26 Sep A Flower for the Dead

The sun hung low, painting the Sierra Nevada in gold and crimson. James Hawthorne guided his horse along the winding mountain trail. The air was crisp, redolent of pine and trail dirt. A nice enough day for the time being. Of course, these things can change quickly when you get to where you’re going.

Hollow Creek lay nestled in the valley, a collection of weathered buildings huddled against the looming mountains. Smoke rose from a few chimneys, but even from this distance, James could sense something was amiss. The town seemed too quiet, too still for a bustling mining community, even at this time of day.

As he approached the outskirts of town, James passed a small graveyard. His experienced eye noted the freshly turned earth of recent burials. Far too many for a town this size. But that’s why he was here, wasn’t it?

Death was an old friend to James Hawthorne; first introduced at a boy of seven, standing at his mother’s grave. She’d died of consumption.

As a young man, full of fire and conviction, he’d turned to the church, believing faith stood as a bulwark against the horror of mortality. He’d trained as a preacher, his sermons filled with passionate promises of eternal life and divine mercy. When the war between the states erupted, he’d volunteered as a chaplain, certain God’s work would be revealed amidst among all the manmade carnage.

Beyond prayers and last rites, he’d trained as a field medic. His hands, once used only to turn Bible pages and offer blessings, staunched wounds, set bones, and on some occasions, wielded a surgeon’s saw.

God’s work, no doubt, and God’s will for certain; but still, horrors beyond his imagination. He’d watched young men die in agony, torn apart by cannon fire or ravaged by disease. He’d heard the screams of the wounded echoing across blood-soaked fields, had smelled the sickly-sweet stench of gangrene in field hospitals. With each passing day, each senseless death, he’d felt his faith being tested; sometimes utterly eroding, even as his skills hardened in this foundry of war.

The breaking point came at the Battle of Cold Harbor. In a single hour, thousands of Union soldiers fell in a futile assault. As James moved among the wounded and dying, offering what comfort he could with prayer and morphine, a young soldier had grabbed his arm. The boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen, his belly torn open by shrapnel. “Preacher,” he’d asked, “will I be in paradise?”

James had looked into those pleading eyes, had seen the fear and hope warring there, and found he could not lie. “I don’t know,” he’d whispered. “I just don’t know.” He’d held the boy’s hand as he slipped away, both his medical knowledge and religious conviction useless in the face of such devastation.

After the war, he’d hung up both his collar and medical bag. As faithful as he’d been in the beginning, he was no longer able to preach the words he wasn’t sure he believed. He’d wandered for a time, lost and purposeless, until fate had led him to the door of an undertaker. The old man had been looking for an apprentice, someone with a steady hand and a strong stomach. James had found solace in the work, unexpectedly so, in providing dignity to the dead when he could no longer offer hope to the living. After so many failures during the war, it seemed the only thing left he could do.

Over the years, James had become known for his skill and discretion. He’d buried paupers and politicians, saints and sinners, treating each with the same quiet respect. He’d learned to read the stories written on dead flesh, to discern the signs of violence or disease that remained post-mortem. His medical training, though rarely used, gave him insights other undertakers lacked.

When the letter had arrived from Hollow Creek, desperate for someone to handle their mounting dead, James had seen it as both a duty and an opportunity. Perhaps here, in this remote mountain town plagued by a rash of mysterious deaths, he could make himself useful again. His unique combination of mortuary skills and medical knowledge could be exactly what the town needed. What awaited him here, and exactly how much he could do to help was up in the air. But the money offered was decent, and he had to admit—it did feel good to be needed again.

The clip-clop of his horse’s hooves echoed off the empty buildings as he rode down the main street. Faces peered out from behind curtains. Faces full of fear and curiosity. James kept his gaze forward, his back straight. He’d long ago learned that in his line of work, a calm demeanor was essential. Less for his benefit than for the others.

The undertaker’s establishment sat at the far end of the street, a squat, dark building with a sign that read “Holloway’s Funeral Parlor” in faded gold letters. As James dismounted, he saw a figure emerge from the shadows of the building’s porch.

