The Woman Hidden

by Lucas Mattias

  Blood kept on dripping from his nose, his entire face burned due to the blow, partially asleep, partially throbbing and slowly getting swollen. He could feel blood pumping in his brain, as if a water bucket about to reach is full capacity and explode. Marco lifted himself, standing on his knees and hands and tried to drag himself towards the phone. He extended a hand and heard the noise from the wooden floor again.

  He turned. He tried to scream, but he couldn’t move his face.

  He couldn’t move himself.

  The second hit came and, although this time he saw the rod coming against his face, he couldn’t see the attacker. This time, he felt his lip open and that dry crack was probably a tooth or two. The excruciating pain that hit him was so deep he only had time to fall on his backs and try to breathe deeply before it all could turn black and he lost his senses.

  And it all turned black.

  He was surrendered.

  By his side, the phone was still on, while his thick, warm blood slid on the wooden floor, spreading itself and settling down around the device, swallowing it in a morbid, fatal dive.

  V

  The beep from the machines echoed intensively, to the point of stinging his ears. Around him, people moved in blurs, completely ignoring his being there. On the bed, a body, still, idle, trying to be brought back to life.

  “Crash cart!” Someone yelled, distant.

  He moved his eyes around. A crowd of doctors, nurses, thousands of wires and machines, the beep kept still, loud, acute.

  And then he saw the dark figure. A large hat, huge, with wavy brims and covered by a black veil. A widow. She passed by him… but not him, the other ‘him’ that was there, by the door, trying to obtain some answers, on the verge of tears.

  Jason looked at himself and realized that this version of him wasn’t there. It was an illusion.

  A ghost.

  He took a few steps, floating across the floor, trying to reach and touch the woman with the widow’s hat, but as he touched her, she disappeared in a cloud of dark smoke, dissipating in thin air with the room and doctors, who also become smoke and vanished, leaving him there, alone in the room…

  And Michelle’s body, on the bed, with an evil, frightening smile.

  “Jason.”

  He woke up.

  He was at the hospital, yes, but he was the one on the bed and no longer watching as Michelle died again, three years before. By his side, the sheriff, accompanied by a doctor who looked too young to be doing such job.

  “Are you okay, son?”

  Jason nodded, trying to clear his blurred sight and wake up completely. He didn’t know how long he had been asleep, but the die was not as clear and comfortable as before. Maybe it was already afternoon.

  “Tired.”

  “Jason, I’m here with doctor Lance, because I need to ask you some serious questions.”

  The sheriff’s face was not the coolest or the most pleasant in the room. The old face had turned into a marble scowling gargoyle, decorated by the classic mustache and the brown hat. It couldn’t get any more cliché than that.

  “I’m ready to answer.”

  “Mr. Flyce,” the blond doctor asked, approaching the bed. “Did you or have you taken any type of illicit substance besides the alcohol found in your organism?”

  “Jason, that’s a serious question.”

  Jason laughed, first thinking it to be some kind of prank made by the sheriff to put some sense into his mind. When he realized nobody else had followed him into laughter, he came to himself and realized the question was not as smooth and funny as he had thought.

  “I don’t clearly understand the question.”

  “Jason, what we want to know is if you, deliberately, have been in contact with narcotics, either to suppress the alcohol abstinence or…”

  “No! Absolutely not! I’m a father, a grown man, not a teenager who’s--”

  “Mr. Flyce, the toxicology exam came back and the results are endearingly alarming and quite confusing.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Perhaps the contact mightn’t have been intentional,” the doctor went on, with a scorn to the sheriff. “but accidental. Do you sir take any medicine prescribed for irritable bowel syndrome or any other gastrointestinal disturbs?”

  “No, I…”

  “It could also be any kind of medicine for cramps, bladder problems or…”

  “No! I have none of those problems, you should’ve checked my record--"

  “We did, Jason.” The sheriff intervened, clearing embarrassing the doctor. “And that’s the reason I’m questioning you.”

  Jason frowned, confused, and then stared at the young doctor, looking for explanations.

  “Am I being questioned or interrogated?”

  “Sir, we found high levels of hyoscyamine and atropine in your organism. They are both toxic alkaloids, frequently used as recreational psychoactive drugs, but in large doses it can cause a series of problems.”

  “What sort of problems?”

  “Some symptoms are dilated pupils, tachycardia, loss of balance and spasms, convulsions, even hallucinations.”

  Jason could hear the words, but not comprehend them. He wasn’t making use of drugs, at least not consciously. Those symptoms would explain a lot, but… Michelle was so real, it was all so real. No. His brain could play many tricks on him, as a writer he was well aware of that, but he knew what he had lived and seen. Besides, how could he have poisoned himself by accident?

  Nothing made sense anymore. Jason sat at the bed and removed the heart sensor from his chest, causing the monitor to go into a long e continuous beep until the doctor decided to turn it off.

  “I’ve got to go home.” Jason proclaimed, being held back by the sheriff.

  “I cannot let you go in this state, Jason, you…”

  “We’ve administered an antidote solution, but the levels are still too…”

  “Am I being interrogated or detained for further exams?”

