Forgotten Dark

By Louise Worthington

A young widow is plunged into her painful past, in this novel by the author of Rachel’s Garden.
 
Losing her husband suddenly was difficult enough for Sally, but now her eighteen-year-old daughter has sought out her birth father, Ricky. Sally hasn’t seen Ricky since she was a teenager herself, and her memories from back then are having an unsettling effect on her sleep.
 
As her world begins to crumble around her, Sally decides to face her anxieties by consulting a hypnotherapist. But when more terrifying secrets rise to the surface, will Sally be able to confront the past and save her future? And will her memories set her free or be her undoing?
 
Praise for Louise Worthington
 
“Gripping and disturbing.” —The Eclectic Review on Doctor Glass

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504081566

Book preview

Prologue

Holly Cottage, a detached character property with an established back garden, is in a quiet location. It has great potential to modernise and improve.

So said the property listing.

Holly Cottage, on Evergreen Lane, is over one hundred years old, and it has seen families come and go. It has known births and a few natural deaths. But, on a Thursday night in April 2020, its walls groaned. Its leaded diamond windows shook with despair. Its latch doors rattled.

If only a fire had been lit in the grate; a smoke signal telling of the terrible thing in the south-facing garden, under the twinkling stars, prostrate in the grass, twinkling with dew.

Field mice and sparrows paused by the thick holly hedge, curious at the stillness of a strange, sorry head cradled by daisies and dandelions, pillowed by blades of grass. Petals flapped open and glistened like a picture frame, while they lay amongst bruised flowers, still as a spade on buried bones. A discarded shoe echoed a memory of the pilgrim’s last lucid journey.

Monocled by a slug, an eyeball looked up at the ceiling of an April sky, as though daydreaming about days to come. From the broken rope ladder of ribs, the bottom one protruded like a flag of surrender – snapped crawling through a tight space. The curve of one eyebrow was all that remained of a once animated face, capturing in its final moment the suffering and surrender. A watch – a fine timepiece gifted on a landmark birthday – ticked on in robotic irony, sitting stubbornly on a snapped wrist bone like a fault line.

Word spread. It sold within days.

Vehicles slowed for passengers to look at ‘the place’ on the market for a song. Some parked and trespassed into the garden, peeked into the leaded diamond windows; browsed through the letter box, without bothering to book a viewing, assuming the seller was that desperate they didn’t need to.

A character property with potential sold for the price of a derelict terrace.

Chapter One

When Sally returns from a supermarket shop, the house feels big and empty, because Adam and Iris are at the cinema. The shopping bags are unpacked and spilling over onto the kitchen floor, brimming with their favourite foods. Fruit for when Iris is on a health-binge, chocolate for when she’s not, bread, frozen pizza and curly fries for growing Adam, and ready meals for when Sally hasn’t the energy to move, let alone cook. Grief does that.

It seems that the house still waits for Jeremy to return.

Sally looks at the staircase. She can’t find the will to go upstairs, so she settles down on the sofa, places a soft cushion under her head and covers herself with a knitted throw.

Six family photos, in an array of different frames, almost entirely cover the oak sideboard. All those shared moments: the children with missing teeth; their wedding photo; Adam in a highchair, wearing mashed carrot and holding a yellow plastic spoon; Iris’s first day at secondary school, wearing a navy school uniform too new and too big for her; Iris and Adam holding hands and jumping waves in a rough sea, their cheeks pink, fair hair whipping in the breeze; a well-dressed Jeremy and his proud parents: Melanie in dark glasses, Albert toasting the camera with a tumbler of whisky.

Seeing Melanie in dark glasses, Sally wonders if her perception of her mother-in-law is accurate. For years she’s thought of Melanie as a limpet on the hull of her marriage, cold and spoilt; and Albert a convivial man who enjoyed an easy retired life. How wrong she had been, because alcoholism had killed him.

Just one illusion after another. Her own making or theirs?

How wrong she had been to assume that Jeremy was healthy.

After he fell and was admitted to hospital, she recalls changing the sheets on their bed while shaking uncontrollably. It felt like she had been stripped naked and searched. At the time, she didn’t know he would never sleep in their bed again.

In one photo, the wife, Sally, looks back at her with luminous green eyes, nestled between Jeremy and Adam, fierce pride in her expression. They are in one of Iris’s favourite cafés in Chester, a trendy and expensive place. Sally remembers drinking a latte, wondering what all the time taken and fuss was about, just to make a cup of coffee. She stares at the photograph until it blurs – until the wife could be anyone. Or no one in particular. A somebody she might know.

She had moved back to a bedsit in the Chester area, and within a few months of her mother’s death she’d met Jeremy. When his eyes lingered on Sally, she assumed it was because she looked so awful, so washed out; she assumed he probably thought, poor woman looks like she needs a decent night’s sleep.

