He supposed she’d take care of that, too.
Perhaps in the morning. Sandpaper.
After locking the double stable doors, a long and rattling bolt, a funny thing to find out here so deep in the coastal hinterland, he thought, he secured the windows. More rattling bolts. Then fed the woodstove. He’d tossed aside the rotting wood from the woodpile out front earlier, tossing it into the long wet grass, unsure if rotting wood was healthy to burn, figuring it was most likely not, and relieved to find more suitable and quite dry wood beneath it.
Lastly, he turned off the lights.
Allowing the darkness to fold over him.
He then took a moment for himself in the stone cottage darkness, taking in his new surroundings. The thick stone walls managing to mute the nocturnal world beyond them. The dark sea pounding against the cliff of black slate. The creepy-crawly things lurking in the dark woods. The only sound holding any authority inside the cottage at the moment the stack of dry wood crackling contently in the woodstove, its reflective orange light dancing about on the interior stone walls. Flickering and swaying. Peaceful. Almost.
Until Oliver felt a cold draft.
Stalking him. A cold slippery thing.
Causing the tiny hairs on his neck to rise.
Gooseflesh to pop on his arms.
For a moment he just stood there.
Perfectly still after it had gone.
Wondering if he’d only imagined it.
Only a product of his heavy exhaustion.
But then, there. There it was again.
Teasing him. Caressing him gently.
The tiny hairs on his neck stiffening.
The gooseflesh dimpling harder.
Of course, upon later reflection, he should’ve known instantly from whence this cold eddy had come. Perhaps, he would consider later after it had all begun and could no longer be undone, he’d not wanted to know, not in the very beginning of things, perhaps. Perhaps especially not in the very beginning of things. Instead, belying commonsense, Oliver found himself shuffling forward through the dancing specter of orange light. Flickering and swaying. As if begging to be played with. That dancing specter of orange light. Embracing its radiating warmth as he stupidly convinced himself to re-check those double stable doors with their faint ghostly apparitions and the small lace-curtained windows with their dark brown wooden borders. Only to find them all quite properly fastened.
It was then the cold reached for him again.
Reached for him like a cold black hand.
Through all that dancing orange light.
Seemingly leaping and cavorting now.
Spasming and screaming silently.
As if a thing being electrocuted.
Before quite abruptly withering.
Falling right off the thick stone walls.
As if now retreating in solemn defeat.
After voicing its shrill warning.
The orange flames in the woodstove synchronously slumping. Their crackle hushing. And their bed of hot coals dulling.
The shadows growing bolder. Darker.
Moving forward into the hollow spaces.
Abandoned by the orange light.
The cold black hand then seemed to seize at the back of Oliver’s neck, its long and cold and black fingers sinking down into his hair-stiff flesh.
Reminding him of that eerie sensation earlier in the day.
What had felt like a hand falling on his back.
Gently encouraging him forward. Forward toward that old rickety staircase and that unsettling inky cellar darkness waiting for him below.
Ethan’s own hands buried deep in his pockets.
That cold black hand slowly turned his head now.
Slowly, very slowly, turned his head.
Revealing to him the cellar door.
The cellar door stood open.
Oliver’s forehead furrowed as he mulled over that open cellar door. He couldn’t recall opening it after closing it earlier in the day following Ethan’s tour. Then again, to be fair, given his exhaustion, he couldn’t necessarily remember actually closing it, either.
Certainly not latching, anyway.
Oliver’s feet began shuffling again, moving toward that open cellar door and away from the properly secured double stable doors and the small lace-curtained windows with their dark brown wooden borders. The cold damp air from the cellar swirling about him, causing a tingling numbness in his cheekbones and his extremities, tugging and cajoling him as if silently begging to be played with not unlike the dancing orange flames on the stone walls only moments before, the same orange flames now oddly conquered and reduced to small hissing things in the ever-darkening woodstove.
Oliver stopped before the cellar entrance.
