rose to close the window.
Outside the rolling hills led to the small coastal town below them in the valley that met the sea and he was thankful that his grandmother's estate lay beyond the borders of town, only so much as to hear the church bell chime the hours and no closer.
His eyes combed the steeples of St Peters and glided over Dunnet Head before looking upon the grey ocean that stretched out yon toward the endless expanse of the saline god that fed the land with its fish in the freezing heart of its belly. He thought to cheer her present demeanour.
The water is lovely today, Grandmother. It is a wee bit wrinkly, but generally calm and it begs to be explored," he smiled, turning to face the deathly sick woman who stared at him through weary eyes and shadowed brow, her scowl most concerning.
She found his attempt at cheer quite cruel, as she had longed to swim once more in the churning cold of the Thurso beach for many years.
Dame Mayem was in her day, a most celebrated swimmer.
Nothing gave her pleasure as much as feeling the cold salty water glide over her skin, lifting her to defy gravity and lend grace to her form, no matter her shape.
Her hair would slither across her back as gentle hands' caress and she would open her eyes below, admiring the beauty of the floor and its teeming life. In her youth, surely before her dreaded illness, she would spend every day in the water.
The mood of the blue maiden deterred her not, not in calm or unrest did she stay away.
Now she was inept at even sitting up. Lady Mayem was of ripe age, six and eighty years, and but a shadow of the lady she once was, but it is truth of a good woman's garden. It could not be unearthed in its glory, for the rose seeds would surely break the ice of winter and like the Phoenix, rise above it to grow and live once more.
For a petal never smells as sweet as when it has withered into a dead rose. Beauty shifted to another face, but beauty, yet'
She oft found herself reciting the lines her romantic husband made up for her after he had left her, to draw strength from his words and feign happiness when she was all too >>> lonely. Her sailor had left her when she was in her fifty fourth year and she vowed never to love again. And she never did.
Now she was not only a remnant of the lady she once was, but quite more truth to the vision of a monster. Her bones were twisted beneath her skin, her ligaments torn and inflamed as her spinal cord suffered the anguish of meningitis and her mind exploded in pain every time she drew breath. Cheekbones protruded grotesquely under her thin skin, leaving her eyes sunken and dark, her scalp bare in the wake of cancer before her current illness joined the demon family of sickness that now riddled her caving body. No more did her towering frame of nearly six feet in height stride in health, but now found itself reduced to just over five feet of crippled arc, snapping under the slightest of burdens.
"There is no more place in the sea for me, lad," she sighed laboriously and cast a glance to the waves far out of reach from her window. Her voice did sound like the creaking of an old pirate ship that sailed too far beyond its years and ventured the threat of shipwreck. "What I wouldn't give for just one more swim," she almost smiled, dreadfully sullen from the sound of her own voice and the cursed words it dared convey.
With her grandson's fallen cheer came another fit and he summoned the doctor to assist him with Lady Mayem's incessant episodes that seemed alarmingly frequent now.
The darkness unfolded, fading in, her vision of the room she had been cloistered in for years. It was quiet now, save for the breakers and the minuscule moan of an infant storm wind that played about the corners of her home, echoing through the night, taking ownership of Thurso and the surrounding glens that beautified it's antique charm.
For a moment she was calm, comfortable and almost content. There was peace about the place and she felt no pain for a moment. Her memories raced, ill and gleeful alike and with her loveful smile came a tear or two, witnessed by the decorative ceiling above her alone. Then it came.
Her tendons twisted under the spasm of every fibre in her body, locking her voice inside and sending her hands clawing for relief, but there was no soothing to be had. From her neck the veins protruded as if surged by lightning and her spine burned from the puss inside that drowned it. The lady jolted back her head, lodging her excruciating skull in her pillows, but for all their gentle support they could not still the deathening headache that exploded within her brain.
The old dame felt her heart race uncontrollably inside her and for all her attempts at calming it, her chest gripped the organ with unholy force and bent her body in a final writhing attack that left her paralyzed in form. Inside her mind she lived still, fully aware of her body failing and letting go of her soul. She heard it then.
Was it truly what she heard? Was it the lonely sound of bagpipes that serenaded her soul from the twisted cage of flesh and hell she left behind? She smiled, but her lips lay still and blue, inanimate in freshly birthed death as she finally heard the beloved waves fade from her mortal ears and the ethereal bagpipes became the only sound she heard, omnipresent and beautiful...the bagpipes her husband used to play while they strolled on the beach below where her spirit now swayed and danced.
