Page 208 of Lost in the Dark
The man, evidently Jax, gave a deep, aggrieved sigh. His jaw tensed as he stood, glaring daggers at Tommy’s retreating form in the distance. I stood too, feeling responsible for getting him in trouble, somehow. Looking defeated, Jax gave me a polite nod, moving to walk away and presumably back to his tasks. A compulsion made me surge forward, impulsively hugging him around his waist as he turned towards me at the contact. It was probably inappropriate, and I should have asked, but my heart was raw right now and it was hard to think clearly. I missed my goddamn sister; her absence was a physical ache that had stretched on for days now. Being able to wrap my arms aroundsomething, even for a moment, made it hurt a little less.
While clearly unprepared for it, Jax caught me and hugged back warmly in return, an embrace that felt almost protective. I knew that the world didn’t stop for an aching heart, that grief couldn’t be paused to let someone catch their breath, but this was the loophole. This scant few inches of space between a tear-strangled breath and the gentle give of a sympathetic chest - this moment of semi-dark peace made it feel surmountable.
Jax gently hugged me for a few beats longer than propriety might have called for, releasing me readily when self-consciousness and embarrassment finally outweighed my heartache. I stepped back, giving him a tight smile and swiping my cheekbones with the heel of a hand. “Thanks. Thank you. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”
He shook his head, dismissing my concern, and rested his hand on my shoulder for a long moment, giving it a light squeeze before turning away and heading up the hill to the older plots. Shoving down my skittish fear of proximity to my sister’s body, I pressed a hand to the side of Brigit’s casket and chose to remember her as she was before the illness started closing in.
It was some small comfort the silent man walking would likely be the one to bury her.
Brigit would have liked Jax.
Jax
She was so soft.
The woman’s heart had been well and truly cracked open, pouring grief, despair, hopelessness against my coveralls. The heady combination was a siren song toluctus- grief demons - like myself. It was our duty to seek out and take in raw grief, to act as lightning rods for cosmic balance. Some of my fellowluctusworked in homicide investigations, and one sister even worked as a life insurance adjuster, but I was one of the few that had chosen this path. True, working for a mortuary directly might have kept my clothes cleaner, but there’d been something honest about this end of things that I found appealing.
At least until Tommy inherited this place and went digging through some old heirlooms. The problem with magical artifacts passing down through generations was that, eventually, honor and conduct eroded with the times. While Tommy’s many-times-great-grandparents likely understood and respected the solemn tasks ofluctus, the skinny little shit just saw me as a source of retribution, power, and free labor. The worn silver medallion around his scrawny neck kept me bent to his will, a situation he frequently abused. The work in the graveyard I didn’t mind so much-it was as close to a steady source of grief as aluctuscould hope for. But lately my keeper’s tastes had grown darker than simple servitude.
Last month, Tommy ordered me to murder a bookie he owed too much money to, effectively cancelling his debt with a quick burst of magical violence. I was a demon at heart, largely unburdened by guilt and the grief I fed so readily on, but I still hadn’t left that alley feeling very good about myself. My kind were not meant to be used like blunt instruments, as enforcers, or even as brute labor. Yes, a surgeon could take down a wall with a sledgehammer, but the act would be a waste of their talents - the same idea applied. Separating grief from rage, regret, anxiety, and fear was a delicate process at best, and took intense concentration. Being a two-bit thug for a waste of flesh like Tommy - well, it wasn’t exactly a whetstone for the blade; put it that way.
Over the last few months, before he got bloodthirsty, Tommy had also been forcing me to break into the houses and crypts of the recently deceased. His sharp ears picked up on clues during services, sending me out to procure rumored jewelry, bearer bonds from hidden home safes, anything of value waiting patiently for probate. Even those ill-gotten gains hadn’t satisfied his ever-growing greed, however; he’d recently started dabbling in insurance fraud, too. Humans always astounded me with their sheer powers of self-destruction, but Tommy was particularly hell-bent on making bad decisions as quickly as possible, it seemed. I selfishly hoped it would lead to his end, one way or another, because then at least I’d be free of him. Compelled as I was currently, I couldn’t lift a hand against him.
My one solace was that I always finished my landscaping tasks more quickly than Tommy realized. He was too lazy to wander the grounds the way I did, so I often exaggerated how long I worked on something to keep him quiet. Today would definitely be one of those days; I’d already decided as much that morning.
It was sheer chance I’d been out by the grave I’d dug earlier, a single, clear note of grief pulling me closer. Extracting those silver-grey threads of anguished loss from the knot of a crowd was challenging without my freedom, which is why I typically sustained myself on emotional residues. It wasn’t to say we didn’t have sparsely-attended “services” - mockeries, considering all the things Tommy had stripped away, like tissues - but the emotions there were usually relief first, sadness second. This woman’s grief was so clear, however, and so eager to glide to my hand for ready harvest. There was a deeper loss to it too, something unusual and lingering, making it as fine and strong as a thread of psychic silk.
