Mister October

by Christopher Golden

  “Maybe she’s sick,” Nicola said, taking the first step.

  “Slept late?” James offered.

  “James, it’s two o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “We should have called,” he said moving along the hallway.

  “Mom?” Nicola shouted. “It’s Nicola and James.”

  Irma was in the TV room sitting in Boz’s chair. She could just have been asleep but they knew immediately that she wasn’t.

  “Oh, Mom,” was all James could think of to say.

  Nicola remembered what Frank Garnett had said about when he found his father dead in bed. You know, Frank had said, a look of something approaching wonderment on his face, he just wasn’t there any longer. It was his body but it was completely empty. Like a drawing of my dad rather than the actual article.

  And that was exactly how Irma Mendholsson looked, one foot tucked up beneath her leg and her head slumped over to one side.

  James knelt down by the chair and felt her forehead. It was ice cold.

  “James!” Nicola snapped, her voice barely above a whisper. “Look.”

  James followed his sister’s pointing finger and saw, clamped in his mother’s clasped hands resting in her lap, the edge of what appeared to be a piece of paper.

  James prised her hands apart and there was another of his father’s postcards, this one featuring a picture of Syney Opera House. He tugged at the card –

  “She doesn’t want to let go of it,” Nicola said softly.

  – and, through the tears, he read out the message on the back:

  “Hey swetie

  “Im in Astraylia. It’s veryy hot. God, im so tired. i’m missing you like mad. i don’t think i can carry on much lonegr. It is very hot here. i love you more than I can say. all my love

  “Boz”

  “Doesn’t sound too good does he?”

  “It’s worse than that,” James said. “The spelling and punctuation is adrift as well.” He handed the card over to his sister and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Oh, Mom,” he whispered.

  * * *

  This time the funeral was a quieter affair. Neither James nor his sister wanted a lot of people, so the only others in attendance were Jim and Angie, with Anthony, Jennifer and Maria, and baby Margaret-Jayne, plus, of course, Jackie and Phil Defantino.

  At the end of the service and the internment, while Jim and Angie took the children back to their respective cars, James and Nicola stayed back to speak with Phil and Jackie. When they had exchanged the customary commiserations, Phil asked Jackie to wait for him in the car. She looked a little puzzled but did as she was asked.

  The three of them watched her walk away, and then Phil turned to James and Nicola and, with a deep sigh, reached into his inside coat pocket and produced a brown paper bag that was about the shape and size of paperback novel. He handed it to James.

  “What is it?” Nicola asked.

  “I think I know,” James said as he opened the bag. Without removing the contents he peered into the bag. For a few seconds it did indeed look like a paperback book, viewed from the page edges rather than from the spine. He folded the bag over again and handed it back to Phil. “There’s nothing there that we want, Phil,” he said. “Just some cards.”

  “James –”

  “Nicola, remember what I told you Mom had said about destroying the magic?”

  Nicola nodded.

  James turned back to Phil. What were they like, those last dozen or so postcards? How much did he deteriorate by the time the end came? Suddenly, James felt thankful that his mother had died when she had. He couldn’t imagine the heartbreak she would have gone through having to read them right up to the end and then for the cards to stop completely. He said, “Just get rid of them.”

  “You sure?”

  “We’re sure.”

  Nicola nodded and turned away.

  “Will you be needing any help? With the house, I mean. Boz’s books and magazines . . . all that stuff.”

  James shook his head and breathed in deeply. The intake of breath made him appear bigger and stronger than he felt. “We’re going to get a dealer in, sell the lot. We could do it ourselves, advertising them, but it’d take too long. And we’d sooner see it happen in one hit.”

  “I understand,” Phil said. “Well, if you need any help with anything at all, just give me a call.”

  “Will do. Nick and I are staying at the house for a few days to sort out all the furniture and, as you say, all of the books. Dad’s old firm is doing the realty.”

  “He’d like that.”

  “That’s what we figured. Anyway, by the end of next week, it’ll just be a shell with a For Sale board in the yard.”

  Phil sighed and looked around. Jackie was standing by Phil’s 4x4—she waved when she saw him looking and he nodded before turning back to James and Nicola. “Well, I guess that’s it.” He shook James’s hand and gave Nicola a kiss on the cheek. “Keep in touch, huh?”

  “You bet,” James said.

  Watching him walk away from them, they saw him remove a handkerchief from his pocket. In the stillness of the cemetery, the nose-blow— when it came—sounded like a clarion call or Last Post. Neither James nor Nicola could decide which.

  * * *

  The weekend wasn’t as traumatic as they had feared it would be. And though they had both expected to be wracked with nostalgia, going through their mother’s clothing and furniture proved to be relatively easy, with most of the stuff being either thrown away in a collection of garden refuse bags or stacked in neat piles for the thrift and charity stores off Main Street. In addition, they had a guy calling around early the following Tuesday to take all the furniture they didn’t want or need—as it turned out, they didn’t need anything and kept back only a couple of items that had earned a place in their memory.

  The man from the realtors’ office—a guy called Dane—came around on the Sunday and prepared a notice on the property. When he left, after less than an hour, James and Nicola stood watching the For Sale board long after his car had disappeared.

