Friday Fiction: When He Awoke

 

     When Eleazer P. Barkis finally woke up from the hundred year curse his sister had placed him under, she and all her family had died out and left the mansion an abandoned hulk. He raised the squeaky lid of the window seat in the library where he had been placed; the fabric of the cushion was rotted and mingled with decades of spiderwebs that had been spun next to the dusty panes to trap flies attracted to the dim sunshine.

     Eleazer was in no great shape himself; his joints were creaking from disuse, his mouth was dry, and his hair and beard had grown about three feet before they had slowed down and stopped. On the plus side, the tightly-joined cedar wood of his resting place seemed to have kept out most pests, and his clothes, which had been made of the best and sturdiest materials, had survived pretty much intact.

     He managed to raise himself out of the recess with the aid of his old black stick, which Cassandra, bless her wicked heart, had still had the thoughtfulness to place next to him. He rolled to the ground, managed to raise himself enough to plant his quavering body back onto the window seat which had shut with a bang behind him, when his brain started working sufficiently to have him decide to call one of his old familiars.

     "Patrick!" he coughed drily, thumping his stick on the bare hardwood floor. "Patrick, where are you?"

     There was a little pft! of displaced air and then there was a small figure of a man, frisking around him like a happy dog. It was about three feet tall and parrot green, with a parrot's legs and beak. His flapping tailcoat looked like it might fly him off the ground and around the room any moment with his ecstasy.

     "Master!" he crowed. "Master, yer awake at last! Lawd, it's been so lawng! Hooroar!" He threw his three-cornered hat in the air. "Hoo-roar!"

     The old man reached out a feeble hand to calm him down.

     "Yes, yes, yes, Patrick. But right now I need a cup of water. A clean, cold cup of water, do you hear?"

     "Oh, yes Sar, right away, Sar!" With another pft he was gone, and back the next instant with a dripping cold chalice. He put it into Eleazer's trembling hand and watched eagerly for approval as the shaggy old man put it to his lips.

     The first sip brought on choking. Eleazer recovered, swished the second swig around to moisten his mouth, then spat it out. The third swallow went down easy, and he drained the rest of the cup in one long head-tilting draft. He handed the cup back to the little man.

     "Thank'ee, Patrick," he sighed. He settled back against the window and closed his eyes. "Tell me. What's gone on while I slept?"

     "Oh, much and little, Sar," answered the familiar. He sat down cross-legged on the floor at his feet. "I been keeping an eye on the place while you were down."

     Eleazer looked around at the dust and devastation.

     "So I see. How long has it been, Patrick?"

     "Oh, just a wee bit over a hundred years, Sar. Say twenty minutes more or so."

     "A hundred years!" The old man winced, and rubbed his neck under his tangled grey hair. "No wonder I feel stiff! Cassandra must have been epically angry."

     "She repented it almost at once, Sar, but there was nothing she could do about it," said Patrick. "Would you like some more water? Or maybe a drop of something a little strawnger?" The little green man held up the cup deferentially.

     "Not just now, thank'ee." Eleazer bowed his head. "So what does that make the year, Patrick?"

     "Two Thousand and Sixteen, Sar. It's October the Twelfth," he added brightly. The old man groaned.

     "A century gone." He tried to stand up once more, only to plop back down, helpless, on the seat.

     "Is the phone still connected, Patrick? Right now, I think I'm going to need a doctor to make a housecall."

     "Lawd love you, Sar, the phone's been down since 'Sixty-Three, when the last of the family passed away. But I can make it work, never fear!"

     The little green man capered away to the cubby where Eleazer had kept the old candlestick phone. In its place he could see an odd, squat contraption with a curly coil. Patrick plucked a barbell-shaped piece off the top of it. He breathed into the piece, his parrot beak agape.

     There was clicking and whirring, and then the old man heard an odd buzz. Another click, and then a muffled voice answered.

     "Ah, hello," said Patrick. "Family Care Clinic, is it? I need to speak to your top man. Oh, he's busy and can't talk?"

     The little man drew an arcane gesture in the air over the receiver.

     "I think you'll find he can. Yes. I thought so. Dr. Richards? Yes, I know you're busy, but this is an emergency. I need you to make a housecall. You don't? You can't? I think you could." He gestured again, grinning around the sides of his nib.

