PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (31 page)

“I
think you took it.”

“Took
what?”

“A
photograph.  And a CD.  They’re mine.  I want them back!”  She is gripping at
my arm again, and this time she has caught it and as much as I pull back she
has got me.  I am wishing that the knife was still in my handbag.  If it was I
would cut her open like a pig’s carcass, piss all over her and burn her until
she was nothing but charred cremation dust.

“Why
don’t you look for it at the hotel,” I say as I reach into my handbag and
shuffle around until I get hold of the magazine, “where you left this.”  I throw
the magazine down and she lets me go.  She reaches down to pick it up and I
take the chance to get into my bedroom.  I drag the nearest chair and shove it
under the door handle and turn .....

.....being
tested from the other side, but the chair holds firm and the door stays shut.  I
take out the drawer.  I take each tablet, not ordered and in turn, not counting
them down like I should be.  There is no more time for preparation or thought. 
I sweep my hand over the shelf and collect all of the tablets that I can in one
go into a cupped palm.  I see Ishiko staring back at me, the image of her
cleaved head encouraging me to follow my plan through, daring me to do it.  To
teach them the lesson they need. 
This is day one of the future
, I hear
Gregory say in my head and I know I have to end the past now so that we can
start again.  I stuff the tablets into my pocket and I slide the drawer back in
place and it looks as if I was never here. 

I
stand up and face the window, the sun shining brightly outside like molten
steel flowing through a refinery.  It warms me.  After something like ten
minutes I remove the chair from behind the door.  I open it.  Ishiko has gone,
no doubt back to her room.  The house seems darker, but there is a stutter of
light coming from downstairs, shadows flickering onto the wall of the stairs. 
I creep towards it, following the light.  I move like a ghost, certain that
another person could see through me.  As I reach the bottom of the stairs I see
Gregory hunched over the fireplace, his movements so small he appears like a
great statue, crouching like a bronze of the human form.  His shoulders are
bunched over the kindling coals, and so I slip through the front door unheard. 
The snow is falling on Marianne’s car, burying it deep, building its grave. 
This will be its final resting place.

The
scent of the bloody roses in my front garden drifts upwards and I let my
fingers drag behind me as they rustle the flower heads, every stem full of soft
petals.  They are smooth and cool to the touch, lifeless if it wasn’t for their
smell.  I bang my knuckles against the door of the Wexley’s house and the skin
on one of them splits, leaving a small stain of blood behind.  Marianne opens
the door, her eyes heavy and sleepy looking.  She tells me, “John is out,” but
it’s not John I came looking for.  The snow is falling and as I look back I
cannot see my house, standing only meters away.

She
sits on one of the kitchen chairs, her elbows resting on the table top, sliding
about as if she is drunk, as unstable as a baby deer.

“Have
you been drinking?” I ask.  She nods her head and looks tearful.  I can see
them welling up in the corner of her eyes waiting for gravity to pull them or
sadness to give them a push.  It smells of stale sweat in here, old and fusty,
like the windows haven’t been open in weeks and the bin has been left to
overflow.  I run my fingers through her hair which feels coarse like wire wool
and it catches my dry cracked skin.  I look around and see that everywhere is clean,
the kitchen unused because they dine out or order in, because in their world of
unreality they can do anything they like, the power of daily life unable to
touch them.  There is a glass on the table which has a few water drops on the
outside.  I pick it up and a small ring forms underneath it but remains
incomplete.  I drag my fingers through it.  I taste the liquid on my fingertips
and it is strong like vodka and it burns my lips.

“Marianne,
you need a cup of coffee to wake up.”

Lots
of head shaking ensues, which I take as a negative response.  “No,” she mumbles,
“I don’t want it.”

“A
glass of water.”  She hiccups, looks like she could throw up.  “A big glass of
milk?  How about food?  Something greasy?”  This is all it takes.  She hiccups,
burps, and then throws up on the floor.  Alcohol last.  That’s what I learnt,
remember?  Otherwise there is a risk you might survive.

