This Little Dark Place

by A. S. Hatch

  There was no Jade.

  Jade. The projection of the person Ruby wished to be, of the person she thought her father wished her to be. The two Facebook accounts suddenly made sense. They were both Ruby! Ruby playing the role she had envisaged and created for herself, taking on the persona she inside felt she deserved but wasn’t capable of sustaining. Pretending to be an art psychotherapist was an integral part of it, a way for her to enjoy a form of control and influence over people as she could never hope to as her true self. Who else had she fooled?

  Jade. The other precious stone, glowing green with serenity and goodness, the antithesis to the red ruby of fire, blood and death. The fantasy of a rejected child. An obvious choice.

  I felt then the familiar weight of bereavement press against my chest. I had lost Ruby. She was gone, a ghost, a projection of my own. She was never really here. I looked at the note again, at the obviously faked handwriting. It was all fake. And was I any better than her, for having played along when in the back of my mind I sensed something wasn’t right? It was an impossible, screwed-up mess.

  How I needed Victoria now. Wanted, craved her.

  I could scarcely believe how stupid I had been, how self-destructive. I needed to overcome this, my weakness for her, and find a way to extricate myself from this car crash. But then I looked at her and I heard myself saying:

  ‘I’m here. Nothing is going to happen. You’re safe with me. I’ll report it, OK? Nothing will happen.’

  After a storm of tears, she assumed a vacant calm. I went into the bedroom to ‘call the police’ and she went into the kitchen to ‘call Jade’. We didn’t speak again about the note.

  In the days that followed I noticed a rabbitlike twitchiness about her whenever she caught me watching her watching the treeline or hear a sound outdoors, which made me wonder if she knew I knew, and whether her act had moved into a new and more delusional phase.

  I made a show of keeping the doors and windows locked and this seemed to pacify her.

  The night of the twenty-eighth I found her in the kitchen carving a face into a pumpkin. She’d been doing this all week. There was a pyramid of them in the pantry: a gallery of faces in various poses of anguish. The knife was sharp and I winced as she tried to force it through the pumpkin’s tough exterior.

  ‘Why do we need so many pumpkins?’ I asked.

  ‘These aren’t pumpkins, they’re jack-o’-lanterns.’ The blade slipped. She stumbled forward slightly. ‘Their light protects us from the undead, from vampires. The devil.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You don’t believe in it?’

  ‘In what? Vampires?’

  ‘Evil.’ She began stabbing the pumpkin, chipping at a hole she’d somehow managed to make without slicing off her finger.

  ‘I believe there are evil people.’

  ‘But where does evil come from? The Devil, of course.’

  ‘That’d be a convenient explanation for some.’

  ‘Where else could it come from? Who wakes up one morning and suddenly decides to be evil?’

  ‘I think people become evil over time, maybe because of things that happen to them.’

  ‘I think that’s an even more convenient explanation. Would you forgive Frank for what he did to your mother if you found out he had a rough childhood? I would never forgive Lee no matter what he went through before.’ The mention of Frank made me shudder. I stroked my chin and was relieved to feel it smooth. She plunged the knife forcefully into the widening hole, then looked at me with a smug smile on her face, a smile that said: you know I’m right. And I did. And if I was to die or be maimed by her hand perhaps I deserved it, perhaps the Devil had got into me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. Her stabbing ceased. She held the knife deep inside the pumpkin’s core and was twisting it.

  ‘What for?’

  I paused. ‘For everything.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ she said.

  The next morning, the twenty-ninth, Ruby left again to meet her ‘Offender Manager’. She’d sold the lie so now she had to keep it going, I supposed. But if I was going to catch her out, I had to bide my time. I waved her off with a smile.

  I spent the rest of the day finishing off the trunks. The only thing left to do was secure the safety hinges. As I locked the workshop door I realised I hadn’t fired the laptop up in weeks. It hadn’t even occurred to me to. It lay cold and unused in the drawer.

  Ruby returned that night with costumes.

