In Persephone's Footfall

They say when you speak of the devil, he appears. And that’s true. What they don’t say, though, is that our grief is the doorway through which the devil makes his way into our world.

My wedding day was the happiest day of my life. High school sweethearts, Amy and I had known each other for more than two decades when we finally tied the knot and made it official.

“Do you think we should get married, Chuck?”

Amy was the only one who called me by my childhood name. A sucker for her in every way, she was the only one allowed to use it.

“Why not?” It was a running joke between us.

“I guess we’ve been dangling the carrot in front of your mother long enough.”

We had big plans for our lives and even bigger plans for the family we wanted to build. So we planned a big wedding and made it happen with all of our family and friends as witnesses. As with all plans, though, god laughed. And when he did, our lives (and our hopes) dissipated.

Diagnosed just six months after the wedding, we lost Amy to breast cancer a few days after our first wedding anniversary. The shock of it destroyed me, but not before ripping apart any dreams we had of a family and a future filled with happy travel and lifelong memories.

When the day of her funeral came, I was in a total daze. Standing there in the rain, I could hardly fathom why they were all shaking my hand and giving me kind words. Didn’t they know the world was over? The faces were the same ones who had been at our wedding only twelve months earlier - but they were strangers to me from that point forward.

If someone had asked me to describe the days and weeks that followed, I wouldn’t have been able to tell them. My life was a waste of grief and pain without Amy. Getting up in the morning was torture. I needed cocktail medications, drugs, and alcohol just to get me through the day.

Eventually, though, the pain ebbed, and in that receding the real world came rushing up to hit me in the face.

“What are you going to do with the house, Charles?”

My mother, the ever consulate realist, confronted me in the kitchen as I sat making my way, dimly, through my morning cup of coffee.

My wife was still everywhere around me. The windows still bore the curtains Amy had selected from her favorite homeware store. Even the steaming cup in my hand bore her name, and the illustration of a rooster - her favorite animal. Every inch of the house still wore her mark and every room still felt as if she might enter it at any moment. Her perfume was still dancing in the air.

Sitting across from me, my mother waited for an answer - her own perfume mingling intangibly with Amy’s lingering presence.

“What are you going to do, Charles? This house is enormous. It’s a project for someone with two incomes...at least.”

She was right, but the reality of her words broke my heart. The greatest majority of our hopes had been placed in this home...and our savings, too. To lose the house would mean losing all sense of that future we planned. For me, however, it could also mean losing my ability to live.

Two more months passed before I was ready to call our realtor. When the shiny Buick edged around the slope of the driveway, my stomach dropped and the memories came flooding back. Memories of carrying my wife across the threshold of the old Victorian house, and memories of bringing it back to life, carefully, day-by-day.

There were terrible memories that came that day too, of course. As the stake went into the ground and the sign was lifted into the air (by the same woman who had sold us the home only a year earlier), I couldn’t help but to recall the day the doctor had called and broken our hearts. Flickers of the pain came back. Pale images of hospice nurses, bruises, nights spent crying in puddles of vomit. It was all just there - right beneath the surface.

I shuddered.

“Don’t worry,” the woman in the plastic name tag and the pale peach suit assured me. “Homes like this are a gem. You won’t have long to wait.” And she was right.

Within days, I was inundated with viewings, offers, and a flood of curious emails, texts, and calls. A historic home carefully restored by hand, everyone wanted a shot at the quaint fixer-upper lodged squarely on the edge of town.

The first family that came to view it made an offer, but they were quickly outbid by another couple - not unlike Amy and myself - who were hungry at a shot to build their dream future with their own hands.

“We’ve been looking for something like this for a long time.”

The husband struck me as eager the first time they came to sift through my house full of disappointed memories.

I recognized the look in his eyes and it broke my heart, but I said nothing.

“This is our dream home,” his wife added, shortly before complementing on a painting Amy had left hanging over the bed where she had taken her last breath.

After a brief bidding war between the two parties, a price was agreed, and a date was set. I organized the movers, found a small place to take myself - and just like that, the story of Chuck and Amy came to its last close.

