The Forge: Fire and Ice

OUT OF HER MIND Danuta Reah

Words on a page, black print on white. Words on a screen, black print on a flickering monitor, safe, contained. He’s the shadow in the night, the soft footsteps that follow in the darkness, sealed away as the book is closed, fragmenting into nothing as the screen shuts down into blackness.

But now he’s seeping around the sides of the screen, bleeding off the edges of the paper…

The room is empty. The light reflects from the walls, glints on the metal of the lamp. The screensaver dances, flowers and butterflies, over and over.

The summer heat is oppressive. Laura looks out of her window. The small patch of ground behind the house is scorched and wilting, and over the fence, the buddleia that grows in the alleyway droops, its purple flowers brown at the tips.

The air is still and dry. The louvres are open, but the wind chimes she put there at the beginning of the summer hang motionless. She taps them with her finger, the gentle reverberation giving her the illusion of coolness.

‘You going to sit there all day?’

Laura jumps and turns round quickly. It’s David.

‘You going to be sitting in front of that thing all day?’ He resents the hours she spends in front of the screen.

‘I was just…’ She gestures towards the monitor where the screen saver dances in a pattern of butterflies. ‘It won’t come right. I need to…’ She can’t explain, but she knows she needs to keep on writing.

She must.

He is impatient. ‘It’s beautiful out there. I’m not going to be stuck in on a day like this. I’m going out. Are you coming?’

She looks round the room. Her study is stark with its north facing window and bare walls. Her desk is tucked away in a corner, quiet and secret. It used to be safe. ‘I have to go on. I can’t leave it now.’ And she can’t.

‘You aren’t doing anything. You’re just staring out of the window. Can’t you make an effort, pretend you want my company once in a while? I might as well be married to a machine.’ He’s angry and frustrated. It’s summer, a glorious summer’s day, and Laura just wants to sit in her study, staring at the white flicker of the screen, tap tapping her fantasy world into its electronic soul.

You married a writer, she wants to say. That was the deal. But there’s no point. He doesn’t want to hear it.

‘I’m going.’ He slams out of the room, out of the house, doors opening and closing with noisy violence. Laura lets the silence flow back, closing in on her, then turns to her desk. Her hand hovers over the mouse for a second, then she pushes it, and the flowers and butterflies fall apart, leaving just words.

Writing running down the screen. Just words on a page. And sometimes there’s a sound when the house is empty, a footstep in the corridor, the creak of a door.

It’s nothing. It’s imagination. He’s always been there, the monster under the bed, the ogre in the cellar. Just a shadow to frighten children in the night.

Only the footsteps are gone now, and there is no monster under the bed, no ogre in the cellar. She grew up and left him behind, only now… now there is something worse. Now he lives in Laura’s mind, on her screen, in the pages she writes. Now he hides behind the butterflies and the flowers that dance in front of the words. Or does he? She can’t find him. He’s gone. He’s somewhere else.

Outside her window, the butterflies used to dance on the buddleia, but now the flowers are dying and the butterflies have gone.

Laura is in the supermarket. She has decided to surprise David. Look, I did the shopping! He hates shopping. Mechanically, she takes stuff off the shelves, loads it into the trolley, a bag of salad, bread, eggs, milk, bacon.

The supermarket aisles are long and well-lit with rows of shiny tins and boxes reflecting the light into her eyes. Reds and yellows and greens, primary colours, nursery colours. The trolley has a red plastic handle and bars of aluminium and the boxes and bottles and tins on the shelves flicker as the bars run past them, like the flicker of the words on the screen. She can see the patterns on the screensaver moving and dancing.

Waiting.

She shouldn’t have left. She has to hurry; she has to get back.

The aisles are long and straight. Laura pushes the trolley faster and faster past each one. Biscuits and cakes. Tinned fruit and vegetables. Soaps and cleaning stuff.

And a movement at the far end of the aisle.

Who’s there?

She squints but the light reflects off the tins and the bottles, reflects off the shiny floor. She screws her eyes up, but she can’t see it properly. It was – just a flicker, a silhouette moving quickly round the corner, out of view, out of sight.

She pushes her trolley into the next aisle, and her foot slips in something sticky, something viscous, something that is spattered across the shelves and dripping on to the floor, red, dark, drip, drip, pooling round her feet in abstract patterns.

She stops, frozen, half-hearing the voices: ‘Look out, someone’s dropped a bottle of wine… better be careful… mind the glass… get a…’

She pushes past, the wheels of her trolley smearing through the red and leaving a trail on the floor behind her. ‘Hey!’ But the voices don’t matter. She has to get back.

