Lesser Gods (15 page)

I rose to my feet in the gray world, and fought back tears and stared at the casket lying at the front of the church. The smell of flowers clung to the air like a funeral shroud. Bathed by floodlight, the coffin bore a soft halo. In the casket, Alice lay, motionless as if she had simply fallen asleep and might awake at any moment. I ignored the recorded prelude and simply stared at her, continuing to do so through the short service, hoping that she would gasp, take a deep breath, and wake up. Then we would tell everyone to go home, the whole thing had simply been a big mistake.

Only she never awakened.

I went through all the surreal motions society required of me, shaking hands with the friends, relatives, and neighbors as each mumbled clichés that were supposed to comfort. One by one, each grew aware of their hollow words, turned, and nervously fled the cemetery. They slithered into shiny cockroach cars that scurried away as if fearful they might be tainted by the death around them.

“It’s time to go,” my brother-in-law finally told me, pulling me away from the grave long after everyone had left. I let him lead me to the black limo next to the empty hearse and climbed in without a word as my brother thanked the funeral director.

I had spent the next six months away from my job, too upset to work, living off the funds Alice and I had saved during our thirty years of marriage. My days were spent searching first in the university library and then grubbing through grimy bookshops, devouring first the books on religion and then, not finding the answers I sought, delving into white and finally the black arts, obsessed with discovering some way of resurrecting Alice.

A year later, sitting in my kitchen, I pushed aside a leather-bound book and traced the cigarette burn on the surface of the oak table with my finger. The burn had come with the table, put there by the previous owner decades before Alice had rescued the antique from a dusty secondhand shop.

I turned my attention to my steak, carving off a chunk before glancing up at Alice.

“So what’s bothering you?” she asked. “Go ahead and tell me about it. We’ll break our rule about not talking shop at the table.”

I put down my knife and hitched up my horn-rimmed glasses. “This spell I’ve discovered,” I said, tapping the leather-bound book on the table beside me. “It’s pretty complicated.”

“That’s okay, I’ve got all the time in the world.” Alice maintained eye contact with me as she lifted a glass of water to her full lips.

“I think I could sit here and look into your dark eyes the rest of my life,” I told her.

“Very romantic but don’t change the subject.”

“Okay,” I said around a bite of steak. “What it boils down to is that the work I’ve been doing…”

“The magic spells?”

“Yeah. I thought it would be complicated — but it’s so simple. It looks like… I know this is impossible to believe.”

“Try me.”

“It looks like it’s possible to bring people back from the dead. I know that sounds crazy, but I’ve already done it with —”

“It doesn’t sound crazy at all. It makes perfect sense to me.”

“Yeah, I guess it would,” I said with a sheepish grin. “You were always going to church all the time and trying to make me feel guilty. You and your parents. Always conspiring to save my soul. Then you were in the accident and…”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s weird,” I said, putting down my fork. “I thought you were, uh, dead. But I guess I was wrong.” I looked at her for some hint of what she was thinking, but her face was a mask.

“Let’s not get sidetracked,” she finally said. “What’s the problem?”

“I’ve either got to falsify documents or somehow mislead people into thinking that… Well, if anyone knows I can raise people from the dead, it will be a disaster. The whole world will be at our front stoop wanting Aunt Edith or Uncle Frank restored to life. I have to be careful.”

“There’s always a solution. Think it through. Talk it out.”

The doorbell rang.

“Who could that be?” I asked.

“It’s for you.”

“Then I’ll get it,” I said, wondering how Alice could know it was for me. I pushed away from the table, stood up, and wove my way past the china cabinet. Crossing into the living room, my shoes clattered on the wooden floor.

I could see a figure indistinctly through the frosted-glass windows on either side of the front door in the foyer; a golden glow shone like a halo over his head, yet somehow this seemed nothing out of the ordinary. I grasped the knob and opened the door.

