by R. H. Dixon
Natasha closed her eyes and ground her teeth together; Granddad had been dead for the past eight years and Aunty Gina had grown up sensibly and got married long before that. Natasha had learned not to say as much, though, the old news about Granddad was always new news to her mother. To go on correcting her would be an act of cruelty. It was just unfortunate that each time Natasha referred to her own dad, Peter Graham, her mother never seemed to remember that she had a husband. As a consequence Natasha’s dad had stopped visiting a long time ago, the experience much too upsetting, but he still sent his love. A lot of the time Diane didn’t remember who Natasha was either, which caused resentment to fester. A large, angry mass of debilitating hopelessness that Natasha had to fight to suppress. None of this was fair.
‘Gina stopped by earlier,’ her mother said. ‘For my shoes. The navy courts with the white bows. I said she could lend them.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Hmmm. Brought me some flowers too. She’s a good lass, our Gina.’ Diane leaned forward, the ridge of her clavicle bone sharp above the v-neck flannelette nightdress she was wearing. ‘They don’t last long in here though. See?’ She pointed to the carnations. ‘They’re dying.’
Natasha breathed deeply. ‘No, Mam. I just brought those flowers for you, not Aunt Gina. They’re fresh.’
‘They are?’ Diane looked at Natasha as though seeing her for the first time.
‘Yes.’
‘Who are you again?’
‘Natasha.’
‘Oh.’ Her mother’s eyes glazed over. ‘That’s a pretty name. Do I know you?’
‘Yes.’
Diane seemed to ponder this for a while, becoming silent and retreating back to whatever thoughts her broken subconscious plied her with. Her fingers started tapping out a tune on the bedsheet again. Natasha’s eyes felt hot. She listened to the fly. Bzzzzz. Bzzz. Bzzzzzp. Found that on some level she could relate to it.
‘I’ve got a daughter, you know,’ Diane announced quite suddenly, spreading her hands flat over her stomach.
‘I know.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah.’ She smiled a faraway smile, her eyes distant, unreachable.
Natasha’s lip trembled. She leaned across and stroked the back of her mother’s hand.
‘Would you do me a favour?’ Diane asked, looking down at the unfamiliar hand on her own.
‘Of course.’
‘My little girl, can you give her a message?’
‘Yes.’
‘She has long brown hair, just like yours, and the biggest, golden brown eyes you’ll ever see. You’ll know her when you see her.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘You are?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good, as long as you are.’
‘Absolutely. What’s the message?’
‘When you see her…’
‘Yes?’
‘Tell her I love her.’
_
…
_
Natasha awoke on the couch, tears soaking her cheeks and dampening the cushion beneath her head. The living room was now dark save for the glow from the television, which lit up the furniture with intermittent flashes.
Oh Mam.
Wiping the heel of her hand across her cheeks, Natasha sat up. As she did her stomach spasmed, a searing hot agony that made her yelp. Sucking in air through clenched teeth, she rocked forward and swung her feet to the floor.
‘Ow, ow, ow…OW!’
Maverick, who had made the back of the couch his own snoozing zone at some point, flew past her head and landed on the floor. He pelted towards the open doorway, as though he was chasing something unseen, then his ghostly form came to a stop once he’d reached the door. He turned back to Natasha and hissed, his needle teeth glistening under the high-drama of someone being murdered on BBC1, then darted out into the blackness of the hallway beyond. Natasha clutched her stomach and cried out again, this time in fright. Her hands met with a swollen, tender mound beneath her pyjama shirt which seemed to have a heartbeat all of its own. Tightly stretched skin pulsated strongly against her palms. She sprang to her feet. The painful cramping had begun to lessen in intensity but her head pounded as though her heart was pumping all of its blood there. In the throbbing darkness her eyes glittered with the threat of passing out, but she cradled her enlarged abdomen and staggered across the living room towards the light switch.
Before she got there another crippling contraction rendered her immobile. She dropped to her knees.
Oh God, I know this pain.
