Where the Dead Go to Die

by Aaron Dries

  The women lapsed into silence, leaning against the wall.

  Mama Metcalf thought of her Erik. There was nothing like death to make you want to cling to what little you had left. She had to do something to bridge the gap that existed between them. The days she had left to spend with her son were likely few and she refused to let them slip by without putting up a fight—she was a Metcalf after all and wasn’t above wrangling that which needed to be wrangled. And if that meant she had to force Erik to spend time with her then so be it. He’d be thankful for it someday. Her efforts wouldn’t be like those of the protesters outside; it wouldn’t just be more hot air in an otherwise cold world. Something would come of it. Of that she was sure.

  Got to make the most of it. Always. Just like that darlin’ Lucette did with Robby.

  Good Lord, that girl has got a world of hurt coming her way.

  “What you two doing loitering about?” Mama Metcalf tensed at the sound of Mykel’s sing-song voice as he approached them from the adjoining corridor.

  “Must you be so chipper?” Emily said.

  “I’m sorry, have they passed some law against being happy in the workplace?”

  “This ain’t a happy kinda day,” Mama Metcalf said. “It’s a ‘maybe I ought-a take a smoke break again’ kind of day, ‘cause God only knows I need something to get me through it.”

  “Why? Because of the kid? It’s not like we didn’t know this was how it would end.”

  “Jesus,” Emily said, and Mama Metcalf noticed her hands were balled into fists at her side. “Do you think you could muster just the tiniest drop of sensitivity? I mean, don’t strain yourself or anything, but come on. Try.”

  “Hey, I’m not being insensitive, just realistic. This is a hospice; it isn’t a place people come to get better. Every person who walks through that door leaves in a body bag. That’s the reality, and if you can’t deal with that then you might be in the wrong line of work.”

  Emily pushed past him and stalked down the hall. Not wanting to be alone with Mykel, Mama Metcalf punched in the code to open the door to the FSU and hurried through. As the door swung shut behind her, she heard him say, “Fine, be that way! Break down into a snail trail of tears and estrogen every time the inevitable happens.”

  Mama Metcalf paused, putting a hand to the wall to steady herself. With eyes closed, she took a few shaky breaths through the mask, trying to calm herself. The thing that upset her most was that, despite the tactless delivery, Mykel was correct, hence the tell-tale ‘F’ in FSU. Emotional callouses from the bedpans, pity, and death kept him immune. That way sorrow passed him over, all thunder but no lightning.

  God, she hoped she never reached that point. Let her heart never grow that hard.

  With a final deep breath, Mama Metcalf started toward Robby’s room, thinking that during her break she would call Erik and tell him she was coming over for a visit this evening whether he wanted her to or not.

  ***

  Robby’s body let him in on a secret: You’re dying. It wasn’t as painful as he’d expected it to be in all honesty, maybe even less severe than the worst of his night fevers. He could sense himself winding down, every ambition evaporated from his will by the heat that had brought him to this moment.

  Dinosaur bones. Exploration. Girls.

  All of it had been steamed away. He was no longer sad. Just grateful.

  If the uglies were here they hid in his joints, in those wet spaces between his bones and skin, dancing with accomplishment. He wanted to scratch at them but couldn’t move. His teeth hurt worst of all. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Lifting a finger to wipe the beads away wasn’t going to happen though. Even blinking was an effort; and when he did, each flutter worsened his vision. There were people in the room, blurry silhouettes going here and there, haloed by kaleidoscopes of refracted light.

  A sound in his throat. Rattlesnake breaths.

  Robby thought he could feel hands on him, grasping and clawing and groping. He wondered if he was still in the hospice room.

  No. He wasn’t.

  He was in the woods behind the fairgrounds on the night of the Halloween festival. The homeless man had him in his grip again, leaving Robby to wonder if he’d ever escaped in the first place. Being abandoned by his family, the embarrassment of having people he didn’t know bathe him, Lucette and her origami fixation—maybe it all had been a dream. A fantasy. He was still at the bottom of the ravine, just another kid versus a vicious, adult world.

