I am reminded of the day my father died. It was a cold, wet mid-morning, and we had all been gnawing our fingertips, awaiting a call from the doctor. My father was waiting to hear the disposition of a certain mass, for a timeline to be established, a terrible evangelizing of prognosis. Like all worried families, we assumed the worst but said nothing. He knew, though. He could see it in our eyes and hear it in our voices, and he knew better than to try curbing our worry. We were awaiting the worst, but the worst was yet to come: my father would say he was going out to get some things, gas for the mower, a newspaper, maybe a six-pack, and my mother would ask him, “What if the doctor calls?” and my father would reply, “then I’ll call him back,” and then with a smile he would kiss my mother goodbye, walk out the door, and then pull out the driveway, and was gone. The phone would ring, yes, but it would not be the doctor calling about my father’s mass; but rather, it was the pronouncement of his death, which I knew to be an absolute fact as my mother put her hand to her mouth and howled as she fell to her knees in the kitchen. He had been struck by another driver and when his truck went into the median it flipped and rolled, practically shredding it as it was compacted across the grass. It turned out my father’s prognosis had been terrible, perhaps even from the day of his birth, at least from whichever day it had been decided that he would die on this date, in this way.
I remember sitting at the table, watching my mother pick up the ringing phone, and watching her collapse to the floor as she made the awful death noise. I felt every part of me rush over to her, reach out to her, but in reality, I sat numb and unable to move or think, or make a sound. The shock had given me phantom limbs that did all but touch—they were, by design, incapable of accomplishing anything at all. I sat there, stricken dumb, staring out the windows of my skull. The tank had run empty. My license had been revoked. God had pressed a red button.
My mother, on the other hand, grew older and died much slower. “Don’t think about it,” she said. “I’m going to be around for a long, long time.” And that she was: fifteen years after my father had died. She spent close to four of those years withering away, though. She lost her hair and her skin became pale, thin, her body mass shrunk, she became weak. “Don’t think about it,” she said, and all I could do was lie to her. She knew I was lying, she had to. It was impossible not to notice it, not to think about it—the way she looked, smelled, sounded—she was like some icon of death. I began to feel guilty for being alive, for being young—at least younger than she was—for not wasting away in place of her. I began to think of the last word I had said to my father, when he was going out to his truck to take that last trip. He asked if I wanted anything while he was out. I just said “no,” and I began to think I would probably have the same last word with my mother. “Am I dying?” she might ask, and I would be forced to say “no.” And then she would die. It seemed oddly poetic.
People say we contain multitudes, but I don’t believe any of that. As I watched my mother’s casket lower down into the hole they had dug next to my father I knew that we, all of us, were—are—singular beings. Nothing had come up in place of my mother or father, they died and were gone. They were them, and then they weren’t. There was no multitude: just as I am me and nothing else, so it was for my mother and father whose existence I may call perfect, but it still ended. And perfection is meaningless. There was a small reception after my mother’s funeral service and I heard the same thing I had heard at the small reception we had after my father’s funeral: “it was a lovely service.” An old woman said it over her forkful of potato salad, and though I don’t know whether or not it was the same woman in both instances, I know that each time the words were spoken just before a bite of potato salad. It’s always potato salad.
I grabbed my coat and left. I went to a bar.
I slumped over the bar, resting my head on my hand, and when the bartender came by and asked if I wanted another, I nodded, saying nothing. “You look a little rough,” she said as she set the glass down. I picked up the drink and threw it back, nodding to her again as I set it down. “Jeez.”
“What’s wrong, buddy?” the man two seats down from me asked. “You’re drinking with a vengeance.” People have ways of making business their own, no matter how far removed they are from it. This man could have been on another planet for all I cared.
“Just dropped in for a drink or three,” I told him.
“You look like you’re dressed for a funeral.”
“Just came from one. My mother’s.”
The man’s eyes went wide and his mouth hung open. The bartender paused what she was doing. “I’m sorry,” the guy, my drinking buddy, managed to say.
