Eyes Of Darkness: JOURNEYS INTO THE HEARTLAND, #1

By Marina Gerrard

The still birth of a long-desired-for baby raises the haunting spectre of guilt over failures real and imagined and over things that happened in Marcia's childhood. This personal crisis triggers a nightmare of self-despite and despair. Reliving the past splits her focus and her personality into three.

Will she regain control of herself enough to become one again?

Marcia is trapped in a loveless marriage. Her hopes of saving the marriage by having a child are dashed when the baby is born faceless and dies. Shame, hurt and despair become warring factions within herself that threaten to split her personality into three. Worn out by it all she retreats further and further until her refuge becomes a wasteland of frozen hopelessness.

Nights full of awful dreams are followed by days full of upsetting dimensions that make her question her sanity. Unable to give up she crawls doggedly through one nightmare memory after another until she comes out the other end. There she manages to put the past to rest.

Eyes of Darkness is the first book in a miniseries of three psychological thrillers on the theme of recovery from trauma.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marina Gerrard
• Release date: Apr 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386065258

Book preview

I. KILLERBIRTH

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They wheeled her into the operating theatre. It was a birth with complications and she had been at it for hours but Marcia did not care. She had been labouring unsuccessfully for four years of marriage and been expecting for much longer than that. As far as she was concerned the past nine months had only narrowed down the years until they focused in this moment of blazing pain. The hours of actual labour pangs seemed short against the hard-won victory they would bring.

Today would see the end of one era and the beginning of the next. She had worked for this moment so hard. Had done all the right things. Had obeyed. Gone by the book, the rules written and unwritten. Fulfilled every requirement. Married approved. Performed her wifely duties. The latter with special effort on her account.

For wasn’t that what love was all about. Special effort. Of availability. To be there, wanted or unwanted. To do the right thing before it was even asked. To anticipate. To furnish the nest. To provide and maintain order, be the rock of certainty amidst the breakers of life. Wasn’t that what marriage was all about?

Hard work. Of course. She had come to expect no less.

She had known it would be worth it. In the end. Had known it would pay off. Finally. After failure upon failure. Because she had gone on trying. Had not given up. Had therefore earned. The right. To love. Respect. Undivided attention. Having a say. A safe place.

It wasn’t much to expect. In return. Was it. After all, it was logic. It stood to reason, didn’t it. It was reasonable. Only reasonable. Only logical. You work, you get. Nothing in this life for free. A deal for a deal. A bargain struck. A price paid. All worked out. All arranged. That was what life was all about, wasn’t it? It made sense. It was the way it was meant to be. A pattern. Dependable down to the very last molecule of hard work she had put in.

She had earned them, her titles in life, first ‘Wife’, now ‘Mother’, and everything else that went with them. She had sown effort. She expected to reap her due. She could not wait.

Another spasm wracked her and Marcia was sucked into the moment. She was high on pain, induction fluid and aeons of expectation. Almost, perversely, she wished it would never end.

At the edge of awareness she registered the presence of doctors and nurses. A part of her knew they were fighting -as she was fighting- like she had never fought before, to actually make it come true. Another part of her saw them hovering around her. Flitting backwards and forwards in a kind of dance. Entranced, anxious, excited and, to Marcia, wholly appropriate.

Orbiting. They were orbiting. Like everything else had started to orbit once her pregnancy was an established fact, with evidence provided by Predictor (tentative), GP (hearsay, but), morning sickness (or was it flu), ultrasound (no it wasn’t flu) and finally, there for all to see, her bulging belly.

For the first time in her life Marcia had known what magnetic attraction meant. No sooner the word was out or Bob homed in. A roving planet finally gravitating, settling into the marital orbit. Close, closer than ever before. From peripheral she became central.

She had registered the change with amazement, then delight. She saw her efforts taking effect. It was an achievement that eclipsed all previous failures and disillusions of marriage in its glory. She would wake up at night and find him touching her belly with a fascination that she found intensely satisfying.

Gradually everything had started to change. The earth under her feet moved; the heavens above shifted until the centre of the universe finally settled somewhere about her navel and she herself started to spin around its axis, folding herself around it. Close, closer, closest. Claiming the protective inner orbit, her rightful place.

