by Michael Kelly
Content warning: This story deals with death and loss during a pandemic, and may be unsuitable for some readers.
Could you love some other me?
She always had faith, Marianne. Not a fervent, fanatical faith. Just a belief that there was something else. Something more. A spiritual afterlife, perhaps. Less inclined to theological doctrines, and more science-based.
‘Like a ghost?’ I asked.
Marianne smiled. ‘Nothing like a ghost.’
And she held those beliefs until the very end.
In those final days, those final hours, I didn’t recognise her. She was already gone, more dead than alive. The day before, while she still could talk, she fumbled at the medical tape and pulled the intubation tube from her throat and rasped, ‘I’m going soon.’ Her eyes briefly lit with clarity. ‘I’ll see you again.’
It started with a cough. The pandemic spread fast. From Wuhan to New York to our little corner of the world. She wasn’t worried. ‘It won’t reach us,’ she’d said. ‘Besides, I have you. We have each other. One will always be there for the other. Always.’
Now, through the protective sheeting, I see Marianne’s hand fluttering at her side. This isn’t how I envisioned it. Not in any scenario. I am not there, beside her. I can’t be there for her. Powerless. Helpless. Her hand spasms. I imagine touching it until it settles, lifting it gently, holding it for the last time, feeling bones delicate as bird wings. Fly away little bird, I think. Fly away. I try a smile. She can’t see me anymore, so the smile is mostly for my benefit. I put a gloved hand up on the thick plastic sheeting. ‘I love you,’ I say, but it comes out in a strangled whisper. And she can’t hear me anymore, so the speaking of it is for me. ‘I love you,’ I say again, choking. Selfish.
A wheeze. One ragged breath. Then an exhalation, like a sighing wind. And even from here I can see that her breathing stops. Her mouth is a grim rictus around the tube. Her eyes close. In my mind I am beside her, and I lean in, touch her chest, feel her heart still beating, thump, thump… thump. Then… nothing.
She’s flown away.
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, waiting, but no tears come. Not yet. I’ve cried enough, it seems, in the past few weeks.
I turn and walk away; try to find a doctor, a nurse, anyone. Try to find anyone to tell.
If I went away and came back…?
Her faith meant she chose fire. She was keen to experience an afterlife. My selfishness meant I signed off on continuance, instead. I couldn’t let go. Not yet. Not after thirty-eight years. When the time comes, you think you’ll be ready, you think you’ll be open to grief. Sometimes you’re not.
It started with a cough. Then fever. Then difficulty breathing. Then death. Then… months later, the resurrections. All those bodies, still in quarantine in meat lockers because funerals were prohibited, all those bodies just… came back. Not dead, but not alive. Not contagious, but not the same. They came back shrieking and screaming. They rose naked from their cold metal gurneys and screamed. They just sat there, or walked in circles, arms at their sides, eyes fixed straight ahead, screeching. As if trying to exorcise some demon, some trauma. We’re told it is some sort of complex tic, is all. A by-product of the initial virus. So, they developed a chemical cocktail. A silencer. One simple injection to mute the ‘continuers’. The only side-effect that their mouths continue to move, to try to give voice to their internal shrieking.
Before the official pandemic, before the resurrections, before it all went to shit; carriers died and were buried. Most were left in the ground. Take a walk through any graveyard and you can hear them screaming, still.
Like a ghost, Marianne haunts me. She sits and fidgets, her body twitching. She stares fixedly, unblinking, her eyes seemingly unable to move, so that her head rotates to follow me whenever I leave the room. And when I do, when I’m out of her sight, she rises up to follow me around our cramped apartment, her mouth moving constantly in a soundless scream. She doesn’t want to be alone. I will be in the bathroom and I can hear her on the other side of the door, scratching at the wood, slow and deliberate until I come out and she stares at me, unblinking. A ghost.
Ghost. The word conjures images of wispy revenants haunting shadowy, cobwebbed houses. Not some silent, twitchy figure that stares and stares at you every waking moment.
But there are other ghosts, those that skulk in the dark corners of our head. A jangle of memories. A mosaic of ghosts. Ghosts are nothing but memories, and memories ghosts. And some memories linger, frozen in time…
…We’d rented a secluded little cabin up north, past Peterborough. Not quite dusk, and we were down on the dock enjoying some wine and the waning sunshine as it painted little licks of fire on the lake surface. Marianne grew pensive. She pulled her favourite cardigan tight around her. It was an ugly, rough-hewn, red and black thing. It reminded me of a dead bird.
‘Could you love some other me?’ she asked.
I placed my wine down, but said nothing. I was afraid she wanted to engage in one of her frequent discussions on spirituality or religion or the afterlife, and all I wanted to do, frankly, was to sit and drink and not think.
‘A different Marianne,’ she continued. ‘If I went away and came back.’
I may have sighed. ‘Changed you mean,’ I said.
‘Not just changed. Different.’
‘I love this Marianne,’ I said, smiling. ‘Besides, we all change. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Change and growth are good.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ll take that as a “yes”.’ Then she stood, gulped down her wine, said, ‘I’ll be back,’ stepped off the dock, and strode across the grass. I was looking into the setting sun, squinting, watching her move across the ground, but instead of heading to the cabin I swore she walked into the woods that bordered the edge of the cabin’s property.
I sat there slightly puzzled, and slightly buzzed from the wine. Surely she was just having me on, getting me back for years of practical jokes? I poured more wine and waited. When I finished that glass, Marianne had not returned, and dusk was a great grey cloak coming fast.
