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Dead of Light

Page 12

by Chaz Brenchley

But that night I was charting territories of excess, and being gifted the opportunity. Two joints in my hands, and more on the way: no one would be going short, so I took four times from each cardboard roach before passing them along.

  Smoke’s bite and whisky’s bite on the cables of an overstretched mind, and already it wasn’t likely that I’d just perch still and quiet on my windowsill and listen to the party rolling on. I could yet tilt either way, alcohol dragging me down into melancholy and fear or dope bubbling me up into euphoria; but one way or the other, balance surely wasn’t on the cards.

  Something had to give, and something did; but not at all what I’d expected. Not my equanimity, not my mood unleashed but something far stronger and far more vicious, something I didn’t even know that I held housed within me.

  o0o

  Eyes closed and head back against the bunched curtain, weight of glass in my hand unsupervised and my body relaxing in defiance of my dizzy mind, I breathed deeply and wondered what would come, what was on the rise tonight -

  - and was overtaken, more than clutched at: gripped and seized and wrenched by monstrous need, appalling desperation.

  My body arched, that much I knew, every muscle suddenly going into spasm; and I fell, of course, into the tangled protests of the party.

  Fell and rolled, arched and bucked across the floor, across a mess of legs and crisps and spilling drinks and yelling. And my eyes were open, they say, but I was seeing nothing there; nor feeling any of the damage I did, with my sight spun inward, searching for the horror shouting in my mind.

  o0o

  All my life my sister had leaned on me, literally and emotionally and in my dreams also. Not for support, only to keep me down: only because she could, I often thought, because it was a talent she’d had before anyone was looking for signs of talent in either one of us.

  Often and often I’d be dreaming and she’d be right there in my dream, uninvited, leaning. Putting her small strong hands against me, choosing her spot and pressing with her fingers, see what I can do? And you can’t stop me. Weakling... And I’d wake up, dragged painfully out of the dream, and I’d have a dead leg or my arm would have gone to sleep, wherever she’d been leaning; and I’d look across the room to where she slept and see her, wide awake and smiling in the dark.

  o0o

  Not for years now, never since we’d reached puberty: since she’d developed her small talent, in other words, and I none at all. Or since I’d left, perhaps that was the significant moment, since I’d revealed myself as beneath even her rich contempt.

  But now I wasn’t dreaming, Christ, and she wasn’t leaning either.

  She was screaming. They say that I was screaming too, they say I rolled and screamed and threshed around like a mad thing on the carpet, running with saliva at the mouth; but all I knew was my sister, back in my head again and screaming this time, screaming for me.

  Ten: All Flesh is Glass

  Later, thinking back, I could never remember a time when it had happened like that. The opposite, yes, often: myself screaming for Hazel to come and help, to rescue me. Sometimes she’d do that, sometimes not. Sometimes she’d only come to laugh. But never this, never my strong sister screaming for me.

  Maybe that’s why I reacted so badly, so urgently. One reason. Maybe.

  More likely it was only that she was being herself, in extremis as in everything. Bullying, demanding, taking possession: this time of all my mind, so that I lost my body with it.

  Not even my sister could scream forever, not even inside my head where she didn’t need breath to do it. When she stopped, she didn’t go away; there was still a mute and dreadful hunger, I need you, dragging like gravity, sucking like the earth sucks, not to be resisted.

  But at least I could breathe now and feel myself do it, at least I could choose to move and have my body understand me. My eyes saw carpet, and my fingers felt the same. Tremblingly I pushed myself up onto hands and knees and tried to crawl to the door, only that I didn’t know where it was.

  I had to lift my head, to look; and saw people’s legs in a circle around me, every direction barred. Looked higher and saw their faces, dimly through the stinging water running from my eyes like my sister’s tears, acid and disorientating. Heard their voices then, vaguely, though I couldn’t make out any words through my sister’s sobbing call; then felt an arm around my shoulders, strong and insistent.

