There was no reply. She wanted to go and find him, but she was frightened. She was frightened because he had hit her again. It had come as she tried to question him about his wounds, after she opened the bathroom door and saw him applying salve to the burns on his hands, and the terrible one on his face. He had answered her question with one of his own.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about your visitor?’ he said, and it took her a moment to realize that she was referring to Parker, the detective. After all, how could he have known? She was still trying to come up with a suitable reply when his right hand had shot out and caught her. Not hard, and he’d seemed almost as shocked by what he’d done as she was, but it had been a strike nonetheless, catching her on the left cheek and causing her to stumble backward against the wall. It was different from the first time: that had been an accident. She was sure of it. This one had power and venom behind it. He’d apologized as soon as it happened, but she was already running to the bedroom, and it was a couple of minutes before he followed her. He kept trying to talk to her, but she wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t listen, she was crying so hard. Eventually, he just held her, and she felt him fall asleep against her, and in time she fell asleep too, because it was an escape from thinking about what he had just done. He woke her during the night to say sorry again, and his lips had brushed hers, his hands searching her body, and they had made up.
But, no, they hadn’t, not really. She had done it for him, not for herself. She hadn’t wanted him to feel bad, and she hadn’t wanted him to . . . hurt her.
Yes, that was it. That was the horror of it.
Now, as she lay in the darkness, she realized that her view of him had changed as much as he had. She’d wanted him to be a good man, or at least a better man than some of those she’d dated before him, but deep down she thought now that he wasn’t, not really, not if he could hit her like that, not if he was changing so dramatically. Sex was no longer gentle. He’d actually hurt her some when he’d woken her earlier, and when she’d asked him to be more tender with her he’d simply finished and turned away from her, leaving her staring at his bare back.
‘I’m talking to you,’ she’d said, and had tugged at his shoulder, trying to get him to look at her. She’d felt him tense up, and then he had turned, and the expression on his face, even in the darkness, had caused her to let her hand fall, and she had moved as far away from him as she could in their bed. For a moment, she had been certain that he was going to hit her again, but he had not.
‘Leave me alone,’ he had said, and there was something in his eyes that might almost have been fear, and she’d had the sense that he might have been talking both to her and to someone else, an unseen entity of whom only he was aware. Then she had dozed, and the dream had come. She couldn’t call it a nightmare, not really, although it made her uneasy. In it, she was trapped in a small space, almost like a coffin, but it was simultaneously larger and smaller than that, which made no sense to her. She was struggling for breath, and her mouth and nostrils were filling with dust.
But worst of all, she wasn’t alone. There was a presence in there with her, and it was whispering. She couldn’t understand what it was saying, and she wasn’t even sure that the words were meant for her anyway, but it never stopped speaking.
A noise came from downstairs, an unfamiliar sound that did not belong in the darkness of their home. It was a giggle, quickly stifled. There was something childlike about it, yet also unpleasant. It was a spontaneous eruption of mirth at a word or act that was more shocking than funny. It was laughter at a thing that should not be laughed at.
Carefully, she pushed back the blankets and put her feet to the floor. The boards did not creak. Joel had done much of the work on the house himself, and was proud of its solidity. She padded across the carpet and opened the door wider. Now she heard whispering, but it was his voice, not the voice of the others, the ones in her dream. Others. She had not recognized that before. It was not one, but more than one. There were many voices, all speaking in the same tongue, but using different words.
She moved to the top of the stairs, then knelt down and peered through the banisters. Joel was sitting cross-legged on the floor by the cellar door, his hands in his lap, tugging at his fingers. He reminded her of a small boy, and she almost smiled at the sight of him.
Almost.
He was carrying on a conversation with someone on the other side of the basement door. He always kept that door locked. It didn’t concern her unduly, not at first. She’d gone down there with him to help him bring up some paint during the first week after she’d moved in, and it had seemed to her just the usual clutter of boxes, junk, and old machinery. Since then, she had rarely gone down there, and always with Joel. He hadn’t forbidden her from entering the basement. He was smarter than that and, anyway, she had no cause to do so. In addition, she had never liked dark spaces, which was probably why her dream was troubling her so much.
She held her breath as she peered down, straining to hear what he was saying. He was whispering, but she could hear no response to his words. Instead, he would speak for a moment, then listen before responding. Sometimes he would nod his head silently, as though following the course of an argument that only he could hear.
He giggled again, and as he did so he put his hands to his mouth, smothering the sound. He glanced up instinctively as he did so, but she was hidden in the shadows.
‘That’s bad,’ he said. ‘You’re naughty.’
Then he seemed to listen once more. ‘I’ve tried,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it. I don’t know how.’
He was silent again. His face grew serious. She heard him swallow hard, and thought that she could sense his fear, even from her perch above him.
‘No,’ he said, determinedly. ‘No, I won’t do that.’ He shook his head. ‘No, please. I won’t. You can’t ask me to do that. You can’t.’
He put his hands to his ears, trying to block out the voice that only he could hear. He stood up, keeping his hands in place.
‘Leave me alone,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘Stop it. Stop whispering. You have to stop whispering.’
He banged against the wall as he began to climb the stairs.
‘Stop it,’ he said, and she could hear in his voice that he had begun to cry. ‘Stop, stop, stop!’
She slipped back into the bedroom, and pulled the sheets around her seconds before he opened the door and stepped inside. He did it so noisily that she couldn’t help but react, but she did her best to sound sleepy and surprised.
‘Honey,’ she said, lifting her head from the pillow. ‘Are you okay?’
He didn’t answer her.
‘Joel?’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’
She saw him move toward her, and she was frightened. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and touched his hand to her hair.
‘I’m sorry I hit you,’ he said. ‘But I’d never hurt you bad. Not really.’ She felt her stomach contract so hard that she was sure she’d have to run to the bathroom to avoid soiling herself. It was those last two words. Not really: as if it was somehow okay to hurt someone a little now and again, but only when it was deserved, only when a nosy little bitch asked questions that she shouldn’t, or entertained snoops in the kitchen. Only then. And the punishment would fit the crime, and later she could spread herself for him and they’d make up, and it would be all right because he loved her, and that was what people who loved each other did.
‘When I hit you,’ he continued, ‘that wasn’t me. It was something else. It was like I was a puppet, and someone pulled my string. I don’t want to hurt you. I love you.’
‘I know,’ she replied, trying to keep the tremor from her voice, and only partly succeeding. ‘Honey, what’s wrong?’
He leaned into her, and she felt his tears as he put his cheek against hers. She wrapped her arms around him.
‘I had a bad dream,’ he said, and she heard the child in him. Even as she did so, she looked down and saw him staring up at her, and for an instant his eyes were cold and suspicious and even, she thought, amused, as though they were both playing a game here, but only he knew the rules. Then it was gone, his eyes closing as he nuzzled against her breasts. She held him tightly even as she felt the urge to cast him aside, to run from that house and never, ever return.