Stillwater

by Maynard Sims

  Sitting at the kitchen table sipping the strong and bitter drink she tried to center herself. Slowly the house was beating her into submission, but she wasn’t prepared to give in. Not yet anyway. She remembered the packet of cigarettes she’d bought at the supermarket. Her bag was on the seat next to her. She took out the pack and peeled off the cellophane, leaving it in an untidy pile along with the silver foil liner. The lighter she’d bought was a green plastic disposable. She wouldn’t need a lighter once this pack had gone. She was only going to smoke the one pack, and after that she’d kick the habit again. But for now…

  She took a cigarette from the pack, and rolled it between her fingers. The one she’d begged from Miranda had whetted her appetite for nicotine but, at the moment, it wasn’t a constant craving. Maybe once she’d finished the entire packet things might change, but for now she would smoke with the confidence that this was only a momentary aberration. She just needed the stimulation that smoking would give her.

  She stuck the cigarette between her lips and flicked the lighter. Offering the cigarette to the yellow flame she drew in hungrily, sucking the smoke down into her lungs. She exhaled with a sigh she quickly drew down again, holding in the smoke in her lungs this time, and enjoying the sensation of light-headedness.

  As she sat there enjoying the smoking ritual she was waiting. Waiting for the woman’s voice to sound again, waiting for it to disabuse her, to pillory her for giving in to her desire. “Well, fuck her,” Beth said, took out another cigarette and lit it from the stub of the first.

  Five cigarettes later, and with less than a centimeter of coffee left in her mug, she was feeling energized, but slightly sick. She needed fresh air. She pushed herself out of the house and down the ramp to the garden.

  There was a light drizzle in the air, nothing serious, just a fine mist that dampened her skin and coated her hair with tiny droplets of water. The spray on her face was refreshing, cooling her down, and washing away some of the fuzziness in her mind.

  The soil around Teddy’s grave was becoming muddy, the rain giving a sheen to the recently turned earth that made the footprint visible to her.

  She hadn’t seen it earlier, but then, she hadn’t got this close to the grave. But she could see it now. She edged forward and stared down at it. At first she thought it might belong to a child or a young woman, someone barefoot. There must be more than just the one, she thought and backed up slightly to get a better view of the surrounding area.

  She spotted a second print a couple of yards away. This one was deeper and more clearly defined, and there was yet another footprint eighteen inches away, again deeper and clearer than the first. They were heading away from the grave in the direction of the trees and the lake.

  The rain was increasing, the fine spray growing stronger, raindrops heavier. The rain had soaked her hair, and was starting to soak into her clothes. It was also having an effect on the footprints, filling the indentations and smoothing them out. It wouldn’t be long before they were washed away completely. More evidence destroyed.

  With a curse she spun around, and headed back to the house.

  Once she had dried herself off, she went back to the office, and called her novel back to the screen. She read through the last section she had written and tried to focus her mind. It was difficult, but after a few false starts she found herself back in the flow and a couple of hours passed quickly.

  Eventually she minimized the page on the screen, leaned back and stretched, yawning as she did so. Her eyes felt gritty and tired, but she was satisfied with what she’d produced. She marveled at her ability to compartmentalize her brain. When she was into a book it seemed to be an easy matter to switch off from the rest of the world and concentrate on the world she was creating. Then again, the chaos the house was causing in her life seemed to be inspiring her writing rather than preventing it.

  The meowing brought her back to reality with a crash.

  She spun round in her chair trying to focus, trying to locate where the sound was coming from. It seemed to be just outside the office window. She rolled across to it, gripped the windowsill, and hauled herself upright to peer out. Even at full stretch she couldn’t see. She had a view of the garden but it ended a few yards from the house. What was below the window was hidden from view, out of her eye line.

  Frustrated, she flopped back into the chair, wheeled herself to the back door, swung it open and pushed through. From here she had a clear view of the windows at the back of the house. There was nothing, no cat, nothing.

  The meowing continued, a pathetic, plaintive wail, but now it seemed to be coming from inside the house.

  “Teddy!” she called, even though common sense told her it couldn’t be her cat. Her cat was dead and, up until last night, buried. But the mewling continued, and she did a sweep of the ground floor, pausing every few yards to listen. The sweep took her to the bottom of the stairs, and she stared up into the gloom. The meowing was coming from there. The cat was upstairs.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Beth sat at the bottom of the stairs. How, she thought. How did the cat get past her and get into the house? She had been sitting in the doorway. There was no way the cat could have slipped in unseen. Unless there was another way into the house she didn’t know about.

  The meowing continued, less insistent now, more melancholy, as if the cat had accepted its situation, and resigned itself to its fate. It was a mournful sound that set her teeth on edge. “For Christ’s sake, shut the fuck up!” she yelled up the stairs. “I can’t come and get you.”

  She spun away from the stairs, and went back to her office, slamming the door behind her. Maybe if she were out of the way the cat would come down and leave the house. She brought the computer screen to life again, intending to continue with her book, but instead of seeing the page of text she had been working on the screen was filled with an image.

