The Wisdom of Evil

by Scarlet Black

  Coming from such a hearty family line, Glory could not imagine her really being sick. She’d outlive them all. Why, her father, Milton Grover, had received the Boston Post Cane three years ago, a New England tradition honoring the oldest living citizen in the county. He was one-hundred and one now! He still lived on his own and even picked blueberries in season.

  “I’m goin’ down there right now,” she said. “Mickey…where’s Olivia?”

  “Where do yah think? Boston.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, this is gonna stop! You wait here for her, okay? I’ll call yah when I get there.”

  He looked relieved. No matter the age, children always believed their parents could fix anything. Glory grabbed the dog’s leash. “Haley, c’mon, boy.” His nose was already at the door; he chuffed, wagging his tail. She took Haley virtually everywhere with her. Joan loved to see him as well.

  When Glory arrived at Joan’s, all the lights were out and the curtains were pulled closed, doors locked. She let herself in with the key she and Michael had, calling her name softly in case she was napping. She didn’t want to startle her. There was no reply. There was no sound of the television or any noise whatsoever except the slow tick tock of the pendulum on the grandfather clock standing against one of the living room walls.

  “Joan.” Glory’s voice was louder this time with concern and fear.

  A feeble, almost unrecognizable voice answered, “In here.”

  There is a strange sensation one gets when on a roller coaster or is having an unexpected fright; an actual physical feeling, starting in the stomach, flying up to the chest and causing the heart to pound in anxiety. This feeling came over Glory at the sound of that weak voice.

  As she stood at the threshold of the bedroom, she gasped at what she saw.

  Joan sat at a slant on the couch, struggling to sit up straight and gain her bearings. Her hair looked as if it had not been washed for quite a while. Her eyes were glassy and runny at the same time surrounded by skin that looked gray, used up, as did her overall appearance.

  The sound of ragged, overworked lungs was prominent. But, it was the smell that caused Glory’s heart to beat faster than she thought possible, her palms to sweat.

  Illness could deceive the senses if one chose to believe what they saw and heard, but the smell. The scent of illness and death could not be denied. That smell was there in that small bedroom with the embroidered lace white curtains and the comfortable old colonial furniture.

  Haley ran into the bedroom, stopped short, a low whining sound coming from deep in his throat. Dogs had the ability to sense things. Ears back, his tail wrapped underneath him, his whines grew. He licked gently at her face, but didn’t leap onto the bed. This was highly unusual behavior for a black Lab. Their rambunctious nature was notorious. Something was indeed very wrong.

  This woman, whom Glory loved and admired, who called her “daughter” for so many years now, was obviously very ill. Yet, she wouldn’t admit it to Glory, or to herself.

  “We need to go to the emergency room.” Glory wrapped her arm around Joan, trying to pull her up. Joan was much larger than Glory and had no strength of her own. She couldn’t budge her.

  “It’s just a cold, I told you. I’ll be fine. I just need to…sleep it off.” An intense spasm of coughing overwhelmed her. She covered her mouth with her hand. When she pulled her hand away, Glory was shocked to see a fine mist of blood on the back of it. The misty spray of bright red was on her bottom lip as well.

  Primal fear tightened around her like a vise. Dear God, not her. Please, not her, she thought.

  “You need to go. Maybe the cold has turned to pneumonia. A cold doesn’t last for two months!”

  From a distance, beyond the sound of her pounding heart, Glory heard the ring of the phone. It was Mickey. Glory asked him to drive down. Nana wasn’t well. She needed his help to get her to go to the hospital. If he wanted her to go, she would. Glory was certain of it.

  Her eyes lit up when he walked through the bedroom door and sat on her bed. Within minutes, Mickey convinced her to go to the emergency room. Between them, they got her up and dressed. Glory combed her hair and washed her face as she insisted she “looked a fright.” She was like that, always taking pride in her appearance, not even going to the store without looking “presentable.”

  Joan was whisked away as soon as they got to the emergency room. Blood was drawn, x-rays were taken.

