What the Dying See

“When conscious, about 50% to 60% of hospice patients report a “visitation” by someone who is not there while they dream or are awake: a phenomenon known as End-of-Life Dreams and Visions (ELDVs)” Rabitti, Elisa et al. American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care. 22 March 2023.

Jerry saw the boy three days after being placed into hospice care.

The dying man was wheeled into the room after dinner while his grandkids were whining and clawing at their parents’ shirts.

“The kids are antsy,” Jerry’s daughter said apologetically, “We should go.”

Her husband helped Jerry into the recliner and waved pathetically as a flood of shouting poured from the hallway—one of the other dying patients was losing their wits about pudding or the television or something.

Jerry instinctually looked at the room’s entrance, where his son-in-law was brushing past Jerry’s daughter with their kids on his heels.

At first, he didn’t see the boy. All the noise, the movement of his grandkids, the faint frantic beeping, all kept Jerry’s attention on the bright light of the hallway. But after a moment, his eyes drifted, and in the dark, triangular shadow of the door, he saw the outline of a mid-sized human that seemed to blend into the faint blackness, except the eyes, which glowed yellow like a harvest moon.

The moment Jerry noticed the eyes, the figure smiled, revealing a row of teeth, which cut the shadow like a white sickle.

Jerry lifted his trembling hand and pointed at the door. But Jerry’s voice had been taken by cancer. All he had left was silent gestures.

“Oh, sure, I’ll close the door, dad.” His daughter sheepishly backed away as she slowly pulled the door shut, unaware of what was behind it. “We’ll give you some peace.”

Jerry wished he could call out. He wished he could yell, scream, groan—anything to keep from being alone in the room with the boy standing there, smiling, with cheeks pulled too high, eyes too wide, skin too much the grayish green color of death.

The boy’s clothes were outdated by a few decades. His white button-down shirt clung to his torso with a muddy brown tinge that mixed with the boy’s gray skin. He had tattered pants, and he was missing shoes and socks. It was exactly how he had been dressed all those years ago.

The boy’s hair was matted down by slimy mud and water. And his neck had been broken, leaving his head to tilt sickly over his shoulders. Dark black chains with splotches of orange corrosion wrapped themselves around the ankles and knees.

I thought you were dead, Jerry shouted. But no sound came from Jerry’s mouth, which quivered at the lips and foamed in the corners. The words boomed from his brain, throwing themselves against his skull as if they could burst forth and assail the boy once more. The boy who saw too much that day years ago. The boy who now simply stood there with his deathly grin.

A patter of footsteps approached Jerry’s room from outside.

“Yeah, I’m going in now,” a curt voice called from the entrance. “Yes, I’ll make sure he takes his medicine.”

The door opened, and as it did, the boy was wiped from the room. A pink-scrubbed nurse came to find a pale, trembling, shell-of-a-man, who was dying of cancer and had just soiled himself.  

“Hello, Mr. Selewski. My name is Darlene, and I’ll be helping you tonight.”

Darlene deftly tugged off his clothes, pulled off dirty undergarment, and wiped Jerry down while he stared at the door, expecting a pair of eyes to somehow fit in the narrow cleft between door and wall. But there was nothing there anymore.

“There you go. All better.”

Darlene finished changing Jerry and got him to sit on the edge of the bed. With the efficiency of a veteran caregiver, she took a syringe of medicine and slowly emptied it into his mouth, letting it trickle down his corrupted throat. Then, she swung his legs onto the scratchy sheets, scooted his hips into alignment, and pulled the covers over his body without a chance for Jerry to protest.

“Rest well, Mr. Selewski.”

The lights cut out and the dull hum of electricity zapped into the muffled hush of the nursing home.

The silence was only punctuated by an occasional beep and the distant laughter of the living, who kept watch over the nearly dead.

In the dark corner, Jerry saw the boy once more.

Quickly, Jerry pulled the thin white sheets over his face and clenched his eyes shut, just like he did when he was a child, laying there with his deep breaths and the anxious hope that blankets could protect him from the monsters.

 A nagging sense he was being watched lured him to open his eyes, but still from under the sheets. He dared not let his guard down completely.

Past his feet, in the direction of where the boy had stood, he could only see the cream-colored sheet blanketed by night. But then, as if they blinked into his bed, the yellow eyes of the boy penetrated the cloak of darkness.

