Darkness Creeping (19 page)

“Could you just give me a hug, Grandma—just one hug, like you used to?”

Then, for a moment, I get the feeling that we have had this conversation before. But the feeling is gone in an instant.

For my thirteenth birthday we have a small party with just a few friends. Dad tries to get us to wear stupid party hats, but no one wants to. Grandma sits alone on a folding chair out in the unfinished rec room, staring at the unpainted wall across the room, occasionally chuckling to herself.

We all eat ice cream and everyone sings “Happy Birthday”—everyone except Grandma. A few minutes later I notice that one of my dumb friends has put a party hat on her. I go into the rec room and take the hat off.

“Have you ever seen the river like this?” Grandma says to the dry, sunny day. “All swollen from the rain? It has to stop raining soon.”

For a strange moment, as I hold that party hat in my hands, I get the feeling again that I’ve done this before . . . but I know I haven’t.

Party hat,
I think.
Wasn’t Grandma talking about a party hat a few weeks ago?
But everyone calls me back into the living room to open my presents, so I don’t think about it anymore.

For my birthday I get a puppy.

The next night it begins to rain. Troubled by the thunder and lightning, I stay up late and watch TV with Mom and Dad in the living room. Magoo, my new dog, sits by the side of the green velvet chair. On TV a rock band plays wild music. Mom and Dad think it’s awful, but I kind of like it. And then I notice . . .

The guys in the band all have pink hair . . . and at the end of the song they smash their guitars.

A chill runs through my body. I look for Grandma, but she is not in the room.

“What’s wrong, Leslie?” asks Mom. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just feel . . . funny.”

Bam!
The thunder crashes at the same moment the lightning hits, and the house is plunged into darkness.

Dad is up immediately. “I’ll get the candles,” he says. He feels around for the walls in the dark, like a blind man.

A few minutes later, with a candle in my hand, I search the house for Grandma. I find her in the garage, looking through boxes of old photos.

“Can’t leave these behind,” she says. “Have to take them with me.”

“Grandma,” I ask, just beginning to understand. “Where are you? What do you see?”

“Barry, you and your family should never have come to visit with the weather like this,” says Grandma. “You should have told them not to come, Carl. You can do what you like, but I’m not taking the chance. I’m getting my stuff, and I’m getting out. Before it’s too late.”

I can tell she’s talking to my dad and Uncle Barry—but Uncle Barry and his family live a thousand miles away in Michigan, and they haven’t visited us for years. Yet Grandma’s talking to them like they’re in the room.

And suddenly I realize what’s wrong with Grandma.

“Grandma,” I say. “I know what’s happening. I understand now.”

“Leslie, your imagination is running away with you,” says Dad. He’s sitting in the rec room holding a candle. The lights have been out for an hour now. I stand at the entrance to the rec room. Mom and Dad sit in a corner. They’re talking about putting Grandma into a home or a sanitarium.

“No!” I insist. “It’s true. Grandma is living in the future. She’s not crazy.”

“Get some rest,” says Mom. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“No, I won’t!” I shout. “Don’t you get it?” I stand in the doorway of the rec room. “This doorway used to be a wall—this used to be the wall that Grandma would talk to—but she wasn’t talking to the wall, she was talking to
us
inside the rec room. Only the rec room hadn’t been built yet! And when she was pretending to eat ice cream in the middle of the night, she was seeing my birthday party a month later. And when she watches the TV when it’s off, she’s seeing TV shows that won’t be on for a whole month. I even caught her petting the dog
before
we had the dog. And remember when she stood in the rec room screaming into the corner about your wanting to send her away? Well, she was screaming into the corner you’re sitting in right now! She
saw
the conversation you’re having right now, and it really upset her!”

I clench my fists, trying to get Mom and Dad to understand. “Don’t you see? Grandma’s body might be stuck in the present, but her mind is living a month in the future.” I point to the grandfather clock down the hall. “It’s like how that clock always runs too fast. At first it’s just a couple of minutes off, but if we don’t reset it, it could run hours—even days—ahead of where it’s supposed to be! Grandma’s like that clock, only she can’t be fixed!”

