Three Lives (Mud Valley) - Chapter 46

A dark quest, murder and an unimaginable burden. A 40-year saga of loyalty and the afterlife

To be released soon in digital formats as Mud Valley.

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Chapter 46

— Petra’s funeral —

In Wagon People legend, existence is instantaneous — life, death. Over and over, endlessly.

Lucy hoped this were true because then Petra’s funeral would not be the end and Petra might strike upon some other last thought than guilt and the belief she had raised a murderer.

The church organist, a woman in her mid-sixties who courted rebellion with a nose piercing, wiped her forehead with a tissue and stuffed it into the sleeve of her beige sweater.

She eased her body onto the bench before the pipe organ with smooth grace and bent low over the keys to call worshippers to service.

The organ’s high cry shot out through the doors of the church, through the cracks of the church foundation, out into streets. The ripples drifted through gaps between the blue hills and over the mountains before sinking back to earth, brushing dark pine and leaching into the sharp, fingerling fissures of the Rift.

The shrill peals and low moans of the organ bore into Lucy, pounding her temples soft. Her chest felt near to bursting.

She stopped midway up the church steps on her way inside to Petra Kappens’ funeral.

The whispering lips and bent necks on the sidewalk talking in groups broke up, climbed the stairs and filed past her.

No going back now, Lucy thought. She turned to face the doors and pushed herself up the steps, shadowed by Blanche.

Lucy noted Whit, Sylvia and Erin sitting side-by-side near the back. Erin waved when Lucy walked by and Sylvia ventured a soft smile in her direction. Whit kept his eyes focused up front, ignored her.

Oh, a shunning it’s going to be then, she thought.

Lucy nodded and chose a pew several rows up on the other side of the aisle. Same old Whit.

Whit spotted Lucy entering from the corner of his eye and cringed. He knew he did something rude, maybe worse. He felt it, without actually remembering much about it. He recalled rushing to the apartment above the bakery and pounding at Lucy’s door.

He saw in his mind’s-eye Lucy looking scared and the more he talked, the more frightened she became until she flew at him like a rabid dog. Lucy attacked him, but he sensed she had her reasons. He remembered his low-burn seething, a gnawing rage risen out of pride. Why, he couldn’t say.

But he still felt the sore spots on his neck and face.

He struggled to dredge up details, but it felt like watching a dimly lit stage play from a bench at the back of the room.

Yet, he knew he had been to visit the apartment. He saw his arms pushing and flailing, his hands grabbing, fighting, but it seemed like a childhood memory, or a faded, old photograph.

Inside, the church was sweltering despite the cold outside. People glistened and the smell of yellow garlic and salt wafted through from back to front.

The pastor delivered his planned speech. “Petra Kappens, born Petra Helga Kimmich, was born in Nor Loch, previously lived there and in Gold Rush before moving to Jury. She is predeceased by two husbands and one son, and is survived by stepsons Jorge and Marco.”

The choir sang Amazing Grace. The assembly said two prayers and Lucy readied herself for the goodbye dash. She’d shown her face, paid her respects. That ought to be enough. Blanche too, apparently had enough and slumped, eyes closed in the pew beside Lucy.

The organist started up again, this time playing a full-throated exit tune suited for walking. Lucy rushed for the door.

She made it outside, down the steps to the cusp of freedom, before she was surrounded by Samay and Alani Singh and family.

They insisted Lucy ride with them to the gravesite. Lucy could think of no polite answer other than to agree and she was shepherded to their car, placed in the back seat between two of the Singhs’ three sons. The other son commanded the second Singh family vehicle, which contained his own wife, along with the wives of the two sons now sitting on either side of Lucy. The third vehicle of the Singh fleet carried grandchildren, four strapping boys. Four more Singh grandchildren, not yet of funeral age, stayed home.

Lucy was not the sort of person who was awed by showy displays of wealth, but she couldn’t help but notice. Samay must have considerable reach into high places to swing enough road-travel rations to put three vehicles to use at once.

“Special government permission for funerals,” Samay replied when she asked.

The vehicles delivered them to the new cemetery. The old one, where Sakuya’s stone lie, was full and had been closed for years.

The new cemetery was planned in the modern style, emphasizing convenience and effective use of space over beauty. It was flat and almost devoid of plants. Yard keepers kept the hedges trimmed at knee-height to discourage vandals and the homeless, leaving the opportunistic wind to howl continuously over the barren plots.

Lucy and the Singhs climbed from the vehicles and started toward Petra’s grave. Lucy looked around for Blanche and for the first time in days, saw no sign of her. Curious, but most things about Blanche confused her.

There is residue of a human heart still beating inside that one, Lucy thought.

They approached the grave. Straps stretched across the pit, attached to a mechanism for lowering the coffin into the ground. Lucy crept close to the edge, leaned over and peered down into the pit.