“Mr. Hawthorne?” The man wore a sheriff’s badge that glinted in the fading sunlight. “I’m Sheriff Caleb Reeves. We’re mighty glad you could come on such short notice.”

James nodded, taking the sheriff’s offered hand. “Wish it were under better circumstances, Sheriff. I understand you’ve had quite a run of bad luck.”

The sour smell permeating the streets wasn’t lost on either of them.

Reeves’ face darkened. “Bad don’t even begin to describe it, Mr. Hawthorne. But let’s get you settled in before we talk details. I reckon you’ve had a hell of a journey.”

“That don’t begin to describe it either,” James said.

As they entered the funeral parlor, James thought about the letter he’d received. Even the handwriting looked desperate. Both Hollow Creek’s doctor and undertaker had succumbed to the same mysterious illness that had been plaguing the townsfolk, and bodies were piling up faster than they could be buried. Odd as it seemed, James felt drawn to it. It had been so long since he’d stared death in the face, he wondered if he’d gone soft. Without the faith he once possessed in such great measure, he no longer felt so reconciled to his mortality as he once had.

Inside the parlor, the sour smell James had noticed earlier was stronger. The air was heavy with the scent of death and decay, barely masked by the cloying sweetness of floral perfumes.

Sheriff Reeves led him to a back room, where several bodies lay covered with sheets. “It started about a month ago,” Reeves said. “Folks started coming down with something. Fever, weakness, then…” He trailed off, gesturing to the shrouded forms.

“How long from first symptoms to death?” James asked, slipping easily into the clinical detachment that had by now become second nature.

“Seen it take days. Sometimes only hours,” Reeves replied. “It hits hard and fast. Damnedest thing…We’ve lost near fifty people already. They’re dropping as we speak.”

James frowned. “Any idea what’s causing it? Something in the water?”

Reeves shook his head. “Doc’s baffled. Was baffled… Ain’t cholera or typhoid. Some folks are saying it’s a curse, but…” He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. “I’m no doctor, but I suspect it’s one of them blood fevers. Like the ones you hear about in Africa. Damnedest thing.”

“Has anyone managed to pull through?” James asked, his mind already cataloging possible causes.

“Just one,” Reeves said. “Little girl, Mary Holloway. Undertaker’s daughter, ironically enough. Former undertaker… She took sick, but didn’t die. Been unconscious for days, though. No telling if she’s really pulled through yet.”

James nodded, filing that away for later consideration. “Well, let’s have a look at what we’re dealing with.”

He approached the nearest body and carefully pulled back the sheet. Seasoned as he was, the sight that greeted him still made his stomach turn.

The man on the table couldn’t have been dead for more than a day, but his body told a tale of extraordinary suffering. His skin was a patchwork of dark bruises and angry red splotches. Dried blood caked his nostrils and the corners of his mouth. But it was the eyes that truly unsettled James. They were open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, and completely, unnaturally red—as if every blood vessel within them had burst.

James had seen his share of gruesome deaths, but this was something different. He’d encountered similar symptoms during the war, in isolated cases of vicious sicknesses, but never had he seen it spread through a community so fast. Their very nature tended to prevent their spread—fast onset, quick death—not much time to spread around. Once a sickness like this settled in you, formal engagements were off.

As he examined the other bodies, James found the same pattern repeated. Whatever this illness was, it was unlike anything he’d encountered before. The speed with which it killed was consistent with the most murderous hemmoragic fevers, but so ruthless in its design, the victims perished before sloughing off most of the typical flesh.

Standing over the last body, James became acutely aware of the silence in the room. He turned to find Sheriff Reeves watching him, a look of dread on his face.

“What do you make of it, Mr. Hawthorne?”

James took a deep breath, choosing his words carefully. “I’ve seen similar things, but never… never like this. Never so many.” He paused, meeting the sheriff’s gaze. “Sheriff, I think you’ve got something very dangerous on your hands here. Not sure an undertaker or a medic is quite the answer. Still, I’ll do what I can.”

As the last light of day faded outside, James sat hunched over in the long shadows through the parlor windows. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d stepped into something far beyond his scope of practice. The bodies around him seemed to whisper the most terrible secrets. Cryptic esoterica decipherable to no one but the dead.

