We sat on folding chairs around Grampa’s bed. At first they talked in whispers, or not at all, afraid to disturb him, perhaps, or maybe just afraid of him, of what he was doing. I didn’t talk at all, just watched, waiting for Grampa to die. As time went on, however, they stopped whispering, and the stuffy silence was broken only by the loud pock of the clock on the mantle.

Nurse and I sat together on the left side of the bed. Across from us were Mom and Dad, so that the four of us bracketed the old man’s bed like archangels, guarding the four quarters, waiting to bear him aloft when he drew his last breath. I watched his chest rise and fall under the blanket, rise and fall, such a slight motion that I convinced myself it wasn’t happening at all, that he had stopped breathing a long time ago. Then a wrinkle in the blanket would move, ever so little, and I would know that he was still alive. The room smelled of old clothes and antiseptic, of Mom’s perfume and mothballs. It was an odd smell, all mixed together like that, a faintly musty smell which was nevertheless sharp and bitter. I felt lightheaded, each tick of the clock seeming further and further apart, as if time were stretching out like taffy, stretching thinner and thinner, until I became lost between ticks, the silence roaring in my ears like the ocean. I wondered if Grampa could hear the silence, if he could hear anything.

The room was hot and very still. I blinked sweat out of my eyes and rubbed my forehead with my wrist.

“How much longer, do you think?” asked Dad. After so long a silence, his whisper seemed to come from nowhere, as if the walls had spoken, or the floor.

“I can’t tell you that, Mr. Granger,” replied Nurse, touching Grampa’s wrist lightly. Her voice was low and controlled, not a whisper, but not speaking aloud either. It was the firm, sympathetic, professionally reverent hush all nurses learn to use. “I’ve never seen anyone last this long before, in this condition. At least he’s peaceful. When the end comes, he won’t know it. He’ll just slip away, a little deeper into sleep, then deeper still, until he’s no longer sleeping....”

“Dead!” I shouted, my voice very loud and shrill. Mom and Dad jerked upright at the sound, and even Nurse flinched back. “He’ll be dead,” I continued, “and then we can have a funeral and bury him.”

Mom covered her mouth with one hand while the other fluttered on her lap like a wounded sparrow. She started to speak, then gave up, feeling helpless, I suppose, to think of anything meaningful to say to a twelve-year-old watching his grandfather die. Dad’s face went flat, then crinkled into a strange expression I had never seen before. “Gerry, why don’t you wait outside.” His tone of voice told me it wasn’t a question, so I got up and left the room, closing the door quietly, almost gently, behind me.

Outside it was already dark. Thunder rumbled far away and heat lightning made the horizon flicker. The air felt thick and heavy, but there was no rain yet, no breeze. It was if the world were holding its breath to find out what I would do next. I stood on the front porch and felt a sense of panic building somewhere deep in my guts. My legs were trembling. I wanted to shout, or run, or hit someone. I felt had to do something, anything, but there was nothing to do. Instead, I sat on the porch swing and set it gently in motion, the chains creaking above me. I was still sweating, for all that I wore only shorts and a tee-shirt. The weathered wood of the swing seat felt smooth and slick under my thighs and against the backs of my knees. The panic slowly subsided as I pendulated the swing back and forth, the tips of my sneakers just barely brushing the porch.

And I remembered Grampa.

Grampa built this house, built it with his own hands. He had been working on it for more than 30 years, building an addition here, a sun porch there, polishing, cleaning, improving, whittling, scraping and painting. Wood and plaster and brick came alive under his hands, as he lovingly tooled each corner, carpeted each floor, glazed each window. The house had character; it was unique. Each nook had a cabinet lovingly crafted to inhabit it and no other; each window was angled and jointed to show just exactly what Grampa wanted to see from that room.

I remember when Grampa first took me aside, put a hammer in my hands, and, his fingers cupping mine, let me help him create his masterpiece, his lifework, the house.

But now the garden was overgrown, the hedges untrimmed, and the paint peeling in large, scabrous weals, as though the house had contracted a disease, a disease which rotted away from the inside, slowly, slowly, so that only after years of tedious deterioration did the wounds begin to show, easing through the skin of the house the way blood oozes up from a scraped knee.

