The Last Bone Seer 

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE 

The harsh sunlight glints off the hammer looped through Dad’s belt loop, one last stab of light before we enter the small, gloomy chapel. And I wonder, again: Why did Dad bring a hammer to my great-grandmother’s funeral?

And it hits me: The hammer is a stand-in for Mom. I almost snort out loud. The perfect metaphor—lean, chiseled, cold, smashing lives instead of nails.

Dad hadn’t even removed the orange sales sticker from the clawed head.

The heavy oak doors close behind us, the air inside the chapel is stifling, ripe with the sickly-sweet fumes coming, I assume, from my deceased great-grandmother. Hundreds of buzzing flies batter themselves against the large stained-glass window above the door. They, too, want out of this stuffy church filled with the odor of death. It doesn’t help that my little brother Jack, who’s nine and is pressed between Dad and me as we make our way down the center aisle, is hotter than a Weber grill.

This is my first funeral. I spent the interminable car ride from Chicago preparing for this moment. I can’t help but wonder why we’re here? None of us ever met her. I press my glasses back up my nose, flick my auburn bangs out of my face. Because of the heat, the rest of my hair is tied into a messy knot high off my neck. Sweat drips between my shoulder blades.

Dad has totally pitted out his dark gray Armani suit. And it’s not just because it’s hot outside. I’ve never seen Dad this uptight before. Ever since he got the registered letter from my great-grandmother’s attorney informing him of her death—and demanding our presence at her funeral on Manitoulin Island in Ontario—Dad, the stoic orthopedic surgeon, has acted crazy. I take in again the hammer clanking against his thigh like a gunslinger’s gun, only partially hidden under his unbuttoned suit jacket.

Does he think he’ll have to do some last-minute repairs on the casket? The man has done an amazing job repairing his splintered family—and the ligaments and bones of devastated athletes—but he can’t even hang a picture straight.

I scan the dozen men and women seated in pews, rigid and silent as though professional mourners paid to attend. They’re ancient. A few of them appear to be asleep.

The three of us reach my great-grandmother’s coffin, which rests on a church truck draped in royal blue fabric near the altar. The casket is plain and unembellished. But it looks sturdy, built for eternity. The white flowers surrounding it are wilted, however, as if leftovers from the last funeral. I lean over, sniff Jack’s brown curly hair—his shampoo smells like bubblegum—and whisper, “How are you doing?”

“Good, Skye.” He scratches his nose with Dr. Doom, his favorite Marvel figurine that never leaves his hand.

The candles on either end of the casket flicker, throwing fitful shadows over the small body laid out inside. My heartbeat quickens as I peer over the edge. I’ve never seen a dead person before. To my relief, my great-grandmother is dressed in a tailored khaki-colored suit, black flats, her hands folded across her chest. Military ribbons adorn her collar. Her white, cropped hair is brushed back. The skin on her face is gray, wrinkled, cheeks sunken in, her expression composed. No garish make-up, thank God.

Okay. Nothing scary here. I let some of the air out of my lungs, the tension in my forehead relaxing, as I take in the framed photograph of my great-grandmother propped in front of the casket. The caption reads:

Charlotte Shaw Carver,

Born to This Life June 10, 1918

Born to a New Life, July 2, 2018

I inhale sharply. My great-grandmother lived to be a hundred-years-old? During our long car ride from Chicago this morning, Dad told me she’d been a career Army nurse stationed all over the world earning the rank of lieutenant colonel. She had one daughter, my mother’s mother, who died when Mom was very young. Dad never mentioned a husband.

I study the black-and-white photograph of a strong-chinned, angular woman with determined eyes and pursed lips, as though she just reamed out the photographer. Her military uniform enhanced her tough-as-nails demeanor, a woman to be reckoned with. Beneath the dates I read, “I lived in the heart of Death,” and gooseflesh ripples down my arms. Dad also said that Charlotte died alone, in a bus station in Duluth seated on a wooden bench, a suitcase tucked under her feet. Where had she been going? I hate to think of her slumped over, life draining out with no one there to hold her hand.

No family does that, Mom.

From the second-story alcove, the organist pounds out the hymn Amazing Grace. I sing the words to myself, “I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.”

No, I don’t see. And if anybody should see, it’s me, with my genetically defective—but highly superior eyes—that allow me to see things I’d rather not. They’re under control, for now. I turn my attention back to Jack.

We make quite a pair. He’s been blind since birth, while I see way too much.

I know he’s waiting for me to give him the play-by-play. “Great-grandmother Charlotte looks like she was an awesome woman, Jack. She’s dressed in a military uniform, has a lot of medals on her lapels.”

And then, from out of nowhere, I feel a surge of anger. Mom should be here. This is her grandmother. My cheeks grow hot, just what I need in this stifling Death room. I wonder what excuse Mom gave Dad to explain her absence. “I’m too busy riding bicycles next to a barge on the Rhone River with my Hollywood dentist boyfriend.”

