Organ - Chapter 27
ORGAN
Chapter Twenty Seven
They had been warned ahead of time by the police that this might happen, Mary watched from the backseat of the car at officers in rain coats and large hats moved away the protestors screaming at her and banging on the car. Their signs reading hateful things and untruthful words.
“Murderer!” and “Monster!” they screamed at the line of funeral cars that filtered into the gates of the cemetery.
Accompanying bangs on the roof from their bags and various baton wielding aggravators. The police did an excellent job of keeping them off the property as Marys family filtered in, some of her relatives hurling back insults behind as the cars made their way through the angry masses. Lies and regurgitated rumours had spread since Oscars death, he was being touted as some now famous Greenwood killer who slaughtered two people and attempted to kill a third, Katie being the third of course. Mary did not believe a word of it and having known that Katie was behind at least one of these rumours had destroyed any chance of reconciling with the young nurse who recovered somewhere unknown in the town. Today was not about any of the lies, truths, or in-betweens, it was not about Katie, Boothe or any of the others that Mary believed failed her son. Today she was going to bury Oscar Rubens and with him bury that last flickering light that kept her soul powered on inside. Dreadful days are often taken in stride, today Mary would bury her only son, it was over.
Thick droplets of Rain miserable with dull greyness hit the windscreen of the limousine; Mary sat alone in the backseat with a small reef of white flowers beside her that stuck into an oasis of soaked foam to preserve them. The drivers and funeral directors seemed to be purposefully ignoring her now, not even a glance thrown back towards the lone mother existing in empty space behind them as they made their way to the cemetery Mary had chosen for her sons final resting place, Greenwood has two cemeteries consisting of a traditional stone and slab arrangement and a woodland park with random graves littered about for those with extra cash and a love for the outdoors, Mary chose the traditional in a grave beside her husbands. It gave her no comfort to know that they would be together again, father and son, but without their mother, she was tasked with staying behind, a hell she now felt she deserved, a purgatory for her own suffering.
By the time they arrived at the cemetery, the rain had grown into a misting spray, Mary looked about the sea of lifeless once-white and black upright gravestones without a motion of emotion in her face.
“Do you want to take a moment Mary?” one of the funeral directors called back to her from the front seats. “We still have a good bit of time until the officiate will be here, I will see if the reception has a cup of tea for you okay?” the gentle toned man said to Mary, hoping no doubt that he could somehow ease her unimaginable suffering with a kind gesture of locating a warm brew, it was hollow in real comfort and Mary still spoke no words.
She meekly raised her head and nodded faintly to the director before he raced out of the car to get his umbrella up quick enough before his suit was ruined by the damp fall. It wasn’t long before he bobbed back into the window of the limousine and handed Mary a cup with a plastic lid splattered with rain drops, she could not bring herself up with her stare that still gazed out in terrifying trance into the seemingly endless lines of slabbed memorials. The tea was burning Marys hand, but she never once loosened her grip. Oscars funeral was something Mary had never imagined she would be planning months ago; it was never something that had even entered her reality, after all the saying is always:
‘No parent should have to bury their child.’
Oscars grandparents had been helping, since the unfathomable news reached her that her son was deceased at the scene of their home, it was all she could do to even pull herself from her bed in the morning. Every day since was spent surrounded by extended family, grandparents that had been distant now became a hovering presence and a constant reminder of her lost boy. The kitchen overflowed with meals, frozen and fresh baked, they lined the fridges shelves and filled the counters slowly attracting the flies from the back garden. Mary had not had the stomach to eat so these dishes collected and piled up in the same kitchen she found her son and if you believe the papers, her sons last victim, the guests noticed but said nothing but occasionally someone would offer to clean up or just walk in and begin stacking the expired meals. Mary paid them no attention. Then came the funeral directors, the cemetery administrators, and the hospital lawyers to discuss various aspects of Oscars death and his burial arrangements, it was an ever-flowing waterfall of well-meaning humanity seeping into her grief, she was tired of it but knew it would all be over soon, when her boy was in the ground and laid to rest, Mary prayed the noisy gossip and domestic chaos would be over. But in her heart she still craved the answers, what really happened to her boy, did he really do the things they are saying he did, could someone have saved him before it was too late, it was the lonely moments that these questions ricocheted around her skull and every ponder would leave her emptier as they drained her remaining morsels of humanity.