I had a sour taste in my mouth all of a sudden. I figured it was due to actualizing my mother’s death by putting her funeral into words. I finished my drink, stood, tossed some bills on the bar, and left.
I had gone to the park because I could think of nothing else to do. The sun was warm, the breeze cool, and a small family fed ducks at the pond. I walked along the pond and then took a small path that branched out into the trees. It was a thin, rough walking path, hardly pedicured like the rest of the park, but it was still quite clearly a human-made gadget. You could not become lost so long as you followed the path in either direction. It gave the illusion of nature, whereas it was really a place where nature had been tamed, and tampered with, if one could really call the surrounding woods “nature” at all.
I walked.
I went up the hill and out the far side of the little forest expedition and I came upon the pavilions and benches that were set up for picnics and cookouts and whathaveyou. The smell of charcoal and grilled meat was on the smoke that filled the air. I walked.
I was up the trail and almost past the last table in front of the last pavilion when I was stopped by a woman’s voice—a familiar voice. “Hey, Rob, is that you?” I stopped and saw that the face matched what I imagined the voice to look like. I wanted to keep on walking, but it was too late: I had stopped, it was me, I was Rob. “How are you doing?”
An awful, stupid question, but one that gets asked of those in or after certain situations. I don’t think we as a species can help it. Perhaps words and sounds, no matter how meaningless or absurd or disconnected, are by definition much better than silence. Non sequiturs are better than silence. Pig Latin is better than silence. I think I am guilty myself of having said these meaningless insensitive words, or some variation at least. I had grown somewhat, I must admit, for I did not clench my teeth as I did when I was first asked, “how are you?” after my father’s passing.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “How are you?”
“I don’t know if you saw me the other day, but I was there. I wanted to say something, but, I don’t know, it didn’t feel right.”
“Look,” I said, “I’m fine. Really. I’ve been through this before, more or less. No need to worry.”
“My husband, Eric, is grilling. You could join us if you want.”
I shook my head and smiled. “No thanks.”
“It’s no trouble—” she began but was cut off by a small child running and squealing to her. “Mommy!” She took the child up in her arms. “Do you want to say hi to mommy’s friend, Rob?” the child’s face disappeared into her armpit. The child would not say hi to mommy’s friend, Rob.
“I should let you get back to it,” I said as I looked over and saw the husband, Eric, has noticed me and waved. “It was good seeing you, Lisa.”
“Really? It’s no trouble…”
“Really,” I said. “Have a good one.” I waved to Eric as I walked away. Lisa told the child to say goodbye but the child did not say goodbye. I began to think how strange it might have been to see that child with a face composited with my features instead of Eric’s. It was a scary thought. I had denied my parents that goodness, and that was a terrible thought. I don’t think I can articulate this quite right, and maybe we’re not meant to articulate it. It’s still better than silence though, maybe, this tussle of half-thoughts, brain juice, oozing ideas.
I wondered who the next person was I would bump into or be stopped by. “How are you doing?” I’m sure they would ask. Fine. Just fine. I’ve done it all before, more or less. Let’s see if I can use my mother’s funeral to get out of a speeding ticket or armed robbery. No? I didn’t think so.
I woke up in the middle of the night feeling clammy, feeling watched. I looked around the room and my eyes settled on a dark corner just outside the small trace of moonlight that came in through the blinds. It took a moment for me to see it, and I wish I hadn’t seen it, but there was my father’s face on the wall, his mouth hanging open, a black void. His sockets were mostly black, too, but I could make out the whites of his eyes, and though he faced me, it seemed that he was not looking at me. I had trouble breathing. I did not want to make a sound. I did not want to look at him and I did not want to look away, close my eyes, or even blink. I was afraid of moving. I was afraid of him noticing me, of him being there. I was afraid of him leaving.
I don’t know how long I laid there like that but I eventually woke in the morning, having fallen asleep at some point. I looked at the corner of the room, at that spot on the wall, and sure enough, my father’s face was not there. He was gone. He could not exist in the daylight.
