by Bee Lewis
As she leapt across the bank, she knew something had changed forever. The separation shuddered through her body, through her consciousness. Eyes, skin, hair, teeth, bones, muscle, sinew. In that instant, everything she knew splintered and fragmented. Her thoughts de-laminated, de-bonded.
Time sped up.
Stopped.
Sped up again.
Slowed.
It was the same feeling she’d had during the car accident, like she’d stepped outside of herself and was watching it happen. The trees grew giant around her, the bushes loomed. Used to the feeling of falling, this felt different. The movement was all wrong. She landed on the other side of the bank, close to the ground. Something was off balance; her perspective had shifted almost as though she’d taken a shrinking draught. Her peripheral vision was now in sharp relief as she realised she could see both in front of her and behind her at the same time. Her view of the world had changed. Frozen with fear, nothing felt right.
There was something else. She struggled to get a hold of the thought, feeling it slipping away. Even her ideas were different. She wasn’t just thinking in words, but in shapes and colours and sounds. There was another dimension at work, as though she’d been able to step into the pages of a book and have the words of the story dance around her. Noise from all directions hammered into her brain. The sounds of the night came at her: bats pushing the air as they sped past; fireflies humming; the ripples on silky moth-wings. She could hear it all. The moon called her and she gazed up at the bright disc, as though seeing it for the very first time, the seeds of understanding planting and rooting inside her.
Pine needle fringes chimed in the breeze and she heard the sound they made, saw the tiny hairs on each needle, recognised their song as her sadness.
Details that would normally pass her by completely flooded her senses. Juniper, yew, alder – all layered their scents with delicate mushroom and sharp, vetiver mosses. The sounds and smells had intensified in the space of a few seconds, though she had no accurate way to measure time, which seemed to bend and curve around her.
As still as a rock, she tried to shut out the forest, tried to focus all her thoughts just on herself. She shivered and felt her heart rate increase, pulsing in her ears as if it was threatening to burst out of her chest. She tried to stand, raising herself off the riverbank, but her limbs wouldn’t listen to her and she remained half-crouched, every nerve-end jangling. She tried again, stretching an arm out in front of her, shocked to see a covering of white fur where the sleeve of the gown had been.
Her ears tuned to the tinkling water, tumbling like liquid silver over the riverbed, and she loped carefully to the edge of the stream where the passing water was calmer. She peered into the water, but there were too many ripples to see her reflection properly. It didn’t matter, she knew – in the same way she knew how to breathe – that she had been transformed, that ancient magick flowed through her blood. The water stilled, just enough for her to make sense of what she was seeing. As she looked at the reflection of the mountain hare staring back at her from the depths of the pool, Esther finally understood.
*
Dan’s side of the bed was cold, the sheets and pillows smooth. Had he even come to bed? Maybe he’d slept downstairs to give her room to move around without risking knocking into her leg. Esther wondered why his disappearances were bothering her so much. She didn’t expect him to account for his every move, but his recent behaviour was so far from his normal routine. What was normal, though? They’d only been here a few days. Hardly time for anything to feel settled. If she closed her eyes and blocked out the possessions they’d brought from Bristol, she could easily make herself believe they were on holiday. Even so, as she tried to shrug it off, her instinct told her not to relax, not to stop watching for the small lies that hid the bigger ones. That was something she’d learned in the last year.
Dan seemed increasingly at ease when Mike was around. He laughed more than she’d ever known him to and she was convinced he’d received a text message the other day. The disquiet she’d felt when he’d lied to her about it pulled at her thoughts. She knew that type of smile.
He’s with Mike.
She held her breath, waiting for anxiety to make her stomach drop like a lift car plummeting to the basement. Nothing happened. She considered the implications. A thousand questions came at her from all directions and her suspicions began to coalesce. She had to consider the possibility that there was more to her husband’s relationship with Mike than she wanted to admit. The thought should have stirred up some emotion in her, but she was oddly calm. It would at least explain his strange behaviour, his deflection, his mood swings. If Dan and Mike were lovers, what did that mean for her?