  On the thirtieth I woke up and through bleary eyes watched Ruby stir and felt a strong and fervid affection churn in my belly. She held the palm of her hand to my cheek. She had such talent for make-believe. I was able in such moments of semi-wakefulness, of almost-dreaming, to suspend my disbelief. To pull the delusion nearer, to wrap it around my face like a blanket, to obscure everything beyond it. I close my eyes and ‘Ruby’ is here and the world and its truth are not.

  It was the day before Halloween. This the thing that drove all of our mad endeavours over the course of that sweet and unreal day. She baked cinnamon-spiced pumpkin cupcakes with black icing that made your teeth ‘rot’, wrapped the cooled boiled sweets in plastic wrappers, and around midday made a start on the punch. By four o’clock we were drunk. The hours of that tipsy afternoon in the warm kitchen disappeared in a blink, as though time itself experienced a sugar rush. I can still picture Ruby’s teeth, blackened from the cupcakes, smiling. At dusk she said she was going for a little wander, to clear her head. An hour or so passed. She had been gone longer than usual. Anxiety brought sobriety. I began to pace, to fidget, to tidy. At around six, stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes, I sensed something out in the pines. I turned the light off (with it on I could see only my reflection) and stared into the dark trees but I could see nothing. I opened the back door and walked over the strip of shale to the edge of the pines. I called Ruby’s name. No reply. I turned to look back at the cottage, at the open door to the kitchen. Something felt wrong. I walked back inside, locked the door behind me and resumed the dishes. At that moment Ruby emerged from the woods. She was wearing the waxed jacket. There was something in her right hand. Seeing me in the kitchen window she froze. I expected her to smile or wave but she did not. She just stood there looking at me. Then I saw that it was a knife she held. A short blade, a steak knife. After a couple more seconds she walked with purpose away from the pines. I followed the crunching of her steps until they disappeared. And then I heard the side door opening and her footsteps continue through the cottage towards me in the kitchen. I turned to face the door, noting the location of the rolling pin which I had just cleaned, and tried to smile as she came bounding towards me.

  ‘Look what I found,’ she said, producing a cluster of small green apples from the pockets of the wax jacket. ‘Did you know you have apple trees?’ I said nothing. I just watched her put the apples on a chopping board and begin to cut them, using a kitchen knife from the drying rack behind me. She ate a segment and smiled blissfully. ‘They’re good. Here.’ She placed a piece of apple in my mouth. ‘See?’ The apple could have been the best I’d ever tasted, but all I could think about was where she’d put the steak knife.

  After a dinner of pumpkin pie we sat on cushions by the fire and Ruby read aloud from Wuthering Heights, which she’d taken up again and which she was nearing the end of.

  I pictured Heathcliff wandering forlornly through the empty rooms of the house he had strived his whole life to acquire through crazy love and revenge, and which welcomed him now emptily, coldly; a lavish and austere tomb. I looked up at Ruby’s face, which was only inches from mine. Noticing my gaze she stopped reading and lowered the book. Impulsively, I placed my hands on either side of her head and drew her to me. She looked shocked at my sudden decisive gesture but did not resist me. I kissed her lips then and we rose to our feet, like two vines colliding and rising up from the ground, twined together. And as we moved from the living room into the coolness of the bedroom, I pictured leaves of ivy emerging
all over our bodies. As we lay down in the bed I pictured the ivy spreading from us onto the bed, across the floor, through the gaps in the door, the corridors and into every room, covering every wall inside and out until the whole cottage was swallowed entirely by ivy and we were its beating heart.

  I slept easily. But in the night I was disturbed by the sound of footsteps outside. I staggered naked to the window. I stood for about a minute, scanning the treeline for movement. I was about to give up and get back into bed when a figure emerged from behind the shed. A gangly man wearing a motorcycle helmet. He walked to the edge of the clearing, as though deliberately showing himself to me, and just stood there. A second man – also wearing a motorcycle helmet – came out from the trees lining the driveway. Was this a message, a threat? Or a final intake of breath before the assault? After a few moments they went, not turning and walking away but moving slowly backwards in the manner of spirits, swallowed by the black trees.

