The Darkening

by Stephen Irwin

  They were in the kitchen, Laine helping Katharine make tea. Outside, daylight was fading from the sky.

  ‘When did Nicholas say he’d be back?’ asked Laine as lightly as she could.

  Katharine frowned and checked the wall clock.

  ‘He didn’t.’

  The telephone rang. Katharine and Laine glanced at one another. Katharine picked up the phone.

  ‘Hello?’ she said. As she listened, her eyes stayed on Laine. ‘When?’ She nodded. ‘Is anyone there going to. .? Okay. Thank you.’ She cradled the receiver. ‘Reverend Pritam Anand died today. Heart failure.’

  Laine set down the crockery as a shiver of understanding went through her. Pritam was dead. Garnock had come for her.

  Quill would be after Nicholas.

  He must know that.

  ‘The fool,’ she whispered. ‘He’s in the woods.’

  37

  Small, shifting gems of woad winked through the high, wind-harried leaves. Evening’s fast fingers were drawing velvet across the sky.

  Nicholas came awake, slowly and painfully, as if being thawed from a block of black and acidulous ice. At first, he thought he was on fire, and the flickering yellow lights at the corners of his eyes were his limbs aflame. But as he worked blood into his fingers and limbs, he realised the pain was just the agony of pins and needles.

  A faint whistling. An old tune, bittersweet, mournful and thin, was barely audible above the wind troubling the eaves.

  Nicholas lay on the floor. He could just see out a clear window: trees almost black with approaching night masked all but the tiniest glimpses of bruised evening sky. Everything shifted, in and out of sharpness. His stomach felt ready to let go its contents, and he swallowed back salty bile. He tried to sit, but sharp pain in his wrists and ankles stopped him spreading. He was well tied with ropes.

  He rolled a few degrees, wincing at the bright potsherds of pain in the bigger muscles of his legs and arms.

  Quill sat on an old oak rocking chair before a small iron stove, staring at the flames flickering behind the black-toothed grin of the stove door, whistling through her grey prune lips. As the firelight shimmered, so did her appearance. One moment her skin was ancient and sagging, pale and deeply scored as drought-cracked earth, but when the flames rose and shadows played across her, Nicholas saw the clear skin and gold hair of young Rowena Quill. Young, ancient; haggard, beautiful. Dark brown eyes, now black, now brown, reflecting red, locked on the flames. Quill’s tune was soft and came from far away and long ago. She seemed to feel Nicholas’s eyes on her and her whistle fell to a sigh.

  ‘Awake?’ she asked.

  Nicholas rolled a little more. He lay on clean wooden floorboards that smelled of pine oil. The room was a cosy mouthful of shadows: it was panelled in dark wood, but neat. A small cedar table stood on a rug with a single chair keeping company. A curtain to a toileting room was held back by an embroidered sash. A tall pine dresser as thin and stately as a butler held some painted dishes and glazed figurines. Another curtain, this one of lace that reminded him too much of spider web, hid all but the shyest glimpse of a trimly made brass bed with a floral counterpane. At the far end of the room he lay in, the floorboards were cut away in a circle. The ring was lined with neatly mortared stones: a fire pit in which coals glowed dully. On the far side of the pit, a folded blanket, kneaded and pressed by the weight of a pet — Garnock, he guessed — but there was no sign of the monster.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, barely recognising the dry rattle of his own voice.

  Quill nodded, and looked at him.

  Again, Nicholas had a vertiginous feeling of seeing her through idling water, or of a hologram viewed in passing: her features swam in the fickle firelight, vacillating between old and young, hideous and beauteous. Only her expression remained fixed and cold.

  He flexed an arm. The rope bit into his wrist.

  ‘Where is Hannah?’ he asked.

  Quill rocked. ‘Hush.’

  As she moved to and fro, in and out of shadows, her twin selves waxed and waned. Behind her, through the window, the last of the day’s colour bled from the sky.

  ‘You can’t-’

  ‘I said, HUSH!’ she commanded, and her voice seemed to rouse the flames behind the stove grate. The room danced. She half-rose from her chair, and the young Rowena Quill, pale and blonde and terrifyingly beautiful, leaned forward, rage sparkling in her dark eyes. Then she caught and reeled in her anger and sat back down — her skin rippled again into leathery furrows. She folded her hands together, watching him.

