Geoffrey’s hand turned the bedroom doorknob. It was now used as Moira’s studio for her oil painting. The room smelt of lacquer and turpentine. Canvasses were propped against walls. An easel stood on sentry by the window. Hung paintings danced into life as white lightning strobed them into movement.
Closing the bedroom door carefully now, holding the torch, it’s beam accidentally silhouetting his face, highlighting it, looking like he was planning a conspiracy in Hell. The pencilled spotlight searched the walls moving up above the original picture rail then across the top of the bookcase, until, it finally rested on the wire mesh of an air vent.
'The grill of a confession box,' he mumbled.
Using a small set of steps and a palette knife, he reached up and levered off the grill cover. The hand clawed at nothing inside the cavity. Geoffrey poked and prodded, whining to himself like a caged animal in panic, searching more feverishly, cursing at the same time.
At that moment, on cue with a tremendous thunderclap, the bedroom illuminated with Moira’s hand on the light switch. He spun round in shock.
‘Is this what you’re looking for, Geoffrey? It’s badly burnt but still readable. It’s all in here. How she saw you in the bushes. How you chased her. She named you, Geoffrey. All her secrets in that wall, and nobody knew.’ Moira held up the singed diary.
Geoffrey reached into his pocket for the letter.
‘Before that letter arrived, before that bloody letter came everything was fine.’ The veins in his neck bulged with anger as he started tearing it up, ripping it into shreds symbolically. Holding her gaze with a vicious sneer he said,
‘We can work this out, Moira? No one has to know?’ He stepped down from the ladder and advanced slowly. She stepped back clutching the diary. ‘I had too much to lose, Moira. The scandal. My parents. My career. I couldn’t have it all ruined by some stupid snooping college girl? Give me the diary, Moira.’
Geoffrey edged nearer her, brandishing the palette knife. She backed out of the door onto the hall landing. It was dark. Her back rested on the balcony rail. Geoffrey slowly approached. One little push he thought, and then I’m free. With her life insurance, I can retire. I’ll be set up, no more worries. He moved quickly to the side to cut off the stairs. She was trapped. The other end of the balcony was a walled dead end.
Geoffrey’s lips were pulled back into a sickly grin. Spit shone on his teeth as his face lit up momentarily with a flash and a roll of thunder. Like a Zombie in an old horror movie, he came steadily nearer with the palette knife raised.
Moira screamed and lunged at him, grabbing his arm, both her hands now wrestling for the palette knife. At that moment, it became daylight.
With a massive explosion, the huge tree outside, struck by a lightning bolt, came crashing through the landing window coming to rest on the balcony rail amongst brick and rubble.
Geoffrey froze, spellbound, staring in disbelief. Then the rail gave way under the weight. He lost his balance skidding on the slippery leaves. His arms were waving, flailing, trying to grab a hold of something, anything to save himself.
Just in time, he clutched one of the balustrades. He screamed, ‘Moira! Help me. Please, Moira?’ His body dangled over the edge of the balcony. He was beginning to lose his grip. ‘Please, Moira! Let’s forget all about this. Pretend it never happened. Just help me up. Please, darling?’
She picked up a piece of broken wood. He knew what she was going to do. Geoffrey looked up at her.
‘Please God, Moira. Don’t! I beg you. I love you, Moira.’ She raised the splintered balustrade and smashed it down. He screamed and then he was gone. A dull thud echoed, quickly followed below by another muffled scream.
She walked slowly down the stairs, as if in a trance, not even feeling the broken glass cutting into her feet. Her face was white, death like. The hall now lit up with only faint pulsating flashes, as if illuminated from a dying neon sign. The storm was moving away.
Geoffrey was still moving, impaled on one of the elephant tusks. He was twitching in spasms like a maggot on a hook. It had gone through his backbone. His mouth was open, all bloody, with the grin of a dead carp.
Moira knelt and stroked Geoffrey’s forehead thoughtfully. She’d always had that nagging doubt about him. Fortunately, he’d never recognised her. The dating agency for busy professionals had worked - that’s where she’d spotted him. And he was so insistent to buy the house. There had to be a reason. She might have waited for years - but then that letter had come.
