Darkly, Deeply, Beautifully

by Megan Tayte

  ‘What do you wish, Luke?’

  ‘I wish you never needed me to come. Because you were never in danger or in pain.’

  The words were right and the sentiment was right, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that wasn’t what he really wanted to say, that wasn’t his deepest wish.

  But I didn’t want to press him. Not now. I wanted to get down, off this tower. I wanted to see Sienna and Jude and Jack.

  I struggled to stand, and at once Luke stood with me, holding on to me.

  ‘Scarlett,’ he said, ‘there’s something else I need to tell you.’

  ‘It can wait. I need to see Jack.’

  I took a step towards the door and Luke’s arms tightened around me, keeping me in place. I pushed against him. He held me tighter.

  His arms around me, they’d always been comforting, supportive. This felt different. Too much like another embrace I’d been in recently – trapping me here.

  ‘Stop it,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘Not before –’

  ‘Let me go!’

  I started struggling, but his arms were strong. Everyone was stronger than me, it seemed, even…

  ‘Michael!’ I gasped. I began backing away and Luke, behind me, staggered. ‘Gone! You said he was gone!’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Luke. ‘Scarlett, I’m sorry.’

  I tried to think, but it made no sense. Behind me: the guy I loved, the guy I trusted above all others, holding me tight, keeping me from escaping this tower. And in front of me: my brother, the lost boy – not gone but here, right here, standing at the edge of the tower, watching me, watching me.

  ‘No more!’ I begged. ‘Please. I can’t take any more.’

  My knees gave out and I sank to the floor, and I wished I could sink right through it, away from them both.

  Michael and Luke? Luke and Michael? I couldn’t believe it. How? Why?

  ‘Scarlett.’ Luke’s arms had released me and he was scooting around so he could face me. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry he’s gone.’

  He reached out to touch me but I shuddered away. I didn’t understand. Michael wasn’t gone; that much was clear. And why were there tears in Luke’s eyes?

  ‘Why?’ I looked past Luke to Michael. ‘Why?’

  I need you, said Michael. Come down. Come down now.

  I stared at him. Luke wanted me up here. Michael wanted me down there. The world was inside out. Nothing made sense.

  It has to be you, Scarlett, said Michael. No one else sees me. No one else understands.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  You do, said Michael. Hurry. Please.

  He vanished.

  ‘I don’t understand exactly myself,’ Luke was saying. ‘I was focused on you and Jack. I saw them at the edge. I heard Michael shout something about flying and Jude shout something about letting go. He fell. I think he just fell. An accident. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What?’

  He stood then and helped me to my feet. This time when his arms slid around me it wasn’t to hold me back, but to guide me forwards, to the far side of the tower. To the edge where Michael had held me and Jack. The edge where my brother had, just moments ago, been standing.

  ‘Scarlett, I’m so sorry,’ said Luke again over a hum of voices now audible below, and I looked for their source, and I saw…

  Him.

  Only it wasn’t him, not really. It was stringless marionette splayed on a concrete path.

  And Michael?

  He was a ghost, standing over his finally dead body, looking up at me, beckoning at me to come down. And I saw, in an instant, why I had to.

  Luke went first down the narrow spiral staircase. He made me take each stair at a time. I focused on where I was putting my feet, and with each step a rhythm built in my thoughts.

  Step. I had a brother.

  Step. His name was Noah.

  Step. He died.

  Step. I had a brother.

  Step. His name was Michael.

  Step. He died.

  Downstairs, Luke led me through the vestry into the nave of the church. On the first pew sat Sienna, rocking a now-sleeping Jack. Jude was slumped beside her, head buried in his hands; Reverend Helmsley was in the second pew, murmuring to the lost sheep.

  My sister looked up as we entered, and her lips trembled as she mouthed, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Is he okay?’ I nodded at Jack.

  She smiled down at him and nodded.

  I turned away, to the side door leading out to the graveyard. Luke remained at my side as we stepped outside. I saw at once the huddle of people along the path from us, and I walked faster, faster, until I was there.