I stood, crossed the grass, and stepped into the woods. A slow wind ruffled branches. The woods were dark, but I could make out a path covered in pine needles, their scent (or the wine) making me dizzy. The path wound through the woods haphazardly. I walked along it calling out Marianne’s name, imploring her to come out, telling her it wasn’t funny. Then, I came to a large clearing. The light was fading. On the far side was a massive hedge that stretched the width of the clearing. At either end of the hedge was what appeared to be arched openings. A figure appeared at one end, and in the dim light I made out a splotch of red. Marianne!
‘Marianne!’ I called out. ‘Marianne!’ But she didn’t hear me. I stuttered into the clearing and headed for the hedge, calling out, beckoning. Marianne appeared to gaze around the clearing, then she stepped under the arched opening and disappeared. And a tiny frisson of fear trickled through me. I suddenly felt ill. Everything went quiet, but it was the type of silence that had that muffled menacing quality to it. Almost an audible silence. Time felt very elastic, and there was an odd tilt to the world, everything just so slightly off that you wouldn’t really notice it unless you were looking for it.
And then, from the other end of the hedge, she appeared. I stumbled towards her. I couldn’t seem to speak. I could feel the wine sloshing around in my belly. Marianne was looking straight ahead, but as I neared she slowly turned and faced me. There was a peculiar smile on her face. Slightly askew. It made me stop. In fact, there was just something ‘off’ about all of her. Her face had a slightly smudgy quality to it, as if I was peering through a sheet of glassine. And her bearing was different. She seemed to lean, oh so faintly.
She opened her mouth. ‘I was on the other side,’ she said, and her voice was a feckless drone. Then, still looking at me, Marianne stepped backwards into the arched opening, her face swallowed in darkness as if she were slowly sinking in dark water.
I bent and vomited wine all over the ground. I wiped my mouth and straightened, then stepped into the opening. There was nothing on the other side. Well, there was still the hedge and the woods beyond, but no Marianne. Again I called out to her. I raced to the other end of the hedge and plunged through the other opening, emerging again into the clearing. There was no sign of her. My mind was reeling. Dusk was gone. Night had fallen. I circled the hedge dozens of times in the dark, frantic, calling her name over and over.
I needed to call for help. I left the clearing, found the path in the woods and followed it, stumbling in the dark. I hurried along and ahead there was a faint light near the end of the path. As I drew closer, the light brightened. Then I was through, and back on the grass, and it wasn’t night but still dusk, and across the way I could see Marianne sitting on the dock bathed in the last rays of the day’s golden light.
I vomited again.
I woozily made my way over to Marianne, where, upon seeing the state I was in, she insisted she’d only gone up to the cabin to use the washroom, and assumed I’d gone to the woods to avail myself of their facilities. After all, I’d only been gone a few minutes, and no more wine for me, and isn’t it a beautiful night? You should clean yourself up and rejoin me. And if in the telling her face seemed slightly smeared, I’m certain it was my imagination.
I was on the other side.
Maybe Marianne was right. Maybe there really is something more. I should have adhered to her wishes. But then she’d just be an urn full of dust and ashes on my mantel.
Her cough, when it came, was harsh and constant. And that was the beginning of the painful end. Until I brought her back home with me.
Was it ever a good idea? Those first few weeks were tolerable. Marianne was by my side. I would hold her at night in our bed. She’d stare into my eyes, but didn’t hug me back. I missed her arms around me. During the day she’d watch me read. She’d watch me watching television, or doing dishes, or doing the crossword. She watched me. Her eyes rarely blinked. They were two dry, dark discs, like old pennies.
They don’t tell you about the regression.
She started to follow me everywhere. Kitchen, living room, bathroom. I had to lock her out of the bathroom. But she always waited for me on the other side of the door, scratching, then clawing, leaving her fingers worn and nubby. She didn’t want to be alone.
And her tics grew worse. She twitched and fidgeted all the time. Her mouth now opened and closed ceaselessly. Maybe in some remnant of her mind there was voice to her thoughts, and she couldn’t fathom why I did not adequately communicate a response. Maybe that’s why she began pulling out her hair, or why she began soiling herself.
I emptied our storage closet, and placed some old yoga mats and bedding inside. I put a childproof lock on the door. At night, I steer Marianne into the closet, and close and bar the door. I hear her in there, pawing at the door. I see the door rattle, and the doorknob jiggle. She doesn’t want to be alone. I do.
It’s near dusk. It’s not my favourite time of day, but I figure it is appropriate.
I open our front door, step out, and go to the back of the house where the dimming orange-pink orb of sun wavers in the late August heat haze. The scent of pine drifts on the air, sappy and astringent.
Marianne follows me out. She stands, twitching and staring.
I get her into the box easily enough, the harder part is nailing it shut while she bucks and thrashes. Just six pieces of unfinished half-inch pine. It won’t hold for long, but I don’t need it to.
Marianne pounds on the wood, a persistent knocking, thump, thump.
I quickly douse the box with the recommended diesel and gasoline mix, light my gas-soaked rag and throw it atop the box. It takes a few moments to catch, and the knocking grows more persistent, but then the whole box goes up in a great whoosh of flame and the knocking subsides, and if I think I hear screaming I’m certain it is just air escaping through the seams and joins on the box.
I go inside and wait. And my chest is aching and sore, and I tell myself it’s just from the constant, harsh cough I’ve developed.
I think about Marianne.
When it’s time, I will choose fire. I’ve already signed the paperwork.
And maybe I really will see Marianne again on the other side.
