My father was a man of God. Or so he’d like me to have believed.
But why would a man of God never step foot in a church?
Why would a man of God never have me baptized?
And yet, every night, religiously, he would sit me down before dinner and we would pray together.
“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
And then it would almost always turn to the same two things… My father, his hands clasped tightly and his eyelids squeezed shut, would beg between grinding teeth:
“Please Lord, please accept Her into your arms.”
Sometimes a tear might fall, but he would always then look at me.
“And watch over my boy.”
My father’s ashamed face filled my mind as I pulled my car keys from the ignition and stepped out into the parking lot of the Home Goods store; the crimson sun had only just cracked over the horizon.
“I know I have made a mistake, Lord. Forgive me.” His words echo in my ears as I pass through the sliding door, pushing a cart in front of me.
“Where is Mom?” I must have asked that question a thousand times as I grew. But the answer eluded me. Instead of answering, he would turn to the bottle.
The door to my father’s bedroom was always locked. But one Saturday night he’d drunk the bottle from almost cap to bottom. Sunday morning I found him curled up next to his bed, a Cross gripped tightly in his hands. It was the first time I’d ever been in his room. It had been drowned with religious doctrine; pages of the New Testament were even hanging from the ceiling. The pages grew more frequent as I neared a pale cabinet in the corner of the room.
I grab four fifty-pound bags of fertilizer from the gardening section and toss them on the cart.
The cabinet was so covered in pages that I could barely make out what color the wood was, but it was surely made of bone. And ancient. I reached for the handle.
A cold hand fell on my shoulder. I recoiled and found myself face to face with my father, his eyes bloodshot and crusty drool dripping from his chapped lips.
“I’m sorry, I…” I started to stammer.
“That was hers,” he whispered to me.
“Mom?” I breathed. My father didn’t respond, instead he gazed at the cabinet and a curtain of darkness fell over his eyes. Then he turned back to me and spoke.
“The dead are watching us.”
I reach the register and pay for what I have bought. I push it outside and back to my car.
I arrive back home. I carry the bags inside and get to work.
After the cabinet incident, my father began to scream at night. It was usually wordless, but sometimes I could make out the same two words.
“Forgive me!”
Any attempt to comfort him was dashed, because at that point, he couldn’t bare to look at me. I didn’t know why.
When I was 17, my father, in a drunken panic, carried my mother’s cabinet out onto the yard, drenched it in lighter fluid and set it on fire. He broke down weeping next to it and when the police arrived, he was inconsolable. Attempts were made, but he was incapable of returning to life, and so he was interred at a mental hospital.
Years went by, and with each visit I made, he looked worse. And he never once looked at me.
One day I went to church for the first and last time. Eyes glanced at me quickly, hushed voices whispered, and I found myself in the only empty pew. My father was an alien in this land, and so was I.
Instead of God, I found chemistry. A fascinating science. Where two elements can form a compound.
At 25 I got the call. It was the end.
My father, his eyes shut, reached out for my face. I leaned forward and his shriveled fingers pulled me to his cracked lips so he could whisper his confession.
“I killed her.”
I moved my lips to his ear.
“Where is she?”
My father’s lips trembled. He took a sputtering gasp, winced and then he told me where she was.
And then he finally looked at me; for the first time in nearly a decade, he gazed upon me with those cloudy eyes. Which immediately widened in terror.
“You’ve always looked so very much like her…” he whimpered. And then he was gone.
That night, deep in the woods, I found the grave. There was no headstone, but the great pale tree above it could not be mistaken. I plunged my shovel into the earth and dug.
The coffin was handmade, and thin. Impossibly thin. And long. Impossibly long.
It was covered from top to bottom in the New Testament.
I wrenched the lid off and stared at my mother’s corpse.
Yes. Yes…
The clock strikes noon as I finish packing the car. A minute later I’m driving, and the smell of diesel crinkles my nose. And five minutes later I’ve arrived at the parade. I check the timer. 1 Minute. I park the car closest to the stands and step out. I walk away as the final seconds count down.
The Dead are watching us. But I am watching you.