Burial Chamber

I stop, resting, panting. The dark has swallowed whole the world beyond me.

“You’ve forgotten again,” the woman says, a distorted warble, like a sunbeam bending through a ripple of water.

“I know,” I grunt, voice scratched raw, arms stretched out straight in front of me where I lay pressed belly tight to the ground. My palms flatten, firm against the stone. My fingers curve to dig as firmly into the smooth surface as I can manage. I twist my hips as much as the earth allows, which amounts to just slightly, pushing one knee out, barely inches, so that the toes of one scraped raw foot can dig into the wall. It leaves my other leg with no room to maneuver, still stuck straight out, but I curl my toes under, pressing them down.

I take a second to breath, forcing heaving breaths into something slow and shallow, and then I move. My toes push against the floor, my knee straightens as I dig firm against the wall, my palms press into the ground as my arms bend to settle tight into my sides. I pull myself a handful of inches forward, scraping against the firm stone above, below, around, pressing, holding, firm and unyielding all around me.

I lose my breath, squeezed out at the press of my elbows into my sides, tight against the wall. I try to breath, gasping around the tightness and am rewarded with the unique sensation of a diaphragm hiccupping around empty lungs unable to fill. In a practiced, panicked, quick-bruising scrabble I shove myself to the side. There's no room to go anywhere, but the force of the jerk is just enough to squish myself into the wedge to make room for one arm to shoot out. With one stretched forward it makes enough room to do the same with the other. It opens up space for my chest to expand, and I can finally take another breath.

“You’ve forgotten again,” She says, muffled but booming loud, as if she is speaking through radio wire tuned into this very pocket of the deep dark. Her cadence is firm, tone gentle. Something soothing and demanding. Near-monotone in its indifference.

“I know,” I say, gasping in breaths. I did not know. Sometimes a lie can be a comfort like that, though I don’t think it has brought me comfort for some time.

The path through the stone crevice I’ve wedged myself into is long. It is slow. A dragging slog through thin air. I feel I’ve run a marathon, beaten myself bloody, and find myself near-melting against the ground, begging for rest I can’t afford to take.

My palms flatten. Fingers dig. Hips shift, knee bent, toes wedged. A breath, a scraping drag. A wheeze as my breath is squeezed out of my chest. I shove myself against the wall harsh enough to free my arm so that I might free my other. A rest, a breath.

“You’ve forgotten again,” she says.

I go limp against the ground, resting my forehead on the cool stone. It flattens my nose uncomfortably but the rest it provides my neck, which has been craned forward for so long I fear it is remodeling the architecture of my spine, is the only thing that provides me enough relief to be able to respond.

“I know,” I say. I did not. Not until she said it.

“You’ve stopped,” she says.

The glow from the chemlight clipped to my hip barely escapes into the tunnel in front of me. It shines through the spaces my movement provides like a thick syrup, cloying and clinging, dissipating into a haze but a few feet in front of me. The tunnel stretches on. On, on, always. I close my eyes. I do not wish to see it.

“You’ve stopped,” she repeats. She is expectant.

I lift my head. Palms, fingers. Hips, knee. Toes, scrape. Wheeze, shove, stretch, breath. I move inches.

I repeat.

“You’ve forgotten again,” she says.

She says it again, again, again. It is a constant repetition, a reminder, for as long as this tunnel crawl lasts. It is so easy to forget, somehow, in between one gasping breath and the next. Yet, every time she speaks the words I am reminded of every other time she has said it, and it is like I never forgot it at all. Then it fades again, an ebbing tide. She says it like she knows I do not know, like this is something she has learned from experience.

Hands, hips, knees, toes. Breathing, wheezing, inches.

I repeat.

I repeat.

I repeat.

I roll over, off my belly onto my back. The sky is that perfect dusk ombré, lighter blue all around the edges of the horizon but fading into that star-speckled navy above. The grass is gentle, if a bit scratchy where it waves in the breeze and brushes against my skin. I languish in the soft, stretching wide. I ache, I think, though I am not sure how I am capable of aching.

There is an echo, somewhere distant and lost to the sweet honeysuckle scent on the breeze. There is water too, gently sweeping at my feet, the dull roar of small waves upon sand. I close my eyes, the call of sleep settling like a warm blanket heavy across me. There is a gentle chirping of crickets, a song I haven’t heard in quite some time, and I find myself humming a long and slow harmonization.