Mary sat in the funeral car for an hour alone, the drivers and funeral director pottered around collecting and guiding different guests from Oscars life that came to pay their final respects to the young, deceased son., The ghosts moving past the cars window did not disturb her, she simply sat and stared off into oblivion and beyond hoping that something would snap her out of this living festering nightmare, with some holy mercy perhaps wake up her into the arms of her baby boy once last time. A light tap on the window snapped her head to attention in a jump, it was Oscars grandparents and Marys in-laws, she rolled down the window that stuttered against the rubber seal and held a hand limply out the window, her bare wrist exposed and caught the cold drops of rain still scattering across the cemetery. Oscars grandmother held his mother’s hand tightly and lent into the window clumsily knocking her purse against the car, it caught the drivers attention for a second but after seeing the scenario, simply accepted a potential scratch was likely more acceptable than upsetting guests at a funeral as raw emotionally as this one. His grandmother, Tracey, pulled Marys head into hers firmly and the two breathed heavily together, Tracey gently stroked her face and gave her wrist another light kiss.
“We will see you over there sweetie” she gently whispered as she released Marys hand back into the car window.
His grandfather simply stood in shrinking hatred of the day, the surroundings and the weather, his feint nod to Mary went unnoticed. He had become a quiet man since his son Thomas had passed, diminished in his conversations and now the elderly man simply spoke when necessary, another light faded by the tragedy of the Rubens vortex. Has there ever been a more inhumane act, than watching a mother, a parent, burying their child he thought to himself, but left the air undisturbed. Mary watched on as the waves of people shambled past in lifeless energy to her sons final resting place, reality was beginning to settle in that this was going to be the day she buried her son and the remainder of her family, but for a moment of clemency the rain was letting up and the guests one by one closed and lowered their umbrellas, holstering them at their sides like blackened rifles at attention, sinisterly hushed became the atmosphere, enough to hear the raindrop bouncing off passing thick shoulder pads on the dense wintery coats, it was a haunting staining white noise. Mary climbed out of the car after being given another knuckle wrap on the window, this time from Leigh the funeral director, the mothers legs felt numb from the hours of sitting around that morning or perhaps simply the stress of the next few hours breaking her down.
The pebbles and clumps of kicked up soil turned under her feet as she barely picked them up, Mary wore flats, the occasional kind meaning words from people she passed fell on deaf ears, faces did not seem familiar or comforting, they were alien and nightmarish, they haunted her with prying gazes seeking to revel and bask in her miserable drama for a days’ worth of gossip. Mary was stopped in her steps by a firm hand on her shoulder, it was Oscars grandfather, Richard, who leaned across the second row of chairs to stop her progressing any further. Richard squeezed her shoulder tightly and she brought her hand up to hold his, a man of few words but desperately protective of the family he still had, the losses fell as personal hits against his ability to keep the Rubens family safe, what they never tell you when someone dies is that the guilt can be a death sentence to the living, and Richard was a shell of his once bubbly self, but he was now there for Mary as physically as he could be without taking her steps for her, they clung to each other in that moment, Richard gently guided her down to her seat that he had dried and covered with his jacket. The cold beneath her legs was bracing, her father-in-law never taking his hand off her shoulder as his wife sat beside him silently sobbing into her blackened stained tissue. It was not long before the funeral director took to the front and began deliberating to the crowd, Mary stared at the grass before her and kept her ears numb to the words.
