Miss Grace of the Spades, Chapter 3

 

After falling asleep right away that night, Nicholas woke up from a deep, dreamless sleep.  The whiskey left a sour taste in his mouth, and he found himself still feeling a little drunk.   He glanced at the alarm clock radio on the oak bookcase headboard behind him; it read 1:25 am.   He had been asleep for a little more than two hours before his bladder woke him up.  Teresa was sound asleep on her back lying next to him; he could see the rhythmic rising and falling of her chest through the blanket and comforter she had covering her.   Even after 25 years of marriage, he still found her as beautiful as the day they met.  He wanted to wake her, but he knew the way the evening had gone, she would reject him which would only frustrate him.  Instead of waking her for his own selfish reasons, he quietly got out of bed, put his slippers on and went to the full bathroom that was located in their spacious second floor master bedroom.  Gazing out the bathroom window, the nearly full moon now lit up the backyard with an iridescent glow.  Nicholas now felt awake, and felt the desire would not let him sleep.  Rather than wake Teresa, he walked past Lilliana’s room, went downstairs into the kitchen.  He looked in the refrigerator, but nothing looked appetizing.  He thought about getting some milk and cookies, but that didn’t sound appealing either.  Not really knowing what he would want that would take the place of his desire, he opted to down two more shots of Jack Daniels.  Now the buzz from the whiskey was returning, and his hunger wasn’t as selective as before, so opening a jar of roasted peanuts, he put two handfuls of the salty nuts in his mouth, chewed and swallowed them.  Next it was on to the bag of tortilla chips with some of the red chipotle salsa Teresa had made a week ago.  After munching on several handfuls of chips, he now was thirsty for a beer.  He opened a six ounce bottle of Corona beer, drank half of it with another half dozen chips and chipotle salsa before finally feeling content.   Belching almost too loudly, he left the chips, the chipotle salsa, and half drank bottle of Corona on the counter and decided to go back to bed.  Feeling content and relaxed again, he walked back up the stairs to the master bedroom, went into their bathroom and urinated again, then finally crawled back into bed with Teresa.  He heard her moan quietly as he moved around to get comfortable in their bed.  Once again, he belched all too loudly only to hear her mumble “you pig” as if she came back from wherever she was dreaming to inform him about his lack of manners, and then returned to dreamland.  Nicholas too drifted off to sleep shortly thereafter.

His sleep wasn’t dream free.  In fact, the sleep he had prior to the beer, whiskey, peanuts, chips and salsa snacks was the last trouble free sleep he would experience for quite some time.  It all started with the dream he had once he fell back asleep that night.

He was out for his usual run.  But for some reason this time, the Turtle Prairie Path he normally ran on that ended when he approached Milwaukee Boulevard now led him right to the East Gate Cemetery.  As he approached the cemetery, he saw Bob Neumiller standing by the huge black arched steel gate on the right side of the entrance.  It was near dusk, the sky darkening and was cold, and he could see his breath as he ran towards the gate.  Neumiller was dressed in a full length black leather jacket, with black leather driving gloves and a white stocking cap that bore the Nike logo in black on the front.  He was holding a simple worn brown kitchen broom in his hands, sweeping the fallen brown and gold leaves from the weathered blacktop road and area around the gate.  No matter how fast he swept, the leaves kept coming towards him, racing with the north wind blowing past him and continuing their hastened pace into the cemetery.  Any sweeping motion Bob made against the leaves did nothing to clean them up.  He had a stoic look on his face, and as Nicholas got closer to him, he asked Nicholas if he had any peanuts, to which Nicholas started laughing out loud and told him, “I don’t think so, but let me check my fanny pack.  Nope, sorry Bob, I just have raisins.”  With that, Nicholas took the running glove off his left hand, reached into the fanny pack, grabbed a handful of raisins and threw them at Neumiller. He raised the broom to block the raisins, and as he did the raisins seemed to freeze in mid air, then fell directly to the ground where they transformed into life like gummy skunks and scurried away.  At the same time, Neumiller glared at Nicholas with the same blank stare, his eyes glowing sharp piercing yellowish gold, like a raccoon that has been frozen in the path of an oncoming car.  All he could say as Nicholas began to enter the cemetery was “Don’t go there, she’s trouble… I warned you.”  He then broke out in a wicked evil laughter that could be heard echoing throughout the cemetery, bouncing from the left side to the right.  With that, Nicholas felt a chill run down his spine as he continued running down the main road leading into the cemetery.

