[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
I kept thinking of everything that had happened. The nightmare, the warning on the window and, of course, the terrifying creature that hid in our house.
When Jacob finally got home, I didn’t put up any play. I pushed him away, both my palms pressing against his chest when he came to say hi. I walked to the cupboard and filled a glass of water I then left on the counter, before turning to him again.
“What’s this about?” he asked, puzzled.
“What happened with Amalia?” I asked him directly.
“A-Amalia? That’s my ex-wife, we divorced.” He avoided eye contact and went around the table, opening the fridge. His classic gesture when trying to avoid confrontation. I kept talking, now to his back.
“I know that, but I want to know more. Why did you divorce? Why you never talk about her?” He didn’t answer, kept rummaging in the fridge, looking for who-knows-what. I let silence take over the room, both of us considering our next move. I thought about my dream, falling off stairs we never had. I thought of the message left by the hooded person. Someone trying to warn me. Someone trying to tell me I was in some kind of danger.
He’s been hiding.
“What did you do to her?” I hissed at him, after a few seconds of silence had passed.
He stopped rummaging into the fridge, straightened his back, but didn’t turn just yet. “That’s none of your business. Stay out of it.”
His voice, the determination in it, struck me as completely new. It felt like I had uncovered something that he did everything he could to keep hidden for 4 years. It felt wrong, but I wasn’t scared. I wanted to know.
“Someone left a message for me… He’s been hiding.” I said, in a flat tone.
Finally, he closed the fridge door and turned to me. His look had changed. It was a look that raised fear deep into my bones. A fear I hadn’t had until a few moments before that. It was a look I’d seen already. The same hateful look the pale intruder had showed him.
He stayed still, his hateful eyes staring at me. Then he took a deep breath.
“So someone tries to scare you and y-”
“Don’t lie to me!” I interrupted him, “you saw the pale creature, you are hiding something… What is it? What did you do to Amalia?”
“She’s crazy, Sarah. I told you tha-”
“You haven’t told me shit! I don’t know anything about you.”
“I told you she’s crazy, she’s a damn witch. She believes in shit, she… She kept threatening me.”
“I don’t believe y-”
“SARAH!” His rage exploded into his slammed fist on the table dividing us.
I was scared of him. I looked around, measuring the distance from the door, closer to him than to me. He took a few steps, getting around the table. Nothing was between us now.
“Why y’all gotta act so crazy, uh? What is it in you that you just can’t live a normal life?” He took another step towards me, I took one back, towards the counter. “It’s all good, life is normal, we got a routine and then suddenly you’ve got to… what, bring in some drama?” Another step back, my hips now touching the cold marble of the counter. “I protected you, kept you away from that witch’s madness.”
You filthy witch!
The nightmare suddenly came back to my mind. The same words he had pronounced before throwing me down the stairs. I remembered the feeling of rolling down, the sharp pain that didn’t belong to my body, as much as those stairs didn’t belong to our house.
“It’s about that creature, isn’t it?” He stopped moving towards me, looking around the room. “I thought I’d gotten rid of him, but he’s still here, staring at me, isn’t he? Where is he now?”
I swallowed.
He knew. He’d always seen our unwanted guest. For weeks he’d been feeding me theories about stress and hallucinations, letting me think I was going nuts. The fear suddenly disappeared, now leaving space to a tremor I recognized as rage. What could possibly motivate the man who said loved me to manipulate me like that? What’s he been hiding?
We looked at each other, our bodies now only a few inches apart. I moved my hand behind me, to the glass I’d left on the counter. I grabbed it, my gesture hidden behind my back.
Then he leaped. He suddenly covered the space between us and was on me, his hand around my neck. “You fucking whore.” He hissed between his teeth. “You had it all, but you had to ruin it… For what?”
I felt the air knocked out of my throat, the pressure growing to the top of my head, my eyes swelling. I raised the glass I was holding in my hand and smashed it on his head with all my strength. He instantly left my neck with a scream, both his hands now holding his head where I’d hit him.
