Unanswered Echoes

"UNANSWERED ECHOES" - Anthony Cowin

A lifetime crashed past him as he opened the door, each memory an enraged commuter in rush hour traffic. Escape was on his mind but his luck was out. The door closed behind him.

Once inside he was surprised to feel so at home. The old place seemed larger to him now. Then he realised she’d knocked through the dividing wall. New wallpaper cleverly concealed any wounds that the demolition must have exposed.

His boyhood nursery was gone. She’d probably mentioned it in one of the unopened letters piled up in his locked study drawer that collected dust and animosity over the years. They were unanswered echoes.

He stepped tentatively toward the bed. Even in this furnace of a room he felt cold and clammy. The sharp outline of her face and her striking features had melted into a Picasso in his mind over the two decades since he had last seen her. He was worried that he may not recognise his own mother.


Charles had two teenage sons of his own and a wonderful wife. Yet here in the presence of this frail woman who was rapidly spiriting away he felt abandoned.

“Hey dad, okay for me and Mike to grab a bite?” His youngest son called through the door. Craig was essentially a good kid, nearly thirteen and already taking a ride on the hormonal-coaster that is teenage life. Earlier that day he'd come downstairs wearing a tee shirt that read “CHOOSE DEATH” which he thought ironic, but his dad found tasteless under the circumstances. Now he wore one with the slogan “My Other T-shirt’s A Strait Jacket.” emblazoned across the chest.

“I’ll take your silence as a no.” Charles turned to the door ready to apologise to his son but the fading footsteps told him it was futile.

He recalled the last time he’d walked away down that beech-floored hallway outside his mother’s bedroom. His footsteps had faded into the decades, echoed across the years. Family disputes can fester for a generation like an open wound and amputation of pride is sometimes the only answer. Now he found himself standing at the foot of her bed about to do just that.

Then he noticed something in the corner of his eye. Somebody sat in the shadows in the far reaches of the room. He tried to place him. Doctor Alexander wasn’t due to arrive until eleven so it couldn’t be him. Besides this was a small person, a young boy perhaps.

“Excuse me,” he spoke softly. The room was silent save for the beeps and hums of the surgical machinery. There were so many wires and tubes stuck into his mother that she resembled an archaic cow, her life slowly milked away. “Who are you?”

The boy’s head bowed toward the floor. Charles began to walk across the room toward the corner hoping to gain a better sight of the lad. He remained seated and stoic, a youthful sentry half hidden in the shadows guarding the dying woman.

One of the machines discharged a sharp warning. Charles stopped. His mother opened her eyes. A tiny explosion detonated inside his chest. His heart pounded so hard he was sure it must audible in the room and loud enough to shake dust from the coving that ran around three quarters of the ceiling.

He dare not look into those eyes. The job that lay ahead filled him with too much terror to allow that. This thing of duty, from a loving son to his dying mother, was hypocrisy, yet he had to execute that obligation. Until then he wished to remain invisible to her.

The machine clicked and the sound abated. His mother closed her cloudy grey eyes and slept again. Charles let out a sigh weighted equally with relief and shame. Then he remembered the boy in the chair. He was gone. Well almost, he seemed to be more of the shadows than of child now. Outside a car door slammed.

He looked at his watch, five off eleven. Dr. Alexander had arrived and the clock ticked ever closer. Suddenly he felt exhausted. His legs threatened to give way beneath him. He sat on the edge of the bed as he had done so often as a child, long before the trouble. He found his mother’s hand in his. There were no apologies. This was not a time of forgiveness, just a time to forget. It all seemed so pointless now, half remembered disagreements that grew like weeds in the cracks and flowered into hatred over the years.

The machines clicked and hummed.

“Charles, good to see you here again,” the doctor had appeared like an apparition “So, are we in agreement?”

Charles gazed up at him, almost lost. This elderly doctor he had known all his life, had brought him into the world, seemed so alien to him now. He stood from the bed and nodded. Nothing more needed, a son’s duty done.

He witnessed a smile pass across his mother’s face; faint but there nonetheless. Then she was gone. The room fell silent, the machines shut down. The doctor stepped from the room lending a comforting hand upon his shoulder as he passed.He placed the daily newspapers on the silk spread. They would remain as unread as her letters. He noticed white lilies on the side cabinet, her favourite. He was shocked to discover his mother had so many cards from well-wishers too.

A tear formed but never fell. He took his mother’s hand for the final time and kissed it. A screech from the shadows broke the silence as the chair legs scraped along the floorboards and fell with a crash. The boy walked toward the space where the wall had once been and where the coving ended. He stopped, still halfway in the darkness but no longer disguised, and turned toward the dead woman. His face seemed so familiar to Charles, a face from the past. He turned an invisible handle and stepped into the long gone nursery, fading as he did so.

Charles froze. He realised that he knew that boy, had known him all his life. He went downstairs and held his two sons tightly to him, still the tears hung in his eyes. As drove away he looked in the rear-view and knew he'd said goodbye to much more than just his mother in that room upstairs, in the house he had once called home.

