DarkFuse Anthology 3

by Shane Staley

“I know, Dad. I know.”

  Jack stood, stretched out the stiffness in his spine and went to close the curtains.

  He’d forgotten how empty it seemed out here, how dark and vast the sky seemed. How small he felt beneath it, crushed by the sheer weight and expanse of it. How alone and insignificant it made him feel.

  As he looked down at the ragged line of trees below, he saw something move. Something low and stooped.

  A pale shape in the moonlight between the dark, crowded trees. It was hunched down and seemed to be digging at the ground. It stopped suddenly, as if it knew it had been spotted and remained stock still. More shadow than substance.

  Jack thought he saw the glint of black eyes and let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding in.

  He lost sight of the thing, whatever it was, and felt his back shudder. He pulled the curtains closed and looked back at his dad.

  “Is it time?” Dad said. He shook his head and waved a frail finger in the air. “I’m at the pier, Jack. I’m standing at the end of the pier. The sea’s black and the sky’s black and that’s all I can see,” he said in a breathless rush. He opened his mouth again, but nothing came out.

  Jack never knew what to say when Dad rambled like this and it seemed to be getting more and more frequent. Always talking about the pier and the sea. Lord knew what he meant by it though.

  He’d been warned that Dad could get delirious as the days ebbed away, start seeing things or reliving old memories. Talking nonsense that meant nothing to Jack, but so much to him. He’d been warned alright. Warned that it would be no easy task sitting with Dad until the end, especially alone.

  But then, there was no one else. Mom was long since gone and Joe too.

  Joe had died three years ago. Struck with a diagnosis of motor neurone disease that had steered him towards a rapid decline. His last days spent bent and twisted in a wheelchair and a care home.

  Jack was all Dad had left. Dad was all Jack had left. It was as simple as that.

  To stay by his side, ease him into the next life, Jack felt he owed Dad that much.

  “I wasn’t there for her, Jack. She went alone. Joe too. I should have been there for him. They never stop being your kids, you know. Doesn’t matter how old they are.”

  “Dad, please. You try to sleep,” Jack said.

  “Read to me,” Dad said in a throaty wheeze, “please, Jack.”

  Jack shook his head and sighed. It shouldn’t be like this, he thought, but what could it hurt?

  He took the worn copy of Green Eggs and Ham from the top drawer. It was the same copy he’d read more years ago than he cared to remember. The same copy Dad had read each night to him and Joe in the bedroom across the hall what seemed like yesterday.

  He began to read and felt the years strip back like a veneer sanded away by the words he read, words he could have recited by rote. Simple, rhythmic words that took him back and, as he read it aloud for a second time, made it all okay. Realigned the world for a while.

  He saw his father’s eyes film with tears and held back his own.

  * * *

  He awoke in the chair by the bed. Stiff and aching, his neck and shoulders sore. Dad was sleeping, his chest slowly rising and falling, his mouth open.

  Jack felt hunger gnaw in his stomach, but wasn’t sure he could face eating or not. He’d skipped dinner and meant to have a light supper before seeing to Dad, but hadn’t got round to it.

  At least he’d slept a little. He looked at the clock on the drawers, green digits glowing. It was a little past one in the morning. He’d had around an hour, maybe a touch more.

  Time to get to his own bed. The same bed he’d had as a kid, Joe’s still sitting across from it.

  He paused at the window, remembered the figure he’d seen out there earlier. A shadow, that’s all, he thought. Nothing to it. A shape thrown by the bulk of the trees.

  He peeled away a curtain and looked down at the field again. Felt a sudden surge of blood throb in his temples.

  It was there. The figure. A tall, wiry shape now. Unfurled from its hunched position, no longer scrabbling at the dirt.

  Tall and slender, alabaster in the moonlight. It stood at the very edge of the trees, long gnarled-looking arms drooping low towards the ground. It raised one of those arms and pointed upwards.

  Pointed at the old man dying in bed.

  * * *

  A dream, either that or tiredness, or stress. That’s what he put it down to in the cold light of day as he fried bacon in a pool of sizzling oil.

