Dark Days

by Ryan Casey

  A bitter taste filled Martin’s mouth. “I just...”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to fill the silences if you don’t want to. This is as awkward for me as it is for you. Maybe more awkward. Believe me.”

  Martin shook his head. “Ella, I—”

  “Mum used to say you did this thing when you weren’t really interested in something. You did this thing where you scratched the back of your ears and looked away. She used to tease me about it. Say I did it too sometimes. You’ve been doing it since we got here.”

  Martin caught himself reaching for his ear just as Ella said that. “I... I haven’t.”

  Ella stood up. She placed the bowl of barely touched mac and cheese over by his side. He caught a glance of a skull tattoo, then a scar on her arm.

  “The food was shit,” she said. “But thanks for trying. I’m going to go to bed. I’m tired.”

  Martin wanted to tell her not to go. It was still light. There was a lot of the day still left.

  But as he reached up and scratched his ear, he took a deep breath, and he sighed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Night.”

  She half-smiled at him. Walked off. Her slender frame barely making a sound.

  He watched her reach the door as the wind picked up.

  “If it’s too cold, the window’s...”

  The door slammed shut.

  Martin was alone again.

  Only a shitty, rancid mac and cheese for company.

  Chapter Five

  Martin poured himself another drink and waited for sleep to take him.

  It was late. He could hear the wind howling outside. There was something relaxing about being locked in the middle of nowhere in the dark and listening to the wind. He really felt like he was the last man on earth. Nobody for miles in any direction. Just him, this place, and his daughter.

  He stared into the crackling fire. He kept meaning to leave it to burn out, but he couldn’t stop getting up and lifting logs onto it. He knew he should probably get to bed. He hadn’t slept much last night, and he wanted to be on form tomorrow. He didn’t want Ella to see him in any kind of state.

  But the more whisky he sipped, the more he started to care less about how anyone saw him at all.

  He glugged the whisky. It stung the back of his throat. He’d never been a whisky drinker. Preferred a couple of nice real ales in a country pub any day. Sarah used to always say he was rubbish at holding his drink. He pretended he wasn’t, of course. Always said he wasn’t pissed when he felt lightheaded and loose with his words. But she always knew. She could always tell.

  It took a lot to fool her.

  He licked the sticky liquor from his lips and poured himself another glass. It was his fourth or fifth. Screw it. Who was counting anyway? It didn’t matter if he had a few drinks. Maybe it’d help him fall to sleep. God knows he needed something that would.

  He went to take another sip of that whisky, the smell of honey strong in his nostrils, his body growing unsteadier, his vision blurring.

  He leaned back against the creaky leather sofa. Held out his left arm, closed his eyes. He remembered falling asleep in front of this fire so many times. Sarah telling him something about one of the various random topics she was interested in at the time—global warming, the allures of a socialist society, the pothole epidemic in North Wales. Things Martin never even thought about. He bored her enough with tales from his days in the RAF anyway, not to mention the occasional survivalist tip or trick he’d figured out. She’d listen to him explaining a trapping method or a water filtration system with interest, only to crack a smile and laugh. Used to always bug him, even though he knew she was only teasing him. She found his interests attractive. Part of why she liked him so much.

  He remember holding her and drifting into unconsciousness, only to wake up in front of the fire the following morning in the same position. The smell of burned out logs fresh in his nostrils.

  He opened his eyes and looked at that crackling fire. He looked at the dusty old television beside it. He looked all around this living and dining area, and the only thing he could think about was just how alien it felt in here.

  Because it wasn’t the same anymore.

  This place used to be nice because of the company he had. It used to be nice because of the memories he made in here. The happiness of the people inside it.

  That was gone. This place was just a shell now. An empty shell filled with ghosts of the past, haunting him time and time again.

  He looked up at the ceiling. Ella went to bed a while ago. He’d heard her wandering around at first, but nothing for a while. Truth be told, he was starting to regret ever coming here and trying to forge some kind of bond with Ella at all. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to build a relationship with a daughter he barely knew. Of course he wanted that.

  But deep down, there was that nagging sense that he couldn’t look after her.

  He couldn’t be the father she needed him to be.

  She was better off with her grandma, Moira.

  He covered his body with his arms, shivering a little. He clutched the chipped old whisky glass between his fingers. He remembered when he was fifteen, Ella’s age. He’d been to Spain on holiday with his parents and his younger brother, Gary, who was seven years younger than Martin. Gary was a good kid, but he had a lot of problems. Behavioural issues, that kind of thing. Of course, he saw that now. But at the time, he remembered rolling his eyes whenever his parents asked him to look after Gary, in that normal way any fifteen-year-old lad would when they were asked to look after their strange, sensitive younger brother.

  He loved him to bits. Of course he did.

  But it was just one of those things. No fifteen-year-old wants to hang out with their eight-year-old kid brother.

