Inkers

by Alex Rudall

  “Fine,” she said. “How’s Annie?”

  “Oh, she’s good,” Tom said, his face demonstrating that he was lying right back. “She says hello.”

  Lily didn’t reply. It wasn’t far for her to come up and say hello herself, but she had not done so, not since she had been hurt. Not since Lily had hurt her in the barn. Only Tom had come, each day, hardly looking at her at first, but gradually being kinder, never his old self, but still caring for her.

  “Listen. Annie and I, we’re going to hold a kind of funeral, later, for Mark. At the lighthouse. “Cause we never did at the time, it was all just too – well awful. And we were just all too upset and worried about you.”

  Lily recalled Annie’s screaming, Leonard’s shouting, the fear in Tom’s eyes as he looked at her, but most of all the look on Brian’s face – fear, but mixed in there, something else. She recalled how roughly Leonard and Tom had grabbed her once they had recovered, and how they had pulled her away from the mess that had been Mark, and she recalled how she had seen Brian bend over at Annie’s screaming figure on the floor, look at her for less than a second, and then look up at Lily as she was dragged away, something like lust in his fat, pasty features.

  Now she was as pale as him.

  Lily nodded. She had not been touched in three months. She really wanted a hug, like the hugs he used to give her. But she was a killer now.

  Tom left the room, closed and bolted the door and put his hand through the hole, throwing the key to the handcuffs across to the floor by her feet.

  “Got it?” he said.

  She didn’t answer but bent and picked it up and unlocked the handcuffs.

  “OK. Good night,” he said, closing the shutter.

  “Good night,” she said quietly. She walked slowly to the door, pushed the key under it, and returned to her bed to eat the food.

  Once she was finished she washed quickly in the lukewarm water and then went to sleep. She soon woke up, screaming.

  Tom came again the next day. He sat with her and talked for a little while. He told her about something he had seen towards the end of January, a great cloud blacker than any he had ever seen. It had approached with great speed, surrounded the farmhouse and then suddenly disappeared.

  Lily shuddered. “When can I come out?” she asked.

  “Soon,” he said. “We just need to decide once and for all what’s going to happen. How we’re going to get you out of here, to a safe place, to somewhere you can be cared for. Don’t worry,” he said. “Good night.”

  She waited until his footsteps had receded. She put her hand on her belly and looked down.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said. “I want to know what’s going on. I want you to help me. I don’t think you meant to kill Mark. I want to talk to you.”

  She waited, listening. All she heard was the rain on the glass of the skylight.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said again, more loudly and clearly this time. She didn’t care if anyone heard her. “I’m not angry. I need your help. I think you can hear me. I want to talk to you.”

  She waited for a long time. Tears ran down her face, dripped onto her belly.

  “I’ll call you Tear,” she said at last. “Tia.” There was no response.

  Finally she lay down and went to sleep. That night she had a different dream.

  She was in the farmhouse, but the farm seemed to be floating in space. Out of the windows, she could see the stars and the sun and the moon wheeling. Everything was harshly lit in white light. She felt light. She was running slowly along the corridors of the building, searching frantically for Tia, gasping for air.

  She found nothing in her room or Tom’s or Leonard’s. Brian and Annie’s room was empty, but she felt a terrible surge of fear on seeing the empty unmade bed and ran from it. The door to Mark’s room was shut and she did not dare to open it. As she turned away a noise like wet flesh hitting concrete came clearly from somewhere behind the door. She ran.

  She looked out of the window at the end of the corridor and caught a glimpse of a lithe, naked, black–skinned figure sprinting across the courtyard away from her. Lily threw herself down the stairs and burst out into the courtyard. She lost her footing and floated clean off the ground. The figure was across the other side. It looked back at her with a face at once familiar and alien, human features with great dark eyes. It looked frightened.

  It disappeared around the corner into the vegetable garden. Lily continued to float gently upwards and was suddenly afraid of floating into space and drifting away forever. She cried out “Help!” to Tia, but there was no air to transport the sound and anyway she was gone.

  Lily tried to suppress her panic. She concentrated. For a moment she sensed her real body, lying curled up in bed, and felt her consciousness begin to return to it. Somehow she knew this dream was important, that this was a chance to make contact with whatever was inside her. She willed herself not to wake up. She focused on the elements of the dream around her.

  She pretended she was projecting a small force upwards, like a thin stream of air through the crown of her head. Very gradually she began to slow her upward movement, and then to travel back down, towards the slabs of the courtyard. She continued, straining with mental effort to force the energy upwards until her feet touched the ground and she was able to gain some purchase. She crouched down, pressing her hands to the floor, and then gently pushed herself to her feet and ran after the dark figure.

  The plants in the garden seemed to be growing larger and larger into the darkness around her, leaves spreading hugely, strong smells of herbs and lettuces and rotting leaves drifting through the air, and bright flowers the colours of ink opening wide to the left and right. There were thousands of tiny stars drifting between the strands and branches of the plants. When they touched Lily’s face and hands they felt cool and gently pushed through her skin, disappearing inside her.