“Thank you all for coming, we are here to say goodbye to a life taken too soon” She began as the wind occasionally ran through the audience carrying her words louder and quieter like the tides of a blustery beach. “Oscar was a beautiful, charming, and talented young man. His future was bright and his goals even brighter, his loss will truly be felt by all those who counted themselves lucky enough to be a part of his journey from a cheeky little chap running around naked in his front garden, all the way into a proud kind hearted young man” the funeral director carried on without wavering despite many likely disagreeing with her choice of words for the accused killer in the coffin, the words merely a script in her mouth, the loss of her son unmoving to a woman who would be burying someone else’s loved one an hour later.
Mary knew Oscar would have been making jokes the whole time the director was speaking, cracking up about the fake-ness of it all and the unnecessary compliments, Mary saw her sons face in her mind throughout, he was smiling.
After exactly an hour of the funeral director and various friends or family who had the nerves steady enough to speak had finished up, Oscars body inside the dark wooden coffin was slowly lowered into the earth, inch by inch Mary watched as the reality was made fixed in her world, her son was dead and buried. The music was not something Mary had picked as she knew it made minor difference to anyone there, and Oscar would not have cared for some heart wrenching sympathy parade of sad songs, she knew her son well and this would have been what he would have picked. The morbid thought turned her stomach into a tangled knot and creased the lines above her nose, Mary stumbled and caught herself on the upright of a chair in the isle. Richard and Tracey came rushing back from a few feet ahead and comforted the grieving mother as she attempted to steady herself, the rain was starting up again, mercifully it had stopped for the duration of the funeral, but now it trickled a fine spray, and the cool water refreshed her as she shook off the dizziness. Then she saw her, standing a way behind the last row of chairs, almost tucked out of sight but close enough to see the last few inches of Oscar disappearing into the earth forever, Katie had come to the funeral. Her face was solemn and the makeup lines down her cheeks indicated she was suffering, but Mary wanted nothing less than to see this woman’s face at the funeral of her boy, the woman she stilled blamed in part for Oscars worsening and his eventual death.
The serenity of her funeral disposition flew off as a cape being tossed into the wind, Mary lunged forward powering steps towards the nurse and took her by the throat with both hands. The guests looked on in horror and surprise, muffled screams broke out and morphed into masses of discussion behind the tangled pair, Richard and Tracey once again hurried themselves gingerly as the elderly should to Mary and took an arm each, pulling her off the veiled intruder. Katie gasped for air doubling over, but keeping the distraught attacker in her vision, she held up an arm to plead for pause but before she could speak, Mary was back on her baring down ferocious curled fist punches that bounced of Katies temple and forearms when they could defend her. Richard grabbed Mary once again and this time attempted to yank her forcefully back from the floored Katie, in doing so Marys weight caused him to stumble backwards and crash down into a pile of the upright chairs behind him, his wife rushed to his aid screaming and the sound of her distressed call snapped her from the grips of the rage inducing blind hatred for a moment. Mary turned to face Richard who lay writhing in pain atop a folded wooden seat, his wife crying and patting him all over in a panicked attempt to find any injuries. Other guests had circled and many where now assisting the fallen elderly grandparent while others assisted in bringing Katie to her feet and handing her myriad of items and clothing that had fallen from her person when Mary had begun her assault.
“How fucking dare, you show your face here!” Mary screamed across the space between them, the emptiness now acting as a paper-thin demilitarised zone of conflict.
“How dare you come to his funeral!” she continued with gut wrenching in every note of her wail.
Katie looked into her eyes and saw nothing but the swallowing black pain, her eyes found the floor away from the mother instead as it accepted her stare with less vitriol.
“I just wanted” Katie attempted to speak but as her words half left her lips Mary hurled her purse across the space, it locked in like a guided missile and struck her in the chest knocking Katie back a pace and losing her bravery to speak.
“I want you to leave” Mary ordered, her words decreasing in volume but gaining in severity. “I want you to leave….now” she screamed.
“Not safe” Katie blurted out involuntarily, the noise almost certainly coming from her direction.
