SILENT SCREAM
SILENT SCREAM
A number of characters in my books have emitted a silent scream when something terrifying happens to them. In real life, I do not scream silently. In real life, the sound that comes out of my mouth when I see a face outside the window in the middle of the night is surprisingly high pitched and very loud.
The dog leaps off the bed looking terrified, but only because he has been woken from a deep sleep by a sound his owner has never made before. I jump up too, but when I look back at the window there is nobody there.
Fear is a shape-shifter. Mine soon turns into anger. Someone came in here and took those bones from beneath the floorboards, someone left an old article written by my wife for me to find, and someone was outside just now, in the middle of the night, watching me. I instinctively reach for my phone, forgetting that it doesn’t work, but who would I call if it did? There are no police, only Sandy. There might not be any crime on this island but someone is up to no good.
I’m not imagining it.
I look around the cabin for something I can use as a weapon to defend myself should I need to, and settle on the iron poker next to the wood-burning stove. Then I unlock the huge glass doors, sliding them open, adrenaline pumping through me.
“I know you’re out there. Show yourself!” I say, trying not to sound afraid.
I close the doors behind me to prevent Columbo from following, and step out onto the decked area, the roar of the sea suddenly loud in my ears. The temperature has dropped dramatically and the cool night air stops me in my tracks. Coming out here in just my pajamas wasn’t terribly smart. I spin around, like some wild, untamed creature—careful not to get too close to the edge or the steep drop it hides in the dark—but I can’t see anything. Or anyone. All I can see at first are clouds of my own breath. My eyes adjust to the light as I look up at the darkest of skies and then down at the unforgiving black ocean. The night sky here is so clear and the stars are so much brighter than I have ever seen them anywhere else. It’s strange to think that this spectacular night sky is always above us, wherever we are. We’re all just too busy looking down to remember to look up. The tide is in now and the sea, like my mind, is not calm tonight. I can hear the waves smashing into the cliff below, and a sentinel of trees swaying, creaking, and groaning in the distance behind me as though I have disturbed them. Woken them from their slumber.
I glimpse something move out of the corner of my eye.
A shadow darts through the trees to the side of the cabin.
I turn just in time to see that it is a large stag with huge antlers. It stops, then twists its head to look back at me from the safety of the forest, two enormous brown eyes staring in my direction. Maybe that is what I saw in the window?
Then I hear something else, something unfamiliar at first.
Somewhere deep inside the forest I hear what sounds like someone playing a harmonica.
I stand perfectly still and I listen and I’m sure I can hear someone playing “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone. It’s faint, and when the wind rustles the leaves on the trees, I can’t hear it at all. Am I imagining it? Am I hearing things? I remember the red harmonica that was on the writing desk when I first arrived and hurry back inside the cabin. I search everywhere, but the harmonica is gone.