  “Tia!” she called, and the noise was lost on her tongue. “Tia!” she cried again, knowing it was a dream, and her dream, and that she could call out if she wanted to. The noise echoed out around her, bending plants back.

  There was a small sound like a bark or a yelp from somewhere ahead. Lily could see nothing except the lengthening path ahead and the plants rapidly growing over to cover it.

  She pressed forward anyway. Then she glanced down and saw Tia sitting cross–legged in the centre of a bush, close, looking up at her. Lily ducked down and pushed into the bush, pressing back the plants that gently tried to halt her progress.

  Tia’s body looked much like Lily’s, except it was pitch–black and her skin was shimmering slightly. It looked like there were parts of it that were running, along her arms and chest, as if her whole skin was made of black. Her face was smooth. Tia opened her mouth, revealing very white teeth, pressed her hands to the earth and screamed “No!” in a terrible voice that shook everything. The ground continued to shake even after Tia had closed her mouth. The tiny stars were falling into the garden all around them.

  “I just want to talk to you!” Lily shouted above the noise, grabbing onto the bush to steady herself. “I need your help!”

  The mouth opened again. “It is coming!” Tia screamed. The force knocked Lily back to the ground.

  “It is coming, it is coming, it is coming!” continued Tia, black running off her body and pooling around her on the dark moist earth. She pushed up onto her hands and knees and crawled towards Lily.

  “I don’t understand!” Lily screamed back at her, scrabbling back. “I don’t understand!”

  Then Tia reached out a long–fingered hand towards Lily’s face and touched her with icy fingers. Tia, the bush, and the star–filled garden all disappeared behind the dark hand, replaced by a vision of something impossibly huge and dark rushing through space. The dark object blazed with light, and then it was gone, replaced by utter darkness. Then Lily saw a man and a woman, naked, trapped, floating in a room, entwined together.

  They turned to look a
t her, faces impossibly blank, and faded into the darkness.

  She saw a blue marble then, the earth from space, still beautiful despite it all. Then there were flashes of light on the surface and it began to break apart, explosions rending it, black and pale–blue growths spreading and tearing the ground apart, tectonic plates jutting terribly into the sky. Finally a great light appeared and smashed into the planet.

  Then it was all gone, and Lily was lying on her back, helpless, Brian leaning over her, his face, lips and eyes completely white, a long silver knife in his hand, and he was cutting deep into her belly, and the pain was terrible but she could not scream.

  Then she was back in the room without features, trapped forever in the darkness once again. She scratched around the walls, the floor, the ceiling, searching for a way out, but there was none. She sat on the floor, put her hand on her belly. At first she did not scream. Then the thoughts tracked through her mind on the familiar pattern, the irresistible habit took hold and she realised that she was trapped in there, in that room forever, a literal eternity, alone, undying, unending, forever. She began to scream and throw herself at the walls.

  At night, because she slept so little, Lily had a lot of time. She spent it trying to climb to the skylight. At first she could not even reach her hands to the ceiling. She learned to remove the mattress from the bed, move the bed–frame silently across the room, upend it so it was leaning firmly against the wall, and climb up it until she was standing on the headboard, halfway up the skylight.

  Little by little she learned to climb her way further and further up the chimney, pressing against the sides with her feet on one side and back and hands on the other, walking with her feet, scraping gradually up, dropping onto the bed frame if she felt herself slipping. She fell badly several times, grabbing onto the bed frame hard, each time frantic that someone would hear the noise, quickly returning her room to normal, preparing herself with excuses. But nobody ever came. They were too busy in VR in the ink barn, or too busy sleeping, or they just did not care.

  She kept trying, scared for the baby, but gradually over the months getting stronger. Getting down was hard but she was able to do it if she went slowly, eventually putting one leg down onto the bed frame and then releasing her other leg, pivoting forward on the bed frame, stopping herself on the wall of the wide chimney where her feet had been. She learned not to fall.

  Looking up at the grimy skylight, she imagined looking out over the steep roof, seeing the farmhouse across the channel on Arran, its warm lights spreading over what she remembered as neat, well–kept gardens. She took to imagining that she lived there with her parents, that she had never taken any drugs at all, and that she had never met Brian or heard of something called the GSE. She spent many hours standing on the bed frame, staring up, and the small measure of secret freedom allowed her to keep her sanity during the long days locked in the room. It gave her a release in the terrible moments when she woke screaming and exhausted from her nightmares.

  The day after the dream where she spoke to Tia, Brian came to see her. She did not speak to him or look at him, and she refused to hand–cuff herself to the bed as he asked her to, so he did not open the door. He asked her how she was, his pale eyes staring from the darkness through the narrow box in the door. He asked her how her belly felt. If she had felt it moving. Finally she ran towards the door and tried to claw at his eyes – he slammed the slide shut at that, but he did not walk away for a long time.

  After that she knew she had to escape. Tia had shown her the future.

  That night she waited until it had been dark for a long time. She guessed it was about midnight. Leonard would be asleep, and probably Tom too. Brian and Annie would be deep in some technical VR space, working on building their god. The baby was getting bigger and heavier every day. Before long she would not be able to climb the chimney. Already it was hard to get up there. It was now or never. Rain was beating against the skylight, and she had no coat, only light pyjamas and a woollen jumper with huge holes in the elbows. She had no shoes, only socks. She had nowhere to go. She no longer cared. She wanted one thing: escape.

