Nuit Noire

by Carol Robi

  I am not much good at singing, not as good as dad was, but I am alright. At times mom and dad would allow me to accompany dad as a background singer on Saturday nights. Dad always played solo, as a one-man band on his acoustic guitar, but on those special Saturdays he’d let me sing along with him. People always ate that up- father and daughter singing together.

  He started teaching me the piano and guitar from an early age. I know the basics, but it was clear early on that I was not as enthusiastic in music as he was. I think it pained him that neither of his children loved music as much as he did. Now I wish I did, just for his sake. If I could go back in time, I’d put all my energy into becoming a music maestro just so he’d be happy. I’d do anything to have him back.

  Dad emigrated from Cuba in pursuit of musical stardom when he’d been eighteen, leaving his family behind. The proud Afro-cuban had traveled through many American and Canadian cities already when he came by Hamilton, where he met mom who’d just started up at the academy. Mom says that she’d been at a small bar she frequented then with her friends when she was captivated one night by a handsome young man, with the neatest dreadlocks she ever saw on a man, who sang hollow blues with infused African rhythms in Spanish over the sound of his trancing acoustic guitar. I struggle not to tear up each time I hear the story. They fell in love instantly, and the rolling stone that was Jorge Torres surprised himself by choosing to settle down.

  It is an unlikely match, a dreamy musician and a pragmatic policewoman. but they’d made it work. Love bound us together, dad often said, and love is the greatest glue there is.

  I had a happy childhood, but recently every thought of my childhood brings me pain. It makes me want to run and hide, and shut my mind against it, for each thought of my childhood reminds me of my father, whose beaming face I am never to see again. My dad, whose soothing voice I am never to hear again, whose low singing I’ll never again fall asleep to.

  Surprisingly, the idea to put up the basketball hoop does help us. Mom begins by shooting some hoops to see if it works well, then Tony surprisingly picks up the ball for the first time since dad’s death, and shoots at the rim. He then decides to try dunking and see if it would hold his weight too. Then I too surprise myself by picking the ball and shooting at the rim. We thereafter play on late into the night.

  Mom or Tony keep winning of course, whatever play we take, but I do not mind. I have never deluded myself to thinking I’m great at basketball. That is Tony and mom’s sport.

  I think I catch Tony smile for the first time in months, and I even manage to laugh when he tackles mom and leaves her sitting on her butt before he sails over me and dunks. I then notice for the first time just how tall he’s gotten this past year. We are twins. We’ve always grown at the same rate, but not this year. He is almost a head taller than me, and by the looks of it, will only get taller. His shoulders are broadening too, but he is skinny. Too skinny, for he has not been eating well. His eyes are slightly sunken and hollow, with dark shadows around them, that I know are caused by the sleepless nights we both suffer from.

  I manage to sleep all night tonight for the first time since dad died due to exhaustion from the exercise. But once again, the bloody orange eyes are what wake me up in the wee hours of the morning.

  …………………………….

  “What about now?” I ask over the loud electric music.

  “Too old,” Hemming says. I look to Hilda with exasperation, but she nods, agreeing with our youngest brother.

  “How about now?” I ask, partaking less in the enriching air around me, set free by the writhing bodies that dance vigorously away at the dance floor below us. We are doing a test run of the club, so Hemming convinced father to let him organise a rave party.

  “What age are you going for again?” Peter, Hilda’s human mate asks.

  “She’s sixteen.”

  “I think you’ve got it now,” Hemming says, tilting his head and drinking in the rich air to his fill, and when next he opens his eyes they are a burning blue. A blue so deep and bright that they illuminate the table on the VIP area we are seated on. We do not fear the humans below noticing it, as they’ve all been compelled not to remember a single unnatural activity in here. Neither are they to approach us or physically touch us. The latter is for their own good.

  “You’ll have to dress differently though,” he adds.

  “I know,” I say solemnly. Looking down at my much younger limbs. Back in England I had made myself into a twenty nine year old man, while Hemming had appeared twenty four. We’d lived in Southampton for twenty years, pretending to be Hilda’s children. I had watched with envy as my sister and her xana grew to love each other.

  Unlike I’m doing, Hilda had never pushed Peter when she sensed him. She’d simply waited for fate to bring her mate to her. Peter had been forty two when he finally met Hilda. The unsuspecting human had fallen in love with the ‘single-parent’ that lived with her father and two sons. Hilda had been patient, a quality I lack. However if she’d lived as long as I have, I doubt she’d have been that patient. It was seven years later that Hilda had introduced her betrothed to our world. Seven long years of learning about each other that she’d first allowed father to taste him and feed him to her, so as to be sure that he was the one. Peter had been frightened, but not too much, as over the years he’d learnt that the woman he cared for was not normal, that her insistence against their touching was beyond a typical psychological disorder. He’d been frightened, but not too much so that he ran away.

  I remember that moment when father had breathed him into Hilda’s lips, the gaseous exchange of essence that had flown from father’s lips into Hilda’s, and the gratifying colour that such a small whiff of energy had brought to her eyes. Only one’s true xana can fully gratify a Draugr’s eternal hunger without dying instantly. Peter was then confirmed to be her rightful mate.

