*****
We left early the next morning and I let Danny drive. Okay, I asked him to drive because he was always in a hurry so I reasoned if the keys were in his pocket, the visit would be shorter. Plus, he had a BMW and I’d always wanted to ride in something that wasn’t upholstered in vinyl, didn’t have booster seats in the back and didn’t smell like old French fries.
It took us about two hours to get there. I’d called John to let him know we were coming and he met us at the door with a grinning face and color in his cheeks for a change. He hugged Danny in that frail way only a sick old man can. Danny looked up at me in the midst of that hug and his face told the story. Like me, he was no longer afraid of the hulking drunk that we used to live with. John sucked oxygen instead of smoke, and he walked with considerable effort.
We sat on the same uncomfortable couch and faced him in his recliner. This time he didn’t turn the television off, but just turned the volume down. I found it a welcome distraction in the background and could watch it without moving my eyes too far from his. He stared at us for a long time before his face relaxed and something passing for a smile spread across it.
“My boys. Only one thing missing from this picture, and that’s my girls. But they’re with me. Always with me.”
We nodded. At first, I thought he was talking about Vicky and my daughter Robin, but he wasn’t, and that was more surprising. He never mentioned mom.
“Your mother would’ve been proud as hell of the both of you. A lawyer in that fancy German car and the family man. A wife and two gorgeous kids. God, she would’ve loved those babies.”
He patted his leg and then adjusted the oxygen tube in his nose.
“Good to see you, dad,” Danny said.
John smiled. I hadn’t expected Danny to call him dad. I guess my feelings and my brother’s feelings were different. Maybe he didn’t remember some of the awful things John did. I know John had forgotten many of them if he was even aware he’d done and said some of them. There may have been years of his life that were holes in his mind. Or maybe John wasn’t so bad after Robin died and after Danny was older and I had already gone on to college. I didn’t pay much attention.
“Good to see you too, son. Both of you.”
We talked into the afternoon, until John began to tire. His cough became more frequent as the day went on, and after a while, the sips of water, the oxygen and even his inhaler didn’t calm him, so we said our goodbyes and wished him well.
“I’ll bring Vicky and the kids out soon. Maybe next weekend,” I said.
“I’d like that,” he wheezed.
Danny made no such promise, but simply said, “Good to see you, dad. Take care.”
John waved and shut the door as we walked to the car. Danny drove down the road as if nothing significant had happened that morning. I guess maybe it hadn’t. On the way home, he was quiet at first, but then he surprised me.
“You remember Sean—what he said before he died?”
“No.”
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
“About how we’d brought Robin over there, and it was our fault, and how he felt like he’d killed her?”
I did remember that.
“Yeah. Why bring that up?”
“I don’t know. Lately, I’ve worried a lot. I think that’s why I wanted to see dad. Might be the last time, you know. Each time we do something it might be the last. We’ve got to make things count.”
“I know that feeling,” I said. “I feel like that every time you go home, buddy. Especially right there after Matt died.”
We drove on for a while without talking. Then he started to laugh, a sickly thing that needed water and sunlight.
“We’re a couple of morbid fucks, aren’t we?” he asked.
I glanced over at him. He looked like he might cry, but then I start to laugh with him. It was the nervous laughter of a man about to crack, the kind that relieves pressure. Danny’s laughter strengthened and after a moment we were in tears of a different sort.
“Morbid couple o’ fucks all right.”
Rain pelted the windshield and he turned on the wipers and turned up the music. It was a game we played as kids, trying to see if the wipers kept time with the music. I was surprised he remembered. I guess I underestimated him. Maybe I underestimated a lot of people. A few car commercials later and a song came on that I didn’t recognize. It was a country station and although I hated the stuff, Danny was smitten with it. He sang along, and each time the wipers fell in line with the rhythm of the tune, we clapped and laughed like idiots.
By the time we got back to my house, the rain had turned into a thunderstorm and the winds had turned violent. I ran in and opened the garage so Danny could park inside. As the door opened and he pulled into the garage, I saw something in the car…in the very seat where I had just been sitting. A little girl. In the back seat, there were two others. I couldn’t see their features, but knew who they were, and as the wipers passed over the windshield once more, they were gone. Matt got out of the car and looked out of my garage into the storm.
“Looks like you aren’t going anywhere this evening,” I said.
