Who knew a dead woman's grip could be so strong?
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The scent of death loomed over Cyrus, in that cold sterile room he had spent far too many months in, as he attempted every trick he could think of to get the damn book out of the woman's hand. He didn't know who the woman was, and what life she experienced in those now blank eyes. All he knew was that she was long since dead and most likely from unidentified kidney failure from how pudgy her skin felt. However, those facts didn't explain why her fingers held the leather-bound pages so close to a heart that stopped beating. It took many tugs, and even placing his foot on the table, to free the book but not before falling over to meet with the marble ground.
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At that moment, an arm reached down and he foolishly believed it was the woman's, his pulse quickening, but luckily it was only Dr. Grimshaw. "I see you finally got the book."
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"Yes." Cyrus, embarrassed, quickly handed over the book, partly because he admired the gangly man too much to refuse his open hand, and partly because the book seared against his own as if to say 'I don't belong to you.'
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Dr. Grimshaw ran his finger along its edges and Cyrus couldn't help but ask, "Are you going to read it?"
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The doctor gave him a grave expression, "You shouldn't delve into a dead man's secrets" and then with a smile, "especially someone with that grip."
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Cyrs smiled back.
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Yes, this was all very peculiar but not to Dr. Grimshaw and certainly not to Cryus.
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The Black family had taken residence in the manor with a cemetery as a backyard, ever since Cyrus's grandfather died. In the years he spent there, Cryus remembers hearing his sister complaining and sometimes even crying on account of the haunting feeling she claimed the cemetery offered, to which their father would reply with curt responses about honoring their grandfather's life. Cyrus, however, liked this new life as opposed to the bustling streets of New York, because at least now he found friends, even if they were dead.
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He liked all the floating bodies of different transparencies surrounding and listening to him attentively as he told them his every waking thought.
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His mother was concerned, his sister disgusted and the kids in his 7th-grade class treating him like an infectious disease but his father brushed it off as "boy behavior".
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At some point, he stopped explaining and kept his energy for the dead until one day, a man with an umbrella on a wonderfully sunny day who was clearly alive, said "Come in, have a seat."
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They sat in the pavilion boarding of the cemetery, when Edward whispered, "I see them too."
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And from there began their unpatterned meetups. Perhaps he should have turned away from the stranger but he couldn't help himself. He became addicted to the thrill of speaking to a real person so much so that he took on a 2-year mortuary science degree and pulled every string to become an apprentice at the Willbrook Funeral home where Edward Grimshaw was the head mortician.
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When Dr. Grimshaw left with the book, and Cyrus had started to scrub on to start the embalming, Dr. Morris walked in with pliers and an attendant. "Where's the book?" she said.
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"Oh, I gave it to Dr. Grimshaw," Cyrus received the look all people harbored for him.
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"Again Cyrus, you cannot give such things to Dr. Grimshaw. This isn't his job anymore. He works in identification now and we work in embalming. All objects and clothes go to us or the families. Got it? I don't want to remind you anymore. Now go get the book."
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Cyrus left, but the stench of the dead body didn't leave him. Behind the door, he hears Dr. Morris and the attendant say, "This stuff again?" "I know, I need to speak to those two. We can't have more missing all because of their little fetish."
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He balled his hands to a fist and moved away.
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Dr. Grimshaw's office is empty, but, well-lit, and lying across the table was the book. He knew he shouldn't look into it, less for the dead women and more because a look of anger or disappointment on Grimshaw's face would break him. But the book was sitting there so perfectly and so he picked it up and discovered it was a diary.
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The entries followed a young girl growing up in the 50s with her loving father, and then the painful grief that followed when he eventually passed. To Cyrus's astonishment, he saw the words,
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But I wasn't really sad, papa came back but as a ghost. With lots of ghost friends.
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And then proceeding that astonishment was horror at the face of Dr. Grimshaw in a memorial card stating he died in 1957.
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"No," Cyrus said but his voice came out hoarse. "He's alive. A warm human body..."
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"Did I not tell you not to delve into a dead man's secrets?" Dr. Grimshaw stood there not in his youthful beauty but as a decaying body, with sagging eyes, rotted limbs, and dirt-stained funeral clothes.
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"Cyrus!" Dr. Morris yelled down the hall.
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Dr. Grimshaw came closer with his festering hands out.
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"Cyrus!" Dr. Morris sounded more annoyed now.
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"No, please-." His words were cut off by the hands of the doctor wrapping around his neck.
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Who knew a dead man's grip could be so strong?
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