Тим Леббон - New Fears 2 - Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

Every day he would talk to Marge and tell her what he was doing as he prepared her daily meal: the steps required to reduce the chances of infection, the attachment of the tubes, the readying of the pump. Marge still had nothing to say, but periodically she would say “yes”—whether out of politeness or as some part of her own internal process he did not know. He was terrified, of course, of making a mistake, of doing something that would make it worse for her, but each day he still did what he’d been instructed to do. And her belly did swell over time, although he wasn’t sure that it was from nourishment.

Eventually Andrew dressed, got in his car, and obtained a burger and some fries via a drive-thru. Once home he pulled the meal apart and examined it: the bun had a plastic sheen and the perfectly circular patty resembled no meat he’d ever seen before. He gobbled everything greedily. The accompanying soda burned down his throat gratifyingly.

Although retirement required no scheduling on his part, no necessary destination or progress toward any sort of goal, no need to ever leave the house really, Andrew had still instituted a regular routine as a way of giving some minimal structure and meaning to his life. Meals and sleep occurred at the same times every day, as did reading the newspaper or a book, as did brooding, as did panic.

As it did every day following lunch the wallpaper in the living and dining rooms began to peel from the top, long curling bits dropping down to reveal great patches of black mould underneath. Wall board began to buckle and dark insects crawled out of the resulting gaps. There were drips everywhere as paste and paint began to liquefy. There were other things as well: vermin and tiny creatures he had no name for living in the walls, coming out to reveal themselves. But he never looked at these too closely as a previous glance had shown they bore the faces of dead friends and relatives.

Andrew made some coffee—hard to think of it even remotely as food—and carried it out into the backyard. He sat in an ancient wooden chair beneath a naked maple and drank it while gazing at the mass of wreckage the yard had become.

Marge used to spend an enormous amount of time out here; he had not. He’d hired a man to rake the bulk of the leaves and haul them away. Dead flower heads bent the grey stems of the ravaged beds leaving jagged ends pointing at the sky. A stiff breeze lifted wire-like branches and made them rattle, broken bits joining the debris piles beneath the bushes. He regretted not paying the man enough to simply take everything away.

Nature made its own trash, and it used to be Marge’s chosen role to deal with it. Andrew had become accustomed to letting it lay. Since her death the backyard had accumulated a collection of broken pots, ice-cracked plaster statuary, rusted garden implements, rotted cushions, and objects whose names and functions had escaped his memory. Marge would have been ashamed, and he was ashamed to realize her opinions were no longer relevant to him. She should have managed to stay alive if she’d wanted some say.

But was it really so bad? Andrew felt both drawn and repelled. Some day he might just take a nap out here, and whatever crawled his way was welcome to anything it could grab.

But he supposed it would be bad if his daughters found him that way. Perhaps he would pass away peacefully in his sleep. That’s what everyone hoped for, wasn’t it? No suffering, and a little bit of dignity?

When the visiting nurse first met Marge lying so quietly, making such a small shape in the bed, she’d said, “Your mother…” and both alarmed and angered Andrew had interrupted, “My wife .” Another time he might have been flattered, although now he could not imagine when.

After several weeks at home Marge entered a period of even more intense silence, and no longer replied “yes” to his recitation of her food preparation, nor did she ask him to adjust her pillows or apply ointment to her lips. She slept, or he assumed she slept. Sometimes he would ask her questions and she would reward him with a vague nod. Frequently he studied her for signs of breathing, and he changed her adult diapers as necessary, although she gave him only minimal cooperation. The nurse on her daily visits reassured him this was to be expected with the increase in her pain medications.

Eventually there came a day when the sounds of her breathing returned, but they were laboured, occasionally violent, and frightening. The nurse came to the house after he called, and let him know that again, this was normal, she wasn’t in any distress. This was to be expected as the body shuts down. The end would be relatively soon, so perhaps he wanted to call their daughters for a final visit?

Their daughters came, and cried, and left again and Andrew was left with Marge and her body and her breathing.

Andrew had gone downstairs to eat something. A can of tuna fish, which thankfully did not look like fish, but more like very soft, flavourful wood chips, like mulch for the neglected flower beds.

When he returned to their bedroom he discovered that everything was silent, back to where it had been before this last stage, and he felt almost relieved. He stared at her for a while, and unable to find those vague indications of breath, he approached, and lay down beside her, and touched her, and tried to gently shake her awake. He knew she wouldn’t come awake, but he still felt that was what he was supposed to do.

He needed to call his daughters, and then he would lie with her for a while until they came, but there was this stench, and he didn’t want his daughters to have to deal with that on their final visit. Marge would have hated that, and he thought he needed to do something, or else what kind of husband had he been, what kind of father?

He readied a clean diaper and some wipes, and he gently turned her, but hadn’t anticipated the imbalance she possessed now, or her inability to participate, and she flopped over onto her face and a kind of sludge flowed out of her mouth, the rank contents of her stomach he supposed, but he really had no idea. He was completely ignorant, and here he had made this terrible mistake, and it had broken him, what he had done, how he had let her down, and he cried out in pained confusion, and tried to roll her back as gently as he could, but nothing about her felt right or normal, and her chin went down, and now he had more to clean. So he grabbed every rag and towel he could find to soak it all up, blotting and wiping it away, crying and cursing himself, and what he could not wipe away he tried to find ways to hide by folding and bunching the bed clothes and towels around her, all of which he knew he must throw out once they’d taken her away.

Andrew must have dozed off outside in the yard, because suddenly he was blinking his eyes against the changing sunlight. The sky appeared to be melting, great gobs of it dropping away like soaked tissue wherever the sun broke through the clouds. But he was just tired. He never seemed to get enough sleep. He’d even forgotten how much he was supposed to get. What had his physician said? “As much as you can.” That old man was useless, but perhaps the appropriate physician for Andrew in this phase of his life.

It had been years since he’d had his eyes checked. No doubt his prescription needed updating, or did you reach a point where very little improvement was possible? Perhaps he simply needed more sugar. He looked at his wrist but he must have left his watch by the bed. Was that his hand with all the skin hanging from every finger, as if he had forced his way through a mass of cobwebs? He looked away and gazed at the lawn, where great masses of dirt were churning. At any moment he expected an arm to pop out of the soil.

He looked at his hand again. It was an ugly, emaciated thing, this old man’s appendage, but at least its covering of skin was more or less intact again. But he was alarmed at the apparent thinness of its skin—he could see almost every vein and joint. Sometimes as the body declines it breaks our sense of time. Had he read this, or simply experienced it?