Moira nonchalantly picked up the remains of Annabel’s diary and flicked through the pages. Then she said to no one, ‘She may have been a snooping college girl, but she happened to be my sister.’
Abigail’s Closet
It had all come to a head yesterday evening at their run-down, wooden house in West Virginia. Abigail was a blossoming 16-year-old schoolgirl with long dark hair and pretty with it. They had said prayers this New Year’s Eve and were in the middle of supper. Silence was the norm around the kitchen table even for this last day of 1966.
Ralph, her stepfather, a fifty-two-year-old staunch evangelist preacher with a hooked nose and thinning greyish hair, sat in his vest and braces and sucked the bones of his oxtail stew while concentrating on a rough draft of his new sermon, already stained with gravy.
Stern faced Vera, her forty-three-year-old mother, sat stiff, back straight, wearing her housecoat with her brown hair in curlers, ready for another hell-fire Saturday evening service down at the Pentecostal Hall.
Abigail picked over the meat and looked up. She considered, swallowed hard, and finally said,
‘I saw this boy I know, Leonard Carpenter, on the way home from school yesterday. He’s asked me out for a date. He wants to take me to ‘Dillies` tonight, they’ve got live country music —’ She broke off, as if the words had been splintered from her mouth.
Vera and Ralph stopped eating. They both looked at her. Vera’s nostrils suddenly flared like those of a horse that had heard the dry rattle of a snake.
‘No, you cannot go,’ said Vera immediately. ‘I don’t want you hanging around with boys.’
‘But, Mama, I’m sixteen now. Most of the girls at school go out on dates.’
‘I said no, Abigail, you’ve got exams coming up. You’ve got to study.’
She answered back indignantly,
‘But I study every night, mama.’
Vera snapped,
‘Shut up and finish your stew or you’ll get the back of my hand.’
Abigail threw her fork into the dinner in temper. The gravy spattered the table.
‘I’m going anyway, so suck on it!’
Ralph rose from his seat. Without taking his eyes off Abigail, he slid the belt out from his trousers.
‘I’m gonna teach you, girl, to wash yer mouth out. I’m gonna strap yer all the way to that closet, my girl.’
Abigail stood defiant.
‘You put me in that closet again, you arsehole, and I’ll go to the police.’
‘You’ve had this coming girl for a long time, shouting at yer mother and me with yer profanities.’
Ralph lunged at Abigail across the table and she screamed as the strap came down across her raised elbows. Then he was on her, moving quickly, knocking her back into the chair as she tried to pull away.
‘Get off me, you bastard,’ she shrieked as Ralph hauled her up by the collar.
Abigail was screaming, trying to bite his arm as he frogmarched her to the closet. Ralph, his face grinning, strapped Abigail’s backside repeatedly while she yelled with each blow. Abigail kicked and screamed and then came a scuffle at the entrance. She shouted through her tears,
‘I’ll kill you - you, bastard!’
Then the closet door slammed shut and the bolt shot through.
Abigail whimpered for a while and then pulled her knees up to her chin as she sat in the darkness. The cheap plastic crucifix on the wall looked down on her. She gu
essed it was going to be a long wait. They’d probably let her out after they got back from the Friday evening sermon. That would be around 9:00 p.m.
*
It had just turned 9:05 p.m. when Vera and Ralph arrived home.
Vera slid the closet bolt back. Abigail was kneeling. Her face was red and hair stuck to her cheeks from sweat and tears.
‘Oh, Mama, I’ve been so bad, both of you pray for me. Please Mama, help me find the way.’
Vera looked astonished, and was about to say something, when Abigail continued,
‘Let’s all pray together, mama, right here and now in front of this Jesus. He gave me the sign, Mama, inside this closet. I saw his tears run from his face, Mama. Look on the floor.’
Underneath the plastic crucifix, a small pool of water had collected. Vera and Ralph crossed themselves. Ralph raised his hands upward and said,
‘Dear lord, this is a holy place now.’
