Strangers (24 page)

She waited for him to speak. She felt he had something to say, something to tell her.

Her son-in-law, this Michael-in-the-future, said nothing. Then, the crinkles around his eyes deepened and he smiled.

That smile! That is—I do not understand—
not
the way Michael smiles. I’ve never seen him took this way!

Michael lifted his hand. He slowly waved.

Then Michael changed. His face, the face of the son-in-law she loved as dearly as a son, was gone. She was no longer seeing Michael. She was looking at…

I am Death!

Death was not a skeleton brandishing a scythe. He rode no ghostly steed. Death occupied Michael Louden’s body, but Death’s head…

Death’s head was hellfire, a lunatic pinwheel of pulsing red. It was the writhing, black-scarlet flame of a great infernal candle. It was an evil blazing ruby, the color of the blood of victims, martyrs,
innocents
.

Though he had no eyes, Death’s gaze fell on her. Though he had no mouth, Death spoke to her:

Soon! My time is soon!

Then Death and the future were gone. The FM station was quietly serenading its listeners with the Andre Kostelanetz version of The Beatles’ “Yesterday.” The slowed chirping of end-of-summer crickets flitered in through the window.

Claire’s head ached. Her heart literally felt as though it were within her mouth. She did not fully understand what she had seen but she fully believed it. She knew better than to doubt the miserable gift of second sight that was hers.

She pondered her presentiment of what would be. Michael. Michael and Death. She had seen Michael become Death. No, that wasn’t right. She had watched as Michael had been blotted out, taken over by Death!

That was it! Michael was going to die, and Death had even revealed when:
Soon!

“Forewarned is forearmed.” Like all clichés, that was good common sense. Claire couldn’t allow herself to believe that what she discerned in her intuitive flashes was
an inevitability
. Couldn’t she have seen—and God, she prayed it were so
!—
merely a possibility, an event that did not have to occur if precautions were taken?

There were people who had testified that they had a “feeling” and so cancelled their passage on
The Titanic, The Lusitania,
The
Hindenburg.
Who knew how many lives had been saved by a wife’s saying to her husband, “I want you to drive to work instead of taking the train,” on the very day the 8:05 commuter derailed; by an intuitive mother’s deciding to let her child skip school on the day a school fire claimed hundreds of lives?

She had to warn Michael. Oh, her son-in-law had always pooh-poohed her premonitions. He no more accepted her psychic ability than he did the Flat Earth Theory.

But Beth… Beth did not
want
to believe, tried like anything to make light of “Mom’s crystal ball gazing,” but Beth
did
know. In her heart of hearts, against her will Beth believed.

She would call right now and talk to Beth.

Claire took the book from her lap and placed in on the drum table alongside the chair. She stood up and the room whirled. Her blood pressure must have shot right up into the stratosphere during her vision, she thought. The dizziness would pass in a moment.

The floor rose up. It was like… She remembered being a youthful visitor to the carnival funhouse, the “topsy-turvy” room. She dropped back into the chair.

She felt strange. She looked around the living room. There was a heightened vividness to everything: the chandelier, the couch with the tired middle cushion, the sentimental knick-knacks in the
shadow-box
… She saw it all with an increased acuity. It was as though she could perceive the faint, ghostly traces of another dimension that lay beneath reality. There was an actual thickness to the distance between the sideboard and her wing chair. The room was crowded with depths of air.

Claire tried to rise. God! She was weak! Just sitting upright required so much of her strength. Indeed, her head was tipping to the right and it took her all her effort to keep it level.

Bracing herself with the heels of her hands on the chair’s arms, locking her elbows at the right moment, she managed to stand. She took a step.

As a child in grade school, she had learned about gravity. Now, for the first time, she actually understood gravity; it was an overwhelming force working to yank her down.

All around her was a hissing-popping noise, as though she were staggering through a sea of champagne. The giant bubbles of carbonation touched her, burst against her.

The right corner of Claire Wynkoop’s mouth drooped, dribbling saliva. Bent at the elbow, her right arm was pressed to her side, the hand turned up, fingers curled in a rigid talon.

Her numb right leg trailing as though it wanted nothing to do with her, Claire reeled into the kitchen. She had to call Beth, to warn her about Michael…

But she couldn’t, not yet. Suddenly—
right now
—death was reaching out for
her
. She had to get help.

She used her left hand to take the wall phone from its cradle. She locked the receiver between shoulder and her cheek and awkwardly dialed the “Emergency” number.

When she tried to speak, her tongue filled her entire mouth. That is funny, she thought; I know good and well what I want to say but it’s coming out lumpy blocks of noise!

She tried once more. She focused all her concentration. The words were halting and thick but coherent. “My name… is Claire Wynkoop.” She had to search her mind for her address but at last she had it. Then she explained the problem. “I think I am having a stroke.”

