A Father's Love

A Father's Love

By Jeff Michaels

His daughter’s corpse grabbed his arm. Surprise kept terror at bay. Instinct kept him from being pulled into the coffin. At least at first.

She was young and, in life, had been no match for his physical strength. Terror set in when he realized that he was now being overpowered by the dead girl. A glance around the church, where her funeral had been held, showed no one in sight.

The last rays of the swiftly fading winter sun illuminated a stained glass Christ with his hand on the top of a child’s head. Candles were the only other light in the sanctuary. Flickering shadows lay across the pews. The nave and the narthex were darkened. He pressed with both of his hands against the edge of the casket. Her eyes snapped open and stared darkly into his face.

A cry for help choked his throat. He struggled for breath and found none. The girl’s left arm held his right. Now, with a spasm, her right arm jerked upward and closed on the lapel of his borrowed suit. A moan escaped his lips. But he could not escape her grasp.

He had a short fantasy that he was waking from a nightmare. His chair soft and worn beneath him. The living room dark and curtained, faint blue light casting shadows in the corners. The air close and warm, the hallway to their rooms dark and silent. He felt a brief burst of relief. Then he felt his feet leave the floor.

His hands pummeled her helplessly. Relentlessly he was forced to lie on top of her body. He had been there before. His child’s eyes were blank and staring as his face drew closer to hers. She looked at nothing. She saw nothing. Light no longer shone in her eyes. Her face was devoid of passion. Her lips parted. The scent of the chemicals that had replaced her blood rose from her mouth. His nostrils recoiled and flared. He began to retch.

The lid to the coffin dropped closed. Dark now, and black. Suffocating and close, breath lost. Movements restricted, trapped. Trapped, with no way out, no way away. Trapped against her body, against his will. No breath to scream. No breath.

The oak and brass casket rocks and shakes. Scratching and faint pounding slowly die. Desperation fades. Long minutes pass. Acquiescence to fate. Dark. Silence.

***

Later in the evening a lone figure strides silently into the church sanctuary. The dying sun of winter leaves the room in a pall of black shadows. Dim lights rise in response to a dial on the wall at the back of the chamber. Dressed in black with a flash of a starched white blouse showing through past taut buttons, the funeral director glides up to the young woman’s final resting place. Briefly the mortician looks upward at the crucifix suspended above the altar. Averting her eyes from the grisly icon she tightens the bolts that seal the coffin.

Two young men, also dressed in mourners’ black, now enter the church, their faces dour with grief rehearsed. With practiced efficacy they swing the casket around and wheel it away. They look at each other in silent communication. It seems to them that it is heavier than it should be for just a young girl. Still, it has been a long day. This was their fourth funeral and they are both tired.

The funeral director watches them go. Turning, she forces herself to look at the image of a tortured and bleeding Christ. “I don’t care if she committed suicide,” she says tensely. “If you want me to believe in your mercy, you’d best find a place for her in heaven.”

Her eyes narrow. A swift gasp and puff of breath, a gesture of disbelief escape her lips. She looks again at the image of the dying son, anger in her eyes. She says, “How could a loving father do that to his child?”

Pieter: A Tale of Gwynn Ap Nudd

The following is a short story that is part of a cycle featuring Gwynn Ap Nudd, the White Lord of Annwn, the Celtic Underworld of the dead. I have utilized Gwynn as a recurring character in my mythological history tales. Gwynn Ap Nudd and the Hounds of the Wild Hunt are associated with the Ancient Dragons and the Giant Smith Wayland. If you are worthy you may one day meet the White Lord himself.

Pieter

A Tale of Gwynn Ap Nudd

The bombs had fallen again. They had lasted most of the night. Somewhere during the midst of all the concussive noise and light he had fallen asleep against the old stone wall. It was what was left of the barn where his grandfather had begun keeping cows. It was not much in size, but it was where the cows had lived and it was where they had calved and been milked for nearly one hundred years. Now the last of the cows lay dead under the remains of the roof.

Somewhere in the night he had lost the ability to care. The relentless pounding against the earth and all who struggled to exist had beaten the will to care out of his form. He stood up now, legs steady, but weak. He leaned his hand and arm against the shattered wall and felt its firmness. As he rose dust and debris fell from his body. Dimly he thought he must be cold or in pain, but he felt nothing.

His gaze wandered randomly over the smoking earth. He thought that he should check on his son and family. His eyes rolled in the direction of their house two hills over. The smoke and flame told him that he would not find them there.