A pair of dark eyes glared back from a black-bearded face. The stick body laughed as it writhed in the cold dirt covered in mucus as though it had just been extruded from below. It rubbed its pink against the soft earth, invisible to everyone but Lucy. It beckoned her to join him.

Harley.

Lucy’s ears buzzed. She felt sick. The scene swirled and went black. She fainted face down toward the pit, tripping over the metal frame that supported the straps of the coffin-lowering device and for a moment she hung suspended by one armpit, entangled in the straps.

People reached out to grab her, but Lucy slipped off the straps and fell with a loud grunt to the bottom.

She woke by the vehicles. Samay’s entourage had pulled her out of the hole and carried her back. Two of his sons stood guard next to her. One pushed her into the back seat.

“You would be more comfortable in the car. Get in. We’re taking you to Gold Rush to the hospital. You cracked your head in the fall.” It was Samay Jr.

Lucy pieced together what she knew and it ended with the sight of Harley and her falling. Fuck.

She tried to brush away Samay Jr.’s supporting arm and nearly toppled. She was exhausted. She wanted only to get back to the apartment. Even Jury sounded welcoming right now.

She fell back against the car, resisting Samay Jr.’s polite orders to get into the back seat, and watched Marco and Jorge trudge toward the grave, hoisting the front of their mother’s coffin while four other men Lucy didn’t recognize gripped the coffin’s other handles.

Alani pointed to the four strangers and said next to Lucy’s ear, “They’re nobody. Just volunteers at the church.”

Lucy watched from a distance as they set Petra Kappens’ coffin onto the straps above the grave. The lowering device had been reset after Lucy’s collapse. The coffin sank from view.

Petra was laid to rest a short distance from her second husband, Frank’s father, and next to where Frank lie.

Alani said she heard Petra at one time had the plot next to her second husband but when Frank died, she traded it for a place beside her son.

The wind whipped up, grabbing jackets and dresses and the people standing next to the grave clutched tighter to their clothing. Lucy finally stepped inside the car, grateful for the shelter.

“Thank you.” She tapped Samay Jr. on the wrist.

People around the grave shuffled and sought shelter. There was none to find. Some pawed at the ground, eager to leave, but reluctant to be first.

We could learn from the Wagon People, Lucy thought. They didn’t believe in funerals.

She’d become a student of Wagon People ways after she left Jury the last time. Once she left Lake Charity, the valley and the Rift, her ability to focus on things not dead greatly improved.

The Wagon People’s stories were bound into the region’s history: their migrations, their mysterious origins, but mostly their belief in the many worlds and in life after.

When Lucy finally settled down at the hot springs on the other side of the lake after skipping out on her murder trial all those years ago, when the sulphurous underground water was but a trickle, she sensed the Wagon People in the air.

She could breathe them, smell their fires among the rocks and canyons, hear their chatter, but she failed to understand them.

Today, she used their tools, wielded their weapons of chants and songs to fight the spirits tearing into her reality.

The Wagon People believed people ended and began in the same instant, arrived and departed, died and started again. Existence in immeasurably small flashes. Over and over.

Watching now, Lucy hoped it was true because then Petra’s funeral would not be the end and Petra might strike upon some other last thought than guilt and the belief she had raised a murderer.

The minister hung over the grave, his arms rolled as his mouth moved. He would see the service through despite the cold and wind. Lucy heard none of it from the car, but she watched from the back seat, Alani yawning from the front.

After a prescribed time, a sense of ending took over and the minister motioned at Jorge and Marco, who each scraped up dirt with their hands and tossed a fistful into the pit. Others did the same. People from Jury, Gold Rush and relatives from Nor Loch filed past the pit, tossing down dirt.

Hanging back, a separate pod of 10 or 15 strangers milled. Some jumped to improve their view or held cameras high on long sticks. A drone hovered and dipped above the grave. Lucy couldn’t see the operator but she knew it would be some asshole hoping to capture internet video.

The drone whined a metre above Whit’s head as he stood before the hole. He clutched a handful of earth, held it skyward toward the drone for several seconds before tossing it into the pit.

Jesus, Whit is mugging for the camera. I don’t believe he just did that, Lucy thought. She noticed Sylvia and Erin had run for the car several minutes ago, and left Whit alone with a group of hangers-on, who waited for one last look at the coffin. If only Whit would move out of the way.

It started to rain. Marco and Jorge covered their heads and shouted for Whit to let others have a turn next to the grave. The opposite side of the small trench was muddy and had crumbled away at the spot where Lucy had fallen earlier. It was unsuitable for anybody to approach from that side.

Lucy saw Marco pull on Whit’s arm. Whit sloughed off the grip and pushed Marco away.

Jorge stepped in with his hands in front of him, making a gesture for peace. Whit raised his fists, threatening, forcing Jorge to retreat.

