The Banishing (6 page)

Sharon nodded. “Do you want another drink?” she asked.

Melissa shook her head. “I need a clear head for driving,” she reminded her. “Are you okay, Sharon? I
am
sorry I’ve pissed you off…”

“I’m just worried. For you.”

“Don’t be.
I’ll
worry about me.”

“I can’t help it.”

Melissa smiled. “You can take Elsie tomorrow though, yeah? I think it’d be helpful if you took her on as your patient.”

Sharon’s eyes fell to the floor, and she winced.

“Sharon?”

“I won’t need to take her on as a patient, but neither will you.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s dead,” Sharon said flatly, her eyes still averted from her friend’s gaze.

“Dead? Shit. When?”

“That’s the thing,” Sharon said, her voice low and hesitant, “She died earlier today. When you went to clean her, she’d already…”

Melissa felt sick, knowing what was coming next. “She was dead when I was cleaning her?”

Sharon nodded. “Nobody told you, but I don’t know how that got missed. The porters hadn‘t collected her for the morgue, yet. I guess no one had gotten around to wrapping the body and—”

“But…that’s stupid. It’s not possible. She woke up. I saw her breathing.”

Sharon paused, then looked into her friend’s eyes at last. Melissa saw worry in them, concern. “That’s why what you said didn’t make sense,” she said. “When Elsie grabbed you, told you that you would die or whatever, she had already been dead for fifteen minutes.”

Chapter Eight

Am I going crazy
? Those four words kept travelling in a loop inside her mind, ingraining themselves so strongly into her thoughts that Melissa couldn’t avoid facing them.
Maybe I
am
going crazy.

Except, she knew that she wasn’t. She knew she was the same person she always had been—it was everything else, everyone else around her that was changing, making impossible things possible. If there was one thing she trusted, it was herself.

Maybe Sharon had been mistaken, she reasoned as she opened her car door and sank into the driver’s seat. Elsie might have died, but it must have been afterward. It
had
to have been afterward.
Please God, let it have been afterward.

She inserted her keys into the ignition and noticed for the first time that her hands were shaking. “Shit.” She pulled the car door shut, rested her hands on the steering wheel, and took a deep breath. “Get your head together, Melissa,” she scolded herself, “Keep it together.”

She had to get home. She needed a bath to wash the day away.

Melissa pulled out and switched on the radio. She didn’t want to be left to her thoughts. Not now.

The roads were clearer than she expected; a lot of the rush hour traffic had dissipated, and only a few cars passed alongside her as she drove. By the time she pulled up outside her house, it was getting dark. Splatters of rain spat against the car windows, hammering heavily as if the fluid were made of stone.

She stepped out of the car and ran to the front door, wincing as the rain plummeted in heavy plumes against her clothes and through to her skin. She opened the door and threw off her coat once she was inside. She dropped her bag and keys onto the bottom stairs as she passed through the hall into the kitchen. It was empty. She backed into the hallway and through to the lounge; it too was empty. The television was on but muted.
Mark had to be home
, she thought. She was home later than normal, she knew, but he would have called if he was going to be on a late delivery or pickup at work.

Late nights were not unusual for Mark—he earned more working late, accepting jobs the other guys didn‘t want—but he always told her. He wouldn’t have left the TV on all day, either.

“Mark?” she called from the bottom of the stairs. She felt cold, damp to the skin, and she wanted to get out of her clothes and into something warm.

Melissa stepped over her bag and climbed the stairs. “Mark?”

No reply.

Maybe he had arrived home, had a call from the office to make a delivery, and had left again in a hurry. Except that was all wrong. She could see his work clothes sprawled across the bed in a messy heap.

She stepped into the bedroom and lifted the clothes off the bed. She threw them onto the floor, annoyed at his sloppiness and his laziness, which had become more apparent over the last few months. She heard something behind her and twisted around.

It was Mark. He was standing in the bedroom doorway, watching her.

“Pick them up,” he said, staring at her.

“What?” Melissa said, startled by his sudden appearance. Had he been hiding? Waiting for her to come up and find him? Why hadn’t he answered when she called out for him?

“My clothes that you just threw on the floor. Pick them up, again. Is that how you treat my things?”

Melissa felt sick. Not like this. Not again. She could not handle Mark this way….not now.

She hesitated for a moment, her mind trying to think up ways to break the weird atmosphere between them, to break the tension in Mark’s eyes. He looked infuriated.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, and realized how stupid that sounded. Something was wrong—with him. Lately, something
always
was.

He remained there, by the doorway, his fists clenched into tight balls. His eyes narrowed, and his skin flushed red. Melissa watched him and thought he looked ugly that way. Mark was a good-looking man. He had never been short of female attention. He was charming, and he had a warm smile. Beautiful eyes. The way he was now, it was as if something disfiguring in him from beneath had swum to the surface. She felt scared. Every muscle inside her body ached with tension.

“You don’t treat my things with respect,” he said, his voice quiet and controlled. “You don’t treat
me
with respect.”

Melissa remained there, by the bed, frozen to the spot. Her skin felt itchy from the wet clothes that clung to her. Every now and then, a drop of rain fell from her hair, ran down her chest, and down her neck. “I do respect you, Mark. What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

He stepped into the room, closer to her. His fists still remained at his side. “You called Sharon last night, didn’t you?” he said.

Melissa felt empty, void. She didn’t know what to think or say, so she said nothing.

Mark stepped forward, again. She could smell wine on his breath. “Last night, when I heard you on the phone, you told me Sharon called
you
. I checked your mobile phone.” Mark looked down, fished in his pockets, and produced Melissa’s mobile phone.

“How did you get that?” she asked.

