I made to follow the gurney, but the old lady grabbed my arm and pulled me over to a seat.
“I’ve been here before. They’ll let us know how it’s going when they’ve got time,” she said. “Lots of people die who shouldn’t, either out in the world or here in the hospital. It’s just the way of things, and you’ll have to get used to it if you grow old like me. There are folks in every corner of this building who are just waiting for death to claim them. Some of them might even go happily. But not this boy, and not this time. He’s going to be fine.”
And that’s when I saw him.
He ghosted through the waiting room, a tall thin man dressed all in black, dark eyes sunk deep in a china-white face, cheekbones so sharp they could pass as razors. Nobody else looked at him … nobody registered his presence. He walked quickly across the reception area and stood over the gurney. He put a hand on Doug’s chest.
“Hey!” I shouted.
Old Lady Malcolm grabbed my arm.
“You see him?”
I stood up fast. “What are you talking about? Of course I see him.”
The doctors wheeled Doug away. The thin man walked alongside the gurney, his hand still on Doug.
“Hey!” I called again, and made to follow.
The old lady pulled me back down on the seat.
“No use son,” she said sadly. “What will be will be.”
“But that man—”
“No. Not a man,” she said quietly.
That got my attention. I sat down beside her.
She sang, almost a whisper.
“Ghost nor bogle shalt thou fear,”
“Thou art to love and heaven so dear,”
“You know the song?” she said.
I nodded.
“He’s not a ghost,” she said matter of factly. “He’s a bogle. In fact … I think he’s the Bogle.”
Somebody had taken my life and twisted it. I had no reference points to hang onto, so I sat quietly and let her talk.
“Cancer. That’s what took my man Tommy. Seventy years of god-fearing abstemious living … and look what it got him. He found a lump under his left arm … just a small thing, not any bigger than a pea. He wasn’t even going to tell the doctor, but when I saw it, I knew what it was all right. The doctor hummed and hawed, and sent him for tests. They opened him up here in the hospital … and shut him straight away again. It was downhill all the way from then.
She looked up at me, heavy tears filling the bottom half of her eyes.
“At the end all I could do was hold his hand and watch it eat him away. I spent more time here in the hospital than anywhere else, trying to make things easier for him. In the end, the drugs did the job better than I could, and he started to slip away. The nurses let me spend an hour with him alone.
“Only when I looked up, there were three of us in the room … the Bogle was there. He bent over Tommy, and put a hand on his chest. Then he started to sing the song. When he finished, my Tommy passed on … a smile on his face as if he’d heard a private joke.”
It took a few seconds for the implications of what she’d said to hit me.
“He’s Death? You’re saying that he’s some kind of personification? The Grim Reaper?”
She nodded, and reached once more for my arm, but I pushed her away.
“Doug!” I shouted, and ran down the corridor after my friend.
I found him in the ER. A doctor and two nurses worked frantically at him while the Bogle stood, silent, by the side of the gurney.
“We’re losing him!” the doctor shouted.
The Bogle started to sing.
“Ghost nor bogle shalt thou fear,”
“Thou art to love and heaven so dear,”
“No!” I shouted, and ran into the room.
I grabbed the Bogle by the arm.
Time stopped.
Everything was quiet. The doctor leaned over Doug, motionless, stopped in the act of trying to tie off a sudden spurt of blood. One nurse stood, hand raised to change a plasma bag, while the other nurse was about to open a box of cotton swabs.
Nothing moved … except for the Bogle.
He turned, and those dead black eyes stared at me.
“Are you offering a trade?” he said. His voice had a sing-song quality in a deep bass register that caused vibrations in the pit of my stomach.
“Yes … no,” I stuttered. “Maybe.”
He turned back to Doug.
“He’s mine tonight,” he said. “Unless you have something better to offer.”
“Something better?”
“Or equal?”
I looked at Doug, his arm a bloody ruin, his eyes open, staring unseeing at the ceiling. I remembered the old lady’s words.
There are folks in every corner of this building who are just waiting for death to claim them. Some of them might even go happily.
“Take anybody else you want,” I said. “Just let him live. Please. Let him live.”
“That seems fair,” the Bogle said.
He smiled at me, and I went cold.
I blinked.
The Bogle was gone.
Time started.
One of the nurses bundled me out of the room unceremoniously. “Please. Let us do our job. We’ll find you when there’s any news.”
I went back to reception and sat beside old lady Malcolm. I told her what happened in the ER and she looked worried, but said nothing. The experience already seemed dream-like, fading into unreality under the cold harsh neon in the reception area.
“Maybe it was just the stress,” I said. “Some kind of psychotic episode?”
“Maybe,” the old lady said, but she didn’t look convinced. She fell quiet.
