Chapter 18
They do not go into the locked room, just the same as they do not go past the locked gate.
Your door could open for her easily enough, given that you have not implemented rust or barriers or anything of the sort, only the simple lock, but if she has not chosen to allow you free passage, then perhaps it is not in your best interests to allow it to her either. You do not know how much she remembers from the room when she wakes, but it seems to be far less than you remember when you return, if there is anything she remembers at all.
Instead, you stay just outside the locked door.
Your host stares at you, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, one of them gripping tight onto an apple that you are certain she has picked from your side of the gate. She seems…upset – that catchall word that means far too many things to accurately convey much of any of them. You press your lips together. “I sincerely hope you’re not intending to throw that at me,” you say, nodding at the apple.
“Why not?” she asks, eyes narrowing. “Are you going to fight me if I do?”
Your gaze returns to her face, and you meet her eyes. You are taller than she is. You hadn’t realized you would be taller than she is. “Wouldn’t you want to fight someone who threw an apple at you?”
Your host’s eyes narrow further until her gaze can only be called a glare. “Jamie will be very upset with you if you eat me. You should know that.”
If this wasn’t so serious, you think you would laugh, and as it is, a stumbling rolling rock of a sound breaks through your lips anyway. It makes your host step back in what you would guess is fear, and then she steps forward again, clenching her hands so tight that her knuckles begin to turn a bright white. “I’m not a cannibal,” you say, unable to keep the wry grin from one corner of your lips. “I don’t eat people.”
“You said you were feasting on me.”
“It’s a metaphor.” You reach for her hand, and she steps back, away from you. But still, you move closer until she runs her back up against the locked door. You take the apple from her hand and hold it in front of her. “This is what I eat,” you say, turning it in front of her. “Not people.” You sigh and step away from her, shaking your head once. “People have far too much fat content. You don’t taste very good.”
She continues to glare at you. “So you do eat people.”
“No,” you say with another shake of your head. “I was jesting.” You press your lips together. “But it seems to me that you will not listen to a good jest. You are just like your Jamie was when we first began speaking. You take everything so seriously.”
Your host continues to glare at you. “You know, it’s hard not to take things seriously when you talk with someone who tried to kill you.”
“I don’t remember doing that.”
“Well, you did.” Your host doesn’t stop glaring. It as though this is the only thing she can do – glare and clench her fists and be upset with you for something you do not remember (or even for something you do). “I can’t forget it. You tried to kill me, and you tried to kill Flora, and you’ve killed probably hundreds of people, and you kept them all stuck there on Bly, and—” She swallows once and shakes her head. “How do you just forget that?”
Your head tilts to one side as you consider. “I forget it the same way that you do,” you say, pressing your lips together. Hm. “I would sleep for a very long time, and while I was asleep, I would forget. When I woke up, nothing that happened before felt quite real. I wanted something. I expected it. I can’t even remember what it was that I wanted – my daughter, maybe.” You say this without the slightest hint of pause. You’d mentioned your daughter to Jamie, and you expected her to have mentioned it to your host. But you can tell from her little flinch of a reaction that she hadn’t heard of that at all. You continue anyway. “And every time I would walk, I would hope for that, without even knowing what it was. There may have been other people there, but I didn’t see them. If you were there, if I hurt you, it was not intentional, I assure you. I didn’t even see you. I only wanted. And Flora….” You press your lips together. “Flora is the young girl, isn’t she? The one who spoke of me as though she knew I existed, the one who gave you Shakespeare, along with the young boy?”
Your host nods once, abruptly. “Yes. Yes, that’s her.”
“I do not think I truly saw her either.” Your eyes narrow as you continue to think. “I only saw my daughter.”
“So you wanted to kill your daughter?” your host interrupts, her voice tight. “That’s worse. Don’t you see how that’s worse?”
You shake your head. “I only wanted to take my daughter back to bed with me so that we could spend time together.” You look past her and nod to the room. “I believed that I was taking her to be with me there. That is what I saw, and nothing else. That, and the path, and my daughter, when she was there. Nothing else.” Your eyes narrow in further thought. You can almost remember – almost – dragging people with you, people who tried to get in your way. But it is fuzzy at best, like static on their television. You can’t make out a clear picture. “I don’t even remember her name.”
You press your lips together, lick your lower lip, and then try to smile. “Come,” you say, gesturing with your free hand. “Walk with me. Let me show you around. It is not quite as terrifying as it is made out to be. I think you will enjoy it, if you would—”
“I don’t want to enjoy it,” your host interrupts, hands still clenched tight. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be stuck here when you decide that you are tired of living here, when you decide that you want to take me over.” She glares at you again. “Just because you like it here doesn’t mean—”
“I am not a beast,” you interrupt, staring at her, voice firm. “I know that you can see me, and I know that you can see that I am not a creature filled with base instincts following them in a rigid, unbreakable pattern without a second thought any longer. I know that you can see that.” You stare at her and look her over. “You asked me to be here,” you say, voice softening. “You asked. Do not act now as though you are innocent of everything.” You take a deep breath, stilling yourself, and then nod once. “Hate me all you want, but do not forget that you are the one who allowed me to be here. I did not ask. I did not suggest. You called me, and I was so tired of being alone. I thought—”
You shake your head. “Never mind what I thought.” It is that stubborn hope again, beating its wings in your chest, dropping feathers as it does so. It never beats too hard. Sometimes, it even sings, chirps a little melody that you think is meant to make you feel cheerier. And yet. “Come with me or not at your leisure. I’m already tired of defending myself to you.”
