Ghost Stories - Lorna Bradbury [7]
The chaplain’s here for my deathbed conversion to our Saviour Jesus Christ. how many men have caught a glimmer of death further on up the road and done just that?
Have you thought about what we discussed last time, he asks. You must seek God’s forgiveness if you want to go to a better place.
I scoff at the very idea. But you live in a world of superstitions, Father, and you cling so desperately to them because to do otherwise would be to concede that your life’s been an entirely fruitless enterprise. Get hit by a truck and lie bleeding and helpless by the side of the road, see how far your belief in God gets you. ask your God to patch you up and make you well again. it’s my name you should be reciting on bended knee, Father, begging for forgiveness, these hands that have had the power to save lives – can the same be said of your Phantom?
He absorbs this, as one absorbs body blows, then says very quietly: you had that power as a doctor, yet you chose to end lives, not save them. he sits forward. First you must admit what you’ve done, and ask for forgiveness.
I sigh. You think your God will smile when he sees me on the other side after what i’ve done?
Pain is the great leveller. Sometimes I clench my jaw so ferociously with the pain that my teeth loosen in their gums. already I am addicted to the itch and shudder of the morphine, though it brings with its relief the strangest pins and needles, like i’m crawling out of my skin. Did anyone in the early part of my life ever inspire such utter devotion? The default image of my wife that most readily springs to mind finds her in a state of distress, crying softly to herself, crouched half on the bed, half on the floor. I am also in the room, but somewhere unseen, stoical, remote. She never recovered from this moment, I tell myself, for the first time in years.
Why is she crying, asks the boy.
You know why, I tell him.
What do I feel for them now, my blood? Remember what it was like to feel something? is this regret for what i’ve done toiling away in the pit of my stomach? My wife always thought me cold, though she never said as much. Unattached to my emotions. is this fear proof that she was wrong?
I cannot deny the respite that comes with giving vent to these morsels of my personal history. I feel I can tell you anything, I say one day. he stares back as impassively as ever, deadly serious, never breaking into so much as a smirk, but he is good company none the less.
I swear to you I had the best of intentions at first. all I wanted was to end people’s suffering. People i’d known for years, decent people who in sickness had lost everything. They would look at me so sadly, as if to say, do something. So I did. I told them they wouldn’t feel any more pain, I gave them an injection, and they slipped away.
You did it out of love.
Yes, I say, seizing upon the idea. Exactly.
But? he prompts.
But … it was just so easy, and so thrilling to watch the light fade from their eyes. and I was the cause of it, as if i’d strangled out their breath with my bare hands. in time I couldn’t stop myself doing it, even to the healthy.
When he hasn’t appeared for an inordinate length of time, I turn and see the jigsaw is complete, and feel I can deny no longer the unearthly pull towards the great eye in its midst, twitching with malevolent life.
Come to me, it says.
I don’t know where I find the strength, but before I know it my ankles are creaking under the weight of my diminished frame as I lift myself from the bed. only when I reach the table I see no eye at all but an image of the boy instead, waving frantically, beckoning me to join him.
My breath swirls ahead in ragged gusts. The wind lifts the fog for a moment to show a line of figures huddled in an alleyway, staring at me in a most unnatural fashion. when I turn back, I find I am enveloped on all sides by the teeming horde, inching forward at no discernible speed,