“I was a young boy in a land where fairy tales were reality and mortuaries were accommodations. I came from a family of rich tradesmen and professional musicians. Music ran through our family like water through riverbeds or blood through the body.

  Family was everything.

  Which was why we kept them

  My mother, a performer; my father, a businessman

  Lost every child, all save one

  Hear our tale through my red violin

  My family, my everything,

  Our legacy in stone

  Despite an only child, I seldom felt alone

  Commodities, like mortuaries, reserved for the wealthy

  Keeping family close, our downright luxury

  I’d outlived my siblings

  Most whom died ‘fore named

  Yet something about them stayed just the same

  Down in our basement, they’d invite me to play

  Among dingy shadows and bodies decay

  Together, we’d make believe

  Family was everything

  Truth, seldom said, more oft’ lost

  Innocents play in shadows

  at a perilous cost

  “Family was everything; I was the last of my mother’s children to survive into an old enough age to receive a name. After each child passed, my mother would bury them in the mortuary downstairs. This was a commodity that only the wealthy could have. Keeping family close, you see, was a luxury. Although I felt lonely, I always knew that someone was watching over me. I figured it was my siblings and that they would take care of me.

  “It was that same feeling that drew me down the old stone steps. Bringing me toward the dark and familiar place, the feeling of security—of safety. I felt the dark welcoming me, and in an instant, I welcomed it too. It felt like my siblings were right there, embracing me.

  “I would play down there for hours, only coming up to eat, sleep, or practice my violin. I got better at telling which sibling was playing with me, and over time, one by one, they all came out to play.

  My parents grew concerned, but my time with my siblings was all I had. It kept me entertained while my mother tended to the house and my father, off on his journeys, traded and dealt merchandise. For that short bit of time, we were happy.

  “The feeling that my older siblings were watching over me in the mortuary only grew stronger with time. I would sometimes hear them, thinking my imagination was playing tricks on me. But now I know the truth. The truth is seldom said, and often missed. Innocents shouldn’t play in the dark alone.

  My father, the tradesman

  Would travel for pay

  But one day returned

  Health, fall’n away

  I played my violin,

  Far more than any game

  My shadow siblings attempted to entice me to play

  The better I played,

  The better he got,

  At least, so it seemed,

  His pain, he forgot

  The plague soon claimed him

  My mother’d soon follow

  She’d fought off the darkness

  As long as she could wallow

  In misery, in loss, the depths of despair

  My poor, downtrodden mother,

  Bore as much as she could bear

  A curse! A curse!

  Our family is cursed!

  Superstition and rumor

  Lies that are sold

  Tarnish the varnish

  Right off our souls

  A curse! A curse!

  Our family is cursed!

  “One day, my father returned home from a long journey, not feeling well. In his arrogance, he waved it off as nothing more than a common cold, and he expressed he’d be ‘fine in a few days.’

  “In a few days, he was bedridden.

  “The mortuary felt more alive those days; colder, hungrier. It was as if I were in the mouth of the beast. A mouth that opened and widened as I descended the stairs day in and day out. Sometimes it scared me, but I never stopped. I knew that darkness, but I did not know the darkness that settled over my father, a shadow that was cast over his soul, beckoning it down into the mortuary.

  “Later that month, he died. They called it the plague back then. My mother was too sad to resist the shadow next. She had already lost so much. My father was buried in the mortuary, and the darkness felt fuller, complete, and less hungry. It was now satiated. I hated the dark for this. I wanted to punish it. I wanted it to burn the way I burned.

  “How does one punish a friend? How does one spurn the rising of the sun, or strike down a raging storm? It was only doing what was natural, what it was designed to do. Who is to argue with the design?

  “So I stopped playing—games with my siblings, I mean. I stopped pretending like little boys do. I tried to be the man my father was. I tried to learn a craft like my father so I could be there for my mother, to make her smile.

  “But I still went down there back then. I still stood in the dark, listening to the whispers of my siblings who’d welcomed my father to the deep. It all felt so hollow. Their presences were shallow. My mother needed me. Why did I keep going down there?

  “So I left.

  “I played my violin for my mother, hoping that it would make her feel better. For the rest of the season, her health gradually improved. The better I played, it seemed, the stronger she became.

  “For her, I played every day. For her, I practiced every night until my fingers bled. The blood ended up staining the neck of my violin. I tried to keep it hidden, but when my mother saw it, she told me to take a break. She didn’t want to hear any more of my playing until my beautiful little fingers were rested.

  “She made me promise. I shouldn’t have listened.

  “The shadow fell over my mother for the next few days. The physicians came and went. I heard them say all kinds of things about how our family was cursed. I hated them for it. I hated how the grocers would look at us and how the servants would leave, one by one, until no one was left.

  “They left my mother in her time of need. Superstition and rumor are more dangerous than any plague that afflicts the body. This disease is a kind that afflicts the soul. A collective poison that seeps into the veins of society and tears it apart from the inside out.

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  Nature’s sweet succulent of a matriarch

  Incubator of me. Creator of my dreams.

  Her face ravished

  Countenance diminished

  Sunken sockets held her vacant gaze

  I can’t

  I won’t

  Vitality

  Her fleeting paramour

  I’ll beseech the Lord in prayer

  Reminded of the pain

  Losing His only son

  Please… spare her

  Appetites a memory

  Yearning for little else

  Save the silence

  The calm, the absence…

  … of pain

  I can’t

  I won’t

  She lies there

  Her creator respondent

  For what ill hath she wrought

  Demanding this fate?

  My emaciated mother

  Please, elucidate

  What did she do wrong?

  Please enumerate.