Or so I believed...

A few short weeks later, boxes littered the house and filled the space with shadows and shafts of light. Where Amy and I had once sat, and loved, and ate, and hoped, there was now nothing but piles of nondescript brown cardboard. In each box sat an incomparable heap of memories and the hope for another life.

In the warm summer heat, I made my way slowly through the house and contemplated what it meant to be there, among those memories, on that last afternoon. It was impossible for me to fathom that this was all that was left of the electric and vibrant woman I had promised my life to. From someone who had traveled, and loved, and fought - there was little more left now than some paintings, cheap trappings, and promises never quite realized.

How did it all come to this? How could I plan for this? I asked similar meaningless questions as I made my way through the towers of silent boxes.

You couldn’t, Chuck. Nobody could. That’s life.

Even in the silence, her voice still echoed in my ears.

Moving from room-to-room, I shifted the last of our belongings. Trying to drown out the memories, I packed Amy’s books and trinkets away into boxes before sealing them up with thick layers of tape. I quickly scrawling generic descriptors over the tops of the boxes, desperate to get them away before my days of emotional resilience gave in. Full to the brim, I shoved them into corners and attempted to clear a path for the movers (much to no avail).

As I carefully placed the last of the boxes next to the front door, I was startled by a noise at the top of the stairs. Spinning on my heals, I squinted in the dwindling twilight to find the source of the sound.

The sun was fading, and the house was filling with long, lean shadows. I sighed. Irritated more than anxious, I was certain a box packed with previous memories had somehow taken a tumble off its perch.

“Dammit,” I grumbled.

My entire body ached from the endless days of packing and moving. The last thing I wanted to do was clean up a mess that did nothing short of bring up another treasure trove of painful memories.

If you don’t clean it up now, the movers will make a mess of it in the morning.

I was right, and I knew it. There was nothing to do but take care of the mess so I could finally head back to the warm shelter of the hotel for the night.

Slowly, I made my way back up the stairs and into the soft shadows of the upper landing. Just as I thought, my feet landed right in a pile of scattered papers, spilled journals, and a tangle of other documents and books that had come spilling out from a previously perched box I had forgotten to seal.

I bent over and scooped up a pile of papers only to make out Amy’s bold and messy scrawl.

The box was filled with her diaries and journals, collected and worked at diligently over the years. In an instant, Amy’s most private thoughts were spread across the upstairs landing. Drawings, notes, and delicately penned secrets bloomed around me. I scrabbled on hands and knees to collect them (as though she would arrive and catch me with her innermost thoughts at any moment). As the last sheet of crinkled paper was tossed back into the box, another loud crash exploded behind me.

This time I jumped - in fear more than anything else

“Hello?”

I called out into the growing darkness before I could question myself.

“Hello?” I called again.

There was no one else in the house, of that I was sure. The movers wouldn’t be here until morning, and I had sent the last of my helpers away hours earlier; desperate as I was to get some final moments alone with my pain and my memories.

All the same, the crash had startled me and I was wondering if I was alone in the old home. Flipping on the nearest light switch, I balled up the last of my courage and made my way into the nearest room . I was determined to find the source of the noise.

Climbing the last of the stairs, I rounded a corner and arrived in the upstairs bathroom. After flipping on the switch, I drank in the emptiness around me. A few small boxes stood motionless in front of the toilet, but everything else was bare. Towel holders sat empty, and the shower stood, imposing and impossibly empty, without the delicate hang of the curtain to conceal it.

Certain of the sound I heard, I looked around for some source of the racket. All remained undisturbed. A knot formed in my belly and my chest grew tight. Despite my best efforts, the hair rose on the back of my neck.

I looked out of the small window behind me and saw the last slivers of sunlight sitting low on the horizon. Nightfall was coming on fast.

“You’re tired,” I told myself, out loud. “It’s been a long, hard day. You need to get out of here and get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a long, hard day.”

“You’re right,” a voice said behind me. It was coming from the mirror. “You’re always right, Chuck.”

