The Woman Hidden

by Lucas Mattias

  If his father had left that diary there, it meant he had read it and that he believed it to be appropriate enough for his son to read. What harm could it do, then?

  He opened it and started to leaf through the pages, observing the dates of the entries and the descriptions. At first, he felt his eyes burn by recognizing the mother’s handwriting. As the doctor she had been, her handwriting was not the best, but it was readable and Marco remembered that detail. While his eyes skimmed through the first page, his heart pounded, as if his mother were right here by his side, reading the entries with him.

  And then he narrowed his eyes and felt a lump grow in his throat, no longer sure he wanted to keep on reading it.

  II

  The wind howled strong, strong enough to wake him up. The grass touched his face like small needles, itching and increasing his agony of lying there. Jason use his hands as support and stood up.

  He didn’t remember laying down there. Around, walls of pines and moss mixed to huge silt covered boulders and nocturnal animals. His feet were, naked, shrank in the cold from the thin layer of snow covering the dirt.

  It was a dream.

  He should have fallen asleep when he shouldn’t, it was his shift watching the house while it was still unprotected. He was probably passed out on the sofa, crossbow in hands, exhausted by his concerns and yearnings that controlled his mind and let him as tired as if he’d been preparing himself for a marathon. Mental fatigue, that little disorder that sure knew how to affect his physical capabilities.

  A distant howl echoed, dissipated by the rustle of the trees constantly swung by the unceasing wind, the snow coming along with it.

  In this dream, at least, he was dressed. All he needed was seeing Michelle again to confirm it.

  He needed to wake up. The house was abandoned, Marco was asleep by then and Clarice was completely vulnerable. He was vulnerable and needed to return to his own self as soon as possible.

  Jason shut his eyes hard and took a deep breath, repeating to himself he needed to wake up.

  I need to wake up.

  He opened his eyes again and the cold blast of air that hit him made his bones flinch, enabling him to realize that, perhaps, that was not a dream after all.

  It was not a dream.

  He looked around. He hated how dark the woods were after the sun was gone, there were no lighting poles or any human interference to enlighten the day and disturb nature’s state of peace. Just the moon, behind thick clouds, hovering above it all. It was almost full, at least, and it was almost enough for him to locate himself.

  If he had sleepwalked, he mustn’t have gone that far. Something in those woods could tell him the way home. From the moss in the trees, he knew how to place himself geographically. He knew where the north was, now all he had to do was to run south, where his house was. The south, however, was a large area to cover, but he knew he lived to the south of a large closed vegetation area, that’s the place he used to go hunt.

  After walking for a few yards towards his desired direction, he noticed at distance a few illuminated spots. At that time of the night, most would be asleep, but they all kept that old habit of leaving the porch light on – something even he would do sometimes, to leave at least the house entrance enlightened, just for habit.

  A few minutes later, Jason found the old trail that would lead him home. The track he had taken with Clarice and Marco a few days before, when they attempted to hunt, without success. When Clarice almost killed him by accident and that thought, although quite morbid, caused a smile to appear on his face.

  How had he ended up there? Jason maybe didn’t know himself that well, but he knew he had never been a sleepwalker, not in any of the decades he had already lived. He also was not used to attacking women while asleep, but that had also happened. All during the same time he started to see Michelle, bugs and demons.

  He had never believed in ghosts or spiritual influences. He thought it all to be superstitious crap from books, movies and TV shows – things he was sworn fan of –, but none of that could be real, tangible. He’d never been the religious type, let alone believing in reincarnation or ghosts that wandered looking for vengeance; Jason believed that the so-called haunted places were nothing but mere peculiar cases that could easily be explained by science, somehow. Collective hysteria, bias, the tendency of seeing what is not really there.

  And now he was almost certain it all was a haunting in his life. Michelle, from beyond, trying to distress him when he seemed about to move on with his life. Michelle, from beyond, trying to destroy him while he tried to be closer to Clarice and maybe even see a future there, after she was free from all those weights from her past and her lack of memory. Michelle, always Michelle.

  He hadn’t been a good husband to her, although he had tried as hard as he could. What reason would she be trying to destroy now for? Was it all a disturbance caused by a twisted death? Was she the one, once more, trying to stop him from being happy? Not now, not anymore.

  He could not believe all those things, but he certainly would look for the priest in Derby, he would confess and ask for forgiveness. Maybe that would send Michelle away for good.

  Maybe confessing was all he needed.

  The wind seemed stronger now, he could hear the creaking of the trees, bent by the brutal blows of nature. The snowstorm was coming and it would arrive soon, snatching it all, confining everyone to their homes for undisclosed period. That time, for Jason, was the worst. The confinement, being imprisoned amongst a white and treacherous vastness, the fear of disappearing under miles of snow and having nobody to turn to. It was not something he usually feared, but after Michelle’s warning, he was not so sure of that anymore. He didn’t want to spend two days locked up at home with the ghost of his dead wife, not when Clarice was just trying to survive and his son, well, they were going back to good terms, there was no use for a ghost at home.

