by Неизвестный
But it wasn’t a dot. I took my time, wanting to get each unevenedge correct. I sat back, exhausted, triumphant. I was a good girl. But it wasn’t the dot. It was The Man.
I moaned, seeing his face. This was the second time. The first time – the first time, I saw him smiling, too. And he had green eyes, such green eyes, full of laughter and light. How could those be his eyes? How could that be his face?
It was my father’s face.
“Very good, Teresa, very good,” the doctor said. She said it. But she didn’t say it like my mother would have, like a mother should have. She said it like my father, she said it like The Man.
The page was flipped away. It was under the knife.
“Now, Teresa,” the doctor said. She said the name that wasn’t mine. “Teresa, I need you to show me what you did. Can you do that? Can you show me what you did to the man? To the spot?”
I could see her now, a shape in the darkness. She wasn’t my mother. She wasn’t my father, either. She wasn’t The Man. But she was a liar, like everyone else. No one could help me. No one wanted to help me. They just wanted me to do things. They just wanted to do things to me.
Yes, there were demons inside me, but they were nothing like these demons outside me.
“Could you show me?”
Could you show me?
“Could you show me?”
Could you show me?
Yes.
We can.
And I ripped at the perfect whiteness, tearing madly, so quickly that no hands could have stopped me. And I found it, the knife, and I was so relieved that it was there. It was a reassuring weight in my hand, a relief.
“Now you will hurt! You will cry! I hope you die!” the demons screamed out with a voice that was stronger than mine ever could be. It was good to hear them again. I stabbed the doctor, again and again, a desperate dance full of joy and release. I was reliving my happiest memory. In the dark, in the dark that was always my friend.
Later, someone held me, a woman, and she was soft in strange places, and I touched her, and she hummed a song I’d never heard before. It made me sleepy. This was the doctor, and she was an angel. We were alone, even if there were sinning hands nearby, even if I was a sinner she cared for me, let me kill her.
“Can you be my mother?” I asked her.
“No,” she said softly, “But I can be your friend.”
I admired the doctor. She could make people do things, and she could tell the truth. I wanted to be just like her. I wanted to be heard, just like her.
And the demons, they nodded their approval and encouraged me to snuggle close. It would only be a matter of time before I’d be free. Free to eat oranges, free to do anything I wanted – out of cages forever.
Three days, tops.
Then, then I could be heard.
Incubus
by Niall McMahon
Katie dreams of flowers, and wakes to flowers. She dreams of snow and there is snow. Her mother calls her a special girl – but her mother has no idea.
Inside her mind, she knows something is different. Within some recess resides unimaginable beauty and power – a magical realm wherein thought, dreams and imaginings may enter reality.
A gift? Jenny used to wonder about nightmares. If she dreamt monsters, would there be monsters? For so long it hadn’t seemed to matter – after all, there were no monsters, real or imagined.
Until Simon.
***
Thomas stands, evaluating the blade in his hand. It is sharp and polished, reflecting light from the small living room with perfect accuracy. In one steely surface is her reflection. She is crouched beneath him, the collar of her blouse seemingly in his other fist. Her eyes are wild with fear and confusion. They stare straight out from the reflection, meaning that they are focused on the knife he holds. For now, he cannot quite bear to look at her.
He struggles to make sense of this. What has she done? Cheated? Lied? Was it the comment about his mother, or the way her eyes had followed the fit young jogger in the park earlier? He cannot remember. Surely none of these offences warrant this?
For clarification, he forces his gaze downward. He frowns. She is bleeding from her nose and her ear. Did he do this? He cannot recall... yet when her eyes meet his he sees the answer as clear as day. Yes, it was him. He barely recognises the look of terror she gives him. She neither struggles nor speaks, such is her fear. No one has ever regarded him so.
But he has never hurt anyone. Not this way.
His eyes are drawn back to the knife, clenched in his outstretched arm and slightly above the level of his head. It has a gravity he cannot deny – a weight. It wants to plummet, to trace a razor’s arc towards her exposed throat. It is all he can do to hold it where it is.
For a moment, the silence is broken. Thomas looks to the curtained window as the speeding blue lights of an ambulance briefly replace the darkness outside.
***
Fortunately, the streets seem unusually deserted. Claire accelerates to sixty and disables the siren. In her gut is a sense of trepidation she cannot account for. She looks to her left to see if Jerry shows any signs of nervousness too, but he is, as ever, focused on the job at hand.
“Take Andrew’s Street,” he instructs her, seemingly oblivious to her concern.
“I know,” she says, and wonders if he will ever quite trust her.
The call-out is apparently to the victim of a mugging. Someone has been attacked with a bat and left with head injuries – a suspected fracture and severe haemorrhaging. There is, sadly, nothing unusual in this, nothing to explain the rising nausea in her stomach. The Plod are already on the scene, there should be no risk to an ambulance crew.
She occupies herself with the drive. Traffic lights, siren on, hard left, siren off, third gear, fourth, double-parked cars, siren on, third gear, clips a wing-mirror (serves the stupid bastard right for parking there) hard right and immediately left past the park.