And right on cue, the tag in the seam of my white blouse, which I’d pilfered from her closet—Dad hasn’t had the stomach to clean her stuff out yet—jabs me again. I squirm away from the label as I used to squirm away from Mom’s firm grip. I’d been forced to ransack Mom’s left-behinds not having a suitable funeral outfit in my own closet. It was all I could do to shimmy into one of her black, A-line skirts, way too short on me. The boots on my feet are all mine, however, brown, ankle-high, zipper cowboy boots with pink and turquoise flowers. Mom would have hated them.

Which is why I wear them.

Jack peers into the casket, his chin resting on the edge, and holds out his hand expectantly. I don’t hesitate. I know what he wants and guide his fingers to Charlotte’s face. His expression remains placid as his fingers feel touch see.

Dad watches Jack, a look of such utter sadness—but also pride—at my brother’s fearlessness.

Just then, three plump, black flies land on the edge of the casket. My brother’s hand shoots out. Smack! His aim is deadly accurate, three tiny carcasses to add to the death toll. I tousle his hair and whisper, “Good shot!”

Jack wipes his hand on his suit pants, adding fly guts to the orange, cheese Doodle smears he acquired during the long car ride here. Even worse, I have no idea where his fly victims ended up. I hate to think of great-grandmother Charlotte in her pristine military uniform entering eternity with fly entrails on her lapels.

Startled by a tap on my shoulder, I spin part-way around as a stooped old man in a dark suit thrusts a cream-colored envelope at me. He mouths the words, “From him.”

Him? Or hymn?

Dad twists toward us, the hammer clinking against his belt buckle, his thick brows knotted.

“Read it, please,” the old man says, nudging the letter into my hand, then retreats with a bow back into the shadows.

In the flickering candlelight, I see my name on the envelope Skye Stewart Dirksen typed in old-fashioned newspaper font. And underneath, a pen-and-ink sketch of a canoe paddle with a feathered cap, which I take to be some kind of club logo or insignia. Dad peers at the letter, a sheen of sweat coating his face. For a second, I think he’s going to snatch it from my hand, so I clutch it tight to my chest. From him?

Clearly, I can’t read the letter this second. I curl away from Dad tuck the envelope into my skirt pocket, then say through gritted teeth, “We paid our respects. Can we get out of here now, Dad?”

“Not yet.” His voice sounds like a growl. “I have to get something.” He leans over Charlotte, his index finger probing underneath her folded hands, digging, then digging some more. He grunts in frustration. My mouth goes dry because now he’s bending her pinky back, and I hear a tiny pop. Jack hears it, too, the back of his head ramming me in the gut.

Dad freezes, his face knotted in horror, Charlotte’s thin white finger pointing in the wrong direction—at him.

I nudge Dad hard and whisper, “What are you doing?”

“What was that noise, Skye?” Jack asks.

I’m so shocked at Dad—he’s a doctor, for God’s sake—I can’t answer my brother.

Then I groan as the luminous white membrane I’ve been dreading slides over my hazel-colored eyes, a tidal wave I can’t stop.

Thanks, Dad. I was mentally prepared for this funeral, was handling everything just fine—until you broke the corpse’s finger! I couldn’t possibly have anticipated that.

These episodes never end well for me. My visual defect makes me look especially hideous because my eyes film over like I’ve inserted white marbles into my sockets. I pray the minister doesn’t see me. He’d probably insist on an exorcism.

It only happens when I get too excited. Or angry. Or upset. So, I work hard at feeling nothing at all. And when it happens at my high school West Side Prep, I pretend I’m having a seizure.

My bizarre birth defect is a form of x-ray vision, which allows me to see under skin, through organs, and into the murky world of bones. Seeing under skin is a creepy power, one I’ve spent most of my seventeen years suppressing. I’m not Superwoman. I can’t see through concrete walls or metal hulls on ships. But I can see through the white, fibrous periosteum, the outside layer of a bone, into the juicy, swirling world of blood vessels, nerves, and bone marrow. And I don’t see shadowy negative radiographs in black and white. I see a teeming red stew, flowing marrow with chunks of tomato and cauliflower. The spongy material at the end of a long bone looks like honeycomb crawling with just-hatched bees; bones themselves are rigatoni pasta. So, you can see why I do everything in my power to not look.

Too late now, I think, as I gaze through Charlotte’s withered skin, through dried ribbons of muscle and tendon into the bones of her hand.

“Are you doing it, Skye?” Jack asks, his voice distant, thready.

I squeeze his shoulder in affirmation.