  There couldn’t have been anybody out there. The house was a couple of miles away from town and the nearest neighbor was Ted Matthews. He and Dad had been close friends years back, but Ted had long since kept to himself. After Emily died, he pretty much shut the door on the world, sold his livestock and let his farm fall to ruin.

  No, there was no way Ted would have been out at the edge of the woods last night. Or anybody else for that matter. Jack doubted Ted even knew Dad was ill, let alone that he’d feel the need to drag himself away from his self-imposed exile to say goodbye to an old friend. Especially around midnight.

  He scooped crisp bacon onto a plate with a slice of wholemeal toast and sat at the table. He ate slowly, mechanically almost. Eating because he had to, because it was fuel. He crunched toast and swilled it down with hot black coffee that was strong and bitter.

  He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms. Yawned until he thought his jaw might snap.

  Sunlight streamed through the window and a fine sprinkle of dew lay across the field. Tree branches twitched in the breeze. He heard a bird call out and there was a time he would have known exactly what that bird was. Now, he scrambled around in his brain and came up with nothing.

  So much time lost, so many thoughts and memories turned to nothing but dust and ash. Blown away by the winds of time.

  He thought of his childhood. Growing up out here, just him and Joe and Dad. Team Rooker, Dad had called them ever since Mom died.

  Not that Jack remembered Mom much really; all he had left of her was a host of vague, hazy memories at best. He remembered the smell of lavender oil and a blue dress, remembered a dusting of flour on her hands and crescents of freshly rolled pastry under her nails. Sunlight framing her figure in the doorway as she left for town one morning. The shadowed outline of a police officer filling the same doorway later that day, hat in hand, voice low. Remembered seeing Dad cry for the first time in his life.

  Joe had run to their room, feet thudding on the stairs, door slamming. Jack went to the kitchen table where Mom’s apron was still folded over a high-backed chair and waited for Dad while the world turned gray.

  He forked another bite of bacon into his mouth and looked around the kitchen that had changed little since he was a boy. The occasional fresh coat of paint, but always that same shade of honey-yellow that caught the sun at its peak as it rose over the hills and trees. The same clock hanging on the wall, ornate hands slowly spinning away days. The same scarred oak table.

  Where did it all go wrong? The promise of childhood and infinite summers, a life full of potential ahead. Dreams and hopes that had led nowhere. Here he was, the wrong side of forty, and what did he have to show for it?

  A failed marriage, a failed career and little else.

  He’d always been pliable. Far too quick to bend and shift his shape to someone else’s will and not stand up for his own. Always the scapegoat for Joe’s antics when they were kids, always led astray by people he called friends. Then Denise, twisting and pulling him to whatever mold she wanted, but it was never enough. All the while waiting for something, someone better to come along and not giving him a backwards glance as she left. Then the loss of his job when he was caught in the fallout of friendly fire. The collateral damage of a company merger and a cull.

  Now Dad.

  What had happened? Surely there was a fork in the road he could go back to, a moment in time that had been the first step towards this barren life he had. Go b
ack to the crossroads and set things right, choose another path. Start again.

  “Fuck knows,” he said. He finished his coffee and scraped the rest of his breakfast into the bin.

  * * *

  “Hard to say, and I’m no doctor, but a month and a little change, maybe. Not much more,” the nurse had said as she took him aside. She’d touched his arm and it had sent an electric thrill through him despite the situation. “We can give him the best palliative care here. Ease the burden on you, too. But if your father’s insistent, if you’re insistent, then if you don’t take him now, chances are he won’t have the strength to make the trip. It really is up to you, Mr Rooker.”

  Jack had looked at his father, so small and frail in the wheelchair, so ravaged by disease. A once big, proud man laid down so low. He didn’t deserve to die here. Where the sterile smell of alcohol hand-gel washed together with the taint of lingering death. Not in this antiseptic cocoon where he’d be just another body to wrap.

  A month. Maybe more.

