by Hannah West
Dark Starlight
Archaic Races Book 1
Hannah West
Copyright © 2018 Hannah West
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events in this novel are fictitious and are to be treated as such. Similarities to any organisation, event, location or person, dead or alive, is completely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work or portions thereof in any way, except as provided by law. For permission, questions or contact details please visit:
www.hannahwestauthor.net
ISBN: 1986055581
ISBN-13: 978-1986055581
DEDICATION
In memory of Grandma Julie.
Hot sadness pressing down,
Cracking fragile skin,
Dark,
Sunlight seeps in.
Summer days,
Teatime haze,
Wild grass and pretty weeds,
Framing fields and skirting trees.
Happy sigh.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, Mark for believing in me.
Thank you, Imran Siddiq for another amazing book cover. He’s got this weird ability to reach inside my brain and pluck out exactly what I want.
A massive thank you to Anne Loshuk, Nichola Miles and Gemma Ballard and Lauren West for being my beta readers. It’s a dirty job and I’m eternally grateful.
And an enormous thank you to my readers. You’re the reason I keep writing, and I’ll love you forever.
Prologue
Doctor Minting pulls a chunk of papers from a black folder and spreads them out on top of his desk. His eyebrows pinch together with each piece of paper he puts down. I’m too short to see what’s on them, so I sit tall in my seat beside Mummy to see if I can find out what’s making him frown. My eyebrows shoot up when I see my pictures.
‘These are some of the most concerning articles,’ Doctor Minting says.
Mummy leans forward to get a closer look. She studies my pictures, some in paint and others in crayon.
‘I don’t see what’s concerning about them,’ she admits.
Doctor Minting plucks a pen from the front pocket of his jacket and uses it to point at one of the pictures.
‘Black is a common indicator of a disturbed child,’ he says tracing his pen over the black paint on my picture. ‘And Primrose uses it in every creative project depicting herself.’
Mummy and Doctor Minting look at me and I stare back. I feel like I’ve done something wrong but I’m not sure what. Mummy knows about my darkness, though she’s just like everyone else in that she can’t see it like I can. She calls it my imaginary friend.
‘See how she uses black to halo herself in each picture?’ Doctor Minting says. ‘It’s why Primrose’s school suggested this consultation. Mental health is very important and we’re introducing a scheme to recognise symptoms early on. Has Primrose demonstrated any concerning behaviour?’
Mummy’s gaze slides to me then back to Doctor Minting. ‘What do you consider concerning?’
‘Well, does she tell you what the black represents in the pictures?’
‘It’s her imaginary friend,’ Mummy says.
‘This doesn’t concern you?’ the doctor asks.
‘Why would my five-year-old daughter having an imaginary friend concern me?’
Doctor Minting’s eyebrows pinch closer together. ‘Her imaginary friend is a dark presence around her.’
‘Well, when you put it like that, it does sound…odd,’ Mummy murmurs and slides another glance my way. ‘Primrose, why don’t you go play with the toys in the corner,’ she suggests.
I push from the seat beside her and go sit at the little table in the corner. There’s a box of toys and I fish through it until I find two dolls. I pretend the boy one is Drew and the girl one is me, and we’re going to the park. Behind me I hear Mummy and Doctor Minting talking. I pretend I can’t hear them, though I’m listening to every word they say. Grown-ups are stupid like that. They think because I’m sitting in the corner with toys that I can’t hear them.
‘Is Primrose’s father around?’ Doctor Minting asks.
I hold my breath at his question, knowing the subject of my daddy is a forbidden topic at home. He hurt Mummy really bad before I was born and she doesn’t like to talk about him even to me.
‘No,’ Mummy answers, tone sharp.
‘Does Primrose ever exhibit signs of aggression?’ the doctor says.
‘No,’ Mummy answers again. ‘Why, have the school said something?’
‘No, no, nothing like that,’ the doctor answers. ‘They’re simply concerned about the images she produces during creative play.’