  ‘Scarlett,’ said Gabe, standing. ‘Are you all right?’

  He realised at once the stupidity of the words, but I looked into his bloodshot eyes and I saw the agony there and I nodded to say, I will be.

  ‘Don’t look,’ Luke murmured as I stepped aside, past Gabe, closer to the body on the ground.

  But I did; I had to look, just once, at the vacant green eyes. Then I lifted my head and looked over the body and I fixed on those same eyes. Only they weren’t vacant – they were full of need.

  Please, said Michael. Please, Scarlett.

  I reached down then and I touched the shoulder of the figure bent over at my feet. A figure so fragile she was half-collapsed on the body, her nightgown stained red.

  ‘Stop,’ I told Evangeline.

  She ignored me. Her chest was making a terrible rattling sound, her eyes were rolling in her head, and yet her hands, pressed to the motionless body, were emitting a brilliant light.

  I looked at the man kneeling beside her, tugging at her.

  ‘Stop her,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve tried,’ said Nathaniel desperately. ‘I am trying.’

  I looked at Gabe, standing by silently. ‘Stop her,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘I tried to do it myself, but I can’t. So I summoned them. This is her fault. She has to bring him back.’

  No!

  I looked at Michael. He wasn’t bloody like the body on the ground; his head wasn’t misshapen, his legs not unnaturally bent. He was whole. He was undamaged. And he was desperate.

  You see me, he said. You see me, Scarlett. You’re the only one who does. You have to know – I did this. I want this. It’s all I ever wanted. It’s the way it should always have been. I am dead. I’m not for this world. I don’t want her light. I don’t want to be a Cerulean. I want the next life. I want peace. I want to be who I am, who I would have been without any of this.

  He stepped towards me, and he was crying, and I was crying, and Luke was saying, ‘Scarlett?’ and Gabe was saying, ‘What are you looking at?’ But I ignored them. I let the whole world recede until it was just me and my brother.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  I’m sorry too. But I’m tired of being a ghost. Let me be that little blue baby. Just let me go.

  ‘You could stay.’

  I can’t. Even if you could all forgive me, I don’t belong. I never have.

  He jerked suddenly and put a hand to his heart.

  No… Stop her. Please!

  I looked down at Evangeline, slumped over the body. Her light wasn’t brilliant now; it was feeble, the blue of an evening mist. I’d never seen a Cerulean light faded this way. Depleting.

  I remembered Jude’s warnings to me from the very beginning: go too far, give out too much light, and you’ll die. I’d never thought to question the how and why of that.

  Suddenly, devastatingly, beautifully, I understood.

  She’s giving up her light, Scarlett. Passing it on to me. But I don’t want it. Dammit – it’s my right to choose!

  His final words were the catalyst: I dropped to my knees and I grabbed the old lady and I pulled her off the body.

  ‘What are you…?’

  ‘How dare…!’

  ‘Scarlett…?’

  ‘Quiet,’ I told them all.

&
nbsp; I held my great-grandmother on my lap and I said, ‘He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want the light, the life. I see him, I see him right now. He’s here. Michael’s here. And he’s begging to be released. He wants peace now.’

  I saw the recognition in her dimming eyes. I thought I saw the beginnings of a smile. And then Evangeline sighed a last breath and she left us all.

  There was a moment of stillness as the four who lived tried to compute the fact that now two did not.

  Then Nathaniel took Evangeline from me and gathered her into a final embrace, whispering his love.

  Then Luke helped me to my feet and kissed my forehead tenderly, before stepping back to give me space.

  Then Gabe turned me to him and said, eyes brimming with tears, ‘He’s here? Where is he?’

  ‘Right there.’ I pointed. ‘By Peter’s headstone.’

  My father looked around wildly. ‘I don’t see him,’ he said. ‘I don’t see him.’

  Mere metres away, his son stood and watched him. Tell him it’s okay, he said. I know he wants to see me. That’s enough.

  But before I could say anything Gabe was gripping my shoulders. ‘You must try now. You can see him. You can bring him back.’

  No, Scarlett.

