PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller

by Michelle Muckley

  She leans in so close that I think I can feel her lips on my neck. My ear becomes red hot, my cheeks and whole body flushed as ripe as a cherry. She says only two words before I slip into sleep. “You will.”

  Chapter fifteen

  The doorbell wakes me with a start, eyes wide and ready for the day. I know the drugs have worn off. My skin is hot from its captivity underneath the duvet, and my first thoughts are of Ishiko. They are not kind thoughts. I am back. I look at the clock. It is nine thirty in the morning.

  I hear steps on the stairs. They are urgent and racing. They are coming in my direction and I hear a voice. It is a woman. The voice is opening my door. Ishiko is behind her. I see her first and I have a vague recollection of what she said the night before. I wipe the beads of night sweat from my forehead and feel an instant and overwhelming urge to hurt her.

  It is Marianne and she is still talking to Ishiko.

  “I won’t hear of it,” she is saying without a hint of an accent, stomping her way across the floor and waving her hand backwards over her shoulder, “I don’t care what you say.”

  “Mrs. Astor, I’m sorry,” Ishiko pleads, almost out of breath and for the first time ever in my memory she appears flustered. “She wouldn’t listen to me.” Ishiko points her finger at Marianne like a child in the playground. I can almost hear her say, She started it! Marianne, looks unimpressed and rolls her eyes at me. “She just barged straight through,” Ishiko begs, panting.

  “Go downstairs,” Marianne says, and starts wafting her hands in Ishiko’s direction as if she was trying to shoo a cat, or clear a bad smell. “I don’t know who she thinks she is?” Marianne is looking at me whilst Ishiko is still making a slight effort to protest. I am amused that Marianne has no clue that I hate them both equally and tolerate her only because to do so suits me.

  “It’s OK, Ishiko,” I say, quieter than intended, my throat dry and hoarse. “Leave us.”

  I shuffle myself up quickly and straighten up the night dress that somebody has dressed me in. I assume that it was Ishiko who undressed me and I wonder what she made of my body when she saw it naked. I wonder if she noticed the small insignificant scars that decorate my knees and shoulder, whose stories have been long forgotten, or the scars on my wrists whose story will stay with me until my last breath. They are old, made when I was fourteen years old and naïve enough to believe that the world wasn’t cruel and lonely. They have faded and are barely visible now, but if you pay attention you would spot them, say if you were holding my wrist to thread my arm through the sleeve of a nightshirt. Faded they might be, but I still feel them running all the way through to the centre of my chest and into the meat of my heart, like deep and incisive fault lines. I wonder if she paid attention to the smooth bump that is pushing out my belly. She could have done anything to me and I wouldn’t have known. This is one of the reasons why I hate the medication. It is supposed to bring you back to life, but instead it only half inserts you back into reality, hovering you somewhere above the ground so that you see everything but feel nothing, and it never really lets you go. And yes, the bit about not being a cutter? Well, that wasn’t quite the full story. But I haven’t taken a blade to my skin in many years. The precision of the cut doesn’t draw me in anymore. I take no pleasure from it. I guess I am a bit like an alcoholic who doesn’t drink anymore. Everybody knows it only takes one moment of weakness, one drink, one slip up. That’s why Gregory locked away most of the knives.

  “Oh, Charlotte. I was so worried when I found out about what happened.” This is Marianne and she is taking gentle steps towards the bed whilst I pull my nightgown sleeves down over my wrists. I find Marianne loud and clumsy. She never once considered not making the scene at my front door that would have been necessary in order to get access to me today. She never once considered not getting drunk and telling me everything about her affair with John Wexley. There is nothing discreet about her, and I imagine that Wexley is regretting the day he ever got mixed up with her. “How are you? You look awful,” she announces through screwed up eyes as if I am under intense scrutiny.

