by S. T. Joshi
Behind me was the infamous nightstand. I had memories of tracing the patterns carved in its legs with my finger while my mother folded laundry or read one of her novels. It was a piece of furniture I knew very well, yet never once did I realize it had a drawer until I took a closer look. History makes us blind. History, and time.
I gently rocked the handle and slid the small drawer out. Inside was yet another paperback novel, Lord Vanity, bookmark halfway between its rich covers of scarlet and gold, and lying beneath it a small diary with a brown faux leather cover. Its pages sealed with a flimsy lock.
“You aren’t going to read it, are you?” Wanda asked me. The horror she felt was folded into her face.
“Of course not,” I said, though I could not deny my curiosity. If my mother had written at all about my father, wouldn’t it have been there? Part of me wanted to scour its pages, but the rest was terrified. I had spent so many years blanketed by her worry that I couldn’t disobey her final wish, even if it meant the answers to all my questions.
Assuming they were answers I wasn’t too frightened to read.
* * *
I pulled myself out of bed the next morning, the funeral still a day away, and drove an hour to Maple to see my Aunt Renée. I went alone, my wife deciding she’d rather nurse her unhappiness in front of a piano than endure another painful visit. Instead, boxes of old paperbacks kept me company, filling the car with a musty tangy odor. It smelled of the past.
I had other motives for the trip beyond delivering the boxes, most of them centering around the revelation of my mother’s diary. It raised questions I hoped my aunt could answer.
It took time for my Aunt Renée to answer her door, and when she did her face was puffed and tear-streaked. She didn’t smile.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, and walked off. I took that as invitation to follow.
My aunt’s house was larger than both my mother’s and my own, and yet felt cramped with all the items shelved along the walls and piled in the corners. I had never liked the place as a child—it was dark and oppressing, its strange atmosphere repellent. She rarely seemed to open her blinds, and the giant shrine to her savior that dominated the front room wall left me uneasy.
“This is it?” she asked, staring in the box of paperbacks I carried.
“The rest are in the car. She wanted you to have them.”
She shuffled through the box.
“You didn’t have to bring them today.”
“No, I suppose not. But I thought I might as well. It gave me a reason to come up and see how you were.”
She snickered. “How do you think I am? How are you? Just peachy, I’d guess?”
I smiled as gently as I could.
“I’m doing okay,” I said. “It’s tough, but I’m doing a little better than I thought I’d be.”
She made a disapproving noise but said nothing. Instead, she pulled books out of the box one at a time and set each on the table.
“Are you still writing your satanic stories?”
I looked down at my hands. The back of one carried tiny indentations, as though fingernails had been pressed into the soft flesh. The pale color slowly gave way to red; I tried rubbing away the discoloration with my thumb.
“They’re only stories, Aunt Renée. They don’t mean anything. Most of them aren’t even trying to be scary. They’re just about how people feel.”
She looked up from the half-empty box and squinted.
“That’s how the demons start. They make you think it’s nothing at first, and maybe it is, but once they get their talons in you they sink and sink.” Her hands were up, fingers curled in shriveled claws and pressed against her chest. “Before you know it, you’re doing the demons’ work on God’s earth for all eternity.” She stopped and looked back into the box.
“Where’s her diary?” she said.
I was glad for the change in topic.
“I was going to ask you about that. I didn’t even know she had a diary until her note said so. But she asked me not to read it. Just to put it with her in the coffin. But what if it mentions my father? All I know about him was that he was sick, but not what he had or what he was like. I need answers, Aunt Renée, and this might be my only chance. Yet, the note …”
“What’s this about a note?” My aunt held out her free hand. “Let me see it.”
“I—I don’t have it with me.” I stumbled. “Why would you need to see it?”
“I should ask you the same thing. You don’t need to see anything. Especially that diary. Bring it to me as well.”
“Why? What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to burn it.”
“What?”
