by Jane E James
Having spent another hour lying awake, my mind conjuring up illusions of shadowy creatures creeping into the house and stealing up the staircase, I get out of bed and get dressed. I dare not put a light on in case it leaks onto the landing and disturbs my father who finally retired to his room an hour ago. I am praying that he is asleep.
As my legs find their way into a stiff pair of just-washed jeans, I slip on an oversized hoody, very apt for the sneaking around I am about to play a part in. On the landing, my plimsolled feet know how to avoid the creaky floorboards beneath the carpet but my heart is in my mouth when I push open the door to my father’s room.
Inside, it is dark and shadowy, and it takes a while for my eyes to adjust. Please be asleep, is all I can think, because if not I will have some explaining to do and I haven’t come prepared with any excuses. The sash window on my mother’s side of the bed has been left open and the net curtain being sucked in and out by the sea breeze makes a sound like a kiss, something this house has not heard in a long time.
At last, I see him—asleep on top of the bedclothes, one arm above his head and the other tucked firmly in the waistband of his underpants. The moon through the window shines onto his sweating forehead and his eyelids flutter relentlessly, as if he doesn’t rest peacefully. Nor does he deserve to, I can’t resist thinking. As always, the blame for what happened to my mother is between us.
He wears a grubby vest, exposing tufts of black and grey streaked armpit hair and I am overwhelmed by the smell of sweat and dead flesh coming off his body. It oozes out of him like a disease, reminding me of Daniel, only this is far worse. Thinking back to the memory of my first kiss, I am almost sick in my mouth, so I force myself not to think about it.
Occasionally, the great fearless man that is Frank Powers whimpers in his sleep and I wonder which one of us is tormenting him in his dreams. Me or her? Not for the first time, I marvel at what my mother saw in him—she was beautiful and lively, and he quite the opposite. What can have been the attraction and why did their love die? This is what I want to know above all else; that and what happened to make her feel she couldn’t turn to anyone in her hour of need, least of all her husband? Damn that bloody cliff, that’s what I say, and damn all the heartless reporters for renaming Little Downey “Suicide Bay”. By romanticising what happened, they are as much to blame for my mother’s death as anyone else. We all let her down. Every single one of us. But most of all—my father.
‘Father?’ My voice seems to come from nowhere, appearing eerily ghostlike, even to my own ears.
‘Father?’ I say again, louder this time, not just to test he really is asleep, but to shake off the malevolent feeling that has crept into the room like an unwelcome shadow. Thankfully he goes on sleeping, so I slip away—gently closing the door behind me.
The Whitewashed Building
Although I have brought a torch with me, I am nervous about using it, in case whoever is hiding out here sees it, so I am grateful to the moon for showing me the way. Without it, I would be alone in the dark, about to enter my father’s workshop. That’s two of my worst fears about to happen in the space of one night.
The hood pulled over my head stops my eyes from straying too far and I am glad of this, because I know if I stare at the shadows too long, I will start to see things that are not there. The stench of death reminds me that I am closer to the building than I first thought and when I see the same dim light that I saw from my room shining through the barred window, my heart sinks. I can’t make up my mind if the flickering is caused by a candle or an oil lamp. All I know is I had hoped to find it gone and even imagined turning around and heading for home again but there is no chance of that happening now. When I hear a dog barking in the distance, I freeze, and a cold shiver runs through my body. I wonder if it is the gypsy’s dog trying to find its way home. Out here, by the sea and the cliff edge, sounds get distorted, so I cannot tell how close the dog really is. It could be miles away.
I wait for the comfort of silence before moving on again and when I do, my body instinctively hunches over in an attempt to appear smaller and less visible. The thought of the intruder watching me as I approach fills me with terror. Who can it be? What do they want? Climbing on top of an old tin barbecue, I try not to make a sound but the torch in my pocket scrapes against the flimsy metal and the light inside the building is immediately extinguished, reminding me once again that I am not alone out here.
All I can hear is my own breathing and I want more than anything to abandon this mission and go home but something bigger than my fear drives me on, so I brace myself for I know not what, switch on the torch, and shine it through the rusting bars of the window.
Once my eyes adjust to the gloomy interior, I find myself staring at crumbling brick walls. When one of the metal hooks on the ceiling moves slightly, creating a sickening clunk, my breathing becomes so loud it hurts my ears. As the blood drains from my body, I sense an invisible presence surround me. The same one I haven’t been able to shake off since leaving the house, or even before that, when I first saw the shadow flitting across the garden. I am so afraid I don’t think I could scream if I wanted to. I close my eyes, wishing I was anywhere but here but they flash open again when I hear a shuffling sound coming from inside the building. I cannot bear not knowing what made that noise, so I push my arm all the way through the bars and circle the room with my torch.
Expecting to see some dark otherworldly creature scurrying across the floor, I scour every inch of the concrete walls, floor and ceiling—but no such monster shows itself. I know that whatever made that noise can’t have vanished; that it is lurking somewhere in the shadows. Perhaps it is creeping up on me. It could be standing beside me for all I know.
