Death in Her Hands

by Ottessa Moshfegh

  “Do you live around here?” she asked somewhat coldly.

  “I’m your neighbor,” I said.

  “In the next camp? The old Girl Scout camp?”

  I nodded.

  “I went there, when I was little. We meant to buy it, when it was for sale. But then I got sick. I grew up in Port Mary.” Port Mary was the closest coastal town, where the state prison was. I’d driven past it once, all those spires and curlicued barbed-wire fences like a fortress, a castle, up in the mist around the harbor. “I remember canoeing back and forth to that little island. There was a ghost story people told around the campfire.”

  “Ghost story?” I said. I tried to laugh, but it came out as a cackle.

  “Ghod told us your name once. What was it again? He’ll be here later. We’ve cast him as the lead investigator with instructions to come dressed as Sherlock Holmes. But he’ll probably show up in his uniform, as always.”

  “Those black leather gloves—” I began to say.

  “Yes,” she said. “Those. Mrs.—”

  “Gool,” I said, not to confuse things.

  A cloud passed up in the sky somewhere, and the sunlight dimmed across the yard. A cold breeze made me shiver. The woman wrapped herself in a shawl, which I now saw was like a spider’s web hanging from her shoulders.

  “Could I trouble you,” I asked meekly, “for a glass of water?”

  She paused, a worried look on her face as she squinted up at those clear, nearly invisible windows facing the yard.

  “I have a long way to walk,” I went on. “I’m hunting my dog. Charlie. Have you seen him? I’ve been searching all day. And my car has trouble, so I’ve been on foot.”

  “You must be worried.”

  “Petrified, yes. He’s my only—” and then I stopped.

  “Well, yes, of course. Come in,” she said, but eyed me suspiciously. She seemed to have some idea that it was untoward, rude to show up uninvited when she was throwing a party for her own death. She gestured, and I followed her through the grass up to the house through the shifting winds, walking slowly, as my balance, my sense of space and dimension were still somewhat blurred.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said when we reached the door, and pointed at my boots, which were crusted in auburn-colored pine needles and muck and dead leaves. “I just did the floors. Guests will be here in an hour or so.”

  “Of course,” I said, and as I bent over to loosen my boot, I must have fainted. The next thing I knew, I was coming to on a burnt-orange velveteen settee. In the clear light through the windows, sunshine reflecting off the lake made me wince. There was an old grand piano, a cascade of calla lilies across a dark polished coffee table, books and books, all clothbound, a whole library of shelves on the walls to either side. A record of Schubert piano sonatas was playing. It was like being transported back to another time, another country. “Where am I?” I asked myself, and put my hand out as though Charlie might be there to lick it. The room spun a bit, a scent of burning myrrh, some clanking from another room, and I dozed again, my arm flung out, and then someone was holding my wrist. Strong, cool fingers.

  “She’s fine,” said a man’s voice. When I looked up, there he was, white as a ghost in his strange white blouse. He replaced my wrist on the soft velveteen. “You’ll be fine. Your pulse was weak when you fainted. But I think you have recovered. Take some Benadryl. Can you walk?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The woman held out two neon-pink pills.

  “Please, Mrs. Gool. How do you feel?” the woman asked. “I brought you a plate of hors d’oeuvres. It’s all I have, for the party, I’m afraid.” I took the Benadryl and washed them down with the water in a glass on the table beside me. The woman pointed to a silver platter covered in tiny delicate morsels. A tiny quiche, a strand of asparagus wrapped in meat, a deviled egg, a croquette, a fleck of goat cheese tart. I recognized each of these from an outdated magazine I myself had in my bathroom, an issue of The Gourmand. I didn’t want to look at the man again. My gut told me he was not to be trusted. He reminded me of a vampire. I could picture him mutilating a small animal. He seemed not to like me being there.

  “You’ll be all right,” the woman said. I guess I must have looked a bit confused, my mouth hanging open, cringing, eyes widening at the look of them standing side by side again like some haunted antique portrait. A Gentleman and His Wife.