The queue snakes away from the checkout. She pushes her trolley to the front. ‘Sorry, so sorry…’ as people step back, frowning, puzzled, too polite to object. She doesn’t have time to queue. She feeds her purchases through and digs in her bag for her purse as the checkout girl drums her fingers on the till and the queue stirs restlessly behind her.

‘…with a filleting knife.’

She blinks. It is the girl sitting at the till, her face hostile and blank. ‘What?’

‘Forty five. Forty five pounds… did he slash her?’

‘What?’

The eyes roll in exasperation. ‘D’you want any cash back?’

‘Oh. No.’

The car park dazzles in the sun, the concrete hot under her feet, the metallic paint of the cars sending shards of light into her eyes.

Night time. He walks the streets, he waits in the dark places. A silk scarf whispers between his fingers. It’s light and gauzy, patterned with flowers and butterflies. It’s smooth and strong. He has something else in his hand. It’s long and thin and sharp. It glints where the light catches it.

Someone is coming. The sound drifts around the roadway, loses itself in the darkness, in the wind that rustles the tops of the trees. It’s what he’s been waiting for, tap, tap the sound of heels on the pavement, like the sound of fingers on a keyboard, like the sound of knuckles against the door. Tap, tap, tap. And then there will be the other sound, the sound that only the two of them will hear, the sound behind her in the darkness… the soft fall of footsteps, almost silent, lifted and placed, carefully but quickly, moving through the night.

The heatwave breaks two days later. In the morning, the sky is cloudless, the shadows sharp as a knife on the walls and on the pavements. The buddleia, parched, droops down, the petals falling into the dust. Laura sits at the table crumbling a piece of toast between her fingers. The sun reflects off the polished surfaces, off the steel off the cutlery, the spoons, the knives.

David sits opposite her, immersed in the paper he holds up in front of his face. Laura stares at the print, black on white, words that blur and vanish behind the moving patterns of flowers and butterflies.

‘Maniac.’ David closes the paper and tosses it on to the table.

Laura looks at the crumpled sheets. WOMAN… KNIFE ATTACK. She grabs it and smooths the page out, her hands moving in frantic haste.

WOMAN KILLED IN KNIFE ATTACK. It was the previous night, in the car park, in the supermarket car park. The woman must have walked across the concrete that was still warm from the sun, her heels tapping briskly, the streetlights shining on her hair. Walking tap, tap, tap towards the shadows where the trees started, the trees that whispered in the night.

Laura runs to her room and switches on her machine. Her hands hover over the keyboard and then began to move. Tap, tap, tap. The words appear on the screen, fill it, scroll down and down as her hands fly over the keys. She writes and deletes, writes and deletes, but each time, a woman walks across the car park into the darkness where gauze and flowers and butterflies wait for her, fluttering in the breeze. And the light glints on something in the shadows, just for a moment.

The day greys over as the clouds roll in. The air cools, becomes chill. Laura types, deletes, types again. It’s no good. She can’t change it.

‘Still at it? You’ve been here all day.’

She jumps and turns round.

It’s David trying hard to be patient. ‘I’ve made tea.’

‘Thanks.’ She isn’t hungry, but… ‘Thanks.’

He’s made egg and chips. The chips lie pale and limp on the plate. The yolk of the egg trembles under its translucent membrane. She cuts the chips into small pieces, pushes them into the egg, watching the bright yellow spill and spread over her plate.

‘Egg and chips not good enough for you anymore?’ He’s angry again. He’s made the effort and she doesn’t appreciate it – doesn’t appreciate him.

She can’t explain. She can’t tell him. ‘It’s fine. Egg and chips is fine. I’m just not hungry, that’s all.’

He grunts, but doesn’t say anything. He’s trying. He’s making the effort. He shakes the sauce bottle over his plate. Smack as he hits the base with the flat of his hand. She watches red spatter over the mountain of chips.

‘Ketchup?’

She shakes her head. ‘Did you get a paper? Is there any more about…?’ About the murder.

‘No. Stupid cow, though. What did she expect, out on her own at that time?’

What had she expected? She sees the wine spilled on the supermarket floor, the drip, drip from the shelves, the bright red of the splashes. David lifts a chip to his mouth. Ketchup drops on to the table, splat.

She has to get back.

The dark footprints cross the paving stones of the alleyway, prints that look black and shiny in the moonlight, growing fainter and fainter with each step until they fade to nothing.

