Speak Now Your Sorrow, Jesse Turner

THIS STORY CONTAINS DEEP GRIEF, LOSS, AND DEATH.

“Speak now.” It answered from the dark of the woods. “You have called and I have come.”

She’s been in the ground a week. The house groans in her absence. Every settling timber seems to call out her name. The sound of it haunts me late at night. I can’t sleep. Rebecca, it calls. But she doesn’t answer. Her side of the bed is cold. Every wrinkle in the sheets lays the same as the last morning she got up to the aroma of coffee brewing in the kitchen. But the smell of her shampoo is gone from the pillow, slowly being replaced by dust. Rebecca, I call. 

I haven’t gone to the basement since, and the dirty clothes will be piling up soon. Soon, but not yet. I haven’t changed in days. My suit coat has been slung over the chair since that horrible afternoon when they lowered her into that dark hole in the dirt. I had to turn away from it, before my knees buckled and I feel in after her. Now, in the house, in this empty collection of rooms, I wish I had. But I was a coward, and I turned away. 

I’ve started to hear her, from the base of the steps, calling my name. It’s faint, like a whisper, and I wasn’t even sure I heard it at first. Like a groan from the floor boards that miss the tread of her bare feet, it echos up to me as I lay sleepless on top of the covers. Jesse, she whispers, Jesse please… It’s just the floor boards I tell myself and close my eyes. I pray for sleep. 

I wasn’t the one to find her. She had made plans with Kerry Ann down the way, and when Rebecca didn’t show she walked up to the house. She’d been waiting in the hot sun for a while, she said. And that she felt terrible, no, guilty. She felt guilty that she was annoyed waiting in the sun by the mailboxes. She couldn’t forgive herself for griping about it as she trudged up the gravel way to the house. 

It was Kerry Ann who got sick on the floor when she saw Rebecca at the foot of the basement stairs. It was her eyes, how they were still open, she said. And her neck at that angle that she had never seen on a person before. She said this to the police. Not to me. She had the grace to spare me those details. It was in an overheard conversation at the wake that I heard it. I can’t get those eyes out of my head, even though I hadn’t seen them like that. Their emerald green irises, devoid of life, imploring me from the shadows of the cellar, rolled in a way to look at me from the floor. 

I open my own eyes just to stop seeing it. And I hear her voice calling from downstairs. Still a whisper. But distinct; please Jesse…

It’s almost time. Rebecca’s mantle clock, that was her grandfather’s, tics hollowly through the house. Tic toc, tic toc, tic toc. Endlessly, day and night. Eventually it will wind down. Rebecca always remembered to wind it. I had been keeping track of the quarter chimes. I should get up.

Old Mr. Boyne gave me the little box with the materials I needed. He told me to go meet him round back when he saw me on his front porch, at the kitchen door where the light had burned out which he never bothered to replace. 

“I wondered when you’d come around. It’s awful what happened to your Rebecca. Broken step I heard?” I nodded, picturing the splintered tread, shaking it away before I went any further down into that basement. He sighed heavily through his nose and patted me on the shoulder. His hand was gnarled with arthritis and shook with a faint tremor. He turned to the counter just inside the door, picking up a plain brown package, just smaller than a shoebox. “The instructions are inside.” He said. “But be careful what it is you’re asking for, whatever it is. You just may get it.” 

I thanked him as I turned to go, unsure of my footing in the dark but burning with shame for having come and rushed to be away from the old man. 

Old Mr Joshua Boyne. We all knew the stories about him and about his late wife. We’d all heard about the things they’d done for people late in the night. The tricks that they had up their sleeves. The tricks that they had in their bottles and powders. We all knew. Or thought we did. And now I do.

The little brown package is on top of the dresser, the lid off and laying next to it. I stare at it from the bed, it’s shape lined in the light of the moon from the window. Rebecca would laugh at me. I’m sure of it. She would have laughed at me for having gone. She would have laughed at what was inside of it. She would have laughed at how hard my heart was hammering. Instead she whispers. Jesse, please…

My coat is creased like I thought it would be. But my suit is the only black clothing I own, and I don’t want to be seen. With the box under my arm I pause at the basement door. I’m waiting for her. I’m waiting for her to turn me back, to whisper; Jesse, please…don’t…

But there is nothing. I get the one last thing required for what I am about to do, a picture of her. Rebecca, with her mouth in a little bit of a pout and the sun caught in her hair. My Rebecca.

