The Waiting

by Joe Hart

  Seizure.

  “Oh God, no!” Evan said, leaping to his feet. “Shaun, Shaun, can you hear me, son?”

  He sat on the bed and slipped a hand beneath Shaun’s arched back while leaning over him. His eyes were wide open and staring at the wall, his breath hitching and a strained wheezing sound coming from his mouth.

  A million impulses tried to hold sway over Evan as he stood and turned the light on. The floor shifted, and at once he bit down hard on the insides of his cheeks. Blood filled his mouth, and the room came back into focus. He stood over his son, who held the arch of his back like a strange sculpture of pain.

  “Oh God, Shaun, no, no, no!” Evan said, picking him up. It was like trying to cradle a mannequin.

  A doll.

  Shaun’s normally weak arms lashed out and froze in an unnatural way.

  “Okay, okay, okay.”

  He ran to the couch and wrapped Shaun’s convulsing body in the heaviest quilt he could find and picked him up again, making sure he still heard his ragged breathing. When Evan opened the door, the wind pulled the knob from his hand and slammed the door into the inside wall. Squalls of rain spit at them, as the trees rocked in the wind, caught in the throes of the storm. Evan spun and opened the closet, grabbing the rain jacket from its hanger. After slamming the door behind them, he ran into the roaring weather, clutching his son’s stiff form through the blanket.

  He made a makeshift tent out of the slicker, providing Shaun some cover on the floor of the pontoon. The muscle spasms seemed to be retreating, leaving Shaun to lay flat against the pontoon’s carpet, but his eyes still stared and his chest continued to hitch in a way that made Evan sick to his stomach.

  Evan fired up the engine, tossed the ropes free, and gunned the throttle. They launched away from the dock, into the embrace of the chopping waves and the rain that fell without remorse.

  23

  “He’s perfectly fine,” the young doctor repeated.

  Evan steadied himself against the wall of the corridor outside Shaun’s room, and was able to absorb the words this time, having not understood them when the doctor first came through the door.

  “Fine?” Evan asked, not sure he could fully trust his ears.

  The doctor nodded. He had jouncy blond hair that moved when he talked, and a stylish set of glasses perched on his thin nose. “Yes, we ran an electroencephalogram, and it showed no signs of a seizure or any signs that a seizure occurred.”

  Evan let the information sink in, and his eyebrows knitted. “So he’s okay?”

  The doctor smiled and nodded. “Yes.”

  “But you can’t see that he had a seizure?”

  “It didn’t show up on the test, no.”

  The doctor closed his eyes for a moment and crossed his arms over the white coat he wore.

  “Are you sure he wasn’t having some sort of nightmare or active dream that may have looked like a seizure?”

  Evan stared at the man, his eyes feeling like they were bleeding. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Because,” the doctor continued, “sometimes people mistake the signs and symptoms for something else. A night terror, perhaps.”

  Evan held up a hand. “Listen, he was having a seizure. He had one a few months ago, scared the hell out of me, just like it did tonight. I know what a seizure looks like. He had one.”

  The doctor relinquished his authoritative posture and nodded. “Okay. What we’ll do now is keep him for the next few hours for observation, and then send you guys home with a mild seizure medication. Only administer it to him if you’re one hundred percent sure he’s having one, okay?”

  Evan dipped his chin once and rubbed his eyes. His hair was still damp from the ride across the lake, and his clothes were wet but not dripping anymore.

  “You look like you could use some coffee,” the doctor said. “There’s a beverage center down the hall and to the left if you’d like some.”

  “Thanks. I want to see him first.”

  “Go right in.”

  Evan moved past the doctor and pushed the heavy door open to a dimly lit room. Monitors beeped and whirred to the right, and a nurse fiddled with an IV beside Shaun’s bed. Shaun lay on the mattress, covered by a blue blanket. His bare chest looked almost white against the surroundings, and a few electrodes stuck like round leeches to his skin. Evan stopped at the foot of the bed. Shaun’s eyes were closed, and he slept peacefully.

