The Dark Beneath the Ice

by Amelinda Bérubé

  “Marianne? Seriously, please say something.”

  “Is that her name.”

  Though it’s not loud, the voice is clear, harsh, more solid than any other sound on the tape. It’s not mine. The static pops and whines.

  “Oh.” Ron sounds very far away. “Oh my God.”

  “Listen,” the voice breathes. “Listen. The wind. It’s so beautiful.”

  “Stay away from me!” Ron yelps. I hear a few hurried footsteps, a scrunch of gravel. “Just—look. Tell me what you want, okay? Stay back!”

  “But you’re the one who brought me here.” Anguish creeps into the other voice, the kindling of anger. “I was trying to find the way for so long. And you called me. I heard you!”

  “There’s something you want, isn’t there?” Ron insists. “Tell me what it is!”

  “I want…what’s mine.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t—no, stay away!” Another scrape and crunch. “Just…just tell me. What’s yours?”

  “This. This!” The voice rises to a horrible, ugly wail, full of desperation and rage. “This is mine! This is all mine!”

  Ron sounds frail, inconsequential, after that sound; her response dissolves into a tide of noise. When her voice becomes audible again it’s shrill.

  “…whatever you are! I called you, you have to do what I…what the fuck—!”

  “You think I’m just going to go?” The other voice is quiet now, but heavy, deliberate, sharp as a drawn knife. “You called me, and now you think I’m just going to go back there and let her have all this? Because you say so?”

  “Tell me what you want! Who are you? Tell me!”

  But the voice doesn’t answer; it just laughs.

  “Don’t touch me!” Ron screams. “Go away! You don’t belong here, go away!”

  “I will not. She can’t drown me anymore. I’ll drown her instead. She can rot in the dark. This is ALL. MINE.”

  “It’s not! It’s not! You don’t belong here! Marianne, where are you? Marianne! MARIANNE!”

  I snap the tape recorder off, cutting off the beginning of my own wordless scream, and scramble away from it, staring at the little plastic box on the mattress like it might bite.

  I fumble my phone from my backpack and bring up the California number from the call log, hit the button before I can think better of it.

  “Come on,” I whisper as it rings and rings. I hang up when it goes to voicemail, dial again. And again. Finally it goes through.

  “You’re lucky I’m picking this up.”

  The statement is flat and hard as a slap, not even softened with a hello. It scatters my thoughts into icy shards of panic and I sit blankly for a second with the phone in my hand, trying to pull them back together enough to respond.

  “Ingrid?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “I don’t… Is everything okay?”

  There’s a long pause. “I don’t know if I’m interested in an apology, Marianne.”

  “An apology?” My heart climbs into my throat, makes my voice squeaky.

  “Were you drunk or something?”

  “What are you talking about?” I grip the blankets in numb fingers. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Oh my God.” Her laugh is pained. “This is so awkward. Look. I’m not gay. I mean, not that I have a problem with it. But I don’t like you that way, okay?”

  I lurch back to my feet, clutching the phone, across the room before I even realize I’m pacing. No. No no no.

  “What way? You’re my friend, that’s all. You’re my best friend.”

  “You barely know me. Look, you seem nice and everything, but we’ve hardly even talked since last summer. I don’t know what I did to give you the wrong idea.”

  I’m asleep. I must be. This is a nightmare. Why can’t I wake up?

  “I don’t know what you mean! It’s not like that, I—”

  Ingrid sighs.

  “That’s not going to work, okay? You can’t make a phone call like that and just pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “But I didn’t call you!”

  “Come on, Marianne, seriously? It was your number. It was your voice.”

  I can’t breathe. I’m going to throw up. I’m going to scream.

  “What did I say?”