He was trimmer then; still bulky, but in a muscular kind of way, with fair hair. When he came over and asked if she’d like another coffee, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer, she heard herself laugh and it felt good.

She can remember how he looked at her and didn’t look away. It seemed then that her life wasn’t ruined. It wasn’t over. She was still desirable, even with a four-year-old torpedo for a daughter. When they had sex for the first time, it was like beginning again. Sally had cooked dinner at the bedsit. It was a rushed affair, as most of the day was spent trying to tire out Iris in the fresh air, so she’d go to bed on time and sleep through. And she did.

Soon after, Sally moved in with him and they became a family of three. Suddenly she had a life, a family, a home and a man she loved, who loved her.

They both wanted more children, so a few years later Adam came along, and family life was fun and messy and wonderful, all at once. Most of the contents of the house were a wonderful mismatch, from the crockery and pictures to the furniture, but somehow it all pulled together to make a home. A happy one, too, for the most part. Iris called Jeremy ‘Daddy’, and he was in every way, except blood.

She reaches an arm out; imagines her hand moving through the glass of the photograph frame, reaching inside to feel how that glowing woman looks like she feels.

Sally then turns her back on the photos, feeling like the people within are staring at her, questioning who she is and what she is doing here. She presses her knees into the back of the three-seater sofa, but still it feels like their gazes are arrows, puncturing her spine.

She lunges over to the sideboard with her jaw clenched.

The photograph nearest to her is the first to fall head-first, then the one behind it, of Sally and Jeremy on their wedding day. Like dominoes they fall, some landing so firmly that the glass smashes. Sally takes a step back. Now the sideboard is empty of open gazes. It’s a graveyard for smiles.

Frightened and feeling terribly small, she climbs back onto the sofa into a foetal position, closes her eyes to the sound of birdsong from the garden, and eventually drifts off to sleep.

A crow flies out of the chimney, into the living room, swooping low and fast over the beige carpet; Sally winces at its dark pebble eyes and sharp, black beak. It darts to the far corner of the room, and in the sound of its wings beating, flapping urgently, she hears panic. Then a glass vase – a wedding present – collides with its beak and smashes to the floor. She opens the window to let the crow out.

‘Get out! Shoo!’

More crows fly in, one after the other, three and four abreast, until the room turns black and pulses to the sound of heaving, black wings. The crows turn on one another, plucking at feathers and eyes, and the air is hot and thick.

Sally opens her mouth to scream, but black feathers are wedged inside her mouth, sitting on her tongue, caught between her teeth. Roughly, she inserts three fingers to remove them, regurgitates black feathers and screams loud and hard, until all the blackness inside her has gone.

Or is it because now she is in a wheat field and a murder of crows flocks toward the northern hedge of a vast field? There are thirty… forty… maybe more owning the wheat field, sounding even more pissed off than usual; their blackness steals from the blue sky; their ugly ‘caa-caa’ steals some of the gold from the wheat. They steal everything.

A shotgun fires and keeps firing; crows fall from the sky. Their wings stutter in mid-flight, before plummeting like black parachutes through blue smoke.

She runs as hard as she can along the tramlines, until the insides of her lungs burn.

A five-bar gate stops Sally in her tracks – not the metal, but the rows of dead crows suspended from it: mummified crows, dressed in blue and purple feathers without sheen or shine, their beaks moving, speaking the language of lead. Are they feigning death? They seem to know so much – so much more than Sally. They are suspended so close together that it could be one creature with multiple heads, speaking only to her. What are they saying?

When Sally wakes up, gasping and sweaty, she tries to think happy, calm thoughts, to still her frantic heartbeat.

She is awake.

The blackness is still inside her, and the darkness she sees through the window pushes into the room – pushes down on her, as it used to when she was a trapped child.

What have I done?

Once the intensity of grief passes, she pulls out the dictaphone from beneath the cushion and strokes it. Sighing, she presses play then leans back into the sofa, trying to relax, desperate to beat a path through the dark place she finds herself. Ruth, an experienced counsellor who used to work for the NHS as a mental health nurse, records the counselling sessions with Sally, because Sally likes to listen back in the comfort of her own home; it sometimes helps them interpret the symbolism and illuminate the meaning behind her dreams.

The counsellor’s voice is heard first: ‘Sally Lansdale. Tuesday third of March.’

Sally is heard clearing her throat, which makes her smile because she recalls feeling nervous about sharing her dreams with Ruth, even though she is the best thing that has happened to her recently.

I’m in a library browsing shelves of my memories, but then there are shelves upon shelves of nothing but dust. Frantically I search other shelves, but I don’t know the titles I am looking for. Yet the books are essential to me; I know they are. The library is in my house, but I feel like an intruder there.

