Hereafter

He walked amongst the dead, the dewy grass misting slightly. It was dark, the moon hidden in the billowing grey clouds. A shovel in hand, a flashlight in the other, he wandered the aisles of graves. He stumbled along, swaying slightly due to the amount of alcohol in his system. Although he was quite drunk, he easily navigated his way around the graveyard, being careful not to tread on those that lay beneath the earth in eternal rest.

Norman was the cemetery groundskeeper, but he spent so much time in the graveyard that most people assumed he lived there. It was not exactly an enviable reputation but it suited him just fine. Norman wasn’t squeamish in the slightest and the sight of a dead man would not, could not, ever faze him. The idea of burying a complete stranger actually comforted him, knowing that he was bringing that person to the afterlife. Who that person had been in life mattered not to Norman. Once you were dead and buried, it didn’t mean a thing anyways. That’s what was so beautiful about it…that everything you ever regretted wouldn’t mean a thing. It was peace, just peace forever.

His back bent heavy with age as he made his way towards her, his late wife. Her passing had hit him harder than he had ever anticipated, and he had anticipated it, for she had been very sick and didn’t have the will to live any longer. The cancer eating away inside of her was too much for her weakened old body to take, and Norman’s duties kept him from being a responsible husband. That’s what he told himself anyways. The truth was that having to sit in the cramped hospital room, holding her hand while she slowly edged closer to death, was more than he could bear. He couldn’t tell her it was going to be alright because he knew it wouldn’t. He had seen too many funerals, dug too many graves to believe in miracles. But many nights he would force himself to hold her hand and tell her it was going to be alright, for her sake. He loved her and wasn’t about to let his stubbornness or his pessimism ruin the precious time he had left with her. So he feigned hope, and in the end death had showed up with its ugly face and claimed her, just as he knew it would.

Oh the grief he had felt those next several years after her passing. He sat himself in that rotten armchair with a bottle of Jack night after night after night. All he could think of was the day Doctor Grimsby had first informed them about Myrtle’s cancer.

He had known Doctor Grimsby almost all his life. They had grown up together in the small town of Willows Bayou. Steve was his first name, but Norman often referred to him as Doc. What a pair of scoundrels they had been as boys! Cutting out of school to skip rocks on the water, fraternize with girls at the nearby Women’s University, skateboarding on the crumbling sidewalks of the park grounds where many young roughnecks could be found in the late afternoon. Of course, they couldn’t stay young and rebellious forever. It had taken Norman longer to realize that than Steve, and before Norman knew it his best friend skipped town to attend some fancy medical school. The years flew by for Norman without Steve. He bounced from job to job, just small time gigs that paid little but took up much of his time.

In fact, until he had first met Myrtle, he never learned to settle down at anything. When Steve finally came home and set up a medical office on the edge of town, Norman couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. What had he done with his life? Here was his best friend, all these years later, so successful and ambitious, while Norman felt as though the whole time he had been sitting on the bench, waiting for life to happen. What’s worse, he made his jealousy known to Steve almost immediately, and what probably should have been a much more pleasant conversation ended with a sense of isolation between the two of them. After that, he vowed only to refer to Steve as Doc which, childish as it seemed, served as a reminder to Norman that he had failed to seize control over his life as Steve had.

Then Myrtle came along and changed his whole outlook. Because of her, he had finally been able to settle on a profession. While being a graveyard keeper was hardly comparable to other lucrative avenues such as doctor or lawyer, for some reason Norman felt he had been born to tend graves. That, and drink and smoke and get into bar fights. But Myrtle had changed this too. Whenever he was around her, he felt less compelled to drink or do anything hazardous at all. How did she do it? He often wondered what would have become of him had this merciful angel not been sent down from Heaven to save his soul. A useless waste like him never deserved so wonderful a person. Whenever they strolled hand in hand through the town square, the looks of approval were always aimed at Myrtle and never at Norman.

“It’s not that they disapprove of us, dear,” Myrtle would say on such occasions. “They just don’t know you as I do.” And she would squeeze his hand and lay her shoulder upon his, and he would look towards Doc Grimsby’s place and think, you’ve got nothing on me.

