The Woman in the Dark

by Vanessa Savage

  Joe flips over a couple more pages and stops at a pencil drawing of a laughing boy. I recognize him as the brown-eyed boy I saw in Joe’s earlier drawings the night he was attacked.

  “Is this him?” I ask, and Joe nods.

  He’s sitting on a chair in the drawing, leaning toward us, bundled in a thick jacket. He looks open and happy, clean-shaven, bright-eyed. This drawing is more intimate than the earlier sketches I saw.

  “He kissed me,” Joe says. Immediately I want to shake this bright-eyed stranger, make him promise never to hurt my son. He’s still so fragile, despite the college application and the therapy sessions.

  “I know you’re worried,” Joe says, rubbing his arm. “I know you’re waiting for me to start cutting again. But it’s not Simon who made me start. Even if it all goes wrong, it’s not Simon who’ll make it go bad for me again.”

  No, it’ll be Patrick. It’ll be this place. He’s been trying to tell me for weeks, but I haven’t been listening.

  “I have something for you,” I say, going over to the wardrobe and reaching back for my treasure box. Right at the bottom, under the postcards from my dad, there is a set of paintbrushes in a roll of fabric.

  “My dad gave me these,” I say to Joe as I hand them over. “The last time he came home before he stopped coming home. I never… I was angry with him then for leaving, so I never used them. Then they became too precious to use because they were the last thing he bought me.”

  I watch as Joe unrolls the velvet. They’re good sable brushes, too good for the child I was then, still daubing with poster paints. “I want you to have them,” I say.

  Joe glances at me, then reaches out his hand. “Why does this feel like a goodbye?”

  I take his hand, squeeze it lightly, wincing as my burned palm throbs. “You’ll definitely get a place,” I say. “You’re incredibly talented, Joe.”

  “So are you,” he says, zipping up the portfolio. “Don’t give up on it, Mum.”

  “I have an exhibition in town.” I blurt it in a rush and the words sit heavy in the air. It’s because I’ve kept it a secret that it feels like I’m doing something wrong. “I’m hoping I’ll sell some paintings. Enough to…” I leave the sentence unfinished.

  “Does Dad know?” Joe says, and I glance toward the half-open door, back of my neck prickling. All these secrets. “Don’t tell him,” Joe whispers.

  In the cellar, you kept a box. Secret, hidden. Tucked away in the far corner, never coming out of the shadows.

  “I kept this here for when…” you said.

  “When what?”

  “When I was down here. When I’d been bad.”

  You opened the box and showed me what was inside. Now I remember junk. Tat. Useless things. Now I think, Why not a flashlight? Why not water? Why not food? But that’s practical, adult crap. And you were a kid when you hid that box, and it wasn’t hunger or thirst or even the dark you were scared of. It was what was in the dark.

  In the box, you kept a shell. A big one, from some exotic shore a million miles away from that cellar. “I used to think it was full of magic,” you said. There was also a key, but you wouldn’t tell me what it was for, what it unlocked. And, best of all, there was a necklace with a cross on it to ward off all the evil.

  CHAPTER 32

  The next morning Patrick unwinds the bandages and lays them on the table. He picks up the first aid cream and gently rubs it into my throbbing palms. I risk a look—they’re red and there are a couple of small blisters, but it’s nowhere near as bad as I’d thought. When it happened, it felt like I’d burned the flesh down to the bones.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again, putting soft gauze pads on my palms and opening a fresh bandage. His sleeves are rolled up and I can see his own faint burn scars.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “It was an accident.”

  He puts a strip of surgical tape on to hold the bandages in place. “Was it?”

  I look up at him. He’s still holding my hands and I pull them away. “What do you mean?”

  “All the way to the drugstore to pick up bandages, I’m telling myself over and over it was an accident, and all the way back I was thinking I was angry with you. For being out again. For lying. Perhaps I didn’t plan to burn your hands, but…”

  I shake my head. Patrick looks thinner, smaller, older. Eaten up from the inside out by fear growing like a cancer. It’s infectious. I feel it blooming in me.

