Dark Horizons

by Dan Smith

  I contemplated the rock, not sensing that I was spending longer over these things than I usually would. At first I didn’t notice the increased awareness, but as soon as I did, I wondered how I could have missed it, and my thoughts opened like a flower. My tunnelled mind, which had once been a pin hole, was now a gaping chasm. A small receiver which had become an entire listening station – an array of satellite dishes hungry for input. I became alert to everything around me, as if I were a part of the forest. I was the rock and I could sense the tiniest traces of each soul that had passed across me. I could feel the anger and the pain and the sadness of every body that had been stretched across it. I was the earth beneath my feet, the collector of the blood that had been spilled. I was each individual tree, the silent spectators at every execution, every banquet of human flesh. I was the curtain of stars above me, each one having looked down without judgement on events that had unfolded in this place.

  I was part of it all, but my mind was not too tangled with its surroundings to understand that I was feeling the effects of what Kurt had given me and it inspired in me a great respect and love for him for having given me this opportunity. But as quickly as I had begun to feel love and respect, so my mind switched, like a train reaching a series of points, changing rails in rapid succession.

  I turned from clear, pure feelings to tainted jealousy and disgust. He had been watching us. Domino and me. He had been watching us when we were in the longhouse. I knew it because I was part of the trees again, and I knew what they were thinking, what they had seen. So now I was there, like a bird on a branch, watching Domino and myself coming out of the longhouse, Kurt sneaking out behind us. Only he wasn’t Kurt any more. He was something else. Something darker. His body was stooped, his shoulders enlarged, his legs short and crooked. He moved like nothing I’d ever seen before, a stuttering movement, his body rolling from side to side as he twitched and spasmed from the longhouse. He stopped and sniffed the air, jerking in my direction, cocking his feral head towards me and looking up into the trees. He knew I was there, watching the watcher. He stayed like that for an eternity, staring up at me, his eyes dead wood, his carved face devoid of expression, like the dreadful facade of the singa masks that hung over the doorways, then he moved away, flinching and twitching into the forest, lost in the darkness.

  Then I was no longer in the trees, but back in the clearing, touching my hand to my head, staring at the rock in front of me, now soaked in a dark syrup, which I knew was blood. And when the word passed into my head, the liquid on the rock sprang into focus, glowing the brightest red, the thick rivulets sliding down the rock, pooling in the dirt and forming clotted clumps around its base. I stepped back as if the blood might come to life and reach out for me, but it remained where it was, glowing, unnatural in the night.

  I turned to look at the trees, approaching the nearest and seeing the tiniest detail on its bark, the orange glow from the torches casting a rainbow of glittering colours across the ancient wood. And as I contemplated stepping among them, the trees merged into a solid wall around me, their trunks becoming one as they enveloped me, blazing in their new colours, their surfaces singing to me, their odour powerful and intoxicating. I knew I would be able to pass among them like a ghost, though, and I dissolved, melted into a cloud of invisible vapour, ready to become one with them, to be a part of something bigger.

  But as my being began to melt into nothingness, so an angel appeared before me, dispersing the trees and coming into the clearing like a divine messenger parting the clouds and dropping to earth as a feather. The angel glowed with a billion colours shimmering around her body, a halo illuminating her entire being. She held her arms out to me, my widening eyes almost incapable of swallowing such a wondrous sight.

  She came to me with open arms and a smile so knowing that I felt as if the angel had looked into my heart and seen all that was inside.

  ‘An angel,’ I heard myself say, the words having substance as they escaped my lips. Like a glowing vapour, scented with earth and pine needles and sweet water, each aroma surpassing the next, like a rolling cloud of ever-changing odour.

  ‘Not an angel,’ she said. Her words, too, were tangible in the night, the colours mingling with those of mine, the two breaths snaking around each other, both visible for some time before they became one, glimmering together, rising over us, reaching for the curtain of dazzling stars.

  The angel stood before me, watching, smiling, before coming right to me and putting her arms around me, melting into me, her limbs sinking into mine, becoming part of me. I put my mouth on hers, drawing us together even further and I felt her breath pass through me, warm and sweet.

  ‘Christ, I want you,’ I heard my voice say.

  Then, with a sensation of two things being torn apart, an almost painful feeling, she stepped back and stared into my eyes. ‘Really?’

  ‘I want every part of you,’ I said, as if someone else were speaking the words for me. ‘Everything.’ I pulled her to me again. ‘I want to be inside you. Come into the woods. Let’s feel what it’s like to do it under the trees.’

  ‘This isn’t you talking. This is … something else.’

  ‘No. Take me into the trees.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘More than anything.’

  So the angel took my hand and turned to lead me back into the forest, but my legs were rooted into the ground. I could feel their extensions, burrowing under the dirt, clinging to the earth. They weren’t my own. They were numb, hardened like wood.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, no longer an angel now. Now she was Domino, her golden hair bathed in the glow of the stars.

  ‘I can’t. I can’t move.’ And I felt a panic stir in me; a panic that grew like a fungus, rapidly spreading, gripping me, smothering me, tightening its fist around my heart.

  ‘You can move,’ she said. ‘It’s just the trip. Try thinking through it. Break through it.’

