Things We Say in the Dark

by Kirsty Logan

  I go for walks; I walk down the road until my legs start to shake, then I walk back. I never reach anywhere.

  I leave the lights on in my cabin but when I get back they’re always off. I don’t bother to lock the door any more, as no one else is here – and if someone had come in, surely they couldn’t still be hiding. Could they?

  It’s hot tonight. I’ll open the window.

  Watch the Wall, My Darling, While the Gentlemen Go By

  He takes you from the alley behind a club where you’ve gone to throw up because you don’t want your friends to see. You’re drunk and were probably flirting with a stranger and your skirt is rucked up in a way both slutty and unflattering, making you simultaneously desirable and disgusting to any man who might happen by and see you. And how is a man supposed to react to that? Take a moment to think of all the things you did to bring yourself here.

  He comes at you gun-fast with his arms full of plastic sheeting and snowballs you into his back seat. With the plastic wrapped around your head, your flailing sounds very loud. The car is bumping and spinning but it might be your head. You’re so sure that you’re suffocating that you don’t even scream. You don’t struggle against him, only against the plastic sheeting, which is a mistake as the plastic sheeting isn’t really the problem.

  You’ve heard stories of girls tricked into cars by a man wearing a fake leg cast, asking for help with heavy bags; girls tricked into cars to help with injured dogs; girls tricked into cars because they looked like taxis but were just some man’s car. He didn’t even bother using a trick on you, and really, what does that say about you? You’re worse than all of those girls. You weren’t even worth making up a lie.

  You hadn’t had a chance to throw up in the alley before he got you and you do it now, into the plastic sheeting, and there’s nowhere for it to go so it all goes back on you. This makes you more disgusting than desirable, and you can’t help thinking that maybe that’s safer.

  He drives for a long time and you pass out for a bit and dream that you’re not in his car, that you’re still out with your friends, that you’re at home asleep with a hangover already starting, but when he stops you jolt awake and you really are in his car.

  Why didn’t you signal for help? Why didn’t you break all your nails trying to open the door? Why didn’t you smash the car window and throw yourself out into the traffic, dead maybe but at least not raped? How useless you are. You have learned nothing. But don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to learn now.

  He puts a cloth that stinks of chemicals over your mouth and nose, and the last thing you hear is him calling you Dove, which isn’t your name but perhaps it could be.

  You wake in a pit. You think it might be a dried-up well. Above you, blue sky, a few clouds. He must have dragged you over rocky ground to get you here because your shoulders ache in their sockets and your heels are torn and bloody, your shoes long gone. The sides of the pit are as high as your apartment building and made of smooth stone. You rub at the stone but there are no finger holds, and it’s too wide for you to brace your body and climb up. You surprise yourself at how readily you abandon the idea of climbing out.

  Remember when you read that thing on the internet and then decided you weren’t going to move out of the way of men in the street any more? You were always going to walk in a straight line, and you’d only move out of the way for buggies and old ladies and dogs. Even when you walked towards a man with calm purpose and he walked towards you without even noticing you, and you both ended up coming to a halt in the middle of the street, you with a polite smile and him surprised, confused – still you didn’t move, still you didn’t excuse yourself. Eventually the man would move aside and you’d walk on, feeling strong, feeling tall, feeling like you should write a blog post about this. And where did it get you? All that reading, all that purposeful walking? A pit in the woods.

  He says he’s going to get you clean. He says that you’ll see how good you can be when you’re his clean girl, all nice on the inside. No drugs, no filth. You’re not on drugs but it doesn’t really matter. Who you used to be then is not who you used to be now. And who you will be after this is different again.

  He turns the hose on you. You shriek and fight, so he keeps it on you for so long that the dirt at the bottom of the pit gets muddy and churned, swallowing your ankles. Because of that, later the cuts on your feet get infected and he has to inject you with antibiotics, which isn’t fun as you have to tie a bag on your head and truss your own wrists before he’ll rope-lift you out of the pit. Why can’t anything be easy with you? You learn from that, and from then on you strip down ready for the hose and stand X-shaped so you can be cleaned quickly. It’s just easier.

  The first time he lifts you out of the pit and into the house to do things to you, you feel incredulous, unreal, trying not to laugh as the hysteria bubbles up your throat because this can’t possibly be happening to you. Any minute now the story will be over, the credits will roll, he’ll say it was all a joke, run along home now. But the story isn’t over, because it isn’t a story, and he does the very worst things to you, worse even than you could have imagined, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Afterwards he puts you back in the pit and your blood drips into the dirt.

  The second time he does things to you, you feel very very sad.

  The third time, angry.

  The fourth, resigned.

  The fifth, you feel nothing at all.

