The Secret World of Maya Alexander

Chapter 15

Maya did not look back at her house or her husband as she walked into the warm night. Just one tear had fallen from her eye. It remained frozen in time upon her cheek. She did not raise her hand to wipe it away.

Still in their bedroom, Stephen did not run down the stairs to follow her. He did not look out of the window to see where she was going, or if she looked okay. Instead, he looked at his watch three times as he tapped his foot against the floor. 23.56. 23.56 .23.56. He did not feel any comfort. He looked again. 23.56. 23.56. 23.57. Tap. Tap... The time had changed. He clawed his nails down his arm, breaking the skin. A burning sensation arrived. The soothing caress of a warm trickle of blood. Stephen focussed upon the blood as it flowed across his surface of his skin. Back to his watch. 23.58. 23.58. 23.58. His foot tapped three times against the floor.

Eyes to his phone. Still 23.58. 23.58. 23.58. Maya's phone lay on the dressing table. She was unreachable. He could not phone his mum or anyone else. People could not know that Maya had disappeared into the night. So he laid in their bed, listening to the ticking of the clock in the hall. Occasionally, he managed to drift to sleep, only to be startled into consciousness by the urgent compulsion to check his phone.

00.36. 00.36. 00.36

00.59. 00.59 .00.59

01.23. 01.23. 01.23

He checked three times long into the night, until the alarm on his clock told him it was 06.00. 06.00. 06.00 and granted him permission to rise from his bed. He had a shower, got ready and left for his weekly visit to the gym without leaving a note.

It had been a long time since Maya had disappeared in the night like this. Stephen could not even remember the last time or reason. They had stopped arguing about where she had gone or what had caused her to leave years ago. But Stephen stored it away in the dark space in the back of his mind with all of his other unhelpful memories. Of course, it would occasionally come out amidst some attack or other when the errors of Maya's being had pushed Stephen too far. But this line of enquiry was not good for their marriage so he had mostly learned not to pursue it.

He never spoke to anyone about the disappearances. They were infrequent and Stephen knew in his heart that he had a role to play in his wife's evanescence. Talking about it would mean confronting his own faults. It was a relief for both of them when her late night escapades ceased. Stephen had not noticed when or why they had stopped. Maya had noticed because it had been a conscious effort on her part to keep her head together. It was as soon as she knew she was pregnant.

The sun rose over the valleys long before Maya felt it was safe to return home. Sunrise was always the time that she would head towards the river, after an evening of escape. It was there that she found a familiar fallen tree. She huddled against it, trying to blend into it and make herself invisible. Her mind was empty. She could not bring any thoughts into her consciousness.

The day had woken to a cool breeze and a moistness in the air but Maya did not feel the cold or the damp upon her skin. She drifted between the light and dark of the empty spaces of her mind as the river wandered eastward before her.

Her ears awakened to the loud caw of a bird. Before her stood a crow. Maya had never been in such proximity to a crow before. It was larger than she had imagined. Its black plumage had a green sheen. She examined every part of its being. All black. Its eyes, its legs, feet and bill. It stood before. Its caw loud and curious. Its call became louder. Its head pointed up and announced a black cloud in the sky above them both.

The cloud descended.

A murder of crows landed like an authority and gathered in a circle around her. They called out to each other, perhaps in mourning, perhaps to fathom out the cause of the death. And as the birds screeched out her right of passage, Maya remained still. She tried to keep her eyes open, to stop herself from blinking, for fear the vision would pass. Momentarily her lids strained into the darkness of unseeing. The birds had fled. She was alone again, except for the sound of the river and the rustling of the trees.