Nightshades

by Tanith Lee

  There had been no gangs last year. The sun sank.

  Caroline was still tired. She went along the esplanade to her block, up the steps to her room.

  When she unlocked the door and stood on the threshold, for a moment -

  What?

  It was as if the pre-twilight amber that came into the room was slowly pulsing, throbbing. As if the walls, the floor, the ceiling, were-She switched on the overhead lamp.

  'Mr Tinker,' she said firmly, 'I'm not putting up with this.'

  'Pardon?' said a voice behind her.

  Caroline's heart expanded with a sharp thud like a grenade exploding in her side. She spun around, and there stood a girl in jeans and a smock. Her hand was on the door of the shared bathroom. It was the previously unseen neighbour from down the hall.

  'I'm sorry,' said Caroline. 'I must have been talking to myself.'

  The girl looked blank and unhelpful. 'I'm Mrs Lacey,' she said. She did not look lacy. Nor married. She looked about fourteen. 'You've got number eight, then. How is it?'

  Bloody nerve, Caroline thought. 'It's fine.'

  'They've had three in before you,' said fourteen year old Mrs Lacey.

  'All together?'

  'Pardon? No. I meant three separate tenants. Nobody would stay. All kinds of trouble with that Mrs Rice. Nobody would, though.'

  'Why ever not?' Caroline snapped.

  'Too noisy or something. Or a smell. I can't remember.'

  Caroline stood in her doorway, her back to the room.

  Fourteen year old Mrs Lacey opened the bathroom door.

  'At least we haven't clashed in the mornings,' Caroline said.

  'Oh, we're always up early on holiday,' said young Mrs Lacey pointedly. Somewhere down the hall, a child began to bang and quack like an insane automatic duck. A man's voice bawled: 'Hurry up that piss, Brenda, will you?'

  Brenda Lacey darted into the bathroom and the bolt was shot.

  Caroline entered her room. She slammed the door. She turned on the room, watching it.

  There was a smell. It was very slight. A strange, faintly buttery smell.

  Not really unpleasant. Probably from the café below. She pushed up the window and breathed the sea.

  As she leaned on the sill, breathing, she felt the room start breathing too.

  She was six years old, and Auntie Sara was taking her to the park.

  Auntie Sara was very loving. Her fat warm arms were always reaching out to hold, to compress, to pinion against her fat warm bosom. Being hugged by Auntie Sara induced in six year old Caroline a sense of claustrophobia and primitive fright. Yet somehow she was aware that she had to be gentle with Auntie Sara and not wound her feelings. Auntie Sara couldn't have a little girl. So she had to share Caroline with Mummy.

  And now they were in the park.

  'There's Jenny,' said Caroline. But of course Auntie Sara wouldn't want to let Caroline go to play with Jennifer. So Caroline pretended that Auntie Sara would let her go, and she ran very fast over the green grass towards Jenny. Then her foot caught in something. When she began to fall, for a moment it was exhilarating, like flying. But she hit the ground, stunning, bruising. She knew better than to cry, for in another moment Auntie Sara had reached her. 'It doesn't hurt,' said Caroline. But Auntie Sara took no notice. She crushed Caroline to her. Caroline was smothered on her breast, and the great round arms bound her like hot, faintly dairy-scented bolsters.

  Caroline started to struggle. She pummelled, kicked and shrieked.

  It was dark, and she had not fallen in the grass after all. She was in bed in the room, and it was the room she was fighting. It was the room which was holding her close, squeezing her, hugging her. It was the room which had that faint cholesterol smell of fresh milk and butter. It was the room which was stroking and whispering.

  But of course it couldn't be the damn room.

  Caroline lay back exhausted, and the toils of her dream receded.

  Another nightmare. Switch on the light. Yes, that was it. Switch on the light and have a drink from the small traveller's bottle of gin she'd put ready in case she couldn't sleep.

  'Christ.' She shielded her eyes from the light.

  Distantly, she heard a child crying - the offspring probably of young Mrs unlacy Lacey along the hall. 'God, I must have yelled,' Caroline said aloud. Yelled and been heard. The unlacy Laceys were no doubt discussing her this very minute. The mad lazy slut in number eight.