  A narrow, carpeted hallway, the walls covered in chintzy wallpaper. The view was from one end of the hallway, as it stretched out before her. There was the occasional piece of furniture: a small semicircular table set against one wall containing a cut glass vase filled with wilting, dying flowers; a tall antique-looking wardrobe, door half-open, which took up half the width of the hallway. And at the far end a Queen Anne chair, upholstered in pink velvet.

  Between the pieces of furniture were polished oak doors, all of them closed, all of them guarding their secrets.

  She reached out and hit the escape key, but the image remained. She tried clicking the mouse, but with no result. Then the image filled the entire screen, covering any menu buttons, so there was nothing to click onto. Finally she reached around to the back of the screen, and pressed the OFF switch; something she never usually did, for fear of losing data.

  There was no response from the computer. The image remained as crisp and clear as ever.

  She was about to go over to the electricity socket to remove the plug, when the image sprung into life. A door opened, a girl rushed out into the hallway and started to run its length. A second later a familiar figure emerged from the room. Dolores Franklin stopped in the hallway, looked both ways and, seeing the girl, began to give chase. In her hand she was holding a thin, whippy-looking cane. As her gaze settled on the girl, she raised the cane above her head and brought it swishing down. There was no sound with the image, but Beth imagined she could hear the thin cane cutting through the air with a wicked whisper.

  The girl had reached the end of the hallway, and was pressing her back to the wall, staring at her pursuer with wide, frightened eyes. Gradually Dolores approached her, raising the cane again and, when she was within striking distance, brought it whipping down on the girl’s shoulder. Again Beth imagined she could hear the girl’s howl of pain as the cane connected with her flesh.

  The girl’s lips were moving as she pleaded for mercy, but Dolores struck again, this time from the side, raising a livid, red
wheal on the girl’s arm. Slowly the girl sank to her knees as the blows continued, Dolores’s arm raising and falling, the cane doing unspeakable damage to the girl’s flesh.

  And then it was over. Dolores let her arm drop. She spun around and walked with measured strides back to the room she had come from. As the door closed behind her Beth refocused on the girl who was huddled into a ball, her body heaving as she sobbed.

  Beth’s eyes were stinging as her empathy with the girl brought tears to her eye. “Oh, you poor thing,” she whispered. “What did you do to deserve such punishment?”

  On the screen, the gap caused by the open wardrobe door widened, and a small silver-gray tabby cat emerged. It approached the stricken girl cautiously, only pausing when the girl extended a shaking and bloody arm, and then the cat drew in close, sniffing the wounds on the girl’s flesh before, tentatively, starting to lick them.

  After the violence, this tender scene made Beth groan aloud, and the tears began to trickle down her cheek.

  She was about to move away from the screen, but then noticed something. High above the girl’s head, fixed to the wall, was a blue and white, willow-patterned plate, a match for the one smashed the other day. She realized that the hallway filling her screen belonged here, in this house. It was the upstairs landing. And the girl? Jessica? The computer was showing Beth events that had happened here in the past. It was depicting the cruel, and incredibly destructive, relationship between mother and daughter.

  “Why are you showing me this?” she said to the screen.

  “Because you care.” A small voice sounded behind her.

  Beth froze. Icy fingers caressed her spine as, for a moment, she was reluctant to turn to the source of the voice. Eventually curiosity got the better of her, and she slowly twisted in her seat.

  Jessica Franklin stood in the doorway, dressed only in a white-cotton, sleeveless dress. Wheals striped her arms, along with deeper cuts, from which blood trickled down her skin. The long dark hair was wet and plastered to her scalp. Threaded through her damp, tangled tresses were green fibrous strands of pondweed. Her face was gaunt, the skin pale to the point of translucency, and her eyes were sunken into dark-ringed sockets.

  The girl stood there, swaying slowly, fading in and out of focus, like an image on a TV screen with bad reception.

  “Jessica?” Beth said, hesitantly.

  The thin, pale-lipped mouth opened. “Because you care,” the girl said again, but the voice seemed to come from a long way away, reedy and faint, an echo of a voice.

  “Then let me help you,” Beth said.

  “Too late,” Jessica said. “Much too late.” She turned slowly, until her back was facing Beth, and then she was moving away.

  “No, wait!” Beth called after her, but Jessica was moving quickly, not walking but gliding over the floor, her legs hanging limply beneath her, toes dragging on the polished floorboards.

  By the time Beth wheeled herself out of the office, the girl had crossed the lounge and had reached the back door. The door remained closed, but Jessica simply passed through it. “Wait!” Beth called again, but the girl was outside.

  Beth fumbled with the key, and finally pulled the door open. She rolled outside.

  Jessica had crossed the garden, past Teddy’s empty grave, but had stopped. Slowly she turned back to Beth, and raised her arm in a beckoning gesture.

  “I’m coming,” Beth said. “I’m coming.”

  Jessica led her into the wood, along the path Beth had taken before. They were heading toward the lake. The muscles in her arms were burning as Beth struggled to keep up, and when Jessica suddenly veered from the path, Beth groaned with discomfort and frustration.

  “I can’t keep up,” she called, and Jessica stopped moving forward. She turned toward Beth, and put her finger to her lips in a gesture of silence.