Mark ignored her question. He held up the mobile phone in his hand as if it was an award, a trophy. “I checked your dialed numbers. You phoned her up. That bitch.”

Melissa felt sick. She felt the drink she had in the bar rise in her throat. It tasted acidic, bitter. “I…just got mixed up. It doesn’t matter, does it? I just phoned for a chat, and then she asked about us going for a drink. What difference does this really make?”

“That’s why you’re home late, is it?” Mark snarled, throwing the mobile phone onto the floor. It hit the carpet with a dull thud.

Melissa took a step back, nodding. “Yeah, we just went out for a drink. Just one. Then, I came back. It doesn’t matter, does it?” she asked a second time, trying to sound casual, trying to make light of whatever darkness had covered the room between them. “It isn’t a bad thing that I called her. Is it? You said I could go out with her!”

Mark laughed; it sounded dark and menacing. “What’s bad,” he said, now only inches away from her, “is that you lied to me. You lied to me and made things up. I can’t trust you.”

Melissa forced a smile. “You
can
trust me, I swear. It’s only Sharon, Mark. You know Sharon.”

“I don’t like people lying to me. Why would you do that? That’s the real issue here. Why lie about something little like that?”

Melissa was about to answer, when she realized Mark didn’t want one. He leaned in close to her, running a hand though her hair. “Make it up to me,” he said, his voice hard and emotionless.

“How?” her voice was weak, shaky, and she hated herself for allowing herself to seem so defenseless, so under his power. She felt like a frightened child under his cruel eyes. She wanted to push him away—to kick him, whack him, tell him to get out—when all she said was “How?”

Mark kissed her gently on the cheek. “You know how,” he said, and pressed against her. Melissa could feel the bulge from his pants and knew what he wanted. She felt sick when she realized that this would be better than getting hit. Sex would be better than another split lip.

She lowered herself onto her knees, and with shaking hands, began to unzip Mark’s jeans. She pulled them down to the floor, and he stepped out of them. His penis poked beneath the material of his briefs. She lowered them and began to take him into her mouth when she suddenly felt a huge blow to the back of her head.

Numb for a moment, she felt her head explode with pain. Tiny dots of light floated in front of her eyes. She realized after a moment of feeling stunned that he had punched her. She fell backwards and raised her hand to her face. She felt for blood, but there was none.

“You’re a bitch,” he spat at her, his voice loud. She didn’t recognize his voice; it was a deep, booming rasp.

He reached down and pulled her onto the bed, his face contorted into a mask of rage. “I don’t like bitches who lie, bitches who don’t respect my things!”

Melissa tried to hold back tears. “Please, Mark. Don’t hurt me.”

It was as if he never heard her. He crawled onto the bed beside her and tugged at the damp clothes she was wearing until they came off, and then he threw them onto the floor.

“Please, Mark. My head…you’ve hurt me.” Melissa winced as another wave of pain crashed against her skull.

Mark, ignoring her, yanked at her bra and pulled it off, all the while laughing—the most insane, unsettling, frightening part of it all, Melissa thought—as he threw them to the side. She was completely naked, now.

Mark, covering her mouth with his hand, thrust himself inside her, deep and hard. Melissa thought about how it smelled of vanilla soap, normally her favorite smell.

“Mark, you’re hurting me,” she tried to say, but the words came out all wrong, muffled and lost beneath the weight of his hand.

His body, pressing her down and pinning her against the bed, felt like a weight she could not bear. He thrust inside her, hard and fast, his other hand pulling at her hair. It hurt and made her wince.

“You have some fucking making up to do,” he rasped in her ear as he violently, and with force, hammered himself inside her.

Melissa closed her eyes, trying to ignore the pain as he raped her with such force that she felt sharp pains searing inside her with each unforgiving, ferocious movement.

Her head still throbbed from where he whacked her. Throbbing, hammering behind her skull.

“A
lot
of making up to do,” he whispered, pulling himself off of her.

He stood up and looked over at her with an air of disgust. “Go and wash yourself,” he said. “Then, you can cook me something to eat.”

Chapter Nine

After locking herself in the bathroom—this room lately seemed to be her only refuge from the craziness that had taken over her life—Melissa climbed into the bath. The hot, soapy water felt good as it covered her body that now felt bruised, achy, and sore. She leaned her head against the back of the bathtub and closed her eyes.

The pain was still there. Everywhere. The right side of her head still throbbed violently in protest where Mark had whacked her. Down below, where he had viciously entered and raped her, she felt sore. Never before, until today, had she ever felt violated by Mark. Hurt, yes, but never violated. Right now, she felt a desperate hate for the man, a hate she had not realized she had been capable of feeling. Before stepping into the tub, she had seen drops of blood between her legs, trickling down her thighs. The sight had made her gag, but no vomit came. Only the sour bile rose in her throat from the drink she had earlier in the evening.

From what she could hear, Mark was downstairs watching TV. It was something he increasingly did in the evenings, now. That was something else Melissa had noticed that had changed in him; whenever Mark returned from work, he used to keep the TV off, preferring to play a CD in the background while he relaxed in the lounge with her, chatting about the day over a glass of wine. They would talk about the business—about anything—but it had been nice. She had enjoyed the attention, the way he had—even after years together—seemed focused on her, eager to hear her talk, and to share their thoughts and feelings. That had died months ago with the onset of Mark’s temper and violence.

Now, after work, he limply sat in front of the TV set, totally lost in whatever crap he was watching, and it
was
crap. All of it. Lately, though, he seemed to now enjoy that more than talking to her. He would stare at the screen with an empty, absent gaze, and Melissa often wondered if he was even watching the show; he seemed so far away.