Hall of the Dearly Departed

This will be the quickest story of regret that I will ever write, for I fear I shall never live to write another. I followed her with the certainty of a man in love, and that was partially true. What guided me was not love alone, but something worse. I itched with rabid curiosity, from some far gone noble hunger to understand why she called me so. By the time I reached her gate at Ravenstown Proper, the house and all its inhabitants already knew my name. It whispered softly through the keyhole, pulling me in. If only I had known whose hand was on the other side, I might have turned back. But the draw of her would not permit me such luck. Not in this life.

Her lips grazed my heart, unbeknownst to her, of course. She had cut into me in a way not even the frost could fathom. The wound deepening with each passing, unrequited day. It was I who loved her, completely by chance, completely unwarranted and completely uncontrolled—from the first time I laid eyes upon her soft glowing skin. Pale like the snow of Winter’s first fall. Lips red like pooling blood. Her hair was glowing threads of angels ornamenting under the light of the street lamp in a shop window at Christmas. I couldn’t help myself but to love her.

She was my angel. Always a part of that house, watching and waiting like stars to the Moon or clouds to a shadow. I was as patient as patience comes. It wasn’t the way she looked or how she bore holes through my soul, no, it wasn’t that. Something about her— so soft and crimson, so sharp and pointed— made me come apart and want her even more. It was illogical.

We were half-way through the most dreadfully boring winter when I first realized what had to be done. It was nearing the time when snow dusts the local windows and the Old Forks River moves at a snail’s pace, hardening like crystalline syrup— black, wicked and evil. Tormenting itself beneath the coating of chipped ice it churned beneath, very much like my love.

Her name was Eliza Genevieve Henry—and she was mine. Mine in every way you could imagine, and that was about it. In some other lifetime we might have been better suited but that was no matter, her name fell from my tongue like unspoken prayers and was as old as any you could muster from such a small town. Dark and rambling like the soil poured over the nearest freshly dug grave. She was quiet and listless and completely somber. She was a presence that took up as little room as she spoke and yet her quiet didn’t scare me. It was the only language her and I seemed to understand, to have in common. Her thick woolen plaid skirt skimmed the floor boards as she walked Ravenstown’s only remaining funeral home. Hers.

The upstairs housed the living, rented out by the week, the first floor and basement catered to the dead. Her black boots echoed down the halls like horse hooves and she wore her hair neatly plaited, two braids tied into loosely coiled waives that hung down to her waist. A white blouse buttoned up to the crook in her collarbone.

But, the thing that stood out to me most was the singular black ribbon tied always at her throat. Black, silk with a cabochon pearl. Neat and trim as mourning dead. I noticed it right away, the way it seemed to hold her together, unlike my thoughts. I never saw her without this singular black ribbon, always tied tightly around her neck. By the time I garnered enough courage to enter the place Eliza Genevieve Henry called home, one might have thought it too late to save my soul. I was already far too gone. My skeleton could have given my thoughts away long after my brain rotted to dust. The candle at the front trembled in the brass casing. Wax dripping past the handle and spilling tenderly over the sign-in book.

Eliza Genevieve Henry sat reading her own unnamed book at the center of the counter. The purple moon illuminating her features. The ribbon pinned to her neck. I had come to this place thinking I was the hunter. I stood at the podium, the pulpit of her altar and in that moment, I had become prey. I spent a few nights watching from the saloon across the street, thinking I had it all figured out. Not many people came and went. Most arriving for the services secreted only for the after-life, utilizing the cover of dark—so as to not disturb the other, living guests—or so I had assumed.

I signed the guest book, my eyes never leaving her side. There were six other names checked in, written above mine in varying scripts. Some names crossed out, some still unlined. She wrote the number to a room—13-C—on a card and sent me off with a huff—"third floor, second door, alcove hallway. Bathrooms are shared, kitchen is only open one hour each at eight, twelve, and nine. No room service, no maid. One-fifty a night. Do not disturb the other guests. Do not touch any furniture that is covered. Do not attempt to use any other door that isn’t yours. NO talking to other guests… Understood?”

I nodded, finding myself tracing the letters on the key-card she had slipped me, a large bronze key tied by a black ribbon similar to her the one around her neck. It was as though the words were carved from her very body. But this was no comfort. I allowed myself to believe I found her, to believe she saw me the way I saw her—and maybe she did, but whatever reasons she had, hers and mine were very, very different as I would soon discover. They were not the same, in any form or fashion, as one would expect.

The narrow stairways leading up were dark and damp. This was not a place of outward comfort. It smelled of dusty wallpaper and day-old fire. Even longer corridors mazed themselves around the halls like dead, crooked tree-branches. I kept my candle and my footing as I walked along the wall—careful not to catch my eye on an errant coat hook, or a sharp picture frame.

I saw her a few moments later, or what I thought to be the trick of my eyes. It couldn’t have been her. Not unless there was another set of stairs leading up the back. But even then, how could she be two places at once. It was just the outline of her skirt catching against the western, outer corner of the hall. Her hair glowing in the candlelight as she glided from sight.

In the three nights I stayed, I never saw her alone, I never saw another guest but in far passing, always at night and always at the edge of the hall, nearest a window. The mirrors were covered by silken sheets. The candles burned far too dim, far too close to the wall to actually make use of what features or reflections one might steal. When I heard her footsteps down the corridors like horse hooves, I tried my hardest to keep up. There were so many rules. So many rules.

My footsteps soon began echoing behind me, falling in line with her own. I couldn’t figure which direction to find her.

“Mr. Adler, are you lost,”

Her voice sounded from the hall parallel. It did not appear she was looking at me, rather through me, as though my body did not possess my soul.

