It's Only Words nosleep

Rippled clouds were drifting by and I was glad to have snagged a window seat. It was a long flight from Indiana to England and I don’t own an mp3 player and can’t stomach reading while in transit, so without the baseline of blue skies and clouds to watch, I would have gone nuts by the time we landed. I was going over my lectures in my head. I was supposed to be teaching a summer class on linguistics, but I had to cancel at the last minute because of my grandfather’s health.

He lives in a small town in England and I had only been there as a child. It was the stereotypical rural English village: green hills, gray skies, sheep roaming in the fields. I remembered brown-roofed cottages and low walls clumsily constructed of stone and mortar. I hadn’t seen the place for over 15 years. My grandfather had been fighting with his mental health for years. But he was a stubborn man insistent on living on his own, especially after grandma passed. My mother’s voice, shaking and splintered on the edge of tears, confirmed the inevitable. Grandpa was slipping. He was becoming delusional, cranky, and distant. We assumed Alzheimer’s. My mother called me early one morning and begged me to convince him somehow to move to a retirement home with round-the-clock care. Though I had long known of his fading health, I never quite comprehended what it was that caused it. He was old. People die. Point A, Point B, I accepted that simple formula.

I took a taxi from the nearest airport and watched the city turn to English countryside outside my window. The cabby was an Indian, but never told me his name. He had driven Americans around before, he said, but had never been asked by one to leave the city. Tourists, he said, thought that all of the charm was in the cities. I explained to him that I was not a tourist. Already I was noting the small points of divergence between American English and its British counterpart. I told the driver that I was in country to convince my grandfather to move to a retirement home and that it would be no easy task.

“Call me,” the cabbie said, “when you have all of his things packed. I can get a van. I will drive you.”

I promised him I would, though I had no clue how I would contact him since he never mentioned his name or gave me his card.

When we drew closer to the town, I imagined that it would look much the same as it did when I was a child, but expected it to be notably aged. My grandfather had aged, after all, so I guessed that his world would as well. However, I was wrong. The fields were as lush as ever. Rams and downy lambs roamed along the roadside in dozens. Even the lopsided walls bordering the homes seemed straighter, cleaner, more uniform than I remembered them. Women stood on their porches, sweeping aside dust with wooden brooms. An old man dusted the knickknacks in his front window. School children were strolling down the streets in black and white uniforms with their backpacks strapped over their shoulders. The smell of fresh bread wafted out from a bakery as we passed.

The Beegees were playing on the taxi’s radio. Andy Gibb was singing “It’s only words. And words are all I have to take your breath away.” I saw a little girl with red hair running across the lawn, chased by a pack of her schoolmates who were yapping and shouting. I turned in my seat to watch the chase. The girl with red hair tripped on a stone and her friends caught up with her, collapsing in a chortling heap atop her and fighting, boys and girls alike, to plant kisses on her mouth. Charming.

Charming was the only word that came to mind as we passed by well-kept houses, meticulously clean streets, and a bustling population that all seemed to line the streets, marching this way and that way, all of them propelled by a sense of purpose, of intention.

The cab stopped in front of my grandfather’s house. It was a small one-story place and, though the rest of the village was clean and well-kept, his was in a state of squalor. The stone wall that bordered his yard was lopsided and composed of chipped stones and cracked mortar. Crab grass sprouted up in tufts between the cracks of his walkway. The lawn had clearly not been mowed for weeks. I paid the cabbie and stacked my luggage on the sidewalk.

My grandfather’s gate was closed and upon trying to unlatch it, found that it had been locked shut with not just one padlock, but three. From the outside, the place seemed abandoned. Dust smudged the windows behind which no light or signs of life shined out. I muttered under my breath and climbed over the low wall, careful not to rip the groin of my khaki slacks when I straddled the wall’s bumpy crest.

I knocked hard on my grandfather’s front door, expecting someone at his age to be hard of hearing. Perhaps he was harder of hearing than I expected because I stood on his porch for a full two minutes with no response. I knocked again, louder.

“Go away,” he cried from inside, “you’re not getting me next!”

“It’s your grandson, Oliver” I called back.

“I won’t fall for your tricks” he yelled.

“There’s no trick, grandpa,” I said “I’ve come to visit, don’t you remember?”

There was silence for a moment, then the door cracked open and I could see my grandfather’s shriveled face scowling at me from behind the chain that secured the door. “Of course I remember. I’m an old man, not an invalid.”

