PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller

by Michelle Muckley

  I smile and say, “Yes.” Her grandson has so far constructed a body and is currently working on the head of his snowman. I take off my scarf and hand it to him and Dana looks at me kindly, something I am not used to. “I’m nearly home anyway,” I say. I carry on up the hill. As I arrive level with the Wexley’s house I am urged to take a look in the window by a force of curiosity that I cannot attest to ever having felt before. But in the window I can see Marianne smiling at me, picking off the dead leaves from a bunch of yellow roses that are displayed proudly in the window. Whilst every natural instinct should have been to run, I cannot. She is smiling and waving. I stare at her, rubbing my eyes to see if I am asleep and that before me there is nothing more than a dreamy apparition. I look back down the road, my gloved fingers resting on my frozen chin to see if Dana is there. She is and she sees me staring.

  “Everything alright, Charlotte?” She looks like she is telling her grandson to stay where he is, and she begins walking towards me. I look back at the window and Marianne is still there, but she is no longer smiling and no longer waving. Dana arrives at my side. “Charlotte, whatever is the matter?” I cannot answer, instead my gaze flits between Dana and the window and I point an accusatory finger in the direction of the vision. For a second she is gone and I think it was just a moment of madness on my part, guilt perhaps rising unexpectedly to the surface. But then Marianne reappears. She is at the door, pulling it shut behind her, pulling her arms into the sleeves of her coat.

  “Charlotte, are you alright?” Marianne says as she arrives no more than a few feet in front of me. Marianne is speaking to me as if it were still possible. As if she were still real. I bring my hand up near to her, but the image remains, totally unaffected.

  “I’m going to go and get Gregory,” I hear Dana say to Marianne as she inches closer to us. I turn and cling onto her arm, not for even one second wanting to be left alone with a woman I killed last night.

  “No, no,” I hear myself saying, my head shaking violently. Before I can be asked any questions I am running, fast as a cheetah back to my house my feet ploughing through the snow. I slip, correcting my footing before I fall, but only just. Somebody calls my name. I don't stop. I burst through the door, slamming it shut behind me, snow falling from my boots and melting on the floor. Ishiko comes out from the drawing room to meet the noise.

  “Don’t let them in!” I shout as I run up the stairs, my feet clambering faster than those of a hunted gazelle. I can hear banging on the front door and then voices and then it is opening and then I hear their feet behind me following me up the stairs and by the time they take their first steps on the stairs I am in the bedroom and I slam the door closed and I reach to lock the door but there is no key and then Gregory wakes up like a firework as if from a nightmare but because I am already aware of how badly this is going to go I know that his nightmare is just beginning as I race to my side of the bed and he implores me to tell him what is going on but I pull the drawer from the bedside table and discard it on the bed sending a flurry of receipts and food scraps and pebbles scattering across the duvet and so I.....

  “Charlotte, what’s going, oh, oh my god.” He reaches over to me clambering himself out of bed across the littered sheets dressed in nothing but his boxer shorts and a white T-shirt and he sees me slumped on the floor and my fingers are clinging onto the empty space in the cabinet, rooting through it, looking for......

  “She’s dead. I killed her,” I say staring at him, pleading for him to see sense. “She’s dead, Gregory.” He is crouching at my side now, his toes splayed out balancing him until they give way and he slumps onto his legs but as he does so I can hear him saying that everything is all right and he is trying to cradle my head in his arms so that he might shut out the world that continues to scorn me and for a brief second the blackness of his embrace comforts me but then I hear the creak of the floorboards and I know they have arrived that it has approached so I fight him off and push my hand back into.....

  “Gregory?” Dana says, a name acting as a substitute for the words that are really swirling around in her head because as I look round I see her staring at me and she reaches out a hand towards either one of us but I don’t really know who and when I turn to look at Gregory I think he might have started crying so instead I try to focus by.....

  “Call Dr. Abrams. We need him,” Gregory says. He has pulled me back into his arms and he is perched on his knees trying to rock me back and forth like a baby but in a way that makes me feel like he is trying to smother me so I push him away and in the process scratch his cheek at which point he screams and so I reach forward to.....

