Dark Places

by Shaun Allan

  The melody quietened briefly, as if considering an answer. The figure of the house remained and I felt an indecisive confirmation, like whatever it was couldn’t quite put into words, or pictures, what it was trying to say. I suddenly felt a pressing sense of impatience and the house itself shook – a rumble rising from its foundations.

  As if someone was slowly turning up a volume control, the song, my name and untold other noises grew in number and degree as the river again became a deluge. Whatever was holding me and showing me these images and sounds had passed the point of trying to do it gradually. I suddenly felt like a baseball hit to a home run. My senses were overwhelmed as the house practically screamed at me.

  At first I couldn’t make any sense of what I was being shown. Images overlapped and blurred into each other at an astonishing rate, and the voices, music and other sounds merged into a solid block of noise. I could feel my body shaking in the house’s vice-like grip. Then, I don’t know whether the onslaught subsided to some extent, but I began to be able to pick out the odd scene and sound. Some were linked, but most were a jumbled mass until, gradually, they seemed to level out – to reach a plateau of some sort and I could finally understand them.

  As my grasp resolved, the display returned to the beginning.

  I was shown the house. I was shown its history. I was shown the true nature of the wolves and why I was now dead. I was shown the future.

  The house was a force. That was the closest term I could relate to. It was more than alive and still not precisely living. It had consciousness but not thought. It didn’t have true shape but, needing physical form, had ‘become’ the house. A building conformed to the current nature of Man. A building would be safe.

  Previously, for an aeon, it had been a vast oak, twice the height of the house with sweeping branches half again the length of the fence. It had filled this cove in the coastline of the Moors. Before that, for longer than could be measured, it had been a huge block of stone, a massive obelisk that looked carelessly dropped by the same child that had tossed my corpse into the cellar. Its shape had changed with time, as Man had changed. The enormous mass of rock had become the oak when Man had fashioned the tool. It had become the cottage when Man had abandoned his respect of nature, favouring material possessions.

  It did this because it needed to be… indefinite. It had to last a lifetime – not the lifetime of one person, but the lifetime of the world. It was a barrier, a boundary between what I had to call ‘my’ world, and another, much darker, world. This wasn’t, from what I could discern, anything like a different dimension. I didn’t have the lead role in some sort of science fiction film, however much I might wish I had. This other ‘world’ was more a different aspect or facet of mine. It was a shadowy domain of demons and terror.

  The force that held me prevented the two from converging. That was why the demons, which I finally understood the crimson eyed wolves to be, beat against the back door. They were trying to break down the barrier – to gain access to that which was forbidden them. If they succeeded, well, I was shown that too.

  The demons didn’t care whether their victims were alive or dead, real or a ghost. It was simply prey.

  They would tear a person apart if they were living, and then do the same to their spirit. My arm had been an insignificant example of this. I was, in part, protected in here. Outside, and without the protection of the house, I would no longer exist, ghost or otherwise – I could, it seemed, die twice. The demons didn’t discriminate between people or animals – in fact, anything living was prey.

  And it wasn’t a hunger for them. They didn’t attack, maim and kill absolutely, out of some instinctive desire for survival. The demon horde, thousands upon thousands of the lupine beasts, killed because they could. The living couldn’t see them, and were torn asunder by an unseen monster. For the dead, it was much worse. The dead had no defence. The dead could see their attacker. The dead could die.

  “Why me?” I asked. What could I do? I was a phantom now. Even if that wasn’t the case, I was defenceless.

  Then that, too, was revealed.

  The house – the force that bound me – knew the reason I had come here. It had seen that I (or the Company I worked for) sought to develop this land, and that meant its destruction. There was no way it could allow that. It hadn’t, I knew, killed me out of spite or retribution – it had done so because it needed me to know. The development had to be stopped and the only way it could warn me was for me to die.

  It was absurd. It was so obviously absurd. I could laugh if I wasn’t so totally horrified.

  It thought I could help. It believed, if I knew, I could stop the work. It thought I could help.

  It didn’t understand that, as a ghost, I was near useless. I could feel its confusion. I tried to explain that the people who would come wouldn’t be able to see or hear me. I could stop them no better than I could stand in the way of the demons.

  The house began to shudder. A booming growl shook the walls and broke the spell I was under. The house released me and I fell back into the room. I looked about me and realised the vibrations were not coming from the walls. The ground itself was shaking. I ran to the window.

  I banged against the glass. I shouted until I was hoarse. I waved my hands frantically.

  It was useless.

  The driver of the bulldozer was Tom. I knew him well. I’d been to his daughter’s christening only three months previously. Her name was Kia and she was the spitting image of her mother, Tom’s wife Diane.

  I could see, wandering around with his mobile phone permanently attached to his ear as usual, the foreman. Chris was a nice guy, if a little absent-minded. He was single, but had twin sons, Chris Junior and Jack (or John, I couldn’t quite remember). He saw them at the weekends.

  I dropped my arms to my sides. I closed my mouth. I stood and stared silently as Tom drove the bulldozer at the fence, crushing it like paper.

  He didn’t slow as the house groaned its despair.