The
vomit splatters on the stone kitchen tiles.  Most likely it will stain.  She has
eaten something red, unless it is blood, which it might be, and which I hope it
is.

“Here,
take a sip of water.”  I hand her a glass.

“I’m
cold,” she says.

“Let’s
get you to bed,” I suggest.

I
help her up the stairs, mainly by dragging her by her arm which remains limp as
her body bumps over each step like a tiny ragdoll, heavy as a little stone.  At
one point I hear a crack and I wonder if it is her neck.  It is a struggle but
I manage.

“John
is going to be very angry with you, Marianne.  Don’t you think?  Good job it
isn’t Friday.”  I push open the bedroom door and get a splinter as her head
bumps into the door frame splitting her lip.  Her head is limp, wobbling as I
pull her like the base of a weeble and again I have to consider that her neck
is broken.  I see blood pouring onto the carpet.  I lean down and squeeze her
lips together and watch the blood pulsate from them.  She squirms but I hold
her as firm as a vice, her head trapped in my grip.

The
bed is made to army standards with perfect corners as sharp as knives.  The
curtains are half drawn and an orange light spills through.  I leave her lying
on top of the sheets and return downstairs.  The house feels asleep, closed,
finished.  A derelict place without love or connection.  There is no life left
here except for Marianne lounging around upstairs as if she belongs here.  “If
she wants to stay,” I say to myself, “let’s make it permanent.”  I take out as
many tablets as I can pull from my pocket, a couple of them tumbling to the
floor and rolling away, stopping only as they hit the puddle of bloody vomit. 
I don’t count them.  I take a glass, fill it with water, and hold the first
capsule over it.  I open it and the powder sinks to the bottom like snow in a
snow globe.  I pull back the curtains for more light and I see that it is
snowing harder outside, and I can’t see past the garden now.  The earlier
flurry has been smothered by an actual snow storm, the fog acting as my
accomplice, hiding my presence here from the world.  The roads will soon be
impassable.  Not even am ambulance will be able to get through. 

I
work at speed, emptying one capsule at a time over the glass until I have
emptied them all.  I take a spoon and stir the mixture until it becomes
cloudy.  The radio is playing in the background, fairground music which I only
just notice.  I imagine the lights of the dodgems, the laughter of the
children, and the secret rendezvous of teenagers in caravans whose parents know
no better.  I set the glass down and waltz on my own for a while, the smell of
candy floss filling the air, the rattle of toffee popcorn, and the sound of
misaligned rifles attempting to win stuffed bears.  When the music stops and
there is no further reason to dance I pick up the glass and walk to the
bedroom, stepping over the bloodstain on the carpet, but smiling as I do so. 
By the time I get back to the bedroom she is sleeping.  I push her hard, waking
her up, and slap her once.  She complains and grunts as I pull her arm to make
her sit forward, and I nearly spill the mixture in the glass because
she
cannot
balance herself. 

“It’s
all about balance, Marianne,” I shout at her, but she doesn’t say anything.  I
force the glass to her lips and she sips from it.  One sip, two sips. 
Eventually it’s  gone.  I pour it down her throat like a foie gras destined
goose, only a small amount spilling from the sides.  There are some crumbs of
un-dissolved Prozac in the bottom of the glass, but nothing much for me to be
concerned about.  Nevertheless, I swipe my finger around the glass like a net
catching fish.  I smear the remaining powder in her gums.  She fights me so I
clamber on top of her, pin her down with my knees, and I think how easy it is
to do anything I like to her. 

I
set the glass down on the bedside table, leaving a ring underneath it.  I find
her handbag.  In it I find the Elavil, scatter a few on the bed.  I take one of
the water glasses from the bedside table and drop it on the bed, allowing the
contents to spill out, enriching the scene.  Some of the water seeps onto my
knees and the wet chill of it feels good, like home, like that was exactly how
it was supposed to be.  I lean in towards her, tell her that this time it is
her who needs to beware the truth.  I look back at the glass.  It looks dirty,
painted with my finger prints. 