The moon is hidden, leaving the night darker than expected. My shoes crunch on the road. Just another song in the chorus of night birds and the things that creep in the grass on the shoulder. Only the thundering of my heart is out of tune, and it overshadows the night owl and the crickets the closer I get to the cemetery. 

Time has stopped, or it feels that way, and I worried I wouldn’t make it by midnight. A small part of me hopes I don’t. By the time I made it to the road behind the oldest graves it is just about time. I found the edge of the crossroads Mr Boyne instructed me to go to. He said it was the best place. Any crossroads would have done. But this is where he always came when he needed, this intersection of dirt roads with the weathered graves on one side and the woodlands on the other. 

There, on the edge where the road turns from gravel to grass and then to trees, I placed the little brown box down gently. I was shaking and my mind raced between thoughts like a flying insect. Piece by piece I removed the contents; the candles, the little bowl, the paper I had written on, the oil and herbs. I held the matches and called out as I was instructed, the sulphur smell instant and sharp as I struck the match. 

“Oh Ancient One of the crossroads, hear my call…” My voice, foreign in the deep quiet of the night, shook with each syllable. I put the match to the candles, their glow lighting up the trees before me. 

I followed the ritual as Mr Boyne had instructed, lighting the candles and calling the secret incantations, doing those other secret things. And then I knelt there in the grass. My suit pants beyond saving but I didn’t care. I waited and waited as the night carried on. And that is when I heard the voice from just beyond the trees. 

It was low and deep, and it sounded like it was made from all the sounds around me. It was as though the crunch of gravel and the groaning of tree limbs melted with the song of night birds in the embers of a crackling fire. “Speak now. What is it you would ask of me, Jesse?” It said, as a thick inky darkness gathered between two trees, just about to materialize but never quite solidifying. “What is it you ask of me? Is it your sweet Rebecca, who I guided in my chariot beyond the veil?”

My eyes welled up at the sound of her name. Frozen with fear and awe, I couldn’t answer. Of course it knew, He knew, why I was there, with her picture among the candles and incense and whiskey. Of course he knew with the grief on my heart so palpable I could taste it. 

I wept. Jesse Turner wept like a child, on his knees in the dirt. I sobbed, and through my choking I begged Him for just another dance, a kiss, to make love to her just one more time. I would give anything for just one more time. 

“We have an agreement, then…” He said, his form like smoke in the air whirled behind me and a book was open before me in the dirt. The page was thick and yellowed and blank. A simple pen with a metal nib lay in the crease of the binding. “Your name for your Rebecca.” Then there was a sharp prick in the palm of my hand and a small trickle of blood appeared. “Just your name….” 

It was done. My name was in the book, which was gone. And so was he. I was left bewildered there in the road, unsure of what had happened, or what would happen. But I was alone.

I waited for a bit, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for anything to happen. Defeated, finally, I got to my feet. Hopeless. Had I really believed that Rebecca would just appear, or come walking out of the woods? I had pushed away the alternative that she might be lurking behind me, fresh from the grave. 

Heading home, slow on the gravel road, careful not to look back as instructed, it dawned on me. Home! Rebecca could be home. And so I ran, almost delirious, laughing like a mad man, sure that she was there.

Maybe I was mad. Wouldn’t I have to be, to be here in this moment? And there, from the bottom of the hill, was our house. Our house with all it’s lights on! I had never seen something so glorious in all of my life! Like the gates of heaven the front door stood open to welcome me home into the arms of an angel! 

Again, I wept. I wept and choked on my own breath as I took the steep path to the porch. My legs, burning like fire, carried me at a stride that would have been impossible in any other situation. 

There, in the foyer, stood my Rebecca, in her favorite sun dress that we buried her in a week before. I blinked and wiped away tears to see her before the hall mirror, her fingertips to her cheeks. Her green eyes soft, confused. Her expression otherwise blank. She turned then to look at me, heaving in the doorway, dirty and untucked. 

“Jesse…?” She whispered. “What…?” But I rushed in before she could finish her questions and pulled her close to me, embracing her so tightly I thought she would break. But in that moment I didn’t care. I didn’t care so long as she was with me. 

Franticly I kissed her. I kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her neck. I lost my hands in her hair as I wept some more. She kissed me back, slowly at first, still confused, until a spark ignited somewhere in her memory and her body yielded to me, matched me in my passion for her. Absently, I kicked the door closed behind me, and carried her as though she weighed nothing into the living room. 

