5. Ryan Fairview
Present Day
(Age twenty-seven)
Alexa, Play: Rescue Me - Unions
T he first time I spoke to a dead person, I was eight years old. I didn’t know she was dead at the time. I just thought she was a nice old lady who wanted to read me a bedtime story.
Her name was Mrs. Williams, and she just sort of… appeared at the end of my bed. She read me one of my favorite Berenstain Bears books until I fell asleep.
It was nice.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized Mrs. Williams was dead. When I went downstairs to find my dad in the preparation room putting some final touches on the remains for the funeral my family was conducting that day, I froze.
There she was, lying in the casket, dead as dead can be. When I told my dad that she had come to see me in my room the night before, he told me I wasn’t allowed in the preparation room anymore. I heard him talking to my mother later that night, telling her he was worried that raising me around so much death was negatively affecting my grasp on reality.
My mother had brushed him off, claiming that I was just ‘sensitive’ to the paranormal… which, if you knew my mother, wouldn’t surprise you.
God love her… she walks to the beat of her own drum, that woman. I supposed you would have to be at least somewhat quirky to marry a mortician.
After that, I stopped telling people about the ghosts I saw despite the fact that I began to see them more and more frequently. Especially as my sister, Theo, and I got older. We learned pretty quickly that kids were cruel, and the only thing people feared more than those they perceived to be different than themselves was.. well… death .
Being the children of Fairview Funerals, Theo and I were not popular in school.
The Frankenstein kids was one of the nicer names they used to call us. We also got a lot of Addams family jokes. The less polite kids straight-up called us freaks.
Theo, being a few years older than me, took on the role of protector at a young age. She’s a lot… angrier than I am.
She took up boxing at age twelve, and let’s just say… kids stopped jumping us on the way home after Theo sent one of the school bullies to the hospital with a broken nose and three missing teeth.
Shortly after that, she made me take up boxing, claiming that she wouldn’t be around to protect me once she graduated. It didn’t take much convincing, as the bullies just used the fact that I needed a girl to fight my battles for me as more ammunition.
As much as violence wouldn’t be my first choice in any altercation, I did enjoy boxing. It was a great way to let off steam, and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t needed to use it for self-defense a few times.
I still practice with Theo a lot. She built a gym in our basement next to the preparation room, and we spar frequently. For me, it’s a way to stay in shape, but for Theo, it keeps her on top of her game. She doesn’t talk about it much, but she’s involved in an underground street fighting ring. I wish she would join something more legitimate. It’s hard for me to bite my tongue whenever she comes home with her face split open and needing stitches, but every time I hassle her about it, she brushes me off, telling me to mind my damn business.
She’s a stubborn asshole, but she’s my sister, so I put up with her shit no matter how pigheaded she is.
Anyway… I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah. The whole ‘I see dead people thing’ …
Well, considering I had already been labeled a freak just for being born into a family that ran a funeral home, I felt it would be safe to assume that my frequent interactions with people’s deceased loved ones wouldn’t be well received. So, I became very secretive about my… special ability. However, sometimes, it was exceptionally difficult to keep my encounters with the dead to myself. Not all the ghosts I met were kind and harmless like Mrs. Williams.
You see, we accepted all types here at Fairview Funeral Services, and most of them came to visit me before they passed on. Whether I liked it or not.
I was seventeen when Mr. Holt staggered into the bathroom while I was showering. His brains had been leaking out of his cranium, and his one remaining eye had been dilated with a manic sort of fury.
‘You’re a dirty whore! I’m going to fucking kill you, you dirty little slut!” he had screamed at me, his dead, clammy hands passing right through me as he reached for my throat. I bolted out of the shower so fucking fast, running down the hall naked and screaming.
Mr. Holt had chased me, and it took my mother discovering me huddled under the blanket with my head between my knees to get rid of him.
She had lit a bushel of sage and salted the shit out of my room, which seemed to do the trick. My mom’s witchy nature was another thing the kids at school often picked on us for, but after she had saved me from that angry spirit, I refused to allow myself to feel ashamed of her for it. Say what you would about my mother, but she knew what the fuck she was doing when it came to the occult.
After I had recovered from the gruesome encounter, I stormed down into the preparation room to find my father listening to his usual classical soundtrack and reconstructing Mr. Holt’s skull.
I did a Google search for the name Holt and was bombarded with news articles detailing this man’s murder-suicide. Apparently, he had raped and killed a young girl before blowing his own brains out.
Jesus.
I was furious that my father would accept the procession of such a monstrous human being. I told my father that we should be more selective about who we accepted in the future. He had given me a sad smile and shook his head, diligently continuing his work on the dead man’s skull.
My father never made it his business to question the moral fiber of the people we entombed.
‘Funerals are not for the dead, son.’ My father had always said. ‘They’re for the living. What we do is important. We help people get closure and say goodbye. Without us, people would have a much harder time moving on.’
At the ripe young age of seventeen, I had accepted this at face value and resolved to endure the nasty souls that haunted me for the sake of the families that mourned them. This piece of truth he had imparted rang especially true when he died a few short years later.
I was twenty-three and just wrapping up mortuary school when the renowned George Fairview, beloved husband of Iris Fairview and father of Theodora and Ryan Fairview, suffered a massive heart attack.
He passed away on a Thursday, and he was the first body I ever embalmed by myself.
It was also the first time I had ever been thankful for my gifts, as my mother called them.
My father had sat on the counter of the embalming room while I had worked on his body. We listened to all his favorite classical playlists, and he left me with a few final pieces of advice.
