by Ashley Libey
Content Warning
Intimate partner harm.
I can’t remember when or where I first saw my husband; all I can tell you is that he was constantly part of the background, hovering like a bluebottle.
If I went to a reading, he was there. If I attended a new gallery opening, he was there. At every event, I’d be sure to see him if I only peered into the shadows at the back of the room. But despite that, he never seemed inclined to talk to me. Instead, he’d linger in some corner or other with a glass of wine in his hand and turn his head whenever I caught him looking. Eventually, I approached him.
Our conversation, while initially hesitant on his part, flowed smoothly toward the end. From that night on, every time we happened to be in the same social setting, he sought me out. We discussed books, philosophy, current political affairs, and our travels. I discovered that he was twice widowed and therefore shy, worried about forming romantic attachments.
He’d often comment on how well read I was. He admitted to having hundreds of books in his library but always returning to the same handful over and over—human anatomy, botany, and a slim collection of mysteries that he insisted weren’t penny dreadfuls, but his reddened cheeks assured me they were. I found him a delight to talk to, and when he asked me to marry him several months later, I agreed.
I must confess that I didn’t hold any particular romantic affection for him, but I thought at the time he was the best I could do—a husband who would let me read, who would ask me questions that I found stimulating. He never once commented on my dark hair or even darker eyes like other men did, as though those things were compliments and not merely observations on a body that would one day wither and decay. He seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. I thought at the very least we could pass the rest of our married lives as friends who enjoyed each other’s company.
But then he started to poison me.
I’d always been healthy, almost abnormally so. Where other children were stricken with the normal flus and infections I passed through them quickly, never in bed for more than a few days at a time, but several weeks after we returned from our honeymoon I fell ill.
It started with a general nausea and fatigue. Sometimes I felt dizzy, or as though my heart were beating erratically. I thought at first (and was rather horrified by the idea) that my husband had gotten me with child despite the fact we’d only shared a marital bed a handful of times.
It would come and go, this feeling of unsteadiness. Some days would be good and I could walk from our house down to the sea. Others were rotten. I’d feel an overwhelming pain in my abdomen, as though someone were stabbing me. My muscles would cramp up and my arms and legs would go numb. I’d spend entire days in front of the fire, cold and feverish. What felt like a certifiable army of doctors visited me and every single one offered a different diagnosis. Some bled me with leeches. Some peered into my eyes and tutted. Eventually I was placed on a strict diet of plain foods – no butter on my bread, no sugar in my tea. The diet didn’t seem to do any good.
On one of my bad days, but not quite one of my worst days, my husband brought me a cup of tea.
“Black tea,” he said. “No sugar. No lemon.”
He handed it to me and my hands were shaking so badly that I spilled some on my skirt. We both pretended not to notice. My husband checked his pocket watch and I stared down into the agitated dark liquid in my cup so that I wouldn’t have to see his face. At first, when I fell ill, he was attentive and caring. He’d sit by my bedside and sketch for hours. But then he became distant, bored almost, as though he wished there were something better to do than to care for an ailing wife. I told myself that it was just his past creeping up on him, that he was putting up mental walls because he’d already buried two wives.
“Do you mind, dear?” he asked. “I’m afraid I have an appointment in town that can’t be put off any longer.”
“It’s fine, darling,” I said. I felt the need to be agreeable. An urge I’d never entertained before. Before I fell ill, I didn’t much care what people thought of me. After, when I realized what it felt like to be a burden, I found myself desperate for reassurance that I wasn’t an irritant.
My husband gave me a kiss on the cheek – a chaste, cool thing – and then departed without saying another word.
I continued to stare down into my cup. I didn’t want to see him leave. I didn’t want to see him close the front door or which walking stick he took with him.
Faded pink roses stared back up at me. The gold along the edge of the cup had chipped slightly even though they’d been a wedding present. We’d only been using them for a few weeks.
I tilted my cup toward the sun slanting in through the window. A few tea leaves littered the bottom and I thought about reading my fortune once I’d finished. I brought the cup closer to take a sip and paused. There was something there, something I hadn’t noticed before.
In the bottom of my cup, beside the tea leaves, glinted several granules.