  “What if it wasn’t an accident?” he whispers. His breath is sour.

  Anna comes to the house and I put my bandaged hands over my ears, hunch down at the table, and wait for her to give up. I don’t want to see anyone.

  I jump, my elbows slipping off the table. Now she’s knocking on the front window. “Go away,” I mutter, walking into the hall to peer into the living room. I can see her shadow in the clouded glass. She knows I’m in here. She knows I’m always bloody in here.

  The shadow retreats and I breathe again. I don’t know how I’ve ended up here, hiding inside from my friend, hiding out there from Patrick. I unwind the bandages from my hands. One of the blisters has burst and I gasp as the cotton tugs at the raw wet flesh. They throb and the pain is fierce, but there’s no sign of infection, so I wrap them again, adding a fresh cushion of gauze to protect my palms.

  Patrick has gone out, dressed up in his work suit as usual. I wanted to ask him where he was going, but the words wouldn’t come. He’s left some money on the table, only a few pound coins, but I gather them and run upstairs.

  I pull open my top drawer, looking for the envelope I’ve hidden at the back, slowly filling with any odd bits of money I find. I stuff the coins into it—there’s been barely thirty pounds since I bought Mia’s train ticket and it makes me laugh, a snort with a hysterical edge. This is my running-away fund? Thirty fucking quid? I can’t get money out on my card: we’re so far overdrawn that the bank will say no. We’re living on Patrick’s credit card, which he keeps on him at all times. I’ve already cut back on the food shopping so I can squirrel away a few more pounds.

  A knock on the door makes me jump and I push the envelope back into the drawer. Dammit. Anna’s not going to give up. I march to the front door and pull it open, but no one’s there. A feather floats up and gets caught in my hair. More swirl around me, and when I look down, I think it’s a dead bird on the step, but when I crouch and look closer, it’s a box lined with soft gray and white feathers and in it is another shell, the twin of the one I carried around in my coat pocket and then displayed in the cabinet.

  Sometimes when I held that shell to my ear, I didn’t hear the sea. Instead I heard whispering and strained to pick up the words. Sometimes I could hear the whispers floating on the air, too faint to make out. The children hear them too. Mia wakes up crying and Joe gets jumpier every day.

  I think Patrick hears them, but he’d never admit it. He keeps going outside at night, looking for the watcher. After the night he thought he saw the watcher, he stopped accusing me of paranoia. He got someone in to measure up for new curtains, thick, heavy ones that block out every chink of light downstairs and in our room.

  “No one can spy on us now,” he said, pulling them closed in the living room.

  The walls crept closer. I’ve never been claustrophobic before, but those velvet curtains look stronger than steel bars blocking the window, sealing us in, just the four of us, locked up in the Murder House.

  I lift the box up, then Patrick’s there, snatching it out of my hand before I can pick up the shell. “Where did you get this?” he says.

  “I didn’t—it was on the doorstep.”

  He pushes past me, striding out into the road, looking up and down the street, the box still in his hands. Then he hurls it down onto the rocky beach and all the feathers fly up, a swirling storm around his head. “Leave us alone!” he shouts to the empty street.

  Losing it, I think. He’s losing it. Things are escalating, aren’t they? Anna’s voice echoes in my head as Patrick sho
ves past me again, sending me stumbling into the door frame. I watch him snatch up his keys, get into the car, and drive off, swerving across the road and speeding up as he reaches the corner. I hear the wind chimes again, louder, discordant, and press the heels of my hands against my ears.

  I lock the door with a painful twist and walk away, ignoring Lyn Barrett’s twitching curtains. I’m halfway up the coast path, thinking of nothing but getting away from that bloody house, when the mist starts rolling in. It’s nothing new; I’ve become used to it—the world disappearing. But I’m on the coast path alone, three feet from the cliff edge. The mist is damp and cold and there are footsteps behind me. Is it Patrick? Anna?

