The cold rustle of wind having mocked her.
As it slipped jocundly past the window.
Past its old rotting wooden frame, anyway.
A suffocating quiet now fell over her.
Even more quiet than before. Too still.
As if the old cottage were holding its breath.
(Rather like herself at the moment, frankly.)
The distant pounding surf chastened.
Dreadfully from all that suffocating silence with the dirt-streaked double-hung window remaining quite still, and with the old small stone cottage holding its musty breath, there gradually rose another round of soft tittering giggles. Soft tittering giggles that had not died out after all with that cold rustle of wind slipping jocundly past the window frame, or appeared, any longer, to be originating from that brethren of creepy-ass little cherubs staring at her blank-eyed from the ugly antique mirror on the wall, but rather, quite ominously, seemed to be growing from the terrible suffocating silence itself -- and from behind her.
A naughty child’s noise seemingly.
Its small hands over its small mouth.
A small mouth filled with tiny sharp teeth.
Tiny sharp dagger-like teeth, surely.
Fighting back that mischievous snickering.
Ghoulish-sounding and blood-chilling.
Inside this cold and empty little room.
That perhaps was not so empty.
Abby spun around dizzily, a scream in her ears that she catalogued in some distant horrified way as being her own, nearly losing her balance on the warped floorboards giddily trying to take her off her feet. As terrified as she could ever remember being.
Only to find no one behind her.
No one in the bedroom with her.
But for those latent shadows.
Staring at her sleepily.
Her breath came in ragged bursts again, quite unable to penetrate her lungs which folded back in on themselves. No longer dry sunken sacks, but gluing shut as if sealed with a warm black tar, leaving her in a state of muscle-knotted paroxysm and at the brink of a fainting spell as she found herself only just managing to turn back to that dirt-streaked double-hung window with that shadowed empty little bedroom now turning topsy-turvy about her.
Perhaps it had only been birds outside.
Or so she thought drearily. Stumbling.
Trying desperately to reassure herself.
Their awful sounds distorted in the room.
Not unlike her own reflection in that mirror.
Only just birds. Nothing more than that.
Certainly not laughter. Not giggles.
Certainly not that in the end.
She stumbled forward with her feet bumping over those buckled floorboards. Peered beyond the dirty glass. Her nose to it only to be startled again as a flock of black birds fluttered noisily from the nearby copse of thin oak trees. Affright, presumably spooked by her in the window.
She blinked with surprise. Relief.
She’d not noticed them before.
The black birds in those oak trees.
Impersonating tree shadows.
Beneath that low-hung gray sky.
She felt her breath come back.
The knots in her muscles releasing.
The lightness in her head fading.
The room no longer askew.
Abby cursed her grotesque tommyrot, shaking her head at her senselessness -- only to have the bedroom door slam abruptly shut behind her with a loud bang as if of its own accord, the uncanny swing of that door moving all by itself without any obvious thing animating it, a wind gust or otherwise, captured in the dirt-streaked double-hung window as the filthy windowpanes in turn captured it in the reflection of that dark ugly antique mirror.
Freshly unnerved, lungs pinching shut yet again, inviting a soft fresh burn in her narrow chest, Abby turned and attempted to rush across the room -- only to have it seemingly yawn out before her. Eight feet suddenly twice that and stretching even further by the millisecond.
She moaned. Lunged for the shut door.
As it seemed to move away from her.
Half-falling. Grappling for the knob.
Locating it despite the unearthly physics.
Only to find the door steadfastly locked.
Her sweaty hand greasy on the knob.
A brass knob that refused to turn.
Meanwhile, she felt the room behind her.
Only instead of yawning any longer--
It suddenly felt like it was now shrinking.
Collapsing. Not unlike her own weary lungs.
Filling with all those latent shadows.
Shadows rising-up from the warped floorboards.
Crawling out from all the dark corners.
Slipping from all the dark crevices.
Swallowing the tenuous gray light.
She fumbled for the old brass key in her apron pocket only to find that apron pocket empty. Shaking violently with renewed fear, she dropped to her knees and peered through the keyhole.
The old brass key was still inside it.
But on the other side of the locked door.
She jiggled the door frantically (and thought she might be able to hear herself screaming again in that distant way), hoping the key would somehow twist the right way and disengage the lock.
Instead, the key slipped from the keyhole.
And fell to the hall floor outside the door.
Offering a disheartening metallic clink.
The door remained locked. Unyielding.
Meanwhile, from those deepening shadows gathering together just behind her, there rose the pitter-patter of small footsteps.
An altogether wet and squelchy pitter-patter.
She heard as well as felt her next scream.
A searing fire rising from her chest.
From her burning lungs turned magma.
Blistering the back of her throat.
She pounded on the locked bedroom door, unwilling to turn around. Unwilling to know who or what might be in those deepening shadows making those small wet squelchy pitter-patter footsteps. Panicked beyond all reason, Abby grabbed at the greasy door knob with that sweaty hand and shook the door in its frame as if she believed herself capable of ripping the door right off its pitted hinges.