Her breaths came in short, sharp bursts and she hitched her shirt up to look at her stomach. In the low glow of the television the white flesh of her abnormally convex belly was as tight as the skin of a drum and covered in bulging, black varicose veins that moved like earthworms beneath the surface. Natasha’s mouth filled with saliva, an automatic reaction to her revulsion. She rocked backwards and retched hot wetness into her lap. Tears blurred her eyes and vomit burnt the back of her nose.
This can’t be real. It can’t be.
When this latest contraction began to subside she scrabbled to her feet and lurched for the light switch. Clean, white light filled the room, hurting her eyes. She blinked rapidly and looked down at her exposed stomach and found there was nothing there to see. Nothing but her usual flat and unblemished belly.
The glitter behind her eyes stormed to a blizzard and she fell forwards.
_
__
13
_
‘Were you having a bad dream?’ John’s hair was blowing about in the wind, dark strands sweeping across his eyes so that he had to keep brushing it upwards with his fingers. The blustery gusts cutting in from the sea seemed suddenly colder. He wondered if it was his imagination.
Seren shook her head and continued to poke holes in the cellophane bundle of uneaten sandwich crusts. ‘No.’
John’s neck prickled. He turned the collar of his fleece up. ‘So what are you saying, kidda?’
‘I already said. There was a strange woman in my bedroom last night. She had long black hair and was talking to me.’
‘What did she say?’
Kicking the backs of her shoes against the large rock they were sitting on, Seren looked towards the sea and shrugged. ‘I dunno.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘She was talking really quiet. I couldn’t hear.’
‘I see.’
‘No you don’t.’ She looked at him accusingly.
‘You’re right, I don’t. I think you were dreaming.’
‘It wasn’t a dream, Dad.’
‘Night terror then.’ He knew how chilling and confusing they could be. Perhaps they were hereditary. There was no fun to be had from the fevered state of mind and brief paralysis that came with being caught between the gossamer layer of sleep and full awakening. It was a horrible place to find yourself, hallucinogenic and disturbing, and certainly a condition conducive for imagining a dark figure at the foot of the bed.
‘It was real,’ she insisted.
‘You’d think a night terror was if you had one.’
‘Only, I didn’t.’
Even though his theory was more logical, a subtle feeling of dread began to creep over John. Why did the woman his daughter was telling him about give him internal chills that set his nerves on edge in a way that talk of Petey Moon never had?
‘What did she look like?’ he asked, wishing he hadn’t as soon as the words were out; feeding his daughter’s (and indeed his own) obscure, imaginative horror was hardly constructive.
‘I dunno, it was dark. She was over near the door.’
John made a half-hearted snort of amusement, a short exhalation from his nose. ‘It was probably Gran’s dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, silly.’
‘Since when do dressing gowns talk?’ she huffed. ‘Just because I’m six doesn’t mean I’m stupid, you know. I know what I saw. It was a woman.’
&nb
sp; ‘Well, it still sounds to me like you were having a bad dream. I’ve had that type before. The space between consciousness and unconsciousness is a funny place, kidda. Sometimes I’ve sworn something must have been real, but really it wasn’t.' He turned away from her unwavering blue gaze and stuffed the clear Tupperware box back into his backpack, he didn’t want her to see any element of doubt that might be showing on his face. He felt a renewed sense of foreboding about the previous night. About the strange sequence of occurrences he’d experienced himself. His mother’s dog hanging by its lead on the landing, draped in its own wet intestines. The sound of its blood dripping. The dark stain on the carpet. The god-awful smell. The deathly chill. And then the mould patch on the ceiling. Since he’d got up that morning he felt that he couldn’t ponder any of it for long because, even though on some instinctual level none of it felt right, he was meant to be the grown up here. He needed to keep his shit together and think rationally. He needed to be the level-headed one. Always. It was the excitement of the trip. It had to be. They were both experiencing some kind of combined emotional hysteria. That was all. ‘Come on, let’s get going,’ he said, standing and swinging the backpack over his shoulder.