  Voices. Faraway. It was the people at the festival, laughing and chattering. So close.

  Robby blinked harder than before and the fog cleared. He wasn’t in the woods, but back in his over-lit hospice room, of course. The machines around him were beeping, there were needles jabbed into his arms. Tubes crisscrossed his chest, carrying liquid left and right. An old woman stared down at him.

  Unable to speak, Robby willed her name.

  Mama Metcalf.

  And even though he could see her face, the creases of her skin like freeways in a roadmap of places he would never travel, those distant voices continued to chime. They were nearer now. Louder. They held a jeering, hateful quality.

  It was then that Robby understood. The sound wasn’t the memory of those at the Halloween fair. It was the voice of the mob congregated outside.

  Uglies of a different breed.

  ***

  Words like an oil slick over water, catching the sunlight in shapeless swirls. None of the paperwork made sense, leaving Woods rubbing her head. She had another one of her headaches, a Grade A doozie, the kind that sent her rummaging around for an Aspirin to chew on. She liked everything to be in order when the Crowners were coming, but concentrating on the reams of paper splayed across the table was impossible to do with the chants of the mob echoing down the corridor.

  They were always out there, though the numbers waxed and waned. Today, however, the crowd was bigger than she’d ever seen it before. Stupid people with their stupid New Year’s resolutions, fools following fools. Woods hoped the sky opened up and shat snow over all of them, cooling their hatred, scattering doses of frostbite as it went.

  Were she completely honest with herself, her annoyance had less to do with the protestors and more to do with today’s duty. Losing a guest was always difficult, but it was particularly rough when that guest had no loved ones to help ease him or her through the transition.

  Ha. The ‘transition’. Like ‘guest’, it’s just another pathetic mask.

  Woods’ job was to make sure that mask didn’t slip, not on her face or any of those working under her wing. This was easier said than done when one of her headaches had crawled inside her skull and made itself at home.

  Emily passed in the hall and Woods called her name.

  “What’s up?” Emily asked, taking a seat after closing the door.

  Woods took a deep breath, recognized she was about to jump off the point of no return, and made the leap anyway. Some things just had to be done. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “About what?”

  “You asked if you could go with Robby when the Crowners take him.”

  “You said that was impossible without parental consent.”

  “You got it.” Woods handed Emily a consent form with Mrs. Hopkins’ name scrawled at the bottom.

  “You mean she showed up?”

  Woods shook her head.

  “Then how? Wait, do you mean that you—”

  “He shouldn’t be alone, and I know he bonded with you and your daughter. If his real family can’t be bothered to be here, someone has to step up.”

  “Mrs. Woods, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then don’t say anything. Just be there, hold his hand. Let him know he’s loved.”

  Emily nodded, staring down at the form. “I haven’t told Lucette yet. I thought it might be better to wait until after.”

  “When the time comes, I’ll bring her in my office, try to keep her occupied.”

  “I appreci
ate that.”

  Emily stood and started from the room but Woods said, “I need the form to give to the Crowners when they arrive.”

  “Oh, of course.” Emily placed the paper back on the desk, left.

  Once Woods was alone again, she sat with her hands on the top of her desk and watched them shake, finally placing them in her lap as if to hide the evidence of her unsettled nerves. She’d always been willing to bend the rules from time to time in the pursuit of dignity, but forging Mrs. Hopkins’ name went beyond minor infractions of policy and protocol.

  She’d leapt past the point of no return, splashing into dangerous waters. Shark-like felonies lurked amongst the waves. And what sharp teeth they had.

  ***

  Betty Hopkins wasn’t built for a lot of things.

  Despite her three-and-a-half decades living in Chicago, the construction of her tolerance didn’t extend to winter. She hated the cold—downright deplored it—and in turn, hated herself for not being able to adapt to each seasonal lashing. Yet here she was.