  Monday morning dawned and with it came a sense of closure. The sun was shining, the house was pretty well cleared, and they were both looking forward to getting back to their own homes. The grieving process had started but, as James said—and had said repeatedly over the weekend—things could have panned out a lot worse than they had done.

  By mid-morning, Nicola had wiped down all the paintwork and vacuumed the house from top to bottom. Now it was just a house: all the evidence of its life as the Mendholssons’ home was now stored as memories in the cerebral databanks of James’s and Nicola’s heads to be accessed whenever they were required.

  The one thing they hadn’t thought of doing occurred to James as he watched the mailman walking along the sidewalk.

  “Hey, we need to get in touch with the Post Office to have Mom’s mail forwarded on to one of us.” He got up from his seat on the floor against the side wall when he saw the mailman turn into Irma’s yard. “You want to do it to me?”

  “I guess me,” she shouted after him, “because I’m here in town and I’m home with Margaret-Jayne most days.”

  James opened the door. “Makes sense to me,” he shouted. Then, to the mailman, “Hey, how are you today?”

  “I’m fine, but tired. Seems like I work harder at home on weekends than I do during the week.” They both laughed. The mailman handed a small bundle of envelopes to James and expressed his sympathy for his loss. “How you doing anyways? It’s a sad time for you.”

  James nodded as he flicked through the letters. “Yes it is, but I think –”

  He stopped when he saw the postcard. He recognized the picture immediately—Venice . . . the Bridge of Sighs, the gondolier, the stone buildings: everything was there, just as it had been on the very first card that Irma had received from Boz.

  James turned over the card. The first thing that he noticed was that this card was not addressed to his mother: it was addressed,
in his father’s hand—a strong hand once again—to him and Nicola care of his mother’s address:

  “Dearest James and Nicola,” the message began. “Well, this is going to be the last card, I’m afraid.”

  “Is everything okay?” the mailman asked.

  “Your mom arrived here yesterday morning—I can’t tell you how good it was to see her again. Adventuring all by yourself is such a lonely business.”

  “James?” Nicola called from the room, her voice echoing in the empty house.

  “She wants me to show her everything else and while we’ve got a mighty long time together now, there’s such a lot to see!!! Look after each other and your wonderful families.

  “Love as always. Dad”

  And there was a ps at the bottom.

  Nicola appeared alongside him just as James was finishing reading and the mailman was walking back down the path, shrugging repeatedly to himself.

  Somewhere off on the Interstate a truck horn sounded, dopplering from soft to loud and then back to soft again, like some kind of animal.

  “I don’t believe it,” James said, shaking his head.

  He handed the postcard to Nicola and put his hands up to his face.

  Nicola read.

  “My God,” she said. “His handwriting is back to normal and he sounds lucid again. But all this stuff about Mom, how could he have –” She stopped, looked up at her brother and then back down at the card.

  “PS,” she read. “I’m sure the past few days have been difficult for you both but I’m absolutely fine. Couldn’t be happier. Have a wonderful life, both of you. We’ll be following your progress—whenever our busy schedule permits it!

  “Much love,

  “Mom.”

  “How-”

  James interrupted her. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, “about that card, and the one that came before—the first one.”

  Nicola, wide-eyed, simply nodded her head for him to continue.

  “I think we were wrong . . . about the sun setting, I mean.”

  Nicola turned it over and looked at the photograph closely.

  “I’m betting that’s a sunrise!” He turned and smiled at her. “The start of a brand new day.”

  The undiscovered country from whose bourn

  No traveller returns.

  William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1601)

  NEVER BACK AGAIN

  By Mattie Hautala

  The young boy sat in the backyard of his house, whittling away at a long oak branch. His father was napping on the deck after another night shift at the hospital, and the boy had managed to slip the scalpel from his dad’s white lab coat between snores. The boy’s eyes focused hard now on each movement of the scalpel—he watched the blade cut hard around the broken edges of the wood, showing a smoother, cleaner surface underneath.

  The boy held the tall oak branch up to the sky and inspected its fine curves and twists against the blue of midday. His gaze remained fixed and focused. He was enjoying himself, but the enjoyment was not that of an eight-year-old boy playing—this was the completion of a task.

  He brought the branch back down to his lap to make some final corrections. With each passing second a small piece of wood would scrape off onto the grass and the boy would bring the scalpel back down to the base of the branch to whittle away another second, another piece of the whole.

  “One two three, branches come from trees.” He sang a little improvised song as his eyes focused intently on the stick—“... four five six, leaves grow on sticks.” The young boy continued humming in the same rhythm until his voice lost interest in being heard. He looked over to the empty seat next to him on the bench and thought about how excited he had been when Mommy had told him he was going to have a new brother. He stared at the empty space next to him, hand steady, and he smiled, knowing that Mommy wouldn’t ever lie to him.

  The sun was sinking fast, heavy with the thought of night. The boy glanced up at the sky and knew he only had an hour left, if that.