I want to cry. I want my mother. Every girl wants her mother when she is afraid.
The sound of the dog barking again startles me so much that I lose my balance and end up dropping the torch. It bounces noisily on the metal barbecue and the beam instantly goes off. What now? I think, as the barking turns to an anguished howling, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. There is something haunting about the dog’s call. It is much closer than it was, I realise, and it crosses my mind that it would be impossible for it to have travelled so far so quickly, unless of course, it is a ghost dog.
Blindly, I scramble for the torch, and thank God when my hand closes around it. My gratitude is short lived when I switch it on and nothing happens. Goddamn it. Don’t you die on me. Wiping my sweaty hands against my jeans, I shake the torch and pray for it to come back on. When it does, I am so relieved I could laugh out loud. The beam is weaker than before but I can live with that. Straightening up, I decide to shine the torch back through the gap in the bars one last time…just to be sure.
For a second, I think it is my own reflection staring back at me but I couldn’t be more wrong. There, in front of me—showing absolutely no fear—is the face of a woman with balding hair, rotting teeth and haunted yellow eyes.
When my mouth opens to scream, she mimics me. In my eagerness to escape, I tumble off the barbecue and hit the ground hard. When I get up again, I think I am about to black out with fear and this feeling intensifies when I realise I have lost the torch. I give up looking for it sooner than I would like because the thought of that monstrosity coming after me is more terrifying than running blindly through the dark.
I run, petrified, away from the whitewashed building, but the house by the sea plays hide and seek with me. One second I can see it and the next it is gone. Realising that the moon has abandoned me, I aim for where I think my father’s house should be and pray that I am right. This is one time I wish I had broken one of Frank’s laws and left a light on to find my way back. Beneath me, my legs, already wobbly with fear, stumble often.
When I run into someone, I scream louder than I ever thought possible and immediately fight back at the arms that are trying to pin mine down. When a hand presses against my mouth, effectively silencing me, I claw madly
at whatever I can get hold of. Hearing a sharp intake of breath, I take pleasure in knowing I have left a mark on my attacker. But when the hand wraps itself more firmly around my face and I find myself struggling to breathe, I try to bargain with God. Please don’t let me be suffocated. Anything but that. But, as usual He isn’t listening, so I remind myself that this person’s skin and blood is under my fingernails. They will not be allowed to get away with this. My father will see to that. I am surprised that I am so sure of this when he makes no attempt to disguise his hatred of me.
A woozy feeling comes over me and it dawns on me that today might be my turn to die. I ask myself if this matters. Will anyone miss me? Not my father, that’s for sure. With all the fight gone out of me, I focus my attention on a distant star. Am I to live? I ask of it, or die?
“Everybody has to die sometime, Natalie.” I hear her voice. Of course, I do. My mother—
I want nothing more than to go to her, but when the pressure is released from my mouth and my lungs fill with air, I realise I am not about to be murdered after all; that it is my stillness and silence that is required, so I give in to the body that has captured mine and make myself familiar with its scent. It has a clean earthy smell, reminding me of woodland, campfires and the sea. I sense that this person is not the same witchlike creature I saw in my father’s workshop. That thing, that thing, whatever it is, could not possibly smell so good.
‘It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.’
His voice comes out of nowhere, like a stray bullet that might take someone’s ear off. I recognise it immediately. Who could not, after the impression he has left on me. Clearly, he doesn’t trust me to remain quiet because he keeps one finger pressed to my mouth. In the dark, I notice that one of his mismatched eyes shows up more vividly than the other.
‘I think it’s gone,’ Jed whispers.
‘You saw it too? I’m not going mad?’ I ask.
Both our heads are cricked in the direction of the whitewashed building as I say this but he cannot know that everything depends on his answer.
‘It’s not safe out here,’ he says after a long pause. ‘Not with that thing about.’
‘I think that thing is my mother,’ I acknowledge, hardly daring to look at him.
The House By The Sea
I can hardly see for the steam but I could find my way around this bathroom blindfolded if I had to. I know, for instance, that my father’s shaving brush will be on the windowsill where he always leaves it and his worn grey flannel will have been put back beneath the bar of soap that has his black and grey hairs stuck to it. The double-edged razor blades he uses to shave his face will of course be nowhere to be seen.
These are things only a family member can know about a house and its inhabitants. My God. What kind of family do I belong to, if what I saw last night was real? I do not want to think about last night, yet it is all I can think about. Can it be true? Or am I losing my mind? I must not think about my mother. Focus on something else, Natalie.
The window has a crack in it that runs from corner to corner. There is a bullet-sized chunk of glass missing from the bottom of the pane. I know if I put one eye to it, I will see the whitewashed building outside and be reminded once again of what happened. That thing cannot be my mother. I know this to be impossible yet last night I didn’t think so. Last night was last night, I remind myself, and I wasn’t myself. Nothing new there then!
The sound of the shower spilling a continuous stream of water into the cast iron bath beneath it is meant to be soothing, but it isn’t helping.
Drip. Splat. Drip.
