As if there were any doubt it was him.
Before imploring: “Don’t get up. No need.”
For Oliver had half-risen from his seat.
Only a simple polite gesture, perhaps.
But one that felt overdone all the same.
His napkin dumping from his lap to the floor.
Disappearing now beneath a shuffling shoe.
“Charlotte,” he said, frozen there in mid-air.
As if she’d performed an enchantment.
Turned him into a hunched-over little ogre.
Volcanic slate into fossilized limestone.
She motioned and he returned to his chair.
The enchantment summarily broken.
But his napkin abandoned. Gathering grit.
Still beneath that shuffling shoe on the floor.
“Charlotte,” Oliver then said yet again.
As if unaware he’d said it before.
And as if it were an invitation -- the tall and attractive woman sat down at their small window table facing the gray sea after dragging a chair over from a nearby table. Her voice still at least an octave too high. Almost shrill as she offered Abby her hand.
“Charlotte Moore,” she introduced.
(Abby found her accent milder than Ethan Hanover’s, their real estate agent, as if she were taking pains to conceal it. As if it were a thing to be concealed. Still, there it was all the same. Lilting and lyrical, and yet altogether rather mucky underneath, making Abby’s ears itch, an accent she’d hear in other voices on this dark isle until all too suspiciously quickly she no longer heard it at all, not even as it began to creep quite treacherously onto her own tongue.)
Abby found herself taking her hand.
A hand that was pale white and dry.
Quite dry to the touch. And rather cold.
Like a mannequin’s hand, Abby thought.
But for the nail polish. Dark black slate.
“You must be Abby,” she presumed.
This tall and attractive doll-like creature.
With that awful high-pitched voice.
As if it were not also an obvious thing.
Then said, as if it were a foregone conclusion, causing Abby’s head to spin all the faster, the dizziness washing over her now: “As you probably know, I met your dear husband, your Oliver--”
Your dear husband, your Oliver…
Abby felt herself flinch once more.
Jaw tightening. Teeth gritting.
“--at the education symposium over the summer at Oxford,” she stated merrily, “so I suppose I’m ultimately the one responsible for your being here. Though, I will admit,” she added conspiratorially, “I’m not quite certain who recruited who in the end.”
Laughter. Oliver and Charlotte.
Her large narrow eyes flashing at Abby.
Amber-colored. Translucent golden irises
Like a feral cat, Abby now imagined.
Not like an inanimate doll at all.
And thought she could maybe just feel the scrape of claws as the woman finally released her hand (reminding Abby of the stickery leaves in the dark woods behind the cottage) and turned toward Oliver, repositioning her shapely legs protruding from a dark wool skirt toward his napkin-less lap and blathering on excitedly in that high-pitched voice about reserving shop talk for the next morning, but confessing now at their small and suddenly very crowded window table overlooking the gray sea and the tourists bundled in their coats and hats taking their obligatory photos of the seals playing in the nearby surf how so very pleased she was he had finally arrived. How so very pleased they all were he had finally arrived.
Tickled, she might’ve also said.
Abby was no longer really listening.
Only watching her dear husband.
The blush rising to his cheeks.
The sky had darkened by the time they finally left the seaside village. A strong wind buffeting the Q5, causing it to rock gently. A heavy wet rain playing havoc with the windshield wipers.
Abby stared out into that darkness.
Out into that wind and rain.
Her face blank. Expressionless.
Oliver peeked over at his wife.
Then peeked heavenward.
“Think we’re in for a bit of foul weather,” he said as if it were not its own foregone conclusion. “Which reminds me,” he quickly added, “I bought you a gift earlier today while shopping.”
He reached into the back seat, his hand groping back there for a spell before settling upon what he was looking for in the dark and dragging it forward. He set a large shoebox down on her lap.
Abby just stared at the large box.
Absorbing its descriptive artwork.
Tableaus of terrible storms. Thunder. Lightning.
High winds. Snow. Hail. Sleet. Rain.
All manner of inclement destruction.
“Go on, then,” he encouraged.
She opened the box and uncovered beneath a layer of tissue a pair of pink women’s rubber galoshes. Slick and very shiny.
“Now I can have the yellow ones,” he said, pleased with himself, “and we both get dry feet for the winter. You like ‘em?”
Abby stared forward again.
Into the darkness. Wind. Rain.
Oliver sighed. Resigned.
“Don’t do this, Abby,” he eventually implored softly. “Please. Don’t dredge up all that stuff best left back in London.”
Abby set aside the pink rubber galoshes and fished a cigarette from her purse and made a show of lighting it in front of him. An insolent act producing a displeased expression on his face.
A few hours later she was finishing her last ciggie of the evening beneath the eaves just outside the double stable doors. She was wearing the slick and very shiny new pink galoshes and could smell strongly the squeaky clean rubber while contending with nonsensical reservations about ever stepping off the front steps and wading out into the grimy muck and forever tarnishing them. She sighed at the muddy pools waiting for her in the night, growing deeper, boggier, as she contemplated the heavy rain slanted in the wind.
