'Don't look, Lillian. Never look into the eyes of a Sin-Eater, you will be as cursed as he is and will forever languish in darkness.'
Lillian Elmes remembers the warning her mother gave her about the town's Sin-Eater only too well.
How could she n...
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The air is thick with death and grief.
There are so many people crammed into the confined space of the parlour room, that for a moment, I cannot breathe.
'Mama,' I whisper and tighten my grip on her hand.
Mama affords me half a smile as she looks down at me, touching the delicate fingers of her other hand to my forehead, but the smile does not reach her eyes. They are stricken and drenched in a pain so deep that I feel its heavy weight pulling on me and I have to look away.
But where to look?
I can look at the solemn faces all around me, grey ghostly visages of woe as if they too are dead and not just spectators to this maudlin scene. I can look at William, as he presses against Papa's coat, his thumb shoved into his mouth, his other hand curled around Papa's leg as if letting go might allow him to fall into some dark abyss below his feet. I can look at Grand-Mama's face, so tightly pinched with sorrow that all the lines converge making her skin look sallower than usual. I can look at the miniature chandelier above our heads, the tiny crystal orbs coated lightly with ashen dust. I can look at the framed pictures that line the walls, where the eyes of Great-Uncle Bernard and Great-Grand-Papa Elmes peer sternly at the child that simply cannot still her feet for fear she may grow as stiff and cold as the man resting in the open casket.
The man I do not want to look at.
Grand-Papa Rampton is still now, but I remember when he fell, clutching his hand over his chest, clawing at his shirt collar as if it were a snake wrapped around his throat. I remember how he bucked and spasmed on this very parlour room floor, his right leg shaking erratically before tensing, his toes en-pointe like a ballet dancer. I remember how his face contorted into shadow and how I had stared at him, unable to unfreeze my body, as his died before my eyes.
I don't want to look at him now, because he does not look like he once did. A man so full of summer light that you would have thought the sun existed under his skin and not in the skies above our heads. A man given to peals of bumptious laughter, often on occasion when it was inappropriate, for which would earn him a telling off from Grand-Mama and then he would tip me a mischievous wink as soon as she turned her attention elsewhere. He is not that man now, but an empty thing, encased in a box only fit to hold dead flesh that will rot soon enough.
No. I do not want to look at him, but I do not know where else to look.
A faint mumbling arises close to the door and I hear a man's voice, deep and monotone, in the hallway. Inside the parlour room, many make the sign of the cross and mutter under their breaths, while Grand-Mama Rampton holds tight to the silver crucifix on the chain around her neck and begins to rock back and forth gently in the armchair. A small pained moan escapes her dry lips.
A man enters the room and stands in the doorway, swaying ever so slightly. He is tall, his silver-tainted curls brushing the top of the doorframe and I feel the room move, almost as if every single person here has just recoiled from his presence, a sea of bodies oscillating as one. I do not know who he is, nor have I ever seen him before, but everyone here seems to know him, and their distaste of this strange man is as palpable as the grief that haunts this place now.