Lucy climbed from the car, supported by Samay Jr.

“I have to get over there,” she said.

“Mother,” Whit shouted.

Lucy heard him above the wind as she walked toward the gravesite.

“Mom, I’ve come back. I’ve come back to see you. It’s me. It’s Frank and you don’t have to die now because I’m here. We can go home together and everything can be like before.”

Whit fell to his knees and stretched himself out on this stomach next to the pit and hollered incomprehensible sentences down onto the coffin.

Marco jumped him and started pounding on his back and head.

“Get the fuck up you useless slug. She’s dead. You’ve already sucked all the life out of her. Now show some fucking respect.” Marco stood and started kicking Whit in the ribs and head.

Whit covered up and continued to shout pleas for his dead mother to rise, so they could return home together and maybe watch a little television.

Samay and Jorge pulled Marco away from Whit, but in an instant he was back on him, viciously kicking every opening in Whit’s defence.

“You selfish piece of shit. You want attention? I’ll give you all the attention you can handle, you fucking selfish fuck,” Marco shouted, the wind pushing his words back at him.

Finally, Samay’s sons and grandsons wedged themselves between Marco and Whit. One son locked Marco’s arms behind his back.

“Here we fucking go again,” Marco shouted. “We can’t even have a funeral without fucking dim-Whit turning it into something about himself.”

Marco thrust his chest out and struggled unsuccessfully to free himself from the Singh family grip.

“My mom gave up a good chunk of her life so you could be happy and safe in your little bubble. And you want to know what else? Nobody believes that bullshit story about you and your little abduction. Did you know that? The whole fucking town knows it’s bullshit. But we’re all supposed to keep it a secret so we don’t hurt the poor damaged boy’s feelings.

“For fuck’s sakes. You go missing for a month and we’re supposed to accept that you weren’t just out raw-dogging it with the hillbillies. Maybe you ran away and got too ashamed to come back without some elaborate victim story. You think we’re stupid?

“You and your stupid imaginary games. You turned Frank into what he became. You talked him into doing all your shit work.”

Marco fought free from the Singhs and kicked at Whit again. His pointy-toed dress shoes cut Whit’s head and face.

“You. Don’t. Get. To. Call. Her. Mom.” Marco punctuated every word with a sharp kick.

Samay’s grandsons wrestled Marco away and as they pushed him past Samay, the old man said, “He’s ill, Marco. He can’t help it, He’s not trying to hurt anybody.”

The Singh contingent led Marco and Jorge away. Others who witnessed the events slunk off to their vehicles.

Whit laid next to Petra’s pit, soaked through and fern-curled.

Samay helped him to his feet. Whit was shaking and helpless as a puppy. The fight had left him.

Samay steered him to Sylvia.

“Get him to the hospital,” he said. “Not just for the physical stuff either.”

Samay pulled his hat down against the wind, gripped his coat tighter and marched with Lucy back toward the Singh vehicles.

No one spoke all the way home. Alani tried, but Samay gently touched her shoulder and shook his head.

Lucy felt close to falling asleep right there in the car. Through the haze of exhaustion, she considered Marco’s tirade. It didn’t add up, she decided.

If Whit was to blame for how Frank turned out, then she was even more responsible. The Mud Valley trek had been her idea. That’s how she remembered it. She urged Whit and Frank onward when they were determined to stop. She had been along every step of the way, and in fact, she’d been much harder on Frank than Whit, even cruel.

No, Marco’s theory that Whit had created Frank, didn’t stand up. Frank was an asshole long before that day. Marco was just distraught and after Whit’s nutty display, who could blame him?

She also spurned Marco’s version of events that Whit’s abduction story was fake. She heard the interviews and read the files the night they broke into Dr. Kappens’ office.

Marco had every right to be outraged but he was wrong.

But what the fuck was Whit doing? she wondered. He was talking like Frank. I think he even called Petra his mom. The hell? She saw no shadows or misty shapes to suggest some cancerous spectre had wrapped itself up into Whit. She acknowledged her skills were rusty, but she felt no disturbances around him.

What then? First Whit showed up at her door acting like a fucking killer clown and now this? It seemed like shit Frank would do, she thought. This had to be Whit drowning in the crazy pool.

He’s been under a lot of stress, she thought. Frank’s confession and the death maps, my return to Jury, the police, the media, the ravenous gossip, it exhausted all of us.

Then there was Whit’s so-called retirement from the restaurant business. No wonder he was losing his grip.

* * *

Bonus material

Check out bonus material, including back stories to the characters in the novel Three Lives of Jury at the link below.

The Underworld Vents also contains short stories of alternative/historical fiction with The Wagon People series.

Check out the new additions with the Tynoffer Common series, humorous flash fiction in bits of letters, bulletins and bureaucratic paranormal madness.

The Underworld Vents - table of contents.