Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 2

Construction paper ornaments hung in chains along the walls of the empty visiting room where Grant sat. Every season, the patients of the acute psychiatric unit who could handle a pair of scissors without hurting themselves or someone else made Christmas decorations for the less stable residents to paint. The results were all over the map. Some were nebulous shapes with smears of color. Others possessed the compulsive detail of a Franciscan altarpiece.

Grant closed the magazine. He’d lost track of how many times he’d perused it in the last year. Judging by the dates on the stack of National Geographic in front of him, the tradition was safe for the foreseeable future.

“That article on Russian warplanes must get better and better.”

Grant looked up to find an attractive nurse about his age wheeling a man through the doorway.

“A good waiting room magazine ages like fine wine,” he said, returning it to the pile. “How is he, Angela?”

“He’s been a perfect gentleman.”

The man in the wheelchair looked older and gaunter—or maybe Grant just imagined that. His tufts of gray hair could stand a trimming. Grant noticed a bandage peeking out from beneath the nurse’s sleeve.

Asked, “He didn’t do that, did he?”

“No, we keep his fingernails trimmed now. This is from a patient who had an episode last night.”

She parked the wheelchair in front of Grant.

The man’s eyes struggled to focus on him, but they had all the control of a pair of marbles.

“Hi, Dad.”

Angela smiled apologetically. “He’s a little more sedated than usual.”

Protocol was to let them know he was coming ahead of time so they could medicate his father. Without the cocktail of depressants, antipsychotics, and muscle relaxers, his father’s outbursts were vicious. Even now as his head lolled, padded restraints kept his wrists secured to the wheelchair.

“It’s dinnertime,” Angela said. “I can bring his tray in and feed him while you visit.”

“Is it four o’clock already?”

“Early bird special. Boston clam chowder. They like their routine around here.”

“Just bring the food. I’ll feed him. Thanks, Angela.”

She smiled and left.

Grant pulled his father’s chair closer and inspected him. Decades of violent tremors had ruined his physique, the joints and angles of his body gradually becoming more dramatic, muscles ropier, until finally the fifty-nine-year-old man looked like he might have just been unearthed from a tomb.

Grant’s greatest fear had once been that he’d never get his father back. But that hope didn’t survive the first few years following the crash. Now he feared that contorted body. That his father’s mind might be a lucid prisoner inside it.

Angela returned with a rolling tray, and Grant waited until she was gone before examining the food. It was corn chowder. Not clam. And definitely not Boston.

“Well, she was right about the chowder part. Let’s see what we have here.”

Grant tasted it.

“Not bad. Your turn.”

His father’s eyes followed the spoon down to the bowl. Grant submerged it and brought it up carefully.

“It’s pretty hot.”

His father leaned forward slightly to meet it.

“What do you think?”

A dribble escaped. Grant wiped his chin with the napkin.

“They doped you up pretty good this time, huh?”

His father’s eyes were vacant and heavy.

It went on like this. The son feeding his father slow spoonfuls. When the bowl was empty, he pushed the tray aside. Through the barred windows of the visiting room, the sky was darkening fast. Grant could scarcely make out the stand of evergreen trees on the southern perimeter of the grounds.

He talked about the weather. How it hadn’t flurried yet. About the downtown Christmas traffic which he knew would be waiting for him on the drive home. He talked about work. About Sophie. A movie he’d seen last month. The World Series had come and gone since his last visit, and Grant gave a blow-by-blow of how the St. Louis Cardinals made a record-breaking comeback against the Braves in the Wild Card standings, culminating with their victory over the Rangers in game seven.

“You would’ve cried,” he said.

All the while his father watched him quietly through a glassy-eyed daze that could have been mistaken for listening.

Grant finally stood. Inevitably, in these moments of departure, the stab of loss would run through Grant like a sword. He knew it was coming—every time—but there was no bracing against it. His father had been a great man—kind and brave and a pillar of comfort to his children even through the loss of Grant’s mother, his wife, even in the face of his own private hell. Grant couldn’t help but to wonder what his life might have become if his father could’ve looked him in the eyes and spoken his mind, his wisdom? And still the question persisted that had haunted Grant since the night of the accident, that the seven-year-old boy inside of him would never let go—does something in the shell of you still love me?

He kissed his old man on the forehead. “Merry Christmas, Pop.”

Ten minutes later, he was one of thousands on the congested 520 bridge, slowly making his way home in the early December dark.