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on moving my legs, breaking them free from the ground, and after a few moments one of my legs was my own, then the other, and I pulled them away, moving them in front of me, one at a time.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s good.’

  I let her take me among the trees.

  ‘Let’s go further in,’ she said. ‘Let’s go where no one can see us.’

  When she stopped walking, I brought her down to the ground beside me where I could smell her, sense her odour emanating from every pore on her skin. I leaned towards her and kissed her, my lips tingling with the heat from her body, my fingertips electrified as they caressed her face and ran through her hair. She put one hand on my face in return and it sent a wave of colour and sensation through me that made me want to explode with joy, burst into tiny fragments and scatter myself across the forest. This was what life should be. It should be about joy and love and this incredible intensity of feeling. It shouldn’t be about boredom and existence, living just so that we may die.

  ‘We should do it,’ I said, pushing her back onto the ground. ‘Right here. Now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’ll be amazing. Like nothing ever before it.’

  ‘It’s really what you want?’

  ‘Yes. It’s what I want.’

  And as we joined together, in the forest, my skin alive with a battery of feelings, my mind awash with colour and scent, I looked down at my angel. But the face that looked up at me, contorted with pleasure, did not belong to Domino.

  It belonged to Helena.

  23

  When I woke, it was light and Domino was leaning over me, looking down. ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking for you for ages.’

  She held out a hand and I reached up to take it.

  ‘You need to get up,’ she said as she helped me to my feet.

  My head felt peculiar. Detached. The pressure of a headache but the euphoric memory of last night’s experience. The confusion of what I saw coloured by unusual pleasure.

 
‘The others are looking for you.’

  ‘You weren’t here before?’ I asked, rubbing my eyes and glancing around. The trees were just trees, the sky was just sky, and I was just Alex.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  It was still dark, but not as dark as it had been when Kurt and I were resting by the boulder. It felt as if our conversation had happened quite some time ago – days, although I suspected it was more like hours – and the atmosphere was very different. There was a duskiness to the light, as if the day was breaking somewhere over the lake, and the first traces of reality were seeping among the trees like mist.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘You sure you weren’t here before?’ It had felt so real.

  ‘You mean someone was here with you?’ She looked concerned, and for the first time since opening my eyes I really saw her expression. She was pale and tired, her eyes ringed red, the whites shot with tiny rivers of blood.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘Something happened last night.’ Domino kept hold of my hand and pulled, taking me back towards the clearing. The torches were out now, no flame from them at all, not even a hint of smoke. I slowed and stared at the rock, remembering how I had seen it last night. The detail on the surface, the blood, the wisps of soul. I had to tear my eyes from it as Domino dragged me in the direction of the path leading back to the main clearing.

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘An accident.’

  I stopped and pulled against her, making her halt. ‘What kind of accident?’

  Domino tried to tug at me one more time, but I was stronger and she gave up, her shoulders slumping. Defeated, she leaned against the nearest tree and slid down it. She put her hands on either side of her face and gripped her hair, pulling it back. ‘It’s all going to shit.’

  ‘What’s going on, Domino? What kind of accident?’

  She looked up at me with glazed eyes. Dark lines on the soft skin below.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s Matt.’

  ‘Matt? What about him?’

  ‘He’s dead, Alex. Matt’s dead.’

  I stared at her, collecting my thoughts. I’d felt a great sense of belonging last night, a sense of intoxication that had stayed with me even when I woke, but now it was gone. As if someone had stepped into my opium den and whipped back the curtain to let the harsh light in. I processed Domino’s words. I let them spin around my hazy thoughts, clearing away the last remnants of last night’s exhilaration, wondering. ‘Is this another one of Kurt’s games?’

  ‘Games? No, Alex. No … he … he was just there, lying on his back.’

  ‘For real? This is for real?’ The sensation of falling. The approach of fear. Not the kind of fear that grips you and squeezes, but the kind that slips up your spine, sinks its roots into your stomach and feeds on you.

  ‘Kurt told me to come get you. He wants everyone there. Wants everyone to see.’

  ‘To see what?’

  ‘I found him,’ she said. ‘I came out to look for you. I was supposed to come and get you. I should have come earlier, but … but I found him.’

  I sat beside her, not knowing what to say, putting my arm around her shoulder. She was shivering, and being beside her like that, I realised the air was cold, the sun hadn’t yet begun to warm the trees. I held her closer, tighter. I pushed away any fading memories of last night, of the incredible feeling of being inside her, being part of her. ‘What did you find?’ Comforting her gave me a feeling of strength that wrapped itself around the fear. I admired Domino’s confidence but when she was like this I felt more connected to her. Like this she was mine, not Kurt’s, not the community’s.

  ‘I walked into him,’ she said. ‘Just walked into him. I think I stepped on his hand. Something under my foot. Hard, like a twig or a branch or something.’ She stopped and stared as if seeing it all again. ‘It was still dark.’ She gripped the fingers of her right hand in her left, bending them backwards then releasing them in a quick movement. ‘I thought it was just a twig.’ She repeated the action over and over as she spoke, taking the fingers in her fist and crushing them together. Her joints cracked. ‘But it wasn’t a twig.’ Her eyes unseeing. ‘It was his fingers snapping. When I stood on them. I can hear them now. I can hear them snapping under my feet.’

