Night Terror by Chandler McGrew Read Free Book Online

the bedroom, preparing himself for the thousandth time for the smell of sickness that waited like a wall, just inside the door. He could never quite figure the odor out. It wasn’t antiseptic exactly, although Doris insisted on keeping a can of Pine-Sol beside the bed to spray on her tissues before tossing them into the trash. And it wasn’t any kind of bodily odor. Doris would never have stood for that. It was just the smell of a person living in a room for too long without really living. Somehow the house and Doris’s disease had meshed and Virgil knew thatsmell would never go away, no matter how much Pine-Sol the new owners sprayed after he and Doris were gone.
    The bedroom itself rebelled against the dying it encompassed. Warm sunlight shone through the windows, reflecting off the dark wood floor and yellowing the curtains and old floral wallpaper. Fresh flowers in a tall vase by the door to the side porch needed watering, and Virgil reminded himself to bring a pitcher back from the kitchen.
    Doris sat propped against thick pillows, wearing her old cotton nightshirt that seemed two sizes too big for her now. Her face was drained and her eyes were sunken, like black marbles in china cups. Her hair, always immaculate, was tucked back into a tight white bun, but it was thin and dull. Bony hands rested on either side of her like a pair of daddy longlegs. She looked eighty, not fifty-nine.
    “Lunch,” said Virgil, resting the tray on the bedside table and reaching for the remote. But Doris grabbed his hand.
    “I’m watching this,” she said, never taking her eyes off the set.
    Virgil frowned.
    A black woman in a bright orange shift sat facing the camera. She flipped tarot cards on the table in front of her and read someone’s fortune in a fake Caribbean accent. A man off camera sounded amazed by the things the cards said about him. A toll number flashed at the bottom of the screen, along with a notice in tiny print that readings were done for entertainment purposes only.
    “Why do you watch this bunk?” muttered Virgil.
    Doris gave him a haughty shake of her head. Her thin neck looked as though it might snap. Virgil wanted desperately to look away, but guilt glued his eyes to her.
    “You should watch, Virgil,” said Doris. “Madame Zola has some real insights.”
    “You haven’t been giving them your credit card number again, have you?”
    “Not since you had your little tantrum.”
    Virgil didn’t think he’d had a tantrum. He’d merely mentioned that they had bills to pay and spending dollars like there was no tomorrow on a television fortune-teller seemed silly to him. Doris had made him feel terrible by being contrite. It wasn’t as though she had any hobbies, andmost of her friends worked, so she was alone all day in front of the damned TV set. But the thought of a con artist taking her in galled Virgil.
    “If you want to spend money on a fortune-teller, then spend ahead,” he said. “You know I never meant to hurt your feelings.”
    “You didn’t hurt my feelings. You were right. It was silly of me to waste money on a TV card-reader.”
    He stared at her, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
    “Babs is coming by Tuesday night,” she said.
    Thump.
    He slipped the napkin into her nightshirt top and placed a pillow on either side of her to hold the tray. Then he fed her the soup until she put her hands in front of her mouth to stop him. Her body quivered with every breath. She seemed fragile enough to shatter. Virgil suddenly pictured himself alone in this bed, holding his pistol in his lap.
    “Tuesday,” she said.
    “That’s tomorrow,” he reminded her.
    “We’re going to hold a séance.”
    “A what?”
    “You know. A séance. We’re going to contact the other side.”
    He almost asked her the other side of what, but he was even more afraid of arguing with Doris these days than he had been in the past. Now, an argument would seem less of a breaking of some unspoken vow and more a