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The Familiar Gesture
A hand finds the back of a neck while someone is washing up. The familiar version has damp fingers, an inconvenient saucepan, a woman leaning into the touch while asking whether the potatoes have been put away. She knows the hand. She does not have to turn around.
That is the part of horror I am reluctant to hurry past. If the kitchen is only a set waiting for a disturbance, there is little to lose when the disturbance comes. The couple's untidy competence belongs here, along with their irritations and the pleasure of being touched without having to present oneself for inspection. They have lived together long enough to know which cupboard contains a bowl and which contains a collection of bowls nobody likes.
The frightening version begins with the person behind her not knowing when to stop. She shifts forward to reach the tap and the hand follows, keeping the same pressure. It is a slight mistake. A tired partner might make it. She asks for room and gets it immediately. There need be no cold air, no strange voice and no mirror obligingly supplying a second face.
Her embarrassment interests me. She was briefly frightened of someone she loves, perhaps over nothing. She may become affectionate to make up for it, although the partner has not accused her of anything. The attempt to put the evening right brings them closer. In this kind of story, that closeness should have practical consequences; it cannot be a decorative pause before the next alarming event.
The same gesture in a different room would be harder to dismiss if it reproduced the exact pressure, including the mistake. A touch learned in its entirety might be a copy of care. She could still explain it to herself. Couples repeat gestures. People misread one another. She may be angry about something else and feel ashamed of turning ordinary affection into a complaint.
Unease alone would leave her trapped in an argument with herself. What frightens me is an action that continues after its reason has disappeared. Her partner might perform a familiar task correctly but fail to respond when she changes her part in it. She stops halfway through setting the table. The other person continues laying places for a meal that will no longer happen. The plates are put down while she is still explaining. It has heard the sound of her voice. Whatever is there has not understood her.
I dislike making a woman foolish simply because she remains in the house. Leaving may mean abandoning somebody who is ill, admitting that an improvement she prayed for has become unbearable, or giving up the only intimacy in which she has felt comfortable in her ageing body. Those are reasons to stay. They should also remain reasons after the reader knows staying is dangerous. Otherwise the story has borrowed love for its opening and discarded it when the plot gets busy. The supernatural can be real. It need not apologize for itself by becoming a misunderstanding. Yet whatever has entered this relationship has to affect something more particular than the electricity. It might know how to soothe her and fail to recognize her refusal. She would then have to decide how close she can bear to get while finding out whether the person she loves can still hear her.
The saucepan is heavy, awkward to rinse and needed for tomorrow's dinner. When the hand reaches again, she has something ordinary to ask: hold this for a moment. To take the weight, the hand will have to leave her neck. She keeps hold of the handle while she turns around.