Lamplight

by Benjamin Appleby-Dean

  He was about to skip ahead when the voice cut in. It was distorted and kept breaking up, like a bad mobile signal, but Tom could make out just enough of the words to follow it. The video quality went every time the voice did, as if something were interfering with the entire recording.

  "The – krrrk – environment is like a radio," it said. Tom leaned forward and turned the volume up, trying to make out the missing words.

  "Krrrk – of matter like radio waves," it continued. Nothing was moving onscreen, and the speaker must be holding the camera. "If so then all matter affects – krrk – matter. There are too many variables to – krrrk – accurately, but – "

  The sound broke into white noise, but something was moving. The camera was set down on a table top, and a man walked into shot and started to fiddle with the objects in the room – shifting the chairs forward or back and inch, twisting the thermostat, dimming the lights. His face was obscured by pixels.

  The sound cut back in: " –and this – krrrk – how they enter our reality. All factors matter but – kkrrrkkkk – is the conduit."

  That word had been important. Tom tried replaying the last few seconds of video, but it was impossible to make out.

  The figure had finished moving the furniture and moved behind the camera to pick it up again. The lens went on a tour of each object he'd moved – crockery, chair-leg, side-lamp.

  Something was wrong with the image again. it was going brighter, like old overexposed film, but that didn't make sense if the man was using digital photography. Tom squinted, seeing the bulb of the side-lamp flare across the screen.

  The voice came back, suddenly clear and free of static. It was young, and more than a little frightened. "Don't look in the middle, look at the edges. Lookattheshadows–”

  The frame swirled with moving shapes, and as the sound sped up the image cut out. Tom closed it with disappointment. He switched back to commenting on that posting of Terry's, the one that had just started giving Steven a heart attack. Terry kept Tom amused by this kind of thing but sometimes he pushed people a bit far, particularly for stuff with his name on it. You had to stay anonymous for the heavy stuff, or who knew what people might do to you back?

  Tom jumped back to the other discussion for a second, shaking his head dismissively.

  The video was an easy fake.

  So why were people talking about it?

  Terry had skipped lectures today. Seeing someone to the hospital and missing sleep for it was as good an excuse as any and it wasn't the kind people could argue with him over, not without losing the moral high ground his tutors were so fond of. Stuffy dried-up old carcasses. He needed something living – that was real education, not thousands of preserved words.

  His phone went, and he pulled it out to find what was basically a death threat. Steven had flipped.

  For a minute Terry considered scaring the living daylights out of him by taking it seriously and going to the police, but he knew that'd stop being funny pretty quickly.

  What'd other people think, if they saw this side of Steven instead of the nice-guy shtick he liked to pull?

  There was only one way to find out, and Terry proudly considered himself to have a scientific mind and a healthy curiosity. He made the message public, commenting to set the tone. Everyone laugh.

  It probably wouldn't hurt his chances with the beautiful Jessica either once she realised what a nutter her ex was. Garnish that with the way he'd looked after her last night, and Terry was sure he was sitting where he wanted. Maybe now she'd notice him as much as he noticed her.

  Even pale and dishevelled she'd been gorgeous, Terry thought as he ambled past the shops. There was something transcendent about his Jessica, a light that pushed through her feelings and disguises to reveal her as pure and perfect.

  He had to have her. To dirty her.

  His phone went again, and Terry found Tom had already commented. Sad prat had nothing better to do.

  Jenny had added some do-gooder thing after it. Terry snorted in disgust, and put his phone away. He needed Steven to see it, and then the fireworks would start.

  Terry had wandered around a couple more places and had an argument with the balding manager of a clothes shop by the time his phone went again. He read Steven's comment and snickered – was the prat really that clueless?

  Terry ducked into a coffee shop and found a warm corner, far enough from the till that the staff wouldn't notice he hadn't ordered. He began to type. It was growing dark, and streetlights flickered on as the shop filled up with chattering students.

  It only took a few lines before Steven looked like he was ready to explode. Terry flicked up and down the comments, admiring his handiwork.

