THE DARK SPACE
IN THE HOUSE
IN THE HOUSE
IN THE GARDEN
AT THE CENTRE
OF THE WORLD
i
Let’s get something straight, right from the outset, okay? I’m not angry with you. Mistakes were made on both sides. Mistakes, ha, arguably, I made just as many mistakes as you. Well, not quite as many, ha, but I accept I’m at least partly to blame. Okay? No, really, okay? Come on, take those looks off your faces. I’m never going to be angry with you. I promise. I have wasted so much of my life on anger. There are entire aeons full of it, I’m not even kidding. And it does nothing. It achieves nothing. Anger, it’s a crock of shit.
Isn’t it a beautiful day? One of my best. The sun’s warm, but not too warm, you can feel it stroking at your skin, it’s all over your bare bodies and so comforting, but without it causing any of that irritating sweaty stuff under the armpits. Though I do maintain that sweat’s a useful thing. Look at the garden. Breathe it in. Tell me, be honest, how do you think it’s coming on? See what I’ve done, I’ve been pruning the roses, training the clematis, I’ve been cutting back the privet hedges. Not bad. And just you wait until spring, the daffodils will be out by then, lovely.
No. Seriously. Relax. Relax, right now! I’m serious.
The apples were a mistake. Your mistake, my mistake, who’s counting? My mistake was to set you a law without explaining why the law was being enforced, that’s not a sound basis for any legal system. Of course you’re going to rebel, right. And your mistake, that was eating a fruit in which I had chosen to house cancer. Well, I had to put it somewhere. You may have wondered about all those skin sores and why you’ve been coughing up blood and phlegm. Now you know. But don’t worry, I’ll fix it, see, you’re cured. Poppa looks after you. As for the apples, good source of vitamin A, low in calories, you just wait ’til you puree them up and top them with sugar, oh God, do I love a good apple crumble. I’m not even kidding! Keep the apple with my blessing. As for the cancers, well, I’ll just stick them in something else, don’t worry, you’ll never find them.
Give me a smile. We’re all friends. Smile for me. Wider than that.
And so, are we good? Cindy, and what is it, Steve. I think we’re good. The fruit is all yours to eat. The air is all yours to breathe, the flowers are all yours to smell. The beasts of the world, yours to name and pet and hunt and skin and fuck. We’re good, but there is one last thing. Not a law, ha ha, I wouldn’t call it a law, ha ha, no, okay, no, it’s a law. Don’t go into the forest. The forest that’s at the heart of the garden, the garden at the centre of the world. The forest where the trees are so tall that they scratch the heavens, so dense that they drown out the light, where even the birds that settle on the branches come out stained with black. What, why, because I said so. What? Oh. Yes, fair point. Because at the centre of the forest there stands a house, and the house is old, and the house is haunted.
Okay.
Okay. I’ll be off then. Night, night, sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
So they went into the forest the very next morning, man and wife, hand in hand, and they dropped apple cores along the way so they could find a path back again. “Like Hansel and Gretel!” said Cindy, because God had told them all his favourite fairy tales when they’d just been children, he’d tucked them up tight in beds of leaves and moss with stories of enchanted castles and giant killers and heroes no bigger than your thumb; “you can be Gretel,” agreed Steve, “and I’ll be Hansel!” And the trees were so tall and so dense and so black, and they were glad they were doing the hand holding thing together, it made them both feel warm and loved. And they didn’t know for how long they walked, it may have been days, and they worried they might soon run out of apple cores, but presently they came across the house, right there at the forest’s heart. And it was a magical house, a structure of red brick and thin chimneys and big bay windows and vinyl-sided guttering. It didn’t look very haunted; “it’s probably quite nice inside,” said Cindy, and Steve agreed, but he held on to her hand tightly, and both hands began to sweat. They went up to the front door, and peered their way through the panel of frosted glass, but they couldn’t see anyone, nothing inside was moving. Steve rang the doorbell, and Cindy called “Hello!” through the letterbox, but there was no answer, and they were both about to give up, turn about, pick up their apple cores and go home, when the door swung open anyway at their touch. It didn’t creak, the hinges were too good on that door.
