Something Lost, Something Broken, Something Found

Lost

The doctor comes. It takes him and my Grandma over an hour to drag Grandpa from the yard. He claws at the ground, pushing and screaming but eventually they are able to get him into the house. Once inside his fight is gone and his eyes are glassy as he stares at the wall. His eyeballs don't move, they don't even twitch, as if the white plastered living room wall holds the secrets of eternity underneath layers of paint and old wallpaper.
My Grandma and the doctor are sitting in the adjoining dining room. "I should have seen the signs," she says, "Now he's completely lost his mind." She cries and worries her apron between her fingers, strangling and twisting the fabric. The doctor talks about things like "Dementia," and "Alzheimer's" and "putting Charles into a home for his own sake."
"Grandpa is already in the house," I say.
My Grandma just shakes her head sadly, "How about you go upstairs and play in your room. You should let your Grandfather rest." She says, and then closes the French doors, shutting me out of the dining room and out of their conversation.
Adults are always good at this, closing doors. I don't want to go to my room, and I can't imagine Grandpa resting with dried dirt caked onto his arm and under his nails. I go to the kitchen and fill a bucket with water then come to kneel at Grandpa's side, dipping his hands into it and scrubbing them with a rag until they come away clean.  The nails are harder to clean, and I fear that I am hurting him, though he doesn't protest. His skin is red and hot when I am finished, the cuts are more pronounced with large bubbling blisters forming at his fingertips, but the mud is gone. The water has become murky with a mixture of blood and soil.
"My little flower," he says. His face is waxy and haunted, like a ghost hiding just under the surface of his skin. He looks even older than he did before, his face drawn and ashen. "I failed. You must find it before they do."
"Find what?" I whisper, afraid that if I speak any louder my Grandmother might hear and the spell of Grandpa's riddle will be broken.
"My soul," the words seem heavy as if each syllable presses more and more weight onto his chest. Groaning he sinks into the cushions of the sofa.
"Grandpa?" I whisper, but he doesn't respond. His eyes are blank again as they stare into the wall, as if he can see through them.
I stand, lifting the water laden bucket and carrying it out to the yard, kicking it over into the garden. I watch as the brown liquid floods into the flower bed. Could something like a soul really be held like a possession and buried away in the yard? I look past the garden, past the spoon that is standing up in the ground like an erect flag. I look past the destroyed yard with clumps of grass lying limply in random piles, until my eyes fall onto the tree line. Grandpa said the demons were watching. If monsters were real is it possible they are watching me now, as I search for then under the limbs of trees? Are they inspecting the young girl with curling blonde hair and scared blue eyes from the shadows of the branches?
The surrounding forest with its cloaked orifices fills me with a sense of foreboding, and causes the hairs on the nape of my neck to stand. If demons do exist, this would be the perfect spot, a place for hiding and a place for peeking.