text: ? Edithe Zilonis asked.
  
  Of course. I do not want to die, but I also do not fear it.
  
  You are a paradox, said Edithe Zilonis.
  
  Perhaps.
  
  > Continue
  Edithe Zilonis wanted to return to my study. She seemed charmed by the place, even if I didn't understand why.
  
  I had pulled the large cushioned chair out from the corner. Edithe Zilonis thanked me and sat down. I sat in front of her, on the edge of the short wooden table after pushing all the books and pens aside.
  
  Edithe Zilonis was amused when most of them fell onto the floor.
  
  She said, "You have to hire a maid. Certainly you can afford it."
  
  "This is the cleanest this place has been in some time," I corrected.
  
  She laughed, but that was no way to become possessed, regardless of how much it livened her face.
  
  I had a book on possession in my hands. I would perform a simple séance, request that I speak to the other part of Edithe Zilonis.
  
  "Wait," she called, closed her eyes tightly. "I need a moment, to prepare."
  
  I waited a moment, before I began: "Loqueris---"
  
  "Wait!" Edithe Zilonis called again.
  
  "Edithe," I said.
  
  "I'm scared," she admitted.
  
  I liked to believe I was especially good at comforting the dead.
  
  While often they bite away their tears, it is the fragile mother, or old man who fears death who sometimes needs reassuring words. It was just another part of my job that I accepted and became swell at.
  
  I placed aside Summoning Spirits by Lovell Zakarian to put my hands over Edithe Zilonis'.
  
  Her eyes fell to my hands and she blushed when I touched hers.
  
  "Edithe, I am here to help you," I told her.
  
  She finally looked at me.
  
  "We have to find the man behind this. If that means being scared, so be it. I'm scared too."
  
  I quite admired Edithe Zilonis, because she did not say, I don't want to; I can't! I would rather die unknowing!
  
  She said instead, "You are never scared. Don't try and fool me, you fibbing Undertaker."
  
  > recite the spell
  The spell read, Loqueris ad me: spiritus.
  
  Edithe Zilonis sat before me, looked at me with a strange face.
  
  "It did not work," she said.
  
  "Spiritus," I tried.
  
  Edithe Zilonis startled me when she slapped the book shut, almost caught my fingers when she did.
  
  "Obviously this ghostie doesn't respond all that well to spells, Undertaker. She is probably like me, the unexpected will bring her out," Edithe Zilonis said.
  
  We both sat for a moment, debating on what in the world could bring this spirit out to speak to me.
  
  Thankfully, Edithe Zilonis was hardly dead.
  
  > Kiss Edithe Zilonis
  I had had my fair share of the romantic dead. Sometimes a gentleman will desire one last fling before he descends into the firey depths. Sometimes a gentlewoman will want a kiss or two before she vanishes into nothing. Sometimes I have to peel the passionate old folks off of me. But I had never ever initiated anything with any dead. It seemed inappropriate.
  
  But I had broken one of the few vows I took as an undertaker, and speaker to the dead, and leaned close to Edithe Zilonis and kissed her.
  
  She seemed surprised as first, but soon her arms were around my neck, pulled me close. She was always soft and sweet.
  
  And Edithe Zilonis did not feel dead in the slightest, which at the time gave me reasoning as to why I would ever do such a thing. As far as I knew, she was not yet dead. And as far as I wished, I hoped she would never be.
  
  "Oh my," she spoke between kissing me, "you are the best undertaker I've ever kissed."
  
  "Let me speak to the spirit," I ushered.
  
  > Continue
  Edithe Zilonis' eyes closed then opened, blinded me with the golden rays of the spirit that possessed her.
  
  "He waits," the spirit said, but now she took on a gentler voice. It still echoed and chilled my bones.
  
  "Who is He?" I asked.
  
  "A passenger, within a carriage, pulled by four horses. He waits."
  
  "Where is he?"
  
  "The carriage. He is binded to the carriage. I can't---" at this point Edithe Zilonis began to fight back, wanted to wake up. I held her shoulders, begged her for just one more moment.
  
