“Wake thee, Groa! | wake, mother good!
At the doors of the dead I call thee;
Thy son, bethink thee, | thou badst to seek
Thy help at the hill of death.”
Svipdagsmál
He walked up the dimly lit stairs with no fear, just the sense that he had to do his job and get out of there. There was no one to stop him, no one to stand between him and the door of the small room. In the darkness he could make out a lone silhouette, connected to numerous tubes and machines, their lights flickering mischievously. The hospital odour of disinfection and urine hung in the air.
He pulled a syringe out of his pocket with hope that the crackhead didn’t get it wrong. The last thing he wanted was to be the murderer of his own mother! But a street drug was the best he could get in his situation. As the first drops of liquid slowly dripped into the tube, there was no turning back.
The old woman’s stained hands trembled, one of them clutching the blanket. She shivered once, and then again. The artificial lungs started in a new and quicker rhythm, like a premonition of the soul to come, and the machines suddenly flashed with the light of carousels. The wrinkled old woman instantly opened her eyes without warning, and her hazy gaze swept across the room until it rested on the night visitor.
“So, you’ve come!” She hissed. Her long dead voice failed her, but he understood every word despite the obstacles.
“You offered it yourself. That you’d be here for me.” Then he stopped himself and added what was appropriate.
“Hi, Mum.”
Before she could answer the greeting, a night nurse burst through the door, alarmed by the sudden alert of the counters.
“What are you doing here! I’m calling security!”
“Wait here and don’t go anywhere, you stupid bitch!” His mother’s imperious voice suddenly sounded so clear that it startled him. And he wasn’t the only one startled; it even stopped the nurse on the threshold of the room, where she stared as if spellbound.
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing here at night with that paramedic? How you go on a rampage back there! Pissing on each other like two horses! And you’re filming it too!” She giggled and continued.
“So, either you let me talk to my son and no one will know, or you can start writing your CV!”
He realised that his mother was now completely lucid and exactly as he remembered her. At least one thing hadn’t changed. The nurse nodded her head and slowly disappeared, quietly like a mouse. The old hag’s power was back.
“So, what’s on your mind, son?” She turned back to him. The touching moment of reunion was long gone.
“You were right, Mum. That bitch, my ex, wants to cash in on the house and the land. She and her boyfriend bribed a surveyor to come up with an inflated valuation… A fucking inflated valuation…” He snorted.
“I told you, didn’t I? Never marry a Christian, never marry a baptised woman! Her sweet smile is on her lips and the anger is hidden in her heart! She’ll break your heart one day! And of course, she’ll beat the shit out of you. And what did you tell me? It was all, ‘Don’t worry, Mum, she’s not like that. Could you trust people more? ‘ You scorned the advice; you rejected your mother! And now you stand here, in the abode of death, torturing my old body on the road to Helheim!”
“Yes, you were right, Mum.” He repeated. “I was young and in love. I’m sorry.” It was better not to argue.
“Okay, son. Get your notebook out, I’ll dictate what to do.”
“Can I record it?”
“Take out your notebook, I said!” Then he didn’t utter another word of resistance and wrote down and did everything she said.
She talked on until the first birds began to sing over sirens and other city noises; the pages of the little pad were covered with spells and mysterious signs, and the birches’ twisted trunks rising out of the darkness peered into the windows like pale faces of hangmen.
“So, do you know what to do now?”
He realised that she suddenly sounded very tired. Tears welled up in his eyes.
“Yes, I know, Mum. Thank you. And… what’s going to happen to you now?”
“Well, what would? I’ll wait for the coma to come back, after the terrible pain subsides.” She groaned. It must have really hurt.
“And then… well, I’ll jump out of my skin again and stretch out my hamr. Like a ghost, I’ll be at the heels of the doctors and visitors, blowing cold air into the back of their necks!” She laughed uproariously. He remembered that the hamr was a kind of witch’s astral body that his mother and her ilk had managed to release of their bodies when they were in ecstasy.
“I have a long way to go. First to the north, and then down into the underworld, where the cruel and righteous Hel rules. And I shall soon follow her, as I am destined to do.”
Slowly the old woman’s vision began to fade, the lights and things fading, too, but fragments of visions of things past and future still floated around like spoken verses. In one of them, a lone man walked through the darkness with a syringe in his pocket, in the act of a necromantic ritual.
He turned to leave.
“Son!”
“Yes, Mother?”
“You are still young. Don’t close your heart to love! Don’t fight it when it comes! Promise me! Don’t close your heart to love! Promise?”
And suddenly he was nodding his head, completely muted, and then the door of the hospital room slammed shut.