The next night I had trouble even going near the bedroom. I wanted nothing to do with it once the sun went down. I knew it was ridiculous, but I could not help it. I was much more than terrified of going into my room. I left the lights on and sat on the couch. I watched TV. I drank. Again, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling clammy, feeling dread, and I noticed a lightbulb had blown in the other room. The doorway was dark. I knew if I looked long enough, I would see the face of my father again or the face of my mother, so I made sure not to look. I turned over on the couch, put a pillow over my head, and laid there.
“You look like hell,” Frank told me. “You been sleeping?”
I shook my head. “Not much.”
“It’s hard, man. It’s fuckin hard…”
Yes it is, but we were not on the same page exactly. Losing my father was hard, and losing my mother was hard. The type of hard you cannot grasp until it hits you. But I could not tell Frank why I had not been sleeping—it was crazy, and I knew it. Seeing my dead father’s face at night. Hearing my dead mother scurry around the rooms, careful not to let me catch a glimpse of her. Frank would think I was mad, or simply not believe me, and regardless of any of that I don’t think it would have addressed the problem.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Oh yeah.”
I had become an oddity as of late—something incredibly interesting. People wanted to check on me, and when they checked on me they wanted to talk about my dead parents, about how I was coping with having been orphaned. It was becoming my identity, and I had no clue how long I would be able to stand it.
“I’ve got an interview on Tuesday,” Frank told me. “Fingers crossed.”
“Good luck.”
“I’m gonna need it.”
We shot the shit for a while longer and decided to call it a night on the early side. Frank’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but he had wanted to check up on me and I had disappointed him by not wanting to play ball.
I could not blame Frank, though—for succumbing to human nature or for not believing me should I divulge the truth of the matter. It’s an understandable response, the small talk, the “how are you?” and I was not sure how much of “the truth of the matter” I believed myself anyway. Whatever the problem was—really was—my lack of sleep would only exacerbate it. I could not help but think about it, no matter how much I wanted to push it away and forget about it. I was trapped. And, to make matters worse, when I thought about seeing my father’s face on the wall, even in broad daylight, I felt a shadow fall over me, and it began to feel as though things around me were being watched—not me but rather the world and people nearby—and when I thought about my mother’s sounds, the breathing and whispering and scurrying and scratching, I began to hear—or thought I heard—it all around me.
How do you explain this to a reasonable person?
I got in my car and sat behind the wheel for a few minutes without even putting the key in the ignition. I looked ahead and saw a man walking with his son, holding hands, the boy was maybe six years old, and when the boy turned my way and looked at me, or only toward me, for a moment, I saw my own face on the head of his neck, and it froze me. I was not safe. The father and son kept walking and crossed the street. I started the car and pulled away.
“Hey, Rob, it’s William. Give me a call when you get this.”
William. My supervisor. Not my boss, mind you. Only my supervisor. He was calling to see when I would be coming back to work. I had put him in a rock, in a hard place, in a pickle. I used my bereavement time and then I started using my PTO. Nobody wanted to be the one who brought down the hammer on a guy who had just lost his mother. At least, I don’t think so. At least, I don’t think William did.
I should call him, I thought. I did not call him.
No.
I started to hear more sounds, more frequently. During the day as well as at night. The air sounded like worms talking. I was attuned to finding faces as well. I picked apart the walls, shapes, shadows, textures, all of it. The human brain works that way, but this particular pattern recognition was in overdrive. My father’s face would be there while it was out of focus or on the periphery, or only glanced at. I could feel it in my bones. My veins shivered. I fought hard not to look but I inevitably looked and the thing that was once a face was no longer a face, yet I hardly felt relief.
The face was gone. It was no longer a face. It was never a face. It was William. It was not William. I should give William a call.
I smoked a cigarette on the bridge and looked down at the green water far below me. It moved slowly, ripples showing on the otherwise smooth surface. Cars whooshed behind me, crossing the bridge and heading toward the State Line. No one noticed me, at least I don’t think anyone did. I was just a boring aspect of the scenery. The sun was yellow and seemed to look directly into the river.
