The Darkhouse Read online

  Scotty gets up and collects the dirty dishes and tries to move around us. When he passes me, I dance for him. I want desperately to grab hold of him and wrap myself in his arms. It takes enormous effort to stop myself, effort that feeds my feverish dancing.

  He doesn’t look at me, but continues on to the kitchen. Soon I hear water running into the sink and smell dish soap bubbling. I drink more wine and imagine the hot water bubbling over me.

  Marlie grabs my hands — my hands that are spread in the air waiting for someone to take them. Like I hoped Scotty would, she pulls me close and swings me around, turning me in the loops of an old-fashioned waltz. The smell of her hair and the feel of her hands and the warmth of her body make me ache and ache for Scotty. Like the music, Marlie twirls me in circles, around and around, barely missing tables and chairs and Biscuit’s sprawled body and Jonah’s tapping foot.

  She’s like the witches in fairy tales, enchanting and enticing us to our deaths.

  “Well,” Scotty says from the kitchen doorway, everything behind him clean, “I should be heading home now.”

  “No!” I say, unwrapping myself from Marlie’s arms so I can face him.

  “Sorry, kiddo. Lots to do tomorrow with the old man.”

  Marlie keeps dancing but flutters one hand at him. “Hey, Scotty, thank Doris for the wine for me. Tell her I really needed that. It really hit — the — spot.” She mimes hitting spots.

  Scotty chuckles. “Will do, Marlie. And thanks for dinner. It was delicious.” Scotty heads to the front door. “Good night, Jonah. It was a blast. Night, Gems. See you around.” Biscuit jumps up and follows him out.

  Panicked, I try to think of ways to stop Scotty, but my head is so fuzzed and warm that no thoughts come. I follow him to the door and watch him walk out to the drive.

  “Stop,” I remember I could say to him, “you didn’t ask Jonah about the hole in the cliff!” But Scotty doesn’t hear my imaginary pleas; he ushers Biscuit into the truck and climbs in after. He turns one last time and his expression is gentle and kind. He raises his hand to me, then slams the truck door and drives away.

  Instead of going to the living room right away, an unreasonable urge leads me to the back room. I throw on the light. Her things are everywhere: the bed I made for her when I invited her to stay, Jonah’s old clothes that she borrowed, her purse and its contents scattered on the floor, her computer and phone plugged into an outlet.

  My heart is racing and I heave and pant. Momentum left over from the dancing, from losing Scotty.

  Rage builds inside me. Mysterious rage, because I’m not angry at anything that I can name. I yearn to pick up her things and smash them against the walls.

  In a blur of not thinking, I push through the room, scooping away imaginary waves of air, and make my way to the box in the corner. Experiment LLB. I open it and pull out the green frog blanket and dump my face into its reassuring softness.

  My shoulders buckle as I sob. But it’s not real sobbing. Another part of me is laughing. And so I sob and laugh and bury my face in the blanket.

  It’s all so strange. So ridiculous.

  Then another unreasonable urge takes over. I don’t care anymore.

  The living room flickers with firelight. Jonah and Marlie sit together on the couch drinking wine. Jonah listens to Marlie and nods as if hers is the most important talk he’s ever heard. Like she’s offering original ideas on Darwin or something. When he speaks, his words come out, like Marlie’s, mushed and unclear.

  I say, my voice also unrecognizable, “What’s Experiment LLB?” Jonah hardly seems to hear me, but raises his eyebrows at Marlie as if he’s waiting for her to answer.

  Marlie says, “It’s so cool you do experiments.” Jonah gives a tight and unfocused smile — the kind people give when they’re not really listening. “I love that,” Marlie says.

  “No.” I wave the green frog blanket at him. “The box with the green baby blanket in it.” The wine spins me around. “What is that experiment?” I throw the blanket at him, but it just plops to the ground. I want to laugh hysterically.

  Marlie looks at me, then at the blanket. She wears a sloppy grin on her face, and I can see she also wants to laugh but is stopping herself.

  “What’s in the hole?” I say to Jonah. His attention fixes on Marlie’s knee, the one closest to him. I say, “What is it? The hole?” Like them, my words come out like mush. “Is it a secret?”

