January 16
I’ve stared at this picture throughout the night. Every part of me knows it can’t be true, but the more I look at that haze of yellow light the more I can see her face. Her high cheekbones and soft chin hiding behind a radiant cascade of soft hair, her fair skinned arms holding her hands just like they did the night of our honeymoon, nervous but excited as we stood on the tarmac waiting for our plane to Hawaii. Her eyes, though. I keep coming back to her eyes. They seem different somehow, like they’re holding some kind of secret. There’s a soft smile behind them, but more a look of understanding. I don’t know where Alice went after she passed away. I guess I just assumed she moved on to a better place. But I’ve gone through every one of these pictures and she’s in each of them. Maybe Heaven was lonely. Maybe she could sense how much pain I was still in. I don’t know. All I know is she’s back now. Maybe things will get better.
January 18
I’m turning into the barmy old coot I never wanted to be. I’m completely changing my lifestyle for a blur in a picture that vaguely resembles my wife. There’s a small voice in the back of my head saying it’s all just a trick of the light or a funky blur, and the entire rational side of my brain is screaming at me for being so deluded. But at the same time, the camera doesn’t lie. Does it? All it does is show what’s there. So maybe there is something to this whole thing. I’ve certainly acted like there was this past few days. I’m back to my old ways of courting.
I’ve saved everything Alice used to like. I set her place at the kitchen table when I sit down to eat, laid out in her best china and crystal wine glasses. We used to love sharing a bottle of wine together. Tonight I’m treating her to a candlelight dinner, just like the one we had in Paris the night of our twentieth anniversary. The light glinted and seemed to dance, playing against the darkness of her eyes. I feel so much more life within me having seen Alice in those pictures. I need to take more.
January 20
I saw her today. Not in the pictures this time, I’ve seen her there dozens of times. I saw her in real life, before my eyes. Well, out of the corner of them maybe. I was in the den reading my evening paper and suddenly a glint of light sprang into the corner of my eye. I cocked my head almost instinctually, expecting perhaps light bouncing off the hood of a passing car, but I saw her. The yellow haze of light and dust was moving slowly, like a passing car’s reflection crawls across your ceiling. She seemed to be moving without any real speed, but if you’re no longer among the living I suppose you don’t really need to set an agenda. The light had an almost human form but still drifted like a patch of smoke, dreamily, toward her old sewing room. I feel so stupid, not remembering the hours she’s spend in that room making shirts and quilts and goodness knows what else. It’s only natural she want to stay where she’s comfortable.
She looks so much different when she’s right in front of you, rather than looking at you from a picture. Her features were softer, not so horribly contrasted by whatever barbarous acts the photo developers use. Her face was blurred, so much so that it almost seemed fake. Like a piece of rubber pulled over her skull. Maybe all the crazy stuff she’s going through means it’s just going to take some time to fully rearrange herself. Even without the eyes, nose and lips I’d stared at for so many decades, without the cheekbones that held her smile so beautifully, the forehead that always relaxed into a smooth dome when she laughed, I think she’s happy. She’s seen how I’ve kept everything just as she left it, and you need that. It’s like returning home from a long trip in a distant land, finding everything exactly as you left it and sliding into that sense of comfort in knowing you’re home at last.
January 21
Alice hasn’t come out at all today. I haven’t seen her around the rest of the house, anyway, so I’m pretty sure she’s still there. A soft golden glow keeps pouring out from under the door, moving around like a firefly who can’t find its off button. Maybe she’s just settling in again. Hopefully I’ll see her tomorrow.
January 22
Still nothing from Alice. I stood in the hallway outside her sewing room for about half an hour today, knocking on the door and waiting for a response. All I felt was a cold silence. The light under the door’s dimmed a little. I hope I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t want her to be angry with me. I told her I wanted her to feel comfortable, and I’d do whatever it took to make her feel that way. Maybe she’ll come out tomorrow.
January 23
She’s started crying. I didn’t hear it at first, except as a low sort of whimpering. It sounded like air rattling through the heating vents; this old house makes more noise in the winter than I do. Anyway, it started out really weakly, a couple of sniffles and some whimpers. Now it’s gotten a bit louder, and I’m concerned. It’s the crying you hear when someone learns of the death of someone they knew well, but weren’t particularly close to. The death of some kind of ideal image of that person. Maybe I’ve done something wrong.
Later
The crying’s gotten louder. It’s become full-fledged weeping now, flowing out from under her sewing room door like tar, heavy and solemn. I can’t seem to get her to stop, no matter what I say. It’s almost as though she can’t even hear me.