  In the morning there was no power. The fuse box had been tampered with. Wires had been cut. I didn’t tell Ruby, I just said a fuse had blown. She didn’t care. She thought it was exciting. She went around lighting candles and jack-o’-lanterns, which she placed outside so they ‘protected’ the cottage. The gas was still working and we had scrambled eggs and coffee for breakfast by candlelight. After breakfast I showered in cold water and attempted to dress but was intercepted by Ruby brandishing my vampire costume on its hanger. As I put it on, something about it made me feel uneasy, something beyond mere embarrassment. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  ‘I’m going to get the milk,’ I said, emerging from the bedroom.

  ‘Make sure you avoid direct sunlight.’ She found my discomfort delicious.

  My transition into the monstrous under way, I trudged up the lane through the woods to the gate. I had the sense that things were coming to a head, that today something was going to happen. Her seduction of me. Our sleeping together. The motorcyclists in the night. I got to the gate and found the milk but no eggs. I stood for a moment at the roadside, my cape flapping in the wind. The road was lined with dead leaves. The bottle was freezing my fingers. As I turned to go back I noticed the flag on the mailbox was up. I opened the flap and saw a single folded sheet. It was unaddressed. I recognised the handwriting immediately. Here is what I read:

  Dan

  Everything’s a mess. I need to see you. I need to talk to you. You have every right to hate me, but I’ll go crazy if I don’t speak to you. There’s so much I need to say to you. Sorry for starters.

  Will you see me? Will you speak to me if I come? I didn’t think I had a right simply to waltz up and knock on your front door; I thought you at least deserved the courtesy of a note first. I’ll come tomorrow, at noon. If there’s any feeling left inside your heart for me at all I hope you can keep it alive until then.

  Love

  Vic

  In a flash everything was made clear.

  It was Victoria I loved, of course it was. But I was still trussed up here with Ruby, hanging from a hook of my own making.

  If she saw Ruby it would be the end.

  Tomorrow, the note said, meaning today. Noon.

  A deadline.

  It had to end now.

  ***

  Robbie was waiting for me when I got back from the workshop yesterday. He stood at my door wringing an invisible cap in his hands and began immediately to plead for forgiveness. I told him to forget about it, it was nothing. He sat on the bed and switched on the telly. We caught the tail end of Loose Women, in which the panel was enjoying a typically discursive chat ranging from Colombia’s rejection of a peace deal with FARC to their dismay over the break-up of a popular pairing from Celebrity Love Island. Robbie began to talk obliquely about love and regret. I recorded his babblings in my notepad because no one else ever will. I have become in a sense his biographer.

  After he’d tired himself out talking about the past he continued watching telly. In a lull there was a sound like a mobile phone vibrating. We looked at each other. He knew I’d heard it. It happened again. Robbie plunged his hand into his pocket. He was rummaging for something. He looked stricken then, the vibrating continuing and he unable to stop it. I couldn’t hide my shock. He jumped up from the bed, his pocket emitting the telltale sound, pulled the tiny impossible thing out, pressed a button to silence it and stuffed it back inside his pocket. He looked at me, sweat gathering like an avalanche over his protruding brow, turning some decision over in his mind, and ran out.

  Last night, unable to sleep, I was looking out across the grass towards the treeline. I was thinking about Robbie and what he could be mixed up in and whether in seeing the mobile phone I had embroiled myself in it like a fly in a pot of jam. I thought about the note under my door and his disappearance and grisly resurrection, and as I groped blindly inside this box of sundry clues I felt the outlines of a theory beginning to emerge. But before I could gather it in my hands a commotion broke out outside. A black figure (I had seen it before!) darted right to left, away from the chain-link fence separating the grass from the walking path. Then another figure emerged from a hiding place in the trees, wielding a torch. This second figure was shouting ‘STOP!’ at the black figure, who covered the ground impossibly quickly. The man with the torch could not keep up and it seemed the fleer would escape but then a third man emerged from the left and between the two of them they pincered him and wrestled him to the ground. The two men, police I gather, marched their quarry across the grass out of sight and then another couple of officers came walking ponderously out onto the grass pointing torches at the ground, crackly robotic voices issuing from their radios.

