Friends of the Dusk

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Uh—’

  The castle rocked. Jane was flailing, a heel caught under a root. She went down hard on her bum in the spiky ground, bushes thrashing, a briar whipping up and snagging her hair.

  She lay there, winded. It had felt like a physical assault. We don’t want you yere.

  She didn’t get up. The light had changed in the sky, the gunboat clouds crowding. On the ground, all the colours had gone, as though the land had bled out. She rolled over stiffly, looking up the hill again, through bushes and saplings. Not far above her was a flat space below the black ramparts of the forestry. A rough plateau, quite extensive, partly covered with gorse. It was hard to see much. Jane reached up shakily, pinching the briar away from her eyes, taking some hair with it. She was going to look like shit.

  Right. Gripping one of the slimy rotting tree roots that brought her down, she came to her feet, moved towards the edge of the flat ground, projecting on it a small grey-brown stone church with a timbered bell tower. The kind you found over in Radnorshire. This village would surely once have been in Wales. The gorsey table of land could well be a circular churchyard, an indication that the church had been built on a site of earlier worship. When it fell into ruins the stone would’ve been carried away for building, over at the farmhouse. If you excavated, you might well find foundations. And graves, scores of humble medieval graves, bones upon bones upon bones. Lying under her now, cold and broken.

  God deserting Cwmarrow. God watching it die.

  The wind blew into Jane’s face as she peered across the overgrown churchyard beyond a carpet of crispy, shed leaves, to a pillared temple of conifer trunks which faded back into the deep smoky green where a woman stood.

  Jane slid back down, sharply startled, into the brambles and the old nettles and the rotting roots. Twigs crackling in her hair, she edged herself back up the spiky rise to peer through the brambles.

  There was no one there.

  More things, Sam said. More things, Horatio.

  Jane breathed out hard. Well, of course there was no-one there. These projection exercises got out of control.

  Time to go.

  Her hands felt cold and wet from the decaying tree roots, as she dragged herself back up, over the rim of the plateau, into the ground cover, holding her scraped hands inside the sleeves of her parka away from the thorns, like paws. As she came to her knees, a sound like laughter was chopped up by the wind, and the woman was back.

  The woman moved in a juddering way as if she was blown along by sporadic gusts.

  A briar ripped Jane’s cheek as she went back down. In the grainy half-light the darkness slipped away from the woman like a long coat as she sank into the leaves as if into a pool, and the leaves rose in a cloud and then settled over her thin, pale, naked body.

  More things, Horatio.

  Jane went foetal in the slimy grass.

  33

  Homework

  THE SILENCE WAS broken eventually by Nadya.

  ‘Does it matter what this is? You wouldn’t actually know anyway, would you?’

  ‘None of us knows.’

  Nadya’s expression said, Speak for yourself.

  Merrily stood up, shouldering the airline bag. A call to Raji Khan tonight might be in order. Not my place to tell you what to expect, he’d said. You should hear it from the people concerned.

  But if these people, some or all of them, had reached an agreement about how much to disclose to her and nobody wanted to step outside it, what was the point of her being here?

  ‘Is it likely,’ Merrily said, ‘is it at all likely that Mr Kindley-Pryce would be in any fit state to speak to me?’

  ‘Now?’ Dennis Kellow going back into the sofa. ‘The way he is now?’

  ‘I’m just…’

  ‘I rang the home this morning. Thought I should. I always think they’re going to say he’s dead. The woman there said he had good days and bad days. I don’t know what that means. Maybe these things plateau out.’

  ‘Not for very long, Dennis,’ Adam Malik said. ‘And each plateau is likely to be considerably lower than the previous one. The truth is nobody really knows about dementia. We really don’t know enough about the workings of the brain. Whatever kind of dementia this was – and without access to his medical records I’m in the dark here – it can develop slowly or rapidly. All we can say with any degree of certainty is that people don’t come back.’

  Merrily nodded.

  ‘And if you’re asking whether it might have been affected – or even caused – by something that happened here,’ Adam said, ‘it’s no use talking to a doctor, is it?’

