He stood alongside his vehicle for a second, the confrontation unsettling him. He purposefully filled his lungs with the crisp air, dragging in a great, heaving breath. There was a hint of woodsmoke on the wind, sweetly scented applewood, burned for atmosphere and not comfort. Unfocused, he stared straight ahead as he turned Rudolph’s words over in his mind. Again and again, he tried to find the fault, but it actually made a terrible kind of sense.
Claire had cancer.
If the man was right, and she’d been looking at a brutal diagnosis, she must have been terrified. He rubbed across his brow with the back of one hand, knuckles scrubbing painfully across his skin. A blessing.
“It still just doesn’t make sense. She would have told me.” He knew he could access any of her information, because she’d made him her executor. “I could look it up.” What would it change? She’d been his executor, too, and now that she was gone—sorry for your loss—he’d have to find someone else. I’ll pay a lawyer before I ask anyone. It had been fine when it was him for Claire and vice versa, because they’d always been there for the other. I should have known she was sick. If she had been sick. Just because some random stranger said something didn’t make it gospel. “God, I hate this.”
“We hate it too.” That voice spoke right beside his ear again, and Clive spun to see nothing.
“And now I’m hearing things.”
It was time to go home.
To that silent house, alone.
Current situation
“You can’t do it any sooner?” Clive tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling of his home office. He’d been on the phone most of the morning and found himself at the end of his patience with the whole process surrounding death and dying. It wasn’t bad enough that Claire was dead and gone, but now he was at the mercy of other people’s schedules. He needed to finish up and get back to the plant, but it was almost as if something didn’t want him leaving yet.
From the air at the center of the room, he heard, “Grief is a passage, not a place you stay.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” His auditory hallucination had stayed, and over the past day or so, Clive had taken to responding to it. Humoring his mind, and as if that reinforced the strength of the delusion, the voice had grown louder, responding to his thoughts now instead of only what he said aloud.
“No, no. Not you,” he told the woman on the phone, who’d responded to him with a question. “Just tell me what day and time, and I’ll make it work on my end.”
Dragging a piece of paper close, he jotted down the appointment information and thanked her, then disconnected. “Isn’t it strange we have an entire economy and businesses built up around death.”
“Men have ever done such.”
“Oh, I’m sure they have.” He huffed a laugh. “We have. But you’d think we’d have at least found a way to be efficient about things.” He’d thought the lawyer was joking when he’d told Clive how many notarized copies of Claire’s death certificate he’d need, but it was proving to be the truth. Every insurance policy, every banking institution, all the places he needed to do their jobs to deal with Claire’s death, required proof of her passing. “It might make sense, but knowing still doesn’t make it less frustrating.”
He pushed back from his desk and strolled into the kitchen in his socks, habitually cautious on the slick expanses of wood flooring exposed between the throw rugs. Just inside the open archway, he turned and looked back, focusing on the floor. There were two ways they’d differed from each other, he and Claire. One was that she’d found the love of her life and he never had, and the other was that as she aged out of her teens, Claire had developed allergies. That meant there were no carpeted areas in the house, and it was a detail that had escaped him until this instant.
Throat suddenly tight, he blurted, “But I don’t want carpet.” Fighting wave after wave of crippling grief, he hated the choking noises that escaped his throat. It seemed to go on and on, but from the clock it had been only a few minutes before he got himself under control, eyes wet and nose stinging, but silent.
“I hate this. I hate it so much. I want my sister back.”
There, he’d said it. Something he’d thought a thousand times as he’d listened to the emptiness of the house creaking around him. Claire had been the night owl, staying up late to watch her true crime documentaries on the TV, and he’d always been early to bed, going to sleep most nights listening to the muted sounds of someone he loved sharing the space. “I want her back. I don’t understand why her. Why, out of all the cars on the road that day, did that bastard hit hers? Why her?”
“A blessing.”
