The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller(21)
His eyes fell to the table beside him, and he scanned the stacks of paper. Upon closer examination, he realized that many of the sheets were handwritten. A hazy scrawl covered the paper with lines of text, written in pencil, pen, and what looked like charcoal. Again he glanced at the clock, its glass doors reflecting three dark images of himself.
“That’s enough fun for one night,” he said.
With as much composure as he could muster, he walked to the stairway and flipped off the light. He treaded upward until he reached the safety of the kitchen, and let out a held breath like a man rising from beneath water. Evan shut the door and sat at the table, then pulled up his blank document once again. After a moment he tapped at the keyboard.
Clock’s origin, purpose, and history.
He stared at the dark words against the white background, then shut the computer down. As he left the kitchen, he paused by the light switch near the doorway, listening. After a minute, he shook his head and turned the light off, then headed toward his room.
9
He cries with a vehemence he didn’t know he possessed.
The agony pours out of him through his eyes as he sits at her bedside, her hand, so warm before, cool now. Everything is cold here, this hospital, the people. But he knows it would be no different going outside, going home; there is no place that would make him feel unlike he does now.
“Evan, I love you.”
He blinks through the tears and swallows his sobs long enough to look at her. “I love you too.”
“I’ll always love you both.”
He shakes his head, re-grips her hand. “There’s still a few tests to run, the doctor said there was this new treatment in Texas, radio waves or something.”
She smiles, so sad. A longing there for life just out of reach, a chance, a hope. “Yes, we’ll have to be patient and strong for Shaun.”
Shaun.
Shaun.
Shaun.
Evan awoke to Shaun’s soft crying. The monitor’s lights jumped with life. He threw off the covers and crossed the hall before sleep completely left him, the dream receding into what he recognized as relief—relief it wasn’t reality, it wasn’t actually happening again. When he flipped the light on, he saw that Shaun had kicked his blankets off and rolled close to one edge of the bed. Dark, clumpy stains surrounded his legs and feet.
Blood.
Evan rushed forward and grabbed Shaun’s shoulders, ready to run to the pontoon and rush him to the emergency room, but then he smelled it.
Shit. Shaun had soiled the sheets.
“Oh, buddy. You had an accident, that’s all,” Evan said, his muscles relaxing. “We’ll get you in the tub.”
“T-t-t-tub,” Shaun sobbed.
Evan picked him up and, trying not to get the sticky waste on him in the process, carried him into the bathroom. Stripping off the pull-up, he saw that the diaper hadn’t held near the leg holes, overflowing and subsequently waking Shaun. Evan got the water flowing in the tub, and wiped his son’s legs and backside as well as he could with a nearby towel, then placed him in the warm water.
“There, we’ll get you all cleaned up,” Evan said, pouring several dollops of bath soap into the water.
Shaun continued to cry and look up every few seconds, his eyes reddened and ashamed.
“It’s okay, honey, it’s okay, you had an accident, you’re fine.” He stroked Shaun’s hair and smiled at him, then wiped sleep from the corners of his eyes. “Everyone has accidents. Uncle Jason had an accident once at college, except he wasn’t wearing a pull-up, but he probably should have, seeing as how much he drank that night.” Evan shook his head at the memory and laughed a little. “He had to clean himself up the next morning, I wouldn’t go near him.”
As the water crept higher, Shaun’s crying diminished, until he sat still while Evan washed him. He tried to remember the last time Shaun had had an accident, and couldn’t. It had been at least a year.
Evan drained the water, scrubbing Shaun down one more time before toweling him off and placing him on the couch. He then undertook cleaning the bedroom, balling up the sheets in a garbage bag and scouring the mattress with hot, soapy water. When he was satisfied, he flipped the mattress, but failed to find another set of sheets anywhere in the house. So he covered the bed with an old blanket from the master bedroom’s closet. It smelled musty but looked clean, and after unfurling it, he saw it was hand-sewn. Evan finished putting away the cleaning supplies, and finally glanced at the clock: 2:17.
“You want to watch something?” he asked, as he entered the living room.
“Somfing?” Shaun echoed.
Evan flipped through the TV channels and found a documentary on dinosaurs.
“This okay, buddy?”
Shaun didn’t reply. He glanced at his son and saw the entranced look on his face as the ancient creatures trundled across the screen. Evan smiled and yawned. As he watched a brontosaurus roam across a lonely, windswept plain, his mind traveled back to the dream, like a tongue prodding at a sore tooth. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, but Elle’s worn face, still beautiful through the pain, kept floating across his vision.
When Shaun fell asleep an hour later, the anxiety hadn’t receded, and instead of returning to bed, he opted to sit on the screened-in porch. The night air felt good against his warm skin, and the sound of the lake all around gradually lulled him into calmness.