I tossed my cigarette down into the water, put my hands in my pockets, and started walking. At the other end of the bridge was a small diner smack on the side of the road. I went inside. I sat down. I ordered a coffee.
“Anything else, Hun?” the waitress asked.
I shook my head. “No,” I said, but the word tasted like wax. The last word I had said to my father. It was more like the rotted meat of some sacred and terrible beast than a word. “Not right now,” I corrected. She smiled and came back a moment later with a cream-colored mug and the coffee pot. It was too late, though, I had already tasted the word. I could not even taste the coffee now. No is all there was, all there ever would be; no longer was there such a thing as blueberries, or vanilla, or sea salt.
What had I said to my mother? The thought stopped me dead in my tracks. I could not remember the last thing I said to my mother. Was it good? Bad? Had I said that I loved her? I remembered the thought that I had of No being my last word to her as well. The poetic thought, I remembered. “Am I dying?” she would ask. “No,” I would say, I would lie. But that did not happen. Did I just sit at her side, staring at her or around her? Did I just sit there with my mouth gaping open like my father’s? No. No. No. No. No… “No,” was better than silence. It had to be.
The phone rang. I let it go. It rang again, again, again. Whoever was on the other end was being very persistent. I answered. It was not William.
“I can help you,” the voice told me. “I can fix this.”
“Fix what?” I asked.
“Look at the TV.”
I looked at the black TV and in the room’s reflection, on the wall above my own reflection, was my father’s face. I gasped.
“See it?”
“Yea.”
“I can fix it.”
“How?”
But there was no “how.” The line went dead and I sat there with my phone to my ear. I did not want to look behind me; the reflection was bad enough. I wanted to run out of the room, out of the house, but I was scared of moving. I managed to look away from the TV screen for a moment and upon looking back I noticed that my father’s face was no longer there. He was gone. I had no idea where he went but I was glad.
There was a knock at the door. I got up to answer it. The man was dressed all in white: shirt, vest, tie, pants, shoes, socks, belt. His pure white clothes shined in the sun. “May I come in?” he asked.
“Who are you?”
“I’m here to help.”
I stood there ready to close the door.
“I can fix it,” he said.
Ah. Him. Him. I let him come inside. I wondered how I could not immediately recognize his voice. He was going to save me, help me, all that. He sat down on the couch, made himself at home and asked for a cup of coffee. “Splash of cream, scoop of sugar,” he told me. “Please.”
I grabbed a beer from the fridge while I got his coffee. I brought it out and handed him the cup as I sat down. “Thank you,” he said. He blew on the hot liquid and took a sip. “Nothing like a hot cup of coffee to get everything in gear. Isn’t that right? Give me a pot of coffee, a good book, and a patio in the early morning any day, now. You read much, Rob? You should. It flexes your brain, makes you wise. I’ve read so much—studied and memorized, too—I don’t know if I’m capable of an original thought nowadays. I’ll have to ask myself, ‘who told you to say that?’ before I open my mouth.”
The man continued to talk and drink his coffee. I wondered if he would do anything else.
“What are you doing here?” I finally asked.
“Oh?” he said. “Oh! That’s right!” he bolted forward and set his cup on the coffee table. “I’m so sorry! I got carried away…that happens sometimes…I just go on and on, I forget myself; I forget where I am and what I’m doing. You see, I heard you’re in quite the rough spot, and I think I’ve got just the—”
“Did William send you? Is this his way of getting me back to work?”
“William?” the man scratched his head. “I don’t think I know this William. I honestly just came of my own volition.”
“Well how did you find out about me?”
“Oh, through the grapevine,” he waved the question away. “Let’s just say that who I am is not important, and how I came about you is not important either. What I can do for you, on the other hand, that may be the most important thing of all!”
I wanted to press the matter, but I also wanted to see what he had to say. If he could really do something—fix it or me—then he was right: who cared who he was, or who sent him, how he found out, or where he came from? It also felt nice to know that someone understood, or at least had an idea of, what was going on. I did not have to hide it or bite my tongue. We were part of the same world. And this man—whoever he was—could drone on all day for all I cared, because his rambling, the light slurp as he sipped his coffee, even his tapping foot, was better than silence. Silence announced that something was nearby.