  You can’t

  You won’t

  I remember the blood

  … And her ice-cold skin

  Her vacant eyes

  Oh, my violin

  Cleaning her up

  Returning her face

  Bespattered with emesis

  To peaceful grace

  I couldn’t get her anything

  The one final thing

  Holding me from

  The precipice of despair

  Was the love of my mother

  An abject thing from a person missing

  She was…

  No longer there

  “I remember cleaning the blood off her face when I felt her cold skin. It was too cold, like frigid ice. I looked at her eyes, and there was no more light in them. They were empty. More than any other emotion—I knew I should’ve been sad, angry, guilty, but more than any of that—I was curious. I couldn’t help but wonder when she died. She was so still, like the first snow on the field.

  “I sat there, staring at her. My whole body grew cold like there were trickles of ice running through my veins.

  “I remember hearing someone crying nearby. Maybe they cared about my mother, too. It was a while before I realized that whimper was mine, and my eyes stung from the tears. The final thing holding up my heart from the precipice of true despair was my own mother’s love, now forever lost.

  “There was a pit in my heart. The kind of emptiness that does not fill, but instead, consumes—consumes everything, all that you are. I felt my heart, my mind, my very being tip over the edge into that pit and fall.

  “I don’t remember when I left her side and went downstairs, but I started coming to when I heard the voice as clear as day coming up from the mortuary.

  “My eyes adjusted to the darkness as the open door looked back at me like the maw of a beast. The voice, no longer a whisper in my mind or my imagination, spoke sweetly to me.

  “‘Why don’t you play with us anymore?

  Are you too sad to?

  Wading through all of the loss you’ve grown so close to?’

  I’ve no joy, no laughter, no promise, no hope

  Feeling the ever-present end of my rope

  My legacy, a memory,

  Our mortuary, our vault

  My family lineage’s demise,

  This curse is your fault!

  In an effort to rectify

  The consumption of my family’s souls

  I was instructed to bring back

  My violin and three candles.

  Racked with guilt,

  But knowing I needed to move,

  I gathered what little of myself I could,

  In the hopes I’d somehow improve

  A curse! A curse!

  Your family is cursed!

  I saw how they stared

  The people of the town

  Whether prince, or pauper, or hound

  Like I was the other

  Some type of undead, a wretched beast,

  Spellbound or worse

  Through their eyes

  Their petulant gaze read

  That thing is cursed

  ‘Why don’t you play anymore?’ it questioned.

  “I couldn’t bring myself to care who was speaking. My voice came anyway, flat and rigid.

  “‘Because playing in the dark is for little boys, and my family needs me. Or, needed me, that is...’ I heard my voice trail at the last bit of my words, as if the darkness had sucked all the harmony out of it.

  “‘Are you too sad to play?’ they inquired.

  “‘Playing make-believe is for little boys. Besides, the only playing I do is with my violin.’ My voice was harsh and cruel. I could feel the heat rising in my tone.

  “‘Are you angry with me?’ the phantom shadows asked.

  “My eyes grew hot next.

  “‘I felt you hang over my mother for weeks,’ I said. ‘You made her too weak to resist the sickness in her body, didn’t you? You punished me and my family, and now you want me too. But there’s nothing left of me. I’ve no more joy, no more laughter, no more hope. I have no more soul for you to steal. I am a walking memory of my family's legacy, and it is all your fault!’

  “The last word was meant to be more of a scream, but all I could muster was loud inflection. I didn’t care what happened next; I just wanted the darkness to know what it had done to me. I needed to know. I needed to be the one to say it.

  “There was a pause in the conversation as the last echoes of my words drifted out. It felt like a void, an endless expanse.

  “Finally, the waking night spoke again.

  “‘I have wounded you. I have caused you many sorrows. This must be rectified in full. If you will, please collect your violin and three candles. When you have these items, come back. There is much work to be done.’

  “I stood there, questioning myself for what felt like hours. Going back and forth within, trying not to listen to the voice, yet still calculating what candles I’d acquire.

  “Somewhere within that little boy who listened to dark voices in the basement was a man who needed to bury his mother. In the end, I left the house.

  “I walked all the way into town, right to the local doctor. I remember how flat and cold my feet sounded on the stone steps going to the door of his office. As I walked in, I heard the gasps from the secretary.

  “‘What do you want, cursed child!?’ she asked with a harsh tone. I stared at her blankly.

  “‘Be quick!’ she spat. ‘The whole town knows that your family is cursed. Out with it, boy!’ she half yelled at me. I felt her words fall into the void of my heart. Like a tether, her words pulled me deeper into that dark pit.

  “‘Please, ma'am, is the doctor in? My mother has passed, and I’m afraid I don’t know what to do next.’ My inflection made it sound like a question, but that’s where I was: confused and lost and painfully aware that I didn’t know what to do next.

  “‘You don’t need to bother the doctor with this,’ she scoffed. “What you need is a simple grave man.”

  “I saw no pity in her face. Her eyes looked empty, just like my mother’s. I walked outside and immediately saw how the townspeople were looking at me. She was right; everyone saw me as a curse.

  “Walking toward the graveyard, I could see how all the townspeople stared, snickered, and scoffed. All of them avoided me, as if being in proximity to me would curse them, too. Every person I locked eyes with had the same empty stare my mother had. It was as if they were all walking dead in front of me, like the whole town had died with my mother. Almost as if I, too, had unknowingly died, and this was my purgatory. I was lost, wandering, seeking something only to be told I’ve sought the wrong thing and must seek again and again and again.

  Can I?

  Will I?

  I finally found what was needed

  A simple grave man

  To prepare the body properly

  A burial custodian

  His simple request for pay

  Was a meal at the end of the day

  He looked just as they did

  But said more than they dared

  ‘You know they speak of you?’

  Exhausted

  I nodded

  It’s not my fault I’m this way,

  That’s what he said, anyway