Whatever had happened in this town, it was going to take more than a steady hand and a strong stomach to set things right. Sadly, that, and the seemingly impenetrable immune system he’d had all his life was all he had to offer. So he went ahead and got started.

* * * * * *

Dawn broke over Hollow Creek. James Hawthorne stood in the funeral parlor, surveying the bodies laid out before him. The sour smell of death hung in the air like a familiar companion. He’d known it well since his medic days.

James rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Without the luxury of embalming fluids, he knew time was of the essence. He began with the oldest corpse, a middle-aged man whose skin had already taken on a waxy, yellowish hue. As James washed the body with carbolic soap, his mind drifted back to a field hospital outside Richmond.

The air had been thick with the acrid smell of gunpowder. Screams and moans filled the makeshift tent, an ever-present cacophony of agony. An existential sound; real life fading away, and real death on the horizon. A young soldier lay on the table before him, gut-shot and fading fast. The boy couldn’t have been more than seventeen, his face still round with baby fat, now pale and drawn with pain.

“Am I gonna make it,?” the boy had asked, his voice barely a whisper. James had looked into those trusting eyes, blue as sky, but clouded with fear and pain. He’d seen the wound, knew the boy’s intestines were unraveled and lay about the cot like macabre bedskirts. Gangrene would set in within hours. But he couldn’t bring himself to destroy the kid’s last hope.

“You’ll be alright, son,” James said, forcing a smile he didn’t feel. “Just rest now.”

The boy had died an hour later, James’s hand clasped in his own. As life fled the young soldier’s body, James had felt something inside himself die too. Another piece of his faith, his hope, all crumbling away like ash.

Shaking off the memory, James focused on his current task. He dressed the body in its Sunday best, carefully arranging the man’s features into a semblance of peaceful repose. It was an illusion, of course. James knew better than anyone that this death was anything but peaceful. The look on the man’s face said it all—it came upon him like a monster; not a thief in the night, but a demon from the depths, with all its infernal accouterments.

As he moved on to the next body, a woman in her thirties, James’s hands worked automatically while his mind wandered again. This time, he was back in a field near Antietam. The battle had been over for days, but they were still finding bodies. The stench was overwhelming, a miasma of rot that hung over everything.

He’d been walking among the corpses, looking for any sign of life, when he’d heard it. A weak cry, barely audible over the cawing of crows. He’d found her half-hidden under the body of a dead horse. A young woman, her lower half crushed, somehow still clinging to life.

“Please,” she’d whispered. “Help me.”

He’d known immediately that she was beyond saving; slipping away with each labored breath. But he couldn’t just leave her there.

So he’d sat with her, held her hand, and lied. Told her help was coming, that she’d be alright. He’d watched the light fading from her eyes all the while. He’d felt terrible the whole while. But the pain, the dissonance, he embraced it the same way he held her hand. This moment, he would never forget. Not as a life lost, but as a metaphor for his own lot in life.

The memory faded as James finished preparing the woman’s body. He stepped back, surveying his work. The corpse looked peaceful now, almost lifelike. Another illusion. Another lie.

As he moved on to the next body, the funeral parlor’s door creaked open. Sheriff Reeves entered, followed by his deputy. Between them, they carried another corpse, this one a young man barely out of his teens.

“Got another one for you, Mr. Hawthorne,” Reeves said. In the morning light, James could see that the sheriff looked pale, a sheen of sweat on his brow despite the cool air. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and there was a slight tremor in his hands as he helped lay the body down.

“You feeling alright, Sheriff?” James asked.

Reeves waved off the concern, but the motion seemed to cost him effort. “I’m fine. Just the pollen this time of year. Plays hell with my sinuses.”

James only nodded. No use in causing a panic. Instead, he turned his attention to the new arrival, noting the telltale signs of the illness: the mottled skin, the burst blood vessels in the eyes.

As James prepared the young man’s body, he questioned the sheriff about the progression of the disease. Reeves described the symptoms: fever, weakness, then the terrifying speed with which it turned fatal. It reminded James of camp fever during the war, just faster. Nastier.

