The Mortician: Preface, Lady from Hell

Preface

Lady from Hell

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Many years ago, as a child, I nearly escaped the jaws of hell. A hell that came veiled as an elder with a gentle face and soft, raspy voice. I remember her to this day as the ‘lady from Hell.’ I had never met my grandmother until after she had died. Never seen her face nor a photograph before she committed suicide in the autumn of 1967.

It was not until the morning of the day before she was to be interred that I came to recognize the inner conflict within me. I started to recognize both good and evil through what was a child’s naive, distorted lens on life. Whatever it was, something saved me that morning when I had left home to go for a bicycle ride with my dog Max to the funeral home hours before her wake, which was scheduled at 2:00 that afternoon. And I swore, from that day on, I would never be tempted by evil, no matter what seemingly innocent veil it hides behind. All those years in Sunday school had taught me what a mortal sin is – the suicides vainly scream in the depths of hell to shut ears in the heavens. I learned that day that evil can be a smiling, handsome Judas from hell!

For years after that day, my parents, as I would mature, would gradually open to me about my grandmother. According to them, she was into the occult, Satanism and witchcraft.

But I will summarize no further. I will start from the beginning – the night before her wake.

***

The wind whistled through the grass and trees of our backyard, the spiny tips of their branches clawing at my bedside window. I was both nauseous and nervous about the next day, as I had not known my grandmother, nor ever seen the dead. I remember flashes of lightning illuminating my bedroom and the rain battered the windowpanes. I was lying in bed earlier than usual that night, imagining what a wake or even a funeral looks like. What I understood at that point in my young life is what I had witnessed riding my bicycle passed cemeteries, within a congregation of mourners clad in black, surrounding a luminous, wooden casket. It was all foreign to me, really. But would my grandmother’s casket be open for me to lay eyes on the dead, I pondered. The thought scared me that night.

As I wallowed in my thoughts, a thunderous argument boomed down the hall. It was between my parents. My bedroom door was slightly ajar, and the gusts of their stormy exchange blew into my ears.

I hurled the blankets off me, tiptoeing to the door. Craning my head into the hallway, I noticed the gold sliver of light emanating from the bottom of my father’s office door. I was sure I could maneuver down the hall quietly enough. I remember feeling I had to understand the words of those thunderous shouts.

Making it to just outside of the office door, the shouts shook my heart. The first words I understood were name-callings by my father directed to my mother – derogatory names that I will not mention in this narrative. However, what I heard next concerned my late grandmother.

“The old hag finally did it!” my father exclaimed and continued, “in my mother’s case – the old hag needed to commit fuckin’ suicide!”  

Then I heard the familiar percussion of my father beating his fist against his oak desk.

“You don’t need to hate your mother in death too, David,” my mother spoke calmly, as she was a devout Christian.

“The old hag and you liked each other!” my father paused before continuing, “I can’t believe you even liked my mother!” More percussions from my father’s fist followed. I was both scared and curious. I wanted to hear more about the grandmother I never knew.

“Well, what we are going to tell our lil’ boy?” my mother insisted.

“He’s your son, too – talk to him!” my father roared.

“Should I give our son the letter that your mother wrote on her deathbed for him?” my mother asked gravely.

“Oh, I don’t know! It’s sealed in an envelope – we should read it beforehand!” my father insisted. A letter from the grandmother I never knew made me even more curious and I bolted back to my bedroom, wrapped a pillow around my head to cast out the thunderstorms beyond the sanctity of my bedroom.

***

The rising morning sun shined through my bedside window, peeling the cold off me. My first waking thought was the letter, then the wake. I bolted out of bed and went straight for the kitchen. I found my mother sitting at the table, with a white envelope on the table in front of her. She had a sad expression and when I got close, I could make out that she had bruising around her eye. She looked at me and said, “oh, sweetie, I have something for you.”

“What, mom?” I said excitedly.

There she handed me the envelope. I was ready to open it right there, but my mother gestured me not to. “Not yet – here, hold out your other hand,” I extended my open hand, and she dropped five dollars into my palm, “spend it all!” It was customary as I recall for my mother to give me five dollars every week to raid the candy store in town. I smiled and kissed her.

Without thinking much about it, I stuffed the envelope into my jacket and laced up my sneakers, ready for a journey to the candy store, and then onto the funeral home, Max by my side.

