Personal Darkness

by Tanith Lee

  "Don't speak of Ruth."

  He said this without anger, almost without expression.

  She said, "Surely in London I should leave you."

  "We wish you to remain. If you won't, well then."

  "I'll—we'll have to see."

  Eric nodded. He looked into the pond. The ghostly life trembled between the lily pads.

  After a while he left her, walking off under the pyramids.

  A week later the two great black cars, the Rolls-Royces, appeared at the hotel.

  The Scarabae departed in the afternoon, and Rachaela with them.

  She felt disconcerted, leaving the hotel. She thought irresistibly of the morning after the Christmas seance. She had gone out into the gardens and, coming back, everything had been tidied and put right. Magicians had cleaned the walls, hung up the pictures, put back the mirror glass and taps. Even the toothpaste, the needles, and the notepaper were replaced.

  They had been safe here, safe from themselves.

  She had been one of them, or had she? Out in the world, she must be herself.

  The journey was not as long, on this occasion, as she had anticipated. The Rolls ran over motorways into the capital, and they were there at sunset.

  So she saw the common on a flaming sky the polarized windows could not completely withhold. The trees and sweeps of earth inside the drum of the city, wild land inside a bottle.

  She was surprised by the comparative nearness of a road. She stared at them, Eric, Sasha, and Miranda, Michael and Cheta. Below, beyond the houses of rich people (less rich, evidently, than the Scarabae), lay the London village with its shops and supermarket, its library and pubs, and the quills of the churches, and beyond, the smoky back of London. But London was old, too. Remember that.

  It was not like the first house at all. Yet it had been made like it. Only the windows were tarot windows instead of puns upon the Bible.

  Over the pillared hall were wonderful women in robes, with harps, and rose-red hair. The stairway parted and ran up in two opposing flights, and there the windows had minstrels and flamingo skies.

  There was no one to welcome them. The Rolls had driven away. Yet in every room, the machines, the TVs. And in the huge main chamber, white and gold below the stairs, was an ivory telephone.

  Rachaela walked boldly to it and picked it up. There was a dialing tone. But who, who, should she call?

  Miranda followed her to her room. Miranda made her shy. She had wept with Miranda.

  "Look, Rachaela. You'll like it."

  The room was the shade of a dove. Soft sweet gray lit with hints of amber. And then the bed and chairs deep green like the pines of the common. And beyond, the white bathroom with its antique finish and viridian window.

  But the window in the bedroom, which showed a snowy woman with golden hair and wings, holding up her hands to the doves which had created the room, was not the picture of that other room, the Temptation, with its armor and apples, its Eve, its snake. This was a luminous romantic window, without significance, perhaps. And, it stood open.

  "The window—" said Rachaela.

  "You can see out over the common," said Miranda.

  Sasha had appeared in the doorway.

  "You must be careful at night," said Sasha, "of bats."

  And this absurdity, these bats of vampire myth, improbable in a London park, made Rachaela laugh aloud, and then Sasha laughed, as once before, and then Miranda. So they all stood laughing.

  "Do the colors please you?" asked Miranda.

  "It's wonderful, yes."

  "Do stay," said Miranda.

  As if there had always been free choice.

  Of course, actually, there had always been.

  The Scarabae had snared her, made her live with them. She had always thought so. But in fact they had invited. That too was a trap, a web. Adamus had waited for her, in it. And she had been seduced by Adamus. And she had birthed, from that union, Ruth. The web had then rent itself to pieces.

  At the hotel, she had played chess with Eric. He had taught her how to play, although she never properly understood, but the pieces intrigued her, the carven kings and queens of black and white, the knights and castles, and the ill-fated pawns.

  They had put the board and the chess pieces on the table, so at first she did not recognize it. Then one evening she came down from a long day-sleep, and found Cheta polishing the table. It was the furnishing from the hotel which they had used in the seance, its surface scratched into a peculiar pattern.

  Cheta stood aside.

  Rachaela poised by the table, staring down at it.

  The seance glass, in rushing from letter to letter, had ripped a path upon the table. And yet she saw now—the reason they had kept it—the scratching also spelled a word: zegnajcie.

  "Cheta," Rachaela said. "This. What does it mean?"

  Cheta said at once, "Good-bye."

  Then they carried the chess board, loaded with its figures, back between them, and set it over that good-bye.

