Then there was a bump as Aiko came back.
‘Matt-chan,’ she wailed. ‘Can’t we please keep that window closed? I have to be up early to cycle to work.’
Matt glanced round. ‘I . . . sorry, did I open it?’ he asked, confused.
Aiko closed it with a thump and scrambled back into bed.
Throughout the night, the lights of the signal flashed to red, then to an almost invisible yellow against the general glow of London, then to green for go, sometimes followed by a low rumble as something passed by below their window. It was a sound that drifted through Matt’s mind as he faded down to sleep almost like the wash of waves on a beach.
***
Next morning he sleepily watched her scramble out from between the sheets, her small body white-grey in the dim light, her black hair almost invisible.
‘Fakking dark,’ she muttered, fumbling for her clothes. She dressed, carefully avoiding the curtainless window, rattled around in the tiny kitchen for a few minutes then left the flat, closing the door behind her. His imagination affectionately followed her downwards and out into the dawn, heading for her bicycle and then off to work through the quiet streets.
He rolled over and smiled, then forced himself to sit up. There was a lot to do. Boxes still needed attending to—the most important were the ones containing his small artworks and created objects of various kinds. These needed to be back up for sale or auction again as soon as possible—a small but valuable extra income. So until well after mid-day was a spiral of sorting out; he was alternately deep in boxes and fiddling with websites at his computer. Stashing things in cupboards and other boxes, WYSIWYG HTML and awkward auction listing pages. It was a relief to finally reach a natural break, slam the cupboard door with expressive force and open the window. He leaned out, taking in the vertical, old-brick-and-glass city around him with a calm-down sigh, a breath as long as the train passing below. A long-distance train, right to left, sloping nose and simmering diesel engines, the massive power of the vehicle reigned in to an almost tranquil roll over the metal tracks as it approached the terminus hidden somewhere deeper in the buildings. The pale sun was behind the building now, casting a big block-like shadow across the tracks and beyond. He smiled a small smile. This was London. In some ways it was a magical place where everything seemed possible and anything could be waiting round the next corner. In other ways, it was a stinking trap out to get both your body and your soul. And what was life but some kind of avalanche of attempted survival?
The train vanished, carrying its load of people into the terminus, and he stepped back into the apartment. It was very dark in here, even now at mid-day, and he reached for the light switch. The apartment was so deep down in the city canyons that the shadow seemed eternal. That was just something he was going to have to get used to.
There was no appeal in going back to the boxes, so he started checking the storage space instead, poking around in their new home’s nooks and crannies. Surveying and analysing. What to go where, where to put what? Interestingly, some of the cupboards were not quite empty. A few things had been missed by the landlady’s unfriendly cleaning team and he found himself hauling them out and browsing through them with interest. There were a few items of crockery—just basic life-accumulated mugs and glasses—an ornament or two, a couple of novels by authors he had never heard of, a few indefinable pieces of cloth . . . and then something else. Shoved almost out of sight at the back of one dark space was a different kind of book. He opened it curiously. It was a simple, cheap hardback journal and it was filled with sketches and handwriting that looked very familiar.
Feather.
As he turned page after page, it gave him a slight prickle to realise that he was looking at the work of a dead girl. The art was beautiful, complex and delicate, little sketches with an innocent yet confident roughness about them, detailed diagrams that he couldn’t begin to understand, pages of densely written text, more pages of numbers and equations. Feather the scientist? These were interspersed with a handful of sketches that were delicately romantic and sometimes very sexually explicit—maths and porn forming a strange blend. Carefully-drawn anatomy and figures engaged in various fun acts, laid out with great precision, and with accompanying notes.
It’s style reminded him a little of Henry Darger, though with a fixation on the wispy adult rather than the semi-mythological child.
This was Feather’s book and as he scanned through it he found himself more mystified and intrigued. Her death was a totally meaningless conjunction in a busy London street, her life a blank beyond the traces she had left in this room and on these pages. In a way, it was extraordinarily poignant, this seemingly private glimpse of a person unclouded by the need to put on a performance for the world, to pretend that some things didn’t matter and some things did. Who on earth was she? Was she a recognised artist? Or was she another of those outsider souls whose creativity blossomed in complete darkness, seen by no one except maybe a few close acquaintances. Outsider art was something he had always loved and felt close to, maybe because it was a form of art with no money attached to it, which was in agreeable contrast to his own continual creative grubbing for the next few quid. Art and money really didn’t mix—never ever and ever—and there was a glorious freedom in the thought of creating in complete isolation from the commercial, like Henry Darger, or Alexander Lobanov, or Miroslav Tichý, or Judith Scott had done. And when you saw the curious and wondrous worlds that were created by these most innocent of artists, it was suddenly less easy to define just what was real and what wasn’t, to define on what sense and level of reality some event might be taking place.
A few pages later, the book fell open with unexpected ease, revealing a sequence of pasted-in photographs that sent a prickle across his skin. A serious-eyed girl with brown hair staring into the camera lens in what were obviously self-shots. He stared at them, trying to work out why there was the faintest of faint ghost of a feeling that he had seen her before.