  After that you lose count. Once or twice you almost enjoy it, or at least you don’t mind it so much. It’s nice to be out of the pit.

  You do try various escape methods. Going at his throat with a butter knife, trying to trip him with the rope, smiling and simpering and then suddenly launching yourself at him all teeth and nails. But he’s big and he’s strong and he’s a man, and what the fuck are you?

  He tells you over and over that you need to be better, you need to be selfless and forgiving and nurturing and beautiful and graceful and you need to smile, just fucking smile for once, why can’t you ever be happy? And so you try, and you get better at it, though never quite good enough. If you’d known to be all these things in the first place then he wouldn’t have to teach you. You have no one to blame but yourself.

  And if it’s painful and humiliating, well, women are good at that, aren’t we? Menstrual cramps, internal exams, childbirth: we mustn’t complain now, must we? It’s all normal. You should be glad it’s not worse, he tells you. He’s done worse to others, and he could do it again; but maybe he won’t. He likes you. He wants you to last longer than any of them. And isn’t that, actually, unexpectedly, kind of sweet? He likes you the best. You are the best woman out of all the women. Congratulations.

  You’re in the pit for a long time. Summer ends and dead leaves fall into the pit. Autumn ends and the pit fills up with rain. Your old blankets rot and he gives you new ones. At some point he lowers a wooden table into the pit so that you can lie on top of it to sleep, and under it when it rains. You don’t think you’ve ever been more grateful for anything in your life.

  Now your hair is bracken and your bones jut and your breath reeks of death, and you didn’t need to read all those blog posts because if you were to walk down the street you could be as straight or as crooked as you liked and every single man would cross the street to get away from you. Why did you fight so hard when all that effort only brought you here? Though if you think about it, perhaps here was the place you were meant to be all along. And if you think about it some more, doesn’t it feel nice to give up the fight? Isn’t it a relief, really, despite the slight discomfort, to just exist?

  And then, one day, he lets you go. He says that you’re his Dove and you must fly.

  At first you just stand in his kitchen, barefoot, blinking. He pushes you. Then he pushes you harder.

  You stumble out of his house and through the yard and past the cars and through the trees. You didn’t think you had the strength left to run but you do, and you feel a sound
building inside you, from your feet right up to your throat, and you let it go and it spurs you on, and you’re screaming and laughing and it’s over, it’s over, you’re alive and it’s over.

  You reach the road and you try to flag down a car, any car. It must be around midday because the sun is right above you and the air is warm enough that you sweat, your waving arms airing out your stale body.

  The road isn’t busy but a few cars do pass, swerving to get around you. The drivers stare at you in the rear-view. They’re confused and scared and you wait for them to drive back for you but they don’t.

  And let’s think about this: you’re standing in the middle of the road shrieking and naked and, let’s be honest, with all those sores and sticky-out bones you look like you’re in the end stages of the plague. Would you stop for you?

  And finally, finally, a car stops, and relief gushes through you like ice water and your knees soften and you drop, the ground welcomes you and you’re laughing and crying and you tilt your face up to say thank you, thank you.

  And the car door opens and the driver gets out and walks towards you, and of course it’s him, you knew it would be him, it couldn’t be anyone else other than him.

  So you get up off your knees. You climb into the car. You let him take you back.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you for the writing time, space and beautiful surroundings:

  Creative Scotland / Gullkistan Residency for Creative People, Iceland / Cove Park, Scotland / Granada UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence, Spain

  Thank you for the feedback and writing dates:

  Sasha DeBuyl / Camilla Grudova / Nadine Aisha Jassat / Alex Kahler / Katy McAulay / Susie McConnell / Paul McQuade / Andrea Mullaney / Heather Parry / Rachael Stephen / Angela Sutton / Ryan Vance

  Thank you for the story inspiration:

  Camilla Grudova for the pica / Robin Haig for the bat-bath / Paul McQuade for the fox piss / Gab Paananen for the mushrooms

  Thank you for making this book a reality:

  Elizabeth Foley at Harvill Secker / Cathryn Summerhayes at Curtis Brown

  And thank you to Annie, always.