  I slow and so do the footsteps. I’m poised again, on the cusp Joe paints me on: fight or flight? Always, before, my choice has been run, hide. Block out the world. Pills, wine, hide behind Patrick, hide from the truth, hide from… everything.

  But I’m not going to do that anymore.

  A second passes and I turn. A man steps out of the fog. “Sarah?”

  I should have run. I should have screamed. I should now—run, scream, both. It feels like the world has gone, but it’s all still there. I’m only five minutes from the house.

  He steps closer and it’s Tom Evans. I don’t know whether to be relieved or more scared. He looks like a stranger, a man full of demons.

  “Don’t run,” he says, his hand shooting out to grab my sleeve. “I’m not here to… Don’t be scared.”

  We’re hidden in the mist, the only people stupid enough to be out. My heart is pounding so hard I believe in this moment that a person could die of fright.

  “Let me go,” I say.

  He drops my arm and moves back, his own hands held up. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  I tuck my bandaged hands farther into the sleeves of my coat. “What do you want?”

  I can hear Patrick’s voice in my head, whispering what he’d said when we watched that row of people staring up at the house: They’re waiting for it to happen again.

  “I saw you come up here. I left you so many messages, but you didn’t return my calls.”

  “You have to stop calling, Tom. I’m sorry I contacted you. I never would have if I’d known you were still so…”

  “So what?”

  Obsessed. Disturbed. I can’t say that to the man standing in front of me trembling, can I? Looking barely older than Joe—Joe with all his pain and scars. “Have you told your doctor you’ve been calling and visiting me?”

  He laughs. “My doctor fucked up.”

  “I think you need to try to let this go.” I wince at my own words. Isn’t that what Patrick said to me? Let it go, Sarah. If I’d done that, would I be here now? Would everything be such a mess if I’d been able to do as Patrick asked and pretend the murders never happened? That Ian Hooper being released meant nothing to us?

  “You were the one who contacted me. You were the one who brought me back here,” Tom says, and the additional weight settles on the burden of guilt I already carry for so many things. “And you were right to do that,” he says, reaching out and clutching my arm again. “I can help you now and you can help me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hooper’s out, and he shouldn’t be. He should have rotted and died in prison for what he did to my family.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, but what can I do?”

  “Not you—your husband.”

  I shake my head to rid it of the buzz of his words. I can’t hear what he’s about to tell me. “Patrick doesn’t know anything.”

  “You’re wrong. He was there. He was with Dad the night of the murders. They were in the pub together.”

  “No—no, that’s not true. I’m sorry, Tom, but—”

  “He gave evidence in court.”

  “What?” I’m frozen by his words. He’s deranged. Patrick is right: he’s delusional. “No, he didn’t. I would know.” But I stopped looking, didn’t I? After I contacted Tom, I stopped my research into the murders. I stopped wanting to know all the horrible details.

  “He did. He told the court they were in the pub together until ten, so there was no way…” His voice trails off.

  He has to be lying. Patrick would have told me he’d been called to give evidence. But Patrick never told me he and John Evans were friends. Patrick never told me he was visiting this town while I was at home with Joe and Mia.

  “There was always doubt,” Tom says, looking into the fog, not at me. “I was a kid hiding under the bed while my entire family was murdered.”

  There’s an odd distance to his voice, a lack of emotion that reverberates, sends prickles across my skin.

  “I remember… Mum tucked me in, but I had a bad dream and woke up, so I was under the bed playing because I didn’t want to go back to sleep. I heard shouting. I heard a man shouting and my mum screaming, and I saw… My door was open and I saw Dad and Mum in their room struggling and Mum was screaming at Dad and she—she fell. Billy rushed out of his room and I closed my eyes then and I put my hands over my ears until the screaming stopped.” He takes a deep, shaky breath.

  “When I came out, it was quiet and I thought… I thought it was over. But then I heard more voices. I went to the top of the stairs and I saw Hooper with the knife and I saw my dad fall. I told them that the first time.” He looks back at me. “But before Mum and Billy stopped screaming, I heard the things Dad said. He was shouting at Mum. He was shouting, I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you all.”

