A Family Mystery

         A shrill metallic sound echoed through the long, dark corridor. At the other end, enshrouded in darkness, a black mass lays sprawled on the computer, sound asleep. Riiiiiiiiiiing. The air is still outside; the lulling song of crickets and the faint hum of the distant highway harmonize undisturbed, as usual. Not a soul stirs in the sultry summer night. Riiiiiiiiiiing. The figure shuffles imperceptibly, still lost in the depths of slumber. Suddenly, as if sensing something wrong, he bolts upright, sending the wooden chair crashing against the opposite wall. 

-"Qué carajo?!"

Not entirely awake yet, he stumbles awkwardly back and forth, shaking his left arm to dispel the numbness. He checks his watch. 4 am. Squinting his eyes in the dark, he sees a small red light flashing on the window. It's a voice message in the old house phone. A cold, heavy feeling settles in the pit of his stomach. No-one has left a message for years; and the nervous, incessant blinking illumines the white wall with a strange, imperative urgency. Cautiously, soundlessly, he walks over and picks up the plastic receiver.

-"There is something wrong with Charles." Silence.

         My grandfather died in my arms that night. I was the only one there. His frail, emaciated body convulsed in spasms, as I held him tight and whispered soothing words into his ear. When he drew his final breath, he looked me in the eyes and smiled. His heart fluttered peacefully, as his body relaxed and  sunk deeper into the soft mattress. I remained motionless on the edge of the bed. I couldn't bring myself to take my eyes off him. Almost a century's worth of seconds, minutes, hours lived seemed to permeate the room around me. I distinctly remember feeling ashamed for not crying. It seems absurd now, for he wouldn't have wanted people to mourn his death, but as I sat there, with his stiff body growing colder beside me, I thought there was something inherently wrong with me. I closed my eyes forcefully, determined to honor his life, if not with tears, then with memories.

        A hot summer day materialized before me. Sitting on the couch in the living room, I could see the tangled meshes of wild plants and massive trees shimmering in the heat beyond the glass wall. Opposite me, ensconced in the leathery folds of his favorite armchair, the legendary Chuck stuffed his pipe with dark tobacco, and lighted up. He took a deep puff, and the pungent aroma filled the room immediately. Long, sheathed sabres hung on the walls, and a seemingly infinite assortment of weird, mysterious objects huddled on the shelves. I spied a picture of him with a shotgun across his chest, boasting a wide smile from the driver's seat of a WWII ambulance. I pointed at it inquisitively, but he remained still, stroking his beard with a wistful grin. He seemed to intuit what I really wanted: a good story. He patted his right thigh, motioning me to come over. I gladly obeyed, clambering up onto his bony lap. From up close, the smoke was almost intoxicating, and to this day it still reminds me of him. With a slow, deliberate movement, he took a photograph from a pile on the table beside us, grasping only the very edge with two long, scabrous fingers. It was an old, faded picture of my grandmother smiling, holding on to the railing of a boat, the ocean a sparkling immensity behind her.

         -"This woman," he said with a deep, hoarse voice, "is the love of my life."

         My grandmother had been dead for almost three years. I remained silent, expectant, suddenly uncomfortable.

        -"You want to know something special about her? It's a secret, so you're going to have to promise me you won't tell anyone." I promised.

         -"Well, you see, she had a rare gift. You could say she was a good witch," he said, chuckling softly to himself, without taking his eyes off the picture.  

        -"How come?" I inquired, quizzically.

        -"She could talk with the dead."

        I heard the story of my grandmother in rapt, wide-eyed astonishment. As the light dimmed outside, and the soft hues of twilight filtered through the wide glass, tales of people coming from all over the land for her, traveling for days on horseback through the rolling plains of Argentina only to speak with her, played in my imagination. She could cure warts, read fortunes, and was, as they say, a portal to the dead. With the naive innocence of youth, I took everything in as fact; but as I grew older, matured, and sat by his deathbed a young man, I wondered what, in fact, was truth. Empty and dazed, devastated that I had not spent time with my grandfather like I used to as a young boy, I finally left his side and wondered back into the throes of youth - but the question remained. I asked my family what they knew, and, apparently, he wasn't lying. We scoured the dusty attic of their empty house and found bundles of yellowish papers filled with scribbled words and sentences spoken by the dead. A withered letter from a desperate woman: the ghost of a Tsar's wife. My aunt told me her baby's premature death had been predicted in one of my grandma's preternatural sessions. We found hundreds of objects people had left her in order to cure ailments, and never returned to claim. A small, rickety three-legged table lay toppled over, covered in cobwebs and intelligible engravings: the table she used for her rituals. A family mystery left untouched until it was all too late. Soon enough, the house was demolished, and all possessions distributed randomly between my mother and her sisters. All I have are hazy memories. Alas, if I decided to write a novel based on family lore, the foundations would indubitably take root in this obscure, otherworldly mystery.