There was a knock on the door, steady, deliberate. As my surroundings materialised around me, washing away the fantastical dream I had so naively been inhabiting, cold and inescapable reality formed solid, a cold dark lump resettling in my core. I dared not move. Had I imagined the caller on the other side of the door? I found little comfort in this fantasy, the noise that had woken me had been too sharp, too sure to have been an illusion my mind had conjured. I lay still in my cot with bated breath, praying the spectre would leave my threshold. I thought of Ethel, her abandonment still stung, yet I was relieved that she was not here to witness our home’s demise.
Ethel and I had been wed in the autumn, a small and uneasy affair attended by few. Her father had been the most vocal opponent of our union, thoroughly unimpressed by me and my lack of perceivable value as a husband. Though not hugely wealthy, their family was of a caste several degrees above that of my family, a long line of serfs, simple folks. Ethel had defied him gradually and gently, a strategy that had proved effective as he eventually agreed to pay for our modest ceremony, though still maintaining an icy demeanour when we were compelled to engage. I had often wondered if he had only conceded due to my bride’s affliction, an illness that had left all manner of doctors and healers thoroughly baffled. Despite this defect, I did love Ethel; back then, she was a tolerant and easy companion, and she appeared to accept me just as I was.
As newlyweds, we were tentatively gifted a small cottage on a swathe of land owned by Ethel’s great uncle, a recluse and eccentric whom we rarely glimpsed. Neither urban nor rural the property sat on neglected farmland, greyish green hills scantly dotted with trees to the east and south. The land had always struck me as afflicted in some way; it had a pallid quality, and occasionally I would catch the stench of death in the air. The visitors we would have over the years, even Ethel herself, did not seem to perceive this blight.
Ethel would spend her days writing, reading and looking after the cottage as best she could, her affliction allowed her to do little else. Her father provided her a small stipend, perhaps a gesture born of guilt as his visits were less and less frequent as time passed. I worked long hours each day, spare Sundays when the factory would close. These minuscule reprieves from the weekly travails brought little respite as Ethel and I frequently found ourselves at odds; she would constantly bemoan her isolation, and I was implicitly at fault. I tried to remain stoic through these troubles, I told myself that the very nature of marriage was fraught but my anger grew and after a time it boiled over in a most awful way. Ethel had given up on our matrimony. She had left me.
The knocking had become more frequent and louder, and the heavy wooden chest, a wedding gift finely carved with scenes of forests and mountains and previously used to hold linens, was jolting and failing as a barricade. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins as I lurched towards the back door. As I passed our bedroom, now boarded, the malodour filled my nostrils—the fetor of decay. I burst from the back of our home, running as best I could over the muddy, potholed pasture. I caught sight of the men behind me, uniformed and, to my surprise, not in pursuit. They were instead congregated near the woodshed. I swore. They would believe Ethel, of course. I’d be cast as the villain, the careless husband. She wouldn’t even have to say anything; one whiff would be enough to condemn me.