Cathy sat on her bed, exhausted from her quarrel with her husband. How could he do that to her? She was lost. Zach wasn’t one to use subtle means to achieve his aim; he took a more direct route. Her thoughts niggled at her, which made her frown. It did not make sense to her at all.
They lived alone, and she certainly had not been using poster colours – she had not even seen them in a very long while until that morning. She could not fathom how those materials had gotten to their toolshed, except of course it was brought in by her loving husband, Zach to scare her into madness or death.
That was the part too she couldn’t get: why would Zach want to kill her? Had he met someone new? Was she a hindrance to his amorous affair with the other woman? Or, was it just time for him to pay her back for cheating on him with Dale? But he’d said he understood why things happened that way, hadn’t he? She had thought he was dead, as the doctors had told her all those years ago; surely, he didn’t believe she planned on cheating on him? To top it off, he had been extra supportive when they moved to the island on the Volta.
She suddenly stood up from the bed and began to pace. He had not pushed her to tell him the dreams she had been having. Was that deliberate, or was he being patient with her? She ran her fingers through her hair. Everything was so complicated. But why couldn’t she just believe that Zach had nothing to do with any of it? She shook her head. That was difficult; no one else went to the toolshed but Zach. Or was there someone else out there seeking to do them harm? Ah, she would surely go crazy if she kept pacing and trying to figure things out herself. She had to reason with Zach, and if she finally believed that he had nothing to do with the black mail, they had trouble on their hands, and they needed to work out a plan very fast.
Meanwhile in the hall, Zach was forming his own theories and conclusions. He had not been the one to create the black mail. He could not bring himself to believe that his wife, Cathy had done it either. It wasn’t entirely impossible; she could have been sleepwalking at any point in her nightmares and written the note in that state. The handwriting appeared sloppy enough. But Cathy did not appear to have dementia: she did everything in her organized and coordinated fashion. Wait, was there a disease that made a person do things in their sleep or an unconscious state where they do not remember anything when they became conscious? Wasn’t that related to Multiple Personality Disorder? Goodness! Zach sprang out of the seat. He could never arrive at any conclusion like this. Someone was definitely out to get them. Who it was, he had no idea yet, and he definitely had no idea how to find that person either. He had to talk to Cathy to make her understand that he wasn’t the guilty one in the story.
They collided into each other in the doorway, sudden electricity passing between them. There was no end to his sexual response to his wife, Zach thought fondly, even when they were having a fight. Zach recovered first and held his wife’s shoulders; apparently, she had felt it too. She quickly disengaged from him and headed into the hall. “I was coming to see you”, she started. “I’m sorry I behaved so horribly towards you earlier when all you have been is patient. I was blinded by guilt and rage. Can we talk?” she ended and sat on the couch.
“May I sit by you?” Zach requested. Cathy looked up at him, unsure if he was making fun of her or being serious. Either way, she nodded. She was tired already, and if their encounter in the doorway was any indicator, they had to resolve this fast and get on with something more exciting. She felt her cheeks go warm at the thought and smiled shyly.
Zach sat and cautiously reached for Cathy’s hands which she had folded in her laps. She sat that way when she was very disturbed. When she didn’t flinch, he held on more firmly. He looked at her face, drawn with so much stress, and his heart and throat constricted. He had to swallow a few times before any word came out. He said, “Cathy, I would never create a prank to hurt you. I really love you, even if you don’t believe me. I always have and I always will. I know why you did what you did with Dale. I didn’t give you much of a choice in the matter, and technically, you cannot cheat on a dead man.” They both smiled at that. “However,” Zach continued, his face more serious, “we have a lunatic on our hands. I cannot move us at this time – I don’t know where we will go. But I can assure you that we are in this together. Let’s just hope that it was a sick joke that will not be repeated…”
“What if it does?” Cathy cut in, concerned. “It must be Dale. He made it out somehow. He’s coming for us.” The tears began streaming down her beautiful face.
“There, there, don’t cry so,” Zach said, gathering his weeping wife into his arms and rubbing her back. “We’ve gone through this before and came out victorious; we will do it again. We are in this together, my dear. Don’t cry.” He kissed the top of her head, her forehead, eyes, both cheeks, and captured her lips, a light brush of lips at first, then a deeper, more soulful kiss. Zach poured all his emotions into that kiss, hoping that Cathy would understand that he would never leave her, that he would always love her, that they were going to fight together.
He pulled back suddenly, paying close attention to his outer environment. He thought he heard movement outside. He looked down at Cathy, whose eyes were already showing signs of… good signs, but there was no time for that. “Did you hear that?” he asked her. Cathy took a while to refocus, what with the mind-blowing kiss her husband just gave her. What else could she hear apart from her own heartbeat and rushing blood? “Cathy, did you hear… Oh never mind. You couldn’t have heard. Go into the room and stay there. Find a heavy object and hold on to it. I’m going to check out the sound I heard.” He gave her one last, long kiss. “I’ll be back soon.”
Zach got up quickly and went out to the porch. There was nothing amiss there. As a precaution, he decided to do a three-sixty round the house. As he neared the back door that led to their backyard garden, he observed that the door was ajar, cakes of mud all over the steps and the floor as far as he could see into the corridor. That was odd: there was no mud in the perimeter of the house; also, the hardened mud had not been there earlier. Just as he decided to investigate the hedges around their house, he heard a loud, piercing scream from inside. He also heard a loud crash of something from inside. His instinct was to rush in and face whatever it was head-on, but his military sense told him to grab a weapon and tread cautiously.
He looked around and found a short but heavy branch; it was not enough but it should do till he got to his gun. He then entered stealthily, careful to see all but avoiding being seen. On entering the hall, he saw that the lamp that had been on the table near the three-seater couch had been upended and broken but there was no sign of his wife. He dashed into their bedroom, praying that his wife would be in bed, having one of her usual nightmares. She wasn’t there. His heart began a new rhythm, faster and much, much harder. The bed was rumpled, there was a sprinkle of ashes all over the bed, and the bedroom window had been broken, the glasses shattered everywhere. Zach panicked. Someone had abducted his wife on his watch! How could he have missed the intruder? He dashed back through the hall to the front porch, frantically searching for a clue as to who could have taken his wife. That was when he saw the footsteps of ashes and a smear of blood, blazing a trail towards the back, the same path he had taken only a few minutes earlier. He shook his head; it did not make sense at all. Was he dreaming?
Zach followed the trail of ashes to the back again, where the toolshed stood open. What first hit him was the acrid smell of burnt offering. The apparition was in black apparel, and right in front of him was his wife, tied to the workbench and gagged. She couldn’t struggle for if she did, she would slip off the bench and fall on the spikes strewn all along the floor near the bench. Zach stood rooted at his spot. He looked at the branch he held and felt utterly ridiculous and useless. He threw the branch away and looked round for something else, a metal or any heavy object. When he couldn’t find any, he made to approach his enemy head-on.
As he did as quietly as he could manage, he heard the apparition say, “I know you are there. Come and face your punishment.”
“Who are you?” Zach asked, still searching for a weapon.
“Don’t you know yet? I am your judgement.” The apparition turned around slowly, and Zach beheld the greatest horror of his life!
