Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction

by James Newman Benefit Anthology

  She turned and looked at me, blinking again in that cute way. But I knew I was in trouble now. “That job you finished last week, you mean?” she asked, though I realised she wasn’t expecting an answer.

  I was busted – wasn’t that the phrase used in the loathsome modern age to describe my present situation? My late wife and I had often lampooned these moronic linguistic tendencies, deriving humour and an even closer attachment from the act. Then I’d often lapsed into some faux olde worlde English, and that had always seduced her. For Kate, the historical heritage of this country had been a constant source of pleasure, and one I’d used to my advantage, never having to pretend that my pleasures were anything other than they were. But that was true of her, too – her bold American charm had delighted me unfailingly. We’d fitted each other perfectly.

  And how could anyone else ever match up to that?

  I felt sorry for Pam as she turned away and cranked the volume of the television back up. The sit-com she was watching was, ironically, an American show, and I couldn’t help feeling that she was now deliberately antagonising me by repeating some of the lines. She knew of course the nationality of my late wife. I often had the impression, whenever I was in one of my regular moods, that she was jealous of my past with Kate. Pam had never come out and said this, but there were other methods to resort to – subtler methods; more insidious ones.

  “Like, oh my God,” she said, and then, “Hey, really radical, dude,” and then – after the line was spoken word-for-word by one of the stupid characters in the comedy whose level of sophistication did little for Kate’s home nation – Pam said . . .

  No, no, don’t say it, I thought, desperately wishing to prevent this latest development.

  But then my new partner did say it.

  “You’d better believe it, honey.”

  I just lay there, observing her. Then she turned her head to glance back. She wasn’t blinking on this occasion, and looked simultaneously surprised and bemused by my fierce expression. I realised that I’d rarely talked about my late wife, and could just about believe that Pam’s use of this American phrase had been coincidental . . . But that was a rational conclusion. And now my emotions were engaged, though none but the more negative ones.

  “What’s . . . what’s wrong with you?” asked Pam, her tone credulous and fragile.

  I had to remember that she was also recently bereaved; her husband had been a solid sort who’d left her comfortably off. I had the impression that there’d been few fireworks in their marriage, but that Pam had been happy enough. Her grief was genuine, but hadn’t lingered like mine had. It had been about four years since both our partners had suffered premature deaths. For Pam, the memories were fond; for me, they were unbearable. And I couldn’t blame her for that.

  “I’m okay,” I replied, turning to conceal my face, hoping she wouldn’t pursue the matter. If she’d just switch off the TV and snuggle down beside me, that would be good enough. With the light out and wind gusting against the open window, I could focus on the relative merits of still being alive with at least a few good things going for me, of which Pam was surely one.

  But she didn’t back off. She ploughed right on.

  “That Roman tower we saw today,” she began, a tad obliquely in my experience. She rarely talked in riddles or metaphor, though perhaps such involuntary insight dredged this sort of material from even the least sophisticated people.

  “What about it?” I asked, recalling the lack of movement I’d perceived inside that shadowy chamber.

  “It reminds me of you,” Pam continued, with more of that intuitive certainty.

  “In . . . in what way?”

  She blinked again. “Part of you is sealed off, inscrutable. You’ve built a protective casing around some vital section and nobody can get close.”

  You’d better believe it, honey, I thought, and just then, that empty chamber in my mind started stirring with half-hidden shapes, or perhaps just one prowling figure, coming slowly into view under that glass-topped casement . . .

  I dismissed this notion at once. “Leave it, Pam. It’s unwise to go there.”

  “But . . . but we’re supposed to be having a relationship, aren’t we? You’re supposed to be with me.”

  At that moment, understanding her concerns and feeling sympathetic, I reached out an arm and tried to take hold of her. But she pulled away.

