Half-Sick of Shadows Read Free Page B

aroma of beef, potatoes, carrots and onions. Sophia, me, Edgar, Gregory, Granny Hazel and Mother had enjoyed stew and crusty bread for dinner when the first sign happened. Our empty bowls were stacked and ready for washing. Tea steamed from six mugs.
    ‘I feel sick,’ said Granny Hazel.
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Mother. ‘The way you down it.’
    Granny Hazel moaned. ‘It wasn’t the stew.’
    She moaned again and toppled sideways off her chair.
    Surprised but unfazed, Edgar and Sophia stared at the place where she had been. Gregory stared too, before turning to Mother, who pretended not to have noticed. I looked under the table to see where Granny Hazel had gone. Her eyes gazed at me unseeing.
    ‘She’s collapsed,’ said Gregory.
    Mother said it looked like it.
    I emerged from under the table to see what would happen next.
    ‘I hope she didn’t bang her head,’ said Mother, pouring herself another cup of tea. After blowing on it, she sent Gregory on the spare bicycle to tell Father at Farmer Barry’s farm.
    By the time Gregory returned – with Father pedalling twenty-four to the dozen behind him – Granny Hazel had come back to life. She had drunk a cup of tea and retired to bed, colliding with more walls than usual on the way. When she came downstairs the following day, she couldn’t get back up. Father took her bed apart, carted the whole thing down to the living room and rebuilt it. He and Mother talked about getting a doctor for Granny Hazel, but nothing came of it.
    Father didn’t trust doctors. He said if the Lord makes you sick it’s because you’re supposed to be sick, and if the Lord wants to heal you He’ll heal you. He said doctors suffered from having had an education. Education blinded people with false knowledge and fancy words from the facts of sin, the Saviour, and salvation.
    Sophia and I remained quiet in bed after Mother left because Sophia had nothing to say and I was preoccupied with puzzling out passing on.
    Whenever I tried to puzzle something out, Mother called me precocious. So I took to puzzling out in private. I wanted to puzzle out what Granny Hazel had passed on, and thought about asking Mother in the morning. Knowing it would be a silly question, I decided against it, and satisfied myself with the knowledge that when people die they pass something on.
    But what?
    I knew people passed on information. Sometimes Father told Mother Farmer Barry had asked him to pass something on – usually something about his wife’s health. I used to think Mrs Farmer Barry suffered from halitosis. It kept her indoors. I knew about halitosis because Mother said Edgar had it. Mother corrected me when I made a fool of myself one day by saying the wrong word. Mrs Farmer Barry might have had halitosis too, but she definitely had tuberous sclerosis. When I asked Mother about tuberous sclerosis she told me to go to bed.
    Noises like moving furniture came upstairs from downstairs. Father must have been shifting Granny Hazel’s coffin into the house from the outhouse. How would he get her in? She was bigger than him and fat. He would have to roll her on to the floor first. I listened for a bump that never came. My brain fogged over trying to fathom the mechanics of it. The kitchen table was about the right size; the coffin would best go on it. Maybe Granny Hazel had enough life in her to walk to the kitchen. Father could give her a leg up.
    I gazed at where the ceiling would be if I could see it in the Dark, and wondered if it was there even though I couldn’t.
    Lying there, I wondered if I could invent something better to do with a dead body than bury it. Use it as a scarecrow or something. We ate meat. A dead body had meat. Just today Mother said we were out of sausages. But we couldn’t eat Granny Hazel if Father put her in a coffin and buried her – not that I’d want to eat Granny Hazel; she would probably make me ill.
    In the Quiet, Dark and Cold, Sophia pulled me back from the rim of