A dark shape emerges at speed from the kerb. Counter-intuitively, whilst braking she swerves towards it and saves the dog’s life. Not halting its run, the creature vanishes into the park to her right.
She sits, engine stalled, gasping for breath.
“Come on, let’s go!” Jerry orders. “Next time, run the mutt over.”
Nearly there, she tells herself, only something in this assertion just doesn’t ring true.
And Claire knows she has saved her final life..
***
The dog keeps to the shadows as she runs. She fights the instinct to slow down and read the odours of the ground, the trees, the grass. She senses the shadow at her back and thinks only of survival.
There was something in the dark space between the buildings. Her owner had sensed it, too. He had stopped walking to investigate the sound of murmuring. Why could he not hear what she heard? Why had he not recognised Death? So hard she had pulled, trying again and again to make him leave. In the end all she had managed was to wrench the lead from the man’s grasp and free herself. She had loved him and had wanted to protect him. But she had known it was futile, and the dread which then seeped into her canine mind was something irresistible. Primeval. She had run, her lead trailing awkwardly beside her – symbol of a life to which she could never return.
A few moments later, from the Shadow, she had clearly heard him screaming.
The park seems empty. It is safe here, but not for long. She risks breaking cover and careers out across the open lawn, heading directly for the far gate which she knows is there.
As she passes a bench she pauses, despite herself. There is something unusual here. A shape is huddled in the darkness, something which smells safe and amiable. A tuft of grey hair. She knows what this is..
Edward awakes on the park bench to a gentle but insistent prodding in the square of his back.
Trouble?
There are gangs now who prey on his kind – the Lost, the Homeless. Is that what this is? Will he turn to stare into the eyes of a twelve-year-old thug and his ump
teen friends?
He tries to ignore it – uselessly to feign sleep and hope that they will dissipate like his dreams.
But the prod comes again – harder, more determined. With it comes a gentle whine – not human but..
He turns over. The dog sits on her haunches, watching him. Her mouth is open, her tongue hanging in the friendly imitation of a pant. But he sees she is not panting – her eyes are wide and frightened.
“Hello girl,” he says. He knows dogs. He kept dogs once, in a previous life across the years and the hurt – so distant that he wonders if the memories are his own. “What’s the matter, my beaut?”
Then he sees the abandoned lead at her side and a shiver traces the curve of his spine.
“Trouble?” he asks the dog.
In response she stands and walks a short distance away, looking back at him to follow. She wants him to leave the park with her, it seems.
Perversely, he feels that he should follow, though there is nowhere he could take her and no way to fend for her.
“I’m warm,” he tells her, “and I’m comfortable. Go on...” he gestures to the distant gate, “. someone out there will help you.”
She hesitates. It is as though she doesn’t want to leave him. Perhaps he is wrong, he thinks. Perhaps she is here to help him.
For a moment he thinks she will return, but abruptly her gaze is snatched away to the other direction, the direction from which she has come. Her hackles rise and, sparing him a final, despairing glance, she is gone – haring off toward the lights of the road.
He shrugs. He knows he should leave, but his survival instinct is no longer fully intact. Whatever it is, let it come.
As Edward turns to lie back down he sees movement. A couple are walking in the direction of the small lake, arm in arm. Deep inside him, something long forgotten twinges – a remote, secluded hurt..
***
Brian stops walking for a moment, knowing that Kate will stop, too, and turn to him. When she does, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her. Her nose is cold but her lips are warm and her resulting smile, radiant.
“That was nice!” she says.
“You’re nice,” he says, “and gorgeous, and sexy, and...”
But she is not looking at him. Irritated, he follows her gaze to a distant corner of the park.
“There’s someone sleeping on that bench,” she says, quietly.
“There usually is someone,” he says, hoping this doesn’t sound too dismissive, hoping she will forget the tramp and return her attention to him.
“That’s so sad. Who do you think he is?”
He shrugs in what he hopes is a caring manner. “Who knows? Someone it didn’t work out for.”
She almost interrupts the end of his sentence – she isn’t really listening. “Shall we go and give him some money?” The intimate feeling he has worked so hard to garner is in danger of dissipating. In its place, his irritation increases. Who goes over to a sleeping tramp and gives him money, except someone who wants a blowjob?
“I think it’s best we don’t.”
She looks back at him, not smiling now. Great – so much for his plans upon their return to his room.
Oh my God! What the hell is this?
He feels instantly on-edge – not a fear of rejection, or of hidden ranks of the Homeless that may be listening in the bushes to his indifference. This is something else.
“Let’s go,” he says, and without waiting for assent he takes her arm and firmly guides her towards the gate.
“What are you doing?”
“Look, let’s... let’s just get out of here, ok?”
She is trying to pull away from him. He clutches her more firmly, digging his fingers into the folds of her sleeve.
“Brian! You’re hurting me!”
He is about to shout at her. He cannot explain his sudden fear but he knows that they must go – that this is a bad place to be. He opens his mouth to do so, and across the park from the direction of the man on the bench, someone screams – an agonising, despairing wail.
And the bench is gone. There is only shadow now – a shadow which seems to have swallowed everything on that side of the park and which advances across the grass toward them as they watch. Within the shadow, movement.
