For The Night Is Dark

by Mynhardt, Joe

  “Let me go,” Stephanie said trying to pull away. “I’ve got to get back to my rounds.”

  “Stephanie you don’t work in the hospital. You’ve been stealing uniforms and posing as a nurse. You’re going to get into real trouble if you don’t stop.”

  “Lies, you’re lying, this is all my sister’s doing. First she steals you from me then she poisons your mind against me.”

  “No one stole me away from you Stephanie. You don’t have a sister. You’ve never had a sister. You’re an only child! This is all part of your delusion. It’s why you’ve got to start back on your medication. You’re a danger to yourself and . . . and . . .”

  ***

  Mike couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence, but he didn’t need to. Stephanie had proven him right. It was her own child she’d killed.

  Stephanie had a completely different life inside her now. It was time to give birth to it. The scalpels could not cut her anywhere near as deeply as the truth had. That was why the blood had shown her—so she could be ready.

  Stephanie made a fist with her left hand so the veins stood out on her wrist and bent her hand back so she could see the artery. Then she took a scalpel and made a deep incision, cutting down from the forearm towards the wrist.

  Stephanie felt a roar of joy inside her as the blood gushed out in rhythmic spurts. She took the scalpel in her left hand and repeated the process. It was more painful this time. The fingers on her left hand were numb from blood loss and she couldn’t cut so accurately.

  Stephanie felt cold, bitterly cold and empty. Coloured blotches appeared in front of her eyes and she fought dizziness.

  Stephanie picked up a longer scalpel. It wasn’t easy. Her fingers felt like balloons and were slick with escaping blood. She lifted the scalpel to her throat.

  The blood inside her carotid artery was so desperate to get out that the whole artery was throbbing and distended. Stephanie didn’t have to search for it.

  She plunged the tip of the scalpel directly into the artery and sliced down. The blood escaped in an ecstatic red spray like a fine mist.

  The flashlight flickered and finally died. Stephanie fell forward and ceased to exist.

  ***

  The new life fled Stephanie’s body like an insane notion. It pooled into a glorious red delirium as the darkness crept in and the others joined her.

  She rose up corpuscle by corpuscle into the murderous frenzy of her new self. She was slick and red and fluid and entirely without tissue or bone.

  Her eight companions were waiting to greet her. The mad murderous sisters she’d fantasised about her whole life, who had, as she’d always known, been plotting Stephanie’s downfall.

  DON’T LET THE DARK STOP YOU SHINING

  —WILLIAM MEIKLE—

  The song ran through her head every night, as it had done these past thirty years and more.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining,

  Don’t let the blackness in your soul.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining,

  Don’t let the devil catch you cold.

  In her head she always heard it in her Gran’s cracked voice; usually accompanied with a smile and a tweak on the nose. But Gran was long dead, and these days there was precious little to smile about.

  She lay on her bed, staring up at nothing.

  Don’t let the blackness in your soul, she sang softly, and sobbed. She tweaked her nose between thumb and forefinger, but it wasn’t the same.

  It’s never the same.

  Cars passed in the road outside, throwing slanting shadows on the ceiling. As they moved away the shadows clumped and darkened. When they started to whisper to her she got up. The spare-room door—the nursery, she thought, and had to catch a sob again—lay open. She closed it without looking inside, headed for the kitchen and made the first of many cups of coffee.

  Another night, same old shit.

  ***

  It had been three years since the accident. That’s how she saw it in her head, italicized, formalized, removed from reality. One day the flat had been full; of barking dog, giggling girl and grumpy husband. Then the switch had been pulled. Now there was only shadow and light, both vying for her attention, neither quite getting it.

  She spent her days at the office organizing spreadsheets, letters and phone calls.

  Another day, same old shit.

  The nights she spent mostly in avoiding sleep. The pills the doctor prescribed her had stopped being effective months ago, and booze only made her weepy and maudlin. Coffee and music were all that stood between her and despair, and the gap was narrowing every night.

  Matters came to a head at Christmas.

  She spent the day itself just walking, all alone in an empty park, trying to avoid the flat and the memories of happier times. The trees whispered to her constantly all the way round, but she had long ago learned to ignore their incriminations. She kept her head down in case anyone might consider wishing her a Merry Christmas, but there was no one but her in the park; her and the ducks that quacked at her accusingly as she passed.

  Don’t let the blackness in your soul, she sang softly to herself as she started the second lap.

  By the time she got home she thought that she might finally be tired enough to sleep. She lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. There was no traffic outside; all the families were indoors, gathered in celebration in rooms warmed with joy. There was nothing to stop the shadows gathering above her, nothing to stop them whispering.

  She was too weary to even roll out of bed. The shadows took advantage of the fact and crowded around her.

  You should have been with them.

  You should have told him not to drive too fast.

  You should have died.

  She screamed. The dark filled her mouth, poured into her throat, coated her lungs and threatened to choke her. It poured like oil into her stomach to pool and coalesce, fester and bubble. Her veins filled with it, viscous, like wet tar.

