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In a Halloween tradition, stickman's blog appears on my page, and mine on his.
Sophia (1967 - 2009).
Sophia, wife of Paul and loving mother to Anne, has passed after a brief illness. Grand-parents, parents, uncles and aunts are united in grief at the loss of their beloved.
Viewing to be held at Butler and Sons Funeral Chapel from 10 am. to be followed by interrment at Mount Hope Catholic Cemetery at 3 pm.
In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Womens' Health Centre, University Hospital.
I.
“Paul...” I try to focus and her face gradually materialises. I smile, stiffly, but that is the farthest thing from my mind. “You don't have to stand here, you know. You can sit down. You haven't slept since she...”
“No, I haven't.” I am interrupted and turn away from my sister, Angelique, to accept condolences from a guest. “Yes, she's at peace now. Thank you so much for coming. We all appreciate it.” I have no idea who it was. I don't want to but I do it anyway. I turn and look.
Sophia is so pale, small and still lying there. It makes me want to take her in my arms, to warm her and to tell her one more time how much I loved her. But I can't do that anymore. That has been taken from me.
We put her in her wedding gown although, now, I'm wondering if I like that. It only accents her paleness, composed on the white satin lining of the casket, surrounded by her favourite jasmine flowers and contrasted with the dark, piano finish of the wood. Angelique leads me to a chair and makes me sit. My hands fold, warring, in my lap and my eyes are continually drawn back to the casket.
“Anne?” I say suddenly and my head jerks up to look around.
“She's with Uncle Neil and Aunt Tania at the park across the street,” says Angelique and her hands close around mine, rubbing, and trying to warm them. “They're going to take her to lunch and distract her for now. They'll bring her to the cemetery later so you can say your 'goodbyes' together.” Angelique's no-nonsense practicality takes me by surprise; my breath catches and I know what is going to follow. I begin to sob again. It is uncontrollable. Angelique's thin arms close around me and then she is holding me and rocking me like a child.
“I thought I'd finished. I thought I couldn't anymore,” I say as another wave of grief washes over me. “I'm sorry.”
“Shhh...” She whispers softly to me of days when this will be a sadness that rests in the past. I try to believe her.
II.
If there was ever a good day for a burial, this is it. The mood was already set this morning when, it seemed, the sun failed to rise, hidden as it was, behind dark, low-hanging cloud and the wind came in damp gusts. Now the wind is sustained, cold, and the day has grown darker still, threatening icy rain.
Father Meighan drones on with the service. On my left, Anne's hand is in mine, chilled and in constant fretful movement. At 10, she is old enough to understand what has happened but not old enough to know what to do with the vision of her mother's casket on the daïs surrounded by artificial grass to obscure the hole in the ground. Anne's bright pink ski jacket, retrieved at the last minute to protect her from the sour turn in the weather, stands out as the only point of light among the ring of black overcoats and black umbrellas that is around us. Angelique clings to my right arm, supporting me and supporting herself, her silk handkerchief frequently pressed to her face to suppress her own sobs which furtively escape with each pronouncement of 'Amen'. The encircling family are as silent as the stone angels that dot the landscape, radiating away like a consuming vortex.
“He that raised up Jesus from the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies, by his Spirit that dwelleth in us,” recites Father Meighan. His voice rises to be heard above the steady wind. I know the moment I dread most is arrived. Anne starts, shocked, and gasps beside me. The mechanism begins its movement with a soft click and whir of gears. The casket begins to drop slowly from view. I clasp Anne's hand tightly in an attempt to steady myself.
“...we commend to Almighty God our sister Sophia; and we commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless
her and keep her...” He bends and retrieves a clod of earth from the ground, breaking it between his pink fingers, and then it falls with a dull spatter over the casket. He nods to me and continues. My breath is coming rapid and shallow.
“Anne, sweetie?” I drop to one knee beside her. Her gaze is fixed and vacant on the hole in the ground. “Do you want to give those to Mommy?” I gesture to the tiny wreath of jasmine that is slowly crumbling in her clenched and reclenched fist. She nods, her lips pressed thin and blue with cold.
I crouch, towering over her, with my hands holding her shoulders. 'The Lord be with you,' comes a whispered response to the priest's liturgy. The hole in the ground is deep, dark and the casket barely catches light from the depth. Anne holds out her arm robotically and the wreath, released, briefly catches on the wind and then dips and drifts lightly down, falling without a sound on the lid. Angelique is beside me and her black-gloved hand rests across my back.
