Skein Island

by Aliya Whiteley

  ‘Oh, we could never have that. Besides, we don’t need the money.’

  ‘Ah…’ says Rebecca, as if a locked door has just been thrown open wide. ‘Of course. No men allowed. Because of the monster. Can I call it that?’

  ‘I prefer to think of it as a statue.’

  ‘Why? You know Amelia’s story. You’re reading to it, you’re refusing to let men near it, so obviously you believe in it.’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ says Vanessa, wincing.

  ‘Why not? It’s only your emotions complicating it.’

  I want to shout at Rebecca, make her stop this attack, because all it is doing is making me feel sorry for my mother, defensive towards her, and that is the last thing I want.

  ‘The statue is—It’s not just a statue, that much is plain, but I never experienced anything like—’

  ‘So you think Amelia made it up? In that case, don’t you need to admit to yourself that you’re using this statue as an excuse to not face up to the consequences of your actions?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Vanessa stands up. ‘Come and see it.’

  ‘Pardon?’ says Rebecca.

  ‘The statue.’

  It’s the first time I’ve seen Rebecca lost for words. Perhaps nobody ever called her bluff in a counselling session before. She blinks, and shakes her head.

  ‘Seriously?’ says Kay. She stands up too, and scratches her neck, a masculine gesture, like a builder being asked to give a quote. ‘I’m up for it. In the library, right? Through the door with the four coloured squares. I have to tell you, I believe in monsters, but I don’t expect to see one down there. Still, I’d like to have a look, if that’s okay.’

  Everyone turns to me. I have become the focus of the room.

  The unspoken question is – do I believe in monsters?

  I know there is something behind the white door with four squares, and I don’t want to face it.

  I could side with Rebecca. She’s waiting for me to announce that I won’t be buying into this delusion, that my mother needs professional help, that we need to get her off this island before we can even begin to form a normal mother–daughter relationship. Where does that kind of help get you? The kind where somebody takes your own ideas from your head and stuffs in fresh ones instead?

  Do those new, shiny thoughts mean that monsters no longer exist? Does it mean the rapist isn’t breathing hard outside the door?

  I don’t believe that every monster, real or imaginary, needs to be faced. But the one in this house does.

  So I stand up. ‘Let’s go.’

  For one moment, it looks as though Rebecca is going to cling to her principles and stay at the table, but then she pushes back her chair and smoothes her skirts. ‘Perhaps this is the best course of action,’ she says. ‘Facing it head-on.’

  ‘The monster?’ asks Vanessa in an amused voice.

  ‘Whatever you think it is.’

  ‘What a very delicate way of putting it.’ Vanessa strides out of the dining room and we follow after her in a snake: Kay, Rebecca, me. We march through a minimalist living room, the fire unlit, into a long draughty hall with black and white tiles on the floor and walls. Underneath the wide staircase, carpeted in a scuffed and faded red, is a door, painted black. Vanessa turns the handle and we follow her farther, down into the basement. The stone steps, so bare in contrast to the décor of the house, are lit by small electric lights running the length of the sloping ceiling, strung on two bare wires, but even though the way is clearly visible, I can’t bring myself to close the black door behind me. I don’t want to lose that opening, that possibility of escape.

  At the bottom of the steps we enter familiar territory: the corridor, and then the library, with the rows of shelves holding empty declarations. Vanessa slows her pace, and strolls down the ‘A–G’ aisle, running one hand along the folders. She reaches the small white door with the four squares, then takes off her green jacket, folds it and puts it on the floor, and rolls up the sleeves of her cream blouse, even though it’s freezing. She picks up a folder from the tray next to the door, then traces her finger along the squares. ‘Red for heroes. Blue for villains. Yellow for sidekicks, and green for wise men. Or wizards, if you like. Sages. Sage green. I’ve often wondered if that’s where the saying comes from. Amelia told me they were as old as the statue, those definitions.’ She swings back the door and steps into the darkness.