“Then let me in” I groaned.

“You’re alone?”

I looked around the empty yard behind me. “Well, yes.”

“You’re sure?” my grandfather asked and eyed the taxi driver who was still piddling around on the street. “Who’s he?”

“Cab driver, grandpa. He drove me from the airport.”

“Tell him to leave,” grandpa said sharply.

“He’ll leave shortly” I said, “I’m sure he’s just stretching his legs. It was a long trip out here.”

“I’ll let you in when he’s gone.”

I wasn’t sure what had gotten into my grandfather. Over the years, though we only spoke through email or letter, he had been a friendly man that loved people. He put in 33 years as a social worker and that’s the kind of career you don’t keep unless you enjoy human interaction. I sighed and walked to the edge of the property, doing my best to politely shoo away the cab driver.

“He’s gone, grandpa” I said through the door which he had shut once more. “Can you let me in now?”

“Fine, fine” he grumbled. I stood and listened as he turned a set of locks on the front door--four of them by the time the door creaked open. I pointed towards my luggage on the curb and gestured for the padlocks on the gate. He told me that he’d lost the keys, so I had to hoist them up and over the hip-high wall one by one.

“What’s with all the security?” I asked once my belongings were heaped in the tiny foyer.

“This town’s been taken over” he said. “Those things are trying to get in here and take me.”

I kneaded the skin on the bridge of my nose. He was farther gone than I’d expected. I didn’t ask him what “things” were out there or who had taken over the town, because I didn’t want to encourage him. Instead I stuck to plain facts: I had flown over to check on his health, I was staying for one week, and I could help out with anything around the house that he needed. My grandfather told me he was as healthy as ever.

“Not bothering with the lawn work, then?” I asked.

“I haven’t left this house in three weeks” he spat.

“Three weeks?” I said and took in the sleepy house I was standing in. “What have you been eating?”

He spoke proudly, “Got a garden in the back. And enough canned food to last a year!”

“Have you got allergies? Does the sun hurt your eyes? Why aren’t you going outside, grandpa?”

“To keep away from those freaks outside,” he said the words ‘freaks’ with as much disdain as his frail little body could muster, nearly trembling as he said it.

“Make a list and I’ll go to the grocery,” I said.

“I’m not going to let you go out there” grandpa hobbled on his cane over to the recliner in the dim living room, “not with those freaks out there.” His hands were trembling as he brought them up and covered his mouth. He clenched his palm tight over his lips, eyes growing wide and his breath heaving from flaring nostrils. He pulled his hand down and stared for a moment at the wall, a distant stare, lost in thought. Then he said “No, sir, they will take you too.”

“Grandpa, I’ll be fine. And you honestly need some food in this house. You can’t survive on canned beans.”

Grandpa grit his teeth and the bridge of his nose wrinkled when he grimaced. He smacked his hand on the table, then tore a shred of paper from a corner of a newspaper. He scribbled something down and handed it over to me. “When you come back” he looked hard into my eyes, “if you do,” he let go the tight grip he had on the scrap of paper for me to take, “this is your codeword. You can’t tell me the word on that paper, you don’t get in this house. Got it?”

I looked down at the scrap of paper. “Bramble?”

“Shh, shh,” he hushed me and lifted high in his seat to steal a gaze out the window. “Don’t let them hear you.”

I’ll be honest in admitting that I wasn’t that worried about my grandfather’s pantry. The man had become tiny in his old age and probably didn’t eat much more than a cup of tea without getting full. Really, I just wanted to escape the house. Yes, I had just arrived, but already it felt cloistering. It was dark. It was dusty. The air was stale. Illness had surely sunken into my grandfather’s brain and his once charming cottage had transformed into his prison.

There was a second reason I was glad to go out. Besides taking my grandfather to a retirement home, I sort of thought of this trip as a miniature vacation. With the spring semester over and the stacks upon stacks of term papers all marked up and graded, I was more than ready to escape the campus a while. I wanted to explore this quaint village, watch the people, listen to them speak. Words, after all, are my truest passion.

I figured I would begin by finding a convenience store or pharmacy. I hadn’t smoked a cigarette in over five years, but I was across the ocean, alone, free. Why not walk about town with a relaxing smoke and maybe a bottle of soda?

