Page 10 of The End of the World As We Know It

Talik nodded, but remained worried. Another fit of coughing racked her body. She covered her mouth and nose in the crook of her arm, soaking it with mucus and phlegm. She looked at the gooey mess, scowled, then wiped it off onto her pajama pants.

“I saw her again, Momma. I saw Mother Abagail,” Talik said.

His mother scrunched up her face in a sneer of disgust. She coughed once more, dragging the sleeve of her blue and pink polka-dot houserobe across her lips to wipe away the phlegm before smiling at Talik. “You mean the old Black woman you said looks like Nana?”

“Well, she doesn’t really look like Nana. She just sort of feels like Nana. You know? When I dream about her, it feels the same as I used to feel when I was with Nana; you know I’m sayin’?” Talik said.

“Okay, well, I ain’t seen her. But you can have your imaginary friend.”

“She ain’t imaginary. My friend Martin says he dreams about her sometimes. And his neighbor Monique dreams about her all the time. She said Mother Abagail is the one who warned her that her brother was going crazy and was gonna try an’ kill all of ’em. She hid all the bullets or else he would have got ’em. He tried to kill their momma with a hammer.”

His mother sneered again. “Well, enough with all that foolishness. I ain’t seen no old Black woman in my dreams.”

Talik frowned and huffed. “What do you dream about, then?”

She shuddered and pulled her robe tight to her neck to ward off a chill, despite the August heat and lack of air-conditioning. “Never you mind. Go upstairs and check on your brother. He’s been sick all day. Ain’t been out the bed since yesterday mornin’.”

“Yes, Momma.” Talik knew better than to argue with his mother. Even sick, he was sure she wouldn’t have hesitated to take off her slipper and apply it to his backside.

The stairs leading up to the second floor had been constructed sometime during the Civil War, and Talik doubted they’d been maintained much since. The treads were warped and splitting. The landing had two holes in it just big enough for a small foot to slip into and twist an ankle. The handrail was loose, held in place at the top by two long screws his daddy had drilled into it. He doubted it would hold up to even his waifish adolescent weight if he needed it to prevent a fall. Whenever he walked up or down the stairs, Talik liked to imagine he was Indiana Jones on an adventure through a booby-trapped temple.

The second floor had two bedrooms, each not much larger than the average prison cell, with one big room on the third floor that had once been an attic but was now their mother’s bedroom. At the end of the hallway on the second floor, a small bathroom with a tub, toilet, and sink—but no shower—served the entire home. The second-floor hallway was dark. The sole light fixture, a brass dome with clear glass and three bulbs that hugged the ceiling, had not worked for several months. The bathroom door was shut, as was the room he shared with his brother and the room his younger sister occupied, so no sunlight could get in anywhere.

Talik and his sister were the only ones in the house who weren’t sick. His sister, Lawanda, was eighteen months younger than Talik, and his brother, Malcolm, was two years older. They were all extremely close. When one of them was sick, they all pitched in to care for them. For the last twenty-four hours, he’d heard the juicy wet coughs of his brother whenever he walked up the stairs. His mother said he had the flu, but that was before the news spread about the Tripps. Before Talik had begun dreaming about Mother Abagail.

The silence that greeted him as he walked down the hallway toward his brother’s room made Talik feel like he was tiptoeing through a crypt on his way to the burial chamber. He heard his sister’s singsong voice coming from her room, imitating the voices of her dolls as she guided them through conversations. Talik was grateful for the sound. It made the house feel less funereal. Even the sound of his mother’s loud coughs coming from the kitchen was better than the void he faced beyond his brother’s door.

Talik had seen many people die in his ten years on earth. Kids his age, some younger. Teenagers, adults, his friends’ fathers and mothers. Lives abbreviated by gun violence or drug overdoses. He was well acquainted with the deathly emptiness that followed the end of a life, an echo of silence where sound should have been. That’s what it felt like outside his brother’s room now, like a body waiting to drop.

His soft knock on the old warped wooden door with the cracked paint and rusted brass doorknob was loud as a gunshot in the emptiness of the hallway.

“Malcolm?” Talik could smell his brother’s sickness wafting from the room, an acrid, darkly humid musk of funky sweat, vomit, and Vicks VapoRub. He opened the door and peeked his head in. That sick stench became nearly overpowering. “Malcolm? You awake?”

His brother’s head was turned toward the closed window, staring blankly at the trees beyond. One of their favorite pastimes had been watching the squirrels chase each other through the branches. They’d even given them all names. Malcolm’s breathing was shallow, a wheezing rattling sound like an old lawn mower engine had joined the bubbling sound coming from his chest as he labored to draw air in through the mucus clogging his lungs. Talik crept closer. He didn’t want to get sick, but he didn’t like the idea of his brother suffering all alone. People were dying from the Tripps. As much as he wanted to believe this was just a regular flu, he couldn’t escape the image of Fat Steve drowning in his own fluids.

“You doing okay, bruh? Can I get you something?” Talik asked.

Malcolm continued to stare out the window. He hadn’t blinked in several seconds.

“You still seeing Mother Abagail?” Malcolm finally asked.

“Yeah. I still see her.”

“I see her, too, now. I can see her right now. She told me not to be scared.” Malcolm turned his head to look at Talik. “And she told me to tell you to watch out for the Walkin Dude. She—” Malcolm began to cough. Snot and phlegm sprayed from his nose and mouth and dotted the window.

Talik stepped closer, then stopped, wary of catching the Tripps. He didn’t know the exact process by which disease spread, but he didn’t think getting Malcolm’s snot all over him would be a good idea. There was nothing he could do for his brother anyway. Whether it was the flu or the Tripps, it had to work its course.

The coughing stopped and Malcolm returned to staring out the window. “She says the Walkin Dude is here—in this house. She says you should get out of here. You should go to her. Go to her…” Malcolm let out a long, rattling wheeze that bubbled up through his snotty nose and his phlegm-choked throat. Then his breathing stopped. His head lolled to the side; eyes still fixed on the window.

“Malcolm? Malcolm!” Talik fell to his knees at the foot of Malcolm’s bed. Tears flooded from his eyes as his body jerked and hitched with sobs. He looked up through blurry eyes at his brother’s face, then followed his gaze to the window. For a brief moment, he thought he saw the outline of the old woman from his dreams, then it was gone, and he was just staring at the squirrels, watching them leap from branch to branch only a few feet away from the window.

“What is it? What happened?” His sister, Lawanda, rushed in behind him, and Talik grabbed her and pulled her into his arms.

“Malcolm’s gone.”

“Noooo! Noooo! Malcoooolm! No-ho-ho!” Lawanda cried.

When Talik looked up, his mother was standing in the doorway. There was not a single tear in her eyes.