Aunt Greta Remembers A Day Gone By
Greta Garbo had not been discarnate for very long when she first met the young man that she soon decided needed her care. She was earthbound, but the surroundings of Skogskyrkogarden in her native Stockholm were beautiful and she didn’t mind being there. It was peaceful and she could contemplate the things she felt were unfinished from her life. She had all the time in the Universe now. She was sad sometimes, but not unbearably so, and in these beautiful surroundings the sadness seemed to ease bit by bit. A gentle cool breeze blew across the gardens. Greta still marveled that she could feel the coolness or warmth of the Earth without it affecting her negatively. Greta was admiring the beautiful flowers that were left on her grave by admirers. Most were sweet people who genuinely seemed to care, but none of them knew her at all. Nobody had really known her. Greta suddenly felt terribly lonely. She wanted to find another spirit to talk to, somebody she could befriend or even just spend an afternoon with. So she asked the angels to take her to the person who needed her most.
Greta found herself in an older cemetery near a church. A funeral procession entered the cemetery. Greta wept for the sadness of the mourners. The mourners left after a time and the gravediggers finished filling in the new grave. Greta went to look at the nearby church. It was old and somehow foreboding. The sky darkened and the rain began to fall lightly. Greta continued examining the church, trying to sense what caused it to feel like a place of sorrow rather than goodness. Perhaps it was the sorrows of the many who had been buried here, but Greta couldn’t help but think that something bad had happened on these grounds. She was drawn to a window well and had decided that she would go in and continue her detective work when she heard a horrible keening wail that seemed to make the hair stand up on the back of her neck as it would have in life.
“My God—such a cry! It isn’t even human,” Greta thought. She looked skyward.
“Please, God, let me help this person who is in such pain,” she entreated.
She tried not to acknowledge the thought that if she were able to assist the mournful soul, she might be freed from the bonds of the Earth and her own melancholy preoccupations sooner.
As she strode forth, she saw the individual who was expressing such acute lamentation. He was young, probably no more than 20 years old. His slender form was curled into a fetal position upon the fresh grave. Long waves of blond hair obscured his face. His entire body shuddered as he wept, and every few minutes he gave another mournful howl. Greta was filled with compassion for the anguished youth. She slowly approached him and gently put a hand on his quivering shoulders.
“Oh please, let me have another chance,” the boy pleaded. “I’m sorry I did it. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry about all of it. Please let me have another chance. Please!”
“Here now, Sweetheart, don’t cry so,” Greta said gently. “Here, sit up and talk to me a bit. You may feel better if you do. There’s a nice boy. Here, let me help you. And let’s brush that hair out of your face so I can see who you are.”
“You’re kind, thank you,” the young man managed as he put a hand on her shoulder to bring himself to a seated position. “Oh, I did something awful, so awful, I didn’t have a choice, but I do so wish I could take it back, I do…”
His eyes went wide when he beheld the face of his benefactor.
“Oh, Miss Garbo! I’m so...I’m honored. And ashamed to be in such a mess and have you see me like this. Why are you here?”
“The ashes of what used to be my body are in a place not far from here, Sweetheart,” the dignified actress said kindly, still stroking the bereft young man’s hair. “But one cannot sit on one’s ashes all the time, can one? So I thought I’d see if I could find another spirit who might like to wander awhile with me. I was thinking about the kind of person who might enjoy chatting with me when I was drawn here. Then I heard you weeping so mournfully that it broke my heart. So I came to see what I could do for you.”
“I’m so sorry to have bothered you,” the boy said, inverting his eyes and blushing. “I should try to be quiet. I should know that even in death everything I do is stupid and a bother.”
“Darling, that’s a foolish way to talk, and I won’t have it. I didn’t come to hear you insult yourself. You’re too fine a lad to be condemning yourself so. Now, how is it that such a young man happens to be in this place? For me, it makes sense. I was old and my body was worn out. But you’re just a baby. How old are you, Dear?”
“22,” the boy said softly.
