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He had expected vengeance, and he had gone in with fear.
Mostly, fear that he would have to do something he’s not prepared for. The whole thing had a pretty simple motive, once he’d traced it to the source. It was a Catholic institution, so, start with violations of the rules. Abuse victim, he’d thought to begin with, but this was one of the rare locations where there wasn’t anything like that - or at least, wasn’t any evidence. So okay, death on the grounds. But churches were always riddled with death energy, and that didn’t necessarily mean foul play. Then there were the people the victim had left behind. A nineteen-year-old who’d come back from college with a girlfriend, been kicked out by her mother. Two days later, mother falls down the steps, cracks her noggin on the concrete. Daughter free to...well, she’d been upset, even with everything. He’d told her he was a newspaper intern and he would help her with the obit, and she’d talked for twenty minutes about how torn she was, loving the parent who hadn’t had it in her to love back, not when she knew everything. She looked out for me for my whole life, you know? The least I could do is not disappoint her. But I have to...I can’t just forget now that I’ve had a chance, you know? And I didn’t mean to. I just fell in love.
He’d shaken her hand and thanked her for her time and left to sit in the hotel room while Dad and Sam were getting lunch and stare at the ceiling and not sleep.
I didn’t mean to. I just fell in love .
Back to the records. Anyone who’d been kicked out of the institution for any reason, pregnancies, illicit affairs. And there it was, simple. These two novitiates. Nancy O’Keefe and Anne Polewski. Two Catholic names if ever you heard ‘em. Roommates, then more, then punished, then dead. They’d turned the gas on and crawled into bed and were found that way, together.
Too-much-older Liam with his face lit by the neon bar lights. Of whom he’d gotten nervous before anything went down, from whom he walked away feeling like he’d dodged a bullet.
David at the last school. Soccer player. With the thighs like...who had been more on his level, who’d been interested, who had brought him under the bleachers after practice and been angry when he’d gotten up in the middle of it and left.
Nothing ever happened. He was smart. He’d been smart.
There’s a picture of them. Nancy and Anne. In their habits, standing side by side in a lineup of the whole order. Their skirts brush. They lean unconsciously towards one another.
He finds them several rows apart in the cemetery, though, which means double digging, which means starting at sundown and working as quick as he can to get it done by dawn. He’d call for extra hands, but that wouldn’t be his first solo then, would it? Besides. Besides.
When he finally gets them unearthed, he stops. He should just get the fires started and go, but instead, he climbs down carefully into Anne’s spot, takes a tarp with him and lifts the contents into it, and brings them three rows over five rows down to Nancy. Carefully, carefully. Tips the tarp out and lets everything mingle. The clattering makes him paranoid, and he wastes time poking his head up over the dirt piles looking for any sign that someone can hear him. When he turns back around, they’re there.
They manifest strong, not as washed-out and colorless as he’s seen sometimes before. No habits, just old-timey nightgowns and cardigan sweaters and slippers. Nancy has red hair, he can actually see the color, a bright, light, copper-wire red. Anne has a flat, limp, brown bob, but fine bone structure.
Their hands together, gripped so tight he can see white knuckles.
He expects a fight. After all, he’s here to erase their last hold on this world, maybe their last hold on each other. To punish them, because it’s his job, for the disruption they’ve caused.
Then they sit down. Together, on the edge of the hole, Nancy kicking her feet gently against the wall of the dirt. His hand shakes over the lighter.
“I - I - look, you know I gotta do this. You, um - look, that lady that died, I know why you did it. I can’t let it happen again.”
“We’re not killers,” Anne says. “But sometimes...”
“It was too much like...” Nancy half finishes.
Neither of them are vengeful. He can see that easy. There’s an energy to that, a feeling like you’re standing too close to a strong electric fence, like your whole body is bracing for impact. A tension. But all he feels is the cold night air and the distant added chill of the veil.
“I’m sorry. It’s not fair,” he says.
“No.”
“No.”
They watch as he scatters the salt and then as he puts the box away and sits back down on his side of the open grave.
“How did - h...how did they know?”
It’s not like he hasn’t been asking himself the same question, all week, ever since it started. This? This one? Dad knew. Dad had to know. How’d he know? He’s never even done anything, not really. Is it that obvious?
I want you to do the research, too. Don’t skimp.
But you already did it. I can’t check your notes?
Check my notes? Show me you can do this on your own. Use your brain. Prove you have one. You gotta work this stuff out for yourself.
Was it the hair? It’s not even long -long, just longer than he usually has it. It’s a normal fucking haircut. Is it the part? Everybody parts their hair.
Sometimes he chews his lips to bleeding, cracked, and ugly. Once this chick he was with told him they were pretty enough to be a girl’s lips. His eyelashes too. You could model .
Was that it?
Anne’s talking. “We used to go to the garden.”
He visited the garden on his first trip down to the church. Small, quiet. Lots of overgrown saint statues. Virgin marys. All the plants dead for the winter, brown bushes and long grasses poking up from two sad inches of snow.
