The Seance

Page 2

Seamus Michael McDuff was buried three days later.
At the gravesite, everyone cried. He had been seventy, had had a full life. He’d come from Ireland to the United States with his wife, his daughter and his son, and he’d created a good home for them. He’d been a pastry chef, and he’d worked very hard and saved his money, and finally he’d opened his own restaurant, where he also employed his Irish knack for a ditty and blarney, entertaining as well as feeding many people. He’d loved God and his family; he’d been a good man.
It was while the ancient Irish bagpipes were emitting the mournful notes of a lament that Christie saw him again.
Most people were standing, but Gran was still seated when he went to her side, touched her hair and whispered into her ear.
Gran looked up, startled, frowning. Then it seemed to Christie that the hint of a wistful smile shone through her tears.
Granda turned, as if aware that Christie was watching, and winked. He looked so healthy. So much younger. His playful Gaelic self.
She couldn’t help smiling, too.
The service was coming to an end, the bagpiper playing “Danny Boy.”
It was then that she looked up, across the expanse of the cemetery.
There was another funeral going on, small in comparison to her grandfather’s. There were a man and a woman and a priest. Just three people. The woman was crying her heart out. The priest was speaking, obviously trying to comfort her. Strangely, it seemed to Christie that they were in a hurry, as if they didn’t want to be seen by anyone else.
There was something so terribly sad about it.
She saw her grandfather again. He was eyeing her with a touch of wistful humor.
“Love is all we can take with us to the grave,” he murmured. “It is the greatest part of any existence, and in that, I have died so rich.”
She wanted to speak to him; she also wanted to scream.
Because he couldn’t really be there.
She heard him whisper. “If y’would, girl. Kindness to others, in me honor.”
She realized that his service had come to an end, and somehow she was holding a rose. She followed the others’ lead and dropped it down on the coffin. She turned away and noticed that one rose had fallen on the ground. She picked it up and, without thinking, started walking over to the other funeral, which had ended. The priest and the distraught couple were gone. Only the caretakers were there now, getting ready to lower the coffin into the ground.
“Do you know this man?” the caretaker asked as she drew nearer.
“No.”
“Then…?”
She set the rose she was holding on the coffin. “Go with God,” she murmured.
“Christina!” She heard her mother’s voice, calling. She turned away from the sadness of the grave where so few had mourned and hurried back to her family.
Later, thinking that it would make her grandmother feel better, she told Gran that she’d seen her grandfather. Gran stared at her, then said, “Aye, lovie, I sensed him there, that I did.”
But that night, to her surprise, her mother seemed angry. “Christie, please, stop saying that you’re seeing your grandfather. Stop it. It’s hurtful, do you understand?”
She didn’t understand. “I wasn’t hurting anyone,” Christie protested.
“And you wandered off…God, that was dreadful. To think that he was buried at the same time, on the same day, as my father.”
“Mom, what are you talking about?”
Her mother shook her head. “Christina, I’m sorry. I love you so much, and I know you’re hurting, too…but you’re dreaming. Dreaming at night, daydreaming when you’re awake. You cannot see Granda. And you must stop saying that you do!”
Her mother was upset, of course; she had just lost her father. Christie understood that. But, it was almost as if her mother were…
Afraid.
If she really was seeing her grandfather, wasn’t that a good thing?
To be honest, she wished that he would come again, closer, that he would speak to her, that he would explain.
Who had that other freshly dug grave belonged to?
Her mother hadn’t answered her, but she heard other people talking. Everyone said it was terrible. There had been a murderer on the loose, but luckily he was dead. He’d been killed by the police, or he was the police, or something like that. She was irritated by the way people clammed up when she came near. She was nearly a teenager, after all, tall for her age, and she was actually developing a shape. It was insulting to be treated like a child. Then she realized that she had set a flower on a murderer’s grave. That was disturbing. But she had seen Granda just before, and he had spoken about kindness….
“What’s going on?” she asked her friend Ana, who lived down the street and was her own age. Ana had come to the funeral and then back to the house afterward, of course, along with her parents and her cousin Jedidiah, looking handsome in his military uniform. Her grandparents’ next door neighbor was there, too, Tony, who was eighteen already. He and Jed were off talking, so she was able to talk to Ana alone.