  Turned my head and saw Carol crouched beside me. Felt her hand in my hair, more rough than tender, tugging for my attention; and her voice to follow, “Ben, listen. Listen to me, Ben. Are you listening? Can you hear me? It’s all right, do you understand? It’s okay. Whatever’s happening to you, you’re with friends here. We’ll look after you, but you have to tell us what’s going on or we don’t know what you need...”

  And so on, insistent, inescapable, oddly comforting: the voice of a woman who’s talked more than one person down from a bad trip.

  But this was no trip, and wasn’t going to go away by talking. I shook my head against her fingers’ grip and surged upwards, snatching for balance; fought free of the hands that clutched uncertainly at my clothes, and plunged towards the door.

  o0o

  Frantic, struggling with complexities — the Yale won’t turn, I can’t open the door, why won’t the Yale turn? Because it’s on the snib already. Just pull it, Benedict, just pull the door — while my mind sang like a wire with the simplicity of Hazel’s despair, I made it at last into the air.

  Outside, things were better. Only marginally, but we’re a marginal people and I was operating right on the margins here. I took a breath and stood in the quiet of the street, turning and turning, feeling for her.

  “Ben?” Carol’s voice, in the doorway behind me. I shushed her with a dizzy anger, too shaken yet to speak; and went on turning, though my head was twisting still in some other direction and my stomach churned in sympathy with neither.

  Don’t give up on me, sister. Keep yelling...

  Mathematically, I couldn’t prove it; there was no sense of a signal increasing or tuning in more precisely. But even when we were very little, “Ben, where’s Hazel?” would produce a finger pointing, unerringly accurate over short distances and fairly reliable over miles. Not a trick I’d thought about for years; but now she was trying, now she needed me, and I was certain.

  That way, then; and not close, not a quick sprint and Benedict to the rescue, a black sheep redeemed by valour, the ugly duckling made beautiful at last.

  Don’t give up on me, sister— though probably she would, I thought. I’d never been reliable before, why should she depend on me now?

  Because there’s no one else, an easy answer to one of tonight’s questions. It was in the blood more than the mind, I thought, but I shadowed her, I still echoed when she shouted. There was no one else she could reach this way, so of course it had to be me.

  And of course I had to go; and was going already, was running at a stagger down the road.

  Carol caught up with me before I’d reached the corner. She grabbed my arm with a fierce strength, and dragged me to a halt against all my pulling.

  “Ben, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  My mind was still yearning towards Hazel, giddy and hurting with it; it was hard to find space in my head to make the words. “My sister,” I said effortfully, thinking that I owed Carol that much, at least. “My twin. She’s in trouble...”

  She nodded briefly, didn’t ask how I knew. It was already a night for faerie and Celtic myth, for the mysteries of blood; and besides, I was a Macallan.

  “Where is she?” Carol asked; and oh, the echoes were strong tonight. How many years since anyone had asked me?

  “That way,” pointing, as I used to point as a child.

  “How far?”

  “I don’t know. Miles, I guess...”

  “Well, you can’t run it, boy. You’re in no state.” She looked at me consideringly, and I could see the pattern of her thoughts, better than I’d ever seen my si
ster’s. He should phone someone else, she was thinking, one of his cousins; but he won’t, and she was reading me right also, he thinks he’s got to go himself. His sister, his twin...

  “Come on back inside,” she said briskly, the decision made. “We’ll find someone to drive us.”

  o0o

  Going back with my eyes less blinded, I saw something at least of the damage I’d done: bowls spilled and broken, nuts and tortilla chips crushed into the carpet, broken glass and wet patches. The greater damage, though, was in the near-silence I walked into, the unsure glances and the nervous shifting back. Friends and strangers, they were all visibly remembering that I was a Macallan, and that strange things happened around people like me. When I was gone, I knew, they wouldn’t talk about me, or not for long. Safer that way. My family had a regiment of spies, and traditionally didn’t like to be gossiped about.

  o0o

  Carol found a man prepared to drive me where I wanted to go, but he wasn’t exactly a volunteer. More a reluctant conscript. Fear of that unspoken family name helped, I guess; more persuasive perhaps was the equally unspoken pressure from everyone else at the party, get him out of here, before something worse happens, or else it was Carol’s relentless urging, the way she gripped the man’s arm and pleaded for me until he took the easy way out, and said yes.

