Sweet Damage

by Rebecca James

  I must have dozed off, because suddenly I’m jolted awake by a loud, repetitive banging.

  As I sit up the noise stops. Disoriented, I wonder if I really heard it, or if some kind of sharp noise from the TV filtered into my dreams. I turn off the TV, check the time on my phone.

  It’s almost three a.m.

  The pounding starts again. Loud and urgent. The front door.

  Shit.

  As I stand up, the pounding continues. Deafening. Insistent. A feeling of dread grips me, making my skin go cold. I swallow and shout, ‘Okay, okay. Hold on a minute!’, trying to sound as though I’m not frightened, as though my heart isn’t beating frantically and all the blood isn’t draining from my face.

  I look around the room for some kind of weapon, and settle on a large ceramic bookend. It’s heavy enough to do some damage.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I call through the door. ‘What do you want?’

  There’s no answer, only three more knocks, so heavy I feel the floor shudder beneath my feet.

  I clutch the bookend tightly in my fist, unlock the door, open it.

  There’s nobody there.

  I flick the outside light but it doesn’t come on.

  ‘Hello?’ I shout. ‘Who’s there? What the hell do you want?’

  I don’t expect an answer, and I don’t get one. I put down the bookend and step out onto the porch, peering into the garden to see if anyone’s hiding, but it’s far too dark to tell. The massive old trees cast deep shadows, which from here look like dense pits of black. The streetlights don’t help at all.

  Kids, I conclude. Probably drunk. Making trouble, playing tricks on people. Me and my mates used to think it was fun doing stuff like that.

  I peer again into the bushes, but it’s hopeless, I can’t see a thing. I’d need a strong torch to see any further than a few metres, and anyway, I’m sure that whoever it was is long gone.

  ‘If you do it again I’ll call the police,’ I call out to nobody, feeling stupid. And then I turn around to go back inside.

  The front door is swinging shut.

  ‘Shit.’ I rush forward, hands reaching out to stop it, but I’m too late. The door slams shut in my face. I twist the handle and push against it. It’s locked.

  ‘Fuck.’ I rummage in my pockets in case I left the key in my pants. I don’t find it, but I do notice how shaky and clumsy my hands are. I take a deep breath, tell myself to calm down. The door must have swung shut. A stupid mistake. My mistake. No big deal.

  I go around the side of the house towards the back, checking windows as I go. It’s hard to see in the dark and I trip and stumble and curse under my breath. I can’t fucking believe it. I can’t believe I’ve let myself get locked out at three in the morning. I laugh miserably at my own stupidity. I’m so tired I could curl up on the grass and sleep, and I’m considering it as a serious option, perhaps my only option, when I reach the back of the house and see light coming from the kitchen. The French doors are both open, and light spills out onto the courtyard.

  ‘Hello?’ I step inside, look around. The kitchen is empty.

  I close and lock the doors, pushing against them firmly to ensure they’re properly locked.

  Did Anna leave them open before she went to bed? Seems unlikely. And I’m sure the lights weren’t on before. The house was completely dark when I got home.

  Is someone in the house?

  I see a shape in the window, a face reflected in the glass. I whip around, a grunt of fear escaping my lips.

  Nothing. There’s nobody there.

  I let out a relieved laugh – it was my own reflection. I’m letting my imagination get out of control. I’m beyond tired, freaking out over nothing.

  A bunch of kids knocked on the door and ran away. I locked myself out. Anna left the back doors open. Nothing sinister or strange at all. I just need a decent night’s sleep.

  I turn the kitchen lights off and head back into the hall.

  The front door is wide open.

  15

  I KNOW I WON’T BE GETTING ANY MORE SLEEP TONIGHT. I TURN THE kitchen lights back on and make myself a strong mug of coffee; try to make myself calmer by pretending it’s morning.

  I take my coffee and go through each downstairs room, one by one. I call out, turn lights on, check behind sofas and curtains. The whole exercise feels a bit stupid and pointless – I don’t think anyone is in the house. Not now. But I don’t want to go to bed and I need to do something with the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

  I go upstairs to my bedroom. It’s empty, exactly as I left it when I went to work.

