Mid-Arc Read online

  That is why I am here as distant cousin Arthur, caregiver to Dorothy MacInerny in her twilight years. Dorothy planned for all this. After all, how do you explain that the nineteen-year-old man taking care of you is really your ninety-four-year-old husband? You don’t. You can’t. We made Jerry, and the grandkids pledge that future generations would only know me as a loving, distant relative. She thought of everything, and God knows I didn’t even want to acknowledge those things, much less deal with them.

  She was so, so, good to me. And now I can’t even stand at her interment and proclaim my love for her as her husband.

  I was her husband! I want to scream it. I want her, God, and the world to hear it. I want it to reverberate through the valley. But I can’t. She was right; it’s too much for the little ones. It was hard enough with the grandkids. So I stand here, unable to acknowledge our love, our years, and our bond other than in the broadest of platitudes.

  Jerry’s hand brings me back to the moment again, and he whispers “Arthur, it’s time for you.” It’s time for me to say words as her ever-present caregiver for the last ten years. Those ten years since we moved just flew by. Pastor Williams beckons me to join him and greets me with a hug. I wipe my eyes, take in a breath, and get ready to say the words I have prepared.

  The first sentence comes out okay enough, “Dorothy was an incredible woman.” But then, shortness of breath stops me. My hands tremble and my eyes well up. Torrents of sobbing come out of nowhere, and I collapse to my knees. I know nothing, but this stabbing, sickening feeling of despair and loneliness. She is gone! I am gone. I want my Dory. All I can think is I want my Dory. Dory’s not here. She’ll never be here.

  Dory….

  I feel hands upon me again and realize that Jerry and Pastor Williams are consoling me. I hear Jerry say, “It’s okay.” His strong hands take me under the arm and offer to lift me, and I oblige, still sobbing.

  “Let’s find you a chair,” he says, and he takes me to the gallery to sit me down. I feel a warm kiss on the top of my head and a pat on the shoulder. I try to wipe the tears from my eyes, but they just keep coming. My body heaves with each sob.

  I hear Jerry pick up from where I left off. “Yes, she was an incredible woman. She touched us all so deeply, and we know that while we all may have had to look after her in her later years, she is now looking over all of us with love. We pass thanks to Arthur MacInerny, who gave the last ten years of his life in service to my mother, as if she was his own – there is no question of his love for Dorothy. Or ours for her also.”

  Dammit, he said what I couldn’t say, and that brings something of what may look like a smile on my face through my sobbing. He is so like her; there are things he just knows. I work to regain my composure and nod to him an acknowledgment. I look to his children and try to pass on that inside “know.” I make myself sit up straight and pay attention.

  Dory would not want me to look weak like that. Jerry comes and sits next to me, draping his arm around me. I want to break down again. I won’t. Instead, I look into his eyes to let him know I love him. I try to look strong.

  Pastor Williams begins the prayer for the family. “Heavenly Father, you have not made us for darkness and death, but for life with you forever. Without you, we have nothing to hope for; with you, we have nothing to fear. Speak to us now your words of eternal life. Lift us from anxiety and guilt to the light and peace of your presence, and set the glory of your love before us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  Amen.

  Jerry pats my knee and stands up to greet family and friends. He is so strong. I stay in the chair. I don’t know what else to do. Marge, Jerry’s wife, and their kids come by with hugs. When Marge whispers to me, “hang in there old man,” I damn nearly lose it again.

  Instead, I just say, “Thanks.”

  I overhear Pastor Williams comment, “He sure was attached to her, wasn’t he?”

  Jerry replies, “You would not believe.”

  Dammit, everyone should know this husband’s love for his wife. I watch family move off to the limousines and wave, trying to eek a smile to them along the way.

  I think I’ll just stay here and cry awhile. I’m not ashamed of it. I want her to know she’s missed. The reception can wait. I know the caterers are ready to take care of everyone. After all, they were summoned with very specific instructions.