  "He has done this before. I am not Edithe, but you have to stop him for me."
  
  "Who are you?"
  
  "Someone you know."
  
  Edithe Zilonis shuffled and groaned under the spirit's words.
  
  "Who are you?" I asked.
  
  The spirit had nothing more to say, or rather, Edithe Zilonis did not like being possessed. Her eyes shut. She collapsed backwards onto the chair.
  
  I knelt before her, touched her face.
  
  She awokened, gasped, exclaimed, "You've kissed a dead woman! That must be illegal."
  
  I let my head fall, ran my hands over my eyes and groaned too.
  
  > Continue
  "What are we going to do?" asked Edithe Zilonis.
  
  "I really wish I knew a witch," I mused.
  
  Edithe Zilonis sat up straight from her place upon the chair. She had been resting heavily, as if she was tired. But I would be tired too if I was possessed.
  
  I worried, because I had never had a dead awake for so long before. I feared Edithe Zilonis' time on Earth was slowly slipping away.
  
  "Undertaker," she called.
  
  I turned to look at her. She had kind eyes.
  
  "I understand if you can not continue with this. You've been a blessing enough already. I've come to accept my fate," she said.
  
  It wasn't a matter of fate. Fate did not exist. No one walked predetermined paths, because if that was true, then no one could have murdered Edithe Zilonis. We were all living creatures of free will.
  
  But the dead, I thought, Perhaps were not. The dead go on to specific places, with specific people and specific futures for eternity. But why was there a rouge spirit then? Who was he?
  
  "No," I said to Edithe Zilonis, "I want to help you. I'm already too deep into this."
  
  "I suppose you're six feet under by this point," Edithe Zilonis offered.
  
  "Hush you."
  
  "Hush you," she teased.
  
  "The spirit said I knew her," I told Edithe Zilonis.
  
  "Well who is dead that you know?"
  
  "Everyone that has come into my shop," I said.
  
  "Well that's just peachy. Who has been murdered, particularly by a ghost man?"
  
  "Many by a man, none by a ghost man," I said.
  
  > The spirit could be a sister
  I poured some gin and drank the rest from the bottle as I muled over what the spirit inside Edithe Zilonis had said to me.
  
  I had known so many lives in my own lifetime. And I was quickly approaching my thousandth client. The dead were aplenty, all the time, under every circumstance.
  
  So this spirit telling me that I knew her was more frustrating than it helped Edithe Zilonis' mystery.
  
  But I combed my memories for any person that I might know well enough, at least, that she, or he, would possess one of my dead and tell me I knew her, or him.
  
  I had called my parents just last week, and I would have been the first to know if Mother or Father suddenly died, as in their wills, they requested I be their undertaker. It might be an obscure, even disturbing request to anyone who was not my family, but they knew I could say goodbye one last time.
  
  Mother had even said, I'm so very lucky to have you. You are skilled and passionate. You care about the dead as much as your father does. You are a marigold in a lily field.
  
  Father had said, You have a heart of gold for the dead, and a heart of steel for the living.
  
  Then there existed my sister, although she was much younger than I and gone far into Peach City. She was probably rich and famous, while I stuffed the dead.
  
  And I loved my job, I truly did. I would not have exchanged it for the world. I just wished I had Agrona's life, and she mine.
  
  Then it occurred to me, I hadn't spoken to Agrona for several months. And as far as I knew, neither had Mother or Father.
  
  "I haven't spoken to my sister in some time," I told Edithe Zilonis.
  
  > Continue
  Edithe's eyes turned to gold.
  
  The spirit spoke: "He is hiding, waiting. There is a carriage coming, will be there in the hour. Edithe was not first, and if you can't stop him, then she will not be the last."
  
  "Agrona," I called.
  
  "I was coming to see you, travelling from Peach City, when I was pushed into a travelling carriage."
  
  Edithe groaned, moved her hands to shoo off the spirit.
  