I put my hands over my ears and close my eyes, wanting to shut out the slaughterhouse scene in my head. Death and blood. All my life, death and blood.
Above the window there is a wooden beam, which dates to when the house was first built. I have imagined myself hanging from it many times. I wonder if my mother also considered it an option before finally settling on the cliff edge. She is not dead, Natalie. You know she is alive. You saw her. She did not take her own life. It was a big lie.
It has been a long time since I imagined coming across my father’s oxygen-starved face writhing at the end of a noose on this beam. Many thought he would take his life after Mother died, went away, but he carried on going to spite everyone, he said. The thought of my father dying a slow and agonising death used to keep me awake at night. He might not have loved me but he was all I had. Now I know that he has been lying to me all these years, I am not so sure he doesn’t deserve such a terrible end. I know I will eventually take this horrid thought back. I love my father and always have. I just wish he felt the same.
Because I have been hunched up in a naked ball on the floor for too long, my feet are numb with cold and my knees feel as if they will never unwind by themselves. I do not care about the growth of black hair on my legs or the way my greasy hair sticks to my shoulders. I know that what I am about to do is unacceptable, unforgivable even, after all the psychiatric help I have received. If Dr Moses were here, he would try to talk me out of it. But he is not and I am glad because his disappointment is something I do not want to witness again. Letting people down is something I have grown good at.
I look down at my clenched fist, noticing how pink the tips of my fingers have become. When I try to unravel them, they resist. Clearly, they think they know what is best for me and do not want to relinquish the chunk of lacklustre glass hidden inside my palm. The size and shape of it is a perfect match for the hole in the window. I will put it back when I am done, so as not to arouse my father’s suspicions. He isn’t the only one capable of keeping a secret. Before it even touches my skin, I feel the promise of a morphine-inducing high.
The glass is blunt, but I persevere, knowing that if I scrape it against the soft flesh of my thigh long enough, it will eventually tear and bleed. I feel little or no pain, even when my skin oozes with sticky blood. I have never experienced sex or had an orgasm but I cannot imagine a better feeling than this. I have been cutting myself since I was nine years old, on and off, and I know that makes me a social outcast, somebody quite disgusting, but I cannot stop. I do not do it to get attention, as many people mistakenly think, which is why I have learnt to do it slyly, to parts of my body that do not get exposed often. There’s no hiding the scars from some people though. At school I used to get asked how I got my scars and I would say I had been in a fight. When asked “Who with?” I would reply “Myself.”
If I am asked what it feels like to self-harm, I say: “It feels as if I am screaming but no one can hear me.”
Little Downey Beach
The bigger more aggressive dog does not bother getting to its feet when it sees me. It remains curled up in a foetal position with its head between its paws. There is something about its flattened ears that makes me think it is depressed. Jed has his back to me and is digging a large hole in the sand. Sweat runs down his bare shoulders onto the tattooed ladies on his arms, who, likewise, appear to weep rather than dance.
Today, I am not here by accident. This time, I am here to see him. And I will not let anybody stop me. On that thought, my eyes swing warily to the caravan. The door is pinned open as usual and I can hear music coming from inside, but so far, thank goodness, there is no sign of the feisty gypsy woman.
Only Jed can help me solve the mystery of what happened. He knows what I saw. It is our secret. All along, I was right. My mother never abandoned me. She loved me too much for that. Everyone else has been lying. Daniel. The villagers. My own father. But what made them fake my mother’s death and why did my father allow it? This is something I have to find out, but I must tread carefully. My mother’s existence proves I was never mad in the first place but who is going to believe me? Not the police, that’s for sure. I dare not accuse my father of anything either. I would find myself back at Thornhaugh in no time at all.
‘Hi,’ I say, louder than I need to, because I do not want to startle Jed. Hasn’t my father always warned me not to creep up on peop
le and frighten them.
Jed turns slowly and I realise I am wrong. He is aware of my presence but is choosing to ignore me. He and the dog share the same sorrowful expression, I notice, but Jed’s eyes hug the ground, intentionally blanking me. I want to ask him what is wrong but then I remember that we are still strangers. Last night, I thought there was a shared something between us, but I realise it meant nothing to him, whereas—
‘Did you find your dog?’ I am determined to remain friendly but I stumble on my words because I find his behaviour confusing. Although he is not looking directly at me, I can tell that his face is dark and grim, not at all welcoming. What can I have done to upset him?
‘I think I heard it barking last night, before you turned up at the house…’ I run out of steam because anger is making his blue eye twitch.
Clearing his throat, Jed spits into the hole in the ground. What is it with the men of Little Downey and spitting? Finally, he forces himself to look me straight in the eye.
‘I think I liked you better when you didn’t say much,’ he grumbles.
The House By The Sea
I have been sitting at the kitchen table staring into space for what seems like ages and I still cannot shake off the feeling of depression that has descended on me. I feel too numb to cry. It doesn’t matter what I tell myself—Take no notice, Natalie. He’s not worth it. Forget about him. He’s not important. Why should you care what he thinks? —but I do think he’s worth it, I can’t forget about him, he is important, to me, and I do care what he thinks.