  “Yeah, what was that?” Marlie says, rolling her eyes. “He kept digging and digging at that hole.”

  “No,” I say. “The hole in the rock. In the cliff.”

  Marlie says, “It really freaked us out.”

  Jonah, his eyes unfocused and wandering, tips his glass of wine at Marlie.

  It’s like I’m in another world, trying to speak through the atmosphere. I turn my back on them, sick and exhausted all at once.

  The coldness of the bathroom floor startles me awake. I stare at the intricate design of black and white mosaic tiles. I don’t remember how I got here. The tiles dig into my face and, when I get up and look into the mirror, I see their imprint on my cheek.

  My mouth is dry but my head has stopped spinning. I wonder how late it is.

  I creak open the bathroom door, afraid to alert Jonah, or anyone. I want desperately to get back into my bed and burrow into its warmth. In the hall, I notice that Jonah’s bedroom door is still open. The muffled sound of a woman crying surprises me.

  The sound draws me to the top of the stairs and then down enough of them to peer into the living room. The reflection of the ebbing fire flickers orange on the walls. Shadows repeat the shapes of the chair and couch and double up the picture frames. The living room — in color and in dark.

  The muffled crying gets clearer as I creep closer, and the stairway becomes a tall, skinny peephole. Through it I see:

  Marlie, tears streaking her face like cracks in a bowl, bends over Jonah. She pulls at his clothes and kisses his mouth, and Jonah leans away, his hands in the air, not sure what to do. Then he kisses her too and now he touches her body. Cautious, unsure. Not a scientist anymore. Firelight shines on them. It scratches over their clothing and then over their naked skin.

  Ipush myself into my closet and curl into a ball on the pillow beside Aidie.

  Aidie has her mouth open in a scream. She screams so loudly no one can hear it.

  I try to make sense of what I saw. Not what Jonah and Marlie were doing, but what it means to them. What it means to my future.

  Aidie balls her fists and pounds them into her belly. She pounds them against the wall.

  “Stop it, Aidie.” I try to pull her hands to stillness, but she fights me.

  What’s happening, what’s happening. Her eyes are crazy.

  “Don’t worry,” I say to calm her. “We’ll figure it out.”

  Aidie’s face strains with red and the veins around her eyes worm up. She screams again, and the sound drives into my mind. I’m about to clamp her mouth shut, but Aidie takes a gulp of air — and then she bites down. Just as abruptly, as if she’s bitten fishing line to release the catch, the struggle against me is over. Relieved by the quiet, I relax my grip on her.

  Aidie turns to face me and her eyes light into mine. She says in a low, clear voice, Jonah did it.

  “What?”

  You saw him. The way he looked at her. He was planning it.

  “No, Aidie. He wouldn’t know how to plan that.”

  He pays too much attention to her. Makes special drinks. Makes small talk. He doesn’t work in his lab so much.

  “It’s because he’s lonely. Like you said.”

  He’s planning something. He’s going to hurt her.

  My body braces. “What are you talking about? This is what you wished for, Aidie. He and Marlie are falling in love. It’s going to be wonderful, remember?”

  Aidie looks at me with sorry eyes. You don’t know what being in love means.

  Anger floods me. “No, you don’t know w
hat love means, Aidie.” I lurch to my feet and tower over her. “You live in a closet.”

  He said he left you with her when you were a baby.

  I lower my hand. “What?”

  He was on the island for seven months by himself before he brought you here. He told everyone he left you with your mother so he could find a safe place to live. You were alone with her the whole time he was gone. Nothing happened to you.

  “Because she got worse when he went back to get me.”

  Scotty said there were no Hubbs anywhere. No Shannon Hubb —

  I clap my hands over my ears.

  And no Jonah either. The islanders always say, “It’s a good thing Jonah had his papers so he could take over the ferry when Henry Jasper passed.” Where did he get his papers if Scotty couldn’t find any sign of him anywhere?

  “Scotty didn’t look everywhere. He missed a place.” It feels treacherous to doubt Scotty. “Or,” a new thought occurs, “maybe Jonah made up all the names. To protect us.”

  Jonah is making everything up.

  “You’re just saying that because you’re angry.”

  You have to get out of here, Gemma. Like that girl said last year — you have no future here. You’re just one of Jonah’s voles.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  Because now I remember.