I was horrified. Then her face transformed into a cauldron of hate and she seethed, “That diary—it’s evil and must not be allowed to exist. I would have done it years ago if your mother told me she still had it.”
“It’s her diary,” I said. “There’s nothing evil about it.”
“You’re a fool. You can’t possibly be so ignorant. Not when you are already doing his bidding. You need to wise up and take the Lord into your heart. He’ll help you vanquish the evil.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“Aunt Renée, I’m not going to disrespect your religious beliefs, but—”
“Your being here, in my house, disrespects them. You’re family, and your mother has just passed, so I’m making an exception. But don’t misunderstand …” Her voice became intensely quiet; I could feel it crawling up my spine. “Your mother may not have seen it in time, but I do. You’re your father’s son. And I pray every night an angel will come and deliver you. It’s been the angel of death twice before. Maybe you’ll get lucky. The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
Her words hung in the air. What she said, what she implied—I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but as the seconds passed I realized she was right. I was being a fool.
“I’ll leave the rest of the boxes, Aunt Renée, then I’m going. After the funeral, you won’t have to worry about seeing me ever again.”
My aunt’s eyes betrayed her anger as she watched me unload the rest of the boxes from the trunk of my car and drop them in her front hallway. I did so silently, waiting for an apology even though I knew none would come. And she did not disappoint me. In fact, it wasn’t until I was done and made the mistake of looking at her that she finally spoke.
“Get out of here,” she said. “Don’t you ever bring your demons back here.”
“Gladly,” I said, storming toward the door. As I pulled my car out of her driveway I saw her on the porch. She looked withered under the bleached light.
“I’d pray for you,” she called out. “But you don’t deserve it.”
* * *
My tongue was sour as I drove, a nauseating shiver of adrenaline bubbling beneath my skin. When I arrived home, my poor wife had to listen to my hatred erupt for nearly an hour, the red heat of it spewing out, and no matter how much I said or for how long it never seemed to end. It was unquenchable, and only my eventual exhaustion slowed me enough for Wanda to interrupt.
“I found something,” she said. “While you were—while you were out. I found something in the boxes we brought back from you mother’s. Though I’m not sure if this is the best time to show you.”
“Show me,” I said. “It couldn’t make my day any worse.”
“I don’t know if worse is quite the word for it,” she said, then opened up a dresser drawer and produced a stack of paper fastened with a blue elastic band. “I thought you’d want to see these, especially in light of your afternoon.”
I took the pile from her and without removing the elastic flipped through the first few pages. When I realized what she’d found, I looked up. She nodded.
“It’s more poetry. Look, they’re dated. They were written sometime before you were born.”
“Why didn’t I know any of this? Why did she hide it from me?”
“I don’t kn
ow, but Dan—”
“Do you think—” Everything rushed through my head; I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight. “Was she embarrassed? Did my aunt say something to dissuade her? I bet—”
“Dan!”
She startled me and I stopped talking.
“Dan, before you do anything you should read some of them. Some of the poems.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, then paused. “Nothing’s wrong. I just think you should read them.”
I skimmed the first poem in the pile.
The word that came to mind was nightmarish, but in its truest sense. Reading her poetry was reading a nightmare on the page—an actual nightmare. It lacked any discernible narrative, rather inundating me with corrupted images, flashes of that which lurked deep within my subconscious. Men in tailcoats and creatures with long tails slithered over one another. Words mixed and intertwined on the page in uncomfortable juxtaposition. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, worse than the strangest weird fiction I’d ever encountered, and afterward it was unclear if what I remembered was real or a fevered dream. A dozen stories sprung to life in my inspired mind.
“What do you make of them?” Wanda asked. “Are they your mother’s?”
“They have to be,” I said, wiping my dry mouth. “I recognize her handwriting. But I don’t understand why her poetry was such a secret.”
Wanda was surprised.
“I think it’s pretty obvious why she didn’t show them to you or to anyone else. They’re vile.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw your face. You know exactly what I mean.”
