Sixty-One Nails cotf-1

by Mike Shevdon

  The note I wrote to Kath reiterated what I had told her earlier and explained that I didn't know when I'd be able to make good on maintenance. I sent her the card for my savings account and then sent the code in a separate envelope, telling her to use it to support them both until I got back in touch. That would probably scare her more than anything else.

  Then I cracked open another beer and sat at the kitchen table, looking at the paltry three envelopes containing anything of significance in my life. The whole process had depressed me. I just wanted to go to bed and sleep but my conscience nagged at me until I went through the whole flat again, finding nothing new this time, and finally came back to the kitchen empty-handed.

  Taking stamps from one of the drawers, I split them between the packages, assuming it would be plenty of postage to get them where they needed to go. I didn't put a return address on any of them. I put on the raincoat and, loading the parcels into a plastic carrier bag, walked back out to the strip of shops around the tube station. I had some trouble getting the envelopes into the postbox, but with some shifting and shoving they eventually dropped down inside. At the cash machine I took out all the money from my current account that my card would let me have so my wallet bulged with it.

  There, it was done.

  Rain spotted onto the darkened pavement, adding its mood to mine. By the time I got back to the flat I was beyond playing hide and seek and simply locked and bolted the door behind me, climbed the stairs and stood in the hallway of the empty flat. I left the damp coat draped over the back of the kitchen chair and went into the bathroom where I stripped off and stood under the shower, letting the hot water wash away the dust and sweat. I had hoped I would feel better after a shower, but I felt hollow, as if it were my life that had washed down the drain.

  I packed my wash-gear into a small bag to add to my rucksack after I had showered in the morning and went around the flat turning the lights off. I finally fell naked into bed, dragged the quilt over me and lay in the dark.

  Now I was finally able to rest, sleep wouldn't come. I turned the light on and set the alarm for 6am then turned off the light again. I shifted position and tried to relax, knowing that tomorrow would be no easier than today. Shattered thoughts of the day kept wheedling into my brain, pushing aside the sleep I badly needed. Kareesh had said I would sleep well, proving she didn't know everything.

  Thoughts of Kareesh brought back fragments of images from the vision with momentary nausea and a dull headache. Oddly the sensation helped to ground me after the strangeness of the day, making it more real.

  I rolled and tossed, tangling the quilt around my legs, unable to get comfortable. I felt feverish, too hot with the quilt over me and too cold without it. Flashes of the vision kept jerking me out of slumber. Eventually I fell into sleep, but it wasn't restful.

  I found myself walking under a starlit sky. The grass under my bare feet was frosted and brittle, though it wasn't cold. Evergreen trees encroached all around the crown of the hill on which I stood and although there was no moon I could still see the shadows of the branches etched in stark outline onto the grass. There was no wind and the stars were hard and bright against the black of the sky. All was silent.

  There was something in the forest. In the dense shadows at the edge of the trees, something was trying to get closer without being seen. I spun around, trying to catch a glimpse of it as it moved. There were only still shadows across the grass. I started to move down the side of the hill, convinced that once I was unable to see beyond the crest, it would slide, unseen, out from under the trees.

  I woke with a start, sweating, the dream hanging over into the waking dark. I knew it was much later because the background city sounds, omnipresent even in the outer suburbs of London, had died down to the minimum. The alarm clock confirmed that it was close to 4am. My bladder told me the beer had followed its natural course and I got up in the chilly darkness, still half asleep, finding my way by faint moonlight out to the bathroom to relieve myself. I shook my head to rid myself of the remnants of the dream, flushed the toilet and headed back to bed.

  As I reached the bedroom, I stopped. The moonlight in the room was moving. I jumped back, expecting something to leap out from behind the door, but everything remained quiet. I glanced at the window, wondering if I had absentmindedly left the curtains apart, but they were pulled tight. Strangely, the light was on the inside of the curtains.

  My heart was beating fast now and I was wide awake. The unseen pursuit of my dream came back to me and I strained to see what was causing the shifting light. Cold sweat condensed down my back as I tensed, waiting for it to jump out.

  But now I looked, the light was with me in the doorway. It was following me around. I went hesitantly back into the bedroom, observing that the strange luminescence accompanied me, falling on the back of the door as I pushed it closed. I turned into the room to find the light dancing on the walls, like moonlight through a leafy tree canopy. It had a bluish night-time tinge and while it wasn't bright, you could make out the whole of the room by it. I turned up my palm, but my hand was dark. How could my hand be dark when everything else was glowing?

  I went to the wardrobe and opened it so I could look at myself in the long mirror on the inside of the door. The reflection made no sense. In the mirror, the room around me danced in the faint flickering light, but I was completely dark. I was so dark, even close to the mirror I could see no feature of my face in the strange radiance. What on earth was going on?

  I turned around and the light shivered as if it passed through water disturbed by a languid hand. Even when I was completely still it shifted as if rippled by a wind I did not feel. I turned to the mirror and placed my hand upon the surface. Where my hand touched it was completely black but around it the glow intensified as if the glass itself had taken in the light, outlining my hand in a nimbus. When I moved my hand the glow trailed behind it, fading back to normal after a second. Experimentally I wrote "HELLO" on the glass with my finger, but the letters didn't last long enough for the word to show. There was no doubt, though, the glow was connected to me.