“She planted me those asters,” says Nancy. “And the maidenhead ferns.”
He has to ask. He’s wasting time, but - “Which ones are asters?”
“Golden. Like the sun.”
He can picture them now, black and white in their robes, between the trees and the statues and the sunny beds.
“Too much hand-holding,” Nancy says thinly.
“Duly noted.” It’s only when Anne’s brow furrows that he realizes he’s spoken out loud.
Seriously? Get your head together. You’re having teatime with gay ghosts. “I...you know I have to...look, ladies, I’m sorry.”
Come on. Move it along .
“I’m sorry about this. I really mean that. You don’t deserve -”
“We’re not afraid,” Nancy says. Their hands are still clasped. “We’re not going to hell.”
That pulls him up short. “But you’re Catholic n-”
“God knows more about love than mankind. And people, we just strive. Sometimes people are wrong.” Nancy smiles.
“So,” finishes Anne, “we’re not afraid.”
“Oh. Okay.” He’s not sure what else to say. It feels like he should say something. “Well, uh. Good luck.”
He drops the match.
***
It’s six thirty before he makes it back. His arms feel like rubber bands stretched past capacity. But everything's back where it’s supposed to be, the sites cleaned up, the ash settled. They went out in bright light, and if he thought anything ascended anywhere he might be able to believe that they did. His eyes itch; he yanks out lashes when he rubs them. He wants to sleep for a week.
Sam’s asleep in bed but Dad’s up when he gets back, sitting at the wobbly motel room desk going through files. “Took you long enough.”
“It was a lot of dirt,” he says. And in his defense this is very true.
“What’d you do, stick around and chat with ‘em?”
He can see the tension in Dad’s back. Come on. Please. I just want to sleep . He tries to formulate some kind of response - realistically sarcastic, but not so bitchy it gets him whacked upside the head - but in the meantime he’s aware that he’s just standing there like an idiot working his jaw.
Dad turns away from the desk. “Are you kidding me?”
“Look, it wasn't - it - they didn’t come at me or, or anything. I just got a couple questions out of them. To finish up the case.”
“Any of this information you could’ve gotten from, I don’t know, the living staff of the church?” His voice is still calm, but. In that way.
“I - I mean -”
“I’m disappointed, Dean. This was your night to prove yourself. You know what kind of a risk it is engaging with these things, I know you know that, and what do you do? Your first trip out by yourself, what do you do?”
“Look, I was just cu-”
“You were just curious? ”
“It was fine! I asked if they had any effects, they said no, I burned them, it was fine!”
Dad shoves his whole face into his hands. He doesn’t even sound that angry, just resigned. Like he had expected there to be something . “You’re gonna go back there this morning,” he says into his palms. “You’re gonna go over every other place they were known to frequent, you’re gonna take whatever looks likely, you’re gonna do another burning. ‘ They said there weren’t.’ Jesus christ.”
“Can I at least take a nap -”
“Dean.”
“I know, sir. Sorry, sir.”
There’s a moment of silent stalemate. Then he sets his bag down by the end of the bed and makes for the bathroom. “I’m gonna shower up.”
“Be quick. I want us out of here by eight.”
“Yessir.”
He drags a change of clothes in with him and there’s still one banana left from yesterday's groceries, so he takes that too. He hates them usually, the mushy texture, the chalky taste. But he’s so hungry he feels like someone took a melon baller to his gut.
He busts pieces off and shoves them in his cheeks chipmunk-style while he gets the water going and peels off his dirt-covered jeans and looks in the mirror. The bags under his eyes are unreal. And okay, his hair is a little too long. He’ll get the buzzer on it, soon as he’s done with this follow-up at the church. Or tomorrow, after he’s slept. He steps in the dark, crappy little shower, swallows his breakfast, stands without soaping up or doing anything as the hot water marinates his shoulders.
God, he hopes they weren’t proved wrong. That god, or whatever, knows more about this stuff than humankind and is willing to forgive them, or doesn't see the need because humankind’s wrong. They’re up there in their great big garden in the sky or whatever.
But he’s pretty sure they're not. Doesn’t think they’re in hell either, come to that. They’re nowhere, because that’s what happens when you die for real, when there’s no echo of you left on this earth. And there’s no authority, no cosmic tally of what’s sin and what’s okay. People decide that too. And it doesn’t matter if they’re right or not. It just matters what they can do to you about it.
Someone’s pounding on the bathroom door. “Duuuude. Did you eat my breakfast? I had dibs on that.”
“Finders keepers losers weepers, Sammy,” he yells over the water. He shuts it off. Gets dressed again. Finds his lighter. Gets a backpack to put all the nonexistant leftovers of Nancy and Anne’s lives into. Walks back out the door while Dad and Sam are still arguing about whether or not Sam can have fifty cents to get a honey bun from the vending machine.
Mass is in full swing when he gets back to the church. He sits on the steps. Around the corner of the lawn, where the garden gate separates the church property from the street, he can see the yellow asters growing.