Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  ‘Mia?’

  ‘Singer,’ the thing on the bed that looked like Mia Hennessey said with a deep, laconic drawl.

  Albie had known that Mia had gone again even before she said her name, but the last hour since she had helped Mia out of the truck (and it had been Mia then, she was sure of it) and into the cottage had become something of a game between them. Mia would be there fleetingly and then she would go again and someone else, the same someone who she had first encountered back in the truck, the owner of that nightmare voice, would be there instead, taking her over. It was like a perverse game of hide and seek. At first, when the change came it was always announced in the eyes; they would glaze and water and then there would be that horrific sight of them rolling back into her head again. But now the game had advanced and when Mia went, her eyes betrayed nothing.

  ‘Singer? What do you mean by that, Mia?’

  Mia pulled her left hand up from the bed, yanked down the bandage against her bullet wound, only just recently treated by Albie, and jammed her index finger into it. The finger searched and probed and rummaged around and then the thumb was alongside it and they were pulling out a bloody, pulpy mess and flicking it at Albie.

  ‘You should hear how she screams, Alberta. This stupid girl. This girl that came back.’

  ‘You know me, do you?’

  Mia smiled and then sucked at the blood on the index finger. ‘Of course, and you know me. You’ve been dreaming about me. It was fate, you see, Alberta.’

  ‘What do you want from me? What do you want from Mia?’

  ‘My dear Alberta. How are the nightmares?’

  ‘You have me at a disadvantage. You know me but I don’t know you.’ Albie’s voice was controlled and poised, utterly at odds with the terror that was washing through her. The rifle in her lap gave her no comfort, even though she could see the thing on the bed eyeing it suspiciously. ‘Or should I keep calling you Mia? That seems a little foolish, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Singer.’

  ‘You’re a singer?’

  Mia laughed and the noise seemed to tear at the inside of Albie’s ears. It was a corrupted and grotesque wail, and were it not for the wide and wicked smile that came after it, Albie would have sworn the thing was screaming at her.

  ‘Stupid Alberta. What would your father say? How disappointed he would be. You so wanted to impress him, didn’t you? Do you think he would be proud of you? Do you, Alberta? My little bitch has the same issues.’ Mia suddenly jerked up from the bed into a seated position and held her right hand out, palm up, in front of Albie. ‘What should I do with my vessel, Alberta? What should be done?’

  Albie pushed back in the rocking chair, her sleeve-covered hands fumbling at the rifle. The thing before her didn’t seem to notice, and if it did, it certainly didn’t look like it cared. Its eyes were cast down at the hand, alive and inviting. Albie heard a knuckle cracking. The index finger on Mia’s upturned hand was bending backwards, almost touching the top of the hand.

  ‘You really should hear how she screams, Alberta.’

  ‘Stop it! Stop doing that!’

  ‘She is my vessel. She is my judgment. My executioner!’

  Albie shot out of the rocking chair and stood over the thing in the bed. ‘Leave her alone! Please!’

  ‘She mustn’t be here. She belongs in the city. Do you really want to fall because of her, Alberta? How far do you want to fall? How are the nightmares?’

  ‘Don’t think I won’t shoot you.’

  ‘You can’t kill me. You can only kill my vessel.’

  There was a loud knock on the door and then Sam’s voice came from beyond it: ‘Aunt! Are you okay? What’s going on in there?’ The knock became a kick and then Sam was turning the handle and trying to get in.

  ‘If you took my vessel, I would just have to find a different home.’ Mia shrugged lightly, her eyes flicking towards the door. Slowly she pulled the finger back into place and then slumped back to the bed. ‘Tedious people.’

  ‘Everything’s okay, Samuel. Everything’s fine,’ Albie shouted back, only too aware how false it sounded.

  ‘We shouldn’t lie to the children. Not the children of today. You try and protect with lies. But lies can kill, wouldn’t you say, Alberta?’

  There was a small, pathetic whimper from somewhere at the edge of the candlelight’s glow and Albie spun around on the spot in fright. She had forgotten all about Blarney. The dog was sat bolt upright at the end of the bed, staring impassively at Mia, or whatever passed for his master right now. In the hour they had been in the room he hadn’t moved an inch.

  ‘Why have I been dreaming about Mia?’ Albie turned back to the stranger lying on her bed. Mia’s right arm was stretched out across a pillow, the scarred letters, not so long since weeping blood, had now dried dark, the edges crusty. ‘Tell me why, Singer.’

  ‘Mr Singer, I think, Alberta.’

  ‘Tell me! Why have I been dreaming about her!’

  ‘You haven’t, you’ve been dreaming about how you will die. It is fate, Alberta. All roads intersect. You’ve been dreaming about what road you will take Alberta, and people die around that girl. That girl that came back.’

  The door to the bedroom suddenly clattered open, the small lock pinging off and flying across the room. Sam was striding towards the bed, a machine gun firmly held in his hands. Hector and Callie stood in the doorway, peering into the room.

  Still Blarney didn’t move.

