well. He tied several knots in the rope.
“That’s it. Not very exciting, is it?”
Michael didn’t answer but walked over to one of the candles and held the rope over the flame. The fire tongued greedily at the rope, the fibres curling and burning orange as the flames skipped hungrily up. Michael dropped the rope to the ground in the centre of the circle, where it continued to burn like a snake doused in kerosene. He spoke in an otherworldly voice. “Fire has cleansed you, unhinged your spirit from this mortal coil.” Sitting down on the rock, he produced another small leather pouch and untied it. He pulled out the dried mushroom stalks and handed her a small portion. “Swallow these.”
Sarah put the mushrooms in her mouth, half chewed them and swallowed. They tasted dusty, earthy. Michael did the same but took more than her, she noticed. Wrapping the leather cord carefully around the top of the pouch, he retied it adeptly and pushed it into his breast pocket. He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Come on.”
They wove through the trees, the wind picking up, rustling the cedars. Sarah broke off a small branch. Crushing it in her fingers, she released the lemony scent and rubbed it under her nose. “Wait,” she called out to Michael, who had run ahead. “I have something for you.” She thought she saw him stop next to a stand of birch trees in the distance, but he was next to her, gripping her arm.
“Listen,” he said.
She strained to hear. A twig snapped somewhere deep in the woods. There was a soft murmuring. Michael stepped forward and a huge buck exploded from behind a thicket, leaping through the air, white tail flashing. Sarah was sure she saw sparks fly as the deer’s feet touched the ground, a silver trail tracing its path as it fled through the woods. Michael bolted after it, eyes wild, hair streaming.
“Wait for me,” Sarah called. She ran after him, stumbling through the underbrush, tripping over roots. Her legs felt weak, her head spinning. “Wait!” She stopped to catch her breath, the sound of her own breathing so loud she had to put her hands over her ears to stop it. She looked around for Michael. He had left her alone. Why would he do that? As she searched through the forest she began seeing John’s face everywhere, in the leaves, in the stones on the ground, in the sky. He was coming to get her. At the brink of panic, she forced herself to count trees, speaking their names. “Quercus rubra. Quercus alba. Ostrya virginiana. Betulapapyrifera.”
At the birch trees she stopped. Their smooth white bark glowed like abalone in the moonlight. She suddenly saw Michael ahead of her, crouching behind some bushes. She moved toward him and hunched over. He grabbed her shirt, pulled her down and pointed at something in the clearing ahead. It was a couple writhing together on the ground, the woman moaning. The deer stood over them, poised, motionless. Sarah could almost see the woman’s face, the man’s back glistening in the dark, his feet capped with socks. How strange. Just like the time she’d seen her parents making love, the shame of it. Tramping into their room to find her father on top of her mother, her mother’s face oddly vacant, her father naked except for the blue socks pulled halfway up his calves. The fleeting glimpse of them punctuating his bare legs, the rest of his body exposed, like a clothing store mannequin, before her mother cried out and her father sprang angrily from the bed.
Sarah turned to look at Michael but he was gone. The couple was gone too. Only the deer remained, majestic against a backdrop of stars that pulsated with energy, the moon’s face appearing stark and startled above the tree branches as the clouds lifted. The buck met her gaze, then disappeared without a sound into the trees, and Sarah was immediately overcome with a feeling of great loneliness. Why had everyone forsaken her? Why must she always be alone? Abject sorrow swept over her and would have taken her under if she hadn’t seen the figure step out from behind a large oak tree. It shimmered in the most seductive way, like sunlight under water. Somehow Sarah knew that it was a girl—the girl. At once she could see impossible detail, the green cotton thread of the girl’s dress, the shadows of her knees against the fabric. But the face … she could not see the face. The girl beckoned to Sarah, urging her to come closer. Sarah’s heart beat loudly in her chest and then the wholefo
rest seemed to be beating in sympathy with her heart. She moved toward the girl as in a trance, the pull irresistible, as if she was being drawn by some unseen hand to this image she had known only in photographs. All her teenage musings, all her childish fears would be quelled if only she could reach the girl.
As she stepped forward, she heard another twig snap, thought it must be the deer, then felt a hand grasp her ankle. Michael lay on the ground, stripped to the waist, the lower half of his face now painted black. He had an apple in his hand. He held it up to her.
“Take your clothes off,” he said.
Sarah woke to the sound of the phone ringing. She sat up on one elbow—the pain erupting in her skull—and flopped back down on the bed. The phone rang and rang. Why didn’t her mother answer it? Trying to muffle the sound, she pressed a pillow over her head. It had to be Donna, calling to find out where she was. She would call and call and call. Sarah lay with her head under her pillow, the silence ringing in the brief pauses between telephone sieges, until at last she couldn’t stand it any longer and threw the pillow to one side. Kicking the covers off her legs, she discovered that she was still in her clothes. Had she gone out at all, or simply fallen asleep fully dressed? Sitting with her head in her hands, she struggled to remember her night with Michael. The deer, the couple writhing—and the girl. Hadn’t she seen the girl from the photos? She moaned lightly. How had Michael described it? “A hallucinatory projection stimulated by chemicals and fabricated in the darker recesses of her imagination.” The mushrooms had certainly worked their magic.