“Run!” he says and forces her to comply, ignoring her whimpering and hesitation.
They reach the gate and burst across the road outside, barely checking for traffic. Brian leads Kate not towards home, but arrow-straight away from that blackness he has seen, down side-roads he cannot name.
***
Jenny suffers the customary dream of the Dark Man – the sensation of him cold inside her. She wants to cry out, but her mother is out and the sound would only bring Simon to the room. Most nights when her mother is away, under cover of darkness, he comes anyway....
Outside on the pavement, she hears the heavy footfalls of two people passing the house (a man and a woman – she can tell by the sound of their shoes). There is something panicky about them – the pace surely uncomfortable for a casual run. She leaves the bed and crosses to her window, but by the time she has moved the curtain and net there is no sign of them.
Before she knows what she is doing, she has moved to her wardrobe and begun to dress. She does not question it, as an adult might, but follows her instincts. Her nightmare is not fading the way it usually does – rather it seems to crystallise in the air around her. The Dark Man – his black, skeletal torso and thin black hands.
She can smell him now, and there are murmurs. This is something new, something her usual dream does not contain.
Her shoes are downstairs but her slippers will suffice. She returns to the window and ever-so-briefly she hesitates. Should she wake him? Should she tell him what is coming?
Then she is on the drainpipe outside and scurrying towards the ground. Simon remains – undisturbed and unknowing. She wonders if she should care.
Before dropping to the path, to follow the footfalls she heard, Jenny’s attention is briefly captured by an orange glow in the sky to her right. Somewhere out there, beyond the houses, something burns.
It has happened then – the monsters have escaped her head. She wonders if she can possibly elude them.
***
The vehicle swerves into the forecourt without slowing or indicating and heads straight for the booth. As it does so, the forecourt lighting fleetingly illuminates the inside. In this instant, from his position at the till, Cameron glimpses the driver’s face.
The driver is a man – middle-aged and obese. Upon his balding scalp are three broad strands of dark hair. But there is something strange about them that Cameron cannot identify. The driver looks terrified – his hands are not even upon the wheel but raised and pressed against the car’s roof.
Cameron thinks he will die, but at the last second, the front wheels catch a kerb and divert the car to the left, directly into pump one. Cameron has the presence of mind to pull the lever which shuts down the flow of fuel from the enormous underground tanks.
He sees the pump totally destroyed as the mass of buckling steel passes through it. A woman who is standing on the other side is crushed against the side of her own car. Then the fire begins. The pump’s fuel ignites in an explosive flash so bright and forceful that Cameron feels his hair singe even through the thick glass of the booth. Flames thirty feet high burst skywards and fan out against the underside of the flat forecourt roof. The glass bulges outwards slightly as the violent blaze devours oxygen.
Screaming.
Shouting.
Thankfully no one on fire that he can see. Not yet.
Some idiot tries to drive away with his tyres alight and, blinded by smoke, merely hurtles into the car in front.
He punches the fire emergency button. The fire station is barely a mile away – they shouldn’t take long. Thank God he has pressed the fuel cut off. If the main tanks go up, all of this will seem like fireworks.
His duties attended to, he rou
nds the till and makes for the rear exit, away from the heat. As he does so, the image of the middle-aged driver comes back to him clearly.
The dark shapes on the man’s head – Cameron realises what was strange.
Not strands of hair.
Fingers...
***
It is a busy night. This is the third alert in some twenty minutes.
Engines one and three have already responded to calls – the first to the town centre’s office buildings, the second to a house-fire barely a half mile away.
Harry is already suited up – they all are. Firemen are a superstitious bunch and believe heartily that shit falls in clumps of three.
“What is it, Macker?” he shouts as they slide the pole.
“Fuckin’ petrol station on Hall Avenue!” his leader responds. “We’ll need help from county if the tanks go up.”
“Jesus! What the bollocks is happening tonight!?” It is a rhetorical question, which Macker nevertheless answers:
“All Hell’s breaking loose,” the man says.
Harry, being the driver, is one of the first on board. He fires up the powerful turbo diesel and checks the electrical systems. Everything seems fine.
The station door is opening as his colleagues join him.
“No rest for the blinkin’ stupid,” someone declares.
Satisfied all is well, Harry engages the sirens and they are off – cutting the corner of the yard to join the westbound traffic into town.
“Shit!” Harry shouts, and twirls the wheel hard to avoid a boy on a bike cycling in the wrong direction along the main road. It is close, but in his mirrors he sees the kid has barely slowed. “The little bastard didn’t even have lights!”
Up ahead, the sky is yellow-red. The petrol station.
“Can’t be the tanks yet,” someone says, “it would be like fuckin’ Hiroshima over there.”
And abruptly the glow is gone – as though swallowed in smoke.
Unaccountably, Harry begins to wish he had taken the trouble to kiss his wife goodbye..
***
Jamie manages to stay upright as the fire engine barely grazes the end of his handlebar. The resultant vacuum of the vehicle’s passing almost sucks him into the kerb. He peddles on furiously, oblivious to the searing pain of lactic acid in the muscles of his thighs.