by Amy Cross
Three
Stopping at the foot of the bed, I feel as if my heart is about to burst out through my chest. I'm light-headed and almost giddy, and on the way up here just now I worried I was about to collapse at any moment. My knees are trembling, actually trembling, and there are tears in my eyes. Somehow I made it, though. Somehow I got all the way to his room.
And now, slowly, I kneel on the carpet and look up into Dad's fearful eyes.
It's him.
It's really him.
Hearing a faint shuffling sound nearby, I turn and look over at Gary. He's still in the doorway, still tapping at his phone, and I can see that his hands are shaking too. He keeps muttering something under his breath, something about this not being possible.
He's right.
It isn't possible.
Turning back to Dad, I see that he's still looking down at his own hands. This is what he was like at the end, in the last couple of weeks before he died.
But it can't be him.
It just can't.
He died.
I was there when he died, and I saw his body in the chapel, and I scattered his ashes. I dealt with the banks and the lawyers. I did all the paperwork. I did everything.
He's dead.
Opening my mouth, I realize I don't quite know what to say. The storm is really picking up now, battering the window with rain, and so far Dad has barely met my gaze. He hasn't said a word, and I haven't said a word to him. Gary has stayed mostly quiet too.
This can't be real.
Reaching out, I place a hand on his knee, just for a moment, just to check that he's not some kind of hologram or illusion. I flinch as I feel the fabric of his pajama pants, and the leg beneath.
The wind is getting stronger outside.
It's almost 1am.
“Dad?” I whisper, my voice cracking with fear. “Um...”
Again, I have no idea what I'm supposed to say.
“Dad, it's me,” I stammer finally. “Dad, what are you... What are you doing here?”
He continues to stare down at his hands, and I swear there's a hint of fear in his eyes. After a few seconds, however, he slowly raises his face a little and looks at me.
“Dad, what's going on?” I continue. “What... How are...”
“Jesus,” Gary mutters. “No way. Just... No way!”
Turning, I see him walking away from the door, although a moment later he comes back into view. Clearly lost for words, he watches as I turn back to Dad.
“What's happening?” I ask, as I start to feel a knot of nausea tightening in my belly. “Dad, talk to me. What are... I mean, how are you here? What are you doing? Where have you been? Please, tell me...”
I take a deep breath, as I feel tears welling in my eyes.
“Dad, tell me what's going on,” I say finally. “Talk to me!”
“This isn't happening,” Gary says, still watching from the doorway. “It can't be. I'm calling the police.”
“Wait!” I hiss.
“Why?”
“They might...”
My voice trails off.
“They might take him away,” I continue finally.
“He's not supposed to be here!” He sighs. “What do you think they'll do, exactly? Arrest him for not being dead?”
Still looking up at Dad's face, I watch for a moment as he stares back down at his fingers. He looks confused, and lost, and after a few seconds I reach out, taking his arthritic hands in mine. I used to do this when he was dying, thinking it might give him a little comfort, and I was still holding his hands when he drew his final breath. At the time, I hoped that he might somehow know that I was around, and I still remember the moment when I whispered in his ear and told him it was okay to let go. He died less than twenty-four hours after that. There was a funeral, his body was cremated, and I scattered his ashes on the beach.
“We're gonna get to the bottom of this,” Gary mutters, “and then we're gonna sue whoever's behind this screw-up!”
“Dad, look at me,” I say firmly.
I wait, but he's still looking at his hands.
“Dad? Please, it's me. It's Annie. I need you to look at me.”
This time, he slowly raises his face again, meeting my gaze with his fearful, yellowing eyes.
“Hey,” I continue with a faint smile. “I need you to tell me something, Dad. I need you to tell me where you've been for the past six months. Okay? And how you got home tonight.”
He stares at me, and slowly his lips start to part. There's some kind of white gum pasted in his mouth, leaving a milky film covering the gap between his lips. As his mouth opens wider, the white film starts to break a little, but for the most part it remains thick and stringy. He lets out a faint, guttural groan, and I instinctively look around for something I can use to clean the white residue away.
Spotting a pen on the nightstand, I take it in my hand and use the lidded end to cut through the white mucus, clearing the disgusting layer that has been covering his mouth.
I used to clean him when he was dying, so I guess it's not that odd that I'm having to do it again.
“Hey Dad,” I continue, setting the pen down. “I need you to talk to me, okay? I know it might be hard, but it's really important.”
I wait for him to speak, but he seems too shocked to say a word.
“I missed you so much,” I tell him, as tears start trickling down my face. “You have no idea how much I wanted to see you again, how many times I talked to you in my head and...”
“We need to call someone,” Gary says from the doorway.
“Not yet.”
“Annie, this is...” He sighs. “This is something that needs to get figured out! He's supposed to be dead, he's supposed to be -”
“I know!” I hiss, turning to him. “Do you seriously think I've forgotten that fact? Gary, please, can you just give me a moment alone with him?”
