PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller

by Michelle Muckley

  “The baby,” I say. It is all that matters.

  “Charlotte, the baby is fine.” Dr. Abrams looks at Gregory, who turns and once again looks back out to the lake. I hear another one of those tormented breaths leave his nostrils. I wonder if he is wishing they had left me to drown in the same way that I sometimes wish they had. “Try not to think about the baby right now. We have to get you well.”

  “How can I not think about it?” The telephone is ringing in the background. Gregory doesn’t move. I look back and see Ishiko answering it. I can’t hear what she says because she is speaking so quietly as if she doesn't want to wake a new baby. “How can I not think about it?” I say again, turning back to Dr. Abrams.

  “Charlotte, we must focus on you. You haven’t been to see me for a few weeks now.” Gregory must know this already because the revelation doesn’t startle him. I feel startled. They have already discussed me at length, I am sure. “Why is that?”

  “I,” don’t know. “I,” didn’t want to. I am picking my nails again and tucking my hair behind my ears and wondering why I don’t feel the urge to pick at my head. “I was fine. I didn’t need to,” I finally say.

  “I think perhaps,” he ventures, as if it is possible that he is wrong and as if I have the option to disagree, “you misjudged it, Charlotte. Last night you became very angry before you fainted.”

  “I fainted?”

  “Yes.”

  “The baby?”

  “I told you Charlotte, the baby is fine. Why did you get so angry last night?”

  In my head I tell the truth. In my head the story I tell is of the betrayal that I saw with my own eyes which I learnt of minutes before my problems occurred. In my head I tell the story of Gregory's willingness to destroy me. In my head I tell the truth. In reality I say, “The baby.”

  “You were angry about the baby?”

  I am nodding, knowing there is a life beyond the haze of this awful sedative so I cling to that idea in order that I might avoid telling Dr. Abrams the truth. “Yes. I want to tell our friends that we are having a baby.” What I really want is to tell him is that Gregory is a cheating motherfucker and that I cannot stop thinking of ways to kill Ishiko because they are a tag team of hurt and deception that is destroying my chance of a decent future but I don't because somehow under the influence of whatever it is they have given me nothing seems as bad and so I say nothing of these facts.

  “Perhaps it is not the time yet, Charlotte.” Dr. Abrams says softly, taking a seat on the arm of the chair and resting a hand on my shoulder which encourages me to look up at him. “It may be better to wait until you are well enough to cope with it. We can plan it together, if you would like. How best to do it. Many women wait until after the first trimester has passed before saying anything.” I know he is right.

  “But I want to celebrate. Why doesn’t he want to celebrate?” I nod towards Gregory who acts as if he hasn’t heard me. Perhaps he hasn’t.

  “Because you have been very sick, Charlotte. He is worried about you. He is worried about how people will take the news. He is worried about how you will react to their reaction.” Gregory stands there looking out to the lake wishing I had died in it, chastising himself for chasing me on that day, for alerting the authorities to what I had done. It’s like he is not even here. The telephone is ringing again. A hotline to crazy central. Everyone wants to check on me. To know I am alright. To hear how I am. To confirm that I am still crazy.

  “I would be better if people knew the truth.” Now Gregory is engaged, and he turns back to face me, stares at me for a while as if I just told him that I was from Venus. He walks towards the piano where he sits on the stool. He sits with his head in his hands, his head swaying left to right like a pendulum, the world shut out by closed eyes. “The truth would make me feel better,” I say. I don’t even know if I am talking about the baby anymore. None of us know what I am really talking about, but we are all wondering.

  “But telling everybody now will be very difficult. You need a little time before everybody learns about the baby. Gregory needs a little time.” His voice is soft, like he is trying to perk me up after a failed exam or a lost opportunity. “We have some work to do.” I realise now that nobody listens to a crazy person. They hear the words but they don’t really listen. Nobody hears the meaning behind the words dared to be spoken. Gregory stands up and leaves the room. He slips out through the door that leads to the conservatory that I designed and that he hates. There is a moment of silence whilst the doctor and me adjust to being alone. Now it feels like therapy.

