Night Nineteen

by Virginia Elizabeth Hayes

Eleanor looked out the crooked bedroom window wondering about the law of averages. Nineteen days ago, she rented a house that was really a collection of added-on rooms, that passed for a structure, out in rural Alaska. She hadn’t traveled here for the architecture. No. the house was conveniently positioned under the zone in the sky called: the Aurora Oval.

This was the part of the world that enjoyed more visitations from the Northern Lights, on average, than any place else.

Eleanor shifted her weight in the poor, sad chair. The wood groaned. She nodded in sympathy. She felt certain her chemo-riddled bones were would make the same complaints, just as loudly, if they could.

Although a sighting had been ‘all but guaranteed’ by the now, absent landlord, the Northern Lights had not shown themselves. Not once in three weeks.

She looked out into the darkness, seeing the snow on the frozen surface of the Chena River. Nothing is moving, she thought. It is all frozen. And I don’t have much waiting left in me.

Behind her, a thick fist pounded on the front door. It rattled the house, frightening all the welcome silence away.

“Yoo-hoo,” sang a throaty alto.

Eleanor closed her eyes.

Without an invitation, the locked door jiggled once, then made a cracking sound. It squeaked open and thumped against the wall. “It’s Pammie from next door, here for some visiting. Hey, your door was stuck. I fixed it for you, so it could open. Lucky! Gosh, it’s dark in here!” What Pammie called ‘next door’, sat two miles away.

Eleanor pushed herself into a more upright sitting position. In the past nineteen days, Pammie ‘visited’ twenty-five times and had broken something every time. Everything in the poorly constructed human rabbit-warren now carried deep, visible cracks.

The house shimmied under the relentless pounding from the visitor. Little clicks clacked their way through the house as a determined hand lit every light. Click. Click. Click.

“There’s some light, now. I fixed it.” Pammie’s boots clumped back into the kitchen. “I’m getting us a big pot of fondue going, with the yellow cheese. Got to get you fed so you can squash that pesky cancer bug.”

Eleanor looked up into the dark, unadorned sky, wishing she had the strength to scream.

After Pammie’s second visit, Eleanor locked the doors. But, a puny little thing like a tumbler never held Pammie and her Alaskan neighborly spirit for long, though.

Eleanor forced herself into a standing position, touching the cold windowpane. She whispered the only words of self-comfort she bothered with anymore. “The law of averages must still be valid. Somewhere. Things have to change.”

One month ago, Eleanor’s oncologist asked her if she’d crossed off all the items from her ‘things-to-do-before-she-died’ list. Eleanor replied that one item remained. She called the vacation rental site. She looked at the odd house. She received the dubious but tempting almost-guarantee.

Five days later, she arrived, at the odd house, next to the Chena River. It was documented the aurora borealis appeared over two hundred nights a year, on average. During the fall, winter and spring, there was a 99% chance they would appear.

Well, that’s what she’d paid extra for, anyway.

Yes. Eleanor planned to see what she’d never seen before. She’d drained her accounts and bet on the chance to witness something new. Something beautiful. Then, if Death came, she would take His hand.

But the lights did not come. Every night they stayed away, defying the law of averages. The only thing that came was Pammie.

Eleanor stood at the crooked window, feeling the wind gust through the cheap frame.

“Hey!” came the relentless shout. “Eleanor! Are you dead, already? But I brought fondue!” Pammie’s fist pounded the bedroom door. The third beat cracked the thin, wood-like veneer.

Turning toward the sound, Eleanor’s weakened bones and withered muscles attempted to hold her up but could not. She lost her balance. Straightening her arms, her fingertips brushed against the panes of glass.

With that whisper of contact, the poorly constructed window frame abruptly snapped. With a shuddering crack, the entire window casement tumbled from the house. Like any chain reaction, a small catalyst started a longer string of failure. The wall followed. Then the rotting floorboards heaved to. The questionable roof cascaded down, dislodging a variety of rodents. The entire back of the building dropped like a perfectly shot scene from a silent movie.

But it wasn’t silent. Boards cracked, windows shattered, and chunks of cinder blocks fell like toys. Down they tumbled, taking the cancer patient along with it.

Too shocked to be frightened and too weakened to run, Eleanor fell. As she tumbled, her back dropped against the window. The glass acted like a sled as it plummeted down the embankment.

Stunned into silence, Eleanor stared up at the open sky as she sped toward the river. A color in the sky, far above, distracted her. Long feathers of green flames danced among the stars. Sparks of red and indigo shimmered in invitation. The aurora borealis had arrived.

Finally.

Sliding away from the broken house, Eleanor’s mouth lifted, smiling toward the lights. She whispered to the aurora. “The law of averages worked. Things changed. And you are beautiful.”

She spoke with belief. With relief. She marveled at the sight of completion.

From the center of the crumbling house rose the angry shrieks from Pammie as she ran toward the fondue pot filled with the yellow cheese. She’d set it on the counter of the disappearing kitchen and dammit it was hers.

Eleanor, still sliding away, hardly heard the inconsequential sounds from that far-away house. The wind pushing her along acted as a merciful buffer, thinning all human voices. Eleanor looked upward, enraptured. She stretched out her hands, to embrace the next change.

The dancing lights spun into her eyes until the universe completed her.