Jealous Spirit

Jealous Spirit

A crash from downstairs startled me. I checked the time, 3:02 am. So as not to disturb Helen, I got out of bed quietly, put on my dressing gown and crept down the creaky uncarpeted stairs in the dark. I flicked on the light in the sitting room.

On the floor by the bookshelf, shattered glass and a broken picture frame. I looked round for what had caused the photo to fall. No sign of anything, but then in these old houses there’s no such thing as a true right angle, all the floors, walls and ceilings slope to varying degrees. It probably just slipped off the bookcase because of a slight slope.

I picked up the frame and looked at the now torn photograph of Una. It had been taken at a barbeque two summers ago, three months before she’d died and left me a widower. We’d both drunk more than we should have that day, and had a blazing row in the cab on the way home. Apparently I’d spent too much time talking to another woman. It was nothing unusual, I knew when I married Una that she had a jealous streak. I put the torn photo and shattered frame in the kitchen bin and returned upstairs.

As she slept, the yellow streetlight beamed through the un-curtained sash window casting Helen’s naked form in gold and black. So beautiful, so young and fresh, I stood, drinking her in, not believing my luck. What did she see in me? It was not what Una had known in our ten year marriage. Una and I were like two parts of the same person, we finished each other’s sentences, laughed at the same things. Helen was the opposite: a mystery girl full of sensation and surprises. How lucky I was that God had given me a second chance of happiness.

As I got into bed Helen stirred. “Where have you been baby?” she said in her sleepy little girl voice.

“Thought I heard a noise but its nothing,” I said.

“Ooh maybe Mrs Ogilvy!” she said, her eyes widening in mock terror. “Back from her watery grave and covered in seaweed!”

“And why would she do that?” I played along.

“Looking for the son who drowned her to inherit the house of course! Haven’t you read those old documents that came with the deeds? “

“I’ve read them. She was swept out to sea, it doesn’t say anything about murder,” I pointed out. “Besides that was over a hundred years ago. She’s not likely to find him here now is she?”

”I bet he killed her,” she whispered dramatically, “It says her body was never found. I bet you’ll find her bones in the cellar. I’m scared! You’ll protect me won't you baby?”

She flung her warm arms and legs round me and clung tightly. There was only one possible result when she pressed her beautiful young body against mine. We made love and in the after-glow I watched her full lips blowing smoke into the sulphur light.

“Will you marry me?” I said.

“Don’t be silly,” she said as she put out her cigarette, “Of course I will!” and with a chuckle snuggled down into me.

Her steady calm breathing told me she was asleep in no time, leaving me listening to the creaks and knocks that the old house always makes as the night’s cold settles in to the timbers and bricks. Staring at the rough oak beam above, I counted my blessings. How most men would envy me: a beautiful young fiancé and a big house full of character and history. I hated the thought of selling Blacknell House. In the months of hard graft I’d put into bringing her back from dereliction I’d got to know every dusty corner, every cobwebbed attic beam. I’d said it was a ‘forever house’ when we bought it, somewhere to live the rest of your days, but I guess that wasn’t to be.

*****

She brought me breakfast in bed. It was tea in a pot and toast with honey.

“Wake up sleepy man!” she said cheerfully, “We’ve got work to do if we’re going to make this place sellable.”

She sat on the bed and began to pour tea from the rose patterned Dalton China pot that had been a wedding present from Una’s mother.

“When we get our place, I’m going to have it all modern and minimal,” she said, “I don’t like this old stuff.”

A sudden crash as the breakfast tray was demolished by the heavy teapot and Helen was left holding the pot-less handle. She looked down at the soaking bedclothes and soggy toast. The silence was quickly replaced by her loud laugh.

“See what I mean?” she said “Out with the old and in with the new.”

She could be tactless at times.

We were spending Sunday morning sanding down the Georgian panelling of the master bedroom. Helen was removing the last vestiges of the ancient paint with a detail sander. Suddenly she turned off the machine.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“What?”

