Page 7

Cathy

Death is the great horror of the world, the one inescapable truth.

No matter how much life we experience, how many kisses we give or hugs we receive, no matter how carefully or callously we treat our bodies, no matter how delightful or dour we are, we all end the same way: leaking bowels, stiffening flesh.

Blank, jellied eyes. Mouths mouths mouths gaping, sagging, jaws loose and lolling—that’s why the undertakers sew them up, little stitches so no one can see.

I wish someone would stitch me up—force my jaw shut and run a thread through my lips, heedless of the blood dripping from the holes.

Just stitch me up, seal me tight, stop the screaming, the screaming—

I can see the dead man, clearer than I see the trees through which I’m staggering.

He’s slumped on the floor of his kitchen.

It’s Mr. O’Brien this time, a hefty guy with a heart problem and a penchant for overindulging in high-cholesterol foods.

Even when I don’t know the person I’m mourning, their name echoes in my head…

sometimes right away, when I first start feeling restless, and sometimes much later.

Adam O’Brien, Adam O’Brien tolls in my mind like a funeral bell.

His family has lived in the area for generations.

He stayed home from church today. Wasn’t feeling well.

Now he’s dying of a heart attack, and I must mourn him.

I must wail for the house of O’Brien, cry for the people he leaves behind.

When I get the first twinges of sadness, the first vision of the face, or the first sound of the name, I’m supposed to go wander the property of the person doomed to die, mourning in advance, warning the family before the actual death—but I can’t allow myself to do that.

I’d get arrested, locked up in some mental health facility.

If I could warn them, if I could fulfill that part of my role like I’m supposed to, these episodes would be over faster.

But since I have to stay far away, the fits last longer, and they’re way more violent.

I’m constantly pulled toward the person’s house or site of death, and I must consciously keep steering myself in another direction or holding myself in one place.

I know where Mr. O’Brien is. I can feel the line connecting me to his body, a burning, poisonous barbwire tightening between us, and as it tightens, the barbs lacerate my heart. A groan quakes through me, bone deep, ravaging my throat, tearing at my lungs.

I have to walk that way. I have to. I need to. But I can’t . I can’t let anyone see me like this.

Throwing both arms around a tree, I hold on as tight as I can, and I scream against the trunk, the edges of my teeth scraping the bark.

I have to try to muffle the sounds. I’m not far enough from the church yet.

Thankfully there are a few loud sopranos among the congregation, so I doubt anyone heard me.

But I must get control before Pastor Linton starts preaching—or at least get farther away.

My body jerks, pulled toward the dying man. The anguish, the need to race through the woods and get to his family, to give voice to their sorrow—it’s more intense than usual. He has many people who love him. I’m supposed to carry their grief, to make it easier for them to bear the loss and move on.

The spirit of the banshee is a primal instinct, too archaic to understand that things have changed, that I live in Wicklow, South Carolina, that we don’t mourn the same way nowadays.

We hide our grief in bathrooms or beds, curled up in a ball under the showerhead, or alone in a car while rain pounds the windshield.

Grief is naked, obscene. Grief reminds us of the wretched truth that death is crawling ever nearer to us, grinning with crooked teeth, salivating for us, gibbering with eagerness, yearning to drag us down.

Pain in my hand pulls me out of my clouded swirl of dark thoughts. My nails are clawing through the bark in an effort to keep me in place, and the first nail of my left hand is starting to rip from its bed.

“Fuck!” It’s a roar and a scream, an ugly, unearthly bellow.

Releasing the tree, I bend double, pressing my hands on either side of my face.

Tears drip from my lips and chin—my nose is a mucus-y mess.

I curl deeper in on myself, my stomach hardening with the strain as my body readies for another scream.

A deep male voice, tight and concerned: “Earnshaw?”

Oh no. Oh shit… Did he follow me?

“What’s wrong?” Heathcliff’s boots stop in front of me, and his big hand curls around my shoulder. “Are you in pain? You need me to call 911?”

“No!” I bark, huffing through a spasm of grief. “Noooo…” The second time it’s a wail, a keening note of utter desperation and unspeakable emptiness.

In the brief moments after the wail, I manage words. “You…can’t…stop this. I just…have to…endure it. Go, please.”

“You need a doctor.”

