ENGIRIL

A SHORT STORY BY DAN JIRE

Susan Whitmore always wondered why people with the most money held onto old three-story homes as their bodies became too weak for them to get up the front steps let alone to the bedrooms.

Still, she helped Mrs. Holden every morning and every night. The old woman was proud and had refused to put in a lift of any kind. She preferred to walk up with her cane, the railing and Susan, her nurse, as support.

Susan had seen old flesh tear from the slightest touch. It rips open like a paper bag. Blood simply globs out without the virile heart to drive it out quicker. Every step and heave that Mrs. Holden made, Susan imagined her ankles splitting open—and the blood that would follow.

It terrified her.

There were too many reasons to fear Mrs. Holden’s injury. First and most importantly it would lead to her death. The nearest hospital was an hour away in good traffic. The nearest Fire and Rescue Station was twenty-five minutes away.

Secondly, Susan had finally found a job to support her family. If Mrs. Holden died, they’d be out on the streets or forced to move again—if an opening could not be found. Susan needed Mrs. Holden to hold on at least four more years until all of her sons graduated from high school. She prayed for those 4 years, every night.

Then of course there was the blood. Susan hated the sight of it. She hated the feel of it. It always seemed to crawl on her flesh. Even her own little cuts drove her to a sink with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide or whatever anti-septic was available.

To further the ridiculousness of Mrs. Holden’s pride, the old woman had a towering king-sized bed that she needed steps and a boost to get into, and then a hand in the morning to get out of. Helpless did not even begin to describe her state.

Kill me when I get that old, Susan thought. Just don’t kill Mrs. Holden yet.

Susan often wondered if the health food industry that promised longer living was secretly connected with elder care, and only wanted to extend life to extend profits. But she felt guilty knowing how she made her paycheck required old people to live long enough that they couldn’t care for themselves.

“Thank you, darling,” the old woman said, like clockwork, as Susan pulled the covers up to her chest. “I should like your boss’ number so that I might call and send good word about you tomorrow. Always good to me you are.”

Susan tried to play it off and almost said that it was just her job. But she didn’t. She scribbled on a small pad Mrs. Holden kept by her bedside. The pad was usually meant for things she remembered and feared she’d forget by morning. Sometimes it’d just read ‘toast’ or ‘red crayons.’ And neither Susan nor Mrs. Holden could remember the significance of it.

“Now get some rest, I will be back up at seven. Ring if you need anything before then.” Susan always tried to rephrase the same statement, night after night. She had only been there for two weeks and already she found herself sounding like a broken record.

“No. You will stay a while.” Mrs. Holden had never requested her company before.

Susan stood dumbfounded for a moment.

“Sit or something. Make yourself comfortable,” Mrs. Holden said.

Susan looked around for somewhere she might be allowed to sit.

“What is it? Can I bring you anything?” She asked after narrowing the seating down to the foot of the king sized bed or an old rocking chair sitting in the corner of the room.

The chair was covered in a stack of old dresses. The kind of dresses you pick to bury someone in. Were these Mrs. Holden’s top picks? She had never once requested Susan to dress her in one. She always preferred a pink nightgown unless company was expected and then she forced on a pair of tan slacks and a sweater, which hid her frail body.

“I just want you to stay here for a little while,” she said as if it were urgent. She shook her head as she ended the sentence and crossed her arms in bed. “Now you can go on being silent or you can tell me some hot gossip. It really doesn’t matter.”

“So long as I stay, right?”

Mrs. Holden nodded.

There was a moment of silence before it started to bother Susan. She hated to stand next to someone and not talk. In fact, most thought it was a fault of hers.

“Did you see where they caught the president with his microphone on when he was trying to say something confidential to the ambassador?”

“Oh, he’s a handsome president.” She said, “quite handsome.” Susan watched the old woman’s eyes as they gleamed. As if they could really see what the current president looked like. Perhaps she was still dreaming of Kennedy.

The conversation ended there. Susan just simply did not know what to say next and didn’t want to repeat her usual rhetoric about Mrs. Holden’s medication or doctor’s appointments. So, she just stood there watching Mrs. Holden sitting upright in bed, staring off at the door.

“I didn’t mean to make you wait so long, my memory is not what it used to be and I just kept forgetting.”

Susan started to tell Mrs. Holden the wait was no problem, but then she realized the old woman was not talking to her. She could tell by the way Mrs. Holden seemed to shush her as she stared out the doorway.

Susan leaned forward hoping to see out into the hallway.

The floorboard creaked as if someone stepped backwards, out of Susan’s view.

“Is . . . somebody?” Susan tried to ask but Mrs. Holden shushed her again.

“I told you I was sorry. She’s here now like I promised.”

“Mrs. Holden?” Susan left the bedside and headed toward the doorway. Just as she reached it the door slammed. Susan jumped backward and stared at the door speechless.