  I squeezed her tighter, letting her shivering rattle through me. I wished I had something to give her. A drink. A cigarette, maybe. Something for her to do with her hands instead of wringing them together like that. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said, feeling their emptiness as soon as the words fell from my mouth. Of course it wasn’t her fault.

  Domino stopped shivering and looked at me. She opened her mouth as if to say something but stopped. She closed her eyes, tightened them like she was trying to squeeze out what she had seen. ‘We have to go back,’ she said. ‘Kurt’s waiting for us. He wants us all to be there.’

  ‘He can wait.’

  ‘No.’ She pushed my arm away and got to her feet. ‘We have to go. He’s waiting. They’re all waiting.’

  I stayed where I was, watching her stand. Now it was her turn to look down at me and I saw that she’d changed, as if she’d slipped on a mask. She was no longer the fragile and distraught girl who’d been shivering beside me just seconds ago. I’d seen this before. She flicked a switch and she was Domino again. Strong and in control. I wondered how she did it. How she managed to shift her emotions from one state to another so quickly. Like a chameleon changing its colours to suit its environment.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘They’re waiting.’ And she turned, began walking along the path.

  I watched her, half expecting her to stop and turn again, but she didn’t. She kept on walking until she was out of sight, so I hurried after her, catching her as she reached the end of the path, and we came into the clearing together, Domino leading by a footstep.

  The others were gathered in front of the longhouses, standing in a group around the body that lay on the ground.

  He was lying face up. Matt. His eyes closed, his stumpy dreadlocks dusted with soil and pine needles. His arms crossed on his naked chest and his legs stretched out beneath his sarong.

  As we approached, I was unable to look away from him. I had played football with him, jumped with him, smoked with him, but now he was nothing. Lifeless. Like my mother lying in her coffin; like the old woman on the road whose life had vanished before me. The sight neither disgusted nor shocked me, but it disturbed me. Everything about what I saw was wrong.

  This wasn’t where he’d died and it wasn’t the position in which he had been found, and it was wrong, to my modern mind, that someone had moved him. My knowledge of death was that it was left to the authorities; that it was they who should move the body. Not us. Particularly because Matt was young, healthy, and his now cold and waxen face was bruised.

  Nevertheless, Matt had been arranged and now his friends were watching him. Most of them were there – everyone except for Michael and Jason. Kurt, as usual, was in the centre of it. All eyes were on the body, as if some grim acceptance had gripped each of them, but they looked our way when we joined them.

  Kurt was the last to look over at us, as if he were unable to take his eyes from what lay before him.

  Domino stopped, facing the others, and I came alongside her, reaching down to take her hand, but she pulled it away from me. She waited for Kurt to reach out to her, then she went to join him, to take her place in the semi-circle. The others looked away, their eyes back on Matt. All except for Helena. She continued to watch me, her face less hardened than the others.

  I stayed where I was, wondering if Kurt’s invitation extended to me. I felt a strong sense of not understanding a ritual that the others seemed to know. A sense that the scene before me was wrong. Unnatural. As if some other force had taken them over, made them different from me. I was an outsider again, while they behaved as one, all knowing how to react. Perhaps that was why Domino�
��s mood had changed so suddenly. For a moment I had seen her as she really was – vulnerable and fragile – but this Domino, the one I was seeing right now, was the person who belonged here, with Kurt and the others, standing in their semi-circle, staring down at the body of a fallen brother.

  In that moment I despised Kurt, the self-appointed leader for these people, but then he extended his hand to me, and I had a sudden and overwhelming feeling of belonging that made me believe these were my people, too. I was one of them, just as Matt was. I had been accepted and I could take my place with Domino. I would do as they did. Perhaps this was where I truly belonged.

  24

  I hadn’t known Matt well, and I didn’t feel the loss the others felt, but he’d treated me as a friend, and I understood their grief. A part of the community had been torn off and cast away.

  We stood in silence for some time before Michael brought Matt’s best friend to join us. Jason must have been forewarned because his face was white beneath his scant beard. It was the face of someone preparing for something terrible.

  He didn’t look at any of us as he came to kneel beside his friend, staying like that for a moment before easing back and sitting on the ground. He bent his head forwards, and we stood in silence.

  When he looked up at us, his face was a curious mixture of sadness and fear. ‘I told him not to take it,’ he said, as if the words were rehearsed, speaking them like an automaton. ‘I fucking told him.’ He shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t listen, though. You all knew what he was like. Always looking for the next thing. The next way to get high.’

  He stopped and we waited for him. We waited because Matt was his friend.

  Jason wiped the palm of his dirty right hand across each eye and went on. ‘He was all fired up. Doing the jump the other day. The thing with Alim. Someone new coming. He wanted to celebrate, do something he’d never done before. I fucking told him not to, though. I told him not to take it.’ As he spoke, he looked only at Kurt, and when he was finished, he lowered his head and stared at the ground, his hair falling forwards to cover his face.