Sorcerie

by Russell Gilwee

  Those black eyes under those gray eyebrows.

  Staring out from that gray stony face.

  An unsettling eternity. Or so it seemed.

  Before finally returning to Abby.

  “I will refill the prescription,” he said in closing. “We will stabilize you over the next few weeks, I should think. This will require patience of you. Afterward, we might then begin to discuss the idea of gradually reducing the dosage. If that’s the decision made.”

  “Thank you,” she said hollowly.

  “Thank you,” Oliver heard himself say.

  His own voice hollow. Exhausted.

  It was true. He was not sleeping well.

  No, he really wasn’t sleeping well at all.

  And neither was his wife. His Abby.

  They certainly shared that in common.

  They drove home in silence from town.

  It was not a companionable silence.

  Abby drifting further away than ever.

  Later that night, confronting that dreamlike world of cold gray fog in the night, avoiding bed and the restlessness it invited, Abby stood beneath the eaves outside the double stable doors, smoking a ciggie, staring at the overgrown garden spilling over that low crumbling stone wall futilely attempting to contain its furious tangle of ugly vines and creepers, nettles and crabgrass, cantankerous weeds, and its dense populations of alien-looking wildflowers and perennials. Oliver, cradling an armful of firewood, intending to replenish the cold dying fire in the wood stove and the empty wood box beside it, was paused there on the front stoop by her voice:

  “Do you have regrets?” she said.

  As she continued to stare at that garden.

  That wild primeval jungle of a garden.

  Her voice only but a fading whisper.

  As if she were perhaps speaking to him.

  And perhaps not speaking to him at all.

  Her murmured query only rhetorical.

  “Many. Of course,” he truthfully said.

  “--about coming here,” she said.

  “No,” he said firmly. A bit too firmly.

  “About the child,” she then said.

  The firewood suddenly became heavy.

  Heavy in his arms. Sinking him a little.

  The porch groaning beneath him.

  “It was not our place to bring that kind of suffering into this world,” he eventually said. “It would’ve been unfair. Cruel.”

  “For whom?” she breathed.

  A lone tear slid down her cheek.

  She flicked her smoke. The red glowing end tumbling into all that gray darkness before blinking out like a shooting star.

  13.

  ABBY WOKE THE NEXT morning to a most welcomed development. She could feel the warmth on her cheek even before she opened her eyes. She sighed, relishing the unanticipated return of the sun. Basking in it. Turning in the bed toward it, allowing its heat to crawl down her pale anemic body even as she wondered if this were only the tattered remnants of a fading dream. In the end, however, it was only the cold wet gray fog that was finally fading. Fading off into the adjacent woods, hanging like Spanish moss in the dark trees, clinging to their gnarled branches before slipping deeper into that dense forest, retreating from the light into the deep untouched shadows where it almost certainly intended to reconstitute itself and rise yet again when the sun dimmed.

  But for now Abby relished the sun.

  Relished the warm rays on her skin.

  Already thawing her cold bones.

  Drying out the dank and the wet.

  That which was rotting at her.

  She rose with Oliver and drove him to school. Dropping him off in the parent drop-off line as if he were a schoolchild.

  Then ventured further into town.

  Squinting behind sunglasses.

  Stopping for breakfast at a café.

  Sitting outside in that sun.

  Beneath a grand blue sky.

  Poached eggs. Bacon. Sausage.

  Hash browns. Beans. And coffee.

  She then drove around. Exploring.

  Stumbling on a local hardware store.

  Forty five minutes later she was loading gardening supplies into the back of the Q5, a light sheen of sweat on her brow.

  Job done, she hit the close button.

  Watched the back door ease shut.

  Making that hiccup of a latching sound.

  She thought about a cup of tea.

  It was almost mid-day in the middle of the week. Locals were quietly going about their everyday business around her. The colorful weekend tourists were rather suddenly and quite noticeably absent now that she took a fair moment to pay attention.

