The Mortician (Chapter One – The Coming Storm)

     It was as warm as the living, and as cold as the dead that autumn day in 67’. Very cold my life seemed, advancing into the twilight. As it was October 28^th, to be exact, the day of my grandmother’s wake, the day where it all started. And the day I, Scottie Dawson, write of as I am now incarcerated on May 1^st, 1980.

     Weather-wise, it was typical in New England that morning. Where the dimness of the early morning chill peeled back to the rising glare of the late morning sun. The air was rich with the flavors of fall time, ending with the exhilarating hues of sunset and the sedating colors of the twilight. I would learn that day, that the living-wishes of the shrouded-dead, do not rest easy in eternities of silence.

     Close to two o’clock that afternoon, I was sliding in the backseat of my father’s 67’ Chevy as we zipped into the parking lot of White Hollow Funeral Home and its adjoining cemetery and church, in Mournbrook, Maine.

     The chilly winds that day contrasted with the sweat-inducing glare of the mid-afternoon sun. The wind at that point was merely a breath, though it still rustled the reds, yellows, and oranges of the shifting trees dotting the property in clumps.

     The autumn sky was a delicious cyanic blue, save for a gathering of grey storm clouds in the distance that appeared to approach rapidly. The sky would soon be mottled from cyan, to white cumulus clouds, to looming, dark grey thunderclouds which eventually towered menacingly on the horizon.

     I remember a dog barking perpetually somewhere off in the distance, somewhere across the very cemetery my grandmother was to be buried the next day.

     As my father and I proceeded from the car to the entrance, I recall my eyes rolling up my father’s tall stature, noticing darkness crossing over his face after he had pivoted as we walked, gazing back at the parking lot with hard, stony eyes. I swiveled, noticing several figures standing by vehicles with lit cigarettes in black suits and dresses. All but one, however, was wearing black; a young, beautiful woman leaning against my father’s Chevy. To this day, I only know her as, ‘the lady in red.’ She wore, at my own grandmother’s wake, a velvety red dress.

     My eyes shifted back to my father after I studied her, and I asked, “Daddy, who is she?”

     Yet with my father’s unsociable nature and placid expression, he slipped up when he told me he did not know. It was his eyes, always his eyes. Even as a little boy, I recognized the sudden, violent cloudburst in those eyes, terrifying, with flashes of anger and thunderous roars of inebriation.

     We paused for a moment, and my father freed my little hand from his vice-grip. Then briskly making his way to the lady, leaving me alone. They warmly embraced.

     While I was kicking rocks, several waves of cold, biting gusts of wintry-like air, coming from the direction of the storm clouds raked my hair and the dead leaves of the trees around. I remember, one gust then carried off a lady’s hat. And with each gust, a loose shutter on one of the looming windows of the funeral home would hammer against its frame.

     Many small details from my grandmother’s wake I have kept alive from all those years ago. Like that ‘lady in red,’ leaning her beautiful body against my father’s gleaming chevy. The folds of her velvety dress draping over her perfect figure. There was a sudden, breath of wind that lifted strands of her hair. Then she glided her palms over her bare arms repetitively, as there was such a sudden shift in the weather. 

     Towering, dark clouds were massing overhead. Then a bright flash that for an instant, turned the dark grey of the heavens blinding white, followed by a sudden roar of thunder, and the rain began to fall. To this, the ‘lady in red,’ scurried into the backseat of my father’s Chevy. My father followed.

     With a sigh, my shoulders slumped, and my head lowered. I proceeded to the entrance, slogging the way on the cracked, cement footpath as the rain needled down on me. The path was flanked by two looming willow trees with moss hanging from their branches. With the coming storm, every bird, squirrel, and chipmunk had scattered. Absent as my father in the storm.

***

     On my own, I found a seat in the front pew that was, of course, reserved for my father and myself. But I did not cry, and I did not sniffle. I remember the air was stuffy and there crept in a putrid stench, which lingered for the duration of my grandmother’s wake. At the time, I did not recognize the smell of death, but even if I had, I would not have known. The stench made me pinch my nose and breathe in through my mouth.

