Too Near the Dead

by Helen Grant

  There was no fight left in me. I did as he said. As we went down the stairs, Alice grabbed my arm again. “What happened?” she asked. “How did the fire start?”

  “I started it,” I said.

  “Holy crap,” said Alice. “Really?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why?” she asked.

  I couldn’t answer that. I couldn’t say: because I would have died otherwise. She wouldn’t have understood.

  When she realised that I wasn’t going to say anything, Alice said, “You’re going to be in deep shit, Fen.” She didn’t sound unsympathetic though. “You’re a law student, right? And I guess you’ve just broken the law. Are they even going to let you go on with it after that?”

  I looked her in the face for the first time. “I hope not,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The fire was ten years ago now, but still it’s on my mind as I set off for the town. I drive slowly, stretching the journey out, trying to relax. It’s no good, though. It’s not just ugly memories that are oppressing me.

  I can’t let James see that something’s wrong. If he pressed me to say what it is, what could I possibly tell him? I snooped into your mail and found your credit card bill, and then I tore it up? No. If that were all it was, I might get over it. The guilt would fade eventually. It’s not as though tearing up a single bill has really made a difference, after all. If James doesn’t pay it, the company will send a reminder. The thing that’s weighing on my mind is that awful sum, and the fact that he hasn’t told me about it. How can I act naturally, knowing that? How can I stop my thoughts from creeping into my expression every time James suggests some new expense? I know he develops sudden urgent desires to have something – a particular book, a piece of music. He likes to make spontaneous plans to go out, to see a film or try a new restaurant. I’ve always loved his impulsive nature, but now I’m asking myself if it’s recklessness. I don’t want to think like this. It makes me start wondering all over again about the meaning behind the dreams.

  Beside me on the passenger seat, my phone buzzes quietly.

  Belle, I think. I could pull over. Now I’m out of the house, out of earshot, I could take the call, and discuss the whole thing with her.

  My hands tighten on the wheel. No, I say to myself. I’m going to fix those dreams. That’s what I’m going to do. I try to focus on that. If I were sleeping better, if I didn’t lie down every night worrying about what was going to happen after I’d closed my eyes, well, I’d probably cope better with everything else. I’d be able to think about that credit card bill in a more objective way.

  I drive through the town to the medical centre, which is a low modern building, decked out inside with light-coloured paint and pine wood, a style with uncomfortable associations for me. I’ve only ever been here once before, to sign on with the practice. I park outside and sit in the car for a couple of minutes. Part of me wants to start the car up again, turn it around and drive away. What am I going to say to the doctor? I rub my face with my hands. I’m not going to tell her everything. There was that night when James came home from Spain and I thought I saw something – or someone – by one of the trees on the drive; I won’t be mentioning that. Bad dreams are one thing, outright hallucinations and delusions are another. After the fire, I had enough of talking therapy to last me a lifetime. I don’t want anyone else picking over the contents of my brain. No. I’m going to concentrate on fixing the dreams. Maybe sleeping tablets would do the trick. Or maybe it will be enough just to hear that it’s a perfectly normal problem – something loads of people suffer from.

  Night terrors, I think, pushing away the thought that they don’t feel like terrors, they feel real.

  I get out of the car and go into the surgery. After seventeen minutes sitting between a small boy with a runny nose and an old lady turning over the pages of The People’s Friend with avid interest, I hear my name called.

  Dr. McEwan is a bespectacled older woman, brisk and friendly. As she listens to what I have to say, her smile of welcome is slowly smoothed away and replaced with a frown of concentration.

  “That sounds unpleasant,” she says, after I’ve described the dream of lying in my coffin as the lid is nailed down.

  “Yes,” I say gratefully, squeezing my hands together in my lap. It’s a relief to tell someone all this. Just using the word “dreams” seems to make them a little less real. “I really want them to stop. I’m getting a bit nervous about going to sleep.”

