15.

“Pehhh...payyy.”

Mano’s eyes had been closed for so long that everything looked brighter when he finally opened them again. Everything was so bright, Mano thought he was dead. The black poodle was sitting on a rock. The black cloud was gone. The Reckoner must have already stood itself back up, and his blood must have already washed away in the rain.

The top of a fern twitched and squeaked. Mano walked carefully toward the fern, ready to fight, and saw his mother’s bed sheet there. He must have carried it with him into the woods in the hours before the sun came up. A sharp pain flashed behind Mano’s eyeballs when he saw his mother’s sheet. It was better now to be dead, Mano thought. Death is nothing, and nothing was all he could handle at the moment.

Mano carefully pushed the fern aside with his foot. Two black birds were pecking at the sheet, trying to get out. In the folds, they were preening their wings. They had pecked two perfectly round holes from the center of the sheet. He unfolded his mother’s sheet to look at the birds. They were just as he had always imagined. Once free, they swooped through the air in three giant circles and then landed on the bare branches of The Reckoner. They were the most beautiful animals he had ever seen.

“How did you get in there?”

Mano removed his glasses, and slipped the sheet over his head. He lined up the pecked-out eye holes over his eyes, and placed his glasses over his eyes on the outside of the sheet. Everything lined up just perfectly. He felt at home inside his mother’s bed sheet. The black birds perched on top of his ghost head. Their claws scratched at his head lovingly

“Thank you, ma’am. They’re just what I wanted.”

Then he floated back out through the woods the same way that he imagined he must have come in.

Back in town, in the back chamber of Lady Blood, Father Mothers III was preparing for the next weekend’s fiery homily about the contract with hell that non-believers were signing. With Lil’ Jorge watching from his stool in the corner, Mothers practiced gesturing wildly with his hands in front of a mirror. He pushed his finger into his fist, back and forth, to illustrate what God’s Finger was doing to those who sinned. Lil’ Jorge attempted the gesture with his own fingers, but it just looked like he was polishing an apple.

“No, like this.” Mothers held Lil’ Jorge’s wrist with one hand, and pulled on his index finger with the other. “We’re being killed like this because we’re sinners.”

Lil’ Jorge nodded and smiled.

Mothers’ teeth jutted outward like a beaver as he practiced a few lines about the black birds of Hell. “If you see a black bird, it’s here only because it lost its way in the forests of Hell.”

“What’s a bird?” asked Lil’ Jorge, still bumbling on his own with the God’s Finger gesture.

“They’re from Hell. They’re bad. They swallow boys and girls who didn’t go to church, and they carry their bodies in their bellies back to Hell with them. They vomit the boys’ and girls’ bodies back up in Hell and the boys and girls would have to live there forever, in Hell.”

“Is this right?” Lil’ Jorge got it just right.

Mano walked down the hill through the woods back toward The Cure. A small crowd had already gathered on the edge of the river right where he had left Pepe’s body. Now that he was a ghost with two black birds on his head, Mano felt more alive than ever before. He felt good and bright, and he wanted to shine like an oracle for everyone in town. He knew this would be a perfect chance for him to announce his first revelations, he thought, to tell them a few things he had recently learned about death.

Mano thought he could save the people of Pie Time from their irrational fears of God’s Finger. He thought that his new job could become making revelations, and the people of Pie Time would write about his revelations instead of writing about God’s Finger. There is no Hell in death—this Mano could prove. The word would get out. Everyone would be freed from needing church, freed from their fear of death, from their fear of fear. And they would have Mano to thank for that.

During his walk toward the crowd, Mano was considering his first revelation. He decided he would start by addressing everyone as friends. “Friends, gather around. I am a new ghost. I am real and am in no way a threat to you. I am just a thing, not evil, but just a thing just like you, how you are just things. I love being dead. And you will soon love it, too,” he’d start. He’d kiss dead Pepe for the first time, and everyone would watch their kiss. Mano smiled.

“Pepe!” Mitzi Let screamed. It was a sound that pierced the constant rushing water noise of The Cure from inside the gathering crowd.

