Dead of Light

by Chaz Brenchley

  The engine revved and roared, came louder, closer; and there was that voice again, yelling at me.

  “Ben, get up, for God’s sake...!”

  And I knew the voice and the note of the engine both: Carol and the bike, Carol on the bike.

  Carol in appalling danger, because Uncle Allan had legs and a brain, and shock wouldn’t hold him in the bike’s light more than a second or two. As soon as he was out of the beam, Carol was dead; and then me too, a moment later...

  I pushed myself up onto hands and knees, and then onto my feet, though every muscle I had was shaking; and I dashed my arm across my wet eyes and blinked into the light, saw the bright eye of the bike coming at me across the grass.

  And thought, That won’t do it, girl, you’ll drive right past him and he’ll be in the dark again, and that’s us fucked, the pair of us together...

  But I didn’t have time or breath enough to tell her, even if she could have heard me shouting; and I couldn’t even see Allan now, blinded as I was, had no idea where he’d got to.

  Rescued and doomed regardless, both at once. Life loves irony. I tried to signal Carol with a wave, to say Not me, don’t think about me, just keep the light on him; but if she saw she didn’t understand. She was there instead, right by me on the bike, and I didn’t have the strength even to run from her, to hope — vain hope — that he would let her go and just come after me.

  It was all I could do to swing a leg across the bulk of the bike behind her, to slump into the queen seat and grab at her slim body for balance, to stop me toppling right over and off the other side.

  “Hang on!” she called, her voice high and tight as the bike carried us away.

  She wanted to get us around the great bulk of the transept, I guessed, and out of his line of sight; and there’d never be time to do that. Again I couldn’t help looking round, expecting only to see my uncle’s shadow dark and deadly behind us; and yes, there he was, but far too clearly for my dizzy mind to comprehend.

  He was a silhouette trapped in light, stranded and alone; they were twin beams that had caught him now, twin points of brightness jouncing right at him and he was helpless in their glare. Gone tharn, perhaps, with the double shock of all this. I was kind of tharny myself, truth to tell; took me too long to click that it was the jeep that had him now, that Carol wasn’t saving me alone.

  Longer still to click that the jeep wasn’t just doing a holding action, keeping Uncle Allan in its light, keeping his talent quelled until we’d made it away from there.

  Didn’t click altogether till I saw those headlights one on either side of Allan’s shadow and coming hard now, and him trying to dive aside too late, far too late...

  o0o

  Not possible, with the roar of the bike beneath me and the roar of the jeep behind me, but I still swear that I heard it, the abrupt thudding sound and then the softer, wetter noises as the jeep’s tyres ploughed over my uncle’s body.

  o0o

  And then we were round the transept, and the massive church was a line of dark, fast eclipsing what I could see; and for a little we were alone then, Carol and me, until we were washed with light again as the jeep came round after us.

  How much Carol had seen or guessed — or heard — I couldn’t tell; but she wasn’t trying to escape any more, she’d slowed right down, so that the jeep could draw up alongside.

  And that was the last terrible shock of a terrible evening, because I looked across and all I could see was that I still hadn’t got it right, still hadn’t got my head around it.

  Jamie, I’d thought at the instant of contact. Jamie’s cottoned on, and he’s done tonight what he couldn’t do last night. Stranger is one thing, uncle is something else; and that’s been the trigger, he’s taken revenge for Marty...

  Wrong again, Ben boy. Not Jamie, not at all.

  Jamie was sitting over on the passenger side, hanging on tight, his face tense and dreadful.

  Laura was driving the jeep.

  Twenty-one: Look Homeward, Uncle

  There was a police car parked outside the main doors to the hospital, brightly white in sunlight.

  That wouldn’t have worried me, only that because I noticed it I noticed also the car parked beside it, a chunky 4 x 4. That I recognised. I’d seen it around town a few times this last year, and seen it again last night, at the roadblock where I’d been turned back. Looked like Cousin Conor was on guard duty again, the police permitted a presence only as a sop to the collective civic ego.

