Chapter Six
Grandma’s Not All There
Now that’s a crazy as hell thought.
Heh. Mom being a vampire.
I don’t know too much about auras, but I do know that immortals don’t have them. Unless Mom recently became a vampire, I sincerely doubt this is the case; after all, she looks old... and vampires don’t age. That means if she’d been turned into a vampire, she had to have undergone the change somewhat recently, within a few years.
I think about Bill at the gas station and his warning about people being found dead out here. Could Mom be some sort of supernatural agent of carnage? The notion of it is hilarious... at least on the surface. Then I start remembering how she could go from vacant to lucid on a whim, and sometimes it really felt like a completely different person talking to me. Not like her accent or anything changed. She didn’t start speaking other languages. Just her mannerisms would be erratic and inconsistent.
Being a blood vampire is out since Mom spends all day sitting in the greenhouse without bursting into flames. Maybe an energy vamp? Doubtful. Hmm. Could Mom have been bitten by a werewolf?
Could she have gone to the Monarch for dinner and ended up eating Mack instead of his food? That sounds so crazy. Dusk has only been here for two days now, so it’s not like he can say one way or the other if she has a habit of running off into the night once a month to shift and feast on the unwary.
Dad’s been here up until last week, so… that kinda rules out the werewolf idea. Very few of them have enough control over themselves to avoid hurting people they care about. Especially in a situation like Mom, where she appears to be suffering from some sort of advanced mental deterioration. Like an Alzheimer’s patient, she might not even remember who Dad is, especially while in the middle of a werewolf feeding frenzy.
The fact that my father lived long enough to collapse on the floor of the local supermarket is fairly convincing evidence that Mom is not a werewolf.
So, what the hell is going on here?
I quietly excuse myself from the table, leaving the kids and Dusk to talk. He’s entertaining them with stories about his years spent wandering Europe. Apparently, he’s an artist and kept himself alive by painting and selling his work.
Once again, I approach the greenhouse at the end of the hall.
I can’t help but think about one time I really wanted to spend time with Mom when I was about ten. Whatever upset me initially, I don’t remember. I walked in here much like this and tried to talk to her, get some reaction out of her. I wanted to do something that normal daughters did with their mothers. Didn’t care exactly what we did, just something we could do together. She just sat there, distant and oblivious to my existence. I remember going back to my room and crying for hours. Was that the moment in my life where I ‘mourned’ my mother and started essentially considering her dead ?
When I was ten, I gave up on her.
I’m not going to give up now. Something is going on.
Mom’s still sitting in the same position she was an hour ago. It’s dark outside now. Her stare remains fixated on the string bean plants the way Mary Lou’s husband Rick stares at the TV when a football game is on. Okay, bad comparison. Mom isn’t screaming and calling the beans clumsy idiots.
I grab the second beat up old stool and drag it over to sit beside her.
“Hey, Mom.”
She doesn’t react.
So, I start just talking like we’re having a normal conversation. For some reason, I end up blathering about the kids like I’m trying to get her caught up on our lives. Of course, I don’t mention any of the crazy stuff. Just, you know, like ‘Tammy’s graduated high school now’ or Paxton’s going to be in high school next year… that sort of thing.
Looking at her, she seems reasonably healthy for someone in their seventies. Maybe a bit too thin. I don’t remember her smoking cigarettes much, but she did indulge in pot. There are some stories in my very distant memory that our parents experimented with LSD, too. Anything they experienced while on LSD was probably far more believable than the craziness of my own life. Diving down the throat of a massive demonic dragon in an alternate dimension definitely sounds like the product of some serious recreational drugs… only it wasn’t.
All three of my brothers went through pothead phases. Clayton did the most. River gave it up first. Mary Lou preferred pot brownies. She never could tolerate smoking anything without coughing so hard we thought her liver would come flying out of her mouth. She needed something to help her deal with the stress of being a schoolgirl as well as a stand-in mother for her siblings. She doesn’t indulge in that anymore. I tried it a few times, but never really cared for the experience. Didn’t do much to me for some reason. I used to think that Clayton and Dusk overacted being high.
“It’s weird,” whispers a voice from the doorway behind me.
I don’t usually jump scare, but I’d been so focused on Mom I didn’t notice anyone else there. So, yeah, I jump a little.
Paxton’s poking her head into the greenhouse.
“Everyone’s saying things are weird.” I smile at her. “What do you mean?”
“Your mom doesn’t have any emotions… like none at all.”
I shift my attention back to Mom. She’s just sitting there. “Maybe she doesn’t have a mood because she’s not feeling much? Wonder if she really does have dementia.”
