Personal Darkness

by Tanith Lee

  When this was over, Sasha, Miranda, and Eric gave each other little gifts. These were tiny curious things, an embroidered handkerchief, a porcelain thimble; some were concealed, especially by Miranda, and Rachaela did not see. Cheta and Michael were also passed small tokens, wrapped, which they did not open. To Rachaela came a package, in due course. She held it, defiantly. She had not realized there would be presents, and had contrived none.

  "You know I don't deserve this."

  "Oh yes," said Miranda.

  "No, I don't. I'm your failure. I let you down."

  "Don't speak of it," said Sasha. "Not tonight."

  Eric said, "Undo the paper."

  They were not the same as they had been. They had taken on characteristics, sloughed from their entity. Sasha abrupt, Eric commanding, perhaps secretly fierce, and Miranda kind.

  Rachaela peeled off the shiny white paper. She found a band of silver in which was caught a polished ruby heart. The ruby was antique, and conceivably priceless.

  "You can't give me this."

  Miranda's face puckered as if she would cry.

  Rachaela's heart clenched within her.

  Sasha frowned.

  Eric said, "It was Anna's. Miriam brought it from the house."

  Rachaela felt no pressure from them anymore. They were not forcing her to anything. The dark spearhead of their lust, Adamus, continuance and seed, was gone. It was only a gift.

  She slipped it on to her little finger—it would not fit any of the others. Perhaps, when she was older, then.

  "It's very beautiful."

  Ruth would have loved the ring. The hard, cold silver, the ruby, for blood.

  Eric got up. Michael and Cheta began to clear the table, leaving only the wine. The Scarabae perched on chairs about the room, and the TV was not switched on.

  Something else, then, something more to come.

  As he had led them in the prayer or chant, Eric conducted them to a round table by one of the curtained windows.

  Michael helped them into the four chairs, Eric, Sasha, Miranda, Rachaela. Then Cheta laid out around the table's rim a circle of cards. They were made of thin wood, and on each was a painted symbol. After a moment, Rachaela realized that these were the letters of an alphabet, but not her own.

  Michael put down on the table, at its center, a cut-glass goblet, upside down.

  He stood back.

  He and Cheta began to turn out the gracious side lamps of the sitting room.

  Dark entered, on cue.

  It was to be a seance.

  Rachaela said, "You can't include me in this."

  "We must," said Sasha. And then, "Anna would want it."

  Anna. Adamus's mother—perhaps. Therefore Rachaela's grandmother. Ruth's. Anna: stabbed through the heart by the heartless knitting needle.

  "But I can't—" said Rachaela.

  They waited.

  When she did not go on, did not get up, Eric put the forefinger of his right hand onto the glass, and Sasha and Miranda followed him. The rings of the Scarabae crackled in the half-dark and the last lamp went out.

  A chair creaked, as Michael sat down by Cheta in a corner.

  Rachaela put her finger on the glass among the fingers of Eric, Sasha, Miranda.

  There was a stasis, a cessation.

  It won't work. Why should it?

  The glass trembled, and began to move.

  They are moving it.

  In the blackness of the room perhaps they could see, but Rachaela could not very well. Somehow she saw the glass, running like a white surge across the polished table.

  Well, let them play at it. If it could comfort them.

  The glass was spelling out words, of course, but—of course—she could not tell what they were. Eric exclaimed in another tongue—not that, she thought, which had been used in the prayer. And then Miranda murmured something. A name? Stephan?

  The glass darted.

  There was a vibration in it, a thrumming, as if from thunder miles away.

  Don't imagine things.

  Adamus had drunk her blood, in the dark, lying over her, flesh on flesh, so long ago. Adamus…

  A pressure mounted in Rachaela's throat, like tears, or the prologue to orgasm.

  She would not be coerced. Not even now.

  The glass was skidding on the table, squealing.

  She lifted her finger—and the glass was gone, seeming to pull the pulse out of her finger's end.

  Irresistibly, she let her finger drop back on to the surface of the goblet.