  “You guys had a rough night,” the nurse said.

  Her voice sounded choked, and when Evan glanced at her, he saw it was Becky Tram dressed in scrubs. Her head was a mangled mess, oblong and crushed on the left side. Raw meat and gray bits of brain hung from shards of bone along her scalp, and her jaw sat like a partially sunken ship off to one side of her face.

  Evan sucked in a breath to scream, his hand flying to his mouth. He blinked and saw the nurse coming toward him, concern on her very normal, very whole features.

  “Sir, are you okay?”

  Her hands reached out to steady him, and he nearly did scream as she touched him, sure that her skin would be cold and hard. Dead flesh.

  “I’m fine. It’s a shock seeing him like this,” Evan said.

  The nurse nodded, giving him a sympathetic smile. He realized she looked a little like Becky—dark hair, a little overweight, same chin. Just a trick of the light.

  “I’ll leave you two be. You can push the call button mounted on the bed if you need anything.”

  “Thank you.”

  Evan watched her leave the room before he went to Shaun’s bedside. He placed a hand on Shaun’s forehead and smoothed back his hair. He could feel a few sticky spots where, he assumed, they’d attached the electrodes for the EEG.

  “I’m sorry, buddy, really sorry.”

  The blood-pressure cuff around Shaun’s bicep puffed up on its own accord, and he shifted. Evan glanced over his shoulder at the door, then leaned in close to his son.

  “We’ll go home soon, okay? There’s no reason to stay anymore. I’ll write that article for Justin, and if we have to, we’ll move in with Uncle Jason for a while until we get back on our feet.”

  Saying the words somehow made him feel lighter, less burdened, and he realized what it was. He was giving up on the clock, on the crazy idea that had plagued his thoughts ever since seeing Bob’s message in the basement.

  “We’ll go home, son.”

  Evan brushed Shaun’s hair back one more time, and then settled into the chair beside the bed to wait.

  ~

  They pulled up to the dock at five in the morning. The storm that battered them on their journey in was gone. The air was cool and smelled rain-washed, fresh. The somber glow of dawn spread in the east, and Evan had never been so glad to see a sunrise. He carried Shaun up to the house, the feeling of his small arms wrapped around his neck comforting, so right. Evan didn’t want to put him down when they came inside. Shaun had woken on the ride back, but his eyes were only half slits when Evan placed him in his bed.

  “You can go back to sleep, okay, buddy?” he said, spreading a blanket over him.

  Shaun nodded and reached out with one hand toward Evan’s face. Evan leaned in, and Shaun’s fingers grazed the bit of stubble on his cheek.

  “Da.”

  “I’m right here, honey. Don’t worry.”

  Shaun’s eyes fluttered and then closed. Evan waited beside the bed, anticipating the moment when his small body would arch again, wrung with pain and spasms that he couldn’t bear to watch again.

  I’d rather die than see him go through that one more time.

  He stood and made his way back out to the living room.

  He hadn’t flipped on any lights when they entered, and the house held a smoky quality, with shadows beginning to give up their posts. Evan walked to the kitchen and observed the mess he’d created in his frenzy to find the winding key. He sighed. Despite his tiredness, he’d have to clean this up before Shaun rose for the day. He didn’t know if the boy would understa
nd or not, but Evan was embarrassed by the scene of chaos. Silverware on the floor, towels strewn out of cupboards, plates and dishes stacked in uneven piles. He placed the heel of his hand against his right eye and wondered when he’d begun to lose his mind.

  “You haven’t lost it yet, bub. Get your shit together,” he said, and strode toward the front door.

  The blanket from their trip sat at the edge of the living room, along with the rain slicker. Evan picked them both up, intending to put the blanket on the porch to dry and the jacket back inside the closet. As he gathered up the slicker, he caught a powerful whiff of something. He paused and pulled the jacket to his face, inhaling. It wasn’t the jacket, and it didn’t smell like mold or mildew—more like something rotten. It smelled like the moment he’d opened the refrigerator their first day in the house.