  Ishiko pulls the door of my bedroom closed. I am trying to remember what it was that she said last night, and work out what she meant. All I can hear is Marianne talking and talking as I stare at the door, wondering if Ishiko is listening on the other side of it. I am barely listening to Marianne, and the only thing that jolts me back into reality is when she sits on my bed. She is holding my arms.

  “Charlotte? Charlotte, can you hear me?” She is looking at me like my mind went walkabout and she is trying to offer me a lifeline back to reality.

  “Could you wait for me downstairs, Marianne? Ask Ishiko to prepare something for you. Tea, coffee. Anything you like. I’ll join you soon.”

  “Maybe you should stay in bed?”

  “Marianne. I am fine. Really.” She is unconvinced, her face as scrunched up as a Pug dog. She is judging me by her own standards and expects me to be wallowing in a pit of depression and self-loathing. She is looking around the room, looking for the disturbance, the indication or evidence that something deranged and aberrant hides here. I watch her as she scans the bedside table and see’s nothing but a book and lamp. She looks for heaped up clothes, discarded on the floor and loaded with melancholy. But there is nothing for her to grip at. No indication of madness that she can rescue me from, no way to be the saviour, or the one friend who could understand. I have ruined her plans just by being alright. By being normal enough not to need a rescue. I guess we are both looking for a new label. She’ll have one soon enough. I promise her that.

  After sending her downstairs I head to the bathroom and get back on track with normality by rinsing my mouth and washing my hands three times and as I always do when I am feeling like myself. I get dressed in a pair of jeans and pull on a baby blue V-neck jumper which has long sleeves. The jeans are tight and there are probably only another couple of weeks before they will be too small for my swelling belly. I look at it in the mirror for a while as the skin settles over the waistband, and I try to convince myself that I look pregnant rather than fat, but it is a struggle. I wash my hands again. They are still red and dry. I inspect the wound on my head which seems to look less red today but I touch it and sense heat. I pull at the edge and free a few drops of blood, but the amount is dissatisfying. There is more green goo that oozes out, but less. I wash my hands again. Downstairs I can hear classical music and I wonder if Gregory is home, but then I realise that if he had been here, there is no way Marianne would have made it up the stairs. I brush my hair and scrape it back into a short pony tail. The shorter bits fall annoyingly around my face, tickling my eyes so I brush them behind my ears. Socks. Shoes. Done.

  Marianne is in the drawing room standing over the CD player. There is a cup of something in her hand, and I think it smells like coffee. It makes me feel nauseas but I swallow it back down. The nausea reminds me of the pregnancy and I try to recall how many weeks and days pregnant I am and realise that I have lost track already. Two days of medication and I am all over the place. I remind myself that I must work it out later, but my concentration has been broken by the music.

  “Marianne, shall we take our drinks in the conservatory?” I startle her because she hadn’t seen me arrive, and she quickly stops the music, fumbling her fingers over the buttons until she finds the one that stops it. There is a moment of silence between us as she turns to see me stood in the doorway. The music playing was Moonlight Sonata, Beethoven. This was the last song I listened to before I took out Gregory’s boat. He knows because he found it playing on repeat when he arrived home to an empty house, abandoned with the doors left open. It was blaring loud like a warning. I am surprised that it was this disk queued up and ready to play when Marianne hit the button. He must have been listening to it. I didn’t expect that and I cannot explain it. He told me that he would never be able to listen to it again. Maybe he was reminiscing how it could have been different if he had stayed at home, rather than race
to the lake. It could have all been so simple if he had just left me to it.

  “Oh, yes. Sorry. I was,” she doesn’t know what she was doing. She is just nosing around. “I spilt something,” she says and points to a splash of coffee on the floor. I wave my hand left to right a few times to signify the lack of importance before beckoning her towards me. She is too close to the piano and I don’t want her to notice the glued down photograph.