“You didn’t know?” Ana asked her. “They got that guy that was killing people. I guess maybe you didn’t hear as much about him down south, but up here, people were paranoid. He was buried today, too.”
And she had put a rose on his coffin.
Later, when she was alone with her grandmother, she was told again to stop talking about seeing her grandfather.
“You loved him, my girl. I know that. But you must stop saying you’ve seen him, though I know you are only trying to ease my heart.”
“Am I hurting you, Gran?” she asked.
“No, it’s not that.”
“Then what?”
Gran looked at her very seriously. “It’s dangerous. Very dangerous. So today you’ve said goodbye. Never, ever think of him as speaking to you…being near you…again.”
“Granda would never hurt me.”
“Not Granda.”
“But—”
Gran was suddenly intense. “To see Granda…you have opened a door. And God alone knows who else might pass through that door.”
Gran’s words chilled her.
“Gran, was Ana telling me the truth? No one thinks twelve is old enough to understand anything, but it is. Tell me, please, was a murderer buried today?”
Her grandmother’s face went white. “Never speak of it, never speak that name in connection with your grandfather!”
“What name?”
“Never you mind. It’s over. An awful time is over. And your grandfather…well, he’s in God’s arms now. Where monsters go, I do not know.”
Gran kissed her then, and held her. “’Tis all right, my girl, ’tis all right. We have love. I have you, and I have your Mom, and my dear son and his lads…. ’Tis all right.”
Christie looked at her. She wanted to scream, because it wasn’t all right. They were always trying to shelter her from the world, but surely it was better to understand the world than hide from it.
But here in her grandparents’—her grandmother’s now—house, everyone was too upset.
Too lost.
She didn’t know why, and it made her afraid. Not afraid of Granda, but just…
Afraid.
Afraid of the dead.
That night, she didn’t sleep. She lay awake, praying silently in her soul that he wouldn’t come.
And he didn’t.
She had probably just been so upset that she was imagining things.
Granda, don’t come again. Don’t ever come again. If you love me at all, please, don’t ever come again.
She told herself that all she felt was the whisper of a breeze, though there was none. A gentle touch, as if…
As if she had been heard and understood.
Her grandfather didn’t appear.
In fact, she never saw him again, not even in dreams.
And as the years passed by, slowly, certainly, she forgot.
It had only been a dream, just as her mother had said.
She was able to believe that for nearly twelve years. And then one day she learned that her grandmother’s words were true.
Seeing the dead…
Was dangerous.
1
A n autopsy room always smelled like death, no matter how sterile it was.
And it was never dark, the way it was in so many movies. If anything, it was too bright. Everything about it rendered death matter-of-fact.
Facts, yes. It was the facts they were after. The victim’s voice was forever silenced, and only the eloquent, hushed cry of the body was left to help those who sought to catch a killer.
Jed Braden could never figure out how the medical examiner and the cops got so blasé about the place that they managed not only to eat but to wolf down their food in the autopsy room.
Not that he wasn’t familiar enough with autopsy rooms himself. He was, in fact, far more acquainted with his current surroundings than he had ever wanted to be. But eating here? Not him.
This morning, it was doughnuts for the rest of them, but he’d even refused coffee. He’d never passed out at an autopsy, even when he’d been a rookie in Homicide, and he didn’t feel like starting now.
Even a fresh corpse smelled. The body—any body—released gases with death. And if it had taken a while for someone to discover the corpse, whether it was a victim of natural, self-inflicted or violent death, growing bacteria and the process of decay could really wreak havoc with the senses.
But sometimes he thought the worst smells of all were those that just accompanied the business of discovering evidence: formaldehyde and other tissue preservers and the heavy astringents used to whitewash death and decay. Some M.E.’s and their assistants wore masks or even re-breathers—since the nation had become litigation crazy, some jurisdictions even required them.
Not Doc Martin. He had always felt that the smells associated with death were an important tool. He was one of the fifty percent of people who could smell cyanide. He was also a stickler; he hated it when a corpse had to be disinterred because something had been done wrong or neglected the first time around.