  Carol came too, sitting in the back with me, holding me close with one arm while the other hand squeezed mine: holding me to the world, I thought deliriously, as my head still spun with my sister’s singing terror. Others had offered to come, Jacko and Jon together; but one was enough, and Carol was better than either. More genuinely concerned, maybe, and certainly less frightened.

  o0o

  Finding Hazel was easier than any of us was expecting. We drove north because it felt right, Carol translating my mumbling and my sharp little cries into directions for the driver, and not often misunderstanding. After a couple of miles, thinking perhaps a little more clearly — unless it was just that the options narrowed as we left the city, as we drove into less familiar territory — I remembered one of our childhood haunts, a sudden valley with a bizarre garden hidden and abandoned behind high walls.

  Taking a gamble, or else responding more deeply than I knew I could to Hazel’s summoning, I hauled up old memories that told me which way to go. Wrong turns in the darkness fazed me, but not for long; soon we were pulling into a drive of weeds and broken tarmac, that led to locked wooden gates topped with rusty wire.

  And there, ticking gently in the cool night, was Hazel’s bike.

  For a moment I only sat looking at it, trying to send a message of my own, I’m here, sis. I’ve made it this far, at least. And not too late, seemingly, because I could still feel her in my head, less strongly now but no less urgent.

  My hand fumbled at the car’s door, getting nowhere. Carol leaned across me and worked the catch for me; I almost fell out onto the gravel as the door swung open.

  Standing was difficult, the ground seeming to buck beneath my feet. Stoned and drunk and desperate, I staggered to the gates and briefly had no idea how to get past them. There was no strength in me, to jump and scramble over. But memory rescued me again, surfacing slowly through the chaotic stew inside my skull; I left the gates and blundered along the wall, hands pressed against gritty stone while my feet ploughed through nettles and dock and stumbled over branches fallen from the overhanging trees.

  Soon I was in a ditch, dry at this time of year, choked with growth. Brambles caught at my jeans like wire, tangling my legs, making all but impossible what was hard enough already; but it couldn’t be far now. Guided by my hands’ fumbling more than my eyes in starlight, I groped my way onward while Carol tracked me along the road, above and behind. I was conscious of her as a voice calling my name, puzzled and anxious; but I paid no attention. Hazel was calling me the other way, calling me on, and hers was the only voice that counted.

  Stones and lichen and old, crumbling mortar against the palms of my hands — and here at last, here the stones shifted under pressure. And here was greater darkness, a wide gap in the wall where a tree’s slow-time pushing had tumbled it into rubble. Here I could clamber up and over even in the dark, and drop down the other side into the blindness of the wood.

  o0o

  Soft beneath my feet, the ground sloped steeply down. Foolhardy, I let it draw me into running from tree to tree, catching my weight against each trunk as I came to it and sighting ahead for the next. This was memory again, the memory of muscle and bone; we always ran here as children, usually tripped and fell sprawling into the mast and loam. And got up straight away and ran on, ignoring bumps and scratches. Too tough to cry herself, Hazel never let me cry either. If withering contempt wouldn’t keep me quiet, then a hard hand over my mouth and a fist grinding into my side, whispered threats of major retribution later always would. Nothing was allowed to spoil Hazel’s fun, particularly not a dirty and grizzling brother.

  Tonight I didn’t trip, though I slipped and skidded and should have fallen half a dozen times. Saved by trees and shrubs and simple luck, anything I could grab, I plunged recklessly all the way down to the water.

  Too small for a river, though that’s what we’d always called it, too wide and full-flowing to be a stream: it came down through farmland rough and unready, then dressed itself smart and civilised for its passage through the garden before vanishing into a culvert under the road and not showing again on the other side.