  Betty also didn’t think she was built to handle large crowds. All of those gnarled faces knitted together. It made her stomach knot, drew black dots over her vision that swam like mosquito larvae across the surface of a pond—just like the one she and her sisters had paddled in as kids. Not that Betty saw much of her family anymore, let alone the pond at the rear of her parents’ property. Everywhere she turned there was nothing but the twisted wreckage of burnt bridges, with her husband, more often than not, the arsonist. And yet here she was. Out in the cold, escaping the crowd.

  Finally, and with a melancholy that surpassed everything else, Betty Hopkins didn’t think she was built for motherhood. It had come so naturally to her sisters, women whose smiles of affection appeared so genuine, smiles replicated in their children as they ran and played at their grandparents’ place, splish-splashing in that same pond. And yet here she was. Out in the cold, escaping the crowd, still a mother despite not having seen her child in so long.

  All because of my husband.

  This was what she told herself. That Tim was to blame. Though it was hard to tell if that was entirely the truth.

  One thing that Betty was good at was the ancient art of second-guessing herself. She was doing so that very moment, there on the sidewalk, two blocks from the hospice.

  Tim is the one who made all this ugliness a reality. At least I think it was him. Please don’t tell me I played a part. Please.

  Quivering hands struck a match. Lit the cigarette. A flicker of heat against her palms, and then it was gone. The dead matchstick tumbled to the slush between her boots as smoke filled her lungs. Betty told herself that she’d quit when she was dead.

  And maybe not even then.

  Second thoughts.

  Robby was her son, and it wasn’t right that she not be by his side when—God, she couldn’t even think the word. This couldn’t be her life, could it?

  He had been such a tiny, meek child.

  And it wasn’t Robby’s fault. He hadn’t asked for this. But that wasn’t how Tim saw it. He blamed the boy for being where he shouldn’t have been; saw what happened almost as God’s punishment. She didn’t know if her husband truly believed this, or if it was just a cracked way of trying to cope with tragedy. Betty wondered if things would have turned out differently if Robby had contracted the infection any other way. Bitten on the street as opposed to—

  (say it)

  —raped by a stranger.

  (dear God, why would you do this to us, to him)

  Robby had confessed what really happened to her alone, and then she’d taken the revelation to her husband. Betty hadn’t had much respect left for Tim and his reaction to the truth destroyed what little remained. Congratulations—he was now the father of a tainted thing. Were Robby to have been simply violated and not infected, Betty believed Tim still would have excommunicated the boy. So deeply rooted was his fear of anything remotely gay.

  Men can be such prideful pigs.

  So stand up to him then!

  This was easier said than done. This wasn’t the time of Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver, where the dutiful wife had to defer to her husband’s will, but she knew that if she truly questioned Tim on this it would lead to a blowout that would cause their marriage to crumble. As appalled as she was by her husband, she couldn’t run the risk of losing him and Robby all at the same time. What would be left then?

  But Tim didn’t have to know about her trip to the hospice. When they’d received the first message from Mrs. Woods, he’d run off, no doubt to Duvall’s Bar where he spent more of his time lately. She didn’t expect to see him again until tonight. Would he come in pretending nothing had happened, that it was just another day, or would they talk about it? And if this unlikely second option happened, what would Betty say? Would she admit to coming to the hospice to help her son when he needed it most, to be with the defective goods they had thrown away?

  Admit to coming here to prove she was a better person than she believed she really was?

  As Betty came within sight of the hospice, finishing her cigarette, head tucked beneath the collar of her overcoat, her footsteps faltered. There were protesters gathered around out front, waving their signs and polluting the air with their hateful words. To think, she and Tim had once been a part of that crowd.

  Though neither had been back since Robby fell sick.

  Betty stopped a block away, pushing herself against the wall of an adjoining liquor store. She was bound to know some of the people. Were she recognized then word would filter back to Tim. Of this she had no doubt. When she’d left the house, Betty had considered wearing sunglasses and a headscarf to disguise her appearance, but dismissed this option on account of it being totally fucking insane. Now she thought otherwise.

