Page 98 of A River Red With Blood
“That too, but poking sticks through bars is fun.”
“You’re a strange man.”
“Says the woman who talks to the dead.”
Sabine’s eyes softened, transforming her face, so that features severe in repose, like a medieval fresco of a saint, were closer to handsome.
“Says the man who also talks to the dead.That makes us quite the pair.”
“Except it seems I have competition for your affections.Who is he?”
“Tim Sadlier.”
“The same Tim Sadlier who works at Spero?”
“Yes.”Now it was her turn to spot a change in me, but it was a tempering, not a softening.“Why does that bother you?”
I saw again the branded bags from the Smiling Seed Company, in the toolshed that served as Sadlier’s den.
“Everything about Spero bothers me,” I said.
“Tim has agreed to speak with you.He’ll tell you what he can.”
“Okay,” I said neutrally.
“Okay,” Sabine echoed.“But we have a lot to talk about before we get to him.”
“Where do you want to start?”
“With what’s out there in the woods.”
Sabine had set aside her coffee.When she was animated, she used her hands to communicate as much as her voice.The cup was getting in the way.
“Death is inconsistent,” she said, “or better to say that it is consistent in its action but less so in its consequences.What persists after, if anything, is not a consciousness entire but fragments, mainly feelings: hurt, anger, confusion, sadness—and fear.”
I thought that Scott Theriault’s grandfather, with his theories of death and persistence, might have understood, but I said nothing.I wanted to listen.
“You can’t conceive of how frightened the dead are,” Sabine continued.“Or perhapsyoucan; others, less so.The transition from this life to the next is like standing on the edge of an abyss and being told to step off, with no guarantee that the alteration in your circumstances will constitute an improvement.Fear is the most natural response.
“So they have all these emotions, but without a capacity for reason.The dead can’t be reasoned with, only comforted, so I try to provide reassurance before sending them on their way.It needs to be done quickly before they become trapped in a cycle, where the dominant feeling becomes so overwhelming that it occludes all else.Have you ever seen an animal in a zoo repetitively pacing its cage because restriction has driven it insane?The dead might empathize.”
She pointed to the window, and the river beyond.
“The day I arrived here,” she said, “I saw a woman standing by the shore of Big Island with part of her head missing.The wound was very neat, as if her skull had been marked into quarters before one was excised with a blade.She’s been outthere for a long time, and when the sun eventually dies and our world comes to an end, she may still be present to bear witness, she and those like her.In the moments before the earth is engulfed by the sun, only the dead will stare.
“But the woman on Big Island has a form, and that’s not always so.What remains after death is so primal and concentrated, yet so abstract, that it may not be able to hold a shape.What I encountered in the woods was formless, but composed of emotions from more than one person.How long have people been dying out there in the wilderness?Thousands of years, I expect.It’s not surprising that facets of them might remain.What is unusual is that they should conjoin, because that’s another thing about death: It’s lonely.We die alone.And when the dead come searching, it’s for the living, not for those like themselves.
“What I’m telling you is that I’ve never before come into contact with a congregation of the dead, bound together with hostile purpose, not like this one.A family, yes, or members of a community—unity in life reflected after—but not disparate souls, some dead for centuries, others barely in the grave, forced together.And in that residue, I sensed Scott Theriault, or the vengeful part of him.The rest is gone—”
I interrupted her for the first time.
“What about Mallory Norton?”
Sabine shook her head.
“Only through Scott.”
“What does that mean?”
