Chapter 17 Silas
SILAS
With a soft snore, Roxana rolls onto her back, pulling me out of my recollections. When I turn to her, my eyes land first on the midnight halo of her hair spread around her face, and then I’m struck by the vulnerability of her closed eyes and her plump, parted lips.
Suddenly, I remember how much I enjoyed watching her sleep earlier in our marriage.
That memory saddens me because even after all these years and even knowing what I know about her now, I still wish I could be married to that girl forever instead of the woman she has become, the woman she has revealed herself to be.
I miss her all the more for knowing that she never really existed, that I merely manifested a fantasy onto her that she more than encouraged me to believe in.
To distract myself from the bitter nostalgia pooling at the base of my throat, I let my eyes stray lower.
That’s when I notice darker patches on the fabric of her garment, low on her chest. I touch one, careful not to wake her up.
And when I take my fingers away and examine them in the dawning light, I see that their tips are smeared with blood.
A stampede of panic rushes through my ears, and liquid terror roars through my veins so potent that I feel lightheaded.
My chest hurts, and under any other circumstances, I would be worried that I was about to have a heart attack.
But under these particular circumstances, a coronary seems like one of the better possible outcomes for me.
Already knowing what I’m about to see, I hook my finger underneath the seam of her nightgown and lift it up to peek at the still-bleeding upper portion of an introverted pentagram that I carved into her skin.
Still in my flannel pyjamas, I rush outside with my coat thrown over my arm and my bare heels protruding from the shoes I hadn’t bothered to put on properly, the urgency of my need to be out of the house and away from my wife overshadowing all else.
For once, I don’t worry about not waking Roxana up, letting the door slam behind me.
A wet gust of freezing wind assaults me, and I decide to prioritise putting my coat on over fastening my shoes properly as I gallop down our front porch steps.
This turns out to be a mistake since I immediately trip over my untied shoelaces, tumble down and just barely manage to protect my face from coming into a closer-than-desirable contact with the cold asphalt road.
Even so, after I straighten up, I only stay still for long enough to push my feet into the shoes in their entirety and tuck my laces in around them before I’m trotting in the direction of the main campus area.
Same as every day for the past three months, the weather is foggy.
But the mist is so exceptionally heavy this morning that I feel like I’m wading through solid cotton.
No sound carries through it, and the stately crowns of the surrounding oak trees remain concealed even as I pass directly underneath them.
It would have been so easy to get lost if I weren’t so familiar with the route, able to walk it blindfolded, if necessary, with the direction of every required step deeply ingrained in my motor memory.
It’s nice to know that at least one area of my memory is unaffected, given that due to its outage in other areas, I don’t even know what day of the week it is and whether I’m supposed to be teaching. Not that I would anyway.
How could I, when I know now what I have suspected for quite some time, what I have felt viscerally to be true but refused to accept until confronted with irrefutable proof. But I cannot deny it anymore. I now know with absolute certainty that I am mentally ill. Unstable. Deranged. Dangerous.
All the strange dreams I had of late felt so much like memories because they were memories. Memories of what I do during my blackouts. Memories of who I become. And I become someone who cannot roam free. Someone who should be locked up.
I realise that I should get myself committed to a mental facility, that this isn’t something that a few sessions at a therapist’s office can fix.
But then dread descends over me, overshadowing all else. What if it can’t be fixed? What if I commit myself only to end up locked up for the rest of my life? How would that be fair? I’m a good man! I have never done anyone any harm! I don’t deserve any of this!
As I near the chapel, flashing blue lights invade the milk-white cocoon around me, muffled voices drifting reluctantly towards my ears through the thick, humid air.
I’m close enough now to see the outline of the chapel, square and inconspicuous, and to see the police cars parked at its front, officers in their uniform boxy winter jackets scribbling on notepads and walking in and out of the main door.
And as I dare walk a little closer yet, thinking about all the incriminating evidence and DNA that I inevitably must have left inside, my eyes land on another shape to the left of the general commotion.
There, protruding from the sodden greenish yellow lawn, is an ominous shape. One that used to be on the roof. Its shorter top end sunk into the moist ground at a skewed angle, one side of its crossbeam touching the tallest of the grass blades.
An upside down cross.
The sun is setting when I get home. Earlier, I ran from the chapel, out through the ornate campus gates, and up the narrow fell path to the north.
I have spent the whole day wandering amidst slippery crags and familiar cairns, gazing upon still tarns reflecting the steely grey skies.
I only descended from those solitary heights when it started getting dark, and it wasn’t until I reached our front door that I realised how very cold I was.
The house is silent, the ground floor dark and deserted. Sorely in need of a change of clothes since I’m still in my pyjamas—soaked with my sweat and the air’s humidity—I creep upstairs and only announce myself when I reach the landing and see light spilling from underneath the shut bedroom door.
“Hey, Roxie,” I call tentatively.
I’m scared. Scared of what she knows, what she’s decided to withhold from me. And most of all, scared of the reasons why she’s chosen not to tell me things while letting me brand her with a knife and do god knows what el—
“Gaaah!” As I think the word ‘god’, searing pain explodes in my head and I crash to my knees, clutching my temples.
The bedroom door swings open, and Roxana steps into view in unfamiliar underwear: black and skimpy with a lace bralette concealing her injured chest.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says, and in her voice, I detect disdain and disappointment.
“Who else did you think ...” I trail off as I comprehend her meaning. “Oh.”
She had thought, no, she had hoped, that I would arrive as the other me. As who I am when I’m not me.
I get to my feet, opening my mouth to confront her about her secrecy. But she turns around and walks back into the bedroom without another word. Despite the situation, I’m still a man, and—as any man’s would—my eyes stray down to her firm, heart-shaped arse.
My stomach sinks when I detect the fading purplish lines on it: marks I left on it with the cane during one of those episodes, nightmare-like, but all too real.
I follow her as if in a trance, my heart speeding up and the back of my neck prickling in premonition of something terrible that I can already sense is waiting for me beyond the door.
Only the bedside table lamp is turned on, and the curtains are drawn, so most of the room is cast in shadows.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust. And when they do, a blood-curdling scream tears from my lips, and I drop to my already battered knees for the second time tonight as memories crash down onto me from the heights of my oblivion.
That looming figure in the mirror, rising from the smoke, coming closer and closer to me. Short black horns, flaming red eyes, sharp teeth bared in a cruel gash of the mouth. Immense hands with long nails reaching out for me through the mirror’s surface.
I cannot escape him.
There is nowhere to hide from him.
He already has my body.
Now he has come for my soul.