Angus slammed his palm on his mouth as not to utter the urgent scream that would not be denied. Upon the massive bed in the cold bedroom he had discovered his grandmother, all twisted and diabolical in her frozen pain, eyes bulging in terror and mouth agape with empty cry. Inside her mouth it was black. Around her eyes it was black. The tiny blue capillaries painted her pale skin and the sheets reeked of urine. What an atrocious sight! Angus hastened to the bathroom where he vomited profusely, strangely hoping to vomit forth and out, his dreadful woe for his grandmother's passing.
The mortician and his assistant had come to collect the lady's corpse and noted in astonishment that the rigor mortis had set in almost immediately after death. Either that were the case, or the lady had been dead for longer than her body had known.
A day after the gruesome discovery left Angus is a fugue state and left him bedridden under order of the physician who administered some welcome mind-calming substances, the tall body was pulled from the rack to be washed. Anstice came treading down the bleak and narrow corridor of the mortuary, eager to begin a day's work after a most fearful night at her husband's heavy hand. She boasted a perfect skill at her trade and she found it oddly therapeutic to wash corpses. Not only did it give her some purpose to society, but she had great respect for her fellow man and believed firmly that all God's creatures had a soul and a purpose in this she went about her macabre craft with contentment and offered great respect to each and every body that passed her table.
"Here's a new one for you, Anstice," the assistant Ronald clamoured, wheeling in the grotesque shape under the off-yellow sheet it hid beneath. Anstice had seen it all, but every so often she would be greeted by a body that frightened her, unsettled her or sometimes drove her to mortal contemplation and she would babble about the cruelty of mankind to the fill of those within earshot.
"Oh," she noted at the twisted silhouette, "well, just get him on the table and leave. I have my hands full today and have no time for dalliance," she barked at the gaunt man who merely shrugged.
Anstice went about her preparations. Her red locks were tied back in the nape of her neck, revealing too much of her double chin than she was comfortable with, but work was work, alas. Her yellow eyes combed the strange shape quietly while she ran the warm water, wringing her hands together in the pleasant soapiness and deep inside welled a twinge of fear, like those times when she was startled by what the sheets had revealed. The anticipation unsettled her already, but she hoped her alarm would be unfounded.
"You sure do have your hands full, Anstice!" he said as he unceremoniously dropped the cranium from his palm with more force than necessary, evoking her anger in a narrowed stare.
Into the small doorway the thin annoyance strolled, moving about the odour of formaldehyde as he called back a few words that ever so slightly had Anstice's nerves a little charred.
"And it's not a him. It's a her!"
The door creaked behind her under the strain of a brewing breeze that announced the coming of a rainstorm. Anstice jumped a little from it, embarrassingly so, and she promptly uttered a nervous giggle to correct the atmosphere in the old basement that served as a makeshift morgue for the small town. The low light that came from the three small windows above her lent her very little to work in and she promptly switched on the two woebegone lamps which stood sentinel over her work table, however the beams were feeble and made for shadows that evoked macabre art upon the sheet.
Through the windows the clouds darkened and the wind howled under the door, creeping icily over Anstice's feet, a most eerie sensation she did not welcome. Before her lay the creepy shape that awaited her service. It was big. For a lass, it was big and the very idea sent a chill up her plump body. The corpse lay tall and bony under the veil and she found herself procrastinating in her uncertainty of composure.
Thunder murmured in warning as she grasped the corner of the pale sheet in her hand, as if in the hand of a friend in consolation. Slowly she pulled it back, inch by inch battling the urge to close her eyes in cowardice, but curiosity preventing her from doing so.
First came a hand, bony and evil, clutching at something that was not there, raised as if waving, but dead in its place. The chamber grew chillier as the thunder roared and the veil finally slipped and fell back.
Anstice gripped her chest in shock at the horrid thing before her, yawning in black and staring right at her with glazed pupils on rubbery eyes that had sunk into the ocular cavities like wrinkled paper. The cadaver was contorted grotesquely, as if she was frozen in a moment of unholy terror, preserved so for all to behold and recoil. Out in the narrow streets above it became wet with rain and cold as the thunder cast the ocean asunder and bellowed in wrath. White light flashed into the small chamber where the bony cadaver held Anstice enthralled in its monstrous spell.
