Fear of the Dark: An Anthology of Dark Fiction
Page 27
The next day, in the middle of a meeting at work, it felt for an instant as if her cool fingers were brushing my hand. Everyone stared as I was forced to leave the room.
More things in heaven and earth.
Reverend Tucker was right in that respect at least. Shakespeare was referring to the behavior of a ghost, after all, which makes it a singularly appropriate phrase to use to David about his little problem.
And to me, now.
Because I have started to see Suzanne everywhere.
I keep telling myself they’re just hallucinations brought on by lack of sleep. I have always applauded the neuroscientists who say that phantoms have no objective reality — that they are “all in the mind.” Stress, grief, guilt; they can all fool the brain into seeing things that are not really there. I have always believed in a rational explanation for every event under the sun.
So why is a very irrational idea in my head?
The idea that my dead wife is haunting me.
A week has passed since I last went to work, even longer since I slept for more than an hour or two at a time. I know my use of alcohol has reached dangerous levels. It helps to blur our encounters.
They started off as intimations. The glimpse of an auburn head in the distance. A distorted reflection in a shop window. But Suzanne has rapidly become a full-blown presence in my life, watching me until I am compelled to take refuge in another room, another street.
The really scary part is that I always see her as she looked on that summer holiday. More specifically, as she looked in the immediate aftermath of the fall. I can make out every bruise on her face.
Whenever I come across her, she seems sorrowful. Her eyes have an accusing stare.
At a conscious level, it should inspire hope that she is simply a figment of my imagination. After all, I am the one person in the world who knows that she didn’t die from an accidental stumble. The climactic moment came as we quarreled about her new-found interest in horoscopes, when she refused to accept that they have no basis in fact. Her stubbornness riled me to the point where I jostled her from the cliff.
She’s just a creation of my tired mind, I keep telling myself. It’s having no effect because I sense something new working inside me. A force that is very much forcing me to confront, against every instinct, a dark and different actuality. I find myself repeating the same words: I am the one person in this world.
Things are getting worse, I think, because I have started to speak to her. I did it on the way to the pub yesterday. As people around me gawped, it struck me that I am in fact going insane. In view of my beliefs, that might be preferable to seeing ghosts. It’s a toss-up.
I try telling Suzanne that I never meant to push her. A flash of temper. A moment of madness. There, I’ve said it again. An action, at any rate, that was outside my control.
I try telling her that I’ve regretted it ever since.
I can see that she doesn’t believe me. On more than one occasion, she has startled me by mouthing, “Liar.”
The funny thing is that what I am saying must be true. Recalling the number of times in the last three years when I wished she were with me, reveling in the credulity of mankind. It’s such a shame. I know I would eventually have persuaded her to see the truth.
To make matters worse is the suspicion that this wouldn’t be happening if I hadn’t lied about her death. My only excuse being that self-preservation seemed the most logical option at the time.
And David, the trigger for the horror that I’m going through? He rang today; it’s the first time we’ve spoken in weeks. Though he sounded very excited, his jabbering barely penetrated my alcoholic fug at first. When the penny finally dropped, I began to laugh. Seems his father had done a runner with an old flame he had come across on the internet. He’d just been in touch from his new home in Australia.
“Isn’t it wonderful news?” David gushed. “Best of all, I’ve stopped seeing him. You were right all along. No such thing as ghosts.’’
He must have been alarmed when my laughter turned to wild hysteria. But then he couldn’t see my dead Suzanne watching me from across the room.
One eye closed in a wink.
Brian Wright lives in Wales, which is probably the nicest part of the United Kingdom. He spends part of his days trying to come up with short stories, most of which turn out to be a little bit weird! His other interests include history, rock music and learning Japanese. Somehow he has managed to get one or two of his stories into print magazines like Twisted Tongue and online magazines like The Harrow.