Until... | Book 1 | Until The Sun Goes Down

by Hamill, Ike

  Mr. Engel isn’t sweating at all. When I lean over to listen to his breathing again, he almost smells like a towel, fresh from the dryer. If all old people smelled like that, people would probably take better care of them. When Kimberly was in her second trimester, her friend Bethany gave birth. I practically had to drag Kimberly away from that child. All she wanted to do was smell that baby’s head.

  I wonder why nature didn’t engineer a similar smell for dying people. It’s probably because wasting effort on old people isn’t an advantage for the species. I understand why nature is heartless, I suppose, but it seems especially cruel that it gave us empathy so that we can understand the depths of the heartlessness.

  “I don’t know how long it will take for them to get here,” I tell him. His eye seems to widen a tiny bit. I hastily revise. “But I’m certain it will be any second. All you have to do is hold on for a few more seconds and they’re going to take good care of you.”

  When I stop talking, I can hear him breathing.

  There’s a tiny pause after each exhale before he starts pulling in air again. I don’t like it. My heart stops each time and it feels like the gap is growing.

  “You need to stay with me, Mr. Engel,” I say.

  I don’t tell him what I’m thinking about. In the delivery room, everyone tried to make me think that I had an important role in the process.

  They would say things like, “Come on, Dad, you have to help her breathe.”

  Like that’s a thing.

  Then, with no notice at all, the demeanor of the doctors and nurses changed. They all saw something that Kimberly and I were completely unaware of. She was breathing and pushing, just like she was supposed to, and then chaos took over. Suddenly, I was pushed out of the way and the medical professionals descended. More masked people appeared. Kimberly faded as she descended into herself. The pain and effort disappeared from her face and the doctors fought hard to drag her back to the surface.

  “When I was a kid,” I say, “I used to come up here a couple of times a year. My uncle bought his house right out of college, so it seemed like he had been there forever. Every corner of his house is distinctly him, you know? I think you were already living here when he moved in, right?”

  He blinks and I take that as a yes.

  “It was a magical place for me—nothing like the suburbs at all. The first time I came up here alone, to stay with my uncle for the whole summer, I was thrilled during the day and terrified at night.”

  I smile at the memory.

  “The sound that the train makes when it’s going across Bartlett Road. The way they always blow the whistle before they round the corner? It’s such a haunting sound.”

  Mr. Engel’s lips part to a smile.

  “I would always imagine that they blew the whistle to clear the vampires off the tracks, you know?”

  I’ve never admitted this to anyone. It’s such an absurd, little kid thing to think.

  He is still smiling and he nods again. Maybe he’s just reacting to the pleasure of the ice on his lips. A little moisture is rolling down from the ice cube, into his mouth. When Kimberly went into surgery, they told me that it was a good thing that she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink because it would mean that putting her under anesthesia would be less dangerous. They said it like it was some personal decision that I had made.

  “Someone told me that vampires lurked in the woods up here. It was a friend of mine down south. I know that he was just messing with me, but a part of my brain kept telling me that rumors usually germinate from a seed of truth. I’ve never been to Romania. I’ve never been in any part of Eastern Europe. But I always imagined that Maine is the closest thing we have to that kind of terrain. I’m probably wrong. Anyway, I would always picture a swarm of mindless vampires that had descended on a big moose as it crossed the tracks. The train engineer couldn’t tell exactly what was going on, but he could see the people on the tracks. He would blow his whistle, warning them away and he would try to slam on his brakes. Why am I telling you this?”

  I know why, though. I’m filling the silence with this story because it means that I won’t have to listen to his breathing. Also, his good eye is focused right on me. I don’t know if he even knows what I’m saying, but the story is keeping him present. I just need him to stay conscious until help arrives.

  “After the first night, I should have realized that there was no way that my story could be true. There would have been something in the paper about how the train was stopped, right? The vampires would have swarmed the train and drained the guy’s blood.”

  Mr. Engel’s eyebrows twitched.

  “I know, it’s a silly story. I was a kid. That first week that I spent alone with my uncle, I was so scared every night that I probably only slept three hours total. I would nap in the truck when we went to the lake. I curled up in the bow of the boat with all the life preservers and spiders. We went fishing and hiking. What a great time.”

  I sighed.

  “Uncle Walt didn’t have a job. He didn’t seem to have much money either but it didn’t bother him any. I always got the impression that he was just living alongside the rest of society, you know? He had opted out of jobs, taxes, income, budgets, and all that. He had his garden and he didn’t buy much. He never took vacations or anything—why would he? As he always said, ‘My favorite place is here.’ It would have been silly for him to leave that behind. He was wrong about that though. Because he never left, except to go to the store or the lake or whatever, he never knew the profound excitement and anticipation of returning. When we would turn off Prescott and onto this road, my heart would soar and I would feel it all the way down to my groin. Pure contentment was ahead and the only way to really appreciate it was to leave and then experience the joy of coming back. I’m almost sad for him that he never got to have that feeling.”