  He looked at Dad now and wondered how much longer it would be. How much longer it could be. There was little left of the man he once knew. The man in the bed was often a stranger, a frail specter. A jumble of bones and loose skin with eyes that stared at some dread horizon.

  Jack hated himself for thinking the sooner Dad went, the better. They had no rift to heal, no broken bond to forge anew. Just time. Too little time, too much time.

  He stirred the liquidized goop that he’d brought up to the bedroom. The bowl held little more than a baby’s portion. Smoked ham, broccoli, and potato. Not that you’d think that to look at the pale green sludge he scooped onto a teaspoon.

  He held it up and leaned forward. The old man closed his eyes and shook his head. Waved the spoon away.

  “You need to eat, old fella. Come on, just a little.” Jack stopped himself short of saying he needed to keep his strength up.

  “I’m not going to be here for you either, Jack. Just like with Joe. He was in so much pain and I wasn’t there.”

  “Don’t think about that, Dad. It’s done now. It’s gone. There’s nothing you could have done.”

  “If I had my time again I’d do a better job for us all. Team Rooker together forever.”

  Jack thought of the crossroads again. “So would I, Dad.”

  “You’re a good boy, Jack. A good son and I didn’t tell you that enough.”

  Jack edged the spoon forward again. It was batted away and Dad turned his waxy face to Jack. Took a deep, rattling breath. “No,” he said with as much force as he could muster. Then, quietly: “Just let me go, son.”

  “Dad, come on… please,” Jack said. He pushed the spoon forward, brushed it against Dad’s cracked lips, teasing the broccoli sludge between them.

  There was a sudden terrible sound from deep within his father’s ribs, the sound of something wrenching itself free. The old man coughed raggedly, his whole body shaking with the force of it. He tried to sit, to pull himself up the bed, frail limbs scrabbling in alarm.

  He gagged, retched. Something caught in the tight constraints of his sunken chest. His usually small, clouded eyes were now wide and bright in panic and fear. That awful wrenching sound came again, followed by another violent cough, and another, and another that eventually vomited out a flow of blood and dark bile onto his heaving chest, onto the white bed sheets before he collapsed back against the pillows exhausted.

  “Make it stop, Jack,” he gasped between harsh breaths as he tried to regain composure.

  Jack had frozen; still sat holding the spoon, not knowing what to do. This was beyond him; he was no nurse. Had he really done the right thing? Thinking he could take care of Dad alone, surely that was too much?

  He saw the bright red of the blood, the oil slick of black bile, harsh and striking against the backdrop of the white linen and wanted to gag himself. Tasted a thick coppery coating on his tongue.

  “Make it stop,” the old man repeated quietly, eyes pleading.

  Jack pulled a fresh tissue from a packet at the foot of the bed. Wiped at his father’s streaming eyes and dabbed at his lips and chin.

  “It’s okay, Dad. Don’t worry.” He looked at the blood spattered in bright streaks on Dad’s chin, at the black drool of bile. Looked at the thick sludge in the bowl.

  “Green eggs and ham,” Jack said.

  He took the spoon and wiped at Dad’s chin, drawing it along the jaw like a razor. Drawing blood and bile onto the spoon. Mixing them with the green slurry in the bowl again and again until all that remained were red and black smears that he swiped away with another tissue and some water.

  He scooped the dark fluid from the bed sheets, smacking thick spoonfuls of it into the bowl. Mixing, stirring.

  He worked as if in a dream, each movement listless and interminable. The edges of his vision, the edges of his reason, swimming gray and blurred. He thought of the figure outside, gaining on the house night after night, imagined himself bending to its unknown will, imagined having the strength to instil a will of his own.

  A sacrifice, a compromise, a pact.

  “I’ll take it away, Dad. I’ll take the pain away,” Jack said and took his first mouthful from the bowl.

  * * *

  For a while he slept better that night than he had since he’d first arrived. It still felt strange, sleeping in his old childhood bed, especially with Joe’s empty bed beside him. Too many memories to gather together, too many slipping between the cracks of his fingers.