“Do you want to say anything now, sweetie? 'Goodbye?'” I suggest, my voice lowered to barely audible in Anne's ear. I need to be away from here. I can feel, what little composure I have, quickly dissolving into self-pitying tears, wails and laments for the love of my life who is now dead. Anne's voice, when it comes, is a piercing shriek that erupts from her lungs, a question with no answer.
“Mommy?”
III.
Angelique bustles through the living room and ushers out the last of the guests. I am on my fifth Scotch. I thank Uncle Neil and Aunt Tania as they leave. I'm sure that my speech is slurred but I blunder on. They really have been wonderful. As soon as they learned of Sophia's final illness, they dropped everything and came down. They minded Anne and the house whilst I whiled away the hours watching Sophia fade until there was nothing left of her. Tania hugs me and then backs away; her hand lingers fluttering over her mouth as Uncle Neil shakes my hand, looking exhausted, and claps me on the shoulder muttering some encouraging words. The both kiss Angelique and then they disappear into the dark and sleet that lurks outside.
Anne is down for the night, exhausted and confused, but curled up, warmly covered, with her 'Dora' doll after the last of the hysterical eruption of tears subsided. They had started up soon after our departure from the graveside. In the limousine coming home, she was inconsolable. All I could do was hold her tightly to me while her body was wracked with sobs.
“I'm going to make some tea. Will you sit with me and have some?” Angelique is looking at me, her head tilted to one side, guaging my stability. I am about to answer in the negative, preferring another scotch, when the doorbell chimes. Angelique studies the closed and bolted door with a questioning glance and then moves to answer it. “I hope they won't mind if I send them away,” she remarks, not looking pleased. “It's been too much of a day for all of us.”
In my mind, everything is wrong. I take a swig from the rapidly emptying glass, not bothering to taste the musky flavour but, instead, send it burning down my throat. The sight of the house looking clean and tended, thanks to Aunt Tania, gives the impression that nothing has changed. Everything has changed. Sophia isn't here anymore. I look around at our things, each one carefully positioned and expect to see her drift silently, padding on bare feet, into the room from moment to moment. The sound of the doorbell only added to it. 'She's home,' came the spontaneous, happy expectancy which dashed equally as rapidly as the reality ran into me with the force of an icy, gale-force blast from the north.
Angelique opens the door and I feel the cold air from outside immediately seep insidiously across the floor and a chill rises up my spine. Her reaction is exaggerated – a momentary withdrawl in revulsion at the shadowed figure on the doorstep. Then she corrects her behaviour.
“What can I do for you?”
“The Agency sent me,” comes a voice from without; a voice as fragile as dead leaves being driven up the street by the cold, autumn wind.
“The Agency?” queries Angelique. She turns to me, questioning. I shake my head, confused and not comprehending.
“The night is inhospitable,” adds the voice in the darkness.
“Yes, of course,” reacts Angelique. “Won't you come in?”
“Thank you for the invitation.” This is followed by something like a laugh but, it sounds more like an axe burying itself in a stump of wood.
In the next moment, I understand Angelique's reaction. The woman who enters the light of the foyer is beyond years, hunched and hideous. Her face is a mockery – the eyes bulbous and glassy above a toothless, withered visage drawn into a lipless smile. Angelique is turned to me, deferring to my actions as owner of the house. Her eyebrows are raised in surprise and dismay. On the periphery of my senses, there arises the impression of an odour, something that is stale and ancient, vaguely malignant. I glance around, searching for the source but, then shrug it off.
“What Agency are you speaking of?” I demand of the frightful crone. My voice in my own ears is thick with the effects of the alcohol.
“Ah!” she answers and her head pivots upon the boney neck and those horrid, protruding eyes fix on me. I wonder if she has a thyroid problem. “You must be the man who has suffered the terrible loss.” Her pronunciation lingers over the 's' making her sound like a snake or, perhaps, I am picking up on a hint of some foreign accent. Angelique closes the door and then moves awkwardly away to stand close to me. “You have my sincerest condolenses,” adds the woman. I wave off her platitude. Her presence, with those pale orbs fixating on me, is making me feel off-centre and unbalanced. I want to be rid of her, to be done with this unpleasant exchange.