  ‘What about Caroline Goddard? Anybody know where she might be now?’

  Nobody seemed to.

  ‘OK. If you ask me what I think I should do this afternoon… from the information I have, it would be to go through the house again, room by room, repeating what we did yesterday. In every room.’ She paused. ‘Including Aisha’s.’

  ‘N—’

  Nadya rising up, arms waving, Dennis Kellow leaning aggressively forward.

  ‘Nadya, the kid’s not stupid…’

  ‘That’s not the—’

  ‘Kids like a wall of security they can bounce off. Couple of bricks coming loose, they’re the first to notice.’

  ‘I have made it perfectly clear,’ Nadya said, ‘that I don’t want her exposed to any of this.’

  Dennis’s face coloured, but Casey froze him with a glance and then turned to her daughter, head on one side.

  ‘What you don’t want her exposed to, Nicole, is the idea that a form of religion you despise might actually be effective.’

  Nadya was out of the leather sofa, Adam putting out a hand to her, but she squirmed away. Couple of bricks? It was like the air was thick with demolition dust

  A silence. Then Adam Malik came slowly to his feet.

  ‘I’ll go up and talk to her. All right?’

  His wife stiffened. He turned away from her, walked across the rich Afghan rug to the stone flags and down to the bottom door and the hall where they’d come in and the back stairs. At the door, Adam turned. His face looked grey with weariness.

  ‘Mrs Watkins, I think you should come with me.’

  He didn’t look at his wife.

  Merrily looked at Dennis and Casey.

  ‘Yes,’ Casey said. ‘You should talk to her.’

  Merrily nodded, walked over to Adam. He opened the door for her and she went through to the dark, woody hall, peered up rough, wooden steps. A paleness dropped from single-pane skylights on the landing at the top.

  You’re sick.

  Jane in the Freelander’s driver’s seat. The vehicle parked in front of the barbed wire fencing off the forestry. Engine running, heater on boost, its noise blanking out the rushing of the brook. The car doors locked. Would that you could lock out something that was in your head.

  More things, Horatio.

  She held the phone gingerly, painfully putting in a text. There were cuts on three fingers. She’d pulled several thorns from her left hand. Dipped a tissue in the brook to clean up her face.

  She’d seen nothing up there – nothing, right? Nothing that was outside of a sick mind that barely remembered the scramble back down from where there might have been a church and now only gorse and leaves.

  And white flesh.

  White flesh and shivering leaves.

  Oh dear God. Was this what people meant by a breakdown, malfunction of all the senses?

  Or just a refusal to accept the truth.

  She read the text back.

  Eirion, I’m sorry.

  You don’t need this.

  Should’ve told you

  ages ago. I might not

  be who you thought

  I was. I’m sorry for

  wasting so much of

  your life.

  Couldn’t stand to read it a second time. It was like something done by a kid of thirteen. They just didn’t talk like this, her and Eirion. They la
ughed at people who talked like this. And she’d never called him Eirion, always Irene.

  Irene. Jesus. She dabbed with the tissue at her swollen eyes.

  Couldn’t send it anyway. No signal here.

  It was quite a big bedroom, with some light oak beams in its pitched ceiling. Replacements. New beams for old. It was neat for a teenager’s room: a three-quarter bed with a lurid red and gold duvet, a black and gold dressing table with cosmetic bottles artistically arranged and a pair of pink headphones. A laptop and a television. Bookshelves and a double wardrobe.

  But no teenager.

  ‘She bloody does this,’ Adam Malik said, suddenly furious. ‘Slips away, in and out of this house like a cat.’ He closed the door, stood with his back to it. ‘I can’t apologize enough, Mrs Watkins. You must be wondering what kind of madhouse you’ve walked into.’

  ‘Every situation like this I walk into,’ Merrily said, ‘people are worried they might be going mad. Me too. It’s a thin line.’

  ‘I do not dismiss these things,’ he said. ‘I just… As you might have gathered by now, I don’t do religion. Or rather I do it, to a point. I am not a zealot. And my wife… my wife, I hope to God, will calm down. One day.’