I eased the swing back and forth, waiting for Grampa to die, and wondering what would happen to the house after he was gone. Only gradually, faintly, far off and sweet, like the sound of children chanting in the distant night, did I become aware that I was not alone. Across the darkness of the yard, painted a black which was almost imperceptibly darker than the trees, a figure stood and watched me in silence. I could see no eyes, no telltale glint in the gloom, yet I was sure that I was being watched. “Hello?” I ventured. “Do you want something?” There was no answer, but my skin prickled and leaped, dragging my bones with it, so that my entire body gave a convulsive shudder. Suddenly I knew there was more than one, that the yard was full of shadowy specters. I held my breath and strained to see through the charcoal air.

Then it was as though the figures were rushing at me, faster and faster, leaning forward, arms a-stretch, feet just skimming the ground, all with a terrible quietness and mordancy, and a breath of the grave overcame me, attar and dust, and I screamed aloud. “What do you want!”

“Don’t talk to them,” said my father from behind me, and I whirled, falling off the swing, terrified to turn my back on the specters, terrified, strangely, of my father, too. “Don’t ever talk to them,” he told me again, and I knew, somehow, without looking, that the specters had retreated, were waiting just beyond sight.

“Who are they?” I gasped. “What do they want?”

“They are waiting for Grampa to die. Come inside now, Gerry.”

I rushed past him and flung myself up the stairs. Breathless, heart pounding, I locked the door of my bedroom and sat on the bed. Through the window, illuminated now and then by flashes of heat lightning, I could see the ghouls, standing quietly, standing tall and black and tenebrous in the yard, waiting, just waiting, waiting for Grampa to die. I fancied I could hear them breathing, that it was in time with the creak of Grampa’s breath, and that with each wheeze they would lean forward, with each rattle lean back...almost, almost, not yet, not quite yet, but soon, soon....A yearning, a subsidence; a rhythm of breathing like the wash of the sea. At some point I fell asleep, and when I woke, it was morning and it was raining, and Grampa was dead.

I stood alone at the side of the coffin and looked at Grampa’s face. His eyes and lips had been carefully sewn shut already, and his cheeks were propped up from within by stiff plastic inserts. I could hear the minister in the other room, talking to Mom and Dad, talking softly, urgently, counseling them in their grief. I wanted to laugh. Grief? There was no sorrow here; only relief. Grampa’s hands looked very still and fragile, paper-thin now that the veins had collapsed. I couldn’t imagine how those frail hands had built this house.

The room was suddenly filled with black, shadowy specters, and the overwhelming attar of their breath washed over me. They did not look at Grampa – they looked at me. Strangely, I felt no fear this time. “Cheated,” said a voice from my throat. It was not my voice, and it was not talking to me. It was Grampa’s voice, using my lungs and vocal chords and tongue to shape his message. “Cheated,” he said again, talking to the shadow shapes. “I have cheated you. Now you will have to wait.”

The specters hissed and vanished. “Grampa?” I asked aloud, but there was no answer. I touched Grampa’s body, poked my forefinger into his cold arm. “Grampa?”

A hand touched my shoulder, and I whirled around. My mouth hung open, and I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. The minister stood quietly behind me. I had not heard him enter. “You must have loved him very much,” said the minister, and I knew then that he had not seen the specters, not heard Grampa using my voice to speak.

“What?”

“You must have loved him very much,” repeated the minister.

“He’s in my blood,” I replied. I touched my chest. “In here. He’s inside me. He’s not really dead.”

“Yes, he will always live inside those who loved him.”

Damned platitudes. “That’s not what I meant,” I began, then stopped. It was pointless. This minister could not understand. I paused for breath. “When it’s time,” I said, “to close the coffin, I....”

“Yes?”

“When it’s time, I want to close the lid.”

The minister’s face crinkled. His hand tightened on my shoulder. “My son, you can’t mean that.”

“Yes, yes I do. I want to close the lid. I want to slam it. I want to put nails in it. I want to....” Suddenly I was crying, and I didn’t want him to see that. I left him standing there beside the coffin, bewildered by my intensity, shocked by my words.

The specters followed me through the halls, invisibly floating behind me as I walked past my parents. Come with me, I told them silently. Come with me. They followed me up the stairs, past my bedroom, into the bathroom. They crowded around me, the stench and fetor of the grave dripping from them like rain as I locked the bathroom door and glared at my reflection in the mirror. My face wavered in and out of focus, first looking like my own, then looking like Grampa’s. I glowered at the mirror and tried to force my face to remain my own.

“You can’t glare me out,” said Grampa, and the specters surged forward at the sound. “Your face is my face, Gerry,” Grampa went on, using my throat without permission. “Stare all you want, but you can’t glare me out.”