  Tom had made a good point, though. What would Jessica say when she saw this? She'd see Steven was a nutcase, sure, but Terry started to wonder if he'd maybe been a bit too clever, too cockily sure of himself.

  He brushed the idea off as nonsense. Girls liked it when you were sure of yourself. He didn't know how a sadsack like Steven kept attracting them – maybe he brought out the mothering instinct. It reminded Terry that he'd given Jessica enough space today though – now would be a good time to check on her, show some friendly concern.

  "Evening beautiful, are you feeling any better?"

  Time to get obvious. If he dithered around anymore she'd think he wasn't interested.

  Jessica didn't reply for a few minutes, and Terry flicked back to Steven's public humiliation. Steven had stopped ranting on by now, but Jenny had chipped in again, going "ur all as bad as each other"

  Interfering hypocrite. She liked to act all fun and in the thick of it, but Terry had seen her get high and mighty before. He didn't know why he put up with her.

  There was still nothing from Jessica. Terry ran through all the boxes on his phone, checking that everything was working properly.

  Jenny had gotten absorbed, and nearly fell off the sofa when the doorbell rang. Leaving her phone on the table next to some statue Hazel had bought in a charity shop, she headed down the hall and saw a bulky shape through the window, and a patrol car outside.

  The bell went again, and Jenny fumbled for the latch and found a broad-shouldered woman standing on the doorstep. The officer had strong cheekbones and a dark ponytail protruding from under her hat, and Jenny immediately found herself thrown off-balance.

  "Are you Jennifer Wright?" Her voice was as clipped and clear as her features.

  "That's right, I made the call." Jenny stood to the side, letting the policewoman in.

  The woman only walked a few steps inside before she pulled out a notebook. "And what's your relationship with the missing person?"

  "Friend. She gave me a key." Jenny leaned against the wall and scuffed her heels on the carpet. Normally certain of herself, she felt like she was talking to a teacher.

  The woman with the ponytail kept asking questions, moving her pencil in short bursts as if she were trying to punch holes in the paper. She wanted details about Hazel that Jenny had never heard of: bank accounts, family addresses, medical history, benefit claims. Jenny supplied photos from her phone and talked about Hazel's break-up and her recent silence, and still the questions rattled out, leaving Jenny feeling as if she were being sandblasted.

  "Can I have your consent to search the property?" Jenny nodded, and the officer headed down the hall, ducking into the kitchen, the living room, turning lights on and off. She vanished into the bathroom, and there was a rattle of porcelain.

  "What're you doing?" Jenny called, and the woman emerged holding Hazel's toothbrush.

  "DNA."

  The policewoman left the bathroom, leaving the light on, and went back into the kitchen. Jenny could hear cupboards opening and shutting. It wouldn't take her long, Jenny thought – Hazel's flat was as organised as its owner had been, books neatly on shelves and kitchen cleaned and regulated as if it were going in a catalogue. She'd never felt comfortable, coming here – it was like going to someone's parents, where you couldn't r
elax for fear of breaking the ornaments.

  She was starting to feel ornamental herself, standing there, and so Jenny headed back to the living room and plonked herself on the sofa.

  The officer followed her in a couple of minutes later, moving cushions, looking under and behind things, prodding and prying. "Did you notice anything unusual about the flat today? Anything different from the way your friend usually left it?"

  "Not really," Jenny said. She had the feeling she was supposed to get up from the sofa, but had just got comfortable. "The bedside lamp was on earlier when I came by the house, but it seems to have burnt out now."

  "And it's off now?" The policewoman headed out of the living room, and Jenny could hear her heading down the hall. She was tempted to get up and follow, but it'd been a long day, and the uneasy sleep Jenny had had last night on Amy's cramped sofa and unfamiliar room was only now catching up with her. She lay back across the cushions, and a sharp breeze came into the room and blew around her ankles. She'd forgotten to close the front door.

  Groaning theatrically – she'd got so used to showing off for people that she found herself unable to switch off when alone, like an actor in front of a mirror – Jenny prised herself from the sofa's grasp and headed down the hall. It was getting chilly in there, and she slammed the front door vindictively.

