MicroHorror

Every evening Michael had to sit in the den with his Nan whilst his mum made dinner. Just to keep an eye on her, like. Make sure she didn’t wander. Nan wasn’t quite right in the head anymore; she had some old people’s disease that Michael couldn’t pronounce. She forgot people’s names and things that had happened just that day, and she saw things.

She always saw things. Michael would sit as far across the room from her as he could, one eye on the telly and one eye nervously on his Nan. He’d repeat the words “Just sick, just sick” over and over in his head like a safety mantra. He always tried to keep the sounds of his mum clanking around in the kitchen in his earshot, too; it was reassuring and something he could run to if things went weird.

Things always went weird. Nan would start looking around strangely, staring at the floor, the fireplace, the ceiling. Then her hands would start weakly swatting at the air; “Shoo!” she’d say, “get away!” as she flapped at nothing. Michael would watch her sideways when this happened, trying to look like he was concentrating on the footy highlights on the television. Nan had liked football once, lifelong Liverpool fan she was; they’d watched games together on a Saturday afternoon and cheered together. Now she barely knew she was in Liverpool, let alone how the team was doing. Michael dreaded her talking to him these days.

She always talked to him, eventually.

“Neil,” she’d say, calling him by his dead dad’s name, “Neil, can you see them? They’re coming across the carpet! Ooh, get them off me, get them away, Neil!” Then she’d stomp her feet a little and bang her hands on the chair. Mum said she saw things in the pattern of the carpet and her illness made them real to her. Other times she’d see shapes and people in the flames of the fireplace: deceased relatives, dragons and fish, monsters and angels. At first Michael had pretended to help her, stomping the floor or waving his hands in the air at nothing. Now, he didn’t like to get that close and tried to ignore her when she had a moment. “Just sick, she’s just sick,” he repeated in his mind.

The moments were getting worse. Nan had started telling stories at breakfast about the hats on top of her wardrobe. She was an old lady, and all old ladies have hats on top of their wardrobes. For Church on Sunday, and special, fancy dos. Big, gaudy things with ribbons and brims, pins and lace. Nana had three hats on her wardrobe, and they had become her latest weird thing.

“They came up, right up in the hats!” she had told Michael’s mother one morning the previous week. “All chattery and white, just grinning at me. I called you, and our Neil, but you never came. They stared at me all night, smiling and chattering their teeth together, and saying things, ooh it was horrible, horrible. I don’t like those heads.”

Michael thought about this as he continued to watch his Nan from the side of his eyes. It was the worst thing she’d said yet and had scared him half to death. He wouldn’t go in her room for anything anymore, not with those hats lined up in there. She was completely still, now, staring straight ahead at a point above the television. Michael relaxed a bit, heard his mum cough in the kitchen and felt all right. Almost time for dinner, and it was his favorite tonight, sausages!

Nan turned her head and looked straight at Michael.

“Michael!” she whispered. “Michael!”

He looked at her, shocked she knew his name.

“Yes, Nan?”

She nodded her head.

“They were asking about you last night, Michael. The heads in the hats, they asked about you. They said they’d be seeing you very soon. Just sick, just sick, they said to tell you.”