I feel my mother’s fingers gently carding through my hair as her voice joins the humming. I open my eyes to look up at her. She is gazing forward across the water, the last of the dusk light glinting off the gold cross she wears dangling around her neck. She rubs the thumb of her free hands across it again and again, a worry stone. She looks down at me and smiles so warmly I feel chocked with it, a longing.

“My silly boy,” she whispers, the hand that was carding through my hair shifts down to cradle my face, like I was nothing but her sweet babe again. Like I had never screamed biting words meant to cut and dig and pain. Like I had been kind and gentle and a good son. Like I hadn’t stormed out of the house, spitting hissing angry at the cross on the wall. Like I had told her I loved her when she was alive to hear it, instead of like a coward at her grave.

“There is a nature of things,” she says, “and you shouldn’t go trying to break it on my account.”

“Mom-” I say, try to say, around the feeling of a swelling lodged in my throat. “I-”

“I’m right here, baby,” she says, “we’re both right here. I’m glad I got to see you, but you gotta pick, honey, or you gotta go home.”

I shake my head furiously, sitting up and turning to face her, begging, “No, no, I-” I stutter to a stop, words vacant. There was.. something…

“You’re a special case,” she says, “you made yourself that way. A body and a soul tied across the veil, but honey, only the dead live here. You’re crawling through the dark trying to reach for things you’ll never get. You gotta give it up.”

“But you’re right here,” I say, begging, “If I can just… Just…” Just what, I think, what, what-

“You’ve already said you’re sorry, honey,” she says, something rueful, “you’ve said it enough for eternity.”

My lip wobbles, my vision blurs, She pulls me into her arms with a gentle chuckle and I go willing. Theres a buzzing echo somewhere around me. I can almost hear it, frayed around the edges.  “Come with me,” I beg. I don’t know what I mean. I feel like I’ve asked her that too many times already.

“Normally I’d tell you I better not see you again for a long long time, but I’m starting to think you’ve gotten into enough trouble for one lifetime,” she says. There is a lull as the crickets sing louder, the waves reach higher, and her warmth seeps into me.

“You could stay, honey,” she whispers, so gently I almost do not here it. She clutches me tightly to her, like it pains her to say it, “you’ve visited enough. You could stay here with me and rest this time. How does that sound?”

“You want me to stay?” I ask. For some reason it feels hard to believe, but whatever it is that gives me that impression, that niggling in the back of my brain, fades away like the water lapping against my hips.

“Of course, honey,” she says, choked, and I slump against her, eyelids heavy. “Just stay, okay?”

I nod, and settle, soothed, warm. She is humming the song again, I breath and breath and breath, and time slips away. I have missed her, and I want her to come back, and I want to stay here cradled like she loves me, and…

And…

There was something else, I think.

Something, something, something…

“You’ve forgotten again,” that voice, that woman, says. A sharp bursting of static garble.

I flail as water invades my lungs on a sharp-startled gasp in. I scramble to get my hands and knees under me, sliding against the smooth stone as I choke and gag. I heave myself up, back shoving harshly into the stone above me as I hack and cough the water out. The crevice I’ve crawled through has opened up into a shallow bowl, water puddled in the dip, before it narrows back into its former coffin tight confines a few feet ahead.

I take the death departure for what it was, a brief reprieve. I’ve become re-tethered to my body on the other side of the veil, I can feel it in the room where it is attended to by the woman. I’m still just long enough to let the burn fade from my chest and then I am shimmying my way into the tunnel up ahead.

“That one was close,” she says, “lost you completely to the other side for a good few minutes.”

I groan, the phantom sting of Lichtenberg figures spreads across my chest. I ignore it. I ignore her. I focus. Hands, hips, knees, toes. Breathing, wheezing, inches, searching.

I repeat.

It is easy, this muscle memory, the panic of losing breath subsides easily. It is also what makes it such a risk. The mind wanders when repetition takes control, and a wandering mind here means succumbing to a siren call. A small death, the promise of a gentle rest as eyes glaze, rigor mortis onsetting. It was strange, those first few times, to feel as I slipped away from my own body without realizing. This place likes to clutch tight to its visitors, make for them a home. Now the tipping of the scales and the sharp shocking yank back feels more like a dance, fumbling as I may be.

I repeat.