  Joe. Older, wiser, more at ease with himself and his place in the world. Happier and more successful by whatever yardstick Jack chose to measure him by. A bright career, a lovely home, a loving family. That seemingly easy inner peace he always seemed to radiate.

  So why was it Joe that had been cruelly taken away? Why not Jack?

  The thought had troubled him often over the past three years, but even more so since he’d come to stay with Dad. More time to think out here, he guessed. More time to reflect on life gone by. More time to face the grim inevitability of mortality.

  He woke with a jolt and fumbled for his watch in the darkness. A little after two in the morning and he was suddenly wide awake.

  The figure was out there in the field again. He was sure of it. Its presence had yanked him from sleep; he had no doubt of it at all.

  Moonlight shone through the curtains and shadows gathered in the gloom. October rain slashed at the window. The rising wind whipped along the eaves, rattling old timber. He pulled the blanket close, felt his knuckles tighten on the sheet.

  Bloody fool, he thought and snatched the sheet back, getting to his feet before his body or mind had a chance to say no.

  Nothing. There’s nothing out there, whatever he saw before was a stress-induced dream, that’s all.

  Nothing.

  He stepped forward, past Joe’s bed, the mattress bare, crisp sheets folded neatly at the base.

  Prised the curtain apart.

  There it stood. Out in the field, out in the unkempt grass that climbed to its bulging, misshapen knees. Closer than the night before, much closer.

  Ashen and gangling, a tall awkward looking spindle that chilled him. He caught the gleam of black eyes, the split of a dark mouth as its lips peeled back.

  It pointed at the other window, Dad’s bedroom, with one bent finger then pivoted the arm slowly. So, so, slowly until the finger pointed at Jack.

  He shuddered.

  No, it wasn’t pointing at Jack, he realized. Not exactly, but just beyond him.

  Jack turned, not wanting to take his eyes off the strange figure, but knowing he had to. Knowing he wasn’t alone in the bedroom anymore.

  Joe.

  Lying in his bed, bent and twisted. His favorite skull and crossbones pajamas were covered in grime and filth as if he’d dragged himself up from the ground. Fingernails split, broken, and crusted with dirt. Eyes wide and black like stones wedged into too-small sockets.

  Old bed springs creaked, the wooden frame th
reatening to splinter, as he writhed and flinched in pain. One thin leg kicked out, pushing ruffled sheets to the floor.

  “Make it stop, Jack,” the boy said, “make it stop.”

  * * *

  Jack looked in the mirror and could barely see for a while. His vision blurred his reflection into a strange, barely recognizable shape that shifted in and out of focus. He blinked, rubbed his eyes and waited for the blur to dissolve.

  He looked worse than he’d thought. Features sallow and drawn, eyes rimmed red and bloodshot. His cheekbones and jaw cut sharp lines across his face. His gums were pale and he was pretty sure at least one of his back teeth was a little loose.

  He’d lost weight. Too much, too quickly, and could feel bones jutting against sparse flesh.

  His stomach cramped, doubling him over in sudden pain. A knot pulled taut within him and he felt it shake something free, felt something slip its moorings. Coughed a thick string of blood into the sink.

  “I’ll take it all away,” said the stranger in the mirror. “I’m Jack-I-am, and I can take it all away.” He smiled through yellowing teeth lined with red. “I do so like green eggs and ham.”

  * * *

  He wasn’t just tired; he was exhausted. He barely felt the world around him was real, its edges gray and fuzzy. Every movement, every word a chore he didn’t think he’d get through. But still, he carried on.

  Close to the end now, he thought. Dad seemed to be shutting down and spent most of the time sleeping. He had hardly moved, hardly spoken at all for the past few days. It was a matter of time.

  More than once Jack had been convinced that he’d gone. Stood over the still, rigid figure in bed, not wanting to feel at his cold wrist or neck for a pulse. Waiting for his chest to rise. Waiting.

  Leaning in close until a ragged breath rattled through the ribs or another violent cough caused the inert body to spasm into life on the sweat-soaked bed.