Fear Itself

by Jeff Gelb

  Needless to say, upon realizing that Grandmother was taking the dream as valid fact, we made every attempt to dissuade her from what was obviously a most pathetic misinterpretation. We agreed, of course, that Grandfather’s spirit would always be with us, especially during the holiday gatherings, but certainly his physical body would and must remain in the grave.

  No! no! she cried. He could come home! He would come home! It was simply a matter of someone going to fetch him. Of opening the grave and bringing him out.

  Her eyes fell on me. “You are the eldest grandson, twenty-one years of age, strong and able. So, it is only fitting that you be the one to do it. You must go and fetch him home.” As I stood there, my mouth agape, she proceeded to explain that the disinterment should be undertaken on the night before the holiday and that Grandfather would have to be returned to his coffin before the sun rose the following morning. For according to Grandfather’s dream-sent message, she said, “the dead do not abide the sun.”

  So, on that Thanksgiving eve, a year ago tonight it was, I set out on the short walk from my house to the graveyard. But it was only to appease Grandmother, you understand. To prove, once and for all, that her dream had no basis in reality, that Grandfather was as dead to the world on Thanksgiving eve as he’d been when we’d lowered him into the ground six months before.

  I must confess that for a brief moment I had allowed myself to consider what it would mean if Grandfather could come back to us. For if he could come back to life, Grandmother’s own vitality would surely be restored as well. Yes, such thoughts were an offense to reason, I know, and only a fleeting speculation, but something deep inside me yearned for reassurance that the dead are not cut off from us forever, that some part, some essence, still lingers here on this earthly plane, surviving even the cold clutches of the grave. What mortal man has not, at one time or another, yearned for such reassurance? For proof of life beyond death? Surely this is the basic longing at the heart of every ghost story ever told. A desperate desire to believe that some part of the life force remains indestructible, that the dead can and do reach out to us, commune with us. That is our greatest hope and yet, paradoxically, it is also our deepest fear. Even to imagine the dead rising from their tombs sends a cold shiver down the spine.

  Of course I knew such conjecture was futile; the Good Book teaches that we shall not know the answers on this side of the veil, and I felt rather like a fool, a common grave-robber, as I readied myself for the distasteful act of plundering the earth where Grandfather lay. But I had promised Grandmother—indeed she had made me swear—that I would open the coffin and see with my own eyes if Grandfather truly was waiting to be released, waiting to come home for the holiday. And I was willing to go to any length to mollify Grandmother.

  I set the lantern on the ground, and with only its scant nimbus to see by, I proceeded to penetrate the grave, shovelful after shovelful, heaving the excavated dirt into piles at the edges of the growing aperture until, at last, the chasm yawned open before me and the coffin was revealed. It struck me at that moment that what I was about to do was an accursed thing, an abomination, but I had given my word, I had sworn to do it. I had no choice but to break open the coffin and look on my Grandfather’s moidering remains. Thus, I climbed down into the grave and, with a mighty swing of the shovel, smashed the coffin’s hasp and lifted the heavy, creaking lid. I thought I heard a sigh as the lid came open, but I reasoned it was only a pocket of stale air escaping its pent-up confines.

  I reached for the lantern, held it aloft, and peered down at my grandfather. At first, what I saw was exactly what I’d expected to see—an insensate corpse sleeping the final sleep. To be sure it was a grim sight: the flesh had darkened and begun to wither and fall away, and there was an overpowering stench that gushed upward and took the breath from me. But all in all, it was what I’d expected. Then, just as I was about to lower the lid again, some strange, unexplainable feeling seized me and I knew—against all constraints of rationality I knew!—that everything was not as it seemed.

  “Grandfather?” I whispered, my voice as scratchy as a rasp upon the chill night air.

  Though he did not answer aloud, his dark, dry-looking lips as unmoving as they’d been only seconds before, I sensed he was speaking to me. I felt rather than heard the words, felt them in the very marrow of my bones. I am alive. Though I am dead, I am alive. That was what he was saying to me. Calling out to me as he’d called out to Grandmother through the dream.