  “Charlotte, have you been taking you tablets?”

  “Yes.” My first lie.

  “Are you sure you haven’t missed any doses? Maybe you have been confused what with the focus on the pregnancy.”

  “I haven’t missed any, I promise.” Second lie.

  “What about your thoughts? Any thoughts about the lake or your father that concern you?”

  “No.” Number three.

  “Gregory tells me that you were seen running away from the lake to your car.”

  “So?”

  “There is no shame in discussing it with me, here together now. I thought that you were feeling better about those elements of your life, but if you are not ready to visit as we suggested, then we can wait.”

  “The lake doesn’t concern me.” Whilst not strictly true, it is at least not my primary thought right now which is both a relief and surprise. “It concerns Gregory a lot more.”

  “Of course it does. Let’s leave off with the exposure therapy for a while, shall we?” I nod. “Don’t go there again, not for a while.” He stands up from the chair and pulls the piano stool towards me and sits in front of me with his elbows balanced on his knees. He is so close that I can smell coffee on his breath, mixed with musky aftershave from his cheek. I hold the chair arms. It is light outside. I don’t know what time it is. It must be early because I can see the postman arriving. “He built you a very nice deck at the hotel, I hear.” I don’t answer. Gifts born of guilt do not interest me, and nor should they be acknowledged. Dr. Abrams waits in silence but in vain, for I say nothing. “Charlotte, we have to start working as a team here. Nobody wants for you to end up back in hospital. Your focus has to be you.”

  “You mean the baby.”

  “I mean you. You have to be your focus. You have to be well, with clear thoughts and a plan for your future.”

  “For the baby.”

  “Yes, OK,” he relents, “for the baby. But you have to be the priority. Without you, Charlotte, there is no baby.”

  “But what if other people want to destroy my life? What if other people can’t accept me being happy and well?” I don’t know exactly who I am talking about. Partly Gregory, partly Ishiko, partly everybody. People are uncomfortable with me when I am well. “They don’t believe it can be true.” They believe the madness is lurking just underneath the surface, like I lurked just beneath the surface of the water until they dragged me on to the boat.

  “People have your best interests at heart, Charlotte. You however, also have to have your best interests at heart. You have to do what is right for you.”

  “And the...”

  “Baby. Yes. What’s right for you, and the baby.” I smile. He smiles. I feel better.

  “So you think I have to concentrate on me. The things I want. The things I need.”

  “Yes. But you must come and see me. We can plan for the things you want together.”

  “OK.” He is collecting his coat and patting me on the shoulder like a pet and I am smiling at him. I wonder if he noticed the glued down photographs. Maybe they discussed them and I am grateful that he didn’t raise it now in conversation.

  “See you on Wednesday,” he says.

  “See you on Wednesday,” I repeat. He buttons up his coat and bends down to eye level. I smell the coffee breath again. “You don’t have to do this alone. I will help you.” He smiles and touches my hand. I feel the warmth of h
is skin, the faint pulse of his veins through his wrist. Within only moments he is gone and I am left alone in a room that smells of Gregory’s brandy, my birthday presents still unopened on the table.

  According to my psychiatrist, I must be the focus. I must focus on what I want and what I need. Before I was medicated and forced to sleep, I had already worked out what I needed. I had a plan. I had to make Gregory want me again. I had decided that it was up to me, my duty as his wife to show him how to want me, by showing him the consequences of his mistakes. I intended to show him what happens when people get betrayed. It will be several hours before the sedative wears off, but once it does I will feel better. I will feel my brain chipping through soon enough, the clear version of it. I can still feel the real Charlotte underneath this soft and slurring exterior. I am still here, crawling back to the surface, perhaps gasping for breath and weak, but slowly I am slipping back into my skin like a wetsuit, or water flooding into a basement.

