by Justin Williams
The funeral fell on a Saturday and the casket felt much too small. The perfume of lilies and daisies filled the sanctuary, ghost-white blooms balanced on stems still unaware of their death. Virginia lingered near the casket, waiting for her family to arrive.
She tucked a chestnut curl behind her ear and examined the floral arrangements, caressing the elegant lilies resting peacefully in their displays. It was the daisies she admired most, though, their brave faces opened wide to the world. She wished she were still so brave.
Virginia had never seen so many flowers in the church at once, and as she drifted away from her casket, she couldn’t resist pulling a handful of daisies from the spray beside it. They shone even brighter in her hand. Several flowers wilted in the display behind her; she hoped nobody would notice.
Virginia began to braid a few daisies the way her mother had taught her, the flowers growing stronger in each other’s embrace. She slipped the others into the deep pocket of her cloud-white gown and looked out over the empty sanctuary. On any other day, she would have felt quite comfortable lingering at the front of the church. Today felt different.
It was still April, she was sure, but the light through the stained-glass windows shone too dim for spring, and the room had the chill of late autumn.
And Virginia had never felt so alone.
She began to braid another daisy into the chain as a steady clip-clop of hooves neared and came to a rest just beyond the church doors. Virginia listened for her mother’s voice among the rustle of mourners descending their horses and carriages. Then the church doors pushed open, and the black-clad crowd began its slow march inside. Behind them, a thick darkness hung on the sky. Must be a storm blowing in, she thought.
Virginia’s great-aunt eased onto the organ bench, and a soothing melody began to float from the pipes. The gathering separated to their seats, and Virginia finally found her parents among them. Her mother collapsed into the front pew, draped in a bombazine dress the color of smudged mascara, a matching scarf hanging around her neck. Virginia’s father sat beside, wearing a black suit and a cravat as dark as the circles beneath his eyes. He took his wife’s black-gloved hand in his own.
Virginia wished she could cheer them up. She wanted to tell them she was trying to be brave, that they didn’t need to worry. She wanted to tell them she was safe, even if she wasn’t so sure. She would have said anything to see a smile on her mother’s face.
Granny Pearl dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief as she settled in next to her son on the bench. “Feels like your father passed just yesterday.” She tucked her handkerchief into her purse. Then she smoothed her dress, and the matching black shawl she wore over it, and said, “It’s too soon for another funeral. Far too soon for this one.” She reached again for her handkerchief.
Virginia had begged and pleaded to say goodbye when her grandfather died, but wasn’t allowed at the funeral, her mother declaring her too young. She wondered if she would’ve been allowed this time, if there had been a choice.
Tears traced her mother’s face, and Virginia, for a moment forgetting she was dead, went to her and kissed her cheek. There was no saltiness to her tears, though, and the slight stick of her mother’s makeup was gone. Instead, she felt only loss.
Her mother shivered.
Virginia sat in the aisle next to her family, hugging her legs. Her usual place, nestled between her mother and father, was gone, her parents clinging now to each other for life. She was afraid to drift too far away, though, and so stayed close beside them. Her uncle came then, the preacher, and stopped to comfort her parents before continuing on to take his familiar place behind the lectern.
“I struggle to find the words today,” he said in his exaggerated drawl. His familiar voice felt like a warm blanket in winter, a comfort for a strangely cold spring day. “Our dear Virginia Rose has passed on to God’s care, and though we know it’s to a better place she goes, saying goodbye remains a difficult task. The psalm tells us to be unafraid,” her uncle said, beginning to recite the verses, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”
So many shadows, Virginia thought. When she was alive, she was old enough not to fear the shadows in her bedroom. But now, shadows walked freely. Shadows chased her. Darkness itself followed her, and it seemed to be everywhere, engulfing everything she once knew.
The world had darkened into a photograph negative. Only her house and the church had held their color. That was all the evidence she needed to know the rest was evil. Virginia crouched closer to the pew and pulled another daisy from her pocket as her uncle continued.
“I will fear no evil,” said her uncle. He leaned forward against the lectern. “That’s easy for a mighty king to say, but I will be first to admit that sometimes fear is hard to keep at bay. Sometimes it feels impossible.”
Several among the mourners nodded their agreement. Others simply pulled out handkerchiefs and dabbed at their eyes.
“But I tell you now,” her uncle continued, “it is only through the darkness of fear that the light of your courage can shine. Lean on your Lord, brothers and sisters, and it will shine like the sun.”
A scattered chorus of amen came from the congregation, but the handkerchiefs remained in hand.
Virginia had felt quite clever avoiding the shadows as she followed her body to the church, or was it as it pulled her? She wanted to have courage, to be brave, but there was still so much she didn’t understand. So much to fear. What would happen when that body left the church? She couldn’t be blamed for being a little scared.
More than a little, if she was being honest.