  Scowling, Evan sniffed once more, wondering if a mouse had crawled into the house and died. If so, he couldn’t see it in the dark. He snapped on the light near the entry and turned around to put the slicker away.

  Two sets of toes poked out from under the closet door.

  Evan stopped, his hand reaching out to pull the door open frozen, fingertips shaking. Every inch of his scalp cinched tight to his skull. The toes were discolored, the skin patched with purple and green, like mottled bruises or rot. The smell of decay grew stronger, but Evan couldn’t look away from the toes. Some of their nails were missing, and some were broken, sticking up like open car hoods. As he watched, the toes wiggled, a wave of motion from one direction to the other.

  Evan wheezed a strangled breath and dropped his hand as he stepped back, his momentary paralysis broken. There was someone—something—in the closet, waiting on the other side of the door. His jaw trembled, and the thought of speaking withered away. As if reading his mind, the feet attached to the toes shifted, like whatever waited there was eager to come out, to open the door and rush at him. He didn’t want to see what was attached to those feet. Oh God in heaven, he didn’t want to see it.

  Evan didn’t realize he was moving backward until his arm brushed something beside him, and he spun, raising a fist. The table lamp he’d bumped rocked on its edge, and he caught it before it fell to the floor. It was made of a heavy piece of lacquered oak, with a burnished brass base. Its cord draped out and led to a nearby outlet in the wall. With a jerk, Evan pulled the cord free, and yanked the lamp’s shade off. He gripped the lamp’s smooth torso like a batter waiting for a fastball.

  “Come out,” he croaked.

  He watched the toes for a reaction, but they sat like lumps of decaying clay. Maybe it was a joke. The thought capered through his mind in ribbons of hope. Someone, Jason or Jacob, had come here in the middle of the night and put these fake toes in the closet for a prank.

  Ha, ha! So funny! Now it can be over, and we can go back to a sane reality in which dead things didn’t hide in closets and wriggle their toes.

  Evan took another step, his muscles so tight beneath his skin he thought soon he would hear the snapping of his own tendons. The image of Shaun defenseless and asleep in the other room hardened his crumbling resolve. What if it got past him? What if it got to Shaun?

  He lunged forward, gripping the lamp with one hand while he reached for the knob with the other, ready to bash whatever came out of the closet. Before his fingers could graze the handle, the closet door flew open with a bang, and Evan leapt back, his bowels loosening almost past the point of no return.

  A solid stench hit him, so strong and putrid he gagged.

  The closet was empty.

  His body shook as he stepped forward, raising the lamp higher over his head. Nothing looked out of place in the closet. The hanger from which he’d snagged the raincoat swayed a little on the bar, and the tackle box he’d dug through sat at the same angle as before. A whispered gasp left his mouth, becoming a moan as he lowered the makeshift weapon and dropped it to the floor. The smell was gone.

  Or maybe it was never there in the first place.

  Evan staggered back until his ass hit the outside door. He slid down it, his legs unhinging at the knees in tandem. His eyes watered, but he didn’t attempt to wipe them.

  There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there.

  The mocking echo reverberated through him until he couldn’t stand it any longer and placed his face in his hands to cry in earnest.

  ~

  Evan couldn’t sleep.

  The fatigue was a physical thing, a weight of restless hours hanging from his shoulders, his neck, both his eyelids, but he couldn’t shut his mind down long enough to drift off. He tried, laying his blankets and pillows beside Shaun’s bed again, but the vision of the toes poking from beneath the closet door kept returning to him. He wondered how long it took a person to go crazy, how long someone could cling to the jagged edge of sanity without slipping into the void of gibbering madness. Would he know it when it happened fully? Would the things he’d seen over the last few weeks become solid? Physical enough to touch, or to touch him?

  That thought was enough to get him back on his feet. Evan moved through the living room, pausing to throw a look at the closet door before beginning to clean up the kitchen. He whiled away the time in silence, with only a lilting song of insanity playing on an endless loop in his mind. He’d heard once that crazy people didn’t wonder if they were crazy; they just went along with it. The idea didn’t comfort him as much as he’d hoped. When the last dish was cleaned and put away, he made a pot of coffee, and sat sipping a cup as the sun rose higher and higher in the east.