Cindy and Steve wondered if they could squeeze themselves into something as small as that house, they’d been so used to the sheer size of the garden that was their world. And they exchanged glances. And they shrugged. And they went in.
In the kitchen there were two places set for dinner, and at each place there was a bowl of porridge. “Like Goldilocks!” said Cindy, because God really hadn’t stinted himself in his fairy tale telling; “you can be Goldilocks,” said Steve, “I’ll be the bear!” They ate the porridge. They both privately wondered who the porridge belonged to. They both wondered if the porridge belonged to the ghosts. They thought they should go home, but it had started to rain. So they decided there was no harm in staying a little longer; they inspected the sitting room, the bathroom, a nice space under the stairs that could be used for storage; “Hello,” Cindy called out, “we’re your new neighbours!” And they looked for the ghosts, but saw neither hide nor hair of a single one. The rain was coming down hard now, it was a wall of wet, and it hit the ground fierce like arrows and it was so dark outside you couldn’t see where the rain might have fallen from, how it could have found its way through so dense a crush of treetops. And the apple cores were gone, maybe they hadn’t been dropped clearly enough, maybe the birds had eaten them, maybe they had long ago just rotted and turned to mush. So they had no choice, they had to stay the night together in a haunted house, maybe they could find their way back to their own garden in the morning, maybe.
The bedroom was big. There were two large wardrobes, and there was a dressing table with a nice mirror to sit in front of and do make-up, and there was a huge bed laden high with blankets and pillows. Cindy and Steve got under the covers.
They both listened out for the ghosts in the dark.
“I’m frightened,” said Cindy, and reached out for Steve’s hand. And Steve didn’t say he was frightened too, that his stomach felt strange stuffed as it was with porridge, that his skin felt strange, too: tingly and so very sensitive with a mattress underneath it and sheets on top of it and this smooth naked body lying next to it, brushing against it, tickling its hairs, yes oh yes. “Don’t be frightened,” said Steve, “I’ll protect you, my Snow White, my Rapunzel, my unnamed princess from Princess-and-the-Frog,” and he kissed her, and they had never kissed before, and they explored each other’s mouths much as they had explored the house, with false bravado, and growing confidence, and some unspoken sense of dread. They pushed their tongues deep into each other’s dark spaces. And slept at last. And dreamed of ghosts. And of what ghosts could even possibly be.
ii
So this is where you are! I couldn’t find you! I didn’t know where you could be, I thought maybe you were in the maze. You know, that maze I made for you, with all those tall hedges, cylindrical archways, and any number of delightful red herrings. The maze, yeah? I thought, they’re playing in the maze, it’s easy to get lost in the maze, what a hoot! So I waited for you at the exit, I thought you’d come out eventually, I’d surprise you by saying boo! And I waited quite a long time, and one day I thought to myself, you know what, I don’t think they’re in this maze at all. The maze I made for them. So where could they be?
I felt a bit of a prawn, I must say, waiting outside a maze for six months all primed to say boo. Getting the exact facial expression right. I got a bit bored. I made a lot more cancers and viruses to keep my mind occupied. Oh, and I made the antelope extinct. Hope it wasn’t a favourite.
But, no,
you’ve found the house! And good for you. Oh, did I say that you shouldn’t come to the house? Did I? Doesn’t sound like me, hang on, trying to think, no. No, I can’t imagine why I would have said that. You want a house, with what, rooms and floorboards and curtains and shit, then you go for it. Much better than a maze. Really, fuck the maze. I want to hear you say it. Say it with me. Fuck the maze. Fuck the maze. That’s it, so you can see, I’ve no problem with the maze at all. I’m not even kidding! You have whatever you like, I never want to hold you guys back, I love you, I’m crazy about you. You have your house, a house with a roof to keep the rain off.
