The Monster's Wife(65)

There had to be a key. May always kept spares lying around. And Victor would have one too. Now was the moment to go to his room and look. If he was in there, she would say she’d come for his sheets. Crossing the hallway, she clenched her fists and willed herself to be as stone.

Victor’s door creaked open beneath her trembling hand. The room was empty and tidier than usual. The bed looked as though it hadn’t been slept in. She could search for the key. Her heart kicked up a gallop at the thought. The desk was clear of papers now, holding only an inkwell and quill, a few stray shreds of parchment.

She opened the long, curved drawer in the middle first. It was lined with a rough cut of flowered wallpaper and there was a letter opener and a scrawled note in a foreign language. She lifted the paper lining and peeked under it. Nothing but a dead woodlouse, legs in the air. She did the same with the other drawers – all empty. Next, the valise.

He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears. That was what they would say in the kirk if they knew what she was about, but this was for May.

Victor’s clothes were stuffed willy-nilly into the valise, stained with all sorts of things she didn’t wish to think about. She almost cut her hand on a knife that was wrapped in a shirt, its edge hair-fine. She dumped the rest out on the bed, scrabbling through rolls of paper and notebooks, soap, brush and straight razor. There was no key, so she stuffed everything back in as near as she could to the jumble she’d found them in. She ran her hands over the lintels of the doors, looked under the bed and rug and finally sat down on the bed, closed the valise with a snap and admitted defeat.

The moon outside the window lit the kitchen. Should she leave now and admit defeat after all this? Maybe tomorrow... She stared at the cod she’d left on the chopping board for the morning. It seemed to watch her, mocking her with its gold-black eye. You’re just so weak and miserable.

She picked up the cleaver and chopped the cod’s head off, then ran her thumb along the blade, gathering shreds of raw white flesh and a dribble of watery fish-blood. The anger drained out of her and she felt tired and thirsty and drained. She put down the knife and walked into the pantry for the jug of beer she kept there.

In the dark, she rooted around, hands fumbling over big bags of flour and oats, a tub of lard. Her fingertip caught on something sharp. She winced and sucked on it, looking between two boxes to see some rusty nails driven into the wood at the back of the shelf. A ball of string hung from one, a loop of washing line from the next and from the third a bracelet of keys, bigger than the others.

She wanted to kiss May for hiding them so carefully, as if she had known Oona would find them here. She slipped them over her wrist and scurried upstairs, not bothering to take her apron off, her mind fixed on that door, a lump in her throat like a round pebble from the beach. She got up to the library and knelt down, glancing down the hallway to see if he’d sneaked back in without her noticing, but wherever he was he must be taking his time for she did not see him.

She pressed her ear to the door and listened, heard nothing, tried the first key. It didn’t fit. Another slid in but got half stuck, so that she panicked and twisted it about and thought it would be jammed in there for good. When she finally jiggled that one out, there were some too small and others too big, until she was down to two keys. One had a big, square tongue with a cross cut out of it and the other was slender with a bare smidge of a gap-tooth.

“One of you had better work,” she told the gap-toothed key as she tried it.

It went in smoothly, turning neatly to the side. She heard the lock’s belly click and release the door and her heart sang. Her hand trembled on the handle, thinking of May holding her hand through gold wheat fields like the Red Sea parting before them, May braiding daisies into her hair and saying they were jewels. The door creaked open like a door that’s not been used much. The room was small and dark and smelled like scrubbed floors and old whisky. Dust motes danced in the light that spilled between the curtains. When Oona got close to them, she realised they were flies.

She held her hand over her nose and mouth. There were dark patches on the floor, dribbles and spots and pools of spilled something leading up to a curtain that hid one half of the room. On the table next to it was a cup of water, a thread and needle, a long knife. Next to the bed sat a glass cylinder with coils of paper inside. The coils went up and down and when they did, they made a wheezing sound like noisy breathing. Tubes ran from the glass case and between the folds of the curtain.

She drew the curtain back. Behind it was a bed covered with rumpled white sheets, as if someone had hastily made it. The tube disappeared under the sheets. Oona ran her fingers along it.

A fly landed on her cheek and she brushed it away. There was a gasp from under the sheet. Oona stumbled back, tangled in the curtain. Something jerked under the sheet and there was another gasp. The noise was strange, inhuman. Hardly able to breathe, she reached for the top of the sheet and slowly drew it back.

What she saw made her fall to her knees.

For a moment she just crouched there, listening to the wheeze of the machine, praying that the thing on the bed would stay where it was. She turned around on her hands and knees like a child. Each part of her shook too hard to move forward. She was a block of ice, heavy and cold. Her fingertips were red. She crawled forward numbly, holding her breath. When she reached the door, she got hold of the handle and pulled herself up on shaking legs. In the hallway, a face turned and stared. Her eyes came into focus and she saw Victor.