The electronic whirring fell into a mournful dirge as the stair lift neared its destination.
“Bernard?” Albert called, pitching his voice so it carried up the stairs. He paused, listening, straining his ears for a response. “If you’re moping in the dark again, I’m calling Dr. Laghari and upping your meds.
“Stubborn man,” he muttered.
If he would just talk to me instead of hiding in his rooms all day… He shook his head.
The chair came to a slow halt beneath him. A disdainful grimace curled his lip as he started the laborious process of levering himself onto his feet. Sharp jolts of pain prickled his feet like he’d stepped onto hot coals instead of the ancient olive shag carpet.
What’s worse about getting old? All the new and constant pains or having to rely on As-Seen-On-TV contraptions to get around my own home?
As much as he hated using it, he could no longer avoid doing so. When Albert and Bernard were spry hexagenerians, Albert was filled with righteous fury over his husband’s purchase. Now, even though the time it took the lift to travel was measured in geological time, Albert couldn’t argue that it wasn’t needed.
The muffled tapping of his cane echoed throughout the hallway. Albert turned the burnished doorknob, but the wooden door didn’t budge. Grumbling curses about old wooden doors, old wooden houses, and stubborn old men, Albert set aside his cane and grabbed the knob with both hands. With a sharp squeal of protest, the door popped from the jamb and slammed against the wall.
Damn, there’s another hole in the wall, Albert chided himself.
His shoulder ached where he’d given the door a little English, but he ignored the pain and reclaimed his cane. A stench wafted out of the room, Earthy and dank.
“Oh, Bernard. Again?” The frustration had seeped out of his voice, replaced instead with empathy for his husband. Albert blinked, but his rheumy eyes failed to see the details in the gloom beyond, just now realizing he’d left his glasses downstairs. “That’s what the rubber sheets are for, love. No need to be embarrassed about getting older. Lord knows I’ve been there, too.”
The floorboards groaned and creaked underfoot as he approached Albert’s bed. A chill tickled his skin, setting the sparse white hairs on his arms prickling.
It was midmorning, but the drapes were still drawn. Even if he had his glasses, he probably wouldn’t be able to see anything in this darkness. His footsteps kicked up dust, which set his nose to watering.
“Bernard?”
The fuzzy lump on the bed didn’t respond.
“Oh, stop being such a baby. If you just moved downstairs with me you wouldn’t have had to stew in it all day. Let’s just get you in the shower and we can clean all this up.”
Not sharing a room. It’s like we’re my parents. They were old, but not that old. He stifled a chuckle.
As Albert drew closer to the four poster, Bernard’s outline came into focus as if appearing from mist. Detailed emerged from the cataract fog, and Albert blinked, trying to make sense of it.
Bernard was in bed, uncovered and undressed. As unseasonably warm as Dunwich was this year, Albert had never known his lover to sleep without covers. He wasn’t entirely naked, though. Bernard’s form looked like it had sprouted thick strands of hair. For the second time in as many minutes, Albert almost laughed. Bernard started balding before his third decade, and in his eighties, he was now all but hairless.
“Bernard! What the dickens…”
The hairs—or whatever they were—covered more than just his husband. The dark paneling on the walls and the dun-colored floor had camouflaged it, but he could see it now. It coated the walls and floor like thick veins of mold. Albert’s neck gave an audible crack as his gaze snapped to the floor. His house slippers were a scant six inches away from one of the mysterious dark strands. He’d have to step over it to get to the bed. His gaze snapped back to his husband, and Albert’s eyes widened in horror. Whatever these things were, they weren’t growing from Bernard…
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Oh god! They’re growing into him.
With a strangled cry, Albert surged forward with a burst of speed he’d not experienced in decades. His shins slammed into the metal bedframe, but he couldn’t pay attention to his pain right then.
“Bernard!”
There was no response.
He shook his husband, but the vines held him fast. One of Albert’s fingers slipped through the dense matting covering Bernard, and Albert’s heart stopped.
No…He’s as cold as death.
“No. No, no no no no no.” Tears sprang to his eyes, occluding his already foggy vision. “Bernard, wake up. Please, wake up.”
Images of their life together scrolled through his mind. The last few years hadn’t exactly been good between them, but even those rocky years didn’t erase the lifetime of bliss they’d had together.
Albert didn’t know how long he stayed like that, weeping, until a gentle caress on the back of his hand jerked his head up.