  “Remember what?”

  That he hurts people. He hurt you.

  “He didn’t hurt me, Aidie!” Without meaning to, I glance at my wrist. There’s only the faintest ring of brown.

  I reached across him when he was reading a case study. Stop, he said, his eyes no longer running over lines of text but stuck on one word. Only two long bones — my ulna, my radius — held the pressure of his squeezing fingers.

  And he hurt me too.

  “No, he didn’t!” I push the closet door closed, but Aidie pushes against me. “You’re crazy, Aidie!” I spit her name into the dark. “Nothing you say makes sense. Just like Jonah.”

  Aidie pushes harder on the door. I’m not like Jonah.

  “Go away.” I push back, but Aidie is almost as strong as me. I can hear her grunting and mewling. “I want you to go away,” I growl at her.

  Aidie cries through the door, I’m not like Jonah!

  How do you stop what you can’t stop?

  “I’m sick of you always being here,” I roar at her. “I hate you!”

  And just like that, the door closes and everything goes quiet.

  Out of breath, I slump against the wood. Tears I didn’t expect sting my eyes and I stumble, blinded, through the dark and into bed.

  An hour later, I hear the sound of the bathroom door squealing open and knees thunking to the tiles. Then retching.

  Waking out of a fitful sleep, I have to work to remember where I am. I sit up, my eyes adjusting to the dark. Across from me, the closet is closed.

  I push myself to my feet.

  The closet door is like the doors in dreams: a moonlight shadow in a wall of black. Somehow, I arrive in front of it. My hand is on the knob. The first time I’ve ever been scared of opening this door.

  Only one vision would be more terrifying than finding a monster. And that is to find what I see now: nothing.

  Nothing on the pillow. Nothing beside or behind the hamper. Nothing around my hanging clothes.

  Aidie is gone.

  The sound of retching rouses me and pulls me away.

  I step into the hall. Jonah’s bedroom door is still open and dark. Empty. The bathroom door is partway open, and I can see Marlie bent over the toilet puking.

  I let myself in behind her. She’s like a wounded rabbit in an open field. Any anger I held against her is gone. Any anger I ever felt is gone. I smooth Marlie’s hair from her face and hold the strands away.

  When I was little and got sick, Jonah would bring me down to Peg’s and I would stay with her nursing me until I got better. Peg is an excellent nurse: she puts a cool folded cloth on your head and lets you rest for days and days, feeding you herbal tea with honey and a bay leaf and two peppercorns floating in the bottom, and when you’re a bit better, toast with butter, and later mashed bananas. By the time Peg is done with you, you hardly remember you were ever sick.

  Marlie stops puking and sits back. She gets up very shakily and bends over the sink to rinse her mouth. She tries to smile at me through the mirror, but puking-tears are running down her face. They make her look terribly sad.

  When she vomits again, we start over: her thunking to her knees in front of the toilet, bending over and retching, me holding her hair back and out of the way. We work like that for ages, up and down, puking and waiting and puking and waiting, until finally her stomach is empty.

  Shivering, she brushes her teeth and says she needs to lie down. Because it’s closer and easier than climbing down to the back room, I escort her to my bedroom and help her into my bed. Like an unseeing invalid, she doesn’t protest, just lets me pull the sheet and blanket over her body and smooth it down.

  I go downstairs to grab a bucket from under the kitchen sink and get a clean washcloth from the laundry closet. On my way back upstairs, Jonah’s sleeping body catches my attention. He lies across the couch with the wool blanket draped across him. The dying embers of the fire light his face and his expression is slack and innocent. A face I’ve never seen on him before. A boy’s face. Or the boy inside the man. For a moment I stop and admire it. If Jonah has never had happiness before, I want that for him now.

  I leave him to his dreaming sleep and go upstairs to Marlie. I carefully dab her face with the washcloth, then push the bucket against the bed beside her. I’m about to leave and put myself in the back room to sleep when Marlie takes my hand and pulls me to a stop.

  “You want me to stay?” I ask. She nods.

  Even though I’m not sure I should, I climb into the bed beside her. I don’t know how to lie beside a real person, so I stretch out on my back and stare up at the ceiling.