  Chapter 2

  The ride back is a blur. Originally, the plan was for me to take separate transportation with my great-grandson, Allen, but given my little episode at the funeral, family who know me for who I really am, think it best I ride with them. The company is good with Jerry, their daughter Helen, her husband, Steve, and Jerry Jr. filling out the compliment.

  It’s nice that they’d wait for me.

  I hate that I’d made such a scene.

  At least they know why. I’m very happy for that.

  There is much consolation and other banter, but I can’t keep up with it. When we pull up to the house, I know it is time to attempt some strength. I sit up straight and put on my best game face. Looking at Jerry and his, I smile and say, “Well, time to find out if the caterers are worth a shit.”

  They of course smile back, and I laugh a bit too, because they know I had left my summonlings to tend to that matter. They would be fully shape-shifted into human form, and no one would know that the people tending to the reception were a combination of hellspawn and fae beings. Each one corresponds to a tattoo glyph on my forearm – the physical manifestation of their gifts and the beacon for their calling.

  We leave the limousine and are greeted at the door by a pale, tall, gaunt man with a balding pate and sunken features.

  “Greetings to you, Master Arthur,” he offers and bows his head slightly to the left. “And greetings to you all on this most trying occasion," acknowledging my family as they make their way by him into the house.

  Jerry responds with a crisp, “Thanks, Arix,” and enters with the kids. You see, the gaunt man is really a kind of demon sorcerer. A very powerful one, but still subjugated to me – one of my gifts - like all of my summonlings, as he has taught me to call them.

  I chuckle at the thought of him answering the door in his natural form. He would be a man just as gaunt, with bleached white skin, unnaturally elongated hands. And a teardrop shaped head punctuated by his sideways third eye that almost always remains closed. That is until something sorcerous was going to happen. With his purple lips, large and yellow lion-like eyes, his gaze alone could be rather disturbing to the first time viewer.

  Allowing family to pass, Arixtumin looks at me in his dispassionate way. “You are not well. At least be comforted that all preparations for the reception have been made and are being tended to in a way to cause no disruption or question.” Arix, as I have come to call him, is more or less the ringleader of my merry band of summonlings.

  And also my teacher in the arcane arts as well.

  “Find strength, my wielder,” he says and puts a hand on my shoulder.

  I look into his eyes, but he politely turns away. And I know why; he can’t relate to any of this. He just doesn’t understand the concept of emotional loss. After all, where he comes from or so he has told me, love and such are viewed as weakness and almost cancerous. I imagine it has to be somewhat uncomfortable for him.

  He turns back to me with a false smile.

  “Myself, the Vetisghar, and Pffiferil are tending to service. The fairy is gone; she did take your mate’s loss poorly. Silithes will be upstairs away from the event. I took the assumption that you did not want her prancing around provocatively amongst the mourners.”

  That is my man, Arix, always logical. Always taking care of business. You see, Silithes is the soul-stealing succubus that was gifted to me for my entertainment and pleasure. She has been neither. All that one has amounted to is high maintenance and a continual, needy pain in my ass.

  “Thank you, Arix. Just make sure this reception goes well.”

  “Give
it not another moment’s thought – If we can’t at least serve food and beverages, then we aren’t worth our time here, are we?”

  I thank him again with a pat on the shoulder and go inside. Jerry was being consoled by the members of Dorothy’s bridge club, all of whom were much younger than Dorothy; only in their seventies. I think of how much she enjoyed the weekly bridge club and turn away before I well up again. They pay little attention to the young man who took care of Dorothy for so many years except to wave. I make my way to the hall and then to my library, opening the sliding paneled doors, then make sure to close them behind me. Walking across the room, I plop myself down in my reading chair.

  It feels nice.

  The quiet is good. But there is some company that I want. Hard to explain, except it is something akin to the bond between a man and his dog. Standing up I take my jacket off and roll up my sleeves. The tattooed glyphs for each of my summonlings stand out plainly.