  The gin burned sweetly, going down.

  This was stupid. The light - no, she'd have to leave the light on again.

  Caroline looked at the walls. She could see them, very, very softly lifting, softly sinking. Don't be a fool. The smell was just discernible.

  It made her queasy. Too rich - yet, a human smell, a certain sort of human smell. Bovine, she concluded, exactly like poor childless Sara.

  It was hot, even with the window open.

  She drank halfway down the bottle and didn't care any more.

  'Mr Tinker? Why ever are you interested in him?'

  Mrs Rice looked disapproving.

  'I'm sorry. I'm not being ghoulish. It's just - well, it seemed such a shame, his dying like that. I suppose I've been brooding.'

  'Don't want to do that. You need company. Is your husband coming down at all, this year?'

  'David? No, he can't get away right now.'

  'Pity.'

  'Yes. But about Mr Tinker -'

  'All right,' said Mrs Rice. 'I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. He was a retired man. Don't know what line of work he'd been in, but not very well paid, I imagine. His wife was dead. He lived with his married daughter, and really I don't think it suited him, but there was no alternative. Then, four months of the year, he'd come here and take number eight. Done it for years. Used to get his meals out. Must have been quite expensive. But I think the daughter and her husband

  paid for everything, you know, to get a bit of time on their own. But he loved this place, Mr Tinker did. He used to say to me: "Here I am home again, Mrs Rice." The room with his daughter, I had the impression he didn't think of that as home at all. But number eight.

  Well, he'd put his ornaments and books and pieces round. My George even put a couple of nails in for him to hang a picture or two. Why not? And number eight got quite cosy. It really was Mr Tinker's room in the end. My George said that's why other tenants'd fight shy. They could feel it waiting for Mr Tinker to come back. But that's a lot of nonsense, and I can see I shouldn't have said it.'

  'No. I think your husband was absolutely right. Poor old room. It's going to be disappointed.'

  'Well, my George, you know, he's a bit of an idiot. The night -the night we heard, he got properly upset, my George. He went up to number eight, and opened the door and told it. I said to him, you'll want me to hang black curtains in there next.'

  Beyond the fence, the headland dropped away in dry grass and the feverish flowers of late summer to a blue sea ribbed with white.

  North spread the curved claw of Jaynes Bay and the grey vertical of the lighthouse. But the sketchpad and pencil case sat on the seat beside Caroline.

  She had attempted nothing. Even the novel lay closed. The first page hadn't seemed to make sense. She kept reading the words 'home' and

  'Tinker' between the lines.

  She understood she was afraid to return to the room. She had walked along the headlands, telling herself that all the room had wrong with it was sadness, a bereavement. That it wasn't waiting. That it wasn't alive. And anyway, even sadness didn't happen to rooms. If it did, it would have to get over that. Get used to being just a holiday flat again, a space which people filled for a few weeks, observed indifferently, cared nothing about, and then went away from.

  Which was all absurd because none of it was true.

  Except, that she wasn't the only one to believe -

  She wondered if David would have registered anything in the room.

 
Should she ring him and confide in him? Ask advice? No. For God's

  sake, that was why she was imagining herself into this state, wasn't it? So she could create a contact with him again. No. David was out and out David would stay.

  It was five o'clock. She packed her block and pencils into her bag and walked quickly along the grass verge above the fence.

  She could walk into Kingscliff at this rate, and get a meal.

  She wondered who the scared punster had been, the one who knew French. She'd got the joke by now. A room with a vie: a room with a life.

  She reached Kingscliff and had a pleasantly unhealthy meal, with a pagoda of white ice-cream and glace cherries to follow. In the dusk the town was raucous and cheerful. Raspberry and yellow neons splashed and spat and the motor-bike gangs seemed suitable, almost friendly in situ. Caroline strolled by the whelk stalls and across the carpark, through an odour of frying doughnuts, chips and fierce fish.

