Disclaimer: Corpse Bride and all its characters belong to Tim Burton and Warner Bros. Pictures. The title of the story is stolen from a line from the poem "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. I own nothing.
A/N: the inspiration for this story comes from an All Hallows Eve tradition in Early Modern Europe that states that families are to leave every door in the house open on Hallowe'en, to let the dead pass through. I'm pretty positive that this tradition had ended by the Victorian era of Europe, but for the story's sake, we'll pretend that it didn't. Okay?
In the five years since Victor Van Dort had accidentally married a corpse named Emily and had his life turned upside down, he had grown used to seeing odd, slightly off-the-wall, things. Even though the World Below was beyond his reach and he was a permanent fixture in the drab, grey world of the Land Above, his mind had remained open to the ideas of the things beyond. He no longer looked at the town graveyard as a mere set of headstones, but as the gateway to an undying world of colour and, odd as it was, a world of light (which was ironic given the lack of Sun or stars). A black widow was no longer a poisonous spider, but was rather a seamstress of cunning design, hemming suits that he felt were the only ones worthy to be seen buried with him. A maggot was no longer a disgusting worm, but a gallant friend, offering companionship to those who have long since left the living.
This was a definite switch to how he had viewed the world before. When he had been a lad of five, he had lived in perpetual fear of the dark. It had been his bad fortune to have a mother who, at best, was uncaring and, at her worst, was completely neglectful. When she would take the candle from his room at night and shut the heavy door, leaving him immersed in a suffocating darkness as thick as a tomb, she did so with the air of a woman who had no idea of what her child suffered. She had no idea that her son's paleness was partially due to a lack of sleep and was, in fact, NOT part of his natural physiology. As he had grown older, he had not mastered his fear of what moved in the shadows, merely ignored it, and he had hoped to God that his avoidance and tolerance of shadows would suffice. As his terror the night he had met Emily had shown, all his hopes had been for naught.
His adventure with Emily had changed all that. She had shown him through her character and kindness that those things which dealt in the dark - the things he had always feared (mainly ghouls, ghosts, and other such things his mother had termed "stuff of nonsense") - were nothing of which to fear. If anything, it was the ones from the Land Above - the living - of which one should truly be wary. Emily, despite her eye popping out of her head on a semi-regular basis and having a maggot reside in her head, had been a kind soul; warm, loving, and was, as far as Victor was concerned, the best friend he had ever had. Lord Barkus, a living, breathing man, had been the one to originally kill that kind, beautiful soul and then had tried to cut down what was left of Emily's spirit, even after she was dead. But Emily, even as a corpse, had a spirit too strong for over-confident Lord Barkus, and had bested him even from beyond the grave. She had then crossed over, or so Victor posited, given that she had broken apart into the most beautiful blue butterflies that he had ever seen.
Not a day went by that Victor did not think of those events, and not a night went by that he did not find himself standing at the window towards the moon, looking for a hint of a blue moth-like butterfly flying across the shape of the moon. On some nights he would stand for so long that Victoria would rise from the bed and come stand next to him. She never spoke for she knew him well enough to know for what, or rather for whom, he was searching. While some wives might be jealous knowing that their husband was looking for what was, to be frank, an ex-wife, Victoria felt the opposite. She knew she had nothing to be jealous of in Emily, and rather sympathised with her husband. In the brief few moments she had spent in Emily's presence, she had seen a kind spirit who understood what it was to love a man and not be able to have him. And because Emily had felt for Victoria, she had given up Victor (and Victoria was certain Emily had loved him just as much as she herself did), and because of Emily's sacrifice, Victoria could never begrudge Victor for wanting to see the woman who had changed him for the better. So together they would stand, night after night, year after year, hoping for a mere glimpse of what had once been the corpse bride.