(In fact, sorry about the rain. Not quite sure what that’s about. Very frustrating, must be leaking somewhere up there, the sky’s cracked, got to be. And yeah, I can hold the rain back, but the thought of that crack, at that poor cowboy workmanship, it makes me a bit cross, quite angry, and when I get angry, it seems to rain all the more, and you know what? It’s a vicious circle.)
And you’ve found the wardrobes! Picking through the cupboards as if they’re yours, and they are yours, of course they are. Look at you, Cindy, no, I mean, look at you. All those dresses, all those shoes. That skirt, ha, that doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination, ha, that really emphasizes your, um, ha, hips, ha ha! And make-up too. Though? If I can? Make a suggestion? The lipstick. Goes on the lips. Hence the name, yeah. . . . And you, erm, Steve, you look nice too.
No, not all the house is haunted. Did I give you? That impression? No, the kitchen’s fine. The bedroom’s fine. The sitting room, fine. Bathroom, ha, there are no bogeymen lurking behind the toilet cistern. No, it’s the attic. It’s the attic that has all the ghosts in. You haven’t found the attic yet? You didn’t know there even was an attic? Well, there is. I wouldn’t go looking for it, though. No good will come of it. Sometimes you stand underneath that attic, at the right spot, you can feel the temperature drop, there’ll be a cold chill pricking over your skin. There’ll be a sickness in your throat, your heart will start to beat uncomfortably fast. Listen hard enough, press your ears up to the ceiling, you can hear whispers. The whispers of the dead. No, I wouldn’t bother, you just stick with your mercifully spook-free lavatory, you’ll be fine.
Is that the time? I should go. It’s a long way back to the garden, and it’s getting late. No, how kind, shouldn’t stay for dinner, maybe next time. But how kind. What a kind thought. How lovely. I’ll get back to my maze, my silly little maze, that’d be best. Better hurry, it’s pissing down out there.
Night-night then. You be happy. Be happy, and stay happy. You both mean the world to me. Night-night, sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
It took them four days to find the attic. It was difficult. No matter whereabouts they stood they felt no chill or nausea, and their heartbeats remained frustratingly constant. Eventually it took Cindy balanced upon Steve’s finer shoulders, reaching up and prodding at the ceiling—a painstaking operation, and one that took a lot of straining and swaying—before Cindy said that beneath the wallpaper she felt something give. They cut away the wallpaper with a kitchen knife. They exposed a hatchway—small, neat, perfectly unassuming.
It hadn’t been opened in a long time. No matter how much Cindy pushed at it just wouldn’t move; Steve at last had to help, crouching down with Cindy on his shoulders and then springing up tall, sending his wife fast up in the air and using her as a battering ram.
The rather dazed Cindy poked her head through, and Steve called up, “Can you see anything? Can you hear anything?” Cindy remembered the fairy tales she’d been told, Jack climbing his way up a beanstalk to dangers unknown, Aladdin lowered into the darkness whilst his uncle stayed safe up top. “No, nothing,” she said. Steve got up on to a table and climbed through the hatchway after her. There were a few nondescript boxes piled up, mostly cardboard; they contained years old fashion magazines, clothes, toys, a stamp collection, stuff. If there was a chill, it was only because they were away from the central heating. If there was a whispering, it was just the lapping from inside the water tank, or the sound of wind playing against the roof.
And if they were disappointed, neither Cindy nor Steve said they were. They went back to their ordinary lives. Cindy learned how to use the kitchen, she’d make them both dinner from tins she found in the cupboard. Steve found a DIY kit, and would enjoy banging nails into things pointlessly with his hammer.
And in bed they continued to explore each other’s bodies. Steve discovered that Cindy enjoyed it when he nibbled on her breasts, but that he should stop well short of making the blood thing leak out; for her part, Cindy quickly learned that sucking at appendages rather than biting down hard and chewing was always a more popular option. They examined and prodded at each and every one of their orifices, and into them would experiment inserting opposing body parts; they found out that no matter what they tried to stick up there, be it tongue, finger or penis, the nostrils weren’t worth the effort. And soon too they realized that it was better to do all of these things in the dark, where the ridiculous contortions of facial expressions on their spouse’s face wouldn’t put them off.
