Risen

by Strnad, Jan

  "I don't pretend to be an expert in cat psychology, but I think that, in his way, Old Tom was mourning for Geraldine."

  "Say," Martin said, "that reminds me of the young man who killed his mother and father and then begged the court for mercy on account of he was an orphan."

  "Hush," Selma said. "Go on, Louis."

  "So," Louis said, barely skipping a beat, "Darleen and me go to bed, and sometime around midnight we hear this horrible caterwaulin' out in the back yard. I mean, it's just horrible. And loud? Loud enough to wake the dead."

  "Hey, maybe that's what woke up old John Duffy!" Martin said. His wife elbowed him in the ribs.

  "We look out the window and there's Old Tom in the middle of the yard, writhing and twisting and yowling. Darleen says to go get him, maybe he's swallowed poison or something, so I run out to the yard barefoot and I'm not more than a couple of feet away when I see a sight that, well...I'd give a hundred-dollar bill to wipe it clean out of my head, even now."

  Louis leaned forward and spoke in a confidential tone.

  "Old Tom's belly swells up like a balloon, the skin pulls tight, Tom lets out a howl and suddenly he just pops open, belly and bowels, with a spray of blood. Stopped me cold in my tracks, you can bet. I just stood there, transfixed. And then, out of the hole in his gut, here comes the head of that mockingbird, Geraldine, and I swear to God she's alive!

  "She looks Old Tom in the eye and Old Tom looks back, then he lets go a final breath and he dies, still staring at Geraldine. She rips away what's left of Tom's gut and claws her way out. She's a bloody, shitty mess. Then she starts heaving and coughing, and out of her mouth pours the damnedest bunch of bugs and worms—all alive and wriggling!

  "I hear this screaming behind my head and I realize that Darleen's followed me out of the house and she's seen the whole thing and she's screaming her head off. I'm looking at her, and then I hear this flutter of wings and when I turn back around, there goes Geraldine, flying off into the bushes.

  "It was something, I tell you."

  Silence fell over the group. Selma pushed away her half-eaten chicken fried steak. When the waitress came up behind Martin and touched his shoulder, he jumped up in his seat and the coffee in his cup fountained into the air and came down all over the table. After a period of wiping up and some nervous laughter, Louis said, "It didn't end there, though, did it, Darleen?"

  "No, it didn't."

  Everyone listened up. Any experience that could make Darleen utter an extra three syllables must have been pretty special.

  "Naturally," Louis said, "we buried Old Tom in the garden. The Davis kids wanted to come over and dig the grave and I said 'Okay.' Of course they didn't dig it half deep enough to keep out a stray dog, but I figured I could dig Tom up and give him a proper burial later.

  "Geraldine hung around the whole day, keeping her eye on the proceedings. Now and again, after the burial, she'd swoop down and peck at the grave. I didn't think an awful lot about it. I figured it was probably because turning the earth had loosened up some bugs or whatever.

  "I couldn't believe how good she looked. Even if Old Tom had swallowed her whole, she shouldn't have looked so healthy. How long could a bird live inside a cat's stomach, anyhow, without suffocating to death? It didn't make sense.

  "Then we heard about Duffy and how he'd been pronounced dead and come back to life and I began to put two and two together. I tell you, I believe that bird was dead, and it came back inside of Old Tom!"

  Martin made a snorting noise and signaled for more coffee.

  "So, anyway," Louis said, "I wake up this morning and I hear Geraldine singing out in the back yard. I go to the window and look out, and there she is on the telephone wire. She swoops down into the yard and starts pecking around, and I spot a black shadow out the corner of my eye, moving slow over the grass. Bless my poor miserable soul if it isn't Old Tom, crouched low and inching toward her, predator after his prey.

  "I look over at the garden where we'd buried him and I see the cardboard box laying off to the side, ripped-up like, and a hole in the dirt where we'd planted him. That damn cat had come back, too.