On most nights, it was merely a passing fancy. It was no different than a person looking at the memorabilia left from a deceased loved one late at night - staring at an heirloom necklace from a grandmother on the vanity table, the picture of a long lost love hidden in a desk drawer, holding a child's play clothes and security blankets in one's hand as one weeps. It may not be the most healthy thing in the world for moving on when one has passed away, but it is at least understandable. However, there was one night of the year when things in the Van Dort household always tended to get a little less mundane and ordinary, and more bump-in-the-night insane, though no less macabre. Like the rest of the houses in the town, the Van Dorts kept every door in the house open on All Hallows Eve; whether the night was cold or warm did not matter. What made the Van Dorts different however, was that not only did Victor and Victoria hope for visitors (which none of the other townspeople did), but if one passed by their house on that one night of the year, they would always hear the sound of the Van Dorts entertaining guests. While this may not seem odd to the casual observer walking by on the pavement, if one were to enter their establishment, one would see the honoured guests tended to lack a pulse and be blue in tint, if they had skin at all. What would be truly frightening to one merely dropping in would be that they seemed much happier talking to the dearly departed than they did the still-breathing aristocracy of the Everglot acquaintance.
Despite the Van Dorts's cheery disposition at entertaining passing friends from the World Below, there was always a distinct sad look on Victor's face at the end of the night. It was a look that always led Victoria to hug him and one that the departing company (pardon the pun) always noted and answered with an empathetic sigh. It seemed that no matter how long Victor waited, and no matter how many otherworldly guests he entertained, it was not enough. Emily never came, and Victor was certain (for reasons he could not quite understand or state to Victoria or even himself) that if Emily ever came to speak to him, it would be on Hallowe'en night. But year after year had passed, and he had entertained numerous mutual friends from beyond the grave, had inquired after her endlessly, and there was no news. It appeared that once one crossed over, it became difficult to relay messages to those still stuck in the World Below, although the ones the Van Dorts entertained had assured Victor that they were positive Emily was well and happy wherever she had ended up. They just couldn't say exactly *where* that was. Whether that was because it was something the living weren't supposed to hear about, or because they themselves did not know, the deceased never said. Not that Victor was really expecting straight answers. Regardless of the reasons, if anyone knew anything about Emily and her whereabouts, they weren't talking. And Victor was beginning to lose hope that Emily would ever come to visit.
Until, late one Hallowe'en night, she did.
For the bulk of the evening, Victoria and Victor had been entertaining Plum the Cook, Paul the Headwaiter, and Mayhew the Carriage Driver in the sitting parlour. Plum had regaled them all with tales of her husband's culinary catastrophes (or the exploits of "that stupid man," as Plum would say). Although, despite all her complaining, Victor felt she must miss her husband during the visit for she kept reaching to her side as though she wanted to pull something out of thin air. Victor, having seen her make this motion many times before, knew that her muscle instinct was to reach for a fork or knife from her husband's head while cooking, and more than likely, she was having problems reminding herself of his absence. Mayhew and Victor had spent some time in a corner while Victoria entertained the other two, discussing what was going on in the World Below and Victor listened as Mayhew gave him the update on Scraps's antics chasing the skeleton cats. Meanwhile, Paul the Headwaiter performed his duties, topping off their drinks and offering word puns in an overdone French accent, cutting them off only when their deceased visitors were starting to get rather rowdy.
As usual, Victor asked his friends if they knew anything of what had happened to Emily.
"I'm sorry, deary," began Plum, folding her fingers together and sitting forward slightly on the love seat, the size of her hat forcing Mayhew to move to the side to avoid getting hit by it. "But we really can't tell you that. We haven't seen her since the night Lord Barkus joined us." Her face took on a malevolent smirk and Victor breathed an inward sigh of relief that the dead seemed to like him. While they had embraced him with open arms, even though he was a live individual in their world of the dead, they had not extended the same courtesy to Barkus Bittern. Based on what he had heard from Bonejangles and General Bonesaparte, the inhabitants of the World Below had done everything they could to make Lord Barkus' time in the afterlife a living hell, both physically and mentally. Victor did not know exactly what that entailed, but he could infer that it most definitely was not good.
"Yes, we are really sorry about that, sir," added Mayhew (Victor couldn't get Mayhew to lose the "sir" even in death). "There are rules, you know. Death is supposed to be a dividing line and all that."
Indeed, Victor did understand that concept a little too well. It was the divider in a marriage - til death do us part - and it was a divider of parent from child and, in his case, best friend from best friend. He had merely nodded to his friends' statements, but took the time to raise one last argument. He had no doubts that it would accomplish little to nothing in his favour, but the question was there, always in the back of his mind, and he felt the issue should be raised.