  ‘Gabriel, I won’t do that.’

  ‘You must!’

  ‘I won’t. Michael doesn’t want to live. He wants us to let him go.’

  ‘No!’ Gabe released me and staggered back. He collapsed onto the bench and said brokenly, ‘I can’t… not again. I can’t leave him alone.’

  I won’t be alone.

  Michael was gazing eastward. All I saw was a weeping willow, but the longing on his face told me he saw differently: another place, a place he belonged. I wondered who he saw awaiting him there – Alice, our grandmother? Peter, our grandfather? Or…

  I lurched towards Michael, towards the world I couldn’t see. ‘Mum,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Do you see her? Is she…?’

  No. She’s not there.

  He came to meet me then, stepping over grass that didn’t flatten beneath his tread. When we were standing face to face he reached out and touched his hand to mine. I didn’t feel it, but I did feel the gravity in his next words:

  I don’t believe Elizabeth would choose the white light. Not yet. I think, if she’d been born like us, then when the time came her decision would always have been different to mine – and yours, if you’d had the chance to choose freely. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Scarlett?

  I hesitated, looking at Evangeline, lifeless in Nathaniel’s arms.

  Just let it go, said Michael, and he threw his arms wide and looked up at the sky. That’s the secret, don’t you see? All this time, it was so simple! Let it all go, and be.

  A hand tugged at my arm. Gabe. Stricken. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘He’s saying let it go. Let him go.’ I looked back at Michael. He was spinning on the spot like a small child. ‘He’s happy,’ I said.

  ‘Tell him he should be happy. Tell him he deserves to be. Tell my son…’

  Michael stilled and stared at his father, who was speaking with such feeling, eyes darting around as he searched for what had been missing for so long.

  ‘Tell him that not a day went by when I didn’t think of him. Tell him that his mother and I, we’ve never once stopped missing him. Tell him that I’m sorry he was alone. Tell him that I love him, I always did love him, and that one day I will see him again.’

  I heard Michael echo those last words: He will see me. And then I saw it: the light. Dazzling. Divine. Reflecting on Michael’s face.

  I remembered my friend Bert lit that way in his final moments – and I remembered Jude’s words to me right before Bert’s spirit passed on: ‘Look, Scarlett, look. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see.’

  Are you ready? said Michael now.

  ‘Are you?’

  Always have been.

  He stepped forward and touched his index finger to mine, and this time I felt a frisson of warmth. And I whispered those words he’d overhead me say a lifetime ago at Bert’s graveside, those words that had sparked the affinity in him – and with it, the madness:

  ‘Farewell to Thee! But not farewell

  To all my fondest thoughts of Thee;

  Within my heart they still shall dwell

  And they shall cheer and comfort me.’

  I was setting him free. I was telling him that we wouldn’t hold on to the anger; that we would choose to remember what was good in him – that we would remember him.

  His last words to me were Thank you.

  He walked to our grandfather’s gravestone, and he let his hand trail across the name Peter for a moment. Then he closed his eyes and he said, with hope, The End.

  And he let go.

  Death comes in threes – so goes the old superstition. Lose one person, grieve quietly. Lose two people, brace yourself for the next: the postman, the lady at the corner shop, the next-door neighbour – your grandmother, your cousin, your mother – you?

  Some people prepare for the possibility of death by worrying a lot and crying a lot and wasting a load of time wishing away the inevitable and listening to morose music. Some approach death like it’s a business to manage; they bury themselves in the practical – checking wills, organising finances, umming and ahhing over oak and rosewood coffins. Some focus all their time on saying emotional farewells to people and places, goodbyes that resonate with poignancy and pain.

  I know this, because I did all these things, and more, when I was dying. But what I didn’t do, what I never thought to do, was throw a party.

  In fact, there had been a party, when I was dying, in part for me. A ‘Cara’s Legs Are Gorgeous and Scarlett’s Back for Now and We Love Her’ party. I went through all the motions that night. I danced. I smiled. I laughed. But I didn’t really. Not in that deepest place inside. Not where it counts. There, I curled up in a ball, and I closed my eyes to block out the hot flames all around, and I sobbed.