  From then on the pace slowed, and Beth found herself catching up. The girl still kept a distance between them, but Beth had closed the gap, and the aching in her arms subsided.

  They were heading toward the clearing where Beth had picnicked with James. Before they reached it the girl stopped, and pointed through the trees.

  Beth rolled silently to a stop, and stared through the ash and elm trees to where Jessica was pointing.

  What she was pointing at was obvious. Through the trees Beth could see the clearing and the lake.

  There were people sitting on the grass in the clearing.

  Dolores Franklin and two young men were by the side of the lake. Dolores was naked apart from a crimson silk scarf that draped over her shoulders and breasts, giving tantalizing glimpses of flesh each time she moved. The young men wore skintight leather shorts but nothing else, the same as they had been wearing in the photograph.

  On the grass by their side was a wine cooler, scattered around them several empty bottles. As Beth watched, one of the boys liberated the bottle from the cooler, tipped his head back, and took a long swig. Beth could see his pronounced Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed. He finished the last of the bottle, and advanced on Dolores, sweeping her scarf aside and exposing her breasts.

  He leaned forward, and she smiled as his mouth closed over her distended nipple. As the other young man moved around behind her, rubbing his crotch against her, she squirmed. He kissed the vee between neck and shoulder, bringing his hand around and planting it in the other man’s hair, forcing his face into her breast.

  Dolores started moaning as his other hand sought out the moistness between her legs. The first young man wrenched his face away from her breast, his face streaked with blood from her bitten and torn nipple. With a moan of pleasure, Dolores threw herself backward, and let them take her, one thrusting for a while before rolling off, and letting the other one enter her.

  Beth looked away, the bile of revulsion creeping up into her throat. This was more than she ever wanted to witness. And then her attention was drawn by something cutting swiftly across the lake. At first she couldn’t make out what it was. Then a head emerged from the water and she realized it was another of Dolores’s boys. As the boy hit shallow water and got to his feet, Beth recognized him: Carl Page, the young man Arthur Latham had pointed out on the computer screen. Page stood there, naked in the shallows, water cascading from his toned and well-muscled body. With his long hair slicked back with water he looked older than his photograph, and this time there were no fawning, adoring looks at his mistress. From the set of his mouth and the frown creasing his forehead he looked angry.

  “Come, Carl, sit with us,” Beth heard Dolores call, as she struggled to sit upright.

  Page didn’t answer her, but when he looked across at the three of them, there was fury in his eyes. He opened his mouth, and the sound that issued from it transcended words. He threw his head back and gave a hideous wail, revealing a rage so deep, so feral, Beth almost spun her chair around and fled.

  Page sank to his knees, falling forward until his forehead kissed the earth. For a moment he stayed like that, as if praying, supplicating himself to a higher being, until his whole body started to spasm, first trembling, and then collapsing sideways and drawing itself into a fetal position, his muscles locking, twitching slightly.

  Beth looked from Page to the others. Both young men were on their feet, and were slowly backing away. Even Dolores Franklin looked uncertain, staring as Carl Page unfurled and got slowly to his feet.

  As he approached the others, the two men backed further away from him, while Dolores let herself fall back to the grass, opening her arms wide to embrace Carl.

  Beth watched them copulate for a few seconds before turning away.

  Jessica was standing just a few yards away, still fading in and out of focus, watching the scene with a curious detachment in her eyes. Slowly she turned to face Beth, raising her arm and pointing to a spot in the trees beyond the lake.

  Beth looked in the dir
ection she was pointing and saw a middle-aged man, crouched in the lee of an ancient oak tree, staring at the events happening on the opposite bank, a mixture of revulsion and sadness twisting his face into a mask of unmitigated despair.

  It took Beth a moment to understand what she was witnessing and then she realized. “Your father?” she whispered to Jessica, who was starting to fade, now almost transparent.

  The girl nodded her head solemnly, before fading from sight completely, leaving nothing but a slight breeze that rippled the patch of grass where she’d been standing.

  Beth glanced back at the lake, but the quartet had vanished, as too had the watcher in the trees.

  Badly shaken, she turned the wheelchair, and headed back to the house, with a deeper understanding of the events that had happened there at Stillwater.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Arthur Latham stood on the doorstep, dressed in his gardening clothes, a pair of well-used secateurs clutched in his hand. He had telephoned earlier that morning to tell Beth he was coming to deadhead her roses. She had already boiled the kettle. “Cup of tea before you make a start?” she asked him brightly. Tea seemed to be their shared method of connection. Tea and gossip.

  “That would be splendid,” he said, settling himself at the kitchen table.

  “How’s Gwen?” Beth asked, as she dropped a tea bag into each of the mugs.

  Latham frowned. “Not too good today actually. She has them, you know. Bad days. She sends her love though.”

  “Well, tell her if there’s anything she needs…”

  “You’re very kind,” Latham said. “I can’t tell you what a relief if is to have such a lovely neighbor.”

  Beth smiled, and put a mug of tea down on the table in front of him.

  “So you didn’t have such a friendly relationship with Dolores Franklin?”

  Latham smiled ruefully. “Nothing like. I think I told you before.”

  “But you still picked her up and took her to the station.”