Liana reached over and grabbed his hand. She gave it a hard squeeze and held on even though he would have preferred she keep both hands on the wheel, the way she drove. She banged a left turn ahead of oncoming traffic to get to the highway. Even though she was from outside Atlanta originally, Liana had taken to Massachusetts driving like she’d been raised with it. She was a wild driver, piloting a car like it was a rocket sled on rails and the only work to be done was feed it gasoline and lock the doors when they got out. Early on, she’d joked that her philosophy of the road was two-fold: “drive it like it’s stolen” and “all you gotta do is miss”—meaning, miss the other cars on the road. It had taken him a week of riding with her practically every day to learn to let go of the door handles and relax. She was never stressed behind the wheel, no matter what she encountered. Today, however, she seemed more focused than usual. More in a hurry. Mitch had to brace himself against the door to keep from banging his head on the window.
“Let’s see if they’re still talking about it.” Letting go of his hand, she clicked on the radio. He reached to change it from talk to some music, but she stayed his hand and said, “Just listen.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Listen,” she insisted, turning up the volume. The car filled with the placid voice of an NPR host saying, “Religious figures around the country are calling it everything from God’s mercy for bereaved parents, to the ‘beginning of the end,’ while scientists and physicians remain baffled. We want to hear what you think, listeners. Call us at 1-800...”
“What the hell, Li? I’m really not in the mood for The Old Time Bible Hour.”
“Yeah, this is weird,” she said, pulling the wheel hard to dart around another motorist. “It’s all weird. Keep listening.” He tried to focus on the radio instead of the danger posed by oncoming traffic.
“Our first caller is Steve from Dunwich, Massachusetts. You’re on the air, Steve.” Mitch sighed and tried to focus on the voices on the radio. Steve from Dunwich wasn’t going to be encouraging or probably even coherent. Everyone up there was either some kind of religious nut or just a nut. It was a wonder that the call-screeners at WBUR didn’t just have a block on any number originating from anywhere in the Miskatonic River Valley. He waited for the inevitable half-mad doom-saying to start.
“Thanks for taking my call, Robin; I’m a big fan of the show. I just wanted to say that I believe this is a sign of the Second Coming.”
That’s a bingo!
“Why do you say that?”
“Look at scripture. Isaiah 26:19 says, ‘Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For the earth will give birth to the dead.’ Mark 9:37 says, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.’”
“What does that mean to you?”
“This is Jesus sending ‘the meek’ to herald his return. God loves all the dead kids; if we reject them we reject Christ!”
“Thank you, Steve. That’s an interesting perspective,” the host said without a hint of exasperation or irony that Mitch could hear through the radio. “I’ll give that to my guest, Reverend Chester Williamson of the Second Life Baptist Congregation in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Reverend Williamson, do you think the events of the last couple of days have a specific religious implication?”
Mitch looked at Liana with concern as she pushed the car faster. They drifted across the highway, moving around slower moving cars and zipping dangerously close behind others hanging in the passing lane until they too moved out of the way. The dashboard began to rattle as she accelerated over eighty-five. She turned the radio volume up again to combat the growing road noise. The voice of the Right Reverend Williamson boomed out of the speakers like he was preaching to the seats in the back of a revival tent and not the ones in the front of a car threatening to rattle apart on the Mass Pike.
“The Bible is full of accounts of people rising from the grave. The one we know best of course is Lazarus, brought singly back by Jesus, but there are other references to the dead coming to life as well. Thessalonians tells us that at the Second Coming, the ‘dead in Christ’—that is, the truly devout—shall be resurrected first. I’m not sure I agree with the caller’s interpretation of Scripture, but Jesus did express an affinity for the innocence of a child-like faith.”
The host broke in. “Dr. Emil Blomquist from Boston University School of Medicine, do you see things differently?”
“I don’t know what to say, Robin. Medical science just doesn’t have an answer yet for what we’re seeing. That said, I do think it is important that we remain calm until we have had a chance to study in greater depth what must be, in essence, a new natural phenomenon.”
“A new natural phenomenon?” Williamson interrupted. “Wouldn’t this, if anything, fall into the category of the supernatural, Doctor?”
“That I’ve never observed a natural process before, doesn’t make it supernatural. I’d liken it to when Pasteur confirmed the germ theory of infectious disease. The more we learn, the more we’ll likely see a natural process at work here. It behooves us not to overreact and start alarming people unnecessarily by declaring that the sky is falling or that a religious day of reckoning is at hand.”
“Overreact,” the Reverend said, laughing. “I don’t know what an overreaction to the dead rising from the grave would look like, but I suspect that a serious investigation of spiritual metaphysics is an appropriate reaction in addition to scientific inquiry.”
“We’re just about out of time, gentlemen. Any final tho...”
Mitch clicked off the radio, unconvinced they were listening to a live broadcast. It had to be some Halloween nonsense that accidentally got spooled up early by an intern at WBUR about to be fired. They can’t seriously be discussing the living dead on public radio. “What are we doing, Li?”