"Oh dear," she whispered and decided to commence her work. Washing the dead was after all her trade and she found herself ashamed of her frailty. From her side she collected the bowl of water, foamed and lukewarm. She carefully dipped the sponge into the liquid and wrung it out, occasionally looking at the dead woman on her table. Lightning illuminated the corpse just so that the shifting light found the body animated in her eyes. Imagination is the devil's pleasure, indeed, here where Anstice found her eye darting more than usual to the object of her work. But the deceased lady did not stir. If one placed one's hand on her, there would be no tremor within.
Over the venous cartograph that lined the body, Anstice gently began to run the sponge , leaving the foam in its wake. With every stroke, she became more at ease with the corpse and even ignored the grim weather at her back that was prompting scares. As she reached the face of the dead woman, her hand began a tremble that she could not command. A vicious crack split the air, extinguishing all light in the town. Her heart jumped, not so much for the dousing of light, but more for the grazing touch of the outreached claw of the cadaver that found her straying arm in the new darkness that embraced her. Her brief cry drowned in the thunder and she was thankful for it, lest the corpse had heard her shriek and elected to raise itself for the occasion. Another blessing that befell her, was the gaunt Constable Cant whose flash light illuminated her the coffin she worked in. The beam found her wide-eyed countenance and they left for the office.
By the next morning the entire town found itself without electricity. It would be a few days before the error could be corrected and the townspeople were advised to make preparations. As such, Anstice had discussed with the undertaker, the preservation of the bodies in her charge, those who had to be kept cold, especially. It was imperative she knew what to do, as there was a body that could not be buried until the next of kin had recovered from his illness brought on by the shock of his grandmother's death. She was the only corpse currently in Anstice's morgue that had to be kept, and kept cold at that.
Therefore, as a last resort, it was decided that the Lady Mayem's body would be laid on ice for the next day or two as her grandson, Angus, was anxious to finalise her burial arrangements. He was still mildly under the weather, but he promised to have his grandmother buried within the next two days. So it was then done. Anstice watched as the men brought ice and filled a bath tub for the twisted corpse to be laid in.
The chamber in which the bath stood was eerie and confined, green paint lending a morbid play to it and the rusted plumbing giving it an unwelcome air, even for a morgue chamber. The plump lady watched her mangled patient sleeping on a bed of ice and noted the windowless room that enveloped the lonely corpse as she slowly shut the door, leaving the interior in pitch darkness. She quickly walked away but the morose silence of the room behind her yielded at once a soft moan, a call for help perhaps and she found herself frozen in fear. Her eyes darted to and fro in contemplation as she employed a battle between her imagination and her senses. Above all her legs desired flight and before she came to such a conclusion, she had already reached the threshold of the exit.
The annoying assistant Ronald smirked at the woman's fright and nodded in his patronizing manner once more, knowing not what she had just endured. She left the building in haste and below the street, in the morgue corridor the assistant jumped at the filtering noise in the tiny locked chamber Anstice had just come from. He carefully approached the green door, intently applying his hearing to what was behind the lock and bolt of the chamber. From the darkness behind the door came the faint sound of water splashing and within an eternity of moments, the rapping of a wet treading upon the floor that rapidly approached the door. As the footsteps reached him, the thunder crashed as if hammering the door violently. Ronald lost his bladder there and then and with that, his consciousness.
On the morrow of Angus' birthday, that of his thirty ninth, he set out to collect the corpse of his beloved mother of his mother in turn. It was a baleful day for him indeed. The undertaker assisted the young man with the casket choosing and lent him moral support, a fillip on such a mournful day where one has to celebrate one's birth by the acknowledgement of a loved one's passing.
Thurso was wet with the weeping of the heavens and Angus found it uncanny how the weather echoed his emotions. He was most distraught and mentally frail from woe as they approached the stony building, in which, within its bowels it held the woman who had raised him lovingly and now had gone, leaving him forever. His eyes dripped under his hat rim as the rotten wood of the door thereto opened before them and he could easily mask his tears with rain, had his eyes not been fraught with the crimson of sorrow.
As they passed the threshold into the cold, dank cathedral of death, Angus felt his stomach churn, not at the innate darkness of the place, but the finality of this passing into the tomb where his grandmother awaited him.
The long narrow passageway closed over him in an arch, much like a birth canal to the reversal of life ahead. His nostrils ached under the stench of chemicals and refrigerated flesh, that kind which one did not smell obviously, but more so experienced as a subliminal sensation on one's skin. It was an ambience, not an odour. Beneath his soles pattered the shallow puddles of murky liquid under his weight and made his tread precarious at best.
