PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (33 page)

Arriving
outside the shop which I expected to be an Estate Agent’s, I find a man outside
pasting a flyer to the window.  It says ‘For Sale’.  The man is crouching over
his bucket of paste.  He is elderly and hard of hearing as I have to say
excuse
me
twice.  On the second time, and after getting close enough, he hears me.

“Oh,
you scared me,” he says as he recovers from the unexpected intrusion to his
work.  He puts a hand on his back and unfolds himself upwards.

“Sorry,”
I say, and he reaches out for my arm and I oblige by helping him stand up.  I'm
not wearing any gloves.

“That’s
OK, no problem.  What can I do for you, Miss?”

“This
building.  How long has it been empty?”  I want to be very careful about
telling him what I think it was.  I don’t want to drag him into my ideas if
what I think is the truth turns about to be part of my own creation. 

“Oh,
only a week.  Family who own it put it on the market.  Wife doesn’t want
anything to do with it after what happened.”

“Why? 
What happened?”

“You
haven’t heard?” he says, sounding surprised.  “It’s been all over the news.”

“I
haven’t been listening to the news?” I say.

“Well,
the chap who owned it went missing, didn’t he.  They found his body in a ditch
couple of weeks ago.  Somebody had made a right mess of him.  Cut him from ear
to ear.”  The old man makes a motion of drawing one finger from one ear to the
next, dragging it underneath his chin whilst his tongue hangs out like a dog's
as it leans out from a car window.  I can feel the colour draining from my
cheeks, whitening from top to bottom, an incoming layer of mist.  “Sorry, I
didn’t mean to upset you,” he says, only now aware of my swollen stomach.  “Are
you OK?”  He steadies me by grabbing my arm, but I am nodding and taking a step
back, leaving the old man.  He looks at me with suspicion, the way he might eye
somebody who just told him he had inherited a few million pounds.  “Are you
sure you are alright?”

“Yes,
I’m OK.”  I fiddle with the key in my pocket, and eventually decide to keep it. 
“I used to work here, that’s all.”

“Shame. 
Real shame.  He looked a nice chap.” 

“Yes,
he was.”  The old man picks up his bucket and sets off back to his van, parked
only a couple of spaces away.  I look back through the window and I can see the
old posters of houses for sale strewn in rows across the floor all on top of each
other, already collecting a layer of dust.

When
I get back home Gregory is sitting as he was where I left him, but the
newspaper has been discarded and he is drinking a coffee.  It’s a new habit. 
He says he must always be alert.

“Are
you OK, Charlotte?  You look white as a ghost.”  He jumps up from his chair,
wraps me in his arms, sits me down protectively.  “Whatever happened?  I knew
it was too soon for you.  I knew it.”

“Stop
it, Gregory.  I’m OK.  I just had a shock that’s all.”  He stares at me, his
eyebrows raised as if waiting for me to answer.  “Stephen Jones was murdered. 
I think.”  He stood up, one hand on his hip, one on his chin, wondering if I
was hallucinating again.  Like I said, nobody believes a crazy girl.  “I went
back to the shop to hand in this key.”  I take it out from my pocket, hold it
up as proof of the reality to which I refer.  He takes it from me.  “There was
a man pasting a For Sale sign on the shop and he told me.  He was found.  In a
ditch.”

“Yes,
he was found.”  He began stroking my hair away.  “You poor thing, finding out
like that.” 

“You
knew?”

“I
had seen it on the television, yes.  And in the newspaper.”

“Why
didn’t you tell me?”

“I
didn’t want to upset you.  You know how things have been.”

“Well
I am upset anyway.  At least I would have known.  I think he was my friend.  I
think he cared about me.”

“Well,
it’s done now, Charlotte,” he says, straightening his tweed jacket.  He pulls
out the pocket watch that was his grandfathers and checks the time.  “Ishiko is
leaving in a few minutes.  Let’s not make a scene, eh?  Let’s give her a proper
goodbye.”