I
watch her for a while, her breathing slow and shallow.  It takes twenty
minutes, and so I speed things up by sitting on her chest to restrict her
lungs.  I press my fingers into the crease of her neck and I find nothing to
repel me or push me away.  No sign of life pulsates back.  I pull back a loose
shutter-like eyelid and find nothing but black, her soulless shark eye dead and
absent.  I wish for a moment that I had brought the knife, so that I could
force her to watch me without having to hold her eyelid open, but it is too
late.  I settle instead for squeezing her lips, but no blood flows from the
cuts, blood already solidifying like a little stone, caught by the
petrification of death.  I lean down once more, kiss her cold cheek, and tell
her that there had been a time when she had a choice.  That at one point this
mess had been avoidable.  On my way out I pass the nest of cuddly toys and see
a small rabbit wearing a blue coat with big golden buttons that look like
coins.  I am almost certain that he speaks to me, but I have no idea what he
said.

I
close the front door behind me.  I cannot see more than a hand’s distance ahead
of me.  I have brought the dirty glass and so throw it into the flower bed
amongst the withering croci.  Before I open my front door I shake off the snow
from my shoulders, kick it from my boots.  The same shadows flicker on the wall
in the hallway and Gregory is still tending the fire in the same position as I
left him.  I don’t know where Ishiko is because I cannot feel her anymore, as
if she no longer exists.  I lie down on my bed and I think I fall asleep. 

I
have not done this for myself.  I am not a selfish person, although you might
think me to be considering my history of suicide and murder.  People often
mistake it for a selfish act.  You may think that my actions in that house
where I do not belong are odd and cruel, and that to kill a woman who has shown
me kindness and friendship is a terrible act of betrayal.  Yes, I have poisoned
Marianne, I have killed her, but she did not die in that room.  She was cured,
reborn, because I have gifted her with a chance to become something more than
she allowed for herself.  Through her, our lives will be renewed, and my poison
no more than a curative tonic, a chemotherapy to the cancer that ran through
our lives. 

I
understand now that Gregory is nothing more than a man, fallible and clumsy,
riddled with mistakes right through to his core like concentric rings within
the trunk of a tree.  Mistakes can be forgiven, if there is courage and honesty
somewhere to be found.  They can at times correct themselves.  But beyond this
bed where I lie, there is no courage.  No honesty.  There is nothing but
selfish needs and desires, and it was only today that Gregory saw what it was
to consider something outside of his own demands, something instead within me. 
I am giving him a lifeline, a tatty old rope strewn into the sea in order that
I might help him clamber to the safety of the rocks rather than let him drown. 
But I will not pull him, only offer him a chance.  A chance to save himself.  A
stepping stone to our future.  A gap that he must bridge himself.  He has made
an error of judgement, a slip up.  Not one that is without hurt, I admit.  But with
Marianne's suicide and Wexley's impending guilt that he failed to prevent her
death, Gregory now has a chance to see the error of his ways.  To see the hurt
he has caused.  He has a chance to see that he must act with an open heart to
put things right, to show his true character, and see that what he has done is
wrong.  To put the past behind us, as he tells me he wants to.  I know that
when I could not speak he became my voice.  When I could not breathe for
myself, he was the one who forced air into my lungs.  He held me up when I
could not stand myself.  It was my responsibility to show him the way back, and
I will succeed where he failed.  He got lost somewhere in the chaos that I
created, but Marianne is my light, our doorway, a path upon which we can tread
and which I can carry him into the future. Marianne has died for us and takes
with her the past.  She has died for me.  For him.  For us.  This, my sweet
little fish, was so that you may live.