  ***

  I had no time to reproach myself for having slept with Ruby, for making her removal a thousand times more difficult. The clock was ticking. Noon. With Vic’s note in my hand I hurried back to the cottage. I had no plan. It was all I could do to hold the panic at bay, to prevent it from controlling me totally.

  Maybe I could call Victoria, put her off coming, or at least slow her down? I still had her number saved but I’d left the Nokia in the bedroom. I would have to make the call in secret. Otherwise there would be questions: who are you calling, why? And if I invented some reason – I was calling my client, or the timber merchant, or the electricity board – the phone call with Vic would take much longer than any such call feasibly would; plus there was no guarantee I would be successful and Victoria might come anyway. But I had to try. I had no better ideas.

  I crunched over the shale and slipped in through the side door. I listened. Ruby was clattering around in the kitchen, completely preoccupied. A reprieve. I sidled along the corridor towards the bedroom door, wincing at the rustle of the cheap polyester cape behind me. In the bedroom I set the bottle of milk down, closed the door as softly as I could and tiptoed to the bay window with the Nokia, where the signal was strongest. I dialled ‘Vic Mob’. It rang and rang. Come on! I looked at the screen: CALLING: Vic Mob. No answer. Not even an answering machine. It had been months since we’d spoken, maybe she had a new number. There was one other option: Vic Work. I hit CALL. It was picked up immediately.

  ‘Wilder Road Dental Practice,’ said the female voice.

  ‘Hello,’ I whispered, ‘is Vic working today?’

  ‘Sorry what was that?’

  ‘Is Vic working?’

  ‘Sorry who?’

  ‘Victoria,’ I hissed, cupping my mouth.

  ‘Sorry one sec,’ she said and put me on hold. The old familiar jingle. How many times had I waited for her – not quite like this – to come to the work phone in the past? I began to drift off into memory, into a montage of a previous life, small, meaningless conversations; do we need milk, when are you going to your mum’s, where’s …

  ‘Sorry sir, no one called Victoria works here.’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Sorry one sec.’

  ‘Who is this?’ said another female voice. Older. Familiar.

/>   ‘It’s Dan.’

  ‘Dan! Hi, it’s Miriam. How are you? How’s Vic doing?’

  ‘That’s why I’m calling.’

  ‘We haven’t heard from her since she was signed off. We’re worried about her. Sorry about Jen, she’s temping while Vic is away. She doesn’t know.’

  ‘Signed off?’

  ‘Well, yes. Dan, is something wrong?’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Dan are you joking? She’s been signed-off on long-term sick since the beginning of October.’

  I froze. I couldn’t compute what Miriam was saying. I was unable to formulate words. I hung up.

  My plan had failed. Vic would be here soon and I was left now with only one option.

  I had to hide Ruby.

  I had to find a way to take Ruby out of the equation and manage Victoria so their paths didn’t cross. Then, when Victoria left (she’d eventually have to leave for something) I would just have to bite the bullet and break it off with Ruby (I had accepted now there was no way to mitigate the risk of Ruby’s reaction being explosive). But how to keep her out of sight? Since ‘Lee’s note’ she virtually never ventured outside alone, so perhaps I could take Vic down to the rock pools? But this brought risk. Vic might be suspicious: Why can’t we go to the cottage? Do you have company? It was very cold, and she might flat out refuse. And while it was unlikely Ruby would come looking for me, it wasn’t impossible. Perhaps I could meet Vic at the gate and pretend that I wasn’t ‘ready’ to have her come into the house yet, that I just wanted to talk for now, that the wound inflicted by her affair was still so raw that we’d have to take things slowly to begin with and perhaps we could meet somewhere neutral tomorrow and talk more, et cetera? But this would take time and Ruby might wonder where I was and could more easily find us there than at the rock pools.