As you can imagine, my ‘affliction’ has made me morbidly interested in skeletons. As soon as I was old enough to understand I wasn’t going to outgrow this defect, I spent hours scanning anatomy charts, in all sizes and shapes, from mouse to man. I learned, for example, that the vertebrae in a turtle are fused with its ribs and shell, that only the neck and tail move freely. I learned that the skull of a puffin is full of holes to lessen its weight and improve its balance while flying. Which is useless information in downtown Chicago.

The complex skeletal structure of the human hand is especially fascinating, the thumb controlled by nine separate muscles, some anchored to bones within the hand itself, while others snake into the arm. The wrist is a chaotic, floating cluster of bones that makes no sense, flimsy and haphazard.

The bones in Charlotte’s hand look fossilized, like the black-and-white radiograph images I studied, the finger joints shadowed and pitted, and twisted with arthritis. She’s clenching a delicate gold chain, a necklace, in her left fist. And yes, her pinky is broken, as is the metacarpal bone beneath it.

Good job, Dad. Doesn’t that saying—Do no harm—apply to you?

I glance at Dad, still staring at the accusatory finger. A blob of sweat drips off his forehead onto the dead woman’s chest, leaving a dark splotch over her heart.

This poor woman will be a mess by the time the Dirksen family is finished with her.

I glance over my shoulder at the minister. His eyes are glued to the floor, hands folded behind his back. The mourners all appear to be napping. Or stoned. We could stand my great-grandmother on her head, and they wouldn’t notice. But Dad also seems to be using his broad frame to intentionally block their view.  And although time seems to have stopped, I’m pretty sure only a few minutes have passed since we entered the chapel.

I whisper to Dad, “Did Charlotte want us to have that necklace?”

The color has drained from his face. “Yes. It’s for you. I… I was hoping…” His voice trails off and his shoulders slump.

If she’d wanted me to have the necklace, why hadn’t she sent it with the certified letter we’d received a few days ago? Is this why we came all this way? There better be a ginormous diamond attached to the gold chain.

“I’ll get it,” I hiss.

“Get what, Skye?” Jack asks. His unseeing eyes tremble in their sockets, glistening brown marbles floating in bowls of milk. I sweep the brown bangs from his sticky forehead. “Your great-grandmother left me a piece of jewelry. It’s stuck on her finger. I’m going to get it.”

Dad withdraws his hand like a kid caught shoplifting.

I pivot Jack toward Dad, who grips my brother’s shoulders. Jack is like one of the pilings under the Navy Pier—he holds everything up. Dad’s eyes never leave my face. He’s dealt with enough of my white marble eye episodes not to be squeamish.

Chewing my lip, preparing myself for the feel of cold, clammy flesh, I reach out and touch the top of Charlotte’s withered hand. Surprise! It’s cold. But then my finger seems to stick, and I feel a jolt. Something. A connection I can’t define. And for a second, her skin feels surprisingly warm, pliable to the touch, as though she were alive just a moment ago. The tips of my fingers tingle. I hold my breath, aware only that the buzzing flies, smashing against the stained-glass window increase their frenetic pace. Then Charlotte’s eyelids flutter open, revealing filmy white eyes matching mine exactly. I twitch so violently my glasses fly off. 

But instead of being terrified, a profound sense of relief washes over me, a loosening of my always-clenched gut. Someone else had this bizarre defect. And my great-grandmother managed to live with it a hundred years, putting my seventeen years to shame. I lose myself in her gaze and feel comforted. I think about the letter in my pocket. Maybe I’ll finally understand why I was cursed with these hideous eyes that have cost me dearly. I hold my breath, afraid to move, not wanting to break this connection and hoping—oddly enough—that I don’t disappoint her.

A faint, feathery voice wafts through the air, so weak, I strain to hear it over the buzzing of the flies. Her withered lips do not move. “To you, Skye, I hand over the cursed bone of the dead man, Augustus Drummond.”

Cursed bone?  I grimace.

Jack squeaks, Dr. Doom trembling next to his ear. Dad’s brows knit together, his worried gaze moving from me to Jack and back again.

Then Charlotte’s hand unfurls like a white clematis in the morning sun—with one bent petal—exposing a dented, oval-shaped locket attached to a gold chain.

Maybe the diamond is inside the locket.

“Take the bone,” the voice says.

Visions of someone plopping a bloody femur wrapped in newspaper on the kitchen table, like in an old mobster movie, flash before me. Or maybe it will be delivered by UPS in a brown box, a neatly wrapped fibula packed in dry ice. I’m not signing for that package! Then it dawns on me.

There’s a bone in the locket? Ugh. It must belong to a mouse.

I curl my fingers around the locket, pull my hand back, the gold chain in my palm glimmering in the candlelight, my hand warming as though touching a glowing ember.

The feathery whisper continues. “I carried this bone for eighty-five years. It’s your burden now. You are the last Bone Seer. You must decide if he has earned the right to die, or not.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

*This is a work in progress, with hopes of being published soon.