Goodbye, Lucinda

A short, melancholy story inspired by all things gothic :)

Morning was slowly looming into vision as we stood on the drive. The darkness held itself above our heads, dangling down from the heavens on chains, only inches from crushing us under its bitter embrace. Soon the chains would shorten and the dying night would be hauled upwards, giving way to day.

 

Frigid blasts of air gushed past our faces, blowing our hair awry and reddening the sullen white glow of our cheeks. Emily cried, snatching her teddy bear from the ground and clasping it to her chest, her face burrowed into it, dulling her screams into muffled gulps.

 

“Emily, please,” murmured Mum, her voice hollow. She offered a heavy hand to the child who smacked it away.

 

“Behave yourself,” snapped Dad, his dark eyes burning like hot cinders. Emily looked up at him, then flinched and stared at the floor reticently.

 

I lingered awkwardly next to her, not knowing how to react. Ben, standing far beneath me at his mere seven years, began to tremble. I reached down a comforting hand to pat him gently on the head, ruffling his soft birds’ nest of brown curls.

 

He began to whimper like an apprehensive puppy. I looked up.

 

The car had arrived, long black and gleaming like ochre in the dim lamplight of the street. The array of white lilies in the back window stood stark against the night, commanding stares from every passer-by.  The flowers were piled on top of each other in attempt to conceal the long, morbid casket that lay behind them. The man at the wheel was gaunt and hunched over, his thin legs wasting away on the leather seat he was crumpled into.

 

He caught Mum’s eye and gave a sympathetic smile.

 

Stepping forward with a large sweep of his hand, Dad commanded,” Everyone, in.”

 

He opened the back door and Ben scurried inside, hopping onto the middle seat. I jumped in beside him and Dad slammed the door. He was irate with anger. It burned within him like a flame that he made no effort to conceal. It glared out through his eyes like a beacon, through the crashes in his footsteps as he took three thunderous strides away from the car.

 

Mum carried Emily to the other side of the car and strapped the little girl tenderly into the chair, placing the teddy bear softly onto her lap.

“There you go, darling,” she whispered softly. She took a few seconds to take Emily’s hand in hers, smiling solemnly and muttering something I couldn’t hear under her breath. Emily blinked at her a few times with two eyes as round as copper coins.

 

Mum closed the door slowly, then her face crumpled and she started to cry. She cried so hard that Dad took her carefully by the arm and led her towards the rear end of the car. They got into the back together, Mum beginning to howl.

 

“There, there,” Dad said awkwardly, patting her on the shoulder with a large clumsy paw. Ben, Emily and I were all looking behind us, and I couldn’t help but stare at Mum’s blonde head bobbing up and down and she buried her face into Dad’s overcoat.

 

“Kids,” Dad warned, his glasses flashing as he looked up reproachfully. “Don’t stare, please.”

 

We flipped our heads back round and the engine started, low and guttural like a rolling rumble of thunder. The car edged out onto the road, then sailed off towards the dark abyss of sky that stretched out beyond us.

 

 

 

TWO HOURS LATER:

 

The wind battered us senseless as we stood outside the chapel doors. It intruded like an invisible car, shooting forwards and catapulting Ben aside. Then it reversed and rotated venomously towards Mum before edging towards her with a malevolent bump, almost throwing her off balance.

 

Crowded and impatient, guests squealed like pigs lined up for the abattoir. Dresses cascaded in the wind, rippling obsidian in the low rays of the winter sun. Cold air jetted between bare legs, and hats took flight like carrion crows.

Teeth chattered, and yet time chugged onwards, testing for how much longer we could tolerate its ruthless games.

 

“Such a chilly morning,” a vaguely familiar old lady chirped, attempting to break the icy cage that entrapped us all. No one said anything, although there were a few acknowledging grunts and nods. The old lady smiled sheepishly, turned a shade of pink and looked beyond the crowd, casting her gaze over the sunrise.

 

I turned around. The church which we were stood outside was perched comfortably on a small hill. It was capped with an endearingly crooked spire that cast a rugged charm over the surrounding fields. As I peered down from the hill and over the expanse of tombstones that studded the grass, it felt rather like standing at the top of an elevated seating platform and looking down.

 

My thoughts were interrupted by a squawking Emily. “Mummy, we’re going in!”

I jumped. “Oh!” Awkwardly, I shuffled my way into the chapel with the rest of my immediate family. As the next of kin, we were permitted to enter first to show our love to the deceased.

 

Faded song flourished into full melody as we walked through the doors, past the hesitantly smiling vicar and down the aisle to our seats. Ben threw himself down the furthest from the aisle, huddled against a pillar, and Dad resided next to him. Mum sat one space from the end with Emily cushioned on her knee like a lapdog.

I sat next to Mum, patting her gently on the shoulder with a tender hand. She started to cry.

 

The chorus trickled in like a gentle brook that grew faster by the second, the crashing movement against the rocks drowning out the footsteps and the whispers of the guests filing in: “Are you going to Scarborough Fair… parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme…” The voice was a woman’s: Celtic, haunting and melancholy in the most beautiful sense of the word.

Choking sobs echoed around the church as the guests filed into the seats behind us.

“I know this song,” a man whispered.

“Everyone knows it,” a haggard woman, his wife, scoffed. “Lucinda’s favourite, it was.”

 

Silence.

 

The minister stood at the front of the chapel, smoothing out his robes and giving a discreet, polite cough.

 

“Welcome,” he said. I could sense that all eyes in the room were pinned on him and his bushy white moustache that quivered every time he opened his mouth. Feeling some pathos towards him, I politely averted my eyes. “We are gathered here today to commemorate the loss of a talented and beautiful young lady. Lucinda Collins, a girl loved dearly by her family. By her friends. In so many distinct ways, she brightened up the lives of all of you standing here today. Her story, as you are all aware, is heart breaking and crippling beyond all words, for her life was savagely taken from her and cut tragically short at the age of seventeen.

