Good Intentions by Layla Ormbrek
You could say that I frequented the cemetery. Its green, manicured stillness steadied me, and I made it a regular stop. It was the perfect place to wander around during lock-down, being the only outdoor space that was never crowded.
Because I ended up at the graveyard so often, it wasn’t long before I began to devise rules for how I should behave there. Once I passed the gate, I would turn my phone off, pocket my earbuds, take out my hoops. Church? I had abandoned it years ago, but this? This was my solemn weekly rite, and I was going to give it and the people resting there my respect. No matter how late my Saturday night, I made the rounds on Sunday morning, choosing a different grave each week to honor with my careful and complete attention.
A couple of days after each visit, I would perform a search to find what I could. Sitting with my laptop on a Tuesday or Wednesday night while I picked at an over-salted microwave dinner, I would stare at Google as it broadcast the banal skeleton of each person’s life, which I would try my best to flesh out. When it was someone who had died before The Valley Daily Record’s online archive began, it was nearly impossible to find anything, unless they were one of the proud, prominent pioneer families who had established the homesteads that displaced the local tribe. Then there were the Japanese settlers, ripped from their own farms and deposited back at the end of the war, and their stories were well-documented too. Mostly, their children and grandchildren had fled to the city in disgust, and their graves occupied an untended, shady corner.
You would have thought researching the babies and small kids would be the worst, and yes, they were awful. But it was the people in their twenties and thirties who got to me most. Some of them were just starting families, leaving half-realized potential, sometimes even victims or people who wished vainly for apologies. Most importantly, they left impressions. In my own life, I didn’t know that I ever had.
After all of that prep work, on Sunday morning, I stuffed the research into my purse, bought some cheap, bright carnations, and then crossed the cemetery’s wrought iron threshold. Each week, without fail, I kept my commitment, even if it only made a difference to me.
You might ask, Maren, why did you do this? My answer is that I don’t know. Maybe I had too much free time. My last relationship had mostly existed in sporadic texts. My friends had retreated from my actual life to the two-dimensional space behind screens where they shared engagement announcements and baby bumps. My job bathed me in fluorescent institutional lighting and crushed my dreams to a fine paste. But I’d never been morbid. This little ritual I had developed seemed a bit strange to me at first, too. But it was the first habit I’d ever been consistent about, and truthfully, it made me proud.
On a Sunday in October, I passed under the gate, heading toward the marker for Dennis King, 1949-2016: Loving Husband and Father. According to his obituary from the Valley Daily Record, Dennis was a Presbyterian who loved bowling, the show M.A.S.H., his two sons Jamie and Kurt, and his wife, Rhonda. He’d worked at the local foundry for thirty-six years when tumors bloomed in his lungs and engulfed the rest of his body. In his photo, he looked like a jovial sort of Santa Claus type. When I arrived at his graveside, there was a fresh bouquet to which I added my own.
Reflexively, I looked around to make sure that his family wasn’t still there. It would be unsettling to see a stranger speaking over your loved one’s grave. I’d been interrupted by families several times, and it could get dicey. Once, I’d been shouted off, and a red-faced adult daughter had thrown rocks at me, believing that I was her late father’s mistress. I hadn’t come back for a few weeks after that.
This time, there was nobody close by, but I did see some people down the gravel path, gathered in a small clump. A hearse sat parked nearby. I made a mental note to wander that way after I finished. I spoke over Dennis’ marker, reciting each detail that I had found. Now, I must confess that some deceased were less interesting than others. But the whole point lay in trying to see the value in each person. However, Dennis was just so well-adjusted. He’d seemed to have everything he’d needed in life, and lucky him. Surrounded by family on his deathbed, eulogized by adoring friends and coworkers. He probably didn’t need me. But I had to be consistent. I couldn’t break my streak. After my short speech, I decided to find someone whose marker indicated a lifespan of less than thirty years; their story would probably be juicier. It had been a few straight weeks of clunkers, so it was time to treat myself.
As I gazed across the rows of tombstones, I noticed that the group was still there. Who was this? They had to be local.
