The Reliquary (Part 2)

Part 2

It wasn’t long after my second birth that I came to know just what I was: I was dead and now I am not. The young Ellie explained to me how I had become this apparition as best as an eleven year-old could. She told me about how she watched her father, the grounds keeper, mortician, and funeral director at the local cemetery, lower my casket into the ground with no one around to watch. She told me that she felt sad that, like her, I didn’t have any friends so she decided that we should be friends. Then, after she had removed my corpse from my plot, after she removed my heart from my corpse, after she placed said heart on top of a rune of her own design and calling me back to this plane, I was now the disembodied soul of the man I used to be. I didn’t quite understand what this macabre little girl meant, but I knew I didn’t feel like the ravenous undead who marched forward in attempt to quench their endless hunger. I was definitely no wraith bent on ravaging the souls of the recently deceased. I felt no different than I had when I was a man except for the fact that my heart no longer beat and I seemed to sink through surfaces without intention.

There was a problem: I didn’t know who that man was. It seemed that my stint in the space beside this one had robbed me of all that I used to be. The only thing that remained was a wisp, and a name. Alphonse. Alphonse Rudeaux. I knew that name well as it was the sound that brought me forth out of the hell I had been in. The name that had been mine for the short time I was of this earth had reached into the abyss, gathered me like clay, and pulled me from the sleepless dream. Ellie would later call the method she used to bring me back “conjuring”.

I watched Ellie grow as I stayed dislodged from the effects of time. I was there in the sixth grade when she got the gall to spin in front of her elementary school bathroom mirror and chant Bloody Mary three times. Much to her disappointment nothing happened. The lights to the toilet did not flicker, the stall doors did not bang, and the only woeful moaning was coming from the boys’ bathroom where some young man was suffering from that day’s school lunch. I was there when, in another bathroom, she was taunted and teased for being short, strange, and relatively silent. I was there when her faced burst forth with glasses, braces, and pimples. I watched her begin to grow into a woman; when she got her period the occasion was met with less celebration and discomfort and more inquisitiveness. Ellie studied herself meticulously and over the years had sampled and tested every fluid and fiber she could reach in her body. Why would her menstrual fluids be any different?

Ellie was undoubtedly a genius. She finished high school as salutatorian. I was there when she graduated, and when she subjected herself to another round of schooling. While she was growing and going about her life I spent my time learning about my new existence. I practiced passing through walls and other barriers that used to impede my way around the world. I learned how to fade in and out of sight at will, and taught myself how to traverse large distances in an instant. I learned that I could travel the void and appear to a point I was conscious of. Since the day of my conjuring Ellie looked at me with awe; when I rose through the floor boards or appeared suddenly a smile would creep across her face.

Ellie’s days had a sense of rhythm and I had managed to pick up on the beat. It was fascinating to watch her work so diligently. I had watched so intently throughout her adolescence that I had become quite familiar with all her ticks and mannerisms. When deep in thought her lips would slowly pull themselves to either side of her face and her brow would wrinkle in concentration. When she slept her mouth would part ever so slightly as if she was whispering a secret to someone close to her. Sometimes I would hover inches above her and try to listen to what she was saying, or try to intuit her thoughts but I could never glean anything. On days when she had worn herself thin, the small hairs around her forehead would seemingly come unglued, and her face, which was usually so expressive, would turn into a plane of emotionless desert. This state wouldn’t last long and soon she was back on task with whatever project she was working on, but I felt for her in those moments; all this time she had toiled away on her own never making another friend or managing to make any connection with another human that could provide some levity, or a welcome distraction. She was a rather lonely young woman from the looks of it, but she seemed content with my presence however physically lacking it was.

When Ellie had finished her thirteenth year of graduate classes and became a doctor she set her mind to metaphysics; she was determined to find a way to travel with me through the void and discover just how my existence was possible. After months of meditation, attempts at astral projection, and medically inducing out of body experiences she discovered that she could not cross the veil of her mortal existence. She had even gone so far as to submerge her entire body in an ice cold bath to bring her as close to death as possible. The only outcome was acute hypothermia and frost bite on the toes that were resting against the metal enclosure. The black scarring on her foot served as a reminder of the price that she may have to pay for entrance into the place I came from. This did not deter her from trying new things and exploring new ideas. I was, as far as she knew, the only being to have been brought back across the plane of death and she knew this was no small feat. After months of experiments with electricity and various tinctures and concoctions we did make some discoveries. We found that we could “tune” my being.

Up until this time I had been just a shape and mostly formless. I was almost cloud like and given my mood my appearance would change. Ellie, even at the age of thirty three, loved watching my form billow like sheets and shift to recognizable forms. I eventually learned how to pull myself into different rudimentary shapes, but they never looked exactly like they were supposed to; when I bent into a dog I was always missing a leg or my head would be out of proportion. Geometric shapes were always asymmetrical, and appearing like anything other than a wandering cloud of smoke took considerable effort. That was until Ellie shared her body with me.

It wasn’t intentional at first: I traversed the void and managed to appear in the same space. Sharing the same space allowed me to regain sensation; all at once my senses became intact and for a moment I could feel the beat of a heart, the warm embrace of skin, and the weight of a body. Sadly these did not belong to me. Startled by my sudden intrusion Ellie jumped back and looked in my direction in awe. She shuddered and let out a puff of cold breath. It took her a moment to get the words out, but it soon was apparent. I had a shape. Not just any shape though. I had replicated her entire image.