Jesus, in the flesh, one eye swollen shut from the beating he had taken from his Roman guards, pushed his way into the room. “Why are you plotting to rob me?” he demanded

I stood speechless, unsure how to answer.

“And why are you such a doubter?” he added.

I struggled to answer but found I couldn’t speak. The deity’s face slowly changed and I found myself in the bathroom, gazing into the mirror, a halo now sparkling over my head.

“Why are you afraid to play God?” the mirror’s reflection asked me. “You need to get on with your business if you’re going to bring Alice back. Let the chips fall where they may. Let the world take care of itself and you keep your eyes on the prize.”

With a cry, I sat up in bed, blinking in the darkness, and swore under my breath before lying back and closing my eyes. I felt so alone. Alice hadn’t been there at all. She was still dead. My stomach churned and I closed my eyes and hugged myself. She’s lost, dead and gone.

A thought shoved itself into my consciousness. I sat up again. I’d been flirting with the idea subconsciously for the last few weeks, turning it over in the back of my mind. Yet I’d suppressed the thought, not letting it sink in, refusing to come to grips with it. The book did exist, and it held the secret that could bring Alice back. Only I was too fearful to follow its instructions.

I lay back in bed, too agitated to fall asleep, even though my eyelids were heavy.

“Ralph,” a voice called softly.

I groaned, turning over in my bed and putting the pillow over my head.

“Ralph,” the voice called again, this time louder.

Abruptly, I rolled over, twisting the sheets around my ankles. “Go away. I’m trying to sleep.”

“Ralph,” the voice murmured a third time.

“What do you want, Mom,” I finally answered, now fully awake.

“Did you say your prayers?”

“No. I can’t. My prayers will raise the —”

“You must say your prayers,” Mother insisted.

“Do I have to?”

“If you don’t —”

“Oh, okay.” I freed myself from the snarled sheet, struggled out of bed and got down on eleven-year-old knees, as I’d been taught. “I don’t really have anything to pray for,” I said, peering up at my mother and hoping my tactic would work.

“Just pray for those you love.”

Abruptly, the room darkened and my mother vanished. I was again a grown man, now in my own home. “Damn,” I whispered, “what a nightmare.”

Yet I knew there might be something to this idea of praying. The magic book had suggested that one might trick God, or, at least, trick the celestial consciousness that heard and answered prayers. It couldn’t hurt to try, I decided. What did I have to lose?

“Pray for those you love,” my mother murmured again.

I swallowed, closing my eyes to recall what I had discovered in the book. I made the magic signs in the darkness and whispered the Latin phrases etched into my memory from the many times I’d read and re-read the passages in the ancient manuscript. Then I switched to English to complete the task. “God, if you’re really there, please send back my wife Alice.” I uttered another phrase of Latin and a second in Hebrew. Then, not knowing how to stop, said a loud, “Amen.”

I waited a moment, wondering if there really might be some sort of answer.

But there was no bolt of lightning, no thunderclap.

Nothing.

“You’re losing it,” I told myself and laughed. “That has to be the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done.” I got off my tired knees, straightened out the sheet and blanket, and climbed back into bed.

Punching my pillow, I wondered if I’d ever get back to sleep again. I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

Then I became aware of a far-off hint of scraping in the darkness.

I opened my eyes and listened.

Nothing.

No. There: A grating, somewhere at the far side of the house, or maybe even in the basement.

I continued to listen for a moment and then swore. “Damn it all. Every year those blasted mice get into the house. Have to set the traps tomorrow.” I shuddered at the thought of killing the stupid little rodents, but hated having them chew on things in the kitchen and leave their droppings all over. Maybe I should get a cat.

I tried to ignore the scratching.

Only I could not. For the noise had taken on a rhythm, growing louder by the moment. That’s no mouse. More like someone walking. Could somebody have broken into the house? What the devil is going on?

I threw back the covers and stepped onto the chilly wooden floor, jerked my robe off the back of the chair at the base of the four-poster, and made my way to the open bedroom door, wishing I owned a gun.

I peered into the darkness beyond and listened.