     This is not how I ever imagined a wake; little I thought to myself as I sat imprisoned in the pew beside my father, who was staring icily at my grandmother’s casket. This is not what ten-year-old me expected goodbye to look like. I did not want to be beside my father.

     My father’s presence became known to me when the steel clamp of his hand gripped the back of my neck. All the while there was a profound rasp in his breathing, and his whiskey breath radiated into my little nostrils.

     I recall believing everyone in the funeral home could hear my thoughts. So, I stopped thinking, and for the first time that day, I opened to my father, “Are you drunk, daddy?”

     “No, son. I’m mourning,” my father slurred.

     Little me knew already my father was full of shit. Perhaps it was good for him to be drunk. I wish I were drunk; I recall thinking. And I believed the woozy feeling I was getting from my father’s pungent breath would make myself drunk. So, I inhaled until my chest could not expand any further, hoping to get drunk.

     Mourners on my flanks and behind me, many of them spoke in whispers. One whisperer I swore, was my deceased grandmother. I gave myself a mental slap and did not dream it possible. My name was being whispered, in a very low, raspy whisper. Several times I turned vainly to connect eyes with the whisperer – vainly. My intuition then told me to be suspect of what was in front of me, and it was then where I presumed the whispering originated. From beneath my grandmother’s casket lid.

     Then I began to feel an overpowering tiredness. My mouth scorchingly hot and dry, I began to slumber but my father’s vice-grip on the back of my neck kept me fixed in ice.

     Then my eyelids became anchors in a teary sea. So, I crumpled mentally, and the boon of sleep got the best of me. Now, if it were not my grandmother’s whisperings from beneath the casket lid, then it began with the nightmare I had, as I was asleep in the pew.

     It began with a violent jolt. I was startled to feel the coarse, iron grip of my father’s hand, not behind my neck, but wrapped around my throat. Everybody else, as I noticed in the nightmare, acted as any mourner would; their eyes forward, or down, and silent as the dead they came to pay homage.

     I at once caught eye of my grandmother’s casket lid slightly ajar, and witnessing in the darkness beneath, the whites of two familiar eyes. I swear to this day, in retrospect, after all the following events of this story, what I witnessed could not have been a dream. For I immediately connected eyes with my deceased grandmother.

     That familiar voice and those oval eyes confirmed she was my grandmother. Her voice, though raspy and unlike what must have been her soothing voice in life, the sound of the lady from hell was recognizable.

     Then a flash, as if I got sucker punched, and I awoke calmly, snapping open my eyes without jolting. My father was placid, as always. I did not think much about the dream again until later that day.

***

     Filing out of White Hollow Funeral Home were many stone faces. A black sea of mourning faces that could not repress a cold, hard glare at my father. Everyone at my grandmother’s wake appeared melancholy, save for my father, Mr. Dawson.

     As we were approaching the Chevy, I asked my father, “Daddy, why aren’t you crying?” the stone-carved stare of inebriation and anger curved into a smirk.

     “Grandma is happier now – in a happier place, son.”

     “But daddy, how can you not cry?”

     “My friend, Jack Daniels.”

***

     The rooms and hallways of the Dawson residence later that evening was silent as the dead. I sat playing with my toys in the loudest space of the house, the attic. Loud in the sense that my thoughts were screaming.

     Stacks of dust-coated, cardboard boxes lined a narrow pass, running through the middle of the attic and leading to the extreme corner, where an antique body mirror, belonging to my late-grandmother, and her mother before her, loomed.

     My spot, as I called it, was in that shadowed corner. It gave me refuge from my father’s bloodshot, whiskey eyes. I was up there that evening for hours after the wake, thinking, internally screaming.