At the centre it too moved. Erratically. Eager and alive. Growing.

She had been alive with it. Eager, growing. Expectant. Readying herself. Around her the world had turned fluid, an ocean of respect. Protective, wrapping itself around her, warmly, knowing she was where it was at. Everyone, everything was readying, expecting with her. She had felt in tune, safe, and she had allowed herself to drift towards this moment of triumph.

Birth.

She had expected it to be a devastating experience in which she herself would die and be born again. A price for a prize.

And so it was.

Even now the pains wracked her. Convulsions gripped her with a force she felt could rend the earth.

She could hear the child crying inside her. The mountain on her belly moved. The earth shook and cracked. Another quake of pain raced through her. Deep inside her life gathered force, searching for an outlet. She felt like a volcano ready to erupt. All of a sudden she heaved.

Time.

It was the time. It had to be done. It could be done. It was what she wanted done. She could do it. She had to. She would do it.

With a supreme effort of will Marcia reached inside herself and pushed . . .

The child was there before they could do the caesarean. The crying stopped. Marcia soared high on her triumph. She had outdone the doctor, who had told her she could not do it. She had bypassed medical authority, who had told her they would do it. She had gone and done it all by herself, leaving them to cut the cord and clear up the mess.

If she had not been so exhausted she would have laughed. She, Marcia, certified Mother.

Then the child was there on her breast. Marcia stirred and opened her eyes. It was fresh and moist, with a tuft of red hair. Bob’s hair. She accepted it as a vindication, a sign of approval akin to a blessing from above. It was only right.

There was a sharp intake of breath and the child was whisked away, almost in the same moment it had touched her breast. They were not quick enough, though. She too had seen. Deep down inside her the scream started, tearing up her throat and spilling over into the operating theatre. Echoing. Echoing.

Marcia screamed, staring fixedly at the place where she had seen the nightmare monster with its drum-skin face, pink and taut and pulsing, all features erased, rubbed off at birth, left in the womb. No mouth, no nose to inhale its first breath with and send its first cry out upon the world. No eyes to see, no ears to hear. No chance of life.

Marcia screamed, her mouth wide open, vomiting noise.

Then abruptly she stopped.

She had killed it. She, Marcia, had killed her child, while trying to give it life. Killerbirth. Babycide. Her mind stared blankly at the paradox. The senseless impossibility of it all.

If only she had not allowed ‘Them’ to cut the cord, its life support.

She could have saved it. Popped it back in, reassembled its features and tried again. Instead she had dropped it straight into its coffin. She, Marcia, certified . . .

Then the afterbirth came shedding the remnants and it was too late to do anything.

In Marcia’s mind the lights went out and darkness fell. Its centre gone, the universe collapsed. The world around her turned rock-solid with failure, sealing her inside. She was wrenched from her orbit and flung into nothingness . . .

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‘Your husband is here. Do you want to see him?’

The question popped into the darkness. Marcia followed its course and found herself staring at the ceiling of a small private room. The question floated into the left-hand corner, where it hung suspended. An omen of sorts.

Marcia considered it.

No she did not. In fact, she did not want to see anybody, least of all him. No choice, though. It all boiled down to having no choice. So by all means show him in. She managed a nod. She heard the door open, footsteps stopping just inside the room. She forced her eyes down from the ceiling and braced herself.

He stood and looked at her. Hand in pockets, shoulders hunched, mouth clamped down to the thinnest of lines, a razor blade of disgust.

Her eyes locked onto the cutting edge, then moved up to the eyes. She saw what she had expected to see. No marks for trying from him. She knew what he thought about failures. Hers in particular. The darkness in her mind turned cold.

Bungler! You couldn’t even do this right!

The message blazed across. She cringed into her pillow and knew better than to reach out and call him over to the bed. She would have to wait. For other chances given. Try again for his approval. Not now. Definitely not now.

Somewhere in a vital place stuck a needle of hurt. Slowly, very slowly it twisted, infecting every single nerve with pain, setting them ablaze one by one. A little voice inside her began to wail.

If only he would unclamp that awful mouth.

He did.

‘It’s dead.’

Flat statement of fact. The words slapped her in the face, spat at her. She moved further under the blankets, praying, praying for other chances. There always had been. Even