*
Chapter Four
His wife sat in her armchair, her head propped against a thick cushion. She wore lipstick but no other makeup. Her hair had been washed and brushed. Once so beautiful, it hung flat on the left side of her head, dented in a car accident three years ago.
John’s mind threw up words like ‘skull’ and ‘concave’ and ‘cadaver,’ but he pushed them way down deep.
He smiled for her.
“Hello,” she said, smiling at him. But not for him. It was just a smile. The kind of smile you might give a waiter, or a mechanic, or some guy who stops and picks up the purse you just dropped.
He kissed her on the cheek.
“How are you today?”
“I’m fine. Thank you for asking.” Her hand strayed to her head, stopped just short of touching the flat part. It was where a bull bar had hit her.
“Did you listen to the radio today?”
“Yes! I listened to Woman’s Hour. I like the stories.”
“You always like the stories.”
“Are you here to wash my hair?”
“Your hair’s been washed already.”
“Oh. Well, it’s nice of you to check on me.”
John bit the end of his moustache and pulled the coarse hair down onto his tongue. He tried to concentrate on doing that for a few seconds. Give himself a chance to set himself before the hurt came again.
Most days the same. But sometimes … sometimes it was different.
“Do you remember me?”
“Of course I do! You’re the cook.”
Sometimes it was different. But not today.
“That’s right. Did you enjoy your lunch?”
“I thought the beef was lovely.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“Are you here to wash my hair?” Her hand strayed to the flat part of her hair again. Just shy of touching. Hovering over the broken skull underneath.
“No, darling.”
“Aren’t you sweet?”
John sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn’t cry.
“I just wanted to tell you I love you.”
She smiled, unsure.
“Well, that’s nice. Thank you for lunch.”
“That’s all right,” he said, and smiled for her. She smiled at him. Her eyes rolled, then came back into focus. It was quick. He might have missed it.
“John?”
His heart beat faster. Like it always did when she came back.
“Karen. How are you?”
“I’ve got a headache. Always got a headache these days.”
“You’re in the right place. They’ll sort it out.”
“John, don’t you lie to me.”
He could feel a tear tickling as it coursed down his cheek, until it hit his beard and the sensation was lost.
Every time he thought he’d done with tears, they snuck up on him. Usually he could save them until he was in his apartment, alone, where no one could accuse him of eating meal deals for one, taking a tipple, and cracking up in public.
Crying wouldn’t bring her back. It might make her go away right now, though. He pushed the tears down in the same place the ugly words went. He imagined a ruptured skull, bobbing under a pool of tears.
Why couldn’t he concentrate? She’s right there. Right there, John. Concentrate and make the most of it.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, honey. I’d never lie to you.”
“I can hear the rain, John. Is it heavy? You’re not wet.”
“It wasn’t raining when I came in.”
It wasn’t raining now, either. It didn’t matter. She often thought it was raining.
“Open the window, would you? I want to see the rain.”
“OK.”
“It’s going be a storm. I can feel it, you know.”
“I know. It’s going to thunder.”
She smiled at the thought, then her eyes flicked left, right and turned up to the whites. She shuddered. He held her down to stop her throwing herself out of the chair, gritting his teeth with the effort.
When it had passed, he wiped the drool from her chin. Then he carried her to the bed and laid her on the covers.
“I love you,” he said and wished she were dead.
He should call someone. The eyes flickering, the change in … what? Consciousness? She’d had a seizure.
He should call. There was a call button for emergencies. Right there, by the bed.
He closed the door behind him.
*
Chapter Five
The home was a warren. John knew the way to the front door from Karen’s room. He knew the way to the common room and the dining room and out to the garden. He didn’t know where the nurses’ station was, so he just wandered the halls until he found someone.
He spotted a woman he knew through the door to another of the residents’ rooms. He didn’t go in. It wasn’t his room. The residents were granted the same respect any normal person would be, as far as common sense dictated. He wouldn’t have walked into someone’s room in a hospital or a hotel. So he waited, leaning against the wall to the side of the door, so he couldn’t see in. Spying would be the same as going in.
Eventually the woman came out. She saw John and smiled.
“Mr. March. Have you seen Karen yet?”
“I just came from there. I wanted to talk to someone.”
“I’ve got to put this back in storage. Do you want to walk with me?”
He saw she was carrying a pack of cotton ear buds and some kind of cream with a long name he wouldn’t have been able to pronounce if he’d been of a mind to try it.
“OK,” he said.
“What did you want to talk about?”
“Her episodes,” he said. He didn’t really want to talk about them, but he knew he should. It was like the talks between parents and children about sex. Everybody would prefer it if it never came up, but if you didn’t talk about it, you ended up being a grandparent at thirty.
He didn’t want to talk about it, because he thought she might be getting worse, and because if she was getting worse, he hoped it wouldn’t last long, and because he felt terrible for thinking things should get worse as quickly as possible.