  I am sitting on my right leg with my left leg out to the side. With one hand I’m caressing Mr. Engel’s lips with the ice cube. He lifts his hand and finds my free hand, giving it a squeeze.

  “Are you feeling a little better?” I ask.

  He nods. It’s a good, energetic nod this time. His tongue sweeps over his lips, pulling in some of the moisture from the ice cube and he gears up his mouth while his Adam’s apple bobs.

  I lean in closer, convinced that he is going to say something.

  I’m right.

  His breath wheezes at first while he tries to get his vocal cords going.

  “Yes?” I ask.

  His voice is so quiet that it’s almost subsumed by the hum from the refrigerator.

  “The vampires,” he manages to say.

  There’s such a long pause that I’m convinced that he’s finished.

  “The ones I used to imagine at night when I was a kid?”

  He nods and I figure that he wants to hear more about that story. I open my mouth and I’m silent for a moment, trying to think of what more I can say. Like I said, I never told anyone about it. The fear was just a misplaced manifestation of separation anxiety, I’m sure. I never felt all that close to my mother, but until that point in my life I had never really been apart from her. She was my only parent so of course I was attached to her. Until I was ten, I would sometimes wake up in her bed, completely unaware of whatever nightmare had driven me to seek that comfort. So when she sent me away to stay with my uncle for the summer, I had invented something to be afraid of at night. I latched onto the stupid story that Matt had told me and my imagination ran wild.

  I’m about to tell him a version of that when he speaks again.

  “They’re in the cellar,” he whispers.

  PART TWO:

  Denial

  Vampires

  (It takes me a second.)

  It takes me a second.

  I have to admit, for a moment it feels like the temperature of the room has dropped about fifteen degrees. My sweaty shirt feels cold against my skin. My fingers and toes are almost numb. I take a deep breath and force mysel
f to hold it for a second.

  Some people are blessed with strong parents and they get to learn from that example. I was blessed with a mother who was meek and victimized because of it. I didn’t see it that way when I was a little kid. I didn’t see how she was complicit in letting the world roll over her. In my mind, she was never at fault. There were mean people everywhere. They should have left my poor mother alone.

  By the time I was in school, when I learned that one had to stand up for oneself, my perspective changed. Suddenly, I saw that my mom was inviting people to take advantage of her because she would never stand up for herself.

  Then, a really weird thing happened. My mother began to evolve. She stopped drinking so much and stopped taking pills. Instead of medicating herself enough so she could hide in bed, she actually began to speak her mind and say no when people tried to pull a fast one. I stopped hating her and began to cheer her on.

  She said something really interesting to me one day.

  “Everyone is full of crap until proven otherwise.”

  That was a step beyond how I saw the world. Her cynicism had progressed so far that it had blossomed into arrogance. I adopted her new slogan immediately.

  Along the way, I must have forgotten.

  This man on the floor, who is clearly delirious and hallucinating, has just told me that there are vampires in the cellar. For a terrible, shameful moment, I let that idea frighten me. Blame the little kid who came up to Uncle Walt’s every summer. That little kid still occasionally whispers in my ear.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Engel, the sun is out,” I say.

  His wide eyes blink and he relaxes his grip on my hand.

  “I turned off…” he says. I follow his eyes to the far side of the room. There’s a fan there. Its metal blades aren’t turning. “The fan. They don’t like heat.”

  “They don’t?” I ask.

  “Vampires,” he whispers.

  This is potentially really bad news for Mr. Engel. If he turned off the fan before he collapsed from heat stroke, then his psychosis must predate this illness. That could spell bad news for his future. I imagine myself going through his things, looking for an address book of a daughter or cousin. They might have to get him declared unfit so they can put him in assisted living or something.

  I’m being silly though. He only latched onto the idea of vampires because I mentioned them. That can’t be the reason that he turned off the fan. I release my hand from his. The fan isn’t turned off, it’s just unplugged. The cord is two cloth-covered twisted wires that end in a rubber plug. I pinch the thing between my fingers, hoping that it doesn’t electrocute me when I try to plug it in.

  It doesn’t.

  The fan cycles up, blasting an amazing amount of air across the kitchen.

  Mr. Engel moans.

  “If you get too cold, I’ll turn it off,” I say as I return to him. “They don’t make them like they used to, right? That thing really moves the air.”

  The wind makes the closet door bang against its frame. There’s an eye hook latch on the outside of the door. I revise my opinion—it wouldn’t be a closet door with a latch on the outside. That has to be the door to the cellar, right? Another chill moves through me and I blame the air across my sweaty shirt. Any other thought would be childish.

  I laugh at myself and the corners of Mr. Engel’s mouth turn up. His eyes are smiling along with me.

  “You’re feeling a little better, aren’t you? Would you like another ice cube?”

  I’m still talking way too loud. He has given me no indication that he is hard of hearing. Then again, at his age it would be silly of me to assume otherwise.

