The Unforgiving Rain

The tea had grown cold in the porcelain cups as silence reigned in the cottage. White light from the pale sky crept in through an open window, leaving all in shades of white.

“I’m being haunted, Charlotte,” I said as loudly as I could bear.

I couldn’t look at her as her cold gaze fell on me.

“Haunted by what?” she asked.

“By mother.”

Charlotte gave an audible sigh and sat back in her chair, arms folded.

“And why would you think that?”

My mouth fell agape, and I meant to speak. But no words came.

Instead, I reached with my good hand into my coat pocket and withdrew a folded letter. I was able to look again at my sister when I set the paper down in the center of the table.

There was a weariness in her eyes, a burning frustration. When she next spoke, her voice was hard.

“If mother were clinging to this world, why is that she would come to you? Have you not suffered enough?”

“Please read it,” I said. “It will explain everything.”

Almost hesitantly, she opened the letter. Her eyes darted from side to side following the lines. As she read, a deep frown formed on her lips. I chewed on my nail.

She did not understand. She could not understand.

Why did I trust her with this?

My heart began to race, faster and faster. She would think me mad. She would find me loathsome. I sat in agony, watching my sister mishandle my very soul’s incarnation.

“Please, you needn’t continue. I am in error,” I said.

I reached out to remove my confession from her hand, but she pulled away. Her eyes were voraciously tearing through the letter’s content, through me. My temper, like the rising of a kettle’s whistle, reached its zenith.

Mustering all my vigor, I lunged across the table for my heart’s note. Tea spilled and porcelain shattered. Worst of all, I was only able to snatch the corner of the page, tearing it free. I had no strength left to do anything else, not even raise my head.

When again my eyes met my sister’s, I found them angry. Her visage had contorted in wrath.

“By God, Jonathan, are you incapable of sitting still? Must you turn even the most dull of self-effacing rants into some great treasure to be defended? There is nothing in this letter that I did not already know.”

Charlotte stared down at my sprawled out form. At some point during my desperate leap, she’d stood up.

“I’m sorry,” I said, face in a puddle of tea, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

A vitriolic sigh, almost a scoff, escaped her lips.

“You do not frighten me,” she said. “You make me afraid.”

I said nothing. For what could be said?

Charlotte turned away, my letter still in her hand. She spoke as she stood before the threshold of our old home.

“You make me afraid for what a person can become.”

I cried out before she closed the door.

“Please, don’t leave. She will not let me rest.”

The gentle closing of the door was, to me, a calamitous slam.

I spent the next few minutes heaving myself up from the table and back into my chair. I was so tired. In my fingers, I still held the scrap of paper I’d torn from my letter. I thoughtlessly slid it into my coat pocket.

That scrap had left my pocket whole, part of a full page. Now, it remained only a part of its former self, diminished. Should it be discarded now?

Using my wooden cane, I forced myself onto my feet, my left leg giving out as always. My own image confronted me in that soft light.

I stared into the large, ovular mirror. I truly was but a piece of my former self. My shoulders were hunched and my clothes fit loosely on my spindly frame. But my eyes, those were the worst. They almost looked hollow, like dark voids drained of all vitality, nearly a corpse’s.

Something moved behind me, and I squinted at the mirror. A surge of hope shot through me. Had Charlotte returned to make sure I was alright? Would she stay with me for a little longer?

A womanly form stood in the background of the mirror, but when I turned to see who was there, I saw no one. My heart sank at the realization. Unconsciously, I backed away.

Mother.

I stared at that silhouette, and mercifully, she did not move.

“Please go away, Mother,” I said.

I lost sight of that shadow as my vision swam with tears. Frantically, I looked around the mirror, trying to relocate her. Where had she gone? What was she doing?

Suddenly, my feet were pulled out from under me, and I fell to the floor with a ringing crash. Pain surged through my side. Tears spilled out from my eyes and wet the carpet as I lay there.

I groaned.

When I regained my feet, the shadow was gone; Mother was satisfied with my momentary punishment. I shuffled, even slower now, more deeply hunched, to my room. Each step brought a flash of burning heat to my body, and my skull rang dully in my own ears.

Eventually, painfully, I made it to my cot in my small, boyhood room. I sat on the bed, curling up next to the window.

The thick clouds that blanketed the sky colored the world darkly. I realized it was going to rain as a gentle wind shook the great oak that stood sentinel over the field.

I don’t know if I slept, but time passed. The world outside darkened to a dull gray.

What was that sound?

Something scraped behind me, arousing me from my stupor. I looked but saw nothing. It was hard to see in that dim light.

“Whatever you are doing, by God, stop,” I called out.

But what was the ghost doing? I scanned the room for anything changing or moving, but could find nothing. Closing my eyes, I focused on the noise.