     Then a flash, like the one from the nightmare, out of the corner of my eye, originating from my grandmother’s mirror. I stared bug-eyed into the dust-coated glass. I scratched my scalp, raised myself up, expecting something to appear beside me. I pressed the palm of my hand into the glass, disturbing years of dust.

     “Grandma?” I choked.

***

     That evening the storm had passed, and the sun was dipping below the jagged tree line beyond my bedroom window. Its orange light suffocated in the coming blue of the twilight; the warmth had thus peeled away from me.

     I rested restlessly with my pillow wrapped around my head, as to muffle out the sounds of wailing from my father’s office down the hall. My father’s cries gripped little me by the heart, squeezing the tears out of my little soul. I knew if I had tiptoed down the hall to see my father’s whiskey dance, it would only bring out his rage. So, I was alone.

     My bedroom, I noticed, had grown unusually cold that night. My skin was clad with goosebumps. I scrunched my eyes and hugged myself tightly. The sensation being that my tears were icing over.

     Teeth chattering, I hurled the blankets off myself and bolted for the heating vent. Like kneeling before a campfire, I raised my palms to the vent. But there was no heat. The air radiating from within the blackness was icy cold. I only rolled my eyes and leapt back into bed.

     Then a flash and my eyes snapped open. A thunderous crash from down the hallway which shook me to the core. I shot up and my eyes fleeted, as if involuntarily, about the room until they came to a stop, focusing on my bedroom window, which overlooked my sister Jenny’s grave, who my father had interred beneath the willow tree in our backyard. Then it was as if I came to, out of some trance of sort. I remember a very discomforting, burning sensation in my eyes.

     I slithered out of bed, knowing where the swift percussion of thunder had originated. I tiptoed to my door, clutched the handle, and pulled with trepidation. Creaking open enough for me to lean my head into the lightless hallway, I became convinced that I did not have to be scared, I eased the door shut and crawled back into bed. There seemed a strange stillness over everything, and it contrasted thoroughly that night with the storm breathing outside my bedroom window.

     I recall having at that point, the most disturbing nightmare I have ever had. I could not differentiate between dream nor reality once I was awake. The reaction I had was one of terror. The terror I had for the third time of my grandmother.

     The nightmare drew open with curtains that had veiled the world of the dead. I awoke in my bed and my bedroom was lit intermittently by flashes of lightning, save for the glow of a small bluish night light. My waking eyes came to focus on my grandmother, who stood in the threshold of my bedroom door, dressed in her black funeral dress and flower brimmed hat. I did not speak in the dream, nor make any gesture to her. And neither did she make any motion yet, as the expression on her face was one of anger, not happiness, and not sadness.

     I then realized I was not alone in my bed, so I turned my eyes and saw a full head of thick, white curly hair laying on the pillow beside me. The hair was quite disheveled with dirt caught between the strands; however, I recognized from earlier that day, the hair was my grandmother’s. And as I was about to utter something, my grandmother begins to slowly roll over, and as she was doing so, my eyes bulged in anticipation. A large lock of her hair detached from her scalp and fell onto the bedsheet as she turned, revealing not my grandmother as I knew her from that morning, but a bleached-bone, eyeless skeleton with yellow, jagged teeth.

     Then a flash ignited the expanse of my dreamworld, and I shot up awake, my clothes clad to my sweaty skin. My pulse was thudding, and I was gasping for air. I came to realize what awoke me was a crash from down the hallway. I flung the blankets off me, bolted for the door, tore it open, and peered into the abyss of my home. There was a sliver of light from the bottom of my father’s office door.

     Fresh tears in my eyes, I nudged myself forward, setting foot into the hall. I noticed it was considerably warmer than my bedroom. I pussyfooted down the length of the hall until I was able to rest my cold hand onto the warm oak of the office door.

     “Daddy?” I whispered.

     As my hand slept on the door for a few minutes, I leaned into it, easing it open. It was just another performance from my father, of his whiskey dance. Where things broke and shattered as my father danced with Jack Daniels. There my father was, hand gripped around the neck of the bottle, the other clenched into a bloody fist, eyes red as hell.