‘Take care of your mother.’ He made me promise, and I nodded, barely holding back tears.
She couldn’t see him, but he spent the entire next day with her at his funeral before he faded away to wherever souls went after they died.
Watching my mother go through the grieving process after my father’s death solidified what he had taught me.
Funerals were for the living.
I truly didn’t know if my mother would have been able to move on from the death of my father if she hadn’t been able to properly say goodbye that day. The whole experience was tragic but somehow also incredibly profound. Since then, I have thrown myself into my work, proudly taking over the family business and following in my father’s footsteps.
However, now, at age twenty-seven, with several years of experience under my belt, I wasn’t sure I entirely agreed that funerals were just for the living anymore.
They had to be for the dead a little bit … considering the soul of whoever I had on my table usually hovered nearby, telling me exactly how they wanted their hair to look or whether or not I had applied too much rouge.
Like right now, Ms. Thompson was caterwauling in my ear about how her sister should have chosen the blue dress and that she should know better than to put her in pink. She was a winter, not a summer. Warm tones looked horrible on her.
“I think everyone is technically a winter after they die, Ms. Thompson,” I murmured as I inserted injector needles into the upper jaw of her body. “But don’t worry, I’ll make sure your coloring suits the dress your sister chose for you before your final look. I learned from the best,” I assured her ghost, who cocked her head to the side skeptically. She snorted.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she snipped as I wired the mouth to her body shut. I didn’t say it out loud, but I kind of wished I could wire her spirit’s mouth shut. She was one of the more annoying ones I had needed to deal with this week. I had just started the embalming process, and I was already sick of her.
There was a knock at the door, and Theo walked in without waiting for me to answer, as was her custom.
I let out an annoyed puff of air, glancing up at her with a frown.
“Can I help you? I’m in the middle of an embalming. You know better.” My father had taught me that the embalming room was sacred. Only authorized personnel were allowed in. Though Theo lived here with my mother and me, she didn’t work here… so authorized, she was not.
However, that had never stopped her before. She was glistening in sweat and wearing her usual men’s black, dri-fit shorts and T-shirt combo that she wore for training.
Her dark brown hair was tied in a knot at the nape of her neck. Because of her naturally tall but stocky stature and insanely rigorous training regimen, Theo was more built than most men I had met. Lucky fucker took after our father. I, on the other hand, took after our mother.
I had the misfortune of inheriting Iris’ red hair and freckles, so while I shared the striking bone structure that my sister had, I was decidedly the less… pursued of the two of us.
In college, after we escaped the stigma that had followed us through high school, my sister’s dorm had been a revolving door of women. I, on the other hand, seemed to attract a lot of female friends. Which, honestly, was fine with me. Sex with the few girls that had been interested in fucking me had always felt like more of a chore than anything.
I wasn’t sure if it was because I spent my days touching dead bodies, but I rarely felt the desire to touch other people in any intimate way. That being said, I had never really had a long-term girlfriend until recently.
I finally found a girl who seemed as uninterested in sex as I was. Her name was Joanna, and she was a Sunday school teacher at St. Gabriel’s Church. She was nice enough, and my relationship with her made me feel slightly more normal. At least when people asked if I was single, I could say ‘no’ now. One less awkward social situation to navigate.
“That weird kid who’s obsessed with you is here again,” Theo said, squirting her water bottle into her mouth.
That got my attention. Caleb was one of the neighbor’s kids, and I was pretty sure he had a shitty home life. He had walked into the funeral home one day asking a ton of questions about death, and I had been overcome with the strangest feeling that the kid was trying to escape something and needed some form of sanctuary.
I had given him a tour of Fairview, taking him to the casket showroom and the visitation room. I explained the difference between an urn and a casket. He had a ton of questions about cremation.
Do we do it with their clothes on?
What about their jewelry?
What happens to their bones? Do they burn, too?
When I asked him if his parents knew where he was, he had gone very quiet, and the blood had drained from his face.
That was when I knew that something was very wrong and this little boy was suffering. I had called CPS, but nothing had come of it. So now, whenever he showed up, I just did my best to make him feel welcome and safe.
“I’m going to be at least another hour and a half,” I told Theo, gesturing to the naked corpse of Ms. Thompson I had just started embalming. Honestly, maybe two hours if she keeps yammering the whole time.
Theo rolled her eyes, looking irritated. “So what do you want me to do with him?”
“I don’t know, can’t you keep him company?”
Theo scoffed, holding up her hand to show me her taped and slightly bloody knuckles. “Do I look like a fucking babysitter?”
I scowled, growing increasingly fed up with both her and Ms. Thompson, who was now complaining loudly that I wasn’t giving her body the attention it deserved.
“Alright, bring him to the house and get him set up with some Netflix. Tell him I’ll come see him as soon as I can. If Mom’s home, see if she can spend some time with him.”
Theo rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You and your bleeding heart. Always taking in fucking strays,” she muttered on her way out.
‘Who was that!?’ Ms. Thomson asked indignantly, crossing her arms over her translucent chest.
“My sister.” I sighed as I reached for the mortuary putty. Her lips were a little sunken in and could use some fluffing up.
‘She’s kind of a dick,’ Ms. Thomson observed, and the corner of my mouth quirked up.
“Well… at least that’s one thing we can agree on,” I replied, pressing the putty under her lips. “Her bark is worse than her bite, though. She has a good heart.”
The spirit scoffed, and I chuckled.
“Now, can you try to be quiet for a few minutes? This next step is a little tricky; the color of your dress will be the least of your worries if I don’t tap your carotid artery correctly…”