evotion
by
Antony Bennett
Copyright 2012 Antony Bennett
Devotion
Geoff was lucky. He had escaped the crash without serious injury. A fading bruise on his forehead and a lingering black eye were the only outward signs that anything had happened to him. But Hillie, the hospital's senior psycho-therapist, had no interest in outward signs. She was convinced that damage had occurred on a deeper, less obvious level, and Geoff was growing tired of trying to convince her otherwise.
"You again," said Geoff, as she approached his bed. Her visits had become a daily occurrence during the past week.
"Me again," said Hillie brightly, pulling up a chair beside him. Her greying hair always appeared slightly windswept. "You're looking better this morning. How are the headaches?"
"Not as bad as they were."
"Well, that's a good sign. And how's your memory? Has anything else come back to you about the accident?"
Geoff gave her a wry look. "You don't give up, do you."
"How do you mean?"
"My memory of the crash is perfectly clear - as far as it goes."
Hillie paused. She wasn't insensitive. She was aware that Geoff was weary of her visits and she was anxious not to alienate him. "Geoff," she said, "I know how frustrating it must be, having to talk about the accident over and over, but you've suffered a concussion and that's not easily shrugged off. The mind can often take a while to recover from -"
"There's nothing wrong with my mind," Geoff insisted, a little too loudly.
He rubbed his temples and sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm tired, that's all. I want to go home."
"I know. But just humour me for now, eh? Talk me through the accident one more time. Please."
Geoff sank back into his soft, white pillows and allowed his gaze to drift over to the window. For a moment, he considered ignoring Hillie - simply not responding to her relentless questions - but he had tried that once before without success. The only way to get rid of her, he had learned, was to surrender to her.
"It was late," he began. "Half-eleven or so, and it had just started to snow. We came to this hump-back bridge. We saw lights coming the other way, but there was room - plenty of room for vehicles to pass - so we carried on. Only there were two cars, not one. Idiots, the pair of them - racing each other side by side. We suddenly had nowhere to go. So we slammed on the brakes. Skidded. And the rest, as they say, is history. We glanced off the nearest car and hit the bridge wall. After the impact, I don't remember a thing until I woke up here. But I'm told that's normal. It doesn't make me mentally deficient."
"You still insist on saying we," Hillie pointed out.
"Of course."
"Well, then, you know what I'm going to ask next."
Geoff nodded, and saved her the trouble. "My wife was driving. Caroline."
"I see."
That wasn't what Hillie had wanted to hear, and Geoff knew it, but he didn't see why he should he alter the truth just to please his therapist.
"You've got a bruise on your head," Hillie said. "A curved bruise, the perfect section of a steering wheel. Yet you claim you were in the passenger seat. How do you account for that?"
Geoff shrugged, disinterested.
"You were alone in the car," she told him - the same way she had told him a dozen times before. "The ambulance crew found you strapped into the driver's seat. The witnesses from the other vehicles say that you were alone. Caroline can't have been with you."
"I was there. You weren't."
"Geoff, please - won't you at least accept that your memory might be unreliable? It's nothing to be ashamed of. The shock of the crash and the concussion are bound to have had an effect."
"Caroline was driving the car. Why won't you believe me?"
"Because -" Hillie broke off, as if she had been on the verge of telling him something and had changed her mind at last moment. Then she appeared to soften. She gazed at Geoff with genuine compassion. "Because that's impossible," she went on, her voice so low that Geoff had to concentrate to hear her. "Caroline can't have been there. Geoff, I'm sorry - desperately sorry - but Caroline's dead."
Geoff turned and stared at her.
A coldness descended upon him.
He was acutely aware of his own breathing, of the beating of his heart. He could hear the dry rustle of the bedsheets as his chest moved up and down. But beyond that, nothing reached him. Hillie appeared still to be speaking - he watched her lips, intrigued by their movement, but he registered nothing of what she said.
"Dead," he murmured at last, more to himself than anyone else. "In the accident?"
"No, Geoff," said Hillie. "That's what I'm trying to make you understand. Caroline died four years ago. Can you hear me, Geoff? Are you even listening? Please, Geoff, you have to understand - Caroline's been dead for the past four years."
A chill wind blew along the street. Geoff paid the taxi driver his fare then turned and faced the house. It wasn't much of a house - a terraced two-up, two-down with a patch of garden at the front and a walled yard at the back - but to Geoff it was the most welcome sight in the world. He was home. Back where he belonged.
Hillie hadn't wanted him to leave the hospital. She had insisted that he needed further help, further therapy. But his physical wounds had healed and his bed was needed, and the doctors had refused her pleas to keep him in a little longer.
On his departure, Hillie had pressed her business card into his hand. "My number's on there," she told him. "Call me, all right? I want you to promise."
"I'm sorry," Geoff said. "I don't see the point."
"You've suffered a shock. You can't be expected to cope at home on your own."
Geoff had simply smiled at her. "I won't be on my own," he said. "I keep telling you. Caroline will look after me."
He walked up the front path, unlocked the door and stepped into the hall. He accidentally kicked a pile of mail, sending envelopes skidding across the floor. Junk mail, from what he could tell. He left the envelopes where they lay.
"Caroline?" he called, eagerly. "Caroline, I'm home!"
