I was maybe seven years old when I first met my Grandfather. He lived a few hours away with my grandmother, who did her best to take care of him. I remember at that age the car ride felt like an eternity. I felt restless and stiff for the trips entirety, and I remember unfastening my seat belt and attempting to walk around in the mini-van that my family had at the time. My mother was not amused by this in the slightest, already being forced by obligation to visit with her estranged family. By the end of the drive, we were all on edge.
They lived in a log cabin in the woods, which had the strange quality of matching the moods of the two who lived there. The sun shined through the multicolored autumn leaves when my grandmother came out to us, creating a fire rainbow of colors across the cabin like a log fire. This matched her sunny, welcoming disposition, and golden hazel eyes, just like my mothers. But this would change for my Grandfather West’s nocturnal strolls. I didn’t see him at all during the first day of that visit, as he was “under the weather” according to my grandma. So I did not get a sight of the man until late in the night. I had woken to find the house was dead quiet, as everyone had gone to sleep. I could see my breath, as there had been no one to tend to the fire into the night, which was the only means of heating the house. I crept along the creaking floorboard, try desperately not to disturb anyone else’s sleep, to find the bathroom. Once there I heard a noise outside, of deep struggling raspy breathing. I too was breathing heavily as I approached the window sill. I pulled up against the edge so as to be able to properly see what was outside. Walking along the front yard of the cabin, through a shroud of fog was the sharp, bent figure of my grandfather. His angled frame seemed to cut through the sheet of grey as he took his slow, deliberate steps. I stared for who knows how long, before he turned around. He looked straight into the room I was in with a grimace on his face, jagged teeth haphazardly placed within a forest of grey hairs pulled taut downward, from a long ago lost battle with gravity. His crooked nose had been broken maybe a dozen times in his life. Most shocking of all though were his eyes. I quickly convinced myself that my childhood imagination had worked hand in hand with a simple trick of the light. Now I know otherwise. Now I know I had in fact seen my grandfather’s eyes glow a sickly, radioactive green as he stared into my eyes. The moment the sight reached me it was gone. In my surprise I had released my grip on the window sill and fell on my but again the chilled tiled floor of the bathroom. I panicked and ran back to my room, most likely awaking everyone in the house as my feet draped against the floorboards. I leaped in my bead, and wrapped myself in a cocoon of my blankets believing nothing could harm me in a shell of such design.
I was woken the next day by my dad for breakfast. I rose to find both my grandparents at the table. The fear of the previous night flooded back to me, but I quickly found that it was unwarranted. My grandfather was quiet, but not outwardly irritable. Also his eye were green, but of a natural leafy sort, missing the brilliant energy that had radiated into my nightmares. I remember little else from that trip, and had honestly not thought of it or had cause to until very recently.
To my recollection I had not seen my grandfather until I was much older, at least into my teenage years. My grandmother was in the hospital, I don’t remember what for, but we were all there expecting the worst. This continued for some time, I and I spent most of my evenings completing my homework in a hospital waiting room. It must have been nearly two weeks of this until one night the doctor urged my mom and my grandfather to say their goodbyes. I waited with my dad as they left to do this. My mom came back crying and told us that my grandmother “had passed on” or some such gentle method of implying what she had actually meant, that she was dead. We waited in silence, expecting my grandfather to return soon, solemnly as well. But he did not. We waited for twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. Finally the door into the medical wing opened once again. But it was still not him, instead our doctor. He walked of in a daze, muttering to himself about mistakes, and faulty equipment. I was still in shock over my first experience with death, and did not follow what he was saying. My mother must have though as she sprinted past the doctor, nearly knocking him aside. Me and my dad quickly followed suit. We followed my mom toward my grandmother’s room, and heard two loud voices issuing from it. As we entered we could see my grandfather bent and sulking in the corner, and my grandmother sitting up in her bead. She seemed groggy, like someone who had been rudely woken from a nap but smiled when she saw us. My mom hugged her, almost violently, and she patted her back gingerly, blinking tears from her green eyes. Back then I was still a good enough Christian to think I was looking at a real life miracle.
My grandmother committed suicide shortly after that night. None of us knew why. She had left a note as people do, but it only said something like “It was my time” or something equally poetic and vague. At the time I got the strong inclination that my mom blamed my grandfather, but I knew not why till much later. It was such a confusing time in my house as we prepared for the wake and funeral. We had all been prepared, emotionally speaking, for her to die, but not twice.
Since then my mom had apparently has received the duties of taking care of my grandfather that my grandmother hand once fulfilled. She would regularly has to take trips to visit her father to apparently administer his medicine. At that age I was smart enough to inquired why he couldn’t just have a nurse do it for him. She would just irritably tell me that “it had to stay in the family.” The way she would say this in a mocking manner gave me the impression that these were not actually a phrase of her design. The meaning behind this remained a mystery to me for the years to come. That is until yesterday.
On the day that she would normally take this trip, she asked me to accompany her. She told me that I would need to learn how to do it properly as someday I would inherit the job. I found this to be completely absurd. It’d be impossible for my grandfather to outlive my mom, but she asked so sincerely that I did not question her and we got on the road. The trip did not seem to take as long as I had remembered from my childhood. I guess age has a way of doing that to a person. It teaches them just what annoyances that you can survive, until they aren’t even noticed anymore. When we got to the cabin there was no one there to greet us this time, and walked in.
From the entrance I could hear the familiar sounds of the hospital. There was the beeping, and exhaling, and dripping of machines. I saw them too once we entered my grandfather’s bedroom. He opened his eyes to look at us. They were no longer the fresh green of the forest, but a rotted sickly shade. He grabbed for my mother’s hand once we reached his side, and squeezed it lovingly. I could tell she had to ignore the impulse to pull it away. He looked up at he and pleadingly said “well, could you get on with it” then turned to me, frowned, and said “pay attention boy. We can’t have ye screwin’ it up when yer turn comes up, eh?” My mom chuckled a little at this, but quickly wiped it away. She then looked my grandfather in the eye, and as he nodded she yanked something from the wall. I heard one of the machines let out a high-pitched whine as she played with the power cord in her hand. My grandfather’s eyes bulged, as if trying to absorb whatever light it could in his last moments.
I was dumb founded. I started to shout something when she cut me off. Then turned to his desk and opened the drawer. She said “you’ll always find them in here” as she pulled out a syringe filled with… something. It glowed a bright green like the nuclear waste in cartoons. She pressed the needle to my grandfather’s arm. As she pressed down on the plunger the fluid left the syringe, but I could continue to see it glow as it moved into his veins. It snaked up and around his arm quickly covering ground until his whole body burned with it. The color dulled down until it was no longer visible. That is until my grandfather opened his eyes. The color had not left his eyes. He coughed and sat up, and he lit the room with his gaze. When the green spotlights fell on my face, my grandfather looked almost embarrassed. He blinked repeatedly, and the color faded with each time.
The three of us did not speak much after that. I went to bed early, to try to collect my thoughts. I keep laughing to myself thinking about how other people complain that their family is crazy. At which point realizing that finding humor at a time like this is not exactly the best evidence of my of sanity. I remember when I first saw my grandfather, and how frightening I found him. Only now, with all the pieces of the story presented to me, the number of times my grandfather has gone to these measures. I realize now that he’s the one that is afraid.