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Douglas Baker's body became rigid with fear the moment he heard the door brushing
across the carpet. Then he heard the intermittent creaking of wheels slowly turning. His heart fluttered wildly and his head reeled, but paralysed as he was, he couldn't move on the bed or even open his eyes.
However, Douglas knew instinctively what was approaching the bed; his mind saw
what his eyes refused to. The old woman wheeled herself agonisingly slowly across the room. She was wasted, loose skin sagged uselessly from a shrunken skull with wisps of grey-white hair. A pulsating tangerine glow surrounded her and the wheelchair. Death and decay permeated the air as the chair stopped its creaking.
She was beside the bed.
He didn't feel her skeletal fingers touch his hand; his body couldn't feel anything, his
petrified mind had disconnected its physical functions.
Then the wheelchair was moving away, the glow dimming until it was cut off by the
door brushing over the carpet once more.
"That nightmare again?"
He nodded, the sweat flicking from his hair. "Only this time she gave me this."
She took the small envelope from his trembling fingers, broke the seal and read the
contents.
This is to certify that I, Judith-Anne Kramer, being of sound
mind, do hereby bequeath my estate and all holdings to my sole family
heir, Douglas Baker. Staff and advisors to be retained. Full details
held by Lawrence Dolby, personal solicitor.
Signed on this date, the eighth day of June, the year of our
Lord, nineteen hundred and eighty-seven.
Judith-Anne Kramer
*
"Where did you get this letter? It must be a forgery. Judith-Anne Kramer had no
family."
"Except me. I was adopted as a child; I never knew my real mother. Would I be
correct in assuming that Judith was my mother?"
Lawrence Dolby looked annoyed. "Ridiculous! Where's your evidence?"
Douglas Baker leaned forward. I merely need to trace the adoption records. The
handwriting on the letter has already been authenticated."
"What letter?" The solicitor ripped up the letter.
"Copies have been made," said Douglas with suppressed anger. "I advise you to sign
the deeds. It was Mrs. Kramer's death wish."
"Do you really expect me to believe that she returned from the grave to leave you
everything she possessed in the world?"
"Yes. I also believe she made her wishes known to you before she died, and that you
possess your own copy of the letter."
"Pure speculation, all of it. None of this can be proved."
"You've just proved it to me by using that statement."
Dolby shook his head impatiently. "Hearsay and opinion isn't admissible as legal
evidence. And now I really must bring this to an end; I'm already late for my next appointment." He moved to the door, pulled it open ...
And froze.
There was no outer office, no secretaries, no typists. Instead, the door had opened on
to another dimension, another world. A dull rocky landscape was being enveloped in waves of vividly bright colours. Images appeared to blur and focus, so that nothing could be determined with perfect clarity, and each image was instantly washed away to be replaced with others just as fleeting. It resembled a crossroads where all planes of reality met. And yet, from this swirling miasma of chaos emerged an old woman in a wheelchair.
From a pinpoint she grew perceptibly larger until, at last normal size, she moved
slowly through the doorway, her wheels squeaking in unison.
Squeak - pause - Squeak - pause - Squeak.
Douglas experienced the feeling leave his body once more. The fact that he knew the
identity of this woman helped him not one iota. It wasn't so much the person as the playing out of the impossible which paralysed him with fear. It was that endlessly large void labelled the Unknown. So, like a trapped creature, he peered through the windows of his motionless body.
Dolby was also plainly terrified, but he somehow found the strength to take two short
backward steps to allow her into the room. With the tangerine glow still slowly pulsating around her, the oh-so-ancient but menacing presence of the deceased Judith- Anne Kramer moved across to the solicitor's desk. The sunken eyes looked down upon the deeds to her estate. Then a skeletal hand pointed at Dolby. Douglas knew instinctively what Dolby was being ordered to do. Lawrence Dolby reluctantly and cautiously approached her, his features wrinkling in distaste as the stench of decay assaulted his senses. He picked up a pen and, with nervously shaking hand, signed over the deeds to Douglas. Then he weakly tried to push a copy into Douglas' unresponsive hand.
Without a word, and merely a cursory and emotionless glance at Douglas, she turned
her wheelchair and returned to the void.
The additional shock of the slamming door returned Douglas' senses to him. The two
men sat staring at each other, as if daring the other to confirm what had happened. Douglas wondered if there was only chaos beyond death; or perhaps he had truly witnessed the Crossroads between heaven, hell, and the afterlife. He sincerely hoped that his mother could take the former path. Then Douglas looked down blankly at the deeds in his hand.
"Even at seventy she looked old," Dolby remarked absently. "But there wasn't a feeble
bone in her body."
"You understand, if you had carried out her wishes, you would have made a great deal
of money. But by wanting it all, you've finished up with nothing."
Douglas walked shakily to the door. Beyond, all had returned to mundane normality.
END
Note: this story first appeared in the horror fiction periodical, Ocular.
Title ink graphic by Lesley E. Wilkinson.
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