In no way could one possibly describe the bereavement of those who loved her most…”

 

A teenaged boy with floppy brown hair and a snubbed nose sat on the row behind us. He had been trying to swallow his tears up until now, but I could hear his sobs: shaky gasps, beginning to leak through. A group of girls sat either side of him, sandwiched next to one another along the pew.

 

A girl sat next to him, laying a sympathetic arm across his shoulder. Her hair fluttered in the breeze that sailed in through the open doors. It was green, like wisps of wafting smoke from the cauldron of a witch. Her eyes were heavily dressed in smoky black liner, and they held a wistful, melancholy gaze.

 

It was time for the first prayer. My attention was brought back to the vicar once we were all asked to stand up. The organ streamed into my hearing, and the vicar commenced with another tidy, short cough.

 

“Merciful Father and Lord of all life,” he began. “We praise you that we are made in your image and reflect your truth and light. We thank you for the life of your child, Lucinda, for the love she received from you and showed among us.

“Above all, we rejoice at your gracious promise to all your servants, living and departed, that we shall rise again at the coming of Christ. And we ask that in due time we may share with our sister that clearer vision, when we shall see your face in the same Christ our Lord.”

 

He paused, taking a deep breath as sharp sniffs cut through the air like daggers. Tissues rustled and crinkled.

 

“Amen.”

 

The room repeated the word, and gazes swept to the floor like falling autumn leaves.

 

Soon it was time for Dad to stand up. He lifted his overcoat above his knees, almost throwing it in Ben’s face. The little boy flinched, then sniffed. Dad strode to the where the vicar stood, his face stoic and devoid of all feeling, of all life. The large, interactive screen behind him flashed as an image of a girl came into view. A smiling girl with long dark hair and glinting eyes, flashing a pair of white, slightly pointed teeth. She was sat on a picnic rug, the sky behind her cerulean and dashed with fluffy clouds.

 

Dad lifted his gaze from the floor, to the back of the church. Then he spoke, his voice loud and clear, yet somewhat strained.

 

“Lucinda,” he said. “Was wise beyond her years. She walked and spoke with a grace that few other seventeen-year-old girls could ever hope to possess. She was the force that held this family together like cement, taking care of her siblings and always remaining considerate towards her parents, even when times were hard-going for us all. My daughter,” his voice broke, “was a rare gem, lost from this earth too soon. Far too soon.”

 

His bellow fizzled out into a croaky whisper. He looked vulnerable for a second, his stolid façade slipping away from his face and down to the floor. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. He stood up straight, looking as if he were going to recite or story or a poem, but he muttered under his breath:

 

“She will be truly and sorely missed.”

 

His face grew stern once more and he stormed back to his pew, next to the cowering Ben.

 

The vicar shuffled back into his place in the centre, behind the wooden bible stand. His thin lips morphed into a condoling smile and he recommenced by delivering a second prayer.

 

The service continued in the following fashion: prayers interspersed with the occasional hymn. The intervals between these were filled with howling and compassionate displays of mourning, and each cry drew me further from my austere, reclusive bubble and closer to tears.

 

It was when the pallbearers finally heaved the coffin from the ground that I broke. I was looking at Ben at the time, his blue eyes wistful, the lower lids dotted with beads of tears. He looked calm, yet I knew that he had no longer a single hope in the world. The spirited glow of childhood had long since evaded him, leaving his mouth downturned and his plump cheeks pale.

 

It’s unjust, I thought to myself, “for a child of his age to deal with death. Old enough to understand that he’d never see one of his sisters ever again, and yet too young to have fully appreciated the time spent together.

 

A tear dribbled down my cheek and into the folds of my dress.

 

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20 MINUTES LATER:

 

I watched as the gravediggers slapped clods of soil and clay onto the coffin. Chunk by chunk, the rubble began to obscure the wooden box from sight, and everyone gave a sad sigh: of both grievance and relief entwined into one. The last vestiges of the coffin had soon vanished.

We were standing in a small cemetery, not far from the crooked little church. The frosted grass was thawing out, and the sunlight peered between the naked branches of dead winter trees. Still the wind clawed at our bare faces, yet it carried a faint perfume of pine trees. I breathed it in with closed eyes.

 

The guests straightened their coats, rewrapped the scarves around their necks and blew hot air into the palms of their frozen hands. One by one, they filed out of the graveyard, down the footpath of trodden grass and out through the gate.

 

My family and I stood by the grave for a few more minutes. Mum was still crying, but the tears came more gently now. A spring shower rather than a rainstorm. Dad took her hand and Mum scooped up Emily, smoothing down the red bobble hat over her caramel waves of hair.

 

They turned around one last time.

 

“I love you, Lucinda,” said Mum. “We all do.”

 

I smiled at her, tears clouding my eyes, but she was looking at the grave.

 

“I love you too,” I called out, but she didn’t seem to hear. Nor did Dad. Even little Emily was staring at the grave, her thumb resting between her lips. My voice was simply an echo that fluttered in the wind like a fledgling struggling to fly.

 

They turned to leave.

 

I looked at Ben, and he looked back at me.

 

“Goodbye, Lucinda,” he whispered.

 

My heart fell in my chest. “Goodbye, Ben,” I said. “You were the best little brother I could have hoped to have… thank you.”

 

He smiled at me, and then ran off to join the family, his curls bobbing up and down, wellington boots crunching on the frozen mud. They left the graveyard, closing the gate behind them with a gentle clack.

 

THE END.