  I was utterly stunned. Who could believe such a thing was possible! But I was sure it was! Somehow some core of life still existed inside Grandfather’s dead body, some vital spark that had reached out to Grandmother and was now reaching out to me. Without question, there was nothing for me but to bring him out of the grave and take him home.

  He was heavier than you might think, considering that we tend to think of the dead as mere skeletons, nothing but heaps of dried-out bones, but Grandfather had been a large, robust man in life and, dead only six months, much of the flesh still remained, spongy now to my touch, and oozing a putrid fluid. His grave-clothes, too, were moist and slick, so slippery it was hard to get a firm hold, but by draping him over my shoulder, half-carrying, half-tugging, I was able to convey him, albeit clumsily, from the graveyard to Grandmother’s house in a matter of minutes.

  As I went lurching along, bearing Grandfather’s weight, I was caught up in a wild delirium of emotions, aghast and excited at the same time. In spite of the fact that Grandfather’s body had deteriorated and putrefication had set in, I was almost certain I could feel the lifeforce pulsing deep inside him, though I grant it was difficult to detect, given that my own blood was churning through my veins and thundering in my ears in such a tumult that it overrode all else.

  A few of the aunts and cousins screamed when I came into the house with Grandfather slung over my shoulder. Others were so stricken at the sight that they could not utter a sound, and some of the smaller children ran from the room and hid. To say the least, everyone was astounded. They’d all known that I’d gone to the graveyard and why, but no one had dared believe that I’d actually bring Grandfather home. No one except Grandmother who was beside herself with jubilation, as I knew she would be.

  I seated Grandfather at the head of the long table, where he’d always sat, and where he seemed very content to be once again. With an enthusiastic clap of her hands, Grandmother bid us all to take our places round the table and, as usual, we bowed our heads and offered thanks. O Lord, thank you for our many blessings. For surely on this Thanksgiving eve we did indeed have an extraordinary blessing to be thankful for. However, I couldn’t help noticing that some of the family didn’t look particularly thankful, especially when, as the meal progressed, a few tiny clumps of rotten flesh fell from Grandfather’s face and landed between the mashed potatoes and the cranberry sauce. What I saw on a number of faces appeared to reflect repugnance instead of gratitude, and I noticed that no one seemed to have much appetite.

  After the meal ended and I’d removed Grandfather from the table to his favorite armchair in the living room, Grandmother drew up a seat and sat beside him. Holding his decomposing hand in her own, patting it from to time, she spoke to him with almost child-like excitement, so effusively warm and affectionate she was. And how attentive to her he seemed to be, how absorbed in her words. So satisfied to sit perfectly still and listen as she talked on and on.

  In contrast, the others were standoffish and visibly reluctant to engage him in conversation, but they did file by and speak before moving off to talk among themselves. Mostly “Hello, Grandfather” and “How are you, Grandfather” and “Good to see you, Grandfather.” Correct but restrained to the point of awkwardness. It made me feel sorry for the poor old fellow. Surely this was not the sort of response one would expect to receive upon rising from the grave and coming home for the holidays. But I thought they were, understandably, simply too shocked to say more; it was, I admit, an unusual situation. Grandfather himself
gave no indication that he felt slighted by the lukewarm reception. It was evident to me that Grandmother’s heart-felt welcome was all that truly mattered to him.

  As time went on, I became aware of dismaying snatches of conversations here and there around the room. The gist of it was that much of the family simply could not believe that Grandfather was alive again. In fact, some of them were denying it emphatically, insisting that what was sitting in that armchair, the focus of Grandmother’s loving attention, was nothing but a dead body. Stone-cold dead, they said. Totally, completely and without question, dead. Disgusting, they said. It was clear, too, that they were quite angry with me. One cousin pulled me aside and demanded to know if I’d taken leave of my senses. “Why, it’s the vilest thing I’ve ever seen, digging up the old man’s corpse and parading it about this way,” he said. Another quickly declared I ought to be buggy-whipped and that I’d be lucky if the sheriff didn’t find out and lock me up for good.