  Kay is the first to follow. Rebecca looks at me. I return her stare calmly, much more calmly than I feel, and then I walk through the doorway too. I hear Rebecca following after me. She manages something I could not; she shuts the door behind her. The light of the library is snatched away, and Kay makes a small hissing sound. I stop walking and wait for my eyes to adjust. I have no idea if I’m in a tiny room or a cavernous space. Although I know there can’t be a lot of room down here, under the house, I have the idea that if I lift up my hands I wouldn’t scrape my knuckles across a low ceiling, but would find only air.

  There is a greenish glow coming from the wall on my right. As the seconds pass, I make out more colours, coming from where the walls give way to natural rock. I see red, blue, and yellow too, faintly, giving just enough light to let me see the outlines of shapes, and to stop me from stumbling as I walk forward to stand next to Kay. Vanessa is ahead, turned towards us, her face barely visible. There is the sound of water, trickling. I shiver, and there’s the sudden sensation of pressure between my shoulder blades.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ whispers Rebecca, next to my ear. She is holding on to my jumper, I think; I can picture her fist bunching the wool.

  Vanessa turns around, shows us her upright back, her blouse reflecting the dim light. ‘Hello, Moira,’ she says.

  The sound of trickling water is not strong, but I have the impression we are close to the source of it. There’s dampness in the air, and I think the uneven floor might be wet. I feel as though I’m standing in a shallow puddle, but my walking boots protect my feet. Isn’t Rebecca wearing high heels? She’s still holding on to me. I resist the urge to turn to her, to ask her if she’s okay, if her feet are wet, anything at all just to get her to let go of me.

  ‘It’s a woman,’ says Kay, and her voice trembles, resonates with fear, and that tone would be enough to make me run if Rebecca wasn’t pressed up against my back. Her grip is relentless.

  Kay has stopped moving. I manage to walk up to stand beside her, and she whispers to me, ‘It’s a woman. Is it?’

  In front of us, in an alcove set in the back of the rough cave, she stands. Behind her the rocks glow red, yellow, blue, green, dimly. I can only just make out her features; she is beautiful, I think. She radiates age and intelligence, and it is humbling to be near her.

  ‘Meet Moira,’ says Vanessa. ‘That’s the name Amelia gave to her.’

  The statue doesn’t move. Of course. How could it move?

  And yet my strong feeling is that she’s not carved from stone. She is encased in it, a thin layer of it; it has grown on her. The reality of her is just under the surface of the rock. Very close to waking, as if she could stretch and the stone would fall from her. She is waiting.

  I don’t know what she’s waiting for.

  ‘It’s a statue,’ says Rebecca, and the fact that she really believes that shines through her voice. She just doesn’t get it. ‘It’s just a statue.’

  I say, ‘No.’

  But now she has planted the doubt, it begins to grow inside me. What is Moira? Are my senses lying to me? Why should my perception be different to Rebecca’s?

  Moira’s face alters. Not discernibly, not so a person could take a photograph and point out differences, but there is no mistaking a change from beautiful to ugly. The nose is now severe rather than straight, and the mouth is loose rather than generous. I now feel I’m looking at an older woman, one whose hard life has written itself on her face.

  ‘She changes all the time,’ says Vanessa. ‘I watch her for hours.’ She walks up to Moira with a n
onchalance that shocks me. Has she really been in Moira’s company for so long that she is able to touch her without feeling profoundly uncomfortable? But Vanessa stops short of touching her. She walks behind her and taps something attached to the wall. I take a step to the right and see a length of pipe jutting from the rock, leading down to a squat barrel from which the trickling sound emanates.

  ‘We sell it,’ says Vanessa.

  The piping runs around Moira’s feet, like manacles, and seems to come from inside the rock, just below her knees. There is a sense of wrongness to it. I have to fight the urge to attempt to rip it from her.

  ‘Like a spring?’ says Rebecca. ‘A natural spring, on the island?’

  Vanessa doesn’t bother to reply. She pulls something from her pocket and a moment later there is a pinpoint of light in her hands – a miniature torch. She puts it between her teeth so she can open the folder she brought in from the pile by the door. Then she shifts the torch to her left hand, holds the folder in her right, and begins to read aloud.