 Jerry’s internal voice trembled.

You should still be in the water.

As if in response, white teeth slowly formed into their ghostly hook-shaped grin under glowering eyes.

Jerry rolled his body to the side and shut his eyes.

You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead.

Jerry repeated those words over and over, eyes clenched and hands gripping the sheets. He knew the boy was still there. He knew he was being watched.

But nothing else was happening.

Perhaps, Jerry thought, it was just a vision or a hallucination, maybe even a specter, but nothing else.  

After a while, even with the fear that gripped his mind, the weight of his sickness caused his failing body to shut down for the evening, and Jerry drifted into a restless sleep.

#

             Jerry woke to a large male nurse calling his name.

             He slowly pulled his sheet from his eyes and saw the muscular, tattooed man holding a pair of diapers.

             “Going to change you before breakfast, Jerry.”

             Jerry must have nodded because a pair of strong hands simultaneously lifted his hips and yanked his pajamas to his ankles. Then, the corners of his pull-ups were torn, and the material was slid from under his body. The cool air pounced on his naked, shriveled self. And even though he was dying, he felt a sharp pang of embarrassment at his exposure. Not just the nakedness, but how little there was left of him.

             “Going to lift your hips again,” the man said flatly, eyes watching his own movements yet regarding nothing.

             Once more, Jerry was lifted. After the crackle of plastic straps on paper pull-ups, along with the slight pinch at his waist, Jerry’s manhood was covered. But it was still a diaper, and even the pajama bottoms could not mask that he was, once more, a child—wholly dependent on others, unable to keep himself from being soiled.

             The tattooed nurse practically lifted Jerry all on his own, guiding the old man to the recliner by his bed.

             “Going to come back with breakfast.”

             Jerry gave a weak wave of his hand in acknowledgment. In all the rush of movement and manhandling, he had forgotten about the boy. But when Jerry’s vision lifted to the beams of sunlight creeping through his blinds, he saw a new figure standing almost directly in front of him, right next to the television.

             “Lottie?”

             His wife nodded.

             She was just as he remembered her in their youth. The auburn hair and smooth, milky skin of her early 30’s. Before the law firm took off. Before the years he became mayor and then state senator.

She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, and she wore the sky-blue dress she saved for special events. She had painted her lips red and a set a little pink blush on her cheeks. Jerry noticed a white flower tucked behind her ear.

He remembered this vision of her with her blue dress and make-up, a lily in her hair. It was a day long, long ago. Before they had their daughter. He had plucked it for her. But where was it?

             Jerry’s wife took a step from the wall. He could feel his face flush and his lips curl in a smile. He had been burdened with all of cancer’s cruelties: the loss of function, the heaviness of the treatments, the icy realization he could not escape its clutches, yet now he was as light as a solitary cloud floating in a warm summer sky. He was his grandfather’s skiff, buoyant on gentle waters. His wife had returned to comfort him in his final days, to be there to lovingly guide him to whatever lay beyond this dark world.

He was sure of it.

He reached out his hand.

             The morning sun shone on flecks of dander and dust as if they were in a meadow. Jerry suddenly remembered the field. They had driven out for a picnic.

But where was it?

Lottie took another step closer. The rays of sun shimmered in her hair. He could smell her perfume. How much more pleasant this was than seeing the boy.

The tingle of comfort and joy seemed to flush completely from his body.

Of course. The lake. Where he had hid the boy’s body—

As if she heard his thoughts, Lottie’s countenance shifted. Her eyebrows slanted sharply, and her lips twisted into a snarl. She bent down, eye level with her husband. Shadows formed across the expanse of her face.

The beams of morning sun, which had glowed white and yellow in her auburn hair, sliced across her skin in a bloody-orange hue. Shadows formed around her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks. Her full red-brown hair turned white and thin. She appeared more like a corpse than the sprightly wife of his youth.

             Her left hand grasped the armrest next to Jerry, who now shuddered in his chair. His eyes locked onto hers.

             Lottie, he thought, what is it?

             She turned her head toward the door. Jerry followed her gaze.

             There, standing as he did the night before, was the boy. His neck was broken, and his head dangled now at a forty-five-degree angle. His shirt was drenched. In his hands, he held the chains that had been tied around his ankles.

He grinned at Jerry.

Lottie turned her head back to her husband. She was smiling the same sick smile as the boy.