  It was then, feeling unjustly put-upon and forced to defend my actions, that I turned and saw what I had not seen before. On the verge of indignant rebuttal, the scales suddenly fell from my eyes and I beheld a sight that filled me with cold horror.

  The truth, the reality, of what I was seeing staggered me like a breath-taking blow. God in heaven, my cousins were right! The thing sitting in that armchair was nothing but a corpse! Yes! Yes! I saw it clearly now! Why, anyone with eyes could see there was no core of life, no vital spark, left in that awful, cadaverous thing, none whatsoever. Can you imagine the horror of waking suddenly to that realization!

  There was only one explanation for it: a mind-twisting hallucination had befallen me, entrancing me as I’d opened Grandfather’s coffin, and it had deluded my mind and impaired my reasoning up until that very instant. And—Lord have mercy!—look what it had wrought: Grandmother was talking to a corpse and smiling into its stinking face! Gently stroking its rotted hand! Believing with all her heart that Grandfather had come back to her and that he was responding to her ministrations. This was beyond nightmare, this was depravity, and I alone bore the blame.

  For a moment I felt utterly helpless, addled with indecision. But suddenly a rush of adrenalin surged through me, and I hurried to Grandmother’s side and fell on my knees before her and began to explain, in what must have been an incoherent babble, that I had to return Grandfather to the graveyard at once. While I attempted to pull her hand from his, attempted to lift her to her feet in order to place her into the care of some of the aunts who’d come forward, she stared at me as if she didn’t know who I was or what I was raving about. She refused to be taken away, and when I tried to remove Grandfather from her grasp, she would not surrender him to me. Eyes burning with a frightening intensity, she him tenaciously, surprising me that such a small, frail person could summon such strength.

  “Leave us be, you son of a bitch,” she said, flinging the startling words into my face with such vehemence that it drove me backwards as surely as if she had struck me. Then she turned to Grandfather, her hands sliding up his dark, withered neck, and she began to whisper in his ear, imparting secrets that were for him alone. I knew she was reaching deep into her dreams, trusting in something that none of us could begin to fathom. And I also knew, it was plain to see, that she was quite mad. But in that madness there was something else that was plain to see: there was a bliss, a newfound bliss that had totally obliterated her grief, wiped it away as if it had never been, and transported her beyond her dreams and her hopes to the conviction that the bond of family truly does transcend even the grave itself.

  I understood at that moment that I could not take that bliss from her. I would sooner have been damned to perdition than to do so. Even if it was based on a lie, a terrible lie, I could not take it from her. And so I did leave them be, both she and Grandfather, the living and the dead, to commune in whatever incomprehensible way she believed them to be communing.

  My family, though relieved that I had finally come to my senses, was appalled that I insisted on Grandfather remaining where he was for the rest of the night. “You must take him back immediately,” they urged. A few even offered to help. The aunts said, “We’ll put Grandmother to bed straightaway, give her a strong draught of sleeping potion and come morning she will think it was all a dream.” But I remained firm in my resolve, and eventually, grudgingly, they resigned themselves to it and waited for the night to pass.

  In the hour before dawn, I took Grandfather in my arms and heaved him over my shoulder, just as I had done before. This time Grandmother relinquished him willingly if regretfully. “Yes, yes, it’s time, I know,” she sighed. “He must go back before the sun comes up.”

  In the fading darkness, the gray shadows swirling about my feet as I made my way to the graveyard, I tried to numb my mind and shut off my senses so I wouldn’t feel that smeary, pulpy flesh against my own, wouldn’t smell the rank stench, wouldn’t acknowledge what it was I held in my arms. When, at last, I’d returned Grandfather to his grave, lowered him into his coffin and shoveled the last shovel of dirt over him, I was immensely relieved to be rid of my loathsome burden.