January 24
She hasn’t stopped. It’s two in the morning and her weeping has turned into wailing. Heart-rending shrieks of pain are coming from the other side of the door, and I can’t get her to stop. She never cried like this when she was alive; it’s a kind of screaming I haven’t heard since Korea. It’s the frantic, terrified scream of the men who limped back into the trenches with their stomachs torn open, holding their guts in their arms, eyes darting everywhere in hope of some kind of relief but secretly knowing all they could do was wait to die.
I just wish I knew what was wrong. I don’t know what else to do. I need to confront her and see what happened.
Later
My heart won’t stop pounding. God in Heaven, what’s happened to my wife?
I put down this journal and tried steadying myself, though her constant screams had quite deeply unnerved me. I slowly walked down the stairs, and as I did I felt an odd pulling sensation, as though part of me was trying to stay away from the source of the noise. I’d felt as though I tapped into the unrivalled fear of our ancestors who lived in the trees, huddling together as they heard dark shadows rustling in the foliage below. I reached the bottom of the stairs and started slowly moving down the hallway to her sewing room. I could see a weak reddish light coming from below the door, though I knew it to be the sun rising on the horizon. There was no other light.
I need to stop for a minute. My hands won’t stop shaking.
Later
The sun’s been up for a couple hours, and I think that’s helped to calm me a bit. I can still hear her; she hasn’t stopped screaming. She’s wandering around the house now, shrieking like a banshee, but her screams have lost their sorrowful tones. They’re now completely filled with horror.
To continue my story, I approached Alice’s door, my breath escaping my chest only in the slightest of constricted gasps. I could feel beads of sweat slowly forming on my brow, cool in the early morning air. I prepared to knock on the door, thinking as I did that there was no way she could have heard me over her own frenzied screeching, but the second my knuckles rapped the dense wood the door flung open, and I saw Alice.
Her body was no longer a shaft of light and dust. She was an honest-to-God human, though I don’t believe God would have claimed her. Her skin had gone a mottled gray and green, large patches falling off her face and arms, exposing black muscle and pearly bone covered in writhing maggots. Her hair was a scraggly black mess, sparsely covering her skull in the places where her skin still clung stubbornly. Her forehead was white bone, a huge flap of skin dangling over her cheek. Her nose had been eaten away, leaving a gaping hole in the center of her face. Most of all I remember her mouth. Her lips had gone a purple-green, shriveled to the point where her remaining yellow and black teeth leered at me in a grim rictus. Her tongue was hugely swollen, writhing behind her teeth like a purple slug, half eaten by whatever godless creature had done this.
She stopped screaming when she saw me. There was no love left in the empty sockets of her eyes, but her eyebrows wrinkled in an expression of absolute helplessness. She stumbled toward me on rotting legs, her fungus-eaten bones on the verge of collapse. Her wildly-flailing arms reached for me, shaking off dirt and maggots as she moved. I tried to back away, but her rotted stump of a hand, finger bones and ligaments wasted away, managed to grab my shoulder. Her rotten sockets stared into my eyes, her sour breath like compost against my face. She took a few shuddering breaths and with monumental effort succeeded in hissing a single word:
“Empty.”
Then her head fell back, as if she were struck with some divine inspiration. For the briefest of moments it rolled aimlessly over her shoulders, across her chest, and along her back as though she were trying to remove a kink in her neck. Her arm fell lamely to her side as she stumbled backward slightly. I began to back away from what had once been the woman I loved, the woman I swore to be with until the end of time, tears falling from my unblinking eyes. She seemed to sense my departure, and lunged toward me with a shriek that froze my heart. I turned around and ran, tears streaming from my face and in that last moment before I slammed the attic door behind me I could hear our screams mingling in the stale air of the morning.
Later
Since I left Alice downstairs she hasn’t stopped screaming. I can hear her downstairs, tearing the house apart. I must have left the door open behind me when I ran out on her. She’s still shrieking, but now it’s almost sorrowful. I think she’s looking for me. I know I didn’t see any love in what used to be her eyes, but I can feel her sadness. After all, she must be scared. Who knows what thoughts have been running through her mind these past days as she’s had to watch her body slowly decompose, then see nothing at all. Imagine sitting in your favorite chair, feeling every sensation as your skin decomposes and insects gnaw away at your flesh, the only person you’ve ever loved in the living room mere feet away from you. Imagine the utter helplessness of feeling your own body decompose.
I have done wrong by her. My God, I’ve forsaken the only woman I ever loved, and she’s going to walk the earth searching for me until the end of time, if she has to. Every now and then I hear a shattering come from below me, and I know she’s searching for me now. I’ve seen her as she is, and she thinks I’ve left her. There’s no way I can imagine the fear she must be enduring, and yet here I am, hiding away from her as she tries so desperately to make sense of what’s happened to herself.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t leave her like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment