by P. Craig
Straightening up, he untucked his tattered gown from his trousers and quickly tore off a wide strip from around the hem. He packed the material into a small bundle and then held it in place on the window with one hand; with the other, he retrieved the crowbar from the wall. With a feather-light touch, the man pressed the crowbar against the wadding; gradually, he put more and more weight against it, listening carefully as the fracture lines developed and crackled quietly, muffled by the material. A faint tinkle reached the man’s ears as a piece of glass dropped down inside the window; he stopped, lifted the crowbar away and removed the wadding in order to examine the condition of the glass. A spider’s web of cracks had spread out from the centre of the window; an empty space stood isolated from the rest where a tiny square had fallen. The man poked at another loose piece with the crowbar and it promptly fell inside, tinkling as it nestled next to its sibling on the windowsill.
The man tossed the wadding aside, dropped the crowbar onto the ledge and then picked away another dozen pieces of glass until he’d made a larger hole. Taking great care, he squeezed his hand through the gap and then reached up inside the window, seeking out the catch that would open the way into the room beyond. He found it, eventually, but it was stiff and he needed to use all his strength to get it to budge even a tiny amount. As he strained to open the window, his arm brushed against the glass and the jagged edge dug into his skin, making another cut to add to his collection. Muttering, the man finally lifted the catch and, with a sigh of relief, opened the window.
He brushed the broken glass onto the carpet as he climbed inside, pushing past the thin curtain with his head. The instant he set foot on the floor, the room’s warmth enveloped him like the arms of an old friend.
As the man’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, his gaze fell upon a large double bed that occupied a corner of the room. After the long trek through the forest, it was a tempting sight. Especially after everything I’ve been through.
He shook his head; he could ill afford to lie down for fear of falling asleep and being discovered by the occupants of the house when they eventually retired for the night. Besides, finding a place to rest hadn’t been why he had broken into the house in the first place; the need to find somewhere he could clean himself up and see to his injuries had been by far and away the overriding concern.
The man spotted a door near the corner of the left-hand wall that he suspected led into an en-suite bathroom; that and, more specifically, its contents were exactly what he needed.
Moving cautiously for fear of causing a loose floorboard to reveal his presence, the man made his way across the room and opened the door. His hunch was right—it was a bathroom. The plush tiling and fittings sparkled as he pulled the light cord.
The man reached for the medicine cabinet above the sink and opened the mirrored doors before he caught an unwanted glimpse of his own reflection; he had no desire to see that face again—those eyes—unless it was completely unavoidable.
His eyes scanned the shelves until he found a small plastic bottle filled with aspirin. It was a well-timed discovery; his head was beginning to pound with an excruciating pain. Fingers shaking, the man ripped the top off the bottle and poured several white pills into his mouth. A moment later, the pain in his head started to ease a little.
He turned his attention to finding something he could use to clean the dirt from the lacerations on his face and arms. Cotton wool, cotton buds, moisturiser, face cream, nail polish remover, sanitary products and other such feminine accessories were all there in abundance; again, strangely, there was little evidence that a man lived in the house.
Shrugging, the man grabbed some cotton buds and began to remove the obvious dirt from the cuts on his face, though he tried his best not to look too closely at his reflection while he made use of the mirror to guide his efforts.
The blood had stopped flowing at some point while in the forest, but the bruising—in particular, the heavy swelling around his left eye—was getting worse. None of it hurt, though, even when he prodded the lump with his finger to see how solid it was becoming, and nor did his nose, out of shape and almost certainly broken though it was. The lacerations on his arms weren’t causing him any discomfort, either; truth be told, if it weren’t for the blood-soaked sleeves of his gown, he wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong with them. In fact, other than the pounding in his head, almost gone now as the drugs worked their magic, he couldn’t really feel anything else at all. Barely even a dull pain.
The man ran his fingers over his shaved head, the tips of his left hand following the curve of the scar along that side—a scar still as red and raw-looking as he had noticed earlier. Now, even more so than before, he really did have the look of a serial killer about him.
Smiling, amused by his own guilty appearance, the man finished tending to his injuries as best he could. Job done, he started back towards the bedroom and pulled the light cord on his way past, plunging everything back into darkness; unnerved, he stopped dead in his tracks at the doorway. He reached round and fumbled up and down the bedroom wall until he found the light switch.
Light flooded the room and, for a moment, the man just stood there blinking, temporarily blinded by the glare coming from a wall-mounted lamp next to his head. His eyes readjusted quickly; curious, he studied the bedroom, looking for clues as to whose home he had invaded.
Just as the contents of the medicine cabinet had suggested the lack of a male occupant, the dressing table by the window further emphasised the complete absence of such a presence; it was laden with an array of perfume bottles, powders and other cosmetics. More than that, though, the room lacked the smell—the stale odour of sweat, the man supposed—that marked a man’s territory. The only smells, if he could call the foul aromas bombarding his senses as such, were the competing scents from those countless bottles of perfume, polluting the air with their pestilence.