I took a cautious sniff and all that reached me were the slightly astringent notes of the tea, over steeped and tannic. I set the cup down on the bedside table, my hand shaking even worse than before and decided not to drink the tea that day. I rose from the bed and poured it out the window. By the time I made it back to bed I was breathless and faint.
For over a week my husband brought me my afternoon tea before leaving the house on some errand or another. Every day I thanked him, and after he left, I inspected the bottom of my cup. There was always something there. Some days I could only spot one or two granules. Other days there were five or more. Every day he brought my tea he declared it to be plain, no sugar, no lemon. Each day after he left, I rose shakily from the bed to pour my tea out the window. My thoughts were flooded with details of my husband’s life I had passively accepted before. Two dead wives. A love of penny dreadfuls.
I began to recover. Not all at once of course, but by the end of the week I was able to get down to the kitchen by myself to make a piece of toast or pour a glass of water. I’d begun to steadfastly refuse anything my husband offered me. It was just the two of us in the house – we had no staff as he hadn’t hired anyone yet, declaring everyone he interviewed to be either untrustworthy or unrefined. He brought me my morning meal, then afternoon tea. Each day I declared I was too tired to eat or drink at the moment, then once he left, I’d descend the stairs in search of food.
My husband was suspicious of my recovery, of that I was certain. He commented on my seemingly miraculous recovery despite my claims that I felt weak. There was nothing I could do to hide the fact that some of my weight had returned, that my skin no longer looked sallow or clammy. I thought that if I could just make it long enough, could just get to the point that walking through the house didn’t sap me of energy, that I could leave.
But before that day could arrive, my husband outsmarted me.
He brought me my afternoon tea and as usual, I thanked him, then set it aside until I was certain he’d gone out. I headed down to the kitchen where I buttered a piece of fresh bread and ate it looking out the window, the sun reflecting off the ocean. A caterpillar crawled along the window sill and I studied it for a bit, its brilliant green body undulating against the brown wood. The walk from my bedroom to the kitchen hadn’t been as difficult and I told myself that tomorrow I would get a few things together and leave the house once my husband was out for the afternoon.
And then my heart began to race. My legs shook. My hands went numb. I dropped the bread I was holding, not understanding. It had just been delivered that morning, how could it sicken me? Then I realized.
The butter. He had poisoned the butter.
All too late I felt a grittiness on my tongue. All too late I realized the butter in the crock glistened a bit, as though someone had spilled sugar on the surface.
A distant part of my brain was aware of my collapse. My head hit the floor with a dull thud and my limbs splayed out to the sides. It felt as though my insides were melting.
Everything went dark.
Some time later, I awoke. Or thought I did. I could hear voices nearby – hushed tones and the sound of someone crying. My husband was slumped by the side of the bed weeping. He was face down, his head on his arms on the side of the mattress. The doctor stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder. I reached to touch my husband’s arm, then paused. Some part of me felt an urge to comfort him, but I wrestled it back. There would be no comforting him, not when I was certain he was to blame for my current situation. But why was he crying? Was it remorse for what he’d done, or was he merely angered that it hadn’t worked? Were his tears for show?
I sat up and realized my aches and pains were gone – my insides felt normal, my arms and legs were no longer numb. I flexed my hands and smoothed my dress, then froze. I appeared to be sitting on top of my own body. I was somehow transparent, ethereal.
“Edgar,” the doctor said. “I know it’s hard, but arrangements must be made. Did your wife have any kin? We’ll need to notify them of her death.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Dead? I realized I felt neither warm nor cold. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty or in any sort of pain. I turned and looked at the body beneath me. There I was, a more solid version of myself. My skin was waxy, my eyes half open. A smear of blood clotted my hairline.
My husband sat up and rubbed the tears from his blotchy face. His hair, a dull shade of brown that somehow never managed to glow when the sun hit it, stood out from his head in all directions. I’d never seen him so disheveled. I tried to tug at his sleeve, but my hand merely passed through him. We both shuddered.
“She has no family. She is… was… alone in the world,” my husband said.
Alone in the world. It was true. My father died before I was born, my mother not too long after. An aunt had raised my sister and I, but they too were gone now. I noted how quickly my husband was able to switch to the past tense when referring to me. A cold wave of suspicion flowed through me. Was that why he picked me? Because I was alone and killing me would be that much easier?