  I take a moment to consider the six glyphs on my arms. Each one represents an entity linked to me. Each one empowers me, gives me this health and agelessness. Each one is a slave to my will. Each one is a prisoner.

  I strive to be a good jailor.

  I look at the glyph for Hjuul. Putting my finger on the glyph for him, I send him away. Wherever he was, he is now in that in-between space that Arix calls the white – a nowhere dimension linked to me. After learning of the nature of this place, I refuse to leave my summonlings there. It is a prison of nothing, just an endless white expanse. Arix tells me that the solitude and loneliness of that dimension can break lesser beings over time.

  I put my finger back on Hjuul’s glyph and call for him. There is a brief rippling of the air and a distortion of the space near me, and then he appears. He is something like a mixing of the beast from an American Werewolf in London and a small bear, only much more canine than either. Hjuul’s eyes glow red, and he bends his head up to howl but stops himself. His eyes fix on me, and the red glow dims. His posture softens as he steps next to me in my leather reading chair and drops his immense head in my lap. I ruffle his fur and scratch behind his ears. He makes a short, chuffing sound and settles down at my feet.

  Hjuul is some form of hell-hound. A scary four-hundred-pound canine who understands what I tell him. He is also my buddy. He knows that I hurt. He also knows there’s nothing he can do, except be there. So that’s what he’s doing.

  Things with Hjuul and I grew over time. The first time we met face to face, he was quite the feral beast; vicious is the word. But over time, he’s softened to me and me to him. As Arix tried to explain to me more than once, the dimension of their existence is very hard and compassion almost non-existent. Over the course of our first years, Hjuul came to recognize that Dory and I weren’t seeking to exploit or abuse him and we became friends. I know he misses Dory too. The day of her death, he took up a mournful howling.

  He hasn’t exactly been on his feed either.

  The door slides open, and Hjuul protectively looks up. Jerry enters and says, “I thought you might be back here.”

  He makes sure to close the door behind him, so no one gets a glimpse of Hjuul. Hjuul’s massive tail is thumping happily against the wood of the floor. Jerry steps up to my hound and pets his head vigorously, which elicits yet more tail thumping and some quiet chuffs from those immense jowls.

  Jerry scoots up a chair and looks down at Hjuul, “You making sure he’s okay?”

  My hound buddy responds, rolling over against my legs and exposing his neck to Jerry.

  Jerry scratches Hjuul’s neck and looks up at me. “I see you’re in good paws here… Hard day, huh, Pops?”

  “That is an understatement, son.”

  I look at him and know this is just as hard on him. He’s lost his mother and is now about to watch his father go away. That was part of Dory’s plan. After her passing, I would relocate and start a new life with this new identity as distant relative cousin/uncle Arthur. She accounted for everything; I used to tease her that I was more project than husband.

  Her plan is simple. Set me up with a new identity using my real name and start a life away from the questions of family. We purchased properties in Austin, New Orleans, Salem, San Francisco, and Seattle throughout the fifties and the sixties. All those properties now belong to the “new” Arthur and are being managed by a fine firm in Charleston, South Carolina. I would move to one of my choosing after her passing. She thought given my lack of aging, that having multiple places would be helpful to lessen questions.

  I made up my mind to head to New Orleans and take over operations of a little retail tourist trap in the Quarter called The Hidden Eye. It would be good to be a bit less of the absentee landlord for the commercial and residential tenants that my Charleston firm tends to.

  The door opens again, and Marge enters. She walks over to us, gently kisses Jerry on the head and then looks over at me. She greets me in the usual fashion, “Hey old man,” followed with a hug. I’ve told Jerry more than a few times he is almost as lucky as me. Almost.

  “This is going to be hard, you know,” I say. “New Orleans is a long drive from Phoenix.”

  Jerry chuckles. “But at least you’ll be closer to Charlotte. So, you still planning to leave tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, I think it’s best to just to stick to her plan. She knew best, after all.”

