Mad
A short story by Robert Durham
The house was cold that winter’s night as the old
man sat in the lone rocker. His bones
ached with the draft that seemed to cut through brick and board, sweeping down
the stairs and through the cupboards, as if it were as restless as he. In the hearth, the fire cracked and sparked
defiantly and cast long shadows that danced upon the walls. It seemed to the old man they were speaking
to him, those shadows, but of course he knew it was the wind whispering against
the windows.
Still,
he looked at the photos upon the mantle.
Three
golden-framed faces stared down at him from above the fireplace. It seemed as if their eyes were alive,
blinking back at him, though he knew it was the reflection of the flames. Nonetheless, it felt as if they were watching
him. The face of Eleanor, the ringlets
of her red hair dark within the aged black-and-white, her slender neck and pale
complexion the picture of elegance.
Beside her rested the twins, Charlie and Charlene, who would have been
mirrored images of each other were it not for Charlene’s long hair lazily
draped across a shoulder. Both had their
mother’s red hair, and that same insufferable smile. The lips of each of his children curled only
at the corners of their little mouths, but it was just enough…just enough.
Over
the years people had inquired of the photos.
At first it was normal, a grieving widower mourning the devastating loss
of his wife and children. One-at-a-time
might have been trying for any man, but all at once? A lesser man might have gone mad with grief,
but not the old man—not at all. He
stared at those three faces daily, reminding himself, never to forget. As the years passed, though, as the years
began to chisel away his sharp features and the black of his hair began to
drain of its luster, it became odd to many people who knew him why he would not
re-marry, why he must look upon the tragedy that had befallen his family day to
day.
“It is unhealthy,” they
would say. “There are some things one
must keep in the past.” And he would
say: “I will never forget,” and then he would smile in a way other people often
shied away from. Now, in his elder
years, it seemed more than appropriate to gawk at those damned pictures…at
those mocking smiles. Even now they
stared at him, smiling. It was as if
they might laugh at any moment, but of course it was the shadows, playing
tricks with his eyes. The old man rubbed
his eyes, yawned. A lack of sleep might
also play at his senses; perhaps it was past time to retire.
But his eyes were drawn
back to his family, and the old man stayed seated.
The sound of footsteps
creaked across the floorboards, pulling the old man from his thoughts. His eyes slid to the pocket watch already
open in his clutched hand. Almost eleven,
he noted. He had been sitting here since
dinner, or perhaps it was lunch. It
mattered not. What did matter was that
his nurses would have long-since gone home, unless Nan, as she sometimes did,
stayed beyond her shift to read the evening Post.
“Nan?” he called into
the quiet of the house. “Go on home,
Nan. I need to be alone just now.” But his call went unheeded, and the footsteps
fell silent, and the old man realized that if it was Saturday or Sunday the
Post would go undelivered until the morn of Monday, and the chill of the draft
made his bones ache, and he looked back at his family on the mantle, and they
looked back with their dumb mouths agape.
“Har!” he chortled at
his own ignorance. Of course it was the
house he heard, what he had mistaken as footsteps. Everybody knows a house settles in the
cold. It was but the house. He looked back to his family. Their mocking smiles! Ah, he told himself, it was but in his mind,
a suggestion played on his brain by the wavering shadows. But no!
See how they laugh! A new sound
then filled his ears, the beating of her heart.
His wife’s calloused, mocking heart, drumming in his ears. She was laughing at him now—Yes! Definitely laughing!—from the mantle, from
the golden crown he had preserved her in.
Her words echoed back to him, beyond the ages.
We
are but from a better breed, she cooed once more,
and the words sounded as if they were whispered in his ear, just a breath above
the beating of her damned heart. And,
lo! The children laugh as well! The shadows dancing upon them transformed
those innocent pale faces into twin demons.
Their laughing became growling, and Eleanor’s heart thrummed in his
head, and the wind sounded as if it might break through the windows, and
footsteps ran through the house and up and down the steps, and there was
laughing that lasted only until it was replaced by screams of anguish.
The old man found
himself on his feet, tipping the old rocker to its side as he ripped the
incessant watch from its golden chain and sent it flying. The sounds—laughing and crying and screaming
and ticking—became a maelstrom within his mind, threatening to split his
head. He stumbled to the mantle and,
with one sweep of an arm, made light work of the children. The twin frames clattered to the floor,
shards of glass spinning across the wood planks.
Eleanor was unimpressed. Her laughing had ceased, though the smile
remained curled on her lips. Such a fair
and lovely and cruel smile. “You are no
better than anyone,” he hissed in her face.
It was as if she realized at last—At long last!—the seriousness.
And this time, it was
the old man who smiled.
With one hand he tossed
her into the hearth, where the flames brightened as they consumed her. And the sound of the man’s laugh rose through
the new quiet, throaty and rough, and when the nurses found him the next morn
the old man was still before the hearth, curled into a frail ball upon the
floor, yet still awake. The nurses spoke
of it for days, and of the smile curled upon his face, and none, not even Nan,
could look him in the eyes. Of that day,
or many of those that followed, the old man could never quite recall. And the night before his hearth seemed more
nightmare than real. Nevertheless, the
old man had never felt more rested than that afternoon he awoke in the
ward. A nurse bent over a table,
adjusting something there. The old man
smiled, realizing as if some weight had been lifted from him that he would
never again feel those judging eyes crawling upon his flesh again. He bid the nurse good afternoon, and she
turned smiling, spouting some platitude about how pleasant it was that he was
awake.
But the old man was
watching the table behind her, where three pale figures stared from mended gold
frames: Smiling.
“We found them after
the incident…” the nurse began, but the old man was already laughing. The sound filled the ward, and the nurse
shied away. On and on it went, that
laughing, until at last his heart gave way and he slumped across the bed. When the nurse turned him to examine his
pulse, the smile had dropped from his face and, there—a look of horror replaced.