"It's just that-" he began, his old stutter coming back to him and his hands starting to wring themselves together, driven by the fear that he may offend his friends with his question, "that - well, you told me when I was going to marry Emily that I would never be able to return to the land of the living. And yet, every Hallowe'en, here you all are. And-and-and I just can't help but wonder...why you can come here and see me, but I would not have been able to do the same?"
"Don't worry about offending us, deary," said Plum, reaching across the tiny parlour table and patting him none-too-gently on his bony knee. "That, for once, is a perfectly valid, rational question. And you don't get that from most men, I must say. You see, you wouldn't have been able to return to the Land Above because you would have scared everyone who knew you - they would have thought you a walking corpse. Our ability to come see you is a rarity, you see? Despite people leaving their doors open for us on All Hallows Eve (which is rather ridiculous for we could enter a house whenever we felt like it, should we wish to do so), most people would drop dead of fright at seeing us. But you already know about the World Below. You're the closest thing any of us have to a friend who is still breathing. But the rules are different when you cross over, deary. Different planes of existence, different rules." Plum then took another sip of her black tea laced with arsenic, and smacked her lips together, signaling the end of her little speech.
Victor Van Dort knew from Plum's lip smack and the way Mayhew and Paul merely topped their drinks off again, saying nothing, that the conversation on Emily was closed for the night. From there, the conversation had sprung back to safer topics with the deceased filling in Victoria and Victor on the afterlife of the newest arrivals in the World Below, and the latest spell gone awry from Elder Gutknecht.
Victor was awoken in the early morning of All Hallows Day by the very faint sound of a piano playing on the other end of the house. He sat slowly up in the bed, not entirely certain that the sound was not only in his head. The silence in his ears was deafening. He was just about to lie down, convinced he had heard nothing more than the church bells clanging in the distance, when the piano tones graced his ears again.
"Victor, you can stop playing the piano now. It's late," came Victoria's voice from his side. He glanced down at his wife, curled up on her side in her long, white sleeping gown and cap, and smiled. Of course she would assume that it was he that was playing in the early morning hours. It was the only thing in his life, aside from Victoria, that he truly loved and it was not unusual for him to play when he couldn't sleep. Apparently, Victoria had grown so used to it that she felt comfortable commenting on it in her sleep. Although, how she thought he would ever be able to hear her over the piano on the other side of the house when she was merely whispering, he couldn't say. But such was the realm of dreams, he supposed.
He sat quietly in bed for almost three full minutes before he realised that the tune he was hearing was a familiar melody - Emily's melody, on which he had added his duet all those years before. It had been in that moment when he had realised that, despite the insane story he was becoming wrapped up in and despite the unfairness of the situation, he genuinely liked the woman herself. Some nights, he found himself trying to recreate her portion of the tune, but for some reason he couldn't seem to find the right notes. But, as he listened, he could hear the chords and placed them with their appropriate keys in his head. And yes, yes! That was the tune! How could he have missed it? Without his mind's acknowledgment, his body had risen quietly and softly from bed in a quiet desperation, and had begun to move its way timidly down the hall, moving ever closer to that haunting melody, listening to her quiet singing grow louder and louder.
"...I know that I am dead, but it seems that I still have some tears to shed," her form sang, head bent down and shoulders hunched.
Victor took a brief moment to study her. If he hadn't known her voice and her familiar tune, he would not have recognised her. Gone was the blue hair, dead flowers, and decayed and fraying dress. Instead, he could see hair of long, ebony black; a veil wreath made up of small, red roses; a long, white dress that hugged her form and that ended in a train of lace and silk chiffon four feet behind the back of the piano bench. Victor was then struck with the thought, "This is the beauty she had before she died." Granted, Victor had always thought Emily was beautiful, for a corpse at any rate, but he had always wondered what she had looked like before Lord Barkus had murdered her. He wanted her to turn around so that he could see her face, though he was certain that stayed mostly the same (although he would be quite happy to have a conversation with Emily without her eye falling out). The only problem was that he was not quite sure how to announce his presence.
He settled for the most obvious choice. "You finally came," he said, breathless with excitement and more than a few nerves. As Emily turned around, he quickly walked across the piano room, his long legs making the journey only half as long as it would have been for anyone else. He took a few seconds to study her as she looked at him. Her eyes were the darkest blue he had ever seen, her lips the palest red. Her eyes were large, just as they had been when she was merely a rotting corpse, but they at least appeared to be firmly within her skull. The ribs that used to be visible through her dress were now hidden underneath a thick lace bodice, and the gaping hole in the jawline of her face was now completely healed, revealing rosy cheeks. Her entire face lit up when she smiled at him and she patted the bench beside her with a light tap, revealing a hand full of pale, thin fingers (a dainty hand that had probably never seen a day's work in its life). Victor followed her wordless instruction and sat down, turning his head to the side to keep her in his line of sight.