  3

  Whilst Albie had been talking to the strange girl who had just landed in her life, Hector and Callie had been receiving a tour of the cottage by candlelight, their guide a twelve and a half year old boy with a machine gun slung over his back. Despite the chaos and panic of the last few hours, Hector still found himself deeply amused by the sight. Back in the library, this little lad and his oversized gun had unnerved him, but now, in this weird, slightly obscure fairy tale land he and his sister found themselves in, the boy seemed to fit. Callie hadn’t yet reclaimed her sense of humour however and wandered quietly behind them, her curly blond locks hanging listlessly over her eyes, a hand absently rubbing at her neck as if still expecting to find Jacob Silence’s knife there. Funny or not, she still found Sam’s enthusiasm endearing.

  ‘This whole bit of land belongs to an estate. All those fields out there, the roads we came in on. I guess maybe even part of that village. There’s a great big house across the fields and that’s where the family who own it live. Well, that’s where they lived. We went there once, at the start, just to see, and…well…doesn’t matter…this is the groundskeeper’s old cottage. There’s a kitchen, living room and my Aunt’s bedroom downstairs. When we got here she was pretty badly wounded and couldn’t get up the stairs very well, so it made sense.’

  Sam began leading them up a set of wooden steps to the top floor of the cottage. At the top of the stairs he took them right, along a small narrow landing, the light from the candle etching the corridor in a warm autumnal hue. ‘Lights haven’t worked in almost a year. There’s a generator outside my aunt’s bedroom but neither of us knows how to get it working again. I always make sure I get as many candles and matches as I can on the trips out. There’s one in each room if you need them. Bathroom is at the end of the corridor there, baths a bit rusty and the washers are going on the taps in the sink, but it’s not bad. That’s the spare room next to it. You can have that if you don’t mind sharing. I put some new wallpaper up in there because the old lot was peeling. It’s a bit hit and miss but I ran out of paste and also the only wallpaper I could find was pretty disgusting, but…’ Sam shrugged as if to say: “I’m twelve and a half and the country’s gone to pot, what do you expect, five star luxury? I’ve never bloody hung wallpaper before. Deal with it.” He showed them into each room and then led them back to the stairs. Across the landing was another door, partially open, and Sam pulled it closed as they passed. ‘That’s my room. Come on, I will make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Why not pitch
up in the big old house down the road?’ Hector asked as they crossed the living room and entered the kitchen. ‘Somewhere like that, all that room…’

  ‘Should anyone find their way out here, Party members or stragglers, where do you think they are going to go to? You think anyone is going to care about this little place when they’ve got some poncey damn mansion down the road?’

  Sam busied himself with cups and saucers and cutlery. Pouring a jug of water into a battered metallic kettle he crossed back into the living room and rested the kettle atop a small, homemade grill in the hearth, a timid fire dancing gently underneath it. Back in the kitchen the machine gun barrel clanged against a cupboard door and then the butt knocked a couple of plastic plates from the one table in the room onto the floor. Hector swallowed down another laugh and Callie thumped him on the arm and then bent down to pick up the plates.

  ‘What did you see, when you went to the estate, Sam?’ Callie asked. ‘You started to tell us and then stopped.’

  Sam shrugged. ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘You saw the family that lived there?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what? They were dead. They had all strung themselves up from the beams in the games room. The parents and the maid had anyway. The kids were…do you want sugar? We haven’t got much.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Callie replied for them both.

  ‘Or milk. I was supposed to get some today. We’ve been on that powdered rubbish for months now. Almost got a taste for it…’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The children?’

  ‘What children? Oh, from the estate? They were in their beds. I guess mum and dad had slipped them a little something. There wasn’t much blood.’

  Callie turned to her brother and met his look of unease with one of her own. Laughter was now a long way from Hector’s mind.

  Sam seemed to sense their expressions. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  Sam started rinsing off a couple of spoons and then wiped them down with a dirty looking tea towel. Do you want me to cry for these people I’d never met? Does it make you feel better to know that I did? That I came back here and cried myself to sleep? What do you do when you are out there and you see things that you’d rather not? Do you have a good cry about it? Do you sit and mourn these strangers or do you just move on?’ Sam turned to them and crossed his arms. His gaze was unwavering, his pose unflinching.

  ‘But you’re talking about children, Sam,’ Callie said softly. ‘When did we get to the point of talking about that like we were talking about the weather?’

  ‘Too busy to cry. Done all that, Callie.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Where does it get you? What good does it do you or the person that you are crying about?’ Sam shrugged, staring at Hector and Callie blankly, as if his face was waiting for them to convince it of an emotion worth having. ‘You know, one of the things about the way the country is right now is that people don’t feel they need to justify their actions. From what I’ve heard and from what my aunt has said that pretty much was the reason the country went under in the first place. I’m not going to ask you what all that was about in the library, that freaky looking guy in the hood. It’s not my business. But I’m guessing if either of you had him at the end of a gun barrel right now you wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.’

  ‘Sure. It’s called survival, Sam,’ Hector said.