I scrambled from the bed and grasped for the doctor. Surely, he would realize I wasn’t gone. But as before, my hand merely passed through him. I called out, but neither of them gave any sign they heard. I tried again and again to make the doctor hear me. I do not know how long I wailed and grasped, trying to get him to realize I was still there, but there was no denying the body in the bed.
After the doctor left, my husband fetched his sketchbook and sat himself by my bedside. He flipped through and found a clean page, but not before I saw his studious documentation of my decline, each page a harsher portrait than the last. He arranged my hair just so, then examined my body with an intensity I’d never seen in him while I was alive. He selected a piece of charcoal and began to draw.
The next day, my body was taken and I assume buried, but I remained.
I am still here and I do not know why. The days blur together now and I am only able to tell their passing by the way the sunlight moves through the room.
I’m never hungry or thirsty or cold or too warm. I’ve tried to leave the house a handful of times, thinking I might go in search of the light that is supposed to arrive when death comes, but I find myself unable to get past the front gate. Something stops me and I’m physically unable to go any farther. Is this what it’s like then, to be a ghost? It feels as though I will be trapped here forever, unchanging and unable to move on.
After my death, I am uncertain how long after, my husband’s mood takes a marked turn. There is a spring in his step and he whistles to himself. In the mornings, he carefully selects which shirt to wear for the day, then trims his mustache, and applies pomade to his hair in an effort to tame it. I watch him do all this, a knot of rage coiling in my stomach, slithering and sliding over itself like a mass of snakes. I hate him. I hate that he managed to hide his true form so well. I hate his new mood – optimistic and just a bit smug. Things continue on in this way for some time, and then one day, I realize the reason behind his change.
He’s married someone new.
She arrives at the house on a sunny afternoon and for a moment I am dumbfounded. Where I was tall she is short, where I was dark-haired she is golden, where I was studious she is joyful, laughing at every little thing and seemingly delighted by the world. She is wearing a white dress trimmed with green and a gold ring glimmers on her left hand. Our differences do not make me envious – they do not make me think my husband removed me from this world so that he might have this newer, happier wife. No. If anything I know I need to protect her.
He has collected a new specimen.
His new wife (I never hear him use her name) walks through the house, smiling at everything and I follow in her wake. I haven’t tried to touch anyone since the day I died, but today I try. I reach for her shoulder, but my hand repeatedly passes through her. She doesn’t appear to notice the first few attempts I make, but by the fourth time she brushes at her shoulder. I try again and again. Each time she brushes herself or twitches away. One time she even looks back, as though to see if something is there.
I try, I try so hard to make her see me. I hold as tight to my wish as I can. But it doesn’t work. She turns back around and follows my husband through the house, marveling at the books and the paintings. Calling my husband clever.
I must not give up.
It’s been a week since the new wife’s arrival and my attempts to make her see me have proven unsuccessful. As before, the only thing I seem to be able to do is make people feel me in a passing sense. So, I do this over and over. I touch her arms constantly. I talk to her, trying to get her to hear me when I warn her that she isn’t safe.
As she takes a seat at the table, I place my hand on hers. I leave it there for longer than I usually do and for a moment, my hand sinks into hers. She yanks her hand away and places it on her lap. Her shoulders are hitched up around her ears and I briefly wonder if I might be able to step into her, walk her from the house and down the road and away from this man we’ve both married.
The new wife begins to cry. She says she thinks the house is haunted and my heart cracks a little. I never wanted to scare her. She talks about cold spots and the feeling that she’s constantly being watched.
My husband’s eyes glitter, like twin beetles. “We shall move then,” he says. “We’ll start a new life somewhere else.”
The new wife looks hesitant. She expresses that she doesn’t want to go too far from her family.
“Don’t worry, dear. We won’t go too far.”
I know that he will take her very far indeed.
In a flurry of activity over the next two weeks, the house is sold, a new house is acquired, trunks are packed. I watch them stow away their things. Away go her brightly colored dresses, her ribbons, and her necklaces. Away go his walking sticks and sketchbooks. I sit on the terrace and watch as the carriage is loaded with the most important of their belongings.
