Months before that first cat, me and Janie got our first real look at death. We were staying with our Aunt Paula during one of our mother’s “hard times”, and out of nowhere, Uncle Jack’s father died at the local power plant where he had worked for close to thirty years. Not by electrocution, either. He just slipped and fell, hitting his head on the way down.
But this sent Aunt Paula and Uncle Jack into several days of crying and planning, talking and shuffling from place to place. Me and Janie, albatrosses that we were with nowhere else to go, got drug along to the funeral home, the probate court, the cemetery, the newspaper. We tried to stay quiet and out of the way, and I think that was part of the problem. When we got to the night of the wake, we were tucked away in the corner, me telling Janie stories and jokes to try and keep her mind off the crush of strangers that surrounded us. We were used to making our own fun, and it wasn’t long before we had largely blocked out the outside world.
As the night progressed, there were fewer and fewer people in the room with us. Then there was no one at all, but we could still hear the distant burble of voices in the other rooms of the funeral home that were open for the wake. Then there was nothing but silence. I told Janie I needed to go check on something, trying to keep my voice calm even though I already suspected what had happened. But she wanted to go with me, so we headed out from the room we had been sitting in to a larger room filled with flowers and pictures of Uncle Jack’s father. From there you went into another large room filled with more chairs that led out into a large hallway to the left. The hallway and the rooms beyond were all dark.
Janie started twisting the sleeve of my shirt, her breaths coming in panicked gasps. “They…left…they left us….here alone…”
I turned and grabbed her arms gently, looking into her face. “It’s okay. It is totally okay. They just forgot. They aren’t used to having kids with them. They’ll come back in a few minutes when they remember.”
Janie nodded, and she seemed somewhat calmer for a moment, but then her eyes widened again. “What’s that noise?”
I was about to say I didn’t hear anything, but I realized that wasn’t true. There was music playing from somewhere. So softly it was easy to miss or mistake for just random noise, but it was there. And it sounded like some kind of song. It took a moment, but I realized it was coming from the other door in that room. The one they had called the viewing room. Where the body was.
I wanted to go and see what it was, but I was reluctant because of Janie. To my surprise, she was already walking forward though, pulling me along. Much like in the rest of this area of the building, the soft recessed lighting in the viewing room was still on. It was a small room with strange velvety curtains draped on the walls and a fake stained glass window with some kind of light bulb behind it giving everything a slight, multi-colored glow. Underneath the window was the casket, thankfully closed now.
Looking around and listening for the source of the music, it didn’t take long for me to realize it wasn’t coming from some funeral home speaker or forgotten cell phone. It was coming from inside the casket. I exchanged a look with Janie and knew she had figured it out too. Giving her hand a squeeze, we crept up closer.
The music had a sweetly sad quality, like something you would hear in a movie when they’re trying to make you cry, but it was different than that too. As I got closer, I realized it was different than anything I had ever heard. It was somehow truer, more real, and I could feel it to my core. I didn’t know the word at the time, but it made me ache inside. I pressed my ear against the casket and after a moment Janie did the same. As we stood listening and looking at each other, I felt myself slowly sinking into that music. Questions of how or why the music was playing became irrelevant as I found myself traveling through some internal darkness, Janie by my side.
It was Aunt Paula’s wail of relief that brought me out of it. “Jack! Jack! They’re in here!” She ran forward to sweep us up in a hug, pulling us away from the casket. My first urge was to fight back, to try to get back to the music, but then I realized the music had stopped. So instead I suffered through our aunt’s kisses and apologies as they lead us outside and to the car. The funeral director, out of his black suit at this point and into some sweatpants and a t-shirt, was busy apologizing to Uncle Jack while Aunt Paula was apologizing to us and to him. Everyone was so fucking sorry.
Not that I was really mad about it at all. I knew we had found something really important—something secret. I told Aunt Paula we had just walked around a bit, and that it was okay, that we weren’t too scared. She looked back at me, tears in her eyes.
“That’s sweet of you to say, honey, but I know you had to be after,” she sniffed hard and continued, “we left you there for four hours. I’m so so sorry.”
I blinked and felt Janie’s grip on my hand tighten. “What time is it?”, she asked.
Aunt Paula looked at her. “It’s nearly 2:30 in the morning, baby. But don’t you worry. After the funeral tomorrow you can sleep as late as you want to as long as you stay with us. And I’ll have a tasty breakfast waiting for you when you wake up.”
We weren’t really listening to her any more. 2:30? That was impossible. I would have guessed that from the time I last heard people to when they came back was an hour at the most. But when I looked up at the car clock, I saw she was right. 2:27. Had we spent over three hours listening to that corpse?
Exhausted, we fell asleep as soon as we got to bed, but the next day me and Janie discussed it more. Her memory was the same as mine, and we had no way of explaining where the music had come from or where the time had went. So eventually, as children do, we just accepted it and moved on.
Except I started to have strange thoughts. Odd dreams. And that lead to the day with the cat, when I realized that Janie had been going through the same thing and that something about that music had changed us both forever.
I pulled back against Darcy’s hand. “Wait, what is this? Should we be going up there?” She looked at me with an irritated, questioning look and I went on in a hushed tone. “There are people screaming up there!”