The door rattled violently.
But those pitted hinges held fast.
As did its thick lock bolt.
All the while yet another most awful susurration of giggles filled the spare bedroom behind her. A child’s voice, surely. Tittering hollowly. Echoing.
Echoing off the shrinking bedroom walls.
And from the ceiling as it pushed-down.
In this horrible darkening little box of a room.
Abby would have no memory how long she screamed or what may have happened next in the darkness. Her next memory was of the bedroom door suddenly bursting open and her Oliver standing there in the short dark hall above the narrow staircase, holding the brass key, a confused and frightened expression on his face.
Whimpering, she rose to him.
To collapse in his arms.
12.
THE PEEL MEDICAL CENTRE stood rather unassumingly in a tight whitewashed corner of the downtown historic district abutting a sleepy weekend inn with dark shuttered windows and peek-a-boo views of the shipyard. The medical centre showcased its own set of dark shuttered windows and a dark glass door entrance, blinds drawn, providing the centre’s operating hours beneath the following in hand-painted acrylic letters: THURSTON EOGHAN MARWICK – GENERAL PRACTITIONER.
There was only one examination room.
Offset from a cramped little empty lobby.
The receptionist having already gone home for the day.
Usually leaving just after noon apparently.
The mother of school-age children.
Oliver stood in the corner of the examination room while Dr. Thurston Eoghan Marwick performed a cursory exam of Abby.
; Abby sat on a wooden examination table.
In a reusable cloth gown. Her clothing on hangars.
Her eyes blank. Her hands tense beside her.
Flinching as the hinterland doctor fiddled with her.
His fiddling fingers long and cold and colorless.
Dr. Thurston Marwick possessed a stiff and arrogant manner. A manner which was only accentuated by a vintage black tweed suit with big leather buttons and a matching black waistcoat over a dark gray tweed tie and a stiff white silk dress shirt. Somehow, however, the good doctor’s stiff and arrogant manner and tweed suit assemble only underlined his provincial status in Oliver’s enervated mind. The priggishness and formality of it all, frankly, in such a far-flung place as this isle where all else appeared homespun. He even spoke like an aristocrat from a prior century. A clipped speech that somehow seemed both altogether polite and yet condescending.
His words drawn-out and colorless.
Like those long cold fiddling fingers.
At last, he stepped back from Abby, advising without expression: “You may dress and meet us in my office, young lady.”
The good doctor’s private office was at the end of a short and narrow hall at the back of the building. A dark wall of shelving featured a library of thick black medical volumes with gold leafing and a grisly display of antique medical devices so pristine and well-oiled that Oliver almost wondered if they were still in regular use.
A tiny metal tonsil guillotine.
A crude hand-cranked skull saw.
An artificial leech with rotating blades.
A Victorian bloodletting tool kit.
A wooden screw-shaped mouth gag.
And other terrible medieval things.
All with identifying placards.
Oliver sat in a rather uncomfortable oak client chair trying not to be undone by the macabre museum of medical artifacts.
Dr. Marwick settled in behind his desk.
An antique mahogany desk. Unnaturally tidy.
The only item out of place the murky brown prescription bottle with its diminishing collection of bitter little orange pills.
It sat in the middle of that desk.
“Tell me about these,” Dr. Marwick said.
His eyes were black and penetrating.
As black as that vintage black tweed suit.
Though it was probably just the light.
Or the lack of it in the small little office.
Behind more dark shuttered windows.
“The pills were prescribed for anxiety,” Oliver told him. “Last year was a very difficult year, you see. Abby lost a child.”
He quickly corrected himself:
“Rather, we lost a child,” he said.
Swallowing hard. Coughing.
“There were complications in the second trimester,” he eventually continued, shifting about in that hard oak chair. “You cannot imagine. Decisions had to be made. Quite impossible ones.”
“You terminated the pregnancy.”
“She will never bear children,” Oliver said.
The words sounded strange out loud.
He’d never said them out loud before.
They were almost like living things.
Or at the very least ghostly things.
Things still haunting over them.
“We will never have a family.”
Dr. Marwick nodded at this, but appeared to sense something more, his dark gray eyebrows lifting like seagulls in flight.
Over those penetrating black eyes.
“It was also a difficult time for me,” Oliver conceded as if unable to help himself. Powerless. “Abby was nearly inconsolable. We were drifting apart. I was drinking. Drinking quite heavily.”
As if that was a justifiable excuse.
A silent beat. Then the real admission:
“The affair began shortly thereafter.”
He shrank into himself. Penitent.
And appalled at his lack of discretion.
At the treachery of his own tongue.
“A colleague,” he heard himself disclose. “A fellow teacher. It lasted over a month. When Abby finally confronted me about Lizzie, the evidence, well, it was beyond denial. I’d been careless. Perhaps on purpose, so I told her every detail. In retrospect, I suppose it was probably a horrible mistake to do so. Cruel even. Like I was blaming her, maybe. She completely fell to pieces afterward.”