“And how is it that you come to be here at such a tender age?”
“I fuckin’ killed myself!” the boy blurted, beginning to weep anew. “I thought about it all the time, but the reason I did it isn’t what everybody thinks. I didn’t have a choice anymore!”
He stopped his tirade suddenly and shook his head, looking down.
“I can’t do nothing right,” he sighed. “I just fucked everything up every day since I was born. And now here I am swearing in the presence of such a fine lady as yourself. I’m so completely stupid, and I apologize to you with all my heart.”
The boy hung his head and his hair fell over his face.
“I thank you again for your kindness, Miss Garbo,” he said, voice quavering as he fought to hold back tears. “You are truly a great lady and kind to care. But there’s nothing you can do for me, and a fine lady like you shouldn’t have to be exposed to my foul-mouthed outbursts. You should go rest ‘cause you deserve to sleep quiet. I don’t know why I’m even here. Really I should be in Hell for what I did.”
With that the boy began to sob anew. Greta sighed and shook her head, putting an arm around him and gently encouraging him to rest his head against her shoulders. She offered him a pristine lace handkerchief retrieved from the pocket of the stylish black jacket she liked to wear whenever it rained or cool winds blew, even though the cold and wetness didn’t affect her spectral form. She again brushed the young man’s thick blond hair away from his face.
“You have so much hair, don’t you?” she said tenderly, as if speaking to a child. “Very attractive, but you shouldn’t hide behind it. You shouldn’t hide such a handsome face and such pretty blue eyes. Let’s dry some of these tears. You’re a very good-looking young man, you know. I bet you had all kinds of girls chasing you.”
The boy smiled and blushed.
“Nah, not really.”
“Oh, don’t be modest. Of course you did.”
The lad blushed even more fiercely.
“Well, maybe a couple liked me a little,” he said. “But I don’t know why such a grand lady as you would bother with someone like me.”
Greta shook her finger at the youth, trying to hide a smile.
“Let’s get a few things straight here, dear lad,” she said. “First of all, since we are to be friends and since I believe we can help each other, I’d greatly appreciate it if we could dispense with the ‘grand lady’ crap. I feel a deep motherly affection for you, my companionable friend, and would like it if you would think of me as your Auntie Greta who wants nothing more than to get you through this awful time. Do you think you might do that?”
The young man bowed his head and inverted his eyes, blushing. Greta pushed the hair away from his face again.
“My dear, as I’ve told you, you must learn not to use this ample mane of yours to hide yourself,” she chided.
“I—I don’t know if I can think of you as my aunt, Miss Garbo,” the youth stammered. “It...I’m afraid it would be kind of incestuous if I did, you see.”
Knowing what he meant but hoping he did so with an innocent spirit as she believed he did, she asked him why he felt this way.
“Because I think you’re so pretty,” he managed.
“That’s all right, Sweetheart,” she said. “And I’m very flattered that such a good-looking young man would feel that way. But you’ll get over it. You see, one of the benefits of death is that one’s appearance can be idealized. But looking beyond appearances, you’ll find over time that Auntie Greta can be an awful pain in the ass. She can be quite imperious at times, and terribly opinionated always. And I very much doubt that she shares your tastes in music or film. After a week you’d find me very much an old fuddy-duddy, were you to consider me as a mistress. So, you may consider me to be your comely but antiquated Auntie, and I shall see you as my prepossessing but naïve nephew.”
“I adore the way you speak,” the young man said with a smile. “And you’re right, you would hate my music and I’d not be very interested in yours, I suppose. I was a musician, but I won’t sing for you. I wouldn’t want to offend.”
“Well, perhaps you can sing for me sometime,” she offered.
“I don’t know, maybe,” he said, inverting his eyes and blushing again. “And I still think you’re very pretty.”
She embraced him and kissed his forehead.
“And I think you’re a very nice boy and I’m glad I seemed to have been able to comfort you. So, now we’ve established that I am to be your Auntie Greta. What may I call you?”
