Millie swept the sizeable bug onto the lawn that grew along the cottage. There was no movement from the insect, not even the twitch of an antenna. By all signs it was dead.
She noted that the bug looked like it was sleeping. Just as they say bodies in coffins, before eternal interment, look to be sleeping.
With her foot, she pushed the bug beneath the rose bushes that her grandmother had tended for decades. Greta had been spotted in her garden longer than the next oldest person in the village had been alive. No one knew exactly how old Greta had been at the time of her recent death. There had been a trio of birth certificates issued in her name, all with different dates of birth listed.
Recent death was the correct term, Millie thought. It was never clear if the woman had actually died during previous episodes or if they had only been “scares.” There had been times when the woman had stopped breathing. Her skin would grow cold, her body as hard as a stone. Her spine would appear to curl in on itself, just like the bug beneath the roses. Minutes would pass, sometimes an interval so long that she had to have crossed through the gossamer curtain between worlds. Then her breath would boldly return. Her eyes would flutter as if she had only awoken from a short nap. She would appear rejuvenated, revitalized. Some smirked and said that death was becoming on her. Some did not smirk and claimed she had sold her soul to the devil.
Millie gave the bug another shove and watched as it fell into a hole that had been crafted by a critter.
“Bon appetite,” Millie whispered to the snake or mole that was hidden in the hole, not knowing if it would accept an offering that was already dead.
Millie rubbed the scab on her hand before returning to her chores. She decided that it was perfectly proper to not offer a burial for a bug that she had only known as dead. It had been the appropriate effort: no words, no sentiment. The flowers from the bush would be enough of a tribute.
There had been a far greater tribute for her grandmother. Everything had been to her specifications.
“Not everything,” Millie whispered, rubbing her hand again. There was one aspect of the ceremony that her grandmother would never have agreed to. Then again, her grandmother had put her children and grandchildren through trials and tortures that they had never agreed to.
It wasn’t that the ceremony had been lavish, but it had been unusual. They had been granted a bed burial, even though those had gone out of style when ancient Greta’s great-great-greats had been above ground. The family had received permission solely because the town wanted to close the lid, so to speak, on the woman who had outlived all expectations, and also outlived the patience of all around her.
Greta’s bed had been handcrafted by her father and it was the one possession she had wanted to take with her. The bed had been lowered, by ropes and pulleys, into the massive hole first, its occupant lowered after. The sheet that had been wrapped around Greta had been the mechanism for gliding her into the earth. When the wind caught it, it fluttered like angel wings.
“What a devil,” one of Millie’s uncles had said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief as he stepped back from the open hole where his mother now resided. Millie did not know if he was talking about the energy required to bury her or about the woman herself.
A beautifully stained piece of wood was balanced between the elaborate ends of the sleigh bed so that Greta would not be visible for the remainder of the ceremony. The family members took turns approaching the hole and dropping dirt on top of the bed.
When they had returned to their seats, Millie’s youngest cousin whispered. “The bed squeaked.”
“The dirt landed on it; the dirt put weight on the mattress,” Millie explained.
“No, it squeaked, like when she would hear us whispering at night and get up to grab the switch,” Millie’s younger sister said.
“Hush, little one, it is all in your head,” Millie assured her.
“And there was knocking,” another cousin chimed in. “I heard her knocking on the headboard, just like she did when she wanted her tea in bed.”
“Hush now, that is grief talking.” The scar on Millie’s hand began to burn, just as if she were being branded by a hot iron. Again.
“If the tea was late, or not hot enough, it was the switch again.”
“Let’s not talk of that anymore,” Millie consoled,” those days are behind us.”
“That rap…her knuckles on the board, she pounded just as hard as any man. Just as hard as…”
“…the devil himself.” Millie hid her hand beneath her skirt, the seal that she had been branded with was glowing like live coals. Millie knew that the littlest ones were not imagining things. There had been sounds coming from the bed.
Greta’s final episode had been particularly lengthy, and Millie had been left in attendance. Millie had checked and rechecked vitals. She had held the mirror beneath the woman’s nostrils. She had felt the waves of coldness, ebbing and surging. And she had kept one eye on the switch on the wall, vowing that it would never be used again.
Millie knew what she knew, and she knew when it was time to alert the family. She also knew, when she saw the old woman’s finger twitch as she was being covered with the sheet, that it was time to make the offering.
She had also anticipated the children noticing sounds; she had anticipated the adults ignoring them.
While Greta was capable of making noise on her own, it wasn’t the old woman who had made the springs squeal and the headboard knock. It was the minion that had come to claim the offering Millie had made. She had made it, knowing it would not accept an offering that was already dead.
∼ Elaine Pascale
© Copyright Elaine Pascale. All Rights Reserved.