  Hjuul chimes in by rolling over on his back and making a low, “hrmmmm.”

  That gets him a belly scratch from Marge; Hjuul is smart.

  “So, tomorrow we get a rental truck and pack up my belongings, and I make the trip to the big easy.”

  “We’ll be there to help,” Marge offers.

  Jerry smiles at me and pokes my shoulder with his finger. “But of course we’ll leave all the heavy lifting to you young ‘uns,” with a wink.

  That is so inappropriate, but that’s my boy; quick to speak his mind, quick to call BS, and quick to be there when you need him.

  “Us young ‘uns are always ready to help the old and infirmed,” I say, adding a wink of my own.

  There is laughter, genuine laughter. I recount stories of Jerry’s childhood. Jerry makes sure to remind me of a few of my more humorous shortcomings. Intertwined in all of the stories was Dory, how she put up with us, covered for us, and generally held it all together. Despite the good memories, I see Jerry’s hurting. His mother is gone; his father is moving away – fading away from family, from him.

  There is a pause and silence amongst us.

  “I love you, son and you too, Marge. I may be moving, but I’ll never be away – you know that, right?”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Jerry looks away, composing himself. Marge hugs Jerry and smiles at me.

  “We’re holding you to that old man,” she adds. It must be strange; this old man still looks like a nineteen-year-old kid.

  There is a knocking on the door, and Jerry gets up to tend to it, I think relieved to break the moment. It’s nice to have defenders. Though in truth, I am the one that needs to be defending them. My sullen selfishness is starting to become obvious to me.

  “Come in,” Jerry says, and opens the door for Pffiferil. Pffif is what most people would call a leprechaun – a small humanoid creature of the fae dimension. For the most part, he can pass as a very skinny, well-proportioned three-foot tall person except for his green hair. With Pffif being the pragmatist, he found long ago that a little hair color goes a long way. As Pffif enters the room, Jerry reaches back to his wallet and winks.

  That gets a roll of the eyes from the little man and a heavy sigh.

  Pffif makes his way over to Hjuul and me. He gives Marge a hug along the way.

  He looks me in the eye. “She was a good woman, ana she’s bein’ in a better place now, ye know that… Right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I just wanna ye to know yer not alone in missin’ her. She was me friend too -vera good to me. I know yer me boss and want ye to know I donna say this except that it
be true. And I know ye hurt. And I say let it hurt too, so ye never ferget. Ye were more than good to her and her to ye. I be blessed to be bound to ye and havin’ the joy of knowin’ her.”

  He thumps his hand on my knee having to reach well over Hjuul’s prone frame.

  “Thanks, Pffif.”

  “I’ll be leavin’ ye to yer family now, ye be seeing plenty of me in the morrow, and beyond.” With a wink, he turns around and makes his way out. On the way, Jerry shakes his hand, and they share a moment. That’s Pffif, brief and to the point.

  The remainder of the day is a veritable blur. Family who know me for who and what I am, come by to pay respects and give well wishes. I do have to make an appearance for the sake of the bridge club and others; it is more than a little surreal.

  When it is over, my body screams for rest.

  Despite my summonlings tending to the cleanup and preparation for the move, the house feels empty.

  And I feel alone.

  Chapter 3

  There is no need for an alarm this morning, though the effort of getting out of bed is a bit harder than most days. Time to move. Time to go. For a dreamy moment, I imagine a young Dory standing over my bed telling me to get with it.

  Makes me want to go back to sleep just so she will stay and nag me.

  Someone is cooking breakfast, and it smells good. So I pull myself out of bed and drag myself down the kitchen. Good old Pffif is manning the stove from atop a chair. Eggs, bacon, and from the smell, biscuits in the oven.

  “Gots to be keepin’ our strength up, Master Arthur,” he says. Judging by the tonnage he was making, he plans on everyone joining in too.

  “Absolutely Pffiferil –where’s the coffee?” I ask.