To Conquer Death

I do not know who God is, but all my life people have been trying to tell me that they know him personally. They know what he loves and hates, that he is a man—but not really because he is a god—that he will come again to judge the living and the dead, that he died for me. I do not like any of this talk. I do not like being told that I owe my heart and head and soul to a person I have never met, a person that I cannot reach out and touch. I love very few people in this world, and those that I do are tangible beings. I can hold my mother’s spindly fingers in my hands and wrap her in my arms when she cries over my brother’s grave. My grandmother can leave a lipstick stain on my cheek after a kiss on my birthday. I cannot kiss the feet of Christ as he takes my brother’s soul into his arms and carries him into Paradise. I do not know Christ. I do not love Christ.

We stand over Bradley’s flower-covered casket, my mother’s head pressed against my chest. She grasps red rosary beads in her hand. That rosary is my mother’s lifeline, but she is my cross to bear.

"May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace," the priest says with conviction. He is a young man with a determined look in his eyes. He has the countenance of a true believer, and I do not envy his burden.

My mother places her rosary on top of the dark wooden casket, pressing her palm into the lid and shrilly crying out in a tone that I have never heard before. It is an eternal sadness that cannot be matched by any other emotion. I can never hear this sound from her again, for I will surely die if I do.

When they lower Bradley and the rosary into the earth, my mother's eyes tell me all I need to know. She will follow him into death.

My aunt takes my mother into her arms and ushers her away but I stay with my brother. Bradley never liked to be alone. He was always surrounded by his friends—his real brothers. It makes me sad to think that none of them came to the service today. None of them had to see my mother cry. Bradley has no friends or other-brothers now. I am all that is left for him.

And yet, I also feel some sort of satisfaction in seeing that Bradley is just as lonely as I am. I know that he is gone—he can’t see me now, but I want him to know that he was wrong to write me off of his internal list of important persons. I am sick to want him to see how selfish he is. Maybe he is not gone, maybe he can see me now, and he is looking up from his Inferno. Dante talked about the sinner’s contrapasso—the balancing of his sins in Hell. I like to imagine that Bradley’s punishment is listening to that one unbearable cry of my mother for eternity.

I know it is an ignorant falsity for me to imagine this for my brother. He is simply gone, wiped from existence as if he were never here. He is not an angel looking down on us in eternal happiness, nor is he a demon paying for the sins he committed in life. He is a body in the ground.

I cry now, because I have no other choice.

Why do you weep, Isaac? The voice returns to me unexpectedly, washing my mind of all thoughts that do not pertain to the purity of its sound. Why do you cry for a dead thing? For something that no longer exists?

This is the second time it has come to me. It is an inconvenient lapse of sanity brought upon by Bradley's sudden death. It is all in my mind. It is a delusion. I am a character in a droning television show, and the audience laughs at my attempts to rationalize the voice.

“Isaac.” I jump. This time it is not inside my head. “Oh, sorry!” the man before me says when he sees that he has startled me. It’s the young priest from earlier. I wipe my tears away, but I know my eyes are red and my cheeks are flushed.

“It’s all right, Father. I just—I didn’t hear you coming.” He has a strange look in his eyes that I cannot place. It is not sympathy or pity. I have become a friend to these emotions, but this priest does not know them.

“I just wanted to talk to you about something important.” He leans on a white marble gravestone.

“Oh?” This man unsettles me. Most clergymen do. I don’t understand them—does their faith make them strong or gullible?

“Yes. About Bradley.” He looks around nervously, fidgeting with the sleeves of his robe. “You’re probably not going to take this well.” He pauses, breathing deeply. “Bradley’s death has triggered something very bad. Something is coming for you, Isaac.”

I want to call the man crazy. I want to storm away from him, and I probably should. But I don’t because I’m an idiot. “What’s coming for me?” I whisper, glancing around for anything suspicious.

“I don’t know exactly. You’ve been hearing a voice?” I nod in response. “Not good at all. Come with me, Isaac.” He turns sharply, walking further into the cemetery. I follow him. He is peculiar, and maybe he is part of this mental breakdown I am probably going through, but I need answers from someone—even if it is someone I created in my mind.

We don’t go far before we stop in front of a decrepit mausoleum. He reaches to open the door, but stops very suddenly. He places his hand on my back. His touch is unbearably warm. He gestures above the door, and tells me to read the slanted words etched above the entryway.

“’To conquer Death is to become Him.’ What does that mean?” I step away from the priest’s burning touch.

“Those words appeared above that door three days ago upon the death of your brother.” He stares at my forehead for a moment and enters the mausoleum.

A strange feeling encases me as I step over the threshold. It is as though I am lighter than usual. I can float away like a feather in the wind.

“Keep yourself grounded, Isaac,” the priest grunts at me. He sits atop a strange stone tomb made of black marble. It is the only object in the dusty room. It's surface ripples like a still pond suddenly disturbed. “This place makes folks feel a little strange.” He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt now, his robes thrown on the floor.

“I don't understand.” He looks even younger than he did before. He musses his hair and gives me a bitter smile.

“I’m not a priest, Isaac.” The non-priest laughs now.

"Who are you?"

He ignores me. He leaps off the tomb and pushes the gargantuan lid off the stone table. A sea of sounds and lights burst out of the opening. It is loud and overwhelming, like a crowd of unfathomable voices all speaking to me at the same moment. He wipes the sweat from his brow.

“I’m here to help you get rid of the monster that's been following you.”

I stare into the eyes of the man I initially thought so holy, so devoted. Now, I see the terrifying truth reflected on his face. There is something wrong with the world. There is something wrong under-the-world. When I wept for Bradley, I should have been weeping for myself. I should have been praying to God. I do not know Christ. He cannot help me. But I wish he could.