“My name’s Per. But you can call me Pelle. My friends always did.”
“Then so shall I,” Greta said, smiling.
The young man stood suddenly and reached for Greta’s hand. He looked about nervously.
“What is it, Sweetheart?” she asked as he helped her to her feet.
“I wanna get you somewhere safe. Oh, I should have known that for me there was no sanctuary!”
He inadvertently squeezed her fingers like a vise. His chin began to tremble and his breathing quickened. Greta stepped in front of him, stopping his frantic stride, and touched his ashen cheek.
“What are you afraid of, Honey? You must tell me. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”
“They’re coming for me. Demons. I’m gonna be sent to hell!”
“Why ever would that happen?” Greta asked, the boy’s fear making her agitated as well.
“I killed myself,” he said, eyes darting about. “That’s what happens when you kill yourself. You go to Hell.”
“No, Sweetheart, you won’t go to Hell,” Greta insisted. “What you did was foolish and wrong, but it’s not reason for you to be sent to Hell. You’re a good boy, a sweet boy, and you’ll be healed, not destroyed. I promise you. I won’t let anything bad take you. If they take you, they’ll have to take me too.”
“Don’t say that!” the frightened youth demanded, surprising Greta with his forcefulness. “You don’t know what you’re saying! They would do terrible things to you! I won’t let you pay for my evil actions.”
He was in a terrible state of panic. Had he been corporeal, he would have been hyperventilating. Greta tried to calm him, but he hurried from her, back to his grave. When she caught up with him, he was sitting with his arms wrapped about his knees. His eyes were wide with terror. She knelt before him and stroked his cheek.
“Pelle, Sweetheart, listen to me please,” she said. “Suicides don’t go to Hell. They are taken by gentle beings such as angels and are healed. Please believe me. No just God would reject a lovely soul like you.”
“It’s worse than you know,” Per whispered, voice quavering, and his words were confusing and unnerving to Greta. “The part of my soul that is the embodiment of all that is hateful in me made a terrible, bad mistake. He formed an evil alliance. We were so tired of being everybody’s scapegoat and the butt of a cosmic joke. So Dead agreed to an awful bargain. He thought we would become invincible and get back at everyone who ever made us feel inferior. Get back at those guys from school who ganged up on us. Get back at everyone who ever called us a freak. Get back at everyone who ever hurt one of our friends just ‘cause they were our friends. And we’d do good things for the people who really were our friends. The Dark Priest told Dead that we’d start a new world where people like us would be respected. So Dead let him feed and our body started to change. But I realized that Dead’s anger was too great and he was truly becoming evil, not just presenting an image any more. He didn’t want just retribution, he wanted to make others suffer. But I’m not like this! I’m angry and unhappy about a lot of things, and there are plenty of people that I wouldn’t care if they fell from a cliff. But Dead always lived the ugliness inside us and I ran damage control after he made a mess of things. Even so, he wasn’t actually evil, just pissed off and hurt. Our hurt made him vengeful always, but after the Dark Priest was through with him all he could think of was blood and murder and sacrifices and making actual plans for these things. He was becoming truly evil and he was making me go dormant so I couldn’t run damage control on his actions any more. I had to stop him. Angry though we are, and whatever rumors may have been spread, I’m not actually evil.”
“No, of course you’re not,” Greta said, her voice a barely audible whisper. What the strange, sensitive youth was telling her made her feel as if the blood had frozen in her veins. It was amazing how many physical feelings remained even after the body had shut down and been turned to ashes, buried in the ground or interred in a mausoleum.
“I will see if I can intercede on your behalf,” Greta suggested, enveloping the frightened lad in her arms as if trying to draw him inside her own form. “The angels do converse with me. It was a terrible mistake, Pelle, but we can reverse it, I’m sure we can. You’re such a nice boy, I’m sure God won’t forever condemn you for feeling hurt and angry enough to make a pact with…”
“It wasn’t Satan,” the youth said. “But I guess it was one of his minions.”
“A demon?”