Dani watches as the lady turns and walks away from her, back down the hallway where it will fade into the tree-lined path, where it will fade again, eventually, into that jungle with no sound. Her hands ache from clenching. She feels as though she has received a slap to the face, even though the other woman hasn’t touched her at all, other than taking the apple from her, one which the creature still holds in a loose grip.
She looks almost exactly as Dani imagined her. Not the faceless being that she remembers from that time at Bly, not the melted wax creature with seaweed thin dripping wet hair and a soaking white nightgown that is somehow (thankfully) not transparent, but real flesh and blood. Dead flesh and blood, so likely not real, but Dani could be convinced that it is. The woman’s hand on hers had certainly felt real. As real as anything else in this mindscape could be said to be.
Dani shakes herself once. Wake up.
It takes far too long. She isn’t trying to come back to the land of the living, isn’t trying to make herself leave her mindscape. Not yet. What she wants is whatever part of her still thinks of the being as a creature to make up its mind. She holds tight to that thought because it is easier – she knows that is why she holds onto it, because it is how she has thought for so long. And even still, it is hard to think of someone who occasionally takes over her body against her will as anything other than a faceless beast.
But it is hard to maintain that illusion in light of the very real woman who has been standing in front of her, who has been speaking to her.
Could she believe that all of this is a creation of the creature living in the back of her mind? Yes. But does she really believe that malevolent faceless devourer would create a world quite like this?
The answer, surprisingly, is No.
A part of her is still surprised that there is anything so well-formed as the path lined with trees, this hallway that could very well have been in Bly, and the room beyond that is still locked. The creature she has been imagining would only have lurked beneath a lake in the back of her pond, and its wanderings would be the same as they always have been – just that ceaseless waking, walking through her mind, and then returning beneath its lake.
She hesitates a moment too long. The creature – the woman – reaches the part of the hallway that fades into the path, and she seems to move out of Dani’s view. Still wary, and still afraid, Dani chases after her, hands still clinched at her sides.
You are surprised when you hear your host running after you, and you stop, turning back to her. She still has her hands clenched at her sides. You think, when dealing with you, that might never change, that she will always be prepared to fight with you, no matter if you want to fight with her or not.
Still – she came after you. That should count for something.
“Wait,” she says, taking a deep breath and stopping just in front of you. “Wait.”
You do. She did not have to ask, but it pleases you that she does. Even if, technically speaking, it is more of a request than a question. “You have decided to come along with me?”
Your host takes a deep breath, stopping just in front of you. “I’d rather not, but you’re not really giving me much of an option.”
“I gave you the option to come or not.” You run your thumb along the flesh of your green apple – the one she picked and brought with her. “Would you prefer to have this back? You can, provided you don’t throw it at me.”
She narrows her eyes. “Why are you so concerned with having apples thrown at you? Has anyone thrown one at you before?”
“I don’t remember.” The answer is easy enough, as much as you don’t like it. You look away and gesture past you, to the path lined with trees, and then before you, to the hallway that leads back to your room. “I don’t remember much outside of this space, unfortunately. It is one of my deepest regrets.”
“More than killing people.”
You sigh. “Again, I don’t remember doing that.” You start on your way again, and the hallway beneath your bare feet shifts to the path you have come to know well. You don’t love it or hate it or have any particularly strong emotional feeling towards it. The path is simply there to be walked on. “Perhaps it would be best if we did not discuss that. Your accusations may have their roots in fact, but that means little to me if I cannot remember it. There is nothing more I can say in my defense and no explanation I can give. I have no intention of admitting to something I cannot remember. That seems a very good way of getting myself into trouble.”
When your host doesn’t take the apple back, you place it beneath one of the trees. You cannot tell which of them she stole it from and so cannot know to which you should return it. Wherever it is, there it is.
And so, you walk, and your host follows.
Dani follows the woman with her hands still clenched at her sides, ready and wary – just in case – even though, as they walk, there seems to be less and less of a reason for her to do so. The woman doesn’t seem to have anything specific in mind. She simply wanders here and there – follows the path for a very long time and then seems to step off of it.
“Where are you taking me?” Dani asks, finally, looking around. The fruit trees fade into the jungle, and she feels even more uncomfortable here than anywhere else. The silence in the hallway and on the path is one thing, but the silence here is so loud simply because it should not be.
“Around,” the woman says, as though that is supposed to be an answer.
Dani’s arms wrap around herself as they continue to walk deeper into the jungle. It’s the silence that gets to her even more than the creature does. There should…there should be something here, something other than just them, but there’s nothing. Nothing at all.
It’s unsettling.