  Chapter fourteen

  After the doctor left I returned to bed where I woke up a few hours later. I have a vague recollection that it was Ishiko who helped me to bed, although the vision remains cataract-cloudy and I am unsure. For a while I know that I drifted in and out of sleep like the waves, rolling back and forth, promising to reach the beach. But in the end I always got sucked back in by the pull of sleep. At one point I woke to the sound of my bedroom door closing, the smell of lavender from Ishiko’s skin still hanging above me. Another time I woke to the sound of laughter. I couldn’t be certain if it was from outside the house or coming from inside, from behind another closed door. It sounded childish and silly. My windows are closed. There are no children living in my road.

  When I wake for the final time I am strong enough to push myself up. I sit upright as if recovering from surgery, my legs limp and weak, the muscles wasted. I shuffle the pillows and get myself comfortable. I sit for a while, uncertain what to do. I consider getting up, but wonder what I might find on the other side of the door. I wonder if it will feel like walking out into a parallel universe or falling down the rabbit hole, where everybody walks upside down and where everything is the same and yet somehow different. I wonder if it will feel like I belong, or if I will re-live the days of six months ago when I float through the house without purpose or hope, my mind and actions slow. I remember Gregory from this time. He was different back then.

  When I woke up in this same position last August it was his face at my side, his eyes red and bloodshot, his tears running into his snotty nose creating streaks of slime running down to his chin, or occasionally smeared across his cheek. When I heard voices in the corridor behind my locked door it was his that rose above the others. When I needed water, it was his feet that ran to the kitchen, and his hands that held the cup as the water hit my parched lips. It was Gregory who had printed off the information about secondary drowning and asked me constantly if my chest hurt or if my breathing felt difficult. I can remember him brushing the hair from my face and wiping the sweat from my brow as he carefully worked his way around the well dressed wound. We sat together in the box of thick near soundproof walls, suitable for screamers and cutters and those at risk. But I was none of these things. I was a drowner. A wannabe drowner at least. I failed and he was so glad, and yet now as he hangs his head low and keeps his eyes averted, I believe he wishes I had succeeded. I am awake and he is nowhere close. I find myself wishing that even Ishiko were here with me, just to know that she wasn’t there with him.

  I lie there listening, waiting for any sound that tells me that I am not alone, but my hearing still feels like I have mufflers on my ears. For a long time after waking I hear nothing, and eventually I get up and press my face against the window to see if his car is on the driveway. It is, but I see him walking as if he has been out of foot, plodding slowly towards the house. He is alone, and then I hear the bedroom door handle.

  “Mrs. Astor, you are awake?” Ishiko is standing in the space between the door and the wall, her face in shadow because of the lamp that shines behind her. I look at her sleek and slender shape, so youthful and willing. I rest my hand against my stomach and feel the tiniest of swellings. Soon I will be none of the things that she is.

  “Yes?” I question.

  “I will make food and bring it to you.”

  “No, thank you.” I am not hungry. My voice is flat and calm, medication-friendly. Even the unruliest of patients can be subdued with the right medication.

  “Then I will bring you tea.”

  “No Ishiko. I don’t want anything.” I look out at the baby blue sky. I imagine the swallows who will return to these skies in only a couple of months. I can almost see them circling in a figure of eight as if they were kites, moving at the will of the child on the end of the string, fighting and darting to cut each other’s glass coated lines.

  “Mr. Astor will be home soon. He told me to make sure you eat.” She has obviously heard him on the driveway, or saw him coming.

  “But I am not hungry, Ishiko.” She stands there waiting like a child who has been told no, but believes that with time the answer she was hoping for will be given. She fiddles with a stubborn pleat in her skirt that appears adamant to remain buckled and I am distracted by her busy fingers as they try to smooth it down. For the first time I am not angry at her, and I have no desire to cause her harm. She is looking down at her shoes, little red ballet pumps with a thin buckle strap. What is she thinking? Is she anxious? I hear the front door open, and after her head darts towards the stairs I see her turn back towards me, the whites of her eyes as bright as stars. She is pleading with me to allow her to fulfil her instructions. “Prepare something light,” I say. “I will be down shortly.”

