fiction

by Ea Anderson

In the Corner of My Eye

Behind the house the graveyard is flooded. It’s surrounded by a stone wall and sits on a wasteland of tall, idle, yellow grass. Farther back, a small area of woodland. All the water seems to stream towards and congregate in the graveyard. It’s not in use anymore. The last person buried there was in 1850. He was called Heinrich.

I know most of the names and dates on the stones in the graveyard. When we had just moved here, I wandered the graveyard daily, looking for some connection. A grave with my name on it or the date of my birth, other names and dates that would make everything come together or just somehow connect. I feel convinced there’s something I don’t see.

They have built a new graveyard in the other end of town. Our house used to be the vicarage, now the minister lives in a new house next to the new cemetery. Often when I pass, there are fresh flowers on the graves and in the minister’s windows. It was him who showed us our house before we bought it. I don’t know why and I didn’t ask anybody. Our house lies a short distance outside the small town, by the country road, at the end of a driveway.

There has been heavy rainfall the last four days, since my husband left for his work trip. Now the rain has stopped and the graveyard is flooded. When I look at it from the bay windows in the living room, I can only see the top of some of the gravestones, the rest are covered in water, still like a mirror, no wind moving the surface of the water or the tops of the trees. The sun came out this morning and sparkled in the drops falling from the branches.

I keep checking the basement. I have been waiting for it, I knew it would come when I saw the water slowly rising in the graveyard. Now the death-water is rising in our basement. I’m not sure what to do. I’m not sure where the water enters but I think it comes from underneath, through the floors, from drains and sewers. I think the death-water seeps through the walls and leakages in the window frame. It’s been a waiting these days, a walk from window to window. I’ve also been keeping an eye on the sky for dark clouds and cracks of sun. I’ve gone to the shop and bought things I could have for dinner. I eat different kinds of food when he’s not home. I eat dry things, no gravy, no sauce, no stews or curries. I fry vegetables and meat like chicken and minced pork. Sunday I even waited outside the church for the service to be over, for advice, I guess.

“Why didn’t you come in?”

I said I wasn’t religious.

The minister said the house of God is a place of rest and reflection. Open to everybody.

These strange unproductive days.

The minister said he would come and take a look at it. I said it wasn’t necessary even though that’s why I went there, I guess. The minister called Monday to see if all was okay with the flooding, I lied and said it was even though it wasn’t, I could hear the death-water glug in the basement while I said it.

I know the minister quite well. He has been to the house several times since we moved in. Sometimes he has just dropped by and sometimes I’ve asked him over. He’s an old-fashioned minister in that sense, he makes home visits to people and not only to us because we live in the old vicarage, I think. In other ways he’s modern. He’s young, sometimes there’re rock concerts in the church at night, local teenage rock bands. I don’t know what I think about all that, but I’m not religious anyway.

I know I have to do something about the water soon, it’s crept up the three bottom steps of the staircase. I’ve listened to music very loud and I’ve burst out in song.

I used to have daydreams about seducing a minister. An affair with a lonely young minister living next door, drawn to me. The power to take him away from his calling, break his celibacy. It wouldn’t go on though. We would move away from each other, far away from the small town, towards wider spaces or bigger cities, but it would linger in us forever, this impossible affair of love and lust.

But ministers don’t lead a life in celibacy, well not that kind of minister anyway. Our minister has a wife. I’ve only seen her a few times, standing in the window as I’ve passed the minister’s house, in an aisle in the supermarket kneeling on the floor amongst a pile of tea. ‘Sorry. Sorry,’ she kept saying while she shook her head. She wore a claret-coloured blouse.

Once when he was away, the minister came over. It was at night, after dinner and I served him sherry. We sat on the couch. The couch is very deep and soft, it kind of sucks you down, swallows you. There we sat with the bottle of sherry on the coffee table in the living room with the bay windows.

He told me about his wife, that there’s something wrong with her, mentally. That she doesn’t like much company. She mostly stays indoors, she looks out through the windows.

I put ginger biscuits out. He continued.

He sneaks out in the mornings and opens the mailbox, then he puts all the letters in order, making sure they’re not upside down and that the address is facing out, then he puts the letters back, closes the mail box and goes back inside and has a shower, and while he has a shower, his wife goes out and gets the mail. She has a fixation on getting the mail. She is ruined for days, in anxious despair, if she doesn’t and if the letters are not in perfect order. She doesn’t get out much more than that.

