by Cory Hiles
Before she was even halfway done disseminating all the information the doctor had given her, Elle breezed into the room and put her cold hand on my shoulder. As usual I could not see her, but I could smell her as well as feel her.
I was glad to know that she was there, but her cold touch did little to warm my heart in the face of the grim prognosis that June was delivering to me.
June was able to deliver her message without tears. And until she was done talking I withheld my own tears, but when she finished her dialogue we both broke into tears and practically leapt into each other’s arms. Both of us were holding onto the other for dear life, as if by holding on tightly in that moment, we might never have to let go.
When June and I finally broke our embrace and stepped away from one another I was somewhat startled by her appearance. The faint shimmering outline that I saw around all physical objects was suddenly much brighter around June.
It shone much brighter and had a much greater depth of colors swirling about it in it, and they swirled at a much more frantic pace than they ever had before. Her aura also extended further out from her body than it previously had. Instead of the normal inch or two that the aura normally extended, it now extended at least six inches and seemed to be vibrating along the outer edges of its perimeter.
By that point in my life I had already began to suspect that my gift was increasing in power as I matured. At that moment, while staring at June’s much more powerful aura, I began to suspect something about the nature of the auras that I was able to see, and I prayed silently that those suspicions were wrong; dead wrong.
CHAPTER 27
June’s oncologist had scheduled her surgery for the middle of December which gave June and I only two weeks to prepare ourselves for a major change in lifestyle.
I wanted to drop out of school so June could recover quietly in the comfort of her home with me as her caretaker, but of course June wouldn’t hear of it. We argued about the topic incessantly. Both of us were so worried about the other that we were constantly on edge. It was like we were walking a constant tight rope, constructed of fear, tensioned by stress, and ready to snap at any moment, sending us tumbling helplessly toward the ground at death inducing velocity.
During all of our arguing I never resorted to tears. Although I was close to real tears a few times from the raw emotion of love and concern, I managed to keep my eyes dry so I would not feel like I was being dishonest with June.
June did not, however, have a desert in her tear ducts like I did, and was constantly weeping when we’d argue.
I have never considered myself to be a cruel person, nor selfish or unsympathetic, but looking back at those arguments with June, I can see that I was far crueler, more selfish, and had less sympathy than all the great monsters that had come before me. My own shortcomings made Charles Manson and Ted Bundy seem like tender hearted Samaritans by comparison.
Having recently discovered the power of tears as a weapon for winning a disagreement, I immediately assumed that June was turning on the water works in order to get her way, which infuriated me for the simple fact that I had risen far above those dirty tricks and I expected her to treat me with the same level of respect that I bore for her.
In my anger I accused her of being selfish. I told her that she was trying to manipulate me so she could get her way, and that she was completely insensitive to my needs. I told her she was cruel to treat me with such disregard.
I was an idiot. In my selfishness, in my cruelty, in my voided empathy, and in my own preposterous self righteousness, I had never once stopped to consider that June’s tears were real. I had never stopped to consider that she was as terrified as I was, but not only for herself, but also for what might happen to me if she should die. She was doubly frightened, where I had only been frightened for her.
I hate who I was during that time in my life. It was not someone I’d ever been, and I have taken great pains to ensure that I never become that person again. I am also terrified when I consider that I might have never known that I was becoming a creature of evil if it had not been pointed out to me by Elle.
Two days before June’s surgery, we were having our same argument and I was making some particularly biting remarks about how selfish June was being by trying to keep me out of her recovery by planning to stay in a nursing home, and was just opening my mouth to tell her how much she obviously didn’t love me anymore when I was suddenly slapped—hard.
I was so shocked by the sudden pain that flared across my cheek that I was rendered speechless for the moment. During that moment of silence I heard Elle whisper in my ear in an unmistakably seething tone of anger and disgust.
“Johnny Krimshaw, you are making me SICK! You stand before this terrified woman and belittle her love for you when she is facing these horrors simply to spare you grief. Do you think it would not be easier for her to give up and die?”
“Are you so blind to human suffering that you cannot see that her tears are real, and that in them is the sum of her hope for your future? I can see not only your body Johnny, I can see your soul, and what used to be bright is growing dark. You are becoming less the man I fell in love with and more like the one I died to forget. If you continue on this path, there will be no hope for either of us, or for June. You have been my hope for these nine years, Johnny... and hers.”
I felt a breath of wind blow past me as Elle whisked herself out of my presence. I was dumbfounded by the revelation that she had imparted to me. I stared at June who suddenly looked small and frail, and I opened the dams in my eyes and fell into her—begging for forgiveness.
I was overwhelmed by the sudden and complete knowledge of all I’d done to hurt her over the past couple weeks and I could not bear to look her in the eye, as I suddenly knew how undeserving I was of the love that she’d been pouring out to me unceasingly since rescuing me from my mother’s basement.