  "I look back toward Geraldine just as Old Tom makes a leap for her, and just like old times she waits for the last minute and flies off and Tom's claws scratch at empty air. He sits up and watches Geraldine fly around 'til she lands again on the telephone wire, and he can't take his eyes off her. The way he sits there and stares, I swear it's like he's in love or something."

  Louis paused. A thoughtful look fell over his face.

  "It made me think of the cartoons," he said. "Cat chases mouse, gets blown up. Dog chases cat, gets an anvil dropped on his head. But they keep going at it, over and over, forever, because it's their nature and in some deep, animal way, they need each other.

  "I thought about Old Tom and Geraldine engaged in this struggle for so many years, then having it cut short by happenstance. And I thought about how it could be the best thing that ever happened to them to know that, now, the game would never end, no matter what damage one of them managed to inflict on the other.

  "If this resurrection business keeps up, Old Tom and Geraldine have a real good thing going, and they have it forever, just like in the cartoons."

  "Yes," Darleen said, “just like.”

  A Candle From The Fat Of St. Iglesias

  Morgue attendant Curtis Waxler was on duty with mop and pail the night John Duffy returned from the dead, and so Curtis became the first person in Anderson to officially experience the Risen.

  Duffy had been lying passed out, dead drunk on the sofa at one in the afternoon when he'd been murdered by his wife. She had parted his throat with a filet knife. She had spent the next hour on other household chores, changed her dress and telephoned the police to turn herself in. They'd brought Duffy into the morgue some hours later and that's how Curtis first met him, cold and bloody, as dead as any corpse Curtis had ever seen, and he'd seen plenty.

  So when Duffy rose up under his sheet, banged his head on the overhead lamp and cried out, "What in the hell—?" Curtis ran from the room as if someone had just set a match to his ass. Somewhere in the process he had wet himself.

  He ran up the stairs, past the night nurse and into the midnight dark of Anderson's sleeping streets. He ran as he'd run for the Anderson Meadowlarks before his abysmal grades and worse behavior had forced the high school administrators to kick him out even though it probably cost them the season. He ran as he'd run as a young black boy growing up in a white community where the word "nigger" passed as easily over the lips as "rain," "wheat" or "tractor." He ran through the dark and through his fear and through the years to find himself back on the playground of the community park, at the top of the jungle gym, with no memory of how he'd gotten there..

  Curtis was not a religious young man, though his aunt who raised him was a devout Baptist who was never far from a "Praise God!" or "Hallelujah!" She praised God when it rained and praised Him when it stopped. She thanked Jesus for the monthly pension check and every parking space. She Hallelujahed when the bread rose. But Curtis doubted that even his aunt would have praised God when John Duffy awoke from the dead.

  "Dead is dead," he said to himself, shivering in the chill autumn wind that cut wickedly through his flimsy cotton uniform. The steel bars were cold. An old taunt from his childhood came to mind along with an image of pale and freckled and unwashed children pointing at him on the monkey bars and chanting, "Monkey on the monkey bars!"

  He climbed down and started walking, but he didn't walk toward home. If he went home he would just drink and get high and wake up as troubled as he was right now. No, he had to think. He had to figure some things out, important things about life and death and evil and the secret acts of people who think no one is watching.

  "God is always watching," his aunt had said, and he'd laughed at her. Religion was superstition with a collection plate, in Curtis's mind. There wasn't any meaning to the world and life didn't mean crap, which took a
way a lot of pressure when it came to figuring out what to do: You did what felt good that didn't land you in jail, end of debate.

  Now John Duffy's resurrection had cast a shadow over what passed for Curtis's philosophy. So Curtis started walking, walking anywhere his feet wanted to take him, walking just to keep moving. He had become that most bewildered of all disillusioned young men, one who has lost his faith in nihilism.

  ***

  Curtis stared into the fire. He watched a bulbous spider crawl from a crack in a log and skitter for its life. It halted, its legs smoldering, and then exploded with a pop. Curtis thought about the fires of Hell and imagined his own body swelling with boils and popping like the spider's, over and over again, for all eternity, while above him the world whirled on, its people living and screwing and watching television and getting high and laughing, oblivious to his suffering. He felt panic swell in his chest.