I sat and watched the night people pass through the casualty department. It was now well after one in the morning. The clubs threw drunk youths onto the street, and the drunk youths threw themselves onto each other. Over the next hour there was a constant stream of scalp wounds, busted heads, vomiting drunks, cursing drunks and bleeding drunks. Add to that friends of the wounded, enemies of the wounded and policemen bringing in both groups, and you had a recipe for disaster. I gained a grudging respect for the blue-rinsed receptionist … she dealt with a level of abuse that would have had me in a fit of rage … and she did it every night.
Much later a tired-looking doctor came out to speak to us.
“You can see him now,” he said. “He lost a lot of blood and is very weak. He’s been moved to the recovery room … it’s—”
“I know where it is,” Mrs. Malcolm said, and she took me by the arm.
When Mrs. Malcolm and I were let in to see him, Doug was sitting up in bed, but he looked barely alive. His skin was alabaster white, almost as pale as the bandage that swathed the full length of his arm. He managed a thin smile.
“Two hundred stitches,” he said. “Remind me to be careful the next time.”
I moved over to the bedside, and we had one of those awkward moments that happens between men when they have emotions but no way to let them show. I settled for holding his hand, trying not to let the tears come. He gripped my fingers tight.
“I’m okay,” he said. “And the drugs have kicked in, so I feel no pain.”
And that was when I calmed down enough to notice what was laid on the chair in the corner. The hospital had provided him with clean clothes for the journey home. The shirt alone would have been cause for comment. It was red and white, sewn with tassels and sequins that danced in the neon overheads. The last time I’d seen anybody wearing anything like it, he’d been sitting on a horse singing about his four-legged friend. That in itself was bad enough, but lying on top of that was an electric blue angora cardigan.
“Roy Rogers meets Ed Wood,” I s
aid, and the giggles began to well up.
“You should have seen what I turned down,” he said. “It could have been Vampirella meets Trigger.”
That started Doug off, and we were both laughing like schoolboys who’d heard their first fart joke.
Old Lady Malcolm looked on bemused.
“Is this a private hilarity, or can anybody join in?”
“You need to know some really bad movies,” Doug said.
“Oh, Plan 9 isn’t that bad,” she said. “Have you seen Cannibal Girls?”
Then I made a big mistake.
“Oh? And I suppose you can link Frankenstein with Tremors in three?” I said.
She hardly thought about it.
“That’s easy. Karloff to Nicholson to Bacon. Do you want the names of the films?”
Minutes later they were into stylistic similarities between Fulci and Romero, having lost me way behind when they moved on from Roger Corman.
I was trying to find a way into the conversation when I heard the singing.
“Ghost nor bogle shalt thou fear,”
“Thou art to love and heaven so dear,…”
I walked slowly out into the corridor.
Voices raised in song from every room. And in every room a black-clad figure stood over a patient, hands pressed on their chest.
The nearest one turned to me. It spoke, and my own voice echoed back. “Take anybody you want,” I said.
Mrs. Malcolm left Doug and came to my side.
“What have you done?” she said. “Oh my God. What have you done?”
The black-clad bogle smiled at me.
“Take anybody you want,” it said.
There was no escape. Throughout the hospital, in every corridor, tall black clad figures went to and fro. And everywhere the chorus rang out.
“Ghost nor bogle shalt thou fear,”
“Thou art to love and heaven so dear,”
“Naught of ill may come thee near,”
“My bonnie dearie.”
* * * * *
William Meikle is a Scottish writer with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in a number of professional anthologies. This story came out of his time working in hospitals in Scotland, and seeing good people die.
Death Over Easy
By Suzanne Church
I’ve always figured a heart attack would be my ticket to the next life. My arteries and I have differing opinions on the virtues of steaks, eggs, and bacon. So last Wednesday, at 11:00 am when Death waltzed into my diner, I grabbed my coat, which hung on the hook below my Classic Cars calendar, swallowed hard, and said, “So how does this work?”
“You take my order,” he said.
My coat fell from my hand, making a soft thud as it hit the floor. “I get it. You like to play with your quarry before you eat it.”
“I’d rather have eggs.”
“Oh.”
Death cleared his throat, sounding like he’d had one too many smokes in his lifetime, deathtime, or whatever. “I’ll have three, over easy, with bacon and whole wheat toast,” he said. “The sign says you’re famous for your raspberry jelly.”
“Ran out during the morning rush. How about grape?”
“Give me honey, instead. I’ve never acquired a taste for grape.”
Now the situation could’ve gone a thousand ways at that point. I could’ve told him to go to hell, but I didn’t want to give the guy any ideas. I could’ve insisted we cut to the chase, because I’m an impatient person and if I was going to die, I wanted to bite it before the lunch hour rush. But when the bastard settled into the booth like he owned the place, and flashed me the vilest, most crooked set of stained teeth I had ever seen, I decided to do what I do best.
Pulling my order pad from my apron, I said, “Number three, coming up. You want coffee?”
“Black. I’m lactose intolerant.”