Pepe’s body was dead on the ground in the center of about a dozen people. Everyone there was examining Pepe’s dead body, and the strange thing that had become of it. Enid Pine was crying, and she seemed to be answering everyone’s questions.

“Pepe! My baby!” screamed Mitzi.

Mano, the ghost with his glasses over the eyeholes, standing inside his dead mother’s bed sheet, stood still on the opposite side of The Cure, near the footbridge, watching. He was too far away to hear Mitzi’s screams from the other side of the river. Still, he figured everyone would be able to hear him from where he stood. Everyone’s backs were to him while he started.

“Friends! Friends!” Mano yelled, and gestured his hands to bring the crowd over the footbridge toward him. But no one could hear Mano. “Friends! Gather around!” He tried again.

Instead, Mitzi shouted at the sky.

Mano persisted. “Friends! I am dead, but...” he started.

No one turned around.

Mano looked closer at the gathering and felt his heart go hollow. He saw through a few legs and arms that someone was holding Mitzi as she leaned forward on her hands and knees.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” That’s all Enid could seem to say.

Mano quietly spoke only to himself inside the sheet in front of his mouth. “I am just a thing,” he mumbled. “I am not evil. I am just a thing—just like you...you and me are just things.” His breath got shorter. “I love...I love...” He couldn’t quite say it.

A few minutes earlier, Mary and Mimi Minutes had interrupted Mothers’ homily practice in the back chamber of Lady Blood, with the news of the most recent death. Mothers approached the crowd, trailed by Lil’ Jorge. He was adjusting his white collar, having just been summoned, and was dressing himself as he walked.

“I love Pepe,” Mano continued now as he watched the crowd swallow up Mothers and Lil’ Jorge from afar. He spoke almost silently, only to himself.

The chattering from the crowd grew as loud as the river until a few minutes later Mothers rose out of the middle of it on the shoulders of The Builder and The Baker. “Friends!” he yelled, “gather around!”

Mano’s ghost body felt reluctant to cross the footbridge to gather around.

“...We are all in the presence of Evil...” continued Mothers.

Mano tried to interrupt as loudly as he could from the other side of the river. “No, no, that’s just it, we are not!” He could no longer feel any warmth in his chest. “That’s what I was trying to tell you...”

Mothers continued uninterrupted, “...We’re being punished for our sins...” He was gesturing now with his index finger and fist, taking his finger out to point at everyone. “His finger is pointing out Evil!”

“No, no, see, look at me!” shouted Mano.

But no one looked at Mano. Everyone was crossing themselves while looking at Mothers.

“What was in it?” Nana Pine whispered

The Banker answered her by pointing at a broken accordion. A few minutes earlier, The Butcher had thrown the accordion to the ground in a fit of rage that the people of Pie Time hadn’t seen publicly for many years.

The Butcher screamed at Pepe. His screams became a long slow whine. “My son, the sinner.” He kicked the accordion until it looked like a small bag of logs.

“What is it?” Nana asked him.

The Banker shrugged his shoulders.

No one but Mano seemed to know what an accordion was. “Your son loved polka music,” said Mano underneath his sheet, but still no one heard him. And still no one noticed his ghost body standing on the other side of The Cure. Mano felt like he couldn’t move. He could only watch Pepe’s body from a distance as it was wrapped up in a blanket. He watched as everyone eventually left. Mano had nowhere to go.

“Pepe? Where are you? We can kiss now. We’re dead together.”

Once the sun went down, Mano finally crossed The Cure over the footbridge. He pushed his arms out from beneath his mother’s bed sheet, and picked up the accordion. It felt heavier than he expected. He liked the weight in his arms. He smelled it, and hugged it, and as he hugged it to his chest, to his own surprise, he heard himself playing the instrument beautifully. He didn’t know that he knew how to play the accordion, but he did. He discovered that he already knew how to play three dirges. So he played all three. And when he tried to play a fourth, he noticed that he was just playing the first dirge again, so he played the first dirge again, in its entirety. And then the other two again, too. All night, his arms moved in and out, in and out, and out came the dirges.