But what had he ever done for her? All those happy years of marriage and he had given nothing in return. He took and took and took, while Myrtle kept on giving. She had aspirations too. She had wanted to be a good mother someday. He hadn’t given her children. She wanted him to be happy with himself. He wouldn’t be. When she got sick, she wanted him to stop worrying. He couldn’t. And when she lay on her deathbed, she wanted him not to cry. But he hadn’t been able to suppress the tears.

That’s why on this particular cold, lonely Hallows Eve he found himself wandering through the small graveyard with a flashlight and a shovel, whiskey on his breath, heading for his wife’s grave so that he could just dig a hole and fall in it and just lie there next to her. He would tell her how sorry he was for not being the husband she needed him to be.

He came upon her headstone, a marble white with black engraving:

Myrtle Elaine Ellsbury

1955 – 2010

He hadn’t been able to think of anything to label her that would in any way be accurate enough. Somehow “loving wife” didn’t really do her justice. He could think of a million great things she was when she was alive. She was the kindest person he had ever met, perhaps too forgiving in her nature. She was a saint among the neighbors, especially to the kids. She had always wanted children, a dream which was not shared by Norman. Who could blame him, for the kids always taunted him whenever they saw him in the grounds, pointing and ogling at him as if he were some kind of Frankenstein or something. Norman blamed the movies, while Myrtle always said it was “kids just being kids.” He guessed it was just the nature of the job.

Their little house near the cemetery grounds was a huge attraction of sorts during Halloween. The “Graveyard House” as the kids called it would be the most decorated house in town, thanks to Myrtle. She would go crazy with hanging fake cobwebs and spiders and jack-o-lanterns everywhere. She even went as far as adding in some sound effects, which Norman always objected to.

“People already think we’re nuts living in a graveyard,” he said.

But she would just give him one of her smiles, the kind that in their twenty two years of marriage always made it hard for him to tell her no, and that would be that. The doorbell would ring off the hook all night with children lining up to get a peek inside the “Graveyard House”. Norman joked that they might want to think about charging for admittance, that the house was officially a haunted attraction.

He smiled at the memory as he sat his shovel down and stared at Myrtle’s grave. How different things were now for him, how lonely and full of silence the house now stood. Only one thing could bring it back to life, but she was dead. How he ached to sleep beside her in the ground, if only just to be near her.

Tears crawled down his bearded face but he didn’t bother to wipe them. He set his flashlight down and the shovel next to it, and began to speak aloud into the silence, not caring if he woke those sleeping in the ground.

“I’m so sorry, my love. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you. Words can’t express it, Myrtle. I failed you. And now I can’t..I can’t fix it. So I will lie with you tonight. I will dig my own grave and drink myself to death, so that the hands of God can take me to you. I’m just so sorry.”

The words didn’t mean much now, but he felt an odd relief saying them, like they somehow made his sins go away. He picked up the shovel and began to dig into the soil next to Myrtle’s grave. It was his spot, which she had reserved for the both of them some time ago, before her sickness. He had been uneasy with her decision, quite sure that choosing a burial plot was surely tempting fate, especially one in this graveyard, his graveyard, which he so obsessively kept well maintained. But again she had given him that same smile that he could never resist.

He stopped after a while, his hands beginning to blister. He had forgotten to bring gloves thanks to the whiskey. As he sat there in the hole, he began to have second thoughts. If only Myrtle could see him now. How ashamed she would be of him, wanting to commit suicide just to resolve himself of his guilt. He didn’t know what had come over him. Maybe it was the fact that the house stood lonely and untouched by Myrtle’s decorative fingers. The neighborhood kids had all but forgotten about the “Graveyard House” now that she was gone.  

He stumbled back through the graveyard. He had left the shovel and the flashlight, not caring that he couldn’t see in the now denser fog curling up to his heels. Had he been in his right mind, he would have found the fog a rather odd phenomenon. Never had there been so much of it sin his twenty-odd years patrolling the grounds. But as it was, it may as well have been just normal air to his poisoned mind.

He turned his gaze towards the gated entrance and froze. It couldn’t be. A figure was hovering beyond the gate, standing in the middle of the empty street. It appeared to be a woman, but the glow off her skin and dress radiated vibrantly in the dark. A ghost? No, no. It was a mirage, his drunken mind playing tricks on him maybe.

“Norman, darling.”

