Excerpt

Mina returned to the parlor. The room, now empty but for Lucy's remains, was bathed in a shaft of early afternoon sunlight filtering through the windows that had somehow escaped the dark clouds. Mina found herself annoyed by the light, and hung back in a darker area of the room. Black curtains of mourning graced the windows, and a dark wreath of hawthorn branches tied with inky satin ribbons hung on the door.

Lucy's coffin rested easily among the flowers. Her white- clad body lay on white satin, a laced pillow beneath her head, a pillow which had been crocheted by her great aunt and which had been in Lucy's hope chest.

Mina approached the casket slowly, in wonder. How could her friend look so lovely in death? It was as if the spirit still remained within her, filling out her corporeal form. Truly, she appeared to be resting only. And she looked far healthier than she had in the last few weeks. It made death very inviting.

Gone were the traces of illness. The blue circles beneath her eyes had vanished. Her cheeks bloomed with rosy color, no longer concave as they had been for weeks which had made her look like nothing more than a skeleton. Those sensuous lips, so red, red as blood...how extraordinary! Pigment tinged her flesh, and her hair sparkled, dazzling as sunbeams danced on the strands. And Lucy's hands! Pressed together just so in prayer fashion on her chest, clasping a white Bible; they looked as though they were about to move, the way Lucy moved them almost continuously when she talked, to reach out and touch Mina's arm, and then Lucy's eyes would snap open, and her lips would part, as she would laugh and say, "I've got you! Silly goose! Did you really think I was dead?"

But the hands did not move, nor the lips part, nor the eyes open and sparkle with the joy of besting a friend in a superb but morbid practical joke.

Mina reached into the coffin and touched Lucy's hands. The flesh was hard, and chilly as marble, and yet the color! The oddness of that combination of such conflicting sensory input became like an electrical shock that moved through her finger tips, up her arm to her shoulder, and down through her body. It left Mina stunned. No, more than stunned--frightened.

She pulled her hand away quickly, as if she had touched something burning hot that had singed her. Why did she expect Lucy to move? To breathe?

To calm herself, she moved a chair close to the coffin and sat, trying to collect herself. Trying to find a way to accept Lucy's death.

But her thoughts moved away, from Lucy, from this room, and she found herself again as she had been all day trying to recapture the events of the previous evening. The night seemed like a dream, as if she had not gone to Carfax Abbey, as if she had not heard the music of the sinfonia, and had not danced in his arms until the sun was ready to rise in the sky and he insisted she must go. As if he had not kissed her, so many times...

She glanced behind her, guiltily. Of course, it was Jonathan she felt most guilty about. She had betrayed him, or had she? Yes, they were engaged to be married. But he did not yet own her heart. And now, she did not envision that he ever would. Seeing him, so stiff and bumbling, so thoroughly inept. And hearing his inane comments, so insensitive, indirect, disregarding the emotions of another, no, her emotions, and focusing only on his own observations and conclusions and what would be easiest for him... What kind of man was that? Why would she want to share her life, her precious time with him?

But beyond all his faults lay something more basic, a lack between them. She had felt it all along, although now it had rushed to her awareness, like a crack that turns into a crevice and then expands to become a pit into which one will fall and die. He could never make her happy because their souls were not aligned one with the other. They were too different. And the security she had envisioned obtaining from him seemed now to be entirely irrelevant, so distorted in terms of what she perceived her real needs to be.

Only one man could satisfy her now. Of that she was quite certain. To spend those hours in his arms, floating through clouds of time, recapturing what she had not known she had lost, swirling, twirling, feeling his hands on her burning flesh, feeding her, his lips so insistent against hers, his tongue, probing, speaking to her physically not verbally, sending her coursing through rapids of desire until the waters of passion overwhelmed her...

SAVE YOURSELF!

Lucy's voice! Suddenly in Mina's head! A movement from the coffin, seen from the corner of her eye, and Mina snapped to alertness. "My God, I must be hallucinating!" she gasped. Had Lucy's hands been in that position? Hadn't they rested more on her chest, and been less upright?

Unnerved, Mina was on her feet, trembling. Could the dead come back to life? "Lucy?" she said nervously. There was no answer.

But Mina had read stories, of those who were thought to be dead and yet were not. Perhaps Lucy was simply comatose, from a peculiar malady, and was trying to wake. That was why she did not look dead--she was not! And soon they would bury her alive!