I touched the ink on the page. Even it was beautiful.
“But what was wrong with them? Nothing vulgar or crass. Nothing profane, as far as I can see. I don’t remember much beyond a few images, but they seemed like science fiction. Was there something about aliens? And maybe a name … Varshni, or something? I remember an old clock …”
Wanda crossed her arms as though cold.
“I don’t like them, Dan. It’s as simple as that. Get rid of them.”
“But they’re my mother’s,” I said, stunned I was emitting the words. “I can’t just—I mean won’t just—”
She put up her hand.
“Just keep them in your office, then. Away from me.”
That much I could promise.
* * *
For the first night since my mother’s death, my dreams weren’t filled with memories of her. Instead, she was displaced by images from her poetry, and they made little sense as they played over and over against the inside of my skull, trapping me in a perpetual state of half-conscious delirium. My droning hallucinations were vivid, teasing the revelation of things that lay beyond my perception. I rose from bed bound by frustration, worried my incessant turning would wake Wanda, and in my hazy stupor I decided to creep across the dark house to my office. My head was in turmoil, but it seemed wise to record my most bizarre thoughts on the chance I could use them in a future book. But as I tried I found myself incapable of concentration. Each image too slippery to pin down—my imprecise words could not capture their true meaning. Frustrated, I rubbed my strained eyes and saw my mother’s face behind the explosions that followed. It was stretched out and warped, but conveyed utter disappointment in me. My tired brain struggled to comprehend why, and when I realized I had been crying but didn’t know for how long I knew it was time to lie down again. There was so little time before the dawning sunlight would burn away the vestiges of my nightmares and force me to confront a far worse dread.
* * *
I stood by the door for an hour, dressed in my finest pinstriped suit, holding my mother’s tiny diary. Behind me, my wife moved from room to room, dressing for the funeral. She was only a few feet away, while I was unmoored and untethered, drifting into the ether and away from the world I knew. Wherever I was going, nothing would be the same for me. And I wanted to cry over what I had lost, and because I was afraid of what was to come.
Wanda and I arrived at the funeral home early to say our goodbyes. My mother lay in her casket, but I only recognized her by fragments—the actual person I knew was gone; a wax stranger lay in her place. Wanda stood to the side while I whispered my final words, then touched the diary waiting in my jacket pocket. It wasn’t much comfort.
I dried my damp eyes and turned to my wife, but found my aunt instead, standing in the middle of the room, her eyes bulging, her lips quivering. I didn’t know if she was crying, laughing, or barely containing her fury, and I didn’t care. I knew only my own fury.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“I’ve come to prevent you from making a serious mistake.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The diary. What did you do with her diary?”
“How is that your business?”
She stalked toward me. She was smaller and frailer, yet descended like a fuming giant.
“I’m trying to help you, don’t you see? I’m trying to save your soul.”
“My soul doesn’t need any saving. My soul is doing quite fine on its own.”
She stopped, thankfully, and glared at me. Then she noticed my wife.
“What’s it like,” she asked her, “being married to an idiot?”
“Hey,” I shouted. “You talk to me. Stay the hell away from her.”
My aunt laughed.
“You have no idea what that book is, do you?” She shook her head. “I’d hoped you’d burned it and its sin from the world. I’d hoped you’d burned it and scattered the ashes. But I see now. You’re no different from him. I knew it as soon as I laid eyes on you. Your mother didn’t listen, but I knew, and I protected her. Your father at least had alien malevolence behind his eyes. You? You’ve always had nothing. Maybe those evil secrets will fill you, but if we are all lucky it will be your funeral soon enough.”
With this, she wrapped her black silk scarf around her neck and stormed out of the funeral home. She did not once turn to acknowledge me or my mother, the woman who had once called her sister. It was as if she were a stranger, and that was perhaps the most hateful thing she did on that day. She denied my mother one last goodbye before she left this plane. I’d had enough of my aunt and her zealotry and antics, and swore I would never intentionally set eyes on her again.