‘The sun never shines here’, he read, and smiled. That was true enough. ‘I have moved into a dark place, but that is okay. One day, the light will come. And in the meantime, I don’t mind the dark.’
He turned a few more pages, skipping through a lot of numbers that he didn’t understand. Then he was confronted by a complex diagram that he did recognise—it had to be a representation of the apartment. Lines and arrows crossed, some carefully drawn with a ruler, some quick and scribbled, passing back and forth around rooms and from room to room. He glanced vaguely round, but could see nothing on the walls or floor that the lines could represent except for the window, carefully labelled. The page opposite was full of more text, but that appeared to have no relevance.
Down the road is a small supermarket—Turkish I think—filled with baklava and beef sausages and curious fruit. This food needs sunlight and it tastes weird in my dark flat. I wonder what kind of food is most appropriate? Some rich dark soup maybe, or roast duck with spices? Or food from Scandinavia or Iceland where the sun never rises for months on end. I must find some recipes. There is a pair of young people in that Turkish shop whose eyes follow the weather. When it is bright they seem bright and when it is overcast and shadowy, they are also plunged into gloom. I think they are lovers. Though always dour, when they talk the sun rises a little in their eyes. I presume they are unlike me; I am so used to the dark and the grey. I wish I could bring them back here, show them that the dark isn’t always bad. But would they understand me?
There was a bang outside in the hallway and he flinched, then glanced at his watch. It was later than he thought. Aiko came in and collapsed dramatically face down on the bed with a huge sigh. He closed the book and looked around the flat with a twinge of guilt.
‘That fakking road,’ she muttered.
‘Hmm?’
‘The High Street. And now I have to cycle down it every day. It’s so busy!’
She gave him a wan look.
‘When will the glamorous days come, Matt-c
han?’
He gave a sympathetic smile.
‘At least no work tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ he murmured, sitting down beside her and rubbing her back where he knew she liked it. ‘I haven’t started cooking anything. I got distracted.’
‘Oh don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Let’s just order something. The plates are still in the boxes anyway, right?’
‘Okay then,’ he said.
‘This flat is still dark,’ she added. ‘Does it never light up at all?’
‘Too many shadows out there,’ he said. He smiled. ‘I think we have moved into a dark place.’
‘Sleeping in the walls of canyons, sleeping down the well,’ she sang to a tune of her own, before drifting away into a muddle of formless humming. ‘Did you order curtains?’ she asked.
‘No, not yet.’
She frowned. Matt coughed. ‘You had better help me choose. We could sort it now if you want?’
Aiko gave a sigh and rolled over.
‘After dinner,’ she said. ‘I am wrecked.’
She sat up and jabbed the CD player. Quiet J-pop filled the room— high-pitched fluting voices supported by synthetic music that sounded as though it was played on candy. Then she turned to the computer. ‘What do you like?’
‘Hmm?’
‘For dinner?’
He gave a sigh. His stomach didn’t seem particularly excited by any of the usual fast food candidates. Kebab was too prickly, Chinese too circular. Pizza too heavy and cubic. And fried chicken just the usual unpredictable formless blob. Not appetising.
‘Come on Matt-chan,’ she said with a giggle. ‘Make up your mind. Or shall I order noodles again? Udon noodles for the new house—you know that’s traditional?’
‘Surprise me,’ he said with a smile, picking up the sketchbook again. She gave a mischievous grin.
‘In London that’s not so hard,’ she said, ducking down to the computer screen and clicking through the web pages. ‘Battered frog’s legs perhaps?’ she asked. ‘Goat curry? Jellyfish salad? It’s all here.’
Matt shrugged and grinned.
‘If you fancy,’ he said, turning the pages, looking for that mysterious diagram of the apartment and the numbers and equations that preceded it.
On the 25th, the light will come, he read. I am excited—I think I am right. In the months I have been here I have missed the light. Dec. will reach 13.19.
‘Okay, ordered it,’ she said, interrupting.
‘Ordered what?’ he asked, surfacing abruptly.
‘You’ll see. I will just run into the shower. Watch for the door.’
He nodded. The light will come, he read again and frowned in puzzlement. That was a very blunt and precise statement. Light = lamp delivery, religious experience, enlightenment, sunlight. But surely those didn’t need pages of scientific-looking measurements and calculations to work out. The diagrams meant little to him and he was still frowning over them when Aiko came dripping back into the room, rubbing herself dry. She peered out of the window for a moment, staring down at the darkening tracks and glaring signal-light, then sat down at the computer again.
‘Your turn,’ she said.
‘Mm?’
‘Shower. The room is nice and warm and you should be clean.’
She nodded primly, then grinned, and Matt swallowed his reluctance, put the book down and tramped through to the bathroom. He flicked the light on, but even as he did so, he registered a glowing square on the wall. It was startlingly tall, reaching from the floor, all the way up and round onto the ceiling at one corner. Out of sheer curiosity he switched the light off and looked at it, then opened the frosted window. The city was full of lights but he couldn’t tell which was making this. It could be more than one, given its size.
