by Val Karlsson
“Lincoln, just go home and get some rest or something.” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t get that gene from my mother, the one that lets you know how to help people when they’re at their worst. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to see her.”
“Please!” he begged. “I need to, Luke. Can’t you do this for me?”
To be honest, the thought of working on Sheila alone in the basement had me sick inside. Especially when I thought about our performance the night before. I wanted to say yes to Lincoln, but I was afraid the sight of stiff, dead, bruised-up Sheila would be too much for him. It was almost too much for me.
“Lincoln, she’s really not looking . . . herself. Maybe you should wait till I finish with her.”
“I can help you. Please! I don’t care. I can handle it. I’ve seen pretty awful stuff before, Luke, believe me.”
I did believe him. Lincoln’s family was a little shady.
I led Lincoln downstairs to the prep room. The fluorescent light glinted off the white tiles on the walls and illuminated Sheila’s broken, bloody body on the embalming table. Lincoln took one look, reeled backward, and fainted cold on the floor. I waited for him to wake up. Then I carefully helped him up into a chair on one side of the room. You could tell he was going to have a bruise on the left side of his head.
“Do you want ice?” I said, though what I was thinking was I told you.
Lincoln just looked back at me with bleary, half-closed eyes. “I’m okay,” he murmured.
I uncovered Sheila’s body and began spraying it with disinfectant and washing off the crusted blood. Then I picked up some tools for setting her facial features. Just then, the lights started to flicker, and I felt the room shake.
“What’s that?” cried Lincoln, snapping out of his daze and jumping out of the chair.
“I don’t know,” I replied as the room stopped shaking and the lights steadied. Everything was suddenly very quiet. I looked back at Sheila and saw that her abdomen was strangely puffed out. Her eyes popped open. Lincoln gasped and cried out a little. It looked like she was looking at us.
Her mouth was beginning to open. Slowly, a low moan issued from her throat.
“He . . . eee . . . lll herrr . . .” she moaned.
“Wha-what did she say?” asked Lincoln in a tiny, terrified voice.
“Nothing, man,” I tried to reassure him—and myself. “It happens sometimes, when a body has been sitting for some time. The mouth can open, and sometimes there is gas trapped inside the body that needs to come out. . . .”
But I didn’t even believe my own words. No, this was something else. I could tell by the way she was looking right at us and how the moan sounded so much like words.
Lincoln was shaking. “Dude, I gotta get outta here!”
“Wait, Lincoln—” It was too late. Lincoln was up the stairs and out the front door before I could finish my sentence.
Now it was just me and Sheila. At least she looked dead again. She just stared ahead blankly, her mouth still hanging open. What did she say? “Hell herrr . . . ?” What did that mean, that Sheila was in hell? That hell was here? Or did she mean “help her”? Help who?
“Help who?!” I shouted at Sheila. I felt a breeze pass through the windowless room.
It was another rough night. More nightmares. This time, dead Sheila sat up on the embalming table and asked me to tell her all about my line of work. I looked around, and a crowd of kids from Bridgewater and Rockdale High was standing in the prep room, waiting. But they weren’t laughing. They were just staring at me silently.
“Come on, Luke! Show them what you do,” Sheila said, her head cocked to one side because of her broken neck, bruises all over her face and arms.
Then my mother came in. She was so thin, and her clothes were ragged and filthy. Her pale skin contrasted with the dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was ratty. She was holding a burnt thighbone in her hand.
“Luke,” she said, “what about me?” Sheila and all the other kids turned to look at her. “What about my body, Luke?”
I woke up gasping for air. It was three in the morning.
I went down to the kitchen for a glass of milk. I sat at the kitchen table, trying just to not think for a minute, when I felt the light shifting around me. I turned. A shadowy figure was coming up the stairs. I looked up and saw a pair of yellowed eyes, wide open.
“Sal!” I cried.
He was carrying a plate of food and a bottle of milk. Since my mother’s death, “food” basically consisted of sliced bread, cold meats, and fruit— nothing that required much preparation or cooking.
Sal jumped the way he did when I saw him sketching in the garage. A few grapes rolled off the plate as it shook for a second in his hand. He didn’t bother to pick them up. He started forward, as if to pass me, without a word.
“Sal?” I said.
“What?! What do you want?!” he barked, whipping his head around to face me.
I walked up to him. “I . . . I just . . .” I began.
“Get out of my way. Just get out of my way!” He pushed me so hard I fell to the side. I landed on the stairs, crumpled against the railing. He stomped up the stairs and into his room.
8
Sheila’s wake was awful. Many of the kids who had been at the party came, as well as Sheila’s entire family and all of their friends. Not one of them acknowledged me. Not even Fitch, who had been so chummy with me at the party. Especially not Fitch. He avoided looking at me the entire time. Even Lincoln did not seem to want anything to do with me.
“Hey, man,” I said to him, as he came through the front door of the funeral parlor. “You okay?” I awkwardly patted him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” he said. Did he actually turn away from me? I pretended not to notice.
