After Sundown

by Mark Morris

  The only eyesores, so far as I could see, were her formal, rigid parterres – for she could not let even flowers grow without restraint – and the glasshouse where she... died.

  Its panes were steamed. I pictured a vengeful creature, breathing within.

  But that was nonsense and I knew it. I was not about to let the place become fearful to me. Defying the ache at the pit of my stomach, I opened the door and strolled in as casually as I could manage.

  Inside reminded me of a chapel: all was still, yet strangely charged. A green, earthy scent weighted the air, while heat panted against my cold cheeks and caused them to prickle.

  There must have been a time when I appreciated a lush spread of verdure as much as the next man, but I cannot recall it. To my eyes the herbs seemed grouped together in dark communion. The grape vines and the melon runners were grasping snares, just waiting to entangle their prey. Even the geraniums were splatters of blood.

  I stood there for a long time, listening to the hush, my gaze fixed on the tiles where she fell.

  Then I began to smash.

  First one pot, then another. Dirt exploded across the tiles. I laughed, pushed two more plants from their perches. Leaves tore like paper in my hands. I grappled with the peppers, plucked the tomatoes from their stalks and hurled them against the windows. It was joyous, mad. The fetid air rang with the sound of shattered pottery and broken glass.

  Finally I stopped my destruction, placed my hands on my knees and panted. Sweat was pouring from my forehead.

  As my heartbeat calmed, an inner voice whispered that my actions were childish, but I could not regret them. The hothouse plants looked wild once more. Even the spot where she fell and bled was covered in a wash of earth.

  Returning to the house, I realised that I wore the aspect of a savage: my trousers were torn, there were twigs caught in my hair and my boots were caked in mud. It is fortunate there were no servants to see me thus.

  They would think I had run mad.

  Evening

  I washed my hands under the pump twice, but to little avail. Even as I write, I am aware of dirt pushed underneath my fingernails and a green, juicy stain upon my skin.

  Perhaps I should retire to bed. It is not late, yet it does grow exceedingly dark. The ivy that climbs outside the window seems to be blotting out more of the light than usual. It cannot last. An autumnal wind howls, tapping the leaves against the glass, and soon it will strip them from the branches altogether.

  What a merry time this winter will be, when both she and all the foliage turn to rot.

  29th October

  I did not sleep well. Most likely I over-exerted myself wreaking havoc in the greenhouse. I could not find a comfortable position in my bed. My back itched and prickled.

  Last night’s wind really was fierce. It caused the ivy to rattle not just against my study window, but the casement in my bedchamber too; an infernal tap, tap that grated upon my nerves. I was not aware, until now, that the creeper actually stretched as far as the bedroom window.

  I have never noticed it scratching before.

  31st October

  Little improvement in my rest. I fear that I may be growing unwell. It is hardly surprising, given the constant strain my nerves were under following her death. A lesser constitution would have succumbed completely.

  For the moment my only symptoms are a cough – which could have been brought on by inhaling spores in that wretched glasshouse – and a feverish rash upon my skin.

  It would be absurd to call the doctor out to diagnose such a trifle. Moreover, I do not possess the wherewithal to conceal what happened in the greenhouse quickly. I should not like him to see the evidence of my frenzy. It might sow the seeds of suspicion within his mind.

  No, no, it is far better that I stay indoors with the dogs and my books and weather it out. I do rather wish there was a lackey still about me to tend the fires and fetch some soup for my poor scratching throat, but it cannot be helped. If the price of my freedom is a stint of convalescence, I am willing to pay it.

  Evening

  The house is so dark! Only on the south side, where the ivy spreads.

  It is a weed. It should have been destroyed long ago.

  Both my study and bedchamber face south – it is most vexing, to be obliged to change rooms when I want to read or write. I have an aversion to the other chambers. Their interiors are still redolent of her.

  2nd November

  My cough grows worse. I must confess, I feel sorry for myself. I can almost fancy that I am the last person left in the world – especially late at night, when I am tossing on my bed, listening to that damnable tap against the glass.

  I did try sleeping in a different chamber, but somehow I could still hear it: a regular rhythm, maddeningly persistent.

  In normal circumstances, a line or two would bring a friend to my side, but I am wary of reaching out to others just now. It would not be seemly for a man in mourning to entertain guests.

  Besides, who would carry the letter for me? I did not think of that. I have strength enough to amble about the house, but a ride to the nearest village would knock me up.

  The dogs have no sympathy for my plight. They have started to avoid me.

  3rd November

  This deuced itch! Whatever can it be? Did I touch a toxic plant when I destroyed her greenhouse? I do not believe so. My wife never grew poison; she had venom enough inside her own heart.

  But stop – why does my hand smudge brown across the page? What is this filth, ground into my skin?

  I am too ill to recall how it got there. All I can conjecture is that I have walked, feverish in the night, to the scene of my crime.

  Good God. I cannot summon a doctor if that is the case! What might I tell him in a delirium? What would I do if he should come across this book?

  No, no. I can endure a few more days yet.