He shakes his head. “No way. It might not be safe.”
“Safe? Gary, it's my father!”
“Is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your father...” He pauses. “Terry's dead, Annie. We both know that. So whoever this guy is, he can't be your father. Not really.”
“Look at him!”
“Maybe he... I don't know, maybe some random guy from a nursing home wandered into our house, and thanks to some billion-to-one coincidence he just happens to be your father's spitting image. I know it's crazy, but it's a more likely explanation than...”
He pauses again, and I can see the fear in his eyes.
“Give me a few minutes alone with him,” I reply. “I'll call you if I need you, but let me figure this out.”
He opens his mouth to argue with me, but finally he sighs and starts tapping his phone as he wanders away. A moment later, I hear him heading down the stairs, and I turn back to Dad.
“It's just you and me now,” I tell him. “Come on, I know you can hear me, so please... Tell me where you've been, and how this is happening.”
He's still staring at me, and now his lips are trembling a little more than before. The guttural clicks are continuing, and after a moment I realize that he seems to be trying to speak.
“Go on,” I continue, forcing a smile, trying to put him at ease. “Just say it. Whatever, just...”
The clicks become a little louder, and slowly his jaw starts to move.
“How...” he gasps.
It's his voice.
Rasping and dry, sure, but I can instantly tell that it's him.
“How? How what, Dad?”
“How...”
I wait, but he seems to be struggling.
“How did I get... back?”
“Well, I don't know that right now,” I tell him. “Why don't you start by telling me where you've been, and then we can figure it out?”
“I...”
I wait, although it's as if he's slipping away again.
“Dad,” I say firmly, “tell me what you remember of the
past six months. Tell me where you went after the hospital.”
Four
When I get back downstairs a couple of hours later, Gary is pacing back and forth across the living room, tapping away at his phone. Every few seconds, there's another beep as a new message arrives. He's so busy with the conversation, he doesn't notice me at first, although finally he glances at me as I stop in the doorway.
“Where is he?” he asks.
I swallow hard. “On the bed.”
“Still?”
I nod.
“Did you... Did you talk to him?”
“A little,” I reply, and I can hear the shock in my own voice. “Not much, but a little, yeah.”
“And?”
I pause for a moment, before spotting my glass of wine sitting untouched on the table. Stepping over, I take the glass in my shaking hands and try a sip, although it doesn't really help. Still, I keep the glass in my hands as I think back to the conversation I just had with Dad in his room. My mind is racing and I'm struggling to make sense of this madness. To be honest, I'm still waiting to wake up and discover this was all a dream.
“Did you call the police?” I ask finally.
“You said to wait.”
“Good.”
“But Annie, whoever that man is, he can't be your father. Your father is dead!”
Staring down at the wine, I wait for my heart to stop pounding.
“Annie?”
“I know,” I whisper. “He's dead, I know, but... He's upstairs in his room.”
“No.” He comes over to join me by the window. “Absolutely not, Annie. I know how this looks, but there has to be some other explanation for this, because dead people just don't come back to life and show up!”
I don't reply. What is there to say, anyway? I should just go back upstairs and talk to Dad some more, but some of the things he's been saying are... I don't quite know what I'm supposed to do next in this situation.
“Did he tell you where he's been?” Gary asks finally. “Obviously there's been some sort of insane mix-up. Like, the hospital got the bodies confused and made some kind of huge mistake, and they must have accidentally sent Terry to a nursing home, and now six months later he's wandered back here. Right? That's the only thing that makes any sense. It's crazy, sure, but it's less crazy than...”
We stand in silence for a moment.
“It has to be that,” he adds, although I can hear the doubt in his voice. “It just...”
“He says he's been in a dark place,” I whisper finally, still staring at the wine. “After the hospital, after he slipped away... He says he remembers voices all around him, and people crying out. He says he was scared and he hid. Wherever he was, he didn't need to eat or drink, or anything like that. He just hid and waited, and listened to the sound of people in pain. He said he was terrified, and trembling, but that he didn't dare move. And then slowly the darkness gave way to a kind of deep, dark red and...”
My voice trails off. This all sounds so crazy, and it's hard to believe those words came from my father's mouth. After all, he was always so stoic and level-headed when he was alive, and he never admitted to being scared, not by anything.
Not until tonight.
“He said there were fires burning,” I continue. “In the distance, but he could just about make out their light flickering on the wall of... I'm not sure what he meant, but he said he could see the wall of some kind of cave.”
“A cave?” Gary asks. “He says he's spent six months in a cave?”
“He was on a boat first.”
“A boat?”
“A big boat. Like a ferry, with -”
“This is ridiculous!”
“I'm just telling you what he told me!” I hiss. “He said he was on a boat, and then he and some others got led off, and he saw his own reflection in the water and he didn't recognize himself. And there were these people, forcing them to walk somewhere, but he managed to slip away and hide.”
Shaking his head, Gary clearly finds the whole story too preposterous to believe. I would, too, if I hadn't heard it just now, coming from my father's lips.