I walked by the rows of gardens and immaculate cottages, taking in the sight of mothers scrubbing dirt stains from the knees of jeans and red-nosed English fathers fixing up the gutters or polishing the hoods of their cars. Something struck me: this whole village must be obsessed with cleanliness. Perhaps that would explain the strange stares I received when I hopped over grandfather’s dilapidated wall. His house and his yard were blemishes upon an otherwise pristine hamlet.

The next thing I noticed, upon entering the small drug store I found in the modest downtown, was that these people were not accustomed to outsiders. The moment I stepped through the door, a bell chimed above my head and magnetized the attention of every set of eyes in the place. The clerk and the customer at the counter put their transaction on hold to gawk at me. The two old ladies chatting over the vitamins raised up on their tiptoes to survey me over the shelves. It was an unabashed gaze, but I couldn’t read the blank expressions on their faces. Was I unwelcome here, or just an oddity whose novelty would pass over the coming days?

I made a beeline to the refrigerators in the back and grabbed a bottle of cola. I could felt their eyes glued on me. I tried not to let it get to me. They were small town folks and here a stranger had come traipsing into their lives. This could very well be a once in a decade event in a little village like this. I approached the counter and some silent agreement was made between the customer and clerk that their transaction could continue later because the customer simply swept himself and his items aside when I arrived.

“Oh, it’s fine, really, you can finish” I said, and smiled.

I tell you, the clerk almost jumped out of his shoes at my words. The customer took a half step back and a tandem gasp hushed out from the vitamin ladies. The clerk stared at me wide-eyed, then glanced at the others, perhaps expecting assistance. Then as if they had rehearsed it, the four of them all broke out of their positions and convened in a huddle in the candy aisle. I couldn’t help but let out a quick, sharp laugh at the whole ordeal and when I did, all four looked up at me, noted the snort, and returned to their whispered conference. After half a minute the huddle broke and all parties returned to their posts. The women went back to comparing the labels on vitamin bottles.

The clerk stepped up to the register and scanned my soda. I asked for a pack of cigarettes and added “the blue pack” since these folks seemed to be struggling. The clerk then looked me in the eye and licked his lips, as if readying himself for a challenge. When he spoke, it was not the voice that I had overheard him bantering in with the customer as I came through the door. Instead, his words were forced and faltering. He was doing his best to emulate my American accent, but the pronunciation differences and subtle changes in cadence escaped him, resulting in a very awkward and abnormal sounding “Thut will bay six heightain.”

By now, I was fighting just to keep from bursting out in laughter and a bemused grin was more than evident on my face. I paid quickly, gathered my change, and hurried out the door. When the door swung shut behind me, I subtly jabbed my toe in its path, keeping it just ajar enough that I could stand outside and eavesdrop on them while I had a smoke.

“He’s’n’t from over here,” the clerk hissed to the customer who lingered at the counter, making no attempt at an actual transaction. “His voice was regular strange.”

“Mind bottling” the customer replied. “Who might he could be?”

I stared up at the sky as I listened to them talk, the old burn of smoke revisiting my throat for the first time in half a decade. What an odd way they spoke. Certainly I expected to find that the English used the language differently than we Americans, but their sentences were awkward and just... off. As if they were all still learning the language.

“He’s just standing to the left of the door,” one of the old women croaked. “Why hasn’t he left yet?”

“Just act normal, and go back to your shopping, ignore him” the clerk said and scanned his customer’s toothpaste for the third time.

“Lovely weather we’re having” the customer said, “I’ll have to open around the windows,” he glanced over at me after every few words, “but I don’t think my sinuses can whether another year of allergies.”

It was the end of spring.

“I think you did an awful good job noising like him” the customer said.

I finished my cigarette and quickly snuffed it out in the ashtray by the door. The whole situation had left me on edge and I hurried down the sidewalk in search of the grocery. I concluded that this village must have been established by foreigners to England and their seclusion had nurtured the peculiarities of their use of the language. It was an echo chamber of mistakes that had coalesced into a unique dialect. This excited me. How exhilarating that I, a linguistics professor, had traveled hundreds of miles only to happen upon unexplored provincialisms. Perhaps when I returned home, I could look into organizing a case study of this hidden English hamlet.

I found a market at the edge of the downtown strip. A handful of small cars were parked out front. I strolled through the automatic double doors and once again found myself face to faces with the full attention of the stores’ employees and patrons. However, their stares were not the frozen gazes of shock but instead were accompanied by smiles and encouraging nods. As if the whole gathering had been waiting for me to arrive. I tried to ignore their eyes as I made a path for the produce section.