When her uncle finished, her father rose to take his turn speaking, and Virginia shifted quickly into his place on the pew. She felt safer there, shielded between her mother and grandmother, and soon she forgot to be afraid. Her grandmother pulled tighter her shawl.
Virginia’s father held the lectern like he needed its support to stand. “Ginnie was—“ he breathed deeply, as if searching for air. “Sorry,” he said. “I have notes.” He struggled to pull a paper from the inside pocket of his coat, and when he finally had it smoothed out, he continued. “Ginnie was our angel. She was bright and curious, clever and beautiful. She’d twirl at a tea party and chase frogs at the creek, all in an afternoon.”
Her father spoke on, but Virginia’s attention was stolen away as a shadow emerged behind her casket, and her feeling of comfort disappeared. The vague and dark shape rose up with bone-white eyes and a ghostly flame dancing upon its head. Virginia covered her mouth.
The negative man hovered at the casket and bent nearer to the child inside, seeming to search for something. Virginia drew closer to her mother. Her mother pulled her scarf tighter to her neck.
Her father’s words found her again, “She never backed down from a challenge. Even when she—“ He knuckled the tears from his eyes. “She kept fighting to the end. There was no stopping—“ He struggled to continue, softly sobbing whenever he tried.
She’d seen her father cry for the first time when her grandfather died.
This was the second.
And then the shadow snapped straight, and swept up beside her father. It paused there beside him, and for a moment, it simply hovered above the crimson carpet of the sanctuary. Then it disappeared into the natural shadows of the mourners seated across the aisle.
Virginia rushed to her father and tried to hug him, for his comfort and hers. Her arms passed through his body like a dense fog. She could almost feel him, but not quite, not enough. She felt only helplessness.
She looked back to her mother. She wanted to turn everything back to normal, to make everything—everyone—happy again. But the negative man emerged from the shadows, and as it slipped right into her place on the pew, she felt there was nothing she could do. Virginia reached for her father, but grasped only air.
The shadow reached for Granny Pearl.
For all she still had to learn, Virginia was certain of one rule in her new world: the dead couldn’t touch the living. She had tried to kiss her mother and felt nothing, tried to hug her father and failed. It could not be done. But the negative man waved his shadowy hand across her grandmother’s cheek, and with a whisper of movement, brushed her hair aside. And in that moment, Virginia learned something new about being dead: she didn’t understand it at all.
Virginia fled behind her casket, collapsing to the other side. She had thought the shadow was looking for her. Was it after her grandmother instead? Could she do anything to stop it? She squeezed her eyes shut and braided another daisy to the chain. She felt a tremor in her chest. She felt a shiver through her spirit, like the ripple of a rock thrown into a pond. Fear.
At the lectern, her father found his words, “She was afraid, of course. God, we all were. But like my brother pointed out, you have to be afraid before you can be brave.” The tears came again.
“It’s okay, John,” her uncle said, putting an arm around her father’s shoulders. “It’s okay.”
Virginia’s father nodded and smiled, weakly. He hugged his brother and started toward his seat. As he stepped away he said, almost to himself, “She was the bravest girl I’ve ever known.”
And wasn’t it true? Hadn’t she been brave when the carriage horse kicked her? Even when her blood mixed with her tears and her mother screamed for help? Even when her father carried her to her bed and the doctors came so soon after?
And even when she just couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer…
“Don’t be scared,” she told her parents. “I’m not.”
But then she woke up in another place, a world of shadows just out of sight, and of sounds just beyond hearing, and Virginia afraid, suddenly, to find herself among them.
She was brave in life.
Now she had to be brave in death.
Virginia shoved her braided daisies into her pocket and steeled all the courage in her soul. She flew into the air above the casket, floating there, crushing fear with courage. “Get away from my grandma!”
Her father turned back toward the casket, pausing for a moment. He wiped his eyes, then continued to his seat. Ahead of him, the shadow rose above the bench, its white hair dancing like fire as it hovered over Virginia’s seated family.
“Go away,” Virginia said. “Leave my family alone.”
The ghost-white eyes of the negative man narrowed, and Virginia was afraid it wouldn’t be going anywhere. Her father took his seat and wrapped his arm around her mother, neither aware of the dark form above them.
“Go!” shouted Virginia, finished with fear. She lunged forward.
The shadow fled.
She chased it down the aisle of the church until it shot through the closed double doors. Virginia followed, brave and proud as she jumped through the doors as easily as jumping into a creek.
Then she froze.
Outside stretched the landscape of a negative world. Virginia no longer saw the negative man, or rather, she didn’t know which one it was. Skeletal trees reached toward an inky black heaven. Shadowy figures floated above bone-white blades of grass, appearing and disappearing against a mourning sky. And Virginia remembered the darkness as she first saw it.
Her bright world of hope and happiness had, in an instant, become a world of darkness and death. No longer did the sun shine outside her bedroom window. No longer did the robin sing its morning song. Then she had wished to be at church and was, and in the light of the church she thought the darkness was over. Now she knew it had followed her.
