>>> more the water to seep onto the sheet.
Anstice and the undertaker now stood spellbound, their arms supporting the faint Dugal. They spake not a word.
There was no need for such unnecessary activity. They were in the presence of wonderment. Macabre, but fascinating wonderment.
Under the wet veil began the motion of the dead body once more, only now, it was not merely an arm moving, but every part of her that had become drenched.
Through the off-white veil they could see her marble skin over bony frame, moving with immense grace. Her arm rowed continuously forward, her left leg lifted somewhat and then came down and it did so a few times over.
Angus motioned to Ronald.
He moved the bucket under the water and again the dead body became as dead once more. Inanimate completely, void of any life or movement whatsoever it lay on the slab like the corpse it was. All present gasped.
They looked at each other as pirates who had discovered a chest in a place no chest could be found.
A treasure no discovery could measure. Angus shook his head madly, laughing, eyes wide in happy astonishment.
"She is swimming," he announced, a lunatic smile painting his face. "She is swimming!"
He bellowed to his unnerved audience and briefly explained that his grandmother had longed for one last swim in the ocean before she died.
At first they though him mad.
"You be daft, master Angus, it is blasphemy to justify such necromancy as a wish granted post mortem!" the undertaker called, holding up his man Dugal, who was clearly not fit for such a show.
Angus locked eyes with Anstice. She stood mute, but her expression was not altogether one of disapproval.
He looked upon the fascinated eyes of Ronald and knew he had an ally.
He had made up his mind.
Lady Mayem would have her swim. Angus, a stout fellow, put his arms under the freezing corpse of his beloved grandmother and began to lift her to the religious protests of the undertaker who dared not even look upon the abhorrent act.
Carefully he picked her up in his arms and Anstice lunged to save the veil from falling from the old dame, revealing her monstrous nudity and thus disrespecting her body. Ronald and Anstice followed the daft Angus, who was singing himself a happy birthday as he waltzed his way through the echoing canal corridor to the outside world where his car awaited.
The three living and one veiled dead then drove to the edge of the North Sea, amidst the mild rain which obscured the landscape in gray and gale. It was dead silent in the vehicle.
Each of the three contemplated not only the happening, but also the outcome.
This was surely an illegal act, but the fascination and dared they think, magic, of it all was simply too precious to pass up.
So they came finally to the cobbled and coarse seaside and Angus spared no time in removing the tall cadaver from the car.
He mumbled to her as if she had hearing. He told her of his birthday gift to her - to him - that she would swim one last time.
Anstice was concerned for his mental state, but she knew that grief had a heavy hand on the heart and considered it his consolation. Ronald had no consideration for deeper things. His only motivation was macabre entertainment and nothing more.
Angus placed the corpse on the beach, near the tide line and waited for the foam to fetch the lady's essence and usher her gently into the water, as only the ocean knew how.
The three stood sentinel over the sheeted thing and awaited the tide.
Through wind and rain they looked on as the waves guided her in, provoking her movement again with their touch and as the freezing water engulfed her, the limbs began moving, all now, at once to the delight of the onlookers. Under the surface, the sheet abandoned, the corpse of lady Mayem took stride and she elegantly paddled her long legs through the restless waves.
Her head was submerged, still, her face unseen and arcane in the maddening mind of her grandson, who saw her as marvel, god, supreme and laughed like a madman in his boundless success that could never now be undone.
Angus watched, like the others, how his grandmother's long elegant body slid effortlessly through the breakers, smoothly, like a mermaid. He imagined her pure glee and he voiced how he could not imagine a more favourable birthday gift.
His smile was vacant of sanity and his eyes were blank with un-reason.
"Look!" he called, pointing,
"She is swimming! She is swimming once more! It was my wish for her. Really! I made this. I made this on my special day, happen!"
With that, Angus started towards the roaring ocean, his grandmother's dead body still paddling and rowing gracefully right beneath the surface of the waves. Ronald and Anstice summoned him back, but he only heard , glorious bagpipes had infused his mind and he knew she was content. The ice cold grip of the sea took his legs, then his waist, but still he bore forward. He would swim with his grandmother. No joy could trump swimming with his grandmother one last time.
Angus was no stranger to the water. A sailor. A captain. He took to the paralysing temperature with ease and swam to where the corpse was diving and sliding below, and above. Ronald and Anstice stood looking on, unable to join, unable to leave. They watched. They watched.
The heaving waves began to mask Angus' head more frequently and eventually his elated cries went mute and his head was lifted above no more. He was gone. The ocean engulfed him entirely and claimed him for his love and compassion. If at all, that was a legitimate reason as any to die for.
From the tide spewed the sea lady Mayem's corpse. She swam in the shallows until the shallows became beach and as the tide pulled away from her, so did her animation and eventually she lay on the shore, bare and contorted once again in the rain that now failed to move her as it had before. The two people from the morgue collected the cadaver on the beach as they would on a normal day. But this was not a normal day. Not for them. Not for anyone who bore witness to the anomaly they now knew and could not prove.
That day the ocean claimed a sacrifice for the granting of one last wish. A wish so strong in its yearning that it ventured across the natural and the god-will, to appease the heart that had asked it.
Some wishes transcend comprehension and sometimes, when the weather in the soul is just right, and the yearning in the heart is true, the supernatural will afford it.
~~~~ THE END~~~~
© LadyAxe 2011