  He didn’t slow as, beyond the back door, thousands of demons, vaguely wolfish with crimson slashes for eyes and claws and faces that were almost human, bayed in guttural delight.

  The howls and snarls increased in volume and ferocity as the bulldozer neared the house.

  Chris had, for about the first time since I’d known him, put away his phone. His large team of workmen surrounded him. Various items of plant machinery and vehicles dotted the fields behind them. Half a dozen or so steel frameworks had already been erected, creating a spider-like village of metal.

  Chris and his men looked on as Tom, who drank 2 pints of bitter every Friday night and simply loved fish and chips, drove his bulldozer into the front of the small, ramshackle, run down old house that no-one owned or really even cared about.

  The demons, I realised, had fallen silent.

  They were waiting.

  Feel

  I don't feel angry at what you did to me.

  The rage has gone, the fury past,

  The hatred just a sad, sad memory,

  I don't feel angry.

  I don't feel glad for what you left with me,

  The scars that shadow the deepest cuts,

  The twisted echo of what was my heart,

  I can't feel glad that you tore me apart.

  I don't feel sad that you're no longer close to me,

  That I won't feel your presence in the dark,

  That I won't have your smile, your eyes, your arms,

  I won't feel sad.

  Can't you see what is left of me?

  Don't you know what you have done?

  Won't you see what my smiles conceal,

  That now you have gone

  I won't, can't, don't feel.

  I just don't feel.

  The Silence

  Modified Radical Mastoidectomy.

  Trying saying that with a mouth full of Maltesers after five pints of vodka. Bet you can't.

  My ears are knackered. That's the deal. A def
ect from when I was born that meant the canals joining all my nasally-ear bits together decided they didn't want to grow past me being 3 years old.

  This will sort it all out. After a life of infections and partial hearing, I'll have a little less hearing but no infections. Well, half the time I don't particularly want to hear what people say anyway. I much prefer to be lost in my books. Escaping to worlds and lives far removed from my humdrum existence.

  Sometimes I wish I could sail along the canals that I'm having repaired, perhaps on a Venetian gondola - they do, after all, feel like they're full of water half the time.

  I'm going down to theatre in a few minutes. They're coming to take me away, ha-ha. The line will be going in and I'll be off to sleepy-byes...

  * * *

  Wha...? Where...?

  Oh. That's right. I'm in hospital. There's a huge pressure on my head. Bandages are wrapped around me. They're covering my eyes too. I was expecting some padding over my ears, but not this. Surely it's overkill? I panic for a moment, but soothing hands pat my own, stroke my arms.

  Calm down, they're reassuring me. It's ok.

  I suppose it is. I should have asked about it, really. Not assumed. Saying that, maybe they should have told me. Either way, it is too late now. I am a mummy - or at least my head is. Part of the walking dead. Ancient beyond words and twice as crumbly.

  Well, I can't see so at least I can entertain myself with silly thoughts. I picture myself walking around, arms outstretched, groaning - just my head swathed but the rest of my body joining in the fun.

  I can't hear anything. I expected that. At first, at least. There would be swelling, internally and externally. It would be a day or two before sounds would seep in. But the pain and the headaches and the constant infections would be gone.

  I could handle a couple of days of deafness for that.

  It's not fun when you're being fed and you can neither see nor hear. The nurse's fingers (I assume it's a nurse and not some random person stalking the halls of the hospital shovelling food into patients mouths) are tapping my mouth for me to open it for the spoon. I don't like tomato soup and I've tried to say as much. They're still feeding it to me, though. I feel like a baby being weaned.

  Maybe I am. Just missing the nappy.

  * * *

  The bandages are coming off. Finally. I didn't expect it to take three days but perhaps I haven't healed as fast as they'd hoped. I think it's been three days, anyway. I've slept at odd times. When you're surrounded by the night, it's hard to know when it's actually day.

  I feel like I've been carrying someone on my shoulder for too long, and they've just climbed down. As the bandages come off, I feel like I'm floating. I'm levitating off the bed and they'd best watch out before I drift out of the window.

  I know to be careful. Three days of darkness means I must take it slowly opening my eyes. I do. Easy does it. A crack at first. Blinking. Oh, it hurts. Even though it appears to be evening, it's a vast contrast to blindness. Still, it's good to be able to see again.

  Blurry shapes. Figures. A face, I think. Yes. A face, closing in. Smiling. The doctor. My vision is clearing. That's better.

  I smile back.

  The doctor's mouth is moving, but I can't hear anything. Perhaps I still have padding over my ears. I can still feel the bandages around my face, even though they're not there. I reach up to my ears.

  Nothing there.

  I frown. I should be able to hear something, shouldn't I? Not as much, I know, but something?

  I say that I can't hear anything. I don't know if I shout it or not. Tough if I do, really. Even my own voice betrays me - it isn't echoing inside my head. Has the silence snatched it away? Eloped in the night for a frantic shotgun wedding at Gretna Green? Or Vegas if they can afford the flights?

  The doctor is frowning. He says something to me. I have no idea what and he seems not to realise that I need to be able to hear to be able to hear him. He leaves the room. I assume he is going to investigate, though my ears are in here, with me. Attached to my head as they always have been.

