She missed London. There'd always been something new to see down there, whereas all you did in this rubbish place was keep running into the same old people.
Without realising, she'd wandered almost to the edge of town, where the shops thinned out and the suburbs began. Jessica could see the jagged shapes of the old Castle up ahead, it's outlying walls running to the base of the hills. There was a fog above Crooksfield today, rolling across the moors and threatening to bear down on the town itself.
Steven was still messaging her. That made a dozen times already, and always much the same thing: "Hey I'm sorry okay, please just let me know you're alright." Jessica had no more idea what to say to that than she'd had this morning. How could he lie there and let it happen?
Maybe she should talk to the other boy, even if only for tonight. That'd show Steven how it felt to hurt like that, how it felt to have private bits of you stolen and seen by other people.
Steven's head was finally starting to clear when the message came through.
"just saw her in town going to work," said Jenny, with a smile at the end of it.
He started up from the table then hesitated: where in town?
"What're you doing?" Jack was still sat down, squinting in the half-light.
"Where's Jessica work at?" Steven asked him, picking his jacket off the back of the chair.
"Whoa." Jack banged the flat of his hand on the table top. "No. Don't even think about it. Sit down before you fall over."
Steven was about to disagree, but a fresh pain lanced through the side of his head.
"Besides," said Jack, "if she wanted you to go stalking her, she'd have told you herself."
"You know though, don't you," Steven said. Thoughts of surprising her were already running through his imagination, maybe with a bunch of flowers under his arm like in the adverts.
"She'd kill me," Jack said, leaning back. "Let it go, okay?"
"I can't, man." Steven rubbed his temples, staring at the door. It was still ajar, and autumn air was leaking into the kitchen.
"Look," said Jack. "I know Jess a lot better than you. You've got to give her some space to calm down or you'll only piss her off even further. I'll tell her you're sorry when I see her, okay?"
"I guess." Steven couldn't see himself making any progress this way, and part of him just wanted to go to sleep. Maybe he should get back before Tom made a mess of the place.
Maybe he should ask Amy instead. She and Jessica'd been friends before Jessica went South, and she might not come over as self-righteous and preachy as Jack was right now. Too many people talked to Steven like he was a little kid, and he was getting sick of it.
"I'd better get home," he said, rising and yawning. Jack rose with him, catching the glass as Steven let go of it. "Hey, are you okay to get back?"
"Sure, man, whatever," Steven said, brushing him off and heading for the door. The outdoor air woke him back up, and he could feel his legs starting to work again as he staggered into the street.
His phone buzzed. Amy.
"Did you find her yet?"
Amy tapped at her phone as she walked to her bike, barely looking where she was going. Jenny had texted her hours ago but wasn't replying. Amy hadn't had time to check her messages all afternoon – Peter had kept her running back and forth as he served an endless stream of customers, and now every part of her was sore.
The wind caught the side of the bike as she started pedalling, nearly sending her into the street. Amy wobbled and managed to stay in control, heading for Grey Street and her flat. She didn't want to stay in tonight, but needed to change and collapse for a bit before she thought about anything.
She could hear her phone humming inside her bag, over and over like a trapped insect. Amy pedalled faster, then braked so sharply she made the tires scream and nearly sent herself over the handlebars.
Jessica was walking down the far side of the road, her back to Amy and her shoulders shaking. Amy called out to her, waving as she put her feet down.
"Oh, hi," Jessica said, walking over. She was trying to smile, but Amy could see the red rings around her eyes.
"Hello," Amy said, leaning her bike against a lamppost. She gave Jessica a hug and heard her snuffle, felt her shiver. She smelled of fruit and fallen petals, and as Amy pulled back she thought again how pretty her friend was, more like an actress than anything. "I was just going home," she said. "Um, would you like a cup of tea or something?"
"But what about your bike?" Jessica pointed out, though Amy had noticed her perk up at the offer.
"I'll push it, it's just the next street along." Amy took hold of her bicycle by the handlebars and frame and started to wheel it as she walked, leading Jessica along the pavement and round the corner. She cast sideways glances at the long-haired girl, seeing her friend's red nose, the streaks in her foundation. Amy didn't want to ask, but then remembered her phone and dug it out, managing to scroll through and balance the bike at the same time.
"Steven's asking where you are," she ventured, and saw Jessica's mouth harden.
"He can keep asking."
Amy left it there. The other messages were that anonymous person or people again, and though she knew she shouldn't read them Amy couldn't keep herself from checking. They were the same things as before.
"Eeew u're raelly fat y do u keep posting"
"I think I love you why don't you asnwer me bitch"
"get off the internet n kill urself lol"
She managed to stop there and deleted the lot of them. Amy heard the bike wheels rattle and realised she was trembling, and Jessica stopped sniffing and looked over at her.
"What're you up to there?"
"Nothing, doesn't matter," Amy said, putting her phone back in her bag. She rounded the corner into Grey Street, feeling the pull of home.
The kettle took an eternity to boil, and Amy could feel Jessica watching her from the living room as she fretted over mugs and teabags. The kitchen in her flat was barely more than an alcove, and she felt uncomfortably exposed.
