I wanted to reach for the nurse’s call button sitting on my nightstand but I was afraid to move from the relative safety of my blankets. The room darkened even more. The inky black silhouette appeared to be absorbing the moonlight and breeding more shadows into the already stygian gloom. A tenebrous curtain of night obscured everything from view as the shadow approached my bedside.
My heartbeat doubled. The blood surged through my veins as if propelled by a steam engine. I watched the dark ethereal shape glide to the edge of my bed and I dug my fingernails into the sheets, ripping them. I imagined the sound of footsteps even though I heard none. A cold draft preceded the apparition as it floated toward me, whispering like wind beneath a doorsweep. Slowly a distinctly human silhouette emerged before me, taking on more anthropomorphic features as it drew closer. The outline of a human skull with ragged tufts of hair clinging to its otherwise bald head, emaciated arms, bony hips, skeletal legs. I could hear it breathing as it hovered above my bed. The dark shape expanding and contracting as it inhaled warm climate controlled air and breathed out that chill gasp. I began to pant terrified little breaths that turned to steam in the frigid air radiating from the nebulous penumbra above me.
Then the shadow reached out one lithe wisp of a limb, lifted my sheets and blanket, and slipped into bed beside me, snuggling its icy flesh against mine. The scream stuck in my throat and came out as a whimper as it drew itself still closer. It was trying to spoon with me. A riot of goosebumps exploded across my skin and icy tendrils clawed my spine raising the hair on my neck and forearms. I could feel it against me, cold, clammy, dead, but breathing. I was more shocked that the apparition had any substance at all than by its lack of body heat.
Too weak to move, I lay there with those cold skeletal arms wrapped around me, that frail damp torso pressed against my back, and its frigid breath creeping down my neck.
When it turned its face toward mine its eyes were gaping holes that yawned wide, more shadows slithering deep within them. It was a portrait of sorrow. Sorrow so deep that it had literally become her, bending each feature into the shape of that one emotion. Still, I recognized her.
“God damnit! Why the hell does she keep following me!” My fear and guilt had merged into one paralyzing emotion. Whatever she had come here to do to me I knew I deserved it.
Her name was Sarah Michelle and she’d had a crush on me, but I’d been too afraid of what others would say about me dating the emaciated little nerd to show her even the simplest human kindness. I had killed her. Or, at the very least, I’d given her no reason to want to keep living.
I never knew that she had cancer. She’d kept it to herself. Never using it as an excuse when people laughed at her sunken corpse-like face or her bald and mottled scalp, giving no explanation for these abnormalities at all. Enduring all the taunts and torments with stoic indifference even when they said she had AIDS and accused her of being a heroine junkie or a crack whore. The other kids were so cruel that I had felt sorry for her. So I tried to be nice.
I spoke to Sarah whenever I passed her in the hallways between classes. “Hi” and “Bye” mostly. I offered her a smile whenever I could. I was just trying to make her feel…I don’t know…not so alone. When I’d first started speaking to her she would eye me suspiciously and quickly walk away. It wasn’t long before she was returning my greetings and my smiles. It was like winning the trust of a wild animal. Soon I could see her lingering in the halls, waiting for me to notice and acknowledge her with a smile before shuffling off to class. I thought it was cute at first. Until she started following me.
Everywhere I went she would turn up. Lurking in the shadows. Staring. Flashing that weak nervous smile and turning away, blushing coyly whenever I would catch her looking at me. I was petrified that my friends would start to notice. That they’d tease me for hanging out with her. Say she was my girlfriend or something. Maybe say that I had AIDS too or that I was a junkie or a crackhead.
See, I was the new kid in school. I’d just transferred that semester and my popularity was something of a fluke. New kids were not supposed to be part of the in-crowd. The thought of being an outcast was the worse thing I could imagine.
“Dude, what’s up with you and the anorexia chick? You doin’ her or something? She’s always following you, man. What’s up with that?”
“She looks like a damned prisoner of war! Why don’t you tell your girlfriend to eat something for god’s sake!”
“You got a thing for crack whores now or what?”
It went on and on like that until I eventually started ignoring her, too. Just to make her go away. I didn’t want to get laughed at. I’d been teased before at other schools and it was not an experience I was eager to repeat. I mean, I was only trying to be nice to her. No need for us both to wind up as targets.
She broke down in tears the first day I walked by without speaking. All day I’d been avoiding her, ducking past and pretending I didn’t see her when I would spot her waiting for me between classes. Finally, after the last class of the day, she worked up the nerve to step right up to me and say “Hi!” All my friends were watching and I didn’t know what to do. I rolled my eyes, shook my head in exasperation, and walked right around her.
“Damnit, why does she keep following me?” I yelled, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Fuckin’ crack whore!”
Her strangled sobs were the only reply to my insensitivity. The agony of that heart, shattered, stomped, and immolated by my harsh words, echoed from deep within her. It was the sound of torture. The sound of utter hopelessness and despair. My own heart broke under the weight of that painful dirge but I still did not return to apologize or comfort her. I kept walking, silent in my shame and self-loathing.
What had I done?
It felt like I had just awaken from a dream to find that in my sleep I had drowned an infant or bashed open the head of a baby seal. But I had no such excuse. I had exercised my cruelty while fully conscious and awake.
“Who knows, maybe she is a crack whore? Maybe she did catch AIDS from a trick or something? I mean, she does look half dead.” I told myself, but it was no excuse. My cruelty, just like everyone else’s, was born of cowardice.
I wanted to run; flee from the human wreckage crying out in agony behind me. I felt wretched. Tears welled up in my eyes and I fought them back, steeled my expression and continued walking off down the hall. I could just barely hear my friends laughing beneath the sound of Sarah’s tears. I sat in my next class, staring at but not truly seeing the blackboard ahead, with the hollow eyed expression of the forever damned.
I saw Sarah less and less after that. She would disappear for weeks on end and no one ever thought to ask for her or inquire about her health or well being. It was as if she had never existed. After a particularly long absence it was announced in class that Sarah was in the hospital dying of cancer and that she’d been fighting it all year long. Enduring painful chemotherapy sessions and surgeries to attempt to excise the cancer from her uterus. She’d already suffered through one radical hysterectomy. There was nothing more the doctors could do.
I remember thinking how she’d been fine just weeks before. How she even appeared to be gaining weight and growing back some of her hair right before I had stopped talking to her.