They listened out for the ghosts. They never heard them.
One night Steve woke from his sleep to find Cindy wasn’t there. He put on his favourite silk dressing gown from the wardrobe, went to look for her. At last he found her in the attic, sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth as she cried so hard. At his approach she started, turned about, looked at him with startled teary eyes. “Where are our ghosts?” she begged to know. “Where’s the chill, the sickness in my stomach? I can’t feel anything. Why can’t I feel anything at all?”
iii
You were thinking of a nursery, right? The attic for a nursery, that was the plan?
Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to make you jump! Coming round unannounced, very rude, but I tried the doorbell, and there was no answer, and I thought, shall I just pop in anyway, why not, good friends like us don’t need to stand on ceremony. I can see why you didn’t hear me. You’re pretty busy. Pretty . . . entwined, there.
Don’t stop on my account. I can wait. You finish off, I don’t mind, I’ll watch. Oh. Oh. Suit yourselves.
Speaking of which! I can see that you’ve discovered the joys of sex. Which is nice. I’m a little surprised, ha, by your choice of partners, I mean, doesn’t it strike you as a bit incestuous? You crazy kids, what will you get up to next! I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all. I mean, it makes me wonder why I invented the zebu in the first place, you don’t fancy the zebu, all those dewlaps? It could have been a baby zebu that’s growing inside your stomach this very moment, imagine what that would have looked like!
Oh, you didn’t realize? Yeah, you’re pregnant. Congratulations! Some men don’t like women when they’re pregnant, but Cindy, I must say, you look great, all shiny and hormonal like that, all your body parts swelling every which way. And yeah, well done too, Steve, yeah. And you’re going to need a nursery. Which is why, I’m sure, you had only the best intentions when you ignored my advice and went up into the attic. And why not, good choice. Babies are great, but take it from me, they’re annoying, they cry a lot, there’s a lot of noise and sick, keeping the baby up in the attic out of earshot is a good plan. Clear away the boxes, there’ll be room up there for all those baby things babies seem to like. It’s all just junk, there’s nothing in there to worry about.
Except, of course, for that one box. The one with the padlock on. Now, you two and I have had a bit of a laugh, haven’t we? It’s all been fun. But this time I’m really telling you. It’s a padlock. That’s a big fucking hint. You are not to open the box. You are not to open the box. I forbid it. I absolutely forbid it, and yes it’s a law, it’s an order, it’s a commandment from up high. Leave the box alone. No matter what you hear inside. No matter what the ghosts inside the box say to you.
Lightening the mood!—any ideas for a name for the baby yet? No? Well, I’m just saying. You want to name it after me, you can. Ca
ll it God, or Lord, or Jehovah, or some such, and I’d be honoured.
The daffodils are out. They look beautiful.
Well, I can see you have things to do. Some of which will no doubt make you drowsy, you’ll be wanting to sleep soon. So, you know. Night-night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. No, I really mean it, I’m not sure, but I think I put cancer in a few of them, the bedbugs are riddled with cancer. You see a bedbug, you run.
So they smashed the padlock, and straightaway they heard them, the whispers inside—and there were so many, there was so much chatter, the conversations were all overlapping so they couldn’t make out what was being said! “Open the box!” said Cindy, too eagerly, and “I’m trying!” Steve snapped back, and it seemed such a fragile little box, but now the lid was heavy, they pulled together and the lid raised an inch, and husband and wife had to prise their fingers painfully into the little gap to stop it from shutting again. And the whispers seemed so loud now, how could they not have heard the ghosts before? And they both felt a bit ashamed of that. Ashamed that they’d been carrying on with their lives quite pleasantly, cooking and hammering and shagging away, and had never paid the ghosts any attention. Cindy looked at Steve, and smiled at him, and thought, I wonder if I’ll find someone new to talk to. And Steve looked at Cindy, smiled back, thought, I wonder if their orifices will be prettier. Because they both loved each other, they knew they did; but how can you tell what that love is worth if you’re nothing to compare it to?
Remember Why You Fear Me Page 39
