THE   RESURRECTIONIST

BY   DUNCAN   LONG



Jake fought back his tears and stared at the casket lying at the front of the church. The shining coffin was bathed in a floodlight that looked like a beam of sunlight from heaven; the brightness formed a soft halo around the casket in which Maria lay, motionless as if she had simply fallen asleep and might awake at any moment. Jake ignored the organ prelude and simply stared at her body. 

He continued to do so through the short service, as if at any moment she would take a deep breath and wake up. She would sit up, full of life, and tell everyone to go home, the whole thing had simply been a big mistake. 

But she never awakened. 

Death is the enemy, Jake thought when the service was finally over at the cemetery. He shook hands with the friends, relatives, and neighbors who mumbled cliches and then nervously fled from the graveyard, got into their cars, and sped away as if fearful they might be tainted by the death around them. 

"It's time to go," Jake's brother-in-law finally told him, pulling him away from the grave site long after the others had gone. Jake let himself be led to the black limousine and climbed in without a word. 

Jake spent the next six months away from his job, too upset to work. He lived off the funds he and Marie had saved during their ten years of marriage. His spent his time searching through the library and then through dusty bookshops, devouring the books on religion and then, not finding the answer he sought, delved into the white and then the black arts of magic. 

Sitting in his kitchen, Jake pushed aside a leather-bound book and traced the cigarette burn on the smooth oak table with his finger. The burn had come with the table, put there by the previous owner decades before Maria had rescued it from the dusty corner of an antique shop. 

Then he turned his attention to his steak, carving off a chunk before glancing up at his wife. 

"So what's bothering you?" Maria asked. "Go ahead and tell me about it now. We'll break our rule about not talking shop at the table." 

Jake put down his knife and hitched up his glasses. "This spell I've discovered. It's pretty complicated." 

"That's okay, we've got all the time in the world." Maria maintained eye contact with him as she lifted a glass of water to her full lips. 

"I think I could sit here and look into your dark eyes the rest of my life," Jake told her. 

"Very romantic but don't change the subject." 

"Okay," he said around a bite of steak. "What it boils down to is that the work I've been doing..." 

"Your magic books?" 

"Yeah. It's complicated--and yet so simple. It looks like--I know this is about impossible to believe." "Try me." 

"It looks like it's possible to bring people back from the dead. I know that sounds crazy, but I've already done it with--." 

"It doesn't sound crazy at all. It makes perfect sense to me." 

"Yeah, I guess it would," he said with a sheepish grin. "You were always going to church all the time and tried to make me feel guilty. You and your parents. Always conspiring to save my soul. Then you were in the accident and..." 

"What's wrong?" 

"It's weird," Jake said, putting down his fork. "I thought you were, uh, dead. But I guess I was wrong." He looked at her for some hint of what she was thinking, but her face was a mask. 

"Let's not get side tracked," she said. "What's the problem with the book?" 

"I've either got to falsify documents or somehow mislead people into thinking that... Well, if anyone knows I can raise people from the dead, it will be a disaster. The whole world will be at our doorstep. I just don't know." 

"There's always a solution. All you need to do is think about it and talk it out." 

The doorbell rang. 

"Who could that be?" Jake asked. 

"It's for you." 

"Then I'll get it," Jake said, wondering how Marie could know it was for him. He pushed away from the table, stood up, wove his way past the china cabinet, crossing into the living room, his shoes clicking on the wooden floor. A reddish glow shone through the cut-glass windows on either side of the front door in the foyer. Jake gazed at the glass but couldn't see through it. Yet somehow nothing seemed out of the ordinary to the scientist. He grasped the doorknob and opened the door. 

 The startled scientist recoiled as the hooded figure pushed its way into the room. The thing's face was hidden in the shadow of its robes; its bony hand held a bloody sickle. "Why are you robbing me?" Death asked. 

Jake stood speechless, unsure how to answer. 

"And why are you such a doubter?" Jesus asked, coming into the foyer and standing alongside Death. 

Jake struggled to answer but found he couldn't speak. The Deity's face slowly changed and then Jake found himself in the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror, a halo now sparkling over his head. 

"Why are you afraid to play God?" the mirror's reflection asked him. "You need to get on with your business and let the chips fall where they may. Let the world take care of itself. Your job is to defeat Death." 

With a cry, Jake sat up in bed, blinking in the darkness, and swore under his breath. He lay back down and closed his eyes. 

Suddenly, he felt so alone. Maria hadn't been there at all. She was still dead. His stomach churned and he closed his eyes and hugged himself. She's still dead and gone. If only... 

The thought came to him all at once and he sat up again. He'd been flirting with it subconsciously for the last few weeks, turning it over in the back of his mind. Yet he'd suppressed the thought, not letting it sink in, refusing to come to grips with it. The book did hold the secret but he was too fearful to follow its instructions. He lay back in bed, fearful to go back to sleep. But his eyelids were heavy. 

"Jake," the voice called softly. 

Jake groaned, turning over in his bed and putting the pillow over his head. 

"Jake," the voice called again, this time louder. 

Abruptly, he rolled over, twisting the sheets around his ankles. "Go away. I'm trying to sleep." 

"Jake," the voice murmured a third time. 

"What do you want, Mom," he finally answered, now fully awake. 

"Did you say your prayers?" 

"No. I can't. My prayers will raise the--" 

"You must say your prayers," his mother insisted. 

"Do I have to?" 

"If you don't--" 

"Oh, okay." Jake freed himself from the snarled sheet, struggled out of bed and got down on his eleven-year-old knees, as he'd been taught by his parents. "I don't really have anything to pray for," he said, peering up at his mother and hoping his tactic would work. 

"Just pray for those you love." 