     “What are you doing in here, son?”

     My tongue rested as the dead, while my eyes bulged with life.

     “I said, what are you doing in here, son?”

     My father drummed his bloody fist onto his desk and continued, “Son, you are not to come in here anymore!”

     “But daddy!”

     “But nothing, son!” My father twisted the wedding ring on his finger as he made his way over to me. “Now go to your room and get to bed.”

     I shoved my hands into my pockets and drifted to the doorway. 

     “I miss mommy,” I whimpered.

     My father gasped, and with the swiftness of a lightning strike, he struck me across the cheek with the back of his bloody hand. I spun around and kissed the wooden floorboards. My father then silently jerked his finger and with another gasp, his posture crumpled. Landing on his knees, my father choked in tears. I had pivoted my body to sneak a peek.

     “Daddy?”

     My father raised his glassy, bloodshot eyes. 

     “Do you love me?” I asked.

     In an eerie calm, my father raised himself with tears glistening down his face as he drifted out of the office, wordless.

     I sprinted to my room, slammed the door shut and leapt back into the horrid frigidness of my bed. I shivered yet had scorching sensations throughout my body, mainly in the limbs. It was not long until the sting in my cheek subsided, that I drifted asleep. 

     I awoke to the absence of moonlight in my bedroom, which was now very dark and cold. I could make out pattering from rain on my bedside window and the distant percussion of thunder. Despite the cold, my pajamas were drenched in sweat, and it was such a discomfort, I tossed the blankets and my pajama top onto the floor, braved the cold, and hard-footedly made my way to the bathroom across the hall.

     No sliver of light, as my father was surely in a deep sleep. So, I heavy-handedly shut the bathroom door without locking it. To my surprise, the mirror above the sink was clouded, yet the shower had not been used in hours, and like my bedroom there was a frigidness, not only in the temperature of the room, but in the general atmosphere. Today it all makes sense, however, back then I did not recognize the presence of the dead.

     Little me was enthralled. I dragged over a stool before the sink and as I ascended, the sting from my father’s bloody hand returned in my face. I leaned over the sink and noticed drops of blood beading onto the porcelain. I extended the palm of my hand until it pressed onto the glass. I was again fascinated, a thin layer of ice! The bathroom frigid like my bedroom, I could make out the steam of my living breath.

     Then before my eyes, a flash. My eyes fleeted about the room. My hands clenched into fists, and my heart was a beating drum. I had no physical control over my body! I stood there like a trembling statue. Then my eyes came to a dead stop on the icy mirror, and I recognized the blurred face buried within the ice. It was not my reflection. Regaining control of my body, I unclenched my fists and gripped the corners of the sink, squeezed my eyelids shut and snapped them back open to confirm what I was seeing. My grandmother’s face with a rigid look of anger glaring back at me. Dark shadows in the orbits surrounding her bulging, clouded yellow eyes, sunken cheeks and deep purple lips, a pale-white complexion, and those jagged teeth!

     The next thing I remember is that I was hunched over the toilet, vomiting. As I was doing so, I could make out the sound of liquid falling in droplets and hitting porcelain sink. I noticed the ice on the mirror was melting! Though when I stepped back in front of the mirror, she was gone. It was my face that I could now make out, and I discovered dried streams of blood leading to the corner of my mouth from my nose. I attempted to smear the blood off, but it had crusted and dried over by then. Thanks to my father I could feel my nose throbbing and my cheek stinging.

     Then there were a few moments where I gazed into my own eyes through that clouded glass. I again raised my hand to the mirror and pressed my palm into the glass.

     “Grandma?”

     Then gliding my finger along the glass, I wrote, I LOVE YOU GRANDMA.  