  “I killed her, Gregory. I killed her.” I say this with my head buried in the drawer space panting and panting for breath in a way that makes me think there is no oxygen in this room and so I pull off my gloves and my pink blood stained latex covered finger is revealed and before it probes back into the drawer space there is somebody wailing behind me but I.....

  “You didn’t kill anybody, Charlotte.” Gregory is sobbing and I can feel his tears dripping onto my face falling down my cheeks as if they were my own and yet I feel no sense of sadness as I pull something from the drawer and tell him.....

  “I did.” He has pushed me aside now and I can feel that one of his arms has reached into the space from where the drawer came I can hear the capsules skirting about as his hand rifles through blindly until he says, “Oh, Charlotte,” and his fingers must have made contact with one of the tablets because I am sure that he pulls one out and that he is holding it between his fingers and then he says, “You promised me that you were taking them. You promised me,” but I cannot.....

  And then it is there in the room with me staring at me and I see it because Ishiko let it in with Dana but perhaps she couldn’t see it and I wonder if I am now being haunted by a cruel trick of fate that I didn’t know anything about and that maybe if you murder somebody they stay with you and that is why I can still sometimes hear my father's voice because I always knew that it was me who.....

  “I killed you!” I say getting onto my feet and backing away before repeating, “I killed you!” and then both Marianne and Dana stand there speechless and I realise that Dana can still see it and they both look frightened as they wonder which one of them should be more frightened because they don’t know who I am talking about so.....

  “I’m right here, Charlotte. Don’t worry. You didn’t kill me,” Marianne says as she takes a step towards me and she tries to reach out a hand and perhaps if she was closer stroke my head and Gregory doesn’t try to push her away so I push myself out from his grip against his struggles to hold me and I crawl over the bed like a wild animal and I back as far away as possible reaching out behind me into the corner of the room until I make contact with the wall and I shout.....

  “I killed you. I killed you because you are his whore,” I scream at her and my words are shrill and tear filled and I turn to Gregory and ask him, “Gregory can you see it?” but I don’t wait for his answer because I turn back to the thing that walks and appears as Marianne and say, “He made you nothing and I set you free. You shouldn’t be here anymore,” and I feel so alarmed by its presence that my breath is shaky and my words stutter through like a scared little child who doesn’t know what to do because she is alone and the oar is.....

  “I’m right here, Charlotte.” It is speaking softly, how one might speak to a baby who wakes in the middle of the night and when waking them further from their sleep would be the worst thing to happen and I know that it doesn’t want to disturb me further and as I look towards Gregory I see that he is at the bedside table and I can see that he is still crying with Dana next to him and his head is resting in his hands and Dana is speaking to him and ruffling his hair up and I think for a second he looks like the crazy one but then he reaches into the cupboard and says.....

  “Why, Charlotte? Why haven’t you been taking them?”

  “Gregory, don’t you believe it. Don’t believe that thi
ng,” I say pointing at Marianne and then say, “I did it. I really did it,” trying to convince them that I killed Marianne and that she should be lying in bed stiff as a rock with a bloody lip but I can feel my words are breaking up because they are interrupted by the static of my vibrating outstretched hand towards Gregory again as my eyes flit between him and the dead thing walking in my bedroom and I see that he is holding.....

  “What’s this?” He looks towards Marianne as he pulls out a pearl bracelet which I know wasn’t there yesterday and so I say.....

  “Somebody has put that there. You put that there,” I say pointing at the imposter filling Marianne’s form and then say, “I left it there for her to find and you took it!” and I see Gregory holding it out to Marianne and I see a drop of blood on one of the otherwise shiny pearls and he says.....

  “Marianne, is this yours?” She nods and he looks back at me and asks, “Why did you take it?” and I scream.....

  “I left it there on the bedside table. I DID! I left it there on HER bedside table. Not yours. HERS!” Gregory has pulled out a knife which is a bloody mixture of silver and red as if it were berries on a platter and I am surprised by the sight of the blood because I would never put something so filthy in.....

