by Rick Hautala
“If she dies … if she dies …”
“Don’t you talk about anyone dying, all right?”
Evelyn’s eyes suddenly brightened with intensity as she looked up at her son. Her hand, the one with the IV sticking into it, reached up and grabbed hold of his shirt sleeve. He slid one hand over hers and squeezed gently. The softness of her skin, the fragility of her bones beneath his touch nearly broke his heart.
“If Dianne dies,” Evelyn said, “I … I don’t know what I can do … about it.”
And if you die, I don’t know what I’ll do, Edward thought, although he wasn’t able to say it out loud.
He had been only five years old when his father had died. That was too young to remember much about the funeral other than him, his brother, and his mother crying a lot. The thought of losing his mother now left him feeling cold and weak and alone. After the events of the weekend, he knew he could be on the brink of a physical and mental collapse. The best he could do right now was shake his head in confusion and watch his mother struggle to speak. Her lips were thin and drawn, making her mouth look like an oval, bloodless wound.
“There’ll be no one left … if she dies … no one left for me to tell—” his mother rasped.
Edward found it extremely unsettling, the way his mother’s eyes kept shifting back and forth, as though she couldn’t see him and she was desperately searching for something to anchor her gaze. He wondered if the heart attack had done something else to her, perhaps sent a blood clot to her brain and given her a stroke or affected her in some other way that was making her talk and act half-crazy. Maybe the medication she was on was screwing up her thinking.
“Look at her picture … her portrait,” Evelyn said, no more than a gasp. Her hand trembled like a small, frightened animal in Edward’s grasp. “You know where it is … She looks so much like … her…”
“You need to rest, Mom. Maybe I’d better be going now,” Edward said, fighting to keep the desperate edge out of his voice. “I don’t want to tire you out.”
“Tell her to be careful … to watch out … until I can tell her … tell her about all of it,” Evelyn said a bit more forcefully.
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell her,” Edward said. He nodded even though he had no idea what his mother was talking about.
“It’s too bad she’s not in the bloodline … but perhaps … perhaps she will do,” Evelyn whispered. “If only you had had a daughter … I had hoped that your sister … your sister would have been the one … or that you would have had a daughter, but … but it wasn’t meant to be, I guess, and now I’m afraid of what will happen next!”
Edward stared at his mother, stunned into silence. He never knew he had a sister; there had always been just him and his brother Michael … poor, retarded Michael. What was this talk about a sister? Either his mother was completely out of her mind, or else she was confusing him with someone else.
“I probably should have told you about her … long before this,” Evelyn went on. She was obviously trying to focus on her son, but her eyes kept twitching wildly back and forth as if she had no control over them.
“Told me—? Told me what?” Edward asked, his voice sounding like metal scraping against stone.
“About Rachel … your sister … She was named for an ancestor of mine … from long ago. She was to have been the next one … the one I told, but when she died … of scarlet fever … she was only two years old … you were just a baby … Oh, my sweet, sweet Rachel! I feared so much for you, too, Eddie … The Lord knows we’ve all had our share of misery … more than our share … but I’m afraid it will only get worse now … if I don’t tell someone.”
“I—I had no idea,” Edward said, shaking his head and feeling both foolish and perplexed. Could it be true, that he’d had an older sister who had died shortly after he was born, or was his mother simply babbling out of her mind.
“I had wished … I’d prayed for another daughter or that you’d provide me with a granddaughter … And Michael? No, Michael never could have, but if you had, I could have shown her … I could have told her about the—” Her throat closed off with a loud click. After licking her lips, she spoke again, her voice fainter now, faltering with the effort. “I tried to tell Sally, your first wife … but she wouldn’t listen … she wasn’t receptive … I had hoped that Dianne would—would be the one … but I need time … time to teach her, to show her that the—”
This time her voice cut off with a high, tight, strangling sound. Her body tensed and began to tremble as though she was struggling against a powerful force. After a few seconds, her body gave up the effort and relaxed. With a loud gasp, she dropped her head back onto the pillow and stared up at the ceiling, her eyes wide open and unblinking. What little color there had been in her face quickly drained away.
Still clutching his mother’s limp hand, Edward looked frantically at her, then glanced over his shoulder at the monitors. He didn’t know for sure, but it seemed as though the digital numbers were dropping lower. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Hey, Mom—? Mom!”
He jiggled her hand, trying to rouse her, but he was convinced her hand was growing cold in his grip. He leaned close to her face, praying to feel the soft flutter of her breath, but he was so wound up with panic that he couldn’t tell whether or not he was feeling anything. Suddenly, one of the monitors let out a loud beep. The sound stabbed like an ice pick into his ears as he released his mother’s hand and moved slowly away from the bed, his gaze riveted to the slack expression on her face.
Oh, God—no! Please! No!
She still hadn’t blinked. The cloudy glaze in her eyes seemed to thicken. Her focus seemed fixed on something far, far away. No motion stirred the thin blanket covering her chest. Her hand lay where he had dropped it, palm up, the thin fingers curled in upon themselves like a dead, white spider.
