by Lyn Murphy
Chapter Twelve
Someone is banging on my front door, dragging me upwards toward the light. I’m thinking it is probably Brenda again. I vaguely remember her telling me she might come back to check on me once she found Lily.
But, when I stagger to the door it is to find two uniformed police constables awaiting me, one male and one female.
Their expressions say it all – how dreadful I must look just fresh from my bed; all puffy eyed and crumpled. They introduce themselves and ask to come inside – they need to ask me a few questions, they say. Of course I ask what it’s about.
‘We’re investigating the disappearance of Lily Carter,’ they tell me.
My mind is fumbling with hazy remembrances; what time was that last night when …?
‘She didn’t come back?’ I ask them and the young male frowns.
‘Back from where, exactly, Ms Forsythe?’
‘Careful!’ warns the voice inside my head. I scrub my hands over my face, trying to steady my mind before I try to answer.
‘Brenda – Lily’s mother- was here last night and she told me Lily was missing.’ I tell them. ‘Surely she hasn’t been gone all night?’
But she has. Lily stepped through her doorway last night and simply didn’t return. The thought sends shock waves coursing through my body.
‘Can we come inside, Ms Forsythe?’ they are asking again.
I ask them if I can use the bathroom and freshen up a bit before we talk.
I use the toilet, wash my face and comb my hair. I clean my teeth and use some mouthwash. I even scrub the bathroom basin while I’m at it. Stalling tactics, I know. But I don’t want to talk to these people. I really don’t want to talk to them because I know they are going to ask me questions that I can’t answer honestly without sounding like a candidate for the psyche ward.
And if I lie, they will know. That’s what they do every day. They question people and sort out the truth from the lies.
Finally I go and perch tensely on the edge of an arm chair, feeling like a lamb to the slaughter.
They ask me when I last saw Lily and I tell them I think it was the night before last. I can’t tell them she was here last night. I’ve already told Brenda that I didn’t see her. It won’t sound too good if I start to contradict myself like that.
But Brenda has been filling them in on all the details. They know about Lily’s unwelcome visits. They know about my so called assault on her, leaving bruises on her arm in the shape of my hand. They even know how Brenda found me last night, sitting on the ground in the dark; so drunk, or drugged that I was hardly able to stand unassisted.
I want to tell them I wasn’t drunk or drugged. Yes I had been popping a few too many pills, but, by the time Brenda found me in the yard the effects of the medication had long worn off. I want to explain that my ‘spacing out’ like that was all part of my condition. I just shut down sometimes, when I am feeling completely overwhelmed by the circumstances of the moment as I was last night.
Yes, I want to tell them, but they don’t give me a chance. They keep coming at me with questions; with insinuations. They keep gradually revealing just how much information they have been able to put together about me in such a short time.
My medical history; they know about my breakdown and attempted suicide. They know I’m currently under psychiatric care and taking medication. And while they are telling me all this, another police officer appears and beckons to the male. They go outside for a moment and, when he returns I don’t much like the way the young policeman is looking at me.
There’s blood on the ground in my garden, he tells me. While they have been in here with me the other police officer has been poking around outside. He has found blood by the gazebo.
I see it in my mind now – Lily on the ground bent over her injured knee. They are going to test the blood, they tell me. And of course they will find it is hers.
The policewoman is talking to me now, leaning forward in a confidential manner.
‘I was an accident, wasn’t it, Ms Forsythe?’ she is saying, her face full of gentle encouragement. ‘You didn’t mean to hurt her, I know you didn’t. But it sounds like Lily was a bit of a pain- in- the- butt kind of kid, eh? She just wouldn’t stay out of your yard, would she? Even when you locked the gates, she just climbed over the fence, didn’t she?’
I’m shaking my head, trying to form the words which will convince them that they are mistaken.
‘Look, I understand, okay’ the policewoman is saying. ‘You probably just meant to give her a good scare right? These things happen. But you have to tell us where she is, Jillian. We need to know what you did with her?’
Chapter Thirteen
Another one of the coping tools in my arsenal is the art of trying to distinguish fact from fiction. Dr Morris always tells me to ask myself questions.
For example, am I really slowly suffocating to death, or is this just a panic attack? Am I really hearing Jake call to me from under the ground or is my overwrought mind just playing tricks on me again?
And are these two police people really sitting here in my living room practically accusing me of murdering Lily or I am just feeling guilty because I’m forced to tell so many lies; forced, that is by the fact that my truth would really be way stranger than any fiction.
Sometimes my bedroom seems such a hostile place, so full of painful memories. Tom used to sleep in that bed with me. He used to make love to me in that bed. And how many nights did I snuggle Jake up in my arms when he was a baby, and when he was sick or frightened by a bad dream?
On nights when I find it hard to sleep I often come out here and curl up in this arm chair. It isn’t the most comfortable bed in the world, but at times like that it at least offers me enough of a feeling of security to let me sleep a while.
Right now the thought of sleep is very attractive. I try to curl up and escape from their relentless probing.