  “You said enough. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  “Ingrid. Oh my God, Ingrid, listen, that wasn’t me. It wasn’t.” She starts to say something but I push forward, ignoring how shrill my voice has gone. “Please just listen to me. That wasn’t me. I’m so scared. It must have been… There’s something here, and it’s throwing things and—”

  “What are you talking about? If you’re trying to convince me that—”

  “There’s something here,” I wail. “Something I can’t see! Some sort of ghost!”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  I put my free hand to my forehead, squinch my eyes closed, fighting for calm. Why did I say that? Why did I think this was a good idea?

  “Listen.” Calm. Coherent. Cold. “There’s been really weird things happening over here. Ever since Dad left.” I rattle through the list, keeping my eyes closed, knowing how unhinged I sound, pushing through it anyway.

  “Holy crap,” Ingrid says, after a long silence.

  I laugh, helplessly.

  “I know. I know. I couldn’t tell whether or not it was real at first. I went to a psychiatrist and everything. But I told—you know Rhiannon? From school?”

  “What,” Ingrid says, in blank disbelief, “Emo Rhiannon?”

  I cringe, plunge ahead. “I told her about it. She said maybe we could test it to see if there was really something there. Try to talk to it. I don’t think she expected it to work, but it did. It was horrible. And now it’s a million times worse, and I don’t know what to do!” The phone squawks in protest as my voice rises; I knock it against the edge of the dresser, but the noise continues. “God, this stupid phone! Can you hear me? Ingrid?”

  “…have some real issues.” Ingrid’s voice is muzzy and distant. “…shouldn’t call me again, okay?”

  “Ingrid, no, please, wait—”

  “…sorry, but…too weird. Good…everything, okay?”

  And the line goes dead in my ear.

  I stand there with the phone in my hand, my knuckles going white, every desperate excuse I couldn’t make howling through me. I stab at the screen, pulling up the call log. There: Last night. The California number. A fifteen-minute call at 4:21 a.m.

  It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.

  I lift the phone, almost throw it. But it won’t help. It won’t even make me feel better. I’ve tried that before. I will not be the hurricane. I force my arms to my sides, taking slow, desperate breaths. Calm down. Calm down. There’s a way to fix this. I just have to calm down. I close my eyes, but in my mind’s eye there’s no more sunlight, and all I can think of is that empty horizon. The fringe of ice over the bottomless depths.

  When the sound begins my first thought is that I somehow missed pressing the End button on my phone, leaving the static to hiss and simmer. But the screen is dark, and as I stare at it, the scouring metallic noise grows louder, more distinct. It’s coming from behind me.

  From inside the closet.

  I set the phone down carefully on the dresser, my fingers gone nerveless. The sound pauses, starts up again with a rattle: chickachickachicka. The closet door jerks and trembles, making me jump. But then silence falls, cold and mocking.

  None of this can be real, none of it. Something’s broken in my head. The difference between reality and a nightmare should be obvious, a sharp line, an on/off switch. I can’t open that door.

  I have to.

  Unable to contain a whimper, I give the door a little yank, as if the handle might burn me.
And a little metal box, a candy tin, tumbles off the shelf and lands at my feet with a clatter.

  I shriek, spring away from it. But it rattles to a stop with the lid flopped open. Empty.

  And then all around me comes a shower of little metallic pings and rattles, and I throw my arms up to shield my face against a hail of little stinging somethings raining down on me, tiny sharp bites against my scalp, through my sleeves. When it stops, it’s a long, sobbing moment before I can bring myself to slowly lower my arms. They’re peppered with sewing pins: slivers of silver jabbed through my shirt, stinging bright needles topped with bright little plastic globes. I pick them out with trembling fingers, run a careful hand through my hair, dislodging a few more. They ping across the linoleum. I remember just in time not to move my feet. I sink into a shaky crouch, collecting them one by one into a little pile on the dresser. After a long hesitation I collect the empty tin, sweep the pile into it, drop it into one of the empty drawers. Slam it shut.

