I HATE YOU

Karina noticed the streetlamp wink out at the top of the hill. They had already been lit by the time Helena and she had left the university building to head home, but they should not be turning off again for another 18 hours at the very least. The cone of the darkness it left behind left an impression on Karina, like it had a weight in her vision.

“Hey Karina, what’s up?”

She let out an involuntary squeal and practically leapt a foot to the left. Helena stood at her side, at first with a confused expression then the beginnings of laughter. “Oh wow, I didn’t expect a reaction like that.”

“Sorry, I was kinda daydreaming.” Karina lied. She glanced at the darkness again but it seemed to have lost its mass, or maybe her head was just elsewhere now.

“Karina, we put in over 9 hours of work today, you can put the project aside for the rest of today.” Helena said, then paused. She turned fully towards Karina and extended a hand, fingers pinched like she was holding a letter. “Here is a letter of Permission to Chill Out for One(1) Evening.” She accentuated the (1) with a raised finger.

Karina chuckled and accepted the invisible letter, putting it in the pocket on the front of her winter coat. “Many thanks, Lady Helena.” Out of the corner of her eye, Karina noticed another streetlamp blinking then shutting off. The darkness was twice the size now. That thought was silly, Karina reflected as she turned her back to it and followed Helena down the curving hill. If she looked up, there would be infinite darkness. Space. But this felt different, like those pools at the bottom of the ocean. There was a vital difference in density.

Karina had always found the hill much more pleasant to bike or drive down. The slope was just enough to cause you to land heavily with every step, coupled with enough of a curve to require turning with nearly every step. Helena zigzagged between the streetlamps, occasionally hanging off one like she was that guy from Singing in the Rain. Karina smiled but kept walking, an uneasy feeling in the back of her stomach. It had been growing over the last week, but it had never been as bad as this. It had landed like a stone the moment she had walked out of the university building. Maybe she was coming down with something unpleasant and the cold winter air had triggered it.

Helena stopped on the path, looking down to the left. A smaller footpath veered off from the road here, situated between two wooden fences made with narrow, moldering wooden logs. Over the years, vines of ivy had been steadfastly winning the war of territory over the fences. In places there was no brown to be seen, just the green of the ivy.

“Hey, isn’t this a shortcut?” Helena asked, her breath making mist in the air.

“It is, yeah.” Karina said with half an ear. A streetlamp on the other side of the road had gone dark. The feeling in the pit of her stomach was only getting worse.

“Can’t we take it? It’s freezing and I want to get inside.” Helena said. It was December, and the shortest day of the year was only a couple weeks away.

Karina looked down the footpath. Since it veered off from the main road, it had no lamps. The only lighting was whatever shone down from the houses on either side, and both families were out of town, leaving the footpath a stretch of complete darkness nearly 100 meters long. Looking at it made Karina deeply uneasy, like she would drop into nothingness the moment she stepped into it.

“I really don’t want to, Helena,” Karina turned away from the darkened footpath towards her friend.

She had meant to say ‘please’, but something caught her attention and held it in a vice grip.

A figure was stood in the cone of darkness left by the streetlamp. It was her grandmother, dressed in that grey coat of hers. She looked Karina dead in the eyes and smiled, waving daintily with her left hand.

"-rina? Hey, Karina!" A hand waved in front of Karina’s eyes and the figure was gone.

Helena moved in front of her with a concerned look on her face. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, just got distracted.” Karina responded. She wanted to take a deep breath, but Helena would catch on.

“It’s only been a week since your grandmother’s funeral, it’s okay to be sad. You didn’t even take a day away from uni for it.” Helena said, the worry plain on her face. Karina thought it looked cute, but simultaneously did not want to see her worried.

Karina looked back to the darkened streetlamp. Nothing there now, though she could still feel those eyes looking at her. “I suppose it just hasn’t sunk in yet.” Karina said, looking away from Helena to conceal the lie.

Helena took her hand. It was warm, even through their gloves. “When it does, don’t hesitate to talk to me, okay?”

“Thank you, Helena, I appreciate it, I really do.” Karina said, turning back to Helena. A streetlamp blacked out behind Helena.

“Now let’s get moving,” Helena said and turned about, taking a long stride along the street.

“Wait!” Karina shouted and grabbed Helena by the arm. The toe of Helena’s boot hovered near the edge of the cone of darkness left behind by the dead streetlamp.

“It’s real dark, you might trip.” Karina added sheepishly, unsure why she had reacted so strongly.