I liked the conversation or what he was telling me, the intimacy. But I also thought a minister was the one who was supposed to listen, to give advice. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, but I liked it, the intimacy. Later he finished the sherry in his glass in one go, clapped his thighs with both hands, “I better get going,” he said. I walked him to the door. We leaned forward in an awkward embrace, then he patted my upper back. Only certain kinds of people get patted, it’s not my cup of tea.

Then the minister walked off, away down the dark road and I could picture him passing through the town, lingering at shop windows and outside bars.

I went to bed with a cup of tea, I tried to read but I kept thinking of his wife.

Now every time I get the mail, I think of her and I put the letters in order in my hand while I walk back up the driveway to our house.

Now it’s Tuesday. My husband left for his work trip Friday, in the morning. He stood in the window in our bedroom and watched the graveyard in the rain. Then he looked at me, maybe he thought I was sleeping. “I have to go now,” he said. The taxi honked its horn in the driveway. He came over to the bed, bent down and kissed my forehead. Did he pat me too? Then he went down the stairs. I got up, I watched him from the window. He put up his big, black umbrella and ran to the taxi, the wind lifted his long coat. He got in and the taxi reversed out of the driveway and then he was gone. I’m not sure where he has gone to or when he’s supposed to come back.

Saturday, I watched the graveyard, the water rising and slowly covering the stones. I checked the basement, I bought food. Sunday, I went to the church. Sunday, I kept feeling the basement underneath, moving like a liquid disease.

Monday the minister called and said he would stop by Tuesday, just to make sure all was well with the flooding and all. “I will hear no protest,” he said.

Today it’s Tuesday and the minister will come.

I watch the graveyard flicker in the sun and again I get this strong feeling of connection, something draws me there. Surely, surely there must be some sign, some hidden message for me.

I put my waterproof trousers and coat on, I put on my wellingtons and walk to the graveyard. The air is cold and clear, the sun plays in the puddles and in the drops on fences and trees. The wasteland is wet. The hinges on the gate creak. The graveyard is like a lake.

It’s heavy to walk in water, each step so slow and long, so forced. Currents form around me as I move, the water makes lapping sounds. I feel the coldness of the water pressed against my legs, through my layers of clothes. The water turns turbid around my steps, then it settles. No sign of the paths between the stones, I try to navigate from memory. I can only read the top of the engravings on some of the stones standing, the rest are gone, like they were never there. I think of a water desert, covering the past, the only sign of former life, these bits of stone reaching up.

I try to walk with care, my feet search the ground beneath the water. Then my foot gets caught in something and I can’t lift it, I fall forward. Now I’m under water, all sound disappears, small, round bubbles leave my coat and float upwards, water seeps in everywhere, through the neckline and waistband, at the sleeve openings and into my boots. I feel the cold water spreading all over my body. I keep my eyes open. Straws of green grass wave in the water, I move my head from side to side, I see my hair move slowly around me, waving like the grass. Then I see the gravestone, it’s to the left of me, I keep still, my hair floats around me, my arms out to the sides. A flicker of gold in the corner of my eye. I turn my head and there it is, my name. It’s written in gold with meticulous, lucid letters on a square, grey stone. It shines at me, a gold beam through the water and into my eye, it blinds me. Then I have to get up for air. I break the surface of the water, the cold air strikes my face and body. I can’t get my foot free, I step out of my boot. I shiver with cold. I force my way through the water towards the gate. I run home over the wasteland, the tall grass hits my legs as I run, the sound of the waterproof trousers and the straws against them, the sound of my own breathing. I undress outside in front of the door. I pull off my wet clothes, leave them in a pile by the door and run naked through the house to the bathroom, leaving little imprints of death-water on the carpets. I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror, there’s something unrecognisable about it, something wild.

I stay under the hot water in the shower for a long time.

Afterwards I stand in the kitchen. I don’t move, as if the air would hurt me if I did. I must pull myself together. I close my eyes tightly. I try to focus on my husband, to remember where he is. I have lost track. I try to evoke him, but he keeps escaping me. I just see a glimpse of an eye, a mouth. I can’t even picture his face. A weak outline then it’s gone.

I open my eyes slowly. I can feel the minister’s presence somewhere nearby. Something in the air, a faint vibration through the ground. I can feel him approaching through the town.

I don’t have much time. I’m resolute now. I go to the garden shed and get the pump. I put on my husband’s waterproof trousers. I open the door to the basement, the dark water lies stale at the bottom of the stairs.