“What did you say! I will kill you; I swear to god I will kill you” Mary continued losing herself in the anger only a mother losing her son could conjure. “I have lost everything…and YOU CALLED HIM A MURDERER…you told them he wanted to kill ME!” Mary held herself together but exploded once again at the end of her sentence.
Her feet slammed forward, and the crowd gasped prepared for another onslaught from the distraught mother.
“I told the truth, I cared for him too Mary” Katie attempted to shout but it fell into more of a whimper,
the words barely sailing hushed into the wind and danced tauntingly around Marys ears. The mothers eyes looked up into the sky as tears streamed down her red exasperated face.
“You didn’t know him. Nobody knew him and you all let him down” Mary stated still looking up with her eyes now closed feeling the spray against her face.
Katie began to open her mouth but was barked down again by Mary bursting into reply.
“….he was my son. My baby. He asked for your help, and you let him die” she sobbed as the words fell from her lips into the grass. “He wasn’t a monster” Mary followed; this last sentence pierced Katie.
Mary saw it in her eyes as the nurse lost her composure and began weeping in tandem.
“He was sick…and you just let him out into the cold world to die” Mary fell to her knees as she finished the agonisingly raw vent.
“Leave” she mumbled once more in between wailing heaving breathes.
Katie wiped her tears, took one last look at the flowers that sat upon Oscars portrait near his grave, turned and left as the audience surrounded Mary and Richard, both needing help in the wet mud.
Later that evening Mary was escorted by her in-laws, Richard, and Tracey, to the wake for her son, Richard was declaring that he was fine, and it was just something to forget about. It was a quiet room in the back of the local church, Oscar did not care for religion, not that Mary knew, but the venue was the only one available on the day of Oscars funeral, so it was chosen without much resistance from his mother. Mary sat at a table away from the bulk of the crowd that loitered in the middle of the room and grazed like locust over the buffet put on by some friends of Marys and the church organisers who put some of the booking fee towards finger sandwiches and various fruit platters. Whispers and quick glances, nosey stares, found their way towards the mother of the departed who sat alone, Mary noticed them from the corner of her eye but paid them no mind. It was going to be discussed for a while, her scuffle with Katie at the funeral, but it was just another moment in her seemingly never-ending night-terror from which she still could not awaken.
“I got you some food and a cup of tea sweetheart” Tracey interjected across Marys daydreams; she gently placed the plate on her lap and the tea by her side.
Mary nodded in appreciation and created for her a cracked smile that bared no teeth, it was heartbreakingly similar to the fake smile her son used when getting around his everyday life, yet another trait the young man inherited from his mother.
“Do you think he would have minded me punching someone’s light out at his…” Mary began joking about the fight with Tracey, the word funeral stuck in her throat, it made her well up with tears swarming to her eyes once again.
Tracey took the plate off Marys lap, replaced it with her hands wrapping around her dirtied fingers.
“He would have loved you sticking up for him, don’t listen to what they are saying. We know our boy better” Tracey laughed back at her letting the tears fall down her cheeks in solidarity, it brought a smile to Marys mouth and a light laugh that felt foreign given the circumstances.
Tracey chuckled and took in a big breath before puffing out a warm gust of tense air,
“I am so sorry for this” she said in hushed wobbling tones.
“I know” Mary replied as she gripped her hands tighter around her mothers-in-law that still found shelter in her lap,
“No. I mean, I am so sorry for everything you have been through” Tracey continued closing her eyes to help her get these choking words out. “You have been through so much. I couldn’t imagine finding the strength to carry on. But you will, and you have to, for Oscar and for Thomas” she spoke out her comforting poetry with love before taking Mary, now sobbing into her hands, pulling her instead into her shoulder.