When I started my ride, the sun was peaking brightly through white cumulus clouds and the air was cooled by a gentle breeze which ruffled the dying leaves of autumn. Just as I was at the end of the driveway, ready to zip into the street, I heard my mother call out, “hey, sweetie!” I stopped and turned to her, “yeah, mom?”

“Be careful! There’s a storm coming and…” here she stopped, and added, “You know we have your grandmother’s wake.” The shiner over her eye impossible not to notice. I answered with an emphatic, “yes, mom!” and rode off. I knew where I was really going. I flew down the state highway until I got to the candy store and after raiding it, I was off to the funeral home to get a glimpse of what was to come. Little me, so unaware and unsuspecting, never could have seen what was to come that morning.

The state highway, which ran through our quaint, little town of Mournbrook, Maine, lead me just beyond the center of town to the farmlands where the funeral home, which adjoins the grounds of White Hollow Cemetery. A mile or so before I got there, a thick mist quickly accumulated. Turning to fog as I peddled further. So dense by that point, I peddled at a cautious pace, prepared for something to suddenly jump out and scream. Max kept up right beside me. I didn’t become totally conscious of the density of the fog until the slowing yellow beams of passing cars showed me. So, my concern to avoid potholes and crevices in the asphalt also slowed my pace.

            The feeling I got was that the fog was swallowing me and that I wanted to become part of that oblivion. I don’t remember what I was thinking exactly that brought on such strange thoughts. Perhaps it was all spooky to me that I was travelling through fog, enroute to the funeral home holding my deceased grandmother in a casket on display. There was a foreboding, a scary foreboding that morning.

            As I peddled on, I began to hear in the distance the sound of many dogs barking. They became yelps as I went on and the sounds fell behind me until becoming too distant for me to make out. It was far away, but Max got very visibly shaken at the sounds of the other dogs. The closer we approached the cemetery and funeral home; the more Max sniffed the air suspiciously.

            Once we had reached the gated edge of the cemetery, I turned into it and Max did not follow. “What’s wrong boy?” I whispered cautiously as his behavior began to make me nervous. Looking around and trying to see as far as I could through the fog, I could not see far enough. I turned back to Max and encouraged him emphatically, “Come on boy!” and I slowly peddled until he whimpered and stepped cautiously through the stone archway after me.

            I continued to speak to him soothingly. Again, I had to stop. Max kept sniffing the air as he looked all around, letting out a yelp. My heart told me to turn back home, but my curiosity would get the best of me. I got off my bicycle and kneeled beside Max. “What do you smell, Max? What’s out there?” I then had a strange feeling that we were not alone. I wondered who else would be in the cemetery in the thick fog. And wondered if it was even worth it to go on. I looked into Max’s wet eyes, and he began to whine, lifting his paw to brush my arm as if he were warning me of some impending danger. I petted him and again, spoke soothingly, “Its ok, Max, we’re good boy.”

     I kissed his fury forehead and got back onto my bicycle. I didn’t peddle right away, but inched forward as to encourage him. He stood like a rhythmless, stone statue with wet, bulging eyes, almost as if he were no longer living. I continued to inch forward while pivoted at him.

     Then the sobering thud of a collision, in which momentum drove me over my handlebars. My head snapped forward and my eyes connected with those of a tall, old woman. She was dressed completely in black, her dress was very old-fashioned, and she wore a brimmed hat adorned with black rose petals. My first thought was of her fierce-looking eyes, which gazed down upon me as a vicious soul would to a child. Her mouth was cruel-looking and lips a deep purple. Her cheeks were sunken and the skin on the whole of her face appeared pale and rough like sandpaper. I could see loose strands of snow-white hair. With a strong appearance of vitality, I believed she was as alive and healthy as I was.

     Finally, one of us spoke, and it was her raspy voice, “my, my! What a handsome young boy!” Her cruel-looking mouth curved and slanted into a crooked smile, baring teeth that were deep yellow. I was as still and quiet as Max was when she added, “Scotty, I presume?”

     “How do you know my name, ma’am?” I looked back at Max, to witnessing him urinating uncontrollably where he stood, his eyes fixed on the old lady. My eyes making their way back to hers, I felt a kind of disability. I could not utter a word then, nor could I think of what else to say if she didn’t answer.   

     “Oh, the little one who was born during a lightning storm not so many years ago!”

