Last Rites
by Diablo Priest
Part 3
At the wake, Needy felt no better. There were even more people. More relatives, more friends, more neighbors, and more people Needy didn't know. Toni had bought her daughter a new dress for the occasion, and everyone said how pretty Needy looked. But she didn't feel pretty. The dress was stiff and itchy.
The funeral home was an old mansion, and it made Needy think of a haunted house. The front entrance and hallway had dark wood paneling and dark intricately carved woodwork. A huge dark wooden door closed off the front entrance like the door of a dungeon, shutting out the light, shutting out the air. Above the door in white chalk, like the hopeless scratchings of a prisoner, was the plea 19 + C + M + B + 97, all the brighter because of the gloom. There was a large fireplace in the hallway too, and a staircase that led up into blackness. A doorway to the right of the staircase opened to a room were Great Ma was laid out. This room was bright and filled with flowers, and there was a beautiful antique sofa and armchairs for the family to sit on. In a second room beyond an archway were four rows of folding chairs for the callers. It was from this room that people entered to view the body, for the front entrance was now for show only, and people entered the funeral home from the back were a parking lot was located; therefore, the gloomy, scary hallway that Needy found herself in when she drifted away from her mother's side was deserted—it was a dead end.
On the mantel of the fireplace, high above a little girl's head, stood a large vase. Needy didn't know why, but she fixated on the vase and glared at it with sullen anger. Spontaneously, the vase exploded, scattering shards in front of the fireplace. Instinctively, Toni ran toward the direction of the noise. Needy was still standing in the same spot six feet away from the fireplace when Toni grabbed her by the arm with a violent jerk.
"What on earth did you do?"
Mr. Holly the funeral director was calm.
"Thank goodness she wasn't hurt," he said. "Children will be children and will get into mischief."
Toni thrust Needy into a chair by the front door.
"Don't you dare move from here until I tell you to," she growled at Needy.
After Mr. Holly swept up the pieces of the shattered vase, Needy was alone in the the dark hallway. Alone in the dark hallway with the frightening stairway leading up into blackness at the other end. She sat in a chair opposite a Crucifix that hung on the wall. Jesus with his head turned to his right seemed to look down on Needy. But she didn't want to be in the dark hallway. From where she sat, Needy could see into the room where Great Ma lay in her casket, where the mourners were; but Needy never felt more forlorn. But then, above the welter of myriad conversations, she heard a clear voice say, "This way, Beloved." A group of people standing near the coffin parted for someone. It was Jennifer. She looked more beautiful than anyone Needy had ever seen.
Jennifer wore a white lace dress, pure white like a Minnesota blizzard, pure white like the foam atop the whitecaps on Lake Superior, pure white like the clouds on a tranquil June day. Her hair was done in curls that framed her face, and she was crowned with a string of pearls around the top of her head. She looked like a doll, a princess, an angel. She carried a single white lily that she put into Great Ma's coffin. With her hands folded perfectly together, Jennifer knelt in prayer on the padded knee bench in front of Great Ma's coffin. Serene prayer. When she rose, she turned, tilted her head to her right, and looked out into the dark hallway at Needy.
Needy gazed into Jennifer's heavenly blue eyes and felt at peace. And she noticed at the top of the stairway that a brilliant unknowable light was now shining from under a narrow door.
When Needy looked back, Jennifer was gone.