the chrysanthemums. Whoever nicknamed them the daisies of the dead better not come through here or we’re going to have words.
I think I remember what they smell like, from long ago, when I still had a physical nose and a sense of smell. Not too sweet, not your typical flower smell. More like an herb, or the smell of fresh dirt.
Which is fitting for a cemetery, I guess.
But it’s just too much. All year round our cemetery is monochrome. Most of the tombstones are granite, which can go from the clear gray of a November morning to the dark speckled gray of a starry midnight sky. Some of the older monuments are stone, which is why they’re slowly crumbling, leaving the sculpted angels without hands, or with iron spikes sticking out of their wings. The paths are dark gray cobblestones or light gray gravel.
The only color comes from the few cypress trees on the north side of the cemetery and the rare flowers left by mourners. Mostly, the flowers are plastic.
But for two days a year, our cemetery turns into a loud rainbow. Blue, red, white, yellow, orange…you name a color, I can guarantee someone will find a corresponding chrysanthemum.
And they’ll cover the family graves with them, and by cover, I mean cover. The Cordonnier family down by the well have a classic flat monument with a sober headstone showing names and dates of the deceased. On the Day of the Dead, you cannot even see the color of the monument and just barely make out the top of the headstone through the flowers. This year it’s all blue.
The Perrots have opted for red and yellow and they’ve set the chrysanthemums up in the shape of a cross, one big enough to take on a life-size Jesus.
Not all cemeteries get this much attention, but this particular village seems to have gone a little crazy at one point in history and now can’t figure out how to get back to normal. I guess if everybody else’s grave is covered in colorful flowers, you don’t want to be the one family who neglects to come pay your respects to the dead.
Clothilde and I, of course, have the two graves where nobody ever places any flowers. Well, Clothilde does, anyway. I don’t even have a tombstone to mark the place I’m buried.
Clothilde’s last resting place is marked by a simple slab of local white-and-gray granite—the cheapest one available, if I’m not mistaken—and a classic headstone with only her first name and date of death.
The woman herself is now perching on her headstone, her hands under her jeans-clad thighs and her Converse-clad feet gliding through the granite as she swings her feet back and forth. Clothilde has been a ghost for long enough to master the art of deciding which rules of the world of the living to follow. Having a stone to sit on: yes. Having it stop her from dangling her legs: nope.
Her intelligent eyes sweep the cemetery as she shakes her head. “Can’t we try telling them they’re here on the wrong day? Maybe one of them is sensitive enough to listen?”
“And you think the rest of these crazy people will listen in turn?”
We have this discussion every year. Being ghosts stuck in a cemetery for almost thirty years, we have time to spare, of course, but we’re not going to come to any transcending conclusions today either.
In France, the first of November—today—is Toussaint, the All Saints’ Day. The second of November is the Day of the Dead, when you’re supposed to go to the cemetery to honor the dead and pray for their redemption. The problem is that the first is a public holiday and the second isn’t. So little by little, the tradition of coming to the cemetery—with chrysanthemums—has moved over to the first.
“Even if they did hear us,” I say to Clothilde from my spot sitting cross-legged on the little bump next to her grave that marks my spot, “it would just mean that they show up a day later. They’d still come at some point. We’d still be flooded with the flowers.”
“It would be better,” Clothilde grumbles. “The people who work tomorrow wouldn’t be able to come.”
“And a bunch of dead people wouldn’t get visits from their families, wouldn’t have prayers said for them.”
Clothilde rolls her eyes in true teenager fashion. “They don’t care. They’re dead. And not ghosts. Not anymore, anyway.”
Clothilde and I have made it our mission to help the ghosts who come through our cemetery to move on. We don’t know where they go—obviously, since we’re still here ourselves—but we’re convinced it’s a better place.
Not everyone becomes a ghost, only the people with unfinished business. It can be as simple as not having said goodbye to a loved one, not having apologized for that one regretful act, or it can be needing justice when someone is murdered and the killer isn’t caught.
Solving murders from within the confines of a cemetery when nobody can see or hear you is something of a challenge, but we manage. So far, everybody coming through here as a ghost has moved on.
Except for the two of us, of course.
“The mom at the Tessier grave is here,” Clothilde says, tilting her head toward the section with the most recent graves. “She brought roses again.”
