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The Revenant did not remember how it had come to be buried; it remembered much but not that. It also didn’t know how long it had been in the dirt, it knew it was longer than it had been awake. As it lay, pressed down by the earth, listening to the insects moving around it, it pondered its existence. How and when did it come to be aware? Was it alive or not? It didn’t feel the urgency of life, nor did it feel the stillness of death.
Questions; the Revenant had so many of them, but no answers. It dozed, on and off; no sense of time passing was a blessing in a way. As it dozed, it dreamed of dancing with a woman with dark eyes. It liked the way she looked at it. The woman smiled and her body swayed in time to music it couldn’t hear, their cheeks pressed hot and close, skin against skin, moving as one. Desire, need, hunger. It felt all of them.
Fingers twitched, toes stretched, and the Revenant pushed back against its prison and longed for memory to bring context to its dream.
When next it dreamed, it was skipping along the side of a path dividing a green meadow. It's dress was Sunday best, a summer dress with a cinched waist and a thin belt, shoes shining in the sunlight. Ahead of it was a tent, dirty white canvas under a bright blue sky, walls snapping in the breeze, pulling strands of hair from a long braid. People walked beside, behind, and in front of it toward the same tent. They all wore their best clothes, suits and dresses, hats seasons old, and sullen world-weary expressions.
No one spoke in the dream. The Revenant desired speech above all but it didn’t open its mouth; it had swallowed more than enough dirt. After more dreams, the Revenant began to believe that they were real people.
When it wasn’t dreaming about other people’s lives, the Revenant was listening to the earth. To the passage of life through the earth, the insects singing love songs to each other. A centipedes ran across its lips, many tiny feet tickling the delicate skin. Crumbs of earth moved close to its left hand. Why had it not heard the sharp shallow breaths that suddenly stopped when the hand was exposed.
It wiggled its fingers and shrugged, the weight of the soil loosened minutely on the left side of its body. The Revenant marveled at the sensation as another hand gripped its hand tightly, nails pressing into its flesh, and pulled. The dirt resisted.
“Fuck.” Soft and high in timbre, it was a woman’s voice. “Fuck.” She squeezed the Revenant’s hand. “Just hold on,” she said, blowing warm breath on the exposed flesh before releasing the hand. She moved away, many steps.
The Revenant felt the absence of that warmth in a vital way. Until that moment, it hadn’t known it was something to be missed.
A vehicle door slammed shut and she returned with tools, scraping the earth away from the entire left side of the Revenant’s body. Turning its head, it opened its mouth and dragged a breath in. Its first breath in a long time, it coughed up dirt from earlier attempts. She grasped its hand once more and pulled, again the Revenant’s grave resisted. Now that the Revenant’s ears were exposed it could hear music, gospel with twanging guitars and swelling organs, voices that had sung to God like a lover.
“Oh come on,” growled the woman, pulling harder, incrementally so she didn’t break bones. She was stronger than she looked and the Revenant felt its skin stretching uncomfortably.
Opening its eyes was a struggle, the lashes crusted like they were glued shut, but a hand swept the dirt from them carefully and held its cheek for a moment. A lamp light shone bright light down on the Revenant from a band around the woman’s face, obscuring the details. The Revenant's eyes blurred as it tried to focus on her, a blob of lighter colour against the darkness all around. It dawned on it that it was night and she was wearing dark colours to blend in.
“Speak,” she said gently.
Its mouth opened and closed many times. So long the Revenant had desired speech but now that it was finally free to talk, it found itself speechless.
“It’s okay, I guess it’s all a bit overwhelming,” she said with a kind smile. “You’re safe now.” The Revenant felt a swell in its chest - relief - and something more in its belly, something intimate that wasn’t familiar.
She leaned over to loosen the dirt around the edges of its body, grunting softly as she scraped the binding earth away. The Revenant drowsed as she worked, comforted by her presence. It did not feel her pull it from the earth, nor the journey to her truck. It became slowly aware of movement and of a soft wrapping around its body, the music muted, filling the cab with the sensation of sound rather than anything identifiable.
“Are you hungry?” asked the woman.