  What the limits of Conor’s duties might be, I wasn’t certain; but best to avoid him, whatever. I didn’t want to get into an argument this morning, let alone a fight.

  So I didn’t go in, I went around.

  o0o

  Laura had had to shunt a Merc aside before she could get off the grass last night. She’d picked up a couple more dents to the jeep’s off wing and some long scratches on the paintwork, done rather more damage to the Merc.

  No trouble weaving a bike through the gaps that blocked a car; Carol and I had been down on the road already, waiting for them. I’d been watching the side door of the church, and only as the jeep came down to join us had the first curiosity been shown from inside: shadows in the doorway followed by the people who made them, first looking and then tentatively stepping out, their voices distantly calling.

  Carol had driven away, hurrying no longer, only wanting to keep that sensible distance. Laura had followed, and we Macallans had been nothing but passengers in the girls’ hands, which had felt as strange as anything that had happened all night.

  o0o

  As the church had a cinder path, so the hospital had a flagstone path that tracked all around the irregular outline of its main building.

  After last night, my superstitious soul couldn’t decide which way to walk. Widdershins had brought both doom and rescue; was that ill luck or the other thing? Or did it just turn your fate around, so that only if you went in badly could you come out well?

  I dithered shamefully, disgracefully and in the end went deasil, simply because that was the shorter route to where I wanted to be.

  Compromise, it’s all compromise between faith and pragmatism.

  Rhythm, Jacko would say. Oscillations.

  o0o

  Carol had driven a while, five or ten minutes, without reference to me or to those who followed us. Once I’d looked back, seen the jeep, seen nothing else behind; then I’d stopped worrying. We’d got Jamie with us anyway, if the family did come after. He could play hostage or hero, depending.

  Then Carol had pulled into the kerb. Laura had drawn up beside us, looking a question; Carol had said, “I want to go home. Can Jamie get us through that?”

  Her hand had lifted to point, and I’d seen another road-bridge up ahead, and another roadblock just this side of it. Here they’d set a minibus across the carriageway, that burned with a pale light. Carol lived in a village that grew closer every year, but still had a couple of miles’ separation from the town; she must have been lucky — or the other thing — with her bus in that night, just getting through before the road was closed.

  We’d all looked at Jamie; he’d nodded. “If it hasn’t been set there to stop us,” he’d said, his voice harsh and strained, ready to snap.

  “I don’t think so,” Laura had said. “They wouldn’t have had the time, even if they knew where we were going.”

  “Well. Let’s see, then,” though he’d sounded far from ready.

  The jeep had taken the lead, slowly down the hill to the burning bus. Figures had moved out in front of it, one raising his hand to halt us; but I’d seen the hand falter in its determination and then drop quickly down to his side again, as he’d recognised the jeep.

  I’d recognised him also. Cousin Marlon, fat and forty, this probably the most responsibility he’d ever been given in his life.

  “Jamie, hullo, lad. What are you up to, then, sentry-go?”

  A shake of the head, and no matter how tight-wound he was, Jamie’s
brain had still been briskly functional. “Dad says you might as well pack up, nobody’s moving tonight. Clear this off the road,” with a casual wave, “and go home, okay?”

  “Okay, terrific. Thanks, Jamie.” Marlon had almost saluted, before he’d turned to his shadowy companions with expansive gestures and hoarse commands.

  We hadn’t waited for them to haul the bus out of the way. Jamie had yelled at Marlon to kill the flames, and then Laura had just bumped two wheels of the jeep up onto the kerb and edged past with us trailing. I’d seen Laura hunch her shoulder up to shield her face a little, as she passed; when it was our turn the ice-burn of it had stretched my skin dry and tight in a moment, while the stink had caught like barbs at my throat and lungs.

  But then we’d been through, we’d been free and clear and Laura had already been accelerating away down the road, so that we’d had to race to overtake, to lead them to Carol’s.