I stand up to have a better look. The woman buried her son here about six months ago and we’ve been seeing her every week, without fail.
Can’t say I blame her. No parent should ever have to bury their child and the younger they were when they passed away, the worse it is. Nathan Tessier had just turned eighteen.
He never became a ghost, though. So he didn’t have any unfinished business. But it seems like his mom does. Not that we know what it is because the woman never speaks. She just sits there, kneeling at her son’s grave, staring at his name on the headstone.
“I’m going over to check on her,” I say.
Clothilde sighs but jumps down from her perch to follow. “You’re not going to get her to talk just because it’s the Day of the Dead. Because it’s not the Day of the Dead. It’s All Saints’ Day!” She yells the last part across the cemetery.
She gets no reaction from the living, of course.
As we reach her, Madame Tessier is running her fingers over the bright red petals of the roses she brought for her son’s grave. Her gaze keeps shifting between the roses and the yellow and orange chrysanthemums of the neighboring grave. Did she not know about the tradition?
“The roses are lovely,” I tell her. “A welcome change for those of us who live here.”
She doesn’t hear me, of course. They never do. But from time to time, we get visitors who are more sensitive to ghosts than most and we can influence them in small ways. Give them ideas that they’ll think were their own. Make their skin crawl with the feeling that someone’s watching.
That particular feature hasn’t actually come in handy to solve any cases. But when she’s in the right mood, Clothilde has some fun with it.
Madame Tessier seems more upset than I’d consider normal at the fact that she didn’t bring the right type of flowers. She sits back on her heels and looks around the cemetery—probably really seeing the rest of it for the first time—taking in the explosion of color.
“Why is she crying about the flowers?” Clothilde squats down on her haunches to study the woman’s face from up close. “There’s nothing wrong with your roses, Madame. They’re lovely. And probably smell a lot better than that other crap.”
Two lonely tears are indeed making their way down the woman’s cheeks.
I spot another woman, one I can’t remember seeing before, just two graves down. She has put a large pot of purple flowers—yes, yes, chrysanthemums, what else—on the grave of Monsieur and Madame Bartoli. Given their ages and hers, I guess she might be a daughter or niece.
Since the woman at the Bartoli grave is already sending worried glances at Madame Tessier, I walk over and talk directly into her ear. “You should go over and tell her that the roses are lovely. She looks like she might need a hug.”
Clothilde seems to have come to the same conclusion. She’s caressing Madame Tessier’s cheek, attempting to swipe the tears away. For a tough-as-nails teenager with a constant I-don’t-care attitude, this show of affection is startling.
The Bartoli woman seems to have heard me, bless her. She walks over to the Tessier grave and clears her throat. “Lovely roses,” she says in a soft tone. She takes in the dates on the headstone and the picture of a young man next to it. “I’m sorry for your loss, Madame.”
Madame Tessier twitches as if brought back to reality. She wipes a hand over her cheek to bat away the tears, hitting Clothilde through the head while she’s at it. “Thank you,” she says in a wavering voice. “I, uh…I didn’t realize today was special.” She waves a hand at the rest of the colorful cemetery. “I’m not…not from around here.”
The Bartoli woman smiles serenely. “Today is special for the dead who are mostly forgotten the rest of the year. Do not feel guilty for thinking of your lost ones more often than when tradition dictates.”
Madame Tessier sighs and sinks lower on her heels. Little by little the air seems to be going out of her and I just hope she’ll have the energy to get home safely when she’s finished communing with her son.
“My daughter just turned sixteen,” the Bartoli woman says.
Her eyes on the picture of her son, Madame Tessier just nods. “He’s not here,” she says after a while.
“Who?”
“My son. They say he’s buried here but I don’t believe it. I can’t feel him at all. I don’t think the body they found in that incinerated dumpster was his.”
Clothilde jumps up on the neighboring headstone to perch there. “Well, she’s not wrong about him not being here. We never saw the guy.”
I can’t remember seeing this before. We’ve had lots of ghosts who want to communicate and reach out to the living but not the other way around. And certainly not when the deceased didn’t even become a ghost.
The Bartoli woman doesn’t seem to know what to say after that and silently slips away toward the parking lot.
Madame Tessier stays at her son’s grave until all the other families have left and the security guard accompanies her to the gate. She never says a word.