  Mickey and Glory sat anxiously, awaiting the results. Joan, meanwhile, repeatedly commented, “I hope they get done soon. I just wanna go home.”

  Two young male doctors came into the section where Joan lay on a bed. They didn’t have any x-rays.

  “So, can you give me an antibiotic and send me home?” Joan struggled as her words mingled with the incessant cough.

  “I’m sorry, but the x-rays weren’t conclusive. We’re going to admit you and run some more tests. We’ve notified your primary care doctor that you’re here. Dr. Marshall will be here first thing in the morning to go over the results with you,” the doctor who looked as if he were twelve years old said. His name plate read Dr. Kaplan.

  “But, its pneumonia right?” Glory asked. “She’s had it before.”

  The two doctors looked at each other with restraint, as if they were about to burst out a secret that should not yet be revealed.

  “We can’t say it’s pneumonia at this point. Dr. Marshall will talk with all of you in the morning and let you know what he finds,” Dr. Kaplan said, leaving the room in haste.

  A nurse quietly drew back the curtain and gently put an admittance band on Joan’s wrist. Her eyes widened in fear.

  “I want to go home!” This time, she merely mimicked the words. The band on her wrist told her she wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Go along home. I’m goin’ to sleep anyway.” She turned her face away from them. Glory looked back on her way out the door and saw tears silently falling down her cheeks. She felt as though they’d betrayed her in bringing her here, leaving her alone in that room when she just wanted to go home.

  A light mist of spring rain had begun to fall as they left the hospital parking lot. Glory and Mickey were both silent on the drive home.

  She called Michael as soon as she reached home and told him what was going on.

  “Did they say what she has?” he asked.

  “No. They didn’t even bring in any x-rays.” For some unknown reason, this greatly disturbed her.

  “Well, they musta told you something!” Frustrated anxiety resonated in his voice.

  “No, they said they’d run more tests and Dr. Marshall would be there in the morning.”

  “I’m goin’ ovah there right now. I’ll call yah later.”

  “She said she wanted to be alone, Michael. I felt bad leaving her there like that.”

  “I don’t care what she says. I’m goin’, and I’m staying the night too.”

  “Do yah think the hospital will let you do that?”

  “I’m a cop; they beddah’. Tough shit if they don’t like it. I’m stayin’.”

  “Do yah want me to come down there?”

  “No, you take care of the kids. I’ll meet you here in the mornin’.”

  Olivia! She better be in her room, Glory thought. She had enough to deal with right now without wondering what her daughter was doing.

  “Olivia!” she called out.

  “In my room, Mom. I’ll be right out.”

  Thank God!

  “What’s going on with Nana?” she asked, her doe eyes large and scared and…hazy. It was subtle, but there. Her eyes didn’t look right. Glory said nothing about it. She should have, but didn’t. Instead, she told Olivia that Joan was in the hospital and Michael would be gone all night.

  Alone in bed, Glory tossed and turned. Finally, she wrapped the comforter tightly around her, tucking her feet under Haley who lay at the bottom of the bed. She slept fitfully. The room was getting colder. The early spring nights in Maine could be quite cool. She
pulled the comforter up to the tip of her nose. Still, she was cold. Too cold. On Michael’s side of the bed, the covers shifted upward.

  “Did you decide to come home after all?” she asked sleepily, not turning around. She was over tired, which meant she probably wouldn’t sleep at all.

  The coldness was not just in the air, but in the very bed itself, a bone-chilling, icy cold. She shivered. Michael didn’t answer her.

  “Michael?” A cool stream of breath came from her lips, as if she were standing outside in the very dead of winter.

  “Not quite,” a raspy voice answered.

  Turning quickly, but seemingly in slow motion, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she came face to face with the source of the dreadful voice.

  Two eyes glittered in what little light the moon brought to the room. They were green and glowing and malevolent. The teeth, white; the nose, incomplete, just a…skull!

  “No! You aren’t real!” Glory closed her eyes and shook her head to clear the image out of her head. When she opened them, the thing’s face was no more than a few inches from her own!