He was beyond hoping for things to get better. He knew they wouldn’t. She was never going to recover. She’d lost a sizeable chunk of bone and brain. She wouldn’t be coming back. He just didn’t know how much more he could take.
Maybe the nurse—Terry, that was it—maybe she saw some of that in his eyes. Maybe she’d seen it enough times over the years to recognise it for what it was.
Nobody talked about stuff like that, though. Nobody came right out and said, “Do you want your wife to die, Mr. March?”
“They are becoming quite common.”
“Is that a bad sign?” he said, meaning is that a good sign, but unable to say it.
“She’s deteriorated significantly over the last year, but she’s a fighter.” They reached the storage cupboard, and she took a key from her pocket to open it.
“Did she have an episode while you were visiting?”
“She was confused, then her eyes went funny, then she spoke to me like she knew who I was … then had a small seizure. She was out when I left her.”
“Shit,” said the carer before she ran away, up to Karen’s room.
John felt like a shit, but he took a breath and walked away. Through the warren, to the front door.
She’d be dead or she’d be alive. He didn’t have the energy.
He was so God damn tired.
He didn’t hear another carer calling his name as he entered the code for the front door. She had to grab his arm to get his attention.
“Mr. March?”
He looked at her. He couldn’t get his mouth to make words.
She smiled. The pity smile.
“Tough day?”
“Jane, right?”
“That’s me. Are you OK?”
He shook his head.
He felt tears welling up. Even a small kindness these days could break his heart.
“Thank you,” he said. He couldn’t look at her. If he looked, he might cry, and he didn’t want to cry anymore.
She left her hand there. He didn’t want her to take it away.
“Honey,” she said. “You come here every day, right?”
He nodded, looking down at his shoes. He saw the left lace was frayed. The little plastic thingy at the end of the lace was gone.
Karen would’ve noticed a thing like that.
Flugelbinder, his mind dredged up. Cocktail. Tom Cruise.
“You ever take a day off?”
“Sorry?”
“You need a day off. Trust me. Just take a day.”
“I can’t. She … needs me.”
“Mr. March? It’s not my place to say it, but I’m going to say it anyway, because I don’t think you’ve got anyone else to say it. You need you more than she does.”
“I’m sorry?”
She smiled. A soft smile. “Mr. March, doctor’s orders. I’m giving you permission.”
“You’re a doctor?”
She just looked back at him. Waiting.
“No. OK. I’m sorry. I get it. I’m just really tired.”
“Take a day off. You’ll see. You’ll feel better. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.”
He shook his head. He realised her hand was still on his arm. He didn’t want to tell her to get lost while she had her hand on his arm.
“I’ll think about it. Thank you … er …”
“Jane.”
“I will.”
“I know you will, Mr. March.”
“John,” he said absently.
She pulled out a letter from her apron.
“Get some rest. When us carers start forgetting things too, that’s when we need a day off. It gets to everyone.” She waved the letter at him with another smile.
“This was in one of the books you dropped off.”
She took his hand and put the letter in it.
“For me?”
“That’s what it says. Mr. John March.”
“Jane,” he said, surer this time. “Thank you. Really.”
“No problem. I’m in tomorrow. If I see you, we’ll have words.”
She waved a tiny fist at him and made a stern face.
He laughed.
“That’s good,” she said. “Good afternoon, John.”
He took her hand with his free hand, the one not holding the letter, and shook it.
He left, headed out into the car park, sat in the driver’s seat. Told himself he was a fucking idiot. What the hell did he shake her hand for? Only then did he remember the letter in his hand.
Mr. John March.
Nothing else on the outside. Just his name in a scrawling spidery script.
His mobile rang. He put the letter on the passenger seat and picked up his phone.
“Hello?” he said, speaking too loudly. He’d never got the hang of mobiles.
Nothing.
“Hello?”
He checked the signal, not thinking that it wouldn’t have rung without a signal. There were two out of five bars. He put the phone back to his ear.
“Hello?”
Nothing. He pulled it away from his ear again to see who it was. Caller ID didn’t recognise the number. He didn’t recognise it either, but then he only knew two numbers: the care home and his office number. He didn’t even know his own mobile.
No. Not nothing. There was a sound. He strained, trying to hear it. Couldn’t make it out. It sounded like something dripping. A tap, maybe. Maybe someone had dropped their phone in the sink. He’d read somewhere that the most common place to lose mobile phones was down the toilet. Maybe it was a toilet calling him.
He hung up.
“Weird,” he said, shaking his head. Then he started the car and drove back to town.
*
Chapter Six
David Hill washed up his dishes from lunch in lukewarm water. He stacked the dishes upside down to drain. He thought about drying them, putting them away, then left them were they were. He took some candles and a box of matches from the cupboard under the sink and put them on the worktop. Then he took his mobile phone from his pocket and put it beside the candles.