“Could I be able to help you finding anything?” a thin woman in a green employee apron asked me as I surveyed the rows of pears and apples. I winced at her syntax, but at least she wasn’t trying to imitate my accent like the pharmacy clerk.

“I’m making dinner for my grandfather,” I explained, “and was hoping to get some fresh fruit for dessert.”

“A fruit salad yes,” she said with an ever growing grin. “Did you have anything on mind?”

I wanted to keep her talking in order to coax out what eccentricities I could in her dialect. So I asked “What would you suggest?”

“I will suggest fresh berries. Strawberries, blueberries, or raspberries, blackberries. A tittle of cream with this” she said.

Tittle? That would be a strange word choice even for native speakers. I nodded and grabbed a few plastic containers of assorted berries before excusing myself with a quick thank you. I snaked through the aisles swiftly, grabbing whatever mismatched foods I happened to pluck off the shelf. My mind was not on the grocery list. I was wholly distracted by the smiling gazes locked on me wherever I walked.

I checked out quickly, with few words, because while at first I found their idioms fascinating, it became unsettling. I stopped outside the door to light another cigarette for the walk home and when I peeked over my shoulder, the employees and customers had all gathered in a congress by the checkout lanes. Surely no town could be this unused to outsiders.

The walk back to my grandfather’s was brisk and my mind was aswirl with questions. When I returned, I hopped the fence and knocked on the door. It cracked open just barely and my grandfather stared at me from the dark foyer with suspicion. He was clamping his hand over his mouth.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Grandpa, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me.” I said, deflated by his fading memory. “It’s me, Oliver.”

“I know who you are,” he spat. “I’m just making sure you did. What’s the code word?”

“This is daft” I sighed.

He shut the door.

“Fucking bramble” I cried. “Let me in for God’s sake.”

The door opened once more and grandpa dropped his hand from covering his lips. He poked his head out the door after I came in and looked up and down the street before slamming it shut. I stood in the foyer with my grocery totes in hand as he meticulously set to securing all of the locks.

“So they didn’t get you, hmm?” he said as he followed behind me into the kitchen, looking me up and down.

“No, grandpa” I said. I set the bags on the counter and began to unpack them into the cabinets. “They are perfectly nice folks out there. Talk a bit strange, I’ll admit, and they stare like all get out,” I opened a box of strawberries and popped one into my mouth, “but certainly polite. And certainly not freaks.”

“They won’t come for you just yet” he said. He put his weight on his cane to climb onto a stool. “They haven’t figured you out. They’re not sure what they’re dealing with yet. It’s your accent.”

“What, they’ve never heard of Americans before?” I scoffed.

“They’d never heard of a Brit before, either, until they landed here” he said.

“Landed here, huh?” I said. “And you’re suggesting they’re what? Aliens?”

“I don’t know what they are” he said and waved a dismissive hand.

I leaned on the counter and rubbed my forehead. I had never dealt with Alzheimer’s before, if that was in fact what was plaguing my grandfather’s mind. Clearly his dementia was gaining traction and I foresaw our trip would be wrought with tales of extraterrestrials, bogeymen, and distrust. I felt horrible to be the bearer of the news, but someone had to talk to him about his sickness.

“Grandpa” I said slowly, sliding the berries across the counter to him, “have you been to the doctor recently?”

“No. I’ll go to the doctor when something’s wrong with me, but I told you I’m healthy as a bull.”

“Physically, yes, you may feel fine. But I’m worried about your mental health” I said.

He huffed and smacked his hand on the counter. He raised his voice saying “I knew it. I knew you weren’t here just to visit your poor old grandpa. You think I’m crazy.” He whacked his cane against the adjacent stool. “The last letter from your mother was filled with this garbage. You all think I’m just some kooky old man rambling on about his delusions.” He stared at me intensely, then pointed towards the front window. “But you saw them. You saw those freaks outside and I dare you to tell me they’re normal, real people.”

“It’s a small town,” I argued, “the community is just a touch eccentric.”

“This is my small town, god damn it.” Grandpa snatched a picture frame from the counter and stared down at a photo of him and grandma decades younger. “We called this place home for twenty-two years and I’ve sat here for the last two months watching the town I loved be taken over by, by, by these things.”

“New people move in. That’s life” I said.