  She removed the mattress. She dragged the bed silently, wincing at every creak of a floorboard, at the slight knock as she rested it down. She upended it. She pushed to test that it would not slip. She removed the cover from the duvet and tied it around her waist, tightly so there were no ends loose. She checked the stability of the bed once more and then looked up. She could see nothing.

  She climbed the bed.

  She pushed one foot against the wall, her upper back against the side of the chimney, and began to climb.

  Half–way up, high enough to break her back and kill the baby if she fell, her back and hands slipped and for a terrible moment she started to slide. She lashed out with her legs and every ounce of strength and stopped a few inches lower, panting with effort. It took everything she had to stay there for five more seconds. It took a little more to make the first step upwards, and then the next. The pain in her wrists was incredible. She pushed with a force that she had not known she was capable of.

  She reached the skylight.

  She rested for a few seconds, long enough to regain the strength to open the handle and push the skylight open. She grabbed onto the edge with first one hand, and then, taking a deep breath, with the other, and then she was falling and she smacked into the wall with a yelp, and she was hanging from her hands. She pulled, and scrambled, and then she was up and over and scrabbling onto the steep roof.

  She slid down to the gutter, heart in her mouth, the rain pouring down around her, soaked already. She clambered around, dropped onto the low roof of the porch, lost her footing and noisily skidded down, dislodging tiles which slid down with her and caught herself just in time against a wall, scraping her hands painfully against the rough surface, several tiles smashing on the floor beneath. She waited for the shouts. None came.

  She swung her legs out, lowered herself by her arms and dropped the final two metres, landing with some pain. Elation overwhelmed it. She was out. Whatever happened next, she had done it. She stared around at the dark island with a fierce grin. It had never looked so beautiful. She untied the duvet cover from about her waist and wrapped it around her self. She checked left and right and then ran for the sea, clambering awkwardly over the sharp stones lining the top of the wall.

  Leonard’s kayak was resting upside–down behind a ruined wall, its paddle inside. Dragging it, she felt everything with incredible intensity, the pain of the stones against her feet, the noise as she turned it over, shaking from the cold, dragging it into the water, the cold on her feet and ankles so real that she cried out. She dropped the duvet cover and climbed in, aground, looked back up at the farmhouse, only a little light shining from one window. She saw a figure standing looking out – Brian’s silhouette. She froze. He appeared to be looking straight at her, but it was so dark here, and she knew that when he took breaks from the VR he sometimes liked to stand staring out at the sea.

  An eternity rolled past. Finally he turned away and disappeared. The light went off a moment later.

  With a great effort Lily used the paddle to push herself off the stones, and finally one of the small lapping waves gave her the boost she needed to get free and floating. She paddled.

  After a few minutes she heard a sound and looked back. All the lights in the farmhouse had come on. They had noticed her absence; there was no other explanation. She carried on, not looking back, the waves building, rocking over the top of them, her technique awkward, her arms aching from the effort already, her hands in terrible pain from the cold and a deep graze from the wall of the house.

  There was shouting back on the island, a male voice that she could not quite pinpoint, then Annie’s voice, and she paddled with everything she had. When at last she dared to look back she saw she had made some progress. Figures were running about on the shore with lights on their heads and hands, and she could not tell who was Tom and who was Leonard and
who was Brian and who was Annie.

  There was a faint buzz. They had started the engine on the rib. It buzzed louder and then roared as they pulled away.

  Lily paddled with everything she had, the waves building higher and higher as she came out of the protection of the curve of the island and into the centre of the channel that divided them from Arran. The kayak was rapidly filling with water and she was already drenched from the rain. At one point she half lost her grip on the paddle and her hands were so numb that she did not immediately notice, and only just caught it as it slid off to her left. She carried on, the roar of the rib getting louder over the splash of the sea. She tried not to think about the icy depth beneath her.

  She knew it was coming but she was still surprised when the rib burst over the crest of a wave to her right and drove straight over the front of the kayak, almost crushing her. For a bizarre moment she was staring up at Leonard, very close, and then she bounced away and the kayak rolled over and she didn’t even have time to take a final breath.

  She came out of the kayak and began to drown and it was almost a relief. But she felt something then, some movement within her, and it seemed like the water entering her lungs was pushed out. Then hands were grabbing at her and she fought and bit and felt a surge of vitality and warmth rushing through her, and wriggled out of their painful hands, and swam, swam, only guessing at her direction, just away from the boat, away from Brian, away from the island, away from her prison.

  The rib was roaring again very close and she was sinking, swimming beneath the surface for as long as she could, just coming up for quick gulps of air, the pain rippling through in unending waves. Her arms were filling with the tired pain, and the cold was unbearable, and she swam, and swam, deeper and deeper where it was a little calmer but her lungs felt like they’d explode and the death–panic came upon her, and then up for a gasp of air, and then down again, over and over, the noise of the rib sometimes overwhelming when she came up, sometimes somewhere in the distance.