.....and
then there was not a bird singing or flying in the sky.  The fallen snow was
less than expected, but it was enough to keep them in their nests.  More
importantly it was enough to cover my footsteps on the ground.  The thick fog
that had clung to my clothes and hair was my accomplice yesterday afternoon, and
now the snow vindicates my actions with its willingness to mask my tracks.  The
roads themselves are clear, and I can hear the rumble of traffic gliding
through the streets.  I can hear Dana in the road too.  With her there is a boy
of no more than nine years old making tiny snowballs as she chases him at the
fastest pace she can, which wasn’t anything more than a walk.  The schools must
be closed. 

I
follow my usual routines which I do not need to explain.  My hand is bleeding
and I cover it with a latex glove into which the blood pools like a warm bath
for my finger.  I dress in my jeans and a baby blue winter jumper, and pull on
some thick socks.  I put on my love heart necklace that Gregory gave me and
that my father did not.  I dig out my hiking boots from the cupboard under the
stairs and take a walk into the road.  We have all slept late, and the town is
marvelling at the beauty of the picture postcard scene.  That’s what snow
does.  It puts the world to sleep for a while, fills in the cracks, the land
itself reduced to a single line of contour.

“Good
morning!” Dana calls as I approach her.  Her grandson is too busy to say hello,
digging his pink hands like a shovel into the snow, disturbing the intentions
of nature as he produces the foundations of a snowman.  “Forgot his gloves,
won’t wear mine.  Say’s they are for girls only!”  As if to emphasize his point
the child lets out a neanderthalian roar, digging his frozen fingers into the
snow like a hunting polar bear.  She tuts as if she expects me to understand
the scene before me.  “Everything all right?” she asks.

“Never
better.”

“Glad
to hear it.  It’s good to see you out,” she smiles, patting me on the shoulders,
puffing as she staggers back into helping with the snowman, digging with her
booted foot of the bad leg, all her weight on the good one.  I begin walking
away when she calls after me.  “Don’t go too far though, Charlotte, you’ll get
lost in this!”

I
walk as far as the lake, which for the first time in many months looks
beautiful to me.  I walk the full length of the bay, brushing the snow from the
top of the bench in front of The Belsfield Hotel.  From here I can see the
shoreline, but the buildings beyond it are shaded over, like a delicate pencil
drawing which gradually fades to grey.  It gives the buildings a surreal
quality, as if they are toy buildings that I could pick up and move, create any
town I want.  I cannot see Ambleside across the expanse of water, but I know it
nestles in at the most northern tip of the lake like a jewel in a golden crown.

When
I sit on this bench I can feel my father.  It is the only place where his voice
returns to me as clear as if he was sat at my side.  It was the last place he
brought me to.  When he came running to find me on that day, quite a crowd had
gathered.  I had begun crying for no specific reason other than I was alone.  I
had left the hotel reception where he had told me to stay.  I wanted to see the
birds and the swans.  Somebody from the crowd asked at the reception of the
hotel if anyone was missing a child.  My father came rushing down the grass to
scoop me up like a hero, and my tears dried up as my cheeks brushed against his
shoulder.  There was a woman chasing after him who wasn’t my mother calling out
his name. 
John, John,
she was saying. 
It’s OK, she’s alright,
but
he wasn’t listening by this point.  Looking back it could have been the
shame that made him run.  He just wanted to avoid their judgement.  They knew
what he had been doing.  They knew why I was alone.  It was a smaller town back
then.

That
shame stayed with us as we took the boat out
.
 It was my reward for
being a good girl.  An apology for what he had done.  Never mind I had cried,
he said.  It wasn’t a problem.  We didn't have to tell mummy.  When the boatman
pushed us away from the jetty and my father pulled the first stroke of the oars,
I remember the redhead still running after us, her shirt loose and hair
dishevelled.  I turned around as we were leaving the shore and she was still
there pleading with him, her hair like a beacon in the descending fog, flames
fanning out in the breeze which continued to blaze until she disappeared into
the mist. 