There was no reply. Only silence - a silence that seemed more intense than it should. And then he realised why. The clocks had stopped. The mantelpiece clock, the cuckoo clock, the kitchen clock - all had been allowed to run down, and without their persistent background ticking the house seemed to have lost its heartbeat.
"Caroline?" he called again.
Why wasn't she here to greet him?
Surely she hadn't gone out. Not today.
Then he noticed the blue vase that stood on the hall table. Caroline liked to keep flowers in the vase, because, she said, flowers made a nice impression on visitors. But the flowers had died. He guessed that they had once been daffodils, although they were too badly shrivelled to tell for certain.
Disturbed by the sight, Geoff made his way into the kitchen.
As he stepped through the door, the cold tap dripped into the sink, making a sudden dull splat against the stainless steel. He twisted the tap firmly off, then gazed around the room in mounting disbelief. Nothing was right. Nothing was the way it should be. The kitchen was supposed to be neat and scrupulously clean - Caroline took pains to keep it that way - but dirty plates had been stacked in a rickety heap, the floor was greasy, actually tacky underfoot, and there were stains and coffee-mug rings on the surfaces.
It looked as though Caroline hadn't set foot in the place for years.
The thought startled him. His heart began to thump in a helpless panic. He desperately tried to deny the fear that was growing in him. Caroline was here, he told himself. She was here, in this house. Upstairs, probably. She hadn't heard him come in
, that was all.
"Caroline?"
He hurried up the stairs.
"Caroline, where are you?"
To his dismay, he found only emptiness and further signs of neglect. He went into the bedroom and sat on the bed, stunned.
Unwillingly, but with a grim sense of inevitability, Geoff retrieved Hillie's business card from his wallet. He stared at the card.
When Hillie had first told him of Caroline's death, he had been shocked; but afterwards, when he had given the matter some thought, he had realised that the suggestion was ludicrous. Simply insane. He didn't understand what had driven Hillie to say such a thing. Geoff had a lucid recollection of Caroline being with him during the past four years, right up to the crash - he remembered every tiny detail, every loving moment - how could his wife possibly have been dead all that time?
But in an empty house, surrounded by evidence of Caroline's long absence, Hillie's words plagued him, and he was forced to accept that his mind might be capable of the cruellest of tricks.
He felt desperately, hopelessly alone.
On the bedside table was a bottle of Caroline's favourite perfume.
He took the bottle and carefully unscrewed the top. The scent had weakened with age, but the first whiff reminded him so overwhelmingly of Caroline that he felt he could touch her - all he had to do was close his eyes, think about her hard enough, and she would be there.
Suddenly, as if opposed to his gloomy mood, the sun discovered a gap in the clouds and flooded the room with a bright, warm glow. In the same moment, Geoff heard a noise.
He lifted his head. It had come from downstairs and had sounded, just briefly, like someone moving around down there. Had he forgotten to shut the front door?
Cautiously, Geoff started down the stairs. One step from the bottom he paused, astonished. A shaft of sunlight illuminated the blue vase - it was filled to bursting with fresh daffodils.
He reached out and touched the soft yellow petals to convince himself that they were real. Their scent filled the room.
Behind the vase, leaning against the wall, was all the junk mail that Geoff had abandoned on the floor - picked up and neatly stacked, exactly where Caroline used to deposit the morning's mail.
Geoff's heart began to beat a little faster.
He went into the kitchen, hardly daring to imagine what he might find in case it failed to be true.
He needn't have worried.
The place was spotless. Surfaces gleamed. The dishes that he had thought were dirty were in fact clean, waiting to be put away in the cupboard. Everything was as it should be. Everything was in its place. Everything, that was, except -
"There you are," said Caroline, stepping from behind the kitchen door, smiling at him and wiping her hands on a tea-towel. "I thought you'd got lost."
"Caroline!" Geoff yelled her name in a mixture of surprise and uncontrolled delight. "Oh, thank God! Caroline! You're here!" He swept her up and kissed her and hugged her tightly, so tightly that he felt he would never let go. "I thought I was going mad. I thought you'd gone."
Caroline laughed. "Don't be silly. Where would I go?"
"But you don't understand. They told me you wouldn't be here. They tried to make me believe ... that you were dead."
Caroline drew back her head and looked him in the eye. "They tried to tell us that once before, remember? But they don't know. They don't understand how much we love each other. We're still together, aren't we?"
"Yes," said Geoff. "We're still together."
"And that's all that matters. I'll always be here for you, Geoff. You know I will. Always."
As Geoff hugged his wife, he realised that there was something in his hand. It was a card - a therapist's business card, by the look of it. Although the card seemed dimly familiar, he had no clue why he should be in possession such a thing. He certainly had no need of a therapist - he had never been happier in his life. He screwed the card up and dropped it on the kitchen floor.
About the author
Antony Bennett's first published story appeared in the collection "Nightmares 3" after encouragement from the wonderful editor Mary Danby, and after that his stories have appeared in many magazines - Fear, Xenos, Not One of Us, etc.
His stories vary from the spooky to the downright gruesome, but they all explore how ordinary people react to extraordinary situations.
Connect with me online
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Antony-Bennett/233732153376298