  "I'm sorry," I said.
  
  "We are fateless. But he is not."
  
  Edithe returned, took a breath and gazed at me.
  
  She said with awe, tears falling from her eyes, "I heard her."
  
  I rushed up Edithe, to take her by the arm. "We have to go, Edithe, back to the place you died."
  
  "Yes, of course. We'll be heroes, Undertaker."
  
  I wasn't sure we would be heroes, but it seemed like the good thing to do.
  
  I was not just a dealer of the dead, I spoke to the dead, I cared for the dead, and I loved the dead, because no other living soul was going to. And I was proud, and I was suddenly glad I did not have Agrona's life.
  
  > Agrona
  Agrona was seven years younger than me, and the age difference put a strain on our relationship. I didn't mind her little self waddling around the house, nor her crying in the middle of the night, but I never particularly adored any of it, or her, either.
  
  But she was a good girl. She never started trouble, rather, she seemed to always end it. She was clever and funny and her face was always lively and made Mother smile.
  
  Agrona could not speak to the dead, and while she never mentioned it, I knew she was jealous of my ability. She actively avoided any roles that involved the dead, and eventually moved to Peach City with a handsome gentleman.
  
  The last I heard, she sold exotic makeup and perfumes by the coast. I believed she was married, perhaps to the same gentleman.
  
  But at some point she was travelling to see me when she died.
  
  I recieved a telephone call later that day from Mother, who informed me about what I already knew.
  
  Edithe said, I'm sorry.
  
  But I didn't know why Edithe was sorry for me, for she was dead, and now was my sister.
  
  > Annaliese Zilonis
  Annaliese Zilonis died when her husband stabbed her through the chest five times with two different knives from a kitchen set.
  
  Edithe had not been in the house when this occurred, but upon her return, her father had packed most of their things and set off for Central City.
  
  Her father travelled, was not often at home thereafter. Edithe stayed at a home of a Bernice Dacosta, an old woman who seemed to care about Edithe more than her father did.
  
  Edithe said, Bernice adopted me. My father eventually vanished, but I didn't care. Bernice loved me like my father didn't.
  
  She also said, My father returned a decade later, wanting to involve himself in my life again. I told him to shove it up his ass.
  
  I asked, Did no one ever tell you about your mother?
  
  She said, No. The police must have never found me, or my father. If he is this murderous ghost, then he is avoiding death, and he must be stopped.
  
  She said, He deserves to rot in the Hells.
  
  > Continue
  "What time is it?" Edithe asked.
  
  I checked my watch. "It is almost four," I said.
  
  Edithe died at four-o-two.
  
  We hurried back along the road to find the place of Edithe Zilonis' death.
  
  "You have to stand back," Edithe told me, "If he likes shoving people in front of carriages, it is best you stay away."
  
  "Edithe," I tried, but she spoke.
  
  "You are swell at reading and solving mysteries. Now I am going to speak to this man. What is he going to do, kill me again?"
  
  She shooed me away with a hand. I stepped back, pressed myself against the building behind me, which was the Vince's Barber Shop.
  
  There had been folks walking the streets, and horses and carriages as well, but in the distance a certain horse and carriage barreled down the street, as if the person inside desired to get home very quickly.
  
  And a regular man in a dark, dated suit and hat brushed past me. I would not have noticed him if he hadn't had in his hands a certain, pink purse.
  
  And he called, "Madam, your purse!"
  
  Edithe turned to look at him.
  
  Time, for a moment, slowed to nearly a stop. I saw myself walking from the far side of the street, a brown bag in my hand, which had been my lunch.
  
  > call out to Edithe
  I had a severe case of déjà-vu. Not for this exact event, not for Edithe, or the man and the purse. Not even as I had walked back from lunch and seen the police just outside my shop, cleaning blood from the stone.
  
  I felt as if I had met Edithe before, as if I had heard Agrona's voice in my head before, as if I had witnessed all these events in sequence before.
  
  And if Agrona had been murdered by this same man, I thought, Perhaps this is all just a deadly, endless loop.
  
