Haunting The Night

“King me.”

Mills frowned as he tried to make sense of my latest move. “Was that legal?”

I was already collecting my red pieces and preparing for the next game. Mills had tried to teach me chess, but he was very good at the game and had no patience as I struggled to remember which way the knight could move. Also, it bugged him that I called it a horse. He gave up and we stuck to checkers as a way to occupy ourselves as we passed the hours in Mom’s hospital room.

I enjoyed spending time with Mills. He and Annalise had been dating for almost a year, the longest my sister had ever dated anyone. And the more I got to know him, the more I liked him. Annalise usually visited at the same time, but there were times like today when she had school responsibilities that kept her in Charleston. When that happened, Mills came by himself and met me at the hospital. He never complained or acted like he was doing me some huge favor. He was there every Saturday, with or without my sister, and we played games or talked for hours while Mom lay comatose in her bed. It was nice to have something to focus on other than the persistent beeping of Mom’s monitors and the whoosh of her breathing machine.

Checkers was also a way for me to keep my thoughts from wandering to the shadow creature. The sight of it the night before had rattled me throughout dinner with Noah and appeared once in my dreams, where it did nothing more than watch me from my closet. Still, it was enough to frighten me into consciousness. So far, I had only witnessed it outside. Was it about to begin visiting me in my room?

Mills set up his pieces. “I’m keeping an eye on you this time.”

“I don’t cheat! You just can’t stand it that I’m better than you at this.”

He smiled. “I’ve been holding back. Prepare to lose, Charlotte.”

“Bring it.”

He won the next game, but I won the round after that. We were setting up the board for a decisive fourth match when one of Mom’s monitors began beeping too fast. Mills and I immediately turned around. The high-pitched noise was getting worse and a red light flashed on one of the machines.

Mills got up and strode to the call button. Before he could push it, three nurses and a doctor swarmed through the doors.

“You need to wait outside,” said one of the nurses to Mills. He nodded. I couldn’t move, though. Fear kept me frozen to the little table with its waiting checkerboard. Mills put one arm around my shoulders and guided me out of the room, away from the tightly controlled chaos of the medical team working on Mom.

Once we were outside the room, Mills ushered me to the end of the hallway. “Let’s sit down over here, okay?” I slumped into a hard vinyl chair. “I’m going to call your dad and let him know that something’s going on.”

I nodded and wondered what Mills would say. Something was going on, but what? None of the words the nurses had recited to one another made sense to me. I wasn’t even sure they were speaking a real language.

The clock bolted to the wall ticked too loudly. I watched the red minute hand as it clunked its way in a perfect circle. In the corner, Mills was talking on his cell phone.

I hated waiting like this, without knowing what was happening, but it had become a kind of job. As a family, we had decided that Mom shouldn’t be alone all day. We took shifts, with Dad visiting Sunday through Thursday. Shane and Trisha came on Fridays. I came on Saturdays and any day I didn’t have school. We talked to her, reading aloud from magazines and newspapers. But after a while, we did other things, too. Sometimes I worked on schoolwork. Dad often brought books. The point was to be there in case something like this occurred. It was an unspoken agreement between all of us: if the very worst happened, Mom would not be alone.

Mills shut his phone and sat down next to me. “Your dad and Shane are on their way. They should be here in twenty minutes.”

“Good. Thanks.”

“Do you need anything? Are you hungry?”

“No.” I leaned to the side so I could look down the hall. “I want to be here when the doctor comes out.”

“Sure.”

Four minutes passed. “I really hate that clock,” I muttered.

Mills chuckled. “I was thinking the exact same thing. I wish it had a mute button.”

This made me smile. I leaned into him, and he put his arm around me. He knew enough not to say that it was all going to be okay or that he was sure everything was fine. He knew that the only thing I needed was a hug.

After three more minutes, a nurse emerged from Mom’s room. Mills and I stood up.

“The doctor will be with you shortly,” she told us. “Your mother is stable right now.”

Right now. Did that mean she wouldn’t be stable later?

“Thank you,” Mills said. “We’ll wait here.”

The nurse left. I didn’t want to sit down again. Instead, I paced the tiny waiting room.

“We’ll know something soon,” Mills reassured me. “She pulled out of it. That’s positive.”

“Yeah.”

I stared out the row of windows lining the wall, even though the only view it offered was of another wing of the hospital.

“I wish we had a sign,” I said, letting my forehead rest against the glass. “I wish I knew how all of this ended.”

I wasn’t sure that Mills had heard me. Another minute passed before he spoke. “Did I ever tell you about my mom?”

I turned around. “No.” He had told me a few stories about his dad, who had taught him chess, and I knew he had five cousins, all girls. But he had never mentioned his mother.

“She was killed in a car accident when I was ten.”

I moved away from the windows. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

He shrugged. “It’s not something I really talk about. But I’m bringing it up now for a reason.”

Mills waited until I returned to my chair before he began speaking again. “It was hard. We all struggled after she died. It didn’t even seem real to me until right before my eleventh birthday. It hit me that she wouldn’t be there to bake the cake or sing to me or decorate my doorway.” He smiled. “It was this thing she did every year. She always strung streamers around my bedroom door and taped balloons to the wall. It was something I loved, especially the balloons.”

Mills awoke on his birthday, sad but hopeful. He opened his bedroom door, wanting more than anything to see the familiar streamers curled with care, and the bunches of balloons taped to the frame. There was nothing.

His dad tried, he said. There was a chocolate cake served after his favorite dinner and a new bike wrapped in newspaper waiting for him on the back porch. But without his mom, Mill’s birthday was an unhappy one. He went to bed early, desperately wanting the day to be over. It was summer, and the sun hadn’t set yet. Mills sat on his bed, thinking about his mom and wishing that she could be there.

“I wanted a sign,” he said. “Just one thing to help me know that she was okay, that she still loved me and remembered my birthday.” He shook his head. “I know it sounds stupid, but I was eleven, and it meant so much.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid at all,” I said, and I meant it. How can it be stupid to miss someone, to want more than anything to know that they are still around in some way?

“I wanted a sign,” Mills repeated. “I asked for a sign. And I got it.”

He pulled out his wallet. It was made of soft brown leather, worn at the corners where he folded it in half. He opened it as if he was going to retrieve a dollar bill, but instead of pulling out money, he showed me a piece of what looked like a slip of silver foil.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I was staring out my window.” Mills looked at the thing in his hand. “There was a tree outside, so close that its branches used to scrape against the glass.”

It was still light out, he said, but beginning to get dark. His window was open to let in the summer air. He got up and went down the hall to brush his teeth. And when he returned, it was there. Stuck in the branches of the tree was a single balloon.

It was a big, silver Mylar balloon emblazoned with the words Happy Birthday in a rainbow of colors.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Mills said. “It was right there, so close that I could touch it.”