“I think she looks pretty good,” I said, nodding toward Sheila’s casket at the back of the room. I guess this wasn’t the right thing to say. I saw Lincoln’s eyes dart toward the coffin. Then he closed them, as if he were remembering something very painful. He turned around, pivoting on one heel. He walked right out of the funeral parlor and didn’t come back.
I couldn’t blame him for being freaked out. I was pretty freaked out myself—and she wasn’t even my girlfriend. But still, I felt close to her. We were connected in some way I didn’t understand. I briefly wondered if she was my Protector, but I quickly dismissed the thought.
Aisha couldn’t make it to the wake, but she came over later that afternoon. We met outside my house so Sal wouldn’t see us. He was still mad at me for sneaking off to Lincoln’s party without telling him. It was strange. He wanted me to stay out of his way, but he never wanted me to go away either.
Aisha and I slipped into the hearse in the driveway, where it was warmer.
“Are you doing okay?” Aisha asked. “I’ve been worried about you.”
I shrugged. She leaned over and gave me a hug. That almost made me cry. Why is it that the tears always come after the worst part of something? I’d felt like a leper at Sheila’s wake, and I’d been worried Aisha would treat me the same way. But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t.
“Are you sure we can’t go inside?” she asked after a minute. “Your stepfather has always liked me. I don’t think he’d mind.”
I shook my head. “I think he’s gotten worse,” I said. “He used to just argue with my mom and me. But now he doesn’t even go see his friends.
He doesn’t talk to anyone. He doesn’t work. He’s just mad . . . all the time.”
“Maybe he’s grieving,” she said.
“Maybe . . . or maybe, he’s really going crazy.”
Just then, the garage opened in front of us. My stepfather stood glaring. Aisha seemed to straighten up in her seat a bit. I realized this was the first time she had seen him since my mother’s funeral. I thought about how he must look to her. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his mouth was pulled into a hard frown. In his left hand he clutched his closed sketchbook.
“What is this?” he asked gruffly. “What are you doing in here?”
“Oh, uh, I was just . . .” I muttered.
Sal glared at Aisha. “I don’t want anyone around here! Get her out!” he roared.
I didn’t say anything. I just got out of the car. Aisha quickly followed my lead.
Sal stood there for a moment. Then he sat down in his chair and opened his sketch pad.
“I’m gonna go,” Aisha said quietly.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “Bye.”
She ran home, looking back only once. I saw the familiar worry in her eyes.
As I turned back toward Sal, I heard the phone ring inside. He didn’t make a move to get it, so I walked past him into the house and picked it up in the office. It was a business call.
“Sal,” I said, walking into the garage, “that was Mr. Abernethy at 17 Willow Street. He needs us to come pick up his mother, who just expired.”
“Well, I’m busy right now.”
“I told him we would come. . . .”
Sal didn’t even look up. I pictured him sketching my own dead body and shuddered.
“I think I’ll go get her, then,” I said after a moment. It was pretty obvious by now that I was the only one capable of doing any work around the house. I threw up my arms and headed for the hearse.
“So, you like that girl of yours?” Sal asked suddenly.
I just stared at him.
“Be careful. A man’s got to look out for himself.”
I wasn’t even sure he was talking to me.
9
Mr. Abernethy looked a little shocked to see me walk up the steps, but I assured him that I was now officially helping my stepfather at the funeral home. I explained that my stepfather wasn’t well lately, which was no exaggeration, really. I added that we weren’t bringing in enough money to hire any additional help—also true.
Mr. Abernethy helped me use the gurney to carry his mother out and put her in the back of the hearse. He said he’d come by the following morning to discuss the funeral arrangements. Sheila’s funeral was that day as well. I knew Sal wasn’t going to handle things, so I was going to have to miss school.
That night, I set about fixing up Alice Abernethy for her viewing. Her eyelids were only half-closed, and I could see the whites of her eyes.
As I started to turn on the embalming machine, I heard a rustling on the table. I turned. Alice was twitching.
A year ago, the sight of a body twitching would not have fazed me—it happens sometimes, naturally. But this was different. The old lady’s body gave one final jerk, and her right arm flopped upward and bent back. Her fingers had all curled toward her palm except for her index finger. It looked like she was pointing behind her head toward the supply closet.
First Sheila, and now this. I couldn’t help but think that someone was trying to send me a message. My Protectors? I thought. My mother? No. I couldn’t go there. “Crazy,” I said out loud, just as another cold breeze passed through the room.
I walked over to the supply closet, just in case. Slowly, I opened the door. It was too dark to see. I pulled the chain that hung from a light fixture on the closet ceiling. I saw the usual: shelves on three sides filled with bottles of embalming fluid, disinfectant spray, creams, chemicals, and cleaning supplies. There was a black rubber mat on the floor, a broom, a mop, and a bucket. Relieved, I closed the door and turned back toward Alice.
My eyes widened at what I saw as I began working on her skin. It seemed to be having a reaction to the cream I had applied. Her flesh looked splotchy, with red patches like some kind of rash. That’s weird, I thought. She’s dead. Why is her skin having a reaction? I pulled the sheet back, but what I saw made me lose my grip. Across her abdomen, in red welts, was written my mother’s name. Penny.