  I missed one: a last thread of silver that almost rolled away under the dresser. I pick it up, watch the light slide off it, and lean the pad of one finger against the point, feel it snag into my skin. Pricking my finger. Like Sleeping Beauty. Did she dream while she slept for a hundred years? The point is vanishingly sharp. It’s real, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

  I push my finger down against the pain, through it, until blood wells up in a bright bead. It’s real, all right. God, does that mean that phone call was real too? The tape? Did I take this pin from the closet and imagine the rest? How can I trust myself?

  Ron saw something. Something that sent her running from me.

  She said she couldn’t resist a mystery. But she’s not here. And who else would ever believe it?

  • • •

  After that, mercifully, everything is quiet. I pull a bandage from the cupboard in the bathroom, rip the paper off with clumsy fingers. I feel hollow, as burnt out as ground zero. Though my hands shake, I’m surprised at my calm, my ability to observe my own thoughts dispassionately from across a wide gulf. Maybe it’s the medicine. I suppose I should be grateful.

  Aunt Jen eventually calls up the stairs to announce that she’s home, but when I don’t answer, she tactfully leaves me alone. Eventually the smell of cooking slides under the door.

  When I finally let it lure me down the stairs, Aunt Jen is humming in the kitchen, clattering around in the cupboards. An invisible band around my chest loosens a notch or two. I sink into a chair at the table.

  “Marianne, do you know where all the forks got to? I just emptied the dishwasher this morning.”

  Nothing spooky about this, I tell myself.

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Well, good thing it’s stew instead of steak, I guess. Spoons it is.”

  I can’t eat more than a few bites, and even that leaves me feeling a little ill. The things I’m not talking about sit in my stomach like rocks, irrefutable. I want to jump up from the table and scream. How are we just sitting here, eating dinner? Somehow that’s the most awful thing. The thing that makes it real and not a nightmare.

  “You okay, Mare-bear?” Aunt Jen asks eventually.

  No. I nod. She’s watching me push the spoon around the bowl; I set it down.

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  I almost demur, but then something occurs to me. Aunt Jen has lived here since forever.

  “Aunt Jen, did anyone ever drown in the bay? Near here?”

  She blinks, sits back. “That’s…not quite what I had in mind, but…I guess there’s always some dimwit wandering out onto the ice during the thaw. So yes, I imagine there have been a number of them, over the years.”

  “No one you know, though.”

  “Nope.”

  “How old is this building, anyway?”

  “About fifty years? I guess there used to be other apartments here before that too. They built those on the site of an old sawmill.”

  Nothing helpful there. I knew it was a long shot.

  “So,” Aunt Jen says in a bright, final way that makes it clear she’s trying to change the subject. “Where did you meet your friend with the wild makeup?”

  “At school.” I study the table, smooth my fingers over a faint circular scar where someone once set a mug without a coaster.

  “She seemed nice,” Aunt Jen offers. “Polite.”

  I shrug.

  “Dad says he’s not cheating,” I come up with eventually, when the silence wears thin.

  “Well,” Aunt Jen sighs, “I suppose maybe he’s not, Marianne. I don’t know. Did you take your medicine yet this evening?”

  Changing the subject again. I fold my arms.

  “So you haven’t,” Aunt Jen prompts. I sink a little lower in my chair.

  “I will,” I mutter. “It’s just that they make me sick to my stomach.”

  Her phone pings—once, twice—and she pulls it from her pocket. Her eyes dart toward me as she scans the messages.

  “Is that Dad?”

  She hesitates. “He’s just checking on you.”

  “He said I didn’t have to stay with him.” I stick my chin out. “Can he make me?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t really know. I guess it’s up to the lawyers.”

  Not up to me. I push the chair back, leaving the rest of the stew uneaten, and head for the stairs.

  “Don’t forget your pills, Mare-bear,” Aunt Jen calls after me. I don’t bother to answer.

  All the way back to my room a thought dogs my steps: home, here, with Dad, it makes no difference. If something is following me—the ghost, or whatever it is—it doesn’t matter where I go.