     "You'll come right away, then? Thank you, Doctor Richards. Yes, that's Two-Fifty-Six Polk Avenue. Thank you, Doctor Richards." He hung up the phone, satisfied.

     Eleazer bent over, coughing.

     "Fetch me some more water," he said, squinting up at his concerned familiar. " And I think you should look different when the doctor arrives."

 

     "So, Mr. Barkis, moving into the old family homestead, eh?" Dr. Richards was a tall gangly man of about forty, casually dressed. He was not at all the solemn, sober figure that was Eleazer's idea of a proper medical man.  "You know, when I was a kid, everybody told me that the folks who owned this house had all died out. They said the place was haunted!"

     "No, Doctor, there is still me," Eleazer replied, frowning. "I am the last of the Barkis line."

     "Well, good to see someone coming to open the old place up again. Raise the tone of the neighborhood," the doctor nattered on. "Now, what seems to be the problem?"

     "I have...been down for quite some time and have awoken rather enfeebled and stiff. Do you have anything you can give me to help get me running again? Some kind of a shot, or a pill, or something?"

     Now it was Richards’ turn to frown.

     "Oh, I'd never prescribe any drugs like that for someone just out of a coma. It was a coma, right? Certainly not without a thorough examination. Why don't we start with that. Can your attendant help get you undressed?"

     Eleazer had never known a physician that didn't carry a bag full of stimulants that they weren't happy to dispense on request, as long as payment was forthcoming. Also he'd never known one with the gall to make him do more than undo a button or two to examine him.  But with the help of Patrick (whom Richards remembered Somehow afterwards as a tall, muscular fellow in scrubs), he got through the ordeal well enough.

     As the old man sat adjusting his antique garments to their proper arrangement again, the doctor starting delving into the slim briefcase he had brought. But instead of the bottle of pills Eleazer expected, he hauled out a handful of pamphlets.

     "All right, Mr. Barkis, here you go," he said, putting them into the incredulous old man's hands. "This is your diet regimen. Avoid these foods and load up on plenty of these. We've got to start building you up again. And here is your exercise program, ditto. You've got to get moving and keep moving, keep that heart going. Use it or lose it!"

     He looked around at the room, as if seeing it for the first time.

     "And you'll want to get someone to clean this place up and keep it clean. Start with just one room maybe today, where you can stay, but the whole house eventually. All this mold and dust won't be helping you, right?"

     "Is that all?" Eleazer raised his eyebrows.

     "That's all for now." Dr. Richards briskly shut his briefcase. "If you have any problems, come by the office, and I'll see you in six weeks to see how you're doing. It's been nice meeting you, Mr. Barkis." He shook hands with the old man, then his attendant (whose hand, in retrospect, he thought was rather claw-like), and over their feeble thanks breezed out of the house and was gone.

     "Well Patrick, that was not what I expected." He spread the pamphlets, perusing their bold titles and slick graphics. "These look like they were designed for a child."

     "Are you going to do what he said, Sar?"

     "I suppose I must." He looked around. "Do you think you could clean this place up?"

     The little man looked discomfited.

     "I would if I could, Sar, but I wasn't made for it, if you'll remember."

     "I remember." Patrick had been his first familiar, a sort of trial. His powers were of an aetherial nature, not really fit for heavy labor. The old man thought a bit.

     "What about Brown Jenny? Or Slopkin? Or Raging Tom?"

     "All gone into the Wherever, years ago. Just worn out, Sar," he said sadly. "Anyway, you'd need a kobold or a brownie to do the kind of work the doctor's demanding."

     "Are there any around I can get?"

     "Not for a thousand miles, Sar, and further I cannot go."

     "Very well, then." Elements of doubt and distaste edged into the old man's words. "I guess we'll just have to deal with... human servants." 

Notes

And there this little story has stood for over seven years, another Unfinished Tale. I do not remember having any definite direction that it was going in, except that a modern family would be engaged to restore the house as working tenants, and that Eleazar's interactions with them (especially their children) would drag him into the modern age, a fish out of water situation. I was rather pleased with the set-up; I fancy I have a small talent for a set-up. It is in the follow through, the then-what, that difficulties arise. I promise a completed story next week.