The description brought back another memory, this one from a Confederate prison camp where James had spent three hellish months. He’d watched disease sweep through the camp like wildfire, claiming dozens each day. Bodies piled like cordwood. The constant, hacking coughs that echoed through the night.

“And there’s just the one survivor, you said?” James asked.

Reeves nodded. ”Mary Holloway. She’s alive, but the poor thing’s been out cold for days. Can’t hardly declare she’s made it yet.”

James frowned. The Sheriff was probably right about that.

As the day wore on, more bodies arrived. James worked tirelessly. Each corpse told the same story. Pain, fear, and a life cut brutally short. He’d seen it all before, in the blood-soaked fields of Virginia and Tennessee. And like then, about all he could do was send the bodies off with some measure of dignity. Wipe them down, dress them up. His training seemed like a cruel joke in this context. Here, like there, he was little more than an undertaker.

Between bodies, James ventured into town, ostensibly to purchase supplies but really to observe the living. Fear hung over Hollow Creek like a shroud. Windows were shuttered, streets nearly empty. Those few souls he encountered hurried past with eyes averted.

He gathered soap and linens at the general store. The man at the counter stood at a distance. “It’s a curse, you know,” he said. “Retribution for our sins.”

“I don’t think so,” James said. “I’ve seen too much of this to believe in a punishing God. Death is all too efficient on its own.”

“We must repent,” the man said. James offered no further argument.

Returning to the funeral parlor, James found Sheriff Reeves waiting for him. The man looked worse, his face ashen, dark circles ringing his eyes.

“Mr. Hawthorne,” Reeves began, then paused to cough into his handkerchief. A wet, rattling sound, and James caught a glimpse of crimson as the sheriff pocketed the cloth. “The Holloways asked if you’d take a look at their girl. Given your medical experience…”

“Of course,” he said. I’ll go first thing in the morning. I’m bone tired.”

“That’s fine. If anything, it’ll make them feel a little better in the meantime. Thank you, Mr. Hawthorne.”

As he gathered up his medical bag, a relic from his army days he’d never been able to part with, the weight of it in his hand brought back a flood of memories: of screaming men begging for morphine, of limbs sawed off without anesthetic, of eyes glazing over as life slipped away despite his best efforts.

His best efforts. Was that all he had to offer here at Hollow Creek? Was that even worth half the money he’d been promised?

He just didn’t know.

* * * * * *

James awoke to a knock at his door. Sunlight streamed in through the gaps in the curtains. For a moment, he just lay there wondering if he’d heard a knock at all, or if some ethereal nightmare had woken him. Then the events of the previous day came rushing back.

The knocking came again, more insistent this time. James pulled himself out of bed and walked to the door. He opened it to find Sheriff Reeves standing there. He looked worse than he had the day before.

The sheriff’s face was pale, eyes sunken and bloodshot. A sheen of sweat glistened on his brow despite the cool morning air. He swayed slightly where he stood, as if it took all his strength just to remain upright.

“Sheriff,” James said. “You don’t look well at all.”

“I’m fine,” Reeves insisted. “The stress of it all. Poor sleep. Nothing to worry about.” He coughed into his fist and inhaled painfully. “We should head to the Holloways’ if you’re ready. The girl?”

James nodded. The dead could wait. They had all the time in the world.

The ride to the Holloway house was silent, save for the clip-clop of hooves and the sheriff’s occasional cough. James noted the tremor in his hands, the way he struggled to keep his eyes focused. It was possible it really was just stress and exhaustion, but James didn’t think so. He doubted the sheriff did either.

The Holloway house was a modest two-story structure on the outskirts of town. As they approached, James saw a woman step out onto the porch. Her face was drawn with worry, but showed no signs of illness.

“Mrs. Holloway, this here’s Mr. Hawthorne. He’s come to take a look at Mary.”

The woman nodded, her eyes searching James’s face. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Hawthorne. Please, follow me.”

Inside, the house was dim and quiet. James followed Mrs. Holloway up the stairs, the wood creaking under their feet. She led him to a small bedroom at the end of the hall. The air was close and tinged with sickness. Sickness, but not death.

