PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller

by Michelle Muckley

  I knew they wouldn’t knock the door immediately, even though it’s cold outside. They have done what I did the first time I came to this house. They were drawn to the garden without any conscious decision to go there. The view pulls you, sucking you down like a whirlpool, a portal to another place. The garden appears peaceful, the centre of the house which just happens to be outside. It is lined with trees that are tall and strong and have withstood tough times and hard winters, standing firm to protect those beyond like a row of warriors. This space is why you would buy this house, not for the modern kitchen or its disparate connections of old and new. It is a place where children will grow and flowers will flourish. It is a place for summer picnics and welcoming guests. A daughter could marry here overlooking the raggedy crags of The Langdale Pikes. A son might sit to study in the summer holidays before he becomes a lawyer or a doctor. It is a place of life, of hope, and pleasure. I stood here three weeks ago and looked out over the trees towards the lake, thinking what a wonderful life somebody might be able to create here. I hope these people do it. The little girl looks like she will grow up to be beautiful, a heart breaker as my father might say. She is already running around the garden, arms outstretched in airplane fashion. I watch as The Wife squeezes The Husband’s hand and turns to look at him as if what’s on the inside of the house suddenly became irrelevant. She has already seen her future here. When I stood here gazing beyond the tree tops towards the depths of the black lake, I wondered if I hired a boat whether I would have the courage to weigh myself down with concrete blocks and slip into the water. I wondered if I would fight, or if I would let the current take me. I wondered if I would regret my actions and try to save the little seed that I knew to be growing inside me, clawing at the bubbles as they crept freely to the surface. I envisioned myself at the bottom of the lake amongst the mud and the bottom feeders, returning to the place from where I had once escaped. I imagined fiddling with the locks to free my feet whilst the winter sunshine rippled through the water above me like a reminder of the life that I had lost. I wondered how long it would be until I drowned, before my fingers seized up from the cold water, or before the last bubble escaped from the imbuement of my lungs. That night I held my breath under the water in the bath. I could feel the large gulp of air bursting against my ribs, overinflated balloons of tissue filling up with toxic gas as I refused to breathe. I lasted thirty six seconds before I slipped quietly back up. I looked at my belly, swelling already if I used my imagination. I told myself fake was good. That fake doesn’t matter. Everybody loves fake.

  Chapter four

  It took over an hour for Mr. and Mrs. Perfect Life to view the house. He is a doctor and she is radiologist. Their daughter didn’t walk anywhere. She ran. Up the stairs, into the bedrooms, outside again, which made me feel both exhausted and thankful that I had lit the fire, because each time she swung through the French doors the wind whipped through the house like the flight of an eagle. They wanted to get a feel for the place, they said. When your client is paying almost one million for a property you let them. If they need a couple of hours to get a feel for the place, you give it to them. If they want to see how it feels to take a shit in their potential new home, you open the door and offer them the toilet seat. It is my misfortune that this actually happened.

  It is exactly this element of my job which bothers Gregory. He finds it demeaning that his wife does this. As far as waiting for somebody to defecate in something that is neither public nor theirs, I would have to agree with him, although I argued against it when Gregory questioned my sanity in accepting such behaviour. This was shortly before our wedding. He wouldn’t question my sanity now. But this is the thing with the rich. They are generally rich because they are eccentric and stood out from the crowd. The rich like to be different, it sets them apart from the rest of society which conforms. I imagine the man who used the toilet in the house that was neither public nor his, enjoyed that experience immensely.

  Gregory too is eccentric. He is the man who goes out to shoot pheasant wearing tweed, trousers tucked into his socks to avoid the undergrowth on a dew soaked spring morning. He wears a flat cap with flaps that cover his ears and carries the shotgun in his hand, tucked up into the crease of his arm, even in the house whilst he is preparing himself and getting into the character of The Hunter. He has many characters. Sometimes I used to wonder if he was pointing the shotgun at me, just to tease me, to taunt me with it to let me know who holds the power and to see what I would do.