There it was. The thumping continued. It seemed to have entered the dining room.

“Who’s there?” I called.

There was no answer.

I stood motionless, watching and listening. Then, for some crazy reason, I remembered my prayer.

With a shudder I knew. There was no doubt. Deep in my bones, I knew. My prayer had been answered. Alice was here, coming to me. That was it. I should go down to meet her.

No! My rational self argued against such an act and my fingers dug into the wood of the door frame as if my feet might try to drag me downstairs against my will. It was insane to even imagine that Alice could come back. What had I been thinking of?

Jesus spoke, “I’ve sent your wife back to you.”

“No,” I groaned softly. “This is crazy.”

But whoever it was downstairs was lingering in the living room. I listened attentively, my heart pounding in my ears.

Then the shuffling feet began again, slowly winding through the hallway, step by labored step, to the foot of the stairs. Then I saw it. The figure paused in the shadows, as if waiting for something, obscure and impossible to make out.

I crept forward into the hallway for a better look, peering over the railing into the gloom. Seeing nothing, I stepped back. My fingers snaked toward the light switch. I found it and flipped the lever, yet nothing happened.

The electricity must be off, I thought. Someone must have cut the power and then broken in. I ought to go back into the bedroom and lock the door. But I couldn’t call the police; the only phone was an ancient hardwired unit downstairs in the kitchen. Indecision paralyzed me. I stood and listened and waited, just as the form in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs did.

“Who are you?” I cried at last. “What do you want?”

The stranger moved out of the shadows, dragging one foot behind her, as she mounted the first step.

I inched toward the railing and peered down the stairwell into the gloom. At that moment the moon appeared from behind a cloud and shone through the stained glass window on the landing, throwing a red glow like a pool of blood across the floor.

The form that slowly ascended the steps, its gossamer clothing billowing softly as if the wind were blowing, yet the air was deathly still and I felt no hint of a breeze in the hallway.

I stood transfixed, knowing I should turn away and run. “Alice? Is that you?”

There was no answer.

It can’t be Alice.

The figure was halfway up the stairs, glowing ever so slightly in the moonlight.

“Alice?” I called again, almost hysterically, as if I were no longer in control of my voice.

“I’ve come back,” the apparition whispered.

“Come back?”

The figure paused at the top of the stairway and I gasped, still frozen where I stood, peering into the darkness, wishing the lights would come on. “Alice,” I cried as she resumed her approach.

“I’ve come back,” she murmured again, lifting her face as the moonlight fully lit her.

I found myself staring into empty, hollow eye sockets.

“Your prayer has been answered,” she crooned, her lips cracking and falling away to reveal a crooked, toothless grin on her mummy face.

Then I realized my mistake. I had simply prayed she come back from the dead — but hadn’t asked that she be restored to what she had been in life. She had come back the way she had become in the grave. I tried to scream as she took my hand in her bony fingers and pulled me toward her bosom.

“Kiss me,” she commanded.

My screams finally escaped and echoed in the wide hallway. Then I clutched at my heart, only vaguely aware through the cloud of fear that a pounding pain had taken root in my chest like a cancerous weed. I sank to my knees and then sprawled across the hard wooden floor.

Alice knelt beside me. “Having troubles?”

“Heart attack,” I said through shivering lips.

“Your heart was always weak, wasn’t it? But don’t worry, my love.”

“You… You could call. The phone’s in the kitchen.” I gasped at the pain that shot down my arm. “Nine, one, one.”

“No, no. After you die I’ll hide and let them take your body. Then, at the proper time, I’ll bring you back the same way you brought me back — I’ve been here in spirit watching all you did. After the worms have worked on you for a few years, we’ll be the perfect couple, a matched set. You won’t be so fearful of me once we’re alike.”

“No,” I gasped, averting my eyes from the horror kneeling next to me. “Oh God, not that.” I groaned at the crushing weight on my chest.

“See you soon, dear.”

The darkness descended over me.