Mary lay in a narrow bed, her small form barely making a bump under the quilt. Her face was pale and drawn. James approached the bed and sat his bag down, his mind already cataloging observations.

“How long has she been like this?” he asked, gently taking the girl’s wrist to check her pulse.

“Five days now,” Mrs. Holloway replied. “She came down with the fever like the others. She seemed to pull through, but then… well, she just wouldn’t wake up.”

James nodded, continuing his examination. He listened to her breathing, palpated her abdomen. Her skin was cool to the touch. Her breathing was slow, but steady. It was as if she were in a deep sleep rather than the grips of a deadly illness.

Reaching into his bag, James pulled out his stethoscope, a relatively new invention that still felt strange to use. He listened to Mary’s heart, frowning at the faint but steady rhythm.

“Has she shown any signs of waking?” he asked.

Mrs. Holloway shook her head. “Not really. Sometimes she’ll mutter something, or her eyes will move under her lids, but that’s all.”

James considered this. In his experience, comatose patients rarely survived long without water and nourishment. Yet Mary seemed stable, even peaceful.

He turned to Mrs. Holloway. “Have you been able to get any water or broth into her?”

“A little,” she replied. “I’ve been using a dropper. It’s not much.”

James nodded. “Keep that up. That’s about all we can do for the time being. She appears to be an outlier; that should give you hope. The others… Well… She’s the only one I’ve seen to make it this long.”

“Mr. Hawthorne… Will… will my daughter be alright?”

James looked at the woman, saw the desperate hope in her eyes. He recounted those of a young soldier who too asked him a question he couldn’t answer. All the times he’d plain lied to comfort the dying. He wouldn’t do that anymore.

“Mrs. Holloway,” he said softly, “I truly hope so.”

The words hung in the air between them.

On a whim, he reached down to hold Mary’s hand.

The moment his skin touched hers, the world fell away. James felt a sudden, dizzying sensation of falling, as if he’d been plunged into an abyss. When the vertigo passed, he found himself elsewhere.

He stood in a vast, misty expanse, neither light nor dark, neither warm nor cold. And before him stood Mary Holloway, her form shimmering and translucent, like a reflection in disturbed water.

“James,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

James tried to speak, but found he had no voice here. Instead, his thoughts seemed to project outward, filling the space between them.

Where are we? he asked. What is this place?

Mary’s form rippled, her expression sad and wise beyond her years. “Somewhere in-between,” she said. “Not life, not death. A place of waiting.”

Images flashed around them. Scenes of Hollow Creek, of people James recognized. He saw them sickened and dying, souls torn from bodies by some unseen force.

James felt a chill run through him, a deep, primal fear that went beyond all rational thought. This couldn’t be real. What he seemed to be experiencing was supernatural.

How is this possible? he asked

Mary’s form shifted again, becoming somehow both more solid and more ethereal at once. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Mr. Hawthorne, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

The quote—Hamlet, James’s mind supplied—seemed to hang in the air between them, charged with meaning.

“You’ve seen so much death,” Mary said. “Why is it that you’ve come to Hollow Creek? Truly, why?”

Images continued to swirl—battlefields. Ones James recognized. Hospital tents. Graveyards. But he saw more from this place, wherever it was. He saw the rising souls of the dying, saw the light that received them. And he saw the darkness crawling along the earth beneath, hungry and grasping.

James’ mind was reeling. This couldn’t be real; it had to be some trick of his overtired mind. And yet it felt more real than anything he’d experienced in years. And her question… Now that he thought of it, he found he didn’t know. To Mary Holloway—or the stress-induced illusion of Mary Holloway—the answer seemed to go without saying.

“Seek the answer,” Mary said. Her form was now beginning to fade. “And James? Believe. Don’t be afraid to believe.”

With a jolt, James suddenly found himself back in Mary’s bedroom, his hand still clasping hers. Mrs. Holloway was looking at him strangely.

“Mr. Hawthorne? You went pale as a sheet for a moment there. Are you alright?”

James blinked, trying to orient himself. The room seemed oddly solid compared to the misty otherworld he’d just been in. Or thought he’d been in. “I’m… I’m fine,” he managed. “Just a little light-headed for a moment.”