A door was heard opening up the hall.
Abby, now dressed, appeared a moment later.
Oliver rose. Assisted her into a waiting chair.
Then settled back into his own beside her.
“May I offer you anything, Abby?” Dr. Marwick inquired, gray face unreadable. Like stone. “Coffee, juice? Perhaps water?”
“Thank you, no,” she said quietly.
“Oliver has been filling in some blanks for me,” he said. “But what I suppose I’m most curious about initially is how this medication has served as a managing tool over that period of time.”
He gestured at the pill bottle.
Sitting there conspicuously on the desk.
In the weak light of a desk lamp.
Abby cleared her own throat. Glanced at Oliver and then said: “They seemed to help quite a bit. Until recently, I suppose.”
“Until recently,” the good doctor said.
She nodded. Again glanced at Oliver.
Embarrassed. Painfully reluctant.
“I--I’ve been seeing things. Unnatural things.”
“Unnatural things,” Dr. Marwick prompted.
“Things that aren’t there. That can’t possibly be.”
Oliver had become expressionless.
Doing a fair impersonation of Dr. Marwick. Only to suddenly have the odd and rather sneaking suspicion this man in the vintage black tweed suit was genuinely curious about unnatural things.
But doing his very best to hide that curiosity.
As if it were a thing to be kept hidden.
“Hm. I see,” the good doctor acknowledged. “And you’ve had no such issue with these sorts of episodes in the past?”
“Not really. No,” Abby said. Before clarifying further: “Oliver and I-- We’ve had struggles in our marriage. It was difficult to trust. I tend to exaggerate small events. But this is different.”
Her voice fell away here. Becoming small.
Like a child’s voice. A little girl’s voice.
Her blank gaze now falling to her feet.
Down to those mud-stained pink galoshes.
“I--I don’t feel alone in that house,” she said.
“Explain, please,” the good doctor said.
And again, Oliver sensed that curiosity.
Intruding into that priggish voice of his.
How he subtly bowed forward in his chair.
“I--I feel like eyes are watching me. Clever eyes,” she admitted dreadfully, her chin buried in her chest. “I feel like I’m going crazy. And believe me, doctor, I know I sound just so. I do.”
The good doctor silently digested this.
Thoughtfully. Without any obvious judgement.
And the sneaking suspicion left Oliver.
Just sort of slowly wriggled off away.
That sneaking suspicion of odd curiosity.
An odd curiosity bordering on the morbid.
As if the good doctor had been eager for her.
Eager for her to say such odd strange things.
As if he’d expected nothing less somehow.
But still quite ravenous for it all the same.
All the while offering only that gray stony face.
Hiding this perversion behind that mask.
That prim and proper aristocratic gray guise.
Yet explaining the grisly medical artifacts, perhaps.
Displayed over there on that dark shelving.
Glistening in the deeper office shadows.
Not just things collected for antiquity sake.
But awful things to po
nder over gleefully.
Awful things to touch and be eager over.
“Tell me, Abby” he finally gently encouraged. “Have you been taking your medication here on a regular basis as prescribed? Consistently and without interruption?” he wanted to know.
Her head slowly began to lift.
Hoping for a logical explanation.
“Perhaps not,” she acknowledged, eyes still blank and disconcertingly distant. “We came here for a fresh start, Oliver and I. And I supposed I could dose up when necessary. If necessary.”
Dr. Marwick nodded. “I see. Well, then, I should disabuse you of this notion, Abby, my dear girl,” he said. “I’m afraid interrupting this particular biologic in such a manner as you describe is but a bit of foolhardiness. It should only be curtailed gradually, and only by a professional. Otherwise, the withdrawals can be quite pernicious. Mood swings. Melancholia. Paranoia. Even delusions.”
Abby accepted this conclusion.
Accepted it eagerly. Almost gratefully.
“Although, for the sake of thoroughness,” Dr. Marwick said, “I suppose it would be remiss of me not to inquire whether you’ve experienced any similarly odd occurrences in the house.”
Oliver experienced a mild jolt here.
As he suddenly realized that--
The good doctor was speaking to him.
“How do you mean?” he heard himself say.
“Only just that, Oliver. Odd. Unexplained.”
And again, Oliver sensed that mask.
That eagerness. That morbid curiosity.
He could also feel Abby turn back to him.
Blank and distant eyes studying him.
“No? Nothing, then, is it?” Dr. Marwick said.
Oliver considered the question carefully.
And any answer he might provide.
She looked so frail. His wife. His Abby.
Not unlike an un-watered flower.
Wilting. Withering from existence.
“Trouble sleeping,” he quietly conceded with a shrug. “A new bed. A new house. And I suppose I’d be remiss not to mention an overabundance of local folklore to titillate the imagination.”
Oliver offered a hollow chuckle here.
Before adding rather soberly:
And honestly enough in the end:
“We have sunk everything we have into the place. This simply has to work for us and it has been stressful. The move.”
Dr. Marwick’s gaze remained on Oliver.
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