I approached, peering between bystanders. On a fresh slab of granite was carved the name MAREN WINTER, 1991-2021. Underneath it was the epitaph, “Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.” I blinked. That was my name. My birth year. My favorite Dylan Thomas quote.
I blinked again, convinced that I was hallucinating. My heart raced. Training my eyes on the other visitors, I realized that I knew these people. None of them were family; I hadn’t spoken to my mother in years, didn’t even know where she was. But I saw old co-workers, teachers, my dance team coach from high school. A few friends I hadn’t seen since before the virus. Some were masked, some unmasked since we were all standing outside. Regardless, I knew them all and I stared openly, rudely even, willing them to stare back, but no one recognized me. What was this, a joke?
Then I spotted someone that I wasn’t sure about. She was turned away from me, but we were dressed in the same clothes: a gray sweater dress, a black scarf, black stockings, black Chelsea boots. She carried a funeral program. She had the same long, auburn hair that I did. In a moment, she pivoted.
She was my double on the right side only; the left side of her face was almost devoid of flesh. I could see cheekbones, teeth, and an empty eye socket confronting me like a dark mineshaft. Muscle lay exposed along with the skull underneath it. She smiled at me knowingly, and the effect was ghastly. I began to scream.
If anyone heard me, they gave no sign. The hired pastor kept droning on about a misunderstood woman, gone too soon. The mourners nodded in obligatory, performative sympathy. My double came closer; I backed away.
“Relax,” she rasped, drawing near. She reeked of something I had never smelled because my modern life had spared me. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand so that I wouldn’t vomit.
“What are you?” I choked.
“You are me. I am you.” On closer inspection, her eyes were a jaundiced yellow.
“What?” I breathed helplessly.
“Okay, it looks like I’ll have to get to the point.” Her exasperated voice sounded like pebbles in a rock tumbler. “I am Hel.”
“Who?”
“You haven’t heard of me?” She rolled her eye, sighed, wheezing like a consumptive. “Goddamn Catholic Church. Goddamn Lutherans. Why do I even try?” This last comment was more to herself than to me. “I’m only the Norse goddess of the underworld, that’s all. Well, specifically, I rule over anyone who’s died a cowardly death, or those who die of old age or illness. Valhalla--that’s not my domain.”
“What is your domain?”
She gestured with a skeletal left hand, waving it vaguely around, phalanges clacking. “You’re looking at it. Helheim. This graveyard. And most others.”
“Wait a second,” I said, as I realized that I was growing accustomed to the stench, “What about all the soldiers buried over by that Korean War memorial? Why aren’t they in Valhalla? That’s where heroes go after battle, right?”
Hel rolled her eye again. “Heroes? Don’t make me laugh. Let’s just say that if they’re here, there’s something you don’t know and probably don’t want to. Real heroes go to Valhalla; everyone else just goes to hell.” She sneezed, and a large beetle shot out of her nose. “Thank Odin! That was bothering me. Listen, I’ve got a lot on my to-do list today.” She shifted, and I heard her hips crack. “So, anyway, you’re dead.”
“Oh?” An eerie calm had come over me, like when I was high on nitrous at the dentist’s office and could hear him twisting his pliers in my jaw until my wisdom teeth popped out, but couldn’t actually feel a thing. “How come I can still smell, then? And I haven’t died of old age or disease? So what, then?”
“Maren, you’ve been a coward in life. Let’s be real. You’ve wasted a real gift. Pissing away your time in a job you hate. Estranged from your family, which is fine, okay? But taking no steps to create your own circle of people. Friends with benefits with one man after another, up for anything. Such a cool girl.” Her good eye, as green as mine, narrowed. “Yes, I said it. Friends with benefits, but no real friends. Coming to the cemetery every week to gloat over my charges in order to give yourself depth. Very ghoulish. A tip of the cap to you. Don’t think I hadn’t noticed.”
“That’s not what I was trying to do at all! I have respect for them. You don’t understand.”
“Oh, I do. I’m not saying that you don’t have good intentions. But you know what they say about good intentions.”