  He started when Reverend Small re-entered the room.

  "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa," Small said. He settled himself into the chair across from Curtis, who had no idea that Small was apologizing to him. "Sheriff Clark just verified your story. John Duffy has indeed risen, apparently, from the dead."

  "No 'apparently' about it," Curtis said. "That man was dead. Ask Doc."

  "Doctor Milford agrees. Obviously, since he signed the death certificate. I'm sorry I doubted you. Must have been quite a shock."

  Curtis glanced at his lap and wondered if the Reverend could smell the piss.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "It could still be a mistake. I understand Doctor Milford has been practicing a long time. What about the sheriff?"

  "What about him?"

  "Do you know him?"

  "Oh, yeah. Me and the sheriff go way back."

  Reverend Small noted the sarcasm in Curtis's voice. He wondered when Curtis had experienced his first brush with the law. He was probably very familiar with, or at least to, the local constabulary.

  "Is he reliable?" Small said.

  "Yeah. Real upstanding."

  "So, there we are. John Duffy has come back from the dead. Enough to frighten anyone. But...." Reverend Small sat back in his chair and studied Curtis's face. Curtis hadn't looked him straight in the eye all night, ever since Small had found him wandering around the church as if casing the joint. "There's something more to it than that, isn't there, Curtis? Something that scares you deep down, that scares you in a way, or for a reason, beyond what you've told me."

  "Maybe." Then silence, followed at last by, "I don't know."

  "If there's something you want to tell me, now's the time. Otherwise, it's very late, and once the news breaks about Mr. Duffy, I expect I'm going to have an extremely busy weekend."

  "What do they know, Reverend?" Curtis blurted out the words. They had been wanting to come out for some time, all night long. They were what had drawn him to the church, to Reverend Small, in the first place.

  "Who?"

  "The dead. What do they know?"

  "The answer to the ultimate question," Small said. "They know God."

  "No, I mean, about...before. About, when they were dead. Do they know what happened to them? To their bodies?"

  "What are you asking me, Curtis?"

  Curtis hung his head. He studied his piss-damp pants, his shoes, the floor.

  "I...I guess you'd say I've sinned."

  "We all sin."

  "No, not like this. It's just, I didn't think anyone would...I didn't know...." He couldn't have looked up to save his life. "Late at night, alone in the morgue. Sometimes...sometimes when a body would come in, a woman, I'd...I'd pleasure myself."

  "You'd masturbate?"

  "Yeah. And sometimes, a couple of times, I did...more."

  Reverend Small sighed. "Oh, Curtis," he said, and the words hung in the air like stale smoke.

  "It's bad, I know. I know that now. But back then, I just thought, what's the difference? They're dead, they don't know."

  "And what they don't know wouldn't hurt you."

  "Huh?"

  Reverend Small stared at Curtis, his brow knotted. He let Curtis stew in the juices of his confession for long minutes. "What do you want me to do for you, Curtis? Pray? Absolve you of this sin with a few choice phrases? I can't do it. I don't have that power."

  "Am I going to Hell then?"

  "It's no small sin you've committed. Defiling the dead—!"

  Curtis looked up, tears streaming from his eyes.

  "You gotta do something, Reverend. You gotta help me!"

  Reverend Small shrugged helplessly.

  "I'll do anything! I'll say a million Hail Jesuses! I...I can't go to Hell!" Curtis looked at the black smear in the fireplace that had been the spider. "Anything," he said. "Anything at all."

  After long moments Reverend Small spoke so quietly that Curtis had to strain to hear the words.

  "There's one possibility," Small said. "It lies well beyond the bounds of orthodoxy, but it's a chance. I hesitate to even bring it up. It poses a great risk to me."

  Curtis beseeched him with his eyes.

  "Have you ever heard of Saint Iglesias?" Small asked.

  Curtis shook his head "no."