  “Do you know what it means to have Death desire you? To love you?” Its breath was foul with the smell of things long dead, putrid and sickening.

  Glory ripped the covers off, went to jump out of bed. She had to get away from this monstrosity. A bony hand shot out of nowhere and grabbed hold of her wrist. She looked at it, shocked. The skeletal hand held hers tight, very tight, with little effort. The hard bone dug into her flesh now, hurting her! She couldn’t move, dared not even breathe. This wasn’t a dream, nor was it a hallucination. This was happening. She’d been running from death her whole life, but death simply wouldn’t leave her alone!

  She struggled out of the remaining bed covers, tripped, and fell to the hardwood floor; still, the bony hand had its grip upon her. She pulled so hard she thought she’d surely dislocate her shoulder, but she didn’t care.

  “What…are you? Who are you?” Glory’s voice trembled as she actually tried to find rationality in the irrational.

  “You know who I am. You’ve always known, Glor-eeeeee.” The awful thing whispered mockingly.

  “Michael! Help me…help me! Please!” She shrieked, watching as her hand and forearm were now turning blue from the cold embrace of the creature. It was…consuming her. The horror of it—her arm was decaying right before her eyes!

  “Mom!” Mickey came rushing into the room, his mouth open in shock at the sight in front of him. His mother was writhing on the floor, struggling with the comforter, pulling at her forearm with her other hand. Something was under there; something was pulling her arm. He couldn’t see what it was. He ran to her and pulled her up by the waist. The comforter fell to the floor. There was nothing inside. But, he was sure he’d seen... No, he wasn’t sure he’d actually seen anything. So, what had been pulling her arm down?

  “Is it gone, Mickey? Did you see that…thing?”

  “No, Mom. I mean, I don’t know what I saw. Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “Thanks, Mickey.” Her voice was hoarse from screaming. She was barely able to talk.

  “Jesus, Mom, it’s freezin’ in here.” He wrapped her up in the comforter and she shakily sat on the bed.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “No wonder. The windows are wide open!” Mickey closed them all.

  She was still shaking, unable to stop. Her teeth chattered and she had goose bumps all over.

  “Do you want me to call Dad?”

  “No. I’ll be okay. He has enough to worry about right now.”

  “How ‘bout a cup of hot tea?”

  “Yeah, that would be n-nice.”

  She heard him in the kitchen. The ordinary sounds of a cupboard opening, a spoon hitting the tea cup, the whistle of the kettle; familiarly calming. She looked all about the room. Mickey had turned the light on when he’d come in. There were no shadows. That monster had been here! That was the truth! Like a pawn on a chessboard, she wondered which of them would make the next move, her or it.

  Mickey’s eyes were intent on her face, watching her drink the soothing tea, as she sat in the very rocking chair she’d once nursed him.

  “I’ll stay here tonight.”

  She didn’t argue with him. By the time she dared to lay back down, he’d fallen asleep in the chair. The bed still held the awful icy chill. Finally, sometime before morning, she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

  Chapter 9

  As soon as Mickey and Olivia left for school in the morning—after convincing Mickey to go—Glory headed back to the hospital. She’d sworn Mickey to secrecy regarding the previous night’s events. She wouldn’t tell Michael any of what had happened.

  Joan was sitting up in bed, Dr. Marshall at her side. He held a set of x-rays and a clipboard with Joan’s chart attached. She seemed much better. Color had come back into her face and her eyes had lost that glassy look.

  Glory couldn’t help but try to get a better glimpse at those x-rays. What she saw made her feel ill! My God, the chest cavity was completely shaded in swirl of translucent white! She wasn’t a doctor, but she’d seen this type of x-ray at the animal hospital. On a normal chest x-ray, the bones would be displayed in black, the background a gray-white in color. This one revealed no black, just that ominous white!

  Michael looked so tired and worried. But she knew he hadn’t seen those x-rays yet. He might be the strong, silent type, but she could read him like a book. If he’d seen them, he’d be afraid, just as she was.