The voice floated in the air, like the wind. He wasn’t sure he had even heard anything at all. But the ghostly figment had turned towards him, and he gasped. It was Myrtle, but not the sick, weak, dying Myrtle whom had grasped his hand in the hospital bed. This was Myrtle without the cancer, the one who had captured his heart all those years ago. She smiled widely at him as she called out his name.

“Norman, my darling. Don’t be afraid. Come to me.”

She held out a hand, and he saw that she had no wedding ring. But that face, that voice. So lovely that he couldn’t resist its calling. He made his way towards her, bumping into several headstones along the way but not caring. It was his wife. His Myrtle. Somehow she had lived. A miracle. A true miracle, staring at him now, making him believe it was real.

No. It couldn’t be. She was dead, for no one knew that better than Norman, who had for the longest time after her death been suffering a pain so deep that it was killing him inside. This…apparition…or whatever it was, it was truly what he had been praying for all those lonely nights he sat up in the house drinking his life away. And now she was here, reaching for him with that irresistible smile.

 “Myrtle, my dearest,” he said, almost choking from the shock of it all.

She smiled wider and her eyes, once a hazy blue but now seeming to sparkle brilliantly, held his gaze so that he couldn’t look away even if he had wanted to. She never dropped her hand as she spoke once more.

“Come, my love. Take my hand, and we can be together again.”

He put a hand over his chest absentmindedly. He knew he should be feeling the thumping of it, but where had it gone? His breath, had it somehow escaped his body? He couldn’t taste the air. Everything around him seemed to fade away from her presence as she walked (or was she gliding?) towards him, her hand steady, unwavering out in front of her.

“Take my hand, Norman. We can be together again.”

He had lost all ability to think, to breathe, to feel. He would go to her. She would heal him and they would be together again. No more pain. No more guilt. All he had to do was touch her again and it would all be over.

It was easy to reach out for her. Where he found the strength he didn’t know, but he stumbled his way to the gate. Myrtle, I’m coming, just stay there, he thought. He slid past the entrance, the gate creaking slowly shut behind him, reached out and touched her fingers. At first he felt nothing. Then he closed his hand around hers, and he felt his heart beat come back, the air come through his mouth and nostrils. He no longer tasted the whiskey on his breath.

Suddenly there was a bright light. So overwhelmingly bright it was. It filled his whole universe, a sort of reverse blindness. A panic overcame him and for a moment as he became severely disoriented. Was he...floating? He looked down at his feet and found them kicking through the air, trying to find solid ground. What terrible trick was this? What deception? But he could still feel Myrtle’s hand clamped around his and that comforted him slightly.

An immense pain shot through his entire body. The pain coursed through him like fire. He was dying. My God, he was dying. He felt himself slipping away, and he weakly moved his hand through the brightness, trying to find his wife’s hand. But she wasn’t there, just like he hadn’t been there for her in her last moments. He began to realize what this was. It was his punishment. He deserved to die for not being strong for Myrtle, for not telling her to fight the disease.

            Footsteps. Somewhere close. Getting closer. He tried desperately to turn his head towards the sound.

            “Oh Jesus fucking shit!” came a cry beside him.

            Though a little blurry, he could just make out a thick figure kneeling over him. The shadowed face bore a thick beard, and the smell of alcohol blasted in Norman’s face as the man spoke once more.

            “Jesus mister I didn’t see you. Oh fuck. Fuck!” The man frantically dug in his shirt pocket and pulled out his phone, trying to dial with shaking pudgy fingers.

            “Yeah hello? Look I need an ambulance right fucking now! Out front of the old cemetery. Fucking hurry!” He hung up and put the phone back in his pocket. He stared horrified at Norman’s broken and bloody body, unsure of how to proceed. Edging closer, the large man put a hand on Norman’s chest, feeling for a heartbeat. After a moment he stood back up.

            “You’ll be okay, mister. Help’s coming.” He started backing away slowly.

            “You’ll be alright. You’ll be okay.” He darted for his truck. When he threw open the door, a beer bottle fell out and rolled, stopping where Norman lay. The man stared a minute, then got in, revved the engine and sped away, the tires screeching into the still night air.

            Norman could barely make out the truck as it sped off around a bend before the blackness overtook him completely and he felt the pain no more.