In no rush to return to my solo vigil, I watched the taxi disappear into the distance. I'd half expected the vehicle to do a sudden U-turn with Weirdo McGavin leaning out the window attempting a visually impaired drive-by shooting, but they simply drove away. Eventually, the chilly March air permeated my suit and drove me back inside.
I took the seat farthest from both the casket and the door. After the unnerving encounter with McGavin and the odd revelations about the coffin, it just seemed like the safest place. Like an old-west gambler, I had nothing but walls behind me.
Someone whispered directly into my ear. "Finnigan."
I leaped from the chair, spun into a backward trot across the parlor, fully expecting a person to be standing there in the rear corner, my supposed safe zone. Nope. It was still unoccupied. I turned a quick circle to double-check the rest of the room. One thing I learned about a funeral parlor was if you weren't in the coffin, there were no other good hiding spots. I remained alone.
Although all evidence pointed at it, I couldn't accept that I'd just imagined the voice. It had been feminine and sort of raspy. I'd felt the breath on my ear. If I'd been sitting in a bar, I'd have been optimistic that I was being hit on by some sultry stranger. But, being alone in a funeral parlor, my already rattled nerves just edged closer to fraying.
I wandered into the lobby to see if someone had been speaking. Amelia stood outside, her coat draped over her shoulders, a cigarette dangling from her fingers. Upon seeing my troubled expression, she dropped the smoke, ground it out with the toe of her shoe, and came inside. "Everything okay?"
The fact that Amelia hadn't even been inside the building pretty much answered my question, but I felt compelled to ask anyway. "Did you happen to say my name?"
She blinked but otherwise, her expression remained impassive. "Just now?"
"Well, yeah. I guess. I could have sworn someone whispered my name behind me."
"So, you're asking if I snuck into the viewing room, crept up on you, whispered your name, then rushed outside before you even got a glimpse of me?"
Having my inquiry repeated back to me out loud made me cringe at its ridiculousness. Not only was it implausible, I now worried she thought I just attempted a pick-up line. A laughably bad pick-up line. In a funeral home no less.
"Finnigan," she said gently. "The grieving process affects us all differently."
"Oh, I'm not grieving," I replied too abruptly and with too much honesty. "I mean, I'm sort of sad. I mean, really sad. For Simon. My uncle." The attempt at backtracking found no traction.
"Ah. I see. Well, no, I didn't say your name and no one else is here."
"Right. Okay. Sorry to bother you." I did a quick heel-turn to end the conversation and headed back into Simon's viewing.
When I returned to the parlor, I found a new mourner. A tall, thin blonde woman in a grey business suit stood next to the coffin. Motionless, she had a hand pressed to the wood and her head bowed respectfully. The normalcy of this was refreshingly soothing and I took a seat in the last row to avoid disturbing her. But as I sat an odd thought occurred to me.
When I'd heard the whispering voice, I'd been alone in this room. From there I'd gone straight to the building entrance and interacted with Amelia. No one had arrived in that time. Where had this woman come from? Curious now, I leaned forward in my seat.
She wasn't as tall as I thought. She was standing on her tiptoes. I wondered why. It wasn't as if the casket was too high for her.
No. She wasn't balanced on her toes like a ballerina. I could tell by her stance that her legs bore no weight. Like a balloon, she appeared somehow weightless, her toes barely brushing the carpet. As I gaped at this new oddity added to an already unbelievable day, my phone dropped from my hand and hit with a thump. Her heels dropped immediately and just like that, she stood as solidly as any normal person.
"I let my concentration slip," she said without turning her head. Her voice was low and raspy, almost a whisper that I still heard at normal volume.
Exactly like the voice in my ear moments ago.
"Sorry about that," she said.
I assumed she was apologetic for not greeting me more promptly, which of course, I didn't mind as we were attending a viewing and not a party. She couldn't be apologizing about floating, because people don't float. It had to have been a misperception on my part.
"Come here and talk with me."
I experienced a momentary urge to just flee to my car and drive straight out of town. As bizarre as the day had been, I found I was still more curious than frightened and not quite ready to throw away all social norms and run screaming like a coward. I retrieved my phone and approached her and the casket.
"You must be the nephew."
Oh no. Not again. Did I have a sign on my back? "Yeah. I am. I'm Fin..." I extended a hand.
"You're Finnigan Walsh. I know." She ignored my shake offering or she didn't even see it as she never looked at me. "Simon mentioned you the last time I spoke to him. It was a while ago, but he had seemed very healthy. This is such a surprising, and troubling, turn of events."
"Well, funerals normally are."
"You, of all people, should understand the dire gravity of this situation." She still had not turned to face me, never taking her eyes from the casket.
I didn't understand anything about anything but was afraid if I asked for clarity the answer would be doubly confusing. "I guess death is the direst of gravitational situations," I said to the side of her head.
"That's an unwise statement. Death is a resolution. Simon's role is done. The problems caused by his passing are not his to bear."
"Oh, right. That's what I meant in completely different words." A few moments of silence passed. "It was nice that someone else showed up though. Besides you, there's only been one other person."
"Oh?" She seemed surprised that anyone else bothered attending. "Did you catch their name?"
"Yeah. Well, just his last name. McGavin. I suppose his first name could possibly be Sexy."
"Ah." She nodded. "The Deadeye."
Wow.
In college, I had friends who enjoyed anointing each other with truly inappropriate and mean-spirited nicknames, but that one would shock even them. I didn't reply, as I wasn't one to scold strangers, especially after her mysterious appearance and the weird whispering/floating thing had me creeped out. But she must have sensed my discomfort.