  “Betty?”

  Hearing her name caused her to jerk and clutch her purse. She looked back toward the protestors to see who had spotted her and gasped when she saw Tim detach himself from the crowd and walk toward her. He wore his I’VE GOT MOXIE cap, the one he’d re-gifted to his son only to reclaim it back when the boy proved himself obsolete. Waste not, want not.

  “Betty, what are you doing here?”

  She couldn’t speak, didn’t know what to say. Tim carried a sign reading, BONE EATERS R NOT PEOPLE & DON’T DESERVE RIGHTS!

  He stood in front of her now, that sign leaned casually over one shoulder as though it was something as innocuous as an umbrella.

  “Answer me,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Tell him!

  (Tell him what?)

  Tell him that we’ve both been ridiculous. That it’s not too late to change. Robby needs us.

  Tim grabbed her arm and twisted it, causing her to cry out. “Half our church is over there watching. Tell me right this goddamn minute what you’re doing here?”

  “I. Well, you see. I came to join you.”

  “How did you even know I was here?”

  Tim didn’t move or speak, leaving Betty shaking under his grip. She thought about wringing herself free and running down the semi-frozen sidewalk, running all the way to one of her sister’s houses on the other side of the city if need be. Only she didn’t. Betty stood her ground, matching her husband’s glare.

  “I—” Her unfinished whisper steam-stained the air.

  Came here for our son. To be with him. To be braver than you ever could be or ever were, Tim. You’re a fucking disgusting piece of shit for making me this way.

  Say it.

  SAY IT.

  “—I figured this was where you’d be, and I thought we should be together,” Betty said, second-guessing herself again. She yanked her arm free and held her head high. It was almost enough to make her laugh. Who needed a silly disguise when one was already so adept at wearing the mask of complacency?

  Tim melted, enveloped his wife in an awkward hug. “I knew you’d come round. Robby died Halloween night, and them keeping his corpse here makes it impossible
to grieve and move on. The Ministry has gone soft. They used to take care of it the humane way. You see that now, right?”

  Betty nodded, forcing a smile.

  “Come on, everyone will be so glad to see you.”

  She allowed her husband to take her hand and pull her back to the group. Several faces she recognized from church, another from behind the pulpit. They greeted her with handshakes and hugs, their affection a stark contrast to the epitaphs on their signs.

  “Betty, it’s wonderful to have you back in the fold,” said an old woman with ratty gray hair and a worn dress. It was black, as it always was. Betty couldn’t remember her name—was it Mabry? Yes, I think so. Betty knew the woman’s own son had been in the hospice and had died shortly after Robby was admitted.

  A chill ran through Betty’s body. She wondered if this was what hatred turned you into. A wraith-like creature warmed only by clichés, a woman whose face was frozen in that moment of terrible darkness that preceded a relief that would never come. “The dead roam those halls,” Mabry said, a B-movie line that Betty had heard from those lizardy lips more than once. It unnerved her then as it always had.

  Because on some level it was true.

  “It’s good to be back,” Betty said, each word broken glass in her mouth.

  “I know what you’re going through,” the old woman said. Her eyes held no shimmer or life, they were like dead stars overlooking a cracked, dry desert. “They put my Edward in there, pumped him full of chemicals and kept his body moving long after he was dead. It’s sacrilegious is what it is, not to mention dangerous. Keeping these demons around puts us all at risk.”

  “Demons?”

  “Our children die, and then demons crawl up in their bodies and wear them like a suit.”

  Betty looked around at those nearby, including her husband. Nobody was reacting as though Mabry were some crazy cat lady in a comic skit. No. They were nodding. Even Tim. She was surrounded by lunatics.

  And now I’m in their number.

  The old woman leaned forward and wrapped her claws around Betty’s wrist. She appeared so wiry and small, only the strength in that grip was as frightening as anything Betty had ever experienced. Fear made people weak, this she knew better than most, but in turn, nothing fueled the human body better than hatred. And the more unfounded that hatred was, the better the mileage.