As the curtains danced with the summer breeze, she sat by his side in the darkness of night and held his hand in hers. The machine to his other side clicked twice and whirred, repeating the endless pattern as it did each night, an unfeeling robotic attempt at a lullaby that failed to lure her into sleep. His chest rose with the whirring.
The machine clicked twice and fell silent, and his chest fell in reply.
In the absence of the computerized hum, the many miniscule beeps and clicks and warbles of the machinery that had invaded their home became clear again, though she hardly even noticed them anymore. With a sigh, she lightly stroked the paper-thin skin of his hand with her thumb, feeling the soft veins floating from side to side beneath her touch. Perhaps in response, though as likely, perhaps not, she felt a light squeeze on her fingers.
She leaned down, reached to the wall behind the bed with her free hand, and slid a plug out of its socket. Save for the swish of the curtains, the room fell into a true, deep silence. She lay her head on his shoulder and stroked his hand, slowly closing her eyes.
Whether minutes or hours had passed when she opened her eyes again, the elderly woman knew not. It was still dark, the shapes of their bedroom but gray shades against the grayer background. She sat up slowly, stretching her neck from side to side. It was then that she saw the boy, standing against the black outline of the open door to the hallway. Though no light fell to illuminate him, his image was crisp and clear, as if he was being seen by her mind regardless of what her clouded eyes had to say about it. He was young, no more than eight to ten years, with hair that was light and a little long for a boy, smoothly parted on the left and combed to either side. He was slender, but with a face that still bore the remnants of his baby fat. And he was unfathomably familiar. The boy was her son; but then, he was her granddaughter; but at the same time he was neither. She was certain she had never seen him before in her life.
He was watching her husband intently.
“Who are you?” She asked in a whisper. The boy flinched, as though noticing her presence for the first time. He looked at her with a frown, his clear blue eyes fading towards black for half a moment, and then walked forward to stand at the other end of the bed beside her husband. He laid his hand on the old man’s shoulder as she watched warily.
Her husband stirred and slowly sat up. Tears slipped from her eyes and she clasped his hand tight, but he only turned away, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His fingers slipped like butter from hers as he stood up beside the boy. She called his name and reached for him pleadingly, but he did not hear her. He only stood with his head slouching towards his chest, his eyes barely open and empty, unseeing.
“Where are you taking him?” She said as she clenched the sheets in her hands, no longer whispering. The boy turned pitch black eyes to her sharply, his gaze piercing through to her core. Though those eyes carried neither malice nor anger, never before had she felt terror as she did at that moment; as his black eyes stripped away the very layers of her being until they reached bare essence. He looked at her as at a naked babe, and knew more about her than she could ever hope to realize in a hundred lifetimes.
YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE, he spoke, his voice a wordless symphony of minor chords. She trembled in her chair, but glared back at the boy, refusing to cast her eyes away.
“Well I am here. Who are you, and what are you doing with my husband?”
DO NOT ASK ME WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN.
She dropped her gaze, clenching the bedding harder at the anguish in her heart.
YOU CANNOT BE HERE, the boy continued, THIS IS NOT THE WAY OF IT. He turned from her as though she may as well have ceased to exist and placed his hand lightly on the elbow of the old man. With a blank face and eyes half-lidded, he turned at the boy’s guidance and together they walked toward the door.
“Wait!” She cried, and bracing herself against the bed she climbed shakily to her feet. “I’m coming with you.” The boy looked back at her, his head cocked slightly to one shoulder.
THIS JOURNEY IS NOT YOURS, he said. I DO NOT HAVE YOUR NAME.
She shook her head. “I took his name a lifetime ago. This journey is ours.”
He frowned again in response.
THIS IS NOT THE WAY.
“I don’t care what the way is. We took a vow, to be together forever. No power can force us apart.”
I CAN. OR HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN HOW THAT VOW ENDS.
She smirked, for the first time feeling in control of her exchange with the boy. “Actually, we left that last part out.”
He gave her a consternated stare, as though calculating a difficult mathematics problem.
“I’m coming,” she reiterated.
VERY WELL, he replied finally. FOLLOW QUICKLY, I WILL NOT WAIT FOR YOU. He turned back and took her husband’s elbow again, and they continued towards the door. Grabbing her cane from the bedside she pushed it to the floor but nearly fell as it gave way beneath her hand. Confused, she placed its rubber cap against the floor again and leaned towards it, coming away with a gripping fear in her stomach. The cane offered her no support, wobbling like a noodle in her hand though the hardwood remained visibly straight.
THERE IS NO PLACE FOR THAT WHERE WE GO, the boy spoke over his shoulder without looking back, a smile in his voice. She grimaced and set the cane aside, slowly pushing off the bed until all her weight rested on her shuddering legs. Turning slowly, she slid first one foot towards the door, and then the other. Three more slow, shuffling steps had her legs in agony and threatening collapse. She rested, panting, and looked up. The boy stood in the doorway, watching her. Her husband beside him faced out into the deep darkness beyond. The boy smiled.
IT WOULD BE… UNWISE… TO FALL BEHIND. I ALONE KNOW THIS PATH. STRAY FROM IT AND YOU WILL NOT BE FOUND.