June held me through my tearful apologies until I quit sobbing and finally she pushed me away and looked me straight in the eye, I tried to turn away, too ashamed to hold her gaze, but she grabbed my head and turned it back towards her, forcing eye contact.
“Baby Doll,” she said, “I love you. No more apologies, ok? We’ll make it through this together.”
You would think that at sixteen years of age I would resent being called ‘Baby Doll’, and probably, I would have if anybody but June or Miss Lilly had called me that, but at that moment in time I found the term of affection to be deeply comforting, like medicine for my sickly soul.
When we were done forgiving each other for all the wrongs we had honestly committed and the wrongs we only thought we had committed, we were finally able to sit and talk through the situation without arguing.
Having pushed my own desires to be close to June at all times aside I was able to understand that a nursing home would be the best solution, for a while at least. June helped me to see that I could not just give up on my own life simply because hers was in peril. I needed to finish school and become whatever it was that I was going to become.
We both understood that June’s chances for a full recovery were slim, but we both had hope that she would end up in that elusive eleven percent range. As we talked I became aware that June had no fear of death. She had a fear of pain and suffering, no more profound than your average person might have, but death itself was not a threat to her.
Although June was not afraid of death, she did not want to die. She understood that she was the only tether I had left in this world and she was in no hurry to see me hurt by the severing of that thin rope.
She did not know about Elle. I knew how crazy it was for me to be infatuated with an invisible dead girl and had never told June about Elle’s presence in her home. As understanding as June had always been, I just wasn’t sure how well she’d understand that situation.
As for myself, I was terrified by the prospect of June’s death. She really was the last tether I had to this physical world. Even though Elle was still in this world,
she wasn’t supposed to be, and I didn’t think she’d stay here forever. Besides, I didn’t think I could exist in the physical world for long if the only person I had left to love was in the ethereal.
June and I discussed the future late into the evening, with as much hope as our bleak despair and fear would allow, and finished the conversation with hugs and uttered declarations of love; much the same way we finished many conversations, and we went to bed.
I was exhausted. Seeing your shortcomings in alarming clarity—in the glaring light of truth and face slaps—can be a crippling experience. Furthermore, finding the strength to admit that you were horribly wrong and apologize honestly is no less debilitating, and I still had one more person to apologize to before going to sleep.
I entered my darkened bedroom and left the light off as I prepared for bed. I was intending to apologize in the dark, thinking it would somehow be easier to do if I could not see anything.
Instead of slipping beneath my covers, I sat down at the edge of the bed before starting my dissertation to the dark.
“Elle,” I started, speaking weakly and uncertainly, “I’m sorry. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I can see now just how wrong I was and I want to thank you for showing me that I was being an ass. Please forgive me, Elle.”
I was answered only by the wind blowing frigidly outside my bedroom window. I got up and raised the blind at my window and sat staring out into the dark night. It was snowing again and the numerous lights around the house illuminated the swirling snow into frantic patterns as it rushed by the window on its way to its final resting place on the ground where it would sit quietly, waiting for its transformation to groundwater in the spring.
Sitting in the dark, staring into the dark and watching the lonely snow falling to the ground filled me with a loneliness that ached deep inside me. I knew that I had hurt June, I knew that I had offended Elle, and I knew that I had been untrue to myself by allowing myself to become a monster in my fear.
I decided that I deserved the loneliness. Elle did not need to forgive me and I did not deserve to be forgiven. June had forgiven me, but I was not worthy of her forgiveness either. I did not think that June had the capacity within her huge heart to carry a grudge and would have forgiven me even if I had been Charles Manson or Ted Bundy, but Elle was a mystery to me.
I knew she had love to spare. She had shown it by coming to me every time I needed her most; making her presence known when I most needed a friend. But I didn’t know if that love would be able to transcend a mountain as high as my own selfishness had built.
And what was that she had said about “The man I fell in love with”? Did she mean me? Without her forgiveness, I’d never know. It seemed to me that Elle had finally reached a point where she trusted me enough to begin to reveal herself to me in a more poignant way, and then I’d blown it by becoming a selfish beast.
As I stared out the window I felt an uncanny urge to write my feelings down, somehow intuiting that leaving them bottled up would result in a cancer in my soul that was every bit as black and destructive as the cancer that was currently ravaging June’s body.
I always kept writing supplies at the window bench as it was where I liked to sit and do my homework and so had no need to get up and find supplies. The light shining in from the pole mounted lamps outside was adequate to write by and so I wrote.
WINTER’S CHILL
The snow drifts down in lazy flakes,
It lands upon the frozen lake.
The doe steals down in search of food,
I sit alone in solemn mood.
Trees now naked dance with breeze,
Raspy witness of cold’s disease.
Their tangled fingers grasp for sky,
I sit alone with silent cry.
Mice in burrows eat winter store,
But still come out to search for more.
At any noise they hide in fear,
I sit alone with frozen tears.
Winter starves the barren land,
Frozen lakes and buried sand.