  It wasn’t the thrill of speed, I’d thought, or the wind in her face that had had Carol whooping suddenly into the sky; it was only the knowledge that we were driving into another country now, a brave new world with only two Macallans in it.

  o0o

  The private rooms in the hospital were all on a single side-ward, branching off the main corridor. I knew them well from a couple of stays in my childhood, once when I’d had my appendix out and again when I’d broken my leg, trying to follow my sister and our cousins on a climb up the side of a quarry. I’d slipped and fallen, and what I remembered most — better even than the pain of it, or Marty bending over me to ask about the pain, more curious than concerned — was the sound of my sister’s mocking laughter, coming down to me from high above.

  It was a stray thought that struck me now, that all my family’s talents were destructive. Not one of them had any gift of healing.

  Shaking that out of my head — too harsh a judgement on myself, that was, with the sun on my back and all my skin alive to it, blood singing — I turned my mind back to hospital, to private rooms; and particularly to the rooms on the south side of the corridor, with their french windows wide enough to wheel a bed outside on sunny days. Always those rooms my family had, my mind remembered. Not only my own stays, but paying duty visits also to sick cousins, always the bright rooms and the wide windows...

  o0o

  Carol had had to hire in a local teenager to babysit her son, while she came to town to rescue me. We’d found Tina doing what was classic, snuggling up on the sofa with a boyfriend, a can of lager between them and the telly on. Nice thing was, she’d been utterly unembarrassed about it, though they’d both been rendered monosyllabic by the influx of so many of us where they’d only been expecting Carol. The only smiles had come when Carol had discovered she’d got no money to pay Tina, and she’d had to touch each of us in turn, coming round to Jamie at the last.

  We’d hustled the kids out after that, not hard to do. What had been hardest was the minute after the door had closed behind them, when we’d all been facing each other in the living-room: staring from face to face, seeing our own tense exhaustion mirrored in one another, monosyllabic ourselves now, confronted seemingly by something too big to talk about.

  Carol had made coffee, and dug half a bottle of cheap brandy out of a cupboard to fortify it; and then we’d had to talk, or I had. Jamie had demanded that. It was the girls, he’d said, who sensed something wrong with my big farewell scene that I’d thought I was handling so cleverly; they insisted on quietly following us out, me and Allan. Carol’s idea apparently to go for the vehicles, to flood the churchyard with light when Allan sent the other witnesses inside. And then the weathercock came down, he’d said, and the girls at least were certain. Carol certain enough that I needed saving, not to think of her own safety as she came roaring in on her charger; and Laura certain enough of Allan’s villainy that she gave no heed to consequences, she only used what she had against him, the strength of metal and speed and a blinding, disabling light.

  But Jamie had been all the opposites of certain, he’d been all confusion and doubt; and he’d made me tell them everything I knew, all the hints and clues that built together into a case against Allan and then what Allan himself had said, his irresistible confession.

  What I still hadn’t been able to tell them was why, because Allan had drawn back from telling me, content to let me die not knowing.

  o0o

  Needing to know, I came to the long single-storey stretch where french windows looked out on what was almost a private garden for the private patients. Some of the windows stood open, and long lacy white curtains billowed gently in the breeze.

  I walked slowly along the line of windows, looking in. There were nurses busy in some rooms, visitors in others; those I barely glanced into. Sleeping patients I gave more attention to, stopping sometimes to look closely, to be certain before moving on.

  I found Uncle Allan finally where I should have known to find him, in the last and largest, the best room on the ward, right at the end where he could have windows in two walls and all the privacy he wanted.

  He was alone, as I’d hoped to find him, though I was sure there would be guards in the corridor beyond the closed door, police and family both. Peering through the half-drawn curtains I could see that his eyes were shut, but he was lying propped up on pillows: only dozing, then, most likely.