  You should have died.

  She gagged, her mouth filling with sour liquid that she was forced to swallow again. She thrashed from side to side, but the sheets had a tight hold on her and the shadow wasn’t ready to relinquish its grip just yet.

  You should have been with them.

  The scream, when it came, blew the shadows apart with its fury.

  “Do you fucking think I don’t know that already?”

  After that came tears, for the longest time.

  At two a.m. she was back in the kitchen, making coffee and listening to the Stones, turned up loud enough to mask the whispers from the bedroom that had started up again all too soon.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining, she sang softly, but she couldn’t make the magic work tonight. Even above the sound of Jagger’s wailing the whispers writhed, reminding her of her perfidy. The walls closed in on her, squeezing the shadows out of the joins of wall and ceiling. She headed for the hallway, meaning to get a jacket and head back out to the park.

  And that’s when she saw it. At first she put it down to stress; just another manifestation of the dark. But where the shadows hid, this new light illuminated. A blue shimmer showed under the door of the spare room—the nursery.

  Somebody giggled, a girlish sound, followed immediately by a thudding that she knew, just knew, was Sam, the old Labrador’s tail hitting the wooden floor in happy anticipation of going on a trip.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining, she sang.

  A male voice, a pleasing tenor she knew intimately, answered.

  Don’t let the blackness in your soul.

  She strode to the door of the nursery and threw it open. It hit the wall with a loud crash that shook the whole apartment. The room was empty . . . and dark. Shadows shifted as wind disturbed the tree outside the window. The dark whispered to her.

  You should have been with them.

  ***

  She spent the rest of the holiday season in the kitchen, the music system turned up, t
he coffee-pot always on the go, and her gaze firmly fixed in any book she could find. The shadows continued to whisper to her, but she was used to that. What she found she couldn’t stand, what felt like it might drive her completely mad, was the infrequent sound of childish giggles coming from the nursery.

  After three days she knew she had to take action. Moving out was out of the question, from both monetary and practicality viewpoints.

  Don’t let the devil catch you cold.

  “I won’t, Gran,” she whispered. “I promise.”

  She went online at first. She had only the simplest idea of what she was looking for. A search on ghostbusters only got her links to the movie and TV reality shows, and one on psychics in her area only got her palm readers and snake-oil salesmen.

  Her first port of call the morning afterward was to the local library. If the young girl at the desk had any queries about her change of reading material away from her romantic thrillers, she didn’t show it, merely stamped the books with her usual blank stare. It was obvious that the books were not the most popular; Communing with the Dead hadn’t been taken out for nearly five years, and Interviews From Beyond the Veil had never left the library since the date it was stamped, some eight years previously. But she almost burst into a run in her haste to get the rest of her chores done. There was a trail to follow; one that led to giggling girls and happier times, and she couldn’t wait to get started.

  She made a perfunctory trip to the grocer’s—milk, butter, bread and jam; about all she ate these days, then walked quickly home. She made herself a simple snack, brewed a fresh pot of coffee and then settled down in the sitting room chair to her reading. At the beginning she would look up every so often towards the nursery, expecting to hear a giggle; or for the dog’s tail to sound out a message. But after a while she got lost in the books, transported to places where ghosts were real, where the dead were given voice—a place called hope.

  She started with the thinner tome, Communing with the Dead. It began well enough, with several case studies based on people who talked to their lost ones; or rather, claimed to talk to their loved ones. For as she read, she came to the realization that she didn’t believe a word of it; none of the cases had the clear ring of truth, none gave her the frisson up and down her spine she had felt on hearing the sounds in the spare room. She started skipping pages, only stopping when she came to the second half; a set of practical instructions and visualization exercises for inducing contact. She skim read that part, promising herself that she would come back to it later if the second book did not satisfy.

  Not only did it not satisfy, it almost ended up being thrown into a corner. It was full of what her late husband would have called tripe; stories of going into the light, and green fields where choirs of angels sang, everybody was happy and no one ever had an accident.

  Even as that thought struck her, a giggle came from the nursery. She smiled

  She put her head back and closed her eyes. It was dark behind there, but her Gran helped her keep it away.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining,

  Don’t let the blackness in your soul.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining,

  Don’t let the devil catch you cold.

  ***

  She woke, stiff-necked and chilled, in a dark room. She stretched out a hand to switch on the lamp beside her chair and stopped; the shadows shifted over in the dining room and the air suddenly felt heavy, her breathing becoming rapid and labored.

  A girlish voice giggled.

  She got shakily to her feet and made her way to the door of the nursery. She ran her hand down the wood, feeling the roughness of the grain at her fingertips.

  The shadows darkened further and the door thrummed. She thought her heart might stop as the tenor voice rang out, clear as a bell.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining,

  For a minute that felt like an hour she sang along with George once more, just like old times.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining,

  Don’t let the devil catch you cold.