  I'm ok. No need to panic. Maybe the swelling is still too much. The sounds can't squeeze through the gap to play tom-tom on my inner ear.

  A whisper. I'm sure I hear a whisper.

  I turn my head. It is coming from my left. There's nothing there. Only the shadows as the light fades. There is only the lamp above my bed to shed any light in the room. The door is closed and lets in barely a glimmer through the frosted glass.

  My imagination is playing tricks on me. I want to hear so much, I'm having phantom sounds, much like if I'd lost a limb. My attention returns to the door. The doctor will be back in a moment.

  Movement. Like a slither. A smooth sound. On the floor. I lean over, half expecting to see snakes crawling out from beneath my bed. There is nothing. Only a deepening darkness.

  I cough, deliberately, to see if any part of it manages to invade my head and prove to myself that I am not hearing things.

  Perhaps I'm mute too. I've been blind and deaf, so third time is the charm.

  But I know I'm not. I can feel the vibration of my voice in my throat. I know it is there, hanging in the air before my face, pulling a moony at me.

  The whisper again. It's on the left. No the right. Directly in front of me.

  But nothing is there. I can see only shadows.

  Off to one side is the television. It's on a long arm that allows it to be pulled over the bed. I do so and press the button to switch it on. After a brief advertisement encouraging me to buy credit to call the outside world or add more channels, a program appears. It's a soap. I don't watch soap operas, feeling that life is easily more entertaining in all its many colours. I leave it, though. It sheds a little luminosity. There's sound, of course, but it is currently redundant.

  The television is actually making me more nervous. The flickering glow is causing the shadows to dance on the periphery of my vision.

  Again I hear the whisper. It's not in my head. I know it's not. It's real. The mouths on the actors move, but nothing is coming out. I press the Volume Up button. Still, an absence of noise.

  Except for that whisper.

  And the slither.

  My heart leaps as the door opens and the doctor returns. He's holding a folder. My notes. He says something to me again then finally gets the point when I shake my head.

  He pulls out a pen and writes on the folder, showing it to me.

  "Not sure of problem. Should have worked. Probably swelling. Will fix. Don't worry"

  The whisper. Not just an indistinct murmur now.

 

  It is coming from everywhere. Where there are shadows there is sound. Where there is light, only silence.

  I take his hand, gripping the wrist.

  Let me out, I plead. I can hear sounds. Not voices, just... sounds.

  He nods and smiles. A thumbs up. Then he leaves.

  NO! Not those sounds! Come back!

 

  A pause. I stare into the shadows. They stare back at me.

 

  You

  I wanted your world in the palm of my hand,

  I wanted your life to be mine on demand,

  I thought you needed my every movement,

  My breath and my taste and my sense.

  It was so easy to say it was me and not you,

  So easy to doubt, so easy to hate,

  So easy to accept what I did to you,

  So easy to say it was fate.

  But it wasn't, was it? It's not gone as we said,

  If it was, I wouldn't feel like crying, like dying,

  At the emptiness in my bed and my head.

  I thought I was the best that you'd had,

  My ego, my arrogance,

  You turned it around.

  Now that I'm falling, my folly I've learned,

  I dream that I'm hitting the ground.

  No-one can touch me, no-one c
an get in.

  I'm my own succour, it's myself I believe in.

  Need is no part of me, there's no room in my heart,

  So why does the thought of you tear me apart?

  The Glass

  She looked deep into the mirror, wondering...

  The wrinkles. Are they really as bad as they look? Laughter lines, surely, though she couldn't remember anything being THAT funny. The hair. A little tug here, a little push there. Thankful that red hair doesn't really go grey. A pout of the lips, the two cigarettes a day not enough to make the pout look like a crater, all ridged and rough.

  The ear rings. A bit too much, really. She never, ever wore large hoops like that usually. She didn't even know why she had them in today. Why not? The same reason she wore the simple white training shoes instead of the heels. The jogging suit rather than the black trousers or skinny jeans she favoured.

  Dress Down Day. She tried to have one every month, a cure for the chaos of her life. Work, no rest and very little play. Without her DDDs, she felt she'd go insane. A break. A breath. Chance to scratch her behind without feeling she was wiping everyone else's.

  So. Why not the hoops. A little much, but still, not the small plain studs she felt she was required to wear.

  Some habits were hard to break. The hair for example. She regarded herself in the mirror. It was just too set. Too right. With a sigh she pulled the grips holding the perfect bun in place.

  "Stop it," she muttered to herself. "Dress DOWN day!"

  She smiled. She had a pretty smile, she thought. Her eyes still sparkled at the rise of her mouth, just as they did a good twenty years or so before. She'd never lost the sparkle.

  She picked up an elastic hair bobble from the dressing table by her side and scooped her hair back. A simple pony tail. Why not.

  "You'll do," she told her mirror-self.

  She turned and walked to the door, picking up her phone on the way. It was also her mp3 players and library, thanks to the music and eReader apps she'd installed. A run, a read and a relax. Perfect for a Triple D.