The Woman in the Dark

by Vanessa Savage

  Patrick doesn’t react. He stands motionless at the top of the stairs, staring at the words highlighted in the flashlight’s beam.

  “You must have seen it when you were down here painting. I wondered if it could have been Joe or Mia, but it’s not their handwriting. So I thought it must have been…”

  He comes down the stairs and stands next to me, his arm brushing mine. “It was just some kid playing about,” he says softly, and all the hairs rise on the back of my neck.

  I realize, as he says this, that before Tom and Billy Evans, the last child to live here was Patrick.

  “A kid?”

  “I’d forgotten,” he says, and he reaches to touch the wall.

  Forgotten? I look at the wall, the scrawled child’s writing stretched all the way across. I’ve been bad. I’ve been very bad. How could he have forgotten?

  The air seems to have gotten thicker. It’s harder to breathe. “You wrote it?”

  He glances over at me. “Of course I didn’t,” he says, a smile on his face. “You know what my childhood was like—do you really think I’d be down in the cellar scribbling on walls?”

  But his smile isn’t real. It’s big and wide and entirely false.

  “Sarah?” he says as we walk back up the stairs. “Don’t—don’t worry about painting down here, okay? We have enough to do in the rest of the house.” He locks the door and looks down at the key in his hand. “I’ll go and put this away somewhere safe.”

  I wake up in the middle of the night, my throat dry, my head pounding, caught in the aftermath of a dream I can’t quite remember. I reach for the glass on my bedside table and gasp, knocking the water over when I see a shadow at the window. Then the shadow turns and I see it’s Patrick, naked and only half-covered by the curtain, staring out into the night. He puts a finger to his lips, then beckons me to him, frowning when I hesitate. I step over the puddle of water as I join him.

  “What is it?” I say, and he points at something across the street. I move closer to the window and squint into the darkness. A shadow detaches itself from the black, forms into a figure, and retreats. I blink but can’t see anything else. The shadows shift and move as the clouds play peek-a-boo with the moon.

  “Is it a person?”

  Patrick nods. “Every so often the clouds clear and I can see him. He’s been there for hours.”

  “Hours? How do you know?”

  “I got up before midnight… I thought I heard something. He was there then.”

  I glance at the clock—it’s ten past three. Has Patrick been standing here the whole time? I reach out to touch his arm. It’s like ice.

  “Come back to bed,” I whisper, but he shakes his head. The shadows move again, but it no longer looks like a person. The street is empty. No one is out at three in the morning in the wind and rain.

  “Patrick, are you sure someone’s there?”

  He steps fully in front of the window, not even trying to cover himself with the curtain. “Someone’s watching the house. You were right the first night. Someone’s watching us.”

  CHAPTER 22

  I take a plate of toast up to Joe on Monday morning, after Patrick and Mia have left, to find him struggling to put his shoes on with his injured hand.

  “Let me help,” I say, putting the plate on the desk. I crouch and loosen his laces so he can slide his feet in, then tie them in a double bow.

  “Are you going out? I could come with you.” I put my hand on his, careful of his still-bruised fingers, but he pulls away.

  “Don’t,” he says. “I don’t want—I don’t need my mother doing everything for me, following me around. Isn’t it bad enough I can’t do my own fucking shoes up?”

  I step back from the frustrated anger in his voice. “I’m sorry. I only want to help.”

  “I know you do, but I don’t need it. It’s been ten days… I have to get out of this house. I feel like I can’t breathe in here.”

  “But you shouldn’t be on your own.”

  “I won’t be. I’m meeting a friend. He’s coming up from Cardiff.”

  “He?”

  “Stop it, Mum. I can’t stand the constant worry in your voice. I’m not going to get into trouble again, okay?”

  I follow him to the door, trying to resist the urge to cling to him, beg him to stay home and safe. God, he’s right. He’s going to be eighteen in less than seven months and I’m acting like he’s five, cutting up his toast and tying his shoes. But it’s so hard watching him walk away when the fading bruises from the attack are still on his face.