     I knew then what I was going to do that very stormy night…

***

     I was determined. Something so strange, so unimaginable to me, I had concluded by this point that I had been four times visited by my grandmother’s ghost and she was trying to tell me something. I had to go to her, I could not see her at the funeral the next day, so I wanted to see my grandmother one last time. I remember thinking that is why she was visiting me. It was my introduction with the dead and I had to find out more. The only conclusion I could come to, was to go to the funeral home, break in, and find my grandmother’s casket.

     I remember peeking out from my bedroom door down the hallway and the sliver of light was still absent. I knew my father would be in a deep sleep. So, I grabbed my flashlight, put on my poncho, and stuffed my pockets with candies, then I tiptoed across the house outside.

     I grabbed my bicycle and peddled hard out of the driveway into a storm that a ten-year-old should not venture into. I believed I was ready to understand. In retrospect, chasing my grandmother’s ghost had become an obsession for the duration of all the years since, yet it never fulfilled anything positive in my life. From the day of my grandmother’s wake till now, I had regressed, both emotionally and physically. My youth was overshadowed by my grandmother’s ghost as I would receive nightly visits and constant whispers. A psychiatrist I would be evaluated by in the years following my grandmother’s death, diagnosed me with psychosis and put me on antipsychotic medication, which I still take to this day. Little did I know until now, that I would have to stay on my medication. What happened leading to my arrest and conviction today was the result of not handling my poor mental state while juggling my grandmother’s frequent haunting.   

***

     I had tried all the rusty door handles of the funeral home, and knowing my grandmother was inside, maddened me. I had to find a way.

     There lying on the asphalt a few feet from the curb, randomly, was a tire iron. The iron bar made my eyes widen and strangely gave me a sense of hope I could physically grasp.

     The lowest pane of one stained-glass window shattered easy to my swing. Luckily, the looming window started only a foot off the ground, so there was no need to climb up and over jagged shards of glass.

     Setting foot through the breach into the welcoming floral and perfumed aromas, the place was dimly lit and I instinctively made my way to the altar, took a knee, and I crossed myself.

     There was a low sighing sound, as if I was not alone. I was then suddenly repulsed by an acrid odor, one that was foreign to me. It was the smell of rotten meat with a fruity undertone. At the time, little me thought it to be the garbage somewhere that was not disposed of. I equated the odor to that of a decomposing animal carcass lying in the road, something I would commonly pass and notice out on my bicycle.

     I noticed a door behind the Virgin Mary statue ajar, and through this door I proceeded into reeking darkness. Advancing blindly, I was again confronted, no longer by perfumed aromas, but by an absolutely overpowering rancid odor that both halted and offended me. In the blackness, a sliver of light shown from an ajar door. I debated for a moment if I wanted to ease the door open and see what was on the other side. I nudged myself on, tiptoeing to the welcoming light, probing blindly on with one hand extended before me.

     Once I recognized with my fingertips, the grains of a wooden door, I eased into it. What I saw was unknown and unfamiliar to me. Today, as I write this narrative, as an adult, and a licensed mortician – I am aware of what I saw. Linoleum tile flooring and green walls, with large stainless-steel sinks lining one wall, and in the center of the room, a large metal table with a tub at one end. The acrid odor intensified. If it had not been for an unbeatable rush of adrenalin, I would have passed out where I stood at the threshold of that nausea-inducing room. I considered crossing the threshold into something unknown to me, but my intuition bade me not to. All the odors of this room, ones I would come to know later in life as a mortician, intimidated little me. I remember picturing my grandmother laying there on the metal slab and wondering what is done to the dead there in that scary room.

     I whirled around, bolting through the blind, frigid darkness of that hallway. As my hand ran the length of the wall, I came to realize, that I had lost my sense of direction in the dark. I advanced further down the lengthy passage.

     After several suspenseful seconds, I came across and grasped an icy door handle, and it squeaked piercingly as I turned it. As this door groaned open, a surging rush of shock both froze me and induced severe nausea. Before my brain even comprehended what I witnessed in that room, I noticed a trash bin within and scrammed for it.