I rise when the carriage pulls away and step into the road to watch it for as long as I can. The new wife pokes her head out to give one last forlorn look at the house and regret pierces through me. I haven’t been able to help her and there is no knowing what shall happen now.
The carriage trundles down the road and the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves fade away. The carriage crests the hill and descends out of sight.
I am alone.
But then there is a tug, somewhere just behind my navel and I am yanked forward. I fall to my knees and realize that I am being dragged down the road, as though I were tied to the retreating carriage with a great length of rope. I rise and rush forward a few steps until I feel the tug lessen, then stop. After a few seconds the tug comes again and I am once more pulled forward.
I hasten down the road, crest the hill, and see the carriage ahead of me. It seems I was never tied to the house after all, but rather my husband.
I follow the carriage until night falls, then through the velvet blackness of night and on until the sun rises the next morning.
This continues on for several days, the carriage only stopping for an hour or so at a time. Just long enough to take care of necessary human needs and change out the horses. I follow, untiring.
Finally, the carriage pulls off the main road and down a narrower lane, full of ruts and potholes. The horses slow and then stop in front of the new house. My husband emerges first, his hair mussed and wild from days in the carriage. His new wife follows uncertainly. Her eyes flicker from the moss on the roof to the paint peeling on the front door.
I follow them inside.
This house is darker, damper than the one my husband selected for the two of us. Where our house by the sea was greeted each morning by a salty breeze through the windows, where blue sky could be seen and the clamor of voices and footsteps drifted up from the street, this new house is different. There’s no blue sky. Instead, the sky hangs overhead like funeral crepe, as though it is in mourning for the sun. The air is foul – clogged with the smells of the charnel house down the road. Even the rooms inside feel tomblike, branching off the warren-like halls. Only the bedroom is of any sort of reasonable size, and even then it feels confined. The walls are covered in a dark damask wallpaper; the windows shrouded with heavy velvet curtains. In one of the corners, I spot what I at first think is a dead leaf, but a subtle rustle tells me it’s a cocoon. The house is filthy.
I trail behind the new wife as she explores the house and a sinking revelation settles on me. She seems diminished. Not just by disappointment or sadness, but by something more. There is no luster to her hair, no glow to her skin. She is growing ill, just like I did. At one point she has to stop and lean a hand against the wall to catch her breath. Our husband has already disappeared into the belly of the house. I want to comfort her, but I cannot. I stand with her in the hall until she regains her breath and is able to continue on.
Over the next few days, furniture from the old house is brought in, along with some items I’ve never seen before. It seems our husband has been buying up a new collection.
“Sarcophagi,” he calls them. But call them what he will, he can’t change what they are. Boxes for bodies.
The sarcophagi are moved about the house until he finally decides on the room where they will be best on display. The bedroom. The new wife sits in the parlor, too weak to argue that the bedroom isn’t a fitting place for a display of coffins. Our husband declares it’s the best location in the house since it’s the largest room, clearly pleased with himself. The new wife smiles wanly and clasps her hands in her lap. They are shaking.
That evening, after the men hired to assist with the furniture have left, our husband makes the new wife a cup of tea. He brings it into the bedroom where she sits on a tufted ottoman, picking at her skirt. The skin on the back of her hands has a grey tint. It’s early afternoon, but already the house is as dark as if it were night. The new wife looks as though she is withering, like a rose picked from the garden and thrown carelessly on a table. She isn’t made for this kind of environment. She isn’t a woman built for the dark and damp.
“Some tea for you, darling,” our husband says. “It will make you feel better.”
Obediently she takes it and I try to knock it from her hands, but nothing happens. She shivers and I’m not sure if it’s me or her sickness.
“Don’t drink it,” I whisper. “Don’t.” But she doesn’t hear me and it’s too dark in here for her to see the granules in the bottom of her cup.
She takes one grateful sip after another, then, struggling for breath, she tries to set the cup down on the saucer. Our husband takes the cup and saucer from her and sets them to the side. He brushes a loose strand of hair out of her face and I hate him so much that I would start screaming if I thought it would lessen any of the rage I feel.
The new wife gasps and tries to say something.