  I get up again to open the ancient refrigerator. I like the latch on the thing. When it closes, it really locks tight. I wonder why they got rid of those. Before returning to Mr. Engel, I press the cellar door shut with my toe and put the hook through the eye. What a grizzly name for that kind of latch—putting hooks into eyes.

  Mr. Engel is watching me do all this with his one good eye. I wonder if the milky one got a hook through it.

  “Can you take this?” I ask, pressing the ice cube into his hand.

  His fingers close around it and he grimaces.

  “It’s cold, huh? See if you can put it to your lips. I’m going to look for the ambulance. I’m afraid they might have gotten confused and gone right by your house.”

  (I would have heard them.)

  I would have heard them.

  The front door was wide open this whole time and there was no sound until I turned on the fan. I would have heard any vehicle rolling down the dirt road. Over at my uncle’s house, I swear that you can hear traffic a mile off. The sound is so out of place.

  At night, when we would sit on the deck on the roof of the barn, Uncle Walt would swear that he could hear the highway in the distance. I never could. I think he was making it up. I wish I was there now—back at Uncle Walt’s.

  I came up here to clean the place out so I wouldn’t feel bad about putting it on the market. I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up the place before I went through all of Uncle Walt’s possessions. There might be something in there that he really treasured and forgot to put in his will. A more insightful person might be able to understand what that means. Am I worried about my own legacy? I don’t want to be forgotten after I die—is that why I’m so concerned about what Uncle Walt left behind?

  Surely he doesn’t care at this point. Whether or not one believes in an afterlife, I’m almost certain that the dead are able to leave behind their earthy concerns.

  “How long has it been?” I whisper.

  My phone doesn’t have the answer. The phone call I tried to make earlier isn’t recorded on my list of recent calls—I guess because there was no signal? So, I know what time it is now, but not how long I’ve been waiting.

  “Ten more minutes,” I say to myself. “Then I’ll figure out what to do.”

  It would take me nearly twenty minutes to get to town and I figure they’ve been on the road for at least half that. And don’t they have, like, volunteers who live throughout the community and respond to calls? I would think that maybe someone from Prescott Road is already headed this way.

  I hear a thump from the kitchen.

  (He's looking better.)

  He’s looking better.

  In fact, he’s up on one elbow for a second. When I come through the doorway, he lowers himself back to the floor.

  “That’s a good idea. Save your strength,” I say. In the brief time that I was away, I missed the fan. Back at my uncle’s house, I have the modern equivalent, but it’s not nearly as good. With sharp metal blades and virtually no guard in front of it, Mr. Engel’s fan turns out a ton of cool air.

  I glance around the kitchen with fresh eyes. There is nothing in the room that suggests the twenty-first century. There’s no microwave, coffee maker, or even a clock over the window that plays birdsong on the hour. Uncle Walt has one of those—that’s why I’m thinking about it. Everything in Mr. Engel’s house is from the sixties or earlier. They could film movies in here.

  The ice cube is a few feet away from Mr. Engel’s hand. There’s already a decent puddle around it on the vinyl floor.

  “You really stuck to your lane, huh?”

  I pick up the ice cube and return to him. Settling down to my knees again, I remember the thump.

  “Did you have a fall or something while I was in the other room?”

  He offers no explanation.

  I should get a new piece of ice, but I’m tired of getting up and down. He doesn’t seem to mind. He likes it when I put it against his lips.

  “There you go.”

  I whip around when I hear the thump again. It’s the cellar door, banging against the frame. The hook is dangling—no longer through the eye.

  “Your fan is strong,” I say, but I’m doubting the idea even as the words leave my lips. There’s no way that the wind from the fan managed to bang the door enough to free the lat
ch. That would be crazy. Either I imagined latching it, or someone undid it when I left the room. Who, though?

  “You didn’t get up, did you?” I ask him.

  He manages to shake his head.

  I turn my body so I can hold the ice against his lips and also keep an eye on the door.

  It’s just as unlikely that the latch was released by someone from the cellar. The door opens out. How would they get at the latch?

  When I hear the bang from the front of the house, a little yelp escapes me.

  I squeeze the ice cube so hard that it shoots up and out of my hand, skittering to a stop just in front of the cellar door.

  “Paramedics,” a voice yells. “Did you call 9-1-1?”

  I exhale.

  “They’re here.”

  (It's a relief.)

  It’s a relief.

  Even though they’re asking me lots of questions, I’m immediately relieved of all responsibility. My part in this story is insignificant. Everything I know about the situation can be conveyed in two sentences. “I came into check on him and found him on the floor of the kitchen. I rubbed ice on his lips.”

  They ask him a lot of yes or no questions. Their voices are even louder than mine was. I guess they assume that a person is deaf until they are corrected. Mr. Engel never corrects them. He’s loaded onto a stretcher and whisked through the house.

  I’m allowed to ride in the ambulance if want to.

  “No, thank you, that’s my truck,” I say.

  Only then, it occurs to me that I have no business accompanying him anyway. I’m not even confident that I know his real name.

  “You know what, I’m going to see if he has an address book or something. I’ll see if I can find a relative who should be notified,” I say.