She’d never seen it rain sideways before.
Not as it was wont to do on this dark isle.
It was as if gravity were truly being distorted.
Or at the very least her perception of it.
She took a final drag on her ciggie.
Then dumped the butt on the ground.
Stamping it out with the sole of her boot.
There, then. Tarnished. An ash stain.
Satisfied, she turned toward the double stable doors, intending to duck inside for the night, but finding herself now contemplating that odd Rowan cross nailed over the horseshoe silhouettes.
She stared at the cross a beat.
Then pulled it from the dark wood.
It made a sharp squealing noise.
As it tore free from a stubborn nail.
Not unlike a small wounded animal.
She toted the thing into the cottage.
And after only a slight moment of indecisiveness, and perhaps a bit of silly superstitious nonsense, opened the woodstove--
And stuffed the Rowan cross inside.
The hungry flames devoured it.
Jumping, crackling, spitting.
The wooden cross buckling. Screaming.
Meanwhile, above, Oliver lay awake in bed. He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep when he heard her light footsteps rising on the stairs beyond the dark narrow corridor. The bed eventually sagged. To his surprise, Abby curled-up against his backside.
Pushing very close to him.
Spooning her body to his own.
Her fingers lifted in the bedroom darkness and gently stroked through his hair. He sighed at the unexpectedness of her touch.
Only to jerk with a sudden start--
When he heard the toilet flush downstairs.
Quite loud despite the wind and rain.
Skin crawling, eyes growing wide--
Oliver very slowly turned to determine who, or, indeed, what, might be in the bed with him only to discover, in the end, a toil of harmless bedsheets bunched tightly against his backside.
His heart was still pounding, however--
Thumpity, thumpity, thumpity thump.
--when a dark figure appeared in the bedroom doorway, pausing there a moment before moving forward in the darkness.
The bed sagged beside him.
The bedsheets rustled.
“Abby--?’ he eventually said.
His voice sounding rather hollow.
Not like his voice at all really.
And from the darkness:
Her voice: Floating to him:
“You ask me that, Oliver, as if there is another answer to that question,” this floating voice in the darkness said.
A moment of silence followed.
Then from the darkness:
“You should remember something, Oliver,” she said, his wife, or what sounded like his wife. “Back in London I told you I would try. Just that. But I never promised to stay. Never that.”
“Stay, Abby,” he said. “Try.”
And finally from the darkness:
“Go to sleep, Oliver.”
Rest, she might’ve also said.
But he could not sleep. Suddenly the storm shadows moving about in the darkness seemed alive on the bedroom walls.
Intelligent and mysterious.
7.
BLURRED IMAGES. UNDULATING.
Abby frowned at the fifty inch Toshiba 4K Ultra HD Smart LED television. The modern technology seemed a peculiar stranger in this old small stone cottage by this gloomy gray sea and was behaving like it just didn’t belong here, either. As if the twenty first century somehow only existed outside these thick stone walls. The large flat screen picture warped and murky and shifting about like a woefully scrambled eight million piece jigsaw puzzle.
Head shaking, Abby exited the double stable doors beneath an umbrella in her new pink galoshes, pushing out into relentless gusts of wind and rain, trying her darndest to ignore the faint horseshoe apparitions and what she was now beginning to imagine as the faint phantasmal etch of the Rowan cross as if such a ridiculous trinket could have left behind any impression at all after hanging there so very briefly. She approached a SKYTV technician. The poor fellow had a clear plastic hooded rain poncho draped over his trademark dark blue SKYTV uniform that was nevertheless getting drenched beneath it. Leaning into those gusts of wind and rain wobbling him about, doing his very steady best to remain steady on an unsteady ladder, he fiddled with a small fiberglass SKYTV satellite dish he’d affixed to a corner of the cottage roof earlier that morning.
Abby stopped under the ladder.
Well, not directly under it.
She wasn’t a complete fool.
She stared past the brim of her umbrella, careful to shield her eyes from the slanting rain, yet the salt still managing to sting her eyes all the same as she lifted her voice above the weather:
“It’s still-- What did you call it?”
“Pixelated,” he said.
“It’s giving me a migraine.”
The SKYTV tech climbed down the ladder, the wind making the plastic poncho snap and pop. He removed a damp SKYTV cap from beneath the clear plastic hood. Scratched his head.
“What you have as best as I can tell,” he began, but his dithering voice belying any true certainty, “is an EMI problem.”
“An EMI problem?”
“Electromagnetic interference.”
“And what causes that?”
“A lot of things,” he said.
Suggesting he wasn’t at all certain.
Scratching his head yet again.
His wet hair pushing over in a clump.
Making it look like his head had blown open.
Or was perhaps just simply half-scalped.
Like in an American Old West movie.
One with gunslingers and Indians.
“But I checked everything,” he went on, confirming her suspicions, frowning now. “Everything that I could think of.”
“Is it the weather?” she said.
