Close Enough

NOTE: I actually wrote this for a previous prompt but forgot to post it *shrugs*

Pain. 

Biting cold pain shot down Mervin’s brittle back, making his sphincter pucker up like a plum. The rake in his hand dropped to the street with a limp thud as a pile of leaves cushioned its fall. Mervin felt the sweat coming before it dripped from his pores, or more so, knew it would come. Anytime his back acted up, he’d be drenched in sweat before the pain subsided. If Carol were still around, she’d scold him for not hiring one of the neighbor’s kids to clean up the leaves. 

“November weathers the weary, and the weary shouldn’t be out in this weather,” she’d have said if he came back inside looking like the mess he was, with the kettle already up for some tea as if she knew he’d need it. 

Mervin would’ve grunted, taken the tea, and gingerly sat down on his leather armchair in the corner of the den of their tiny home on the end of Sycamore Street. The one next to his mantle above the fireplace is still adorned with pictures of the couple from their first picture together to one of their last. And, of course, the other photograph. The one he put up after Carol passed. The black and white paper faded with time. A picture of a group of young soldiers outside an abandoned cathedral, not one smiling. Darkness draped across their faces like shadows, though the sun pointed in the wrong direction. Mervin was amongst those men—boys, really—and though the memory of that day did nothing to put him at ease, it did distract him from the pain in his back enough to bend down and pick the rake back up. 

“Need some help, Mervin?” 

Lewis, a man in his mid-forties, looked toward Mervin. He was one of those neighbors with kids that Carol would’ve asked to rake the lawn back in the day. Mervin, perpetually hunched from age, had to crane his head up to meet Lewis’s gaze. 

“No, no,” Mervin replied. “I need the exercise.” 

“Are you sure? I can have Todd or Ryan get this bagged up in no time.”

“I’m sure,” Mervin forced a smile onto his leathered face and brushed the sweat from his forehead into the white hair atop his head. “I’m quite sure.” 

Lewis nodded slowly, shrugged, and tossed his bag into a trashcan before going inside. Mervin returned to raking, and as he pulled a pile of leaves aside, clearing a view of his lawn, a memory returned to him. His hand gripped a broom now, and instead of leaves, Mervin found himself removing the dust from the floor of the abandoned cathedral in the woods of Feldberg, Germany. The Black Forest. A grim place, but inside the cathedral, the air somehow grew thicker. He and a few other Privates had been ordered to clean the floor and look for any sign of anything. They’d been told that if they found what they were looking for, they’d know it. After two years of serving, Mervin and the others had grown used to taking orders, but this mission felt off from the start. 

A raid on an old church in the middle of the woods was odd enough, but to find it as well defended as they had? That was unexpected. Despite the Captian’s warnings of potential resistance, no one expected a firefight. They’d gunned down every last Kraut, including the ones in the cloaks, but they had lost eight of their own the night before. American men. Good men. Mervin took his brush and hit the floor with the end side as hard as he could.

Crack! 

The broom broke in his hand as it collided with what he thought was an old wooden floorboard. But no wood could make that sound. Mervin raised his brow and looked down. The dust had dissipated, and in its wake, he could make out that a large stone door had been built into the center of the cathedral’s floor. Or rather, the cathedral had been built around the stone door. That thought popped up on its own, but his gut told him it was right. Mervin understood what the Captain meant; he’d found why eight men had died. It was a slab of obsidian eight feet long, polished to a sheen and smooth as a pebble in a stream, with a handle protruding from the surface. If it were upright on a wall, it’d look almost normal, but on the ground, it made Mervin’s skin crawl. He bent down to touch it, but his body went old and his mouth dry. He cried out for help. 

“Captian!” He called out, but his voice was wispier than he remembered. 

Mervin turned to look for a reply but found himself hunched over in the suburbs with a leaf pile by his feet. A cough cleared his throat and brought some liquid into his barren mouth. He steadied himself on his rake and took in a lungful of crisp air. A memory, he thought. That damned picture. Why did I put that thing up? But Mervin knew the answer to that question, and it made his stomach tie into a knot. He had put it up for a reason. Albeit, a reason that the others of his troop would call both mad foolish and dangerous, but it was not upon that mantle by accident.

“But an accident is how it started,” Mervin mumbled. “An accident.” 

“Accident? You found it by accident, private?” 

Mervin turned to his Captain, who stood stall beneath the splinters of light piercing the broken wood ceiling of the forest cathedral. Only a shadow of the man could be made out, but Mervin stood at attention nonetheless. He clamped his feet together and saluted his commanding officer. 

“Yes, sir. I was brushing the dust here and found this….door.” 

“It’s on the ground.” The Captain said, an odd amusement in his voice. “It didn’t say it would be on the ground.”

“It, sir?”

“What?” The Captain turned toward Mervin as though he had forgotten the shorter Private was still there. “Oh, nothing. Tell me, Private, were you close with any of the men we lost today?”

“Of course, Captain. Every man in our platoon is like a brother. You’ve said as much.” 

“Indeed, but was there anyone, in particular, you were closer to?” The Captain leaned over, and the shadow that shrouded the man grew over Mervin. 

“Private Williams, sir,” Mervin managed to say. A lump tried to repress the words. 

“Good.” The Captain pointed toward the obsidian on the floor. “Think of him and open the door. Make the image of your friend clear in your mind, crystalize it., and then, only then, pull open the door.”

Mervin looked at the door on the floor, and ice grew in his bones. “I’d rather not, sir.” 

“This is a direct command, Private.” The Captain shouted his words.

Mervin nodded and swallowed hard. Dennis Williams was one of his closest companions throughout the war, and the picture of the squat, stocky man with a smile as wide as his flat face formed in Mervin’s mind with ease. A cigarette stuck out of his mouth, not even lit, just for show. Dennis Williams was a good man, and at that moment, Mervin dearly wanted to see his friend again. So, he bent down, grasped the cool obsidian handle on the ground, and pulled. 

Leafs filled Mervin’s hands as he found himself bent on the ground of his lawn. The ache in his back was resurgent, and the years washed over him with a cruel greeting. The door on the floor remained in his mind and on his mantle, but he was glad the memory faded before…before it opened. Am I, though? After all, he placed the image up, knowing full well what had awaited Mervin and the captain beneath the cathedral in the woods. But still, he put the picture up. 

It was his choice. 

Mervin stood up, using his rake for balance, and headed back toward his home. The small cottage was a relic among the new homes on the street, but it had suited him and Carol just fine. He was near the front walkway when his legs gave out from under him. His foot had hit something slick, and Mervin slipped, crashing to the floor with a thud and groan. The world went hazy for an eternity, but then the sky returned, and Mervin climbed up toward it. He looked back down, and the familiar feeling of ice in his bones returned. Polished, black obsidian glared up at Mervin from beneath a pile of leaves. Grabbing his rake, Mervin wasted no time. He cleared the leaves and felt his muscles twitch as the door on the floor stared up at him from his own front lawn. The first instinct that flooded his being was flight. To run as far away as he possibly could. But then again, he had put that picture up for a reason. 

Mervin swallowed in a lung full of cool air and built up the image of Carol in his mind. Not Carol in hospice as the cancer claimed her, but Carol before. Her hair was still white but full of life, just like her face. Lined with age but beauty in equal amounts and piercing blue eyes that could make the ocean weep. Mervin remembered her voice, sweet and slow in a methodical fashion of perpetual understanding, as though she always knew the right thing to say. And she did. What would she say to me now? Mervin ignored the thought and opened the door. 

“Meerrrvvvinn,” a voice called out.

It was Carol’s, and it wasn’t.

But it was close enough.