“I heard someone downstairs,” she said. “Didn’t you hear it?”

“No”.

“It’s a woman,” she said. “There’s a woman downstairs. Go see.”

I went down.

“You’re hearing things. There’s no one down here,” I called back up stairs. “Want a cuppa while I’m down here?”

“Love one,” I faintly heard her call back. The sound of the sander started up again and I went into the bare brick kitchen to put the kettle on.

Typically, Helen had left her shoes in the kitchen doorway. At twenty-six she was as untidy as a teenager. As I shunted them out of the way towards the wall they tipped over and tiny pieces of glass like splintered ice splashed out of them. ‘My God, what if she’d put them on?’ I must have dropped the frame-glass in them before I’d got to the bin. How did that happen? As I stooped to sweep the fragments into a dustpan, a stench caught my nose. The rancid bloody, meaty smell of a butcher’s shop was reeking from her dainty little shoes. I’d have to throw them away and buy her new ones. I couldn’t be sure that I’d got all the glass out anyway.

As I walked up the stairs with the tea tray I could hear that the sander had stopped again. Helen stood in the corner of the room; her sawdust covered face was white and drawn, in her eyes, unmistakeable fear.

“What’s the matter baby?” I asked.

Trembling, she pointed at the window. An invisible finger was writing in the dust that coated the glass of the top left hand pane. The unseen hand worked in slow deliberate wipes making letters that were small, centred and neat. A faint squeaking accompanied each stroke until the message read,

“L E A V E H I M”.

Quickly we exchanged open mouthed glances before our eyes were drawn back to the window. More letters appeared in the pane below.

“W H I L E Y O U S T I L L C A N “

Then in the next pane;

“B I T C H”

Helen was whimpering hysterically. “Make it stop! Make it stop!”

I was transfixed. I watched the remaining ten panes for any signs of movement.

With a thunderous crash the glass of all twelve panes simultaneously exploded into the room. A blast of frost-cold air followed throwing the fragments around like icy daggers. Instinctively I fell to the floor, my arms covering my head. When the shattering stopped I looked up. Helen stood bleeding from a thousand little red cuts. Her eyes staring off into some vision of terror held in the middle distance. Her mouth quivered. Slowly, I stood and spread my arms wide to hug her.

“No!” she screamed, ducking awkwardly past me and bolting for the door. I heard her clattering down the stairs and then the bang of the front door. I ran after her of course but she’d gone.

That evening I tried to ring her but kept getting voicemail. When I finally gave up and went to put the phone back in its cradle on the bookcase, I noticed that photograph of Una at the barbeque.

*****

Two days later that meaty smell crept back into my nostrils as I used a crowbar to pry off a board covering the chimney in what had been the washhouse. Amid a cloud of soot and dusty cobwebs a woman’s body fell out onto the worn oak floorboards.

I remembered how perfectly together Una and I were before we moved to Blacknell House. How did all that hope and optimism wither away? I guess the stress of living in the cold and filth and the money worries got between us somehow. Whose fault was it that we gradually stopped talking? In the end when she made her ultimatum I knew I couldn’t afford the mortgage alone so it was sell up and move out together, or sell and divorce. Blacknell House would be left to rot again.

It was those old documents and Mrs Ogilvy’s son that had given me the idea. Una’s friends and family had known she was unhappy. Her shoes, with a suicide note tucked inside, were found on the beach at Chapel Point. That was all it took to cover her half of the mortgage with the life insurance, and the House was mine.

“Right, you bitch!” I said, “This time you’re really going for good!” and I hoisted Una’s body over my shoulder and carried her out to the back of the car.

*****

I don’t blame Una for Helen’s departure anymore. On reflection it would never have worked. I realise now that she was far too young for me and that I could never have shared Blacknell House with another. I didn’t need Una or Helen for that matter. And so I live here alone in my old age and people ask me “Why do you need such a big old place?” They’re missing the point of course. I don’t really need Blacknell House but she needs me and she has a jealous spirit.

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