Clive shook his head. “Not to me it wasn’t. One moment we’d been messaging back and forth to plan the next cruise we’d take, and the next I get a call from a morgue. A morgue, when all she’d been doing was going to the grocery store. A cruise and a pork roast, and then she’s dead. Murdered by a drunkard whose own family washed their hands of him years ago.”
The lawyer had shared that tidbit earlier today. There would be no one to fight against the responsibility of the man’s estate to pay for Claire’s death. That insurance company had called Clive yesterday, and he’d routed them to the law firm, one of the easiest ways to deal with the details. The driver didn’t have any children, and his two siblings lived thousands of miles away. They hadn’t witnessed the downturn in their brother’s life, and from what the lawyer said, they didn’t really care. A sad shell of a man who’d lived alone and brought such destruction into the world.
“I want her back. I don’t care about him.”
“There are limits.”
Clive looked up from the floor at that. “What? What did you say?” He realized the ridiculousness of questioning the empty air and shook his head.
Shut up.
He went into the kitchen, picked out the last two uncontaminated slices of bread from the loaf slowly turning green along one edge, threw the rest away, and made a sandwich with the remaining slices of lunchmeat in the refrigerator. Standing next to the countertop, he began to eat mechanically, plate held high under his chin as he stared at an inspirational magnet on the front of the refrigerator.
My current situation is not my permanent destination.
“What a crock of shit.” This was mumbled around a mouthful of dry sandwich. He swallowed, the bread scratching the back of his throat, and set the rest of the sandwich on the plate. Each breath feeling heavier than the previous one, he fought the feeling of drowning in the loss that surrounded him everywhere he looked. Panting, he croaked, “That’s a crock. She’s gone. That’s how it is. ‘Not my permanent destination’ my ass.” She’d loved those magnets, was a sucker for anything with a joke or a saying, funny or not. He remembered teasing her one day about how cheesy she’d be willing to go, unsurprised when she showed up a few days later with a shirt that read “It ain’t easy being cheesy.”
“She’s just gone.” He whirled and threw the plate into the sink as hard as he could, only recoiling when it exploded, shards of the delicate bone china going everywhere. “It’s not fair. She wasn’t old. She hadn’t lived her life. She shouldn’t be dead, dammit. She shouldn’t be dead.”
A tear blazed a hot path down his face, finding its way to the edge of his jaw before it dropped, creating a perfect circle of wetness on the front of his shirt. Another pattered down, then another, the liquid making his skin itch as it crawled along, almost like static electricity. No matter how he clenched his teeth or closed his lids tightly, his eyes leaked burning salt, too much to be blinked away. The first barking sob broke free, and he crouched, balanced on the balls of his feet, fingers woven over the back of his head. Muscles taut, quivering with the strain of holding back, he waited it out, forcing the anguish down, inside, away, until he was left there, exhausted, skin tight with the remains of his heartache.
Knees creaking, Clive unfolded and stood, then looked around the kitchen at the mess of mangled sandwich and splinters of china an
d sighed.
He had nearly finished cleaning up when he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his foot. A piece of plate sliced deeply into his heel before he could flinch away, the curve digging through flesh in an instant. Balancing on his other foot, he lifted the throbbing one and propped it above his knee, angling his head to look. The shard protruded from his sock by a fraction of an inch, scarcely enough of it there to get hold of with his fingers. My luck. He limped to the bathroom and, with a muttered apology, dug through a drawer of Claire’s toiletries, finally finding the tweezers he needed. Perched on the edge of the tub, he grasped the end of the splinter and pulled, shocked when almost two inches of thin china slowly slipped from his flesh.
Head shaking, he stared at it for a moment, then leaned over and dropped the bloody shard into the trash. Sock off, he looked at the entry wound, but it was nearly invisible now that the piece of plate had been removed. Still, he smeared ointment on a bandage and stuck it to his heel, wincing at the sting when he stood and put weight on it.
“And that, kiddies, is why we don’t act on our impulses.” He returned to the kitchen and finished the job of cleaning up after his outburst. “Because grown people have to clean up their own messes.”
Later that night, the throbbing wound woke him, but only briefly, emotional exhaustion dragging him under again quickly.