  “That means shopping!” Hilda jolts me from my flashback by exclaiming cheerfully, her wrinkled face contrasting the girly ring in her voice, and we all can’t help but laugh at her excitement.

  Chapter 3

  “Is it true that you and your brother killed that serial killer in your living room?” A beautiful brunette asks tactlessly.

  “Jennifer! You can’t ask her that!” Another strawberry blonde says, talking down her friend.

  “Why not? I think it’s badass..”

  “It’s rude and insensitive, that’s why sweetheart,” Collin says, a tall lean guy in my history class, that I now suspect to be Jennifer’s boyfriend because of how he holds her, his hand around her shoulders possessively.

  “My name’s Mandy,” the strawberry blonde with the squared jaw now says, extending her hand to me with a warm smile. “I’m embarrassed to admit that Jennifer is my best friend. She really doesn’t meant to be rude or insensitive. She just lacks that special bone called tact.” I smile at the girl, and shake her hand. I then sweep my eyes around the canteen area looking for my brother. I need his help to get away from this crowd of nosey teenagers that just make me want to lash out at them in anger. I don’t know how much longer I can keep smiling. I see him then, seated alone on one of the tables closest to the doors leading outside, and I promptly excuse myself.

  “I have to go talk to my brother,” I mumble, rising to my feet, my lunch pack in hand.

  “Oh yeah. I heard you have a twin brother,” Jennifer now says. “How cool is that!” I am not sure if I ought to answer her or not. I choose not to, and sling my bookbag over my shoulder. “I’d love to meet him. Is that him over there?” I groan inside. Tony will not be happy about this.

  Try as I may, I am completely unable to shake my new friends off me. They hurry before me towards my brother who is clearly seeking solace in isolation, and by the time I trudge begrudgingly to his side, they already know his name and are fielding him questions on what he likes to do.

  He looks up at me angrily, and I try show him an apologetic face, as I had not wanted to bring the cir
cus to him.

  “You played basketball at your old school, right?” Collin asks happily. Tony nods reluctantly. “Great! I think you just saved our school team..”

  “He doesn’t play anymore,” I prompt, seeing the impatience in Tony’s eyes at Collin’s question.

  “Why not?” I’m not sure what I ought to say.

  Isn’t it obvious? We’ve been through a terrible traumatic experience. Things change after that, I scream in my head.

  “Because,” I choose to say simply.

  “But.. Were you any good? If you were, please come try out. Our school team really needs..”

  “Leave him alone!” I suddenly cry out in anger, surprising all including myself. “I said, he doesn’t play anymore.”

  “It’s alright Sophia,” Tony then says, placing a hand around my now shaking shoulders. “I’ve actually been thinking of playing again. Maybe it’s time I do something about it.”

  “You have?” I look at him surprised.

  He nods. “I have. Since we played last weekend, it is the only thing that seems to make me..” Now he lowers his voice, and speaks into the wild curls of my hair. “..Feel slightly better.”

  I nod, surprising myself by smiling a little. I know what he means. I saw it in him. Often had I panicked that I’d never see my brother smile again until that moment. My brother, Tony, the ever smiling school jock, had been reduced to a shell of himself after dad’s death. A life-sucking cocoon that I feared he’d never crawl out of.

  “And you,” he continues to tell me quietly, a small whisper of a smile playing at the corner of his lips, “should join cheerleading again..”

  “You were a cheerleader?” Jennifer suddenly asks. I nod, wanting to laugh at the excited look on her face. “That’s so awesome!” She shrieks, turning to Mandy with a happy smile on her face.

  “They are cheerleader’s too,” Collin says in answer to my questioning look.

  “I’d play better with you cheering me on,” my brother continues, looking at me intensely.

  “I don’t know Tony,” I whisper back.

  Our first week of school goes better than any of us expected, and our new shrink, Dr. Young, is happy about that.

  “I am glad to hear that you started basketball again, Tony,” Dr. Young says, peering at my brother earnestly. He shrugs in answer. “How did it make you feel..”

  “Really?” I interrupt rolling my eyes. “How did it make you feel? Don’t you ever get tired of asking that question?” The shrink now turns her narrow eyes towards me, a patient smile on her face. That patient smile irks me. “You keep asking him how it makes him feel. He feels better. He told you already. What more do you want him to say?”

  “You’re angry..”

  “Of course I’m angry,” I tell her. “My father died, and each week we keep talking about how random things make us feel! What else am I supposed to feel?”

  “Are you angry that your brother is moving on..”

  “Of course not! I am happy that Tony is doing much better.”

  “Better than you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you sleeping?” Dr. Young asks.

  “Yes, I am..”

  “No she isn’t,” mom interjects. “She only sleeps a full night if she takes the medication you prescribed. And even then, she still wakes up to her nightmares..”

  “Mom!”

  “Describe your nightmares,” Dr. Young says.

  “A nightmare,” I say stubbornly.

  “A little more than that,” Dr. Young urges.