BIO: Anthony Cowin writes horror, dark tales and eclectic poetry. He's had work published in print anthologies, magazines and several ezines. He's currently working on his début novel with the working title, 'The Futurist. Follow his progress, find unique content and keep updated here at: http://anthonycowin.blogspot.com/

What doesn't kill you.

"WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU" - Anthony Cowin

The child was at the foot of his bed again. Every night since Sadie finally left him she appeared. The first couple of nights he hid under the duvet and waited for the sun to bleach out the vision. By the fourth day he was sent home from work for sleeping at his desk. His life was crumbling around him and the last thing he needed was this kid, this thing coming to haunt him each night.

He finally plucked up the courage to speak to it. But when he opened his mouth the thing disappeared. Outside all the streetlights blew and every car alarm screeched into action. He ran to the bathroom and threw up. He had to sort this out.

He stepped into the church like a naughty child that had been caught stealing, or more accurately bullying. The priest was no use. Told him he should consider getting help to stay sober.

‘This ghost you see is only in your head.’ The priest told him.

‘What about the Holy bloody Spirit?’ He shouted back. ‘Is he in your head?’

Father Roland grabbed him by his dirty shirt collar and pulled him hard against his chest. ‘Look man whatever you are seeing is a result of that stink on your breath and something you’re keeping inside. The only ghosts in this world are the ones we create.’

‘But she’s real, as real as you are right now.’ He began sobbing. Father Roland had to stop him from crumbling to the floor.

‘You have a cancer eating you up. Once you deal with that you deal with this spirit. Understand?’

He loosened his grip and let him fall onto the pews. When he looked up she was there. The little girl, six years old, dressed all in black with tight pigtails and a blank expression on her white face. His screams went unheard. The priest had done an Elvis and left the building.

The girl smiled at him and held out her hand. Against all his natural instincts he took it. The sun burnt through the stained glass windows saturating the church with vivid colours. He saw who she was for the first time; he recognised the eyes. A church is as good a place as any to die, he thought. When he woke up he was in Heaven.

Only it wasn’t Heaven. He’d mistaken the crisp white rooms and glowing neon lights of the hospital for God’s pad in the sky. She was there at the end of the bed. There was no escaping her, he realised that now.

‘I don’t understand what you want from me. Why can’t you leave me alone?’

The girl smiled and looked at the door. It swung open. It was Sadie, come with flowers and grapes like cliché. He was so relieved to see her beautiful face again.

‘They rang me at work. Oh Steven what has happened to you?’ She couldn’t believe the difference in him after only one week. He looked ten years older, his hair was greying and his eyes seemed hollow. She'd wanted him to hurt when she left but not like this.

‘Sadie I saw. I mean there’s this girl…’

‘I knew it. You can’t help yourself can you? You’ll never change.’ She stood to leave but he grabbed her wrist.

‘No, a kid. A little girl.’ He tried to sit up but found he couldn’t move. He saw the drip at the side of the bed. Maybe it would have been better if they had left him to die.

Sadie sat down and took his hand from her wrist. She held it and he felt real for the first time in a long time. He explained what had been happening and what the priest had told him about ghosts being a cancer, like guilt. When he finished he looked up and told her who the girl was.

‘Oh Steve no, that’s impossible. Please don’t say that.’

‘Is it true Sadie, please tell me? If you do I promise I’ll leave you alone forever, you’ll never have to see my face again or worry about what I may do to hurt you.’

She began crying. She’d waited to let the tears out for a long time but was too afraid she may never stop once she did. ‘Last month, in this very hospital. Steve I’m so sorry but I knew I couldn’t stay with you. The baby would have given you an excuse to harass me for the rest of my life. I wanted you gone, gone for good and I didn’t want to put a child in that danger.’

The girl was sitting on the chair by the window, the evening light highlighting her features. She looked so much like Sadie, so beautiful and innocent. But it was her eyes that scared him. She had her daddy’s eyes. He wasn’t a murderer but he felt like one at that point. He was so horrible and so violent that a woman he loved and who had once loved him back decided to have an abortion rather than bring his child into this world.

He let go of Sadie’s hand and smiled at the girl. The ghost was a cancer alright and he decided he needed the cure. He’d never hold his daughter now. It was too late for that. It was too late to win Sadie back too but he thought she’d be better off without him anyway. He just hoped he had time enough for himself.

Every now and then he falls behind a little, falls off the wagon, too. But he sees her there. Not the same girl but her eyes looking at him through other children. And when he wanders the streets he notices how many children have those eyes.

He sees what others can’t. He sees all the lost children walking amongst us who also have their daddies’ eyes. There’s no cure for that cancer.

BIO: Anthony Cowin writes short stories, flash fiction and poetry. His work has been published in print anthologies as well as on-line. He is currently working on his debut novel.