  I go through the other bedrooms as well, checking under beds, in cupboards. When I get to the bedroom nearest Anna’s, I hear something through the door. A soft, continuous keening noise. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

  I open the door.

  She’s crouched on the floor in the corner, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her arms are wrapped around her legs, and her face is buried. She’s moaning and crying, muttering something over and over, rocking back and forth.

  ‘Anna?’

  I enter quietly, afraid to scare her. I crouch down in front of her and put my hand on her knee.

  ‘Hey.’

  She stops crying and becomes still for the briefest moment before starting up again. Crying and rocking. Back and forth.

  I speak louder. ‘Anna, are you okay?’

  She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t stop moving. I wait there for a moment, not sure what to do, before deciding I should try to help her up, get her to bed. It’s cold in here and she’s wearing a very thin-looking pair of pyjamas.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, hooking my hands beneath her arms. ‘But I’m going to help you back to your room. I think you’re just . . .’ I fade off. I don’t exactly know what I think. Do I think she’s having some kind of breakdown? A bad dream? Do I think she’s been running around the house knocking on doors? Locking me out?

  I lift her with surprising ease. She’s as light as a feather and she doesn’t resist. When she’s standing she raises her head and looks up at me, blinking, her expression docile.

  ‘Did you hear him?’ she asks.

  ‘Hear who?’

  ‘Benjamin,’ she says.

  She’s obviously having some kind of dream, some kind of sleepwalking nightmare. I shake my head and put my hand on her back, lead her out of the room, across the hall. When we reach her bed she sighs, climbs in and pulls the blankets up. She turns onto her side and shuts her eyes.

  ‘Okay,’ I say quietly, not sure if she’s even aware of my presence, if she was ever fully awake. ‘You’re okay now. Everything’s fine.’

  I flick the light off and am about to close the door when her voice rings out, sad and small in the darkness.

  ‘He was here. Benjamin. I heard him. He needed me. I was so happy. I thought he’d come back home. I thought he’d come back to give me a second chance.’

  16

  THOUGH I KEEP AN EYE OUT, I DON’T SEE ANNA AROUND THE HOUSE for the rest of the day. I hear footsteps upstairs at lunchtime and I race up, only to see her slip into the attic, closing the door firmly behind her. By the time I’m ready to leave for work I’ve decided I should find her and check that she’s okay, try to suss out what was going on last night.

  Her bedroom door is open, the room empty. I knock on the attic door and hear footsteps crossing the floor above me, then clumping down the stairs. The door opens. Anna’s eyes are bloodshot, her skin pale. She looks unwell. She also looks openly annoyed.

  ‘Sorry. I’m just leaving for work,’ I say. I smile. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Absolutely fine,’ she says abruptly, sounding almost offended by my question. If she remembers anything about last night, she’s not giving it away.

  ‘O–kay,’ I say. ‘Um. I . . . about last night. I—’

  ‘I’m busy,’ she says. ‘Did you want something specific?’

  Her expression is so hostile it seems su
ddenly impossible to bring up what happened.

  ‘Right,’ I say, now annoyed myself. ‘Fine. I just thought you might need something from the shops. The fridge is a bit empty. I thought maybe—’

  ‘No,’ she interrupts. ‘Thanks. I don’t need a thing.’ She steps back into the attic, as if she can’t wait for me to go.

  ‘Cool,’ I say. ‘No worries. I’ll leave you to it, then.’

  She nods, then closes the door without saying another word.

  17

  IT WAS A WEEK AFTER THE ARGUMENT WITH HER MOTHER WHEN FIONA RANG and asked if she wanted to come for lunch.

  Marcus cooked and they ate pasta and salad, then afterwards they walked to a nearby cinema to see an afternoon film.

  ‘Hey, how’s your mother going?’ Fiona asked. ‘Any more dramas?’