And then he turned away again and walked with her husband into the black.
Gritting her teeth she hunched over, leaning her hands on her knees as she forced another four steps out of her arthritic joints. She glanced up, noting that her quarry had gained at least fifty feet on her in the meantime. They were still in view, walking straight out from the doorway, but at this rate she’d never catch up to them. Panic began to set in, and she forced another two steps in rapid succession. On the third, her leg refused to cooperate and she tumbled to the floor. Pain flooded through her body, but she shoved it angrily aside. She, who had given natural birth to three children; who had twice survived cancer; who had replacement knees and surgically fused vertebrae: she had made pain her bitch years ago. But despite her determination, her legs would not respond to her calls for action, and her fingers could find no purchase on the smooth floor to drag herself along towards the doorway, mere feet away from her now. Cursing her body for its betrayal in her time of greatest need, she gazed out into the dark. Even with the boy’s uncannily crisp image, she could only barely make them out in the distance. Through the doorway, the darkness began to loom.
An ominous dread settled over her and she looked back at the room, the bedroom she had shared with him for the vast majority of her long life. The canvases on the wall that she had painted and he had framed. The drawers he had fashioned and the windows she had stared out as she composed her books of poetry. The bed they had shared, and the hospice bed he had ridden alone. The memories of all they had done, all they had shared, hung thick in the air, saturated the furniture. Even the floor on which she lay was steeped in the story they had written together; a story inked with their sweat and blood and bound by their love. A story that would presently end, she realized, if she failed to get out of this damnable room! The room she would be doomed to haunt as he walked without her down the dark path. She looked out at the dull gray speck in the distance that was the last trace of her husband and the boy. She looked back at the room, and down at her ruined old body, lying twisted on the floor. For a moment she imagined she could see the faint outlines of her husband back in his bed and herself lying beside him with her head on his shoulder. Vague images she recognized as the live-in caretaker and their youngest son flitted around the bed and machine, like ghosts captured by a blurry analogue camcorder.
There is no place for this where we go, she realized.
She stood in the darkness. The boy looked up at her thoughtfully, seemingly unfazed by her appearance at his side, and then made an appraising sound in his mellifluous voice that she could best describe as a ‘hmph.’ The old man beside him smiled at her, offering his hand. She took it, and together they followed the boy onwards.
They walked for what seemed like ages. As they walked, voices echoed out of the darkness in vague whispers and cries, while hazy visions flitted across the emptiness, never truly solidifying into stable images. These phantoms tugged at her heartstrings, strumming up her most primal fears and dredging up memories of jealousy and anger, sadness and loss. They washed over and through her, but just as they appeared, so too did they fade back into the black world, taking with them the sting of the old wounds they’d reopened. Layers of worry and disquietude peeled away from her with each assault, like dead callouses sloughing away to reveal the fresh pink skin beneath, leaving her simultaneously refreshed and raw. Through it all, the boy led on unwaveringly, wordlessly, and they followed hand-in-hand.
As her layers fell gradually away, the voices and visions flagged in both intensity and frequency, slowly fading out to nothingness as she remembered again her epiphany in the bedroom. She walked on in a placid calm, enjoying the simple warmth of her husband beside her. They had been some time in the peaceful dark when finally, the boy stopped. He turned and fixed first her husband, and then her in turn with his piercing black eyes, but this time she felt no terror at his gaze.
“Thank you,” she said. He looked at her as though he intended to say something in reply, but then shook his head instead, turning away.
COME. WE ARRIVE.
They continued forward, and with every step they took the surrounding world began to brighten. She caught her breath in wonder as vague, jagged outlines solidified into dusky green pine trees on the edges of a small meadow, and looming hulks in the sky revealed themselves to be craggy, snow-capped mountains, white and gray beneath the brightening sapphire heavens. The gentle mutterings of moving water grew in the air, and she saw that they were approaching an energetic brook with a rocky bed. Songbirds began to chirrup their morning salutations. So caught up was she in their surroundings that she failed to notice the boy, who, as the world flooded with light, slowly faded away. She turned back to him just in time to catch a small, strange smile thrown over his shoulder, and within three more steps he was gone.
The two came to a stop as their guide departed, taking in their surroundings in silence. Across the brook, a tall stag grazed lazily while a doe and their fawn drank from the stream, unfazed by the human presence. In the distance over the trees, a few small columns of chimney smoke rose up into the cloudless sky. Her husband squeezed her hand lightly, and she stroked his in return, feeling firm, calloused skin beneath her thumb.
“It’s so beautiful,” he said aloud in a voice the likes of which she hadn’t heard in decades.
She turned to him and gasped, her heart thumping powerfully at the sight of the young man beside her, the man she’d first seen from across the dance hall at her town’s harvest festival when she was sixteen. He lifted her soft, smooth, young hand to his lips and kissed it, smiling all the while.
“What do you think this place is?” She asked breathlessly, gesturing back to the wooded vale around them.
“I have no idea,” he replied, and his lips creased with the mischievous smile that had won her heart. “Let’s go find out!”
The Literary Diversions of K.T. Lazarus 
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