  The Scarabae were quiet now, only breathing, concentrating.

  There was a light in the room. Someone had lit a lamp. But it was not the lamp. It was too low down.

  Keeping her hand in contact with the goblet, Rachaela looked. A powerpoint was glowing fierily against the wall. And there another, slowly blooming up like a gas flame. The light switches had begun to shine. At the room's center, the overhead lamps abruptly fractured with a dull dense crack. Glass showered the carpet.

  The Scarabae took no notice.

  Suddenly there came the hiss of water and a loud knocking from beyond the room, a bathroom along the corridor also apparently reacting. There were faint noises of stress from every corner. Thumpings, patterings. The hotel sitting room had come alive. The carpet was shifting. Pictures tilted on the walls.

  That doesn't make it real. Psychic electricity, a poltergeist.

  One of the chairs was rent as if by a blade and stuffing jetted up in a cloud, coming gradually down again, like dandelion fluff.

  The glass had stopped.

  Rachaela was shaking. It was not fear or nerves. Something had been leached from her.

  She took her hand away from the goblet, and getting up, she went to the dinner table. Michael was there before her, pouring her a glass of wine. She took it. Not meaning to, she laughed. To her surprise, she heard Sasha laugh, just as sharply, randomly. Then they were silent.

  Rachaela stood by the cleared table where the old wine remained alone. She watched the Scarabae file out of the room.

  Cheta switched on a lamp. Slowly, slowly, the powerpoints were losing their radiance.

  "Quite a lot of damage," Rachaela said to Michael. "I believe the hotel will clear everything up, no questions asked."

  "Yes, Miss Rachaela."

  No questions.

  The bronze clock had lost its hands, they had flown off and landed on the floor. Its face was empty. Rachaela remembered all the broken clocks of the Scarabae house, the clocks which had gone too fast, or run backward.

  When she reached her room, she found the pictures had crashed from the walls, the mirror had shattered making a rain carpet on the ground.

  In the bathroom, judging by the mess, the wonderful shampoos and gels must have exploded. The tops had come off the taps and water had erupted at the ceiling, next, just as irrationally, miraculously losing force and falling back, now only trickling like weeping in the bath and basin. The toothpaste had made long white snakes, looping crazily, decoratively.

  She investigated without panic or surprise.

  In the drawer of the bureau the paper and stamps were torn into confetti. She opened the little sewing kit. The two needles had sewn through and through, then curled up like springs or the shells of snails.

  On the table by her bed, the flowers were straight and dewy. The buds had opened wide as wings, giving off a rich pure scent.

  CHAPTER 5

  RUTH HAD NOT SLEPT IN THE T-SHIRT. She had not slept at all.

  The Millses' operational spare room was done in coffee and milk, with hint-of-pink walls. There were a coffee washbasin with milk towel, a milky reading lamp beside the coffee bed, magazines, a cupboard for (nonexistent) clothes. On the chocolate and rose rug, Ruth's white and red feet lay still as she watched them.

  She sat on the bed, motionless, until all the human sounds of the house had ceased. Then she turned out the lamp and allowed her eyes to get used to the dark. This was easy. She was a
Scarabae.

  In the dark, she moved out of the room, and along the passage, slim and agile as a ferret. She went downstairs.

  A faint unearthly glow shone into the hall from the glass window in the front door, the streetlight over the road.

  Ruth did not need this beacon to find the kitchen.

  The tiled floor was cold, the gadgets and fitments rose apparently impervious.

  Ruth reached across the stainless-steel coffee grinder and selected, from the conveniently laid-out panel on the wall, the sharpest, longest knife.

  Across the table, the girl wore a low-necked black dress. Her hair was piled up on her head, and clipped by a diamante buckle. As the waiter put down the veal in front of Clive, the girl pointed at it and said coldly, "You can't expect my husband to eat that, it's rubbery."