  First publications:

  ‘Second Fear’ in ‘My Body Cannot Forget Your Body’: Banshee Lit

  ‘Sleep, You Black-eyed Pig, Fall into a Deep Pit of Ghosts: F(r)iction

  ‘Third Fear’ in ‘Last One to Leave Please Turn Off the Lights’: Copper Nickel

  ‘Fourth Fear’ in ‘Last One to Leave Please Turn Off the Lights’: commissioned by New Writing North for the BBC Free Thinking Festival in 2017

  ‘We Can Make Something Grow Between the Mushrooms and the Snow’: The Puritan

  ‘My House is Out Where the Lights End’: Nightscript

  ‘Good Good Good, Nice Nice Nice’: The Shadow Booth

  ‘The Only Time I Think of You is All the Time’: Monstrous Regiment

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  Copyright © Kirsty Logan Limited 2019

  Illustrations by Nora Dåsnes

  Image © Alamy

  Kirsty Logan has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Harvill Secker in 2019

  penguin.co.uk/vintage

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473567948

  Footnotes

  The World’s More Full of Weeping Than You Can Understand

  1The lady had a smile that was so white and so wide that it couldn’t have been real, and it wasn’t; it was a large china shard that she held between her lips and that stretched her mouth into a crescent moon, her cheeks squished into pink balls and her lips pulled out until the skin cracked.

  2The dress was nipped tight at the waist and had a big full skirt, so big that when she sat it touched the ground and made a tent shape. She read stories and her voice was pretty and a bit lisping, and it made little boys want to crawl under her skirt to play, and they did, and they were never seen again.

  3The book had lots of diagrams and guides and it showed how you could make rainy-day projects like a tie-down holder so someone could be hung, drawn and quartered (you needed horses for this so it wasn’t very practical), an iron maiden (you needed an adult for that one, to help with the soldering) or a scold’s bridle (only boys were allowed to make that one, though girls could wear it after).

  4Stubble and volcanic sore-looking acne protruded through the clown’s face paint, making his skin bumpy like papier mâché. His suit must have been white once, but the armpits and crotch were yellowed with sweat. He spent a long time licking his lips before blowing up his balloons, filling the rubber with his rank breath. When he twisted the balloons they squealed as if in pain, their shapes too bulbous and misshapen to be recognisable as animals.

  5Mister Punch had a white hat, but the more he beat Judy and the red flew out of her eyes the more the white was covered until there was none left at all and his hat was red and his jacket was red and his face was red and when he smiled wide even his teeth were red. It was not a good idea to sit in the front row because then you’d get red too.

  6At first Judy tried to get away from Mister Punch but it was pointless; he was bigger than her and he had a stick, and the more he hit her with it the more bent and broken her limbs became and so eventually she couldn’t even crawl away and had to just lie there and blink and breathe until she couldn’t do either any more. And then it was the end of the show and everybody clapped.

  7The eyepieces were thick black rubber that looked wet but wasn’t, and when you pulled your face away from them the suction felt too strong like it could pull out your eyes if it wanted. When you put your penny in the peepshow was triggered: a trap snapped on a tiny mouse and broke its back, caught it squeaking and squealing and dripping red from its eyes until it died; a guillotine snipped down on the neck of a little brown bird; loops of barbed wire suddenly tightened on a spider, its legs tangling round its fat oozing body. It must all have been made of horsehair and woodchip but it all looked so real.

  8The rabbits had pink eyes and pink gums and pink inside their noses, and when they got pulled out of the hats only parts of them came out, it was like they split halfway and half got left inside the hat.

  9The birds were very small and their bones seemed very light and when the box collapsed on them the blood all stayed inside like they were never there in the first place.

  10The man was dressed all in black to hide the stains and he unrolled a black leather wrap like a chef’s and it was full of knives with black handles and gleaming silver blades; they clicked together and when he chose one he slid it from its black leather loop and
very, very gently touched it to his moustache to show how sharp it was, making a single black hair spiral off and see-saw to the floor.

  11The box had writing on it, something with a lot of exclamation marks, but it was too hard to read the words because of all the scratches and scrapes, a long time of blades against the paint.

  12That smile was made of china too, almost definitely china, because if you listened carefully it squeaked and scraped as the woman tried to open her splitting mouth wider to spit it out.

  13They made a noise going in, the knives, a pork-chop-chopping type of noise, and the woman shuddered in her box and her smile squeaked and almost broke, and though her eyes rolled back they were still open. Finally all that was visible of the knives was their handles, and they gleamed black and shiny in the lights.

  14The saw was big and rusted and when the man unveiled it he played a wibbly-wobbly dirge on it, and everyone liked that and laughed and didn’t notice the woman wasn’t wiggling her toes any more.

  15He tilted the boxes away from everyone watching so you couldn’t see inside, and it was either because what was inside was so good that he wanted to be the only one to enjoy it, or because it was so terrible that he didn’t want everyone else to suffer.

  16They didn’t really. It was just the man shaking the box; you could see it if you really looked.

  17But it was real. You knew it was true no matter what anyone said. It was the realest real thing and the woman was really hurt and she was really dying and your mother sat in her seat and smiled too wide with her hand in a vice around your wrist and told you to be good and safe and nice and sit still and don’t look at the man, just keep your eyes down and your smile wide, and so you couldn’t move to help the woman, because no one ever comes to help.