He shrugged it off, switched the light on again and took his shower as fast as possible, the water helping to clear the fustiness of an entire day spent indoors. Back in the living room he found Aiko unpacking trays and packets from a warm-looking white bag. He grabbed the book and sat down with her. What did it mean? The 25th? There was a date on the journal entry, 3rd May 2013. He realised with a certain shock that the entry was less than a month old. Was it the 25th of May? What day was it today? He wasn’t sure, but he thought the 25th was still to come. That gave him a strange sensation, a mix of poignancy and a prickle of unease. The dead girl Feather had an appointment of some kind.
And what the hell did Dec. mean?
‘Matt-chan?’ Aiko interrupted, and he reluctantly put the book down. He would have to check that term on the computer after dinner.
***
He was not there in this dream, he knew that. Later, he would try to work out just how normal or unusual that was and not really come to any conclusions—but now this was just her, alone as she was so often in this apartment, completely white-naked. She twirled round it, moving with the unselfconsciousness of one not being observed. She didn’t care how she moved or what she looked like, and the result was a kind of primal simplicity.
That was how it appeared at first. But then he realised that there were no curtains, that she might not be as unobserved as it first appeared. Outside the window he could see more windows. The girl moved carelessly towards it. If she was putting on a performance, it wasn’t one of posturing and glamour. She stood there and moved gently, white and very simple. She was dancing, he realised, a complex, performance-art kind of motion with her arms, her entire body swaying slinkily. Outside, a train passed on the far track, left to right, a beast of gleaming metal seeming even more substantial in this dream-state. He watched her reach out to it almost with longing. Windows processed by, and he wondered if they could see her—whether any of the people passing noticed this spectacle of a naked girl dancing for them in her one small window among many.
Matt turned over restlessly, half-awake but still dreaming. Attempting to find himself in all this, he reached out to touch the girl’s shoulder, motive uncertain, but the only result was that the whole thing drained away. The rumble of the audience train became a real rumble passing outside in the dark. He woke up to the familiar glow of London. It seemed to be everywhere. He hoped the curtains would arrive soon, because this was like sleeping in some weird light sculpture.
He realised the patterns were changing. He jolted into a higher plain of wakefulness and stared in amazement. The colour shifted subtly—different shades of white and orange. The angle also appeared to change and move, casting a ray into the bedroom that crawled across the floor a moment before changing again, this time into a diffuse glow. It was as though different sources of light were being switched on, moved and switched off in some sequence. He tried to work out how light cast in from outside could achieve this. It came with an unearthly feeling that froze his skin—a sense of the eerie—and he realised that he was actually frightened. The silence seemed absolute. There was no sound anywhere, no traffic outside, no train anywhere near, no sirens, no wind. Just this silent light show.
The light changed again, another ray crawling across the floor and up the wall towards him, expanding as it moved. Almost without thinking, he shifted out of the way, not wanting to be touched by it. Then it winked out, shifting again to a diffuse illumination from the doorway that slowly changed colour.
He abruptly jumped out of bed and ran into the hall. There was nothing to see, just the usual familiar apartment and the glow from the windows in the kitchen. A low rumble made him pause, his skin prickling again, but it was only a freight train approaching in the distance, right to left, cutting the silence. He exhaled with relief and paced back to bed.
‘Matt-chan?’ Aiko murmured, barely awake.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispered. ‘Go back to sleep.
***
‘When’s the 25th?’ he asked next morning.
‘Tomorrow,’ Aiko said casually. ‘I know that because it is not my day off.’
‘Ah . . .’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
/>
Aiko gave him a puzzled look. He returned to working on his collages —alt-glam photo prints of Aiko supplemented with select debris and rubbish from where the picture had been taken: brick, gravel, mess, all spray-painted into a nice grungy whole and framed in rough wood. He thoughtfully pasted a miniature road sign in there—just a laminated ‘road narrows’ warning, which seemed to match her posed body rather well—then set it aside to dry. These were quick, simple things with a certain carefully cultivated aesthetic that could be sold for a handful of pounds on various online communities and auction sites—hardly great art. Hardly—the thought nagged at the back of his mind, like the sketchbook. It seemed years since he had created anything for its own sake and without some kind of commercial agenda. Last night’s light show also lingered in his mind. Often he would find himself pausing, his art blurring as his mind wandered back to the way the light had crawled across the floor towards him, and the sense of fear and even revulsion that it had evoked. Matt was not used to thinking the thoughts that were now prickling at his brain or feeling the confusion and uncertainty that swirled within him. The explanation that it was just some stray reflection from outside didn’t quite seem enough to dispel the crazy notion that there was something wrong—that some of the lights and reflections cast were impossible.
Mentally plotting the movement of light in darkness quickly brought Feather’s diagram back into his mind—the intricate spiderweb of lines running through the apartment. Could she have been wondering the exact same thing? As soon as the current artwork was finished, he picked up the sketchbook again and leafed through the drawings, looking for the right page. Aiko leaned over his shoulder and studied first the small, framed collage and then the diagram with a puzzled frown. ‘Nanidesu ka?’ she asked.
‘It’s here,’ he said helplessly waving round the room. ‘This apartment. But I don’t have a clue what it all means.’
Strange Tales V Page 17