I took off my shirt and hit myself on the chest, over the heart. “Out,” I grunted with every blow. “Get out.” I watched in the mirror as my skin reddened. I hit harder, striking my stomach and my thighs with closed fists. “Out!” I growled. I grit my teeth and punched as hard as I could. “Come out of there!”

“You can’t beat me out,” laughed Grampa. “You are the seed of my seed, the flesh of my flesh. I have every right to stay here. You are only hurting yourself.” The specters leaned forward, relishing my pain. They ran their ghostly black hands up and down my body, touching each bruise, fondling each welt. With disgust, I tried to shove them away, but although they could touch me, my hands went right through them, and I was just pushing at shadows.

I took down my father’s razor and turned on the hot water. Holding the sharp edge of the razor against my inner wrist, I pressed lightly, and the steel slid easily into the surface of my skin. A thin trickle of blood appeared, quickly washed away by the running water; I had only cut through the first layer of skin. I would have to press harder. “You can’t bleed me out,” said Grampa’s voice from my throat, but he was no longer laughing.

“You’re in my blood,” I told him. “And when the blood comes out, so will you.” The specters leaned forward eagerly, watching, waiting. I paused, the blade just barely resting on my skin. Could I really do this?

“It won’t work,” said Grampa. “But I won’t let you try.” I watched with fascination as my hand put the razor back on the shelf. “You see, Gerry,” said Grampa, breathing the air in my lungs, moving my lips to say his words. “You can’t fight me.” He moved my legs and arms for me, turned off the water, sat me down. He made my hands take off my shoes and pants, and when I was naked, he marched me into the shower and held me under the cold water until I was spluttering and gasping and begging to be freed. He gave me my body back then, and I shut off the shower and got dressed.

The specters stood in a silent circle around me, watching. Grampa laughed at them through my throat. “You’ll have to wait,” he told them. “Just like Gerry.” The specters moved off then, faded through the walls, melted through the floor, whispered away. But not far. I could feel them without knowing how I knew; I could see them, ringed invisibly around the house, still waiting.

I looked in the mirror at my face, at his face, and I couldn’t tell which was which. “Grampa,” I breathed, “you’re dead.”

“No, Gerry. I’m in you, in your blood, whether you like it or not.”

He marched me through his funeral like a marionette. His dead hand kept my live one from slamming down the lid of his coffin, kept me at a respectful distance. His dead lips kept mine from speaking. He made me cry at the appropriate time, and he made me stand and watch while his body was lowered into the grave and the dirt was thrown on top. And inside, he was laughing.

After the funeral, I sat on the porch swing in the dark. The air was hot and humid. The crickets were loud. The stars were bright and unwinking. There was no moon.

Dad came out and sat beside me for a while in silence. My hands twisted at each other until Grampa made my fingers lie still and splayed on my knees. As the swing went back and forth, and my breath seeped through my throat, the dark ghosts faded in and out of view. They leaned forward with each lung-full I sucked in, swayed back with each breath I expelled. There was a terrible, relentless rhythm about it all, and it matched the beating of my heart. Dad touched my shoulder, and I knew that he saw them too.

Grampa spoke then, from my throat, and answered himself, from my father’s throat. He was inside each of us, and we both realized it at the same moment, and I started to cry while Dad beat his fist softly against the back of the porch swing and said, “Damn, ahhh, damn,” very quietly. Then suddenly Dad was hugging me, hugging hard, and I clung to him like a very little boy. Grampa let me cry for a long time, then made me straighten up again and knuckle my face dry. I sat next to Dad then, and leaned against him, and he put his arm around my shoulders. I looked out from under Dad’s arm and saw the specters leaning forward, scenting pain. “Go away,” I whispered. “Just go away.”

“Don’t talk to them,” Dad said after a moment. “Don’t ever talk to them. It just makes it worse.” We sat together in silence then, pushing the porch swing gently back and forth with our feet, watching the darkness deepen, listening to our breath match the rhythm of the night, not saying anything, just waiting, like the ghosts, for Grampa to die.

Story Notes

"Waiting for Grampa to Die" is one of my very few horror stories. It appeared in the ill-fated Midnight Zoo magazine in 1992 and disappeared without a spash.

Of incidental historical interest, this was my first professionally-published science-fiction story (is there any science fiction in there?), and it allowed me to join Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as a junior member. Out of my online association with science fiction writers came SFF Net, which currently hosts the SFWA site.