“Where are the birds?” she asks finally, looking around and seeing nothing. “And the other animals? Are they all scared of you, or did you kill all of them, too?” She presses her lips together. “I take it you don’t remember it if you did.”
“There have never been any other creatures.” The woman continues moving forward, pushing through the jungle. “I am here alone with my fruit trees. There used to be a stream, but you dried it up.”
Dani blinks. “I did what now?”
“You dried up my stream,” the woman says without a hint of bitterness to her tone, even though Dani imagines that there is one there nevertheless. “You redirected it to make that great moat of yours just before the gate.”
“I don’t remember doing any of that.”
“And I do not remember killing anyone, and yet you insist that I’ve done it.” A corner of the woman’s lips curves upward in the barest hint of a smile. “Perhaps you and I have the same problem.”
Dani shakes her head. “There is a difference between killing people and creating a moat.”
“Of course, there is. I did not mean to suggest that those were the same. Only that you and I seem to have trouble remembering things we have done. Subconscious things. Ones that we likely didn’t even realize we were doing when we did them.” The woman pauses. “Have you seen the moat? And the wall?”
Dani nods. “They were just behind me when I entered. I figured you made them.”
“No,” the woman says with a little laugh. “There once was only a white picket fence with a rusted lock holding it closed. But every time you found something new about me to frustrate you, the barrier grew. Barbed wire, at first. Then the wall. Then pikes and a thicker gate. Now there is a moat.” She gives Dani a pitying look. “It doesn’t do you much good. I can still climb over it whenever I so desire. But it’s nice that you try.”
Dani’s eyes narrow. “Are you mocking me?”
“No. Only jesting.”
“That’s the same thing.” Dani feels very strongly that she does not like this woman. She doesn’t know if that’s carryover from not liking the creature that this woman once was – that a part of her still suspects she is – or if that’s just from their current conversation, from feeling as if the woman is constantly poking fun at her and trying to worm her way around whatever Dani is saying. Regardless, the woman makes her feel uncomfortable.
Out of her league, almost.
So, without thinking about it, and not to try and throw the woman off but to somehow quell the uncomfortable feeling she is still getting, Dani asks, “If you don’t mind me asking, what do you remember? You’ve mentioned some things.” She stops and crosses her arms. “What else is there?”
The woman stops abruptly and turns back to face Dani. “I do not think you have earned the right to ask after my memories,” she says in as firm a manner as she can. “I doubt that you would be vulnerable with someone who hates you so completely as you hate me, so please, do not ask that of me either.”
“You mentioned a daughter?” Dani asks as the woman starts forward again, and the words make the woman pause. “You had a daughter?”
This time, the woman does not turn back. “Yes,” she says, finally. “Yes, I did.”
Dani takes a deep breath. “What happened to her?”
The woman continues to pause. She looks up at the darkening sky and lets out a sigh. “I don’t remember,” she says finally, and she turns back to Dani, pressing her lips together in a thin line. “I think that’s quite enough for now. Time for you to go back.”
“Go back?” Dani asks, brows furrowing. “What do you mean go—?”
Then – it’s the same feeling, that same thrust that Dani feels when she is pushed out of the room, the same tightening on her wrist when she had been thrown from the room so long ago, although there is nothing touching her now, and all of a sudden, she is back, on the sofa, away from wherever it was she had been.
Dani blinks, staring out on the world that is the real world, and she takes a deep breath. How long has she been gone? How long had that taken? And, more importantly, how had the woman thrown her out so suddenly and abruptly? She closes her eyes again and tries to send herself back, but when she does, she finds herself on the other side of the locked gate, surrounded by other fruit trees – not apples, not plums, not oranges – but olives, coconuts, a really odd assortment of food that she isn’t sure she even likes in the first place and so is confused as to why they are growing here. She walks toward the wrought iron gate, grabs the trunk of one of the decorative apple trees, and stares through to the other side, where there is little space to stand before hitting the moat. If she really had constructed this, it should have had a drawbridge. Or perhaps whatever part of her subconscious had constructed it hadn’t considered that someone from this side would want to ever cross to the other, was only focused on making sure whatever existed across the moat was forced to stay there.
She closes her eyes and sighs.
Something lands on her shoulder, and Dani opens her eyes to a bluebird, tweeting a little tune at her before spreading its wings and flying off again deeper into the jungle on this side of the wall. Dani stares after it. She starts to follow it, but as soon as she steps foot into the jungle, a flock of crows startle, fly around her, and then into the sky, further into the depths of her jungle. She flinches.
Birds.
Dani bites her lower lip as she watches them fly away. A few feathers float down around her, and she picks one up, staring at it. The wind ruffles its tips as she holds it, pushing her hair into her face. She tucks her hair back and stares around her, watching the leaves rustle in the breeze. If she focuses, she can even hear the bubbling of a stream ahead of her, should she want to investigate.
She doesn’t. She opens her eyes and she opens her eyes.
The world is real and true and there. Dani stands and goes to the window, glances down to the sidewalks, to the snow piled up on either side, and sees Jamie just starting to walk up to their front door. She takes a deep breath. Good. Good. She isn’t sure she can handle trying to think through any of this right now.