  “Hmmm,” she says, and she glances at the computer screen. “I see from your records that you’ve been prescribed anti-depressants in the past. Those can cause vivid dreaming in some people... but I see that was some time ago. You’ve not taken them recently?”

  I shake my head. “Not for years.”

  “Any other medication? Non-prescription medicines? Or–” She hesitates.

  “No,” I say firmly. “I don’t even take aspirin very often. And I’ve never taken... you know, drugs.”

  “Good,” she says encouragingly. “Alcohol consumption – moderate?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Less than 14 units a week. I mean, mostly. Maybe not at Christmas...”

  Dr. McEwan smiles. “We’ll let you off on that one. What about stress? Are you under a lot of stress at the moment?”

  “Well,” I say, “I’ve got a few things on my mind, I suppose.” When the doctor doesn’t reply, I realise she is waiting for me to go on. “It’s not all that long since we moved up here and they say moving house is stressful, don’t they? Even if you’re quite happy about making the move. And we’re getting married, so there’s all the wedding planning to do. I mean, obviously I’m thrilled to be getting married, but it’s still a lot of work – organising everything–”

  Stop wittering, Fen, I say to myself. I smile tentatively, trying to show that everything is alright; there’s no stress in my life that isn’t perfectly normal stress.

  The doctor looks at me for a few moments and I have the disconcerting feeling that she can see exactly what’s going through my head. Then she says, “Well, nightmares can definitely result from stress, so that’s a possibility. When things have settled down, they might stop on their own. In the meantime, I’d like you to keep a sleep diary.” She grabs a pen and paper and starts writing. “I’d like you to keep a note of when you go to bed, how long you slept, whether you woke up in the night, things like that... There’s a website you can look at with all the things you should note, so I’m going to give you the address for that.”

  “Can’t you just give me something temporarily to help with it?” I ask her, dismayed.

  She looks at me over the top of her glasses. “It probably wouldn’t help,” she says. “I sometimes prescribe melatonin for patients who can’t get to sleep, but that’s not really your problem, is it? The problem is what happens when you are asleep. And some medication for poor sleep can actually cause vivid dreaming, and occasionally even sleepwalking.” I suppose the disappointment is visible on my face, because she adds, “If stress is the cause, it’s possible that keeping the sleep diary might help a bit, because it’s giving you back a feeling of control. And if the problem persists, there is a sleep clinic I can refer you to, although it’s private. But you should keep the diary first.”

  “Alright,” I say numbly. I take the piece of paper with the web address on it. “Thank you.”

  I walk out of the surgery with my head down, my fingers crumpling the piece of paper in my pocket. The sleep diary is probably a sensible idea, but it isn’t going to make the dreams any easier to bear. I think about the first one, about the horror of waking up sealed inside a coffin, dressed in all my bridal glory but boxed up tightly like a doll, feeling the last of the air running out, utterly helpless... I shiver. No. I can’t imagine keeping a diary giving me any sense of control.

  I get back into my car, and as I start the e
ngine the first spots of rain hit the windscreen. I drive home with the windscreen wipers going and the distant view dissolving into grey mizzle.

  Stress, I think. Can I really put my nighttime torments down to that? And what can I do about it, anyway? I can’t change anything about Stephen, or my parents. I suppose I could decide how to tackle the question of James’s credit card bill. I remind myself that there’s the practicality too: once the debt is out in the open, we need to pay it off, and that means saving elsewhere. A smaller wedding. A shorter honeymoon. No honeymoon at all.