  But of course I was not rid of it. The guilt, the obscenity of what I’d done, would continue to haunt me. How could there be a greater sacrilege, a greater wickedness than to deliberately defile the dead? Yet, God forgive me, I knew I would do it again. The bliss I had seen on my Grandmother’s face, the deliverance from dark despair to ecstatic joy, would compel me to do it again. No matter the burden it placed upon my conscience, no matter the revulsion and fear I would feel, for her sake I would do it again. And I did, just over a month hence, when Christmas eve came round.

  And again when Easter came. By that time, Grandfather had deteriorated to an even greater degree, his bones showing beneath the stringy, rotted flesh, and his head shrunken to a wizened skull. The family turned their own heads in disgust as I brought him in, but they, too, understood by then that it was this gruesome holiday recurrence that gave Grandmother courage for all the other days of the year. Some part of her mind was gone, that is true, but because she believed Grandfather would return to her periodically, she continued to function, to live and breathe and laugh and love, in a relatively normal fashion. And none among us had the heart to deprive her of that. Nor to deprive ourselves of the grandmother who’d been restored to us. For, by then, there was something else we all understood: if she stopped believing, then something inside all of us would wither and die …

  Now Thanksgiving eve is upon us again and seven months have passed since Easter, since last I dug up Grandfather. Most likely I will find him beyond recognition this time, the seeping rain, the moldy damp, and the grave-worms having taken their toll. It will be a revolting, skeletal thing I shall carry to Grandmother’s house this night. Still, I plunge on, my heart racing, my hands clammy as the lantern swings at my side.

  Ah, yes, there it is, just ahead there, Grandfather’s grave.

  Of course I am fully aware that what I do here is an offense against every law of heaven and earth, and I do not know if God will have mercy on my soul, or if I shall be condemned to the everlasting fires of hell. All I know is that, in the meantime, Grandfather will come home for the holidays. Now, I must dig.

  Time Enough To Sleep

  Thomas F. Monteleone

  Your children are not your children.

  For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

  which you cannot visit,

  not even in your dreams

  Kahlil Gibran

  I’m not sure how much longer I can hold the son-of-a-bitch off.

  For the past few days, I’ve seen more signs of his arrival. Each time I enter Becky’s room, I think I smell the faintest of scents—a grim, olfactory wake of his passage.

  He’s so bold, coming here flirting with my daughter, thinking I have no sense of it. And yet, it is the driving force in my life. There is nothing that will give me more strength than to have the chance to beat him. He knows now that I keep an o
ld Little League aluminum baseball bat in the pantry, but he also knows I am not afraid to use it.

  It began the day Rhonda and I brought her home from the hospital. There is nothing more fragile than a newborn child—something I had never realized till that moment. I admit, being a cost accountant for Proctor & Gamble all my adult life, had perhaps kept me somewhat removed from the mainstream of life. When I brought a new life into the world, it was like getting slapped in the face.

  The very first night, Rhonda kept her in a bassinet in our bedroom. I questioned the need for it until darkness fell over everything and the house shut down to the point of the occasional creak of an old foundation. I could hear my wife’s breathing at my ear, a signature of her exhaustion and a final release of tension, anxiety, and fear.

  Little did I realize that mine had just begun.

  I never slept that first night. An endless stretch of black time wherein I lay listening to what seemed like breathing of the most labored sort. I had no idea a tiny, living human could make such scary noises and survive till morning. Wheezing, coughing, rattling, mucous throttled sucking were only a few of the horrible sounds through which I suffered that night. It was so intensely awful, I became quite certain we would lose Becky before dawn.

  But we didn’t.

  The bassinet remained in our bedroom another three or four weeks before I allowed my wife to have the baby sleeping in a crib so far away from us—her own bedroom down the hall. I had grown accustomed to the travail of her breathing, and it measured out the nights as a metronome of life itself.