  “No, I’m sorry, Arnold.” She used the remote-control unit to deactivate the burbling television and then flicked out the bedside lamp casting the only illumination in the room. The curtains were again stirred by an impudent breeze from that open window, where moonlight now crept in, weak and weary. Pam’s walking gear was splayed across a chair at the foot of the bed, like something sitting and watching us, patiently biding its time. Then my companion slumped down beneath the sheets, turned over with embodied emphasis, and said, “You may think I’m shallow, and maybe that’s true. But I’m here, Arnold. I want to be with you. You just have to . . . well, you just have to let her go.”

  She was right, of course, but had failed to factor in one crucial detail: I wasn’t keeping hold of Kate; it was she who kept hold of me. I had no choice in the matter. Her presence was as rooted in my mind as that Roman tower base was embedded in the Gloucester ground. And if I’d built a protective casement around this experience, just as Pam had suggested, it was surely intended to keep it from being damaged by those too insensitive to know better.

  I settled down beside Pam, offering no response. She seemed to be waiting apprehensively, her back to me. I imagined her eyes wide open, blinking with expectation, but a perverse aspect of my character prevented me from reassuring her. The truth was that I enjoyed spending time with her. Even the infrequent sexual acts we’d lately enjoyed had been an unfeigned pleasure on my part. But . . . something was missing for me. Maybe time would heal this wound. Perhaps once my late wife had become history, I’d be able to move on, escaping the web she’d woven like some stealthy insect on the make.

  Realising she wasn’t about to hear what she wanted to hear, Pam exhaled sharply, her body stiffening in my enfeebled embrace. And about thirty minutes later – during which the sounds of the district filled the air around us, rich and strange – we were both asleep.

  My dream when it came was predictably troubling. I was back in Gloucester city centre, though on this occasion alone. It was night time, pitch dark, and directly up ahead was that Roman tower covered by its protective glass-topped housing. But what, on this occasion, was being protected? Against my frightened will, I stepped up close to the place, my limbs compelled by perverse hope. Then I looked inside the chamber . . . and saw its solitary occupant.

  Moonlight made a parody of the face pressed against the underside of that thick sheet of glass. Somehow Kate had propelled herself up off the ground beside that Roman tower’s base to stare with silent fixity into the goldfish-bowl world outside, presently occupied only by me. Startled, disturbed and pitiably aroused, I glanced quickly behind me and saw nobody else standing in this dream-street.

  Then I glanced back at the figure below.

  It was indeed my late wife, now dressed in a dirty white smock, looking up at me, her mouth a slack ruin as her teeth ground against the transparent surface between us. Her muddied hands had also lifted, placed flat against the unyielding surface. I placed my own against them, separated from what they desperately longed to touch by an impenetrable inch. In response to this restriction, Kate looked furious, as if she could move worlds. Her bloodshot eyes bulged in that glass-flattened face.

  And then, with the same compulsion with which I’d arrived, I was swept away, at first striding backwards in the direction of the hotel occupied by my sleeping self, and then turning round to flee. I heard a sound in my wake, though couldn’t identify its source, and when I finally reached my now unwanted destination I didn’t dare look back, despite every fibre in my frame telling me that this was what I should do . . .

  When I awoke th
e following morning, Pam was gone.

  The first thing I noticed was her walking garments strewn over that chair at the foot of the bed. In broad daylight, these no longer resembled a person looking at me, rather a vacant shell, evidence of a discarded life. I got up and examined more of the room.

  “Pam?” I called, wondering whether she was in the bathroom. But after entering, unmindful of whether she was in a state of undress, I found the room empty, just our combined toiletries populating the back of the sink unit. Would she have left all her personal stuff behind if, after waking before me, she’d decided she’d had enough and then fled? I recalled she had an open rail ticket, which could take her back to London whenever she pleased . . . but was Pam really the kind of woman to do that?