Then, I hold a key with large metal teeth and I lock the library door. I hear the lock click after it’s turned 180 degrees. I tug on the door to make sure it’s locked.

When I’m inside the dream, I think the dream is reality. When I’m awake, I know the dream existed, but I think about it, imagining myself back in the dream. I hear things from my dream in reality, like when I dreamt about the hospital machine beeping dispassionately; I am conducting the beeps for Jeremy to keep breathing and stay alive. I felt angry when I woke up, because it meant the machine was switched off, and from that point Ricky has been circling mine and Iris’s life.

I’m angry Iris wants to see her birth father all of a sudden; it feels like a betrayal to Jeremy, after everything he’s given Iris. Ricky is a door to a past closed off.

Sally pauses the recording and tries to collect her thoughts into some kind of shape. She resumes the recording, all the while staring at the broken frames on the sideboard.

Something makes me think I’m going to be okay; I’ll get through it because I always do. I just wish I could put my hand through the glass of a photo frame, touch a picture of me on my wedding day – a sepia-toned image – and know that I am the same person now as I was before… before Jeremy died.

Chapter Two

Shari leans forward in her chair and waits for her colleague to speak first. She places her hands in her lap while maintaining a neutral position to conceal her irritation with Ruth. While the experienced psychotherapist understands the difficulties of managing complex clients, Ruth’s frequent requests for last-minute appointments are starting to grate.

Ruth Lightfield, a long-standing colleague, is usually a sensible, self-contained therapist but today she has flushed cheeks and fidgeting hands, telltale signs of stress.

It doesn’t do to jump to conclusions, so Shari parks her initial impressions. The faint sound of traffic from outside her office on the second floor is a pleasant reminder of rush hour, and the end of the working day. Another hour, perhaps two, and she will be on her way home.

Ruth runs a hand through her hair.

‘Take your time, Ruth. Start at the beginning.’

Ruth sighs, and shuffles in her seat. ‘So, Sally’s husband, Jeremy, died six months ago, from a brain aneurysm. It was a terrible shock and loss, and followed on from her father’s abandonment when she was sixteen. Her mother died four years later.’

‘Yes, I remember you telling me that. Go on.’

‘I think the grief and loss of Jeremy are triggering the re-emergence of repressed material.’

‘It’s a major event, causing stress, so it wouldn’t be unusual for repressed material in the unconscious to resurface. Why are you so concerned by this?’

Ruth fleetingly looks towards the window, then back at Shari. ‘I’ve seen little gestures and phrases out of character – just for a few seconds; no more – and then they’re gone. They’re childlike: a jutting lip; a scowl.’

‘The behaviours could be staged.’

‘Or they could be a genuine reaction to excess stress. My concern is that she will regress to a child, should the repressed material be remembered.’

‘I see. Does she have a support network?’

‘Not really, and she is left with two children and a business to run – Jeremy’s estate agent firm – which is out of her comfort zone. Until Jeremy’s death, she was a social worker, working with young offenders. Her mother-in-law is local, but Sally keeps her at arm’s length.’

‘If you have spotted signs of regression, and I’m not in a position to say you have or haven’t, it could be because she is needing more help and attention, and there isn’t anyone there to give it. I know you always go the extra mile anyway but it sounds like Sally is going to need you to be there 24/7.’

‘Exactly. We’re talking dangerous levels of stress. I accept I will have to be on call. But Sally is determined to remember what is buried in her unconscious. If I continue with our sessions, I worry that she will regress; but if we stop them she would lose my support.’

‘I see your dilemma. Have you explained the purpose of ego defence mechanisms in protecting difficult memories?’

‘She knows it’s a method of coping with trauma, yes. I think the dreams hint at more than one trauma, though I can’t be sure which also concerns me. Last week Sally spoke about a swallowed tongue during hypnosis: a metaphor for forgetting, I suggest.’ Ruth speaks quickly. ‘She has been dreaming more and more lately, which suggests the unconscious is ripe for more hypnotherapy – don’t you think?’

Shari doesn’t reply immediately, giving Ruth time to calm down. ‘In theory, yes. I’ll reserve my judgement until I’ve listened to the recording.’

Ruth presses play, and relaxes a little at the sound of her voice following the protocol of firstly stating the patient’s name and date before Sally speaks.

Sally Lansdale, Thursday fifth of March.

I hear the ears of wheat whispering in the field. It’s a bumper crop because of the rich soil; the right balance of nutrients; drainage; all kinds of things. Corpses make excellent fertilizer, someone once said as a joke. But I’m not laughing. I’m listening.