  The doctor denied with a tense movement of his head, and the sheriff just gave up on the struggle.

  “So I can leave.”

  “Sir, it would be good if we could do a thorough analysis of samples so that we could try and define exactly what might have caused the intoxication, even if accidental, although the levels of atropine are sk--”

  “I’m not on fucking drugs!”

  Jason’s voice boomed through the room and vibrated on the walls, getting the attention from the people outside, doctors and nurses included.

  “And we believe you, Jason.” The sheriff said in such a condescending way, Jason had to count from ten to zero to calm himself down.

  It could have been something he had eaten… But he wasn’t eating anything so abnormal. It could even be something inside that bottle from that damn scotch, it was the last thing he had drunk before ending up in there. He knew he was not doing anything on his own will… that could even be some weird interference from his dead wife. Or an attempt from the sheriff to convince him he needed help, that he needed to submit himself to some kind of rehab. The man was powerful and Jason knew that, by his own experience. If the sheriff had to force a doctor into making Jason believe he needed rehabilitation, he would do it.

  Jason only wanted to go back home, to see Marco, assure him it would all be fine and, for sure, see Clarice.

  Clarice. All alone in that house and probably concerned.

  He put himself up and started to get dressed. He didn’t know where his stuff was, he didn’t know where the keys were.

  “Sir, it would be nice for you to calm down, you just woke up, the medicine could bring you down if…”

  “I’m fine, doctor… it doesn’t matter. I’m fine. You want me to believe I’m on drugs, when I know there’s no fucking way this is possible.”

  “Accidental ingestion.” The doctor shot and, although for him it seemed to be the greatest medical discovery, Jason felt he was only hitting the same key. “The alkaloids foun
d in your body are also found in plants, like the deadly nightshade. The effects are unpredictable, in majority, but they commonly cause the symptoms I just described to you when you ingest its fruits or even the leaves.”

  “I didn’t ingest…”

  Nightshade. His thoughts flew to the plant he had found near his house, with the help of Marco, who almost went and ate one of the fruits. That could be just another coincidence, but then it would be a lot of coincidences.

  He hadn’t eaten that. He knew the plant very well and, in fact, he had warned his son about its consumption, with Clarice by his side. No one had eaten or even approached the plant. It was not possible that…

  Martha.

  “Wait, nightshade, you said?” Jason asked just to confirm.

  By looking at the sheriff, he received a positive answer with narrowed lips.

  Martha Allembert and the blueberries pie. He had eaten that and he could swear there were some leftovers still at home. Could Martha have caused his hallucinations and her own death?

  “Aubry, you did exam Martha, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, Jason, but yours is a different case.”

  “No, it’s not. What if, unknowingly, she ended up poisoning me? In this possibility you haven’t thought? That her death could’ve been just an accident, just like those results of my blood?”

  “Jason, even if Martha had caused you the intoxication, the levels indicate something…”

  “She had not chance. She was an old, weak lady.”

  “This you are right about, sir.” The doctor intervened again. “If this woman already presented heart condition, it would have been worsened by the poisoning.”

  “I gotta go home, Aubry. And don’t worry, I’ll drink water only.”

  “This attitude of yours won’t change my distrusts, Flyce.”

  Jason sighed while putting his coat on. He was not up to another argument with the sheriff, not when the man doubted his integrity after all they had faced together in life.

  “I’m without my car, could you drive me home?”

  The sheriff sniffed and wrinkled his nose, but soon the face changed giving space to the exhausted mood he tried so hard to conceal.

  “We should go before the snowstorm lock you up in here for good.”

  “The snowstorm?”

  “It’s coming, Jason. I hope you have restocked the house.”

  Jason didn’t want to deal with the threat of a blizzard at that point. He had already been waiting and expecting it, but not in that day. The last time he had seen such a serious snowstorm in the area, he had stayed almost two days unable to leave or ask for help. The roads were flooded by layers and layers of snow, cutting any connections to the nearest city, the one he was in now.

  They had to leave and they had to leave soon. If he were going to be locked inside some place, that place had better be his home.

  The walk to the truck was silent, neither of them were willing to talk. Jason, particularly, didn’t want to open his mouth, because he knew that anything he said would just ignite the layer of powder that there were between him and Aubry and his head already hurt enough without an argument that could easily be avoided.

  Aubry didn’t trust him anymore. What did that mean? Jason wondered if it would all fall apart and if he was damned. The support and the silence from the sheriff had saved him before and, suddenly, the ties that held them together seemed to pop open one at a time, slowly, until they both were completely emancipated from that dark connection. Jason’s fear was exactly not knowing what could come up after that rupture.

  From the hospital door, it was already possible to see the storm would arrive soon and that it would not be an easy one. In the horizon line, although it was still the middle of the afternoon, the skies seemed heavy and dark, the mountains that composed the view had already been hidden behind the fog and the snow that was probably already coming down over there. Luckily, Jason thought, they were going to the opposite side, which meant they would still have some head start against nature.