  Gregory decided not to come with me to my hospital appointment today. He provided me with a loose and somewhat transparent excuse about a busy schedule and a renovation to oversee when I questioned him a few nights ago. My first instinct was to be annoyed, and for a day or so as the fact of his not coming lingered with me I placed a degree of pressure on him, the gentle sort like a child’s fingers as they prod at you to investigate the alien changes of adulthood. At first he tried reassurance and repeated his story of renovations and prior engagements. But after a while he became frustrated and on the last occasion that I insisted he rearrange a few things in order that we might make the trip together he simply didn’t answer. I took this as a sign and resigned myself to going alone.

  I had forgotten the beauty of the southbound A592 from Bowness to Barrow. It narrows delightfully as the trees cluster into the road to share secrets with those opposite. Occasionally the trees give way to hedgerows or higgledy-piggledy walls which border land and join up with the stone walls of roadside farmhouses. There is a frost which appears to have been sprinkled across the slate rooftops and it glistens under an uninterrupted winter-blue sky. As the trees recede the land opens up, and as I follow the road I also follow the lake as it narrows into a river. Here there is space, air, open land, and no constraints. Here, for a brief moment pleasure in life feels possible and I reach down and stroke a hand across my stomach. But soon I realise I have been swallowed up by the reality of the journey and am once again sucked into the town and as I look down I find both hands on the steering wheel.

  The doctor’s waiting room is small and smells like antiseptic. I assume it is clean and so I sit down, but I do not remove my gloves. Opposite there is another couple, young, and beyond any doubt here as the result of an accident. Her stomach is swollen, the shape of an egg, cradled in smooth protective hands. She is barely beyond childhood but already feels the need to protect that which she has created, and I think again of how I had considered hiring a boat and killing both myself and the early life inside of me. There is a boy who sits alongside her wondering how life played such a cruel trick on him. His arms are folded tightly across his chest, his eyes half closed. I feel sorry for him because he looks scared, and I feel envious of her because he is here. I feel sad for myself that I am alone. It is not how I imagined this. I catch my reflection in the nearby aquarium and I realise that my hair looks like grass blades covered in droplets of spring dew, perfect for Gregory to trample through. The frost has crept into my hair and in the heat of the hospital it has started to melt. I flatten it down, conscious of my scar which has begun to pulsate. I have the beginnings of a headache.

  “Mrs. Astor,” a voice says before looking up to meet my gaze. “Mrs. Astor,” he says again. He is impatient. He sees me walking towards him and he realises that he knows me and so starts tracing through the clustered compartments of his brain to work out where from.

  “I am your estate agent,” I say. I am not one for guessing games, and I do not like to play haven’t-we-met-somewhere-before. I was with him only two hours ago. I forget enough already so I have no desire to play around with the things that I do remember. I don’t believe that he has forgotten me, and I am irritated at his display of pretend confusion and my headache feels immediately worse.

  “Of course,” he says, “come in, take a seat.” I was unimpressed at the house viewing when he decided to help himself to a coffee from the pot, and then complained that it was cold. The old fashion iron that had been placed on th
e windowsill in a decorative nod to the past seemed a good object with which to strike the back of his head, and I believed that it would ease my irritation, but instead I took his cup from him and heated it in the microwave. He is young for a consultant, and I wonder if he is my only option. I have investigated the option of private hospital care and suggested several options to Gregory but he was of the opinion that the local hospital was better. He hadn't performed any research. It was simply his opinion. I know this because he told me so. Here I am.