  ‘Dennis says she used to be an atheist.’

  Adam Malik sighed.

  ‘I won’t say that was what attracted me to her, but it certainly didn’t put me off. No, that’s— that’s probably going too far. I’m just not an extreme person, that’s all. I consume Mars bars before major surgery during Ramadan, to keep up the blood sugar. And other necessary transgressions I don’t talk about. Though obviously, there’s less need for discretion in Hereford.’

  ‘How did your wife feel about coming here?’

  ‘How she talks and how she feels are not always the same. She’ll tell you what a sacrifice it was coming to a city with no mosque for the sake of her father… while, in reality, she loves being part of a vociferous minority. Listen, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t talk like this. She’s just very driven. The pioneer spirit. Like Dennis, and he doesn’t see it either. Both of them more drawn to the cutting edge than I’ll ever be, and I’m a damn surgeon.’

  He laughed uneasily, but he was still shaking.

  ‘She converted because she thought it would please my family. And then she… she’ll tell you she realized what was missing in her life.’ He opened out his hands. ‘Can we leave it there?’

  Merrily nodded. She went over to the bookcase, attracted by a name in Gothic lettering on the black spine of a paperback.

  ‘This blessing,’ he said. ‘She’s not here so that can go ahead. Will it calm the atmosphere or what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked for his eyes. ‘What do you think?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘I think there’s something missing. Something you’re not telling me.’ She put a finger on the top of the paperback. ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She drew it out. The cover showed a twilit castle on a wooded hill. It could have been a photograph, messed about with. It was not quite like Cwmarrow, but the resemblance was there. A white beam shone from a tower room, softening and broadening out to tint the rooftops of the houses in the village below the hill. The image continued on the back of the book where, on the edge of the beam, a thin, grey shadow hunched, predatory.

  The Summoner

  Nightlands, Book One

  ‘Foxy Rowlestone,’ Merrily said.

  ‘You know who she was, presumably.’

  ‘Just never seen a copy before.’

  ‘I bought her both Rowlestone books,’ Adam said. ‘Her gran – Casey – was a little unsure, but I saw it as a way of making Aisha feel at home here. She had all the Twilight books. A voracious reader since she was small.’

  ‘And she enjoyed this?’

  ‘You know what they’re like, nothing could be better than Twilight. And then after a few weeks and a second reading and a third…

  ‘So it did make her feel at home.’

  ‘It made her excited. That’s her second copy. Only one split in the spine, see? Telling her friends at the new school that she lived in the Nightlands, and of course they all wanted to come and visit. Drove Dennis daft, all these kids. Doesn’t happen so often now. Crazes wear off quickly at that age. Though not for Aisha.’

  ‘Even though the books stopped.’

  ‘She’s written to Foxy Rowlestone. Twice, I think. Asking when the next one’s coming. As thousands of young people do, apparently.’

  ‘She get a reply?’

  ‘Not that I know of. When Kindley-Pryce was taken into care, I don’t suppose the lady had the heart to continue. I think she still writes children’s books, just not this kind.’

  Merrily slid the book back. Most of its neighbours had similar dark spines. Not unusual, kids Aisha’s age.

  ‘I’m now sorry I bought her the books,’ Adam said.

  ‘Too close? Too scary?’

  ‘Certainly too close, but she’s not scared. Like my wife says, she’s happy. Talks about writing her own. Continuing the story. As children do. Do they call it fan-fiction? Look.’

  He pulled open both wardrobe doors. There was a velvet curtain across one side, and he pulled it back.

  ‘Oh,’ Merrily said. ‘I see.’

  ‘Bought through the Internet. Whole websites devoted to this stuff.’

  ‘Yes, well…’ Merrily fingered the black velvet and the satin. ‘It appeals to a lot of kids. I… went through a similar phase. My mother was horrified, but it just… it makes you feel mysterious and exotic. Never think you might look daft.’