  ‘Yes. It is. It’s the same reason I’m done crying.’ Sam started to move away to the living room but stopped just before the doorway and turned back. ‘My aunt was badly banged up when we got here so I had to do pretty much everything to get this place straight. Decorating the rooms. Finding food. Mending what was broken. I burnt all the dead sheep out there in the fields too. There were twenty-five sheep. This was all a long time ago. I still had an imaginary friend back then. The groundskeeper had shot himself just about where you are both standing right now. I had to bury him. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get bits of blood and brain out of things?’

  Sam wandered over to the kettle and then silently set about stoking the fire. He didn’t speak again, none of them did, until they heard the shouting coming through the bedroom door.

  4

  The thing that held Mia prisoner seemed to enjoy having an audience. It looked to each of them in turn – from Albie standing at the side of the bed, to the two Frosts in the doorway and the guard dog at the end of the bed – its withering gaze coming to rest on the young boy and the machine gun.

  ‘What the hell is going on here? What’s happened to her?’ Sam had the machine gun up in his hands, jerking it forward as he spoke. ‘What’s that on her arm? I knew she was some sort of weirdo. I knew it. I knew I should have left her where she was.’

  ‘Yes! Yes where did your valiant gesture get you, child? She belongs in the city. Not here. Now your good deed will destroy you! All of you!’

  The sound of the voice that spoke to him was all it took to knock the macho posturing out of Sam. He froze to the spot, his mouth opening and closing like a feeding fish, as it searched for words to say. Albie moved in front of him and gently pushed the weapon aside.

  ‘The youth of today…’ Mia flicked a hand out at Albie and Sam and then the hand was moving past them and beckoning Hector and Callie to come closer. ‘We seem to be missing one. I’m sure there should be another…there should be six and the mutt, I’m sure of it.’

  Hector led Callie inside by the hand. ‘Mia?’

  ‘Another Good Samaritan. Hector, dear…’

  ‘What’s going on, Albie? What’s happened to her?’ Hector whispered.

  ‘It’s not her,’ Albie told the room.

  ‘No Hector dear, it’s not me.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You’ve got your audience Singer, now tell us what you want.’

  ‘You think I’m here to spin yarns for you wretched people? You think I owe you stories to placate you? I owe nothing. You people, you owe everything!’

  Callie’s hand tightened around Hector’s and he gently moved her closer and kissed her forehead. Sam was now backing across the room, moving towards them. Blarney remained in position at the foot of the bed, his wide hazel eyes looking deep into that crazy stare of his master, searching for something he knew and could understand.

  ‘Mia Hennessey is my vessel. I have need of her in the city. I guided her there. She is my executioner. Now you people have moved her off course.’

  ‘So go. Go back to the city,’ Albie said quietly. ‘I don’t want you here.’

  ‘Not a very welcoming attitude to have, Alberta. I will go back to the city. We all will. It is your fate now, Alberta. Don’t you see?’

  ‘Why is she talking like that?’ Hector asked. ‘Who is Singer?’

  ‘What a worthless bunch you are,’ Mia said in the cracked nightmare voice that had greeted Albie in the truck. ‘It seems to me only the tatty mutt has got anything about him. What do you say mutt?’ Mia suddenly pushed herself forward and got onto all fours, shoving her face into Blarney’s. ‘Talk to me mutt!’ Blarney gave one slow, agonized whine and gently raised his right paw from the bed and offered it to Mia. Mia responded by curling her lips back, jutting her tongue out and unleashing a terrifying hiss that made Blarney scamper backwards in fright and fall off the end of the bed. Mia collapsed back onto the mattress in hysterical laughter as Blarney took shelter at Albie’s feet.

  ‘Stop doing this! You want to be in the city then go there, go and leave us alone!’ Albie screamed. ‘Samuel, take Hector and Callie back into…’ Albie turned to the others for a split second and then Mia was on her, leaping from the bed and grabbing the rifle as she shoulder charged Albie to the floor. Mia swung the rifle down and smashed it in two across the frame of the bed as Blarney scampered away and hid behind the sofa in the living room. Hector and Callie were close behind him.

  ‘Get off her!’ Sam yanked himself out of his stunned inacti
vity and leapt forward to Albie. Mia lunged at him and aimed a fist into the side of his face. Sam suddenly felt the machine gun being pulled around until it was against his back, the strap moving across his chest before jerking up and finding his neck. All of a sudden he was rising upwards, the strap pulling tight around his throat. He chanced a look down and saw his feet off the ground. He was being pulled to the ceiling, and the strap was turning, tightening.

  5

  Mia could hear voices trying to get to her. The heavy sea was distorting them and they sounded like ugly growls. Somewhere in the distance were three booming blasts like canon fire. She tried to make herself heard but at each attempt she only found herself sinking deeper, that unrelenting hold getting tighter as it kept her under.

  There was only one voice she could hear and understand.

  The bottom of the sea is a long way down, Mia.

  At first she had tried to convince herself it was her father’s voice, that she was a young girl again and he was holding her under the sea at her insistence. But she knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

  You are going to kill for me, Mia.

  As she replied to the voice, she spoke the words as if she were still that young girl receiving swimming lessons all those years ago: ‘I won’t! I don’t want to!’