  She nods her head and leaves. Before long I hear voices and the clatter of plates, Charlotte related activity taking place. Gregory will no doubt be preparing to assume an air of superiority in the drawing room, and Ishiko will be preparing lunch around him trying to look both efficient and alluring. I glance down at the clock and see that it is almost half past four in the afternoon. I put on my robe and wander downstairs, appropriately dressed for any time during the day except for the afternoon. Halfway down the stairs I realise that I have forgotten to rinse my mouth and wash my hands. I cannot even taste the dust in my throat at the moment. I am obviously still under a greater influence of Dr. Abrams drugs than I assumed. At least this explains why I do not hate Ishiko today. I consider going back upstairs to do it, but instead I ignore the pull, realising that today it doesn’t feel as strong as usual.

  I eat the smoked salmon and soft cheese sandwich that Ishiko prepared whilst sitting alone in the conservatory and it makes me feel sick. I can hear Gregory in the drawing room, the occasional crackle of newspaper pages as he wrestles the broadsheet across his lap. I have watched him many times as he appears to read the newspaper. He believes a man of his standing and social position should read a broadsheet and understand the world news. When our ‘friends’ discuss the developments in the Middle East or the financial crisis that hit Europe he always has an adequate number of interjections prepared in advance to throw into conversation, but I do not believe that he really digests what he reads. I have paid close attention to the number of times he departs the conversation when he is required to offer a personal opinion. He might have a pressing telephone call, or an urgent toilet break, anything which facilitates his avoidance from participation in a well considered debate. The only well formed opinion he has is of me, and he is avoiding me, it seems, as well.

  The telephone is ringing and I hear the knock of the door. I hear a female voice, it sounds kind, and reminds me of my last lucid moments on the floor of The Sailing Club. It is Dana. I think about getting up, but I hear the door close. She has been sent away.

  I feel something in my blood today that I have not felt in a long time, and I do not like it. It is vulnerability. I feel like I am open to the world and that everybody is here screaming at me so loudly that I can no longer hear my own voi
ce above the crowd. I know inside I am screaming, but my words are being drowned out. At some point after finishing my sandwiches I am aware that I feel Ishiko’s hands on me, guiding me, pushing me or pulling me, one of the two. I am back in bed and she is looking at me and smiling. She kisses me on the forehead and strokes away my hair. I realise I am nearly asleep. I ask her why she is being so kind to me today. She tells me she sees sadness in me and that it must pass. I know somewhere in the blur of my medicated sleep I tell her that it is her fault, but she tells me, assures me, it is not. She tells me that I am wrong.

  “That is not correct, Mrs. Astor.” She says something in Japanese and I don’t understand. I ask her what she said.

  “What did you.....Ishi.......what did you....”

  “Say?” she looks at me and for a moment I focus on her eyes which are brilliant hazel disks, alive as if they have been charged up to the point that I think I can almost hear them buzzing, like a pylon in the rain. I nod, and I am losing her already, my eyes trembling shut. “A frog in the well, knows not of the ocean, Mrs. Astor.” She is speaking in my language now, but still I don’t understand.

  “I don’t understand,” I splutter, suddenly able to snatch a few words together, powered on by frustration. My head drops to the side and my necklace falls with it, the pendant so heavy the chain feels like it is choking me. I realise that she picks it up, places it in the dip of my neck so that it rests in the hollow. She strokes the Triquetra, never once taking her eyes from me. She looks at me in a way so different to anybody else. Sometimes it feels like she is the only one who sees me.

  “Beware the truth, Mrs. Astor,” she says as she strokes her hands across my forehead, before once again stroking the pendant into my neck with the delicacy of a brushstroke from a Monet. My skin tingles and goose pimples from her touch.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I say. She says something else that I don’t hear properly and I tell her to repeat herself. She leans down and gets close to my ear and I feel her breath tickling me and my hairs fluttering away like leaves in an Autumn breeze. She is so close I can feel the electricity from her skin, from her eyes, from her fingers, her nerve endings charged and firing at me. I tell her again. “I don’t understand.”