The Revenant turned to look at her, with the dashboard lighting up her profile; she had a friendly round-cheeked look, and a few scars, old and faded, curved around the edges of her jawbone and mouth, down her neck. She appeared to be chewing something, her jaw working around it furiously. A plain red trucker cap sat low on her brow, dirty blonde hair escaping from beneath it. She wore denim dungarees over a thin black t-shirt with red printing the Revenant couldn’t make out, so she had changed out of the dark clothes from earlier. Her arms were bare and the sun-browned skin was goosed. Her body was filled out in curves and softness over muscle. Heavy steel-tipped work boots pressed down hard, alternating between the accelerator and brake.
“Are you hungry?” she repeated, with no anger or irritation in her voice.
The Revenant didn’t feel hungry and shook its head. It pulled the soft summer blanket closer, marvelling at the shape of its long fingers and longer nails against the cloth. Dirt was crusted thick under them but it felt no vanity, for it imagined the dirt was thick all over. It leaned back against the headrest and stared out the windshield. They sat in silence for while, companionable as the night world passed by the windows.
“What’s your name?” asked the woman, not sharing her own. She reached over, turning the heater up to ward off the chill growing in the air. The sun had yet to rise and the temperature had dropped. She grabbed a thermos and tossed the cup aside to drink straight from it in long gulps. “Gah, cold.”
The Revenant watched her throat move as she drank and pondered on names for a bit. Did it have a name? Had it ever had a name?
“Can’t remember?” she guessed, favoring the Revenant with a kind smile. “Don’t worry, it’ll come back, it always does.”
Had she spent time with Revenants before? Such a statement felt like she might have. The sun rose across the horizon shining golden light in long beautiful rays. The Revenant had not seen such light for so long, tears welled in its dry eyes.
“Wrap up, there will be more traffic on the highway now, we don’t want them seeing you in the state you’re in. They’ll think I’m a serial killer or something,” she laughed but the words were short bites. In the growing light, her hair was lighter, her skin darker, tiny wrinkles scarring the corners of her eyes from years of smiling and laughing. She pulled a stick of lip balm out of the pocket on the front of the dungarees and smeared it over her lips several times. She had been worrying them with her teeth earlier in the drive, so the skin was a little ragged in places. The woman noticed the Revenant watching. “It’s a terrible habit but not as bad as some. You’re not hungry, are you thirsty?” she asked, rummaging in a box next to the Revenant’s feet.
It took the bottle of water she offered with weak fingers, opening the cap slowly. Raising the bottle to its dry lips, it drank a few drops, feeling the water moisten its tongue. It swallowed the rest in a deep draught, gasping when it finished.
“Another hour and we’ll be there,” she said, not explaining where ‘there’ was, and watching from the corner of her eye as the Revenant drank a second bottle of water. “You can get clean, maybe eat something.” The hour came and went and they pulled off the highway onto roads lined with houses, most rundown and in need of paint. The woman pulled into a driveway next to one of those houses, pastel blue paint peeling off a former coat of green. “Keep your blanket around you, people watch; they don’t care but I still don’t want to chance anybody seeing you.”
Walking around the front of the truck, she helped the Revenant from the cab and carried it around the back of the house, holding it in one arm to open the door. As she carried it over the threshold, the Revenant looked around with wide eyes at the large kitchen full of the morning light then down a hallway, the walls lined with oil portraits of women, each slightly similar in the way that family is a little similar each generation but also dissimilar. The blonde woman carried the Revenant into a room off the hallway, a small guest bathroom with a shower and a waterproof chair under the nozzle. The floor was covered in blocks of textured ceramic tile. She set the Revenant in the chair and pulled away the blanket.
The Revenant snatched at the edges with a small cry as it disappeared. It was its most familiar object now and wouldn’t be surrendered easily.
“I’ll get you a fresh one when you’re clean. Stay here a minute, I need to get some stuff from the truck. I’ll be back real soon to help you wash up.” She patted the Revenant on the head then left and shut the door, locking it behind her.