With a final look over my shoulder at my only customer, I retrieved my coat from the floor, hung it on the hook, and headed into the kitchen to make the dark dude his breakfast.
Death finished the eggs and bacon, but left a half slice of toast. I warmed his coffee a couple of times, and still he lingered at the table, spending his time studying the picture of the 1965 Ford Fairlane hanging on the wall above his booth. I must have glanced at my coat ten or more times, waiting for my cue to leave, but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry.
When my assistant, Betty, arrived, she headed for the kitchen, donned her apron, and set about making fries for the lunch crowd.
“Anything else?” I asked Death.
“The bill.”
“Can I get my coat, first?”
He placed his hand on my wrist. His flesh felt cold, not like ice, but cold enough to drive home his job description. As he moved, dust shook free of his grey trench coat and released the stench of attic must and lanolin. I wondered if I would ever get the smell off the vinyl booth seats.
“The cheque, please. I would like to be on my way.”
“It’s on the house.”
Death stood, continuing to hold my wrist with his right hand, and reached in his coat pocket with his left. Bringing out a ten dollar bill, he said, “This ought to more than cover it.”
I stared at the money, all the while praying for him to release my wrist from his shiver-grip. Finally, he did.
“See you next Wednesday.” And with a tip of his fedora and a swish of his trench coat, he glided out of the diner looking more like a dancer than the ultimate equalizer. A trail of dust motes traced his path like monikers.
“Quite the stranger,” Betty called from the kitchen. “You get his name?”
“Nope.” I headed into the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to yell and added, “Said he’d be back on Wednesday.”
“From the look of him, I’d rather he stayed gone.”
With a nod, I said, “Couldn’t agree more.”
I arranged for the town lawyer, Cliff, to make up my will. Like any small town, just about everyone had slept with every eligible partner their own age, and Cliff and I were no exception. I’m sure he’d blabbed the news of my urgent-last-testament-request to anyone who would listen by the time he showed up at my door on Sunday morning.
While contemplating the fact that I likely had only three and a half days to live, assuming that Death showed up at eleven on Wednesday, the doorbell rang.
Suddenly the couch seemed more comfortable than it had ever felt before, but I forced myself out of it and headed for the door.
Of course, Cliff, feeling like he owned the place since he’d slept with me all of once back when we were in high school, had already let himself in. “Hey, Lizzie. Your papers are ready.”
I caught up to him in the mud room, and pointed at his boots. “You are going to take those off, right?”
“That’s how you greet friends who do you weekend favours?”
“Hello, Cliff. Nice to see you. Thanks for coming by on a Sunday, and no doubt charging me double.”
“Nice.” With a smirk, he held up a manila envelope chock full of paper goodness. “We need to talk before you sign.”
“I figured.”
He sidled past me, headed straight for the couch where he flopped down and pointed at the cushion beside him.
I stood next to him, arms crossed, picking at the skin on my elbow.
“Sit.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Sit!”
I did.
“You’ve got the whole town in an uproar. It’s not every day someone as young as you insists I rush a will in a couple of days.”
With a glare, I said, �
�So much for lawyer-client privilege.”
“Most of the scuttlebutt points to cancer. Big-ass tumors, and with the diner, you’ve got no health insurance, right?”
“You’ve got a big mouth.”
“I’m concerned about you. We all are.” He sat back, crossed his left leg over his right knee, and stretched his right arm along the back of the couch. His attention skipped from the steering wheel of my first car, hung over the mantle like the antlers from a hunting trip, to my throw rug with the pattern of a 1967 Mustang grill.
“You’ve got a nice home here, Lizzie.”
“Thanks.” I pointed at the papers beside him. “I appreciate your concern for me, and your need to spread the word that I might be in trouble, might need some help. But I was counting on your obligation to keep my request confidential.”
“You do realize,” he said, his voice turning more serious than his usual over-confident bravado, “that confidentiality is moot once you’re dead.”
And so the elephant appeared.
Cliff stared at me. I stared back.
“So the rumor is cancer, huh?” I managed to ask.
He studied my face. “You’re taking this awfully well. Better than I would.” With a pause, he added, “Better than I am.”
My voice softer, I admitted, “I don’t think it’s really sunk in, yet.” I pointed at the papers again. “Can we get this over with, please?”
He switched to legal mode and started explaining. I checked my watch a few times, painfully aware of how much he was going to charge for this visit. At the same time, I’d likely be hanging with the Death dude before Cliff could send a bill. The diner was worth plenty. He’d find a way to retrieve his fees from my estate.
Clicking his pen, he pointed to the first sticky-arrow, and said, “Sign here.”
I did.
Lather, rinse, repeat, more times than I wanted to count, with the occasional initials for good measure. Before my hand cramped, he clicked the pen closed, stuffed half the papers in the envelope and handed me the other half.
Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper Page 13