She managed to hang up the phone and unlock the back door so that when help arrived there’d be no problem getting in. She tried to get to the kitchen table to sit down but weakness—not at all unpleasant, actually just a warm weariness radiating from her bones—hit her and she sank down onto the linoleum floor, her right leg stuck out before her.

She wondered if she were dying. She did not think so. Though she had virtually no strength, she did not feel
bad so
much as
different.
She sensed changes within her mind, profound changes. The way she viewed the world was being transformed. She had the impression that for the very first time in her life she was
seeing;
the “scales were removed from her eyes.” She understood the meaning of what she saw. On the wall, the ill-sewn sampler that Beth had made when she was in third grade, GOD BLESS OUR HAPPY HOME, was vibrating with a child’s love and the joy of creating and the determination to make something “nice.”

When the paramedics arrived, Claire Wynkoop was unable to answer any of their questions. She was conscious, but could not speak. Yet her glazed eyes were seeing, seeing not only what existed
but
the essence of it that transcended mere existence. Her brain, in which millions of cells were dying, was interpreting what she saw.

“Don’t worry, ma’am. You’re going to be all right.”

Claire heard what was said, but more than that, she heard the concern and sincerity in the paramedic’s voice.

Her head lolling, she studied the two men.

They shine! I can see the light. I understand their natures. The glow around their heads… They have auras, bright golden, and that means they are kind and caring…and good.

Claire Wynkoop’s self-diagnosis was correct. She had had a massive stroke.

But now she could
see.

She could see human auras.

And she could understand them.

It was five-thirty Saturday morning when the telephone rang. Michael sat up in bed, his heart racing.
The call?
At last,
the
call?
Since seeing Jan Pretre at the Engelkings, hearing the renewal of the promise of the Time of The Strangers—
Soon
!
—
the ringing of the telephone sent an anticipatory tingle down his spine.

But, shit, he should have known. A predawn call was probably a dumbass playing a prank or…

Beth had the telephone. She wasn’t saying much. “Oh,” mostly, but every “Oh” was more worried than the one before and she was crying.

“Beth, what is it?”

Even as Beth said “Mother,” he realized what the call had to be. So good old, dear old, sweet old Moms had bought the big farm, over and out and call it a wrap, huh? Hypertension had finally popped the cork in her brain and bye-bye!

He slipped an arm around Beth’s shoulder. He said, “She isn’t…” then paused as though he couldn’t bear to face the possibility that Claire was dead.

But goddamnit, and how about that? Claire was not dead after all! The old broad clung to life like gum stuck to your shoe in a fleabag movie house.

After she’d hung up the telephone, Beth, sobbing, gave him the details. Mother had suffered a major stroke, and, by the time she got to the hospital, she had yet another—not so severe, that one, the doctors thought—on the other side of the brain. She was paralyzed. Right now, they had her in intensive care. She was drifting in and out of consciousness and, while her condition was serious, they called it stable, not critical.

“We have to…”

“Of course,” Michael said. “We’ll get right down there.”

“The children, I…I don’t want them to see Mom when she’s like…like she is.”

Right,
Michael
thought,
have to spare the impressionable wee ones any nastiness, don’t we?
“Okay,” he said, “You start getting ready and I’ll wake the kids in a few minutes. I’ll give the Engelkings a call. Vern’s an early riser, even on weekends. I’ll ask if they would keep Marcy and Kim until tomorrow evening. I’m sure it will be okay. You know how they feel about the girls.”

“Yes,” Beth said. “Laura and Vern are like family, Michael”—Beth choked—“Mom…”

Of course the Engelkings would look after the children for the weekend. No problem. So sorry to hear what had happened and if there
were
anything at all they could do…

An hour later, the kids dropped off at the Engelkings’, Michael and Beth
were
on the road to Belford. Beth had hurriedly packed, taking a week’s clothing for herself. That way she could be with her mother—“
I keep praying she’ll be all right,
Michael,
but that’s not what I feel”—
and Michael could probably—“If only Mom is…”—return home Sunday evening. The girls, of course, had school on Monday and he had
to work. It would be better not to upset the children’s routine any more than necessary.
once
they knew what was what, that Mom would be okay, they’d figure out what had to be done.

And just how the hell “okay” was the old lady likely to be?
Michael wondered.
She was probably going to wind up a vegetable, and a goddamned vegetable belonged in the ground.

“I’m sure things will be all right, Beth,” Michael said. “People can make remarkable recoveries from strokes. Your mother is a strong-willed woman; that will help. I’ll bet a year from now, you won’t even know she had a stroke.” To himself, Michael added,
A year from now, you won’t know anything!

Beth did not answer.

Overhead, the sun was a hazy blob in the sky. There were few cars heading south. The highway markers ticked off Monee, Kankakee, Chebanse, the exotic Illinois place names of small towns that had little more to offer a visitor than, as the signs promised, “Food,” guaranteed bad, and “Gas,” definitely over-priced.