The low, guttural speech pattern couldn’t be mistaken. He had heard it too many times over the years when collecting his check, the German accent hiding beneath layers of years speaking English, but still there.
“Erwin?” John croaked, his throat cinching shut. The air in his lungs was too warm, as if he’d breathed dishwater instead of oxygen. He couldn’t have heard the voice, it must’ve been the heat finally getting to him. He squinted at the door. Something moved deep within the house. A fluttering of whiteness, like someone lunging between the rooms, trying to be seen and not seen at the same time. John turned and started walking toward the truck, certain he had the beginnings of a heat stroke.
“John.”
The voice froze his guts solid, and for the second time he stopped, his muscles rigid while his heart punched at his ribs. The gas can dropped from his hand. He turned. The doorway still stood empty.
“May?”
“You killed me, John. Killed us both. You left those pills out on purpose, I always knew you thought Henry was a burden.”
John’s mouth had turned into a cottony desert without words. His mind reeled. “No, May, I loved Henry, both of you. I woulda never hurt him, you know that.”
“Liar.” May’s voice sounded cold and distant but still full of malice. “You killed us both—Henry with the pills, me with the cancer. You helped it grow, like your precious bushes and shrubs, and nurtured it along with your emotionless soul.”
John took a shaking step toward the house and saw another flit of white near the living room. I’m speaking with my dead wife. The thought sped through his mind, but he answered anyway. “May, you know I loved you, still love you. I—”
“Da.”
John stopped again. “Henry?” His voice crumbled as tears ran with the sweat down the sides of his face. His heart ached, and he had to restrain himself from bolting toward the house. He could almost feel Henry in his arms, the smell of his hair after a bath, his smiling face mirroring his own. The forty-five years since he had last seen his son melted away.
“Henry?” John pleaded again.
“They’re here with us, John,” Erwin’s voice answered. “They’re waiting for you. Come inside.”
John felt himself moving, the heat pressing on him from all directions. His vision narrowed to the outline of the door like a hazy tunnel pulling him inexorably forward.
“You come in here and make this better, John Hanrahan. You atone for what you’ve done.”
John halted. Something in May’s voice made him pause. It had sounded like there was liquid in her throat, her voice thickening. John blinked and his vision expanded, and he looked past the doorway.
The rictus of Erwin’s ruined face hung in the shadows, suspended there without bodily form supporting it. John watched as the teeth parted and a wet chuckle escaped from the thing’s disembodied mouth. The face dissolved into nothing and everything became still again.
John backed away, his breath hitching beneath his soaked shirt and his white hair hanging across his forehead. His mouth opened and closed like a fish asking for air. His hands clenching painfully, disturbing the arthritis within. The gas can bumped against the side of his foot and he stopped. John looked down at it, as if he had never seen it before, and reached to pick it up. It felt heavy in his hand, a good feeling. There was plenty of gas within the red plastic.
John walked toward the house and up the few stairs, unscrewing the cap as he disappeared inside.
The nurse’s key spun within the lock and Lance heard the tumblers falling away.
“Go right in, sir. Take as much time as you need,” the nurse said with a smile. She looked twenty years younger than any other worker in the nursing home, her blond hair curled and her uniform pressed in an almost obsessive way.
“I know you’re supposed to stand right outside the door, but could you give us a little privacy?” Lance asked as he motioned to the bench that sat a few feet from the elevator doors.