My dead father.
“He hid for a long time,” I reply, closing my eyes, “and then finally he got to his feet and went to take a look. He says he made his way carefully through the darkness once he was on land again, heading toward the light, and finally he could see more. He says there were other people around, people like him, people who were scared and hiding. He says he began to climb down some rocks, and he could hear people still crying out in the distance, but he had to go and see what was happening. The sky was red and -”
“This is bullshit.”
“Gary -”
“No, this is absolute bullshit,” he continues, sounding a little angry now. “It's like something from a bad nightmare.”
“It's what he -”
“We have to call someone. The police, the hospital -”
“Not yet!”
“Because they might take your dead father away?”
“Yes!”
“Then what about your sister?”
I open my mouth to tell him we can't call anyone, but suddenly I realize he might have a point. Denise has a right to know about this, but I don't even know how I'd begin to break the news.
“In the morning,” I stammer.
“Why in the morning?”
“Because first we have to figure out what's actually happening! If I call Denise right now, what do I tell her? That Dad just showed up in his old bedroom and started talking about being in a dark, scary place? She'll think I've lost my mind! She'll think I'm having a stroke or a full-on psychotic episode!”
“That's probably what I'd think,” he mutters, “if I hadn't...”
“If you hadn't seen him with your own eyes?”
He pauses, before heading to the drinks cabinet and pouring a shot of whiskey.
“Do you want one?” he asks.
I set the glass of wine down. “No.”
“I need one,” he continues, downing the shot and then pouring another. “This is insane. Unless you and I are having some kind of shared meltdown, this is the most insane thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. There has to be an explanation, there just...”
He pauses, before downing the second shot and then pouring a third.
“Careful,” I tell him.
“Don't worry, I won't get drunk. I just need to steady my nerves before we... I don't know, before we do whatever we're going to do about this.”
The ceiling creaks slightly, and I look up just as there's the sound of someone shuffling across the bedroom directly above us. Dad's on the move, and when I turn to Gary I see fear in his eyes.
“What's he doing?” he whispers.
“I don't know.”
“What the hell is he up to?”
“He's just moving about.”
“Why?”
“Are you scared?”
He doesn't reply, but the answer is clear.
“It's just my father,” I remind him. “It's not a ghost, it's... It's my father.”
We stand in silence for a couple of minutes, listening as Dad's slow footsteps move onto the landing. I know there's no reason to be scared, but I can't shake a hint of fear in my chest as I realize that Dad has started making his way down the stairs. I turn and look over at the hallway, and sure enough I hear the steps creaking slightly as Dad continues to come down. There's a faint gasping sound, too, as if he's a little out of breath, but I keep telling myself that somehow this can't really be him. That any moment now, I'm going to suddenly realize what's happening here, and the madness will end.
A couple of seconds later, Dad shuffles into view and stops in the doorway. He's breathing heavily, and it's clear that the effort of coming downstairs has really exhausted him. Still, as he grips the doorway to support himself, he starts looking around with fearful eyes, as if he's genuinely terrified of something.
“Jesus...” Gary
whispers. “No way...”
“Your sister,” Dad mutters, stumbling forward. He looks unsteady on his feet, so I hurry over and take his arm, supporting him as he heads to the sofa. “Denise had that dog when she was young.”
“Wait, Dad,” I reply, struggling to keep him upright.
“Barney... Its name was Barney...”
“I know, but that doesn't matter right now.”
“I told her it ran away and was never seen again,” he continues, slumping down onto the sofa. “That wasn't true. I lied, and lying's a sin. I have to tell her the truth, I have to tell her it was sick and I took it to the vet, and I...”
He lets out a pained gasp as I sit next to him.
“Dad, don't worry about that right now.”
“And Margaret Evans. I wasn't fair to her, I was too harsh when we were arguing about that boundary fence. I have to apologize.”
“Dad, just -”
“I have to make it all right,” he adds, seemingly in such a frantic state that he hasn't even heard my voice. “I have to make everything right, all my little mistakes. All my sins. While there's still time.”
“Dad -”
“I can't go back to that place!”
He turns to me, staring for a moment.
“Please,” he stammers, “you have to help me. I can't go back. Not ever.”
“What place?”
“I told you! Help me, Annie. I have to make it right again. I wasn't the best person when I was alive. I wasn't evil, or cruel, I thought I did enough but...”
He pauses, and I swear he's actually shivering with fear right now.
“Help me,” he gasps finally.
“Dad, I can help you,” I reply, glancing briefly at Gary's shocked face and then turning back to my father, “but right now, we need to focus on figuring out what's happening to you. Dad, do you remember being in the hospital?”
“Of course I remember being in the hospital!”
“And do you remember...”
I hesitate, thinking back to those awful final days when he was barely conscious. I sat with him the whole time, even spending my nights at his bedside, and I was with him when he finally passed away. Tears are already welling in my eyes, even though he's now sitting right in front of me.