Helena gave her strange looks as they crossed the street towards the lit pavement on the other side. At the top of the hill, Karina could see more streetlamps going out. It was seriously weirding her out, but Helena seemed not to notice.

All was silent at the crossing by the foot of the hill. Karina supposed most had gotten home from work already or had yet to leave, for not a soul was there, except a single tabby cat lazily walking along the pavement. When it sighted Karina and Helena nearing the crossing it yawned and approached them, although entirely at its own pace. It clearly wanted attention, yet if neither girl moved to it, it would take minutes before it got close enough. Helena walked to it with a big smile, petting it with her glove. But when Karina approached, the cat shied away from them, hissing. It seemed to Karina like it was looking past her, but there was nothing there. Just the empty street. Another streetlamp winked out. The cat run to the crossing and turned the corner, in the direction of Karina’s house.

“What’s gotten into that kitty?” Helena mumbled as Karina and she turned the corner. The final stretch was ahead of them now; quiet houses sat alongside the street, lit only by the streetlamps. Towering above them all was the beech that had grown outside Karina’s house ever since her family moved in. The small beechnuts that fell down in the summer were always a delight.

At the far end of the street, past her house, a streetlamp went dark. The hairs on the back of Karina’s neck stood up. On any other night she would have attributed it to the cold, but the sight earlier had unsettled her. She wanted to tell it to Helena, but her friend would not understand.

Another streetlamp went dark. The darkness was inching closer to the house and the front entrance. Karina turned to Helena, her friend looking back at her with curious eyes. “Race you to the door!” Karina shouted and broke into a run, hoping Helena would follow without questioning. She had a feeling that they needed to beat the darkness to the front door, and the streetlamps would not hold much longer. Even as Karina heard her friends boots against the pavement behind her, another lamp went dark. Her winter boots and coat were heavy and hard to breathe in while running, and within moments she was huffing and sweating, her boots becoming harder to lift despite her gut-insistence to hurry. Helena asked why they were running but Karina did not want to expend the breath to answer. Just a few metres yet and the last lamp on the street ahead went dark. Now the front entrance was only lit by the weak light that hung above the door. Even on summer nights it could barely show the faces of people standing right beneath it. It would not hold for long. Karina practically jumped up the tiled steps and grabbed the door handle. Locked, of course it was. She fumbled in her pocket for the keys while the lamp above her began blinking. Helena began walking up the stairs, breathing hard, asking Karina what the hurry was. Finally, she found the keys and worked the lock, motioning Helena inside. She flicked the light-switch for the entrance even as the front-light died. She had to force herself not to slam the door shut. 

“What was that all about?” Helena said while gasping for breath. She zipped down her coat and threw it onto the stairs to her left.

Karina unzipped her coat too. “You were the one that said it was cold.” The inside of the house was hardly warm, being empty since early this morning, but compared to outside, it was cosy. Combined with their sprint, they were both sweating.

“I suppose. I feel like I need a shower after all that running.” Helena said and looked upstairs.

“Go ahead, I’ll just turn on the light and the heat.”

Karina made a point of turning on all the light in the house, even in the basement. Walking down the steps into that darkness felt like the bravest thing she had ever done. Her parents would balk at the electricity bill, but they could stuff it. They hadn’t seen what she had. She could hear Helena singing in the shower as she finished lighting the upstairs, even in the rooms she then closed the door on.

“Ah that’s much better.” Helena said. A towel was wrapped around her hair as she stepped out of the bathroom, dressed in fresh t-shirt and trousers.

“I’ll have one too,” Karina said and pointed to the stairs, “You mind starting dinner while I’m in?”

“Lasagne, the sauce is on the low shelf, mornay sauce beside it. Enjoy the shower.” Helena said with a smirk, clearly reading off a mental list, and walked past her towards the stairs.

Karina did not bother fishing out fresh clothes before the shower, so she walked into the bathroom. The air was still humid from Helena’s shower and the floor-to-ceiling mirror that sat above the sink was steamed over. Karina closed the door and began taking off her shirt when she noticed something on the mirror. The words I HATE YOU clearly written with a finger. For a moment she pondered what Helena had been up to and who she meant, when the lights in the bathroom flickered for the briefest instant of time. A face that was not her own glared back at Karina from the mirror, the same face she had seen under the darkened streetlamp earlier that night. The words I HATE YOU spread across the surface of the mirror like wildfire. Karina tried to back away, but the floor was slippery with moisture and she tripped, landing on her hip. The light blinked out again, for longer this time, and someone was standing next to Karina. Grandmother was stood there, looking like she had at the end of that dreadful afternoon, one of her arms bent at an unnatural angle, an eye dangling on its optical cord from a broken skull. She mouths that Karina cannot understand, but the words scrawled on the mirror make them abundantly clear.

