Part Two
After washing the seven fingered Mormon, my responsibilities began to grow. The funeral home had become increasingly short staffed, and subsequently I started to have more back of house responsibilities. My heels were replaced with sensible flats. I kept scrubs in my desk. My nails were chipped with paint - stripped from the embalming fluids.
I wasn’t sleeping. Mostly from the midnight calls to pick up descendants from their place of death. The pandemic was still taking too many lives. Our fridges were always full, and we never had room. I was clocking in at least 100-hour weeks.
But I also wasn’t sleeping because of the cold. It was permeating everything I was doing. I was dressed in layers and layers. But they didn’t help. The cold was not that of a winter, the kind that slowly envelops and holds you. It was a poking, stabbing kind. Matching the marks of the bruises.
The unknown hands had started to guide me. The hands of an unknown parent directing me. Hands wrapped around my upper arms, twisting my body towards the projected and wanted direction. The icy breath would brush against my ear:
“Don’t turn around.”
I don’t understand why the voice was still trying to tell me what to do. I had stopped disobeying. I had hoped that the more I followed its instructions, the higher the chances it would go away.
But the voice had started to scream. Part of me wanted to be convinced that it was a lack of sleep, brain tumor, or the beginning of a schizophrenia diagnosis. I couldn’t. My shoulders were marked with bruises. My mom questioned them every time I wore a tank top. She placed each of her fingers over the oval shaped bruises. She counted them out, 1..2..3..4…5…6..7..8..9..10 I ignored her questions. Worried about her perception of hearing voices.
I started seeing things too. My desk was positioned in the lobby, wrapped with windows facing the street. I often watched the cars pass by the pedestrians crossing the tide of machinery. I watched as the world went past, as a part of me felt frozen in time. The hands over my shoulders held towards the real world - my back positioned towards the office.
The eyes first appeared in the window. They glowed, akin to the light that hits a deer in the night. Green in the broad daylight. I stared. They blinked. It was behind me, my reflection laid over it. Its long white fingers were visible against my black tops. I just wanted to see its face.
“Do……Not……..Turn………….Around.”
I want to ask why. To look it in the eye, and beg it, “please, leave me alone.” I turned, ever so slightly. Just a peak, I told myself. Just a glance.
“Do……Not……..Turn………….Around.”
I turned more, twisting myself in the chair. It wouldn’t care. I wasn’t actually turning around, right?
It slammed my chair forward, propelling me with enough force that I smacked my head on the edge of a desk. I expected heat from the searing pain. I wanted to see blood smearing on the floor. My mirrored reflection showed it dripping from the gash on my forehead. The thing, a white distorted face, rose above me. I still couldn’t make out its face. Only the eyes - rising, rising, and rising.
It was at least 8 feet tall. I had to tilt my head entirely up in order to see its reflection above my head. I watched as its hands placed themself over my forehead. Its thumb rubbing against the gash. Instant cold hit my head, penetrating three inches deep. My head was swimming in pain, an instant headache forming in the back of my skull.
“August, are you okay?’
Its hands leap off my head. The eyes can no longer be seen.
“Yeah, um… I just hit my head. I think it’s bleeding.”
Elijah approaches me, turning my chair towards him. He inspects my forehead, carefully moving warm fingers against the throbbing cold. I had forgotten what warm could feel like.
“I don’t see anything.”
I turn back around, look at my reflection in the mirror. The blood is dripping into my eyes. Blurring my vision. “Really? I’m dripping blood. It’s on the floor.”
He furrows his brow through the window. I’ve never seen him look so concerned. Looking at my reflection in the window - I raise my hands up to the gash. Coldness envelops my pointer and middle finger. I see the dark burgundy of my blood tint my nails, swirl in the edges of nail beds. I bring my hands back down, to inspect it further.
They are clean.
“I could have sworn I was bleeding.” Embarrassment sweeps down my spine, past the persistent bruises.
“I think you need a break. We have to call a town over. It’s going to take a while, an hour or two at most. You can sleep on the way…and then let’s get a burger or something together.”
Elijah and I grew in friendship. It became a spot of warmth in increasing coldness. I also grew a habit of always holding a mug of black coffee. Using its warmth and bitterness to keep me warm, to hold me in reality. I stole cigarettes from Elijah, letting the tiny fire my cracked lips.
My mom and brother took to calling me “Little death.” My skin was ashen, resembling my descendants. My eyes had sunken towards my skull. I look back on photos of this time now, and am shown a person resembling a 30-year-old with cancer. It felt as though each time its cold elongated fingers gripped me, it stole a part of me. A part of my warmth. My life was draining, and leaving,
I’d look at stolen reflections.
Through the melting snow on the ground “Do……Not…….Turn…………. Around.”
Windows of the hearse, “Do……Not………Turn…………. Around.”
The blackened screen of my computer, “Do……Not……..Turn………… .Around.”
I’d steal a glimpse of its green eyes, or forming face. Each day its face became further defined. It became clear it didn’t actually have a face. Its eyes were enveloped in dark sockets that lead to cracked ridges. It did not have a mouth. “Where is its voice coming from?” Its eyes rested at 8 feet, but its ….horns…rose to 12 feet. Its wingspan was long. I still could not guess at its total length. It was human, animal, dead, alive. It was nothing and everything.