  "He's a patron saint. Mind you, I do not personally believe in patron saints. I'm a Methodist, after all. But still, the borders of religion are porous. One faith leaches into another. Cosmologies overlap. The hand of Man is evident in all belief systems. Who is to say which—?"

  "What are you getting at, Reverend? If there's a chance...."

  "Of course." Reverend Small leaned closer to Curtis. "You need forgiveness, not from me, not from God, but from those you've sinned against. You must seek forgiveness from the dead."

  "Whatever it takes," Curtis said.

  Reverend Small moved slowly as if burdened by a great weight. He walked to a chest and hesitated before opening a particular drawer. After a moment of silent prayer, he withdrew a black candle, crudely molded, still bearing imprints of the hand that had crafted it. He returned to the fire and set the candle on the table in front of Curtis.

  "This candle," he said, "was formed three hundred years ago. The wax was rendered from the body of Saint Iglesias himself and mixed with his ashes. Iglesias, you see, is the patron saint of those who have sinned in word or deed against the deceased. If you are to be forgiven your sins, it may be of help to you."

  Curtis stared at the portentous lump of wax before him.

  "Your problem is that you must communicate with the dead," Small continued, "those whose bodies you defiled, and beg their forgiveness. You can't do that from this plane of existence. Do you see what I'm driving at, Curtis?"

  Curtis shook his head.

  "I mean, you can only seek this forgiveness after your death. Unfortunately, the wrath of God is swift. Upon your death, your soul will be, well...."

  "Sent to Hell, do not pass Go, right? And this candle can stop that?"

  "Supposedly. For a time. What you must do, Curtis, upon the moment of your death, is...you must light this candle, the candle of Saint Iglesias. As long as it burns, your soul will be spared the fires of Hell, and you will be presented with the spirits of those you've offended. You can beg their forgiveness. If they give it to you, your soul may be spared. If not...."

  "But it's a chance, right?"

  "A chance."

  "Can I touch it?" Curtis asked.

  Small nodded.

  Curtis picked up the candle and turned it over in his hands.

  "Where'd you get it?" he asked. "Shouldn't something like this be, you know, in a museum or someplace?"

  "I told you, this offer comes at some risk to myself. You're right. A sacred relic of this antiquity, for it to appear in the hands of a small town Methodist preacher...I'm not without my own sin, Curtis. To possess such an item is an enormous temptation. Let us just say that I was presented with an opportunity, and I will have to pay in the Hereafter for taking advantage of it."

  Curtis considered the candle, play
ing the scenario in his head. How would he know when the moment of death was on him? "What if something happens?" he said. "Like, what if I'm hit by a truck or something? How am I supposed to light a candle if I'm layin' dead in the middle of the street?"

  Reverend Small sank deeply into his chair. "I think you know the answer to that," he said.

  "You mean I have to kill myself."

  "While the candle is burning. While it burns, you won’t die, not before meeting those you offended. "

  "How long I got? "

  "As long as any man. The shame would be if you died tomorrow, unrepentant. Death does not make an appointment. John Duffy, for instance, thought he was lying down for a short nap and…." Reverend Small opened his hands.

  Curtis thought, looking back and forth between the candle and the fire. He imagined himself inside that fire, burning for all eternity. Or, if his aunt was correct, he could live forever in the glow of God’s precious love. Eternal damnation. Eternal bliss. When he thought about it that way, it didn’t seem like such a hard choice.

  "What do you think?" he said at last. "Hanging?"

  "I imagine that would do, " said Reverend Small.

  ***

  Reverend Small received the telephone call from Curtis's aunt early the next afternoon. Curtis did not generally rise early, so it had been several hours before she discovered the body. Small wrote down the address and said he'd be there shortly.

  He found Curtis hanging from a drain pipe in his basement apartment. He was tied by the neck with a length of electrical cord. On a table nearby stood the black candle, burned halfway down.

  Small wondered if it had begun to sputter out even as Curtis struggled in the grip of the noose. Had he watched it flicker as he gasped his last breath? Had he felt an indescribable fear as the promise of eternal damnation closed in on him? Reverend Small smiled at the thought.