  It all seemed calm at home, by the way. He noticed just as he got near and realized how calm the place looked. The main door was ajar and, for a couple of seconds, his heart pumped stronger, fearing the worst had happened when, after a second thought, he realized it ought to have been him in his dream-like state. Jason walked in and locked the door, confirming his suspicion as soon as he saw the keys hanging in the lock.

  The air was warm inside, cozy. His bones didn’t hurt anymore, although he still shivered a little. Except for the living room lights, the rest of the house was sunk in darkness, fogged in sleeping sounds that just come up late at night, when there’s nobody to watch or witness it. He walked to his armchair, where his crossbow slept, gently left in there.

  And he still couldn’t remember it. He didn’t remember falling asleep, didn’t remember having walked to the woods with no certain destination. He could’ve died. Anyway, he would look for support after, either at the hospital or with the AA group he was part of.

  Four thirty-six in the morning. He was not up to sleep and he would keep his post, this time, until sunrise. Jason felt his body drop onto the comfortable armchair and too a dee breath, keeping the crossbow on his lap.

  Had he stayed too long out? What if something had just happened? His brain burned, shutting itself around that thought, thinking about a thousand ways that sleepwalk could have gone. He could have died. And had he died, life would move on. It seemed easy. Comfortable, even. He wondered if that feeling was the same that had caused Clarice – and Michelle, years before – to try and leave earlier and faster.

  Suicide. He had never taken the time to digress on that subject, except when he thought of writing about it or inserting it in one of his characters. He thought it to be taboo, but a hardly explained one. Jason couldn’t tell if the reason for such taboo was religion, the fact that people believed that suicide could take you to a limbo of endless suffering; or if that related to the fear people naturally have regarding death. After all, it is never easy to think about your own demise. We spend our whole lives learning how to deal with the loss of othe
rs, but we rarely stop to consider what would happen in case we died. And there, he believed, resided the whole problematic about suicide.

  Every dialectic concerning that subject was about what would come after it. When we die, what happens? Do we meet God? The eternal salvation? Nothing? Would it all simply end? Jason believed so. His closes friends and acquaintances would often criticize him for his cynical way to see life, something he fought for knowing it to be true.

  But what if one day you die and meet God? For that Jason also had an answer: he would simply accept he’d been wrong all along. It didn’t make sense for him to raise such expectations for something that was so uncertain. And death, though uncertain it could be, carried certain magic with it and it was precisely due to its unknown face.

  What does come after?

  He didn’t know if he were willing to learn it so soon. He would oppose, either, in case that happened. He was surrendered to fate. It made no sense to shed so much energy in life for something that would disappear along with his last breath.

  Maybe that meant being depressed.

  Depression that had given him an addiction to alcohol, that had given him a rotten marriage, the unexpected widowhood and a wall between him and his son. Depression that had taken almost everything from him and that now, when he could finally see a silver lining to it, threatened to take from him some more. Jason used to think his feelings as beings and depression, for him, was the ugliest. A sinuous, with horns and claws, scary monster with a touch that burns and, at the same time, freezes. With a breath that seduces you, but also frightens and sets you off, that solidifies what should be fluid in you and turns into ember all that seemed to make sense.

  A burning demon. The same he had seen here and there whenever Michelle appeared. That demon was the personification of depression, to him.

  A demon that had its claws around Clarice and tried to destroy her. And that hurt him. The depression was not used to attacking people bad at heart or who didn’t even seem to have one. It didn’t dig its claws in monsters loose on the world or into the ones who cause pain to thousands of other people. It would only take a hold of what was good, what was pure, fragile even. Sometimes, it would seize what didn’t even seem to be that fragile, but that was so split and cracked inside that one single hug from that obscure being would allow the interior to shatter in a thousand pieces, giving space to that dark shadow depression left behind wherever it walked by.

  And Jason could feel that shadow within, burning in his chest, freezing all that was good in him, turning his joy into stone, turning him into a depressed, alcoholic sleepwalker with suicidal tendencies. All he had never dreamed of being one day. A depressed man, haunted by his past, about to die on the hands of someone else’s past, corroded by remorse, haggard by fatigue.

  Clarice could never wake up again. Marco could leave him in a few months to never come back. Michelle could give up her hauntings and leave him, too. And even if Clarice ever woke up, she could decide to face her own life far from there, leaving the past to freeze under the layers of snow. The sheriff? He was a distant friend, who would soon leave him too, either by death and for sheer lack of interest. Martha had already left.

  What was the reason for breathing, anyway?

  He deserved that suffering, he knew. For some reason that might not be entirely clear to him, he deserved it. And he accepted it. And if he were to be abandoned and left to die in a puddle of vomit and whiskey, whatever. At least he would die happy and having no one to disturb him in the mysterious afterlife.

  And Jason needed some whiskey. There was nothing on the upper or the ground floor of the house, something he had purposely done and with the help of Marco to avoid a relapse. But he remembered, with sharp precision, he had kept something on the basement, months before, somewhere he would never go back to. He knew he would not go back to.