  * * *

  The young boy’s mother stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing away vacantly at the mountain of dishes and pans left there from yesterday. She had used the frying pan the night before and would’ve left it another day or two, but now she had to wash it to make some stir fry for dinner. Having her husband home for dinner meant cooking “real food” as opposed to the usual hot dogs or American chop suey. To her all the flavors just blended together, but she knew it meant a lot to him.

  She had a similar look in her eyes as the young boy did when he practiced his whittling—it was as if her son had inherited both her eye color and the weight of her years. She had been through a lot—two divorces, one miscarriage, and more career changes than she cared to count. She gazed off into the soapy ocean of the sink and spent the next five minutes washing the same plate.

  She wondered if anyone—even she—knew what she was thinking or feeling.

  * * *

  The young boy ran into the kitchen with his freshly carved oak branch tucked under his sweatshirt. He darted past his mother standing sentry at the sink and made for the back door. Just as his small hand pushed open the screen door, his mother dropped the sponge and spoke with a cutting tone that pulled him back inside.

  “I hope you’re not planning to go over to that pond! I don’t like it when you play out there alone. It’s too far away and it’s starting to get dark. No one could hear you if you needed help.” The mother’s love and concern for her son were apparent in her words, but her gaze was still fixed on that same plate, her hand running soapy circles, over and over.

  She looked up from the sink and shot him a sharp look. The young boy took a second to control himself, to not get mad—he knew if he yelled back at her he wouldn’t be allowed to go outside at all, and then he couldn’t finish the game he had started at the pond. He took a quick breath and calmly responded, “Alright, Mom, I won’t go there… but how many times do I have to tell you that when I’m out there, I’m not alone?”

  The moment those last words left his mouth he realized his mistake—she hated talking about his little brother. The boy gripped the stick tightly beneath his sweatshirt.

  His mother tensed up her neck then let out a sigh. “Cut it out sweetie! You know you don’t have a brother. We… we lost him son. He’s gone, and that’s hard for Mommy and Daddy, too. But I surely don’t intend on losing you, too! Only you, your father, and I live in this house, it’s just us.” Her voice shook with anger.

  The boy looked up at his mother’s pinched face. He knew she was angry, and that it was changing her, but he couldn’t figure out why she was so mad. He was too young to really understand it but he noticed small differences; she would fall asleep watching T.V on the couch instead of reading to him in bed, she had burned the apple pie for dessert last night, she asked him less and less about how school was going. She had even forgotten to cut the crust off his sandwich for lunch. Things were different, and he just wished he could do something to help her feel better.

  They hadn’t read The Hobbit before bed in weeks but he figured that Gandalf was still her favorite character, and he hoped that she would like the wizard staff he had been carving for her. The boy twisted his hand underneath his sweatshirt - he wished that the oak branch was a real wizard staff so he could use its magic right now to help his mom feel better. The gift wasn’t quite perfect yet, so he decided it was best to keep it hidden and wait until the time was just right.

  His mother was still looking and him, and he realized she was waiting for a response.

  “All right, Mom. I’ll be safe. I promise. I’m just going to the other side of the road.” As he walked out the kitchen door and into the backyard he whispered under his breath, “…and he isn’t lost, he’s just waiting.”

  The cold scalpel in his pocket knocked heavily against the boy’s body as he ran towards the pond, eager to finish the game.

  * * *

  The young boy ran through the woods, and a soft breeze fol
lowed closely behind him. He tripped hard over a root while running uphill but caught himself and smiled brightly as the dark water came into view.

  * * *

  He arrived at the pond and ran to the edge of the embankment. He kicked up clumps of dirt as he ran down the hill towards the silent shore of the pond. Half of the surface was covered in slime and lily pads, and the parts of the water that managed to peek through were blacker than oil. The young boy looked anxiously at the glossy face of a lonely lily pad and said, “Hey, Brother, I’ve come back for you. I’m here.”

  He felt an excited tremor in his left leg and a tingling sensation ran up his spine and neck, leaving a slight buzz in his ears. The sun was setting quickly; he only had fifteen minutes or so to finish the game. The lily pad shook a little bit, and the young boy continued, “I brought what you asked for, but I want you to tell me what’s going to happen…. I know it’ll be funner if we’re together, but I can’t figure this all out alone. Help me, tell me.”

  A small breeze pushed the lily pad further away from the shore and the glossy leaf started to shake from side to side. The young boy heard the familiar voice whisper, “Does Mommy ever ask about me?” He knew the answer, but he didn’t want to upset his little brother so he stood still, waiting. “Does she know I’m trapped here? That I’m stuck underwater, that I can’t breathe? I need you, big brother. I need your air.”

  The young boy thought back to earlier that same day when he and his brother had been swimming in the pond together for hours, having fun and laughing. He wondered why his little brother wasn’t laughing now like he was before. The playful, joyous tone was gone. Instead, the voice had a newfound urgency.

  Tears came to the boys’ eyes, and he said, “Mom just keeps saying we lost you. She never listens to me when I try to tell her that I found you. I just don’t…. I want to have a little brother, that’s all; someone to read to at night and walk to school with in the morning. It’s no fair that I can only play with you out here at the pond. I want you to come home with me.”