  The bedroom door was half-closed, and she could see the main ceiling light coming though, but there wasn't any sound from inside.

  "Hello?" Jenny called, hand raised to push the door open.

  The police officer didn't answer. Jenny couldn't hear any footsteps or sounds of searching. Not even a breath came from the other side of the door.

  There was a funny taste in Jenny's mouth. Acid, as if the contents of her stomach were trying to climb up her throat.

  She couldn't see any part of what might be inside the room, not with the door in the way.

  Had the light really burnt out before, or had someone switched it off? What might she have missed in the darkened room? There was space under the bed and in the wardrobe and behind the curtains, too many hiding places for her to be sure of anything.

  Slowly, as if something might bite her, Jenny reached her hand around the door and slid it along the wallpaper, fumbling until she felt the hard plastic of the light switch.

  Maybe the police had gone already.

  Jenny pressed the switch, plunging the bedroom into darkness, and snatched her hand back. Nothing moved. No-one complained.

  Turning off the other lights as she went, Jenny left the house as dark and empty as she'd found it.

  She texted Amy on the walk home, and found her fingers shaking.

  "hey thanks for leaving was fine on my own"

  Amy was feeling all used up by the time she got back. Her legs had gone all floppy, like discarded clothes, and it took her almost twenty minutes to get back off the sofa. She levered herself up, nearly knocking the lampshade over, and caught sight of her image in the living room mirror.

  Her hair had gone a horrible patchy yellow, like mouldy paper. Amy ran her fingers through it, shuddering, and resisted the urge to try and tear it out. She needed to fix that now, before Jessica got here.

  Jessica had fallen quiet, but Amy didn't want to push her, not after the mood she'd left her in. She'd message Jessica once she was a bit less hideous.

  Gathering her bowl and gloves and dyes, Amy headed for the bathroom. Her phone blipped just as she was leaving, and she tried to picked it up without putting anything down, arms overflowing. Jenny's text popped up on the screen, and Amy gave it one glance and tossed the phone on the sofa. Jenny could be pretty admirable sometimes, but she didn't need to get so unpleasant. She had been feeling a little guilty for leaving the other girl alone at Hazel's, but Amy could feel that particular regret fading.

  She leafed through the boxes and dropped most of them. If she put green on top of the peroxide it would turn bright and verdant, and Amy thought she was in the mood for green. New growth, new life.

  Heading for the bathroom, Amy immersed herself in foam and colour.

  By the time she emerged, bag over her head and a faint burning around her ears despite the Vaseline, Amy found two messages from Jessica. The first said "Hey sorry fell asleep," and the second "I'm getting ready now don't be mad, I'll text you when I set off." Half an hour had passed since the latest message.

  Amy let her legs carry her back to the sofa, and tried to ignore the itchings and complaints coming from her scalp. Her fingers ached to tear it off and scratch and scratch, and she distracted herself by reaching for the bookshelves on the other side of the sofa – they were opposite to the table with the lamp, bookending her – and sliding the books out, bringing the slim volume hidden behind into the light.

  She didn't really know why she hid this book. Amy hadn't invited anyone back here until Jessica, so it would have been just as safe sitting in full view on the table. But much as Amy wore her necklace in public as often as she could, she'd never actually told any of her friends about that side of her – the Coven, her beliefs, her faith in the secret life of the world. Until she was out and proud and open, it felt right to keep the book hidden too.

  It was hers, after all, in a way the others weren't. Her journal, her journey. Her Book of Shadows.

  Still fighting the urge to tear her hair out by the roots, she flipped the book open and looked at the most recent page, neatly pencilled in.

  "Abductions by fairies," it began.

  Amy hadn't been sure about recording this bit. Although the other Coven members never said what their own books contained – why would you? – she'd gathered the impression that they found the stories and folklore side of things a little childish, and preferred to record what they saw as more practical lore – herbs, divination, that kind of thing. Amy however liked to think of her book as a chronicle of that side of her life, and so everything that took her fancy went in – personal thoughts, articles she'd been reading, sketches and scribblings.