  The thought of discussing those things freely and making the necessary decisions together is persuasive and comforting, like a postcard from a beautiful and distant island. To cross the distance between here and there, that is the difficult thing – how to bring up the fact that I not only opened James’s post but destroyed it afterwards. I rehearse different openings to this conversation in my head and none of them sounds right to me. I grimace, peering at the wet road ahead. Some people would probably say that what James has done is far worse than opening someone else’s letter. He has hidden something from me – something that affects us both. Twenty-two thousand pounds. The thought makes me want to put my head in my hands. But I don’t want to get into an argument about who has been more wrong. I love James. I don’t want to get into an argument at all. I want to be in the happy place on other side of that conversation, the place where we sort it all out together.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It rains all that day, but the next morning dawns bright and sunny, with a clarity that makes me think of blinking back tears. I am up before James, standing by the kitchen window with a mug of hot tea in my hands, looking out at the landscape gilded by the early sunlight. The light has an unusual quality that I have seen before on clear days, as though the contrast between light and shade has been sharpened, and the autumn colours have been subtly enriched. It makes me think of a striking effect I once saw during a solar eclipse: as darkness moved across the face of the sun, the shadows became more deeply graven and every aspect of the view was thrown into sharper relief. But today there is no dark canker eating into the face of the sun.

  My laptop is open on the work surface behind me, its screen dark. If I tapped one of the keys, it would spring back into life and reveal the title page of the thriller writer’s latest oeuvre. It landed in my inbox at five o’clock last night, no doubt sent by his editor moments before she left the office for the evening. It is hard not to imagine her shrugging on her coat, clicking on send and then scurrying for the door, like a ship going full steam from the site of a depth charge.

  I had a look at the new manuscript last night when it came in, and it’s just as bad as I expected. It begins with a sex scene liberally peppered with words like genitals, which is the least sexy word in the entire world if you ask me – even less charged with erotic force than words like toenail. Reading this scene has most definitely not left me gasping for more. It’s going to take a considerable amount of effort and concentration to turn it into anything I could read without wincing. I should probably get to work on it as soon as I’ve finished drinking my tea. Instead, I gaze out at the late autumn sunshine and decide that this morning is the morning when I absolutely have to go and look for Barr Dubh’s ruined chapel. This is not entirely a work evasion tactic. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from living in Perthshire, it’s that you have to take advantage of fine weather whenever you get it. By this afternoon it may be pouring with rain again.

  The aroma of hot coffee drifts through the kitchen; I put the coffee maker on when I came down. There’s still no sign of James coming downstairs, so I take a mug up to him. He is in the bathroom, running hot water for a shave, and for a few moments I watch him silently through the doorway. Then he catches sight of me in the mirror and turns.

  “You’re up early, Fen,” he says.

  “Not that early,” I say, lightly. “Anyway, I have things to do.”

  “Sounds intriguing,” he says.

  “I’m going to go and look for that ruined chapel. Do you want to come?”

  “Yes,” he says, and then, “No. Damn it. I said I’d talk to Laura at nine thirty.”

  “I could wait,” I offer.

  “No,” he says. “I can see you’re dying to go and look. Just make sure you show me where it is, if you find it.”

  “Sure.” I linger for a moment, but I suppose he’s right; I should go. I’m already dressed in jeans, a shirt and a sweater; now I put on gloves, boots and a padded jacket to keep out the cold autumn air. Five minutes later the front door bangs shut behind me and I’m crunching over the gravel. It’s a very fresh morning; I can see my breath on the air. In the trees, a flock of starlings chitters.

  To get to the area where the chapel ought to be – if the old man we spoke to was right – I will have to cross the rough pasture and head for the treeline at the other side. There is a gate in the fence that separates the garden from the pasture, so I head for that. It takes me a little while to work out how to open it: there’s a kind of lever, and it’s so stiff that at first I think I’m doing something wrong. I pause for a moment, frustrated, and glance towards the spot I’m trying to reach, as though wanting to get there badly enough will somehow do the trick. Then I stop thinking about the gate and stand there staring.

  There’s someone there again – and if I’m not mistaken, it’s the same person I saw once before. I see that same sudden billow of light-coloured fabric, as though the wind has caught at a dress or long coat.