“The first thing I need you to do,” he went on, “is tell me why I’m here.”
“What?”
“Why am I here? What am I doing? Go on, say it! I need to hear it from you. Fess up!”
“You said you could help me,” I told him. “You said you could fix it.”
“But what am I fixing? What is it?”
I sat for a moment trying to piece together what answer he wanted. He just looked at me. I opened my mouth to say something but stopped. I sat there. I closed my mouth.
“You’ve got to say it, Rob.” He told me after some long moment passed. “You have to learn how to say it. You have to get it out of you. It’s not good to have nowhere to go.”
“My mother passed away recently,” I said. He cocked his eyebrow at this. “I guess I haven’t been handling it all that well.”
“I wouldn’t be here if that were it.”
“My father passed away a long time ago, and I guess I’ve never moved on.”
“Not it.”
He stared into my eyes and I tried not to look too deeply into his, for fear of seeing my father’s face in those black orbs. But that was it, and he did not just want me to state the obvious, he wanted me to be honest. I felt a weight lift off of me.
“I can’t sleep,” I told him. “I don’t know if it’s my parents haunting me, or something else, but I’ve been seeing my father’s ghostly face at night, and I’ve been hearing my mother, too. She’s careful not to let me see her, but I’m sure it’s her. I don’t know what they want, or what I should do. Once everything gets real quiet, I know they’re here or soon will be. I can’t take it. I can’t stand it. I don’t know why this is happening…”
“There, there…” he put his hand on my shoulder. I noticed my eyes were wet—I had started crying. “I can take care of things,” he said, “I can fix it.”
How? How could he fix it? What on earth was even going on? Death was just another part of things, but it was supposed to be the end of the story or chapter. My father’s eerie death mask and my mother’s disembodied noises seemed commonplace compared to the absurdity of what this stranger offered. That was absurd. He was absurd. I wanted to crawl into a hole, or move to the North Pole, or set up shop on the moon—whatever it took, I was willing.
“Here,” he said as he stood and motioned for me to lie down on the couch. I laid down. “Close your eyes,” he said, and I closed my eyes, though it was the last thing I wanted to do. “I want you to breathe slowly. Take deep breaths.” I breathed slow, deep breaths. This went on for several moments. “Now tell me what you see.”
What I see? What did I see? I saw nothing. My eyes were closed. I was looking at my own head. “I don’t think I understand,” I told him.
“Why?”
“My eyes are closed. I can’t see with my eyes closed.”
“Well, then just pretend.”
Still nothing. I started to wonder if this were just some joke. I shook my head and opened my eyes. I looked at the man. “It’s not working.”
“It will.”
I closed my eyes with a sigh. “What am I looking for, exactly?”
“That depends on you,” he said, “where do you want to be?”
The air grew warm and began to smell of salt and fish. I began to hear the plopping sound of water running into objects. I was in the sun—it was a hot day—and I stood at the stony bank of a river. I looked out at the green water and knew it would only be a moment before my father opened the cooler, took out a beer, and sat down on the rocks, which he did.
“Not biting much today, are they?” my father said. “Used to take them home by the bucketful. Back when I was a kid. You’d eat nothing but fish after a catch like that.”
“What happened?”
“I know some people will say it’s the climate changing, and it just might be. I’m no scientist, so what do I know? A lot’s changed over the years, though. More people, more industrialization—hell, any factory upriver could probably spoil it all. Or maybe the fish learned,” he laughed, “they figured us out and want to starve us. Can you imagine that?”
“Mom would say to cast the net to the other side.”
“Too bad I didn’t bring the net.”
I began to think I was here—or back here—for a reason, but I could not place it. My father sipped his beer, set it down and began to bait a hook. I looked back out over the water—it was almost brown now. “Where’s mom?” I asked, realizing she was not nearby. My father just hummed. I turned around and looked back up the way; everything was quiet, a light breeze blew but it did not make any noise. I looked back to my father. He sat still, watching the water, his fishing pole in his hands.