“You’re. Not. Listening” he beat his palm on the formica countertop. “These aren’t new neighbors. This isn’t immigration. This is a takeover!”

“A takeover of what?” I asked.

“Mankind” he said and began to sob into his wrinkled hands. I came around the counter and draped my arm over his slouched shoulders. I said “Grandpa, I promise you whatever you think is happening is just your mind playing tricks on you. It’s your brain, it’s just chemicals in your brain. I know it’s hard to admit, but let me get you some help.”

This only caused his sobbing to worsen and I could barely make out his words through the wetness of his throat. “I lost my wife. I lost my town. I lost all my friends to these things. And no one will believe me.” His hand lashed out and swatted the open container of strawberries off the counter. The berries bounced and rolled, leaving smudges of blood red on the white tiles. “They just think I’m a crazy old man. A dope losing his mind in his old age. Oh, God, if only they would listen to me.”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say I believed his stories to console him, because he would know I was lying. And I couldn’t handle denying him as he sat weeping. Instead I hugged him and began to pick up the berries.

“I’m going to start dinner” I said. I surveyed the hodgepodge of groceries I had absent-mindedly picked from the grocery store and had no idea what to make.

“I’m not hungry” he said. He wiped his damp eyes before sliding off the stool and hobbling his way to his bedroom. “I’ll be in bed reading. Clean up after yourself.”

The following morning, I left out for a stroll before grandpa got out of bed. The air was cool and crisp. I headed back towards downtown. A few blocks later, I spotted the taxi that I had ridden in parked beside the town’s small inn. By some stroke of great timing, the door to one of the rooms swung open and out strolled the cab driver with a young woman in tow. The coral lipstick painted on her mouth was smeared across the cab driver’s lips. I figured I’d pause for a moment to chat and, as the parking lot was only the size of a basketball court, I waved to the cabbie and sauntered over.

“Decided to stay in town for the night, did you?” I asked.

The cab driver tilted his head in confusion, then looked at the woman at his side for some clue. He said, “We had lived here always.”

His peculiar tone sent goosebumps raising up my forearms and I stumbled back a few steps. How had he forgotten my face so quickly? You’d think hours in a car with someone would impress their features on you. And what reason did he have to lie?

I hurried away from the hotel and back towards grandpa’s house. Whatever had spooked me about the interaction caused my swift stroll to become a jog. Houses passed by on both sides as I ran, the windows lined with women polishing teapots and old men tending gardens and children sitting on the lawn, their eyes glazed over, staring at the sky. I was so distracted that when I dashed across an intersection, I collided with a police car parked at a stop sign. The impact knocked the wind out of me. I held up my hand and waved to the police office inside. He rolled down his window.

“Isn’t’t loving weather today?” he said with a grin.

“W-what?” I stammered.

“You’re’n’t all right?” he asked.

“I-I-I’m fine.”

I scrambled around the front of the car and hustled back to the house. When I came near I saw that the front door was wide open. But how? There was no way that grandpa, in all his paranoia, would be airing out the house. And he was in bed when I left. No. No, no, I realized. I had left it unlocked.

I hurdled his stone wall like a high school track star, then stumbled over the bumpy lawn. Bursting through the open door, I found three people standing in the living room. Grandpa was sprawled on the floor on his back and one of the three was hunched over him, breathing into his gaping mouth. The two folks that were standing by just glanced at me with unassuming smiles.

“What’s going on? Is he okay? Has he stopped breathing?” I asked.

Before I got an answer, grandpa sat up and turned towards me. The scowl that I had grown accustomed to seeing was no longer present. Grandpa stared at me with no sense of recognition in his eyes. “I’m right as raining.”

“Grandpa?” I whispered.

“It’s’ll okay, son. Not cutting the yard was a oversight,” he said. He wiped his mouth and grabbed the arm of his recliner to lift himself to his feet. “I’m going to fix the wall, and wash the windows, paint the walls. With my neighbors’ oversight, I’ll have this place glimmering clean with no time.”

I backed out of the room slowly. The bright sun outside stung my eyes and all I could see in the living room were four shadows lurking around the recliner. None of them followed me. I flopped over the wall and took off down the street, away from the house, away from downtown, away from this disturbing little village altogether. Several miles out of the town I stumbled across a major road. I hitched several rides back to London and never looked back.

Submitted April 08, 2015 at 04:48AM by Zyclin http://ift.tt/1HNWY6c nosleep