Effigy (Part II)

Ron had to be the first to speak, “I used to hate him for doing it.”

Gwen looked up at him, eyes swollen with tears, “Oh Ronnie don’t say that honey!”

“No Mom it’s true.” Ron tried to explain; even though he was sure his words would let him down. “People always say it’s a selfish act. I believe that to an extent. But Dad, he didn’t think that way. In the end, I just think he thought it was easier on us without him.”

“Though I hate to admit it- that sounds like him.” Gwen had a realization. “Honey, we’ve never really talked about this, have we?”

Ron shrugged then shook his head. “Guess not. Probably should’ve happened awhile back.” Ron picked up the Polaroid that showed his brother’s first trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s- his first stop after being in neonatal intensive care for a month. “I suppose not all the memories can be good ones huh?”

“No dear, I don’t think that’s the way it works.”

Ron held onto the picture, but his arm went slack as he thought. “Mom do you think we have worse luck than other families?” He hovered behind his mother, ready to ask the question, but not ready to look her in the eyes.

Gwen sensed her son’s discomfort, made herself busy by arbitrarily stacking the photo albums. “What are you saying, we’re cursed? Don’t let your imagination get to you. We are just like any other family. Good days and bad. No better, no worse than anyone else.”

 “I don’t know about ‘cursed’, but seems we have more than our fair share of heartache.”

Ron absently glanced back down at the Polaroid.  It began to move….the picture itself changing, morphing. A fog rolled through the background blotting out the den where the picture was taken. Slowly, the fog passed from person to person. As it touched them their eyes within the photograph glowed red then seemed to burst and fade into pale blue and then grey.  This first occurred to his Uncle Barry. Then purposefully, the churning fog roiled from Barry, to his cousin Sue. Within the photo, Sue’s eyes were washed in the frightening red of burning coal, which quickly became the subdued blue of fish scales. This color was then fed upon by a dull grey.

It wasn’t until the smoldering cloud wafted to Ron’s Grandfather Henry that he began to understand the purpose.

As if it had burned him, Ron threw the Polaroid on the kitchen table, “Mom…” That word was all he could manage, an empty utterance that only underscored his weakness and confusion.

Gwen’s gaze locked onto the photo; at first she was ready to call herself senile, insane. Her brain fought what her eyes insisted she was seeing. She saw the strange fog make its way through the photograph and touch her late husband’s father. As it did so, his eyes grew red with fire; they then cooled to a strange blue, and when the life left that color a grey that was void of any feeling.

“Oh dear God,” Gwen grabbed her heart with one hand, and her son with the other. Even that didn’t stop her head from spinning, her world from unraveling. “What is it?”

Ron heard her. It’s recounting the order they died in. His attempt at a reply never left his lips. He could only stare. How transfixed he became by the silky movement of the fog, the insistent transition of color. When the malevolent fog within the photo came to his father, Ron believed he shed a tear; it may have left his eye and was currently at rest on his cheek. But at the same time he could no longer trust his mind, as if his body was no longer there with him.

Meanwhile, Gwen was horrified; she tried in vain to wrench her face away from this photo that had become a monstrosity. She failed. When she made an effort to close her eyes some force kept them open. Fascination and revulsion held her in its dual grip.

The picture still worked its devilish magic there upon the table. Ron was the first to figure out what the end game was, just before the fog crept over the shoulders of his younger brother like a grim shawl. Ron heard his cries echo, but only in his mind. He screamed and pleaded for his brother, but merely in the prison within himself.

Gwen came to understand the message as well. Her mouth became a disfigured etching of pain and promise. She sobbed for her baby boy without the benefit of tears.

Trapped, the mother and son watched as the photo version of Christopher’s eyes grew red and lava-like; the energy abated and then came that alien blue, finalized by that sickly grey tone.

For Ron, the sorrow continued. A vision of he and his brother as young boys was now forcefully playing in his head. He could do nothing to stop it, trapped in the theater of his mind’s eye.  

Here in his grandmother’s home. They were staying the night over summer vacation. There was only a single guest bed, which the brothers shared. Rob’s mind populated with details of that night: the perspiration of humidity, the way the blanket had stuck to him to the point it had needed to be kicked off during sleep. The recollection came to Ron, dreamlike in its quality. The parsed memories that made up that night years ago came alive within him once more. Finally, there was the way he had awoken to his brother twitching and convulsing as though Christopher was experiencing a stroke, rather than simply a nightmare. As an eleven year old, Ron recalled trying to yell out for his grandparents only to have his voice stifled by the darkness that surrounded him.  His brother’s spasms increased in speed and violence to the point where Ron wasn’t sure Christopher would survive. Again he tried to cry out, but succeeded only in crying. He felt an immense pressure unfurl over his body, weighing him down. In a last ditch effort, Ron worked his hand outward. With what felt like a hurricane fighting against him, Ron reached for his brother’s hand.  The level of effort needed to even move was lost on the young boy, but finally he was able to clasp his seven year old brother’s smaller hand in his own. Ron smiled through a sheen of naïve tears. The victory was short lived. For no sooner than Ron had secured his brother’s hand was Christopher lifted limp as a doll from the bedclothes. Eerily through his own child-like vision, fragmented and muddled, Ron remembered the last remnant of blanket falling off his brother’s left foot. This unseen influence then maneuvered young Christopher up away breaking Ron’s already strained grip. Ron’s memory ended with Chris floating away from him, head lolled and clad in the Pac Man pajamas he had been tucked away in only a few hours before.   

In the present, whatever otherworldly strength held Ron and his mother, let go as quickly as it had overtaken them. No matter what it was, it was done with them for now. Through the kitchen curtains, the moon had long ago replaced the afternoon sun. Gwen and Rob exchanged a look that only seemed to confirm they were both again in control of their bodies.

It was then that Gwen’s cell phone chimed in her pocket. Lethargy was evident in her motions, but after four rings Gwen was able to retrieve the phone from her pocket. Without a word she inspected the phone’s screen. Terror had coupled with petrification; Gwen was useless, looking to Ron for some kind of explanation.

Ron read his mother’s eyes too well. Without looking at the phone’s face, he knew the call had come from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Ron knew it was about Christopher. Ron knew his brother was dead.