  Martin remembered lying on a fluffy blue beach towel in the warm Malaga sun. He was looking after Gary while his parents went shopping in the nearby town. The sticky sun cream clinging to his body. Sand between his toes. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore. There was a girl nearby. A gorgeous, olive-skinned girl around his age, with a slim figure and big round sunglasses. He’d seen her around the hotel looking at him a few times. He remembered lying there, acting all cool, desperate to impress her, even though his abs were severely lacking.

  He was so desperate to impress her that he didn’t even pay any attention to the fact Gary had been gone a long time.

  He started to worry when he couldn’t find him in the sea. He paced down the beach, trying to keep his cool. Maybe he’d just gone to find Mum and Dad. Or back to the hotel. He couldn’t be far away. He had to be close.

  He remembered the relief he’d felt when he saw Mum and Dad walking back, a little boy by their side.

  Only it wasn’t Gary.

  It was a young kid selling Coca Cola and ice lollies.

  Martin remembered protesting his innocence as his parents lost their minds. He remembered swearing that he’d had his eyes on Gary at all times. That Gary had just been making sandcastles on the beach before him. That he was sure he’d show up. He had to. Nobody went missing on holiday. It just didn’t happen.

  Gary was never found.

  It was all over the news at the time. One of those great mysteries. He remembered seeing the stories in the papers—stories blaming serial killers, and his parents, and even him. It stung. Really messed him up. It didn’t help that people looked at him at school. The sense that even his teachers were whispering behind his back.

  But like all news, the press lost interest. The people lost interest. He went on to live a relatively normal life.

  Well. As normal a life as could be when you were living with guilt like that.

  His parents never really forgave him. They moved to New Zealand fifteen years ago, and he’d barely spoken to them since. He figured they needed a fresh start. All of them did.

  He remembered when Sarah had Ella he swore he’d look after her. He’d do anything for her. He’d protect her.
/>   But he was realising now that he really never had been strong enough to look after anyone.

  He thought about Sarah. Thought about what she used to say to him whenever he was struggling with work, or with anything. “Everyone’s in the deep end. We’re all just trying our best to float.”

  He shook his head. Sarah was gone. She’d taken her own life. No matter how nice those words and the sentiment behind them might be, she hadn’t floated.

  He sipped on more of his booze and stood up. He felt dizzy and could barely plant one foot in front of the other.

  But he found himself walking upstairs.

  Creeping up the creaky steps.

  He walked to the door of the room Ella was staying in and saw her lying there.

  Her eyes were closed. She was tucked up in her bed. Breathing gently. That little whooshing sound she used to make as a little girl still there even to this day.

  He looked away from her. Swallowed a sickly, boozy lump in his throat.

  And then he looked back at her lying there in the windy darkness.

  This wasn’t her home.

  And he wasn’t the person she wanted to spend this time with.

  He was taking her back to her grandma’s first thing tomorrow.

  He turned away from her door and walked back down the corridor.

  Tomorrow was a new day.

  Tomorrow, he went back to his life.

  Tomorrow, Ella went back to hers.

  Chapter Six

  Martin woke to the sound of a blast.

  He opened his eyes. Darkness all around him. He didn’t know where he was for a few seconds. Back home in his apartment? No chance, this bed was far less comfy. His apartment might be a shithole, but if there’s one thing he didn’t scrimp on, it was his physical comfort. One of those expensive mattresses they advertise on TV. A pillow that cost more than his annual TV license. And a weighted blanket that supposedly tapped into some evolutionary desire to be pinned down to the bed.

  Still slept like shit, though.

  He looked around. He could hear wind howling outside. He realised where he was, then. The log cabin. Eskdale. He’d come here with Ella for a weekend away. Only he was only one day in, and already it was going pretty badly.

  He turned over onto his back. He was laced with sweat. He could taste the sourness of whisky and vomit right at the back of his throat. His nose was all blocked up and sniffly, probably thanks to the dust in this cabin. His head banged. He wanted to roll over and fall back to sleep, but even closing his eyes hurt.

  And then he remembered why he’d woken in the first place.

  The bang.

  He opened his eyes. A light shone through the dirty, cobweb-covered window. At first, he thought it was the moon. But no. There was something different about this. Something... shuddering.

  He got up. Wobbled a little as he walked across the cold, hard wooden floor, over to that window.

  When he reached the window, he peered out of it, his vision still a little blurry and his head still spinning. He had no idea what time it was. No idea when he’d even dragged himself up to bed.

  He looked out into the dark, and he saw something.

  Two things, actually.

  First, there was something hovering in the sky. It was hard to make out, but it looked green, dancing across the night sky.

  Like an aurora.

  It was beautiful, seeing an aurora like this. He’d visited Iceland when he was younger. Only the one night the aurora was supposedly visible in Reykjavik—something usually more confined to the rural areas—he was getting pissed in the English Pub. How very British.

  There was something strange about this, though. He knew you could see the aurora from time to time. But not like this. Not this bright. Not this beautiful. Not here.

  And then there was something else.