With no way to tell how long it was in the room alone, the Revenant felt oddly comforted in the dark. It noticed there was no mirror in the small room, no reflective things. The woman returned with towels, perfumed bottles, a wide-tooth comb, and a few other things, including clothes. She had changed her own clothes again, covering them with a long plastic apron. Bathing it took time; the woman was gentle and thorough, and when she’d finished-- well, the Revenant felt like it had lost a few pounds of dirt from its body. Together they managed to get the soft sweatshirt and pants on, and the woman stood back and looked at the Revenant.
She looked with eyes that lingered strangely a moment too long before flicking them away to stare at the mess around them, kicking it all into the corner and leading the Revenant back to the kitchen. “You should eat, you need to eat. That’s the only way to get your strength back; then you might remember your name.”
The Revenant stood in the middle of everything and gazed around the room. It was sparsely decorated with sepia photographs in old frames; couples, men, women, singular or in pairs, no children, though. Faces serious, and like the portraits in the hall, similar around the edges like families get. Grooves in the wood measured the number of times each frame had been handled - many times over many years. The Revenant saw its rescuer in some of them.
“Sit.” A plate was placed on the table dominating the kitchen. It was round and smooth with a faded yellow pattern worn off completely in places, and the chairs had grey tape covering tears in the vinyl, but it was soft enough when the Revenant sat. A single egg, fried, on a slice of white buttered toast. A steaming cup, set near its hand, smelled like early mornings and late nights.
“Eat.” The woman wouldn’t take no for an answer this time, and watched as the Revenant picked up the knife and fork provided with the food, and sliced the egg.
It’s nose crinkled as yellow spilled free over the toast but it dutifully raised a mouthful and chewed it, swallowing.
“Remarkable,” whispered the woman, her lips close to the Revenant’s ear but not in a sexual way, simply proximity. “Now, drink the coffee.”
The same scene played out over many meals for many days. The Revenant did get stronger. Memory was a funny thing though; tastes, smells, touch, and other sensations becoming moments of deja vu where the Revenant would simply freeze and try to catch the rabbit before it disappeared back into the rabbit hole.
Sometimes the woman would disappear for days at a time, then return with a stack of books, vinyl records, and interesting pieces of ephemera. The Revenant learned to cook by itself, simple meals, from old cookbooks. It had a room and would lie on the bed, looking up at the ceiling with its stained and peeling paint; it did not sleep deeply and never dreamed out of the dirt. It toyed with the thought of digging a hole in the backyard, forbidden though it was to leave the house, and sleeping back in the ground. The woman always returned, smelling of rich dark earth, before it could make its mind up though.
Its name remained elusive and the Revenant chose not to speak to its rescuer but practiced shaping words in the small privacy it was allowed until it perfected the act of speech. This silence seemed to irritate the woman who had rescued, clothed, and continued to feed the Revenant as time went on.
“I’m Honey,” she said one day, looking in the Revenant’s eyes with a gaze that challenged it to disagree. Her lips were thin and angry. “Who are you?”
“Honey,” repeated the Revenant, allowing the woman this one victory but thinking she didn’t look like a Honey. “I do not know.”
It became Honey’s mission in life to get the Revenant to talk more, remember its name, and act more---human. Often these things coincided with meals but sometimes, it was when they sat in the evening, listening to the radio or reading. Honey wanted the Revenant to read as much as it could, giving it book after book, then asking its opinion.
“I’m going to call you Bee,” said Honey abruptly one night. She had a glass of wine, one of several she had consumed since they had eaten dinner together in silence. “You need a name. We can be Honey and the Bee.”
Surprised, the Revenant found its voice and replied, “I think that is not my name.”
“You think?” Honey stared back, her mouth in the shape of a smile though there was no pleasure involved in the shaping of it. “I say you are Bee. You need to be a real person sometime, and a name is a good start.” The blonde woman stalked from the room and the Revenant assumed it was to get another glass of wine. Its own glass was still untouched on the small side table beside its comfortable chair. It raised its book and began to read.
Honey returned in a while carrying a box, which she put on the coffee table, and held up a small object. “Bee meet iPod. iPod meet Bee. This is going to be entertaining for all of us.” Honey put her iPod in the speaker dock and turned up the volume.