“No ma’am, just can’t sleep.”

The words hung between us, making it clear she knew my intentions, she knew my gaze upon her and yet, she did not budge.

“You shouldn’t meddle in affairs that are not your own. Wandering between halls that neither house you nor require your presence. Go to sleep Mr. Adler….go to sleep.”

The sharpness, the bitterness swallowed me up. I realize now, in hindsight how much of a bother I might have become. The house was changing around me in ways I couldn’t explain, some quiet, some loud, some uninvited. She had made her presence known, and along with it, the house did as well.

I spent my days following her shadow through the house, trying to sneak another glimpse of her face, her neck, her throat, that ribbon. It was the same contact my soul hoped would catch her spirit. To see if they fed off each other, as one and the same. I learned her habits, her methods, her shy, quiet, devious ways. All of them, became mine, my own. Until I could discern no difference. None at all.

**

The second day was far more interesting. I passed by a man, tall and slender, as though made to walk through the narrowest halls of this house. He wore long white scarfs, double wrapped and an even taller navy-blue hat. He appeared to be one of the other guests written in the guest book, but I couldn’t be too sure. I gave a short nod but it was as though his body forgot how to reply.

I tried to stay hidden, as concealed as I could in such tight quarters. The doors were four feet apart, exactly. Rooms that led to other rooms, or so I thought. I couldn’t be for sure as I had yet to see what lived beyond any of these particular places. Velvet-red ropes tied off the stairs leading up to the fourth floor and I wasn’t sure I could muster enough bravery to attempt the even more narrow ascent. I passed an unclothed mirror at the end of this very hall, I saw my reflection, slightly less focused, and that of another woman behind me. She appeared much younger with powdered curls and a white ribbon on her throat. She wore a hoop skirt that I thought would make noise as she passed, but when I turned to nod and show my respect, the hall was empty, completely void of anyone else, save my own wretched being.

“You really needn’t make any contact with the guests,” Eliza Genevieve Henry warned.

It was nearing the lunch hour when I decided to see for myself exactly who was sharing a lodging with me. I had spent most of the morning at the saloon parlor to worry about hunger and now my stomach was rumbling.

I followed Eliza Genevieve Henry to the area where a large, rectangular wooden table sat, enough seats for a small army rounded each square inch, arm to arm. The coffered ceilings bowed down reverently like hunched backs, muted murals of war painted above the chandelier. I expected a room full of circular tables. It seemed more likely that guests would be more comfortable not having to share a table unnecessarily. I went to voice my concern but soon realized this too would fall upon deaf ears.

Not a single person was at the table, no food, no water glasses filled, no smell of food brewing in the back. No sound of pots and pans clanging.

“You, Mr. Adler, have taken far too long, much longer than any of the other guests…”

Eliza Genevieve Henry stood reverently, patiently, statuesque—her back to me, only the side of her face visible as she turned, flattening out the front of her dress, appearing to wait for something specific to happen.

My breath caught tightly in my chest, seizing as one might with terror. It was as though she had sent a barb right through me.

“You knew?”

The words left my lips before I could think them up. She turned, ever so slightly to face me. Her smile was gutting—similar to greeting a guest long expected but never received.

“Of course I do, I always do, I have been waiting for you my entire life…”

Her smile deepened. Her eyes glowing with a fire I had not known.

“I knew you would come. I knew you would find me...”

The room had grown in size and still felt like I was being swallowed whole.

Dim candles cast a shadowed light upon a series of charcoal lined portraits. I hadn’t seen them upon my first arrival, but there they were, a beacon of betrayal. There were seven in total, two of which I recognized as the tall man and the young woman— and one blank, empty portrait. Each face pale, each gaze fixated on something just out of reach. Each throat tied with ribbon. They were masterfully done, almost perfectly life-like.

“Sometimes it isn’t what we think, this world. You and I are much too similar to ever make anything work, other than what must inevitably happen. I saved my best work for last, and I think it will be my favorite.” She paused, gently, stepping towards me, her hand outstretched to my face.

“I see the tender way you revere me, but you no longer need to hide it, not now…not when I know.”

Her fingers rose up to her own throat, tracing the lines of the delicate ribbon, pausing briefly on the pearl cabochon. “You felt me calling to you under the streetlamps. I felt it too. That is how I knew you and I were the same.”

Something cold brushed the front of my neck, warmly feathering my throat. Each movement mirroring something within.

Her hand, a ribbon. My ribbbon.

“I collect devotion, obsession, reckless, wanton desire. You will never betray me. Never leave me.”

The ribbon looped more ribbon, seeming to come from nowhere as it trailed across my chest, its velvet length capturing my essence in a fell swoop, wrapping tight with only the yearning a lover can grasp. I didn’t raise my hands nor my voice to stop it and with that, it was as though the ribbon and the mirrors and the very dust collecting around the house had memorized my being, my features, my soul. Each of my breaths hollowed out, fighting for one more moment on this Earth. Slipping lose from my lungs as though longing to flee. Knowing what cruel fate awaited. I let it, I welcomed it.

In that moment, my final shuddering thoughts tried to recount the ways, to revisit the steps that brought me here. I had been careful, calculated, measured. But it wasn’t enough. She had the nails to a coffin long created. The ribbon kissed my skin, leaving pinpricks of pain. Stealing the final breath from my lungs.

“Its waiting for you,” she whispered, her eyes lifting towards the blank portrait where a shape began to blossom—my face—drawing itself thread-by-thread as the ribbon took stronger hold. Patiently waiting for my soul to loosen its seams and crawl obediently inside, and take its place among the others.