We didn’t care that the windows were open. Let whoever wanted to see, see. We made love right there on the living room floor like it was our wedding night. How long did it last, I don’t know. It felt like hours that we were tangled in each other. 

After, stretched out on the red oriental rug she had to have from that antique barn sale, Rebecca curled into me under the crook of my arm. I felt like I could finally sleep. But I didn’t dare. The fear that she would be gone if my eyes were closed for too long was more real than anything I had ever known. 

So, we talked. We talked like we had never talked before, like this was the first time we had ever truly seen each other. I was curious, but I didn’t venture the questions I’m sure most people would have been dying to know. I didn’t want to know any of it. I wanted the loss of her to be as far from this moment as it could be. It seemed like dawn would never come. And I prayed that it wouldn’t. I wanted to be here forever, untouched by the coming day. 

We must have gotten a second wind. I was up on an elbow, Rebecca was up, back in her sun dress, putting on a record. It was something melodic and moody. Something from the 90s I’m sure. That was her favorite era of music, and something we had bonded over instantly. 

“Do we have wine?” She asked me over her shoulder. I always loved the way her hair fell over her shoulder when she did that. And she knew it. She knew it so she smiled. 

I got up and went to the kitchen for the wine and glasses, not the least bit concerned of my nakedness. The house was alive again, and reminded me of Eden, of paradise. What better place to be naked?

With the wine poured I came back to my beautiful wife who stood at the record stand, thumbing through the collection we had amassed through our years. She asked me what I wanted to listen to but I didn’t care. I told her to leave this one. 

We sipped our wine as I stood behind her, swaying to the music. When she spun around she took my glass, put them down next to the turn table, and draped her arms around my neck. We swayed to the rhythm of the music as she looked up at me. 

“Wow, Jesse, you look really tired.” She said, her brow furrowed a little. “You ok?” I told her yes, that I was now. And we danced some more through the rest of side A. 

“Top me off?” She asked and handed me her glass. Only a little was left at the bottom. I kissed her as I took the glass from her hand. 

As I poured I saw that day had finally begun to creep into the sky. An hour away still, I thought. But it still struck a pang in my chest, that this night would be over and I would have to share my Rebecca with the world. Yes, that though flashed through my entire body, the world would know. But I pushed that away.

Maybe it was the wine or maybe just exhaustion but the kitchen swayed slightly as I looked away from the window over the sink. I rubbed my eyes, knowing I couldn’t stave off real sleep for much longer. But I would keep her in my arms as tightly as I could until I woke later in the morning. First, though, this glass of wine.

As I walked with sluggish legs back to the living room the cellar door creaked open. Dread, heavy and cold, sat in my gut and planted my feet where they were. Fight or flight was nothing. The fear of that dark open door was so much stronger and it anchored me in place. 

The music seemed miles away and my skin was cold and tight over my body. The slow squeak of the hinges unnerved me so badly I dropped both glasses and almost pissed right there on the kitchen floor. But it beckoned me closer, and my body moved against every primal instinct I had coursing through me telling me to run. RUN!

As through water I heard Rebecca call me. The world was on a bizarre axis though, and I couldn’t find my senses enough to answer her. I could only see that smoky darkness at the bottom of those stairs. I couldn’t look away for what seemed like the longest time, captivated by those inky swirls inviting me further down, until I found myself staring at that broken tread. That broken tread, which was so abhorrent to me after the accident, was now a blessed reprieve from that despairing shadow. 

Then it was gone. Just like that, it’s absence was immediate and total. But in my peripheral there was something else. Something familiar, but more deeply dreadful. A shape, a human shape, there at the bottom. I couldn’t look. I could bring myself to see what would only have been Rebecca. This whole night, some terrifying hallucination, threatened to come crashing down like broken glass. 

“Jesse…?” She called again from behind me. I realized I had been holding my breath and finally exhaled. I’m delirious and need sleep. That’s all. 

I looked, sure that this prolonged moment was all in my head. There I was. There, at the bottom of the stairs. My nakedness now ridiculous. And my neck at that angle that only meant one thing. And my eyes, rolled to better see me from that horrible inclination. And before I could take a breath to give life to a scream, the world on its bizarre axis, tilted again. It was then I understood, I had signed my name in that book.