The Dead Visitor

The Dead Visitor
Lucy’s POV

They didn’t listen. No one ever listens. Except Ethan and now…I don’t understand anything anymore with him.

The nurses gripped my arm tighter, holding me still while another prepared the syringe. 

“She’s resisting too much. Doc, we have to hurry,” one of the nurses said, her voice slightly raised.

“I think there’s something more to this poor lady,” another nurse whispered carefully to her colleague beside her…her voice filled with worry. “I mean…look at her. She looks so malnourished!”

“That’s it. I’m calling the cops. We should have called this in the moment she was wheeled in,” a third nurse announced, already reaching for the door. “This could be a kidnapping case. The driver mentioned that she was on the phone before passing out, and she sounded clearly terrified of the person on the other end.”

“No!” I tried to say, but the words became tangled…like I couldn’t get the word to come out. I didn’t want the cops involved. Ethan might find me. 

I don’t understand anything happening right now, but there was suddenly something deeply, and suspiciously off about him. The identical cycle…like I’m stuck in a time loop…The perfect routines that are always the same... The way he appeared out of nowhere like my Prince in shining armor saying I saved him once. It was all suddenly too much!

I didn't want to see him until I pieced it together. “Don’t call—” I started to say but the words slurred harder.

The needle slid into my vein and cold quickly spread through my arm like liquid ice.

Almost instantly, my limbs turned to lead…like it weighed a ton. Strength bled away and every muscle felt like jelly. 

My eyelids grew impossibly heavy as I fought it, blinking slowly, terror rising fresh as the room blurred at the edges. 

A nurse tucked me in properly as they all gave me a look filled with sympathy before filing out, dimming the lights, leaving only the soft beep of machines and the faint glow of monitors.

I lay there, paralyzed but conscious, willing my eyes to stay open. I did my possible best to stay awake. I can’t afford to sleep anymore. Sleep meant the river. Sleep meant the stretching hands reaching for me. Sleep meant Ethan wearing the face of every monster that had ever hunted me.

No…I don’t want to sleep. For once, I wanted to stay awake forever.

Just then, the door creaked open with a kind of calm you can only find in movies and I held my breath.

Soft footsteps started approaching my bedside as a familiar, gentle humming filled the room. I forced my heavy lids wider, confusion swirling inside me.

Oh no. Did I fall asleep while trying not to? Or am I still awake? Are they coming for me even while awake?

Just then… I saw her. My grandmother.

She walked in, wearing the same faded blue cardigan she’d always loved with her silver hair pinned neatly. She smiled at me with that warm, crinkly-eyed affection I remembered from childhood and I felt all my emotions crashing out. I wanted to run to her…to hug her and bawl my eyes out.

But I couldn’t move a muscle.

“Grandma?” I muttered, the word slurred. “Grand…”

Wait a minute… I felt my body going colder as the realization hit me. Didn't she die when I was 18? How is she here?

Before the thought could fully register, she was standing right beside the bed…far too close, far too fast. The same familiar smile was still on her lips as she leaned down and kissed my forehead. Her lips felt frosty, almost like it was Olaf from frozen that was kissing my forehead.

I tried to move even a single muscle, but nothing happened. My body felt like a sack of mashed potatoes, heavy and useless under the sheets.

She kept smiling…like everything was perfectly normal. Like it’s okay for a dead relative to visit the living just to smile at them.

Without breaking her smile, she reached up and gently brushed a strand of hair away from my face. Her touch was warm…real like she was real.

And then she whispered, her voice soft and familiar, exactly the way it had sounded when she was alive.

“You have no idea how hard I fought to come and see you one last time.” Her fingers lingered against my cheek as her smile softened. “I promised you, didn’t I? That I would always be with you, my little gift.”

A sob caught in my throat as the warmth of her presence wrapped around me. It was so familiar, so soothing, that for one terrifying second, I wanted to forget everything I knew. Forget that she was gone. Forget that I had watched her leave his world.

“Grandma…” I croaked. 

The moment that word left my lips again, the tears finally spilled over, streaming freely down my cheeks.

“Remember what I always tell you, muffin,” she said, sounding serious. “Time is one concept evil doesn’t understand. Which is why the dead ones can never keep the clock straight…they slip between minutes like water through fingers, wearing yesterday’s face on tomorrow’s bones. They think a month is a heartbeat, and a heartbeat is forever. That’s how they hide. Do you understand now?”

What the hell is she talking about? Time? I don’t understand anything that…

My eyes suddenly widened as an image flashed through my mind. 

A single tear slipped down my cheek as the memory hit like a blade and everything started falling into place.

Last night…when I asked Ethan the time he came back and instead of answering, he awkwardly laughed to evade the question.

It can’t be…can it?

Ethan… oh my God, Ethan!