  ‘You think you know,’ she whispered, ‘but you can’t know.’ She looked back at the flames. As she rocked, Nicholas noticed something on the wall behind her. It was a calendar of sorts, but made of wood, with moveable squared pegs plugged into holes like a board game belonging to some Victorian-era child. But the pegs were marked with strange symbols: stylised seasons, runes, phases of the moon. The board had an elaborately carved frame; at its top, staring through hooded eyes as black as wells from a face of oak leaves, was the Green Man.

  ‘I have so much to tell. So much,’ Quill whispered. ‘So many stories. So many years.’ She spoke so quietly, her lips hardly moving, that Nicholas wondered if he was dreaming her voice in his still-swimming head. ‘Can you imagine my delight when I learned from your mother that you were a Samhain child?’ She pronounced the word as Suzette had: sah-wen. A word lush and full. Quill turned her eyes again to Nicholas. ‘A special child. A child with the sight. And you do have the sight. I can see it in your eyes. A gravedigger’s eyes. A stomach full of sadness to match mine.’

  The old woman was suddenly gone and the young Rowena Quill sat in the same dress, its collar loose enough around her pale shoulders to show the curve of her breasts below. Her lips were red as blood. Then a log cracked in the fire, and the old woman was back in the chair.

  Nicholas stared. ‘Then why did you try to kill me?’

  Quill watched him for a long moment. ‘Oh. I never did.’

  ‘You set a bird for me,’ he said. It was hard to talk, his own weight pressing on his ribs. ‘As you did for Hannah. And God knows how many other children.’

  Anger flared freshly in her eyes, but was hidden away just as fast.

  ‘But never for you. The one you found was for your friend, and it found him sure as sure. With your help, in fact. I had Gavin Boye tell you a wee fib, to entice you here.’ She winked — a wrinkled sphincter. ‘You saw it for what it was, not the trinket I wanted seen. You saw a dead bird. Your blond gossip saw a lovely tin hussar. But it was never for you, Nicholas Close. I wanted you full grown.’ She looked back at the warmth of the fire. ‘That’s why I asked Him to send you back.’

  Nicholas suddenly felt his heart beat harder. Its thudding pumps shook him on the floor.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She smiled, perfect white teeth alternated with rust red, almost toothless gums.

  ‘England was too far away. Too, too far. So I asked Him to bring you home,’ she said. ‘And here you are.’

  Nicholas felt his vision sparkle and the blood drain from his face. And memories of flashing green; the thrum of a motorcycle; the glimpse of an inhuman face among the black tangles of an oak grove; Cate’s neck bent too far back over the white porcelain edge of the bath, her open eyes dulled by a fine patina of plaster dust.

  ‘What did you do?’ he whispered.

  She let free a laugh that was at once as clear and pretty as fine bells and gravelled and moss-thick as a blocked drain. Her eyes watched him fondly.

  ‘My pretty man. I did what I had to. I want us to be together.’

  The smell was familiar.

  There wasn’t a hint of goodness about it. It was the sour scent of rot and wet shadow; the smell of bad earth and failed flesh. Hannah recalled it, or something like it, from when she had accompanied her father under the house, crawling low between stumps, over damp earth where sunlight never shone, until they found the dead possum. Its
grey bones poked from beneath a pungent shroud of fur, green stuff and wriggling white. Maggots. The smell of death had made her gag and skitter back to fresher air. Now she had no such luxury.

  She was upright, but couldn’t move or see. Her legs were swaddled fast together and her arms were bound tight and crooked against her body. Her eyes were shut and she couldn’t open them: a second skin had her wrapped from head to foot, with only a little space left under her nostrils. Fine strands like baby’s hair tickled her nose when she inhaled the stale, soiled air.

  But she knew what it was holding her. She was trussed up just as she imagined Miriam had been: spun tight in spider web, alive and waiting to be fed upon by scuttling things with sharp fangs and unblinking eyes.