The writing on the tiny bright screen read Chet Faker as the singer launched into No Diggity and the Revenant closed its eyes. It stood up and began to sway to the music; it felt Honey’s fingers slide through its own and they danced slowly.
“Do you remember this then? Dancing?” Honey asked, her voice fragile in a way the Revenant had not heard before.
As they danced, it turned to look at her face, really look. The soft scattering of freckles across her nose, the scars that lined her face, her eyes so dark and warm, her lips. The Revenant remembered then, it had a name and it had lived a life before the dirt. It remembered her too, not Honey or rather, Honey was not the name the Revenant knew her by.
“Harry,” it breathed.
Honey who was also Harry let a sob escape her mouth and the Revenant felt the tears dropping heavy on its bare neck.
“Light me?” asked the woman with the red lipstick, and yellow gold hair in a perfect victory roll. She wore a Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps uniform snug to her curvaceous body. Pulling a cigarette from a small case in her purse, she held it ready between her fingers. They both turned to the stage when one of the band called Chet Baker out to play, and after a minute or two a new face put a trumpet to his lips. Magic happened. She turned back with a wide smile. “I don’t know you and I know everyone around here pretty much. What’s your name?”
Charlotte smiled cautiously in return. “Charlie.” She flicked her lighter and raised it for the woman to light her cigarette. It was true, she wasn’t from around here. “Want to dance?”
“Maybe,” said the blonde, then pushing her luck, she asked, “Buy a girl a drink?”
“Sure, Honey, I’ll buy you a drink. A drink for a dance.” Charlie grinned, signalling the barman over as the blonde laughed and blew a plume of smoke out. “What’s your name?”
The blonde studied the crowd, her back to the bar. “Most people call me Harry when I’m not on duty.” She gave Charlie a sly smile that made the other woman swallow hard, some fear, some attraction. “I like your suit.”
There was the slightest trace of a European accent - it had almost been scrubbed away completely. Probably for the best - most folk around here wouldn’t know the difference between ally and enemy from their accent. She had scars around her face, old and faded, like patchwork; makeup hadn’t successfully covered them but you had to be close to see them at all.
“I’m Charlie?” said the Revenant, suddenly unsure. “You’re Harry? How am I still-- me? I was dead?”
Harry didn’t answer immediately. She broke away abruptly as the song finished and another began; she slapped the iPod out of the dock and it clattered to the floor. “It’s complicated,” she replied.
“Complicated,” repeated the revenant of Charlie slowly.
Harry nodded sharply. “Yes. You died, it was my fault. It was also in my power to--restore your life, in a manner of speaking.” She gestured to the body that was not entirely all Charlie. “I had a diary from my mother; she had transcribed certain events that took place in detail. The great creator didn’t know, he was dead before it mattered. Everyone thought my mother destroyed but she was herself a revenant and could not die so easily. She created me in her fiftieth year reanimated, a daughter to carry the legacy. We travelled together for a time until the war where we became separated. I never saw her again, I know she lives; we are connected, you see. She sends me mysteries to solve, treasures to find.” Her voice trailed off as she walked her own memories.
“And I? How did I come to be reanimated?” Charlie tried to keep the impatience from reaching her words.
“The night we danced, we had such a time, I do believe I fell in love with you a little. Just a tiny bit, with your dapper suit and lips so sweet. We were driving in my old Ford, so fast and sleek, it just happened, I leaned over to kiss you one last time before we parted.” She didn’t apologise but she did look contrite, shaking her head. “I recreated my mother’s laboratory, just as she had recreated my grandfather’s. Part of you was irretrievable, I did many things I am not proud of to make you whole again but when the moment arrived and the lightning lashed down, you didn’t rise immediately. I thought I’d failed, and I bury my failures.”
Charlie reached for her wine, letting it slide down her throat like a bitter elixir.
“But we don’t speak of the failures,” whispered Harry. “So many bodies.”
“Well I’m not a failure,” said Charlie, smiling for the first time since leaving the dirt. “It just took a little time to wake up.”