Rolling my eyes, I sighed, “That the road to hell is paved with them.” I didn’t like this, a deity who got off on her own puns.
“Zing.” Hel laughed at her own joke, heaving breathlessly. “Now, this brings us almost up to speed. Kid, I admire you. You know the clientele. You’re interested. And I need help. In case you haven’t been able to tell, the last couple of years have been busy for me. I need to scale back, do a little self-care. This is where you come in.” Hel sounded almost apologetic.
I looked around, reality slowly dawning on me. The funeral-goers were still there. I peered into the open grave as a polished gray casket was slowly lowered down to its resting place. “That’s really me?” I imagined myself, choked forever under five tons of earth.
“Well, your husk. A body.” She sniffed. “I mean, relax, you know? NBD. I fudged a few things, made some arrangements, and instead of continuing your aimless, ineffectual little life, you’re going to work for me.”
“What do I have to do?” I was numb and doubtful.
“Keep an eye on these people. Make sure hauntings are at a minimum. Keep them in fresh worms. Listen to their stories. This bunch is a little high-maintenance. I’m not sure why. Sometimes, it’s just the dynamics of a particular place. But I’m sure you’ll be great. Really, for the first century or so, you’ll just be getting to know them. That’s absolutely key.”
I glanced around, realizing I was now surrounded by people in various states of dress: kimonos, shirtsleeves, white patent leather go-go boots. Kids in their Sunday best. They looked familiar in the same way that I could clock people that I had seen on social media but never in real life, and I knew why: I had studied their obituaries. They had arrived without a sound, perching on markers or leaning against statues, some smiling shyly, others skeptical.
“This is our new emissary? Hel, you’ve got to be kidding,” a petite Japanese woman quipped, her arms crossed. “She did her little song-and-dance about me, made me seem so stoic and dignified. She didn’t know me! I’m a 1,000 watt, three-dimensional, five-star bitch! Her delivery sucked all the juice out of my life. And now we’re stuck with her?”
“Stop running your mouth, Tanaka,” a man in mutton chops and suspenders grumbled. He resembled a constipated Basset Hound. I remembered him. Ezra Thaddeus Collier, a local pioneer who’d tried to start what amounted to a cult back in the 1870’s.
“Right back at ya, Collier. Why should I be surprised you’re chiming in? Same dickhead as always. As if we needed your input. Bigamist asshole.” Tanaka cut her eyes at him and then vanished.
Then Dennis King, of all people, made an appearance, and I could feel my cheeks reddening. He pulled on his Santa beard, “You don’t know me, kiddo,” he said. “Read your little report and think you have it all covered. Please. I’m multi-layered. I contain multitudes. Did you know I wanted to be a dancer?” He winked out of view as quickly as he had materialized.
I surveyed the panoply of people spread out across the cemetery. People with beginnings and endings, shimmering with clarity and definition, yet whose tempers, peccadilloes, and vendettas had not died with their bodies. People who hadn’t gotten to finish their stories before life unplugged the mic. This array of souls was gossiping and sniping, eyeing me like I was a petty functionary they didn't trust, or maybe a substitute teacher. I heard the phrase friends with benefits tossed back and forth a few times, followed by laughter.
Uncertain, I turned to Hel a final time. “So, this is it?”
She nodded, glancing at her smartphone. “I have to go. It’s Homecoming weekend, there’s an atmospheric river, and, oh, a new variant. Anyway, I’m buried today, just buried.”
“I get it.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Hel said, glancing backward as she walked away, showing me only her good side.
“One last question.”
“Be quick.”
“You never answered me earlier. How come I can still smell?”
“Oh, that?” she waved dismissively. “That will go away. Give it a few days. Take advantage in the meantime. So you can remember.”
Hel gave me a quick, businesslike smile and walked away; I was clearly an action item checked off.
I sighed. It would be months before I would truly fathom what had become of me. My focus wheeled above the ghosts, granite, and grass, up and up into the blue October sky, my lungs filling with the crisp autumn air, the scent of dry leaves.
