Into That Darkness

by Steven Price

  A kiltering stairwell led downward. The floorboards groaned under his weight and he paused and in the flashlight beam he saw tracked in the dust underfoot the scrape and slide of boot prints.

  Hello? he called down.

  He slipped softly to the landing and stopped every few feet listening but he did not hear any sound. He thought of the men he had seen out of the window that morning. He knew there were those who would use the destruction for their own ends. That evil was real and existed.

  Halfway down he waited with a hand on the balustrade peering down into the darkness. He had left the cellar door standing open and the stairs shivered under him and the rubble clinked quietly but there was no sound from below. A faint grey dusk slanted in through the holes where the windows had been. The ghostly forms of rubble and broken things. Dust everywhere.

  He could just make out the silhouette of a man seated behind the washing machine. He was bowed forward as if in repose and then Mason saw the rifle between the knees and the scoop in the back of the skull and he lifted his eyes and then too the dark slide of bone meal and blood and brain down the far wall. His heart was beating very fast.

  Novica? he whispered. Novica?

  The man did not move. Mason glanced quickly into the shadows then stepped closer.

  He crouched beside the body and stared into the flat dead rooms of the eyes. The spatter on the wall bloomed outward to the left and he saw now that the gardener must have flinched in his last moments. Mason did not touch the face in that dust.

  After a while he pulled the rifle from the dead man and the body came heavily forward then fell back with a thunk against the wall. Mason checked the chamber and he slipped two fingers into the gardener’s pockets and withdrew the box of ammunition. He was careful not to touch the cold skin. Then he took the flashlight and went back up.

  He left the rifle leaning against the couch and the box of ammunition tucked under the stock and when the old man came in to check on him it was the first thing he saw.

  Where did you get that?

  Out by the truck, he said. And blushed.

  Why did I say that? he thought. What was it that made me say that? He wondered suddenly if it was in him now too whatever it was he had seen in the gardener. But he did not think so. The heaviness that was in him from before was still in him and he thought maybe it came from there.

  The old man had picked up the rifle and was looking at it and he checked the chamber and then set it down again. It doesn’t make any sense, he said.

  Mason felt suddenly sick. He did not want to think about the gardener. He did not want to think about what he had found. When are we going in the morning? he asked.

  Whenever you’re ready.

  I’ll be ready early.

  Okay.

  I need to sleep now.

  The old man gave him a strange look. Okay.

  I just really need to sleep.

  Okay. You have the flashlight?

  Mason did not reply. He was noticing how filthy the old man’s clothes were. He still wore his grey shirt from the day before and it was streaked with grime and torn and the shirttails hung long on his long frame and Mason thought, There is something wrong in him too and I know that it is there though I do not know what it is.

  Mason? What is it?

  Mason looked away. He said he saw my mom.

  Who did?

  Novica. He saw her.

  He didn’t see your mother. He’s mistaken.

  He said he did.

  Listen to me, Mason. He didn’t see her. Go to sleep.

  He wanted to tell the old man what he had found but just lay there quiet and staring stubbornly down at his hands. Instead he asked, Do you think he’s going to come back?

  Novica? I don’t know.

  What do you think happened to him?

  The old man wet his lips. I expect he just went on his way.

  Without taking any food?

  I guess so.

  Or his truck? Or his gun?

  Well. I guess he wasn’t thinking straight.

  I don’t think he was either.

  No.

  Arthur?

  Yes?

  I didn’t like him.

  The old man got to his feet. You get some sleep, he said. If you need me I’ll be right here. We’ll fix your glasses in the morning, okay?

  Okay.

  The old man paused at the door and looked back at him. He was carrying the rifle.

  I didn’t like him either, he said.

  In the hour before dawn the old man awoke, and Mason heard him, and he rose from the couch and carried the flashlight in to him its light cupped in one hand. A sour odour curdled up out of the bedsheets, out of the old man’s flesh. As Mason came in Lear turned his head and his dark eyes were glassy and wrong.

  Arthur?

  What.

  You were shouting.

  The old man swallowed. His eyes darkened, he peered at Mason. Picked up the clock beside him and rubbed at his unshaven face. Jesus, he said roughly. Mason. Go back to sleep.

  My dad gave me an air rifle for my birthday. It was dark and thick-stocked and the pellets were tiny and dangerous like real bullets. When you put your nose to it the barrel smelled like hot chalk. Kat did not like it but it was my rifle, I told her she better watch out. Kat said if I even thought about it she would paint the rifle pink with nail polish. Mom told me I could not take it out of the yard. Kat said tell him don’t point it at anything that moves. What about a tree? I said. Kat said a tree does not move and I told her it does so in the wind it moves. Then don’t point it at a tree either Mom said. And don’t point it at the house. That will leave nothing to shoot at I said. That is fine with me she said.

  I phoned my dad to thank him but he was not there. I left a short message because you have to pay to talk long distance. Next day was a Monday and I snuck the rifle to school down the leg of my pants. It was hard to walk but if I took very little steps it did not look like I had an air rifle down my pants. I was late for school. Mr Owens made me stay in at recess. At lunch hour I showed it to Luke Mackey behind the sandpit, he wanted to shoot it but I did not give him any pellets. He said it probably could not hurt a fly. I said it could it is very dangerous. He said what have you shot? I told him I had shot two crows and a squirrel. I thought that sounded believable but he said Mason Clarke you’re a goddamn liar. Shut up I said. He said have you shot any Russian spies with it? Shut up I said again.