My face crumples, another flood of tears gushing from my eyes. I’m too fragile to lie to him right now. I just need him to understand what he probably suspects anyway. “This isn’t medical. It’s fucking supernatural. Now go away. I have to move. I have to…”

I force myself to take steps in the opposite direction of the victim, on a trajectory that will take me deeper into the woods. I’ve mapped the area. I know the best places to go where no one is likely to hear me.

I stagger through the trees, holding each trunk briefly for support, weeping as I go.

Time blurs and so do my surroundings as visions of Mr. O’Brien’s life fill my head.

He killed a man once—a scuffle behind a bar.

No one ever knew. He hit his wife one time in anger.

She stayed, and he never did it again. His six kids adore him.

The second daughter is pregnant—his last thought during the heart attack was that he wouldn’t get to see the baby.

He won’t get to be a grandpa. He and his wife will never take the cruise they were always talking about.

I walk, and I weep, and I watch the memories drifting through my mind like clouds of inky smoke.

Bark under my palms, thorns scratching my legs. I stumble, and my ankle twists. I fumble with my sandals, trying to remove them, and somehow they come off by themselves. Or maybe a rough, warm hand helps with the buckles.

Onward I limp, over crackling brown leaves and mossy stones. Then there’s damp earth, mud. Water rippling around my ankles. My injured foot hurts and I waver, but I’m held upright until I’ve crossed the stream.

I can’t see anymore. That happens sometimes—my eyes go white, irises a milky swirl, veiled by visions. I must turn away from the pull—always turn away. Don’t go to the dead man, don’t go to the family. Veer in a new direction each time you start to yield. Take the path of greatest pain.

***

My lips are cracked. They hurt when I scream. Everything hurts—my ravaged throat, my aching lungs, my bare feet, my ankle, my fingernails.

It’s been hours, I think. I can’t be sure. Night insects chirp around me, backup singers to my soliloquy of moans and quiet sobs. Cold cracks along my limbs and stabs my fingers to the bone. My body is wrung out—no more moisture for tears.

And still I walk, wheezing the grief of the O’Brien house, bemoaning the theft of possibility and hope. The sudden end of a man so fallible and yet so well loved. He was a jolly man, a big presence, and he leaves behind a hollow no one will ever fill.

I cry for the ones he abandoned, and I cry for him , for the soul lingering, unsatisfied, unwilling to accept its fate. He’ll let go eventually—they all do—and drift into some afterlife. I don’t know where they go. It’s my job to stare death in the face, not look beyond it.

“Dead, dead, dead,” I whisper. “Dead eyes, dead hands, shrunken lungs. But it’s the mouths that are the worst. No more kissing, talking, chewing, breathing, smiling.

No more screams. The silence is so big, it’s enormous—it swells until that’s all there is: Silence.

So much silence. Living things are never really quiet.

Bellies burbling, guts churning, blood pumping, hearts thumping, lungs inflating, breath hissing.

Death is silence. I fill the silence. I challenge it.

But in the end, it always wins. Always.”

“You’re talking. That must mean you’re coming out of it.” A low, cautious voice at my side.

I startle and blink. A white, rectangular glow explodes into my sight, and I cringe, hissing, “No, no, no!”

“Sorry.” The light angles away from me. “I’m worried you’ll cut your feet to pieces. I would have stopped you from walking, but I thought it might make things worse. Can I… Are we done wandering around?”

I know that voice from somewhere, but my brain is still full of murmurs and memories. I can’t find the thread that connects the voice to a name. “You shouldn’t be here. No one ever walks with me when I mourn.”

“This has happened before? Fuck. And your family doesn’t follow you to keep you safe?”

“They don’t care.” I’m still walking but slower now. I blink again, staring at the swath of ground illuminated by the bluish-white light. My sight is back, so I can see the grass and the dead leaves in stark relief, each outlined by a crisp, black shadow. “They wish I would die.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t. Do you do this often?”

“Yes.” Why am I answering this person’s questions? Why do I feel as though this gruff voice belongs to someone I can trust?

“You get cut up like this every time?” he asks.

“I heal quicker than most people. No scars.” Not visible ones, anyway.

The nauseating urgency in my gut is fading, draining away, leaving me cold and ravaged. Salty blood seams the cracks in my parched lips. I try licking them, but my tongue is thick and dry. “Do you have any water?”

“Shit…no.”

“It’s fine. I’ll just go home.”

“In the dark? In this condition? Do you even know where you are?”