Soon he knew he would see soldiers march down his road. Men with weapons, boys truly, boys the age of his grandson. His grandson two hills over and now gone, the last of the line of his family probably buried beneath some shattered roof like the last of the cattle bred from his grandfather's cow.

His knees grew weak and his body sagged against the war ravaged wall. Smoke filled his nostrils and a steady thunder filled his ears. He had not realized his deafness until the first machine roared past him and took him by surprise. That surprise did not show and he stood, barely, as an army marched past him. He carried no expression upon his face. He could see that these boys had been forged into men by their awful landing, by the strange expressions they held. They had been forced into becoming men.

He could feel no pity for them and he could feel no love. He could feel no hate and he did not thirst for revenge upon anyone. One man stopped and offered him water late in the day. Pieter drank only when the cup was held to his lips.

Night fell. The old man finally succumbed to gravity. Dimly he wondered why it was that he had stood all the day. Sleep swept over him the instant he sat down and he did not dream. Instead he traveled back to the first day of his life with a new bride and the gifts of the wedding moved into the house he had purchased from the family. He had been shrewd in his business, but honest and well liked by his customers, always a little generous with an extra egg or a ladle full of milk for a child in addition to the bucket that was purchased. His wife was a baker of note and the extra cookie or loaf of bread to the widow or the church was common in their daily life. He looked up at her face in the window as he returned from the town…

A strong vibration roused him from slumber and daylight was full on. Again boys marched and again he watched. All the day he sat and he had no tears. He looked at the army marching and between their pacing and filthy legs he could see the shallow grave of his wife across the road by the rose garden she had tended so long. Few flowers were left and few would bloom again. A single tear rolled down his soot stained face and the tear did not have the strength to move the dirt aside. A single tear as he sought to recall her name.

It was an odd thing, he thought. He had never in all his days seen a dog that with that coloration. It did not occur to him that the death and devastation all about him was also an odd thing. The dog though, with the red ears, bright red really, like the solitary rose near the grave of his wife, the rose that the hound was sniffing; that was odd.

The hound sat quietly on the opposite side of the road returning Pieter's gaze through the legs and past the wheels of the army marching in a long endless line through the remnants of town. He was very large for a hound of any kind and white. Really, in the midst of all this mud and ash, how was he so clean? It must be that he arrived with the army and that some soldier boy had washed him. Pieter looked up into the grimy faces and down at the filthy boots and wondered why someone would keep a dog clean, but not these boys.

Late in the day a tank rumbled past, cutting off the view Pieter had of the white dog with the red ears. The machine moved slowly and in the short seconds that he was out of sight a profound sadness swept over the man. When the tank had passed and he was able to see the hound again, he felt happy, like the return of an old friend after a long journey away.

The hound had been joined then by another dog. Not so odd this one. Not a breed really, more a mix. Pieter squinted one eye. It really looked like his old dog, the one he had hunted with as a boy. That could not be, he thought. Old Rags had died a long time ago. Still, sitting there next to the odd hound was a dog that looked like Rags did, right down to that yellow spot on the side of his head. He even looked right at Pieter with his tongue hanging from the side of his mouth, just like Rags.

Evening was falling and Pieter wondered why he was not hungry or thirsty. He wondered why the boys would walk past him all day long. He thought about the boy who had given him water the day before. Deep in the ground he could feel the vibrations of the explosions up the road. The same direction that all these boys were walking. He wished the water bearer well.

Night fell and the clouds parted occasionally to let pale moonlight brush the smoking earth. Pieter felt his eyes trying to close. One moment he looked across the road. He saw a tall thin man standing next to the hound. The clouds took him away.

Another moment and he was back and there, next to him, stood a woman. Pieter struggled with his body. He had been sitting still for so long and now, that woman…

The clouds sailed about the sky and still he struggled. He recognized that dress. It was Anna’s, her favorite. His Anna. And his old dog Rags. And he pushed with all his might against the earth. Weak and weary he struggled to get up.

Across the road, empty of the army now, he could see the tall, thin white man standing still, watching him, waiting. He could see the red eared white hound sitting next to the grave of his wife, sniffing her flowers and watching him, waiting. He could see Anna and Rags watching, smiling and waiting. He pushed hard.

A hand reached down to him. A dirty hand, but familiar somehow. Pieter took the hand and found that rising was easier. He looked into the face of the water bearing boy.

Together they crossed over to the man in white.