  There was a light in the distance. Hard to tell how far away it was from here. It looked like it was shimmering in the midst of the trees. It definitely wasn’t the moon, that was for sure.

  Martin rubbed his eyes. Squinted a little harder into the distance.

  He realised what it was, right then.

  A fire. Something was burning.

  A bitter taste filled his mouth. He felt nauseous. Something just didn’t feel right about any of this. A fire? Why would there be a fire? What would start a fire? A power station? He didn’t know of any nearby. A gas explosion? He didn’t know of any houses on gas nearby, unless a line in the ground had taken a hit. He had that same sense of foreboding he’d felt when he’d watched that Chernobyl program on Sky Atlantic. The sense that something was wrong, even though everything immediately surrounding him seemed normal.

  He really didn’t know.

  Only that he wanted to go outside. Partly because he felt so lousy. He wanted to get some fresh air. He knew sleep wasn’t gonna come easy after this. At least if he went outside, he could actually do something productive.

  And something else. That bang. The sound it made. It reminded him of the sound of a helicopter crashing back when he was in Afghanistan. A training mission gone wrong.

  He remembered the smoky smells, the sounds, the heat…

  He turned around and saw a figure standing in his doorway.

  The hairs on his arms stood on end. For a moment, he felt like he was staring at a ghost. Sarah. That’s who it was. She was here, and she was haunting him from the grave.

  But then he saw the figure step into the light, and he realised who it was.

  “Ella? What’re you doing up?”

  She walked further into his room. She looked slimmer every time he saw her. Always holding her long, slender arms to her chest. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  He looked around and out of the window. Ella walked up and stood alongside him, peering into the distance.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Martin looked at this shimmering fire, and at the hypnotic light dancing above it. It was still quite hard to tell how far away it was from here. The hills were vast. The landscape was dark and empty. Hard to gauge how far away anything was.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said. “You should get back to bed. You...”

  He looked at her, and he saw it.

  The blood on her left forearm.

  Trickling down.

  She held a hand to it. Tried to cover it from the light.

  But he saw it, and he felt his heart sink.

  He felt lost for words. He couldn’t get anything out. He felt like he was choking, drowning. He just didn’t know what to say.

  In the end, he said the only thing he could. “Are you... are you okay?”

  Ella narrowed her eyes. Then she looked down at her arm and quickly covered it up. She looked away, cheeks flushing, and nodded.

  “You can talk to me,” Martin said, reaching for his left ear and scratching it. “If you need to get anything off your chest. You can talk to me. You know that. Right?”

  She glanced back at him and opened her mouth. For a moment, it looked like she was going to speak. Like an outpouring of emotions were going to tumble from her mouth.

  And then she closed her mouth and she smiled at him in that way people smiled at strangers when they passed them in the streets. A flat, half-smile. Nothing to the eyes.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Night.”

  She turned around. Walked back towards the doorway.

  And Martin wanted to call her back. He wanted to tell her how sad he was to see that cut on her forearm. Or how angry he was. Or how confused he was.

  He wanted to tell her so, so much.

  But in the end, he could only watch her slight figure step through that doorway.

  He could only stare at her as she disappeared.

  He stood there a little while. He wasn’t sure how long.

  He turned back around. Looked out of the window at that fire raging in the distance.

  He swallowed a sickly lump in his throat. Then he headed back to bed.
/>
  He lay flat on his back, stared up at the ceiling as that glowing light of the fire twinkled, illuminated his room like a nightlight.

  It would be okay. Everything would be fine.

  But as he closed his eyes, he couldn’t ignore the knot in his stomach telling him something was amiss.

  He didn’t even look at the clock beside his bed.

  The time stopped dead at four minutes past three.

  Chapter Seven

  Martin woke to the sound of complaining.

  Light filled his eyes. He squeezed them back shut. He didn’t want to open them. He knew right away he’d drank too much. He could taste that thick lump of boozy saliva right across his tongue. He could smell the alcohol on his own cold, sweaty body. His head felt like it’d been stuck in a damned washing machine. A piercing screech rang in his ears.

  But there was nothing he could do about it. He just had to ride the symptoms out and promise he’d never make the same mistake again.

  He knew it wasn’t a promise he would keep.

  He looked out of the grimy window. Light shone in. Something felt strange about all this. It felt later than when he usually woke up. Sure, he usually woke before his alarm. His job driving lorries meant his body clock was all over the place, which meant he woke and slept at all sorts of times.

  But right now, he got the feeling there was no chance this was before his alarm. Not with how bright it looked out there.

  He rolled over onto his side. Every inch of his body ached. Damn it. Why the hell did he have to get himself pissed? He’d be surprised if he even managed to drive Ella back home today.

  His stomach sank.

  Ella.

  He thought about what he’d been contemplating before he went to bed. Driving Ella back today. There was no point staying here. Ella wasn’t enjoying it. And he was struggling to find any motivation for any of this, too. He didn’t know what it was. It felt like there was some kind of block between the two of them. He could try getting to know her. But he always ran into the same dead-end, every single time.