Everything had been taken by death along the way, leaving the church its next victim, and her family there inside.
Virginia flew back to her parents, crouching at their feet as her uncle spoke at the lectern as if the world outside hadn’t died. She pulled the daisy chain from her gown. It felt brittle and dry in her hand as she reached for a fresh flower.
And found none.
The delicate petals she’d already braided lay wilted and crumbling in her hand, so Virginia shoved the chain back into her pocket and squeezed her eyes shut. She held her knees and rocked and tried to forget the negative man, the dead world, everything. She wished more than anything her mother could hold her.
How did she think she could fight off the shadow? She was a child. She shouldn’t even be here. Virginia shivered. But I’m safe in the church, she thought. I’m safe in the church. She tried to convince herself, but she didn’t believe it.
Her uncle began to pray in his slow drawl, but Virginia wasn’t listening. She was trying desperately to not be dead. Then her great-aunt began to play a closing hymn, the haunting notes of the organ echoing through the church. Several of her uncles and cousins gathered around her casket, ready to carry her body to its final resting place.
Virginia reached for her mother, grasping nothing. She reached again, and again. Don’t pull me along this time. Let me stay here. Please.
And then…
“I hope she’s ok,” her mother whispered.
“I know she is,” her father whispered back.
Virginia pulled the flowers from her pocket and looked again at her daisies, dead in her hand. Death followed her, and somehow she knew it would take everything in its path. But she could stop it. She knew that now. She’d been right that she shouldn’t be here, but she’d been wrong about where here was.
The dead world surrounded the church and her family couldn’t even see it. But she could, and it was time to face it. To face the truth. She wasn’t meant to be there, as much as she wanted to be. Death came for her. Just her. And it would all go away if she went with it.
Courage.
Virginia wrapped the dying daisy chain into a crown and she felt a growing confidence swell in her chest. She had almost hugged her father, and the negative man had moved her grandmother’s hair. If that shadow could do it, the bravest girl could, too. She closed her eyes and focused her strength, and squeezed her mother’s hand. She felt warmth. Her mother looked down as if she felt it, too.
“I’m ok,” Virginia said.
And if her mother heard her or not, she smiled, and that was enough.
The brave soul of Virginia rose above the mourners. She hovered in the aisle, ready to face the darkness waiting beyond the doors. She was the bravest girl her father ever knew. Even death couldn’t take that away.
Virginia swept down the aisle, clutching her crown of daisies. Her spirit shivered as the fear struggled to keep its hold. Virginia refused to give in, determined to move forward, to keep the darkness from her family.
Even when the negative man slipped back into the church, Virginia refused to stop. As the shadow stood, Virginia flew forward, prepared to explode right through it with all the strength she had. She would never back down again.
The shadow shimmered.
The shadow lightened.
Like a developing photograph, the negative man eased into focus, and Virginia hesitated as the hint of a man grew clearer, waving his arms at her. As it solidified, she stopped. She knew him. His eyes shifted from bone-white to glistening light blue; his fiery hair cooled to a warm brown.
“Ginnie?” The distant voice crackled like a dusty record. “Can you hear me?”
“Grandpa?”
“Yes, dear,” he said, his mouth curling into a smile.
Virginia leaped into his arms.
Tears fell along her cheeks and around the corners of her smile. She squeezed him as tight as she could as he spun her around in the aisle. He kissed her forehead and set her down.
“I thought you were chasing me,” said Virginia, “and Grandma, and—“ She reached into her pocket and fiddled with her daisies. They felt smooth in her hand, but she hardly noticed.
“I was so afraid when I died,” he said, caressing her cheek. “I wanted to be here for you.” He looked over Virginia’s shoulder and toward her grandmother. Tears glistened in his eyes. “And I just miss her so much.”
Warmth filled Virginia’s soul, pushing away the cold of the shadows, the frozen fear.
She stood back from her grandfather and looked back at her parents and her grandmother. Her great-aunt played on, but the melody faded.
“Will they be okay?”
“With time,” said her grandfather. “You and I will be together now, and your other grandparents are excited to see you again.” He looked over her shoulder. “And when it’s their time, they’ll come home to us, too.”
Virginia pulled the daisies from her pocket. They shone like stars in her hand. She put on her braided crown and took her grandfather’s hand, nodding to him with a smile as he led her to the door. Outside, the darkness had disappeared.
The renewed world seemed more vibrant than ever. The sky spread like a wash of watercolor, reaching across a lush landscape that stretched on for eternity. The trees around the church stood proudly, and the air smelled sweeter than a room full of lilies and daisies.
As she walked on into the new world, Virginia tucked a curl behind her ear. In the reflected light of the golden sun, her crown of daisies shone like a halo.
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Header photo by Stuart Timms on Unsplash
Justin Williams 