The hours passed and the two shared the evening sat comforting one another, using each other’s clothing as tear receptacles, and telling short still raw stories about Marys son and her late husband. It was just after midnight when Mary finally worked up the courage to go home, the thought of crossing the threshold and knowing it would be an empty night without both her husband and her son was crippling her movements. Richard had dropped her off and gave her a warm cuddle and a kiss before taking Tracey and himself home on the other side of Greenwood, it was a long drive and the couple tended to stay home after hours, but needs must, and Mary was in no state to drive. She said her goodbyes and fumbled into her purse, dented and scuffed from being used as a weapon at the funeral, shame swept over her at the touch of the dented corners of her bag, but they drifted away as swiftly as they arrived. Mary found her keys and hesitated once again placing them into the lock of the front door, swinging the door open slowly she stood at the threshold and watched into the dark abyss of her empty family home it was familiar and only reminding her of that night she found the body, it was lifeless, it felt unwelcoming and cold sending a spine-tingling chill up her arms and setting off a trail of goosebumps that she now wore as armour.
“This cannot be real” Mary whispered stepping through the doorway and dropping her purse to the floor, no longer protective over it for obvious reasons. Hours passed into the early morning and Mary still had not dared fall asleep.
Terrified anxieties crept about her delirious state threatening her with nightmares of the losses she’s had, sleeping was a terrifying prospect, so Mary sat watching TV in the living room nestled in her bathrobe after washing off the day’s grime and tidying up her scuffed knees and palms from her fight with the uninvited Katie. Eventually her body demanded she let it rest, her eyes becoming weighted curtains begging to be closed, so she switched off the television and placed her empty cup onto the coffee table that she rested her feet on. Mary made her way to the staircase and climbed slowly for her bedroom; her solemn march was interrupted by a glimpse of something outside the window of the stairwell. Mary saw someone walking around outside her home.
“Is that real?” she pondered under her breath to herself as she peered around the windows edges at the exterior of her front drive.
Then the unmistakable sound of the pebble dashed side passage being scuffed broke the twilight silence, Mary was terrified, taking slow steps back down the staircase, she found herself to the front door of her home and peered through the peephole, shaking as she placed her hands on either side of her face to steady her view. Her breaths being so heavy caused the noise to be muffled, but there it was again, the scuffing steps of someone treading around the pebbles outside her home. Mary cut away her fear and summoned the courage, or resignation, that only a grieving mother without a safety net could conjure up, swinging her door open she stepped out courageously onto her front porch and stared around frantically in the direction of the noise.
“Who’s out here?” she screamed into the darkness. “I have a gun” she continued threatening into the night air.
No reply came, Mary sensing her vulnerability stepped back inside, dead bolted the door and went for her phone to alert the police, she shook with disbelief at the idea that this was the day that she would deal with a potential home invader or another hateful protestor of her sons name, the day she buried her child. As she began dialling the number for the police, it rang momentarily before Mary ended the call, another noise was calling her attention, this time from upstairs and it was a noise she recognised. Mary tiptoed her way to the top of the stairs and onto her landing, facing a corridor of closed doors she breathed deep and stepped across to Oscars door.
“What am I doing?” she spoke to herself as she reached for the handle and swung the door open slowly, clearing the frame she stepped in and took in the darkness allowing her eyes to settle.
“Oh my god” she proclaimed into the void.
On the floor was Oscars remote for his projector, her son would often hook it up, watch his movies alone when they had a fight, it was an extremely common occurrence for him to fall asleep in bed with it on his sheets and knock it off when he would roll over to face the wall, his mother complaining at every loud thump it made in the early hours. It was now lying just beside his bed in the middle of the floor alone.
“Oscar?” she pleaded into the emptiness, “Are you here?” Mary continued as her tears filled her eyes. “I am here baby; I am not going anywhere” Mary let the tears fall and she picked it up and climbed onto her sons bed.
Curling her knees into her chest and drifting to sleep as the water works dried about her face. As she fell into snatching slumber, Mary allowed her eyes to flicker closed and open, in the glimpses as she would fall asleep she saw her boy laying in front of her spooned into her stomach facing away from her, Mary smiled smelling the back of his hair and could have sworn the warm hair-raising words filled her ears, real or not the mother needed to hear them,
“Goodnight Mum.”
