The Funeral Guest

Rain fell like a curtain drawn tight over the cemetery. Umbrellas bloomed in black across the hillside, petals sheltering faces more numb than mourning. Somewhere in the distance, a horn blared—long, unbroken, and strange, like it wasn’t part of the world.

Julian arrived late. He always did. But this time, no one turned to scold or sigh as he stepped through the iron gates. They just stood, watching the casket lower like they were witnessing a magic trick they didn’t understand.

He didn’t understand either.

“I saw her yesterday,” he whispered to the air. The words felt too real spoken aloud, but it was true. He’d seen Nora. Not someone like her. Not a trick of the crowd. He’d spoken to her. She’d smiled.

The priest’s voice droned on over the muddy hill. “Into your hands, O Lord, we commend your servant, Nora Evelyn Locke..."

Julian nearly laughed. Servant? Nora had barely served a customer politely, let alone some divine architect. She’d been more fire than flesh—prone to sudden disappearances, strange midnight letters, and cryptic phone calls that ended before you could say hello.

He scanned the crowd. Henry—her on-again-off-again soul project. Claire, her oldest friend. And, strangely, Professor Lucien Mallory, the quiet academic who once lectured Nora on alchemical theories in her kitchen while eating leftover curry straight from the pot.

They were all here. All crying or not-crying in the way that meant they’d accepted it.

But Julian hadn’t.

Because two nights ago, at exactly 2:14 a.m., someone had slipped an envelope under his door. In Nora’s handwriting. No address, no postage. Inside was a single sentence:

Come to the funeral. Don’t believe everything you see.

The funeral ended as all funerals do: with people lingering too long over stories they hadn’t thought to tell when it mattered. Julian avoided the small talk, drifted near the gravestone, stared down at the name freshly etched:

NORA EVELYN LOCKE

b. September 8, 1987 — d. March 22, 2025

Except something was off.

There was a second name, half-erased. As if someone had begun to carve a different death date, then smoothed over it. Barely visible, but there. A mark under the stone skin, like a buried thought.

Julian looked up and caught someone watching him.

A woman in a yellow raincoat.

She didn’t move with the rest of the mourners. Didn’t cry or speak. Just stood at the edge of the trees, head tilted slightly, as if trying to remember who he was. She looked familiar in the way that dreams do—the longer he looked, the fuzzier she became.

Then she turned and walked away.

Julian followed.

Through the trees and over the stone wall behind the cemetery, she led him into the woods. Branches clutched at his coat. The ground was soaked, but her footsteps made no sound. He could almost believe she wasn’t there at all, until she stopped.

At a clearing.

And there she was.

Nora.

Very much alive.

She was standing barefoot in the mud, hair damp and tangled, arms crossed like she was cold—or angry. Maybe both.

“Took you long enough,” she said.

Julian opened his mouth, but all that came out was: “You’re dead.”

She smirked. “According to the paperwork.”

“You faked your own death.”

“Technically, someone else faked it for me. I just... let it happen.”

Silence flooded the space between them. Insects buzzed. Somewhere, a branch snapped under the weight of a curious animal.

“Why?” he asked finally.

Nora sat down on a mossy stump, elbows on knees. “You ever feel like the story you’re in doesn’t belong to you?”

Julian blinked. “What?”

“I was tired of being Nora Locke. The person people thought they knew. The magician, the screw-up, the vanishing act. I wanted... an ending. So I could start again.”

He wanted to be angry. But the sadness in her eyes made it hard. “Why tell me?”

“Because you’re the only one who ever saw the cracks,” she said. “The only one who might understand.”

Julian exhaled. “And what happens now? You vanish for real? Leave the world thinking you’re buried in the ground while you... what? Live off-grid in the woods?”

Nora smiled. “Close. I leave the world behind. But I’m not staying in the woods.”

From a leather satchel, she pulled a passport—brand new, not in her name. A thick envelope of cash. A journal. And a map.

“I’m going south. Somewhere warm. Somewhere I can be someone else.”

Julian stared at the items, then at her. “You’re serious.”

She looked at him, not blinking. “I’m already dead, Julian. Might as well make it count.”

They talked for hours in the clearing. About the plan. The woman in the yellow raincoat—an old friend from her traveling days. About the strange lump-sum donation made to a small, backwater funeral home two counties away. About the body that wasn’t hers, found on a cold path weeks before, no ID, no family, no story.

Julian didn’t ask how she’d pulled it off. He didn’t want to know.

Instead, he asked the question that haunted him most.

“Do you regret it?”

Nora looked up at the trees. “I regret not doing it sooner.”

She handed him something before he left: a copy of the journal. “Just in case. For when people start asking questions.”

“They will,” he said.

“Let them.”

Three days after the funeral, Claire came to him.

“You were the last to see her alive,” she said. “Before the accident. The police mentioned a witness matching your description near the scene.”

Julian shook his head. “They were wrong. I hadn’t seen her in weeks.”

Claire didn’t believe him. She never had.

Next came Henry, drunk and angry. Then the professor, quiet and curious.

The journal burned a hole in Julian’s bookshelf.

Then, one night, he opened it.

Inside were notes, sketches, lists of aliases, phrases in half a dozen languages, pressed flowers, receipts. And pages of thoughts. Nora’s thoughts. Raw and alive. Not the musings of someone gone.

Death is not the end. It’s the border between stories.

I think I crossed it once before. When I was twelve, drowning in a pool. Everything slowed. I remember thinking, This isn’t the end. Just the chapter break.

If you find this and I’m really dead—I mean, truly—then I hope you write the next chapter well.

Julian closed the book.

Weeks turned into months. Her name faded from conversations. Her grave gathered moss. People moved on.

But sometimes, Julian swore he saw the yellow raincoat. In crowds. On train platforms. At the edge of his vision.

And sometimes, a letter would appear.

No return address. No stamp.

Just a sentence.

"Still writing. Hope you are too."