by Tim Lebbon
“Nikki, let me in and we’ll talk, that’s all.”
“You’re still holding that poker!” Nikki sounded terrified. Perhaps Brand had left her now, flitting in and out to taunt Megan with a glance, a stare, a look loaded with barely veiled malice.
“I’m only protecting myself, Nikki. And you know that you bastard, if you’re still there.”
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“There’s no one in here with me, Mum.” Her voice was bent out of shape by tears and fear.
“Then there’s no harm letting me in.”
There was silence from the bathroom for a moment, then a quiet, emphatic, “No.”
Her daughter had retreated along the landing as Megan mounted the staircase, that dopey, hungover smile slipping quickly from her face, replaced by confusion and puzzlement as she saw the poker in her mother’s hand. I saw you in the garden, Nikki had said. Why were you chasing the birds, Mum ? I thought you liked having them in the garden. Didn’t you see them? Megan had replied, looking into her eyes as she searched for a sign of him in there, watching and laughing at her through her own flesh and blood. Didn’t you see what was wrong with them, they were watching me for him. Nikki had shrugged her shoulders, frowning, arms held out and hands trailing along the landing walls as she walked back toward the bathroom. Who, Mum? God?
Megan had not raised the poker because she could not. But she’d seen a brief grin on Nikki’s face, disguised as something nervous and vulnerable, perhaps, but loaded with Brand’s presence, a mocking glare hiding behind her own daughter’s confused smile. And for an instant she had been reflected in Nikki’s eyes. She saw herself how Brand was seeing her: hair awry, poker swinging by her side, eyes wide and full of her daughter.
She knocked at the door again. “Nikki, open the door now!”
“Those birds, Mum …”
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“I didn’t touch them.”
“You tried to. You tried to kill them with-“
Megan stood back and shouted, raising the poker to point at the door. “He’s spying on me! He has been ever since we met him, spying through his minions, casting his evil through the animals, at me. Maybe he’s angry that he can’t turn me. Furious that he can’t leach me away from God!”
“Who the hell are you on about, Mum?”
Megan held her breath and put her ear to the bathroom door, wondering exactly what she’d heard behind Nikki’s voice just then. Her daughter’s voice, her daughter’s words, but something darker sending them. There was nothing. No movement, no breathing … nothing.
“You know,” she said. “You know exactly who I mean. Has he got at you?” The thought was terrible, acid in her veins, blood in her mouth, and for a moment Megan was on the verge of being sick. “Has that bastard been at you? Nikki, answer me! Have you been at her, you bastard? I’ll kill you if you have.” The images came, much as she tried to force them away. Closing her eyes made them all the more vivid. “God help me,” she hissed, but she saw Brand abusing her daughter, bending and twisting and invading her, all the while holding his head back and closing his eyes because somehow he was watching Megan’s reaction … watching it now.
She spun around and saw the blackbird sitting on the sill outside the landing window. It pecked gently at the glass and fluttered its wings.
Megan threw the poker. It was a good shot.
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One end glanced off the window frame and pivoted the other end into the glass. It shattered instantly, sharp silver edges and the black panic of the bird mixing with snow that was instantly blown in. It should have escaped, Megan knew, it should have flown away and called back at her through the blizzard. But a lucky spike of glass plucked at the bird, the poker fell back inside and caught its wing, and the frantic creature fell to the landing floor. Glass tinkled around it. Nikki shouted incoherently behind the bathroom door. Snow touched its feathers and melted. Megan was there in two steps, bringing her foot down on the injured bird, feeling its thin body crunch beneath her shoe, turning its feathers wet and sticking them to the floor in the mess of its own inside.
One wing fluttered briefly and then the creature was still. A snowflake landed on its remains and steamed away.
“There you are,” Megan said. She could not keep triumph from her voice. She feared pride, but she feared fear even more.
And then she heard Nikki admitting the vilest truths.
“I love him, Mum,” she said, words muffled where she had her face pressed against the door. “I can’t help it.”
It was only when Megan closed her eyes in despair, attempting to speak to God but finding her way blocked by her own fears, that she heard Nikki’s other voice, her Brand voice. Deep, mocking, things her daughter would never say
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passing through her innocent lips. “And he loves me.”
She picked up the bloody poker, walked to the bathroom door and swung it hard. Nikki screamed at the impact, and so did Megan. It left one blackbird-bloodied hole in the hollow door. The shock smacked her hands and wrists and she dropped the poker. It rattled to the floor, she picked it up and continued hitting, hitting, her eyes still closed and Nikki’s other voice-her voice of Brand-sneaking giggles in between her daughter’s screams, a shout and a laugh every time metal impacted upon wood, and Megan was begging God to help her.
He gave her strength. She felt the hot bubble of blisters already rising on her palms but she kept hitting the door, swinging the poker harder with each strike. It bounced from the door handle, she hit again and the handle bent, wood splintered.
“Mum Mum Mum Mum Mummy…” Nikki shouted, and somehow the other words came too as Megan squeezed her eyes even tighter shut. “Bitch bitch bitch …”
Megan opened her eyes. The lever handle and latch were a mangled mess now, surrounded by splintered wood and ready to give in. She bashed three more times and then hit the door with her shoulder. It swung inward … and then slammed shut again.
