A grin spreads across my face as I hear you jiggling your keys at the front door. You open it, knees shaking as you step out barefooted onto the doormat, with only your satin night slip to keep you warm. I can sense the goosebumps rising on your arms and legs and a pleasant shiver runs along the nape of my neck.
Hugging yourself, you take two steps forward as you gaze up and down, flinching as you step on a stone. As you turn back, you begin rubbing the lock. You think it’s bulbous nose, your colleague, but when the morning comes, you will know it’s me. After that, I will see your fear – the fear that your past will be revealed for the world to know. I grip the precious photo in my pocket, the one that will ensure you’ll never say a word.
I laugh as you trip over your coconut doormat before slamming the door. The road is silent without a soul around. Curtains all closed and the wind howls away. No one is listening as I step onto the road. No one is watching as I stand, back against the wall, under your open window while you hurry to lean out for one last look. No one else will smell the scent of my vape as I blow the sickly smell upwards while I creep under the passageway that runs alongside your house. Revenge is sweet but I don’t want to achieve it too quickly, I want to savour every moment.
I button up my mac, ready to leave the passageway and work on phase three. The alarm on your house was a mere setback, but that’s all it was. Pulling the red stringy sweet from my pocket, I silently feed it through your letterbox, smiling as it drops onto the carpet.
Time to get on with the job. My surprise for Susie, that’s what I need to work on. I always thought that what she’d taken from me could never be replaced, but now I know better. ‘I’m coming for you,’ I whisper as I crack my knuckles.
Thirty-Nine
Snuggled up in bed, a thick quilt covering her and the television muted, Gina flicked through the items in the box that Mary had passed to her. The dark sketches laid all over the bed were sure to give her nightmares.
She scooped them up, dropping them back in the box. As a girl, Susan had been obsessed with doors, some of the sketches showing doors to everywhere, through long corridors heading in all directions, a bit likeRelativity, Dutch artist Escher’s painting; that’s what the sketches reminded her of. A door above a door, some open, some closed. Another sketch of an open door, then a set of stairs leading to three other open doors, ending with a closed door. She stared for a little too long at the last drawing, Susan’s most accomplished. In that, the final door was open and the gap was filled with the darkest of pencil marks.
She wiped her hands together, hoping to wipe off the smudges of graphite that had transferred from the sketches onto her fingers, almost cursing under her breath when she saw the mess on her pale cream-coloured quilt. Great! More washing. The ever-growing pile of laundry lying in a heap would probably reach the window ledge once she added the quilt cover to it.
Spotting Briggs on the local news programme, she grabbed the remote and unmuted the television, listening to his every word. ‘This is a brief statement and we won’t be answering questions at this stage. At Cleevesford Police, we can confirm that the body found alongside the River Arrow this morning was that of thirty-five-year-old plasterer, Dale Blair.’ He continued appealing for any witnesses before offering sympathies to his friends and family. She muted the television again as he gathered his notes from the lectern, Annie from Corporate Communications disconnecting his microphone. He loosened his tie then the news quickly cut to something involving aKeep Warwickshire Tidycampaign.
She felt a heaviness wash through her as she finished her wine in the hope that it would help her sleep. It had been a long day. A murder, two house searches, back and forth to Mary’s house and now this box, expressions of a troubled teen mind. Gina wondered if the doors Susan had drawn were a metaphor for something.
The doors didn’t seem to open to anything inviting and the drawings show the final door opening and there being nothing but darkness. What was that darkness? Maybe Susan wishes she never opened the last door. Are the doors real? Maybe she’d drawn a real place, somewhere she stayed when she ran away.
As Gina rifled through the last of the folded up poems, a small piece of red liquorice fell from a fold. She shivered as she thought back to the sweet they found in Dale’s bin. She dropped it back into the tin and snuggled a little deeper into her bed before throwing the last sketch into the box. She stared as it sat on the top of the pile, inviting her to pick it up again and join it in all its misery. Grabbing the drawing, she turned it over. It was beyond creepy, pulling her eyes through those doors into the infinite dark void. It was like it wasn’t giving her a choice but to make the journey through the dark corridor, to the final door. She grabbed Susan’s poem,The Secret Doorand the final line made her stomach flutter.