“You’ve forgotten again,” she says, and it all comes rushing back.

“God, shut up,” I say. I am trying, trying, trying, trying, trying, and her voice is always hovering, an incessant buzzing like a locust plague.

“Not quite,” she says, and sounds almost amused, “but good guess.”

There is a moment where I think to ignore her and continue, and then I think of the lake, of my mother and all the time I didn’t spend with her. I think I do not want to be here anymore. I think fuck it.

I lift my head up and back as far away from the ground as my spine can manage, then I slam it down into the stone. Again, again, again, the sound shifts from fleshy smacking thuds to the wet squelching of blood pooling from split open skin and tenderized meat. Between one smack and the next I am blinking awake.

The lab is dark, save for the lamp light at the woman’s desk and the glow emitted by the machine hovering above the bed where I lay. The woman sits, monitors recording all sorts of data into graphs and digits I don’t understand.

“Very mature,” she says, monotone and blank as always. Nothing phases her. She has been here too long for that.

Somewhere in the back of my mind something hysteric laughs we both have.

“This isn’t working,” I say.

“It would work a lot better if you’d stop forgetting you’re alive,” she grouses as she stands and approaches my bedside, heals click-clacking against tile. “There’s only so much this thing can do for you when you’re actively working against it.” She knocks her hand against the metal shell encasing the bed. It hums an electric buzz, emits a soft gentle glow shifting through colors and darkness like the swirling of a fog.

The woman has always called it the Astral Cradle. From the vague pieces of conversations I’ve overheard her share with collogues I don’t think it has an actual name. Nothing and no one here does. It is known to everyone else as just ‘the machine.’ Something that lets the tether of the soul to the body extend longer, to let it roam and wander. To sneak into the veil, to travel to the afterlife and learn its secrets. To return and to share. But still, I prefer her name for it. ‘Astral Cradle’ had made it sound comforting, and the woman looks at it like it is a thing of love and marvel. I suspect she is the one who built it, but I have never bothered to ask. It was unimportant in the face of the promise that if it worked I would be the one to choose a soul to bring back from beyond.

She is sharp and severe, and she wears a petit silver cross on a necklace, tarnished and a little scraped. I have seen her flick and spin and fling it around on the chain like a child with a plaything. I have seen her bite it, teeth grinding against it in thought as she jotted down note after note, a record of every attempt to crawl through the wall between the worlds. I had thought this opportunity such a gift, at the time, but our working relationship is something more symbiotic. I get to use her machine to bring my mother back, and she gets to use my attempts to map a path.

I think she wants to find God. I think she wants to kill him.  

“This isn’t working,” I say again. Something in my voice must tell her there is a change in me. She looks at me, sharp and predatory.

“What do you suggest instead?” she asks. I have no answer. Only a vague feeling of dread.

“She won’t come,” I say.

It is an admittance. My mother loves me, I know. But not enough to come back. Not enough to stay. I suppose she might say the same about me.

“Then you can pick someone else,” she says, “or you can find a way to make her. If you can just remember your alive and stop slipping over into true death you’ll have all the time in the world to convince her.”

The light of the astral chamber churns, like a violin concerto, “and if I cannot convince her?”

“Then you will have to live without her. Though that’s clearly not something you’re willing to do. So, I suggest getting on with it.”

There is a third option, hidden in there. The woman is too blind to see it, but I find it glowing like a beacon. To go to it would be the same as a moth to the sun.

“Are you ready to go again?” she asks. She is impatient.

“Yes,” I say, and do not mean it.

There are no more words exchanged. She steps away; I close my eyes. The familiar feeling of rocking begins. It is at first a soothing sensation, like the gentle ministration of a bassinet, and then it grows faster, dizzying, a sensation only matched in the metallic whirring of a coin quickly spinning on its edge. Then it is a free fall, weightless and wind rushing as I drift.

I slam bodily into something solid. I lay pressed belly tight to the ground. I breath. My palms flatten and fingers curl into the stone. I twist my hips to make enough room to bend a knee and dig my toes into whatever surface they can reach. I heave myself forward and move inches. My breath is forced out of me by the tight stone confines and I shove, wriggling, until my arms are free. I breath.

I repeat.

I repeat.

I repeat.

Inches, inches, inches.

“You’ve forgotten again,” she says.

“I know,” I grunt. I did not know.