‘I can’t believe she’s being made to endure this,’ Mummy hisses. ‘Primrose is a happy, thoughtful little girl. She’s never been aggressive towards other children and loves going to school. The fact she uses black in her artwork isn’t grounds to start finger-pointing, Doctor Minting.’
‘I’m not here to point fingers, Ms-’
‘Then what are you here for?’ Mummy demands.
I’ve never heard Mummy so angry, and I turn to look her way. She’s standing, hands pressed to the top of the desk as she leans closer to the doctor. I’ve never seen her act this way, and I feel like it’s because Doctor Minting mentioned Daddy. Mummy always gets upset when people mention him, but never this bad.
‘I just want to make sure there’s nothing untoward with your daughter’s health,’ he answers. ‘Like I said, her use of black in paintings is-’
‘Untoward?’ Mummy cuts in.
‘Yes,’ Doctor Minting answers.
‘I think it’s creative,’ she counters.
Doctor Minting blinks, like he didn’t expect Mummy to say that.
‘Ms-’
‘No,’ Mummy says and looks over at me. ‘Primrose, it’s time to go.’
I put the dolls back in the box and push from the little table. Mummy takes my hand when I reach her side and guides me to the exit. She turns as she opens the door and looks at Doctor Minting.
‘Thank you for your time, Doctor,’ she growls then leads me out.
Mummy buckles me into my car seat then sits behind the wheel and stares out the windshield. She’s breathing deep and I hear her sniff.
‘Mummy, are you okay?’
She sniffs again and wipes her face, before turning to look at me. Her eyes are red and her makeup smeared. Dark smoke rises from my skin in response and wraps me in a comforting hug. It always hugs me when Mummy is sad. I look at it shimmering like a glittery shadow around my skin, and remember the pictures Doctor Minting laid out on his desk. We had to see him because I draw the darkness around me in pictures, even though others can’t see it.
‘I’m okay, sweetheart,’ Mummy says.
‘Are you sad because of me?’
‘No, baby,’ she says. ‘Why would you ask that?’
‘Black is my favourite colour and Doctor Minting said that is a bad thing.’
Mummy shakes her head. ‘It isn’t a bad thing, Primrose. You can like whatever colour you want, okay?’
I bite my lip then ask, ‘Why did he ask about Daddy?’
Sad lines crease Mummy’s face and her eyes fill with tears. She blinks a few times then paints a pretend smile on her face. I hate that smile. Mummy hides behind it when she doesn’t want to tell the truth.
‘He shouldn’t have asked about your dad, Primrose,’ she murmurs.
‘So, you’re upset about him asking about Daddy and not because I’m not normal?’
‘You are normal,’ she says, sounding a little angry.
‘It’s not real, Primrose,’ Mum snaps.
My eyes go wide and I press into my seat. Mummy sighs, shoulders sagging. I bite my bottom lip and try not to look at the darkness flaring around me in response to her anger. It’s like a dark, glittery cloud that curls around my body. Sometimes it reaches out to touch people and sometimes I can’t see it because it sinks beneath my skin, but it’s always there. Mummy says it isn’t real, but I feel it, so how can it be pretend?
‘I’m sorry, Primrose,’ she breathes.
‘Okay,’ I whisper.
But it’s not okay.
I turn my face to look out of the window. I hear Mummy sigh before starting the car and pulling out into traffic. Mummy doesn’t believe me when I tell her my darkness is real, and I think it’s because it scares her. I think it scares my teacher at school too, which it why we had to come to see Doctor Minting. Nobody ever believes that my darkness is real and it’s never been a problem, but maybe I should stop telling people about it. If I don’t talk about it and I don’t paint it in my pictures, Mummy won’t get angry and won’t be sad.
CHAPTER 1
A raindrop splashes the top of the coffin, followed by another and another. They come faster and faster, until water is sluicing into the grave below. I feel like those raindrops, lost in the cold earth beneath my feet. The vicar’s voice drones on, reciting lines meant to bring comfort but serve as a reminder for what I’ve lost. I step from beneath the umbrella I’m sharing with Aunt Katherine. Rain drenches me in seconds, plastering blonde hair to my scalp and trailing mascara down my cheeks.