You opened the door. It’s your fault and no one must ever know.
She picked up the photo of the three teenagers and looked deeply into the unidentified girl’s eyes. Words that came to mind were frail, underdeveloped, childlike; as if pleading for someone to take her away from something. Gina shook her head and put the box on the floor along with the photo. Reading too much into it all at such a late hour was going to do her no good, she needed to sleep.
Ebony crept in through her open bedroom door and jumped onto the bed, stretching for a moment and digging her claws into the bedding as she made her own little bed before curling up by Gina’s feet.
Turning everything off, she lay on her side, allowing the wine to work its hypnotic magic.
Forty
Saturday, 16 November 2019
The door slammed behind Gina. She turned and grappled with the handle – locked. Barefooted, running along the sterile white corridor, she searched for a way out but she had come through the only door. Shivering, she tried to pull the short sleeves of the white nightdress further down her arms. Chilly, it was so chilly. Teeth chattering, she knew death would come knocking if the temperature continued to drop. Would that be the final door she’d ever open?
Her mother’s sobs emanated through the wall, drawing her closer to the end of the corridor. The strip lights flickered and the far one perished, just like she would if the temperature dropped any further. A frost formed on her face, she felt it hardening, making it impossible to shout or scream, slowly turning her into a statue. As she slid down the wall, another light flickered off. She closed her eyes. If the end was coming, she wasn’t going to watch. Her mother’s agonising sobs continued. After a loud click, she fell backwards into another corridor with another door at the end. She hobbled through the stiffness and banged on the door.
‘Gina,’ the voice behind it called. ‘Knock three times and it will open.’
Stiff, gnarly fingers, frozen to a curl tapped on the door as it was sucked into the air, vanishing into darkness.
‘Follow the light,’ the frail voice of her mother said.
A bed filled the centre of a dark room of which she could see no walls, only a darkness that never ended. White vapour filled the air, coming from the patient, hooked up to machines that beeped. Cold, so cold. Heart in mouth, gasping for breath, she approached the bed. ‘You never came to see me,’ shouted the patient as the woman turned, eyes missing, nothing but black holes.
Gasping for breath, Gina grappled for her lamp switch, knocking the glass on the floor, followed by the lamp. The cat meowed and scarpered across the bedroom, darting down the stairs. She stumbled out of bed, shivering as she turned the light on. Sweat drizzled down her forehead, dripping off her nose. She was safe and she was at home, alone and in her bedroom. She’d just lost her quilt to the floor, that’s why she was so cold. Her dream – it was her mother.
She ran to her wardrobe and with trembling fingers pulled out the little tin of photos and letters from her past. Photos of her and her mum together. Little things her mum collected, bits of ribbon and postcards from her travels before Gina had been born. Silly things like buttons and badges from her mother’s youth. Her mother had once kept this tin in a chest, one with a distinct woody smell. She lifted the box to her nose as she opened it and Gina could smell her childhood home along with her mother. One of the ribbons still had her mother’s perfume trapped in the fibres. In her mind she could smell her mother getting ready for a night out, wearing her favourite short blue dress. So pretty, so loving, she’d wrap Gina in her arms and tell her to be a good girl while she was out. She loved spending this time with her father, they’d play games and he’d let her stay up late while they ate chocolate and cake. She inhaled the unique blend, the blend of her family, the family she had abandoned for Terry. She slammed the lid and placed the box back in the wardrobe. She should have trusted her mother and ran back home, taking baby Hannah with her instead of being lulled into Terry’s world of abuse.
Choking up, she held her tears back. She didn’t deserve to shed any tears and grieve. That privilege was saved for people who hadn’t let their families down. She gulped in a few deep breaths, suppressing the urge to sob and smash up her bedroom.
She grabbed her laptop and stumbled back into bed. She wasn’t going to be able to sleep now. Her phone flashed. She had missed a call. Briggs. He’d tried to call half an hour ago. She would have been mid-nightmare. Maybe he’d hoped to talk about his television appearance. She pressed his number and held the phone to her ear. He would be just the distraction she needed.
‘Gina,’ he whispered in a gruff voice.