     It made me recall all the occasions my mother had told me I born during a terrible storm, my father barely able to get the car through the blinding, torrential downpour to the hospital. I gripped my handlebars and thought: I should suddenly peddle hard and fast away from this woman.

     “Oh, my, your mother never told you?”

     “Yes. She has,” I answered as I felt a sudden, frigid chill all over my body. I could just make out the steam of my breath as if it were wintertime. The air became icy cold and to break the quiet and horribly uncomfortable stare she was giving me, I inquired again, “How do you know my name?”

     “You have your mother’s eyes and nose, little cutie you are!”

     Then I could make heavy sniffing from Max, this time his nose sniffed in all directions as his legs stood still as timber. “Ah, your dog is so perceptive alive!”

      “What do want?” my voice became stern.

     Then with a cackling laugh, the horrible state of her teeth both obvious and repulsive, she answered, “You know, my little Scotty! You know the other side!” as she said this, she pointed through the fog behind her. I could just make out a clearing into a clump of trees located further into the cemetery. I was familiar with that past of the cemetery during clearer weather. There’s a small pond in the middle of it.

     Before either of us continued, piercing yelps from dogs all over and close by shook me. Scanning the few headstones I could make out, my eyes reluctantly came back to rest on the lady’s. Her eyes gleamed as she said, “it sounds like many living dogs – yet there are no dogs alive here!” Her eyes darted to Max’s, and his legs buckled. He fell hard onto the pavement of the path we were standing.

     “Max!” I hollered while dropping my bicycle, kneeling beside him.

     “Scotty!” she hissed.

     Eyes darting back to her, she continued as she extended her closed hand to me, “I have candies! So much candy!” Her smile to me seemed to become even more crooked and all the while her eyes kept gleaming whenever those dogs yelped unseen in the fog.

      Finally, I said, “look lady! I don’t wanna go with you! You can offer me all the candy in the world but I am not going with you!” I remember my heart thundering in my chest.

     She kept her closed-hand extended to me. Then what she did next startled me. She slowly opened her hand as if to reveal something. I stood and watched with trepidation. Her empty palm. “Take my hand, Scotty,” she whispered. “Take it,” she added as if to sound intimidating.

     I then heavy-handedly lifted my bicycle, shouting “home!”

     With those piercing yelps in the distance and those piercing eyes of hers, she growled, “Give me your fucking hand!” All my adrenaline rushed at this and again I shouted, “You are weird! You are a weird lady! Go away from us!”

     Without taking my eyes off her, I turned my bicycle towards home and as if some kind of spell had been lifted, Max jumped right up and caught up with me. Reaching the stone archway, my head snapped back to the lady, but she had vanished.

     Now on the asphalt of the state highway, Max visibly regained his strength and kept up with me as I peddled along the edge of the cemetery. I did not see the funeral home till later that morning, when the weather cleared. I don’t remember looking back until Max and I made it up the driveway home.

     The house was quiet, save for the familiar sobbing of my mother, who was sitting in the same chair at the kitchen table. She turned and looked at me, smiling while asking, “fill those pockets with candy, sweetie?” I remember how different the shiner on her eye made her appear when she smiled. Knowing by then how she would get those shiners, my father had yet to slap one on me. 

     I hugged her and kiss her cheek. Then answered, “Too much candy, mom!” We both laughed and she told me to wash up as we were leaving soon.

     Max followed me passed his full bowl on the kitchen floor and into my bedroom. As I removed my jacket, the sound of paper hit the wooden floorboards. It was the white envelope from my deceased grandmother. With a moment’s pause I dropped my jacket and picked up the envelope. GRANDMA, was written on the front. I opened it and read:

     From Hell,

     My little Scotty! Had I known you in life, even for one day, you would have loved me as your grandmother! Unfortunately, what I knew of you, and photographs I’ve seen thanks to your mother, would be nothing compared to cuddling with my grandson! I hear you are adventurous and a boy scout! As I lay here on my death-bed, I write you this in hopes that you will follow your intuition and come find me at my new, eternal home, beyond the cemetery! Be adventurous! I will be waiting for you…

     GRANDMA

     As I finished reading, the walls of my bedroom seemed to while around me. If not for Max nudging me to lay down, I would have collapsed. Something so weird, impossible to comprehend at the time. From the netherworld, I was visited by something purely evil. Something in that little boy-spirit of mine at the time took me out of the obscurity of the fog, and the jaws of Hell.