LEFT OF SINISTER

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of 

light."

                                                                                                 Ursula K. Le Guin

                                                      PART TWO:

Earl made it as far as the chairs and when he did so at last collapsed into one of them the phantasm of what he had witnessed so astonishing him that all his strength had been drained from his being and he could no longer put one foot before the other. He struggled to breath certain that the pain he was feeling in his chest was the worse angina he'd ever experienced. He expected at any moment that he might fall unconscious from a lack of oxygen or his heart itself would cease functioning seizing up like a mechanical device.

It would no longer continue to pump the precious oxygen carrying blood that fed it and the demanded nutrients his organs required to promote his human existence. He at last rolled his head to the left staring toward the windows. He had to make his way over there though he decided, he had to, to see, to see for himself if they were still out there in the yard Sage and that small convention of ghostly beings and if still intent for him to look into the trunk of his car.

Surely that was what the specter of his sister-in-law was entreating upon him to do, surely it was why her apparition had deigned to confront him in the restroom, deigned to put a hand on his shoulder and impart to him the importance of his coming with her. Had she somehow believed he could through osmosis go through the wall and join her in the yard beyond, join her and her fellow spirits?

Despite his pain and the thought of his imminent demise he, after putting his hands flat to his side, managed somehow to struggle his behind forward in the chair and at last stand erect even though he found it extremely difficult to raise the upper trunk of his torso to its highest degree.

He was now rather bent forth grasping at his waste as if his abdomen was a bellows that could somehow pump the blood and oxygen required to remain a viable human entity. At last he managed to turn to his left fixing his eyes on the wall where she had disappeared from his sight. Taking several gulps of air he inched forward trundling slowly in the direction of the wall there awaiting him certain he would at last resolve the question of what the lifeless humanity awaiting him out there, outside in the yard, was summoning him for.

He had gone but several feet when the lightning made yet one more sizzling cracking sound like the sound of some awesome reptile issuing a warning that it was in a protective mode and to take heed of its caution. And then the beast rumbled aloud further demanding restraint from those encroaching upon its person.

But the thunder did not deter him from continuing toward the window, on he went, on he went shuffling along like a patient in a hospital corridor pulling a metal stand beside them holding a drip bag that allowed the medicine needed to carry forth their existence for just a little bit longer. If he had a hospital gown tied in back covering his body but still in places partially exposing his frail aging flesh he would not have seemed the least bit out of the ordinary.

At last he was almost there at the edge of the stained carpet closest to the windows as his slid his feet over it. And finally after a bit more he was on the bare portion of the wooden floor his goal of the wall and windows some eight feet or so away from him.

And then the lights were extinguished the power having gone off. He jerked his head about shocked that he was now standing like some lonely sentinel within the gloom of some vaulted darkness, a man come upon the dreary shore of the River Styx longing and yet decidedly reluctant to cast his eyes beyond it, to look at the opposite shore. But his determination was clear he had to look out there into the yard again, see if they were still demanding he join them out there to see what it was they wanted him to see.

He was there after several more moments the sound of his sliding feet more pronounced than when being pulled along the carpet. He bent his head forward then and raising his feeble right hand used two fingers to part the blinds.

He looked out there through the glass and again he saw the image of them, of the seeming increasing mob of fearsome, he knew now, dead souls and they were yet again summoning him to their side, summoning him to join them to look into the trunk of the sleek and attractive vehicle he had utilized in his journey to the eastern shore of the state to mourn with his brother the passing of his family.

He turned to his right now moving yet again, moving with the slow fortitude of a weakened but boundless inspiration, an inspiration to know what was out there, out there in his car that they wished for him to see or discover. No matter what it was he was convinced once he was there he would learn the meaning of all this. And so on he went toward the door of the den and the foyer out there intent to go into the yard to look inside the trunk of his car once more and resolve this haunting he was experiencing.