  She went to a cinema and watched a very bad and very pointless film with a sense of superiority and tolerance. When the film was over, she sat alone in a pub and drank vodka. Nobody accosted her or tried to pick her up. She was glad at first, but after the fourth vodka, rather sorry. She had to run to catch the last bus back. It was not until she stood on the esplanade, the bus vanishing, the pink lamps droning solemnly and the black water far below, that a real and undeniable terror came and twisted her stomach.

  The café was still open, and she might have gone in there, but some of the greasy stork-legs she had seen previously were clustered about the counter. She was tight, and visualized sweeping amongst them, conquering their adolescent nastiness. But presently she turned aside and into the block of holiday flats.

  She dragged up the steps sluggishly. By the time she reached her door, her hands were trembling. She dropped her key and stifled a squeal as the short-time automatic hall light went out.

  Pressing the light button, she thought: Supposing it doesn't come on?

  But the light did come on. She picked up her key, unlocked the door and went determinedly inside the room, shutting the door behind her.

  She experienced it instantly. It was like a vast, indrawn, sucking gasp.

  'No,' Caroline said to the room. Her hand fumbled the switch and the room was lit.

  Her heart was beating so very fast. That was, of course, what made the room also seem to pulse, as if its heart were also swiftly and greedily beating.

  'Listen,' Caroline said. 'Oh God, talking to a room. But I have to, don't I? Listen, you've got to stop this. Leave me alone!' she shouted at the room.

  The room seemed to grow still.

  She thought of the Laceys, and giggled.

  She crossed to the window and opened it. The air was cool. Stars gleamed above the bay. She pulled the curtains to, and undressed.

  She washed, and brushed her teeth at the basin. She poured herself a gin.

  She felt the room, all about her. Like an inheld breath, impossibly prolonged. She ignored that. She spoke to the room quietly.

  'Naughty Mr Tinker, to tinker with you, like this. Have to call you Sara now, shan't I? Like a great big womb. That's what she really wanted, you see. To squeeze me right through herself, pop me into her womb. I'd offer you a gin, but where the hell would you put it?'

  Caroline shivered.

  'No. This is truly silly.'

  She walked over to the cutlery box beside the baby cooker. She put in her hand and pulled out the vegetable knife. It had quite a vicious edge. George Rice had them frequently sharpened.

  'See this,' Caroline said to the room. 'Just watch yourself.'

  When she lay down, the darkness whirled, carouselling her asleep.

  In the womb, it was warm and dark, a warm blood dark. Rhythms came and went, came and went, placid and unending as the tides of the sea. The heart organ pumped with a soft deep noise like a muffled drum.

  How comfortable and safe it was. But when am I to be born?

  Caroline wondered. Never, the womb told her, lapping her, cushioning her.

  Caroline kicked out. She floated. She tried to seize hold of something, but the blood-warm cocoon was not to be seized.

  'Let me go,' said Caroline. 'Auntie Sara, I'm all right. Let me go. I want to - please —'

  Her eyes were wide and she was sitting up in her holiday bed. She put out her hand spontaneously towards the light and touched the knife she had left beside it. The room breathed, regularly, deeply.

  Caroline moved her hand away from the light switch, and saw in the darkness.

  This is ridiculous,' she said aloud.

  The room breathed. She glanced at the window - she had left the curtains drawn over, and so could not focus on the esplanade beyond, or the bay: the outer world. The walls throbbed. She could see them.

  She was being calm now, and analytical, letting her eyes adjust, concentrating. The mammalian milky smell was heavy. Not precisely offensive, but naturally rather horrible, in these circumstances.

  Very carefully, Caroline, still in darkness, slipped her feet out of the covers and stood up.

  'All right,' she said. 'All right then.'

  She turned to the wall behind the bed. She reached across and laid her hand on it -

  The wall. The wall was - skin. It was flesh. Live, pulsing, hot, moist -

  It was -

  The wall swelled under her touch. It adhered to her hand eagerly. The whole room writhed a little, surging towards her. It wanted - she knew it wanted - to clutch her to its breast.

