Dust in the Barn
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Maya Angelou
The thought came to her as she was waking.
October was beginning, and, like most ideas born between sleep and wakefulness, it blurred back into dreams, forgotten.
It wasn’t until she added milk to her tea and watched the bloom and fade of white through brown that the thought resurfaced - maddening, creeping, sprawling - and she looked up, saw only the smudge of dark and shadow through the small crisscrossed steamed-up kitchen window, but she knew it was there. The barn. Unmoving. Built to last, the estate agent had said, all those years ago, thirty was it, now? Near enough.
She sipped her tea, thoughtful still. The house, around her, waiting for her next move. The bread bin, perhaps? The fridge? Or the clearing away of yesterday’s dinner plate.
On Monday, there had still been the hope that the next day might be different. But Tuesday and Wednesday had come and gone, and by Thursday something had shifted, a different pattern had emerged.
She had stopped eating. There was no bread in the bread bin, no food in the fridge, and no dinner plate left out to wash.
Now, the tap-tapping started. The gentle knocking, like the ticking of a clock on the off-beat, and she turned, with the eyes in the knots in the walls, to the calendar.
October 13th. A date marked off every passing year with the dot of a ballpoint pen in the corner, the pen that swung in ever-increasing circles on the old piece of string hung on a nail in the wall, tapping, over, and over, and over, and the old voices crept in through the cracks in the floor, rising, rising, like the steam from her mug, and, from the hallways, she heard the scrape of blood-red heels on the flag-stone floor, the clink of keys, the shuddering slam of the front door and the rush of a chill that gripped her chest, her throat, stole the breath from her and from somewhere, somewhere, the chill that sunk and gnawed deep into her bones and whispered with a curling grin, God, it was fun breaking you…
And the laugh that followed, rattling through the rooms, through the beams and rafters, bouncing and repeating and getting louder and louder, sending her, like yesterday, like the days and weeks and years before, through an empty hallway to the door, and out, where the North wind slapped and stung her cheeks and she blinked and gasped for breath, the door creaking, slamming behind her, wailing, like the scream before a gunshot.
And then, nothing.
The sky, clear wintry black above her and cold with an almost full moon just departing that illuminated the countryside with a frosty glow, turning the road to a silver ribbon, and the trees cast long waking shadows across the drive that stretched toward but never touched the great black doors to the great black barn, that now, she found herself facing.
She knows what I’m planning. The thought was there, and then, as if her thought could be heard, she tucked it away and looked again at the wide-open sky full of stars that blurred in the rising mist. If there was a day of the year when whatever veil between the dead and the living was lowered, it was today.
She had it planned.
Ever since the first time. Just a month after the accident, when, standing in the living room putting up Christmas decorations the lights had flickered, buzzed, and then flared, and a bolt of electricity had shot through her body and sent her heart out of rhythm, but then, she had always had a weak heart.
In the weeks that followed other things happened. She began to hear voices in the wind that blew, restless in the chimney breast, and despite the fire in the hearth, the house never grew warm.
In the months after that, she began to grow used to the creak and slam of doors, the dragging sound of the cutlery drawer opening, and the slicing silver sound of a knife being pulled.
And, in the years that followed, she became adept at passing off the cuts and bruises from things that crept between shadows in the night, the broken arms and legs from one glass of wine too many that saw those same shadows reach out and grab her, crush her, slither into her mouth, her nose, and smother until gasping for air, she would find herself, once again, outside, face to face with the barn.
But now, as meticulous as her plan had become over the years, now, on this morning, thirty years to the day after the accident, she found herself there, by the doors to the barn, closer than she had come in all those years, and the wind holds her breath, the birds cease their singing, and the only sound is the creep in the grass, in the eaves that draws her in, that tempts her, eager and spiteful, gnashing and wild that whispers, fear me, love me...
At first, the great iron handle of the door feels foreign and unreal, a moment from the past caught up to her with such violent suddenness that she has opened the door before she has realised it, pushed against it, just like she always had done, with her hip to release the rusted hinges, and now, the gaping mouth of the barn opens, yawning, screaming, sucking her in with the thrill of the wind that has begun to roar and the wail and creak of the beams above her hung with smoke white cobwebs that billow and whip.
Fear me, love me...
She felt her, skulking, stalking, sucking her teeth, circling her, a laughing snarl, slipping invisibly between and through each darkened corner of the barn, between old grey straw bales and rotted wood barrels that dribbled stagnant water.
She stood, closed her eyes, felt the cold creep in, the laughter fill her head, growing louder, louder, louder until she was dizzy. Until she could feel her, the ice cold of fingers encircling her wrists, pulling her down, down, squeezing until the bones in her arms crunched and twisted.
Fear me, love me...
And then, the sting of the ground, the dust that blooms, the blood in her mouth, and the fleeting glance of a memory - so sharp and sudden - of being chased, here to the barn, by the woman who had stolen so many years of her life. The memory of those blood-red shoes and the flash of the knife held aloft and steady, and the struggle, the pain of the blade between her shoulder blades, and then, reaching around, pulling the blade from her own body and, with one last rallying scream, the plunge of the knife into the chest of the woman who, with ink-black spreading through the folds of her jumper, in the dark, laughed and staggered backward, still laughing, still laughing, and then, back in the moment, the laughter, over and over, tinny, hollow, echoing, louder, louder…
Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will give you the world…
The laughter split her head, her eyes, and then, she saw it, the glance of a moment so fleeting before death that she had never recalled it. The memory of the fear in her eyes as she fell to her knees.
And then, the quiet.
Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will give you the world...
It’s instant now, the voice that haunts her, it’s rattling, threatening, but there is an edge to it, and the shadow slinks, lower, tentative, pausing in the dark like a faltering heartbeat, suddenly unsure, suddenly wary.
Fear me, love me…
But now she opens her eyes. Exhales a breath she has held for thirty years, feels the dust and grit against her lips, feels, for the first time, the air falter, as if unsteady.
And then she speaks. For the first time in too long. In her own voice. Perhaps, for the first time in thirty years, and it is a voice as clear as the night and as sure as the day.
You have no power over me.
And the heart that faltered in shadow, the whispering ghoul who had dug her fingers deep into her flesh to hungrily feast on her heart finds her fingers slip. Finds her muscles weaken, finds her shoulders slump and her voice that only moments before shook the building above them, falls to nothing at all, and She, who spent so many years bending to the will of the dead finds the silence once more, finds the light of morning begin to fill the barn, and now, like the dust, she rises.
***
Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf and Sally Wainwright, Elinora Westfall is a British/Australian lesbian actress and writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry and radio from the UK. Her novel, Everland, was selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow Editorial Programme, and her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Camden Fringe Festival, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, while her theatre and audio shows have been selected by The British Library and performed in London's West End and on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue. Elinora is currently working on The Art of Almost, a comedy-drama radio series, and also writing Love, Mary, a historical television drama series.