THE NIGHTMARE WITHIN: Chapter 1

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

The last Indian Summer ended, followed soon after by bitter winds blowing in off Lake Michigan, an angry marauder let loose on the city.  Ever since their standoff with Mr. Freakshow, Sophie hadn't felt quite right.  She felt drained, utterly exhausted.  She spent days on end in bed, watching as Andrew painted a new mural over the old.  He painted a red sun low at the horizon, a wisp of cloud skirting the diffuse sunlight, the rolling wheat fields reaped of their summer seed.

She watched his hands flex as he moved through a brushstroke, his artist's hands--long, agile fingers, the ridged tendons close to the surface.  His blood flowing through his veins.  Her thin lips spread in a gray-lipped smile.

"Andrew?"

"Yeah, hon?"

"Come to bed.  I'm cold."

"Should I turn up the thermostat?"

"No, it's fine.  Come here."

Andrew was about to set down the brush, but made one last dabbing stroke.  "I was just finishing anyway."  He wiped his hands dry on a paint-caked rag and then came over to the bed.  "It's done."

Sophie pulled aside the blankets, and her husband joined her.  Andrew fit one arm in the crook of her neck, the other arm on her side.  His rough hand rested on the small of her back.  She sighed deeply, her eyes closing in contentment.

Sophie's breaths became shallower, more erratic.  She stirred as if dreaming and Andrew held her gently, lovingly.

At some point, Sophie stopped moving, her lungs at rest for the first time since before they formed while she was still inside her mother.  Her breath expired.  Such a subtle transfer of energy, of life.  So subtle as to be almost unnoticeable. 

But for Andrew.  Her husband of so many years, waiting for her in the afterlife for these last twenty years.  Finally, they would reunite.

The Andrew dream faded away, the blankets falling where he once rested next to his dreamer.  The beautiful murals, the thousands of brushstrokes covering Sophie's walls, her ceilings, they too faded. 

Carin had three surgeries to fix her leg.  After two months, she had graduated from her walker to a cane.  Kevin playfully teased her and called her an old lady, but Carin did not care.  She had her son again.  He had come back to life, by some miracle, he had come back to her.

Until the end of winter, Kevin had to wear a fitted helmet to guard his broken skull.  On impact, he also suffered a broken pelvis, a bruised liver, and a shattered ankle.  Pressure had built up in his brain, and shortly after they removed him from the lawn of his old house, he was in surgery at Warren Cove Community Hospital.  When he woke, the doctors told him he was lucky to be alive.  If he had landed at a slightly different angle, he would have died from any number of his injuries. 

While he called his mom an old lady for walking with a cane, she quickly forgot he was even wearing the helmet.  The public was less forgiving.  People would stare at him, curious.  Some children pointed at him as if he was some kind of freak.  Their parents would have to force away the pointing fingers and gawking expressions.  It was one of the happiest days of his life when he was able to leave the helmet for good.

In the springtime, Carin was getting around well enough without her cane, except for particularly damp days, and then she would only use it if she were on her feet for extended periods.  Kevin, being so young, had healed almost completely.  He still walked with a slight limp as his healing ankle regained strength to match its twin.