A doubtful shrug. “I checked the LNB’s. I didn’t see any water pooling there.” A sigh. “And there’s no obstructions.”
He glanced morosely at the small withering oaks pretending to guard the stone cottage just to be certain. Scratched his head a final time, the scalped-looking clump flapping back into place.
Well, not quite back into place.
It sort of bounced there on his head.
Looking more like loose flesh than ever.
The cruel wind making a mockery of it.
“Tell you what,” he sighed, mystified. “Let’s try wrapping the AC power cord to the converter with a fat ferrite core. We’ll do the same with the coaxial cable to the box. Sometimes it works.”
“Does it?” she said, dubious.
“Sometimes,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later they were back inside the stone cottage. The SKYTV tech had tools, wire, and coating everywhere. He had tried everything he could think of apparently. Without success. And now he and Abby just stared at the pixelated telly picture.
The eight million piece jigsaw puzzle.
Blurred. Warped. Undulating.
“Maybe it’s the wee people,” he said.
“The wee people,” she repeated. “Brilliant.”
He was dripping water on the floor.
“Is that your professional opinion, then?”
“Naughty little sprites, they be.”
He bent down with another sigh and squirmed behind the television, cursing softly, fidgeting and checking plugs. Abby couldn’t help but grin as the tug of his pants revealed his bum crack.
Just then the wind outside gusted.
Much more robustly than before.
The stone cottage trembled badly.
The cottage lights fluttering terribly.
And the television abruptly clearing.
“Wait. Stop,” she hollered out.
The SKYTV tech crawled out from behind the television. He blinked, confounded. He and Abby shared a wondrous glance. A soccer match played on the large LED screen. The telly picture all of a sudden startlingly crisp and sharp and in high def even.
“What did you do?” she said.
Somehow knowing he hadn’t done a thing.
“Naughty little sprites, they be,” he only reiterated, head shaking, already gathering-up his scattered equipment and preparing to make a break for it, not wanting to tempt fate. “Full of funny mischief for their own amusement. Best not to ask questions.”
Abby was left alone the rest of the day.
Oliver being gone for his first day of school.
She occupied herself with organizing the kitchen.
A mindless task. So many mindless tasks.
But what then? she wanted to ask herself.
What then when there were simply no more moving boxes to unpack and no more rooms to sort out? she wanted to know. What then when her mind wasn’t even offered a stupid mindless chore to occupy itself?
What then in this small isolated stone cottage beside this gloomy gray sea? What then when she was left alone with only her unoccupied mind?
Why had she not considered that?
What it might mean to be so alone?
To be so very alone with only her mind?
Why had she not considered that at all?
The minutes seemed to march forward more and more slowly as the morning became mired in itself. As if all those minutes were forced to monotonously march around the small stone cottage as if the stone cottage were a giant clock-face. Forced to march through the rain-sodden muck beyond the double stable doors. The minutes hideously stretching and distorting from mere minutes into hours. The sun now hidden behind the leaden gray storm clouds as if just maybe it no longer existed -- as if it were no longer moving across the heavens. As if time itself were grind
ing down to a slow death halt and unable to deliver her from morning to noon to evening. As if she were somehow caught in a most terrible time warp.
But slowly, very slowly, the sky darkened.
That leaden gray turning to black.
The day, Abby’s very first day alone in this small stone cottage beside this gloomy gray sea, finally coming to a merciful end.
But with so many more days ahead.
Why had she not considered that?
Not considered the idea of being so alone?
So very alone with just herself -- here?
That night, sitting at the kitchen table, Abby stared impatiently out the window waiting for her husband to arrive home under that now-darkened sky, her heels tapping impatiently beneath her chair. The telly droning in the background. A news program.
The television had been on all day.
The quiet of this place just too quiet. Just too very quiet in the end. Despite the wind and rain outside the stone walls.
Abby half-rose from her chair at the kitchen table, maybe just a bit too quickly, when she thought she heard the sound of an approaching motor and perhaps detected the faint aura of headlights out there in the endless whipping wind and cold salty rain.
But it was just the wind in the end.
And that sideways curtain of rain.
Playing tricks on her imagination.
The darkness quickly reasserting itself.
Perhaps even heavier than before.
The quiet even more quiet.
She sighed, only to screech out loud when her mobile suddenly buzzed and began bouncing about on the kitchen table.
It was her husband. Her Oliver.
She answered quickly. Too quickly.
Out of breath. Making her head dizzy.
She wondered if he’d hear it. Her panic.
And what he might think if he did.
But he sounded so faraway. Tinny.
His own voice fading in and out.
Not really seeming to hear her at all.
Only explaining and apologizing.
She pushed the phone to her other ear.
As if that might somehow do the trick.
Change what it was he was trying to tell her.
What he was explaining and apologizing for.
“What do you mean drinks?” she said.
“It’s a tradition,” he attempted, sounding like he was speaking from the far end of a very long and narrow metallic tunnel. “Drinks with the faculty after one’s first day. I dared not be rude.”
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