  Lavender, I think. Once again I wonder whether this whole thing about lavender being unlucky isn’t some spiteful in-joke the locals like to play on newcomers. Whoever it is over there doesn’t have any objection to wearing that colour, that’s certain. I shade my eyes with my hand. It must be a woman, surely? The volume of fabric and the delicate colour suggest a dress, though one entirely impractical for walking outdoors at this time of year. The fact that it’s in the very same spot as before gives me pause. Perhaps I am just seeing a piece of something caught on a branch or wire, animated by the wind.

  I glance back at the house. Should I go back inside and call James? That seems like overreacting. I hesitate for a moment, and then I grasp the lever on the gate again and yank it as hard as I can. At last it moves with a metallic screech. I open the gate and slip through, and it closes behind me with a clang that is clear and resonant in the cold air. Then I look towards the treeline again and that patch of lavender has gone.

  Scared off? The trespassing laws are more relaxed here than in England, but I suppose most people don’t want to get into a debate with a landowner. I watch for a moment, but there is no sign of movement over there. I set off, treading cautiously over thistles and coarse grass. It takes a while for me to cross the field. Soon the exposed skin of my face is tingling in the cold air. My breath drifts after me in a delicate mist.

  As I get closer to the treeline, I can see that there is a wire fence separating it from the pasture. The fence has been there a long time: there are tangles of thick brambles growing through it in places. Under the trees there is damp darkness. I cannot see anyone moving about in there. I pause for a moment, my gloved hand on the fence, and listen. I can hear the breeze rustling through the dry autumn leaves and the distant cawing of crows and the sound of my own breathing, but nothing else. No footsteps crunching through the mulch on the other side of the fence. No whisper of fabric flowing with the movement of the body under it.

  I test the fence with my hand. I don’t think I can climb over it, but by pulling apart the top two wires I can make a gap that is just about wide enough to duck through. The top wire scrapes across the back of my padded jacket; if it were barbed wire it would be impossible to do this without sticking fast. On the other side, I straighten up, dusting my gloved hands together, and look around me.

  This patch of woodland looks neglected. Here and there, trees have fallen
, and have lain there so long that the trunks are thick with green moss. One of them has fallen against the fence, bending the wires with its weight and loosening one of the wooden posts, but nobody has come to remove it. The ground is so covered with branches and brambles and the remains of summer weeds that it will be difficult to explore. There is no sign of a path. I step further into the shadowy place under the canopy of trees and twigs crackle under my feet, but I can’t see so much as a rabbit’s track.

  This is a surprise. I’ve seen the person in lavender – assuming it was a person – several times here, so I just assumed there was a path. Nobody wearing a long dress or cloak could get over these fallen tree trunks and sprawling brambles without a lot of difficulty. I turn and scan the fence area but there is no sign of anything that could have been mistaken for clothing billowing in the wind – no piece of tarpaulin caught on the wire or on a jagged branch. I frown, biting my lip. A mystery.

  I venture further in, stepping high over fallen branches, steadying myself on tree trunks that are damp and black. It smells damp in here too – a subtle but pervasive odour of wet organic decay. It is hard to imagine there ever having been a building in here, and if there was, the chances of my stumbling over it in this snarled mess of vegetation must be minimal. All the same, I keep going, though more than once I have to stop to disentangle myself. Unhooking the fabric of my jacket carefully from a jagged twig, I glance back towards the field, and Barr Dubh House, and the sunshine. It makes me think of looking out from a tunnel.

  Not long after that, I come across the first stone. It is damp and green, and furred with moss like the fallen trees, but the rectangular shape of it stands out. It looks made, not grown like everything else. I touch it gingerly with the toe of my boot, feeling the uncompromising solidity of stone. Then I look around for others, and pretty soon I have picked them out; they are scattered across the forest floor, almost meaningfully, like a series of stepping stones leading away from the spot where I am standing. I follow them, picking my way carefully, and soon I see a section of rough stone wall, pockmarked with age.