The man’s eyes lingered on the dressing table; a smell had stirred a memory somewhere in the depths of his mind, perhaps a vague recollection of encountering a woman who had been wearing one of these fragrances, although for all he knew it could have been a cheap perfume commonly used by many. The man screwed up his face in disgust; frankly, he didn’t like the smell in the slightest. In truth, he wasn’t keen on the rest of the decor in the room either, with a myriad of soft, feminine furnishings and pastel paints predominating; again, it spoke volumes about the dominant figure in the household.
The man walked carefully across the deep-pile carpet and sat down on the bed. The mattress was soft—far too soft for his liking—and it didn’t tempt him to lie down, though the thought passed fleetingly through his mind nonetheless. Still, sitting was good enough for now. Finding somewhere to sleep, somewhere safe, somewhere isolated, could wait until later.
The man pulled open the bedside drawer, curious to see what intimate secrets he could find. He was pleasantly surprised to discover a leather-bound diary.
He glanced at the door, suddenly fearful that someone—the woman of the house—would walk in and catch him in the act. But the light emanating from underneath the door didn’t give any indication that someone was lurking out in the hallway beyond.
Momentary panic over, the man grabbed the diary from the drawer and flicked through until he found the first entry.
March 9
Hello Diary,
Sorry I haven’t written for a while. Come to think of it, I haven’t written in you at all since I got you, have I?
Sitting in my room, our room, writing in you like this, just reminds me how long it’s been since I took you home. It’s been over a month—January 30th, I think it was. I guess I could check the receipt to be sure (I probably still have that lying about in the kitchen downstairs), but I suppose you’re not too concerned with exact dates. Well, maybe you are, actually, because there’s a date on every page of you, but I guess it’s me who’s not concerned.
It’s been hard to think of what to write in you, and maybe I’ve jus
t been lazy. I don’t seem to have any sense of the days at the moment. Since my love left, it feels like all the days are merging into one. Guess it explains why I’ve been so tired of late. Maybe that’s why I haven’t written before. Well, not in you at any rate. I used to keep a diary when Charlotte was younger. I wrote all the time when she was in hospital. I just wanted to record everything that happened to her, to us all, when she was there. We were so close to losing her, you know. I guess writing in a diary seems like a stupid thing to do. I mean, what difference is it going to make exactly? But it helped that time. I don’t know how it did but, well, it did. Maybe it just made me feel like I was doing something constructive, helping to counteract the illness that was so close to taking her away from us. I guess that’s maybe why I’m writing in you now. I guess I’m hoping that writing will somehow stop my love from being taken away from me.
See you tomorrow when I hope I’ll have more to say. Something positive.
The man snorted his derision and looked disdainfully at the diary in his hands. There certainly wasn’t much in that first entry to make him want to continue reading.
Nonetheless, his curiosity hadn’t been sated and it demanded he read a little more. Shaking his head, the man turned over to the next page.
March 10
I’m really struggling to find the words to express what I’ve been feeling today. I don’t remember feeling like this before with Charlotte. It just doesn’t feel right. I don’t feel right. I’m not sure what to tell you. I know I promised to say more today but I don’t think I can.
No, I will try to say more. I must try.
The waiting to hear news, any news, is what has me on edge. Charlotte’s edgy too. She barely said two words to me today. She just stayed out in the yard and listened to her music most of the day. It’s her way of dealing with it all, I guess. She hasn’t been in this situation before, not from this perspective anyway, and she’s handling it in the way she thinks best. As for me... well, I really hate the waiting. I can’t find my old diary, but if I ever do, then I think I’ll find that I had recorded how much I hated waiting back then too.
I really, really hate the waiting. Did I mention that already? I just hope that it’s worth it at the end of day; that it’s not all for nothing.
I still have a feeling that something isn’t right.
Sorry, the words still aren’t coming to me.
The man’s curiosity still hadn’t been satisfied; worse, the woman’s words—the lack of them, frankly—irritated him slightly. Are all women as neurotic and vague as this one seems to be? What the heck is she babbling about?
He shook his head in dismay; his regard for women had sunk to a new low that he hadn’t known existed. How he hated their evasiveness.
March 11
I don’t want to write anything today. I don’t think I can. I will maybe try tomorrow instead.
Sorry.
The man laughed in disbelief. What a bitch. He couldn’t believe she had written in her diary that she couldn’t be bothered to write anything. What, exactly, did she think she was doing with her pen at that moment when it was making contact with the paper? Stupid bitch.
The man turned to the next day only to find that it was blank, not so much as a single pen stroke to indicate that the woman had even bothered to look at the page to consider writing on it. It was the same story on the following page, and the one after that, and then the one after that too. He flicked through several more pages, his anger rising at his curiosity’s insatiable appetite; his desire to be somewhere else, anywhere, doing something else, anything, was fighting a desperate battle—but losing.
Almost a dozen pages after the last entry, his curiosity—curse that it was to him—finally got its reward.