Unable to think straight, she pulled herself up in the bed, testing out how much pressure she could put on her leg. Her hands pressed gently on the bandages, then firmer once the streak of pain she expected failed to materialise. Her leg was tender, but not painful. Dan might try to insist on another day of rest for her, but she didn’t think she could face it. Ennui rendered all the books they’d brought disinteresting, and there was no aerial on the roof so he couldn’t even rig the TV up for her. He’d tried to get it to work downstairs using a wire coat hanger, but was rewarded for his efforts by static snow. The surrounding mountains shielded Rosgill from all outside interference. Besides, the echoing thoughts in her head threatened to burst out of her skull. She had to find something to keep her occupied.
Her bandage would need changing soon. She rang the little bell to summon Dan, but there was no answer. The panic that she’d felt threatened to reappear, but she swallowed it back down. She’d overreacted yesterday and wasn’t going to do the same again.
Leaving her prosthetic leaning against the wall, she chose the crutch. On other days, she wouldn’t have given it much thought, often choosing the crutch over Peggy. But today, having to use it rankled, her freedom of choice restricted further. She swung her way to the top of the stairs, then sat down, finding it easier to shuffle down them on her bottom. It was an action she’d carried out thousands of times without thinking, but today it underlined her dependence and she felt a sharp sting of injustice. She needed to knock herself out of this mood; she knew it would lead to more bickering.
She opened the front door and looked along the length of the platform as best she could. The fog blanked everything out, creating a void around the halt, but she could see enough to tell that he wasn’t out there either. Major Tom shot in past her, tail quivering. She stroked the cat’s ears and was instantly rewarded with a deep, rich purring sound, matched by the rumblings of her stomach.
‘Breakfast, that’s what we need.’
The cat watched her move around the kitchen as though it agreed with her. She spotted a note propped against the kettle.
‘Gone to see if I can fix the car. I might also try to find a church service, so don’t worry if I’m gone for a while. D x PS Look in the fridge’
Good Friday. No wonder he’d want to look for a church. She felt stupid for doubting him, even more so when she opened the fridge to see he’d prepared her a breakfast of bananas and yoghurt. ‘Yum,’ she said, in the general direction of the cat.
After she finished eating, she was about to put the bowl down for the cat to lick, and immediately stopped herself. Dan was right. Why take risks with her health? Still hungry, she cut two slices from the loaf Mike had baked and put them under the grill to toast. Out of habit, she picked up her phone. It felt solid in her hands, a link to her other life. Like the carving. She swiped the screen and the low battery icon flashed at her. Then she spotted the text message alert. She scrolled to the icon and opened the message.
From: Soph
I’m here. Shoes are clues.
Esther kept her finger on the screen, hardly believing what she was seeing. Someone was playing a cruel joke on her, there was no other explanation. Who would b
e so mean? Dan? What reason could he have? The screen darkened as the battery died. She looked round for the phone charger, trying to remember where she last saw it. It was on Dan’s desk a couple of days ago. She got up and walked past the mirror, avoiding glancing at it, not wanting to see anything it had to tell her. Not wanting to consider that she might be losing her mind.
The charger was where she’d left it. Plugging in her phone, she had to wait a few minutes for sufficient power to reboot and she cried out with frustration when the screen booted up but the message had disappeared. She couldn’t have imagined it. It had been there, right before her eyes. Frantic, she scrolled through every menu, checked every folder. Nothing.
Fat, salty tears coursed down her face. Whoever was doing this to her was cruel in the extreme and she didn’t know how to react. Was someone watching her, waiting for her to break? She was close to it, she knew that. Her stomach churned against a potent cocktail of grief, anxiety and fear. She had an overwhelming urge to vomit and just managed to reach for the waste-bin as her stomach did its best to expel her misery. Trails of saliva dangled from her mouth and she used the back of her hand to wipe them away. Shoes are clues. The pleasant bakery smell of the kitchen turned acrid and sour. Something was burning. The toast!