  Jason slammed the truck door, blocking out the strong gusts of air that persisted on attacking him. He was safe. The sheriff entered the vehicle too and the environment turned heavy. Before, while walking, it was easier to ignore the other’s presence. In there, locked in a narrow, tiny space and Jason being in a low position of someone who asks for a favor, it was horribly annoying and they both know tension to be in the air, about to break havoc. Jason decided he wouldn’t speak; if Aubry desired to discuss or talk about the past, he should the one to start it.

  As the pickup truck advanced on the road, Jason’s wonders sank deeper and deeper inside himself. As they crossed the grocery, the memory of the demoniac attack followed by snakes and spiders returned to him. That had been the first attack, if he well recalled it, the first moment in which other people also witnessed his sorry condition. Before that happened, all he could remember was to have seen Michelle’s figure out of his house for some seconds, something he could never clearly defined to really having happened or not. Before that…

  Nothing. He had never seen ghosts before, let alone smoking devils who ruled venomous animals. He had never been the star of an extravagant scene anywhere, he was just a writer moving on with his life. For a while he had believed it was all but an illusion, until the day he started to consider ghosts really existed because of Michelle. And, up to that moment, he had blamed all those happenings on supernatural influences, even when he was not totally sure he believed it.

  Why was it so hard to trust science when it being rubbed at his face?

  One of the possible answers was facing reality: he didn’t want to let go of Michelle’s haunting. Although horrible things had happened in that meantime, it felt like an opportunity to redeem himself, to accept his life and move on. All he wanted was reconciliation, a kind of reconciling he was prohibited to get before.

  Was it crazy to think that way? Was it wrong to demonstrate such possessiveness towards something that wasn’t even his anymore?

  Howsoever, there was also fear. The fear of what that rational explanation could actually mean. And what if it was poisoning? The thought moved to Martha, the poor old lady found dead, massive stroke. If she had been poisoned, perhaps accidently, and if the same had happened to him, it could be something common to both of them. The possibility of being the water was discarded right away. If so, Clarice and Marco would have been at the same situation of his. And many other people. Even the pie revealed itself a foolish thought, because the same way he had eaten it and relished on it, everyone else in his house had done the same. It was true he had eaten most of it, but it was still hard to consider that option.

  What else, then, could have caused that condition?

  The explanation that seemed the most tangible was, still, the supernatural. Had that truth come earlier in the morning, he would still consider some sordid trick of Clarice’s psychotic husband and…

  He was dead. After so many revelations and arguments, Jason had forgotten that detail. If that man was indeed Nathan. It all could have been a confusion and a big misunderstanding as well. The body found could’ve been anyone else’s and it all could be just some of Aubry’s wide suspicions, after all, what amount of certainty could you lay on such antiquated and decrepit shell of a man?

  Alright, Jason considered, maybe that was a dishonest and dripping bitterness description of the man. He had to also consider, though, that there were no real facts to substantiate the found corpse. No positive ID, no DNA, no sure word that indicated the body found was from the same person prowling around his house, murdering animals and shattering glass doors. The same man who had supposedly killed Martha, too.

  In Jason’s mind, the image of Martha’s kitchen came in a flash. The shards spread on the floor over that unknown liquid puddle that could have been some refreshment, a hot chocolate or a tea. The entrance door, the drug ingestion. She could have hallucinated and seen her husband, maybe she had seen Nathan himself trying to drive h
er mad. Nathan, who had been there to finish the job he started when he kidnapped the dog and slaughtered it. Martha would run out of her house, after being attacked by Nathan or getting into a deep hallucination state that drove the simple tea to its doom, up to the point her heart reached its limited and would abandon her, leaving her to die, fallen in her own backyard in a death that would have been considered many things but dignifying. She didn’t deserve that.

  Although that was a viable picture of it and quite realistic, there was still a piece missing in that puzzle: the poisoning. How had the poison got to him? Jason kept on hammering the thought in his mind, until he came to the conclusion that he should do something he did very well: organize the timeline.

  As a writer, timelines were something pretty common to him, who knew how to be methodical in many things, except in his personal life. Way before writing his novels, Jason would set up timelines with the key moments so that he wouldn’t lose himself in the narrative ahead on the road. Those lines turned out to be really useful, because he knew how to track everything that had already happened and what was about to come, besides getting to define the exact moment in which lost details could’ve unfolded.

  That alternative seemed the most feasible. He would get home, draw a line in a sheet of paper and, then, he would sprinkle it with dots and dates, writing down all that had happened to him ever since the first crisis, punctuating all suspicious and possible moments, in order to discover where and when it all had gone wrong. There wouldn’t be a clear explanation, obviously, but at least he would be able to get really close to it. He was good.

  The vehicle stopped shaking and the cry from the handbrake being pulled made Jason return to the truck, back to the actual moment he was living in, back to reality.

  The sheriff didn’t turn, didn’t smile, didn’t show any signs he would say goodbye. Up ahead, the cabin. It all seemed calm, all in peace.

  The snow there already fell in heavy layers and blows, the wind twisting and bending trees to the point Jason feared a break and a possible blackout or a broken roof.