  Then, as quickly as it had come, the sound stopped and the apartment fell quiet.

  She stood there for a while longer until her tears subsided then went to the kitchen, returning some minutes later with coffee and a sandwich. She ate with one hand and held the book in the other, opening Communing with the Dead at the section on practical instructions.

  Those that have passed beyond often find themselves lonely, wishing to make contact with the living. There is often something; a person or a well loved trinket or a well loved room that draws them back to this plane, keeps them returning in search of old memories, of happy times. If you wish to make contact with a returning spirit, you should stay close to the place they loved most, become attached to it, and make it as much a part of your life as it was theirs. If you can bear it, talk to your lost one, as if they were present with you. And if you persevere, you will often be rewarded with an answer.

  She almost threw the book away to join the other.

  I’ve done that bit. I’ve been doing it for years.

  She persevered with it, reading ever more frustrating entries about using Ouija boards or pendulums, and instructions about how to hold a séance.

  In the end the books told her nothing she needed. She stood at the nursery door, staying there even as cold seeped into her bones, but although the shadows quivered and whispered, her family did not come back that night.

  That became the new pattern of her life, her daylight hours spent wishing away the time until night would come and her love would sing for her. It was only for a minute or so every night, and afterwards she always cried fresh tears, but she hadn’t felt so close to her George since his death.

  She took to stroking the door of the room as if its timber were somehow part of George himself, and it seemed to respond in kind, sending tingling vibrations running through her body. In the depth of the dark nights she sang the old song, her feet tapping a rhythm on the floorboards and the door thrumming in time.

  I’m close. But not close enough.

  It was as if her family was almost in touching distance, and her frustration at not being able to break through the veil between them was growing with each night that passed. She wanted more. She needed more.

  ***

  One morning, some two weeks after she first heard the giggles and singing, she came to a decision. She’d heard of it being done; seen it happen in those old horror movies that George had loved so much. If they were close enough to sing to her, then maybe, just maybe, they were close enough to be brought back completely. One thing was for sure; she wasn’t about to find what she needed in the books she’d got from the library, nor in any of the volumes on the shelves that she’d perused on her visit. Her current plan called for something more esoteric.

  That afternoon she booked an hour on the computer in the library. She settled down to searching for what she was after. It felt like George was at her shoulder the whole time, whispering in her ear. Her free hand stroked the wood of the table as she surfed, and in her head she heard him sing, ever louder as she got closer to her goal.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining,

  The song in her head reached a crescendo as she reached a page deep in a history of alchemical text. The Concordances of the Twelve Serpents.

  Ye Twelve Concordances of ye Red Serpent. In wch is succinctly and methodically handled, ae mefhod for ye reffurection of ye recently dead; and, the better to attaine to the originall and true meanes of perfection, inriched with Figures representing the proper colours to lyfe as they successively appere in the practise of this blessed worke.

  There were many legends associated with the book, but the thing that drew her to it most was the illustrations, and one in particular. CALX was the heading. The picture showed a young man, bound to a mast of a burning ship. He was smiling.

  He had George’s face.

  Accompanying the illustration was a set of precise ins
tructions. It took her the rest of the hour to copy them down to a notepad in her firm precise handwriting, but she was singing inside as she left the library.

  Don’t let the dark stop you shining,

  ***

  Sourcing the ingredients proved to be a problem. Mementoes of the deceased were the easy part; procuring the hand of a dead murderer proved more difficult.

  But not impossible.

  It seemed that anything was available, for a price. It cost her almost all of her meagre savings, and when it was delivered she took one look at it then hid it away until she needed it. The scented candles were likewise exotic, but she finally tracked them down in an Asian shop. The last thing to arrive was the Holy Water from Rome. Neither of them had ever taken much time for religion, and certainly not the Roman variety, but the recipe in the book called for it, and she always followed recipes.

  Her frustration grew while waiting for all the ingredients to finally arrive, but it seemed that her family knew what she planned. Every night they sang for her, just a few bars, but enough that she knew she was doing the right thing. She spent the nights memorizing the words and actions she was going to need when the time came. That was something she knew how to do. It was almost like doing her multiplication tables back in school, with the same sing-song chanting rhythm to it. But this had a far different purpose.

  On the day the Holy Water arrived the nursery door had been thrumming almost constantly in anticipation, her stomach roiling and seething in time.

  Tonight. I will do it tonight.

  ***

  The preparations did not take long. She started by drawing a circle of chalk, taking care never to smudge the line as she navigated her way around the nursery. Beyond this she rubbed a broken garlic clove in a second circle around the first.

  When this was done, she took the small jar of Holy Water and went round the circle again just inside the line of chalk, leaving a wet trail that dried quickly behind her. Within this inner circle she made her pentacle using the signs laid out in The Concordances, and joined each sign most carefully to the edges of the lines she had already made. Finally the pentacle was done and she was able to stand.