  They would pack and leave tomorrow, he decided, draining the last dregs in his cup. There was no reason to stay now. The promise of the clock, no matter how insane or unbelievable, was gone, leaving an empty cavern, once filled with a mystical hope, inside him. All he had now was Justin’s interest in the article, and he could do all the necessary research from the comfort of his own home—or Jason’s. Besides, the psychiatrist that he’d seen for grief counseling after Elle died was in Minneapolis. That would be one of his first stops when they got back.

  What about your other shrink? You know, the one you’ve made dinner for, talked to for hours, and kissed?

  What would he tell her? That he was seeing ghosts and/or losing his mind, so sorry, he had to run away now before he convinced himself that there weren’t any ghosts, only the broken shards of his sanity that continued to snag on reality? Yeah, that would go over well.

  “She already knows we weren’t staying forever,” he said to the quiet kitchen.

  But the notion had crossed your mind, hadn’t it?

  Of course it had. Just the thought of her pretty face smiling at him in the sunshine the day he’d taken her and Shaun fishing and of the way her lips had felt on his had almost cemented the notion of never leaving. It had been years since he’d experienced anything like the sensation of really being alive.

  Evan cast the thoughts away and stood, his feet carrying him to his room. He took out his suitcase and began to fill it with clothes.

  Shaun woke a half hour later, and Evan cooked him breakfast in the spotless kitchen. After they’d both eaten, he helped Shaun trace the alphabet and numbers to thirty, saying letters and numerals aloud as the dry-erase marker squeaked on the plastic pages. When the books were packed away, they did Shaun’s exercises, though Evan was careful not to push him too hard, for fear of bringing on another seizure. But Shaun looked strong and resilient, with no sign of giving up. Pride washed through Evan, and a smile that would’ve seemed impossible a few hours ago came to his lips. That was the power of children. Sometimes they were the sail that lifted the adults’ minds out of a free fall.

  We’re always thinking that we take care of them, and more often than not it’s the other way around.

  Bolstered by how well Shaun did, Evan showed him the sunshine glittering off the lake outside.

  “Wanna go swimming, buddy?”

  The boy looked at him, and then glanced out to the lake, a
thoughtful expression on his face.

  “Swimming? Do you want to swim?”

  “Swum?”

  Evan smiled. “Okay, let’s go.”

  The water gripped Evan’s ankles like cold hands when he stepped in, and he hissed with the sensation, every inch of his skin tightening. The sun sat behind the island, and the massive trees threw long shadows on the lake, making its surface opaque and fathomless. The dark water pushed a blade of unease into him, and he walked down the beach, with Shaun in his arms, until he found a break in the trees where sunshine sprayed onto the water in a shimmering pool of light.

  They eased in together, Shaun making a happy yet comical grimace as the water lapped higher and higher on his body. Evan whooped when it met his crotch, and he dunked them both lower, knowing it was better to get it over with. He walked them out to deeper water and helped Shaun float.

  “You remember this?” Evan asked, as Shaun turned his head toward him. “You remember your therapy in the pool back home? Remember swimming?”

  Shaun smiled and raised his eyebrows, making his eyes so large Evan burst out laughing.

  “You’re a ham.”

  They swam until Shaun’s teeth chattered and his own fingertips tingled. Evan waded them to the shore, and then climbed the hill to the house. Once they were both dry and in comfortable clothes, he made Shaun a cup of hot cocoa and coffee for himself. They sat at the kitchen table and drank, the warmth of the beverages sinking into them. He watched Shaun suck happily on his straw, and thought that in this moment things almost seemed normal. The trip to the hospital the night before and the incident with the closet seemed far away, like an island in the distance that is visible but without detail. He could almost imagine them living here indefinitely if every day was like this.

  Evan frowned. Had he just been contemplating staying? He shook his head, the disquiet he experienced earlier when looking at the dark water returning.