They don’t want me to sleep. They are calling my name, pulling at me, telling me to sit up. They are dragging me up, walking me out of my house between them. I hear the sound of Brenda’s voice; ranting and screaming. I squint against the brightness which assaults my eyes and I see her struggling with a policeman, trying to get at me.
‘What have you done with her, you crazy bitch?’ she is shouting. ‘What have you done with my daughter?’
There’s a court case. I sit there in the court room, day after day, listening as they argue the case.
There’s no body. No murder weapon. No eye witness. No actual proof that Lily is dead, let alone that I am responsible for her death.
‘Ah ha!’ cries the prosecution. But there is Mr Cuthbert, the man who lives in the house next door to Brenda and across the road from me. Mr Cuthbert’s wife does not allow him to smoke in the house, so he often comes out into the yard to puff away.
He tells the court that he saw Lily gain access to my yard many times, usually by way of climbing over the fence. Indeed that is what he saw her doing on the night of her disappearance. He places the time of the sighting at around 8.45 pm.
He also adds that I am an aloof, unfriendly sort of woman and that he always suspected there was something very wrong with me. The defence objects strongly and his objection is sustained. But, as they say, you can’t un-ring a bell.
Brenda takes the stand and delivers a venom-filled testimony. She talks about how I tried to tell her some cock-and-bull story about Lily believing there was some sort of doorway in my garden that lead to the spirit world. And what did Lily say when questioned about this? She hotly denied it, of course. She came to my garden because she liked to play there. She liked the gazebo and the fish pond. She liked the smell of the flowers.
She tells how I sat there, vacant eyed, on the night of Lily’s disappearance, ‘off my face with drugs’ as she put it.
‘And I helped her,’ she cries, her face distorted with anger and grief. ‘I helped the bitch who killed my baby.’
Again the def
ence is on his feet to offer objections. The judge instructs the jury to disregard that statement, but how can they? The words are firmly imprinted in their minds.
And there’s the blood they found on the ground in my yard – Lily’s blood.
They introduce my medical records – my breakdown, my attempted suicide, the fact that I am currently on prescription medication for what is referred to as a Schizotypical Personality Disorder. An expert takes the stand to explain that a patient with this disorder will have great difficulty in establishing and maintaining close relationships. They may be, he says, preoccupied with paranormal phenomena that are outside of the realms of their subculture.
When asked to break this down into layman’s terms, the Psychologist adds
‘They may be prone to bizarre fantasies,’
I hear the murmur sweeping through the court room like the Mexican Wave at a tennis match. Ah ha, they are saying to themselves. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?
I told them the truth eventually. I had to tell them what really happened, even though I knew very well that it wouldn’t help. And it doesn’t. The Prosecutor now hones in on that statement like a bee on a nectar laden blossom.
‘Bizarre fantasies, you say? Like the one where Ms Forsythe seems to believe that young Lily possessed the ability to visit the spirit world through a doorway in her garden? How she goes there to visit with her dead father – is that what you mean by ‘bizarre fantasies’, Dr Roberts?’
I see my attorney roll his eyes and shake his head, but he doesn’t object. How can he object when this is exactly what I said? How ridiculous it sounds now, even to me.
The Defence Counsel cross examines. Isn’t it true, he wants to know, that persons with a Schizoid Personality Disorder usually seem to be quite indifferent in their attitude to life? That they seem unable to express emotion and often appear aloof and distant, even detached from life? Would a person like that really be likely to get fired up enough to commit murder?
The witness counters by explaining that a patient with Schizoid Personality Disorder is indeed detached and expresses little emotion. However, he says, when we are talking about a patient with a Schizotypical Disorder, we are talking about a person who has a combination of impaired social interaction skills as well some very unusual and odd beliefs. This persons thinking is much more distorted and closer to psychosis than in a schizoid patient.
On and on it goes. The trotting out of all the psychiatric and drug related terminology and diagnostic descriptions. The experts who came to quote facts and figures concerning the numbers of violent offenders actually found to be suffering from Schizotypical Disorder.
In summing up the Prosecution paints a picture of a little girl who has so recently suffered the loss of her much beloved father. She has been cruelly uprooted from all things familiar to a new neighbourhood, a new school, a completely new life.
This lonely little girl finds a place to play – a pretty garden with a gazebo and some colourful goldfish in a pond. Unfortunately she doesn’t seem to understand that the lady who lives has an emotional disorder which makes her fiercely protective of her privacy. After all, what harm was Lily really doing? She was just playing in the gazebo and watching the goldfish.
The Defendant, he says, pointing in my direction, wants to shift the blame to Lilly. To make her out as a very disturbed young lady who actually believes she has some supernatural ability to cross between this world and the next. Ms Forsythe, he tells them, expects us to believe that this little girl seems to disappear and reappear at will.
But you have already heard how Lily reacted when questioned about this. She never told Ms Forsythe anything of sort. And of course she couldn’t actually disappear. She just hid herself each time the ‘crazy lady’ came out looking for her. All Lily really wanted to do was to play in the garden. Just to play in the garden.
I see the way the jury members are looking at me. There is no doubt that they are seeing me as some kind of monster, a child killer deserving nothing but contempt.