  She follows me to the conservatory. I sit and she sits, in Gregory’s chair. The environment seems to fluster her. She fidgets with the frills and cushions and straightens up her clothes. The fog outside is thick today and I am grateful for its blanketing silence, its ability to suffocate the world around me. Besides the odd crow cawing, there is peace. Today I do not think of swallows in the spring, or the first of the daffodils breaking through the ground. Ishiko brings tea and a plate of sandwiches. She sets them down, only to return with small side plates and napkins. Gregory has her well trained, like a small household pet.

  “It’s so cold today, isn’t it,” she says, breaking the ice. She is looking at my hands, which are gloved. “Is that why you are wearing the gloves?”

  “Marianne, let’s just get this out in the open.” I ignore her questions. Why I am wearing gloves is of absolutely no concern to her. “I assume John told you what happened.” She fidgets a bit more, straightens up her plate and napkin before finally looking at me. She swallows hard.

  “Yes, he told me on Sunday. He came to see me and told me what had happened. I couldn’t wait to get here today and just see you. To know that you are ok.”

  “What exactly did he tell you?”

  “Well, he said that you got yourself very upset on Friday night and that you fainted.”

  “That was it?” What a pathetic retelling of the story. Doesn’t seem like something to be so worried about. She must be hiding something.

  “Well, he said it all seemed to come from nowhere. That one minute everything was fine and the next minute you were on the floor and not making any sense.”

  “I fainted. I hadn’t eaten much that day and I fainted. It happens.” I considered for a split second how she might react if I told her the truth but it wouldn’t help me at all. “So you see, it was nothing.”

  “As long as you are sure.” She certainly isn’t.

  “You know how it is, Marianne. It seems to them that I because I was once, I must always be crazy. I will always be that girl, to them. That girl who got depressed. That girl who wanted to die. That girl who nearly drowned.” I could go on for much longer here, perhaps for another hour at least, recounting who that girl was, offering up a myriad of arguments that support my previous insanity. Slashed wrists at fourteen, possible suicide attempt (it was, but it was never proven beyond any reasonable doubt) at twenty one, or the attack on my fellow pupil at the age of ten that left her with less than perfect vision. I do not though. “Everybody always says how desperate they are for a person who has been ill to get well, but it seems that most people are very reluctant to let a crazy person back into polite social circles. I mean,” I giggle, “a woman cannot even faint without it being down to insanity!”

  She giggles too. We both giggle. She understands.

  “I understand. I just want to know that you are OK. And the baby?” She asks this in such a cautious manner, almost apologetic.

  “We are both fine.” I pour us tea. I offer her milk, which she accepts with a nod of the head, and I push the sugar bowl towards her. She helps herself to a large spoon and stirs it in her tea. I take a triangle of sandwich, tuna and cucumber. It get’s near to my mouth before I realise what is in it and the smell overtakes me. I swallow hard and return the triangle back to my plate, which I push away.

  “Ishiko,” I shout. I shout it so loudly that even Marianne jumps. “You understand because you have been there,” I say to Marianne. “Take these away would you,” I say to Ishiko who has arrived at my side. “And bring me the hand wipes. Was John OK with you?”

  “Would you like anything before I clear the plate Mrs. Wex.....” Ishiko is saying this to Marianne.

  “She doesn’t want anything,” I say to Ishiko, in spite of Marianne’s hand hovering over the plate whilst it is suspended in mid air. I turn back to Marianne and say, “Because I got the impression that perhaps it was a little difficult for you both.”

  “You mean about my.......illness?” I nod, taking a sip of tea and Marianne does the same. “Well, John does remind me to be careful. To take my tablets. To see my doctor. To discuss my issues. He was a bit angry at me that I had got drunk the other day. I tend to talk a lot when I am drunk. I am sorry if I spoke out of turn. Especially about your friend.”

  “Who?” I am genuinely confused because I was under the impression that I didn’t have any.

  “Mary. Perhaps it is difficult to expect you to be a friend to me, after being a friend to Mary.” She looks down into her lap. “I said the same thing to Dana only last week.”