He wasn’t leaving if I could help it. I was soaked from running up to the house and I hugged him to share the wetness. Vicky stood in the doorway to the kitchen with Robin on her hip.
“You are too polar opposite to be brothers. A drowned rat and a man in a BMW. Come on in. I’ll get you some towels,” she said. Then she patted Danny on the shoulder and said, “The guest room is still made up. You can’t drive in this.”
He glanced at her and then back out at the storm outside. Rain was coming at a harsh angle now, soaking well into the garage. The trees across the way whipped and their leaves flashed different shades of green.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Danny said.
We watched out the open garage door as lightning streaked in the distance and thunder clapped loud enough to shake the concrete slab under our feet. I pushed the button to close the door and we went inside.
“Donder and Blitzen,” I said.
“Huh?” Danny asked.
“Thunder and lightning,” Vicky said. “We say that to the kids instead of thunder and lightning. Christmas is less scary than thunderstorms.”
“Or they’ll be scared of Christmas,” Danny said.
We all chuckled on our way into the house.
“Think I’ll take a shower,” I said. “You need some clothes?”
Danny shrugged. “I guess. I only have what I’m wearing.”
“I’ll get you something to sleep in and wash your stuff for tomorrow. Unless it’s dry-clean only or something,” Vicky said. “This is why you need a wife. You’d have come prepared for an extra day if you were married.”
He raised one eyebrow at her and she mimicked the expression only hers was better, more practiced. Vicky disappeared with the baby and was back in a minute with some of my clothes.
“You’re on your own for underwear. That’s just too weird,” she said.
“I’ll manage,” he replied.
Danny left to change and I got in the shower. The hot water felt great compared to the icy-cold rain of the storm. Vicky peeked in at me and gave a wolf-whistle.
“Close that. You’re letting my steam out,” I said.
“Steamy,” she said with a chuckle before snapping the curtain closed.
“You guys do all right today?” she said.
“Fine. It went well, better than I’d first dreaded. I think it was good for Danny, anyway.”
“Good.”
“I told John I’d come back next weekend with you and the kids,” I said.
“Okay by me.”
I head the door to the bathroom creak open and then close again and she was gone. I rinsed the shampoo from my thinning hair and stood in the hot stream of water for a while, letting my muscles relax. They immediately tensed again as a clap of thunder shuddered the whole house…and then someone s
creamed. It was Vicky. I opened my eyes to find the power had gone out. It was pitch black in our master bathroom because it had no windows. I poked my hand out of the curtain and fumbled around for my towel, finding it on the hook just to the right where it always was.
Hurrying, I opened the door to our bedroom and though there was some light, it was still near impossible to see. Vicky was there, holding Robin.
“I woke her when I screamed. Can you find me a flashlight?”
I wrapped the towel around my waist. “Yeah, give me a sec.”
I dug through the night stand and pulled out a plastic flashlight and switched it on, thankful that it worked.
“Here,” I said. “Let me throw on some clothes and I’ll find a couple more.”
I pulled on a pair of boxer shorts, my bedroom slippers and quickly dried my hair with the towel. When I reached into the next drawer to find a t-shirt, thunder shook the house so violently it knocked me down. Vicky fell onto the bed.
Outside, the storm raged, and as it did, our old home creaked. I listened to the boards groan and imagined the shingles curling back like paper strips on a piñata, then the particle board sheets, then the ceiling above our head, exposing us to the rain. Ms. Gulch might have ridden by on her bicycle. In truth, the roof hadn’t left yet, but the wind was terrible out there.
“You okay?” I said.
“Yes. I need to get to Sean.”
I heard my son crying in the background. “ No, I’ll get him,” I said.
I got to my feet and took the flashlight from her, went into Sean’s room and scooped him up from his crib.
“It’s okay, buddy. Just Donder and Blitzen. Nothing to worry about.”
He screamed in my ear as the storm rattled the house again and I hugged him as I rushed back to the master bedroom and I set him down on the bed. Vicky pulled him into her lap with his sister and the three of them huddled there.
“Shit,” I said. “Danny…Wait right here, I’ll check on him and get another flashlight.”
I pointed the one I had at her and saw her nod. Sean was still upset, but had stopped screaming. Robin’s face was away from me, but I was glad she was with her mother. I left them in the bedroom and headed down the hall.
“Danny?” I shouted but got no answer.