When
the fog came down onto the water my father told me not to panic.  I didn’t.  He
was there with me.  If he was there, everything would be alright.  That’s what
I believed.  He held me because I was cold and he told me not to worry, the fog
would lift.  We heard several horns beeping, sounding, honking, from all directions
boats were speaking to each other.  It was impossible for him to know which
direction to take.  So we sat, me tucked inside his arms and wrapped in his
coat tails without a single shred of fear.

At
first I thought we had reached the shore when we struck land.  It wasn’t the
bay from which we had left, but after half an hour of drifting through the fog
we had found something.  He told me we would wait there.  He promised me things
would be fine.  As he stepped his foot on the edge of the boat he was careless
with his balance.  He slipped, and at first I thought it was funny as his feet
swung into the air.  I even laughed.  But then his head disappeared over the
side and he didn’t get back up.  I looked over and the water was red, his shoulder
sticking out like an extra rock but the rest of him submerged under water.  I
tried to pull him back in the boat but each time I did I only succeeded in tipping
the edge of the boat towards the water.  I pulled harder and I managed to pull
him out of the water, but his head flopped down like a weight on a fishing line
and I couldn’t hold him and he slipped back down.  During my last attempt I
pulled his body onto the side of the boat.  I thought at first I had managed,
that I had saved him, but the edge of the boat tipped over, sending me and my
father into the water.  I fought my way out.  I didn’t realise that I was
supposed to die.  I flapped and clambered until my arms made contact with
something and I held it tight and heaved myself out of the water.  I didn’t know
that I was treading all over him, pushing him down further.  What an insult to
die this way, forced underwater by your own five year old child. 

By
the time I got to the shore, my coat heavy with water, he had already slipped
further away from me.  I grabbed the nearest stick, tried to drag him out with
it.  It was too short so I pulled at the oar of the rowing boat and managed to
lift it.  But as I raised the oar I found it to be heavier than I had expected and
my grip gave out.  It struck my father’s head, splitting it open further, and
it was at this moment that he was lost under the water for the final time, the
only visible thing left of him his blood.

This
is why I know I am supposed to die here.  This is why I believed that my life
had to end, to make it right, the terrible things I had done.  I was never supposed
to survive.   I wasn’t supposed to escape.  But yet once again I have found a
way.  I sit here today looking out at a fog drenched lake and I have proven that
I can do what it takes for my child.  That I can cheat fate.  I am strong
enough to take the life of another, and in doing so save my own.  Twice.  And now
I also get to save Gregory’s life, metaphorically speaking.  Perhaps this was
my destiny all along.  Maybe I always deserved another chance, and that all I
had to do was prove myself.

Dana
is still outside playing with her grandson when I arrive back in our road, her
face pinker, her knee tighter.  “You made it back OK then?” she shouts. 

I
smile and say, “Yes.”  Her grandson has so far constructed a body and is
currently working on the head of his snowman.  I take off my scarf and hand it
to him and Dana looks at me kindly, something I am not used to.  “I’m nearly
home anyway,” I say.  I carry on up the hill.  As I arrive level with the
Wexley’s house I am urged to take a look in the window by a force of curiosity
that I cannot attest to ever having felt before.  But in the window I can see
Marianne smiling at me, picking off the dead leaves from a bunch of yellow
roses that are displayed proudly in the window.  Whilst every natural instinct
should have been to run, I cannot.  She is smiling and waving.  I stare at her,
rubbing my eyes to see if I am asleep and that before me there is nothing more
than a dreamy apparition.  I look back down the road, my gloved fingers resting
on my frozen chin to see if Dana is there.  She is and she sees me staring. 

“Everything
alright, Charlotte?”  She looks like she is telling her grandson to stay where
he is, and she begins walking towards me.  I look back at the window and
Marianne is still there, but she is no longer smiling and no longer waving. 
Dana arrives at my side.  “Charlotte, whatever is the matter?”  I cannot
answer, instead my gaze flits between Dana and the window and I point an
accusatory finger in the direction of the vision.  For a second she is gone and
I think it was just a moment of madness on my part, guilt perhaps rising unexpectedly
to the surface.  But then Marianne reappears.  She is at the door, pulling it
shut behind her, pulling her arms into the sleeves of her coat.