  “I’d like to speak to Joan in private, if you don’t mind,” Dr. Marshall said to Glory and Michael.

  “Of course. We’ll just…go down an’ get some coffee and wait outside in the visitors lounge,” Michael said.

  Michael drank his coffee like it was going out of style. Glory had none for fear she’d throw it up. They were the only ones in visitor’s lounge at this early morning hour.

  They sat side by side, noting the time on the clock. The hands appeared frozen as the minutes ticked by and they sat helplessly waiting.

  Those minutes turned to an hour. At last, Joan’s doctor ushered them into the room.

  Her back was to them. They could tell by the way her body shook, her slumped shoulders, that she was crying. An older woman in a starched white lab coat knelt beside her holding her hand.

  The disturbing x-ray Glory had only glimpsed earlier was illuminated on the monitor screen, the eerie mass of white stating that which she already knew to be true.

  The older woman introduced herself as Dr. Belin. She was a specialist brought in to look at the x-rays and confirm Joan’s primary physician’s diagnosis.

  “Let’s go outside and talk about your mom’s condition,” she said to Michael.

  “No,” Joan replied. She stopped crying and sat up straight. “I’ll tell them,” she said. “And then you can speak to them afterwards.”

  There was a look of unmasked dread on Michael’s face. Not one to sugar-coat her words, she told them right out. “I have lung cancer.”

  The room began to spin. Glory felt as if she couldn’t breathe. All the color evaporated from Michael’s face as he fell into a chair, his head in his hands, covering his face as he wept. Her Michael, who never cried, was sobbing like a child.

  Joan didn’t speak.

  Wiping away his tears, he got up, touched his mom’s shoulder gently, and left the room. After he left, Glory sat next to her on the bed and hugged her close, feeling her special warmth. She looked deep into Joan’s eyes and whispered fiercely, “Don’t you leave me. Please…don’t leave me here without you!” Damn God for doing this to this wonderful woman! Glory thought.

  “You know me, Glory. I’m not giving up, so don’t you give up either. Go to Michael; he needs you and I need…some time alone to think.”

  She found Michael with Dr. Belin. He was nodding as she explained to him that Joan had stage four small cell lung cancer—the worst type. There wasn’t any operation to remove this cancer an
d it spread aggressively.

  “How long?” Michael asked.

  “Eight months with chemotherapy and radiation treatments.”

  “And without all that, how long?”

  “Four months maximum.” She was so certain; she hadn’t even hesitated.

  Michael and Glory were stunned! Just one short day ago they’d expected to bring Joan to their home and care for her as she recovered from pneumonia. Now they had to listen to details of an illness they both were all too familiar with; one that was both cruel and finite. The only cure was death. The mere thought of a world without Joan in it was intolerable.

  Glory’s own mother, with all her poor life choices and inability to show affection, wasn’t as much of a mother to her as this woman. Joan had shown her what a mother’s love could be. She’d learned a lot about life and love from her, treasures that she would carry in her heart throughout her life.

  While Michael was close to his mother and would do whatever needed to be done for her, Glory knew that Joan would never want to burden him with the care that she’d need.

  “She has eight months at best, Glory. Let’s make it the best eight months we can for her.”

  “How can we give her everything that she needs?”

  “We’ll do it. It’s…my mother, your mother, too. She thinks of you as her daughter, always has. I’ll take medical leave from work and you can take over later in the day. Because that’s what families do. I’m sure Mickey and Olivia will pitch in too.”

  “Mickey is gonna be crushed by this,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, I know…but he’ll do right by her. And he’s a pretty resilient kid. So, we’ll just…do the best we can with what we’ve got, as a family.”

  In the months that followed, everyone in the family spent numerous hours at the hospital as Joan received chemotherapy.

  After her release from the hospital, she came to stay at Michael and Glory’s home where they could care for her around the clock.

  When the oxygen tanks were brought in and the guest room was converted into a sick room, the reality of the illness hit them hard, but they did their best.