I knocked on the door to the guest room and got no answer. Lightning flashed again, freezing everything momentarily in my eyes, and the boom was right behind it shaking the whole house. It vibrated my internal organs like a power chord at a rock concert.
“Danny?”
I pounded, and then opened the door when there was again no answer. Inside, Danny was sitting on the bed, clutching at a pillow and staring at the opposite wall. He wore one of my old t-shirts and a pair of shorts that I liked to mow the lawn in. His face was blank, like a statue making its only expression. There were tears in his eyes. I didn’t see what he was looking at, but kept my eyes on him. “What is it? What’s wrong—are you hurt?” I said.
He just stared and so I just stared until there came another flash of lightning and more thunder. Danny flinched but his eyes never moved. I finally turned to see what he was looking at and I understood. Against the wall, floating a foot or more above the floor was Nataliya. She didn’t speak, but watched him intently with those pale blue, no-pupil eyes. It was as if I wasn’t even there. A fly on the wall. I was frozen for a moment, terrified as I’m sure my brother was, but something bubbled up inside me and I stepped toward him, keeping my eye on the ghost.
“Danny, come on!” I shouted.
I moved to grab his wrist, to pull him off the bed and out of the room. I shook with fear. He wrenched his arm from my grip and glared at me. “No!” he screamed. “It’s finally over!”
“What?” I said, and reached for him again.
Again, he pulled away. There was another crack of thunder and lightning bloomed in the room, burning a huge hole through the roof with an explosion of sparks and splinters. The bed frame cracked in half and folded in on itself. It flamed, crackled and hissed as the rain hit its red-hot edges. Danny rolled off onto the floor. I reached for the door to open it. I wanted to take him with me. I wanted to get to my family. I wanted to wake up and shake off the nightmare, but its claws had dug in and it was all too real.
Another lightning bolt reached for the doorknob at the same time I did, knocking me backward and sending tributaries of blinding light to the old pipes in the walls, blowing the drywall out as it dragged its jagged fingers down their lengths. Electricity arced from within the outlets, exploded the cathode ray tube in a small television we kept on the dresser for guests. The alarm clock melted and the bulb in the lamp on the nightstand popped. Rain poured in torrents through the hole in the roof, drenching everything.
I backed into the corner and watched as Danny’s hair stood on end. The electricity continued to dance through the room, and the now rain-soaked carpeting grounded his bare feet. I guess my bedroom slippers were just enough insulation to keep me safe. The current ripped through his body, causing his muscles to contract and relax, causing his whole body to convulse as it lifted him up off the floor in the fiery light. He floated there, just like Nataliya. A marionette on electrical strings for the amusement of one vindictive ghost-child.
White and light it burns the night.
It held him there, in the air, and as I watched in shock, I saw the ghost of Nataliya still clinging to the wall. She hovered and grinned her toothy, exaggerated grin. Her eyes were wide, dark pits, no longer the solid blue pools, and her visage came and went with the shadows as the bolt pulsed. It crackled and sputtered like an old Jacob’s Ladder in a mad scientist’s lab. Danny wasn’t dead yet, but trapped inside that current like a moth caught in a bug zapper. Every hair on his body stood on end and I smelled the sick stench as they burned—as he burned. His skin boiled and blistered and turned an awful color that even in the darkened room didn’t look natural. The rain bounced off of him and steam rose from his body. I heard each drop sizzle as if it had been dropped into a pan full of hot oil.
I moaned something, trying to call out for my brother, trying to do anything, but I was paralyzed by the scene. Suddenly, it was too bright and I couldn’t see Danny anymore. I couldn’t see Nataliya anymore. Maybe I heard that fucking ghost laughing, but as the thunder rolled again, loud and devastating, I thought white and light it burns the night. It was all I could think. Then I heard laughter again, the tinkling sounds of a little girl being tickled.
I saw Danny for the briefest of moments when that flash died down. My vision was impeded by a bright blue-green afterimage, but he was looking at me, not her. I no longer saw her—Nataliya—but I heard her laughter.
“It’s…finally over…” Danny choked out.
There was one final pulse that must have burst his heart. I watched as he coughed out a mouthful of blood, and I saw his burnt purple-black flesh before he crumpled into a pile amidst the rubble of the broken bed. Sean and Matt were there, as well as my sister Robin. They stood in the corner and watched him expire. Lightning flashed once more and they were gone. Then, the storm stopped and my house was filled with dead silence.