“Charlotte,
are you alright?” Marianne says as she arrives no more than a few feet in front
of me.  Marianne is speaking to me as if it were still possible.  As if she
were still real.  I bring my hand up near to her, but the image remains,
totally unaffected.

“I’m
going to go and get Gregory,” I hear Dana say to Marianne as she inches closer
to us.  I turn and cling onto her arm, not for even one second wanting to be
left alone with a woman I killed last night.

“No,
no,” I hear myself saying, my head shaking violently.  Before I can be asked
any questions I am running, fast as a cheetah back to my house my feet
ploughing through the snow.  I slip, correcting my footing before I fall, but
only just.  Somebody calls my name.  I don't stop.  I burst through the door,
slamming it shut behind me, snow falling from my boots and melting on the
floor.  Ishiko comes out from the drawing room to meet the noise.

“Don’t
let them in!” I shout as I run up the stairs, my feet clambering faster than
those of a hunted gazelle.  I can hear banging on the front door and then voices
and then it is opening and then I hear their feet behind me following me up the
stairs and by the time they take their first steps on the stairs I am in the
bedroom and I slam the door closed and I reach to lock the door but there is no
key and then Gregory wakes up like a firework as if from a nightmare but because
I am already aware of how badly this is going to go I know that his nightmare
is just beginning as I race to my side of the bed and he implores me to tell
him what is going on but I pull the drawer from the bedside table and discard
it on the bed sending a flurry of receipts and food scraps and pebbles
scattering across the duvet and so I.....

“Charlotte,
what’s going, oh, oh my god.”  He reaches over to me clambering himself out of
bed across the littered sheets dressed in nothing but his boxer shorts and a
white T-shirt and he sees me slumped on the floor and my fingers are clinging
onto the empty space in the cabinet, rooting through it, looking for......

“She’s
dead.  I killed her,” I say staring at him, pleading for him to see sense.  “She’s
dead, Gregory.”  He is crouching at my side now, his toes splayed out balancing
him until they give way and he slumps onto his legs but as he does so I can
hear him saying that everything is all right and he is trying to cradle my head
in his arms so that he might shut out the world that continues to scorn me and
for a brief second the blackness of his embrace comforts me but then I hear the
creak of the floorboards and I know they have arrived that
it
has
approached so I fight him off and push my hand back into..... 

“Gregory?”
Dana says, a name acting as a substitute for the words that are really swirling
around in her head because as I look round I see her staring at me and she
reaches out a hand towards either one of us but I don’t really know who and
when I turn to look at Gregory I think he might have started crying so instead
I try to focus by.....

“Call
Dr. Abrams.  We need him,” Gregory says.  He has pulled me back into his arms
and he is perched on his knees trying to rock me back and forth like a baby but
in a way that makes me feel like he is trying to smother me so I push him away
and in the process scratch his cheek at which point he screams and so I reach
forward to.....

“I
killed her, Gregory.  I killed her.”  I say this with my head buried in the
drawer space panting and panting for breath in a way that makes me think there
is no oxygen in this room and so I pull off my gloves and my pink blood stained
latex covered finger is revealed and before it probes back into the drawer
space there is somebody wailing behind me but I.....

“You
didn’t kill anybody, Charlotte.”  Gregory is sobbing and I can feel his tears
dripping onto my face falling down my cheeks as if they were my own and yet I
feel no sense of sadness as I pull something from the drawer and tell him.....

“I
did.”  He has pushed me aside now and I can feel that one of his arms has
reached into the space from where the drawer came I can hear the capsules
skirting about as his hand rifles through blindly until he says, “Oh,
Charlotte,” and his fingers must have made contact with one of the tablets
because I am sure that he pulls one out and that he is holding it between his
fingers and then he says, “You promised me that you were taking them.  You
promised me,” but I cannot.....