  I say nothing more. I haven’t told any of them about my nightmare, other than that it is a nightmare. They don’t know that it is the same constant dream. It is the same eyes that wake me up after beckoning me for what feels like hours, pulling me, attracting me like a magnet. They don’t know that often the nightmare feels so real, that I’m not sure if I am asleep or awake. That at times even during the day, I feel the constant centripetal pull towards something, I do not know where. They don’t know that the pull has gotten stronger since we moved here, a thing I am unwilling to tell anyone for I can see the positive effect this quaint city has on mom and Tony.

  “Sophia..”

  “Stop pushing me,” I suddenly lash out. “Mom, make her stop pushing,” I cry out, turning to my mom, who looks back at me helplessly with most depressing eyes.

  “Sophia..” Mom starts.

  “You said no pushing mom,” I remind her, rising clumsily from my chair, backing away towards the door. Mom rises to her feet fast and catches me just before I knock something down in Dr. Young’s office in my frantic panic to get away.

  “No one will push you, Sophia,” mom now says, spreading her arms around me and holding fast even though my flailing limbs hit at her. “No one is pushing you, baby,” she tells me again, holding me so firmly that I feel her tensed up biceps taut over my body. Their solid firmness render me immobile, before I finally melt into her embrace, sagging against her.

  “No one is pushing you, my darling. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.”

  Other than my slight freak out, the session goes on well enough. Slightly better than the hundreds of sessions we’ve been to ever since the unfortunate incident, because Tony is finally not a shadow of himself. He speaks up, though just a little, and it is clear to see the relief in mom’s face to finally have a semblance of her son back.

  We eat out that night, at a Chinese restaurant, in the most comfortable silence we’ve had in a while. I am not scowling, Tony is not staring into empty space, barely eating, and mom’s eyes do not look as hollow and helpless as they have in the course of the past year.

  “I’ll just go by the lake,” I tell mom when we drive back home. The lake is only a few minutes walk from our new house. It has fast become a favourite place of mine.

  “I could..”

  “Mom, I’ll just be behind the house,” I reassure her. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Don’t stray too far off..”

  “I know, mom. I’ll not wander off. I’ll just be by the pier,” I tell her.

  “Okay. I’ll wait up for you..”

  “Mom!” I complain.

  “Of course I’ll wait up for you,” she says, brushing my hair. “Tomorrow is a school night, so you’ve got to be back by ten,” she says somberly. I nod, just glad that she’s not insisting on following me out there.

  This whole traumatic incident has been very hard on her, and mom now has it very difficult trying not to be overprotective of us. It is also part of the reason we moved to Greenfield. Here she has less working hours, and can spend most evenings and weekends at home with us, watching over us. It’s a smaller city with a lower crime rate, hopefully one where there are no serial murderers holding vendettas against her.

  I move slowly between the leafy grass pines reaching up to my knees, choosing to cut through the grass rather than follow the winding path so as to get to the beach faster. I soon enough get to the edge of the dark waters, kicking at the small pebbles lying on the narrow beach and listening as they land in the water with a soft plunge. I take off my shoes and walk along the freezing cold waters, ironically enjoying their icy cuts that chill me almost instantaneously. I enjoy the discomfort as it causes me to feel something.

  I soon come to the pier, and step onto it, walking along the old wooden planks out to the water. I sit on its furthest edge, looking out at the play of the moon mirrored on the dark waters, lighting a shimmering silver path towards me.

  My feet dangle over the edge, my toes frozen stiff, but I never take them out of the water, as I snuggle in closer into my jumper, and look up at the stars which are considerably much clearer to make out out here than they had been back in Hamilton.

  It is in this rare state of serenity that the now familiar pull of my nightmares tug at the edges of my consciousness. I begin to panic the moment I feel it. I look around me frightfully, jumping to my feet, my frozen feet hitting the wooden planks
painfully, unsure on whether I am still awake or not.

  The pulling increases, and I begin to pinch myself, again and again, trying to force myself to wake up. My mind doesn’t cooperate this time though. The pulling continues and I cannot seem to wake up no matter what.

  I am trapped in my nightmare! I can’t shake it off.

  Chapter 4

  My heart rate rises, my heart thumping furiously against my chest, making it hard for me to breathe, as I try fight the pulling.

  I fight it as hard as I can- flailing my hands around me, kicking against the air at whatever invisible ropes are wrapping around me, pulling me towards an unfamiliar edge of something intangible.

  Mother, the single word screams in my head, for I believe the only person that can save me now is my mother. I open my mouth ready to scream out her name when the wind around me suddenly, impossibly, whistles a “shh” that immediately silences me, stopping my yet to be voiced screams.

  I open my mouth trying to scream, but once again, no sound comes out. My tongue just doesn’t coordinate. Neither does my throat. I turn, resorting to running away. But my feet remain frozen when the wind around me sounds again as though whispering, “don’t. Move.”

  I am now in a full blown panic, frozen to the spot, not a single sound escaping my lips. Another nightmare. The worst yet, for my body is not under my control anymore.

  I am still turning around in place, looking for a way to get out, attempting to run or scream, when the sound of something landing on wooden planks shocks me. I force myself to yet again turn around, the silent scream I give inaudible as I catch sight of a tall lean figure now standing before me.