Lightning flashes in the sky, and Mom stands up. “I think this storm is giving us all the creeps. I’ll feel better when it’s over tomorrow.”

“No,” I say. “According to Grandma, the storm goes on for weeks and weeks.”

That’s when we hear Grandma screaming.

We run into the bedroom to find Grandma thrashing around the room, bumping into things. She clutches the bedpost, holding on for dear life, as if something is trying to drag her away. Mom and Dad try to grab her but she doesn’t see them; she just keeps on thrashing and clinging to the bedpost, like a flag twisting in the wind.

“Barry!” she screams. “Hold on! Carl! Don’t let her go!”

Dad grabs her and holds her, but she is stronger than any of us realize. There is sheer terror in her eyes, and I try to imagine what she sees. “Holly’s gone, Carl—Holly, Barry, Alice, the twins, they’re all gone—there’s nothing you can do! Now you have to save yourself! No, don’t let go! No!”

She screams one last bloodcurdling scream that ends with a gurgling, as if she’s drowning. Then, silence.

And that’s when I know Grandma is gone.

She’s still breathing, her heart is still beating, but she is limp and her eyes are unseeing. Her mind has died, but her body doesn’t know it yet. It will in several weeks, I think.

Suddenly the only sound I hear is the falling rain and the rushing of the river a hundred yards beyond our backyard.

That was almost a month ago. Now I stand in my room, shoving everything I care about into my backpack, making sure I leave room for Magoo. I don’t let Mom and Dad know what I’m doing. I can’t let them know, or they would stop me.

In the rec room, which has been painted, carpeted, and furnished, Mom makes up the sofa bed. “Uncle Barry and Aunt Alice won’t mind sleeping on this,” says Mom, patting the bed. “The twins can sleep in your room,” she tells me. “You can stay with us. It’s only a week—I don’t want to hear you complaining.”

But I’m not complaining.

“Isn’t it wonderful that they’re coming all the way from Michigan to spend time with us?” says Mom. “After all these years!”

“I just wish we had better weather. I’ve never seen it rain this much,” says Dad, coming into the room. “It can’t be good for the soil.”

That night, I give Mom and Dad a powerful hug and kiss good night, holding them like I’ll never let them go. Then, after everyone’s asleep, I go into Grandma’s room. She lies in bed, as she has for a whole month now. Not moving, barely even breathing.

I give her a hug also, and then I climb out of the window into the rain.

It is raining so hard that in moments I am drenched from head to toe. I am cold and uncomfortable, but I’ll be all right.

Tonight I will run away. I don’t know where I will go; all I know is that I have to leave. Even now, I can hear the river churning in its bed, roaring with a powerful current ready to spill over its banks.

Tomorrow, after Uncle Barry’s family arrives, there will be a disaster. It will be all over the news. There will be special reports about how the river overflowed and flooded the whole valley. The reports will tell how dozens of homes were washed away, and how hundreds of people were killed.

I can’t change any of that, because Grandma already saw it. She saw my mom, my dad, my uncle, my aunt, and my cousins taken away by the flood. Then, finally, the waters took her as well. She saw it more than a month ago.

But on that day when we watched her in her bedroom, holding on to her bedpost, torn by waters that we could not see, there was one name she didn’t mention. She didn’t mention me. And if I wasn’t there, then at least one member of my family will have a future.

So tonight I take the high road out of town. And tomorrow I won’t watch the news.

The scream stabbed into Cody Fenchurch’s sleep, tearing a jagged hold in his dream. He had been dreaming he was tall—the tallest kid in school—towering over all the other kids who always teased him about his height. But great dreams like that never last, and Cody was dragged away from that happy fantasy, into the cold darkness of his room. He sat up, blinking in the moonlight, wondering who had screamed—and why.