  I wake out of my next sleep and find the silhouette of a person at my window. The sky beyond the silhouette is gray and still — so early, the sun is only starting to rise.

  I wish it were Aidie. Aidie, who knows everything about me, who loves me even when I’m dismal and sad. My only friend.

  But I know, even as I wish it, that Aidie won’t come back. Maybe, probably, forever.

  Loneliness gushes through me, rushing over everything and unearthing more loneliness. So much buried inside me, getting dredged up.

  I climb out of the bed and step toward the silhouette. It looks unfamiliar as it stands against the bluing sky. As I move nearer, I pretend this is Aidie grown up. A future Aidie who’s returned to tell me that all the worries I feel right now are nothing and will soon fade away. You’ll get over it, she might say. So many beautiful things will happen to you. And the loneliness inside me would dissolve and relief and joy would grow in its place. If I knew it would all be okay one day, I could stand anything now.

  Only when I’m close enough to touch her do I begin to see the strands of her hair and the color of her skin and I allow myself to accept that this is Marlie. A real person with no insight into the future.

  She stares into the yard, her face pale and her eyes glassy. I begin to realize she’s still asleep, like when I found her by the lighthouse and she spoke to me without knowing. I think of Peg’s stories about sleepwalkers, people who can get up and bustle about without any idea of what they’re doing or where they are, with no memory of it after they wake.

  I put a hand on her shoulder and say, low and careful, “Marlie? Wake up.”

  But she doesn’t recognize that I’m there. I follow her gaze into the yard.

  Jonah is at the open door to his lab dressed in his climbing clothes. While he often gets up early, it’s usually not as early as a springtime sun. He pulls an empty cardboard box off the grass and collapses it into a flat square and stuffs it into the garbage bin outside the lab door. Before the box disappears into the bin, I notice
black marker scribbled on one corner. I don’t have to look too closely to see that the writing says Experiment LLB.

  On Jonah’s back is a stuffed knapsack. Sticking out of the open top are rolls of cardboard sheets. He often special-orders large rectangles of white cardboard from a supply shop in Moncton. He uses them to track his experiments. When I was younger and they arrived in the mail and lay in bright blank piles on the table, I longed to paint them over.

  Now Jonah reaches through the lab door and pulls out a large shovel and pitchfork, then he closes the door and locks it. He walks away with the tools, his stuffed knapsack bobbing on his back, and makes his way down the path toward the Rock Pit.

  Curiosity and dread land on a scale inside me — first one side heavier, then the other.

  Marlie turns from the window, still without looking at me, and glides like an omen toward my bed and slips into it. She rolls away from me, away from the light rising through the window, and pulls the blanket under her chin.

  I follow quickly to the other side of the bed so I can check on her. She’s fast asleep now, as if nothing had happened. The rhythm of her breath is regular and even. Good breathing, Peg would say. I touch her cheek and the temperature feels right. I stroke my hand down her hair. So soft, touching it brings comfort.

  I go to my closet and find some clothes. Aidie’s pillow is still empty.

  I try not to think about her as I pull on my pants and a sweater, but words she would say come anyway: Sometimes getting mad breaks things that ought to be broken.

  But Aidie isn’t here talking to me.

  Irun downstairs and quickly pull on my coat and boots. Outside, I race down the path to the Rock Pit until I find Jonah on it, walking with purpose, using the pitchfork and shovel as walking sticks. He doesn’t look left or right or back. Dew-frost splinters under my feet, and I follow like a deer in tracks, far from him so he won’t hear it breaking.

  When Jonah gets to the Rock Pit, I crouch down into a bush, ducking my head so the thorns don’t cut me. He wedges the shovel and pitchfork under a rock several feet from the path, levering it up and out of the way. When the rock is flipped on one end, I notice it’s a very particular one, identifiable by a pattern of crystal on its surface that looks exactly like a smiling face. Squinty, laughing eyes; round nose; divots and flecks arranged into a friendly mouth. The upended rock teeters and wobbles for a few seconds, as if it’s trying to balance on its head, then slowly keels over. Jonah crouches and digs into the hollow and pulls up five or six smaller rocks. Then he reaches very deep into the excavated hole. With both his hands he pulls out a chest about the size of a tackle box.