  I’m not a good mother, so how can I raise a good son? I shout when I should be reasonable. I can’t help it. It’s so much easier to let it out, all the frustration, that I’ve had a bad day. I’m annoyed at everyone, including him. Kyle should have a bad day too, he should suffer too, that’s how I feel. I’m suffering so he should too. But I’d swear it doesn’t bother him, and that makes it worse. He looks at me like he’s meant to be shouted at, like that’s what life is about. Like I’m teaching him something he needs to know. He’s only eight and I’ve already taught him how to be horrible. How to take it, and how to dish it out.

  Maybe this is what all men are, deep inside. They are here for us to fight, so we make each other suffer. Being on this island makes me wonder if we could really do without them. Aren’t they responsible for all the crime, anyway? All the violence? People say – oh, he must have had a violent father. But maybe their mothers taught them to be that way. I’m teaching Kyle to hate me already.

  Vanessa stops reading.

  When she spoke those words, they made a different sound. Resonant. Deeper and stronger. Not like it sounds when Vanessa says, ‘She’s feeding off them now. Off Kyle. The idea of him. What he could have been. All these declarations, and so many women find themselves writing about what men want, what men need from them.’

  Flat words; they have no substance. I don’t believe them, and Moira is disinterested in them. But when Vanessa read to her, there was avidity. The ugly face was intent. Now it is serene and heavy with age.

  ‘This is elaborate, isn’t it?’ says Rebecca. ‘This act. All the things you’re doing to make Marianne believe you.’

  ‘Rebecca, can you really not feel it?’ says Kay.

  ‘Feel what?’

  Kay flips her hand at the statue, at Moira, and in response Rebecca’s tone hardens into belligerent, obstinate belief: ‘You’re seeing a carefully prepared room. You know that, right? Lighting, effects, like a film. It works on you, just like a film does, standing here in the dark. But it’s not real. It will do you no good to believe in this. If it was genuine, don’t you think Vanessa would turn on all the lights, show it to you properly? Everything always looks different in the light, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Women never mattered, did they?’ Vanessa says. She is warming to her subject. She gestures with the folder and the torch, and throws back her head as her voice gets louder. ‘Not in the great tales of heroes and villains. Women were the prizes and the punishments. Moira isn’t interested in us, you see. Men feed her, make her stronger, so that the entire world gets caught up in her.’

  ‘Let’s go back upstairs,’ says Rebecca.

  ‘Don’t you see? She’s real. She’s real. I had to be here. Don’t you understand, Marianne?’

  ‘There’s a crack,’ says Kay. Vanessa drops her hands.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A crack. In her neck.’

  Vanessa puts her face next to the curve in Moira’s throat. When she shines the torch upon it, I can clearly see the crack that runs through the stone, from below the left ear to the clavicle. There’s a soft sound, like a ripe fruit hitting a hard floor, and as I watch the crack widens, deepens, approaching the breastbone.

  ‘What’s happening?’ says Rebecca.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Vanessa switches off the torch. There is a tremor of movement under my feet. The ground is trembling. A noise is building, a low roaring. The piping behind Moira groans and begins to rattle against the rock. ‘I don’t know. This is wrong. There must be a man nearby. Amelia said she would only change if there was—’ She pauses, head tilted to one side, and then she turns around and looks straight at me.

  ‘Run!’

  The ground splits apart.

  There is no time to react, to think of what should be said or done. I push backwards with my legs as the floor begins to give, and my head hits something hard as I fall. I scrabble behind me, touch the door, grab the handle – how did I get so close to the door? It can’t be real. But it is solid, it stays solid, as the rest of the room sags, drops away, screaming, grinding, shouting so loud at its disappearance. I can’t see Kay or Rebecca, but I can see Vanessa. She is holding on to Moira, who remains upright, an island in the centre of the moving ground. Vanessa’s terror is palpable, and so is Moira’s amusement, written on her face, and through the fretwork of cracks that now cover her, life pulses, reaches out: more than life, more than flesh. She glows. Vanessa is shouting something at her; I can’t hear. Moira’s hands are golden, and they move, they move, so slowly, up to Vanessa’s open mouth, and they close around her lips and pull apart, stretching, stretching the skin until they are ripped free of Vanessa’s face, and there is so much blood, and then the door swings back, into the corridor, and snaps from its hinges, so that I am shaken free of the handle to land on something cold and hard underneath me.