  At night with no moon up it was black and alive, flat and wriggling with the stars like flying sparks reflected in its flanks. My hectic descent had brought me down at an angle I hadn’t intended, careering almost into the hedge that divided the wood from the farmer’s fields. The water rushed and gurgled through a mess of brick and ironwork, half choked by banked-up rubbish; then it ran on free and clear, and I ran beside it to where low walls and a high arched gateway marked the limits of someone’s forgotten garden.

  There was no house. So far as I knew, there never had been a house. We’d never found any sign of it. Only the garden, private and secluded, hidden and wonderful.

  The gate under the arch was long gone, though its hinges still rusted in the bricks. I went through, sobering abruptly as I felt my sister sliding from my mind.

  I called her name nervously, “Hazel?” into the darkness. Nothing came back to me.

  This side of the wall, the water was broad and hushed between stone edgings, running into pools where fish flourished despite our childish efforts with bamboo and bent pins. There were bridges and a roofed verandah, slate benches and plinths where statues must once have stood. We’d loved this place once, Hazel and the cousins and I; now suddenly I hated it, as I’d always hated anything that scared me.

  “Hazel?”

  Still nothing. Only the water moved and all the shapes were strange, stark shadows against the sky.

  Slowly now, all my urgency displaced by a creeping terror, I made my way along the water’s bank to the first of the bridges, where we’d carved our names once with Marty’s knife in the rail; and that’s where I found Hazel.

  o0o

  She was lying slumped and still on the mouldering planks, and even she looked alien for a moment, her head rounded and swollen and black, faceless and shining with stars.

  I shuddered, too breathless to scream; I stood over her remembering Marty, remembering Tommy and frightened to touch.

  But it wasn’t her head, of course, it was only her helmet. Once I’d understood that — though it took a while, before I could bear to look close enough to see — I was all brother again, dropping to my knees and reaching for her, fumbling under her chin to undo the strap and lift the helmet off.

  o0o

  And then for the second time and far too soon after the first, I knelt in the dark with someone in my arms I couldn’t recognise.

  o0o

  Hazel it was, it had to be. The short-cropped hair was Hazel’s, and the helmet, and the leathers. But oh, the face was not hers; for
one mad second in the starlight I thought it was Aunt Bella still in Hazel’s web, and in her clothes now also.

  Nothing identical about us, Hazel and me; no one had ever confused the one for the other even when we were babies in nappies and there was nothing for guidance, which was which. But still our faces had had the stamp of one womb on them, easy to tell that we were twins.

  Looking at her now, I didn’t know her.

  A harsher web than Hazel could ever lay claim to had seized my sister. All the skin I could see was painted over with lines, in a bizarre geometry; but those lines danced with nightfire, and stung where my fingers touched.

  I snatched my hand back, and I think cried out in shock or grief or some more complex feeling, more appropriately family. Even that, though, even my voice so close couldn’t move Hazel now. Her open eyes were looking not at me, they ravaged the sky. Searching for a moon, I thought, even at the last; and cursing an ill-made pattern of stars and circumstance that left her moonless tonight when she most needed what strength she could borrow. Left her with nothing but me to shout for, and me too certain to come too late, and helpless...

  As I watched, the nightfire glimmered and died.

  After a little, my tingling fingers reached for her face again.

  Those lines were cracks, black cracks seared in her skin, pathways for the fire to run. Between the lines, my hard sister was harder now than ever, nothing soft or human remaining to her. Crazed glass more than skin, brittle and sharp-edged, shattered into a craquelure of fragments.

  Nothing of herself in that cracked and broken face, which meant nothing of me either. Losing sight of her, I lost also sight of myself. A more valued edition of what I saw in the mirror, all our lives her features had defined mine. With those now gone, I felt myself blurring, losing definition. If I looked now into the water, if there were light enough to see by, I was weirdly uncertain what I’d see.

  I cradled her dead the way I never could when she was alive, the way I’d never wanted to; but it was her own true self I mourned, not some fictional dream-sister, sweet and amenable and loving. I knew too well what the world, what the family and what I had lost here. She’d taken a half-share of my life, or more than half, and I could never disinvest from Hazel; how could I help but mourn her?

 

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