  I returned to the main room, checked the wardrobes in which she’d placed her clothing yesterday. Her overnight bag was slumped like a dying animal on a shelf near the bottom and a few garments were folded a little higher. I hadn’t paid much attention to what outfits she’d brought along for the trip, not like I might have done with Kate, who’d always looked elegant and refined and . . . But damn it, I was supposed to be thinking about Pam. I really liked Pam. She was sweet and sensitive, and although she couldn’t quite engage with me in that deeper way I’d enjoyed with my late wife, wasn’t that rather a failing of me and my reluctance to adapt to different circumstances? I remembered how I’d treated my new partner the night before and felt ashamed. I’d been cruel and undignified. Kate would have been appalled by this lack of honour, let alone Pam.

  Just then, I noticed the curtains blowing up at the window. I stepped across there and parted the heavy material. From this high up in the hotel, the city of Gloucester and the Cotswolds beyond it lurked implacably beyond the pane, like a face and a body pressed against restrictive glass . . . I turned back, examining the carpet. There was no trace of Pam’s nightdress anywhere. Perhaps she’d clambered into a few new items of clothing, pushed the nightdress into one pocket, and then departed with only her essentials: money, rail tickets, keys to her house. She might have deliberately left behind her walking gear as a symbolic affront to the lifestyle I’d tried to press upon her . . . My reasoning was growing increasingly desperate, I realised.

  I looked back at the open window letting in slithers of cool morning air. Grubby fingerprints were visible on the pane’s edge, just where the parted section stood on its metal runner. The gap was large enough for someone to have thrown herself out, I noticed, and then jerked forwards to look down. The pavement way below was deserted except for a tramp huddled in a sleeping bag. I’d lapsed into melodrama, anyway. After all, was I really worth someone killing herself over? Of course not.

  It wasn’t until I’d packed away what few items she’d left and then hurried downstairs to settle the bill that I entertained the ludicrous suspicion that something had come into the room and taken Pam from her bed. The lengthy elevator ride reminded me how foolish this was. The top floor was the third story, maybe fifty feet high . . . What on earth could have clambered up an external wall to enter through a window?

  At reception, I asked the attractive young woman working there whether my companion had taken breakfast or checked herself out. I received a vacant expression in response, which might denote either confusion or embarrassment. In either case, the answer was negative and so I paid in cash – £117 – received my change and left.

  There was only the tramp outside, who mumbled something as I approached. “. . . Like a pale giant insect,” I thought I heard, and then, “. . . scrabbled up the side to enter and then came back out with its prey . . .”

  He was clearly deluded or drunk on cheap sherry or cider, so I handed him the three pound coins I’d received in change from the hotel and was on my way.

  It was now later than nine o’clock and the city centre shops had been open a while. This suggested an explanation that hadn’t occurred to me in the hotel. Maybe Pam had gone out early for a browse around the stores and would soon return to our room. This was so unlike the behaviour of Kate – my one previous lover, the person on whom I’d based my understanding of women – that it had never crossed my mind.

  I spent a good half an hour searching the shops, growing impatient in crowded aisles and sweaty under the weight of my luggage. But there was no sign of Pam. After approaching a mobile phone store, I was reminded that although I was carrying my handset, she’d yet to start using one. I hurried on through the high streets, neglecting on the basis of escalating unease the many fine old buildings preserved there.

  And then I reached that Roman tower base.

  I hadn’t been certain that this was where the monument was located, either because I was unfamiliar with the city . . . or because the crowd of people now standing around it had concealed its appearance. I was astonished that the attraction had drawn so much interest. Kate had often bemoaned the English’s lack of interest in their heritage. But here were harried housewives, suited city gents and even a handful of school-dodging teenagers . . . as well as several police officers.

  It clearly wasn’t history these people were taken by; it was something that had happened in the latter-day, perhaps even overnight.

  When I reached the crowd, I shouldered my way through to get a good look at this spectacle.

  “You can’t come any closer, sir,” said one of the officers, a pasty-faced youth with violent pimples. “Please, back off.”

  But I’d already seen what I needed to.

  The thick glass sheet that covered the ancient monument had been shattered into a number of sizeable shards.