  “Charlotte, what have you tried to do to yourself?” He climbs over the bed and is standing at my side. “What did you do?” He pulls off my latex glove and I scream but I do nothing to resist because I have no fight left as my hand is gripped so tight that the skin splits further and I see blood trickle from the wound on my hand but he finds no evidence of any other wounds and so he pulls up my sleeves and pulls at my jumper until eventually he reveals the engravings that I have made to document my growth and he says, “What are these?” crying and looking anywhere but at me and Marianne walks towards him telling him everything will be alright but she doesn’t even look like she believes it so I tell him again calm this time, almost whispering, “I left that bracelet in Mary’s house.”

  “Marianne, Charlotte. This is Marianne,” he says, his lips curled up and his face watery and flushed. Marianne is right next to us now, at least what looks like Marianne.

  “Marianne is dead,” I say, almost a whisper. “I put my tablets in her water." I am crying, I think. My voice is squeaky like a tiny little bird. "The capsules are in my pocket. In my coat. Go on,” I dare, pointing at Marianne, defying her to prove that she is alive, “have a look in that coat pocket.” I point at the coat that hangs on the back of the door. She picks up my coat and pushes her hand into the pocket. She pulls out a handful of capsules and a key. The capsules are whole and she holds them up for us all to see. She puts them all on the dressing table, along with the key. Gregory is at my side again. Dana comes back into the room and I realise that I didn’t see her leave but she announces that Dr. Abrams is on his way. She has been crying too.

  “But I did it,” I say, looking at Gregory, desperate for his support, for him to tell me that he believes me. But he is looking at Marianne and Dana. He is telling them that he should never have stopped me seeing Dr. Abrams. My head is throbbing and I reach up to try to release the overwhelming pressure and the pain of an impending seizure but he holds my arms down. He is telling them it was all too much for me, especially with the pregnancy. They nod, as if they already know. “Gregory,” I say, aware that I am no longer part of what is happening around me.

  “It’s OK, Charlotte. Don’t speak now, just rest.” I realise that I am on the floor, resting against Gregory. Dana is crouched at my side, and Ishiko has brought them all drinks like they are hanging around during the intermission at a theatre. Marianne crouches in front of me. It opens her mouth to speak.

  “Don’t worry, Charlotte. Everything will be alright. You’ll see.”

  I hear her false words, the words of the dead spoken as if they are real and as if she is really there. I tell her. I tell it what I promised myself would happen. “I’m going to tell Mary. I will tell her that you are there in her house. That you are trying to take her life.” Marianne looks at Dana who looks at Gregory who looks at me. I look back at all of them, but mainly at Marianne.

  “Charlotte, dear. Mary died over a year ago.”

  Gregory holds my head, pulling it into his chest and now all I see is the crease of his elbow and the soft smell of sweat from the night before. Somewhere in the background I hear Dr. Abrams, and somebody says something about my confusion and a twin sister, but I am already lost to the pull of the sedation, and the voices are just a background irritation before I am taken by some sort of sleep.

  Chapter thirty one

  My first thought, at least the one that I can remember was one of roundness. I remember that I woke up one morning and the light was trickling through the curtains like when the earliest waves tease the shore, when they just sort of trickle in as if there is no effort behind them. Rather than think about what was wrong with the world I thought how nice it was to wake up with the sun on my face. I could feel a little bit of heat, and the light crept into my eyes, welcoming them open. The noises of the household were all around me. There was water rushing through pipes, and the radiator was knocking as the heating kicked in. I could hear plates rattling, and early voices. I turned over and looked at my clock. It was a Saturday. Three days after the last thing that I could remember.

  Gregory met me in the kitchen, a smile on his face wider than a tomcat. Ishiko was behind him, rustling up breakfast, and she too turned around and smiled. She was the first to speak. A quiet and cheerful good morning. Gregory came close to me, cupped my face in his hands and kissed my cheek. He didn’t feel so cold, and his hands felt stronger than I imaged they would in the moment before he touched me.

  “You are awake. Welcome back. We missed you.”