“Yes and no. More like servant. Even now I have difficulty expressing what happened for fear I won’t be believed.”
“Well, who would believe that you and I would be sitting here in a graveyard, two spirits born many, many years apart, talking to one another? Come now, Pelle,” Greta teased. “Don’t say that you think old Auntie Greta wouldn’t believe in ghosts!”
Per didn’t smile this time. He continued looking down at his feet.
“A vampire,” he said quietly.
Greta looked at him askance. He shook his head and sighed.
“Now you think I’m nuts just like everyone else always did,” he muttered.
“No, of course not! I was just taken by surprise. You are telling me that you killed yourself because you were being changed into a vampire and didn’t want the transformation to be completed?”
Per nodded.
“Yeah, well, Dead made the deal, not me, but I’ll explain more about that later if I’m still here and not in Hell. Dead goes and creates a bigger fuck-up than ever for us, but now he’s asleep inside our mind and I can’t wake him up to help me fight the battle he started. Fucking Dead, I hate him! Whenever anyone thinks of us, they think of him. Nobody knew me.”
“Well, let’s start by letting me get to know you. I like what I know already. If I were God I would look at you and be proud of the beautiful creature I created. I would want to protect you. I wouldn’t want to see you punished for something that some other part of your mind did. I would want to heal all the parts of you.”
“I’ve got problems with the Christian God, Auntie, and I suppose that he must have problems with me to have let me go through such hell in my life. Maybe you’re right that my father’s God wouldn’t send me to Hell. In truth I doubt he’d even bother with me one way or the other, he’s probably so disgusted with me. We have not been on speaking terms for a long time, you might say. My father was a priest. We didn’t get along well and, to be honest, his God seemed to me to be a judgmental asshole. Just like I thought my father was, I suppose. But I learned many things about spirits and the afterlife from lots of sources. My grandmother was a witch, and I read lots of books about the Occult, and I do know that whether or not you accept any god or devil that there are heavens and hells nonetheless. Jarius can take me to one of the Hells, and I can’t run away from him forever. That’s why even though I so much want to stay with you, I can’t put you in danger. I must take responsibility for my own terrible actions. I’m so frightened, Auntie Greta. While in the world I was so miserable. I wanted to stop that pain, and I often thought that killing myself would help. When I pulled the trigger on the gun, I thought that I’d at least find peace from my worldly suffering as well as stopping Dead from taking over our body and getting to live his idiot fantasies. But my problems just followed me. I traded one set of bullies for another, and I made my real friends and those members of my family who actually did love me cry. I loved some of them so much even if I never could figure out what I was really feeling or actually say it. I was pretty scared of my feelings, I think. But I never wanted to hurt the people who truly loved me, especially my sister and my Nana. I think I might have fucked my brother up pretty good too, even though I left home when he was pretty little and I hoped that he’d forget about me. Dead always said nobody would really care if we died, that they all thought we were simply trouble. But all the time now I feel the unhappiness of my loved ones. I deserve to go to Hell for that. I have to admit that along with stopping Dead I just wanted for the mess that was my life to be over and not to suffer any more. But I just played into that fucker’s hands.”
“Baby, I don’t think this vampire can hurt you now,” Greta said gently. “You’re a spirit. He’s a—what is that word that Bela Lugosi told me? He had just learned it and was so proud. He was sharing it with everybody. Oh yes, a revenant. I don’t think that a revenant can touch a spirit. I think that it may be your lot to stay here with archaic Aunt Greta, and together our souls can mend. A hellish fate, perhaps, but I do promise never to torment you purposefully.”
“I wish it were so,” Per whispered, tears coming to his eyes again as he wrapped his arms more tightly around his knees, pressing himself against the maternal figure who lovingly embraced him. “Oh, I wish it were so! But he’s pissed at me for killing the body. And he’ll come find me.”
“Sweetie, he’s a revenant, remember?” Greta soothed. “He can’t hurt you any more.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, my venerable Miss Garbo,” a cold voice said, causing Greta to jump.