  He gives me a ghost of a smile that chills me inside.

  “I spent my whole childhood telling myself I was wrong. I’d been mistaken. Dad wasn’t a good man all the time, but he wasn’t a monster. I didn’t want to be the monster’s son. I told my grandfather once and he said the same. He said I was wrong and I should never, ever tell anyone. So I didn’t. And then, at the trial, Mr. Walker said he was with Dad and it made me feel better, because I must have gotten it wrong—it wasn’t Dad I saw and heard shouting at Mum. I was confused—maybe I fell asleep and was dreaming. It must have been Hooper, because Mr. Walker said Dad was with him.”

  I breathe in but can’t let the breath out. I hold it until my chest hurts.

  “But it never went away,” Tom says. “Hooper was never convicted of my mum’s and brother’s murders. Not enough bloody evidence. He was there with the knife in his hand… It had to be him.”

  He looks at me. His hand relaxes on my arm. “I need Mr. Walker—I need Patrick to talk to them again. He knows the truth. He can tell the truth and Hooper will be locked up again. Then this will stop,” he says, letting go of my arm. He hits himself hard on the forehead, clenches his hand into a fist, and hits himself again. “I want it to stop—I want to stop hearing my dad say those words.” He lets his hand drop and there’s a red mark on his forehead.

  “It’s why I sold Mr. Walker the house—it’s why I agreed to see you the first time. He knows the truth about the murders and he knows the truth about the house, what it does to people. You should have listened to me before—you should have gotten out then.”

  I back away from him, my heart hammering in my chest. Patrick was right about one thing even if he’s lied about everything else: Tom is disturbed.

  “Sarah?” Tom calls as I turn to run. I stop and glance back at him.

  “Did you get the box I left?”

  “You left the shell? Just now?”

  He looks blank. “Shell? No—the other week. You weren’t there so I left it on the doorstep.”

  “What?” Then I remember the box with my name on it that Patrick took.

  “It was photographs. From before. My dad and your husband. The house.”

  “I haven’t… Patrick took the box.” I see a shadow cross his face. There are only a few years between him and Joe, but right now he looks decades older.

  “When we moved into the house, there was… You should look at the walls,” he says.

  “The walls?” I remember t
he pictures from those newspaper cuttings, the edge of drawings under Joe’s peeling wallpaper.

  “Behind the wallpaper. In the room that used to be mine. That’s how I know Mr. W—Patrick understands about the house. What it does.” I don’t like the way he says Patrick’s name, through gritted teeth, spitting it out.

  His gaze skitters away from mine and he stares back down the path toward the house. It drifts into view in a break in the mist, and I see Anna on the doorstep. When I glance back at Tom, I realize he’s been watching me watching Anna.

  “You should be careful, Sarah.”

  I turn away, but I don’t move. “Leave me alone, Tom.”

  When I turn back he’s gone, swallowed by the mist.

  Anna is still standing on the doorstep, hunched over, her hands in her pockets. She looks like she’s just gotten up: her hair is all over the place and she’s not wearing any makeup. Close up, she smells of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to check you were okay. I saw Patrick leave—he looked angry,” she says. I step past her to open the door, fumbling with the keys in my bandaged fingers, trying to hide them with my body.

  I haven’t invited her, but she follows me inside, still talking. “I saw his face as he left. What do you think is going to happen next? You think he’s going to come back and everything will be fine?”

  I ignore her and run upstairs, opening the drawer of Patrick’s bedside table, searching for Tom’s box of photos. There’s no box, but my hand closes on one photo, crumpled at the back of the drawer.

  I recognize Patrick immediately, even though he looks so much younger. He looks like the Patrick I met. The photo is taken outside the house, and even then, way, way before it became the Murder House, it still looks… dark. The windows are blank black eyes, the red door a bleeding mouth, hiding sharp teeth waiting to gobble up the smiling teenage Patrick.