"Of course I came, Victor," came Emily's sweet, lilting voice. It sounded just as Victor remembered it - calm and unassuming, with a hint of indefinable sorrow that no one could alleviate. "You wanted to see me and you're my friend. So I came. It just takes me a little longer to get places than it used to do." She placed one pale finger on the middle C key of the piano and held it there. Victor listened as the sound resonated across the large piano room and waited as the frequency was sucked into the surrounding woodwork and stone.
Victor began to place his own fingers over the keys at the bass end of the piano, not pressing down but taking comfort from the familiar feel of resisting ivory beneath his skin. "I-I-I began to think you would never come," he ventured, cursing inwardly as his stutter made itself known again. For five years he had spoken almost every sentence he uttered with confidence and strength, never again cowering in shame before his parents or the Everglots and even maintaining eye contact with Pastor Galswells (evil tyrant that he was). But for some reason, on this Hallowe'en night, he seemed to be regressing, and it was aggravating him beyond all reason. Aside from Victoria, Emily was the one woman who had never tried to intimidate him and whom, aside from when he had initially woken up in the World Below, had never frightened him. "I-I wondered how you were," he finished, feeling pathetic. All the time he had spent waiting to speak with Emily and all he felt at that moment was stupid and awkward.
His feeling was eradicated when Emily smiled at him. She did not appear to think the question foolish or odd at all. "I'm fine, Victor. Just fine." Her finger moved up a couple of keys and pressed an E note and she looked at Victor from the corner of her eye, a challenging smirk that he remembered seeing once before lighting up the side of her face. He answered her with a challenging look of his own, and in one accord they both put their fingers on the ivory keys of the piano, her on the treble side and he on the bass, and just as they had all those years before, they began their duet.
It was evident to Victor that despite his love of the piano, Emily was the far more experienced player. Granted, she had probably been quite the accomplished woman before she died and was probably infinitely more intelligent than he had ever been as well. His fingers hit the wrong key as he was struck with the sudden thought of where she might be now if she had not died. Granted, she would have been significantly older than he was - Lord Barkus had to have been in his late 30s or early 40s when he had tried to marry Victoria - but he wondered if Emily would have been a person that he would have become acquainted with at any point. Would she have been a nice, older woman that would have shown him some kindness when he was a young boy or would she have been more like Lady Everglot - rich and so ugly on the inside that it began to manifest itself on the outside? He shook that last thought off quickly; Emily could never have been as ugly as Lady Everglot, and never as mean either. Not even being murdered had ruined the soft, kind part of Emily's spirit. Falling in love with the right man and having a fortune would not have done so either.
"Victor, watch what you're doing," admonished Emily, trying to sound stern but not managing to hide her amused smirk that he had messed up while she was still performing perfectly. In his musings, his fingers had performed of their own volition and he had played entirely the wrong notes throughout the whole of the middle 8 portion of the tune. For the rest of the time, he focused on keeping his fingers going at the right pace with Emily's and merely watched her fingers as they drifted over the treble-side keys, still full of enthusiasm for the music but not popping off of her wrist and playing of their own volition.
They finished off the final notes with flourish, Emily hitting the final high note with particular force. The note's sound flew across the room with a particular clarity and Victor suddenly was worried about awaking Victoria with their loud playing. Emily appeared to have remembered too and put a dainty hand over her mouth, blushing slightly and letting out a small giggle. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Victor. When it comes to music, I appear to still have quite a bit of enthusiasm. I do beg your pardon."
"It's quite alright, you know," said Victor, turning slightly to look at Emily as he spoke to her, and grabbing her left hand where it sat next to his on the bench. He brought it up to his chest level and encased it firmly between both of his, as he had done after attaching her hand to her wrist all those years before. "I still love your enthusiasm."
He let go of her hand with his left and laid her hand back down on the bench, still holding onto it with his right.
"What's waiting for us, Emily?" he asked, certain that if anyone would answer the question for him, it would be she. "What's after the World Below?"