  You may think that ten days after burying my great-grandmother and seven days after burying my brother, putting on the party to end all parties was somewhat disrespectful. You’d be wrong. It was everything we needed, all of us.

  Because it wasn’t ‘The End’ at all. It was an end, but it was also a beginning. I was sure it was.

  *

  My little cottage on the cliff had witnessed many strange scenes. People disappearing, people materialising, people glowing with an ethereal blue light. But never, to my knowledge, had it housed a mermaid, a Jane Eyre, a Red Riding Hood and a Rapunzel, all lined up in the living room and taking turns to glimpse our finished looks (two hours plus a week’s sewing in the making) in a full-length mirror.

  Estelle, smoothing down her empire-line dress with delicately buttoned gloves, went first. We all agreed she looked amazing, and why shouldn’t Jane Eyre have piercings and jet-black eye liner? She was, after all, a woman ahead of her time.

  Next up was Cara. As one, we admired the bonnet and the cape and the red gingham dress with lace-up bodice, and even the frilly red shortie knickers that were undeniably visible at the fringe of the teeny, tiny skirt.

  We fussed over Grannie Cavendish for a while, smoothing her pink velvet gown, retying the bows on her little satin slippers and arranging metres of long blond braid just so across her shoulders, down the sides of her wheelchair, onto her lap. Then we moved the mirror to her, and blotted away tears and re-powdered soft cheeks as she exclaimed over and over, ‘Look at me! A real princess!’

  Finally, it was my turn.

  When Cara had suggested fancy dress for the party – and got over her shock, and then Chester-level excitement, that I’d said yes – she’d launched straight into a list of ideas for my outfit that spoke of many nights of costume dreaming. I’d chosen the very first idea, because it made me laugh. Mermaid. So far from the almost-drowned girl who’d started out in this cove.

  I’d left Cara to des
ign as she liked, and when I’d seen the dress tonight, I was glad I’d given her free reign. It was so Cara – elaborate and show-stopping. But it was me too. The top half was a blue halterneck with a glittery shell bandini sewn over the top. From the hips down, the skirt was tight to the knees and covered in shimmering, silvery scales, then it flared out in layers of tulle.

  The top was hardly modest (‘draws attention to the bazookas’, as Cara delicately put it), the mermaid skirt restricted movement to little dainty steps only, and the silver strappy heels on my feet were stupidly high. But tonight, I didn’t care. And when the others told me I looked amazing, for once I didn’t flush or long to change back into jeans and a t-shirt – I believed them.

  ‘I knew it,’ said Cara, her face dimpling up. ‘I knew it – you love it! I’ll make a fancy dress fanatic out of you yet! Today a mermaid, tomorrow…’ She stopped then, and a shadow came over her face.

  ‘Tomorrow, the Mad Hatter,’ I told her firmly.

  Our eyes met in the mirror. I held my smile. She restored hers.

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.’

  ‘Or the King of the Swingers,’ suggested Grannie. ‘Everyone loves a swinger, you know.’

  And on that note, we were off – a laughing, excited gaggle of girls spilling outside and then squeezing into my Mini (no mean feat, given Grannie’s three-foot conical ‘princess’ hat with trailing wispy veil, and her large and clunky wheelchair). We pootled off down the lane, singing Disney anthems at the top of our lungs.

  By the time I parked down at the seafront and we set to work levering ourselves out of the vehicle, we’d moved on to a Grannie-led fusion of ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’ and ‘Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee’. On a nearby bench, an elderly couple taking in the early evening air and watching a world of strange characters go by called a ‘Good evening’ to us and we returned it cheerily.

  The others tottered/wheeled off to the source of all the noise and light and delicious aromas, and I paused a moment to lock up the car.

  I heard the lady say, ‘Do you remember, Frank, when we were that age, and I’d put on a nice frock and we’d go dancing?’

  ‘I remember, Jessie,’ said the man, ‘and still you take my breath away every time I look at you.’