  The next week was different. I was under supervision. Dr. Abrams called at the house three times, because Gregory had told him that under no circumstances would he be taking me anywhere outside. I heard him on the telephone, telling him how lucky he was that he was still even my doctor, especially after he had heard about the homework assignments to visit the lake. I didn’t try and defend Dr. Abrams. I didn’t see the point. Or the need.

  Medication time was different too. Gregory didn’t see fit to trust me to take my tablets anymore, and so he stood with me in the bathroom each day, watching me lift my tongue and poke it out left and right like an antenna searching for sanity. He permitted my count of thirty with the water in my mouth. He didn’t rush me. Checking that I hadn’t kept my tablet under my tongue like this made me feel institutionalised, but with the tablets doing their job, I didn’t care so much, and I admit I quite liked the attention.

  It was two weeks before I went outside. The snow had melted without a trace by that point and it was as if spring had taken over. There were daffodils in the garden, and the croci that had withered under the snow had been replaced by those that had been sensible enough to continue their hibernation a little longer. They were blooming, a carpet of purple, white, and the odd splash of yellow. My first trip was a supervised walk in the garden, and it was Gregory who accompanied me. We talked about the flowers which would bloom over the coming weeks, and the new patio furniture he was thinking about getting. He told me he wanted me to choose it, and this idea extended to a refit in the house as well, once I was up to it. Any changes I liked. He used the phrase "just in case" a lot during these days to justify being close to me, and I think it was his honest way of reasoning with me. He didn’t go to the hotel once. It was his way to make me understand his need to be near me, and for my need to be incapacitated. Because I was, no matter whether either of us liked it or not.

  The week before, we cleared out some of my cupboards. We found many things which Gregory described as unexpected. We found newspapers that dated back to two years previously. There was a shoebox which was full, nearly at least, of used tissues, each scrunched into a tiny ball and set hard by its contents. Some of them were bloody. There was a pile of envelopes, all used with their stamps
and postmarks and dating back from before I moved in. I must have brought them with me, Gregory said, which I found a disappointment because it meant that I had been storing these items since before I knew Gregory. It was harder to blame him for my problems when faced with the truth. The most bizarre item seemed to be fruit seeds. He found the apple cores as well. There were many more, much older ones in the wardrobe, all sealed in Ziploc bags. Some of the contents were unidentifiable and so we just made a good guess at what it was. He seemed most disturbed by the food. We found them late on in the search, near the back of the cupboard, and by this point I was struggling, shaking, and nearly crying. When he asked me why I had wanted to keep them, my answer was fairly simple.

  “Just in case.”

  “Just in case what?” was his reply, to which I didn’t say anything. By this point, the medication was already working, and I was at least aware that some of my answers were less than rational. I think this is why he used the same phrase with me. My own logic used against me.

  If I had answered honestly I would have told him that it was because I needed to have them there. Because if I had decided to throw them away it would have meant that they were in the rubbish bin, and Ishiko would have put this outside and it would have been taken and I would have lost these things forever. At least in the cupboard they were safe, in case I needed them. In case I forgot everything and had to relearn everything all over again. News stories I had read, envelopes from where I knew people in the world, the germs I had suffered, the tastes I had enjoyed. I had kept all this information just in case, stored in varies piles which now formed the haul of insanity. Now, a few weeks after the clearout, I am starting to care less and less for the things that I have lost.

  A few days ago, through a joint decision that was encouraged by Dr. Abrams, I was granted permission to venture out alone. I dressed well, perhaps overdressed for the milder weather, and I chose to walk to Dana’s house. I knocked the door, half willing her not to open, but she did, and greeted me with a smile. She welcomed me in, offered me a coffee which I accepted, and which she checked was going to be alright with my medication. We discussed how I was feeling and I told her well, and better. I offered her an apology which she batted away with a quick shake of the hand. She said it wasn’t necessary. She asked me about the baby and if we were excited. I told her we had discussed painting Ishiko’s room yellow when she leaves, and that we would turn it into a nursery. I told her that Gregory had suggested he might paint it himself. She seemed excited for me, and it was nice to see what that might feel like to somebody capable of such a feeling.