Gregory
helps Ishiko with her suitcase and loads it into the boot of the taxi.  He bids
her a polite farewell, pats her on the back and goes inside.  She watches him
as he leaves.  I am left on the step, wondering what, if anything is
appropriate for me to do.  At the last moment, just as she closes the door of
the taxi I rush out and tap my knuckles on the window.

“Ishiko,”
I say as I bang on the car.  She winds down the glass pane.  I take off my love
heart necklace and push it towards her.  She holds out her hand and I place the
chain in it.  I take my fingers and wrap them around hers, closing her hand in
on the necklace like a shell over a pearl.  “I want you to have this.  It is my
way of an apology.”  I had never put a photograph in it.

“Mrs.
Astor, you have nothing to apologise for,” she says as she opens her hand to
see what it is I have given her.

“My
behaviour was terrible, Ishiko.  I accused you of all sorts of things.”  I take
her hand again as if to emphasise my point before letting go, aware that I
don’t want to scare her.  She pushes her arm back out from the taxi and pushes
the necklace towards me. 

“I
cannot take this,” she says.

“Please,
Ishiko, I feel terrible for what I did.  I want to put things right, for all of
the things I did and said.  I....”  I push the necklace back into the taxi but because
she was trying to loosen her grip it drops to the floor of the car.  She leans
forward to pick it up and it is at this moment that I watch as her own necklace
falls forwards.  It was an exact replica copy of the one she was now holding in
her hand.  As she sits up the love heart locket rests into the soft section at
the base of her neck, the same section I had stared at so many times and
considered what would happen if I was to hold it and compress it.  “You already
wear the same necklace,” I say, stunned.

Her
big hazel eyes with their lightning streaks of yellow running through them didn’t
ask forgiveness, they didn’t say they were sorry.  Instead they taunted me, as
if to ask me,
you see, now?

“You
have the same necklace,” I say again.  She pushes my hand out from the window
and once again I am clutching my own version of the thing around her neck. 
“Ishiko, why do you have the same necklace?”

“Don’t
you see yet?  I thought now you would see.”  In spite of the tablets that I
have taken without coercion, my thoughts were running so fast through my mind
that I couldn’t remember what I was trying to think of half way through the thought. 
Ideas and thought processes stopped making sense, and instead my brain was
suddenly full of random motion, chaotic and anarchic.  I snatched at any
details as they flew past, moments with Ishiko, when she kissed me, when she
held me, when I smelt her.  When I saw them.

“He
gave you that,” I say.  Ishiko moves her head just enough to confirm that I am
right.  “You were sleeping together.  I did see you.”  She wasn’t listening to
me, and I watched her reach forwards and tell the driver to leave.  I grip the
side of the car, and as she reaches for the window button, I reach out and take
her hand.  It feels in this moment that perhaps we are sat together watching a
film, me for the first time, Ishiko for the one hundredth.  She already knows
the plot and didn’t need to pay attention.  “Am I right?”   She sits back, snatches
her hand away from mine.  She stares at me as if she has all the time in the
world to consider an answer.  She reaches across into her handbag and pulls something
out.

“Mrs.
Astor I told you long ago that you had to remember.  I know you tried.  I was
trying to help you.  But after what happened I thought it best forgotten.  But
now you see again,” she said, pushing a series of papers through the window which
I instinctively took, “and so there is no reason to hide the truth anymore.”

“What
are these?” I ask.

“I
never filed these papers like he told me to.  I told you once to beware the
truth, Mrs. Astor.  Maybe this time,” she said as she clasped her own locket in
her hands before once again looking at me, “you will actually learn it.”  She
tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder and he drove away, taking Ishiko far
from our lives, and yet I could feel her here all over me, swallowing me up
just as she had done from a distance on the day I first saw her dancing in
front of Gregory.  She was like a bug, crawling all over my skin, so invisible
that she was beyond swatting away, and yet I could feel her everywhere as if I
was charged with electric.