  A hot wave of panic swept through her, and she fought for control of her bowels. Idiot, she thought for the thousandth time since she’d watched Nicholas — at least, she’d thought it was Nicholas — return from chasing Miriam’s voice. He’d smiled and said, ‘Just the wind.’ Then he pointed, ‘But what the hell is that?’ She’d turned to follow his outstretched arm, realising as she twisted that she had fallen for the oldest trick since ‘smell the cheese’. Something hard had come down fast on the crown of her skull, and minutes suddenly disappeared. She’d woken on the ground with her arms tied behind her back and her knees lashed together and rags shoved in her mouth. Then, like looking into a bewitched forest mirror, she saw herself standing in the darkening glade, smiling back at her. The hairs on her arms and neck turned to wire, and her twin called in her own voice: ‘Nicholas!’

  The real Nicholas — the one with a gun, dummy! — had rushed back, looked at Hannah, and his eyes had widened. He’d raised the gun and, just when she thought she was dead for sure, swung the barrel away. Then, blammo!, and a sting ten times worse than any bee’s had rammed like a hot darning needle into her left calf muscle, which now ached like hell. Tears had rolled down her face as she watched her twin self pull out a syringe and stick it into Nicholas. He folded like a dropped doll, and then her twin came over to her. ‘Sleep tight,’ the other Hannah had said, and stuck the needle into her arm. About ten minutes ago she’d woken from a black sleep to here, a fly stuck in the spider’s parlour.

  Hannah realised she was crying. Fat lot of good that would do.

  ‘Help!’ she called.

  Her voice was muffled and sucked up by the blackness; it was like yelling from inside a wardrobe full of clothes. The dead sound and the spoilt butter smell of rancid earth confirmed she was underground. It was as if she was dead already.

  Hannah expected this to make her sob even more, but instead she found her tears drying up and her tummy growing warm. How dare they? How dare they do this to little girls! She understood why her parents got so angry when they saw the results of bombers in the white hot streets of the Middle East, why men and women wailed in anger as well as grief when they lifted the limp bodies of children from the rubble. How dare they? No. She wasn’t going to die like this, wrapped up like some helpless baby.

  She concentrated, trying to picture herself. There was no weight on her feet. She was vertical. Her heels, back and shoulders were pressed against something hard and cold — the earth wall. She was hung like a side of lamb. She sent a testing kick of her twinned legs against the wall behind her, and heard a small shower of earth trickle and a faint rattling like glass. She kicked again. Another small fall of soil, another rattle like glasses on a shelf. If only she could see. There was only one way that was going to happen.

  She strained and forced open her mouth, and stuck her tongue between her teeth. It touched a fibrous skin that made her wet flesh instantly recoil and her stomach jumble. Come on, she told herself, there’s no other way. She opened her mouth again, wider. She felt the binding silk around her jaw stretch. She closed and opened again, wider, the muscles in her neck straining hard. Come on!! She closed and opened one more time. . and felt the horrible fabric tear a little.

  She put her tongue out and felt the raw edges of the torn silk. She looped her tongue around them and drew them into her mouth. Just a little bit, she thought. That’s all I need to free my eyelids. She pulled the tasteless web between her teeth and ground, pulling her jaw down in a grimace — it felt as if she was eating the very skin off her face. But the silk over her eyelids shifted. She opened her mouth and gagged, her stomach heaved and finally let go, and a warm gush of acidic mush jetted out. She spat and sniffed up snot. Her eyes opened a crack.

  It was impossible to judge the room’s size because it was almost completely dark. The inkiness was broken by three weak slices of light that shone down onto a set of ascending stairs made of old bricks. The far wall was swallowed by the darkness — it could be three metres away, or three hundred for all she could see. She twisted her head to the right. From the corner of her eye, she could just make out the wall she was hung from; into its earth were cut rows of horizontal shelves, and on them were jars and jars and jars. So that’s what was rattling. She twisted her head left, and bit back a scream.

  The skull looking back at her had its mouth open. The spider webs that bound the mummified child had long turned grey, and now sagged morosely. The child’s skin was the black of old book leather. Curled black hair poked dully between the smoky silk around its skull. Its eye sockets had been built over with fresher webs.

  She looked away, heart cascading. How long had she been here? How long would she need to hang here until she was too weak to do anything and met the same fate? How much time did she have? A fresh wave of tears built up inside her, threatening to burst out. How much time?