  After school Luke Mackey and me took the rifle down into the empty lot where the high school kids smoke. No one was around. The sky was grey and I said it is going to rain but Luke Mackey said give me the gun let me try it. But I did not want him to try it yet. I loaded the rifle and sighted along it and lifted it towards the sky and pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked and punched back against my arm. I lifted my head and looked at the sky like I had just shot a hole in it. I felt still inside, the way you feel when you go into an empty classroom. Like you expect somebody to be watching you.

  Cool, Luke Mackey said quietly.

  A crow started up when I fired but it came back to the litter of a sandwich in the grass and I lifted my rifle and aimed at it. You can’t hit that Luke Mackey said. I aimed a little bit high so that I would just scare it but when I fired there was an explosion of feathers and a horrible screech then the bird was just lying in the grass very still. I was so surprised. I stood there not believing it.

  Holy shit, Luke Mackey said after a minute. Holy shit you killed it. You cannot know if it is dead, I told him, maybe it is just stunned. Because sometimes they are just stunned. You killed it, you killed a crow, Luke Mackey said again. Shit. He was running over to it.

  There was a wetness in its feathers that must have been blood. One wing was outstretched, its feathers frayed and wild. Its beak looked very sharp. I was still holding the gun. It was very interesting to see it though I was a little sorry for the crow. It did not understand, it had not done anything. I peered around to make sure no
body had heard us shooting. When I looked at Luke Mackey he was crying.

  Who is the liar now I thought.

  They climbed down from the house after breakfast and crunched through the rubble to the gardener’s truck where he had left it half drawn up onto the lawn. The street was cool with shadows from the ruined buildings. When Mason opened the passenger door his palm left its print in the white dust on the glass. He climbed up and in and Lear held the door open for him and then passed in to him an orange cloth satchel stuffed with sandwiches, bottles of water. He handed over the gardener’s rifle last. Mason could see in the side mirror where Lear lifted the door of the canopy and tossed in the crowbar and blankets and then the gym bag they’d filled with two flashlights and batteries and a portable radio. The old man had changed his shirt and put on a pair of stiff jeans and he looked both calmer and more composed to the boy’s eye.

  Mason leaned across and wiped the inside of the windshield with one sleeve. The light burned coldly in the quiet street. When Lear banged the canopy shut the echo carried flatly between the buildings like the report of a rifle.

  Lear came around and climbed in. He reached under the seat, coughed thickly.

  Where are we going? Mason asked.

  Lear turned the key, adjusted the rearview. They said they were taking her to the station at the Vic General, he said. I thought we’d start there.

  You’re not worried he’ll come back?

  Who?

  Novica.

  Lear gave him a long look. Are you worried about that, son?

  What if somebody comes looking for his truck?

  Who would come?

  I don’t know. He could come back.

  Lear sat looking at him. You want me to leave him a note?

  Mason said nothing.

  Lear leaned forward, punched the truck into gear. I didn’t think so, he said.

  Their going was slow through the ravaged city. Lear stopped often so that he could climb out and shift rubble from their path. In the middle of some streets they saw mattresses thrown down, figures sprawled in sleep across them. No one woke or called to them or tried to stop them.

  At the overpass they could not get down to the highway for the broken asphalt and Lear turned the engine off and climbed out and Mason climbed out after him. He sat on a traffic divider in the webbed blue shadow of a Douglas fir, hands between his knees. The concrete was cool under his thighs and he sat with his head lowered remembering the night before the earthquake and the lighted kitchen and the blackness of the yard. The apple tree’s roots like a great dark secret flowing there. When he had poured the peelings into the compost he turned and saw his mother and sister talking at the table through the split-framed glass. His mother went to the sink and began to rinse the dishes and stack them to dry. He could see plates shining in the light. A stink of cut grass and rotted matter swirling up around him as he breathed. The slop bucket clicked and swung on its wire hinge. He had stood there without the words for it, feeling astonished, and grown-up, and somehow very sad.

  On the highway a route had already been cleared by heavy trucks. Traffic was backed up close to the hospital with the injured being brought in from all over the city and Lear pulled to one side and parked at the crest of the road overlooking the hospital grounds and he stuffed their provisions under a blanket in the canopy and locked everything carefully.

  Just in case, he said.

  Mason nodded. He was looking down at the crowded tents in the parking lot and at the huge crumbled edifice of the hospital itself and he felt something darkening inside him. The faces of entire wings had sheared off and the central building looked to have stoven in upon itself.

  A hand on his shoulder.

  Come on, son.

  Look at them all, he whispered. There’s so many of them.

  He looked at Lear and Lear nodded.

  She could be anywhere.

  Yes.

  Mason could feel a lump in his throat and he swallowed it down.