Lottie, please—

Her eyes, which were blue the color of her dress, turned to night. All was black where the whites of her eyes had once been.

Lottie—

Her right hand had remained draped behind her, but now she slowly moved her arm out from her lower back. Clutched in her hand was a glistening knife, six inches long and glistening. It was familiar to Jerry.

Lottie—Even though it was a voice in his own head, his voice was but a whimper, a whisper that seemed to dissipate right after it came out—I had to do it.

His wife lifted her hand from the armrest. She tilted her head, as if in a fit of compassion, just as she he done all those years ago. Her fingers gently brushed a solitary tear from Jerry’s cheek.

For us, he said.

For a moment, he rested his head in the palm of her hand. He could feel the softness of her skin. The small pockets of flesh in her palm.

Lottie’s hand moved to the back of his head. As her fingers dug into the base of his skull, her voice cut the silence with a sharpness he’d never heard when she was alive, and she repeated the words Jerry had just uttered in his mind.

For us, she said as her right hand plunged the knife between his ribs. Jerry lurched in the chair. He had felt each millimeter of steel slide through flesh and cartilage and muscle and organ. Right to where the cancer had started.

His body shook violently. Lottie leaned forward and placed her lips upon Jerry’s cool, pale forehead. Then she slowly retracted the knife.

Jerry gasped. He could feel fluid foaming from his lungs, clogging his throat more and more.

Why, Lottie? Why?

Her hand pinched his chin and turned his head toward the boy in the corner. Behind the boy stood a young woman. Her blonde hair was ruffled on one side. It was where Jerry had grabbed it that day—the day the boy saw too much. The day Jerry had tried to hide.

The blonde woman’s skin was caked with mud, and her red dress was torn down the middle, revealing where Jerry had stabbed her. In that spot there was a hole inside of her chest, where heart beat slowly in the midst of the darkness.

Jerry’s wife now held that very same knife in one hand. And in the other hand, she kept Jerrry’s face turned to the pair that stood in the corner, who watched gleefully as she stabbed her husband.

Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over—

#

The tattooed male nurse found Jerry sitting in the same recliner he had been placed in minutes before. Jerry’s shirt was ruffled and damp with sweat. Twin streaks of urine formed on Jerry’s thighs. The air held the unmistakable smell of excrement.

The nurse sighed, cursing himself for failing to secure the patient’s diaper.

“Mr. Selewski?” the nurse said, setting the tray of oatmeal and orange juice on the bed.

But Jerry was like a statue, unmoving and rigid. His hands clenched the fabric of the chair so tightly he left ridgelines around his fingers. White tufts of cotton peeked from underneath. There was no way he had enough strength to hold on for that long. But surely it was too soon for rigor mortis.

“Mr. Selewski.”

The nurse pressed his fingers into Jerry’s wrist. There was no tremble of life in Jerry’s veins.

The nurse then pressed his fingers into the rubber button of his radio. There was a faint electronic vibration and a puff of static.

“Janet, call Dr. Collins. Need confirmation of death. Room 113.”

Immediately, the radio cackled and Janet’s voice filled the air. “That was fast.”

The tattooed nurse nodded as if the disembodied voice of his coworker would see him. He went to stand, but in lifting himself, he was even with the old man’s face.

Jerry’s mouth was screwed into a violent, silent scream. His vacant eyes stared in horror in the direction of the door. The nurse slowly turned, but there was no one else in the room.  

“Weird,” he said, as he bent down to get the tray of food.

But then, he felt the unmistakable presence of a hand around his neck, waiting to squeeze, followed by the distinct scream of a child.

The nurse stumbled backwards as the door slammed loudly. Unable to stop his fall, he fell right into the lap of the corpse sitting on the chair.

A voice he had never heard came from somewhere near the dead. The voice was tortured, and increasingly hollow, as if being wrenched somewhere underground.

No, it said, not there. Not with them.

The nurse jumped from the stiff body. His heart pounded as he stood. He gave one more glance at Jerry, then he spun around to rush from the room.

As the nurse emerged from around the bed, he froze.

There, on the floor, unseen when he walked in, were two curious objects propped up by a mound of freshly tilled dirt. The nurse leaned down and picked them up.

In one hand, he held a lily with red speckled petals. In the other, the broken link of a rusted chain, still dripping water from some unknown source.