I went outside and walked around the block, breathing deeply. What did all of this mean? The nightmares, the screams in the night that had sounded so real, the creaking in the wall, the rattling chains, the voices in the wind, the track on my iPod, Sheila’s breathy words, Alice’s rash and pointing finger. . . . Was I going crazy? Was I going to end up like Sal, sketching images of dead people in my garage and angry at the whole world?
No. Lincoln had been there. He had heard that voice say “help her” through Sheila’s mouth. Isn’t that why he’d left at a run? I pulled out my cell phone and started to text. But then I stopped and put the phone back in my pocket. What was I thinking? Lincoln wouldn’t want to talk about that. Not now, while he was still in shock about Sheila’s death. Probably not ever!
I thought of talking about this to Aisha, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She’d probably think I was going crazy. She had already looked so shocked by Sal’s behavior. I couldn’t put this on her.
As I came back to the house, I saw Sal’s hunched silhouette near the far wall of his room, but I couldn’t quite see what he was doing. It looked like he was climbing up onto something—or maybe into something—just beyond the edge of the window frame.
I reluctantly returned to Alice. She was exactly as I’d left her, but her rash was gone. Maybe it was never even there, I thought. Maybe I was hallucinating.
I worked as fast as I could to drain the blood and pump in the chemicals. I watched nervously for another sign, but nothing happened.
It was one in the morning by the time I had finished and got to bed. Sleep came over me immediately, but I was soon awakened by creaking in the walls.
It’s just old house noises, I tried to convince myself. The noise stopped, and I fell back into an uneasy sleep with uneasy dreams.
I was on the front lawn. And there they were, coming toward me. A crowd of dead bodies, some of the people who’d died years ago, embalmed and dressed for their funerals.
There was little Darlene Winkler, dead at age six. She was wearing a frilly white dress and carrying a porcelain doll that looked just like her. There was Mr. Morelli in his blue suit, carrying a clear plastic bag that held his organs. Old Dr. Miller was coming too. He wore his tuxedo and held his medical bag. Mrs. Chase traipsed in her flowered housedress, barefoot. There were others, but I didn’t recognize them. Their eyes were all sealed, and their mouths were closed with wires and sutures. They stumbled toward me blindly, moaning through their closed lips, desperate to tell me something but unable to.
I tried to run, but something was holding me down. “What do you want?” I shouted at them, but my voice came out as a whisper.
A loud song brought me out of my nightmare. It was coming from my alarm clock radio. Why is it going off at 3 A.M.? I thought as I fumbled for the power button. I didn’t even set the alarm! It was tuned to some R&B station that I definitely hadn’t selected. A woman sang, “He’s got me where he wants me, ohh, but I ain’t gonna stay. Now that you have found me, baby, won’t you come my way?”
I hit every damn button, but the radio wouldn’t shut off. “I’m tired of being a prisoner, baby, break me from these chains. . . .” Finally I grabbed the radio, tearing the plug from the socket. I threw it across the room, and it shattered against the wall.
I couldn’t stop shaking.
10
I stopped going to school. All of my time was spent answering the phone, making arrangements, driving the hearse for pickups and funeral processions, preparing bodies, and running wakes. I almost never saw Aisha. I was kind of surprised she hadn’t dumped me yet. I guess she knew I was going through some stuff.
I was the one holding everything together, and I felt like I was coming apart.
The day before the first anniversary of my mother’s death, I found a card in the mail, addressed to Salvatore Signorelli V and Luca Signorelli. Luca. No one ever called me that—my real first name. I flipped over the envelope. “Alberto Signorelli.” The address was in Connecticut. Uncle Bert? As far as I knew, I’d never even met my step-uncle. I barely even knew anything about him.
I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the card. It was a sympathy card.
I am so very sorry that this card arrives so late, but I only just heard about your family tragedy from an old Bridgewater acquaintance I ran into this morning. Why did you not call me or write to me, brother? I know we have had our troubles, but family is family.
Luca, we do not know one another, and I deeply regret that. However, I can assure you that it was not my choice. I hope that we can someday remedy this sad situation.
I am very sorry for the loss that you both have suffered, and I hope that your wounds have healed somewhat now that a year has passed. Time cannot heal all wounds, but I hope that it might heal some.
I am here if you need me.
Sincerely,
Bert
I took the card inside and left it on the kitchen counter for Sal to see. Stuffing the addressed envelope in my pocket, I decide to Google my step-uncle. I thought maybe he went and opened another funeral service business somewhere else, but no. He was actually an obstetrician. He delivered babies. He ushered people into this life rather than ushering them out.
He was also married and had three kids. I actually had family somewhere. But my stomach turned a little when I thought about meeting them. What if Uncle Bert turned out to be just like Sal?
On the back of the envelope, I jotted down the phone number I found for Bert’s medical practice in Connecticut.
11
I didn’t think things could get worse. It was the anniversary of my mother’s death, and I was certain that someone was watching me. Following me. I could almost feel them breathing down my neck.
It was a Saturday, 6:00 A.M. I woke to my bed rocking; it felt like the whole house was shaking. I held onto the edge of my mattress, confused and sweating. The motion stopped after a minute, and I got out of bed as if I’d been pushed.