He gently released Mary’s hand, half-expecting something else to happen. But the girl remained still, her breathing slow and steady.

As he gathered his things to leave, James felt oddly numb. Everything he thought he knew about life and death seemed suddenly questionable. His comfortable sense of atheism, his rejection of all things supernatural—it seemed hollow now. Still, a part of him resisted. It wasn’t unheard of—waking dreams, hallucinations; brought about from excessive stress, lack of sleep, etcetera. These things do happen. They never had to him before, but they most certainly did. It was common knowledge. Even to a glorified undertaker.

As he left the Holloway house, he felt adrift in a sea of uncertainty. Why had he come to Hollow Creek? The money offered was decent enough, but he knew that was only an afterthought. Was James Holloway some kind of great altruist looking to help his fellow man? Or some self-aggrandizing underachiever looking to be a hero?

He didn’t know what to believe.

* * * * * *

Hawthorne set back to the funeral parlor. The streets of Hollow Creek were empty, save for a few crows pecking at something in a gutter. As he unlocked the parlor door, a wave of dizziness washed over him. He steadied himself against the doorframe, blinking away the spots that danced in his vision. Just fatigue, he told himself. Nothing more.

Welcomed back with the familiar scent of death, three more bodies had been brought in during the night, laid out on tables and covered with sheets. James sighed and ran a hand through his hair. There would be more before the day’s end. Plenty more.

He shrugged off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, trying to ignore the slight tremor in his hands. As he prepared his instruments, he found his mind wandering back to Mary Holloway.

The memory of that misty otherworld, of Mary’s ethereal form and cryptic words, felt more like a dream than reality, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something fundamental had shifted within him. The foundation of disbelief within him had been indelibly damaged. Even with his feet firmly on the ground, he felt…detached.

As he pulled back the sheet on the first body, a young woman barely out of her teens, James felt another wave of dizziness. This one accompanied by a sharp pain behind his eyes and a sudden, bone-deep chill.

He gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. “I’m fine,” he said to himself. And perhaps the young woman on the table.

With trembling hands, he began to wash the young woman’s body. Her skin was mottled with the telltale bruises and rashes of the disease, her unseeing eyes rimmed with red. As James worked, he found himself talking to her. Talking to her, and everyone like her, past, present, and future. The strangeness of this was not lost on him, but his mind felt oddly adrift. Almost dissociated.

“I’m sorry,” he said, gently cleaning her face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. Couldn’t save any of you.”

The words echoed in the empty parlor, a litany of regret that seemed to encompass not just Hollow Creek, but all the deaths he’d ever witnessed..

As he continued, it became more and more difficult to ignore his deteriorating condition. Sweat beaded on his brow despite the chill that wracked his body. His vision would blur with fatigue from time to time, sending the room to tilt on end. Still, he pressed on, driven by some deep-seated desire to complete his work.

When he finished washing the body, James reached for the white burial gown he’d prepared. As he draped it over the young woman, smoothing out the wrinkles and adjusting the folds, something strange began to happen.

The face beneath his hands began to shift, features blurring and reforming. James blinked hard, certain he was hallucinating. But when he looked again, he found himself staring at his own face.

It was him on the table—sunken and bloodless, but undeniably him. The James on the table stared back with eyes full of the same pain and doubt he’d so often seen and ignored in himself.

James stumbled back, his heart in his throat. “What… what is this?”

But even as he asked, the proper face of the woman rematerialized before him. He stood back and dragged the sleeve of his gown over his sopping forehead.

“I’m fine,” he said again.

With shaking hands, James returned to his task. As he dressed the body in the white gown, it felt less like preparing a corpse and more like a ritual.

As he continued to, more feverish memories flooded his mind. The young soldier at Cold Harbor, asking if he’d go to heaven. The countless bodies he’d prepared over the years, each one a testament to the fragility of life and the inevitability of death. Mary Holloway, suspended between worlds, speaking of answers and belief. Belief in what? A purpose to all this pain and suffering? To the brutal brevity of existence?

James finished dressing the body, smoothing the white fabric one last time. The face on the table was peaceful now, the lines of worry and doubt smoothed away. It looked ready. Prepared to meet whatever waited on the other side. If there indeed was another side.

