The Fourth Night

By R.J. Tennyson

I know that she’ll scream tonight. I know whose name she will shatter the night silence with; but I sit here waiting all the same. The only things I can hear are her breathing, and the pendulum clock that hangs in the hall outside her door.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

It’s the clock my mother-in-law gave us for our fifth wedding anniversary.

Tonight my mother-in-law lies in Ward B of St. Jude’s Hospice. She is an emaciated version of the woman who raised my husband Blake. Eyes sunken, lips dry and cracked, a skeleton encased in a translucent shroud. My husband has not left her side for a week now. The opioids administered are so strong, she hasn’t spoken for three nights; the first night Caitlin woke screaming. The night I knew death was almost ready to take my mother-in-law.

Caitlin stirs, and I hold my breath. Is this it? She tosses her head to her left, murmurs, and returns to her dreams.

I exhale.

The first time it happened was almost four years ago.

One, two, three nights in a row Caitlin woke screaming. Her eyes were wide open but looked like empty black pools of nothing. She stared at something only she could see. Something she didn’t want to see. Each time, I held her and rocked her, until her rigid body slackened, and she fell asleep in my arms. On the fourth night she woke again. Unlike the three previous nights, on the fourth she screamed a single name over and over again. GRANDPA… GRANDPA… GRANDPA.

Again I held her and rocked her until she fell asleep. I was woken at seven o’clock in the morning by a call from my mother-in-law. Blake’s father, Caitlin’s Grandpa, was dead; a massive heart attack.

The screams in the night stopped.

Blake and I didn’t know what to make of it. Lapsed Catholics, neither of us were religious, or believed in things unnatural. We labelled it a coincidence. We tried to forget it, but who can forget something like that? So we never spoke of it again. Well, not for Eleven months; until Caitlin’s screams in the night started again.

One, two, three nights in a row. On the fourth again she called a single name over and over. KEVIN… KEVIN… KEVIN. My brother Kevin was knocked from his motorcycle that night. A broken neck. They said he died instantly.

Now I sit here in Caitlin’s bedroom; waiting. The screaming has started again.

One, two, three nights in a row. Tonight is the fourth.

I know she will wake screaming tonight. This time I know who death will demand she call for.

Caitlin stirs, and again I hold my breath. She sits bolt upright as though pulled into position by a hand I can’t see. Her head turns, and her eyes fall open revealing empty black pools of nothing.

She screams, “DADDY… DADDY… DADDY.”