  ‘Not really,’ Anna said. ‘No dramas. But she’s not really speaking to me.’

  Her mother had kept a pitifully wounded expression on her face the entire week. And when she did talk, she used her saddest, quietest voice.

  ‘But you’re okay?’ Fiona linked her arm through Anna’s, pulled her closer.

  ‘Yes. I’m fine. I just wish she’d stop being so pathetic.’ Anna laughed. ‘I sometimes have these fantasies where she just goes away. Leaves me and Daddy alone in the house. Life would be so much better without her.’

  Fiona frowned.

  ‘You think I’m terrible now, don’t you?’ she said, squeezing Fiona’s arm, glancing across at Marcus who had his eyes on the ground. ‘You think I’m selfish and ungrateful.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Fiona said. ‘Sometimes parents can be hopeless. I completely understand.’

  After the movie, Fiona drove her home. In the car they discussed the movie, the characters and plot, the bits they liked best. Fiona dropped her outside the house and promised to ring her in a few days. Anna waited by the side of the road and watched Fiona’s car get smaller and smaller as she drove away.

  *

  That night she was startled awake by a gentle knock on her bedroom door.

  ‘Anna? Anna?’ Her neighbour, Pat, was standing at the foot of her bed.

  Anna pushed her covers off, stood up immediately.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly frightened. ‘What is it?’

  Pat looked terrible. She had red blotches around her eyes, as if she’d been crying. ‘You’d better come downstairs, darling,’ she said, taking Anna’s arm. ‘There’s something—’

  ‘Something what?’

  ‘There’s been an accident.’

  When they got downstairs she found the house weirdly busy. Every light was on, and there were two policemen in the kitchen. Another official-looking woman stood stiffly by the table. Pat bustled Anna into the kitchen and pulled out a chair for her. Anna was surprised when she looked at the wall clock to see that it was only just past midnight.

  ‘What are all these people doing here?’ she asked. ‘Where’s Daddy? What’s happened? Where’s Mum?’

  The rest of it was a blur. A female police officer came and crouched beside her, put her hands on Anna’s knees and told her that her parents had been in a car accident earlier that evening. Her mother had died instantly. Her father was in a critical condition in hospital. A coma. Anna tried to argue at first, saying it was impossible, there must be some kind of mistake. But the woman was patient and so was Pat, and they stayed with her until she understood.

  *

  On the day of her mother’s funeral she howled, surprised by the depth of her grief, the way she longed for her mother.

  ‘I’m so sorry so sorry so sorry,’ she chanted in her head as the curtains closed over the coffin.

  Her father lived for three more weeks and all day long, every day, Anna sat by his bedside in the hospital and willed him to wake up. To live. To stay with her.

  ‘You can’t leave me too,’ she told him, pressing her face against his still-warm chest. ‘Don’t you dare. I won’t let you. I won’t.’

  The day he died she went back to the big empty house alone. She went straight to her bedroom and picked up the ceramic flower her father had made for her. She curled up in a foetal position on her bed, the flower clutched tightly in her hands, and wept.

  18

  WHEN I WAKE THE NEXT DAY IT’S POURING, AND THE SKY IS GREY and overcast. It’s probably warm outside, humid and sticky, but inside it’s cool. I pull on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans and a thick pair of socks to keep my feet warm, then head downstairs.

  What I find there makes my heart pound.

  The kitchen is a mess. Every cupboard door, every drawer, is open. Plates have been thrown on the floor, and shards of crockery are scattered everywhere. Pots and pans and lids litter the entire floor and, judging from the marks on the walls, they were thrown with force. The fridge door is open and jars of food have shattered against the walls and floor, leaving disgusting smears and dangerous slivers of glass everywhere.

  This is deliberate. The work of someone in a mad frenzy. Someone very, very disturbed.

  I run through the rest of the downstairs rooms, looking for evidence of a break-in, but everything is intact and in its place. The doors are locked tight. I run upstairs to Anna’s room and knock loudly on her door.