  • • •

  That night I dream I’m dancing. I’m in the wide, bright room in the basement, with a rightness and a sureness pouring through me down to my fingertips, bearing me up. It starts as the grand allegro from one of my conservatory classes and then spirals out beyond it: endless fouettés, grand jetés, high and strong, my arms swept out triumphant and stern. My feet are ghost-light in pointe shoes, the stiff canvas honing them into delicate blades that meet the floor with barely a whisper. I’m perfect precision. Perfect delight.

  There’s no music; it doesn’t matter. I sweep through the house, past the huge expanse of windows, a swan on a hardwood river, my neck a long curve, stretching my wings. I could be Odette, I could be the Sugar Plum Fairy, I could be anyone. I’m unstoppable.

  When I come to the kitchen, Dad’s standing at the island with a gleaming knife, chopping something. The certainty falls away from me as abruptly as the harsh scratch of a record needle, and I stumble to a stop on the flats of my feet. He’s standing there like nothing happened. Has he come back? Again? I don’t know how to ask. The blade clacks against wood in expert rhythm.

  He’s always loved to be the chef; he keeps those knives carefully honed. “It’s important to look after your tools,” he insisted. He showed me once how he could shave the hair off his arm with one of them.

  And Mom sits at the kitchen table, slouched moodily over her coffee. Her feet are gone. Her legs dangle from the chair, blood dripping into a vivid pool beneath her. She looks up at me, scowling.

  “Well, what’s it going to be,” she says in a hurt, huffy voice. “Choose. Go ahead. Him or me.”

  Dad’s knife goes thock thock thock against the cutting board. He looks up at me and smiles.

  “What pretty dancing shoes,” he says.

  I turn and run, no elegance left, only clumsy terror. But the house has become endless, full of dark hallways, secret passages that twist and double back on themselves. When I finally find the front door and shoulder through it, I’m stepping out from under the trees onto a dim and silent beach. And somebody is standing in the water, barely visible, a shadow against the faintly luminous expanse of the ice.

  I want to turn back, I w
ant to run the other way, but my feet carry me forward, stumbling across the sand toward a figure I’ve glimpsed before, hollow eyes and twisting hair. It lurches through the water, coming closer, flickering into the light, all hunger and hatred. It steps onto the shore in dance shoes, just like mine but red. Ruby red. Red as blood. Limp, shining ribbons trail over the sand behind it like seaweed. Its pale hands are claws reaching out for me. Another heartbeat and its fingers will close around my throat.

  I finally manage to pitch myself back into the waking world, to the yellow glow of the bedside light spread across the ceiling, but something holds me down, pushes back against my flailing attempt to sit upright. I fight my way free of the blankets, trying not to scream. Something metallic goes clattering to the floor, making me jump.

  All around me, standing upright with their tines stabbed through the quilt and into the mattress, are the forks. They’re still cold to the touch when I yank them out.

  13

  I spend the rest of the night curled in the farthest corner of the bed, watching the room, fighting the quetiapine, waiting for something to happen. The night oozes by, and I can’t tell whether I’m awake anymore. The moments flake apart into fragments, like the mirror, sharp-edged, disjointed. I’m not sure whether I’ve slept by the time gray morning finally thins the lamplight. Either way, it’s a relief, kind of, despite the gritty feeling in my eyes and a dull headache. I scrub my hands over my face and swing my legs over the side of the bed.

  My feet splash down into icy water.

  I snatch them back up. My socks are soaked through, the cuffs of my pajamas clinging wet around my ankles. The crows tock and chuckle outside. A car door slams. The rainy-day light is limp, ordinary. But my feet leave soggy prints on the dry sheet.

  Slowly, I lean out over the edge of the bed. My shadow looks back at me, the faintest ripply reflection. Clear water covers the linoleum, laps at the feet of the dresser. The cords of the lamp and the alarm clock are underwater; I jerk the plugs from their sockets.

  I jump, cringing, at a sound from the hallway, but it’s only Aunt Jen opening her door.

  “Good lord!” she exclaims. She knocks on my door, but opens it before I can answer.