Sarah’s face fell. “I love you too, Mom,” she said.
Darkness. The old woman lay in her bed, curled up like a fetus, pores sweating and her body shivering from the midnight cold. She waited, knowing he was coming, if not this minute then the next, or the one after that, or—
Was that a sound?
She could hear the noise of the wind and rain battering the window from behind the drapes, but over that, she thought she heard something else.
Like the creak of the front door being pushed open.
No, just her imagination. Ghosts don’t use doors. Or did they? And who said he was a ghost? She didn’t know what he was, where he came from. It didn’t matter.
She curled herself tighter, becoming a human ball, as if she could make herself so small she’d be lost in the vast blackness.
The waiting was the worst. Knowing he was coming and not knowing how long. The nights seemed to stretch endlessly, each one taking a few more seconds of the day, and soon there would be no more sunlight, only this dark, both inside her head and out.
The soft tread of feet along the parquet floor of the hallway. She was old and her senses had dulled over the years, but she could hear well enough to know. It was him. He was coming. Finally.
Fear tightened her throat. The old woman told herself that she would ignore him this time. She wouldn’t tell him her secrets, not any more. Because once you told him your secrets he kept them. Forever.
She felt rather than saw the doorknob being turned, and her body stiffened as she watched the door yawn wide. She could only barely glimpse the outline of his body as he emerged from the fabric of the night.
No, please not tonight go away go away I’m a poor old woman why won’t you leave me alone—
“Hello.” His voice was soft, but she heard it clearly; its cold penetrated to her marrow.
A million miles away, rain drummed at the window.
“Hello, Marian.” She didn’t ask how he knew her name. Of course he knew. Soon, he would know everything, and she, nothing.
“Would you like to talk?”
No, she thought. I don’t. But the dark was so huge, so lonely, and she was a frightened child lost within it. Only he could save her from the darkness, he who was the darkness.
Don’t! a more primitive part of her mind screamed. Don’t! He’s just playing games with you, he’s making you feel like that, he—
But she ignored that voice, drowned it.
“Would you like to talk?” he repeated.
“Yes,” the old woman said. “I would.”
“Tell me something, then.”
“Where should I begin? There’s so much…”
“Anywhere. Tell me anything. We’ve got plenty of time.”
She considered this. “Did I ever tell you about the trip Herman and I took to California?”
“I don’t believe so,” he said.
She opened her mouth, and before she could even think, the words fell from her lips, one after the other, like anxious children tumbling over each other’s heels.
MAMA’S BOY
by C.S. Fuqua
Everyone could see where Carl Baker was headed, even me. After two years on his belly in Vietnam, Carl had come home with a habit most people called “a shame.” They’d shake their heads, say, “It’s terrible, but I hear a lot of ’em get hooked over there,” and go on about their business, figuring that sooner or later he’d get his head together and body clean. After all, he had his mother. In time, with her help, he’d be fine.
I was twelve then. We lived in a remote northern part of the county directly across a pond from the Baker house. I saw Carl nearly every day, walking around the pond, hands in pockets, glassy eyes staring into the ripples of the water. I’d stand beside him sometime for upwards of half-an-hour before he’d acknowledge me. Then we’d toss a football or take a walk through the woods. He’d tell me about the women he’d been with in ’Nam and the great drugs he got his hands on there. But, when he was with me, he never consumed anything other than water or an occasional beer. My presence, I suppose, was good enough. Maybe he saw something special in me, maybe the childhood he’d lost in war, I don’t know. In those days, though, I was his only friend.
Out of politeness, I’d ask how his mother was getting on, and he’d shrug, his face going cold, unreadable, say, “Okay.” I don’t know if he really liked his mother or not. A frail, brittle woman, she returned after forty years of nursing when Carl returned home, hoping I suppose, to devote her remaining years in service to Carl’s needs, but Carl didn’t need much—a few bucks, a fix, and a patch of grass to lie on as he drifted into oblivion. One day, he didn’t come back. Too much smack slammed into his brain, leaving him a vegetable.
A month after Carl’s OD, Mrs. Baker took him home from the hospital. Mom stopped by the house a couple of times, but Mrs. Baker never invited her inside, talking instead from the front porch for a few minutes before returning to her son. Mom said she admired Mrs. Baker’s determination, but she wondered if the old lady was physically capable.
Over the next few months, I rarely saw Mrs. Baker. She ordered all her groceries and medicines delivered, each paid for at the door. I once saw a man with a black satchel—a doctor, I assumed—get out of a blue Buick and go inside, but, as far as I know, after the doctor’s single visit, no one but Mrs. Baker ever saw her son.
By Valentine’s Day, Carl crossed my mind only when I looked out my bedroom window to see lights from the Baker house shimmering on the pond. I’d get images of him lying in bed and start to feel trapped. I’d turn away, slide into bed, making a tent with the covers, and lose myself in my school books as Mom and Dad downstairs watched Johnny Carson.
One warm night in early March, I had begun to nod off when something hit my bedroom’s outer wall. Faint laughter drifted up from the TV. I sat up as another knock sounded against my window. I slipped out of bed, over to the glass. Pale light glittered on the pond. Carl’s face, twisted in agony, flickered in my mind, the image abruptly vanishing as footsteps started up the stairs. I slipped back into bed, settling as the door opened and Mom looked in. A few minutes later, I drifted into sleep, figuring the knocks against my wall were nothing more than pine cones falling from the tree outside my window.
Two nights later, it happened again, a solid knock, like knuckles rapping, not pine cones. I searched the darkness, saw nothing but the single light in the Baker house. I turned away from the window, froze. A bump against the outer wall. Then again, and again, a gradual progression around the side wall, the inner wall, to my door.
“Mom?” I whispered, Thump. “Dad?”
I crossed the room to the door, jerked it open as Mom turned toward me at the head of the stairs.
“What are you doing up, young man?”
“I—uh…” What could I tell her? My room was twenty feet off the ground. Who’d believe me? “I need to pee,” I said.
Back in bed, I expected the knocking to start again, but what came were screams. Faint, guttural groans, ending in suffocating shrieks. I twisted out of bed and hit the door at a run.
“Mom! Dad!” I took the stairs in twos. They bolted from the den, their faces drained. I raced back to my room, my parents following. Mom switched on the light. They glanced around the room, their questioning gazes falling finally to me at the window.
“Listen,” I said in a hushed voice.
“To what?” Dad said irritably.
Frogs croaked at the pond. Night birds chirped. “Somebody was screaming.”
A roll of the eyes.
“I swear!”