  I stepped back, perplexed but intrigued. I looked around me and tried to encourage the glow, or at least that was the closest I could come to describing what I did. The glow pulsed and brightened, allowing me to pick out creases in my pillow and the darker pattern in my dressing gown. Then I damped it and it dimmed down until it flickered and died away. I stood in the near dark of my room, but it didn't come back. I turned back to my reflection and noted that even though it was now darker, I could see the features of my face and body in the meagre light leaking around the edges of the curtains.

  Is this what Blackbird had meant by my magic? Is this what I could do?

  Having done it once, I had to try again. I tried to glow, thinking of the strange light, but nothing happened. I looked at my hand, wishing it dark, but there was no change. Why didn't it do it again? Had I exhausted it? I thought not, but I wasn't sure what had started it. How did one glow when one wanted to? I wished Blackbird were here to see it as I was sure she would know, but then I remembered I was naked and somehow those thoughts didn't mix. She was sixty or something, or a lot older. Either way I could not imagine being naked in front of her. It felt wrong.

  I went back to thinking about the glow, putting aside that troubling train of thought. What had she said to me? Magic responds to need? I tried to need to glow, but you can't just need something because you think you can.

  I shook myself, shedding my confusion like water.

  Blackbird told me that the power was within me, that all I had to do was learn to reach for it. I knew I could do it, I had seen it for myself. What had sparked that connection? The dream?

  I closed my eyes and remembered the feeling from the dream, bringing an involuntary shiver. Then I imagined myself standing in my bedroom, with the glow starting dim and building until it flickered over the walls. I made that thought real in my mind, assuring myself that was how it would be when
I opened my eyes. Within me, something that had been waiting stirred to life. There was something inside me, something dark and deep. I reached within, and as I did, it reached for me and the connection was there.

  I opened my eyes and the room was filled with milky-blue dappled light.

  Alarmed, I pulled away and the light flickered and died.

  I tentatively reached within myself again. It was there. The connection formed at once. Light spilled out into the room.

  I grinned at myself. I had made magic. It was me doing it. I could make a glow. OK, it wasn't summoning lightning or transforming base metal into gold, but I had made a glow.

  I relaxed my hold and the connection within me subsided so that the light flickered and vanished. Then I called it back and it returned, quicker this time and stronger, the light brightening until the walls swam like a room underwater. I was so pleased with myself. It was strange and exciting. I couldn't stop grinning.

  I released it again, shivering in the pre-dawn chill. My earlier doubts and depression were swept away by my new talent. Maybe I could do other things as well? It made me even more determined to find Blackbird again tomorrow, or later today as I realised it would shortly be. I was tempted to experiment some more with my new-found skill, but I made myself get back into bed and settle down. I needed more sleep if I was going to be able to face the new day. Briefly I summoned it back and made the interesting discovery that the glow wasn't stopped by the bedclothes. It flickered across the ceiling over the bed. It formed around me rather than on me. I was so thrilled, I couldn't wait to show Blackbird. Mind you, she would probably say everyone could do it from the age of three and that I should concentrate on doing something more useful.

  With thoughts of what I might say to her tomorrow I drifted towards a deeper, more restful sleep.

  That was when I heard the stair creak.

  SIX

  There are some noises that you immediately recognise. Something about them, the resonance or quality of the sound means that they are unmistakable. My creaky stair was like that. When I'd first moved into the flat it had irritated me. I had kicked it, banged it and knocked nails into it. It still creaked. It didn't creak when the house cooled or when the wind was in a certain direction. It didn't creak when my neighbours downstairs moved around in the lower half of the house.

  It only creaked when someone stood on it.

  I slipped quietly out of bed and went to the door. It was shut and I put my hand against it, listening intently for any other sound. Maybe it was Alex. Perhaps she'd stormed out after a bad argument with her mother and turned up here for tea and comfort, all hormones and teenage angst. But I had bolted the front door. Alex would have had to ring the bell or hammer on the door to get me to come downstairs and undo the bolt.

  The step creaked when you stood on it, and again when you stepped off. I was pretty sure that it had only creaked once. There was absolute stillness. I stood and listened, naked in the dark, starting to feel chilled, but nothing stirred. The memory of the unseen pursuer and chill air from my dream returned to me and I was just on the point of thinking that the creak had somehow been part of the dream when it came again.

  There was definitely someone on the stairs. Someone or something.

  Could it be Blackbird? A bolted door would be unlikely to stop her if she wanted to come in. She'd said that she would find me, hadn't she? But why would Blackbird creep up my stairs at four in the morning? And why would she stop when the stairs creaked? No, whatever it was, it wasn't good news. She'd told me to watch my back. She'd warned me, "If they catch you, you'll die," and she wasn't joking.

  I put my finger on the light switch, then hesitated. It would show under the door and whatever it was would know I was awake. I looked around the darkened room. There was no weapon, nothing I could use to defend myself. Besides, if it was something like Gramawl I was kidding myself if I thought I could fight it and win.