  6th November

  My chest scrapes when I breathe. Nothing but sleep and peace will restore my health, but I can have neither while that blasted ivy pats at the windows, hour after hour, night after night. I am resolved. There is just strength enough within me. Tomorrow I will cut it down.

  7th November

  The tools were not hard to find: a ladder, a saw and some secateurs lay discarded in one of the outbuildings. More challenging was the task of hauling them over to the side of the house through the raging wind. Dead leaves were caught in the blast; they clung to my coat and flew into my face. Somehow, I prevailed, finally managing to hoist my ladder up against the wall.

  The ivy rustled and hissed. A tremor seemed to run through it, a repulsion at my proximity.

  Shakily, I began to climb.

  The rungs of the ladder trembled beneath my feet. I could not hold steady; something tickled at the back of my throat.

  I scrambled higher. Higher still. With every step up, my need to cough intensified. Hardly able to see, I snatched at one of the ivy tendrils and began to pull. There was a moment of resistance, then it peeled away with a crackling snap.

  It felt wonderful. Glorious. I grabbed another handful and another. Mortar crumbled as I yanked, but I did not stop. I did not care if I pulled the whole house down, so long as the deuced ivy was gone.

  The vines left scars upon the wall: thin, yellow tracks. They marked my hands too, scratching the flesh to ribbons.

  The ladder creaked in the wind and I pulled harder; kept pulling beyond my strength.

  At last, I could not help it: the hateful spicy scent of the leaves crept into my throat and I choked.

  The ladder moved.

  My fingers caught on something – a vine – which I clung to with all my might as the coughs wracked my body.

  I heard a dry crunch.

  Leaves were everywhere, all around me, falling in great cascades. I could not see them clearly, for w
ater filled my eyes, yet I had the wildest notion that they were not dropping from the ivy I grasped in my hand.

  It seemed – absurd to think of it now! – as if the wash of dead leaves were falling from me.

  From my very own mouth.

  Evening

  I pulled it down. I swear upon my life that I pulled the godforsaken plant away from the windows, but hark! The tap!

  Darkness has made me a coward. I dare not draw the curtains aside to see what is out there, still scratching away. I am convinced that if I peered outside I would see her, tapping, tapping at the glass.

  8th November

  I dreamt that I visited her grave. Not as a mourner. I was dressed as I am now, in a sweat-stained nightshirt, and the skin that showed on my legs was a furious red.

  It was a windy night. Rags of black cloud scudded fast across a full moon. My uncombed hair flew about me and I held some kind of tool in my hand. It was only when I raised my arm, and the moonlight glinted off metal, that I recognised it as a spade.

  Strange, how acutely the mind can recreate sensations. I swear that I felt the wooden handle in my grasp, smelt the earth as it flew past my shoulder and landed like a patter of rain. I dug. I dug through worms, through clay and roots, driven by an itch deep in my bones.

  That is with me, still.

  There was no rain in the dream, yet somehow the soil was wet and claggy, sucking at my boots, squelching beneath my fingers as I dropped the spade and began to burrow like a dog. Her coffin emerged from the filth. A few days beneath the earth had done little damage to the wood, but the brass name plate was tarnished.

  From inside the coffin, there came a steady tap, tap.

  I cracked open the lid, my nostrils braced for the reek of the grave, but it was not rot or decay that spilled out. It was ivy.

  We had buried only mounds of ivy.

  ?? November

  Weaker than ever. Even my legs feel weighted, as if something were wound tight about them, binding me to the floor. Have I left it too late to fetch medical attention? How shall I alert anyone to my plight?

  Perhaps I could crawl – I will crawl down the stairs.

  This from her writing desk in the parlour. I did it: I dragged my poor, aching body to the ground floor. One of the spaniels was dawdling at the bottom of the staircase; when I whistled to him, he whined and ran away.

  It is truly desolate here. Wind gusts down the chimneys and blows skeletal leaves rattling across the floor.

  I must fetch help, but my voice seems dried up and strangled out; all I can do is cough. Perhaps I will take this pen and paper with me. Perhaps I will meet someone on the road.

  But I cannot plan at present. The exertion of crawling downstairs has half-killed me and the itch is like ants, scuttling over my bones.

  I must rest here on the sofa, if only for a while.

  Rest! Ha! Did I write rest?

  She does not rest!

  I know now what it has been, clawing me at night, running its long nails down my spine.

  I took the pen-knife, I cut the sofa open, and it was not horsehair I found there.

  The cushions, the pillows – they are full of ivy!

  Horror of horror!

  There is no way out.

  Ivy swathes every window. Vines are pushing through the fireplace, through the cracks in the walls.

  It could not all have grown while I slept!

  I keep trying the door, but it will not budge. Some infernal force holds it fast. Are the creepers there, too? Are they stretched taut across the threshold?

  I saw a forest wrapped in ivy once: the vines twisting round and round the trunks like snakes. They constricted and squeezed until you could no longer see the bark below. You did not know what manner of tree it was, trapped within.

  Merciful heaven, what am I to do?

  Who will help me?

  [Undated]

  This will be my last entry. Let it serve as my confession, if nothing else.

  I killed her.

  I killed her, but she is not dead.

  My wife is everywhere – even in me.