Uttering a soft moan, Edward wheeled around and raced for the door. He was telling himself that he had to remain calm, that there were medical people nearby who could help, but a stronger, deeper voice inside his head was whispering that it was already too late.
She’s gone! … She’s gone!
Flinging the door open, he ran out into the corridor and collided head-on into a nurse who was rushing to the room. She pushed past him and hurried over to the bedside. A second or two later, a doctor, three more nurses, and two medical technicians wheeling a cart loaded with equipment burst into the room.
Numb with shock, Edward stepped back and leaned against the far wall, telling himself he’d only be in the way as the medical team made a frantic attempt to resuscitate his mother. They called out orders and vital signs readings to each other; then all of them stood back when one of the medical technicians shouted, “Clear!” and zapped her with the defibrillator. Out of the corner of his eye, Edward saw his mother’s body jump with the electrical jolt that was supposed to jump-start her heart. They tried this three times; then one of the nurses monitoring Evelyn’s blood pressure shouted, “We’re losing her! Fast!” The doctor called for something, but the nurse looked at him, shook her head and said, “Flatline.”
That single word cut through the swirling confusion that raged inside Edward’s brain. He knew damned right well what flatline meant.
Chapter Six
Summer Shadows
“Kinda hot for this early in June, don’t you think?” Edward said.
Dianne was sucking lukewarm coffee through a straw as she sat with her husband at the picnic table under the trees out behind Edward’s house. After living here less than two months, she was still painfully aware that this was Edward’s home, not hers. Not yet. It was going to take a long time of living in this house before she felt like she belonged here. And now, following her accident and the death of Edward’s mother, she was beginning to think that she would never feel comfortable again—here or anywhere. In some ways—in a lot of ways, Brian belonged in this house more than she did.
She glanced over at Edwa
rd and nodded. She could still talk, even though her face was wrapped with elastic bandages and her jaw had been wired shut, but over the past two weeks, she had learned quite a bit about communicating with guttural sounds and simple gestures. At times, she thought about how language must have evolved this way and that maybe that’s what was wrong with the whole world today: words complicated everything.
“I have to meet with Frank this afternoon to go over the plans for the house I’m going to be building for him,” Edward said. “Maybe we should take this morning to go over and start cleaning up around my mother’s house.” He took a deep breath, as though it was too difficult to continue. “We probably should clean it right out so we can sell it or whatever.”
Dianne looked at him again, regarding him for a moment, then nodded stiffly.
“I suppose so,” she said. Her voice was muffled and distorted. “But I told you, I’m still not feeling up to it. Maybe we should hold off on that for a while longer.”
Edward, she noticed, had developed the irritating habit of leaning forward whenever she spoke to him so he would catch everything she said. She didn’t like the way it made her feel handicapped. She wasn’t handicapped! She was just recovering from a serious accident. This wasn’t permanent!
“It’s not exactly something I’m crazy about doing, either, but we have to get it done eventually. I think we’ve put it off long enough.”
Dianne looked away from him, wishing to God she didn’t feel so annoyed at him—at everything this morning. It had been a long and painful two weeks since her accident, and she damned-sure wasn’t looking forward to spending the rest of the summer with her face bandaged up, her jaw wired shut, and her body and mind numbed by the narcotics the doctor had prescribed. Sure, the medication dulled the pain, but that might be what was making her feel so cranky and depressed all the time. There was another operation scheduled in two weeks, to take out the metal plates that were holding the broken bones in her face in place, and she was dreading it. This summer looked like it was going to be one long, agonizing ordeal.
She didn’t feel like getting up for another cup of iced coffee, much less going through her dead mother-in-law’s possessions to decide what to save, what to get rid of, and what to donate to Goodwill.
“You know,” she said after a long pause, “I still can’t accept the fact that you didn’t even tell me that your mother had died until after the funeral. It—it boggles my mind.”
Edward took a deep breath and remained silent as he looked out at the line of trees bordering the backyard. The forest was lush with the bright greens of maple trees and the darker greens of pine. A sultry breeze was blowing from the south, making the trees sway gently. His gaze automatically went to the darkened path that sliced into the woods. One branch of that path wound more than half a mile through the woods before ending in the side yard at his mother’s house. Over the years, the path had been worn smooth from him tracking over it to go visit her.
“This hasn’t exactly been very easy on me either, you know,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You were in the hospital, and I didn’t want you thinking or worrying about anything else except getting better.”
Dianne tensed and almost asked him what worried and hurt him more—her accident or his mother’s death—but she let it drop. Far too many times over that past two weeks she had told him, and sometimes screamed at him, that he had no idea what she had to deal with. She realized that their relationship had suffered enough strain since her accident; there was no sense in adding to it … not on such a nice summer morning.
“I mean,” Edward said, slapping his fist into his open hand, “Christ! Up until two weeks ago, I never even knew I’d ever had a sister!”
Dianne sighed and shook her head, wanting to ask him—truthfully—how much difference something like that would make in his life; his sister had been dead for over forty years. Instead, she said, “Do you think Brian would want to come along with us?”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Brian—now he was a problem. Even before her accident, her stepson had treated her at best with ill-disguised dislike bordering on outright contempt. Now that her face was mottled like rotten fruit and wrapped in elastic bandages, and her eyes still blackened and swollen, he was treating her as if she were some hideous monster, something to be feared and hated instead of pitied. She instantly found herself hoping Brian would want to stay at home.