  This particular page had been a summary of lots of different myths and articles she'd found. It talked about changelings, and doing bizarre things to catch them out like boiling water in eggshells or placing the baby in the oven; but it also had references Amy had found to the less well-known cases: the new mothers stolen to suckle fairy babies instead of their own, the singers and poets stolen for their talent, the knights 'rescued' when falling from their horses. Most troubling of all were the murders: people killed by their spouses or families then said to have been abducted in order to cover up the killing.

  Amy didn't know why she'd wound up reading these, let alone reproducing them, but part of her suspected that if there was a greater secret truth behind the mundane world then everything was relevant to it – you couldn't pick and choose your superstitions out of snobbishness.

  They'd known that in older centuries, in years of fire and darkness. Times of simpler beliefs, wind and weather and life and death. People had got complicated since then, Amy thought, too wrapped up in themselves. They'd forgotten how much wonder the world was hiding, how many secrets lay in the old forests and the wind-scoured hills.

  Maybe it was time to bring the old mysteries back. Light some new fires. It couldn't be her, no never her, but someone ought to do it.

  Jessica still hadn't sent anything to say she was on her way. Maybe she thought Amy was angry at her? Amy quickly fired a message off: "You okay there? Sorry about before, I was in the shower!"

  She'd left the dye in long enough to develop and it was getting impossible to bear. Amy headed back to the shower, almost falling over her own feet.

  Jessica had meant to do all kinds of things once Amy left – she'd meant to have another search of the house, to search Jack's room and try and find details of his friends so she could contact them. She'd meant to ring up that job interview and see if she could get it rearranged, to contact Terry and thank him for seeing her home, to get herself changed and made up properly before she went over to Amy's.

 
; Fragments of her parents' words kept creeping back. Jessica sat in her room, balancing on the edge of the bed, and watched the time go by. She didn't mean to sleep, but it must have happened somehow, as the next thing Jessica knew was that it was dark outside and she was painfully thirsty.

  She messaged Amy to apologise. Jessica was feeling sticky all over, and her teeth had gone oily the way they normally did in the mornings, so she headed for the bathroom and the shower.

  A few minutes later, cleaner but still thirsty, Jessica headed back into the bedroom. The worry was still there, roaring in her chest, but if she concentrated enough she could fill her head with nothing but thoughts of getting ready.

  Amy still hadn't replied. Jessica sent another message, just to be safe, and pulled out dress and tights. She didn't feel much like makeup – it'd seem like she was trying to overshadow Amy after the way her friend had looked that morning. Jessica didn't like the idea of being attractive today, and she couldn't help but think it would be safer, if she were alone at Amy's, to look as plain as possible. Just in case.

  She hated herself for thinking that, but it wouldn't go away.

  Her phone went, but it still wasn't from Amy – Terry was texting her again, second time that day. "Seriously, are you okay?" He was getting too pushy for Jessica's liking, even if he really was concerned. She put off replying for now.

  She was about to head downstairs when something else caught her eye. Terry had made a public post earlier, shared a message. Jessica flicked onto it.

  The words blurred together at first and didn't make sense. She had to read them twice through, and by then Jessica found her knuckles had gone white.

  Steven was a little jealous bastard, she knew that, but this – he was treating her like some possession; and Terry had taken her and pinned her for the world to see, like a bug in a bottle. Jessica read through the comments one more time, the smugness and sniping of both of them, and found her teeth had gritted so hard that her jaw was aching.

  What did those two think they were doing? Fighting over her like little children, and where everyone could see? Steven was acting as though everything he'd done last night had never happened, as if he hadn't sent her to hospital by going psycho, and even seeing his name on the screen made her skin crawl. Terry had sloughed off all his niceness and revealed himself as the wanker Amy had warned her of – and Jessica had a stab of guilt at the thought of Amy, for surely that mistaken kiss had been the least bad of the many things people were doing to her.