I
looked down at the paperwork.  At first it seemed like nothing of importance. 
There was a telephone bill, a charity invitation, one of my hospital letters. 
But then my eyes began to read rather than just glance, and I started to process
the letters on the page.  This letter from the hospital wasn’t mine.  This had
nothing to do with Dr. Jenkinson, or obstetrics.  It was addressed to Gregory,
and it was from a urologist.  An appointment for a vasectomy reversal.  His
appointment was May 6
^th
.  In two weeks time.

Images
from the back of my mind raced towards me, my mind playing out in fast forward
and rewind all at once.  Two simultaneous stories, sanity and insanity,
crossing paths and fighting for room.  Moments from the past.  The cold of the
water, the bump on my head, the headaches and throbbing that have plagued me
since my fall from the boat.  I see the redhead running after my father as he
scooped me up and took me to the water.  I can feel my chin bobbing up and down
on his shoulder as he runs.  I hear him tell me not to panic.  But then there
are waves that do not belong in this memory.  The waves hit the sides of the boat,
rocking me left and right and I am saying out loud that I am scared but I am no
longer a child.  I am a woman.  The fog is falling, wetting my face, blurring
my sight.  The rowing boat tips but it is not my father who tells me not to
panic as he inches forward.  I say over and over that I am scared but my father
isn’t there to comfort me.  Instead it is Stephen.  I grip the edge of the boat
whilst he talks to me and strokes my face.  The fog is clearing and I see he
smiles at me, his eyes guiding the way like the beam of a lighthouse for ships
to stay free from harm.  He says to me,
leave the past behind you.  Do not
fear it. 
He reaches over.  He kisses me.  He tells me,
come with me and
we will make it better.  Leave this place.
  He is pleading, I am telling
him no.   I am telling him I cannot because I belong here.  He tells me to
feel
the water
and I do.  He tells me
not everything has to die here in this
lake. 
He tells me,
I am here.  I will always be here. 
He reaches
out and places a Triquetra pendant around my neck and he tells me that the
ring is for protection.  Remember that. 
I hold the pendant tight and the
water doesn't feel so dangerous.  His eyes start to flash and I realise that
the fog has cleared.  What I thought were lights in his eyes are now the lights
of the taxi driving away and I realise that I am back in reality and that
Stephen is no longer here.  He is dead.  Just like my father.  Taken from me.  I
am holding my neck and watching the taxi leave my driveway, but there is no
necklace where there should be, instead only a heart in my hand amidst a pile
of letters. 

In
the hallway the coat stand hosts five of Gregory’s jackets.  I reach in the
pocket of the first.  Nothing.  The second.  Nothing.  Then I reach in the blue
jacket, the heavy one, the one he wears underneath his winter coat.  My fingers
slide around in the pocket until I feel the chill of the silver pendant.  I
pull out the necklace with the Triquetra knot on the bottom and I remember what
it stood for.  Three points.  Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  Mother, Crone,
Maiden.  Mind, Body, Spirit.  And a circle for protection.  A unity that can
never be broken.  I hear Stephen whisper that it is a
unity that can never
die.  Not even in death
.  I feel Stephen’s hands on my neck as he fastens
the chain.  He wanted me.  He begged for me.  He held me and loved me, and I
know now that he also gave me a child.  I remember what those hands felt like,
and why I craved them to hold me again.  This is why Gregory took him from me. 
First the necklace, then the man.  He knew I would remember.  In taking it from
me he gave the Triquetra a new meaning.  Truth, Clarity, Sanity. 

I
leave the love heart necklace in the pocket of the jacket.  I hear Gregory call
to me from the drawing room.  He asks, “Has she gone?”

“Yes,”
I say.  He thinks it is over.

“Good. 
That means that it is just us now.  She left us some lunch in the oven.  Shall
I serve it?”

“Yes,”
I say as I walk up the stairs.

I
file the papers in my bedside table, behind the drawer.  I leave the Triquetra
with them.  I place a small white and green capsule filled with lies next to
the necklace and count number one and know that the time has come for me to be
ready to start taking them on my own.  There is still a red stain on the
woodwork inside the drawer space, but I know now that this is not my blood.  I
abandon Gregory’s version of the truth, because I realise he knew mine all
along.