  To me it seems a much bigger deal to be sleeping with her husband than it does to be sharing a pot of tea with her neighbour. But I like her thinking because it would seem that she is at least aware that she is a blot, a stain on the lives of those whom she betrays. But I do not recall ever being close to Mary. “Mary? My friend?” I can hear the telephone ringing.

  “Yes. That’s the impression I got. Everybody here seems very close.” I hear Ishiko answering the telephone and after what sounds like a series of sorry apologies and half hearted reassurance I hear her back in the kitchen. I am still trying to work out what she said to me last night which was something about the ocean or the lake. Fish? Frogs? None of it made any sense, regardless.

  “I am surprised John discusses these things with you.” I can imagine him sitting there, complaining about his wife, regaling the age old story of how his wife doesn’t understand him. I am sure Marianne was hoping that I would add a bit of authenticity to their life together with a few stories about how terrible Mary is, but I refrain.

  “We don’t really talk about her,” Marianne says, rubbing her hands together underneath the table, no doubt cold in Gregory’s seat because there is a slight draught that creeps through the closest window. "It's kind of hard for him." I hear the door handle and we both detect that Ishiko is on her way. She arrives at my side with the packet of hand wipes.

  “I can understand that,” I say, taking the packet from Ishiko and pulling out one of the wipes, all the time aware of Marianne watching me closely. “After all, they are still close,” I continue, undisturbed by her attention as I wipe my gloves.

  “Close? How can they be close?” Marianne looks at me as if I were an abstract painting, trying to place my warped, colour rich features.

  “Oh no,” I say apologetically, “what would I know? You must know more about their relationship than I do.” I wait a while before adding in, “surely?”

  “But I don’t understand? How can they, still, be close?”

  “Well, I’m not sure if I should say anything really about how they are together. I don’t want to rock the boat. Plus, anything I say,” I pause and look pensive, as if hurt by the mere thought of it, “He will just tell you it’s because I am crazy and that you shouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Charlotte, you are not crazy, and you have been a good friend to me. But tell me what you mean because I’m not sure I understand.”

  I wait a while and do my very best impression of Gregory looking contemplative. I gaze down at my gloved hands and take some deep breaths whilst thinking about the wound on my head which isn’t bleeding as well as I would like it too, and I think I can feel the pressure starting to build up. “I think he is still very much in love with her.” I expect this to be met by resistance, insistence that I am mistaken. Instead she begins smiling, a reflective smile which seems understanding to her problem.

  “Of course he is. It’s hard just to fall out of love with somebody. But at some point the past has to become the past.” She has no
idea how many times I have heard this, or from how many people. “He doesn’t seem to understand this. I keep telling him that we have to be strong and push forwards, but he always says it is his responsibility, and that he has to be there for support, especially since their mother became so unwell.”

  “You should try to see them together, through your own eyes. That way you can decide if you believe what he is telling you or not.” She places the cup of tea down onto the saucer and pushes her unused plate away. Resting her arms down on the table she looks up at me, her face soft and confused.

  “But Charlotte, that’s not.....”

  I am distracted and I have stopped listening to Marianne. I can hear the telephone ringing again. It literally hasn’t stopped ringing all weekend. The hotline to Crazyville. I hear Ishiko speaking in the background and then she is shuffling towards me, but I didn’t hear the conversation end.

  “What is it Ishiko?” I say without turning around.

  “Mr. Stephen Jones is on the telephone for you Mrs. Astor. He has called several times and says it is urgent.”

  “Tell him all is well and that I will call in another day or so.” I smile at Marianne but she isn’t smiling back at me. Instead she is looking at me in a way that makes me somewhat uncomfortable, as if I have made her uncomfortable, so I turn around and look at Ishiko instead.

  “He says he wants to speak to you. He says he is expecting you at the office.”

  “OK, then tell him I will call in later.” I raise my head towards the ceiling and shake it, as if shaking off the hardships of commitment and other people’s demands, or like a shudder when people comment that somebody must have walked over your grave.