  “I really fainted?” My voice was small, distant, as if it were coming from out in the pine woods, a faint echo from the poisoned beyond. The walls of the house were papered in a muted gray paisley pattern. Everything was so fine, so ornate. It was nothing like my cabin and my shabby secondhand furniture, my rough painted plank floors, the dark-paneled rooms, the creaks, the stains of what, I don’t know, on the old couch. Was I in a dream? I closed my eyes and let my head roll toward the back of the settee. I listened to the gentleman and his wife whispering.

  “What’s she doing out here, anyway?”

  “Looking for a dog.”

  “What kind of dog?”

  The woman cleared her throat and raised her voice.

  “What kind of dog did you say it was?”

  “Was?” I said, almost sleeping.

  “Your dog.”

  “He ran away,” I murmured. “It’s so unlike him.” I pictured Charlie again, or at least I tried. I could barely recall the shape of his snout, the color of his fine fur. He was about as tall as my knees. I tried to summon the words to describe him, but merely said, “Big and brown.”

  “I’d worry about a dog on the loose. You know there are hunters in these parts.”

  “And wolves.”

  “Bears are coming out of hibernation. Anybody wandering the woods would be in peril, in the night,” said the man.

  My eyes fluttered open. I tried to lift myself up to sit. The silver platter of hors d’oeuvres sat in front of me on the coffee table. I reached for one, but just grasped at the thin air.

  “Should we call an ambulance?”

  The man grumbled something. “This dog,” he said, his tone like an inspector. “When did it run away?”

  “Last night,” I answered.

  “I think I heard it.”

  I sat upright. My head began to clear.

  “What’s that?” I asked. “You heard my dog?”

  “Last night, past midnight,” the man said, wandering over to the piano. “I heard something rustling outside in the yard. Bigger than a raccoon. It woke me. Is he rabid?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “It could have been anything,” the woman said.

  “But it could have been a dog,” the man said. He sat on the piano bench, took one of his long, hairy white fingers and struck a high note. It rang out loudly, dissonant to the Schubert. I cringed.

  “I’m sorry about your dog,” the woman said. She seemed to want to brush off this concern. “Can you stand, Mrs. Gool?” I looked again at the strange bits of food she’d offered me. It seemed unwise to eat them. “Our guests should be coming soon. I’d offer you a bed to sleep in, but I’m afraid—”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” the man said. “Do you know your name?” he asked me derisively. “You know who’s president?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Please,” I answered, waving my hand.

  “How many fingers?” He held up two of those long, crooked things, kept his gaze lowered to his piano keys. “Not that there’s anything so very terrible about amnesia. Like Henry. He seems to get along fine. Better even, than if he’d remembered,” the man mumbled.

  “Henry?”

  “The man at the store. He was shot in the face, you know,” the woman said.

  “How awful,” I said. “I suppose one would want to forget something like that.”

  “Brain damage,” the man said, tapping his waxy black hair. �
��I’ve read somewhere that each time you lose consciousness, a part of the brain dies.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Are you a doctor?” His voice was casual, false, patronizing.

  “My husband was a doctor,” I told him. “He’s passed away, but he was one. I never heard him say that about losing consciousness. You mean to say that every time you fall asleep—”

  “He’s only teasing,” the woman said.

  “Only teasing,” the man said.

  “I’m sorry about your husband.”

  “Well, it was a long time ago,” I began to say, and almost let it slip that I had dumped Walter’s urn and ashes in the lake. But I didn’t. It may be considered a crime to dispose of human remains without permission. The neighbors might have grounds to seek charges against me for pollution, and that is what I felt I’d done, in fact. I’d polluted the lake forever against me with Walter’s mindspace. Now Walter had all of Lake David to swim around in.

  “I have a self-help book here,” the woman said, moving to the shelves and pulling one down. “Death, it’s called. It’s been very helpful to me.” The man rose and puffed his chest, walked defiantly toward his wife, and snatched the book from her fingers.

  “Take it,” he said, and held it out. I couldn’t look up at him. “Perhaps this will aid you, in your mourning. A husband, and now a dog. It must be difficult.” His voice was cutting, as though he meant it to stab me in the heart. But it did not.

  “How generous,” I said, and held the book to my chest as though it might soothe me. I hated him. He reminded me of Walter, pointing to my weakness and offering only his great intellect, ideas to comfort me. I opened the book, words swirling before my eyes. The woman sighed. “I’m sure it will help,” I said. “Anything would help now. Any clue.” I shut the book. “I’d do anything to find my Charlie.”