Gold is everywhere: in liquid sunshine; in Adam’s and Iris’s colouring; in the daily sun, even. My history is golden – all golden. I want to know it all. I see an expanse of golden ears, bobbing and waving in the breeze, holding up the sky. There is no one around for miles. The landscape stretches every way, punctuated only by hedges and mature trees. I have missed golden hours because I am locked in the wardrobe.

I lie down in the wheat; the watery sky moves farther away. I am young, around sixteen. Then the sky is blocked entirely, by a figure leaning over me. They’re wearing dark clothes.

It is darkness. Darkness pressing down. Darkness gives way to more darkness; shadows on shadows. A smell of wet petals comes off of the figure.

I am crying because Mother found grains of wheat in my shoes, socks, my jeans pockets… I’m a bad child.

I see Mother’s creamy skin, her milky-cream blouse and the pearl earrings in her ears.

The air crackles in a chorus of yellow and orange… and a voice… I know what the wheat is saying now:

‘Mother knows best.’

Shari’s office is loud with silence once the Dictaphone is switched off. The thrum of traffic seems further away. Shari could be with Ruth for some time. In 2018 one of her clients regressed to a two-year-old, periodically crawling and sucking his thumb. It was devastating for him, his wife and two teenage children. Ruth will have her hands full.

Ruth reads that Shari is concerned, by the way she is holding her hands tightly in her lap; her usual position of neutrality isn’t present. Her worries intensify. Is Ruth the best person to treat Sally?

Shari clears her throat. ‘My question for you is are you pushing too hard for her to remember, because of countertransference feelings and residual complexes stemming from your own experience of abuse? As you said once before, it’s quite likely there is more than one trauma re-emerging here, and that knowledge could be beyond your client’s coping mechanism.’

Ruth sighs. ‘That’s always been my concern. They are intertwined, somehow; I can’t unravel one negative experience without tugging at the threads of the other.’

‘My second thought is this: Sally has given you permission to record your sessions; it is within the contract, yes?’

Ruth gives a curt nod to confirm, her jaw tensed.

‘I know you will be paying close attention to what she says, but also do the same to your own responses. Are they objective? Self-scrutinise. You have a valuable insight into your client’s emotional feelings, following your own experience of abuse, but use it wisely. I hear your strong feeling and it concerns me. Are you sure your interventions aren’t stemming from your own needs?’

Ruth leans forward in her seat. ‘No, definitely not, I am sure of that. I care about her – of course I do!’

‘See me every fortnight, I think, for the time being?’

Ruth nods to confirm and pushes her hair away from her tired face.

‘As you said, you provide much-needed support at a stressful time in her life. I think you should continue to help her. Did you ask her whether, in the dream about the library shelves, she locked herself inside the room or outside?’

‘I didn’t ask.’ Ruth makes a mental note to do so the next time she sees Sally. ‘So I should continue with the sessions, but take it slowly, continuing with hypnotherapy and dream analysis? And monitor closely?’

Shari nods and smiles warmly. ‘Exactly, Ruth. If anyone can help her, it’s you.’

Chapter Three

There’s a cherry-red Hilux parked in what was Jeremy’s car parking space at the estate agents; it is clearly marked ‘JESAL STAFF’. Sally still can’t bring herself to use it, even when it is empty.

Moments ago, she was advancing to her blue Ford Fiesta just before five o’clock, but made a rapid U-turn back inside the office, muttering as she hitched her small leather handbag up onto one shoulder; now she’ll be delayed collecting the children from her mother-in-law’s house. She had promised to be no later than five thirty, and that they’d swerve by McDonald’s for dinner, as a sweetener; neither of them were happy about going to Melanie’s house. That came as no surprise from her eldest child, Iris, who at eighteen would ordinarily be allowed to stay home alone and do as she pleased. Adam grumbled because his previous habit was going to the skatepark after school, but the old routines of freedom no longer sit well with Sally, now that Jeremy isn’t around.

‘You’re back?’ Bev quizzes, while clutching the updated details of a semi-detached property called Carrig House, situated in a suburb of Chester. ‘I thought I was going to lock up.’

Sally scurries behind the protection of Jeremy’s desk, then nods toward the front floor-to-ceiling windows, which look out onto the car park. At three advancing figures.

‘Oh, no,’ Bev says, in a tone like a lead weight. She looks at Mr Guy first, then the familiar entourage of his wife, Patricia, and wayward son, Eric, his hands stuffed into the front of his grey hoodie, like a kangaroo’s pouch.

Sally would be the first to admit her brain isn’t as sharp as it could be right now, having stepped into the breach at the estate agents. From what she can recall, she left a message for the Guys to call back. They are in the middle of a chain, she thinks, but there isn’t much else she knows or recalls. But, from the expression on Mr Guy’s weathered face, the holding call didn’t appease; this clearly isn’t a social