  He’s right to get out of the house too. The silence when they’ve all gone is so full… I’m alone but I hear footsteps above me, the creak of floorboards. I know it’s an old house settling, but here alone, it’s a restless ghost pacing upstairs; it’s Marie Evans, covered with blood; it’s Billy Evans, playing with his Star Wars figures. It’s a child scribbling on the walls of a dark cellar. I hear the quiet click of a door and freeze, my heart pounding. Just the wind, the crap windows letting in a sea breeze, like a breath that opens and closes doors. Not a ghost. Just the wind. But it doesn’t stop me from staring at the kitchen door, waiting for one of the ghosts to appear.

  There’s a knock at the front door and I jump, my hand jerking and spilling tea on the table. I expect to see Mia on the doorstep, moaning about forgotten books and keys, but I gasp when I open the door because it is a ghost.

  I realize my mistake in seconds—it’s a grown-up Tom Evans, not the ghost of a little boy conjured by my own haunted thoughts, but it doesn’t stop my heart from pounding, and it’s too late to hide my gasp and lurch backward. He flinches and steps away.

  “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I waited until your family left.”

  “What are you doing here?” I want to slam the door in his face and run away, my mind still full of ghosts and murder, but what if the neighbors see him standing there, see me slamming the door on him? Will they recognize him as I did? Some will have known the Evans family in real life, not just from newspaper stories. I almost told Patrick after I saw Tom up on the cliff path, almost confessed what I’ve invited into our lives, but there was never a good moment. And then Joe got attacked and I caught Patrick painting the cellar, found the writing and— I just can’t. I can’t add to whatever it is that’s leaching away the Patrick I know.

  “I wanted to see the house again,” Tom says, and as he speaks, I think he might cry.

  I don’t see a ghost anymore. I see a broken little boy who never grew up. I can picture that broken boy writing on a cellar wall and, God, do I want it to be him, not Patrick? Do I want to imagine any lost boy scribbling such horrible words? I open the door wider. “Come in.”

  He takes a deep breath and steps into the hall, tensing as I close the door behind him. The outside world disappears and it’s the two of us alone in the Murder House. I wonder if his heart is beating as hard as mine. He moves closer to me, too close, but I’m right by the wall and I can’t back away.

  “I haven’t been back in here since…” He blinks. “I couldn’t. I knew my grandparents arranged for it to be cleared and decorated, but I couldn’t. I thought it would be so different with a family in it again. I thought I could see it and it might finally take away the images in my head.”

  His shoulder brushes against my hair as he turns away.

  “When it was empty I used to come here and stand outside,” he says, touching the dip in the wall by the stairs. “I always had the key in my pocket, but I could never use it, never bear to come in.”

  I go cold. How often has he been back since we moved in, standing outside? We decided not to spend the money to get the locks changed. Does he still have a key to the house where my family and I sleep?

  “It was so old-fashioned when we moved in,” he says, peering into the living room, “but Dad had all these plans to make it modern. All he seemed to do was wreck it. The colors he chose were ugly and he was terrible at painting and DIY. It drove him mad th
at everything he did made it worse, not better.”

  His gaze drifts to the still-visible height chart by the door. I wait for him to say something. He reaches out to trace his wobbly initials and I can see his hand is shaking, but he doesn’t speak. He clenches it into a fist when he pulls it away from the wall.

  He wanders into the kitchen and I follow. “Old Mr. Walker actually came around once, after Dad ripped out the dark wood stuff in the kitchen. Me and Billy thought he was going to have a fit and die right there on the path, he was so mad at Dad. He was shouting and ranting and tried to push his way in. I thought Dad was going to punch him.”

  Patrick’s father? I can’t imagine Patrick’s father shouting at anyone. He seemed such a quiet, small man the few times I met him.

  “Can I… can I see upstairs?” he asks.

  I don’t want him upstairs. I don’t want him walking through my bedroom. I’m already wishing I hadn’t let him in.

  But he doesn’t wait for a response—he’s already heading for the stairs.