I don’t turn on the light, cautious of short circuits. The basement is tight around me, the concrete walls dark from wetness, a humid, dusty smell, the water reaches my knees. I open the basement window, stick the end of the hose out and turn on the pump. The pump starts, it buzzes and grunts. Slowly it eats the water. The water runs in a steady stream from the basement through the hose, out the window. It forms a little burn running down over the lawn outside.

My hands straighten my blouse down the front.

I don’t offer the minister anything, no coffee or tea, no sherry, no ginger biscuits. He looks around, turns his head slowly from side to side, lets his eyes wander all over the living room.

“So, what’s new?” he says, like somebody else speaking. He rubs his hands. I take him to the basement door, we open and walk down a few steps, him in front of me. He bends down and looks into the basement. “Well, that all seems to be working fine now, doesn’t it? It’s not all that bad, after all.” As we turn around and walk up the stairs from the basement, the minister runs his hand over my back, all the way from my neck and down. I’m not sure. I don’t mention it. We walk up and I close the basement door behind us.

I go to the kitchen. I start folding kitchen towels on the worktop, pressing the folds sharp with my hands. The minister appears in the doorway.

“Not much for me to do here after all then.”

I keep folding. He says they will look into getting some drains put down in the old graveyard. I think of them digging there, old bones, hair that’s kept growing after death, teeth.

“Will we see you in church Sunday?”

I smile at my kitchen towels, I wonder who we are, then he leaves, and I’m alone. I watch him through the window, I stifle an urge inside me to run after him. Something self-satisfied in his walk down the driveway.

I don’t see her coming, she must have sneaked around the gable, then along the wall of the house, she must, like me, have seen him leave.

The doorbell rings and when I open, she stands there in front of me. A rush of heat and then sweat runs over my body and leaves me with a feeling of nakedness.

Her eyes are wide open. Her upper lip is pulled up on one side, sneering, showing her teeth like an animal. She hisses at me. The muscles around her eyes tightens. “You leave him alone.” Her voice comes from everywhere in her body, I can see it shiver through her arms, out through her hands and fingers. She hisses again, then she turns and runs with long, agile, elastic strides, away.

I pull the door closed and lock it behind me. I go to the living room and look out the window, staying half hidden behind the curtain. I see her running through the garden, through the wasteland, in amongst the tall, yellow grass and disappearing through the woodland.

That night I close all the blinds. I sit on the deep, soft couch in the living room with my legs up. Now and again, I get up and glance out through the cracks in the blinds. Fear flickers like polished metal in the corner of my eye, along the borders of the garden, from underneath low bushes. I feel things closing in. I want to call my husband, I don’t know where he is. I try to remember. I look at the phone lying on the coffee table. I think of Lisbon and Madrid, big cities and traffic, the rumbling sound of roads, heard from a short distance.

Something starts appearing, dim, clouds lifting from my inner vision, there he slowly appears. I see him in a hotel room with high ceilings. One in an old-fashioned hotel, with gold taps and a bath on lion feet, mirrors in thick gold frames, a four-poster bed. He sits at a table by the window overlooking a busy street. He pulls some papers out of his briefcase but he can’t concentrate on reading. He takes a mini bottle of whiskey from the minibar and drinks it. At home he never drinks whiskey.

Then he goes to the restaurant, he orders a steak, medium-rare. The restaurant is in an enormous room, wide and square with glass and gold and waiters walking, smooth, almost unnoticeable around the room. The sounds are eaten up, everything echoes and nobody can hear what anybody says, scattered, mumbling voices, knives and forks against plates.

Back in his room he takes a shower, too hot, too long, it leaves him drowsy. He puts on a hotel bathrobe with a gold emblem on the place where the heart is. He stands with his back to me, looking out the window, then he turns around, and I can see he’s crying, and I don’t know why.

I wake up from the touch of him stroking my hair very gently. I’m still lying on the couch. His suitcase sits next to us, on the floor.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“It’s only six.”

He opens all the blinds in the living room. We stay there together on the couch. We watch the sun rise over the woodland, we watch the mist move over the wasteland. All the night’s dew evaporating in the air.

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Ea Anderson is originally from Denmark and a graduate of The Danish Academy of Creative Writing (forfatterskolen). After moving to Scotland in 2011, she started writing in English and completed a MSc in Creative Writing at The University of Edinburgh. At the moment Ea lives in the south of France. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Trampset, West Trade Review and The Woven tale Press, among others. She’s the recipient of a Pushcart Prize (2025 edition), volume XLIX. More information can be found on ea-anderson.com.