‘Let’s all pray together then,’ Abigail urged them with excitement. ‘We can all get in here and kneel.’ Then her face twisted with pain. ‘Mama, I have to come out first. I need to use the bathroom badly.’
‘OK, but you hurry, girl. The Lord don’t take kindly to young sinners. Oh, and bring some cushions with you and two candles with a box of matches from the kitchen dresser. We can light them in the closet for this new holy place’
‘OK, mama.’
They waited until she arrived back. Vera and Ralph stooped their way first into the closet. With the cushions placed, they all knelt down.
‘Did yer get the candles?’ Vera asked.
Abigail rolled her eyes back. ‘Sorry, Mama, I forgot.’
‘You stupid girl,’ Vera said giving her a scalding look. ‘Go, get them now, and hurry.’
Ralph joined in with a little dig,
‘The lord is waiting, girl.’
Abigail got up in the cramped space and manoeuvred her way out of the closet. In an instant, she slammed the door shut and shot the bolt home.
‘What yer doin’, Abigail?’ Vera knocked on the inside. ‘Abigail, you playin’ games?’ Vera shouted again, ‘Open the door!’
Ralph looked at Vera. ‘She’s teasing us, the bitch.’ He leant over and thumped with his fist. ‘Open this door, girl, or you’ll get my belt again. That’s a promise.’
They heard something being dragged. It rattled against the door. Abigail had wedged the doorknob with one of the wicker chairs from the kitchen.
Ralph pounded with his clenched fist again. ‘Open this door, girl. The joke’s over. Yer mother an me are gitten angry.’
For a while, Abigail stared at the closet door. What to do now, she thought. She had come too far, there was no turning back now. Then her eyes lit up with realisation.
She lit the two candles and placed them carefully either side of the closet door. Then she hurried to Ralph’s drinks cabinet and brought back two bottles of Scotch. Clenching her teeth, she broke the seal of one of them and twisted off the gold cap. She sniffed and winced at the strong smell. Abigail stood with the whisky bottle by the door, ready for what she had to do.
When Abigail’s parents had started using the closet for her punishment as a sin-bin and confession box, Ralph had fitted an air vent at the top of the door. It was a small austere wire mesh grill, nothing fancy, in keeping with their little makeshift prison for sinners. The mesh so fine, you couldn’t see through it. However, it had its uses, such as providing an escape for unwanted smells if one was locked in there long enough, as Abigail could verify.
Without further hesitation, she poured the bottle of spirit through the grill vent.
Ralph erupted.
‘What yer doin’, girl?’ The whisky was splashing all over him.
Vera screamed out,
‘What she doing? What’s that smell, Ralph?’
‘Smells like liquor or somethin’.’ Ralph pummelled the door again. ‘What yer doin’, Abigail? Yer makin’ me and yer mumma upset now. Open this door!’
Abigail hoisted the second bottle of whisky and it glugged its way through the vent amidst more banging, more cursing and more profanities.
The closet floor by now was drenched. Abigail looked down to see the liquor seeping out. Now was the time. She tipped over one of the candles into the emerging stream. There was a whumph! A pale blue chasing flame shot under the door and up the outside where some spillage had occurred. Abigail dropped the bottle in shock, it smashed on the floor and she backed away.
Ralph screamed,
‘What the hell! We’re on fire…Vera, Christ sake, help me.’
Vera screamed,
‘We’re on fire, help us somebody! Abigail, there’s a fire!’
Ralph was screaming in a terribly high pitch that she’d never heard before. Not even when he’d had them all fired up in one of his frenzied sermons, all a-slobberin’ and a-gibberin’. More high-pitched screams came from both of them with terrible thudding and pounding. The bolt was beginning to shear off - the retaining screws being far too inadequate for such punishment. However, the chair still held, solid as a rock, right to the end.
Abigail had to get out quickly. The place was filling up with smoke. The closet door was completely on fire and she shielded her face as she listened to the pounding and their agonized pleas. She waited until the noise had turned to helpless whimpers mingled amongst the crackle of wood and sizzling, then eventually, only slight movement and moaning.
