Sometimes I wake up at night to my wife staring at me, not in the endearing way she used to when we started dating, not even in the Soulful way she did when we said our vows to each other. These stares are just empty, and those empty eyes are a passage to her empty soul that I’m pretty sure someone else occupies, which is in chilling contrast to her beautiful face.
This all started the day we moved into our new home. We had saved for ages, worked so hard, and finally achieved the dream that most people never fulfill in this generation. Our home was simple, because we were simple, all we ever needed and all we ever cared about was our love for each other. Of course despite the love we shared I never told my wife that the previous owner had been arrested as that would just freak her out.
It was white and two stories with a huge backyard and giant tree at the end of it. We would always joke that we would need to put a tyre swing up as we may be having children soon. Now I know that day will never come.
I, the typical male, took a strange love to gardening. My wife thought it was hilarious, as working as a author I almost never left my home office. So any time she saw me outside she would smile and than get to cooking something cause she knew I would be hungry when I came back inside.
After a while of Gardening I decided I needed more space and wanted to cut down the tree at the end of the garden. Almost immediately my wife’s demeanor changed. She started to look a little sadder and while she never said it, I always saw her frowning at me.
When I asked her why later on she just told me that I was killing her dream, and that she didn’t want the tree cut down. I assume she meant our plans to put a tyre swing on the tree and I left her alone. However for some reason she started asking me if we had enough money to take care of a child, which I didn’t we did either.
Now my wife was pretty young and had no medical conditions, so the next thing that happened really scared me. Around October in Autumn I started to notice hair every where. In the bathroom, in the kitchen, on the floor. It was almost as if her hair was falling out.
I asked her about it and offered to take her to the doctor to see what it was but she just shouted at me, claiming that because she was becoming bare I wouldn’t love her anymore and that it just wasn’t her season. I kept trying to comfort her but she just kept saying I would love her again in a few months when her hair came back, while pulling out what remained of it. As a distraction during this time she took up coin collecting, however she collected every coin she could find, not just valuable ones.
I always loved my wife and she was picture perfect beautiful but even if she wasn’t, that wouldn’t change anything for me. What did change my love for her was her new and strange mannerisms and her seemingly growing contempt of me.
A few weeks had passed before I noticed that the tree was growing out of control and even through autumn it’s leaves stayed green. So I decided to trim it as it was making my garden look untidy. I didn’t inform my wife as she was still a bit jumpy so using some trimmers I cut branches of the tree, slowly shaping it, until it looked neat again.
Unfortunately my wife wasn’t happy about this and after she saw what I did she threw a fit. Screaming at me while slamming every door in the house. This was nothing like the woman I married who was intelligent, calm and often more reasonable than me.
Sadly, things just got worse. While her hair grew back beautifully, she looked sadder, heartbroken and constantly accused me of not loving her. Things got quite terrifying after that, She started to calling me Jake, her creepy staring started and she was strangely always counting our money. She kept checking the bank accounts, the value of our assets and even the money we had in the safe.
Around one year into our lives at our new home things got rocky, we were fighting almost every day and I tried my best to avoid her. I was seeing a marriage counselor alone because she didn’t want to and I knew if I pushed the issue she would throw a fit. So it was strange when I was on my way home one day and I found an old couple standing in front of my home and softly weeping.
I asked them if everything was okay but they just apologized and said that they missed her and should never had forced her. What they said next made tumblers crack in my mind.
I phoned the realtor up and asked him about the previous owner of the house and why he had been arrested. Unfortunately, as part of our deal he couldn’t disclose why. Just the name of the man which was, as I already knew now, Jake.
A few weeks later I visited Jake in prison. Unfortunately I wasn’t prepared for what I would here.
Jake and his wife were forced into an arranged marriage pretty young and while they tried to make it work, they soon grew to hate each other. They had fights every day and according to him that kind of thing would drive a man mad, things only got worse when they started to grow broke and he didn’t think he would have enough money to take care of the both of them. So he killed her.
He said it to me as if it was the most normal thing in the world. However what he would never say is where he buried the body. However I was pretty sure I knew.
After my conversations with him I tried pretty hard to dig up the ground around the tree but my wife would never let me. I never told her what Jake told me but I think she already knew as every night I would wake up to her staring at me in the bed, softly whispering, Let her rest.