A Supernatural Reunion
by Charles C. Cole
“A class reunion at a cemetery?!” Bram asked his wife. “It’s nuts, and I’m not doing it again!”
“We have this argument every year.”
“The others don’t have to drive as far as I do,” said Bram.
“You’ll hate yourself if you don’t go.”
“What if I get chosen?”
“She always chooses a girl, doesn’t she?”
“This is the last time, I swear!”
Bram pulled up to the private family cemetery at four the next afternoon. People were drinking beers. Some wore bathing suits under their damp t-shirts, like the day’s events had been going on for hours. There was a decked-out picnic table and two smoking barbecues. No sign of kids because, despite the laughing and joking and 90s music blaring from a pickup, this was all business. This was payback for the rest of their lives.
“Dude!” said Wren Fairchilde, still only chest-high, somehow with bluer eyes than the last time he’d seen her and clearly a little tipsy. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”
“Bad things happen if you don’t,” said Bram.
The mausoleum door was open. Busy family members were dressed in bold purple robes. “They’re preparing her,” Wren explained, as if it needed explaining.
At the end of 8th grade, fourteen long years ago, Dot Whitley, frail and pale, had surprised her entire class, who were still shocked by a freak car accident that had killed three of their friends. She had made a deal with a local pagan god, she said, that nobody else in their class — or their families — would die before their graduation. In return, Dot would have herself placed in her family tomb — also a shrine for the god — on prom night, to be revived for their class reunion every year. So long as they came back, they were still protected. Some socially awkward kids would literally sacrifice everything to be popular.
At the last reunion, she had emerged like a Hollywood image of Cleopatra: wearing a tiara, voluptuous, glowing with charisma. It had been hard to look at her without feeling inferior in every way.
The worst part: for one hour, someone took her place in the sarcophagus so that she could mingle in the land of the living without breaking the supernatural union. Marnie Bazuik had been chosen last year. When she came out, her hair was white, she was unsteady on her feet and she couldn’t speak for the rest of the evening. It was as if she had suffered a stroke — in her twenties! Turns out there was a downside to donating some of your life energy to vampirical gods who craved a little summertime buzz.
Bram looked around for Marnie. Wren appeared to read his mind: “Guess she couldn’t make it. Must feel she gave enough last time.”
“Ever wonder what would happen if nobody came,” he asked, “if we just quit doing this?”
“We’d all die horrible deaths.”
“Everybody! Everybody!” called Principal Hawthorne, in the same style of suit he had worn every day at the office. “Please form a circle. We’re about to begin.” The poor man looked ancient compared to the rest of the revelers, because he was.
Someone turned off the music. People put their red Solo cups down. Footballer-gone-to-seed Freddy Philmore shoved one last piece of pie into his wide mouth and mashed it around with his tongue.
“What’s that about?” whispered Bram to Wren. “Not like he needs it.”
“It’s pumpkin pie. Dot hates pumpkin pie. He’s hoping it will somehow disqualify him.”
Everyone recognized a familiar recording of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” apparently no longer just for weddings. The family carried Dot out on a gray divan woven with stripes of glittering tinsel. She was swathed in bright white sheets, held together by a shiny gold rope belt.
“You rock, girl!” shouted Wren.
Dot was propped up by a stack of overlarge pillows. Those in attendance put on black masks that had been distributed earlier; this was strictly ceremonial. Dot smiled and waved royally. Even her teeth were perfect. Two relatives Bram didn’t recognize helped her to her feet.
Her mother, Gloria Gannett-Whitley cleared her throat. “Would Wren Fairchilde step forward for the transposition?”
Wren squeezed Bram’s forearm and pleaded, “Don’t let them take me! I just started dating again after my divorce from Henry.” Self-consciously, Bram peeled her off and stepped aside.
“You’re here by choice,” he whispered. “No one made you come. I hope the alcohol helps.”
“You bastard!” she said.
“I mean it!” he said.
Dot leaned intimately close to her mother, and Mrs. Gannett-Whitley cleared her throat again. “To show fairness and gratitude to all, our god has asked for Abraham Addard. Would Bram please step forward?”
He always did as he was told. A desk-jockey for the same company for years, he had watched many less-qualified peers promoted to the ranks of low-level management. But, in his heart of hearts, Bram knew that he was a sheep, a follower. Dot’s family — nobody smiling, nobody making eye contact — lifted him onto the divan and walked him into the cold, dark chamber. Maybe her unnamable god could get him a raise.
In the morning, Bram stretched — and ached. His father would say he had been thrown off the potato wagon, right onto his back. His wife was cooking breakfast. The clock said 11:30. He pulled himself to his feet and gazed cautiously into the mirror above her bureau. He looked mostly unchanged: small bags under his eyes, hung-over. It was done for another year.
His wife brought in a steaming bowl of grits and set it down on the bureau, on a folded dishtowel. “Morning!”
“Grits? No bacon? No bagel?”
“Let’s start gently,” she said and returned to the kitchen.
Something felt wrong to his tongue, in his mouth. Bram used his index fingers and pulled his lips back into a smile, revealing a couple of missing teeth! Next time someone offered to do him a favor, he was going to punch them in the nose.
Copyright © 2019 by Charles C. Cole