  The window was high in the wall opposite the door. Cwmarrow Castle gleamed dully from across the valley like a rusting tin can flung into the hill under a sky loaded with rainclouds.

  ‘She’s changed,’ Adam Malik said. ‘She always seemed younger than her age. A bit clingy. To me, rather than her mother. And to Casey and Dennis. Now it’s like she doesn’t need us.’

  ‘At her age they change. Rapidly. Shockingly, sometimes.’

  ‘I know. I have three sisters.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Is there a boyfriend?’

  ‘No. We’re pretty sure of that. And none of the usual adolescent rebellion. We don’t quarrel, she just… doesn’t appear to need us. She’s distant, self-contained, in a quite adult way. As if she has her own life and we’re not part of that. Casey says this place changes people and not for the better.’

  ‘But she still reads young-adult books.’

  ‘Are they?’

  Adam Malik turned abruptly to the bookcase, ran his hands from shelf to shelf before finding what he wanted near the bottom. Extracting it and pushing the others together to obscure the gap. He held out the book, its cover curling.

  ‘This is her old copy, she won’t miss it. Put it in your bag, and if you have chance to read it…’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I don’t think Dennis has read it,’ Adam said, ‘but I have. I like the countryside. I want to understand this place. Its location is non-specific, but once you know it’s about here, you begin to see the effect the place had on Kindley-Pryce. It’s Caroline Goddard’s writing fuelled by his imagination.’

  Merrily took the book. The splits in its spine were like fish bones.

  There was a knock on the door before it was pushed open, impatiently, against Adam’s shoulder. Merrily slipped the paperback into her airline bag as he stepped away from the door.

  Nadya stood with arms folded, glancing around the room.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Evidently not doing her homework,’ Adam said.

  34

  Full broadcast quality

  AS THEY DROVE out of Cwmarrow, the sky broke. The rain came slanting in and, with it, mist.

  Jane didn’t seem to be sorry they were leaving. Her hair was wet and her face was scratched and there were mud patches on her parka. The way she used to come home when she was a kid, only then she’d be happy.
r />   ‘I tripped,’ she’d said. ‘I tripped and fell. Wrong boots. Don’t ask. I’m not hurt, I’m just pissed off about it, OK?’

  The village was two or three miles behind them before Merrily realized it wasn’t OK. Should’ve paid more attention, but she’d still been full of the farmhouse. Blessings sought, the sprinkling, the intoning of the Lord’s Prayer – Nadya’s delivery clipped and efficient.

  No resonance from any of it. There was a fog in that house that you could almost see, like it had acquired a dementia of its own. Did it make sense that Kindley-Pryce’s failing mind had, in some sense, been absorbing the house’s memories?

  Or could he have left something behind? Confusion-residue. Fog. Back in the living room, the rest of it over, she’d prayed for fresh light to enter the house, fresh air to blow through it. Feeble, really. Inexact. She felt anxious, and that was not a good way to leave a disturbed house.

  And now Jane…

  Nothing much remaining of the enthusiasm she’d shown for trying to find a lost village. When Merrily asked her if she’d discovered anything, she’d mumbled something about the possible site of a church, but like what did she know?

  They drove around the village of Dorstone, unspoiled, arboreal, its church squat and solid, and over the hill towards Leominster, past the turning to Arthur’s Stone, where Jane had always liked to stop, but not today.

  After they crossed the Wye at Bredwardine, the mist began to lift, trees, already wintry, standing disconsolate in the fields.

  Jane said suddenly, ‘What are ghosts?’

  They hadn’t been talking about ghosts. They’d been talking, in a desultory way, about the imaginary village Jane had tried to visualize in the Cwmarrow valley.

  ‘Like, do you know yet? After all your deliverance work, are you any clearer about it? Do ghosts exist out there? Or are they only in our heads? Projections of our lowest fears. Anxieties. About death. And life. Why do we never get any closer to answering those questions?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Merrily glanced sideways. Jane was animated at last, but not in a good way. Her face was colourless. ‘Why do you ask?’

  Jane didn’t look at her. After a while she started to talk about seeing things that weren’t there.