Elijah and I spent an increasing amount of time with each other. Our funeral home served a large rural area, resulting in calls lasting a total of 6 hours. Calls lead to a rapid friendship, sharing parts of myself I never had before. How else do you pass the time?
Him and I went on once such a call mid-March. A late snowfall had enveloped our high desert. Sludge covered the roads. I wore a thick wool hat. I enjoyed the way that my metal tumbler burned my fingers. Our conversations started small, discussing the random weather. I sat with my head tilted back, eyes closed. Both avoiding the shining water in the road and attempting to plead my cold headache away.
I remember vaguely wondering why I couldn’t see it in mirrors. I just want a clear picture of its existence. I poked my bruises, just as I always did in moments of doubt. The pain reminded me I wasn’t crazy.
“This road always reminds me of my trip to the coast.” Elija spoke, voice slightly cracking from the prolonged silence. I turned my head, eyebrows raised - prompting him to continue.
“Emily and I were planning to move together, and I left a couple months early to try and get a lay of the land.” The coast was a day away by car, without stops. It is a commitment to drive from our small mountain town, nestled in a high desert. And taking it by car was a sentence of motion sickness and boredom. Emily was his best friend, a girl my age he spoke highly of. He continually described her as funny and kind. And the few times I heard her over the phone, this absolutely read to be true.
“I drove by myself,” he continued, “It was fun at first. I listened to scary stories, a lot of bad music. I’m talking about the guilty pleasure kind. Music that I would not admit to you that I listen to.”
I laugh, imagine Elijah jamming out to Britney Spears? No, Katy perry. Wait…Definitely Taylor Swift.
“I definitely ate way too many hot dogs too. I’m acutely aware of gas station toilets. The trip ended up taking me like three days. When I finally got there, I slept on the beach. It was cold and rocky, but it was perfect. I had never seen the ocean. I remember thinking to myself, how does it go so far? How does the water know when to stop? How does it know when to meet the sky, and change its shade of blue?”
He paused for a long time, gripping the steering wheel. He glanced in the rearview mirror, intently staring at a point in the distance. The car veered off the road, onto the marbled old tire. The car shook, and Elijah jerked the car back onto the interstate. He cleared his throat, shaked his head, and said, “Sorry.”
“That’s okay, need me to drive?”
He laughs, “You’re not allowed to kid.” Our company only allowed those over 21 to drive company vehicles, so I was stuck as a permanent passenger.
“Not a kid!” I shrieked.
He just rolled his eyes, “Anyways. I stayed on the coast for a couple weeks, picking up odd jobs, sleeping in my car. I came home when I ran out of clean underwear.” He did not talk more about his time on the coast and wouldn’t for months. It became one of the few gaps in his history.
“On my way back, I took this highway. This time I didn’t make as many stops, and I listened to sad cowboy music. Leaving the ocean, the sky, the cold, and god damn those fucking trees, felt so wrong. I felt like I was leaving part of me. But I missed Emily, my girlfriend, and my family way too much…..Did you know that this stretch of highway does not have a stop for four hours?” He pointed in front of us, gestured around the minivan.
“There is no gas station, and no small, abandoned houses. You won’t even see cows here. And the ground is so fucking flat, you wouldn’t even be able to tell that the Rocky Mountains are so close. It’s no man’s land.”
“One hour into the drive, my radio cut out. And not in the normal static no signal way. It was just…quiet. I kept the radio volume blasted, hoping for a moment of sound. I eventually turned on the phone, attempting to play some of my downloaded music. But nothing was playing. I tried song after song. The silence began to drive me crazy. I started humming to myself. Then the radio then made noise. Words, the radio made words. It cracked “keep…..going…..keep going….it…follows…it follows…..”
He had never talked about this before, and as he did the cold fingers gripped around me. Finding their slots along the given bruises. They were tight, tighter than ever. I had to straighten in the chair, my back a board. Elijah breathed slowly. Controlled. His knuckles were white. He was so pale.
“I know this doesn’t sound real,” he continued, “but it was the realest thing I’ve ever felt. Realer than you.”
“I believe you.” More than he knew, more than he might ever.
“The radio then started playing, something. It was musical, but not a song I have ever heard. It sounded ancient. Like the singers and dancers that come to the plaza.” Our town, nestled on the rockies, is enveloped with reservations. With 20 individual ones between our town and the next closest. The pueblos have always existed there, long before anything else. Although, they’ve shrunk, and been suppressed by unfair and unethical measures. Often performers from there will play on our small plaza stage. The jingle of their dresses mixing with their drums, and the thud, thud, thud of the wooden stage.
He continued, “The radio got loud, too loud. But I couldn’t turn it down. The window wipers went on and off. My hazards blinked. Then I felt the cold. The piercing consuming cold. I felt like someone had put me in the fridges. Suddenly, just as fast as the radio had turned on, it silenced. Then I heard it, it was like a whisper in my ear. It itches down my neck” He paused, glanced at me.
“What did it say?” I whispered, slowly. Barely audible.
He turned to look at me, and at the same time the breath on my neck tickled.
It and him spoke in unison, “Don’t turn around.”
***
Thank you for reading this far. Small edits have been made for clarity. I will post more in the coming days; this thing has been here for a while, and there are so many parts to tell. It hovers with me, even now. Green eyes shining my computer screen, its breath piercing the hot heat of the deserts summer.