In the shadow world, we sometimes get glimpses of what we left behind, who we once were and familiar memories that float into our senses unexpectedly.

A few of the Ancients can go back and forth at will, but most of us here experience the stirring of memory with sad acceptance. I know I'm dead, but I'm not clear how long I've been here or how I died. I don't know who I was or am. I simply know that in another time, I existed somewhere else. There are others here, but I am entirely alone.

The Ancients--- it's a name for those who have acquired knowledge that they are reluctant to share with others. They say it is a curse and makes one long to go back to something none of us will ever have again.

In a deep corner of this dark world, the Ancients gather; their whispers sometimes travel, but they are difficult to decipher, rumbling through the fog with muted tones. They are little more than noise. And still, the intrusion is welcome in this vacant vacuum of distraction.

The presence of evil is all around me and I want it to consume me, take claim to my restless soul. This utter emptiness, this lack of purpose or reason, is a slow torture.

Why couldn't they take my mind when they disposed of my flesh? My thoughts are stuffed with words, vocabulary that has no purpose. I feel the warmth that occasionally emanates and touches some part of me. I imagined it to be a purity of some kind, but I did not know why it shines on me.

Once, a musky perfume stirred my senses. It was so familiar. The strain of trying to understand, the longing in me, was consuming and hopeless.

I felt the warmth of spring rain and glanced around, looking for something I understood, but couldn't see without eyes. The scent of lilacs and the velvet touch of pussy willows caressed my soul.

I was cold, but not uncomfortable. I imagined that I was entitled to the cold, that somehow it would comfort me, claim me or preserve me until I could feel the breath of laughter once again.

The Ancients surround me and I long for them to terminate my confusion. Give me purpose, I wanted to scream, but I was mute, lost in my loneliness.

Were they mocking me with their superiority? Was there nowhere else they could gather for their clandestine meeting? I was at their mercy and yet I felt no malice.

A single word penetrated my fog. The clouds parted and for a single moment, a split second, I heard the voices in unison.

"Elizabeth."

And then I heard the words echo and disappear.


***


"He's gone," the nurse said.

Beth stared down at the man's emaciated body and slowly removed her hand from her father's death grip.

"He called out my name," she said to the nurse.

"Child, don't be so hard on yourself. Your father's been lost to Alzheimer's for years. Be grateful that it's finally over."

"He called out my name. Don't you understand? He remembered me."

The nurse smiled at Beth. She didn't want the loyal child to suffer. So many of her patients were abandoned by their families, but this one, this woman had never given up hope. She'd always felt her father was there, just a below the surface. She didn't want to destroy her final reconciliation with the man she'd stood by for so long, but she knew that the man in the bed had been dead for years. Just like the other fifteen patients under her care that night, Beth's father was simply flesh and bones. Few of the patients at the nursing home were alive anymore. The nurse knew that, but was still obliged to tend to their living remains. She heard the wails of panic from down the hall. Number twelve lived her last days in a perpetual nightmare. This woman didn't know it, but the nurse knew; Beth's father was at peace with his death.

"He loved me," Beth said,

The nurse paused at the door, hesitating before she called the funeral home. "Of course he did," she said.