Amy hadn't had anyone over since she moved in, save for anxious parents – the flat was her sanctuary, her place of power. Inviting Jessica had been an impulse, and one she was having second thoughts about. She rescued her necklace from the kitchen side and put it on.
"Your lamp's broken," Jessica called, fiddling with the table beside the sofa. It was starting to get dark outside, and Amy walked over to the main light switch.
"There's no bulb in it," she said as she drew the curtains. There never had been – Amy liked the look of the lampshade, which was patterned with forests and running deer, and used it for decoration rather than have an empty table.
Jessica sprawled back on the sofa and let out a long, hard sigh. "Thanks," she said. "For inviting me back, I mean."
"Don't worry about it." Amy handed her a cup and squeezed onto the bit of sofa that was left. "We needed a chance to catch up anyway."
"So." Jessica sipped her tea and looked at Amy over the top of it. "What's been going on in your life lately?" Her eyes weren't red any more, but clear and sharp and framed by long lashes.
Amy swallowed.
"Just work and friends really," she said, not wanting to mention the Coven.
"What, no boys?" Jessica teased, taking hold of a lock of Amy's hair and rubbing it between her fingers. "You've got such a lovely colour," she mused. "I can't get mine to stay like that."
Amy had still been trying boys back when Jessica had left, but it had led to awkward fumblings and sticky arguments and nothing further. It wasn't until a year after school she'd realised, and she hadn't told anyone Jessica knew – so there was no way Jessica could know either.
Amy pulled away, taking her hair back.
"You don't need to," she said, looking at Jessica's long straight locks with more than a touch of envy. "Back three days and you've already found someone."
This clearly wasn't subtle enough and Amy saw Jessica tense up again, cupping both hands around her tea to for
m a barrier.
"I don't know about that," she said. "It's weird being back here, kind of like falling asleep."
Amy drained her mug, setting it down beside the ornamental lamp.
"I like your necklace." Jessica leaned forward, taking hold of Amy's pentagram without asking. "Religious, isn't it? Devil-worship or pagan or something?"
"Something like that." Amy didn't pull away this time. Things were weirder between them than she'd expected, but there was something hypnotic about being this close to the other girl, to those eyes.
No. It'd muck everything up, and she couldn't afford to lose any more friends.
Her phone rescued her.
"Hey, have you seen Jess?" Jack was asking.
Jack was beginning to worry. Jess was ignoring his messages, and it was getting late. Though there was only a year between them, he'd found himself feeling protective towards his sister since she'd reappeared, despite her new-found London sophistication and accent. She hadn't wanted to talk about whatever had driven her North, but Jack had a few guesses in mind, especially since Mum and Dad hadn't called to check on her.
If they didn't care, that left him responsible. He didn't plan on mucking it up.
He texted everyone who might know and sat back in the kitchen, staring at the half-open door. It was growing almost too dark to see, and an outside chill was setting in, but Jack didn't care enough to move. It was easier to think like this, fewer distractions.
Steven wasn't talking to him either. They'd had fallings-out before, but this felt more serious, more real. He'd known the two of them getting together was a bad idea, but Jack struggled to put that knowledge into words, and now both the people he cared about were pissed off at him. Trying to help had only made it worse, and Jack had no idea what to do. If he stopped trying, wouldn't that look like he didn't care? It'd be a kind of lying, and he didn't want to lie to his best friend or to his family.
The kitchen light flashed, split-second. It was still on at the wall, and there must be a few blips of life left in it.
Jack got up to turn it off, and to put the hall light on so that some came through into the kitchen. A few dead leaves had blown through the kitchen door, and one of them crunched underfoot.
He lifted his foot up, but the little crunching sound didn't go away. It kept on reverberating, running around the kitchen walls like an echo.
Jack shook his head, and tapped his ear to see if it was blocked. His fingers found something sticky, and he pulled them away to find a dark smear on his fingertips, one that turned out to taste of metal. His ear stung, and he poked gingerly at it, seeing if the sound would stop.
It wouldn't. The little crack and crunch kept on inside his head like a stuck record. Jack headed to the sink to get himself some water, forgetting about the light-switch. It took him some fumbling seconds to find a glass in the dark, and his ear kept smarting. He was starting to feel dizzy, and Jack sat at the kitchen table and gulped the water too quickly, sending it across his face and the collar of his shirt.
The light flashed again, on-off, throwing soft shadows across the kitchen surfaces.
Jack finished the water. His mouth tasted of acid, like he'd just thrown up, and that noise still wouldn't stop, scritchscritchscritch.
His phone went at long last.
"It's fine, she's with me, stop worrying," messaged Amy.
Jack sat back with relief, making the chair creak. He was getting cold, and he got back up again to shut the door, hoping that the noise in his head might fade when the wind did. Of course it was the wind. All those leaves outside blowing around the yard.
The light blinked twice, and it sounded like a gunshot. Jack jumped and knocked the chair over, sending it crashing to the kitchen tiles. Never mind the door – he'd sort the lights out first.