"Mind the steps, Master Angus. The floor is slippery as hell down here," warned Ronald, now awake and brave once more in the dim lights that lined the middle of the archway above them. In company all cowards find themselves captains.
"You don't say," the unhappy birthday boy remarked nonchalantly.
Ahead of them, a mere step down lay a room inhabited by surgical tables and cold walls, green against the frigid light the Scottish winter afforded it. He looked past the visible. He knew in there, in the chamber of ice and plumbing, was his grandmother. His ghastly contorted grandmother. He dreaded the vision of her crooked cadaver, the gruesome reminder of a most unkind death.
Inside his belly welled the bile of uncertainty and macabre excitement. Anstice stood ready beside the sheeted form on the table and the pale light of the overcast street outside illuminated her ample cheeks and aproned outline, shaded blue. His eyes caught the unmistakable shape of lady Mayem and for a brief moment of terror his memory regurgitated the grisly scene of his discovery that day.
Angus' hands felt cold and clammy in his handkerchief, raised to his mouth and shivering from the unnatural cold in the creepy chamber where he was reunited with her. His skin could not tell whence the coldness came now, for it seemed cooler in the chamber than it was on entering and he had a relentless suspicion that the temperature had naught to do with it.
Once more, with devilish force the rain came down and doused any sound that dared reverberate throughout the town. Even the eleven o'clock toll from the St Peter's steeple found itself virtually unheard by the cowering townspeople, its chime eerily distorted by the rage of the storm. It did not last long, the rage, but left in its wake a continuous downpour that had Angus wondering how they would go about putting the old girl in the ground when the otiose earth was so fallible now.
In the midst of his ponderings and the silently respectful contemplation of the people in the chamber, the roof bled a leak.
"Oh crikey Moses!" Ronald exclaimed, making haste for a bucket as the droplets became drops and the cleft concrete began to cry rivulets of rainwater into the chamber. In awe, dead still, still, the party looked up at the annoying waterage that slowly wet everything below the broken cement and watched how it meandered across the floor.
As Ronald scampered about, something twitched underneath the veil.
The undertaker, his assistant lad, Dugal, Anstice and Angus all froze, save for unbelieving glances exchanged for the oddity they all had secretly hoped was an optical illusion, perhaps a play of light. Ronald noticed nothing in his cacophony of steel buckets and crashing instruments as he rushed to contain the imminent flooding he expected in his prolific imagination. He stood up suddenly, holding up a rusty bucket under the tapping of a dripping crevice. Like a statue, proud of his feat, he smirked ever so slightly, but no-one paid him any mind.
He frowned at the puzzlement of the others and was about to inquire as to their bewilderment when the thing twitched again. Anstice's knees buckled somewhat at this and she briefly closed her eyes to compose herself. The men grimaced and sighed hard next to her and before they could find their wits, the arm of the cadaver gracefully rowed in a circle under the dripping water.
A small yelp came from the undertaker, his hand firmly over his mouth as the macabre display continued to the dismay of all present. Ronald, somehow more curious than appalled, made his way to the corpse, concerned for the filthy water dripping upon her. He held his bucket out to halt the drops and at once the animated corpse became still, in its position. The party gasped, more in amazement than fear, but Angus felt his heart sink, jump and all manner of varying reactions he could not contain. He felt inconsolable and yet, the quaint revelation before him awoke an oddly cheerful idea that he begged to employ.
He jumped, holding out his hand to Ronald, as a puppet master to his marionette. Ronald watched lady Mayem's grandson intently, waiting for a silent order by eye. With a slow wave of Angus' hand, the morgue man moved the bucket, allowing once more the water to seep onto the sheet. Anstice and the undertaker now stood spellbound, their arms supporting the faint Dugal. They spake not a word. There was no need for such unnecessary activity. They were in the presence of wonderment. Macabre, but fascinating wonderment. Under the wet veil began the motion of the dead body once more, only now, it was not merely an arm moving, but every part of her that had become drenched. Through the off-white veil they could see her marble skin over bony frame, moving with immense grace. Her arm rowed continuously forward, her left leg lifted somewhat and then came down and it did so a few times over.
Angus motioned to Ronald.
He moved the bucket under the water and again the dead body became as dead once more. Inanimate completely, void of any life or movement whatsoever it lay on the slab like the corpse it was. All present gasped. They looked at each other as pirates who had discovered a chest in a place no chest could be found. A treasure no discovery could measure. Angus shook his head madly, laughing, eyes wide in happy astonishment.