     Then my intuition pulsated, and I turned. Behind me, was my grandmother’s casket hoisted on a draped table. The casket was shut. I eased closer, slowly gliding my fingers across the chilly wood. As I was a child, and short, I dragged a chair out from the corner of the room. I ascended, resting my hands on the lid. Then I gripped the edges in trepidation and squeezed my eyes shut until I mustered the strength and courage to lift, and the casket lid hissed open. I found my grandmother to be adorned in the black dress she had worn the morning before. But her face! Any beauty in life must’ve faded, appearing to be cast in wax and whitish as snow. What must have been rosebud lips, have turned to a deep purple. Little me then understood, why for the duration of the wake the casket lid was shut. I rubbed the disbelief from my eyes, as well as fresh, stinging tears. 

     She did not appear happy in death, in fact, she appeared to exhibit intense anger. Her jaw appeared clenched, her nostrils permanently flared, the overall appearance of a turbulent expression.

     I wanted one last goodbye. The thought stung me, and I bled a tear. I did not touch my deceased grandmother. I eased the casket lid shut, leaned forward, and kissed the oak.

     Blindly groping my way back through the darkness, I made it to the altar, went onto a knee, and I again crossed myself. My heart thudded with adrenalin as I did so. I remember thinking that funeral home had purpose for me.

***

     Extending my leg back through the breach in the window, I stepped into needles of freezing rain. I found the weather to have become biting cold. The sky was moonless and pulsed with flashes of lightning. The change in the weather caused me to shiver. My heart began to hammer my chest, and the pungent odor seemed to shadow me outside.

     When I came to this realization, my eyes were drawn to the expanse of the cemetery as if by the command of an invading entity of my body. I did not know then what force caused the sudden, involuntary shifting of my eyes. Then I felt both audacious and curious, believing I could brave the storm and find my grandmother’s freshly planted headstone. 

     With each burst of light from the heavens, the whole expanse of the cemetery illuminated. I defied the biting cold with resolve.

     I overheard my father mention at the wake that my mother’s headstone had been planted. There was this consuming urge to seek what would become my grandmother’s grave in the storm and press my lips against the stone.

     Braving the storm, I took a confident, heavy step into the frozen, muddy grass. Barely able to open the rusted, wrought iron gate, which was partially off its hinges and slanted to one side. Flanking either side of this gate were two sun-blanched granite statues of weeping angels. Within, one will see the expanse of the cemetery to contain numerous fenced-in family burial plots.

     Meandering the aged, moss-clad headstones, one could not miss observing the poor condition many were in – old, cracked, crumbling, leaning, or fallen. The grass around, I could make out, was not well tended, as the grass was tall, and yellowed in patches. And there were no decorative flowerbeds. I did not notice any flower or wreath on any of the graves, as if all the dead before me had been forgotten.

     As my feet splashed through the quagmire of icy mud, rock, and long, inflexible barbs of petrified crab grass, a vague mist appeared and curled around a row of headstones before me. I was not alarmed. Something though nudged me on. Something about the mist felt familiar, nostalgic even.

     The air was icy cold, and I noticed the steam of my breath, exhaled in long plumes before dissipating into the mist. I remember taking mental note on which puddles to avoid on my way back. As my dead flashlight bulged in my coat pocket, I relied on the flashes of lightning to take a survey of the expanse before each motion forward. I had no idea at first where to search. I felt a determination that seemed unnatural.

     Emanating from the heavens above were the first of a series of brilliant thunderbolts, followed by roars of thunder. The intensity of both the brightness and the percussion disintegrated my morale, so, I desired to flee the storm. But something kept me curious, and I wanted to know more.  

     Finally, I braved the intensity. My eyes wide to observe the expanse of the cemetery. Then that lingering mist curled around my legs and drifted up my body, encompassing me. Strange, I remember thinking, as it somehow furnished within me a sense of trustful warmth. So, I followed this mist. Something so mysterious drew me to it, something that seemed so clearly familiar, nostalgic, but I could not put my finger on what it was at the time.   