He dreamed, he was sure of it, but whatever his subconscious was working out, it decided to be mute about the topic, and he woke exhausted but with only an underlying unease, as if there were a change on the horizon he couldn’t see. Could only sense in the way dogs and cats knew an earthquake was coming.
“Ah,” he hissed as he settled his feet on the floor, pain shooting through his heel. When he peeled the bandage away and looked, nothing appeared amiss, the slice in his skin having closed over seamlessly. He prodded without stirring the ache, and when he stood to put pressure on it, he dismissed the resulting small twinge as something that could be ignored.
Work email checked and crises handled, he headed to the kitchen to find the coffee carafe empty. “Son of a…”
In the midst of dealing with his tantrum last night, he’d forgotten to set it up and turn on the timer. Claire had hated the one-cup makers, said the combination of instant and real coffee left her with a headache. Clive completed the actions needed by rote, then stared at the drip pot as hot coffee slowly filled the carafe, doing his best to ignore the follow-up thoughts that raced through his head. If he didn’t think about all the things he could do now with Claire dead, then he might forget how much it hurt to have those choices at all. He’d rather do things Claire’s way for another handful of decades than to change. “I want her back.”
The light overhead flickered quick as a blink, and he glanced up with narrowed eyes, prepared to flinch if it burned out, but the illumination evened out, the bulb glowing steadily. The coffee maker made familiar gurgling sounds, then sputtered wetly. He reached out to retrieve the full pot. His hand hadn’t yet connected when the bulb blew, and in a bizarre re-creation of the scene last night, shards of thin glass rained down everywhere. Then, in a cascade of blasts, the rest of the lights in the kitchen and dining room detonated.
Instinctively, he lifted his arm and buried his face in the crook of his elbow just as bulbs in the six-arm chandelier over the table flared brightly in a rapid succession of deafening pops he could feel as much as hear. It was as if tiny fireworks had been detonated inside the house, but with only the concussion and rattle of the explosion, none of the brilliant sparkle that made crowds oooh and aaah. In the silence that followed, the only thing he could hear was the loud plop of liquid dripping. Dumbfounded, he looked down to see a growing puddle of brown next to the cabinet. The coffee carafe had broken into three pieces and lay in a discarded heap around the base of the machine.
“There are limits.”
“What’s going on?” Clive stared at the wreckage all around him. Two of the glass-fronted kitchen cabinets had cracked, as if from an earthquake. Everywhere he looked there was evidence that something had happened, but it was quiet—no car alarms, no sirens in the distance—and he felt buried inside this sense of isolation where nothing made sense. He had no idea what could cause a cascade of energy large enough to take out half the light bulbs in the house, as well as randomly break glass objects nearby. “What’s going on here?”
Glass crunched behind him, and there was a surge in the energy in the room as Clive turned quickly. A man walked towards him, appearing unruffled by the destruction. His bright blue eyes were aimed directly towards Clive, a slight curve to the corners of his mouth.
“Who are you?” Clive shuffled backwards, but there was nowhere for him to go. The hot coffee dripping off the cabinet started soaking the back of his shirt, the blistering heat cooling quickly. “What are you doing here?” He blindly groped for the drawer to his right, dragging it to the end of its tracks with a crash. Clive fumbled around inside and gripped the handle of the first gadget to hand. Holding up a spatula, he positioned it protectively in front of himself. “What is going on?”
“There are limits.” The man shook his head, and Clive felt a thrumming across his skin, like he’d stood too close to a faulty outlet, electricity raising the fine hairs on his body to attention. “What you want, it is…complicated.”
“What I want? What do you mean?” The man’s head tipped to one side, the slightest of posture adjustments that gave Clive the impression he was thinking hard. “What do I want? What limits?”
“You command. Ed. Commanded.” The man blinked, and when his lids raised again, the orbs behind were cloudy gray, shining from within, giving the appearance of a sick Halloween decoration. “Not every loss is off beam.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Clive thrust the spatula out, a half an inch of movement that the man ignored. “Who are you?” There was a burst of high-pitched static, and Clive clapped both hands over his ears, spatula falling to the floor with a clatter. “What the hell?”