The glass on the table was still vibrating from the fall of the chair, and the tiny noise it made ran alongside the scratching that Jack could still hear, making both his ears hurt.
Ping. Snap. The light was back on then back off, like a thunderstorm.
Jack's vision swam, and he didn't make it to the door or the switch, finding himself leaning on the table for support. Something warm was trickling down from the injured ear, and both sounds – glass and leaf – seemed to no longer be coming from the kitchen around him but from deep inside his head, as if they were lodged inside his ear canal, inside his brain tissue.
He tried to talk, to reassure himself he could still hear properly, but all he seemed to manage were incoherent sounds.
The light came on and off, and each time it did it seemed to Jack that the intervals were shorter, as if the long bulb were slowly coming back to life. The shadows it threw up were vivid and strong-edged, and Jack stared stupidly at them several times before he realised they didn't match the kitchen furniture, or himself, or anything else in the room.
The light grew more and more frequent, the sound more constant, and the shadows clearer every time it came on, until it seemed to the stumbling Jack as if the whole room were acting like an enormous television set, trying to tune itself into –
– something.
No time for door or switch or water. He had to get out.
Jack propelled himself towards the hallway, and the light came on so brightly it blinded him, making him lose his way and walk into the fridge. He was right beside the light switch, and Jack managed to lean to bring his bloodstained fingers up against it, flicking it down.
The light seared on again, and the acid taste became so strong he felt like his mouth was on fire.
Jack pressed the switch up then down, twice more, and nothing changed. His legs went and he half-fell to the floor, leaning against the freezer door as his feet skidded on the tiling. The back of his head hit the handle on the fridge, and Jack lost all awareness of the room for a moment.
When he got hold of himself again, he was lying on the cold floor, head propped up against the bottom of the freezer. The light was on as if it had never broken, and Jack's eyes travelled woozily across the kitchen ceiling. He could see every detail with painful clarity – the cracks around the borders of the light fitting that made the plasterwork look like crazy paving, the cobwebs slowly amassing in the corner above the kitchen cupboards, the stain where the bathroom had leaked last summer.
It was hard to think about anything abstract – his head hurt too much, and he couldn't seem to hear anything. Jack's gaze slowly came down across the kitchen. The back door was still half-open, bordered by the thick black shadow of the outside yard, a cluster of leaves and twigs and dust piling up around the base of it. One of the chairs was pulled back from the table, while the other was lying on its side with its legs in the air like an upturned tortoise. The wicker on the seat was beginning to fray at the edges, and it faced Jack and leered as if the gap were a mouth.
Behind the table he could see the radiator, the top piled high with tea towels and bags and whatever bits and pieces he'd needed to put down in a hurry. Behind that was the wall, unbroken grubby plaster, with Jack forbidden by his tenancy from pinning or sticking anything to it.
On the wall were the shadows, and the shadows were moving.
Jack tried to speak, and couldn't hear his own voice. The back of his throat was an inferno, and he started to get up and found his feet sliding uselessly around the floor. His cheek was wet, and the inside of his ear felt like a wasp had stung it.
He could see shapes he recognised on the kitchen wall. Those slanting corners had to be shoulders, and the spindly wobbling lines were hands and fingers, and that stark circle that flickered at the edges was a head. The shadows were so dark and thick by now they seemed almost solid, as if they might step free from the plaster and take on life of their own.
But if those were only shadows –
– then where –
Three
Amy squirreled back among the cushions of the sofa. Having Jessica there no longer felt intrusive – her friend fit into the flat as easily as any of the furnitur
e, and they were starting to talk the way they had before.
"He worries too much, " Jessica was saying, putting her cup delicately on the carpet.
"I think he'll get better when you've been back longer," Amy said, fiddling with her pendant. "We're always more careful with things when they're shiny and new."
"Shiny and new?" Jessica giggled, and Amy wondered if she'd been drinking, or if she needed to be.
"Seriously," she said. "I mean, look at you."
"Er, thanks." Jessica covered her mouth with her hand, still laughing, and looked graceful even doing that.
Amy was feeling warm. The tea had got to the centre of her, making everything better. She checked the time, and it wasn't even late.
"Do you want to go somewhere?" She pulled her phone out. "Jenny wanted to meet up before, though I think she's in a huff with me now."
"Ergh, not really." Jessica made a face, and Amy could only guess at why. Had Steven –
"But it doesn't mean we can't go out," her friend cut in. "Just not with her or any of that crowd."
"Then it'd be just the two of us." Amy stood up from the sofa. "Unless you want to invite Jack?"
"Haha, no." Jessica picked up her coat. "Maybe when he learns to relax."
It was a cold night outside, but Amy barely noticed. She felt like she was cresting on a wave of bubbles, and when Jessica smirked and linked hands with her it seemed the most natural thing in the world, the pair of them skipping along the street like children.
It was a weekday and Highburn Place was emptying, with people heading home in knots and clusters. Amy preferred it that way – dancing was fun and all, but you needed space to talk to people afterwards. She usually stayed in on Saturdays, when the streets were lively and Crooksfield's only club – Kairos – was heaving with students and restless locals.
Lamplight Page 3