River Woman, River Demon by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-30T00:15:11+00:00

When the service ends, we’re invited to pay our respects at the front of the chapel. The woman in the open casket doesn’t feel like Cecilia, the unnatural flip of her hair, as if styled for a 1950s sitcom, and not the natural, beachy waves of the San Diego chick I knew, her outfit muted and stifled as if chosen by Alba herself, her makeup clotted where I remember the bright-red bauble of blood tendrilled from her hairline, soaking her hair, river-wet and dripping. Her hands are folded serenely over a candle, her nails trimmed short and not jagged, not broken from fighting off her attacker. I can’t even think past this thought—her nails broken from fighting off Jericho in the river. Here in this cheap casket, her nails are placid against her dead skin.

There’s a smudging of makeup, the same thick pancake foundation glistening its sham across Cec’s face, that covers her wrists, and—as I lean toward the coffin to whisper under my breath, Goodbye, Witch, friend or foe, I’ll never know—a faint purpling of flowers appears from beneath the buttercream-color the mortician has missed. It’s uncanny. Cecilia’s bracelets of bruises match my own. Only hers haven’t faded post-mortem. I reach out and touch the skin at her wrists and shudder at how waxen she feels—same as her ghost who dragged me out of the house. I mouth, Tell me, Cec. Tell me who did this to you, wrapping my hands around her wrists, then slipping my fingers down her palms as if giving her a reading, tracing her loveline across her lifeline to where it ended in the river outside my living room window. Tell me.

A woman behind me coughs. A few others in line shuffle and murmur.

My time at the casket is over; the woman behind me in a wide-brimmed black hat clears her throat again, louder, and I must unclasp Cecilia’s hands from my own—only I can’t. She’s clasping back. She’s tugging me into the coffin with her. I struggle to pry myself away, but our fingers have turned to flypaper, and she’s grasping tight, the same as the night I summoned her through Santa Muerte. I’m shrieking, flailing, trying desperately to pull away from the coffin. The church-hatted woman is staring at me, aghast, her eyes wide with terror.

“What’s the commotion?” Detective Páramo’s calling in her throaty, official tone from somewhere behind the crowd now surrounding me, the whole funeral transformed into a spectacle of the murderer’s wife, wrestling with the corpse mistress. “Mrs. Moon, please, I have to ask you to step back from the coffin.”

I crane my neck to La Detective, who’s now behind me, followed by Bobak and the social worker. I’m still pulling, trying desperately to pry my hands free. I catch La Detective’s eyes, pleading, help me, and keep tugging. “I can’t,” I choke, weeds in my throat. “She’s holding me.”

“Mrs. Moon, come now, please.”

Fucking La Detective. Thinks I’m messing around. Ruining the funeral on purpose.

Believe me, I’d thought about it.

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