She turned off the flame and pulled the grill pan out. The two pieces of bread lay on the wire like little blackened tombstones. Her mouth tasted of metal and bile. Turning the cold tap on, she let the water run for a few seconds, then sluiced her mouth. The cold, clean water shocked its way down her gullet. She filled a glass and took it into the living room where she sat on the sofa, mulling things over. Shoes are clues.
The carving, still hidden under the seat cushion, pressed up against her leg as though she was the princess who couldn’t rest because of the pea under her mattress. She fidgeted, then reached underneath the cushion and pulled out the carving, steeling herself against another vision. This time there was no fleeting glimpse of the forest, no vibrations, no message for her in a language she had never heard but knew intuitively. It was just a carving. She turned it over and over in her hands as she sat and thought, allowing her mind to navigate the possibilities she’d been resisting. If all the things that had been happening to her weren’t just a mean trick, then what was the other explanation? Could Sophie be trying to tell her something? Was that possible? Were there forces at work which she couldn’t explain? Threads of thoughts knotted and tangled as she tried to make sense of them.
The cat jumped onto the sofa next to her. Absent-mindedly, she petted it, while holding onto the carving in her right hand, trying to place her thoughts into some recognisable form. The carving began to gently oscillate, like it was waking up from a deep slumber. Instead of being surprised or frightened, she smiled, understanding that it was a conduit carrying a message that was meant for her.
The blue shoe-box.
Whatever the secret was, the shoe box was the key. She had to find it; had to know what was inside. The carving stopped vibrating and she tucked it under the cushion again, scanning the room for the box. There was no sign of it. Looking at Dan’s inventory wouldn’t help as he hadn’t listed it, but she knew it had to be close by; it was just a matter of putting herself into Dan’s mind-set. He would approach the task logically, systematically.
The temptation to tear the unopened packing boxes apart was strong, but she resisted. Instead, she carefully opened each one, checking the reference number Dan had written on the side against the spreadsheet on his laptop. Kitchen equipment, books, board games; all matched the list.
Once she was satisfied that the shoe box hadn’t been hidden among the cartons she’d searched, she turned her attention to the remaining boxes. More books, blankets, bedding, table lamps. It wasn’t there.
Think. Think! Where else has he been? As she scanned the room once more, the mirror caught her eye. The store room!
Remembering to take the bunch of keys with her from the kitchen drawer, Esther made her way through the house. Major Tom trotted along beside her, but when she stopped at the store-room door, rummaging to find the right key, he suddenly shot off back in the direction they had come from and disappeared into the fog.
Opening the door, she fumbled for the light switch, but nothing happened when she flicked it on. It was hard to see in the gloom and the shelving racks obscured her view further. She walked past them, not sure what she was looking for and disappointed when it seemed there was nothing to find after all. Yet, instinctively, she knew she was right and this was the most logical place he’d have hidden it. The rabbit paw-prints Dan had called her to see led into the room, but not out. Were they also a sign to her, or had everything taken on such significance that she saw meaning where there was none?
She visualised the trail and, as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, spotted another cupboard, set into the alcove next to the chimney breast and painted to match the rest of the walls. She looked through the bunch of keys, trying to find one that might fit. The fourth key she tried twisted in the lock and she pulled the door open, holding her breath as she did so. The cupboard was deeper than she expected and fitted with shelves on three sides, like the walk-in pantry at Eric’s house. She scanned them: all empty. With a sigh, she was about to give up when she spotted something tucked behind the door frame on the bottom shelf. She reached inside and pulled out the blue shoe-box.