Mina hurried to the wall and removed a small, ornate Victorian mirror, the glass side of which had been turned to face the wall. She took it to the coffin and placed it under Lucy's nostrils, over her lips, and bent low, hoping to find a sign of breathing, a mist, moisture, anything!

But several minutes of this, and there were no tell-tale signs. And Mina had to force herself to accept that the doctors knew best. They would have checked all her vital signs. They would not have declared her dead if she were not.

Mina replaced the mirror slowly, thinking she had been reading too many novels of late, of the type that would frighten and cause disquiet. And this occasion was so wrought with sadness and fear, for does not death force us to reflect on our own mortality?

She sat again, and placed her hand over Lucy's. Such coldness! Why must death be so chilling? Why is the body but a shell, a shell which provides us such pleasures and delights that we can soar through the heavens and touch the gods? And then it abandons us, leaving our spirit free-floating, or is it ascending, or descending?

Mina felt so confused. All that she had learned from religion, about heaven and hell, about spirit and flesh, all of it seemed so irrelevant now. She only knew that she longed to explore every sense, to wallow in passion, to penetrate the realm of ecstasy, and only one being could bring her to all of that.

They had danced as one body, one soul. The music filled her entire being. They had become the music, and all that mattered, all that gave existence value she discovered in his embrace.

To be loved so, desired, cherished... She could not contain her happiness...

ALL IS NOT AS IT SEEMS! SAVE YOURSELF!

Lucy's voice again! And a twitching of her finger against Mina's palm! Again, Mina snapped her hand away. Her heart beat hard in her chest, and a chill raced through her body, a chill of terror. Outside, dark clouds had gathered again, annihilating the attempts of the sun to pierce through. The greyness enshrouded the room in a pallor, so oppressive she could hardly breathe. What was happening? Was she losing her mind?

Quickly, she unbuttoned the two black pearl buttons at the collar of her mourning dress, struggling for breath. She massaged her throat, and felt two wounds there. Passion bites from her lover. They gave her strength, even as they brought her conflict to the fore, for how could she tell Jonathan that she no longer loved him? This, more than anything, oppressed her spirit. Even more than the loss of Lucy.

Lucy. She stared down at her friend. And the hands! Now pointed more towards the feet. And Mina felt utterly baffled. She had been sure they pointed to the face, then the ceiling, and now... But she could not be certain. Perhaps they had been pointing this way all along! Her brain tumbled over and over with thoughts, trying to make sense of all this, of the physical reality before her, of the death of her friend who did not seem dead, of the newly-awakened passion which would rend and tear her life in two, putting her outside of society, causing her to be branded a wanton woman, the breaker of a heart, a harlot of poor breeding who had betrayed her intended and gone off with a foreigner. She would be shunned, thought of in the lowest terms, and that she did all this as her friend lay dying!

But it was worth it. All of the scorn to come. She relinquished every bit of safety and security she had ever known or would know. The comfort of sliding neatly into a prescribed role, fitting into the world she had always known so precisely, it was more than worth parting with for what lay ahead.

To be his love, his only love, enraptured. Nothing could compare to this. And she knew in her heart that nothing could be done, for she belonged to him completely.

Mina rose. "Goodbye, my friend. I will miss you. I love you deeply." She leaned into the coffin and kissed those cherry lips. They were icy, so cold they burned like heat.

Mina trembled, but the stark terror quickly gave way to the pleasurable feelings of his love, for it was as though this kiss reminded her of kissing him! She felt nearly overwhelmed with its scope.

Mina walked to the back of the room, intending to rejoin the others, but on sudden impulse she decided that she needed a bit of fresh air. She rebuttoned the collar of her dress, and picked up the shawl she had left by the door. Just before she left the parlor, the wind outside picked up, gusting out of nowhere, smashing a branch against the window which startled her. The wind howled as if a storm might be coming. And as the wind sang through the bare tree branches, it sounded to Mina like laughter. Like Lucy's laughter. Not the Lucy she had known, but a demonic, diabolic Lucy. It was the laugh of a witch, a cackle, a laugh that seemed to say, yes, you, too, will be lying here soon, my good friend. Join me, oh sister! And we shall share him!

Lucy was laughing at her! So cruelly bitter. So premonitory!

Mina gasped and ran out the door, desperate to outrun the reverberation of that sinister sound and all that it implied. Wondering if she were going quite mad.