“Mum, please, don’t do this!” Nikki shouted. She must be leaning against the other side, using her weight to keep it shut.
“He’s in you, Nikki,” Megan said. “You never
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had God in you, not really, all those times I wanted to take you to church, to see what it was like to love Him and be loved by Him. You left yourself open, empty, and Brand has come to take advantage. He’s in you. I can see it in your eyes, hear it-“
“Mum, I can’t help it, he’s so …” It seemed that Nikki could not think of a word for Brand.
Megan could. “He’s evil!” she shouted, looking to the ceiling and closing her eyes, exhorting God to guide her.
“No I’m not,” a voice said from the bathroom. “Poor blackbird, going to bake it in a pie?”
Megan screamed in outrage, fear, anger, and charged the door.
It burst open unhindered. She held the poker in front of her as she entered the bathroom, searching around for Nikki. Gone, she’s gone, he was in her and now he’s taken her and I’ll never see her—
Nikki was in the bath. It was empty of water, she was fully clothed, but it looked as if she was washing herself. With both hands. One passing back and forth across her breasts, the other delving down between her legs.
“Nikki,” Megan whispered, suddenly empty of fight and emotion, a blank.
“Brand,” Nikki groaned. Her hips rose, her breathing quickened and she bit her bottom lip until it bled.
Her mother was coming upstairs brandishing a poker, staring at her strangely, forehead creased as it was sometimes when she prayed, knuckles white around the poker handle. She was
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muttering something, probably to Nikki but her voice was so quiet that it seemed as if she was mumbling to herself.
Nikki backed away and smiled at Brand as they stood behind The Hall. Her mother faded and Brand was there, breathing into her face so that she could taste the inside of him, breath flowing from him to her, and he was whispering sweet nothings into her ear without his l
ips moving. She knew what he was thinking because she knew him so well … she didn’t but she dreamed she did, dreams within dreams, a play within a play revealing hidden treachery and unknown dark depths … But where had that thought come from?
Her mother’s voice forced her back along the landing but still Nikki smiled. Brand was in school, looking down from the library window and waiting for her to sense the remnants of his presence that lunchtime, already knowing that she would be where he stood and leaving signs: the flies, so fat and bloated and dead; the silence, normal in the library but this particular species planted by Brand, an enforced silence in his presence, a deference to him, not to knowledge. Nikki had knowledge. She knew as soon as she saw him that she was the one for him, and vice versa. Jazz’s hand flung casually around her shoulder may as well have been a spatter of snowflakes, such was its lasting presence.
The point of the poker wavered. Her mother was using it to point, emphasizing each word with a little stab at the air in front of Nikki. She backed against the bathroom door and nudged it
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open with her shoulder. Brand’s hand closed around hers in the Freelander, warm instead of cold, hot in intention, sending secret signals as her parents sat in their own exclusion zones. Their disregard for each other was now so old that they were both almost comfortable with it, pretending it was as things had been and always would be. Pretending it was right.
Nikki slammed the bathroom door behind her and clicked the latch shut. Her mother was talking on the other side, trying to persuade her to come to her senses. Fear gave her voice a high lilt. Prayers broke through now and then, interspersed with please let her go and let him go, her mother talking to two people. Three if you counted God, and Nikki giggled because she had never counted God before …
She began to cry. She didn’t actually feel sad or scared or upset, but it was what was expected. “There’s no one in here with me, Mum,” she said, looking at the shower cubicle and seeing Brand standing in the woods, smiling at her, and even though the expression stayed far from his eyes she smiled back. He shifted slightly and then he was at the party, wandering through the gyrating clouds of nobodies to tell her she was somebody to him. The bathroom was bright and white and cool and stank of bleach, but Nikki could see only the glint of Brand’s shiny hair in the dark, feel the warmth of the house heating up under the onslaught of so many teenaged emotions and hormonally driven quests to exchange juices, taste the tang of pot in the air and the electric surge of sexual excitement as Brand sought her
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through the crowded house. She had not seen him then but she saw him now, always a step behind her as she searched for him, a shadow twisting in strict accordance with her own, always one step away but always, always behind her, so that he was so much in the corner of her eye that she imagined he was a fantasy or a memory. Following her through the rooms and upstairs and back down. His hand reaching out to touch an errant strand of hair, sending a flush of warmth to her groin.
Her mother questioned and Nikki answered. Or maybe Brand answered; sometimes she wasn’t quite sure who was saying what and to whom. Then silence for a while, interrupted only by a tap-tap-tapping from beyond the door. Glass shattering. Nikki knew that her mother was going mad out there, but she was also certain that she was utterly sane in here, as definite as she had ever been about her life and the thing it was to become.
Whatever that was.
Nikki rested her forehead on the door and smiled. “I love him Mum. I can’t help it.” She felt a cool hand caressing the nape of her neck, and when she turned around a breath hung condensed in the bathroom air. Brand stepped from the shower, brushing leaves and twigs from his clothing, mud on his shoes, he was in the woods … and Nikki suddenly knew that this was now, this was not what had been or would be. He smiled and spoke in a gruff parody of her voice. “And he loves me.”