  The french windows were locked, and there was no handle on the outside, but that was not a problem. I laid the flat of my hand against a single small pane beside the lock, and sunlight fell on my fingers’ tips; and oh, it was easy now, I felt so strong. The glass warmed and folded beneath my touch, turned so plastic I could squeeze it in my fist and tug it out. Then I reached in through the vacant space, turned the key and pushed the window open.

  There’d been no sound except the single metallic scrape of the lock unlatching. Perhaps it was that which roused him, or else the change in air as I brought the breeze in with me; but my uncle opened his eyes, looked directly at me — and smiled.

  Said, “Hullo, Benedict. I thought perhaps you’d come.”

  o0o

  After I’d told them everything I could, Jamie had hovered, had paced the small space of Carol’s living-room, had finally asked to use the phone.

  Had dialled a number and waited while we all pretended not to listen, while we listened hard; had finally said, “Dad, it’s Jamie.”

  A pause, then: “No, sorry, I won’t tell you that. What about you, where are you? ... Oh. The hospital, right,” passing the information on to us without letting his father know there was anyone else tuned in. “How is he, then? ... Uh-huh. Yeah... No, look, he’s your brother, but he’s my uncle, right? That’s just as ... Well, I’ll tell you why. If you’ll stop shouting, I’ll tell you...”

  And he’d done that, neatly and accurately, his mind still sharp though his face was still pale and there was still a tremble in his fingers; he’d told his father everything I’d said and everything we’d done except the last thing, where we’d come for shelter.

  No way to tell, he’d said to us afterwards, how Uncle James had taken the news, or what he’d do about it. But Jamie had dropped onto the floor in a collapse so sudden it was almost frightening; he’d slumped back against Laura’s legs where she was sitting on the sofa, he’d tilted his head against her knee and closed his eyes while her fingers played soothingly in his hair, and he’d looked five years younger all in a moment. Infinitely relieved, I guess, with the burden of responsibility rolled off his shoulders and onto his father’s. Nothing more for me to do, his body had been saying, I’ve put it out of my hands now.

  The relief for me had come a few minutes later, when Carol had told Laura to take him up to bed.

  “You two can have my room,” she’d said. “I’ll sleep in with Nicky, he’s got a spare bunk in there for when one of his little friends stays over. It’s embarrassing, but I fit it.”

  “What about Ben?” Laura had asked.

  “Sleeping-bag in here. Lots of cushions, he’ll
be fine.”

  After the other two had gone up, while Carol was bustling around in mother-mode to organise my bedding, I’d suggested diffidently, “You don’t have to squash in with Nicky, you know. You could stay down here with me. It’s a warm night, we could unzip the sleeping-bag and just nest together...”

  But she’d shaken her head, firm and decisive. “Not tonight, Ben. Laura needs company, you could see, that’s why I’ve given them the double bed; but I need to be alone. And with my son, I need that too. To remember what’s important. All right?”

  “Sure,” I’d said. “Fine,” I’d said. “Good night, then,” I’d said.

  “You wouldn’t have liked it anyway,” she’d told me, ruffling my hair, still playing mother. “Tonight, maybe, but not tomorrow. Nicky gets up early, and he’s horrible if he finds men in my bed. He’s going to be bad enough with strangers in the house, me camped out with you down here would be unthinkably awful. Sleep well; and if you can’t, I’ve left the brandy out in the kitchen, okay?”

  And she’d kissed me on the forehead and left me, and I had neither slept nor drunk myself to sleep, but only stared at the little patch of sky I could see through the window from where I lay while it changed from black to white, though all my thoughts were grey.

  o0o

  Only a thin smile my uncle gave me, in a face turned unexpectedly thin and grey; and his voice was thin also, weak in a man who had never seemed weak. He looked dreadfully ill. I didn’t need the drip into his arm or the electrodes taped to his chest or the bedclothes raised on frames to keep their weight off his legs to tell me that he’d been more than hurt last night. Damaged beyond repair, was how he looked.