Emily's eyes suddenly took on an haunted look, and she looked sad, as though he had disappointed her in some way. "I'm sorry, Victor. You already know I can't tell you that. There are rules."
And there it was. Once again, Victor was faced with the answer of "there are rules." As much as he wanted to get indignant about it, he knew that his time with Emily was growing short - the Sun's rays were beginning to rise up over the trees of the forest, and he knew Emily would have to disappear before the town crier could see into the windows and begin announcing that Master Van Dort was having an extra-marital affair within his own house while his wife was asleep upstairs. Victoria, he knew, would understand exactly what was going on, but the truth of the matter was that the rest of the town was distrustful of Victor and were convinced that he was marked in some way. Why else did the dead in the town always show up at his house on All Hallows Eve? Surely he and his wife must be damned.
"Will I ever see you again, Emily?" he asked, knowing the answer but needing to hear it from her.
Emily looked at him, and if it were possible for someone beyond death to cry, she would have done. "No, Victor. I'm only here this once as a favour. But I released you from our marriage vows, which means that when death parts us, it's for good. There's nothing to bind us together. Where I am is different from where you and Victoria will be one day."
"So why come back now if we were separated already?"
"To tell you to stop waiting. Don't look to the moon anymore, Victor. I'm not up there, and I'm not those rare, blue butterflies either. So much is happening in the world around you and Victoria. Don't spend what time you have looking for what's not there. I'm happy, I'm complete, and I am finished. Our adventure in the World Below and the world you live in now finished off what I had spent so many decades dwelling on. I don't want that for you."
She gave the hand that was still holding hers a small squeeze before dropping it, the peaceful smile he remembered from five years before gracing her face again. She looked to the window and, as he followed her gaze, he realised the dreaded Sun was close to rising. Emily stood from the piano and he took a moment to watch as the light poured over her (for once) lively features and encased her in a golden glow. A memory fluttered across his mind of seeing her twirling in the moonlight, a pure, childish joy emanating from her in the action; she had been content then, despite the cold and the snow. She looked just as pure and content in the sunlight and he suddenly felt incredibly lonely in the knowledge that he would be losing her forever in a few short moments. Up until now, he had harboured hope (however small) that he would see her again. He could have no such hopes now.
As he watched, she gave one brief twirl, her hair flying behind her in a dark, satin cloud. Her childish giggle echoed around the room and Victor found himself giving a small chuckle in response to her carefree ways. His breath caught in his chest as she quickly leaned down, and he felt those pale red lips against his cheek for the briefest of moments. "Be happy, Victor," she whispered to him, her lips brushing briefly against his ear. She had looked so lively throughout their conversation that he was briefly shocked when he felt no heat from her mouth next to his ear. He then reminded himself that while she appeared more alive, she was still quite dead.
"I am, Emily," he muttered, closing his eyes in solemn sincerity, "and I promise I will be even happier now."
When he opened his eyes, she was gone; a lone tiny red rose from her veil wreath still resting on the piano was the only sign that she had ever been there. A few moments later, as he lay down in his bed next to Victoria, wrapping one long arm around her and pulling her to him, he reached over her and placed the red rose on her beside table, as a gift to her from Emily.
"Was she happy, Victor?" Victoria asked, her voice still half-asleep and her eyes still closed. Victor briefly wondered if he should bother answering, as she most likely would want to hear the story in detail when she truly woke up later that morning. But he felt desperate to share at least some news with her before sleeping, if only to verify to himself that what he had experienced was more than a dream. And he also knew that Victoria was worried enough about Emily herself; that she wanted to know the answer to the question that had kept her awake at night as much as it had Victor.
"Yes, Victoria. And she wants us to be happy too." Victor laid his head down on his pillow and drew Victoria closer to him, her familiar scent making him drowsy despite the sunlight's attempts to keep him awake.
"Of course she does, Victor," Victoria muttered back, her voice already muted and Victor could tell she was almost entirely asleep again. "She never wanted anything else. And that's what we will be. Happy," she muttered, her words almost indistinguishable to Victor, but the intent clear nonetheless.
He smiled softly to himself as he fell asleep, and Victor and Victoria Van Dort lay together in peace, all their doors still open as the rest of the town woke quickly from restless, disquieted slumber to close their doors against frigid air as cold as death.