  And that actually caused her pause.

  Her cup of tea quickly forgotten.

  As she stood there behind the Q5.

  Mid-day in the middle of the week.

  Sweat bubbling on her forehead.

  At first she wasn’t certain why.

  Why it should give her such pause.

  But she suddenly felt conspicuous.

  It had to only be her imagination.

  Or a side-effect of her meds mismanagement.

  Still, it seemed to her as if she were being watched. Then again, maybe watched wasn’t the correct word. Rather, minded seemed, perhaps, the better word. A funny word, in the end. Minded. But if felt as if she were being so all the same. From passing cars. Storefronts. Sidewalk passers-by. Not quite overtly, but just out of the corner of their collective eyes. These locals. Discreetly. Vigilantly.

  Then again, she was new in town.

  Part of the mysterious young couple from London.

  As lovely Fay had so aptly characterized.

  So, of course, she would be a curiosity.

  Still, it rather unnerved her to sense it and found herself quite hurriedly ducking out of the wonderful and welcomed sun into the Q5. She had the little orange pills in her purse and shoved one into her mouth even though it was an hour before her next dose.

  She dry-swallowed the bitter little pill.

  Her heart thumping in her chest.

  Making like a drum in her ears.

  And for a moment she missed the fog.

  The anonymity of being lost in it.

  She headed back to the small stone cottage beneath that grand blue sky and neatly organized the new gardening supplies inside the mud room. Briefly contemplated the overgrown garden waiting for her attention only to realize the afternoon was already getting away from her somehow and heading right back into town only to arrive at the school to pick-up Oliver a full hour before the final bell. She tried not to be too hard on herself, sitting there all alone in the Q5 waiting for Oliver in the sun beneath that grand blue sky. Tried not to think about how she’d left the small stone cottage this morning with Oliver and spent nary a moment inside it save for lugging the gardening supplies into the mud room. Tried not to think about all the shadows still waiting for her there. Waiting so patiently.

  Most especially in the spare bedroom.

  She tried not to think of such things.

  Such silly terrible awful things.

  When her mind simply would not cooperate with her, she exited the Q5 and stood with her hiney to its front grill and smoked a ciggie while waiting for that final bell. Then smoked another. It was not unlike waiting for a watched tea kettle to boil. Eternal.

  Only to be startled in the meantime.

  Startled by a shadow falling over her.

  A cold shadow eclipsing that warm sun.

  It belonged to Charlotte. The cold shadow.

  And behind it, her prim simpering smile.

  Those heavily dimpled pale cheeks.

  And that thick flowing mahogany hair.

  Catching ablaze in the bright sunlight.

  As Abby had simply known it would.

  Known it in the very pit of her stomach.

  “Bum one?” Charlotte said, winking.

  Winking an amber-colored cat eye.
>
  Meaning a ciggie, of course.

  Abby politely offered the tall and attractive woman one when the only thing she really wanted to do was maybe stab her with her own lit cigarette right in a translucent golden iris. Fearing Charlotte might read as much on her face, she made a show of trying to locate her lighter only to have Charlotte cup a hand behind her neck and pull her toward her, lighting her smoke against Abby’s own ciggie pinched between her lips. An intimate gesture. The tall and attractive woman’s claw-like nails scraping against the back of Abby’s neck, her nail polish still that dark black slate, her skin still dry and pale white and cold, but implying to Abby this time, rather than of a mannequin, of those strange grayish-skinned trees in the woods out behind the small stone cottage. In the meantime, a cloying cloud of invading perfume only added to the queasiness in the pit of Abby’s tummy. Somehow less flowery than formaldehyde, it was.

  Another silly terrible awful thought.

  As if she were an undead thing. The tall and attractive creature before her. A dead thing that knew not she was dead.

  Abby blinked. Chided herself.