She pulled her hand free and frowned at me. “Yeah, which means we missed the opening.” Her expression softened and she went on. “Look, I didn’t tell you more about this because I didn’t want you to freak out. It’s perfectly safe. Well, not perfectly safe, but safe enough. I wouldn’t have brought you otherwise. But I need you to trust me and be cool. You’re going to see some shit tonight, and you’re going to have to participate. That’s the rule. But you won’t be hurting anybody and no one will hurt you. I promise.” She reached out and rubbed my arm. “You cool? Can you trust me?”
I swallowed and nodded. She gave me a quick hug and took my hand again, leading me up to the third floor where we could see electric lights had been set up running off a gas generator. The screams had died down now, and as we headed into what had once been the cubicle-laden central bullpen of a company, I saw a small group of people clustered around some kind of table or apparatus. The ruined desks and cubicle walls had been shoved away towards the edges of the large room, and as we stepped past that outer ring of office detritus and into the sullen light of the work lamps that had been set up, I could see what appeared to be a man’s naked body laying on an adjustable metal table tilted so that his feet were close to the floor. The angle was such he would have slid off if not for the raised platform at the end where his feet rested and the thick leather straps that were around his waist and neck. I was about to ask Darcy what they were doing to that guy when someone stepped to the left, revealing his torso.
There was a wet, red hole where his chest should be. It reminded me of cars I had seen that were missing a hood. A large rectangle of skin, muscle and bone had been cut out of his chest around a foot wide and a foot and a half long. Inside, you could see glimpses of organs in the bloody darkness.
I turned to Darcy, barely able to breathe. “What…did they kill that guy?” I was whispering, but we were close enough now to the others that I was terrified they’d overhear me.
She shook her head. “No, no. It’s ok. They get cadavers. They’re bodies from the nearby med school that were donated and John Does from the county morgue. All stolen, yes, but no family is missing them.” She went to say something else when a gray-haired woman wearing a long dress and carrying a short, black walking stick came up and gave Darcy a hug.
“Darcy! You made it! So glad you could come.” The woman’s dark eyes shifted to me. “And who is your friend?” Her tone wasn’t unfriendly, but it wasn’t warm either. I felt like an uninvited guest at a dinner party.
Darcy looked unruffled as she smiled at the woman. “It’s good to see you too. This is Josh. He’s…” she shot me a glance, “Well, I guess you’d say he’s my boyfriend.”
I felt my heart race a little at her calling me her boyfriend, even in these circumstances. We had been very slow to label our dating up to this point, and while I had called her my girlfriend to others a few times, this was the first time I had ever heard her use the term. I was chiding myself for having fucked up priorities when the woman began talking again excitedly.
“The Twins are here! Can you believe it?”
Whatever that meant, Darcy clearly was excited too. She looked at me and grinned, her eyes bright. “This is so awesome! The Twins are the ones that started all this a few years ago. I’ve heard they have a few different groups around the world, but only occasionally show up in person to oversee them. We are so fucking lucky!”
I glanced at the corpse again, finding it hard to tear my gaze away from that ragged, red void in its chest. “So what does this have to do with the dead body?” People were starting to clap and cheer, and Darcy hushed me to silence before pulling me along behind her friend as we made our way up to the inner circle.
Entering the circle from the other side was a young couple that appeared to be in their early thirties, although both of them had hair of bright white. It was a strange and discordant frame for their smooth skin and striking features, and the hair itself seemed far too healthy to have been whitened by chemicals or age.
Between their physical appearance and their expensive-looking clothes, I found myself wondering what they were possibly doing here. At first glance, they looked more out of place in that derelict building than I did. But then I noticed how they carried themselves, how everyone else deferred to them. They were extremely comfortable here, and they were in control.
The woman stepped forward, her voice soft but strong as she introduced herself. “My name is Jacquelin Forrester, but you can call me Janie.” There was an excited titter through the crowd at what seemed to be a familiar joke to many. “This, as many of you are aware, is my brother Martin.”
“Tonight, we are going to take a journey together. A journey unlike any other you have ever experienced…well, unless you’ve done this before.” Another pause and round of soft laughter. “But for you newcomers, here are the rules.” She stepped back and Martin stepped forward, nodding to his sister before turning to the crowd.
“Rule one: You must participate. No exceptions. Rule two: You can never tell another person about what we do here or what you see and hear unless you bring them along with you in the future. Then you can only tell them after they have crossed the threshold and are bound by our rules as well.” I shot Darcy a look and she shrugged apologetically.
“Rule three: You will wait your turn. There is no arguing, no fighting, and no rudeness tolerated here.” He shrugged. “And that’s it. Oh, yes, one more thing. If you think you might want to break one of the rules, just remember.” He pointed to the corpse with a grin. “We always need a fresh body.” He chuckled as he stepped back and there was another ripple of laughter, though this one seemed to carry a note of unease.
Janie raised her arms, and I could tell from the palpable excitement thrumming through the crowd that this was a part of some beginning ceremony or ritual. Smiling, she looked around at us as she spoke. “Welcome to all of you. May you wear the Heart Mask well and gaze deep into the Nightlands! "
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Credits
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