"She is swimming," he announced, a lunatic smile painting his face. "She is swimming!" He bellowed to his unnerved audience and briefly explained that his grandmother had longed for one last swim in the ocean before she died. At first they though him mad.
"You be daft, master Angus, it is blasphemy to justify such necromancy as a wish granted post mortem!" the undertaker called, holding up his man Dugal, who was clearly not fit for such a show.
Angus locked eyes with Anstice. She stood mute, but her expression was not altogether one of disapproval. He looked upon the fascinated eyes of Ronald and knew he had an ally. He had made up his mind. Lady Mayem would have her swim. Angus, a stout fellow, put his arms under the freezing corpse of his beloved grandmother and began to lift her to the religious protests of the undertaker who dared not even look upon the abhorrent act. Carefully he picked her up in his arms and Anstice lunged to save the veil from falling from the old dame, revealing her monstrous nudity and thus disrespecting her body. Ronald and Anstice followed the daft Angus, who was singing himself a happy birthday as he waltzed his way through the echoing canal corridor to the outside world where his car awaited.
The three living and one veiled dead then drove to the edge of the North Sea, amidst the mild rain which obscured the landscape in gray and gale. It was dead silent in the vehicle. Each of the three contemplated not only the happening, but also the outcome. This was surely an illegal act, but the fascination and dared they think, magic, of it all was simply too precious to pass up. So they came finally to the cobbled and coarse seaside and Angus spared no time in removing the tall cadaver from the car. He mumbled to her as if she had hearing. He told her of his birthday gift to her - to him - that she would swim one last time.
Anstice was concerned for his mental state, but she knew that grief had a heavy hand on the heart and considered it his consolation. Ronald had no consideration for deeper things. His only motivation was macabre entertainment and nothing more.
Angus placed the corpse on the beach, near the tide line and waited for the foam to fetch the lady's essence and usher her gently into the water, as only the ocean knew how.
The three stood sentinel over the sheeted thing and awaited the tide. Through wind and rain they looked on as the waves guided her in, provoking her movement again with their touch and as the freezing water engulfed her, the limbs began moving, all now, at once to the delight of the onlookers. Under the surface, the sheet abandoned, the corpse of lady Mayem took stride and she elegantly paddled her long legs through the restless waves. Her head was submerged, still, her face unseen and arcane in the maddening mind of her grandson, who saw her as marvel, god, supreme and laughed like a madman in his boundless success that could never now be undone.
Angus watched, like the others, how his grandmother's long elegant body slid effortlessly through the breakers, smoothly, like a mermaid. He imagined her pure glee and he voiced how he could not imagine a more favourable birthday gift. His smile was vacant of sanity and his eyes were blank with un-reason.
"Look!" he called, pointing, "She is swimming! She is swimming once more! It was my wish for her. Really! I made this. I made this on my special day, happen!"
With that, Angus started towards the roaring ocean, his grandmother's dead body still paddling and rowing gracefully right beneath the surface of the waves. Ronald and Anstice summoned him back, but he only heard , glorious bagpipes had infused his mind and he knew she was content. The ice cold grip of the sea took his legs, then his waist, but still he bore forward. He would swim with his grandmother. No joy could trump swimming with his grandmother one last time.
Angus was no stranger to the water. A sailor. A captain. He took to the paralysing temperature with ease and swam to where the corpse was diving and sliding below, and above. Ronald and Anstice stood looking on, unable to join, unable to leave. They watched. They watched.
The heaving waves began to mask Angus' head more frequently and eventually his elated cries went mute and his head was lifted above no more. He was gone. The ocean engulfed him entirely and claimed him for his love and compassion. If at all, that was a legitimate reason as any to die for.
From the tide spewed the sea lady Mayem's corpse. She swam in the shallows until the shallows became beach and as the tide pulled away from her, so did her animation and eventually she lay on the shore, bare and contorted once again in the rain that now failed to move her as it had before. The two people from the morgue collected the cadaver on the beach as they would on a normal day. But this was not a normal day. Not for them. Not for anyone who bore witness to the anomaly they now knew and could not prove.
That day the ocean claimed a sacrifice for the granting of one last wish. A wish so strong in its yearning that it ventured across the natural and the god-will, to appease the heart that had asked it.
Some wishes transcend comprehension and sometimes, when the weather in the soul is just right, and the yearning in the heart is true, the supernatural will afford it.
~~~~ THE END~~~~
© LadyAxe 2011