His bedroom was down the hall. It took him a good while to get there. Be nice to take a nap, he thought. Laughed and shook his head.
Be taking a nap soon enough.
He and his wife had never shared a bedroom in this bungalow. She’d never even seen this bungalow. She hadn’t lived long enough. But then, nobody ever lived long enough.
He took off his jacket, a grey woollen suit jacket. He laid it carefully on the bed and then sat on the bed to get the trousers off. Getting his trousers on and off was a chore these days. His back screamed at him when he tried to get the waistband over his feet.
He didn’t change his shirt. A white shirt was just fine. His y-fronts were clean enough, and his socks didn’t have holes in them.
He looked down at his socks, seeing his thighs and knees and shins. The patch-thin hair, the heavy blue veins. There was a scar running down one shin. He’d barked it when he was a kid. He couldn’t remember what his legs had looked like back then.
“When did you get old, Dave?”
It was just a thing. One day you sat and thought, Shit. I’ve got a wife. I’ve got a mortgage. Whatever happened to so-and-so?
Did he ever have a day when he looked down at his legs with wonder at how skin so thin, so papery, could hold his legs together?
He didn’t think he did.
It was sneaky, old age. A sneaky fucking bastard.
One day you could piss in one go, run up a hill, read the headlines on the ten o’clock news.
Next day your wife’s dead. You wake up one day and realise you need subtitles for your film, because you can’t hear it, even with the sound turned right up.
About a year after that he’d realised he couldn’t read the subtitles either.
Sneaky.
He stood up and went to the fitted wardrobe that ran along one wall of his bedroom. Took out a black suit. A little shiny in the elbows and the seat, but it was his only black suit. Black suits got a lot more wear and tear when you were an old man.
He went through the reverse procedure to get his trousers on. He took the belt, a good leather one, from the waistband of his grey trousers, and threaded it through the loops. Then he cinched it tight round his waist, which was thinner than it should have been. Everyone loses weight if they get old enough. David Hill just didn’t have the appetite he used to have when his wife had been around to cook for the both of them.
He stood and slid on the jacket to match the trousers. Checked himself out in the mirrored doors to his wardrobe.
He took a glance around. Wondered if everything was in place.
Thought about it for a while. It was true, what he’d told Mabel Oldham. He was still sharp after all these years. But this was important. He didn’t want to make mistakes.
He couldn’t see a mistake.
Didn’t mean there wasn’t one, but if he didn’t know what it was now, he never would. No sense in worrying about it.
He put his feet in his slippers and walked back into the lounge. Went to his favourite chair and stooped, picking up Betsy’s body and putting her on his lap.
He had a choice how he went out. She didn’t.
He couldn’t bear the thought of it.
He sat down, reached over and took a cigarette from the ashtray he’d retrieved from under the sink. Looked at the cigarette. Smelled it. Rolled it around for a while before putting it between his lips and lighting it.
God.
He blew out his first taste of nicotine and tar and all that other good stuff for, what was it?
Twenty-seven years?
He smiled, felt his head go light.
Took another puff.
The sky went dark. The room got cold.
Mr. Hill’s joints seized, and suddenly holding the cigarette was agony. But he wasn’t going to give it up now. Not after discovering the taste all over again.
He stroked Betsy with one hand, leaned back as best he could, and took another drag.
The window blew in with a scream, and shards of glass flew across the room. One sliced David’s ear, but he didn’t feel it. He was so cold his legs could have come off and he wouldn’t have felt it. He could feel the warm smoke in his lungs, though, and that was just as good as it was going to get.
Rain flooded into the room. He could hear it pattering. Then he could hear splashing, like footsteps through a deep, heavy puddle.
He took a long drag and held the smoke in his lungs.
The rain poured from the ceiling, dousing the cigarette, soaking David Hill. Suddenly he could smell wet dog.
Wet dead dog.
The rain shifted. Became solid.
Became a man.
David Hill thought about crying. But he wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction.
Some people, they never got it. The kind of people who might get in shit in their lives, think maybe taking some pills was a good idea or tying a rope around a rafter.
David Hill never got them.
When his wife had died, he’d wanted to die. But he’d always had something to live for. There was always something good around the corner if you travelled long enough. If you waited long enough.
But there were no more corners for him. His end was right there, right in front of him, and he knew he wasn’t ready.
And still he wasn’t scared. Because above it all, he knew this was the end. He knew there was no escaping it, no fighting it. No matter what he did, he died this day.
“You couldn’t run,” said the man. His voice was deep and wet, like he was talking from the bottom of a dank mere.
“Weren’t trying to,” David said. He couldn’t see the man behind the rain. Just the shape of a man. Water trying to imitate life.
“It’s time.”
“Sure it is. For me. Not for you. You’re too late.”
“Give me my due.”
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 2