Before that old rickety staircase.
Falling steeply down into the darkness.
Vanishing into that black hole.
And once again, as before, felt that cold black hand fall on his back, gently encouraging him forward toward that dark descending maw.
Sucking in a tremulous breath, he held his ground this time, digging in fast his heels, and reaching for the cellar door, his own hand, somehow pale in the darkness, actually trembling. Actually trembling as it finally managed to locate the door’s edge.
Quite thick and prickly with age.
He pushed the door closed.
That naughty cellar door.
Despite its thickness and weight and large rusted hinges, the cellar door swung easily. The simple act ending with a soft muffling sound. Well-worn wood slotting against well-worn wood.
The orange flames suddenly jumped.
Coming back to life. Soaring again.
Soaring high on the interior stone walls.
Hissing and crackling and spitting.
Startling him again. Not unlike a schoolgirl.
He might have even shrieked a little.
He really, really, was exhausted.
Still, Oliver would remember later after it had all begun and could no longer be undone the sound of that well-worn wood slotting against that well-worn wood. That soft muffling sound.
Sealing the dark dank air below.
Not unlike a tomb, he would think.
But tonight, Oliver left it behind, the cellar door, and the dark cellar beyond it, and ascended the narrow staircase to his right below the weak ceiling lamp, resisting a most terrible urge to casually glance back down over his shoulder to make absolutely certain that cellar door remained shut, his ears nevertheless pricked for the soft creak of those rusted hinges down there in the heavy shadows, but hearing nothing more than the gentle creak of the warped staircase beneath him as he flipped off the weak ceiling lamp as he passed by the linen closet and eschewed the hollow bedroom facing east with the large antique mirror and dark radiator for the sparsely furnished bedroom facing the dark and moonless sea to the west with its twin bed, tall wardrobe, and its own radiator in the corner.
Abby was already tucked in bed.
The only light a small table lamp.
Something brought from home.
Something from the city. Civilization.
Rather modern and odd-looking.
Odd-looking here in this distant place.
Along with the table it sat upon.
Also modern. Sleek lines.
Home, Oliver thought, and silently reprimanded himself. This place was now their home. And London only a memory of another life. Another place in time. Another world now gone by.
If a place of bright street lamps.
Traffic lights and crosswalks.
Twenty four hour take-away.
And blinking neon signs.
Of sleek and modern things.
He dodged more moving boxes -- things from that other life removed from the trailer behind the Audi in the muck. Things that would almost certainly look out of place just like the sleek modern table lamp and table. Things that would tug at the heart strings and produce a melancholic nostalgia, he co
nsidered, even as he deplored the insufferable thought as he climbed into the bed beside his wife, wondering, if not for the first time, despite himself, if it had been a mistake to uproot their life and journey here to this desolate rock in the middle of the Irish Sea -- wondering if it was possible to run far enough away to have a new home and to begin a new life without their old home and their old life forever haunting them.
Perhaps new furniture, he considered.
Things to possess new memories.
Perhaps simply that in the end.
The mattress sagged beneath his weary bones as if whispering to him its own counsel, the box spring whining gently:
Seeming to suggest of him:
Head on pillow, dear boy. Sleep. Rest.
Abby set aside a book and her reading glasses as if heeding the same advice. She turned off the table lamp. Slipped deeper beneath the bedsheets as the darkness collapsed heavily upon them.
They lay in the moonless darkness.
Listening to the cottage around them.
This old stone cottage by the sea.
The low rumble of the boiler far below. Like lungs. The occasional hiss of the radiator in the corner. Like respiration. The damp moaning of wood against all that stone. Like settling bones.
And the whisper of Ethan’s voice, too:
Whispering from the darkness:
Perhaps even Abby heard it:
A couple from Leeds, I believe.
This was meant to be their summer home.
Aye, well, he fell ill and she never returned.
Of course, his wife heard it. His Abby.