  Blackwood was a place of mystery of life and death, and the chills on the back of one's neck was an unfortunate side-effect one deals with when moving to Blackwood. Eventually, the chills subside, leaving one feeling either completely empty, or even more confused than when one began.
  
  I supposed everyone on Main Street of Blackwood were completely empty.
  
  And I thought I was too, until I shouted, Edithe! It is him!
  
  And I hadn't heard myself shout so loudly or ferociously before.
  
  The man had placed a hand on Edithe's shoulder, went to push her to her death again when she reacted just in time to do the same to him.
  
  I watched the carriage rightly trample him.
  
  The pink purse fell from his hands to the ground and landed open. The coins and the perfume bottle within it scattered and shattered at Edithe's feet.
  
  > Continue
  Leola Viles had been particularly solemn the day of her death.
  
  She sat for several hours looking out the windows while she exchanged few words with me.
  
  But what she did say was, I deserve this. I deserve to die because of the things I have done.
  
  I said to Leola Viles, No one deserves death, not even the worst murderers. Because death is a ceremony. Life is useless and overrated. Death is silent, but freeing.
  
  She asked me to sit with her, so I put my work aside to do so. She spoke softly about how well she could sew and cook although she hardly did because those were maids' jobs.
  
  I said, Some professionals sew too. I have to sew up the dead sometimes. I wouldn't want my maids to do that.
  
  And for the first time since I had met Leola Viles, she smiled, and she was immensely beautiful when she did.
  
  It was a quarter after midnight when she asked to say goodbye, told me to dress her in her simplest gown for her funeral. I obliged.
  
  She held my hand tightly until she went on.
  
  I think she felt as if I humbled her. But, in fact, Leola Viles had humbled me.
  
  > Continue
  "Is she there?" I asked Edithe.
  
  Edithe closed her eyes, tried to summon Agrona.
  
  There was a long moment of silence, where Edithe and I sat in my apartment. Edithe seemed flushed. I was tired.
  
  She looked up at me, shook her head.
  
  "Well," I mused, "that must be a good thing."
  
  "I'm so sorry," Edithe said.
  
  The doorbell rang and echoed through the silent building. Edithe touched my hand as I went to answer it.
  
  I opened the door to see my Mother, she rushed into my arms and we exchanged an embrace. She sobbed into my shoulder. I don't think my emotions had caught up to me yet.
  
  Edithe appeared from the steps, stood solemnly at the bottom.
  
  "Would you be her undertaker?" my mother asked.
  
  "Of course," I said.
  
  Mother had looked over my shoulder, seen Edithe.
  
  "You have an awakened dead," Mother mentioned.
  
  We all returned to the parlor. I explained to Mother all that had happened. She seemed surprised but not too surprised.
  
  "The dead are mysterious," she said.
  
  "Oh indeed," called Edithe. "I am still quite unsure of how this all could happen."
  
  Mother did manage a small smile for Edithe. I supposed Edithe Zilonis had that type of mystical power after all.
  
  > Continue
  Edithe remained by my side the rest of the day.
  
  Agrona's body was on her way and I would see her the following day. Until then, I held more or less random conversations with Edithe. Some conversations we spoke about our assumptions about Heaven. Other times it was about the weather, or how that new restaurant on Eastend was operating.
  
  None of which were about how Edithe would have to return to death as some point.
  
  And soon, the night came. Edithe mused over how she was now never hungry while I prepared dinner for myself.
  
  I was stirring peppers in a pot over the stove when I finally said, "Edithe, you can't stay here. You know that?"
  
  She had been sitting across from me when I spoke. Her brown eyes dropped down.
  
  She said, "I know. Of course."
  
  "If it is any consolation, I will certainly remember you," I told her.
  
  She said, "I'm sure you say that to all the dead."
  
  "You're correct, but I do remember all the dead."
  
  Edithe smiled. She said, "What if I choose to become a ghost?"
  
  "Lingering about here is not worth Heaven."
  
