The Safety Bell

Pity hung from the funeralgoers' faces. They were something out of a nightmarish painting; not sure what to do with their mouths, some pinching them closed, others looked like they were caught mid scream. Most of the women had watering eyes that they tried to avert from meeting Albert’s. For some reason, it made him feel ashamed.

They were all in a line to offer sympathies, but what they really wanted was to witness the widowed newlywed. Albert wasn’t naive; he had heard the whispers.

“Courted, married, and dead within a year,” tended to be the headline.

What they thought conspired and for what purpose was anyone’s guess. In life and death, Albert did not benefit in any monetary value. There were no secret paramours or debts, nor enemies or vendettas. He had loved Mabel, and no one had been more shocked at her passing than he.

*********************************

Albert was dreaming about hunting a deer. He focused his dominant eye on its chest and lined the bow before releasing. It let out a succession of bleats that rang in his ears, leading him to launch awake with sweat dripping from his palms. It took him several moments to orient, but he realized it was Mabel on all fours at the foot of their bed.

“My love,” he went to her, brushing back her hair as she hissed through her teeth. “What is it?” he shakily asked.

Mabel only howled, screeched, and sobbed. Albert reached for their bedside lantern, and as the light hit the bedsheet, his screams joined his wife’s.

*********************************

The pastor had given a predictable sermon about dying knowing Christ, and the choir sang a multitude of songs about Heaven and God’s grace. Then Mabel’s closest friend, possibly Albert’s too if he counted anyone outside Mabel, Elenor, gave the eulogy. She started by describing what their childhood had been like. Neither woman had a sibling, so they found that missing connection in one another. They had done nearly everything together, except that Mabel had fallen in love first.

Elenor had witnessed the start and the middle, and now she was here for the end.

“Mabel and I were walking the docks. It was a hot day, and we wanted to catch the breeze and quick spritzes of water when, all of a sudden, she stopped, her jaw slack! Before I could ask her, she pointed, and there was Albert with a bare chest. She said, ‘Ele’ tell me that’s not a mirage!”

Albert found himself slightly smiling despite his sourness. He could see the sunny day now. The whole cloudless sky seemed to glow bright orange, and he remembered the heat tickled his skin. It had been the best day for catching fish since he’d arrived, and after shedding his shirt, he decided it was a fine time to take a break as he caught Mabel pointing at him, aghast.

“When no one was looking, Mabel was,” Elenor’s words cut through his memories. “And maybe that’s why she loved you so much, Albert, you were looking right back.”

*********************************

Mabel’s eyes were closed as they lowered her to the ground. She wore her wedding dress, a simplistic lace gown in ivory with small flower buds around the bodice. It had been her mother’s, and as she drunkenly exclaimed as he took it off on their wedding night, “One day our daughters or daughter to be! Careful!”

One last prayer was pled as attendees threw flowers and said their final farewells before the dirt covered her coffin. Albert acknowledged those who came to him, offering words of encouragement and comments on “a beautiful funeral”. Elenor was hosting a dinner, which he was not attending. She had already informed others that he needed space to grieve.

They watched Albert as they left. He hadn’t cried as far as any of them knew. Maybe Elenor did. She seemed to have an answer for everything. They commented to her that he had appeared preoccupied, and she had answered every time, “Well, wouldn’t you?” All of them were reflecting during the third course when a bell rang.

*********************************

“Towels. Grab towels,” Mabel demanded. “And some water.”

“Mabel,” Albert pleaded, “I don’t understand what's happening.”

Mabel sucked in a breath, then attempted a smile, but it was a grimace. “Please, Albert, do as I ask.” She tried another smile, which prompted him to move.

A soft sucking noise was all Albert could hear as he came back to the room with what Mabel requested.

*********************************

The dinner guests burst into confusion. Chairs toppled over along with glasses of wine and forkfuls of lamb.

“She’s alive,” someone exclaimed, their voices trembling with shock and wonder.

“Dear God, forgive us,” prayed another.

“Duncan,” summoned Elenor, “alert Albert of the bell. Father William, search the crypt.”

*********************************

Albert’s wife’s body was still, except for the slow caress of her hand. He moved his hand, holding the lantern, closer to Mabel, and the sound of low slurping.

A tiny bundle was wrapped in blood-soaked sheets and placed on Mabel's breast. Her hair was matted to her forehead, her chest rattled, yet she smiled up at him as he came to her side.

“Do you have your knife?”

“What for?”

She held out a rope-like, muscular cord. “Cut here.”

*********************************

The sun’s light was still out as Father William made his way toward the church grounds. He could see far out and, as he stumbled up the steps to the graveyard, could see upturned earth where Mabel May had just been laid to rest. The site had been disturbed. Big dirt clods were thrown haphazardly onto the cobbled path. He began to run toward it when Duncan hollered, “Father! Come!”

Father William ignored Duncan as he continued pleading for him, getting closer to Mabel’s grave. When he finally reached it, he made the sign of the cross, then looked in.

Mabel’s coffin was open and empty except for the Safety Bell.

*********************************

Nearly the whole town crowded back into the church they had just been in hours before. The younger women cried, while the older ones shouted for answers, and the men made accusations.

A small crowd had gathered around Duncan. Elenor stroking his cheek, hushed the others while reassuring him. Another incongruous group obnoxiously squatted by the confessional Father William had fled into.

“You heard it,” Henry had stated to Marcus.

“Indeed,” Marcus agreed. “Not just that, I followed Duncan. Blood-so much blood over at the Mays’. A knife too!”

“What does that mean?” asked Marcus.

Duncan snapped his head toward them, “Albert has taken his life.”

“He was heartbroken,” Elenor wept.

“And the bell,” the small group asked in unison.

“Mabel?” a brave voice added.

*********************************

Four poorly fed, yet strong men, hurled the young father’s luggage onto the ship. One locked box, covered in dirt and reeking of death, was ordered to the depths of the craft. Albert made a cross over it before they took it. The baby giggled for the first time.

A young woman took Albert and the wrapped wad to his quarters. She didn’t look at him like those at home had, with assumptions. She simply asked whether he would need a wet nurse and updated the list of provisions he had originally sent. It brought him relief.

Mabel had not known it, never would, but Albert had planned this trip. It was going to be a surprise honeymoon. A celebration that they hadn’t yet honored. Instead of a vacation, it would be his and his daughter's escape—a way to start anew.

*********************************

They gathered outside with torches ablaze. It was dark now, quiet, even the breeze was still.

Slowly, almost as one, they moved closer to what they found. Just like Father William, they saw that it was a grave with a casket but no body.

“It rang,” announced Henry.

“I heard it,” concurred Marcus.

“Means she was buried alive,” came a voice from the shadows. “We have to find her!’

The crowd stirred, ready to be ordered.

“She’s a ghost,” came another, familiar voice. Father William stepped forward, “Mabel will haunt us for what Albert did! He’s an abomination, and we will forever be plagued!”

*********************************

Alma admired the flower buds that adorned the hanging dress. They were delicate, and the image of the Japanese practice of folding came to mind- even though she knew it was Victorian. It was an heirloom from years and years, so many that the documentation just ended without a solution. She delicately cut one, unravelled the lace, reformed it, and dyed it gold.

Later that night, New York Fashion Week opened with bells as Alma May’s models sashayed the runway. They erupted from coffins, like mummies, draped in ivory and lace.