“All I know is that Tony called me and told me we needed to come over right now and then I started hearing this weird stuff all over the place. People are freaking out.” A sign announcing Exit 10 toward Worcester in one mile flashed by almost too fast to read. She cut off another driver, and sped up as they approached the exit. Mitch gripped the handle on the door harder.
“What stuff?”
Liana braked hard to avoid rolling the car around the rotary exit and pulled to an abrupt stop at the end of the ramp. She turned and looked him in the face. “I... I don’t want to say. It’s weird, Mitch. But it might be good weird, y’know?”
“I don’t understand what could possibly be ‘good weird.’”
“Do you trust me?” she asked. He nodded. “Okay. Then let’s go meet Tony.”
14
Liana checked the address on her phone again before shutting off the engine. She’d parked across the street from a blocky, three-story tan building with the seal of the Commonwealth just under the front parapet. The architecture displayed very little of the ornate flourishes that distinguished most other city or state-owned addresses. Unlike New England city halls and courthouses and even libraries, there was nothing adorning this edifice meant to make you stand in awe of its majesty. No columns or deco window arches to draw the eye up to a cornice ledge dramatically underlining the sun and blue sky above. Just tan brick and unassuming concrete steps leading to a pair of unadorned wooden doors below the circular seal and an address engraved in a plain font: 86 Garden St.
“Where are we?”
“This is where Tony told me to bring you.” She leaned over and lightly kissed Mitch on the lips. “Whatever happens in there, I love you.”
His throat seized up and he couldn’t swallow. Between the radio and now this, he had no idea how to still his mind. It was racing from one unreal idea to another with such speed that he felt a sort of velocity disorientation. Every thought was moving so fast, he only had time to catch a blurry image of an idea before it was gone and his mind was on to the next one. He took as deep a breath as he could and managed to hold a coherent thought
long enough to say, “I love you too.”
Liana was already out of the car and around on his side, pulling him into the street. She dialed Tony’s number with one hand while she continued to guide Mitch with the other. As they climbed the steps, one of the heavy doors swung open and Tony emerged, ashen faced with twin ruddy spots on his cheeks. He looked like someone who’d witnessed something so horrible, the memory could only be overcome with alcohol. “Come in, quick,” he said, shoving the door open for the couple to pass by. He cast a nervous glance up the street before ducking in after them.
On either side of the foyer in which they stood, stairways reached up to a landing where Mitch could see closed office doors. In the center of the lobby, dead ahead, wide marble steps led down. While the exterior of the building was unassuming, bordering on anonymous, the interior was rich with symbolic adornment. A pair of bronze sphinxes on either side of a center stairway froze Mitch where he stood. He shuddered as they stared at him with a flat dispassion, their hollow pupils fixing him in place. If asked, he intended to blame the shiver on the excessive air conditioning. Above him, on the front of the upper landing, was a gilt hourglass with outstretched golden wings. The words “Fugit Irreparabile Tempus” were engraved in the marble wall below it. Mitch asked Tony if he knew what it meant. “Time flees irretrievably,” was the answer.
“Where are we?”
“The ME’s office,” Tony said. “Come on. This way.” He was halfway down the steps before turning to see if Liana and Mitch were following. He paused and held out a hand to the couple. “Come on.”
Passing through a pair of swinging doors at the bottom of the stairway marked STAFF ONLY, the building transformed a third time. This time to a sober and sterile-looking hospital environment. White walls and a gray floor with blue stripes on either side of the hallway led off to the left and the right. Doors with wire-reinforced windows were labeled with the names of people who spent their days behind them. Tony led them to a door marked MIRANDA DOWNUM, M.D. He knocked and opened the door, peeking in before swinging it wide.
Inside, a petite redhead with freckled skin and a black silk choker around her neck sat behind a desk much too big for the room. Behind her hung a painting of a dog-faced man in a golden headdress and skirt, holding a shepherd’s crook and scales. She stood and came around the desk, reaching out to hug Tony. Pulling back, she said, “I thought you said you were bringing her family. Who’s this?”
“This is her family.” Tony held out a hand. “This is Michel LeRoux.” He cleared his throat. “Her uncle. Her only known relative.”
“No mother? Father?”
“It’s just me, ma’am,” Mitch said. Dr. Downum looked him up and down before sighing. He casually slid a hand over the tattoo on his forearm—a diamond inside a circle—but he was certain she’d seen it. When he’d gotten it, it was armor. Now it was a weakness—a signal to everyone else in the world what his vulnerabilities were. She was judging him based on his appearance while she looked like she hadn’t graduated from medical school long enough ago to have filled her office so completely with clutter. Eventually, she reached her silent judgment and said, “This way,” leading the trio out into the hallway and around a corner to two more swinging doors. These were marked with a simple numeral one. She pushed through without holding them open for the others following. Tony pulled a door open and allowed Liana and Mitch to enter ahead of him. He shrugged as if to say, Dr. Downum doesn’t deal with people often. Not living ones, anyway.
The trio stepped into a large, chilly room. Three steel tables bolted to the tile floor stood in a row along a far wall. Above each table was a recessed alcove with a sink below a hanging autopsy scale. On the opposite side of the room stood a door with a slender vertical window above the knob. Behind that, the room narrowed with one wall made up of square steel doors in rows from floor to fluorescent lit ceiling. And at the end of it crouched a man in blue scrubs with his back turned. He looked over his shoulder at Dr. Downum and smiled weakly. “You find them?” he asked, standing up.