  Until now.

  Jason feared leaving the room alone again, but he realized he had stayed out for hours and nothing had happened so, probably, nothing would. Just in case, he decided to take the crossbow with him. The basement door was hidden under the stairs, a narrow wooden door that had always been kept shut. Jason hit the lights on the switch beside the door before opening it and, as he did, he climbed down the stairs with ease, counting each step just to make sure he was still awake.

  There was dust under his feet, indication that no one had venture in there for a while now. The light seemed fainted, but it kept the whole area well lit.

  Originally, Jason had envisioned the basement to be some sort of wine cellar, but he changed his mind when he saw an amazing design of a basement turned into a reading room. Every subsequent ideas were dropped and forgotten and the place became a storage, besides sustaining the heating system of the house and an improvised laundry room that had never been used since Michelle died – paying to get clothes clean was more practical.

  It was a wide space, comprising almost the whole house area underground, but it stank to moss and dust. A large open area, only broken by a wooden column in the center of it, that also offered support to the structure of the cabin. On the corners, against walls, many cabinets and shelves with old stuff, toys, clothes, things kept by pure material attachment. Jason saw, afar, an old piano Michelle loved to play, his old red guitar and a crib that once had been Marco’s. On the other side of the room, a large barbed wire roll, something he didn’t even remember the reason of having bought, and an old arsenal of hunting gear, things he had promised to do something about, but that had been forgotten.

  There was also this extremely large chest, capable of upholding the contents of an entire room inside, something had had never opened. That chest had Michelle’s stuff, clothes, books, albums and diaries, things that were too personal to be thrown away, but too painful to see on a daily basis. Above the trunk he found what he wanted and it was the only reason he ignored the pain of seeing that huge object. The shelves above kept bottles of old wines, some dusty and dirty clutter and, also, what he had gone there for.

  Jason placed the crossbow on the trunk and grabbed the aged scotch bottle with both hands, admiring it as if it were pure gold bottled with diamonds. It was a trophy, an Oscar he now seemed so deserving of.

  There was, indeed, some prior repentance mixed to interior shame of what he was about to do, but something else exuded from his pores. Not fear, not even despair… it was freedom, as if the real Jason had been locked up inside that bottle, where he had been for the past years, waiting to finally be released so that he could breath again.

  Jason walked up the stairs, the crossbow now forgotten, and turned the light off, closing the door just as he reached the ground floor. The house was still in darkness and, in his head, ‘Stand by Me’ played distantly, reminding him of a good time when he didn’t have to fear his next glass of liquor. He had many demons to fight, alcohol was the smallest of them, something he would easily overcome.

  So what was the reason for such throbbing hesitation he had in his chest? Oh, darling, darling…

  He feared not for himself, but for Marco. For Clarice. For the others. The world would move on when he went back to drowning himself into puddles of whiskey and cheap vodka, life would continue even if he summed himself up into a loser at a random gutter begging for the next bottle to sustain his addiction. Marco would move on, even if without him. Or would Marco sink too? Would Clarice?

  She would at least have decent reasons for abandoning him too.

  The bottle cried when it hit the dark counter in the kitchen, beside the utensils Clarice used while preparing her teas. He was out of that God’s delight ever since the bathroom incident and he even considered leaving the alcohol aside for the warm beverage, something that would feel like a placebo, but a good placebo to distract him and take him away from that disturbing wave that dragged him to the final precipice of his life.

  He had to stop thinking like a writer.

  The broke writer he now was. He could move forward on what he had started, he didn�
�t know if he should. He didn’t know if he wanted to. He was sure that in a few weeks his editor would call, yelling for hours to ask when the next manuscript would be ready, ignoring that even writers have problematic personal lives. And then the e-mails, letters, tweets from fans would follow, waiting for the next chapters of stories he was not sure anymore he wanted to develop. He didn’t want anything else, that was the truth. All he wanted was compressed inside a beautifully wrought glass bottle, shining like glossy dense gold with its amber tones and its unique flavor, accentuated by the slight touches of oak and all the other bullshit liquor tasters find in a glass of scotch.

  Even knowing he would probably not drink, unless to soften the blow of alcohol for the first time in a while inside his body, Jason decided to do the tea. He put the water to heat and waited, staring the bottle as if it were his last opponent in that imaginary championship. The humane and real questionings started to rain in his head, spinning his brain in a thousand spirals around itself, creating a bigger havoc.

  He was gonna drink.

  He didn’t wanna.

  He needed.

  He didn’t want to succumb.

  He would have limits.

  He didn’t know which extension to give his own limits.

  He could control himself.

  He had to.

  He had to control himself. He needed a drink.

  He needed it.

  Jason’s hand jumped onto the bottle seal, when he heard the stairs creak. He discreetly moved the bottle, taking it to the shelf below the counter, in a frivolous and quite childish attempt on trying to hide it.

  “It’s fine, I’ve seen it already.” Clarice replied, leaning against the wall while walking.