     I beamed in the storm when I first laid eyes on my grandmother’s bone-white headstone.

     “Where are you?” I shouted. 

     For the first time since hearing of my grandmother’s death, I was paralyzed with grief, and I began bawling in the downpour.

     “I love you, grandma!”

     I noticed the mist lingered, and now whirling around me. A violent shiver rattled my body, and running over my skin, as if it were by the frigid hands of the dead.

     “You left and now you’re trying to say goodbye!”

     Beside the sighing sound around me, the whispering crept into my ears. My skin prickled and an icy fear trickled down my spine. Then an instant change over my body hit me like a gigantic wave, knocking me hard into the petrified blades of grass and freezing mud. All my limbs felt stiff as rigor mortis and my spine a rhythmless iron rod. I lost all ability to articulate even a finger.

     It was all so fantastic, so surreal. The umpteen needles of rain became small bullets of hail, bombarding my exposed face. Half-conscious, lying on my back, eyes straight up into the turbulent sky, I somehow felt marveled at the brilliance of the white-hot bolts of lightning, carving jaggedly through the black, starless sky.

     As the heavens were alive with pulses of light, my hell here on earth was profoundly death-like. My jaw was unclenched, my lips parted, allowing the small bullets of hail to penetrate my mouth, keeping me hydrated.

     Then another intense shiver, like no other before, ran down my spine, sending a resuscitative shock throughout my body. For all my nerve endings, the shock struck home, as all my limbs jolted, and my fingers articulated sporadically.

     My eyes clogged with tears, then my lids dropped as anchors in a tear-rippled sea, and there I lost consciousness. 

***

     I awoke to silence, exclamatory silence. Through my eyelashes I could see the storm had passed. I do not know how long I was out for.

     An eerie silence now dominated the cemetery, no nightly tune of crickets or owls. My whole body felt numb and considerably void of mass. That mist shrouded me still, and the full moon had broken through the overcast, splashing the expanse of the cemetery in a hue of yellowish-white.

     What occurred next ventured beyond my realm of reasoning. I felt a tingle in my spine, it gradually flowed into my limbs, fingers, and toes. I could only muster shallow breaths. But then I lost control of my breathing altogether, and it was at that moment, that a deep gasp, following a lengthy, involuntary intake of air, has me convinced today that my body was under possession by another. It felt as if an immense weight had been placed on my chest, hindering it from expanding.

     There was a prickly, broiling sensation in my eyes. Involuntarily, they shot open, as if by the command of another. Young me considered, as I laid there, that it was paralysis. But the thought of a ghostly body entering mine did cross my mind.

     Through the veil of the misty vagueness, I saw, as I claim today to be the truth, my grandmother standing beside her headstone, staring at me with those oval eyes that were rather cruel or vicious looking. And strange to say the whites of her eyes were a deep yellow and her blue pupils appeared clouded. Her cheeks were sunken, her lips a deep purple, her skin as white as a sheet of snow. My eyelids fluttered shut and I again lost consciousness.

***

     That eerie stillness lingered. My eyelids were ajar enough for me to peer through. Where my grandmother stood, lingered the mist which had drifted over. An intense migraine was beating drums in my head.

     It was so strange, so surreal, that I cannot after all these years since, describe the physical sensations flowing through me as I laid there in the frosty grass and icing mud.

     My eyes fixed back onto my grandmother’s headstone. Another overpowering sensation arose in the tips of my fingers as they began to tingle, and a prickly sensation followed, running up the skin of my arms and down my torso. My toes wiggled and my fingers unwillingly folded until my hands were balled into white-knuckled fists.

     My jagged, chewed-up nails dug fiercely into my palms, convinced that the skin was pierced, and that I was bleeding. However, I could not muster a scream. My eyes again made rapid, involuntary movements from one point to another, coming to rest on my mother’s headstone.

     Lying there in that icy pool of mud, clothes drenched, my whole body felt numb, and my heart pumped with shallow beats. Again, losing consciousness, I swore I hallucinated. 