“This is the uncle,” she said without gesturing or looking back.
The man stood up and took a step to the side. Sophie’s body sat propped up on a rolling office chair. Her blank eyes were open, staring off into the middle distance. Mitch felt a filter of rage descend over his consciousness. There was no word like widower for someone who lost a child, because it was just too terrible a thing to give a name to. He couldn’t imagine the profound cruelty that would inspire such a show. He walked toward the girl to move her from the chair back onto a table where he could cover her. Preserve her dignity.
Sophie blinked. He stopped.
It’s a trick. He tried to convince himself that he was seeing things. The result of a suggestion brought on by a terrible practical joke meant to drive him mad. He looked over at Liana and Tony—people he trusted—for assurance that they weren’t in on it. It was a con and they were all being had. Liana was standing frozen, gape-mouthed and shocked. At least she wasn’t in on it. Tony, on the other hand, had that fatherly look that he’d paraded around the funeral home. The face of a man whose job it was to feign empathy. Well, fuck him and fuck Dr. Downum too. No one deserves to be treated like this. She’s not a toy to be propped up and paraded around. If they think I’m going to take the bait and go running over like—
She blinked again and tilted her head.
“Sophie?” he said, the name catching in his dry throat like a hook.
She looked at her uncle and mewled softly, raising her arms in the gesture that had always preceded her saying, “Pick me up.” He rushed for her, his hip slamming into the corner of an autopsy table, bouncing him off target and nearly into the wall as he ran. Correcting course, he plucked her out of the seat, hugging her tightly. Her little arms wrapped around his neck and they stood embracing each other. Holding on. He loved her so much.
She was ice cold.
15
While Tony and Dr. Downum argued over the issue of how to resolve documenting the release of the child, Mitch cradled Sophie, whispering to her, smoothing down her hair, trying to warm her with the heat of his body. She didn’t look like his girl. Her hair was still curly, but it had lost all of its color, going a dull grey. Her skin was ashen and her eyes were washed out white with cataracts. Despite all the appearance of death, he couldn’t deny that she nuzzled into his shoulder, searching for that comfortable nook where her head fit just right. She nudged and shifted and fidgeted until she found it. And the familiar comfort of holding her against him made everything but her irrelevant to Mitch. He didn’t care how Tony and Dr. Downum worked out the paperwork, as long as they both acknowledged that he wasn’t leaving without his niece. He quietly hummed a lullaby while trying to ignore the fact that he was sitting in an autopsy room, feet away from a refrigerated wall full of the as yet unrisen dead.
Shifting in the office chair, he adjusted himself beneath the girl, trying to make her more comfortable. She didn’t seem to notice. She lay still on his chest, her fingers lightly playing with the beginnings of the beard on his chin. She felt lighter, maybe even smaller somehow than he remembered. She’d always been little. And while she grew, she remained small for her age, younger kids on the playground towering over her. Sitting in his lap since her resurrection, she felt lessened, as though some essential element of her was missing. Of course that was nonsense. She was embracing him. There was nothing missing.
Except her soul.
He pushed the unwelcome thought down. He wasn’t sure what he believed in when it came to the universe and the afterlife, but he was certain that if there was a god and it was merciful, his niece had her soul just like everybody else. If there wasn’t a god, then she wasn’t missing anything. Just like everybody else. The only option left was that there was a god, but it was not a merciful being and it had kept the part of her that gave her spiritual substance while returning only a dead shell to him. Given what he knew about the world and its injustices, the last was
as much a likelihood as the prior two options. Still, he preferred to willfully exclude it from his list of possibilities.
She’s fine. She’s sitting here and she’s fine.
He closed his eyes for a moment and felt her fingers stroking his cheek, imagining that they were home on their sofa and that none of this had happened. Of course it had. She’d been taken from him—kept from him. They’d told him she was dead and had threatened him with jail. In that time, he’d lost his food assistance and was about to lose the rent voucher now that they would have to return home and needed it the most. He wondered how Liana would do with the two of them moving in to her apartment. It wasn’t big enough for three. He had to find a way to keep their old place. That meant redoubling his efforts to find a job. And trying to get Sophie back into day care. There was so much to be done. He didn’t have time to daydream.
Opening his eyes, he saw Liana standing against a far wall with her arms folded to keep away the coldness of the room, keeping her distance. Mitch wanted to call her near, bring her into the embrace, but she seemed to be coping less well with the reality of the situation than she had been with the concept. Her enthusiasm in the car had hit a brick wall in the morgue. It was one thing to listen to stories about the dead returning to life on the television or the radio. She had clearly been excited by the prospect of reuniting Mitch with the most important person in his life. But it was an entirely different experience to face the reality of what he held in his arms… and have it stare back at her. Sophie wasn’t a corpse. She was awake and alert. She wasn’t talking... was she breathing...? but here she was, holding on to him, and that was all he wanted in the world at that moment. He had his niece. He had a second chance.
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