As Neumiller’s laughter echoed through the monuments and stones, one by one images of the old woman started appearing by every tree, sign, monument and head stone.  Each one was dressed the same: black overcoat, white hat.  With every step he took he saw more and more of the old women appearing, looking towards him reaching their wrinkled, black feeble hands up to him, pointing at him.  In their other hands, the black canes steadied them at their sides.  They seemed to be mumbling something, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.  Now realizing that he needed to get out of the cemetery, he turned around, only to find them closing in behind him.  They weren’t running like he was, but they appeared to be floating, their feet were not visible to him.  He spun around again, with perhaps hundreds of the old women everywhere around him, and only a small, narrow path that led straight towards the back of the cemetery.  He continued trying to run, to not pay attention to all of the old women who now had him surrounded.  At first as he passed them they seemed to be going by him in a blur, but then as he tried to pick up his pace and run faster, they started going faster.  He kept trying to focus on the end of the path, but it seemed like the right hands of each of the old women where getting closer to touching him.  He felt panic starting to set in.

Trying to run faster now, his legs felt like he was running in quicksand.  It felt like his running shoes were stuck in the muck at the bottom of a slough and when he raised his legs and shoes up to stride forward the muck smelled like pig manure.  He felt like he was pulling a locomotive engine, and with every stride forward, he only moved a fraction of an inch.  Now he was scared.  Out of the crowd appeared a larger version of the old woman. She started floating towards Nicholas, and as she got closer, he guessed that she had to be at least eight foot tall.  As she raised her right hand and reached out to put her wrinkled huge right hand on his left shoulder, he finally swung his right hand in a back hand motion at the woman, and as the back of his running gloved hand contacted her right side, she suddenly broke into thousands of tiny pieces, like tempered glass breaking.  The shards began sizzling and then evaporated, smoke rising from each shard as it dissipated.  Now the smaller versions of the woman started shrieking in high pitched screams; their voices sounding like fingernails scraping across a blackboard, their horrified faces contorted into a feared frenzy. They all began shuffling towards him, and he swung his arms so hard, breaking each and every likeness of the woman that approached him, sending the tempered glass shard-like pieces all over the ground around him.  The women were murmuring something that he couldn’t quite make out, so he finally asked them what they were saying and another larger version moved to the front of the group and mumbled “ain’t yo’ bidness”, to which the rest of them mumbled a collective “bidness” in a voice that was barely heard, but he understood what was being said.  

The crowd to his left began to clear, and suddenly a huge twelve foot tall teddy bear appeared, chewing on red roses.  He held the stems in his left paw, and one by one was biting off the flowers and swallowed them.  Now in a deep graveled voice, the teddy bear opened his mouth, stared directly at Nicholas and said as he pointed at him while holding the bud-less rose stems: “you knooooooooow”.  “Know what?” he now shouted in a child like voice.  “I have no idea what you are talking about.  And just what in the world is “bidness”? Who are YOU trying to fool?  Come on, this can’t be logical.  I know there can’t be seven thousand of you old women here, and you, teddy bear, talking to me like that?  I’ll whip your lilly white butt if I could just get these old hags off of me!”  With that all of the old women gasped collectively, and the ones near him, perhaps twenty or so, all raised their canes in the air, and with a downward motion synchronized in perfect timing, they lowered their canes onto Nicholas’ neck.  The canes now turned into white slithering snakes, and began to wrap themselves around his neck.  He suddenly felt himself unable to breathe.  Another huge likeness of the old woman came up to him, stuck her face next to his now choking face, got close enough to look into his eyes directly.  As she got close, he could smell her breath, a breath that smelled like something he’d smelled before, but he couldn’t quite identify it.  As her mouth opened, Nicholas thought perhaps this was it, she was going to bite him or something, but as he gazed into her dark, toothless mouth, he thought he saw the tunnel to the devil himself, but instead a small stream of gray smoke began to meander out of her mouth through the air, it circled his head, and the words now came to life as he could sense her say directly to him: “my bidness gonna be yo bidness.”  Frozen in his steps, he could go nowhere.  His legs, once able to move him, were numb and he could not feel them.  He tried swinging his arms to hit the women to break more of them, but it was no use.  From a distance, he heard his name being called.  The voice started getting closer and closer, louder and louder, so loud he had to put his hands over his head.  The voice turned to a high pitch scream, and as it did, one by one the women all shattered. There were glass shards everywhere, and finally as he started running from the cemetery now that his legs could move gain, he was awoken by Teresa shaking him.

“Nicholas! Nicholas!  Wake up! Are you going to church with us today?  I suppose not!   I can’t believe you’re not going to miss church again today. Now wake up!  Why should I even bother?  It’s not like you care.  Obviously by the mess you left in the kitchen, you just don’t care anymore.  I wish you would tell us what your problem is.  You’re going to ruin our marriage and this family!”   He sat straight up in bed, his heart racing at a million miles an hour.  He rubbed his sweaty hands on his facial stubble, and realized that it was all a bad dream, and he was still at home in his own bed.  His upper body was drenched in sweat and his head pounding like a drum with the worst headache he’d had in a long time.