A brutal wave of dizziness swept over James, much stronger this time. He staggered, catching himself on the edge of an empty table. The room spun around him, the walls seeming to breathe and pulse with some otherworldly energy. All at once, he was utterly exhausted. Like he exhaled his last breath of energy and was unable to draw in another.

With the last of his strength, James pulled himself onto the table. He lay back, the cool surface a balm to his burning skin. The ceiling above him rippled and swirled, patterns forming and dissolving like clouds in a storm. Like beliefs in the ether.

“Why am I here?” he asked the empty room. “Why did I come here?”

The questions echoed in his mind unanswered. He found himself taking stock of things. The choices he’d made, the path he’d taken. His life. The plea for help that had brought him here. Was this supposed to be some kind of atonement for all those lives he couldn’t save?

The first coughs came, dry and from deep in his chest.

James closed his eyes, feeling the fever burn through him like a cleansing fire. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw faces – soldiers he’d tended, the bodies he’d buried, the people of Hollow Creek. And among them, shining like a beacon, the ethereal form of Mary Holloway, reminding him to “Believe.”

He felt a great presence settle over him. A vast and unknowable one, both terrifying and comforting. It filled the room, filled the world, until James felt he was floating in an ocean of awareness. And in that moment, James Hawthorne prayed for the first time in years.

“Father,” he whispered, the word feeling both strange and familiar on his tongue. “I don’t know if you’re there. I don’t know if you can hear me. But if you can… if you’re listening… I’m sorry.”

The words poured out of him then, a torrent of regret and fear. He apologized for his doubts, for his anger, for turning away from his faith. He begged forgiveness for all the times he’d failed, all the lives he couldn’t save. And he begged forgiveness most of all for his impure motivations. He’d come to Hollow Creek to be a hero. To feel needed again, like he used to feel; as ineffectual as he’d always been. Like a flower for the dead.

And finally, his voice barely a whisper, he asked the same question that had burned in his heart since it had been asked of him.

“Father,” he asked. “Will I be in paradise?”

The silence that followed was profound. James strained to hear something, anything—a voice, a sign, any indication that his words had been heard. But there was only the sound of his own labored breathing and the faint creaking of the old building around him.

As consciousness slipped away, James felt a curious sense of acceptance. About life and death, mistakes, regrets; they all ceased to matter.

It didn’t matter why he’d come to Hollow Creek. It didn’t matter whether he was driven by selflessness or selfishness, by a desire for redemption or some subconscious wish for oblivion. And in answer to his final question, he found not certainty, but resignation.

“I don’t know,” he thought, the words echoing in the vastness of eternity. “And that’s okay.”

And with that, James Hawthorne, once a man of God, then a man of science, then merely a man, slipped away. His body lay still on the table in the funeral parlor, ready for whatever came next.

Outside, the sun set and rose again. The town stirred to life, unaware that in a small, dark room, a battle for a man’s soul had been resolved.

Unaware that somewhere, in a realm beyond mortal understanding, the cosmic scales had shifted. The curse that had plagued Hollow Creek had begun to lift. And in a small bedroom on the third floor of the Holloway residence, a young girl’s eyes began to open.

“James…” she whispered. It was the first word she’d uttered in six days.

Her mother hurried to her bedside. “Mary! You’re awake! Oh, thank God! How do you feel, honey?” She pawed at her daughter’s clammy, mercifully cool forehead. “Oh, thank God, I’ll get you some water.”

“Thanks, Mommy,” she croaked. Already she’d forgotten why she’d said the name “James” upon regaining consciousness. Some fleeting dream, perhaps, quickly forgotten in the rays of sunlight streaming through the curtains and onto the bed around her. Vaguely, she remembered dreaming of the long-lost lamb finally returning to the pasture… That parable…The one that told of a shepherd who left his 99 sheep to find the one that was lost, and when he found it, there was a great celebration indeed.

James Hawthorne had been found—not through grand gestures or miraculous cures, but through deed, and a simple act of surrender. His body was claimed by darkness, same as the others in Hollow Creek. But his soul was claimed by the light.