Out of the Mist Read Online Free Page B

long.”
    Gran-gran’s home seemed
empty after the influx of relatives this morning. Mrs. Hemphill,
Gran-gran’s helper, was in the living room, placing flowers from
mourners in vases. “I’ll look after the little girls,” she told
Mother, taking them into the kitchen. She gave them some hot cocoa,
and had them sit at the kitchen table where they wouldn’t see the
casket as it was carried out of the house and slid in the back of
the hearse. Their mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts and older cousins
got into their cars. Each vehicle sported a purple funeral flag.
Within minutes the long procession disappeared from
sight.
    Margaret held her cup up high to look at the
design, a picture of a flower, with the words “Rosemary for
Remembrance”.
    “ Careful of that cup,
now,” said Mrs. Hemphill. “It was your Gran’s
favourite.”
    Margaret hurriedly put it down, but it was
too near Evelyn’s elbow. Her little cousin moved and accidentally
brushed it off the table.
    “ Now look what you’ve
done,” Mrs. Hemphill went to sweep up the broken bits. “Well, well!
What can you expect of children? Good thing your Gran didn’t see
that.”
    Margaret and Evelyn looked at each other
with startled eyes.
    What if Gran-gran did see them? The two
cousins wandered into the hall. Gran-gran’s home looked the same as
ever: Chairs of dark wood, carved with elaborate designs of flowers
and urns, with uncomfortably hard seats. A window with exotic
flowers—tropical violets and spider plants. A curio cabinet with a
collection of arrowheads, a stone axe, and plaster figures of
strange gods brought back by an ancestor from the Orient. On the
wall hung a sampler, embroidered by Gran-gran, showing a
willow-tree weeping over a tombstone, and the motto, “In hope of
Blessed Resurrection.”
    People did rise from the dead.
Sometimes.
    Evelyn started up the stairs, hanging on to
the carved wooden banister, and climbed up two feet to a step.
“Don’t go up there!” Margaret called.
    “ Why not?”
    “ That’s where Gran-gran’s
room is.” Margaret had been taken each week to see her grandmother
after Gran-gran got sick. Holding her mother’s hand, she would walk
upstairs slowly, not really wishing to see the old, old lady. She
was over 80, her mother told her. The first visits were not so bad.
Gran-gran was sitting up, with a little smile. Her sunken eyes
seemed to recognize Margaret, and she would vaguely reach out and
squeeze her hand. But sometimes she would seem to be asleep, though
her eyes were open, lying there, her white hair scanty, with
patches of pink skin showing through. Her mouth would be half open
with a little dribble of spit flowing out. Sometimes, when they
visited, Gran-gran would be groaning softly, “Oh-oh-oh,” and thrash
her head from side to side, not looking at Margaret and her mother
at all.
    The last visit was the worst. Mother had
said, “Here’s Margaret, Granny, here’s your granddaughter.”
Gran-gran’s face was distorted, her mouth twisted, and her head
rolled back and forth on the pillow. She had held up a knotted,
skeletal hand between her and Margaret and cried, “No, no, Get
away! Don’t come near me!”
    Margaret had run out of the room. After
that, she wouldn’t go in the room when her mother went to visit
Gran-gran.
    Evelyn was at the top of
the stairs. “What’s in these rooms?” she asked. Living farther
away, she had never seen Gran when she was sick. Margaret followed
slowly to the upper hall. There was a shadowy feeling about going
near Gran-gran’s room. The hall was dark. All the shades in the
house had been pulled down. “That’s what we do when someone dies,”
her mother had told her. Gran’s house was gloomy anyway with dark
wood mouldings, old fashioned lights with glass shades shaped like
flower petals, and old pictures on the walls of churches, ruined
buildings, and some dead pheasants. Also at the end of the hall
between two windows was a painting of an old man