I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU

Karina screamed, screamed so loud the sound tore at her throat. Grandmother smiled, the movement shuddering her broken skull. The door flew open and banged on the side of the sink, the light flaring back on.

“Karina, Karina!” Helena shouted and practically dived right next to her, putting an arm around her shoulder. “What happened?”

Karina barely noticed as she tried to push herself away from the mirror by pushing at the floor. The lights in the bathroom began flickering, the spectre of her Grandmother appearing for the brief instances of darkness. Getting closer and closer. The moist heat in the bathroom has dissipated, leaving a cold that stuck to the skin.

Helena took Karina’s face between her hands and looked her in the eye, holding the eye-contact until Karina’s scream faded to a whimper. “Karina, I’m here, relax. Take all the time you want, I’ll listen.”

Looking into Helena’s eyes calmed her enough for her to breathe. She tried her best to calm down, to close her again against her grandmother’s writing on the wall. She was not sure if Helena could see what she had seen, had she been looking the right way, or if she would just ignore it. She had a feeling that the spectre closing in with every instance of darkness could not be ignored. The woman’s hateful words, both those scrawled on the mirror and those she had said in life, were ringing through Karina’s head.

She had not told anyone what had happened, not even her brother. But she also had not told anyone what her grandmother had said, how she had treated her. Only in her granddaughter’s lone company did that vile woman show her true self. Her family thought it had been an accident, but she knew otherwise. She had not told them the truth. The spectre knew that, she could tell from the glare in its dead eyes.

Karina tried to think it through, plan how to say it, but her thoughts were a jumble and she would just have to go for it.

Helena held Karina’s hands and waited patiently.

“You know my grandmother died, right?” Karina started.

Helena just nodded. The light flickered and grandmother’s face appeared right behind Helena. Karina choked back a whimper of fear and pushed on.

“It wasn’t an accident like they said on the news.” Karina said while doing her best to hold Helena’s gaze. Helena’s eyes widened at that, but she held her silence.

“When it was just me and her, she would change, say horrible things to me, call me names. She said she hated me and wish I had never been born if I was going to be like this. Called me a slut, a degenerate. It went on for years and years.”

Karina had to take a deep breath; the words were tumbling out too fast to breathe. “She said my friends and I deserved to burn in hell, but never to my family. Only to me.”

The light in the room flickered. Grandmother was still there, a hand bent in agonizing ways reaching up to the side of Helena’s face before vanishing with the light.  

“We were at the top of the stairs and she started cursing me again and I, I,” Karina said, fumbling her words.

“What happened then?” Helena said, kindness and patience in every word.  

The light flickered and did not turn back on. The fingers of that broken hand inched ever closer.

“Karina.” Helena said, pushing her with every kindness, holding Karina’s hands tight.

“I pushed her,” Karina said, so quietly that she was not sure if Helena could hear it, “I didn’t mean to push her down, I just wanted her to stop, to not say such horrible things. And then she lost her footing.”

Karina paused a moment, making sure she could remember. “She was still alive; I could have called the ambulance sooner. She might still be alive.” The broken hand twitched.

“But I wanted her to stop, I wanted her to not say those horrible things. So, I waited before calling the hospital.”

“Waited till she stopped breathing.” Karina said and whimpered, clutching a hand to her mouth.

Sensing she was finished, Helena reached forward and put her arms around Karina in a hug. Karina hesitantly responded, then began to cry, first a single gulp, then a torrent. As she howled and cried, the light in the bathroom flickered and lit again.

They sat like that for nearly a quarter of an hour before Karina tapped Helena on the shoulder and stood up. “Thanks Helena, guess I needed that more than I thought.”

Helena just smiled. The shoulder of her t-shirt was dark with Karina’s tears. “Don’t mention it. Let’s go fix some dinner, I’m starving.”

Karina grabbed a towel. “Go ahead, I’ll be right down.” Then she began toweling down the mirror, removing the words.

That night, Karina kept the light on. But the next night, when she dared to turn it off, it was just her in the room. Grandmother was gone, for good this time.