“Not for you. If you ask, I must answer, but Clive”—the voice nearly sounded like Claire for an instant, and Clive stared at the man—“not every loss is off beam.”
“I don’t know what that means.” A loud clatter came from near his feet, and Clive glanced down to see three spatulas lying there, handles misaligned.
“Which is true?” The man lifted his shoulders, but the action looked awkward, a movement practiced but off somehow. “There are limits.” He nodded towards the floor, and Clive looked down to see a dozen spatulas lying in a jumbled tangle. “Off beam—” That thrum bled through the air again, and Clive cringed from the way his skin crawled with it.
Something else in the house exploded. The smash of glass hitting the floor was loud and sounded heavy. The man bowed his head and touched his hands to his eyes and ears, then back to his eyes as he spoke in no language Clive had ever heard.
“Biocac aire tamma.”
The man turned away, facing back to where he’d walked in from, and bowed slightly. “Aire sseccus.”
Clive watched as the man made those ritual motions again, palms covering his eyes, then ears, then eyes. “So biocac tamma, aire parehat rebme cedrebme enyd. Biocac arie eriferus ruof sseccus.” His head swiveled like an owl’s, turning to look over his shoulder at Clive.
There was a disconnect between the sounds and how his mouth moved, and Clive felt as if he could have read his lips without the distraction.
“Rewui ua bi elaib die rgua epywar. Tiy jbiq ur ua qeibf. Si bir nljw nw si rgua.” The man paused, then tipped his chin down a fraction of an inch. “Aire sseccus.” The atmosphere vibrated, and Clive saw a ripple go through the man’s skin, like the brush of a wave on the deep ocean’s surface, barely noticeable—but there. “So biocac, so enyd eriferus. Aire sseccus.” As if nothing had happened, as if there hadn’t been an interruption, the man said, “Off beam. Wrong. Not every loss is wrong.”
“What are you?” Clive was breathing heavily, and the breath in
his lungs felt hot. His throat burned, the tissues inside his mouth drying instantly as he panted. “What?”
The man’s body turned to line up with his head, the action jittery and wrong, and to Clive, the movement looked unnatural. “Your…” The man blinked, and that sensation swept over Clive again, a volatile buildup of a charge that wasn’t draining away. “Sister.”
“Claire? What about her? She’s—” He broke off, because it wasn’t something he’d said yet. Not said and believed, and he knew telling this man would cement it, make it real. “What about her?”
“Yours is a true wish.” He inclined forwards, nearly the same bow he’d made to the opposite side of the room. “Aire sseccus.”
“My wish? What wish?” I wished for coffee. He shook his head. “What wish?”
A jarring echo of his earlier words wafted on the air, and it might have been Clive’s voice that filled the room, but Clive wasn’t speaking. He watched the man’s face as his mouth opened and said, “I want her back. I want my sister back.” The man blinked, and the eyes exposed were that sky blue again. His voice had returned to its normal cadence and tone when he said, “Aire sseccus. There are limits.”
“Yes, I want her back. I miss Claire like crazy. I loved her. She was my sister, my friend. She was the best part of me, and I miss her. I want her here. But what do you mean, that’s my wish? Do I wish she hadn’t died?” The man nodded, and his features sharpened, muscles tensing, the line of his jaw taut. “Yes, I wish she hadn’t died.”
Pain hit, sudden and instant. It rolled over him like a sonic boom, bolts of electricity razing the skin from his bones, and for an instant, his arms and hands looked flayed, muscles and tendons standing out in stark relief. Then everything went dark and silent, and Clive floated in isolation without anything to anchor him. Panic hit and he flailed, or thought he did, but nothing changed. There was no resistance to his movements, and after a moment, he realized he couldn’t even tell if he was moving. Time passed, or maybe it didn’t—with nothing to reference, he didn’t know, couldn’t know. He blinked, or thought he had, and something appeared.
The Gray Zone Page 2