  "I know, I know, I was just thinking."
  
  I don't think Edithe Zilonis was just thinking.
  
  > Goodnight
  It was after dinner. The clock read eight or nine. Edithe Zilonis held my hand tightly as we returned to the shop.
  
  I had never had such a difficult time saying Goodnight to a dead. Edithe's gentle eyes gazed over her bed, then at me, then I helped her up.
  
  She quickly embraced me, pulled away and kissed me, and then said, "Thank you so much, Undertaker."
  
  "It is my job, my dear," I said.
  
  She smiled, kissed me once more before she rested back.
  
  "If there is any chance I can visit," she said, "you know I will."
  
  "I have no doubt."
  
  "I will be sure to become friends with your sister," she said.
  
  "That would be swell."
  
  "How much do you get paid for this?"
  
  "Not nearly enough in gold. But more than enough in satisfaction."
  
  "What is your name?" Edithe Zilonis asked.
  
  "Oh it's quite a common name. My first name is Good and my surname is Night."
  
  She was about to shout at me when I said, "Goodnight Edithe. And good luck."
  
  She fell asleep then and there. I placed her arms gently on her stomach, over her pink purse. I pressed a kiss onto her forehead before I returned to bed.
  
  The night seemed delightfully long. I slept well and had not a dream. But I did muse over the day, over ghosts and possessions, over murder and Agrona, and over Edithe Zilonis.
  
  Sometimes it is a comforting thought, to know that life, if anything, has a finite end. But it is disturbing to know that anyone could cause that end, dead or alive, as I discovered.
  
  Humans are exceedingly fragile, emotionally and physically, unfortunately. But they are capable of taking that knowledge and discovering how to become stronger. Edithe Zilonis was too young when she was murdered. Agrona was even younger. But Edithe did not dwell on the sadness, and I discovered neither had Agrona.
  
  Edithe Zilonis, instead of weeping in my arms, desired the truth. I think I wept more for her in the end. She looked on at death as merely a small setback.
  
  And she inspired me. She inspired me when my parents died forty years later, and she inspired me when I died sixty years later.
  
  There was a vast jury of judges looking down upon me. Most of them said I had been good. Some said kissing the dead was not good, but ultimately I had a choice.
  
  Clearly, I should have chosen Heaven. I would have been free from my job, would have never had to speak to the dead ever again, and would have lived in complete bliss with my parents, Agrona and Edithe Zilonis.
  
  But the thought of that was too much for me to bear.
  
  I told those judges, I want to return to Earth, and be an undertaker forever.
  
  I was laughed at, but that hardly mattered, because one day, a twenty-nine-year-old young man came into my shop, dead of course, and his wallet disappeared under my watch.
  
  An undertaker's job never ends, and that is fine by me.
  
  > Bonus Update Epilogue
  Alyda had just sewn up and wished Goodnight to a relatively fresh man named Sal Frantz and put him away to cool when the front door chimed as it opened.
  
  Alyda was a young, reserved woman who had her cousin's gift to speak to the dead. She took over the Undertaker's shop when it was passed down to her.
  
  She recalled the stories her predecessor had told her. Of Damon Ellsworth and Leola Viles. Of the mysteries that overwhelmed Blackwood and the folks who were most affected by them.
  
  But Alyda's favorite story had always been the one of Edithe Zilonis. The woman who died without rhyme or reason, whose death was even beyond that of religion or the rules of life and death.
  
  She published the writings of the Undertaker, weaved them together in a coherent story but did not at all embellish it. She felt no need to.
  
  And one particular person, or rather, one particular person and one particular, tall and dark figure beside her, had read the published book, stormed the front of the shop.
  
  It seemed Edithe Zilonis was not the last person to be unfairly murdered in Blackwood.
  
  "What the Hells," said Alyda as she gazed upon the two, but mostly the figure.
  
  "We need your help," said a nervous woman named Cynthia Vedaldi.
  
  Indeed, spoke the figure beside Cynthia.