  “Yes, you have a mystery to solve. And you can. It’s more than a needle in a haystack, a dog in the woods. You will find him, Mrs. Gool.” Perhaps I looked sad, since although she was impatient to escort me to the door, she said, “In solving a mystery, it’s best to look at the clues. And then assemble them in a picture that makes the most sense. And then you can recreate the crime.”

  “Who said anything about a crime?” the man said angrily, playing a strange minor triad on the piano.

  “Well, just hypothetically. In the murder mystery dinner party, before the killer is revealed, the inspector is supposed to reenact the crime.”

  “I know all about that,” I told her. “I’m familiar with mysteries.”

  She was trying to be helpful, but the husband was very irritated. Then, as though he could hear my thoughts, the man asked again, “Can you walk?”

  I got up. “I think so,” I said. “Did you see any digging? My Charlie likes to dig.”

  “We have done our own digging,” the man said curtly. “If there’s any other digging on our property, I’d ask for the holes to be filled.”

  “Of course,” I said, gaining my balance again. You’d expect a gentleman to come let me lean on his arm, at least walk me to the door, see me off, but no. He stayed there fingering the high black and white keys of his piano, as though threatening to play something eerie and upsetting. The woman glanced down at the hors d’oeuvres. Out of politeness, I bent down and picked one up—a fragile shard of goat cheese tart. It had honey drizzled on top. I’d thought the goat cheese and honey was an odd combination when I saw the recipe in The Gourmand. But it was tasty. The woman handed me a cocktail napkin. The man played a high, creepy trill, which made both of us jump.

  “I guess I should be going,” I said.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for your dog,” the man said. I wished he wouldn’t. I didn’t want him anywhere near my Charlie.

  “Feel better, Mrs. Gool.”

  “Oh, I’ll be fine. Just overheated, probably. It was nice to meet you,” I lied. “And thank you again for the book.”

  “Have you called the police?” the woman asked. “The animal shelter? Fish and game? You could post signs up around town. At Henry’s store, for example. Or go online. They say when a person goes missing, it’s the first twenty-four hours after the disappearance that are the most critical, in the search.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said hurriedly, suddenly embarrassed and despondent. “I should get to it.” I tried to look happy as we walked down the hallway. I didn’t understand the house. From the outside, it looked like a simple rustic structure. But on the inside, it was somehow palatial. Perhaps it was my twisted nerves, my eyes seeing things. We passed the open archway to the dining room. A long oblong table was spread with glossy china. Goblets and candelabras. From the kitchen I smelled a roast. If Charlie were around, he’d be howling, salivating into a puddle in front of the oven. “How lovely,” I said. “Oh, and you. I hope you make a full recovery. Enjoy yourselves. And thank you for taking me in. I hope I didn’t disturb you too much.”

  “Please,” she said, shaking her head. “I only came home to enjoy my last days on Earth with my husband.”

  “Have a lovely time.”

  I left then, walking across the yard, past their black car, and up the dirt road through the pines, thrumming my fingers on the book still held against my chest. If I didn’t have that tangible object to hold, I’d have felt that what had just transpired was only a dream. I’d hallucinated. Weren’t there spores in the air that could cause that to happen? Each second had ticked by so deliberately. The sun had already passed its highest point and would now be on its descent toward the birch woods on the slope. My breath caught again, but not as bad this time. I took it slowly. Was the note about Magda just part of their death party game? It was the kind of thing Walter would have liked. “Games, all kinds, are to give stupid people some sense of control over reality. But they are not in control—not them, nor you or me, Vesta. It’s a strange cruel universe we live in. In other dimensions, death may not exist at all.” Walter would have charmed those neighbors, I was sure. He was drawn to kooks, he’d said. The two of them looked like they’d been trapped in a cellar for years, the crackled pasty-white makeup slathered over the woman’s face, but not on her hands. She wouldn’t want the makeup to get into the food, I supposed. Poor woman. She’d had some female difficulty, I intuited. Uterine cancer, maybe.