  At that moment the door opened. It was not a door in the restaurant, but the bedroom door. Clive thought it was Amanda, returning from the bathroom, she always made sure she woke him. But no, Amanda was snoring gently on the far side of the bed. For a second Clive had the idea that Tim had come in, as he used to do in childhood, seeking reassurance after a nightmare. It had been a hell of a nuisance, always. Sometimes he had insisted on climbing in with them.

  But obviously it could not be Tim.

  Clive raised himself to one elbow and leaned toward the bedside lamp, and as he did so, he saw the girl, Tim's girl, right in front of him, a shadow with hair.

  "What—" said Clive. And the girl said softly, "No." So Clive did not finish his question. And then the girl swayed forward, her arm waved, and she had cut his throat.

  Clive made terrible noises but he was choked by blood; they were not very loud. In fact they were very like noises he often made when snoring in slumber. This was probably why Amanda did not wake, only gave an irritated little muttering in her sleep.

  As Clive flopped down, his head and arm and blood pouring off over the bed, Ruth went quickly around to the farther side. She raised Amanda's chin, and sliced accurately. The knife was sharp enough to cut meat and raw vegetables and it made short work of Amanda. Possibly Amanda woke up before she died, but if so it was much too late.

  There had been no commotion, and the peace of the house seemed undisturbed.

  Ruth stood looking at her two kills, in the dark.

  She had learned butchery from horror films. It did not require great skill, only decision and some strength, both of which she had.

  The Millses were not vampires, she had not had to stake them.

  It was she, of course, who was the Scarabae.

  She drank Amanda's blood first, daintily, fastidiously. Then she visited Clive on the other side of the bed. When she had had some from both of them, she lightly stepped across the room and came out, closing the door quietly behind her.

  Out in the corridor there was the impersonal silence of comparatively modern houses, whose central heating was off and whose plumbing was reliable. This was not comparable to the notes of an old house, which shifted in its sleep like an animal, ticked and purred and sighed.

  Ruth arrived at Timothy's door and opened it. She remembered the layout of the room well, but in any case could see it exactly,

  Timothy lay on his back and, as she entered, he raised his heavy lids.

  He thought he was dreaming. But it was not a dream. Christ, she had sneaked out after all, to join him. He had thought she was sexy, but given up. After the disaster of the evening's end, he had hoped for nothing.

  Timothy was wide awake now. He sat up.

  He hissed at her: "Shut the door."

  "It won't matter," said Ruth.

  "Jesus—keep your voice down."

  The streetlamp shining faintly through his curtains had enabled him to see her, though not well. Now as she slid toward him he realized there was something in her hand.

  What was it?

  She was a couple of feet away when he understood it was a kitchen knife, and it was wet.

  Instinct shot him out of the bed. But the duvet snared his foot and he rolled onto the carpet. Before he could get his feet under him, the girl whirled down.

  Timothy screamed.

  He screamed loudly and violently. But it had been a rainy day and his window was shut. In the house, there was no one left to hear.

  Because he tried to fight her off, he was slashed in the arm and across the face before the knife tore home through his neck. He died against the pastel wall, which he had blackened with his blood.

  Ruth took only a sip of this. She had had enough.

  She left the knife beside Timothy, not needing it anymore.

  By three-ten, Ruth was downstairs in the kitchen again, frying herself eggs in one of the copper-bottomed pans.

  She had gone through the house carefully, or those areas which might be of interest. She had put on some of the lights, for the cupboards and drawers were easier to search this way.

  From Amanda's wardrobe Ruth had taken a large brown suede shoulder bag. This she then filled with other items. Amanda's chest of drawers had yielded a packet of unused cotton panties and some tights in cellophane. In Timothy's room Ruth located new jeans, and three plain black T-shirts, but left the other tops which had colorful designs. She also found a leather jacket of Timothy's. It was a little too big but not cumbersomely so. She kept the trainers.

  Amanda's jewelry had no attraction for Ruth. There seemed to be no books or proper music in the house.

  In Clive's wallet Ruth discovered a wodge of notes, and elsewhere a stack of pound coins. She ignored the plastic credit cards, and also the heap of small change in a dish. In Timothy's desk, too, there were some ten- and twenty-pound notes, as well as useless change and the Visa card. If Amanda had money it did not surface.