For she hushed from the darkness:
“I thought it strange how he was just standing out there in the rain when we arrived and not waiting for us inside the cottage or in his vehicle for that matter. How long do you think he was standing out there in the rain like that? We were nearly an hour late.”
It’d only been a cold gray drizzle.
But his wool pants had been sodden.
Sticking neatly to his long thin legs.
His bottom lip blue. Quivering.
In that cold gray drizzle falling sideways.
“Is it just my nervy imagination or does he bear a most unlikely resemblance to Ichabod Crane?” Oliver wondered.
Abby snickered softly. Sleepily. Said:
“Perhaps he didn’t want to be presumptuous.”
Presumptuous, Oliver contemplated.
Standing out there like he had been.
Standing out there in that cold gray drizzle.
With his back to the small stone cottage.
Facing the sloping paddock, instead.
The cliff of black slate. That cold gray sea.
The cold gray drizzle slanting in his face.
Resting heavily on his long black lashes.
Blinding his muddy brown eyes.
You didn’t bring much, he’d said.
Standing out there in the mucky sludge.
Rocking this way and that.
Oliver had thought to stay warm.
But he’d done the same in the cellar.
Down in that cobwebbed darkness.
With one foot on the bottom step.
And a hand still on the staircase railing.
As if crawling out of his skin.
Bit stuffy down here, he’d said. Ethan.
Never been partial to small confined spaces myself.
Bit difficult to breathe, he’d explained.
Mee-self. Con-feigned. Braithe.
The bedroom was small. Musty.
Oliver took a deep breath. Sighed.
He really was exhausted. Truly.
Quite out-of-sorts and disoriented.
It would take some time to settle in.
To make a home of this place.
Been ‘round here forever like most things.
For as long as anyone ‘round here can remember.
Been empty for years now. The estate is selling.
He reached for Abby’s hand in the dark, not realizing she had already turned her back to him, having rolled over to sleep. Oliver’s eyes gradually fell shut, too. His breathing slowed. Nearby, the curtains, transparent like gossamer, began to slowly sway above them, tempted by a draft despite the window being tightly shut.
Oliver’s eyes flitted back open.
In that slight rising chill.
And though it had to only be exhaustion, believed he saw past those gossamer curtains, in the reflection of that double-hung window, the silhouette of a young woman materializing at the bedroom threshold. Ghostly and distinctly blacker than the surrounding bedroom darkness. Looming there. Silent. Watchful.
Oliver blinked heavily.
Then, very slowly, turned toward the dark bedroom doorway. But whatever he’d imagined there, if anything, was now gone.
5.
THE SUFFOCATING GRAYNESS was back by dawn. It would become an all too common fixture of life for Abby on this dark isle. Cold and damp and drizzly and smelling of dead things, and reminding her of that walrus she’d stumbled upon in Brighton on their annual winter holiday. A solitary morning walk while Oliver slept-in back at the inn by the beach dreaming of eggs, Cumberland sausage, baked beans, black pudding, and toast. It had always been a special time of the day for her when she could just be alone with her own thoughts, drifting down the long strandline just as sunrise was lifting on the horizon -- only to stumble across that monstrous forsaken beast half-buried in the pebble beach.
Abby had never seen a walrus at Brighton Beach before, alive or dead, and therefore assumed the poor creature to be far from its home. A sad thought, really, that such a magnificent brute could be so lost. Worse, it was bloated almost beyond recognition, and horribly discolored with large squishy patches of black and blue against mottled gray. Its thick blubbery skin scarred and torn open in deep gashes, spilling out a coiled spaghetti of cold guts and snarls of sausage-looking innards with an overwhelming foul stench that turned her tummy when the stiff breeze blowing off the sea shifted in her direction. A sickly sweet and sour mephitis. Not unlike rotting eggs turned black, putrefying Cumberland sausage turned muculent and bloody, all served with moldy baked beans and fetid black pudding in a porringer of rancid raw sewage. The nauseating stench seemed to multiply in her sinuses as she fought back vomit rising thickly in her throat, her bare feet slipping and sliding over those slick beach pebbles as she hurriedly rushed away from that decomposing beast abandoned by the tide, its nidorous odor chasing after her, already clinging to her hair and clothing as she made for the blinking lights of Brighton Pier while gray seabirds dove down from the gray sky behind her and tiny critters with tiny greedy claws swarmed all over it, pecking and ripping and gorging on its moldering flesh.