  Caroline ripped her hand from the flesh wall. Its rhythms were faster, and the cowlike smell much stronger. Caroline whimpered. She flung backward and her fingers closed on the vegetable knife and she raised it.

  Even as the knife plunged forward, she knew it would skid or rebound from the plaster, probably slicing her. She knew all that, but

  could not help it. And then the knife thumped in, up to the handle. It was like stabbing into - into meat.

  She jerked the knife away and free, and scalding fluid ran down her arm. I've cut myself after all. That's blood. But she felt nothing. And the room -

  The room was screaming. She couldn't hear it, but the scream was all around her, hurting her ears. She had to stop the screaming. She thrust again with the knife. The blade was slippery. The impact was the same. Boneless meat. And the heated fluid, this time, splashed all over her. In the thick un-light, it looked black. She dabbed frantically at her arm, which had no wound. But in the wall -

  She stabbed again. She ran to another wall and stabbed and hacked at it.

  I'm dreaming, she thought. Christ, why can't I wake up?

  The screaming was growing dim, losing power.

  'Stop it!' she cried. The blade was so sticky now she had to use both hands to drive it home. There was something on the floor, spreading, that she slid on in her bare feet. She struck the wall with her fist, then with the knife. 'Oh, Christ, please die,' she said.

  Like a butchered animal, the room shuddered, collapsed back upon itself, became silent and immobile.

  Caroline sat in a chair. She was going to be sick, but then the sickness faded. I'm sitting here in a pool of blood.

  She laughed and tears started to run from her eyes, which was the last thing she remembered.

  When she woke it was very quiet. The tide must be far out, for even the sea did not sound. A crack of light came between the curtains.

  What am I doing in this chair?

  Caroline shifted, her mind blank and at peace.

  Then she felt the utter emptiness that was in the room with her. The dreadful emptiness, occasioned only by the presence of the dead.

  She froze. She stared at the crack of light. Then down.

  'Oh no,' said Caroline. She raised her hands.

  She wore black mittens. Her fingers were stuck together.

  Now her gaze was racing over the room, not meaning to, trying to escape, but instead alighting on the b
lack punctures, the streaks, the stripes along the wall, now on the black stains, the black splotches.

  Her own body was dappled, grotesquely mottled with black. She had one white toe left to her, on her right foot.

  Woodenly, she managed to get up. She staggered to the curtains and hauled them open and turned back in the full flood of early sunlight, and saw everything over again. The gashes in the wall looked as if they had been accomplished with a drill or a pick. Flaked plaster was mingled with the - with the - blood. Except that it wasn't blood.

  Blood wasn't black.

  Caroline turned away suddenly. She looked through the window, along the esplanade, pale and laved with morning. She looked at the bright sea, with the two or three fishing boats scattered on it, and the blueness beginning to flush sky and water. When she looked at these things, it was hard to believe in the room.

  Perhaps most murderers were methodical in the aftermath. Perhaps they had to be.

  She filled the basin again and again, washing herself, arms, body, feet. Even her hair had to be washed. The black had no particular texture. In the basin it diluted. It appeared like a superior kind of Parker fountain pen ink.

  She dressed herself in jeans and shirt, filled the largest saucepan with hot water and washing-up liquid. She began to scour the walls.

  Soon her arms ached, and she was sweating the cold sweat of nervous debility. The black came off easily, but strange tangles of discolouration remained behind in the paint. Above, the holes did not ooze, they merely gaped. Inside each of them was chipped plaster and brick - not bone, muscle or tissue. There was no feel of flesh anywhere.

  Caroline murmured to herself. 'When I've finished.' It was quite matter-of-fact to say that, as if she were engaged in a normalcy.

  'When I've finished, I'll go and get some coffee downstairs. I won't tell Mrs Rice about the holes. No, not yet. How can I explain them? I

  couldn't have caused that sort of hole with a knife. There's the floor to do yet. And I'd better wash the rugs. I'll do them in the bath when the ghastly Laceys go out at nine o'clock. When I've finished, I'll get some coffee. And I think I'll ring David. I really think I'll have to.