  He asked me a few questions about my medical history, which for the most part is short and uninspiring. He checked the results of the blood tests which my midwife had taken earlier. She is a pleasant, chubby lady, like I might be if I wasn’t careful with food and if I tried to smile more. He tells me that everything is satisfactory and that I should get onto his couch. I ask him to clean the couch first, and whilst surprised, he obliges my request. He makes a show of cleaning the probe and I appreciate his effort and consider that I may have judged him too soon. I lie down as he instructs me too and within one minute there is a lump of grey matter flashing up on the screen as he wobbles a jellified probe around on my belly. It jiggles in and out of view, revealing a gaping hole in the middle, black and at first empty. As he rocks the probe back and forth I see something that looks like a fish swimming out at me, flipping in and out of view as his imaginary tail beats left and right. Then the sound of life fills my ears, whooshing along at pace. Gushhush, gushhush, gushhush, gushhush. He turns to me and smiles. I am pregnant, he tells me. I wipe a little tear from the side of my face and manage an unconvincing smile. He looks confused by my reaction. I am confused, too.

  He points to the screen with his oversized fingers, almost covering the tiny fleck of life that he wants to show me. His voice has changed a bit, and now he sounds encouraging, like the voice of a parent to a small child who needs nothing more than a gentle push in the right direction. He is used to bringing joy, and has almost forgotten how to deliver bad news. I have made him uncomfortable, I know it, and he shifts his weight about on the couch, trying to settle. I know he is wondering what might be wrong with me, and I see that it is only now that he notices just how empty the black chair to the side of him feels. It is the chair of the husband, where the boy outside with his arms crossed will take the choice to stand up and become something, or chose to live with the albatross of an abandoned child hanging from his neck for the rest of his life. I believe he will do the right thing, but I cannot decide why. I can feel the doctor carrying on with his scan, and I dream about the boy outside and wonder if I would feel better with him at my side as opposed to nobody. I wish Gregory was here, and I feel pathetic for wanting his prescriptionary method of support. A set of delicate fat fingers resting absently on my arm as if I were a stranger.

  The doctor nudges me in the arm just forcefully enough to wake me from my daydream. He points to something flickering back and forth, a tiny little switch going on and off, a wagging finger of judgment. It is the heartbeat. The sounds, the gushhush gushhush of imminent life were alien and new to me. But the heartbeat looks as my own pulse feels. It is a sensation of reality. It is only now that it is tangible to me that there is something moving inside of me. No matter what else was happening in the world, this little fish was protected by nothing but my own mortal body which I had on occasion tried to destroy. This revelation was a chink of winter sunshine in an otherwise bleak landscape of grey, the diamond in the tray of river mud, the first flower to burst through the ground after a nuclear winter. In new beginnings there is always the first day, the first moment, the first drop of monsoon rain to quench a barren landscape. Maybe, for me this was it.

  On the way home I stop the car because an urgent need to pee takes over everything else. I park in Glebe Road car park and use the facilities which are not acceptable according to my usual standards, but I accept this change as part of the pregnancy and my first sacrificial act as a mother. There was no time to clean the surfaces, so instead I try not to touch anything and fight back the tears. Afterwards I discard my gloves on the floor because no amount of cleaning would be ever be enough for me to consider wearing them again. I cross the road and walk along the pavement which leads towards the town centre. The trees which line the roads are sparse, big giants stripped of their summer frills, their leaves long since rotted into the ground and the spiders web of branches glisten white like Narnia. The lake is just visible through a shroud of mist which has rolled in from the surrounding hills, a sleeping beast hiding his might behind a hazy facade. I hate this lake. I hate its size. I hate its depth. I hate its beauty, of which I am not unaware. I hate the town’s dependence upon it. I despise the tourist crowd which flocks to it, riding around on boats and water-skis as if it were a friend to be visited and enjoyed. I hate that I allowed it the chance to take my life, and I hate that I failed to give myself to it. I hate it because this was the last place he ever took me.