It is starting to rain. The drops make black marks on the dry flags. The drops are big and heavy, splashing up as the rain falls harder and harder. The footsteps begin to blur, and a darker colour trickles across the ground with the rain that starts to run across the path, across the alleyway, running into a black pool that gleams in the shadows. And the puddles cloud as dark streaks mingle with the clear water, running thick and black then clearer and faster, into the gutters, the drains and away.

The next morning, the sky is Mediterranean blue. The sun blazes down, scorching away the freshness of the storm. The air is hot and dry. Laura’s fingers fly across the keys.

David is the doorway. ‘It’s been on the radio,’ he says. His voice has the lift of excitement. ‘There’s been another.’

‘I know.’ She types, the words spilling out of her fingers. She can’t stop now, she mustn’t stop… and the rainwater ran across the paving stones…

‘Not the supermarket.’ David wants her attention. He has information to pass on, exciting news, and he can’t wait to tell her. ‘In the alleyway, Laura. They found her in the alleyway. Right behind our house! Last night.’

I know. But she can’t say it.

Three a.m. Something wakes her. She lies very still and listens. Silence. The wind whips the clouds across the moon. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. The curtains are pulled back and the trees in the garden make caves of shadow. They rock and sway. The branches of the cotoneaster scrape across the window. Tap. Tap. Tap. The alleyway is full of night.

David has been out all day, comes back to find Laura at her desk, the dishes unwashed, the fridge empty.

He looks at the screen. ‘Nothing. You’ve done nothing. Sitting there all day. I can’t do it all.’

Sorry. I’m sorry. But she can’t say it. Her eyes move towards the window, where the buddleia flowers droop over the high fence. A sudden breeze makes them lift their heads. A piece of tape, yellow and black, dances through the air and wraps itself round the stems, then hangs still. All day. She’s heard them there all day, behind the garden, in the alley.

Later, David relents. ‘I’ve made you a sandwich.’

She can’t choke it down.

‘There’s no pleasing you!’

She flinches as his hand brushes against hers.

His eyes are cold. ‘Out. I’m going out. If you want to know.’

She can’t worry about that now, can’t let it distract her. She has to get back to her desk, back to her screen. Nothing else matters.

In the distance, she hears the door slam.

Laura sits in her study. The rain started falling hours ago. She reads the words that fill the screen. She scrolls down, reads on. Her fingers tap tap on the desk. She looks through her window. Now, it is dark outside, the back garden, and the fence, and the alleyway all in shadow, empty now and silent.

She has to bring him back, back behind the screen, behind the words, behind the flowers and butterflies, safe and secure. He doesn’t want that. he is enjoying his freedom.

But there is a way.

She goes out into the corridor and opens the hall cupboard. The corridor is painted white, the walls satin, the doors gloss. The floor is polished. The light reflects into her eyes.

She opens the cupboard. She drums her fingers, tap, tap against the door. She takes off her slippers, and puts on a pair of black shoes, strappy, with very high heels. She has to fiddle with the fastenings for a few minutes. She stands up, tall and straight. She puts on her coat, a mac, light and summery. It will be no protection against the rain. She throws a scarf, a summer scarf, thin and gauzy, round her neck. Then she walks to the door. Her heels tap, tap, tap on the lino.

I’m coming.

The street is long and straight, with pools of light under the streetlamps, light that glints off the water as it runs down the gutters. And between the lights, only shadows. The rain drips off the trees. Dark and then light. Dark and then light.

I can’t find you anymore!

I can’t find you anymore!

She walks on. She knows he will come. He has to.

Her feet tap tap on the pavement, moving quickly from light to light. And then she hears it. The sound of soft footsteps behind her, moving fast, moving closer.

Something glints in the darkness. Something blows in the wind, gauze and butterflies and flowers.

David gets home late. As he comes through the gate, he sees a curtain twitch in the house next door. He hesitates, then walks up the path. His own front door is open. He can hear it banging as the wind blows. What the…? He catches it before it can swing shut again, stands for a moment, listening. ‘Laura?’ he calls, and again, more loudly. ‘Laura?’ Then he closes the door quietly behind him.

The house is silent.

He goes to Laura’s study. The screen flickers, the flowers and butterflies locked in their perpetual dance. He banishes them with a touch, and looks at the screen, looks at what Laura was writing, looks at the words that scroll down the screen.

The street was long and straight, with pools of light under the streetlamps, light that glinted off the water as it ran down the gutters. And between the lights, only shadows. The rain dripped off the trees. Dark and then light. Dark and then light.

I can’t find you anymore!

And then, over and over: No, no, no, no… down the screen. Down and down, no, no way, no way, no way. No..w no..w now now now.

Now!

He reaches out and presses a key. The writing jumps, fades, is gone.

The black screen faces him.

the end