“Hush, dear,” he says. “No need to exert yourself. Let’s get you to the bed. Perhaps you should lie down.” He helps her stand and then carries her to the bed. Already she’s too weak to support herself. Her eyes roll back in her head.
He lays her down and she continues to make that horrible gasping sound. Then, silence. Her chest stills and I feel a gentle, warm breeze, the first thing I have felt since I died. I look around for her, but the new wife isn’t here. She’s simply gone. Her body lies in the bed, but her soul has moved on.
My husband grasps his new wife’s wrist and waits for a moment, checking for a pulse. Satisfied, he lets her wrist drop back down to the bed and straightens his waistcoat.
“Time to call the doctor,” he murmurs.
The doctor has come and gone, mumbling such helpful things as, “This environment is hard on those who are already weak,” and promising that a grave can be dug in the next couple of days. My husband doesn’t even cry, merely screws up his face and covers his eyes with his hands. It’s all for show. He has a part to play.
Once the doctor has left, my husband fetches his sketchbook and pulls up a chair next to the new wife’s body. He turns up the lamp on the bedside table so that its light illuminates her face. He arranges her hair on the pillow and then sits down to sketch.
I stand in the corner. I want to cry for her but I can’t. Even if I could, what good would it do? I move closer and reach for her hands and just like always, I pass through her skin, but then I notice that odd sensation I felt before. The feeling of…settling. It’s as though my hands have become her hands. Curious, and feeling more than a little morbid, I try to move my hand and her hand responds.
On the other side of the bed my husband twitches, his dark beetle eyes darting to the bed. I still my hand and wait for him to return his attention to his sketchbook. He rolls his shoulders back and resumes drawing.
I wonder if I can do more than settle into her hand.
Crouching over the bed, I reach out my right arm and place it against the new wife’s right arm. I start with my hand, since I know that will work, then once our hands are joined, I drape the rest of my arm across hers. It works. I feel the entirety of my arm settle into hers. Curious, I test the control I have by bending her elbow slightly and then straightening it again.
Across the bed, my husband starts. I retract my arm just as he reaches for the new wife’s neck to feel for a pulse. He settles back, satisfied that she is indeed, still dead.
“Imagining things,” he mutters to himself. He rubs a hand over his face.
I consider my next move. I feel confident that I could inhabit the new wife’s body, but I’m hesitant to do so while my husband still sits near the bed. He’s jumpy and nervous and, while I don’t think he will resort to physical violence (after all, he poisoned the two of us), I don’t want to let him realize his dead wife is no longer entirely dead before I have complete control. But if I wait too long, the body may not remain… habitable. I hover over the narrow bed, hesitant, wondering if I will be alive if I do this and how long it will last. I decide it doesn’t matter. I only need to last long enough to avenge the two of us.
Slipping inside her is as easy as putting on a dressing gown.
I merely need to pretend that I am laying down in bed and I sink into her. Her arms became mine, her legs my own. I can feel the slight scratch of her cotton dress on my skin. Below me, the mattress is firm and a bit lumpy. I can smell the beeswax from the candles and the leather binding of my husband’s sketchbook. I want to weep with joy. I hadn’t realized how much I missed these things, these reminders of the physical world.
Her eyes are closed but I open them just a little. Beside me my husband is staring intently at her face (my face now I suppose). He looks like he’s seen a ghost and I have to suppress a mean-spirited laugh. I must move a bit without realizing because he jumps to his feet.
“You’re imagining things, Edgar,” he says. “You’re imagining things.” He stares at me for a few more moments before leaving the room. He leaves the lamp on the bedside table and a red-bodied, dark winged moth flutters around it.
I listen to his steps retreat down the hall before rising from the bed. I smooth the clothes the new wife was dressed in. A glance in the mirror shows me that while I’m wearing her body, I look a bit different than she did. My hair is a touch darker, my eyes less blue than hers. Perhaps I have become a blend of the two of us. Perhaps as time passes, I’ll look more and more like myself. Be that as it may, I have other things to think about at the moment.
It is time to make my husband a cup of tea.
Ashley Libey (she/her) is a lover of dark fantasy and horror. She has most recently been published by Luna Station Quarterly and The Fabulist. When she isn’t baking cookies or crocheting yet another blanket, she can be found binge reading and dreaming up ways to retell old stories.