Nikki held her breath, eyes wide, heart
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stammering in her chest. Had he really said that? Did he really mean it?
Her mother started smashing at the door. Nikki screamed and Brand giggled, and even though Nikki knew that he was not truly there, she reached out to him for comfort. He laughed some more and her mother screamed through the door. Nikki answered in the only way she knew how. Brand … Brand … Brand … there was nothing else for her, not any more. His memory, his idea, approached her and held her hands. He cooled her skin and prickled goosebumps across her body, leading her to the bath and whispering in her ear, bringing back that final memory. It should have shamed her. She put her hand to her face and chin and felt where he had spilled his seed. Those places still felt cold and numb, colder still when he touched his fingertips to them, drawing out the heat and chilling her to the bone, chilling her bones themselves.
Her mother crashed at the door but Brand threw it shut. He spoke to her, Nikki was screaming simply because she knew she should be, and he watched as she lay down in the bath. The impacts on the door sounded different as the wood gave way. Her mother’s voice was suddenly louder now that there were holes for it to come through. Brand reached out and held Nikki’s hands. His hair swung over his face as he leaned down and started touching her with her own hands. Nikki closed her eyes and smelled spilled wine and damp in Mandy’s basement. And then her mother was in.
Nikki heard her name called but it was from a
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long, long way away. Much nearer was Brand, touching her all over, setting her skin alive and alight with his gaze, guiding her hands with his own timeless, endless touch.
“Brand,” she said. In her mind’s eye he smiled because he had her, totally.
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Chapter Fourteen
Dan was lost.
He’d been in these woods dozens of times before; summer and winter; spring when the wood ants were forming their mounds; autumn when decay looked so beautiful. He’d walked through sober in the daytime and drunk in the evening, on those few occasions he chose to walk home from Bar None instead of phoning Megan for a lift. He’d tried to find his countryside heritage, searching through dedicated city-dweller’s blood for the farming stock of his great-grandparents. Alcohol sometimes encouraged this vain search, and a stumbled journey through the woods would often leave him scratched and bloodied and dirty, but smiling a sad smile at something he would never be able to be.
Dozens of times.
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But he’d never seen this gully, this dam of rocks, this wide pool sucking in the snow.
Maybe kids have been here, he thought. Dammed the stream, intending to come back and bust the dam in a secret World War II bombing raid, forgot, left it. But kids nowadays were more likely to be guiding Lara Croft through endless angular dungeons than playing in the woods.
He couldn’t fool himself. He was lost.
Dan stood on the bank of the gully and looked down at the pool, wondering where he’d gone wrong and listening all the time for the sounds of pursuit. Since he’d entered the woods fifteen minutes ago he’d heard nothing but his own footsteps and the occasional shush of snow falling through the branches from above. Now, standing still, he listened harder than ever. If Brand was still following him he’d be making a noise. Brushing against trees, blinded by the ever-worsening blizzard. Stumbling in holes already camouflaged by snow.
Unless he was standing as still as Dan, only feet away, watching him.
Dan spun around. Snow swirled at him as a heavy gust passed between the trees, flakes forming a solid mass and nudging him back, back, his heels slipping on slick leaves and wet mud, and then he was falling into space. He tipped and stared up at the sky, catching snowflakes in his eyes and blinking as they melted and blurred his vision. The fall seemed to be taking a very long time. He saw a shadow beneath the trees, a place where no snow fell and no light penetrated, a null zone which was not just black, it was nothing
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… and when Dan heard a laugh he wanted only to close his eyes, but he had to loo
k. Still falling, still tipping back to the sky, he had to look.
His head and shoulders hit the side of the gully first, then his back and behind. He slid down towards the pool. His senses spun with the impact, eardrums heavy and hard, neck stiff and on fire. He clawed his hands and dragged them through the rot of leaves clinging to the steep gully sides. Leaves collected against his fingers as he slid, dragging decayed bouquets to whoever he was going to meet at the bottom. The sky spun, even though he was sliding in one plane now, and surely it had been daylight minutes ago? Daylight darkened by snow (and the nothing between the trees), but daytime nonetheless? Dark now, darker and colder than he had known, and Dan panicked when he heard pebbles splashing into the pool. In seconds his head would break the surface and water would flood his lungs.
He strained to sit, twisted his body, grabbed harder at the slick bank, and in all the struggling he succeeded in turning just far enough so that only his legs and one arm slid into the freezing pool.
“Shit!” Dan gasped, struggling to breathe for several seconds before air found its way past the shock. The water was so damn cold … and it stank. Stagnant. There was a stream running through the woods, but this pool must have been formed from the melting snows of a few days ago. Dan didn’t know how long it took for water to stagnate in such conditions, but this smelled like an open sewer, the aromas of rot and decay
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sweeping over him as if breaking the pool’s surface had allowed them egress.
He struggled to crab up the bank and away from the water’s dark edges.
Dan looked up to where he’d been standing. The bank was barely six feet above him, yet it felt as if he’d been falling forever. He was freezing. His teeth clattered and his limbs shook.