  The crowds were sluggish in the heat and the eyes of those they met seemed dulled with pain. They clambered along the shoulder of a roadway filled with abandoned cars, their shirts dampening in the sunlight as they went. And then they were half-sliding down a grassy hill into that sprawling city of tents, and shouldering on, through the crowds, seeking word.

  Underfoot was asphalt, painted white lines. There were figures squatting on boxes, leaning up against tent posts, clutching bundles of clothes to their chests. Everywhere tarps were strung up on thin ropes or wires as if to build small enclosures and in these spaces a strange assortment of electronics, suitcases, cookingware, packages and parcels, their owners glowering watchful over them. Mason saw a woman leaning at a bucket, washing her hair. A group of men in bandages regarded the old man trudging past and Mason watched their etched faces feeling uneasy. When one glanced at him he looked quickly away. He could hear babies crying, men shouting. The air was sour, dark with the stink of open food and unwashed skin.

  Lear shoved his way through the crowds, a head taller than most, his fierce visage turning hawklike in the sharp sunlight.

  This isn’t the hospital, he said abruptly. He stopped, ran his tongue along the inner wall of his cheek. He was sweating.

  Mason said nothing.

  We’re in the refugee tents, Lear said. We need to get over to the hospital.

  Is that where my mom is?

  The old man’s grey hands were scarred and blistered and thick. He reached out, took Mason’s hand.

  But Mason was studying a girl in a green dress who stood half-obscured by a strung-up sheet. Her face begrimed, her blonde hair chopped savagely short at her collar. She was staring at him with dark ringed eyes and she said nothing and she looked very abandoned and very alone.

  He felt sick. He felt sick with the fear of it.

  They were directed towards a blue tent marked 17-C but they found themselves turned around in the winding alleys between the tents and had to retrace their steps and ask again before they found it. The refugee chaos gave way to a maze of vast green tents and tarped amphitheatres and it was here the old man furrowed his brow and studied him and said, I don’t know if you should come in.

  Mason peered past the old man at the dark entrance. He could see nothing beyond it.

  There’ll be a lot of hurt people in there, Lear said.

  I’m not stupid.

  No.

  I know what’s in there.

  The old man studied him and then nodded and they went in.

  Inside all was shaded purple as if the very light were bruised. Mason peered about. He did not understand why they had been sent here. Outside was crowded and busy and draining but here in this place all felt uneasily still.

  It was a big tent. There was a line of nurses still masked and scrubbed sitting on a wood bench with their heads bowed, arms folded. Flood lamps had been ratcheted into the posts nearby and other lights stood on small steel tripods and all had been shut off and three plastic-sheeted operating tables stood scrubbed and vacant. A radio was playing softly in one corner.

  Mason saw dark splatters on the tarps hanging nearby which he understood at once to be blood. He thought of his mother and then he closed his eyes. When he opened them one of the seated nurses was very slowly lifting her head, as if just coming to. Her skin was almost as grey as the old man’s but her blue eyes were clear.

  Lear cleared his throat. We’re trying to find the wards, he said. I think we’re a little lost.

  She gestured tiredly back the way they had come.

  Just keep walking towards the ruins, she said. You’ll find them easy enough. Go to where the soldiers are. You do know it’s all wrecked, don’t you?

  Yes.

  She nodded and seemed as if she might say something but then she did not.

  We’re looking for his mother.

  The nurse looked at Mason. I hope you find her.

  Mason said nothing.

  She was brought in yesterday, Lear ad
ded. We just don’t know where.

  The nurse watched them from under her heavy lids but said nothing more.

  They went out. The morning was already hot and there was little shade and they walked in the direction the nurse had suggested. When they reached the edge of the destruction Lear raised a hand to the crown of his head. Where the hospital should have stood there loomed only cliffs of rubble, collapsed medical wings, the gutted walls of buildings tottering like bombed-out ruins.

  My god, Lear said under his breath.

  Mason said nothing.

  There were fires burning amid the rubble and in the blasted sunlight a faint roar of trucks and cranes and a distant clatter of stones like soft applause. Mason thought he would feel something like he had felt the day before but he did not. He saw diggers drifting from heap to heap and their shouts carried to him and he saw wending up the slopes of the rubble antlike columns of men. He lowered his eyes. His shadow and Lear’s shadow in the earth.

  And then he started to cry.

  He was surprised to be crying. He stared across at Lear in alarm and he was gulping air but he did not stop crying. Lear did not go to him nor did he speak and Mason stood with his hands loose at his sides and cried silently. He knew his mother would not be here. He knew it with the same clarity that he had believed the night before.

  After a time he ran a sleeve across his eyes.

  Feel better? the old man asked softly.

  Mason shook his head.

  Well.

  It’s not fair.

  No. It’s not.

  She didn’t do anything. She didn’t do anything.

  We’ll find her.

  You don’t even believe that. You don’t.

  The old man said nothing to that.

  They turned back. Mason followed the old man past a low-slung tarp under which a young woman sat distributing water and then the old man turned and studied the cloudless sky and then he trudged heavily back. He took the proffered water and lifted his chin and drank deeply with his eyes on Mason as he drank. Then he passed the bottle across. Mason was parched and tired and drank for a long time then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.