Beguiled - an exercise on unreliable narrators

Beguiled

Part I - Dana

I have been coming here, to the sea, for the past 9 autumns of my life. In earlier years, my parents brought my sister Lily and I to stay in the pink house that reminds me of the underbelly of a salmon, and we would stay until father was sure that on our return the trees would be bare. Mother couldn’t stand the change – the green bursting into orange and yellow before dying into a brown crisp and swirling and falling. We came to escape the trees.
   Now, free of my parents, I came of my own accord. This time to a white house – a quaint cottage with a charming view of the lighthouse. The lighthouse resembles a fat candy cane without the hook, and it has a light like a cyclopean eyeball plucked from the head of a bug, or a monster. It moves like a ball joint, looking for ships. However, last night, it found me.
    I was by the piano, almost asleep in the half light when I felt a low hum beneath my breast bone, a vibration that radiated everywhere in an instant. It roused me immediately before the room was ablaze with light, a light that shimmered and created a thousand yellow stars under my eyelids when I dared close my eyes, just to check. My brain felt heavy, like a too wet sponge, yet my feet carried me out into the balmy air and through the rushes, until I was there. It felt like I was inside an electric field, entirely encompassed by an irresistible charge that filled me with an odd sense of comfort and stole away the pressure on my mind, ebbing away with the waves.
    The lighthouse was taller than 50 of me, yet next to it I did not feel small. I wondered how many bricks were used to build it, and was struck by an unstoppable desire to touch it, to let my fingertips brush the walls of this thing that had called me here. As I moved closer, the light began to drown me in my own yellow tide until I was glowing like the edges of the sun, and tears blurred my sight.  Seaweed began to run around my toes and nip me and scratch at my ankles, and the swish of the sea became a crash screaming in my ears. Yet I moved forward and forward with my fingers outstretched like in a game of hide and seek in the dark and reached and reached. I waited for the cool brick on my thumb and I could almost taste the thick cement, so much so that my nostrils stung and I was ready. But then I could feel a searing heat like steam rising from boiling water and my heart was sent into disarray
 and then I touched it.

Part II – Lily

Our family always loved coming to the seaside for an autumn break, so I could think of no better place to bring Dana on her first full weekend away from the hospital. Taking her back to mother and father’s seemed too obvious – I thought she would prefer fresh air and the to and fro of the waves over the stifling heat of our sitting room and father’s patronizing attempts at conversation. Unfortunately, as is often the case in our family (particularly with Dana) I thought wrong.
    When I picked her up from the hospital – that dreadful, unsettling place – and told her of my plans, I saw a temporary light flicker behind her eyes and she immediately become obsessed – almost wildly – with the idea, convincing her mind that it had been her that suggested it in the first place. “Yes,” she had said in a hurried breath “yes, yes, to the sea and this new white house and of course Lily yes it’ll be peaceful, thank you.” I worried that she seemed too enthusiastic but then dismissed the thought at once – I realised I should be happy, enthusing is far better than hysterical tears or bottomless detachment. Christ, anything is. The cottage was nearer to the lighthouse than usual – I hoped Dana might like our view of it, such a beautiful structure it is. I liked to admire it as a child, it has a light that always reminded me of a sparkling bauble that we used to place near the top of our Christmas tree, however I have only seen it working once – it has been unoccupied for seven years.
   Last night – our first, we ate chicken with our fingers and watched a ridiculous romcom movie, of course for Dana’s sake as it strayed from seriousness and had an almost believable end with sparkle toothed smiles that made you want to applaud and shout “THIS COULD HAPPEN!” Later Dana played piano, her long fingers slipping easily over the keys with combined passion and grease from our chicken. She played Brahms and Chopin and some of her own, haunting melodies that lifted my heart and then crushed it again in one key change. She suggested we sleep near the piano but in my mind I was already sinking into a feathered pillow so I left her. I shouldn’t have, I know! But her face, it was soft and relaxed – no tension or fear, just a simple contentment and I couldn’t rob her of that precious time away from her black cloud.
  At 4am, something stirred within my chest, curling and tightening around my heart. I think it was God reminding me. It took almost no time for me to reach the patio door; although the realisation that something was wrong made a second feel like it was being stretched out for eternity like a slow motion take, and damn did I panic. Yet, when I finally caught sight of her, my feet became stubbornly rooted to the linoleum. My eyes widened in alarmed attempt to drink in the sight of her enough to assess if it was real or not.
     I could only but make out the silhouette of her created by the light lent by the small slice of moon, yet she appeared to be utterly possessed by something. She moved around the lighthouse in a slow waltz that spoke of longing and anticipation, her fingers slowly stretching out and immediately pulling back into her body as if being scorched. She looked to be completely enchanted by what appeared to be the lighthouse itself, the dark, broken lighthouse that shed no light and loomed over her. Her white night dress blew behind her like a thin fluttering veil and her hair followed in the same manner – a mane of charcoal black waves, she was like a Goddess, summoned and she moved closer. Her steps were made with such precision it was as if she were walking along a tight rope – there was an overwhelming sense that she was desperate to reach the end yet had her world at stake if she were to make the wrong move. I sucked my breath in and let out a small “Oh” as she finally touched it and fell into a heap in the sand. The thud broke my trance and I dashed, pushed by the hands of guilt, to pick her up, my poor, poor sister. She was wailing, and her eyes were vacant like a defective robot. I felt like there was a piranha inside of my body, devouring my soul, punishing me for letting this happen.
  As I handed her back over to her nurses later in the morning, she slipped me a note. The paper was tear stained and crumpled like my heart. In her large girlish handwriting she had written: we can never really escape the trees.

- 2010