  Charlotte, meanwhile, leaned back against the Q5 grill beside Abby, either completely unaware or simply unconcerned with Abby’s demented ramblings of the mind, relishing instead the cigarette and rare sunshine and unabashedly unbuttoning the top of her silk blouse over a slim dark tweed skirt, exposing the rising cleavage of her pale bosoms to that warm and inviting sunlight.

  Abby blushed with disapproval.

  Charlotte did seem to sense this.

  Even though her eyes were now shut.

  Her face tilted toward the sun.

  “I admire your courage,” she said, brushing russet locks away from her cheeks. “It takes a lot of courage to be so brave.”

  Abby’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  “How do you mean?” she said.

  “Your hair, dear,” Charlotte mused with a sigh. “To chop it so short. I’d be terrified to be mistaken for a ten year old boy.”

  Abby frowned at that rising cleavage.

  Then said to this undead thing with complete candor: “I quite sincerely doubt much of anything could accomplish that.”

  “Even so,” Charlotte murmured.

  Abby ran a hand through her pixie cut.

  A reflex. One she might have resisted.

  If Charlotte’s eyes had been not been shut.

  Quite certain she’d just been insulted.

  Meanwhile, the final bell finally rang.

  A loud hammering brrring sound.

  Echoing long after its conclusion.

  Schoolchildren began exiting classrooms.

  Well-scrubbed little cherubs in white polo shirts. Boys in royal blue jackets and black trousers and black laced shoes. Girls in royal blue cardigans and dark tweed skirts and black patent leather shoes. It was rather like observing a herd of small prey animals insulated from harm in the relative safety of their numbers. Individual members lost amongst the blinding sea of shuffling arms and feet.

  Abby found herself envying them.

  She rose. Tossing away her cigarette.

  Motioning for Charlotte to button that blouse.

  Charlotte, her amber-hued eyes now flitting half-open, and to Abby’s chagrin, appeared to make a small show of it, her long pale fingers lazily working through the blouse buttons with the cigarette still clutched between her fingers -- as Oliver approached.

  His upper body floating above the children.

  As if he were wading out of royal blue water.

  The rare sun already turning his cheeks.

  Later that night, Oliver and Abby lay in bed in the dark, listening to a cold rising wind buffet the cottage walls, murmuring a melancholy chorus as it moved beneath the eaves in a black fog. Abby had watched earlier in the evening gray wisps of that fog creep out from the woods as daylight had waned. The gray wisps had gradually joined hands, swallowing the tiny isle once more in its suffocating embrace, and turning black with the falling night. She lay on her side now away from Oliver and listened to that melancholy chorus while staring at the spare bedroom across the short dark hall.

  The spare bedroom door stood open.

  Revealing a host of untamed shadows.

  Shadows fidgeting about in the darkness.

  Perhaps it was only the trees outside.

  Outside that double-hung window.

  Fidgeting about in the wind and fog.

  Still, she began to tremble softly.

  Oliver felt his wife shivering.

  “Abby? --Abby,” he said.

  And reached to comfort her in the darkness. Her body tensed with his initial touch, but still she allowed him to soothe her. Oliver mistook her tacit agreeableness for further invitation, however, and his hand eventually slipped beneath her wool nightgown.

  Not unlike the fog from those woods.

  Slipping. Creeping. Liberated.

  That fog turned black by the night.

  Their subsequent lovemaking was awkward.

  Strangers after such a long absence.

  And her still thinking of that cleavage.

  As Oliver entered her, Abby’s jaw clenched, her teeth clicking forcefully, and her body shuddering beneath her husband in a wave of pain. As if she were being cut open from the inside out.

  She whimpered in the darkness.

  “No…” she eventually said to him.

  Oliver didn’t hear her at first.

  Not until she was suddenly altogether more insistent. Louder. Pushing him. Hard. Almost violently. He fell off her, collapsing on the bed beside her. Frustrated. Confused. Out of breath.

  A beat of hollow silence followed.

  But for that melancholy chorus.