“She doesn’t want you to see her yet!” The old woman’s voice cracked and popped as she tried to yell.

“Who?”

“Engiril.”

“Mrs. Holden, is someone else here in the house?”

“Of course, I told you. Engiril.”

“Who is that?”

The old woman readjusted her arms and looked to one side as if she were a small child ready to dish out the silent treatment.

The door creaked back open. Susan backed up further into the room. Mrs. Holden leaned forward as if she were listening.

“Who is out there?”

“Damn it. God damn it!” She smacked the bed and glared at Susan. “Darling, how do you expect me to hear if you keep yapping? These ears aren’t what they used to be!” Her voice strained again as her yelling couldn’t really rise above the volume of a normal conversation. “Again! Say it again!” She yelled at the doorway and leaned further to hear.

Susan started back toward the door.

“Don’t you dare.” Mrs. Holden snapped at her.

Susan stopped in her tracks and stared at the old woman, wondering if she had finally lost her mind. But what could she do, she needed this job and at the moment, it didn’t seem worth it to risk insulting the old woman.

Mrs. Holden produced a weak laugh or a groaning chuckle. A smile creased her wrinkles across her cheeks. She swayed in her upright position. She grew antsy as if some form of excitement was brewing.

“She says it is quite rude of you not to remember her.”

Susan searched her mind for a connection to the name Engiril, it was produced in many variations of spelling but none were correct. None were of the childhood scribble Susan had produced when she was three years old.

But then again who remembers the terrors that woke them when they were so young. Those are the memories pushed aside for planets and state capitols. The memory needed help to find its way up through the chasm of soap opera plot lines, grudges, and grocery lists.

“Engiril, Engiril.” The old woman began to chant, trying to root for the memory’s return. “Engiril, Engiril.”

“I’m sorry, my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

Mrs. Holden shook her head as a smirk formed as if she wasn’t going to accept Susan’s ignorance.

“She needs you to remember. She can’t let you see her until you do.”

“I don’t . . .” Susan shrugged. Her mind was trying to figure out a way to coax the old woman back to sanity so that she could go downstairs for the night.

“Yes, we’ll try that.” Mrs. Holden said to the door. “Alright, Darling, you used to draw, didn’t you? Do you remember how a red crayon smells? How construction paper feels, how the crayon doesn’t produce a solid line until you go over it again and again, again and again. Writing her name. E-n-g-i-r-i-l. Engiril.”

The spelling did it.

Gone were the Ingalls and Engirls and Ingulls. Engiril formed on a yellow piece of construction paper over and over again. Susan could remember the struggle in her little hand as the letters formed because someone was telling her to write it down. She remembered her tear and how it tasted salty on her lips. Was it the first time she tasted her own tears?

Susan looked at Mrs. Holden whose smile became a sigh of relief. Mrs. Holden was elated.

“You do remember. Thank you. It wasn’t my time, I told her about you. I told her you were strong enough. I’m too old for her.” Then back to the doorway, “I told you she could remember, I told you. She is a smart girl, always remembers my medicines and how I like my teas.”

“It can’t be real,” Susan said, her mind remembered the night terrors, her mind began to remove the shadows on a dark face looming in the shadows of her bedroom. Every night of her childhood, she felt its presence, waiting in the corner behind the door. The corner beside the window. The corner behind her bed. In her closet. Engiril was there.

The nose that crept into the moonlight and the forehead that soon lit up only to darken the sockets where the eyes hid. The sudden flicker as light reflected off a set of mangled teeth. The adjusting of her own eyes as the form became more dimensional, as if even in her memory she could reach out and touch it if she weren’t so terrified of it.

“The boogeyman only appears once in each of our lifetimes. Just once uninvited. It needs our permission to haunt us to return night after night. We all defeat it don’t we? We are told it is not real. And what can it do but hide under our beds, hide with all our Sunday dresses in the closet, hide in the backseat of our cars waiting for us. Waiting for us to remember them. Engiril has been waiting for you for such a long, long time, darling.”

The door swung back and forth a few inches as if something impatiently held the doorknob, waiting for Susan. She had to know. She had to disprove the childhood fear that now twisted in her mind. That memory that wanted to rip away the grocery lists and soap opera plotlines. That vicious being dreaming of strangling the constellations and burning the capitols.

She stepped into the doorway.

Her heart raced.

“Please, darling, go with Engiril. I finally get to sleep now. I’m too old for the boogeyman.” Mrs. Holden began to plug her ears with cotton balls. Not that she had much hearing left, but it helped reduce the screams to a more pleasant hum. Like an old air conditioner banging away in the night. You can get used to it. You can let your mind count sheep. Think of the things you need from the store tomorrow. Just put the bogeyman out of your mind. Just forget her name.

THE END.