The afternoon had darkened without them having realised. Clouds the colour of baby gulls churned above them, moving fast; sky-surf riding on the back of the increasing wind. The angler who had passed by some time ago was nowhere to be seen, swallowed by the sea or having written the day off as a bad one and sloped home to watch the football. John didn’t think the latter was a bad idea. He assumed a brisk pace and they made it back home just before the heavens opened.
There was no more talk of strange women in the house, not even when it was Seren’s bedtime. John had casually suggested she might like to swap rooms, but she wouldn’t have any of it.
‘What’re we doing tomorrow?’ she asked, climbing into bed next to Geller.
‘I dunno, trouble. I’ll have a think.’
A faint smell of bleach tainted the room, killing Judith Gimmerick’s floral blend with an unpleasant but inoffensive smell that stayed at the back of John’s nose, reminding him of newly cleaned toilets and the school janitor’s cupboard. He craned his neck and looked up at the ceiling. It was all white.
‘Can we go out again, like today?’
‘Maybe. If the weather behaves itself.’
Thunder grumbled in the distance like defiant back-chat and the wind spattered rain against the back of the house. Seren looked to the window and giggled nervously. Whatever the weather had in store for them the next day seemed irrelevant because right now it was creating the perfect conditions for bad dreams and ghosts.
Not good. Not good at all.
‘Want the light leaving on?’ he asked, taking Seren’s glasses and putting them on the bedside table.
She raised her eyebrows and shook her head, determined to prove that she had no problem sleeping there and that neither strange woman nor storm could oust her.
‘Goodnight then, kidda. Get some sleep and I’ll think of something cool for us to do tomorrow.’
At the doorway John flicked the light off and kept his gaze on the blackened room, allowing his eyes to adjust. The chest of drawers and slimline wardrobe soon became visible as rectangular silhouettes against the lighter walls and the bed was a black wedge against the far wall. There were no shapes that might be mistaken for a woman and his groping hand confirmed that there wasn’t a dressing gown or anything else hanging from the back of the door.
Shaking his head, he closed the door and went to his own room to collect his robe. His plan for the rest of the evening was to have a long soak in the bath, accompanied by a bottle of Norman’s Rioja from the wine rack in the kitchen. Lightning flashed as he slung the robe over his shoulder, highlighting everything in his mother’s bedroom in shades of grey. The subsequent roll of thunder was louder, much closer this time. He went to the window to see if he could catch any subsequent forked flashes of pink over the sea and found three dead flies on the sill. He pulled the curtains closed against their upturned bodies and headed downstairs. Thunder rolled, a deep resonant sound like stone grinding against stone, and he imagined the lid of a crypt being slid open somewhere beneath the house. The dead coming back to life. He stepped off the bottom stair and heard the unmistakable creak of the garden gate. He looked at his watch. Ten o’clock.
Here they come.
A quiet knock on the back door’s windowpane suggested a caller who didn’t want to disturb the entire household. But the fact the caller was at the back door and not the front suggested familiarity, someone who sought a late-night answer. Otis and Mindy beat John to the kitchen, their noses pressed to the tiny gap between the door and its frame, their bodies shivering with suspense. John ushered them out of the way and opened the door.
‘You again?’
Pamela Tanner was standing on the doorstep beneath a red umbrella, a bottle of Echo Falls in her hand. There was an inebriated playfulness about her which implied she’d already been drinking. She smiled that porcelain veneer smile of hers and said, ‘Hey handsome, wondered if you could do with a bit of company? I saw the bedroom light go off, presumed the little 'un must be in bed.’
John stared, unsure how to respond. Was it by chance she’d seen Seren’s light blink out or had she been actively watching and waiting? The latter was almost too creepy to consider.
‘So, are you gonna invite me in out of this rain or what?’ Pam said, stepping forward.
John moved back so she didn’t brush against him as she forced her way inside. She shook the excess water from her brolly outside then shut the door behind her, sealing them in together so that John felt both trapped and imposed upon. His throat constricted.