March 21
It’s taken me a while to get round to writing again. I’ve been putting it off, I know, but there just didn’t seem much point in telling you about what’s been happening. It’s difficult even thinking about it. I’ve had it all explained to me several times, twice today even, but I still don’t really understand it. I listen to their words, I listen carefully, but it’s almost as if I’ve lost all sense of what they’re trying to say—they might as well be talking in a different language.
The waiting is over but now it’s like there’s a big empty space all around me. I think Charlotte feels the same way, but she’s bottling it up, locking herself away from me.
I feel more helpless than ever. To be honest, I don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t feel like myself. I try to be, I do, but this person that’s here, that’s standing in my shoes... it’s not me. The empty space—it’s gnawing at me, taking a bit of my soul away with every nibble. Each day passes without any positive sign that the next will be better, that my love will come back to me. It’s as if we’re not ever going to be ourselves again.
It’d be easier for me in some ways if Charlotte wasn’t here; then I could just stay here in my room until it all went away. But she is here—and every day I have to go down and face up to the bitter reality of the situation. Seeing her just reminds me of what I’m losing. You know what? I think I hate her for it too. Just how bad of a mother does that make me?
I want to be left alone to cope with it by myself. I wish Charlotte wasn’t here. Or maybe it’s just that I wish I wasn’t here.
I don’t think I’m going to talk to you again for a while. Maybe when things get back to normal again. If...
The man flicked through a dozen more pages, checking to see if she had made another entry. Finding none, he closed the diary and lobbed it back into the open drawer, where it landed with a heavy thud.
He shook his head in disgust. In his opinion, the woman was bereft of any kind of warmth or heart; she seemed to think only of herself, with her true colours, her hideous nature, coming to the fore just because life seemed to have made a turn for the worse. The man had a hazy memory of overhearing someone talking about how people will revert to type when under great pressure or stress. At such times, he recalled, the human mind is often at its most vulnerable, its most fragile—the ability to think rationally, to act in a controlled way, goes straight out the window. And when that happens, the false facade a person presents to the world is stripped away to reveal that person’s true nature, their real personality, so often hidden away in normal circumstances for fear of being judged critically by others.
Through her diary entries, even in those few short lines, the man had seen this woman’s true nature—and he didn’t like it one bit.
The man closed the bedside drawer and rose from the bed. His knees creaked, no doubt in complaint about the brevity of the rest, but his growing desire to be somewhere else, anywhere else, quickly silenced them. The woman had written that she wished she wasn’t here in this house anymore; the man was beginning to think the same thing. There was a dark, ugly bitterness within this place; it was gnawing at him, infecting his mind with its poison just as it had done to the woman. He could already feel the evil pestilence spreading through his brain and consuming his thoughts. There was only one way to end it, to clear his mind from this new, unwanted pollution—he had to leave.
The man looked back to where he had come in. The curtain was billowing by the broken window, courtesy of a stiff, cool breeze that had descended on the grounds around the house in the moments since he’d left the outside behind.
A pity the wind’s not strong enough to blow away the ills from this hellish place.
The man’s feet crunched on the broken glass lying on the floor by the window. He stood in the breeze for a moment, savouring its touch, breathing in the crisp, clean air. He pulled back the curtain so he could more clearly see the grounds outside. The forest all around the perimeter was once again calling to him. Time to go.
A faint creaking sound from out in the hallway caused the man’s head to whip round; he stared anxiously at the bedroom door. The door swung open and his eyes locked on a pair of eyes in the hallway; they belonged to a woman—a thin,
gaunt wretch of a woman—who stood there dumbstruck, mouth agape, body shaking, like she had seen a ghost. The man knew that this wasn’t just any woman, though; this was the woman—the woman of the house, the she-devil of the diary.
The man expected her to back away and scream, to raise an alarm at an intruder in her home, yet her first movement was forwards, startling him and suddenly making him fearful.
Instinct kicked in. He reacted quickly, covering the distance to the approaching woman in the blink of an eye, and hit her with a knife-hand strike to the throat, relying on her momentum to worsen the effect of the blow. There was a faint crunch but the man kept moving; he closed the door behind the woman and then turned to look as she took a couple of staggering steps further into the room, gasping for breath, her hands clutched around her throat.
The man knew she was struggling—the blow to her throat had almost certainly shattered her windpipe—and as she turned and swayed unsteadily in front of him, he could see her eyes—her ghastly, sad eyes—pleading with his for help. He smiled and moved around the room, keeping a safe distance, watching as she tried desperately to fill her lungs. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and her mouth was opening and closing, as if she was trying to scream—but not one sound escaped her lips. Her strength failing, the woman fell onto her knees and began to crawl towards the closed door.
The man moved quickly again and blocked her path. He placed a foot on her shoulder and pushed her backwards, knocking her off-balance and flat onto her back on the carpet. He pounced on top of her, pinning her down, and then wrapped his hands snugly around her throat. The woman was physically weak—her body, thin and emaciated; her face, drawn and tired; her skin, translucent and stretched taut across her skull. The man felt ill just from looking at her. She was hideous, uglier than sin itself, a true physical reflection of her inner self. How right I was about her!