  There are little track marks on my skin that cannot be erased; when I stop writing to inspect my fingernails I see shoots, sprouting up beneath. It seems to me that whenever I open my eyes from a coughing fit, the pile of leaves at my feet has grown.

  I am going the way of the dogs.

  Not that I know for sure what became of my pets. All I can say is that there are no longer any animals in this house; instead there are topiary shapes that resemble hounds.

  Soon, I will be potted and contained like one of her precious plants, but I doubt she will be satisfied, not even then. My wife is as fastidious in death as she ever was alive.

  She is the weed that is plucked and returns each year; she is the root too deep to pull out.

  I cut her down. I did.

  Yet her hate springs, evergreen.

  Last Rites for the Fourth World

  Rick Cross

  David Opuni sits easy, waiting for his wave.

  His neoprene-swaddled legs dangle in the chilly surf. The waters of Kawela Bay lap hypnotically at his board. It’s a Takayama, and he emptied his savings to buy it, igniting the final blow-up with his old man. He’s been crashing with friends ever since, and working maintenance double-shifts at Turtle Bay Resort, trying to claw together enough scratch to put first-and-last on a place with some old high school buddies.

  Water slaps his board. His fingers rest on its deck, idly tracing runic patterns there. He’s unaware he’s doing this. He’s attached to the surfboard by a length of frayed hemp knotted loosely at one honey-brown ankle. He likes the way the leash chafes, an itch like a healing burn. The back of his neck itched like that as he withstood his dad’s fury, told him in an unwavering voice to go fuck himself, and walked out. About time, he thinks. He supposes if he repeats it often enough, he may even begin to believe it.

  His eyes scan the rolling waters, watching for the telltale white lip, that sensation of gathering power. Sun’s almost down, but he isn’t in any rush. He knows the wave will come.

  There are a dozen others seated around him, most Oahu natives, surf diehards. None are talking. Carly is among them. She’s twenty-one, same as David. Her mom, a divorced Navy officer, moved them here when Carly was fourteen. She was a fish out of water then, the whitest kid in their 8th grade class, but within a couple years she was golden-brown, her blonde hair bleached white by sun and salt, and by graduation she could longboard with the island’s best. She staffs the front desk at Turtle Bay where, David has observed, at least three guys a week ask for her number. David’s been in love with Carly Desoto since 8th grade, and despairs that she might ever prefer a fiscally challenged native boy like him.

  He can’t help glancing her way from time to time, though. She ties her hair back when she surfs. Today a single long dread, threaded with tiny shells and twists of old fabric, has escaped her hairband to lay damp across her collarbone, above the indigo wetsuit. She’s shielding her eyes with one hand, watching for waves. Her beauty makes his head swim.

  He frowns. She’s not watching for waves, he thinks. She’s—

  Carly is looking down, leaning to her right, tracking something under the water. She puts a hand flat on her board, rising a little.

  Oh no, David thinks. Shark?

  “Hey,” he calls. “You okay, Car? Spot something?”

  She turns to look at him. “I don’t know,” she replies, her voice carrying clearly across the water. “Thought it was seaweed tangled on driftwood, but…”

  Her words trail off. David is already paddling toward her, navigating around Buzz and Bernadette Kahale, sixty-something marrieds who cleaned up on Wall Street a decade ago and retired to the island. Bernie smiles as David passes. He likes the Kahales. They give him hope.r />
  He pulls alongside Carly’s board and leans over, following the angle of her gaze to peer into the blue-green water. It’s not deep here, maybe eight or ten feet to the sand, and in the summer it’s like sitting atop a rippling glass window, the whole floor visible from the surface. It’s murkier now, the powerful winter waves creating more chop, the undertow churning up the sandscape, but these are still the clearest waters in the world, or so the resort brochures claim.

  Carly points. “What the hell is it, David?”

  He looks again, and now he sees the thing. It does look like seaweed snared on a big piece of wood, but the stuff’s way too uniform to be random tangles of kelp. As he watches, the current tumbles the big shape, and David sees at once that it’s not seaweed at all, but hair.

  Hair obscuring arms. Legs. It’s a body.

  “Oh, shit!” he gasps. “Ikaika! Buzz! There’s somebody down here!”

  He hears the others beginning to turn their way as he slips off his board, pops his leash and dives. It takes just one hard kick to reach the shape bumping along the sandy floor, and even before he gets there he knows there’s no chance this is a snorkeller’s prank. This is a dead body.

  And it’s not human.

  A bear? he thinks, not wanting to touch the drift of weirdly thick brown hair. Some kind of big shaggy cat?

  Muted splashes around him, and others appear in his peripheral vision: Buzz, an economist named Shep, and Ikaika, a big, cheerful Hawaiian dude a couple years older than David and Carly. Others swim or paddle around beyond and above them.

  Ikaika jabs a thumb at the shape, then points upward. All of them seek lifting points on the limbs and torso – Christ, he’s eight feet tall, David thinks – and push off the bottom.

  They surface together. Bernadette’s got her waterproof phone out to dial 911. Carly reaches for David as he breaks the surface – until she sees the hairy shape bob up between the men. She pulls back, shocked.