  I jump when I hear a car door slam, imagining Patrick coming through the door, finding Tom Evans in his house with his wife. But Patrick will be safely at work now.

  I follow Tom upstairs and find him standing in the doorway of Joe’s room.

  “This is where I was. I’d taken Billy’s Star Wars toys again. He never liked me borrowing them. I’d take them without asking and play under my bed so he wouldn’t catch me. I did that so many times when I had bad dreams and couldn’t sleep. Played under my bed, soothed out of the bad dreams by Mum’s wind chimes in the tree outside.”

  I shiver. “Wind chimes?”

  “Yeah, she had loads of them. I don’t know what happened to them after…” He looks lost again and those scribbled words are back in my head. I’ve been bad, I’ve been very bad…

  “Tom, did you or your brother ever write on the cellar wall?”

  “Write? What do you mean?”

  “I found writing on the wall and I wondered. I thought it had to be you or Billy. No one’s been here since.”

  There’s a short silence. “No. We were never allowed in the cellar. Dad always kept it locked.”

  He moves out of the room and I pause there, pressing a hand to my stomach. It hurts, a nagging nauseous ache. I rub my eyes. God, I’m so tired. So tired of thinking and worrying.

  When I leave the room, Tom’s not on the landing and the nausea rises higher when I find him in my room. He’s picked up my sketchbook and is flicking through the pages. “This isn’t your husband,” he says, gazing at a scribbled sketch I’ve done of Ben.

  I snatch the book away. “Okay, I think that’s enough now.”

  “It’s starting again, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He steps closer and I back away until I’m pressed up against the wall.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. He bows his head and he’s standing so close it almost rests on my rigid shoulder. “I sold the house to Patrick because he knows… I was angry and I wanted the house to make him admit what he knows. I didn’t think about you and your children.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You shouldn’t stay here,” he says. “It keeps happening. The same thing’s going to happen. This house… Bad things happen to people who live in this house.”

  “You need to leave.” My voice is steady, but my hands are shaking.

  Oh, God, what have I done? I should never have gotten in touch with him, never have invited him into the house. What does he mean, Patrick knows? Knows what? I need to ask Patrick, but that means telling him about Tom.

  I step back from the easel to look at the finished painting. I’ve painted Anna’s secret beach, all those muted, beautiful colors, building them up in layers so it appears almost abstract. Step to the side and a whole new level of color appears, highlighted by the dying light coming through the window. Wiping my brush on a rag, I walk over to look out. The sky has clouded—it’s going to rain. I check the time. Patrick will be home soon and I still need to shop. I clear away reluctantly. The longer I spend here, the harder it becomes to go back to the house. When I’m here, painting, I’m able to push everything else to the back of my mind, but the moment I leave, it comes back: Tom Evans, the house, worry about Joe, about Mia, about Patrick.

  Ben was right: this is a sanctuary. But now it’s time to go back to my real life. I make sure all the paint is scrubbed from my hands, lock the studio, and head for the supermarket.

  I’m halfway back from the shop when I see it. Outside a jeweler’s, I’m checking my list to see if I’ve forgotten anything. I’d never normally bother looking in the window—it’s all twenty-grand engagement rings and heavy gold jewel-encrusted stuff—but something is nagging, something I’ve seen in the corner of my eye. I step back and there it is: my mother’s engagement ring, nestled in the middle of the section marked “vintage,” pride of place on a blue velvet cushion, price tag tied to it.

  I move closer and gasp. When I breathe out it fogs the window. As I wipe my hand across the glass, I want to be wrong. I want to see an emerald, not a diamond. I want to be mistaken. But I’m not. It’s my mother’s ring, tied to a price we could never afford to pay. I put down the shopping bag. This dinner was supposed to be a peace offering, Patrick’s favorite meal, before I confess that I’ve invited Tom Evans into our lives and now I can’t get rid of him.

  I waver there for what seems like forever, then I turn right instead of left to go home. I walk down onto the beach and all the way to the water’s edge. I kick off my shoes, scrunching sand between my toes, liking the salty smell of the sea, the sound of the waves washing over the pebbles at the shoreline.

