Dead To Me

Grandma hums to herself as she stirs in the egg she finished beating to her dry ingredients. Her apron, the one dad and I got her many Christmases ago, is dirty with flour dust and batter splotches, and the faint lettering that once read No Bitchin' In the Kitchen now says something like N itch ' I he Ki hen. The smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies hangs in the air and the setting summer sun casts a nostalgic glow against the oak cabinets.

I smile to myself as I live through what I know will soon be a fond memory in my heart. My best memories are of grandma and this kitchen, with the same lingering smell of cookies and the gentleness of her hum. Growing up, I saw a lot of her and dad. Grandpa wasn't around much, and when he died a little over a year ago, it didn't leave much of a scar on my heart as it would if it were grandma who died instead.

"Leah, honey," grandma's soft voice breaks my lulled trance.

"Would you please go get me some more of those candied cherries you like? There should be some on the second shelf in the back pantry."

I nod, grateful to be put to use, and hop off the stool I was sitting on at the island. The wooden legs squeak against the hardwood as I push it in nicely. Grandma doesn't like bad manners, and she always taught me to clean up after myself and make it look like I was never there. 

I happily skip to the back pantry near the door to the garage, which I notice is slightly ajar. An odd sight, as grandma has never let me see the inside of the garage. She told me it may be haunted, which gave me enough sense to steer clear from it. I’ve never had any interest in the garage until now. 

A cold breeze drafted through the small crack between the wall and the door. I can’t see anything past the opening, and black darkness swallows up the space beyond the door. I look back over my shoulder, half expecting grandma to be at the corner scolding me for even thinking of going into the garage, half hoping she is there to stop me. 

Before I do anything stupid, I reach to shut the door to prevent any mistakes from happening on my end and to shut down any forbidden curiosities that bubbled to the surface. But I freeze, hand in midair, when I hear a voice. 

“Leah,” it croaks weakly from the darkness beyond. 

I feel my heart nearly explode out of my chest. My eyes grow so wide I think my brain might push them out of my sockets. I force my limbs to move out of their frozen state, slam the door shut, and run back to the warm light of the kitchen. 

Grandma is still humming but I don't register it. All I can hear is the thrum of blood in my ears and the wild beating of my racing heart. 

Either grandma was right and her garage is haunted, or I scared myself so badly that I was going crazy and made up voices in my head. I wanted to trust the latter, so that’s what I told myself. Grandma hasn’t noticed me back yet, so I calm my breathing and go back to the pantry. I ignore the hairs standing up on the back of my neck when I pass the door. I find grandma’s cherries easily and make my way back to her, back to safety. 

I don’t tell her what happened. I don’t want to speak the words that would solidify my experience into existence. I made it up, I tell myself. It wasn’t real. 

That night, grandma tucks me into bed with a kiss on my forehead. I managed to scrounge up the courage to ask her if ghosts really exist. She just told me that she thinks it's up to each individual person to decide if that is true for themselves. 

That didn’t calm my nerves. 

So when I heard her walk to her room for the night about an hour later, I choose to decide for myself. 

I quietly open my door, praying it doesn’t creak. This house is old as it is beautiful, and now possibly haunted. 

I make my way to the staircase, minding where I step, avoiding the places where I know will creak and give me away. 

I successfully get downstairs. I almost hope I make a noise and alert grandma so that she can stop me from doing what I’m about to do. 

There is light from the moon that filters in the big window in the living room, lighting my way just enough that my eyes don’t have to strain too terribly to see. 

I freeze in my tracks when I turn the corner into the hallway.

The door is wide open. 

My feet don’t budge an inch as I stare into the gaping black emptiness pouring out from the garage. Goosebumps dot my skin as the dense cold washes over me, but not from any wind or breeze. I feel a bone-deep chill that engulfs me, like I just encountered some other-wordly presence. I don’t see anything in the darkness. I don’t even think this could be considered just regular darkness. The black is so deep and void of any light that it seems paranormal. It looks haunting, like I would get lost instantly if I were to step foot past the door. 