“Bernard! Are you—”
A grasping vine slithered up his arm. He snatched his hand away and finally recognized what they were.
Roots.
Albert’s hands shook as he fumbled for his cane, knocking it to the floor. Now that he wasn’t weeping, he could hear a skittering sound. No, not skittering. More like the creaking of an old house during a storm as the wood swelled, contracted, and settled.
All the vines along the bed had turned toward him like the roots of a parched tree turned toward a water source during a drought. Stumbling back, Albert realized too late the roots on the floor had done the same. One pierced his house slipper, and the thing was plucked from his foot as he stumbled away.
Hundreds of wriggling tendrils waved in the air like windblown grass, all stretching toward Albert’s retreating form. He searched for a clear path back to the bed. Bernard couldn’t be gone. Not yet. Not like this.
Not without me. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
He couldn’t leave him. Not alone. Not with these…things.
But the coiling strands were everywhere.
“I’m sorry.” His voice cracked, and tears streamed down his cheeks, dampening the crevices of his wrinkled skin. “Please forgive me.”
I’ll come back for you.
Albert turned and hobbled toward the door as fast as he could, stumbling at his lopsided gait. He kicked his right foot with each step, trying to dislodge the last slipper.
The skittering tendrils covered the walls and ceiling. He’d had dreams of dying, of walking toward the glowing portal toward the afterlife. But it didn’t look like this. He urged his flagging steps faster—as fast as they could go. The roots on the walls and the ceiling stretched, growing ever closer toward the door, shrinking his salvation and perverting his dream of ever after.
Albert’s grunting turned into a low wail of pain, his sciatic nerve flaring in agony with each step. Before him, the roots reached the doorframe. He flung himself through the opening, his bathrobe snagging on the grasping vines.
The stair lift rested where he left it, a dozen steps away at the top of the flight.
Albert spared a glance behind him, considering his options. The deadly vines were shambling along, but so was he. If it were a straight race, Albert could win, physical ailments or not. His gaze turned to the stairway. The house was built in the 1800s. The steps were narrow and steep, with no mind given to accessibility or the frailty of the house’s future owners. He didn’t have time to wait for the lift. For the first time in years, Albert stepped onto the stairway.
Before his foot hit the stair, Albert knew he had made a mistake. He didn’t know if his error was glancing over his shoulder as he took the first step or if it was committing to the step without having a firm hold on the banister.
Perhaps it was not checking for roots around his ankles.
He didn’t have time to parse the information and figure it out.
Albert pitched forward. There was a brief moment just before the vertigo kicked in where he was weightless and gravity hadn’t taken hold yet. It was almost like flying, and the sensation was both thrilling and terrifying. It was the same the first time he rode a rollercoaster. He felt it when he first lay eyes on Bernard and knew that he was destined to live a life of sin, just like his mother used to say.
Nature reasserted itself, and Albert plummeted. His mind reeled, thoughts lurching as they tried to catch up with his body’s motion. Tossing his cane away so he wouldn’t impale himself on it, he reached for the banister. His sweaty hand slipped from the ancient wooden rail, but his right hand slipped into the space between the banister and the wall. He braced himself as best he could and tried to arrest his fall.
The thin bones in his forearm weren’t up to the task of supporting his entire weight. With a wet pop, the bones snapped. He heard it before he felt it, and he experienced a moment of almost clinical disinterest as his body fell down the stairs, and his forearm folded over parallel to itself.
Then, with a sloppy SLURRRRRP, his arm jerked free of the banister, and he hurtled down the stairs. He rebounded off the wall and came to rest on the landing between floors. A trail of blood marked his path.
Like a bloodhound, the roots beelined for the crimson trail, following quickly behind. Albert cradled his arm against his chest and purposely averted his eyes. If he saw the blood, he’d likely faint. He could hear the vines skittering closer, sounding like thousands of spiders as they inched along. He tried to lever himself to his knees to crawl away, but his left arm gave out, and he crashed to the staircase again.
When the first root touched his ankle, he kicked. Soon there were too many to fight. They spread across his body like he was being cocooned in a spiderweb.
Albert rolled to his back so he could look up the stairway. He never wanted to be one of those old people with regrets, who lay on their deathbed lamenting what they should have done. Even as he and Bernard aged and drifted apart, he thought there would be enough time to fix things.
“I’ll see you soon,” he whispered.