***

“The sale is off! The sale is off!

I was practically screaming into the phone when I called the realtor only a few hours later. Night had bloomed, and the world was awash in starlight and the pale flames of the full moon. Everything looked different. Everything felt different. But there was no way of knowing whether it would stick until I followed through.

“Excuse me?” The realtor's voice was both confused and dazed - a sound I knew well. “The new tenants move in tomorrow.”

“The sale is off,” I beamed before hanging up the phone. “Bill me.”

I could hardly believe my luck. Giddy as a schoolgirl, I raced through the house - lighting candles everywhere as a I went. They decorated the walls, the windowsills. I even placed them throughout the box-packed rooms in criss-crossing patterns on the floor. Eventually, I came to the spot where our old record player had sat. Locating the box nearby, I wrenched it open and set about replacing the machine that had brought us both so many hours of joy. It didn’t take long to fill the house with the joyous choruses of our favorite Motown classics.

There was no denying the raucous happiness that I felt. Everything was almost done, and once it was...everything would be the way it was supposed to be

“Are you ready, darling?”

Finishing the last of my tasks, I pulled on my finest suit and stretched the arms of the bowtie taut. Dressed, I practically skipped to the full-length mirror and stared hard at my reflection.

Amy smiled behind me and stepped forward. She wrapped her arms around me and I swooned. The weight of her was divine after all these long weeks without her touch.

“Of course I’m ready, my darling. Are you?”

Her smile grew wider.

“I’m always ready when you need me, my love.”

She looked as beautiful as the first day I had met her. There was no sign of death on her cheeks, and the waste and the shadow had totally gone. Amy was a woman reborn, and all health and vitality had returned to her.

Seeing her there, feeling her behind me, made me long for her. Out of habit, I turned to face my wife - but no one was there. I flashed back to the mirror, so quickly my neck popped, and I was once again greeted by her rosy cheeks and the wide cut of her smile.

“Do you remember what I told you?”

I nodded. Hearing that soft voice again was like a wind in the sails of a dying sailor.

“I remember.”

“And you know you can do it?”

“I can.”

Looking back now, I suppose I should have known from the lilt of her laugh and the light in her eyes. I should have known that my grief had opened the door to something sinister, but all I wanted then was the hope that we could somehow overcome the odds. It was, after all, the prerogative of the gods to bring back lost love from time to time.

There were no second thoughts and no second guesses as I listened to the sultry voice of the girl in the mirror - the girl who had once been my hope of a future and a life. Not when she directed me to the altar and the knife that waited. Not even when I took the point and used it to cleave my own breast bone in two.

I kept my eyes on that mirror and the smiling face of Amy as I ripped the heart from chest and held it before her - throbbing between the blood-stained fingers of my trembling hand.

“Do it,” she goaded me. “Finish the rite and make sure that I can return to you. Please, my love. Please rescue me from this death.”

Tears were streaming from my face, but I could not stop. I would have done anything in that moment to have her, and ripping out my own heart? It seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

Flames of pain licked up my arms, and bile filled my throat. Summoning the last of my courage and my strength, I plunged the point of the blade right into the center of my still-beating heart. Ripping it open, a vomitus mass of black blood began to pour from the wound.

In that same moment, an impossible roaring filled my ears. Looking up through blood-filled eyes, I could see the empty frame of the mirror standing before me. Amy was gone. Laughter filled the room and blackness seeped into the edges of my vision. My lungs shuttered as the last of the oxygen was sucked from the air and my scream became choked in a mix of vomit and pain.

The laughing grew louder and louder as the last shudders of pain wrenched throughout my body. Collapsing onto the cold ground with my heart still clutched in my hands, the last tendrils of my life spilled out of me and created a web of blood around me.

“Fool!” The laughter was a roar now. Even after my death, it shook me.

“You thought you could beat death, and in your desperation you found me.”

“Amy,” I whispered.

“Amy’s dead,” the voice bellowed from the deep. “But you? You will never sleep again.”