  Rising and falling beneath the eaves.

  Finally, Oliver said in the darkness beside his wife in the bed: “Is this to be our purgatory, then? Is that what you intend?”

  She was trembling again.

  Perhaps she’d never stopped.

  “Perhaps,” she said to him, thinking she could just now maybe hear snatches of soft tittering giggles in the dark shadows across the dark hall. “Perhaps it’s what we both deserve in the end.”

  Exasperated, he rolled away from her.

  The night grew ever darker. Blacker.

  That black fog heavier. Colder.

  That melancholy chorus more restive.

  But sometime around midnight, Oliver, bit-by-bit, was woken by Abby moving quietly under the bedsheets, forming a small lump over the lower half of the bed. Surprise registered on his face when she tugged down his pajama bottoms and took him into her mouth.

  He groaned with pleasure. Stiffened.

  Still half-asleep. And utterly disoriented.

  Disoriented by the sheer carnal unexpectedness of it.

  He slowly peeled back the bedsheets.

  Instinctively. Or simply to encourage her.

  Finding a familiar blonde pixie cut.

  Bone-white in a slant of moonlight.

  And he absently wondered about that.

  About that odd slant of moonlight.

  How it could have arrived here at all.

  Given the black fog in the night outside.

  But only absently given the circumstances.

  Thinking it might be to blame in the end.

  The clever moon. For her change of mind.

  Not that he was blaming anyone. Anything.

  Simply pleased for her attentive touch.

  After such a very long, long absence.

  His eyes fluttered and began to close.

  Only to suddenly pop open again--

  As she lifted her bone-white head--

  In that odd slant of moonlight--

  And revealed not Abby, not his wife--

  But Charlotte staring back at him.

  Beneath that familiar blonde pixie cut.

  Revealed Charlotte winking at him.

  And he thought he maybe saw besides--

  Her
mouth full of sharp little teeth.

  Glistening in that odd slant of moonlight.

  Bringing to mind that wooden barrel.

  Iron spikes inserted ‘round the interior.

  And awful tormented screams.

  He gasped. Bolted upright. Waking.

  Waking to a dreary gray foggy morning.

  The morning chill deep in his bones.

  Abby slowly woke beside him.

  Reading the disquiet on his face:

  She said: “Bad dream?”

  14.

  OLIVER STOOD AT THE classroom window lost in his own thoughts. The windowpane had been retrofitted with a thin film of glaze, presumably to control any glass failure in the event of a major storm of which this dark rock in the middle of this gray Irish Sea had to be very familiar. This protective sheen tended to distort the outside world beyond it. Not unlike eyeglasses furnished with an incorrect prescription, creating a terrible sense of vertigo, making near objects like the playground equipment and the sandbox a dozen meters distant in the mist appear dreadfully fuzzy around the edges as if fading from this dimension into another, and more distant objects blurred almost beyond any recognition.

  Rather like Oliver, himself, this morning.

  Hovering between here and there.

  Between this world and quite another.

  An otherworldly world beyond this one.

  Hovering him on the very precipice of reality.

  For it had felt so very disorientingly real.

  That terrible vertigo of a dream last night.

  Leaving him fuzzy around the edges.

  Muzzy and so unlike himself.

  Perhaps that was the reason he had found himself descending down into the dark cold cellar earlier that morning, the naked bulb hanging from the staircase rafters above him buzzing softly.

  He’d approached the far stone wall.

  The black boiler popping and hissing.

  Staring at him with its large red eyes.

  Grinning at him with its red mouth.

  Flames jumping between its iron teeth.

  After peeking up at the rectangle of gray light representing the kitchen doorway, ensuring his privacy, he’d peeled back the pile of moving boxes from the wall, revealing the stone column.

  Revealing those cryptic runes.

  Gleaming in the boiler red glow.

  Revealing the compilation of moon cycles.

  Cresting over that giant thorn tree.