Esther’s hands shook as she held the box up to the dim light from the doorway. A length of parcel tape around the box sealed the lid. She’d need scissors to open it, and once it was opened, it would be obvious that the box had been tampered with. What secrets lay inside? It was clear Dan didn’t want her to find it, didn’t expect her to find it. Or perhaps he’d set this up, hoping she’d stumble across it. Thoughts tumbled and whirled, their meaning always tantalisingly out of reach.
How long had he been gone? She wondered how much time she had as she closed the cupboard door and tucked the shoe box under her arm, locking the store-room door behind her. She needed to find a place where she could open the box without being interrupted, but she knew it wouldn’t be that simple. He would find her wherever she went.
Dropping the keys into her coat pocket, she made her way up the stairs to the bathroom and ran the shower. If he did come back, he wouldn’t think anything was amiss. She locked the bathroom door behind her and sat on the little stool she used to assist her in the shower, the box on her knees. She couldn’t remember ever seeing it before, and knew she would have done as it was such a vibrant shade of blue, the colour of summer skies before storm clouds gathered. Time was running out, and yet . . . and yet, opening the box might change things forever. Her heart fluttered in her chest as it pumped adrenaline around her body.
She looked inside the medicine cabinet for something sharp to slit the parcel tape with. If she did it carefully enough, perhaps he wouldn’t notice. She couldn’t see any scissors, but spotted the metal nail clippers. It came with an integral nail file, the tip of which ended in a hook. It was perfect. The tape gave a satisfying ‘pock’ sound as she sliced through it. Then she lifted the lid and set it aside on the floor, next to her feet. Her hands shook. Whatever was in this box, whatever it was that Dan was trying to keep from her, there was no turning back now.
The letters stared up at her, like they’d been caught red-handed. There must have been a dozen, maybe more. She rifled through them, the sick feeling inside her growing as she read the front of each one. The letters were addressed to her. Some had HMP postmarks. Some had her father’s prison ID number written across one corner. One of the letters had been sent to the apartment. Oh, God!
All the strength poured out of her and she bent double, hugging her knees, her mind in a tailspin. Esther now knew two things for certain: the letters were from her dad, and Dan had kept them from her. Her blood chilled and slowed even as her heartbeat hastened. Another betrayal. Maybe worse than before.
She didn’
t know how long she sat there, the water running in the shower, the box on her knee. Time had stopped inside the bathroom as her emotions created wormholes through everything she thought she knew. Perhaps he’d hidden the letters because her dad hadn’t wanted to see her? Stop making excuses for him. You always do that. When will you learn?
The door handle to the bathroom rattled, bringing her back to the present.
‘Es? Esther? You okay?’ Dan shouted through the closed door to her.
‘In the shower,’ she called back, surprising herself at how normal her voice sounded. She was not ready to confront him, she needed to get things straight in her own mind first. He’d make her feel like she was being unreasonable, emotional, if she spoke to him about the letters now.
‘Okay. You’ve locked the door. You know I don’t like that. What if you fall over?’
She gritted her teeth, every muscle in her body resisting the enforced normality.
‘I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I’ll be right out.’ She struggled to keep her voice normal, neutral, and hoped that the sound of the shower had masked her discomfort.
Dan’s footsteps receded. It sounded like he’d gone downstairs. She had to find a place to hide the shoe box so that she could go through the contents before he realised it was missing. Thinking quickly, she undressed and put the box at the bottom of the laundry bin, placing her nightclothes on top. Then she splashed her shoulders and face with water, as though she’d just stepped out from the shower, and wrapped a soft towel around her. Sliding the bolt back, she opened the bathroom door and jumped to see Dan standing there unsmiling, holding a mug towards her.
‘Tea?’
Esther pulled out a red mohair jumper from the chest of drawers, and put it on, along with her brightest smile. Dan sat on the edge of the bed, watching her dress. The only thing she could think about was the shoe box. Could he tell? Could he sense her agitation? His face was expressionless, like he was waiting for her to make the first move, to break cover.