‘Filthy isn’t it?’ she said, kicking her crystal-embellished pumps off and walking barefooted to the counter with her bottle of wine.
‘What is?’ John saw how her feet made sweaty prints on the floor tiles, or maybe it was rain water residue, and how black tattoo ink swirled around both feet in complex symmetrical designs contrasting with toenails painted prohibition-red to match her lips.
‘The weather.’ She put a hand on her hip and stood in a way that invited him to look at her.
John shrugged as if the weather was none of his business. He noticed that she smelt of rain, fresh air and perfume, and that her shop-bought smell was a grown up, no-messing fragrance. Strong and bold. There was nothing floral-light or fruity-sweet about Pamela Tanner. She wore a black Lycra tube dress that came down to her knees, clinging to her everywhere it touched and emphasising her confidence. She was trim but ample, he saw. Shapely in all the right places but with subtle lumps and bumps above her knicker-line and below where her bra sat. Her outfit would make most women half her age feel self-conscious, but she was simply owning that dress. Pamela Tanner exhibited a cool fierceness, a fierceness of which John was automatically wary. She was way more trouble than he needed. Way too old for him too. He ran his hands down his face and took a deep breath.
Oh man, how will I get out of this alive?
‘You seem like the quiet sort,’ Pam said, turning her back to him while she unscrewed the top off the wine bottle. Without being prompted she reached into the cupboard where Judith Gimmerick kept her wine glasses and took two out. ‘As you can tell, I’m not shy so I thought I’d make the first move.’
John surrendered any of the half-formed comebacks that came into his head before they could reach his mouth. He was completely out of touch with the ritual of blatant flirting, especially when he had no desire to join in and play the game. This was no fun at all. And something about the way she looked at him so brazenly, like she was undressing him with her eyes, made him feel awkwardly juvenile. He hated this.
She laughed at his obvious discomfort, the sound a warming purr. ‘Hey chill out, fella. Just having a bit of friendly banter, that’s all. I hate thunder, gives me the heebie-jeebies. I’ve come round for a drink and chat. No harm in that is there?’
‘Not at all. Make yourself at home,’ John said, finding his voice at last and injecting it with a detectable amount of sarcasm that he was pleased with. He watched as she poured the wine, unfazed. Otis and Mindy were still fussing around her legs, evidently a damn sight happier about her being there than he was.
‘Here.’ She reached out and offered John a glass of red, demanding eye contact as she did. Her fingers deliberately touched his when he accepted. She smiled, her eyes holding his without reprieve. John was the first to look away, taking a generous mouthful of wine while thinking he’d need a lot more, and fast, to get through the next few hours. Although not a pushover, he couldn’t think how he might tell Pamela Tanner to get lost without causing some neighbourly rift that his mother wouldn’t thank him for. This was just awful.
Pam took a sip from her glass then led John through to the lounge, which made him even more concerned about how the evening might pan out.
Just go with the flow. Drink more wine and go with the flow.
She sat down at one end of the couch so he took the armchair, the furthest seat away. This seemed to amuse her. Her eyes sparkled. She positioned herself straight-backed on the edge of the couch’s cushion as though she was the epitome of elegance, but really it was the best posture for her to keep, John thought, to avoid unflattering midriff folds.
‘I told Jude I’d look after the house,’ she said.
‘Hmmm.’ John could understand why his mother had declined the offer.
‘I’m pleased it turned out this way, though.’ She took another drink of wine, her tongue lingering on the edge of her glass.
‘Which way’s that?’
‘This way, dopey. You being here.’
‘You are?’
‘Yeah, you and me, we’ll get along like a house on fire during the next few weeks.’ She knocked her shoulders back and sucked her stomach in by about half an inch.
‘Hmmm.’ John’s eyes wandered to the photographic line-up of his family on the mantel, his body language deliberately as unenthusiastic as his verbal response. He didn’t dare ask what she had in mind.