The Defence, he says, will try to tell them I am a poor, misunderstood creature with a serious mental health issue. I am more in need of their sympathy than their condemnation. And, he concludes, he might even buy into this notion if I would just confess. If I would just tell them that I’d killed the girl in a moment of rage. If I would just lead them to the body. But no, I have continued to lie, to refuse to allow a grieving mother the closure of knowing what happened – of burying her child.
I am not to be pitied. I am to be treated like the dangerous criminal that I am and locked up for the rest of days. The jury is nodding. They are sold.
The Defence takes his turn on the floor. He tries, but he is so far off the mark. He thinks I’m guilty, that’s the problem. He really believes I did it.
He now tries to tell them that Lily was indeed a disturbed little girl who took great delight in playing mind games and preying on people’s weaknesses. And what is wrong with the mother, he asks them. Why didn’t she try to step in and put a stop to this endless harassment his client suffered at the hands of her child? I told Brenda that I didn’t want Lily in my yard. Brenda saw me putting the locks on the gates. Why didn’t she do something before this whole thing got out of hand?
The Prosecution objects. Lily’s mother is not on trial here, he points out.
The Defence tries again. He harkens back to my medical records – my breakdown and my suicide attempt. He joins the dots for the jury regarding the numerous tragedies which led me to that dreadful place in my life; the loss of my parents and my sister, the breakup of my relationship with Tom, and the final straw, the death on my son.
Yes, I have Schizoid tendencies, he admits. I’m not good with people and relationships. I prefer to be alone. I like my privacy. That is why I keep to myself. That is why I have tall fences around my property. That is why I put padlocks on my gates.
But none of that was going to stop Lily, he points out. She knew just how to push my buttons, telling me stories that would spark off my previously discussed preoccupation with the paranormal; convincing me that she had some kind of strange abilities.
I want to shout at him to stop. You’ve lost them completely now. They’ve all seen Lily’s picture; the sweet, innocent little face in its frame of wild hair; the fragile, thin body in her little white, lacy dress. How can this man callously try to present her as the devil’s spawn; that she deliberately drove me to the point of murder?
They zone out. They don’t want to listen anymore. They are fidgety and restless and they want to be done with this. They want to retire to the jury room and vote.
Chapter Fourteen
The decision is unanimous.’ ‘Guilty,’ says the jury foreman. The judge sentences me to spend the rest of my days in this place. There are bars on the doors and windows, and I will live out my life in a strange, drug induced fog like just about everyone else here. It’s easier this way to keep us all calm and manageable.
I have therapy sessions once a week but I am no longer able to see Dr Morris. Oh no. I have graduated now from an attempted suicide to a child murderer. Now I rate visits with a Criminal Psychologist who is apparently quite gifted when it comes to getting inside the criminal mind.
With me, he is using the approach of asking me to write my story down like this. He says it might help me to break down the barriers I have erected to shield my mind from the true horror of my act. I tend to believe he is hoping I will present him with a written confession, complete with an X-marks-the-spot map.
To be truthful I sometimes catch myself wondering if I did do it; if I really did kill Lily and hide her body. Although I can’t remember doing it; can’t conceive of my having done it in the first place, it certainly seems more feasible than the story I have tried and failed to sell them. That Lily stepped through her doorway and never came back again
Well she does come back, but only to me. It’s probably just a dream, regardless of how real it seems. She still looks
the same, pale and blonde with those washed out eyes. But she seems different somehow; more substantial, which sounds a bit odd, but it’s the only way I can describe it. She even smiles at me instead of just staring in that unnerving way of hers.
She doesn’t really speak to me in words and yet I understand what it is she wants to say. The last time I saw her I asked those questions about her doorway. Now she is here to answer them for me.
Jake is the key. If I want badly enough to see him then he will open that door for me, just as Lily’s father did for her.
Unfortunately though there will be decisions to make. You can’t come and go as you please. It’s way too confusing and upsetting for the people on this side. I can certainly bear witness to that. Of course that will hardly be a difficult decision for me. There’s nothing to keep me in this world now.
So, if you spot me out walking in the garden later today, during our exercise period, you’ll probably notice that I seem to be searching for something
I’m looking for the doorway.
The End
*****
About This Work
This story has been the bane of my life as a ‘Wanna Be’ writer. I stumbled upon the idea about eight years ago and initially wrote a short story which I then submitted for appraisal to a Publisher.
The Publisher got back to me to say she felt my story should be expanded into a novel. There was so much to be done with this plot, so many directions in which I could take it. So I began to work on it, endlessly rewriting.
I wrote character studies, trying to flesh out my main characters. I wrote separate descriptive passages about the location of my story. I tried countless new approaches - pouncing on each new idea when it popped up in my head only to find it wouldn’t travel the distance.
Time and time again the story crashed and burned. Eventually I gave up. Not only did I give up on writing this particular story, but I gave up writing altogether.
See, I couldn’t get past this one. The bug still bit me from time to time. I wanted to write. I felt inspired to write. But all I seemed able to do was to try to rehash The Doorway.