  Time.

  T-i-m-e. T-I-M-E. T-I. .

  If she screamed now that she’d spat the gag, the witch would surely hear her. She closed her eyes, focused on the letters. T-I-M-E. T-I-M-E. Tick tock. Tick tock goes the clock. Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. . Her breaths came more evenly as she ran the children’s rhyme through her mind. The bird looked at the clock. The dog barked at the clock. The bear slept by the clock. . Her heartbeat slowed. Before she realised what she was doing, she moved her legs left, just a little, then let them drop back. As she swung down, she lifted her legs right. And drop. Tick tock. She began a rhythm, a human pendulum, swaying on the wall. She didn’t ask herself why; she knew it felt right. With each drop and swoop up, she strained, getting higher and higher. She felt her back, her bottom, her elbows, her heels, scrape on the dirt, grinding through the silk. That’s it! Scrape! Tick! Scrape! Tock! She swung herself, straining left, straining right; swing-scrape, swing-scrape. The tightness around her chest eased just slightly. Her strapped ankles grew slightly freer. She felt wet, cold earth trickle into her shirt, down her back. Left-swing-scrape. . Right-swing-scrape. . a little higher, a little higher. . She could flex her arms, just a little, but that little bought her room to swell and contract as she swung. A couple more! She could hold her legs a few centimetres apart. Her shoulders could shrug. She could slide her hands across her belly. Yes! One more! She swung. .

  And felt a line of fire draw across her shoulder blades. She yelped. Her body scraping across the raw earth had exposed a sharp rock, and it dug deep into her flesh as she slid across it. It felt like a line of boiling oil had been dribbled from shoulder to shoulder. Hot tears poured from her eyes and she bit her bottom lip hard to stop the scream from coming out. She stopped swinging.

  And, despite the tears, grinned in triumph. Her feet were on the floor.

  Laine watched the very last of the day’s colour leach from the sky. A thin slip of cobalt blue kissing the western hills was being subsumed by the black arch of night.

  She turned to Katharine. They’d hesitated and delayed, both hoping Nicholas would walk through the door, but as each minute passed it confirmed what they suspected: that he’d never gone to the library, instead had slipped into the woods to deal with Quill himself.

  ‘He’s in trouble,’ said Katharine.

  Laine nodded.

  Then they heard a
key in the front door.

  ‘Nicholas?’ called Katharine.

  ‘Mum?’ called Suzette.

  She was halfway down the hall when she must have glanced into her bedroom and seen what was pinned to the floor with a pitchfork — she let out a shriek. Katharine and Laine ran to her.

  Introductions were quick, but Laine felt a warmth when Suzette took her hand. She liked these Close women.

  They explained to Suzette that Nicholas had not come home.

  ‘The fucking twit,’ said Suzette.

  ‘Well,’ said Laine. ‘Let’s go get him.’

  The three women looked at one another, and smiled.

  ‘Yes,’ said Katharine. ‘We’ll need some things.’

  Laine found it hard to suppress nervous, insane giggles as she watched Katharine rock the pitchfork free of the mass that had been Garnock. The massive spider’s flesh was rotting at a rate that reminded her of time-lapse clips where flowers sprang forth, bloomed, wilted and died in seconds. As Katharine yanked the fork out, the corpse fell apart into a grey, pungent soup that made both women retch, and which — ironically, it seemed to Laine — buzzed with flies.

  Suzette hurried across the twilit back lawn to the garden shed, where she found two spades with blades polished silver and sharp by being driven into unwelcoming shaly soil.

  From under the kitchen sink, Katharine produced a torch, spare batteries and another can of insect spray.

  Stars were opening their eyes in the black sky when they shut the front door behind them. Katharine checked it was locked, and the three women hurried down towards Carmichael Road.

  Nicholas watched Quill rise from her chair and walk to the fire pit.

  Her calves — squat and blue and veined, then slender and pale and taut — passed before his face. She knelt at the larger fire and began stoking its coals. Glowing orange sparks rose in a syrupy fountain of dying stars.

  Outside, the wind grew stronger. It batted at the window, setting it knocking in its frame, and whistled sorrowfully in the flue. The fire behind the grate grew brighter as if jealous of its increscent neighbour.