Snowflakes blanket over all,
I sit alone and watch them fall.
I finished the poem and felt a bit better. I still had a chill in my soul and the aching loneliness was still pinching my insides, but some of the pressure seemed to have abated since putting my emotion on the page.
Apparently, writing my feelings had an effect not just on my own emotions, but on Elle’s as well, for just as I was reaching down to pick up the page with the poem on it and put it away, I smelled roses and felt a cold hand grasp my own, pushing it away from the page, and a voice whispered urgently in my ear, “Wait!”
I was so startled by Elle’s sudden appearance that I gasped and jumped, banging my knee on the underside of the bench in the process.
“Ouch! Sonofa…” I growled as I reached down to rub my damaged knee. “For God’s sake, Elle, you scared the holy crap out of me.”
I don’t know what reaction I was expecting from Elle at that point but it was certainly not the reaction I got. She laughed! Elle actually laughed at me. Her laughter sounded like music to me and brought forth the mental image of water bubbling over stones in a small stream in the forest, with moss covered banks and slivers of warm sunlight shining through gaps in the branches of majestic trees.
The last shadows that remained in my soul were chased away by the light that Elle's laughter brought forth within me. “You think that’s funny, Elle?” I asked, smiling. “I’m sitting here with a broken knee and you think it’s funny?”
Elle continued to giggle and I could almost see in my imagination the image of a pretty young lady covering her mouth with one hand, trying to stifle her giggles while staring at me with merry, twinkling eyes laced with faux guilt.
I couldn’t feign mock anger for long and soon began to giggle alongside my invisible guest. As I began to giggle I saw movement from the corner of my eye as a shadow crossed over the page in front of me.
I shifted my gaze quickly towards the shadowed page and the shadow vanished, but the page, which had been turned slightly askew from the force of my knee impacting the bench, was turned straight again, seeming to move under its own power.
Elle’s giggles subsided as she read the page in front of me. I began to feel awkward in the silence. I had never been one to mask my feelings well, and I was generally pretty forthright in telling people how I felt, but somehow this little poem felt much more private and I wasn’t sure I was ready to share those feelings with anybody.
After a silence that lasted about two minutes, I felt Elle grasp my hand again and her voice again graced my ears as she administered a gentle squeeze to my hand.
“All is well Johnny. The darkness has passed from you, but darkness lies ahead. Keep your strength, keep your light. I will not forsake you in the sadness; you will forever be my hope.”
With those words she let go of my hand and I felt her depart the room, leaving me confused. I was pretty sure the words meant that she had forgiven me, but I could not fathom what she meant by me being her hope, and I was afraid to contemplate what further sadness and darkness was still laying ahead.
CHAPTER 28
On December 17th, 1999, June went in for surgery. The procedure took six hours and I spent all six of them waiting in the aptly named waiting room. I had brought several books but could not concentrate hard enough to read them.
I kept opening a book and staring at the pages trying to make sense of the jumbled text that swam before my eyes. I may as well have been trying to read hieroglyphics for all the sense I was able to discern from what I stared at.
My mind raced through the entire time and I could feel my overacting brain sucking energy from me at an alarming pace. June had not been allowed to eat or drink for twenty-four hours prior to her surgery and I had been so nervous and upset that the very idea of eating had induced acid to form in my belly and so I had not eaten for twenty-four hours either.
I had not been able to sleep the previo
us night, had not eaten and could not turn off my mind and the resultant fatigue was making me twitchy. My eyes burned, my belly burned and my muscles were beginning to ache.
I briefly wondered if a situation like this could actually force a person to go insane. I quickly discounted that idea as I had already promised myself countless times that I would NEVER be insane, however that process of thinking did get me to thinking about things I hadn’t thought about in many years.
I first thought about my father. I had never known my father and wondered if he was still alive. I had forgiven my mother for all the wrongs she had inflicted upon me, but found that I still struggled with this one. I wanted to have a father.
Next I thought about Joe. I thought about Joe more often than I thought about my unknown father and quite a lot more than I thought about my deranged mother. I missed Joe terribly and often wished that he had not perished at such a young age.
I wondered if it was a selfish desire that led me to wish that Joe had survived that car crash. If he had survived he might have been forced to go through life disabled, he would have had to witness our mother coming completely unhinged, he would have been stuck with the responsibility of raising me after our mother died, and who knows how many other horrors Time would have dealt him if he had survived.
It might have been a sick idea, but I had an idea that Joe was probably better off having died before Time could abuse him than he would have been if he had survived.
That line of reasoning is a slippery slope that leads one nowhere but downward into a bottomless pit of despair where Snoopy nightlights rule kingdoms of darkness with iron scepters and tentacular armies, but I could not resist the temptation to wallow in my own despair of life at that moment.
After allowing myself to become properly depressed I finally thought about my mother. I had managed to resist the urge to think about her much over the years, fearing that dwelling on her would remind me of painful memories that I’d rather forget.