Abruptly, the room darkened and Jake's mother vanished. He was a grown man again, now in his own home. "Damn," he said, "what a nightmare." 

And yet he knew there might be something to this idea of praying. The magic book had suggested that he might trick God, trick the collective consciousness that heard and answered prayers. It couldn't hurt, he decided. What did he have to lose. 

"Pray for those you love," his mother had always answered patiently when he had been a child. 

"OK." Jake swallowed, closing his eyes to recall what he had discovered in the book. He made the magic signs in the darkness and whispered the Latin phrases etched in his memory from the many times he had read and re-read the passages in the ancient manuscript. Then he switched to English to complete his task. "God, if you're really there, please send back my wife Maria." He uttered another phrase of Latin and a second in Hebrew. Then, not knowing how to stop, said a loud, "Amen." 

Jake waited a moment, wondering if there really might be some sort of answer. 

There was no bolt of lightning, no thunder clap. 

Nothing. 

"You're losing it," he told himself and laughed. "That has to be the most ridiculous thing you've ever done." He got off his knees, straightened up the sheet and blanket, and climbed back into bed. 

Punching his pillow, he wondered if he'd ever get back to sleep again. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. Then he became aware of a far-off scraping. 

He opened his eyes and listened in the darkness. 

Nothing. 

And then he heard it again. A thumping and grating somewhere on the far side of the house or maybe even in the basement. 

He continued to listen for a moment and then swore in the darkness. "Damn it all. Every year those blasted mice get into the house. Have to set the traps tomorrow." He shuddered at the thought of killing the stupid little rodents, but hated having them chew up things in the kitchen and leave their droppings all over. Maybe he should get a cat. 

He heard the scraping again. 

The noise took on a rhythm of its own, growing louder by the moment. That's no mouse, he thought. More like someone walking. Could somebody have broken into the house? What the devil was going on? 

He threw back the covers and got out onto the icy cold wooden floor. He jerked his robe off the back of the chair at the base of the four-poster bed and made his way to the open bedroom door. 

He peered into the darkness and listened. 

The thumping continued. It seemed to have entered the dining room. 

"Who's there?" he called. 

There was no answer. He stood motionless, watching and listening. Then he remembered his prayer. 

And suddenly, he knew. 

Somehow, deep in his bones, he knew, felt that God had answered his plea. Maria was there, waiting for him. That was it. He should go down and see her. No! His rational self argued against such an act and his fingers dug into the wood of the bedroom door frame as if his feet might try to go downstairs against his will. It was insane to even imagine that Maria could come back. What had be been thinking of? 

Somehow, a voice deep inside him said, God has sent your wife back to you. "No," Jake groaned softly. "It isn't Maria." 

But whoever it was lingered now in the living room as he listened attentively, then slowly walked through the hallway and was standing now at the foot of the stairs, pausing in the shadows as if waiting for something. 

Jake crept forward into the hallway, peering over the railing into the gloom. Seeing nothing, he stepped back and his fingers snaked toward the light switch. He found it and flipped the lever, but nothing happened. 

The electricity must be off, he thought. Someone must have cut the power and then broken in. He ought to go back into the bedroom and lock the door; call the police. Yet he couldn't force himself to move. Instead, he listened and waited, as did the form at the bottom of the stairs. 

"Who are you?" Jake cried at last. "What do you want?" 

The stranger moved forward out of the shadows, dragging one foot behind, then mounted the first step. 

Jake inched toward the railing and peered down the stairwell into the gloom. At that moment the moon appeared from behind a cloud and shone through the stained glass window on the landing, throwing a blue-green glow across the form that slowly ascended the stairs. The gossamer clothing the figure wore billowed softly as if the wind were blowing, yet the air was deathly still and Jake felt no hint of a breeze in the hallway, where he stood paralyzed. 

He knew he should turn away, run. But he couldn't move. "Maria? Maria, is that you?" he croaked. 

There was no answer. 

It couldn't be Maria, he told himself. He must be having a nightmare. Yes, that has to be it, he thought frantically. 

The figure was halfway up the stairs, glowing ever so slightly in the moonlight. 

"Maria?" he called again, almost hysterically, as if he were unable to control himself. 

"I've come back," the apparition whispered. 

"Come back?" he sobbed. The figure paused at the top of the stairway. Jake gasped, still frozen where he stood. Suddenly, he could see clearly in the darkness, as if the lights had come on. "Maria?" he cried as she resumed her approach. 

"I've come back," she murmured again, lifting her face to stare deep into his eyes, her empty, hollow eye sockets gaping at him. "Your prayer has been answered," she crooned, her lips cracking and falling away to reveal a crooked, toothless grin on her mummy face. 

Then he realized his mistake. He had simply prayed she come back--but not as she had been. She had come back the way she had become in the grave. He tried to scream as she took his hands in her bony fingers and pulled him to her bosom. 

"Kiss me," she commanded. 

Jake's screams echoed in the wide hallway and he clutched his chest, only vaguely aware through the paralysis of his fear of the pounding pain of his heart. He sank to his knees and they sprawled across the hard wooden floor. 

"Oh, oh," Marie said, kneeling beside him. "Having troubles? Your heart was always weak, wasn't it? But don't worry, my love." 

"You... You could call. The phone's right in there." He winced at the pain that shot down his arm. "Nine, one, one." 

"After you die I will hide and let them take your body. Then, at the proper time, I'll bring you back the same way you brought me back--I've been here in spirit watching all you did. After the worms work on you, you and I will be a matched set. You won't be so fearful once you're like me." 

"No," Jake gasped, averting his eyes from the horror next to him. "Oh, God, not that." He groaned at the weight that seemed to be crushing his chest. 

"See you soon, dear." 

The darkness descended over Jake. 

But not for long.