Edward glanced up at the house and said simply, “I suppose I ought to ask him.”
“Oh, he doesn’t have to come if he doesn’t want to,” Dianne said, but she knew it was already too late as Edward got up and walked back to the house.
Edward pulled the car to a stop at the top of the dirt driveway and switched off the ignition, but he didn’t get out of the car immediately. For several seconds he just sat there, gripping the steering wheel with both hands as he stared up at his mother’s deserted house. A deep cold gripped his innards as his eyes darted back and forth, taking in the hard angles of the old structure. The house was well over two hundred years old and had been in the family since before the American Revolution. The sun was behind the house, casting the front door in shadows that made the peeling, brown paint look all the darker. The front windows looked as though they were covered by a mantle of deep, dark ice that reflected back only a small amount of the bright morning sky. There was a sense of loneliness, of disuse and abandonment about the house that wrung Edward’s heart as an avalanche of childhood memories filled his mind.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Dianne asked, looking back and forth between the house and Edward.
Brian sat silently in the back seat, slouched down with his arms folded almost defiantly across his chest. He hadn’t said a word since getting into the car, but throughout the short drive to the house, Dianne had felt his cold, intense gaze linger on the back of her head.
Edward took a steadying breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know—you know? I—sometimes I just can’t accept the fact that she—that my mother’s not here anymore,” he said, his voice trembling slightly. “I mean—ever since I can remember, she’s always lived here … her entire life! I keep thinking that as soon as we walk in through the front door, she’ll call out to us from the kitchen. It just makes me—I dunno.” He sighed deeply and shivered. “I mean, all the time I was growing up, I never really liked this house. There was something about it …”
“Then why, once you were old enough, didn’t you move out of Summerfield?” Dianne asked.
Edward shrugged. “I know, I know. I just never got the chance to leave, I guess, and I—well, I always felt like I ought to stay around and help my mother out, especially once she started getting along in years. There was no other family around who could do that. I—” He sighed again and shook his head. “But now, it just doesn’t seem like the same place, knowing that she’s …” His voice trailed away to nothing.
Dianne reached out and covered his hand with hers. She wanted to say something reassuring, something comforting, but her husband’s dark mood was unsettling her, too; he looked so … so haunted was the first word that popped into her mind.
Like he expects to see his mother’s ghost up there in one of the windows or something.
“We can wait until later, if you want to,” she said softly. She squeezed his hand, surprised at how cold it felt in her grip.
Edward glanced quickly at her, but then his gaze was drawn back to the house as if it were a magnet and his eyes were iron. His lower lip began to tremble; the color had drained from his face.
“No,” he said, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders. “We can’t possibly get it all done today, anyway, but we have to at least get a start on it.” He slid the keys out of the ignition, opened his door, and eased out of the car. The whole time he kept his gaze fastened on the house.
Dianne remained in the car, watching him for a moment before she got out on her side. She glanced back at Brian,
who had made no move whatsoever, but didn’t say anything to him. His mistrust of her cut to the heart, but she didn’t want to—she couldn’t let show how much it bothered her. Right now, she and Edward had enough problems of their own.
They met at the front of the car and, hand in hand, started up toward the house. Dianne kept watching the way Edward’s eyes darted back and forth, as though he was looking for something or else trying to encompass the entire house in a single glance. The haunted look didn’t leave his eyes; if anything, it intensified as they approached the back porch and mounted the steps. Edward’s hand was trembling as he fit the key into the lock, turned the doorknob and then, stepping back, swung the door inward. He gestured for Dianne to enter first, but before she did, she turned to him, gripped both of his arms at the elbows, and said, “Edward? Honey? What is it? Tell me what’s really the matter?”
His expression remained darkly expectant as he peered into the open doorway. His nostrils widened as he sniffed the stale air that wafted out of the house. He cringed back and tensed as if he expected something horrible to come rushing out at him.
“You have to talk about it, you know,” Dianne said. The smell of stale air and mold made her feel slightly dizzy, but she forced herself not to let it show. “You have to tell me what it is. What do you think you’ll find here?”
Edward shrugged and shivered slightly. “I dunno,” he said. His voice was flat, barely above a whisper. “I just don’t know. Maybe … maybe just the ghost of the child I used to be.”
Brian waited until his father and stepmother had gone inside the house before getting out of the car. Just seeing the house again and thinking about how scared he had been that night two weeks ago, the night before his grandmother died, made his legs feel all weak and wobbly. Over the past two weeks, he had actually half-convinced himself that he had been so nervous that night because, at least subconsciously, he had known the old lady—the Old Witch Lady—was going to die. Maybe the surprise of the phone, ringing as late as it did, had started it all by frightening the old woman … or maybe, even though she had appeared to handle it quite well, the shock of the news his father had given her had started the heart attack … or maybe … just maybe—in spite of what that local kid had said about her keeping herself alive for over a hundred years by drinking the blood of children from around town—it was simply that his grandmother’s number had come up, that it had been her time to croak.