The bookshelf, it was coming from the bookshelf.

I moved quickly, forgetting my cane, and pressed my face to the wall to see if I could see any motion.

Then I saw it.

One of the books was slowly, bit by bit, being pulled from the shelf, its cover scraping against the others’. I stepped back, and my leg gave out, sending me to the floor.

I watched in dread as the book was freed from the shelf. It hovered in the center of the room for a moment. I realized that it was a Bible. With a creak, it opened to a particular passage, pages riffling. My hands shook as I regarded the display.

“Please,” I cried.

The book fell to the ground fast, as if forced down. It landed with a thud, and I flinched. I felt her anger in her next action. Other books began slowly inching off my shelves and floating into the air. I knew she would bury me with them.

“Please, mama, I’m sorry,” I screamed. “I should have never taken the horse. I should have been obedient. I should have listened to you. I should have been good.”

I stared up at the mass of hanging tomes for a moment, my heart racing. After an eternal second, the books slowly moved back to their original positions on the shelves.

“Is that all you wanted?” I asked. “An apology?”

I was met with silence. And somehow, that was worse than a response.

She will torment me always, won’t she?

After a while of lying in that lonely room waiting for any kind of sign, I returned to my cot.

#

My cane sunk in the wet grass as I stepped outside for the first time in what felt like forever. Immediately, the cold rain sent a shiver down the back of my neck. My course was set, however.

I couldn’t help but think of that night, the cold, the rain, the horse, and the soaring. Years and years ago it was, but time became thin in that moment, and I felt the past.

I kept trudging on to where I knew I needed to be. She had called me. And unlike in my youth, this time I would answer. Whatever it was she wanted, I would give.

I blinked through the rain. There was something interrupting the water droplets, a silhouette.

It was her. This time, she was no shadow, and I saw her through no mirror. Her form was entirely translucent, and the water beading off of her revealed some of her features. Never before had she appeared to me so palpably.

Finally, this dreaded unknowing could end. My mother could have her revenge, and I could finally have my sleep. I was strangely numb, standing before her in that field. She felt so familiar, and somehow, even now, that gave me a measure of peace.

I fell before the ghost of my mother. I could tell by the way the water washed over her that she was angry.

“I’m sorry, mother,” I said. “I wish I could have been more for you. I wish I would have known to take care of things. I wish I hadn’t seen the world as unchanging and everfixed.”

The ghost stared down at me brow contorted.

“If it’s vengeance you want, you may take it. You made me, you may take me.”

I lowered my face to the earth beneath me. Rainwater soaked into my pants and formed small rivers over my skin. We stayed there for a long time, mother and son. All the while, I waited. I waited for the punishment, whatever it may be. I waited for the pain.

But nothing happened.

My mother’s face remained contorted in rage. Was this the punishment?

Then I felt something.

It started off small, a faint prick in my side, but it grew to a forceful pressure. This was it. She would impale me to bleed out in that field. As the sickness that I’d passed to her drained her of life, so this wound would drain me of mine.

That unseen point drove into me, writhing and looping over my flesh. I watched it. And I waited for the blood.

I waited long.

Not even a drop spilt out onto my coat. The pressure in my side ceased, and I looked back up at my mother.

Her full form was now breathed in water. Every detail of her face glistened in that dying light. I could not understand her expression.

“What have you done?” I asked.

My hand pressed against the side of my coat where the pain had been. Something crunched there. Slowly, I reached into my pocket and withdrew a scrap of paper, my scrap of paper. I’d forgotten it.

There, on the opposite side, there was something written on it. My eyes strained to read it in the darkness.

I loathe you.

If a heart is capable of bursting, mine did then. The note fell from my weary fingers to the grass.

“That is the answer?” I screamed. “Eternal hatred?”

I cried then. My face hung low, inches from the earth. There were no apologies strong enough. My mother had finally spoken to me her heart's truest words. I knew why she was haunting me. I’d always thought, suspected, it was for my sins, but no. It wasn’t for my wrongs she tormented me. It was the hatred that my wrongs had cultivated in her that drove her.

When again, I opened my eyes, the world seemed ever so slightly brighter. I looked down at the note again. I would read it every day until I died.

The words looked different though in the brighter light.

I read it again.

I read it again.

Then I read it again.

Hundreds of times, my eyes passed over my mother’s handwriting. It could not be. It must not be.

My jaw clenched, and my throat was swollen. When I looked up, the ghost of my mother was gone. I was alone in that field, a narrow beam of white light illuminating the world around me.

One last time, to ensure I hadn’t slipped into a dream, I read that familiar script again. And the knot in my heart, with the escape of a breath, unraveled.

I love you.