“Maybe Neil or Tania called someone,” comes Angelique's suggestion. I nod, realising that she might be right. “You will need help with Anne and the house 'til you are back on your feet.”
Still the eyes of that awful hag are on me, seeming to pierce my thoughts. She is nodding very slowly as if in approval of a question not yet posed. My breath catches when, from nowhere, a scent passes under my nose. Before I realise what I am doing, I am inhaling, longingly, a jasmine perfume and my eyes wander in search of Sophia's presence in the room.
“Paul?” My head jerks back and I gaze blankly at Angelique. “What's wrong?”
“It's... I was certain... nothing.”
“What do you want to do with her?” Angelique's head tilts slightly toward the ancient creature standing at the door. That glassy gaze is fixed on me yet and, were I not certainly mistaken, I would interpret her expression as one of desire. I shake off the disgusting notion.
“You can come back tomorrow afternoon,” I pronounce, stuttering; repulsed by the expression on her face and overcome with yearning from the stray scent which instantly conjured Sophia to me. On my decision, Angelique springs to action, seeming equally anxious to be rid of the old woman. She moves quickly to the door and opens it, inviting the woman to exit. “Two o'clock should be reasonable,” she says curtly. The old woman acknowledges the information and takes a step toward the door. Then, she pauses and turns again to me.
“What would you give to have Sophia back?” Angelique gasps in surprise at the insensitive utterance but my answer has escaped my mouth before any conscious thought has materialised.
“Everything,” and then she vacates the doorway, disappearing into the cloaking darkness.
IV.
Late in the night, long after my sorrowful sighs had subsided and, aided by a sleeping draught provided by Angelique, I had drifted off to sleep feeling cold and lonely in the bed now too big for me alone, I awake with a start, eyes wide and searching in the obscurity of the silent room.
My first impression was of the storm outside, now worsened. I see a flash of faint blue light followed by a long, low rumble of distant thunder. The rain, beyond the drawn curtains and window panes, is driven on the wind in sheets against the glass sounding like tacks dropped on a ceramic floor.
It was not the storm that awoke me. It was a whispered voice.
“Paul...”
The combined effect of the sleeping potion and the whiskey, earlier, has left my senses dulled, ill-prepared and swaddled in a semblance of sleep but, in spite of this, my recognition of the voice is complete and immediate, sending both a tremor of fear and a quivering thrill through the nerve-endings of my body.
“Paul...”
It is a contradicted movement, wanted and yet not, that causes my head to roll to the left on the pillow creating the soft rustling soud of compressed fabric and feathers like a breath of wind in the ear. When my eyes focus and adjust in the dim, filtering light, I realise that Sophia is in the bed beside me.
There is nothing unnatural about her presence. That is the same thing that causes my skin to crawl with goose-flesh, my tongue to thicken and dry and my limbs to fall dead and paralysed. My bladder threatens to release with the shock and terror.
She is lying on her side and facing me, her black hair mussed, framing her pallid face, and her eyes upon me. Under the covers, I can feel the radiant heat from her body.
“You were crying in your sleep,” she says. Her voice is like a carress. “Baby, what's wrong?”
The screaming response which returns in my mind is that of my consciousness: 'You are dead.'
Her hand extends toward me from beneath the security of the duvet and it is too much for me; my bladder releases sended a flood of warmth over my groin which pools, seeping around my hips. But, the hand that falls on my cheek is not the cold hand of a dead woman; it is nothing like the sensation of my lips in a final kiss against the lifeless, flacid chill of her cheek before the casket was closed and sealed. Sophia's hand is soft, small and warm and it rests there lovingly while she continues to regard me.
“You've dreampt something terrible, haven't you?” she says and, again, her voice soothes me.
“You died,” is all I manage to enunciate, my own voice broken with emotion.
“Come here,” she says, pulling at my arm and I edge away from the cool dampness that has spread around me.
Quickly, she rises over me and her thighs are against mine. The covers fall away and the white purity of her skin glows dully. Then I enter her and all my doubts fall away.
“What will you give to keep me, baby?” she says and her hips move, pushing against mine.
“Everything,” is all I want or need to say and, when she moves over me, her body lithe and supple, enticing me toward release, I barely notice or care to notice the 'Y'-shaped and rudely sutured incision up her chest.
Enjoy!
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