Under stone

I’ve seen writers post citing ‘Macabre Monday’. I don’t know what it is or where, but here is a short story that might fit. I am certain it’s Monday, if nothing else.

There was something under the stone at the bottom of the garden, where the vegetation hung damp and heavy. She heard it whispering when she tended the roses, the beautiful roses that marked the boundary between the tame and the unsettling gardens. The stone covered an old well. The landlord had said not to touch it. The well was deep and dangerous.

Through the dull foliage of the rhododendrons with their impossibly exotic flowers, there was a wall, and beyond the wall was the road where no one passed. And beyond the road was the sea.

The house was old, squat and ugly, but it was cheap and quiet, and that had been what was most important to them when they were ridiculously in love. But that interlude was over, he had gone and she was alone with the squat ugly house and the dripping rhododendrons. And the whispering at the bottom of the garden. He had gone. Not left, just gone, and that was what troubled her.

When she had begun to notice the holes in the weave, the faded colours, the little snags in the fabric of their love, she had told him. He had smiled in a way that he thought radiated concern but she saw only condescension, and he had taken her hands.

Don’t worry, he’d said, it will pass, blow over like a rain shower. You’ll see.

He hadn’t understood. It irritated, then angered her that he expected her to make do with something in tatters, that he refused to see what she saw so clearly, the overness of it. He pottered about at his painting, his roses, but she couldn’t settle to work. He talked about babies, a family, and she screamed at the blank sheet that his presence had drained of its words. He wouldn’t understand, so she had had no alternative.

She was more restless than usual that evening. The sun was setting in a pool of blood, and the wind brought the sound of the heaving waves into the house. She even heard the whispering of the backwash, though she knew it wasn’t the hissing of the sea. It seemed to fill every corner, and she strained to hear the words. With growing unease, she went round the small house, turning on all the lights, the radio, music in the bedroom. But the voices grew louder, more insistent.

The sun had set, leaving a deep red glow in the darkening sky, and the electric light dimmed. Imperceptibly at first, but as the dusk deepened, it became obvious how it was losing the fight against the darkness, and she watched fearfully as the shadows grew in the cluttered rooms with the squat, ugly furniture. The shadows deepened, the lights flickered and went out, and the whispering grew to an angry muttering. Something in the wordless jumble was familiar, a sound, a stress, a pleading, a cough of mirthless laughter that became a gurgle of drowning breath. She stopped up her ears.

The gurgle turned to a low murmur of reproach, and that was more than she could bear. Her nerve broke, and she ran to the front door. It wouldn’t open. She tugged at the handle, turning the key back and forth, but there was not even a tremor, as if the door had turned to stone. She flew through the house to the back door, and with a wild cry of triumph flung it open onto the night.

The air was full of the heavy scent of roses and the hissing, whispering sound of frothing foam that she knew was not from the sea. She hurried through the garden, making for the back gate that nobody used, and the road where nobody passed. She pushed through the dripping rhododendrons, through the roar of the surf and the angry muttering from beneath the stone. She cursed him for his pottering, tending his precious roses round the house and never attacking the jungle beyond, the rhododendrons that sprawled and crawled up to the sky.

She hurried, tried to run, but the gate receded, the garden lengthened. Rain dripped into her eyes, and leathery leaves whipped her face. Brambles caught at her ankles, and she winced with pain, stumbled and reached out to steady herself on the parapet of the well. Her hand flinched at the contact, but the stone was like an insistent hand. It held her fast, wouldn’t let go.

She lurched forward, but the bushes huddled closer, and heavy, damp fronds pushed her back. Her hand could not leave the stone. She felt its roughness sliding, slipping against her skin, almost like water gritty with sand, and the muttering became a roaring louder than the ocean. The stone ran a finger across her palm and the whispering in her ears was half-forgotten love words, bitter now, accusatory.

I had no choice!

She screamed but who was there to hear? That was why she had chosen this place after all, why nobody had heard then, when she took back her life for herself. She wrenched her hand away, and the stone tipped, fell. A wave of darkness swelled and poured over her, blinding her, filling her ears with its sinister song that had once been a love song. Water rose, not well water. The sea. A dark haunted tide was rising, carrying her away, drawing her after the dead sun and all the other deaths, of dreams, hopes, loves, returning her to the once familiar arms of the echoing waters that heaved at the bottom of the well.