  ‘Anna? Anna? Are you in there?’

  ‘Tim?’

  I open her door. She sits up and pushes her hair back from her face. She looks and sounds annoyed. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The kitchen,’ I say, and I don’t mean it, but my voice comes out sounding harsh, accusing.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Come down and take a look.’

  She follows behind me. When she sees the mess she takes a step back, puts her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she says.

  ‘What happened?’

  She looks at me, looks back at the mess, shakes her head. She starts to cry. ‘I don’t know. I have no idea.’

  For a minute I almost believe her. She looks so genuinely startled and afraid, and it’s not too hard to imagine that someone else broke in and did this, someone with some kind of axe to grind, or just some random, drug-fucked freak. But there’s no sign of forced entry – no broken windows, no jimmied doors.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ she insists.

  ‘Then who did?’ I say quietly, turning away before she can see the doubt in my eyes.

  19

  THE THING IS, SHE CAN’T REMEMBER.

  Her memories of last night are all a bit of a blur, but she knows she was distraught, desperate with anxiety, frustration, self-loathing.

  The day had started badly. She slept in, waking around midday feeling groggy and drained. And she felt distinctly miserable, even sadder than usual, on the brink of tears. She went straight up to the attic with a mug of tea, then sat in the big old armchair that used to be her father’s and let the tears spill over. She let herself cry until her head ached and her eyes stung.

  In the afternoon, after Tim had gone to work, she left the attic and went to the kitchen. She searched the fridge. Milk, cheese, eggs, ham, a half-empty bottle of Coke. There was a loaf of yesterday’s bread in the pantry. Tim was good at making sure there was always something in the house. But she didn’t want a sandwich, she didn’t want eggs. She wanted a big bowl of soup and fresh, crusty bread.

  The more she imagined the soup the larger the idea of it became in her head. She not only wanted it, she needed it. It was such a reasonable thing to want, why couldn’t she have it?

  She found her purse, put her shoes on. She would go to the shops; simply walk outside, turn towards Manly and walk down to the supermarket. No big deal.

  She went out the front door, pulling it shut behind her and walked down the path, towards the gate. If she went quickly enough, without thinking, she’d make it. She’d get there. She wouldn’t vomit, or cry, or collapse in a breathless heap on the floor, wouldn’t have to be a prisoner to her own fears.

  She ma
de it to the gate and started along the footpath towards Manly. She walked very quickly at first, head down, determined, concentrating only on the movement of her feet against the footpath, trying to ignore the black knot of fear that was unravelling in her mind, filling its spaces. But with each step, her breathing got more strained. Her heart started to pound, her hands to tremble and sweat.

  She felt her stomach churn, her bowels twist. Her heart was beating so fast and so hard, she was sure it was visible through her chest. She looked around her in panic, terrified that she’d be noticed. If someone offered her help right now, or asked if she was okay, she’d be unable to answer. Being seen would only make things worse. She would die of humiliation.

  She turned her face to the sky, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back the tears. She could see a weak patch of sunshine through the clouds, through her eyelids; she could see the red of her own blood. It was such a benign afternoon, and there was so obviously nothing to be afraid of out here . . . She tried to breathe: in and out, in and out, in and out. It was no good. Her mind and body were reacting to a simple walk as if she were fleeing a hungry lion. She was pathetic, weak, hopeless. She turned around and headed back to the house, almost running the last ten metres to the front door.

  Once she got inside she went to the kitchen, found the box of pills she kept in the cabinet above the fridge. She took four valium with a sip of Coke from the bottle in the fridge. The label said to take one, two at most, but she needed this to work, she craved the cotton-wool cloudiness of a valium mind. Sweet oblivion. She closed the fridge door and pressed her back against it, let herself sink to the floor. She wept noisily into her hands.

  When she became too uncomfortable and sore, she got up. The valium had dulled the sharpest edges, but she wanted more. She found some vodka high up in the pantry cupboard and swigged from the bottle. The liquor burned her throat and made her gasp. She took another large drink, and then another.