  The window was the only option. If I opened the big French windows, I could climb over the railing of the half-balcony, drop down onto the patio and make a run for it.

  I moved around the room, trying to locate my clothes in the dark. While it was tempting to just open the window and jump for it, I knew I would be much worse off naked. The delay between stepping on and off the stair told me that whatever it was on the stairs was being cautious. That meant I had a few moments to get my stuff. I fumbled, pulling on my Tshirt and slipped quickly into my underpants. The trousers I had left out for the morning were here somewhere. I cursed silently in the dark. Then I remembered my glow.

  I summoned it, but nothing happened. No wonder, my mind was like a butterfly. Knowledge leant me calm and allowed me to focus. I reached within and my glow flickered into life. It was unsteady, reflecting my state of mind. I glanced towards the door and wondered how much time I might have? Not long. If only the door had a lock on it.

  Pulling on my trousers, I tried to think of something to wedge in the door to keep it closed. The milky light danced around me. If only I could seal the door.

  But perhaps there was a way. Magic responds to need, that's what Blackbird said. Well, I sure as hell needed it now.

  I went to the door and put my hand on it, remembering what she told me. The power was there, I just had to believe in it. I knew I could do magic, the light was all around me. I needed to bend it to my will and seal the door.

  I focused on the door, thinking, Yes, I remember there used to be a door here, but it was nailed shut. I reinforced the thought, feeling an echo of something inside, a pulse of darkness. I struggled to link it somehow with the thought that the door was nailed shut so no one could use it. I opened my eyes, only then realising I had closed them. My glow had gone and the door looked the same, but I knew it was nailed shut. It was no good trying it, because it had been nailed shut long ago. I had to believe.

  I went back to the end of the bed and rekindled my glow, fumbling with my socks. Abandoning trying to put them on, I stuffed the socks into the top of my rucksack and put my bare feet into my boots. It would have to do. I pulled the laces tight without lacing them up, knotting them roughly to stop them from tripping me. I heard a tiny sound that might have been something in the kitchen. Damn! That was where my coat was. I'd have to abandon it.

  I froze. The door handle on the inside of my bedroom door slowly turned downwards. I frantically reinforced my belief that it was no good trying to open the sealed door and edged towards the window. The handle reached the bottom, but the door didn't open. I grabbed the rucksack and pulled the top closed. Whatever was on the other side of the door now knew I had barred it. I went over to the French window and pulled the curtains back.

  The door creaked. I glanced at it while I fumbled onehanded with the security locks on the French windows. Why were security locks so fiddly? I stopped trying to watch the bedroom door, which was nailed shut anyway, and concentrated on the window locks, bringing up my glow so I could see what I was doing. The light swelled and swayed around me, making it more difficult to see what I was doing.

  Tiny pings and creaks were coming from the door, as if enormous pressure were building up on the other side. The door bulged inwards as the strain built up. The tips of my fingers were numb with the strain of trying to open the catch when I finally managed to release it and the security lock flipped open. I yanked the catch across and wrenched opened the window. There was a sound behind me and I glanced back. The door had held.

  I reached over and grabbed the rucksack, hoisted it over the railing and dropped it onto the patio below as quietly as I could. I didn't want whatever was outside my door to know I was escaping and go back downstairs to intercept me as I came around the front.

  A glance over my shoulder revealed dark spots forming on the door. The spots ran together to form a dark stain in the centre of the wood. Each spot had the same flat unreflecting black as my skin when I called my glow. Hesitantly I stepped back around the bed towards the door, fascinated by the spreading blackness. It was
like the opposite of my glow, cancelling out any light I could make.

  "Brother." The breathy murmur from the other side of the door resolved into words, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. "Open the dooooor."

  That did it. I went back to the half-balcony and swung my leg up over the railing, finding it uncomfortably tall in awkward places. I fought for a footing on the other side. As I looked back into the bedroom from the far side of the railing I could see black spots spreading over the wood of the door. They spread like drops of water condensing on a surface, running across it, joining and merging into a dark stain. What the hell was that? The spots paused at the edge of the door then swelled onto the wall, running across the wall and up onto the ceiling.

  I had seen enough. I took a quick look down to where my rucksack was lying on the patio, squatted down to get as low as I could and dropped from the rail to the paving below. The impact jarred me to the core and I banged my chin against my knee as I sprawled onto the wet slabs made slick by the rain. I pushed myself to my feet. My glow was gone, but I could see my rucksack by the city lights reflected from the low clouds. I grabbed it by the strap, swung it over one shoulder and glanced up at the room, now dark with the window wide open. I would have to leave it like that. What else could I do? The flat had been the one place I could be myself. It was a refuge from work and from life. Now I was being forced to abandon that as well. Anger swelled in me, taking the edge off my fear.

  Turning away, I edged up to the corner of the house and peeked around to see if anything was waiting to jump me. There was nothing to be seen. At the front of the house, a quick glance at the front garden told me the way was clear just as a loud dull thump came from the back of the house. It spurred me on and I headed straight for the front gate.