I place the rose I’ve been clutching beside the wreath atop the coffin. Blood smears my palm from the thorny stem, and I blink at the crimson staining my skin. I smooth my hand along the polished wood, thinking of Mum inside it. The ache in my middle inches wider, feeding the dark cloud around me.
A slender hand takes mine from the coffin and I meet Aunt Katherine’s gaze. Her cornflower blue eyes, the same shade as Mum’s, are bloodshot from crying. Mascara paints her face in bold stripes and her bottom lip quivers. I glance at our joined hands, where my darkness forms a complex pattern, as it weaves its way up Katherine’s arm. It opens a doorway to her emotions and my darkness glitters in response. It leaches pain and grief from her, tinged with the love she feels for me. I meet her gaze to find her tears drying and she musters a smile. My darkness has eased her pain and for that I’m grateful.
‘Come on, Prim,’ Katherine murmurs, tugging me back under her umbrella.
I let her take me to where Uncle David waits with the crowd of mourners. David and Katherine stand me between them, guarding me like sentinels. I release Aunt Katherine’s hand and stare at the coffin. The vicar speaks of committing Mum’s body to the ground and the coffin lowers. It’s hard to breathe and darkness pulses around in prickling flames. Midnight tendrils reach out to the lowering coffin, caressing the polished wood.
‘Bye, Mum,’ I whisper.
The ebony tendrils slip from the coffin and curl across the grass to me. Darkness fills me up, my flesh stinging against the writhing midnight beneath my skin. I glance down at my arm, expecting the skin to split and shadow to leak out. My darkness feels too much, like it’s grown too big for my being. It has been a part of me for as long as I can remember and it’s never done this.
Shadow creeps across my vision, the skin around my eyes tingling. The sobbing people around me grow distorted, like I’m underwater, and my heart speeds up. I suck in a breath and step from between my aunt and uncle. Sweat beads on my brow, mingling with the rain on my skin, and I curl my hands into fists. Something is clawing at my insides, like the entity in my middle wants out.
‘Prim?’ Aunt Katherine calls, concern painting her tone.
I slide the heels from my feet. ‘I need to go.’
I turn from the grave and start running. Katherine and David shout my name but I don’t stop. The darkness inside me drums an unrelenting rhythm. My skin grows tight, stretching thin, and I push on faster. My bare feet press into sodden earth, as I dodge between graves and find the path leading out from the graveyard.
I break free from the churchyard and sprint down the main road of the village. There’s nobody to stop me, everyone still standing by Mum’s grave. I burst through the front gate and skirt the side of my cottage, taking the garden path through the archway cut into the hedgerow at the bottom. The rain slows as I enter the meadow pattering to a stop by the time I reach the middle. My dress is drenched and sticks to my body, wild grass and flowers whipping at my bare legs.
I slow to a stop then drop to my knees in the mud, wildflowers brushing my shoulders. Something snaps in my middle, sending a ripple of pain out from my centre. Shadow blasts from me in an agonising wave and I scream in pain. It forms a tornado around me, funnelling upward, trapping me against the mud. I cry out and curl up in the centre of the vortex, body aching.
Minutes pass and the pain lessens, bringing fear in its wake. I don’t know what to do. The darkness is a part of me, but I’ve never been able to control it. It just does what it wants, sometimes reacting in response to my emotions. It has never acted like this, and I don’t know how to calm it down.
The midnight tornado grows stronger, rising taller, until all I can see is a circular patch of sky. It goes still and eerily quiet, and I push to my feet. I stare at the sky, blue from where the rain has receded. My hair whips around the stinging skin of my face and my heart pounds against my ribcage. The disc of sky is getting smaller, the funnel closing above. My world goes black and all I can hear is the pounding of my heart. I count ten beats before the darkness slams into me. It forces me to the ground and I lie on my front, pressed against the earth, struggling to breathe. My lungs sting with the need to take a breath, while my head swims with desperation. I close my eyes when I start to feel dizzy, then there’s nothing.