Abby sighed drearily now.
Attempting to fight away the image.
The image of that poor animal.
Presumably so far from its home.
Spoiling on that cold beach.
And instead, got on with her day.
She’d awoken this morning to the suffocating gray dawn, cold and damp and drizzly outside the bedroom window, to find herself alone in bed. Sighing again, Abby rose from the bed, dressing for a day of chores in faded old blue jeans and a faded flannel shirt, then descended the narrow staircase, yawning, calling out Oliver’s name, only to find a handwritten note on the kitchen table.
DROPPING OFF TRAILER IN DOUGLAS.
DIDN’T WANT TO WAKE YOU.
CHEEERS, OLIVER
Abby frowned at the note only to perk up when she saw the coffee maker had been unpacked and a pot of fresh coffee waiting for her. Her favorite mug was sitting beside it. The black and white one with the dandelion stenciling and the inscription:
You’re Never Too Old To Make A Wish
If only that were fucking true.
After her morning coffee, she busied herself with a mountain of chores. Unpacking boxes. Sorting things. Opening the windows to air out the musty cottage. A bit
of miscellaneous cleaning before tackling the one and only bathroom since her husband was still not back even though it was almost noon. Scrubbing it down, using a fizzy mixture of white vinegar and baking soda to remove the mildew stains that rather suddenly appeared more like black flowers of mold when straight bleach failed to do the trick. The small and only bathroom now smelled rather like a fish and chips shop.
Her tummy rumbled.
She munched on some odd stale tidbits and tried the vinegar-baking soda solution on the badly rusted floor drain and the shower head. The thick rust, however, resisted her efforts and she sent a text off to Oliver asking him to pick up lemons for lemon juice and tried not to fixate on where he might have stopped for lunch. Tried not to imagine him sitting there without her on the Douglas promenade with its whimsical horse-drawn trams and views of the harbor while stuffing his bottomless gullet with a giant basket of fresh battered cod and homemade chips and washing it all down with a tall cold fizzy glass of prosecco as she stared morosely at the froth of vinegar and baking soda failing to discourage the reddish-brown layers of rust and imagining his fizzy prosecco all the same.
Bubbly. Refreshing. A lemon wedge.
She might’ve rewarded herself with a break.
Perhaps a cup of tea. Or a brown ale even.
Maybe a few brown ales, actually. Or bitters.
There was a box of them somewhere.
Despite her earlier efforts, the boxes seemed to be multiplying like gremlins. Open one and two more suddenly appeared.
Instead, she took to sweeping out the spare bedroom, or what she was beginning to think of in her mind as the spare bedroom. It was easier to think of the empty bedroom facing east as such rather than what it actually was. Empty and hollow. But for its radiator and the large strange antique mirror with the ornate silver frame depicting those angelic-looking cherubs on fluffy white clouds.
She found the antique mirror quite strange because of its mere presence here. The fact its owners (she presumed the couple from Leeds) had not taken it with them after he’d fallen ill. Suggesting he had perhaps fallen ill here after all, perhaps even dying here, his distraught wife leaving in a mad rush of grief to never return. Still, unlike the functional utilitarian furniture and the odd knickknack, the antique mirror suggested a more personal possession, perhaps even a family heirloom. Yet, here it still was. Left behind. Abandoned. Meanwhile, the antique mirror with its chubby-cheeked, dewy-eyed cherubs somehow made the bedroom seem even more empty and more hollow by its simple inexplicable existence on the wall.
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