To The Dead We Owe the Truth

“We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth. " - Voltaire.

I loved my Gran. I loved visiting her and wouldn't stop. But since her dementia had taken its vice-like grip. Since that evil disease had squeezed out everything that made her spectacular, it was harder.

To look at, she was still her, and when she smiled, I was sent back in time to better moments. But it was all a façade, a trick of biology.

I was first to arrive and took my seat beside her bed, watching her sleep. I tried to be as quiet as I could, but she stirred and woke. Prepared to answer all the usual questions.

"I'm Janine!"

"Yes, Janine, your granddaughter, you are Ethel."

"You're in a special care home."

"You have dementia."

I closed my eyes and braced myself.

"Janine dear, are you sleeping sitting up?"

It took a moment for it to click that my Gran was speaking directly to me and appeared to know who I was. It felt too like she already knew what I had done.

Peering with one eye open, tears pooled along my eyelids, forcing me to open both wide.

"Gran?"

"Yes dear, last time I checked!"

"But... this is. Doctor, doctor." I shouted, opening the door and pulling away from my Gran for a moment."

"Calm down, dear. Do you need a doctor?"

"No... Gran, it's okay."

Dr. Willis, the on-call doctor, came in and sent me to sit outside. When mum arrived, I explained that there had been an incident.

Dr. Willis came out and explained that far from being truly lucid for the first time in many years, Gran was suffering from what is known as Terminal Lucidity.

It was a brief and cruel spell of lucidity in dementia and other long-term degenerative patients. The cruel part was that it was usually a precursor to a death, which would be sooner rather than later.

We were told to try and enjoy the moment.

Walking back into Gran's room, she was smiling her widest smile and greeted my mum with the warmest words of criticism, "Cut your hair again, I see?"

We sat at either side of her bed and talked for what seemed like hours.

Gran was in her element. She always loved a good sit-down and a chat.

"Nicer than Janine's. Hers is...very selcouth."

"Gran!"

"Mum"

We both laughed, though it did hurt a little. After waiting all this time for just one more chance to speak to my Gran, I was a little upset that the horrible side of her came out to play.

"I need to tell you something before my time is up."

"Don't stress about that, Gran, we know you love us."

"It's not that dear. It's something..."

She trailed off and stopped smiling enough to fill the room with unease.

The silence was so thick it felt like breathing through cloth—until a sharp bang on the door tore it open.

It was Dereck, my older brother, and my dad.

"I thought Janine was telling another of her lies when she phoned and said you were awake. Is that really you, Gran?"

"Of course it is, fuckwit."

"Seems normal to me," my dad chuckled.

"You're all just in time. I wanted to share some words with each of you before my time is up."

"To my dearest daughter, Angela. You should tell your man Harry what you've been up to late at the office."

Silence followed laughter - brittle and wrong.

"Don't be silly, Ethel," my Dad said. "She's too goody two-shoes to be doing anything other than work."

"I wouldn't be too sure, my dear. Ask her about Dougie."

"Mum, what are you talking about? I don't know a Dougie."

For as much as I wanted to believe Mum was telling the truth, she looked way more uncomfortable.

"Yes you do, Dougie McLafferty, your boss's right-hand man. You always talk about him, mum!"

Dereck piped up. Always the smartarse, wanting to dispense to anyone who would listen from his fountain of knowledge.

"Shut up, Dereck. Don't wind your Gran up. She's obviously confused."

"Harry, get yourself checked. That's all I'm saying."

"For fu..."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I thought Mum had been acting strange recently.

"But don't be too harsh on Angie, Harry. You're hardly a saint after all, are you? How long has it been since you last snorted coke from the back of someone that wasn't Angie?"

The oxygen machine hummed in the silence, as Gran's words brought a heaviness to the room. Even the fluorescent light seemed to hesitate to shine, flickering.

Gran's breathing was as shallow as it ever was, but there was something behind her eyes, a fierceness, a knowing.

"What? Cocaine, again, Harry?" countered my mum, as if she had been granted the high ground.

"Now, can we all calm down a little. How do we know the crazy old bat isn't making it up? She's always had it in for me!"

Dad could be harsh with his word choices, but even I could not argue that Gran had shown disdain to my dad for, well, as long as I'd been alive.

Dereck couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"This family is a joke," he exclaimed between the giggles.

I just sat there, shocked. Silent and shocked.

"You must be the punchline, Dereck."

"Does anyone know what really happened when you dropped out of college?"

Dereck's smile was quickly replaced with a scornful, no, confused look.

"..." he tried to speak, but the words couldn't leave his mouth.

"What happened, son?" asked Dad, trying to maintain some level of composure, but also deflecting away from his own issues.

"It was... nothing"

"I'm sure the police think that, my boy, but we both know it was anything but nothing, don't we, Dereck? Tell Granny all about it."

"Did your anger get the better of you when you saw that lassie kissing another guy?"

Silence. The ticking of the clock filled the gaps between Gran's revelations.

There was a strong waft of rot, too. I put it down to the fact that we were surrounded by people on their last legs.

" Did you take it out on both of them?"

More silence, more ticking.

"No one can prove anything. My lawyer said there's no evidence to support the case against me," he blurted out, clearly trying to defend himself.

Dereck was not the brightest and let his emotions get the better of him.

"What case?" my Dad asked with a glare that could cut the choking atmosphere in the room.

I didn't know what to think. Tears were streaming down my face. I was fearful about all the revelations.

"Why are you saying all this, Gran?" I asked, grabbing hold of her hands and trying to stroke them, before she shoved me away.

"It's all so selcouth, the way the living hold onto their lies. Hoping to buy another day of life in their sewers of sin and depravity. I was told as a child, 'The dead only know one thing, Ethel'. Never did I question what that one thing was. Now I understand. The dead know only one thing... the truth."

I had forgotten Gran's flair for poetry.

“Do you think you hide in your lies?” she asked, her voice soft but wrong — like someone else was learning to use her tongue.

"But none of this is true. It can't be. You're just... and I hate to say this because for so long I wanted to speak to you, but you weren't there, but you're just being a spiteful old bat."

I had had enough.

"My dear Janine. Finally, the blushing coward speaks her mind. I saved the best to last with you, my dearie."

"What do you mean, Mum?" asked Mum, clearly upset by everything my Gran had said so far. She quickly glanced my way before turning back to her mother.

I was struck with a strong sense of revulsion and fear.

"Yeah, Gran, what do you mean, you old bat?"

I repeated my terse words in the hope she'd give up.

"Well, Angie darling. Do you remember when dear Janine here was looking after me before I got really sick and you found me unconscious, barely holding onto the little life I had?"

My hands were still trembling from earlier when I had tried to calm her. I could still feel her papery, fragile skin. It had felt like it could tear if I had pressed it too hard or too long.

"She had just gone to the toilet. That's all. It was an accident, Mum."

My mum took her turn trying to calm Gran, and my heart sank.

"That's what she said. But, darling... ask her about the pillow." Gran's eyes gleamed with a sharpness that belied her frail, failing body.

I froze.

The word hung in the air like smoke, suffocating. As I remembered that night. It was just an accident. I was under pressure, panicking. The terrible thought I had... was just a thought.

Gran's lips curled into a smile. A different smile. Then she lay back on the bed, sighed, and closed her eyes.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: This is for L.C. Schäfer's awesome Spooktacular Dollar Challenge (October Edition 🎃 🕯). There is still time to enter. Please do check it out.

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