  I wondered what could have caused such damage. The glass was inches thick, so surely only a heavy object dropped upon it could have managed the trick. Meddlesome youths, perhaps, the kind Kate and I had always described as destructive of a world we’d both hankered after? Maybe we’d sometimes romanticised the past, but what was the alternative? To admit that this tawdry modern cultural landscape was all we had: shops and TV and shallow preoccupations.

  Cutting away from the vandalism, I couldn’t be certain I’d heard another of the police officers – a female this time – say, “It doesn’t make sense. All the broken glass is on the outside, as if . . . as if something has broken out of there.”

  Fragments of my dream propelled me towards the railway station: a figure stirring in shadows, a face pressed against glass . . . Then, as I boarded the first train for London, I thought about Pam and how much I felt sorry for her. It wasn’t fair to have to deal with such a messed-up man like me. I pictured her now, blinking in that vulnerable way she had whenever she felt apprehensive and had to speak awkward words. My heart went out to her, and for once my late wife didn’t intervene in the form of some memory from the past.

  All this confusion and panic must have weighed on my mind, because by the time the train had exited the mischievous Cotswolds with their impish memorial prompts, I’d fallen asleep in my chair. I dreamed again, this time of two figures huddled together down a moonlit Gloucester high street. The area was deserted except for this pair, who writhed and struggled as if one was doing unforgiveable things to the other. Then my dream-lens zoomed up close to these people . . . and I saw they were both women.

  It was Pam and Kate.

  The first – my new partner – was definitely the victim. Like some terrible arachnid travesty, the second – my late wife – seemed to be absorbing Pam, or perhaps forcing Pam to absorb her. Their bodies combined with organic resistance, liquid sounds reverberating in all the hollow dream-space around them. Bones ground and muscles merged, but then at last the two were just one: a woman who looked like Pam, though a little more knowing, her eyes sharp and narrowed. Moments later, she walked away, prowling the night, hands flexing with spindly grace.

  I awoke as the train was nearing Paddington Station and my change for St Pancras. I felt transformed, and I hurried from platform to platform, fresh resolutions cutting through my frame. From my professional training, I was familiar with a littl
e modern philosophy and understood something about Freudian shifts in paradigms, how a new world of meaning could open up after a single resonant experience.

  And had this now happened to me?

  All I knew for certain was that I had to visit Pam in her Islington home. Did it matter that she didn’t share Kate’s and my fantasy of an older, finer world than this one? In fact, might that make her less dangerously deluded? What I’d surely get from Pam was stability, because it was abundantly clear that I lacked this in myself. And the thing she’d get from me was . . . what? Conscious commitment, perhaps, and a real effort to – what our simplistically profound friends had termed – move on.

  I reached her terraced house and paced up to the front door. Kate was gone, I reminded myself and pushed this notion deep down inside me, building an even stronger casement around her memory on this occasion. And now, looking determinedly forwards, I had to engage with Pam as who she truly was.

  In response to my knock, footsteps approached from inside the property. I hadn’t even been sure anyone would be home, but now realised that my initial assumption about her having left me in the hotel had been correct. I had much to make up for, and as the door opened with a stealthy creak I had an opportunity to do so.

  “Don’t speak,” I instructed, as the woman emerged from the house, and then I launched into my intuitive defence. “I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you. It’s almost as if I’ve been unfaithful. But I’ve seen my errors now. It’s you I want to be with. So can we possibly make another go of it? Will you forgive me? Can we try again?”

  Without blinking in that customary manner she had during such fraught episodes, the woman in the house who looked almost exactly like Pam replied at once.

  “You’d better believe it, honey.”

  Widowmaker

  By B. E. Burkhead

  B. E. Burkhead is a prolific poet, writer and artist. His first collection of poetry, The Underside of the Rainbow, is forthcoming from Raw Dog Screaming Press in early 2015. He lives on the southern tail of Maryland with his wife, son and army of starving cats