  The taste of that goat cheese had stuck in my mouth, and as I breathed carefully through the pine woods, I spat occasionally, my mouth watering like a dog’s. I was reminded momentarily of something that happened in Monlith with Charlie, still a young pup and rather silly, before we moved to Levant. I’d taken him to the local park. One could let a dog run around off leash, and I thought it would be good practice for Charlie to learn to socialize, and good exercise. He was so energetic, it was impossible to exhaust him when he was young. He’d zoom laps around the downstairs of that big old house, knocking over boxes as I packed things up, all of Walter’s things, his books, his pens. An entire fortress of outdated reference books and long legal pads with only the first pages scrawled on. I sent it all to Goodwill. I’d asked the university if they would like his archives for the school library. But he’d already left them all his important papers. His secretary had the files at the office at school. At home, he was just keeping busy, just writing things down to amuse himself.

  “This is Vesta,” someone said at the dog park. “She was married to a famous German scientist!” That was how I was introduced.

  “Well, he was an epistemologist, not a real scientist.”

  There was a whole pack of older ladies with big wolfish dogs in Monlith. I’d seen them walking together in town. It’s where I’d initially gotten the idea to get Charlie.

  “Our children are grown, they don’t even visit. If they had grandchildren and lived nearby, maybe that would do it. But having a dog is a different kind of relationship. After a while, even if your husband lives a long time, things get
dull, you know. No man can give the same comfort as a dog. People grow apart. But a dog will stick by you. A dog will never abandon you for some younger woman. A dog will never be cold and ignore you after a hard day. He will not think you look any less beautiful in this than that. Get one, Vesta,” these women had told me. So I had.

  At the park, Charlie took off, galloping around sloppily, wide-eyed and shy around the other dogs who were comfortable in their relationships. He went off into the maples and I just had a feeling he was up to no good. Maybe he would dig up some dead thing, unearth a bone a dog had buried decades ago, or come to me with a rotting squirrel, some headless bunny rabbit with a tire print across its back, teeming with maggots. But it was not a dead thing that Charlie was after that day. It was another dog’s watery feces. He stuck his face right into it, then rolled around so that it covered his neck and chest. Almost immediately, he started gagging, thick drool flinging from his mouth as he shook with disgust. I stood back watching him in this insanity, feces and saliva mixing. He gagged and gagged. But he was so happy. When he looked up at me and saw my horror, he shrank against a tree as though suddenly aware of how unsanitary it all was. Then he vomited a pile of kibble—each little pellet swollen and airy, I saw, steaming in the chilly Monlith morning. What was I supposed to do now? That was the last time I fed him “dog food.” I was mortified. The women with their dogs were preening in the low sunshine, so happy, so pleased at how well their lives were going. And here was my little Charlie covered in diarrhea. I couldn’t put him in the car. And I couldn’t ask for help. How would they help me anyway? Bring a bucket of water? Oh, I couldn’t stand their pitiful looks. When Walter died they came by with casseroles, flowers, acted like the country had lost a hero. They’d all probably had crushes on Walter. Those hussies. Those useless hens.

  I slipped the leash back around Charlie’s neck, careful not to touch the feces, but of course it got all over my hands and the legs of my trousers. We walked out of the park, leaving my car along the side of the road, careful not to be seen. It took two hours to walk all the way home, and then the garden hose wasn’t working. There was nothing to water in the garden anyway. No amount of fertilizer or water could get anything to grow in that dry, dead dirt in Monlith. I had to open the kitchen window and pull the spray nozzle out from the sink and try to wash Charlie off that way. I squirted dishwashing detergent all over him. The pressure from the sink hose was laughable. It took an hour just to get the first layer of stuff out of his fur. Then I wrapped him in an old towel and carried him into the shower. I figured the shower was safer, less splashing around, and he couldn’t try to jump out because there was a fiberglass door that I could fasten shut. So I removed my clothes, too, and we showered together for what must have been nearly an hour. I didn’t think to wear rubber gloves, it didn’t occur to me. I just shampooed him again and again, scrubbing with my fingers, then holding him down under the hot water, talking to him all the while. He seemed to understand that he was being punished, but I didn’t think he was old enough to understand exactly how much he’d inconvenienced and humiliated me. The women would ask where I’d been, what had happened. “We thought maybe you’d been kidnapped, since we saw your car. It was there when we all left, and we just didn’t see you. Where’d you go? We nearly thought to call the police.”