  I realise I’m shouting the word no, no, no, over and over. I can’t hear myself but my own lips are saying it. I’m in the corridor, the lines of the walls are angular, sloping inwards to meet just above my head, and the stairs at the far end have formed a concertina, squashing, shrinking, and then I can’t see them any more as the air thickens with dust, and breathing becomes so hard that my mouth stops moving and my chest hardens into a stone of pain.

  CHAPTER TEN

  He watched Inger knock on the door of the wooden chalet, wait, then knock again. She moved to a darkened window, cupped her hands to the glass, and looked inside. Then turned, and saw him. She pulled a face: a caricature of the disapproving mother. He couldn’t help but laugh.

  She stamped up to him. ‘I don’t find this funny.’

  ‘Sorry.’ But David couldn’t stop smiling at her. The night was so clean, making his skin tingle with its freshness. He had never felt so well. Maybe this was a by-product of all he had gone through in the last few days. Catharsis had taken place, and he was now a better version of himself. He felt it.

  ‘She’s not there, anyway,’ said Inger, putting her hands on her hips. ‘Nobody’s there. She was sharing with two other ladies. The only organised activity on a Monday night is massage therapy with Janet. Could she have gone to that?’

  ‘She’s not a massage person.’ He’d tried to rub her feet when they first got married, and she’d clenched them up into birdish claws and told him she was far too ticklish to enjoy it. Could that have been a lie?

  ‘I don’t know, then,’ said Inger. She puffed out her cheeks, then said, ‘We should go back.’

  David looked around. Something was building. He felt it in the darkening sky, the curves of the ground. He remembered the round, white house, visible in the distance. It had struck him as the hub of the island, around which all things rotated. He’d felt the pull of it. It would sound ridiculous to Inger, so instead he said, ‘Come on,’ and set off back the way they came, following his instincts, wondering where this new confidence in them sprang from.

  ‘No—’ said Inger, and he heard her running after him.
He felt the strength of it, being in charge, making the decisions once more. She wouldn’t be able to stop him for all her heroics.

  When she caught up to him, David said, ‘What’s in the white house?’

  ‘Mrs… Makepeace…’ She was out of breath already. He realised he was jogging. It put no strain on his lungs, his body.

  ‘I’m not meant to be here, I know, but I just need to look through the window. Nobody will know, and then I’ll come back with you and lie low, I promise, honestly.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Honestly,’ he said. He didn’t slow down. The night was no impediment to his speed; his feet found the right path, even though Inger stumbled. He saw the white house up ahead and aimed straight for it, faster, stretching out his legs.

  ‘I can’t…’ Inger fell behind. He found he was sprinting. The sleek strength of his muscles was a surprise; he felt like an animal. He found he had rejoined a path that led up to a wrought iron gate, which he simply climbed over, not bothering to check if it would open or not. The path widened until it formed a semi-circular gravel space in front of the pillared facade and a large, blue front door.

  David looked behind him. Inger was nowhere.

  He ignored the door and moved to the nearest window. Inside was a pattern of black and white tiles covering the walls and floor. David put his hands to the glass and it trembled at his touch. No – the glass wasn’t trembling. Something else, something under the ground, had come alive. It shuddered and squirmed at his touch, then groaned, so loud, so lonely.

  He pulled back his hand and covered his ears.

  The house reared up, and the windows split apart with great cracks, the glass falling into splinter shards that pelted down in dust and tiles and plaster.

  And the ground opened.

  It swallowed half the house in a second. The rest of the house fell over and lay on its side; David watched it, felt certain it would attempt to get up. It creaked and complained on, and gouts of steam erupted from the black mouth of moving earth into which the house had fallen, just beyond his feet.