The voice calls my name again. This time, it sounds hollow. It pleads for me to answer. 

It sounds so sad and desperate that my feet start moving. I brace for a dark hand to come from the darkness and sweep me into it, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, my feet take me to the precipice, the edge of the darkness. I stand at the door frame. 

“Leah,” the voice calls. 

I step in.

My hands grasp where I think a wall would be and I manage to find a railing. I carefully follow the steep decline of what I assume to be stairs and descend into the blackness. My teeth chatter from how scared I am. I should have brought a candle or flashlight with me. I wasn’t thinking and didn’t have adequate preparation. 

But it was too late now. I keep going down.

I walk cautiously down the stairs for a minute until I see something, finally. A dull light on the floor. The source is coming from something beyond.

I get to the ground. The freezing cement sends cold crawling up my legs that burrows deep in my bones. 

I can hear a steady beep. I follow the source of the light until I get to a room with a curtain. The light source filters from behind it. So does the beep, the sound carrying from behind the curtain. The rest of the room is empty, made of stone flooring and unfinished walls. I can see the drywall, patches of it missing as if it were a forgotten project. Pink insulation peaks out from the gaps along with wooden support beams. A chandelier hangs from the low roof in the middle of the room, just before the curtain. I approach the hanging fabric. I pull it back.

There is a small side table with a lamp that casts the eerie blue light. Beside it, an orange bottle of pills. And another. One of the bottles is on its side, its contents spilled out. I notice pills on the floor from the spillage. Beside the table is a hospital bed. 

On the hospital bed, hooked up to a machine on the other side of the bed that emits the steady beeping, is grandpa. 

He is a husk. His eyes are sunken in, his cheeks hollow and his skin drooping. He looks dead. But I know he isn’t, because his small chest is rising and falling unevenly. His bony hand lays at his side. I pick it up and hold it in mine. 

“Leah,” he croaks. The beeping of the heart monitor gets faster. 

“Grandpa,” I manage to force out despite my throat closing. My head is spiralling. Grandma told me he passed away. She told me he was gone. 

I was never as close to grandpa as I am with grandma. But after believing him to be dead for a year, and now finding him laying half-alive on this bed, I feel like I am going to throw up. 

“Why are you here?” I whisper. 

He doesn’t respond, but his heart monitor picks up some more. It gets faster until there isn’t more than a second between beeps. His chest quickly rises and falls and I hear him panting weakly. 

I start to panic. I reach for the pills on the table. The bottle I picked up reads amiodarone. I don’t know what that means, but I shovel a few into his mouth. The monitor still beeps rapidly. I add a few more into his mouth and force him to swallow. After a moment or two, he stops panting. The monitor slows. I breathe a sigh of relief. 

Then it lets out a long, non-stopping beep. The sharp ongoing sound fills the room. Something tells me that isn’t good. I look back at grandpa. He isn’t moving. I wait for his chest to rise, but it doesn’t. He isn’t blinking either. His eyes are staring at me. They look empty and glazed over. 

I killed him. 

I stumble backwards, choking on my sobs. I place the pill bottle back on the table, close the curtain, and make my way quietly back upstairs. 

The journey back up is a lot faster than the way down. I reach the top of the stairs, the sound of the monitor still faintly to be heard. I close the door and quickly get back to my room. 

I get into bed and shut my eyes. 

I killed my grandpa who was already supposed to be dead. 

But I don’t let that thought develop any further. I force myself to sleep. 

The next morning I wake up to the sun in my eyes. I hear birds singing their morning song and nearby cars making their way down the road. A train blows its horn in the distance.

And I hear grandma wailing. 

Her cries solidify the brutal anxiety settling in my stomach like a heavy boulder. 

Last night wasn’t a dream. 

I killed my grandpa. 

But did I really kill him if he was already dead to me?