"Oh, I wasn't trying to be callous. That's the name of his curse."
I nodded, then paused at the word choice. "Curse?"
She sounded puzzled by my confusion. "You're not familiar with the nomenclature?"
"Well, I suppose being blind could be considered a curse, but I think it'd be more appropriate to refer to it as a medical condition. In public anyway."
"I see," she whispered. "Fine. McGavin suffers from an acute medical condition known as the Curse of the Deadeye. Better?"
I didn't think it was an improvement but wanted this topic to dissolve, so I replied, "Yes." Eager to change the interaction I asked, "How did you know my uncle?"
"I met him."
"Oh." I wondered if my uncle had associated with anyone who could conduct a normal conversation. "Old friends?"
"Maybe."
"Right." I shifted around on my feet, played with my cufflinks. "I'll let you get back to your mourning." I turned to walk away, not having a destination other than getting out of this talk.
"I owed him," she said before I could escape.
"I see. Well, if you were looking to pay him back, I'm sure you could just make a donation to a local charity in his name."
"I didn't owe him money. I owed him my life."
She hit me with another insufferably long stretch of silence before I finally said, "I don't think there's a charity for that." The lame joke landed no laughs but did get her speaking again.
"Don't interpret that as something as mundane as him pushing me out of the path of a bus. It was more than that. He took me off the road to ruination. He altered my very existence. I was a terrible thing. A foul, destructive force. A figurative and literal poison to those around me. I had thought myself unsalvageable, but he found a way, despite my many dark and unspeakable crimes."
I rocked nervously back and forth and then shuffled back a few inches at this information. "Well, we all have our unspeakable crimes, right? Who doesn't? But they're best left unspoken. Hence the unspeakable part." I wished I had a watch to check to then lie about having some kind of appointment to rush off to.
"Your uncle was a beacon of hope. A lighthouse on a darkened shore. It'll be impossible for me to truly repay his kindness, but I'll try. I can promise you that, Finnigan."
I wanted to keep quiet, but I also wanted to stop her from talking further. "Uncle Simon sounds like he was a great man. He sent me a cool birthday card one time. I was maybe thirteen or fourteen. It was a Star Wars card. Made lightsaber noises when I opened it. Not really a lighthouse in the dark but I'll take it. Also had a gift card for pizza but it was expired." None of this was true but I wanted to claim the narrative for at least a moment.
"You speak as if you did not know him."
"I didn't."
She tilted her head curiously and then, for the first time since we met, she turned and looked at me.
For a split second, something happened to either my vision or her face. Her pale skin darkened into splotchy hues of mottled greys like a camouflage pattern etched directly to her flesh. Her shiny blonde hair faded as well, hanging like strands of ash from her scalp.
At least, that's what I thought I saw. It was such a flash that I may as well have been trying to memorize the instantaneous jagged arcs of a lightning strike. One blink later and it was just a young, blonde woman looking at me.
"What do you mean you didn't know him?"
"Uh." The vision left me blinking and struggling to regain my conversational footing, which had been pretty shaky to begin with.
"Are you not his apprentice?"
The use of that word jarred me back to reality enough to respond. "Apprentice? What do you mean? Was Uncle Simon like a blacksmith or something?"
"Blacksmith?" She looked back to the casket. "What is going on here?"
"Lady, I'm the wrong person to ask that question."
"Do not call me 'lady'. My name is Sil."
"Okay. Sil. I haven't seen or talked to Uncle Simon in years. Out of the blue, I get notified that he's passed away. I'm only here to pay respects on behalf of my family...of which I'm the only one left."
"This is not what I was expecting at all. It complicates things greatly. By the way, your uncle spoke of you, I had assumed he was preparing you for what was to come. His death must have proved too sudden. I will have to think on this matter and formulate a new course of action. We don't have much time."
"You're right. The viewing should be just about over." Saying this out loud felt fantastic.
She sighed then, the way a teacher would at a dense student. "I'd ask you to take part in this investigation but you're clearly in the dark in just about all matters. It would take too long right now to try and explain such things to you. The most I can ask, and the best I can expect from you, is to just try and stay out of trouble until we meet again."
I felt like she just used a whole lot of words to tell me I wasn't very bright. It was rather insulting but I had no standing to defend myself as I was just as clueless as she insinuated. "Look Sil, could you at least tell..." I'm not sure exactly what I was going to say but it didn't matter as she rudely walked away midsentence. I followed her into the lobby and to the front doors. "What is going on?" I finally asked.
"We're going to find out." Sil pushed open the doors and started across the parking lot. I had no idea where she was going as there were only two cars: mine and Amelia's.
"Finnegan," said a voice from behind me.
Already stressed out and confused I nearly screamed. I spun to find Amelia. "Sorry. You startled me. It's been a weird day."
"No kidding." She handed me an envelope. "The viewing is over."
I took it and tore it open. Into my palm fell a key and an address on a scrap of paper.
"It's the key to Simon's house. He wanted you to stay there for the duration of the funeral and watch over things."
"I'm only going to be in town for one more day. What could I possibly watch over?"
Amelia shrugged.
I shook the key around in my fist before dropping it into my pocket. At the very least I didn't have to bother with booking a hotel. In such a small town the pickings were probably slim and equally unimpressive. I thanked Amelia and headed immediately to the parking lot.
Sil was nowhere to be seen. Without transportation, no one could have walked into the distance in such a short time.
Poof. Gone.
For the first time all day, I wasn't surprised.
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