Abigail had to hurry now before neighbours saw the smoke and gave the alarm. However, she knew she couldn’t get far without money. Then she spotted Vera’s handbag. With nearly thirty dollars and some change, she stuffed the purse into her pocket.
Abigail opened the front door and peeked out onto the dilapidated porch. Smoke immediately billowed past her. The evening was quiet. Stepping out with her hand on the rusted iron knocker she swiftly pulled it shut, then made her way down the cracked slabs of her garden path. At the broken wooden gate, she looked back. Thick black smoke was puffing out from under the door and from the gaps in the sides.
As Abigail made her way along the un-kept street, she kicked a drink can in defiance. She felt elated. It was the first time in her short miserable life she was actually free of them. No more going home with that gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Girls of the BDM
‘Come on, hurry up Magda, the car’s here,’ her tall, good-looking brother shouted up the stairs. At 33 years old, Martin liked to think he had a good head of dark hair, just thinning a bit at the temples. He fussed with his fingers at the slight widow’s peak in Magda’s hallway mirror while he waited for her.
‘Give me five seconds and I’ll be with you,’ she called from the bedroom.
It was the usual panic. Earlier, Magda had received the urgent telephone call for her to give blood at the hospital then phoned her brother.
That was the problem being AB Negative. Magda's blood group was the most rare. Only around 1 in 170 people had this type. She’d started giving blood twelve years ago when she was twenty-six-years-old. In all the times, Magda had been a blood donor, she’d only fainted twice. After a brief lie down and a cup of sweet tea with a biscuit, she was fine. Magda was single and on her own, so Martin always went with her. He’d phone into work to let them know, and leaving his wife making the kids’ breakfast, would come round to Magda’s flat to lend moral support. She got very nervous around hospitals and doctors. Her experiences of them during the war 19 years ago had left their mark.
In her late thirties and having had no children, Magda had kept a slim figure. ‘Painfully thin,’ her brother Martin would joke and add, ‘You need to eat more cream cakes and chocolate, sis…’ Tall like her brother, she was pretty with sharp features and a white complexion, her long dark hair usually tied at the back for her work as an optician. Magda had qualified and built up her own practice over the years on the outskirts of Munich.
The hospital had sent its e
mergency blood donor car to her Munich address. As they had got in, the driver had switched on the siren and they had sped off into the early morning. Within ten minutes, they’d swept into the hospital entrance and pulled up at the emergency parking bays by reception. Magda had got out quickly and walked through the swing doors to check-in while Martin thanked the driver and ambled in behind her. He’d brought his book as usual and was quite prepared to settle down in the waiting room with a cup of coffee from the visitors’ canteen.
At reception, she handed over her blood card. The duty nurse spoke softly to Magda and nodded over to the boy’s distraught parents sitting on a bench in the corridor. With an arm around her, the husband was trying to console his wife. She was bent over, sobbing uncontrollably into a handkerchief. Their 10-year-old boy was in a coma following a hit and run. To make matters worse, he was a haemophiliac with a compound fractured leg.
It wasn’t unusual for Magda to see grief-stricken relations. With her rare blood group, she had at times been at the front end of emergencies. Mostly accidents like this one. She now approached the couple, wanting to offer some relief.
‘I’m here to give blood for your son,’ she told them. She put a hand of sympathy on the husband’s shoulder. With a worried face, he nodded to her and tried to smile. He then composed himself.
‘Darling, they found a match for Max; to give blood, to help him.’ After he said it, the husband hugged his wife for reassurance. With a dazed expression and red eyes, she slowly looked up at Magda.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘we had nearly given up. We are so grateful you…’
It took a few seconds to register. Magda’s face changed to a look of horror. They recognised each other. It had been inconceivable they would ever meet again.
*
In 1943, things had turned terribly bad for Magda’s family when the Gestapo records bureau found that their great grandparents had been Munich Jews.
From A Poison Pen: A collection of macabre short stories Page 10