“I bet mom’s at church,” I said, not knowing why. “She’ll be coming this way shortly.”
My father hummed.
“She’ll bring lunch, too: sandwiches, chips, potato salad. You’ll make a joke about us eating like kings.”
My father hummed some more.
“And then—” I began to say but was cut off by the sound of my mother’s voice.
“There’s my boys!” she called out. She had some plastic shopping bag in her hands. “Who’s hungry?”
“Absolutely starved!” my father bounced to his feet.
We sat down and scooped potato salad onto paper plates, had a helping of chips. I had a turkey sandwich and my father had ham, my mother had turkey, too. We ate for a moment in silence and then my father leaned back. “A meal fit for kings!” he said as he smiled at Mother, neither of them realized that I mouthed the words along with him. I looked back out toward the river—the water was turning red now.
The fish were not biting. The sky was sinking. The water was red and would soon turn black. Night would come and we would not move—we would sit on the rocks and eat our sandwiches. There was the low grumble of some distant boat motor but there was no boat.
“Ah! Almost!” my father laughed. He was skipping stones now. “Watch this, Honey!”
My mother giggled at his side as he threw another rock. I don’t know how many times it skipped—it could have gone on forever. My father seemed happy with it.
This would go on, caught in a loop for all eternity. The clouds would roll in, thunder would snap and lightning strike, and then it would all clear away, drops of rain would turn to crystal in the sun. The moon would rise and fall. The sun would rise and fall. The water was black now, black like dirty oil. Something was not right. My mother and father continued to talk, but their voices were gone—no sounds came from anywhere. I tapped them on the shoulder but they did not respond. I circled around to face them but they turned away from me. Something was not right. Something was terribly wrong. Their bodies began to steam and evaporate.
I opened my eyes and sat up. “Stop it! Stop it now!” I cried.
“Now, now,” the man in white said. “I’m not finished yet. Just try to relax—it’ll be over in a jiff.”
“No. I said stop.”
The man in white regarded me. His eyes were now little black pearls and his teeth were sharpened points. “I suggest you listen to me,” he said, “I’m here for a reason, after all.”
I had the feeling that his reason had nothing to do with me. He had stuck his fingers in my head, rubbed a wet cloth all around the walls of my brain. I wondered if it would really be so bad…of course it wouldn’t.. Once the last trace of smoke went up there would be nothing to recover, it would all be perfectly excised—this man, whoever he was, took pride in his work. I would be left alone on that quiet shore, locked forever there, locked in silence.
“Get out,” I said again.
“Fine, fine,” he groaned. “Have it your way. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He stood and stomped over to the door. “You know,” he paused and turned to me wit his finger in the air, “no, never mind. Piss off.” and he left.
The air in the room was thick. I had to swallow in order to breathe. It tasted stale.
I was not curious about my visitor. I could not really tell if he had been real or if I had just imagined the events—maybe I had fallen asleep and dreamed it all, him, up. I had made the right choice, though, whatever that choice was. The air remained still and awful for a bit longer, but soon enough, I heard the telltale sound of my mother on the other side of the wall. My skin no longer crawled. It was better than silence. It sounded as if she were drumming her fingers on the wall, tapping her nails on the shell of paint. It was just noise, but after listening to it a moment, the noise became organized into the tune of a lullaby she had sung to me when I was young. My cheeks became wet and I smiled. I laid back on the couch.
My father’s face was the entire ceiling now. His sockets and eyes and mouth still looked the same, only much larger. I listened to my mother tap her lullaby on the wall, and it was better than silence. I looked into my father’s face and eyes on the ceiling, and it was better than darkness. He watched the room, watched me, watched over me. I put my hands behind my head and closed my eyes.
I drifted off to sleep.
My mother began to hum.//
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allen Seward is a writer from the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. His work has appeared in Scapegoat Review, miniMAG, Jersey Devil Press, and Moth Eaten Mag, among others. He currently resides in WV with his partner and four cats. @AllenSeward1 on Twitter, @allenseward0 on Instagram
About the Author