I waited until Tommy had left, curious what he’d said to her - he never discussed business outside the office, usually. Although Tommy was definitely noluctushimself, an unexpected protective instinct reared up at his proximity to my desired source. As luck would have it, I had a pack of tissues in my pocket - left behind by mourners from a previous service - and I was able to offer it to her.
Giving her the pack got me close enough to take the napkins she was forced to use -fucking cheap-ass Tommy- to presumably throw away. In reality, the handful of damp napkins was a billiard ball of concentrated grief, and would sustain me for days. It was probably greedy of me, but I was frankly sick of the unintentional starvation diet.
Once I was near her, I was surprised to find a beautiful young woman - grief was an emotion that was refreshingly real, and raw, but seldom flattering. My kind found grief enchanting by default, but she wore it so well - resigned but prideful, resolute even as her heart shattered. I wondered who was slated for burial, what they were to her; she’d unexpectedly piqued my curiosity. I made a mental note to break into Tommy’s office later to get into his files and find out.
As if I’d summoned him by plotting, my loathsome keeper snapped at me across the rows of gravestones, ordering me back to work. The urge to tell him where he could go -and no, it wasn’t the office- pressed against my tongue like the restless undead shoving at a coffin lid. He’d gotten tired of my sarcasm shortly after pressing me into service, and figured out the incantation to silence it - I couldn’t say a word unless someone directly asked me to, by name. And, of course, Tommy only asked me to speak for very short periods of time, rendering me effectively mute.
After I handed the woman the tissues and turned to walk to the rear of the cemetery, a gentle touch at my side made me turn back. The embrace was a genuine surprise, and I expected her to let go immediately - I chalked it up to an awkward, impulsive show of gratitude. I was also so unused to being touched, it shocked me, but somehow returning the hug felt as natural as tears in sadness. The woman’s shoulder-length brunette hair smelled faintly of greens and florals as it brushed against my neck - enticing scents to someone that worked so closely with both.
She held on longer than I thought she would, but eventually I felt her back stiffen just a fraction as she moved out of my arms. I immediately missed the contact, the warm flush that overwhelmed sadness often brought with it retreating as she did.
Her soft brown eyes darted up to mine before sliding to the ground, her low murmur clearly an embarrassed one. “Thanks. Thank you. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”
No, I didn’t like that. Grief was a normal emotion, a beautiful one to me, and she wouldn’t regret it around me if I could help it. I grasped her shoulders, finding myself anxious to make physical contact again, and squeezed it lightly. What I really wanted to do was to pull her back into my arms and drink sorrow from her lips until her soul felt peace again, but I managed to keep myself in check. I shook my head and stooped slightly to meet her eyes, hoping to reassure her that she didn’t need to feel ashamed.
When her gaze flicked up to mine, I swallowed thickly. Her proximity was invading my senses like the heavy perfume of funeral lilies, tying a tongue that was already, ironically, rendered mute by magic. I turned back to the hill while I could still think somewhat clearly, my pocket full of grief-saturated napkins giving me a taste of freedom as I made my way among the dead.
As I walked away, my arms and torso felt pleasantly electrified. I’d been getting by with secondary grief for too long - what I could glean from the surfaces of caskets, the rounded tops of gravestones, and my reluctant favorite - the flowers. But this -thiswas an infusion straight from the source, and it was everything I’d forgotten I needed.
At a touch, the crumpled napkins in my pocket lit me up so quickly I struggled to keep my eyes from flashing their native luminescent blue; the first sign of cracks in my human glamour. The urge to shift, to drop the pretense of my human appearance, was almost overwhelming. Instead of continuing to the edges of the plots, I slipped into the cool dim of the unoccupied mausoleum I called home. Once I was satisfied I hadn’t been seen, I lit a few sacred candles, sank to my knees on the stone slab floor, and silently prayed to Oizys for strength.
Cara
Iwas grateful I didn’t have to stay at Brigit’s grave as she was laid to rest. That had been another funeral trope that lingered in my brain where coping mechanisms were supposed to be. Against my will, my mind replayed the idea of tossing a spadeful of dirt atop her lowered coffin a hundred times before I realized I didn’thaveto do that. I simply kissed the side of her coffin and whispered a tearful goodbye, stopping briefly in Tommy’s dim office to confirm I could leave.
He assured me he’d take care of everything with Brigit, sliding a sheaf of papers towards me across the desk. The edges were festooned with a few self-adhesive translucent flags, indicating where I should sign. I scribbled my name and social security number in the places the flags pointed to, sliding the papers back to Tommy when I was done.
“Everything looks like it’s in order, Ms. Pierce. No sense delaying - how about we start at 8am tomorrow? I’ll go easy on you, don’t worry - flower duty.” Again he shot me that out-of-place smile, brittle and predatory, as well as a lingering glance that made me feel uncomfortable.
“Sure M - er, Tommy. That would be fine, I could probably use the distraction.” My fingers tightened nervously on my purse strap, burrowing my nail between the woven straps as I tried not to think about the reason I was here to begin with. Brigit would have had some kind of sardonic pep talk for this situation, but right now there was only deafening silence where my sister should have been.