I leaped outside of the kitchen and started running, looking at our entrance. In front of it, in front of my only chance of surviving, there was our unwanted guest, the small pale creature. Its face was turned to the door, I could only see his tiny back. His small figure completely still, a shadow surrounded by the light that came from outside. He was just staring at the door, without any movement, like a goddamn doll in way too few clothes to cover his bruised tiny body.
I spun on my feet and took a turn to the corridor in the opposite direction, jumping in the bathroom. I closed the door behind me and locked it, then fell to my feet next to the toilet, holding my knees and finally crying.
____________________________________
It took him so long to walk out of the kitchen, I’d started to weigh out the option of trying to leave the house again. Maybe he’d blacked out, maybe the creature had left the door.
I was still considering my options when I heard his dragging steps in front of the bathroom door. I braced myself, expecting him to try breaking through the door. I was exhausted.
But he didn’t. I heard the sound of brushing fabric, then silence. I pictured him sitting down in front of the door, like a predator waiting for the prey to leave safety. Then I heard the low sobbing. Not like the baby’s crying. Just genuinely adult, human sobs.
“She was crazy,” he said right when the sobs stopped. “I always knew she was a witch.” His voice was calm now, a different tone from the one he’d just used a while before. “Her research, that… Obsession. The candles, all those signs and these… These fucking weird words…”
I wasn’t really listening, but I wasn’t planning on interrupting him. I was thinking hard on how I was going to get out of there. I cursed myself for always leaving my phone in a different room instead of in my pockets.
“She wasn’t like that before, not when we married. Then she got obsessed. She wanted a child, but it didn’t work, we just couldn’t… Then, all these dark fucking books. I knew she was a witch…”
He sounded weak, vulnerable. I crawled closer to the door, now realizing my only way out was by talking him into letting me go. I had to be his friend, despite feeling ever so distant from him, scared by the man I’d been married to for 4 years. A man who’d been hiding.
“We never know who we really married… it’s easy to keep secrets.” I whispered, now close to the door as well. I felt him change his position.
“And then it worked. Somehow she got pregnant. I couldn’t believe it.” His voice was choked, like he was trying not to cry again. “I asked her how she did it…”
The sobs started again. I couldn’t find any empathy for him in me. I felt stupid. I felt so damn stupid not having seen through him when we first started dating and eventually married. You truly don’t know who you live with until they decide to show you their true self. Until they stop hiding. I just wanted out. “What did she tell you?” I said, trying to sound empathetic.
“Witchcraft,” he simply said after a short pause. “I asked her not to use that shit on me. I asked her to keep me out of it. I told her to stop. She continued, behind my back. She used that stuff on me…”
I understood then. I thought of the dream, of the message on the window, of Amalia. Everything started to make sense now, but the feeling of all the pieces falling into place was far from satisfactory. It was horrifying.
I swallowed. “What did you do to her?”
He started crying. Not sos anymore, but a deep and heartfelt cry.
“Jacob… What did you do to her?” I raised my voice to overcome his cry.
“I-I didn’t mean to… It was just a moment of rage. She just… the stairs. I didn’t plan this. I wouldn’t hurt a baby.”
My heart sunk at that moment. I thought of the beautiful moments Jacob and I had had together. I thought of the embarrassment I felt for the roses sent to the office when we first met. I thought of his kindness when I was sick, when I had a bad day, or his kisses at night.
And then I thought of Amalia. I thought of the sharp pain I felt in my belly falling down the stairs and of the blood on it. I thought of the shadow that had been haunting our house looking at Jacob with hateful eyes.
Looking at his dad.
What would I have done in Amalia’s place?
It’s at that moment that I heard tiny bare feet run across the hall.
Jacob only shouted once, a loud scream. Painful and sorrowful at the same time.
________________________________________
I found the strength to get out only a few hours later. Only a stain of blood was left where Jacob had been sitting. He’d just vanished.
I stayed at my mom’s for a few weeks after that. I tried to make sense of everything that had happened, where the intruder had gone, who’d written the message on the window, where Jacob had gone.
It was only this morning that finally I had all the answers I needed. I found it in the same local newspaper I’d read before. I’ve been googling “defixiones” almost every day.
The translated title read: defixiones reappeared in local museum.
What would I have done in Amalia’s place?