***

     The moon was again smothered by pulsating darkness. A burst of light, as if from a supernova, lit up the heavens and my hands clenched tighter. As if the intensity of the flash resuscitated me, my eyelids shot wide open, fleeting rapidly, aimlessly at the brilliant bolts of lightning fracturing the black sky. The percussion of the thunder made my heart shake violently and beat like a hammer against my chest.

     The freezing rain was daggerlike, like watery icicles – stabbing my cold, shivering soul and body. As my hands were still clenched, I was terrified that all the bones in my hands would fracture. The skin of my palms was tearing from my jagged fingernails being driven in. Yet, I still could not produce a cry for help, as I swear, my body was under the mysterious domination of another.

     In the distance I heard an indistinct voice hollering, noticing a faint, yellow beam piercing through the misty darkness. I was so delirious, exhausted, and nauseous. I finally mustered a raspy scream, and regained control of my eyes as they darted to the beam of light.

     “Scotty! Scotty Dawson!” A man hollered.

     “Help!” I croaked, barely lifting my head out of the icy mud.

     Then the yellow beam intensified as it appeared to close in on me, as it scanned the headstones surrounding me. 

     “Scottie Dawson!”

     Blackout…

***

     That awful scorching in my eyes, the dizziness and fatigue that nausea catalyzes. I awoke supine in one of the pews in the chapel of the funeral home. As I opened my eyes, white-hot pain radiated to my brain, and a thunderclap headache instantly followed. My body jolted as I felt the need to vomit. I rolled to one side, craning my neck over the faded carpet, and all the prior night’s dinner jetted out. 

     Then I felt the warmth of a living hand softly come to rest on my shoulder. I turned to see the face of Father Francis Whitcomb.

     “My son, how do you feel?”

     I could not reciprocate, neither verbally nor through gestures, rather through blinking.

     He lifted me up into sitting posture. My head bobbled then slumped forward. Father Whitcomb pulled a handkerchief from his robe and the vomit smeared across my mouth.

     “My son, what happened out there? Why are you here at this hour?”

     I could not muster a sound. To the pricking of intuition, I raised my head and immediately connected eyes with my father. His eyes were blazing with fury, yet he was as quiet as a statue. He loomed before the altar and the statue of the Virgin Mary almost symbolically as if he were overshadowing every Christian principle I had ever been taught.    

     “Let’s go, son.”

***

     The dawning sun crept into my bedroom, peeling the dark and cold off me. A sense of relief came as the bedroom felt substantially warmer than it had overnight. I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed the sting of a fresh awakening. Then a figure out of the corner of my eye, standing at the threshold of my bedroom door.

     “Daddy?” I whispered.

     “Get ready. It’s time for your mother’s funeral. You’re going to that damn church with me again this morning.”

***

     These are the first pages of my account. Where the breathing live, and the dead walk with worldly feet. No one yet in law enforcement, nor the court-appointed forensic psychologist believe my account. I have tried strenuously to convince and inform of the miracles performed by a Sir Henry Monroe, a composer, and Father Desmond Autumn, who presides over The First Congregational Church of Mournbrook. Things I was too blind to see before, too angry to care. These two men, whom I did not know personally, and whom I wronged, need not apologize to me for anything as I was the transgressor. A young man’s love and longing for his deceased grandmother was maddening to me, always. When I found these two men and the miracles they performed at their church across town, the temptation was too great for me to not do what I did.

     So, I, Scotty Dawson, conclude the beginning pages of this account, and hopefully any reader will gradually gather that my message is clear, the dead rest restlessly in eternities of silence. Death is eternal, though not silent! Most are carried to their grave in silence, of course. Let us imagine our loved ones brought to the grave screaming in silence. Without any articulation, carried and buried in the cold clay – screaming. This is how I imagined, nay, heard from my deceased grandmother of what death is like.

     -Scotty Dawson,

     Inmate, Maine State Prison