Another squirrel climbs the tree swirling up the trunk so fast it makes me smirk.
‘Primrose, what on Earth is so funny?’ Miss Mantel demands.
I cringe and look to the front of the classroom. She’s scowling at me, hands perched on her narrow hips. Fierce grey eyes glare at me over the top of her bifocals. The woman is the bane of my senior education and I dread the next two years in her class.
‘Nothing, Miss,’ I murmur.
‘Then you won’t mind continuing from where Trevor left off,’ she says.
I glance at the book in my hands and swallow. I was too busy watching the squirrel outside to listen, and don’t know where Trevor stopped reading.
‘Were you even listening?’ Miss Mantel demands, moving until she’s standing beside where I’m sitting at my desk.
‘I-’
She snatches the book from my hands before I can answer. ‘You’re not even on the right page, Primrose!’ she snarls and I cringe into my seat, skin prickling. ‘You-’
Darkness explodes from me in inky ribbons and wraps around Miss Mantel’s arm. She sucks in a breath, the book slipping from her fingers, as her eyes go wide. A wave of her frustration hits me, followed quickly by confusion, as she stares down at the book on the floor.
‘Miss Mantel?’ Isla asks from Miss Mantel’s other side.
I meet Isla’s gaze and shrug like I don’t know what’s happening, while disguising my panic. In my head I’m chanting for my darkness to retreat. Please don’t do what you did to the man on the beach. Miss Mantel might be prickly, but she doesn’t deserve his fate.
The darkness doesn’t retreat like I want. It never does. Instead it continues to take heavy pulls of Miss Mantel’s emotion, until all I feel from her is a haze of calm and confusion. The inky ribbons uncurl from her arm and join the dark aura now framing my body. Nobody reacts to it, so I pretend it’s not there and continue to stare at the teacher with the rest of the class. I’m good at pretending like this.
Miss Mantel blinks a few times then bends and retrieves my book from the floor. ‘Page thirty-nine,
Primrose,’ she says in a calm voice and goes back to the front of the class.
I stare after her in surprise for a second, along with my classmates, before thumbing to page thirty-nine and reading from the top. I don’t register any of the words I’m speaking, too wrapped up in what just happened. Did my darkness just influence her emotion? I’ve always been able to feel what others are feeling, as long as my darkness is touching them, but controlling what they’re feeling? I refrain from snorting at the notion. I don’t control anything. My darkness does whatever the hell it wants and I don’t get a say. It’s a part of me, and although it isn’t sentient in it’s own right, it seems to react on instinct, based around my wellbeing. Like with Miss Mantel just then. I was stressed because she was angry and it responded.
Like with the man on the beach that day.
I shudder and block thoughts of that day from my mind, relieved for now Miss Mantel didn’t suffer the same fate.
I blink in daylight and cough as I sit up, looking around in confusion. The dark funnel is gone, along with the immense pressure on my chest. I feel bruised all over and dirt cakes my skin. I ignore my shaking legs to push to my feet to look around. The flowers and grass surrounding me are shrivelled and black. I turn a slow circle, to find I’m standing in the centre of a blackened disk in the meadow, dead plant life crunching beneath my feet. The diameter is at least ten metres across and I feel my mouth hanging open.
My soles tingle when I crunch my way from the circle of dead plants. I look behind me, stopping in my tracks when I see the inky footprints I’m leaving in the live grass of the meadow. I lift a foot and bend to see my sole. It’s caked in mud but isn’t black. I press the same foot to a patch of fresh grass and feel the tingles surge through my sole again. There’s a perfect imprint of my foot burned into the grass when I lift it away. I bend to stroke a finger over the footprint. It’s dry and crispy, like the flowers inside the circle.