If I’d only had the strength.
* * *
The funeral had been more difficult that I’d anticipated, and the various pains offered me a clarity I could have happily done without. When Wanda and I arrived home, all I wanted was to take off my suit, pour myself the strongest drink we had, and sink into the couch. I needed to clear the thoughts that gathered in my head like storm clouds. Even with Wanda near, I was bereft, and in my distraction I realized the jacket I was trying to hang was too heavy. Something was in its pocket, something that was not my wallet, and as I freed it I felt my heart seize.
My mother’s diary. In the commotion of my aunt’s entrance and accusations, I’d forgotten that it was still in my pocket, that I hadn’t put it in her casket, even as we dropped flowers onto her vault. Everything had been wiped from my mind as I was consumed by sadness and anger, but what I had done was unforgivable. My mistake was irreparable.
The guilt broke me. I became a recluse. For weeks, I was unable to function without dwelling on my failure, on what it meant for my mother’s journey beyond the veil. Wanda did her best to help me, but I rejected everything she said. I was inconsolable. When eventually she had to return to work, I was left alone to wallow in my private darkness. I knew intellectually she had no choice, but an irrational part of me could not forgive her abandonment. I treated her poorly when she came home at night, which over time caused her to return later and later in the evening.
If only I still had my writing, my one escape from life’s torments, but it too evaporated in the shadow of my guilt. As days became weeks, my head filled with chaotic imagery—swirling star-studded vista
s and cosmic turbulence—and those few sentences I managed to scribble down were senseless. My mind raced too fast and in too many directions to capture it all, and what was left were fragments strung illogically together, wholly indecipherable as soon as I set them down. Without writing, without my wife, without any anchor at all, I slipped further beneath the surface.
As time passed and I became less frequently sober, the voices that pushed in from the edges of my thoughts worked themselves deeper into my psyche. I could not forget my failure to bury the diary, but neither could I spend the rest of my life staring at it—not if I wanted to resist falling irrecoverably into insanity. The idea crossed my mind to burn it, but I couldn’t. It would have been like burning the last piece of my mother, and perhaps my only link to my father. I spent my time daydreaming what might be contained within the diary’s pages, what secrets my mother had wanted to keep hidden. My aunt knew something, and it was so vile she could not contain herself around me. Who was my father? What had he done? I wanted so desperately to know.
It was only a matter of time before I could no longer resist the temptation. Between bouts of drinking I found myself holding the diary, running my hands over its worn covers, convincing myself I could feel heat exuding from it. When I finally broke the seal and cracked it open, when I finally saw my mother’s name in her large schoolgirl hand, I nearly retched, as though my body were revolting at the thought of what I was about to do. I could have put it down easily, forgotten about it, left it behind, restarted and repaired my life. But instead I leafed through pages so well thumbed they were linen, looking for mention of my father.
I quickly forgot my purpose and became lost in my mother’s life. I had known her only as overly worried and overprotective, but quickly I came to realize she had once been anything but. She had thrived on ill-considered risk in her youth and was often joined by my equally adventurous Aunt Renée, not yet quite as angry or as pious as she would become. The revelations in the diary were so bizarre and unlikely I could barely believe them. Were they not in my mother’s handwriting, likely I wouldn’t have.
She was introduced to my father at a holiday picnic. By then she was bordering thirty and was still not looking terribly hard for someone, yet he emerged nevertheless from what she called “a sea of Coke bottle glasses.” She did not think much of him at the time—he was a quiet, aloof, attractive only in an inoffensive and average way, and was the opposite of every man or boy she’d ever dated. Even his speech was peculiar, as though he’d only read books from a hundred years earlier or more and yet had no idea how to pronounce most of the words. Strangely, instead of repelling her, she found it oddly charming and began seeing him despite my Aunt Renée’s jealous disapproval.