  Ruth did take one small thing from the living room. This was a green glass apple.

  From the main bathroom she appropriated toothpaste, Amanda's deodorant, and a wrapped tablet of soap, some tissues and cotton wool, and a miniature oval mirror.

  In the kitchen Ruth switched on all the lights, and first made herself some sandwiches from the wholemeal bread and cold half-chicken in the fridge, adding pickles for a garnish. The sandwiches were placed in plastic sandwich bags and stored in her suede container, with a liter bottle of diet Coke.

  Then she poured herself a large gin and added tonic.

  She could find no bacon, but put three eggs into sunflower oil to fry, grilled five tomatoes, and opened a can of beans. She had watched Emma Watt, and later Cheta and Maria, and later still, others, cook—long ago —and learned the rudiments from observation, just as she had learned the methods of slaughter.

  Ruth finished the wholemeal loaf with her breakfast, and then she ate a packet of dates, and the last apples from the fruit bowl. She drank some orange juice, and put an unopened carton also in her bag.

  The light had not yet come, but there was an insubstantial quality now to the dark. Outside the windows, the garish streetlamps stood like sentinels, seeing nothing.

  Ruth took the pan of cooling oil off the stove. She donned one of Amanda's tan washing-up gloves, and then fetched the Cook's Matches from the work surface. She lit a match, and dropped it in the oil.

  The pan lit with a thin blue flame.

  Ruth carried her new coat and the bag of provisions up into the hall. Then she returned for the frying pan.

  She went into the dining room first, and touched the blue fire to the seats of the chairs, the fringes of the lamps.

  She came out, leaving the door open, and crossed into the living room. Here she spilled fire onto the sofa, and gave it to the curtains, and the teasels in the fireplace.

  Nothing else was needed. In each room a pale animate bonfire was now in progress. Fire was very fast.

  Ruth came out again, into the hall.

  There she hesitated a moment. Then she walked to the dying flowers under the mirror, and offered them, too, the kiss of flame. They sprang up prettily, blue and saffron, as if all the life had come back to
them, and in the mirror Ruth saw her face behind the fire.

  She set the frying pan, still burning, carefully down on the hall carpet.

  Then she removed Amanda's glove, put on her jacket, and took up her bag.

  The house, which had once been Emma's, was full now of a textured noise, crackings and gushings, little pops and gasps.

  Ruth turned out the hall light, and the light of the fire took over, ancient and beautiful, as she remembered.

  She undid the front door and moved out. She closed the door gently, and went down the steps.

  At the end of the street she looked back.

  The house was not yet blazing, only gleaming, flickering, as if full of the beating of yellow wings. Its light, however, had begun to put out the streetlamps. False dawn.

  CHAPTER 6

  SPRING MET THE HOTEL IN WAVES OF acid green, in crocuses and snowdrops running up the lawn, and daffodils under the monkey-puzzle tree. There were squirrels in the rose garden. The powdered bloom of jade came out on the giant chestnuts.

  The Scarabae lifted their heads, as if they had been sleeping under stones.

  One morning, Rachaela met Eric under the topiary.

  "There were gardens like this," he said. "Once."

  As if the topiary of the mansion was just an illusion, a memory.

  They walked down to the pond, where floated the ghostly ectoplasm of unborn frogs.

  "We shall be going to the house soon. We've had to wait a long time."

  "Do you mean," she said, "the house by the sea?"

  Eric looked away through the wild spring morning.

  "Never go back," he said. "Never."

  Not that house, then.

  Rachaela said, "This is a new house."

  "An old house, of course. But in London."

  She was startled.

  "But—will you like it there?"

  "It will be ours."

  "Does that mean I'm included?"

  He glanced at her. "Things occur," said Eric. "Time erases deeds."

  "No it doesn't. But then, the deed was yours. I mean, it was the Scarabae's. Mating Adamus to me. Producing Ruth."