  I drop down on to the gravel path which abuts the lake like a poor excuse for a beach and make my way through the pestering swans and moorhens, cawing at me to feed them. I pass the Old England Hotel on my left, originally beautiful but now defaced by the surgical stoma bag attachment of a new wing, a necessary but ugly appendage. I cut up through Church Street and I feel the pull of my lungs, their task made harder by the intruder in my womb. I pull a new pair of gloves from my bag and as I step inside the café, the heat is overwhelming, blistering and nauseating. I order a takeaway latte and drop the coins onto the counter before heading back towards the lake.

  I take a seat under the shadow of The Belsfield Hotel. I don’t turn to look at it but I know it is there, like the moon during the day, not in view but unmistakably present. I watch as the water lurches back and forth through the cloud of fog. I remember eating ice cream sat on this bench as a child, when the sun always seemed to shine and when I trusted that life would stay as people said it would, and when all I needed were words to comfort me because I had no concept of real or false. I pick up my latte, take a sip and cross the road. I abandon the use of the pelican crossing and wonder if that makes me a bad almost-parent. I take steady steps towards the nearby jetty before thinking about those who have stood here before me. Those who gazed out at the water and found happiness. Some find peace in the gentle lakeside tide, the hollow clatter of the boats which displace the water as they knock together. Some find reassurance in the rise of the green trees beyond, which dip into the water's edge providing a nesting site for ducks. Some of these people take out a rowing boat. They heave themselves and their family into the middle of the water, laughing as the boat rides over the swell of waves from the steamers that pass by. They won’t see the danger. They arrive back at shore, Dad’s arms aching, Mum giggling and reminiscent, interrupted by a nauseas child. This is a memory that will last, one that will not perish in the passage of time. The water does that. It is a life source that fixes memories in a single moment, feeding them so they are not forgotten. But it is just the surface that we see, a public facade reflecting our own lives back so not to reveal its true self. Really it is a pit, the negative of the world sucked down into the silt, a land of the dead. Even the earth tries to claim back the void, depositing silt from its banks, a gradual reclamation lest not to anger it. The mountains on the far side know this. They reveal their inverted forms on the surface of the water to remind me that I should never assume what I see of the lake to be the truth, for it distorts all too well. Lake Windermere is the largest in England. I have lived near it my whole life and I have hated it for as long as I can remember. But yet still I come here, drawn to it.

  As close as I dare, I hover on the jetty, watching my reflection billow in the black winter waters. It knows that I am his. I pull my coat in close, and wrap it around me before pouring the rest of the coffee into the lake, and throw the cup in behind it. A poor offering that will never be enough. My reflection blurs and I disappear in the sludge.

  I turn and run, dodging the boat hire stall
s and lamp posts, following the path as it hugs the water’s edge as it reaches out to touch me. To claim me. I reach the car and in the mirror I see my cheeks are pink and I am sweating, beads stuck to my forehead like frozen diamonds. My hands grip the steering wheel, my knuckles whiter than the bone beneath the skin. My breathing is hard and laboured, and I tell myself it is due to the pregnancy but I know it’s a lie. I ask myself again why I do this, why I come here, but I have no answer. I drive out of the car park faster than is sensible and again I wonder if I am cut out for parenthood. I take one last look in the rear view mirror and tell myself I will not come here again. I will be a mother. I cannot give myself anymore. I whisper, "I can't," before the lake disappears into the distance. I swear it knows what I am thinking.

  Chapter five

  I pull over just inside the private driveway, designed to keep out the riff-raff as Gregory calls them, by the placement of a sign that reads Private Road. My knuckles still have a Velcro-tight grip of the wheel. My mouth is dry, like coffee flavoured sand paper, and my tongue is grating on the roof of my mouth to the point that I think I can almost taste my own blood. I wind down the window and stick out my head like a dog in transit, gasping at the cold air, my mouth hanging open, the chill burning the inside of my nose. For a moment I think I am going to be sick, but I swallow hard and the urge passes. From here I cannot see my house as it sits just over the brow of the hill. I can only see two of the houses from here. They look warm and comfortable, lights on and fires lit, the women inside making a home for their men to return to.