  I have to make a decision. I have to stop hoping everything’s going to turn out all right on its own and make a decision.

  It’s beginning to rain and the few people who were on the beach are leaving. I look down at my empty hands. I left my shopping outside the jeweler’s. It gets darker, darker than it should be at this hour, as the clouds get heavier and the wind picks up.

  My scarf flutters and is snatched away by a gust of wind powerful enough to make me stagger. I spin to reach for it, but someone gets there first. It’s Ben, a big smile on his face.

  “I thought it was you,” he says. “I live in the cottage up there, and I saw you walking down the beach.” He’s pointing up to a house on the hill. One of a row of cottages I sometimes daydream about living in.

  Ben has phoned twice since I went to the gallery, leaving messages about my exhibition. I haven’t returned his calls.

  “The rain’s getting heavier,” Ben says. “The café’s still open. Do you want to get coffee?”

  I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t. I should go collect that shopping and head home and cook like a good wife. But I think of Patrick and the house waiting for me, Tom waiting outside with a key in his pocket. I think of the ring in the window of the jewelry shop. I think of the decision I have to make.

  “Why not?” I say.

  “I thought you were avoiding me. I’ve seen you coming and going to the studio, but you never drop in to say hello.”

  He says this as he brings weak tea in stained white mugs over from the counter. The plastic tablecloth is sticky when I peel my arm off it to make room for the mugs. The rain is pelting the windows, the wind rattling the door. Every so often, someone else is blown in, windswept and dripping, seeking shelter. The windows are steaming up.

  “It’s not personal. There are… things going on at home. It’s complicated. But I am painting. Anna convinced me to go all out for this solo exhibition.”

  “I’m glad,” he says. “I’m glad I came over as well. I saw you on the beach and I assumed it was your husband with you so I nearly didn’t.”

  I frown, lifting my tea. “I wasn’t with anyone.”

  Ben shrugs, confused. “He was a few steps behind you, but since he’d walked with you all the way from town down onto the sand I a
ssumed…”

  I put down my mug without taking a drink. Tom. It was Tom fucking Evans following me. In the wind, I wouldn’t have heard anyone walking behind me and I was so preoccupied, thinking about my mother’s ring. Was he waiting outside the studio the whole time I was there? Is he outside watching now?

  Ben puts out a paint-spattered hand and touches mine. “Sorry—I must have been mistaken. But either way I’m glad I came over.”

  Someone walks past the café window just as our hands touch and I imagine how this would seem if it were Patrick. I move, but part of me is tempted to leave my hand there for all to see.

  A girl comes over to take our cups, pausing to turn the Open sign to Closed. The wind rattles the door again.

  “It doesn’t look like it’s stopping anytime soon and they want to close up here. Why don’t you wait it out in my cottage?” Ben says, pulling his jacket back on.

  I shouldn’t. I should be back at home, cooking, figuring out how to explain about Tom Evans. I should be home before Patrick or I’ll have to come up with a whole new lie to explain where I’ve been.

  “Why not?” I say again.

  “Do you need to phone home, let them know where you are?” he asks as we stand at the front door of his cottage, waiting for him to unlock it.

  I don’t answer and he pushes open the door, walking in ahead of me. It opens directly into the sitting room, dimly lit by a woodburning stove in the corner.

  “I know it’s ridiculous lighting it in May, but there’s something about a stormy night…”

  He gets a wine bottle and two glasses from a drink-ringed dark wood cabinet. I see paint under his fingernails as he hands me a glass filled with red wine. Cobalt Blue, Cadmium Red. It’s a sight so familiar and so strange. It fills me with nostalgia for a time when everyone I knew had paint under their nails, smelled of turpentine and linseed oil, sweet rolling tobacco and cheap booze. Giddy days when I’d lurch from excitement to fear at how overwhelming and different my life had become, when a part of me longed to run home to the stifling safety of my mother.