“Umm.” Paxton creeps over and stands beside me. “I’ve never met anyone before who didn’t have any emotion at all.”
“What about sociopaths?”
She sighs. “My dad had emotions… bad ones, but he had them.”
Oof. I’m ninety percent sure she’s just calling him a sociopath as an insult. Not that he doesn’t deserve it. She’d have no way to know if anyone she’d bumped into randomly was a sociopath. Though, odds are pretty good she’s at least been in the vicinity of someone suffering from sociopathy at least once in her life. It’s a scary thought how many of them are out there.
“Was she always like this?” asks Paxton.
“I… umm…” I look down at my lap, fidgeting my hands together. “I remember her being a little more functional than this. She’d go for long periods being out of it, then come back to life and be consumed with her hobbies. Always in here crafting stuff. Mom was never really too interested in us kids.”
“Did she ever have emotions?” Paxton leans on me.
“Yeah. Usually annoyance or… excitement at whatever flaky idea she got and wanted to spend all her time on.” I tap the tips of my boots together, thinking .
Dusk said something about her doing ‘magic’ to protect Clayton from some sort of monster. That is contrary to the idea of Mom being indifferent to her kids. Maybe she cared enough to want to prevent us from being kidnapped or eaten by a bear… but not enough to play board games with us.
“You’re sad now.” Paxton squeezes my hand.
“Maybe. I feel confused. Things aren’t adding up.”
“Like what?” Paxton tilts her head, causing her long blonde hair to spill off her shoulder.
“That thing Dusk said about protective magic.” I look Mom over, hoping to see any hint of reaction from her as I speak. “I remember her being indifferent to us. Like she didn’t care about our existence at all. If she did something to protect Clay, that means she had some amount of concern for us.”
“Comin’ round the bend, quarter to six,” mutters Mom.
“Huh?” I ask. “Mom?”
She tilts her head in contemplation. “Blue looks tacky. Better go with the beige. It’s high in nitrogen.”
Paxton’s eyebrows go up. She whispers, “Ma, she’s got emotion now, but it’s so strange. Changing fast. Annoyed to worried to happy, and now... it’s gone again.”
“Mom?” I ask. “It’s Sam.”
Mother tilts her head back the other way, smiling at the bean plants.
This is almost too much for me. It hits me now that I hadn’t been avoiding coming here entirely because I didn’t want to explain why I still look so young. It’s guilt. I didn’t want to deal with losing my mother a second time to whatever’s going on in her head. That day when I was ten and gave up on her was me mourning the mother I never had. I didn’t want to go through that all over again.
Sensing my mood spiraling down, Paxton squeezes my hand.
“Ma…” Anthony walks in .
“Hey.” I wipe tears off my face. “Sorry. This isn’t easy for me.”
“Something is wrong with Grandma?” Anthony moves over to stand behind us, resting a hand on my shoulder.
Paxton gives him a ‘ya think’ stare, but doesn’t say it out loud.
“Yeah, I think so.” I glance down. All this supernatural power in me and I can’t think of anything to do that might help her.
“There’s no soul inside her,” says Anthony.
“Harsh,” whispers Paxton.
A brief spike of anger hits me. I almost snap at Anthony. Thankfully, I catch myself. My thinking brain has faster reflexes than my mouth. He’s not trying to insult her. He’s being literal. His tone was so blank, matter-of-fact.
“Wait. What?” I peer back at him. “You’re not just calling her soulless.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I mean Grandma’s not here.”
Was she ever? I bite my lip so I don’t say that out loud.
“You’re missing the party,” says Dusk as he walks in with Tammy behind him.
I look up at him. “Dusk, do you remember if Mom was always like this? My memories are so foggy.” Hey, don’t judge me. My brain’s been through a lot. Somewhere in the process of being turned into an immortal, having Elizabeth squatting rent-free between my ears for so long, plus the emotional rollercoaster of nearly losing Anthony as a kid… and everything else that’s happened to me—it’s no wonder bits and pieces of my memory have blurred into ‘was that real or did I make that up’ or simply gone missing entirely.
“Umm. Yeah, I kinda remember her being more normal at times, but I was a little kid then.” Dusk stokes his fluffy beard.
“No soul,” whispers Paxton. “Guess that explains why she doesn’t have any real emotions. ”
“Or aura,” adds Tammy.
“Emotions?” Dusk glances at Paxton.
“Yeah, kiddo’s an empath.” I squeeze her hand.
“Proof that weird runs in the family.” Dusk chuckles.
Paxton almost glows with happiness at being called family.
Hmm. If Mom wasn’t always like this, then something obviously happened to her.
Question is: what?
Better question is: can I do anything to help her?