  When Cheta had gone, Rachaela was alone in the room. The Scarabae dinner would not be for another hour, for afterlight still lingered through the glorious windows of walled gardens, roses, palaces upon hills. And through this window above the table, where the knight kneeled before the forest and the burning tower.

  Good-bye.

  Now she had glimpsed their true power. Oh yes. At last.

  They could command things and elements, and people. The cars in the mist, the vast hotel, this house, prepared for them against their coming.

  And yet, they beat like moths against the tempest of life. Strong, thin, black moths with eyes of obsidian. How great the storm, how small, how small, the Scarabae.

  CHAPTER 7

  ON SATURDAY MORNINGS, ABOUT TEN-thirty, the milkman always came. And so, although she was hoovering, with music turned up loud, Julie Sawyer heard the knock.

  The problem was with the milkman; if he failed to rout them out on Saturday, he would return at six a.m. on Sunday and bang and shout. Julie tried to avoid this, but sometimes she overslept on Saturdays. Terry was useless, naturally, he just pulled the covers further over his ears and burrowed down into the pillow. He was up there now, asleep overhead in the larger of the two small upstairs rooms. And although Julie had been making as much noise as she could, she knew in her heart he could slumber through the disco beat and Hoover, even when she cleaned the carpet around the bed.

  She could create a noise cleaning the bathroom too, of course, and this sometimes did disturb him, unrhyth-mic crashes of shampoo bottles and Jif falling in the bath, the Niagara of water and chug of the tank.

  Saturday was the only day she had time to clean, and then she sometimes left it, what with the shopping and the launderette, or if they went out. Today the chore had to be done, because Terry had asked Blackie over. Blackie was all right. But Lucy and Jenny would come too. Julie had mixed feelings about it, she always had.

  Generally, when things got going, it was not so bad. In fact, she liked it, sometimes. But then, again—

  At the thud of the knocker—the bell no longer worked—Julie switched off the Hoover and pushed her short black hair back. She was slim and small breasted with rather large feet, and she wore stained jeans and a cotton top. She let the music center go on playing, a reassuring thump, thump, thump, and went out with her purse into the narrow hall.

  Through the wavered glass of the door she could not see anyone. Had the bastard already gone?

  Julie flung the door open and there was the milk sitting on the doorstep. There was no sign of the milk float. She had missed him. Sod it.

  Outside the front door of the end-of-terrace house, was a five-foot patch of weeds, and a dustbin. Just inside the gate stood a girl, about ten years younger than Julie. She had a lot of very black hair.

  "Mrs. Watt?"

  "No," said Julie flatly.

  "Yes," said the girl, quietly and distinctly, "she lives with her daughter."

  "You've got the wrong
house," said Julie Sawyer. She jerked her bitten thumbnail at the next house along, the first of the adjacent row beyond the gap. "Try her. She might know." Knock the old cow up and waste her time.

  Julie was going to close the door, but the girl walked forward. Her clothes were good, particularly the leather jacket.

  "I've come a very long way."

  "Have you? Well, I've never heard of any Watts."

  "I came into London, and then out here."

  "They must have given you the wrong address."

  "This is the house."

  "No," said Julie, trying to be strong, "it isn't."

  And then the sash window went up over their heads.

  Terry peered out, his face sallow and his hair looking tangled and greasy. What the droning Hoover and beating music had not been able to achieve, their steely voices under the window had.

  "What the fuck's going on?"

  Julie gazed up at him in exasperation.

  "She's come to the wrong place."

  Terry's eyes had cleared. He stared at the girl.

  "No she hasn't." He smiled. "Who did you want, love?"

  "Mrs. Watt."

  "No Mrs. Watt, I'm afraid. But come in. Make her some coffee, Julie. We can sort it out." He added to the girl: "I'll just take a leak and I'll be down."

  Julie stood rigid. Her mother used to say of her father, "He treats me like the maid." Maids did not live in Julie's vocabulary, but it came to the same thing. Bloody bugger, telling her to make this bitch coffee. As if she had nothing else to do.

  "You'd better come in," said Julie.

  "Thank you," said the girl, and slid in past her, over the threshold.

  Her name was Ruth, as Terry elicited from her among the coffee mugs.

  The Hoover stood in the middle of the brightly patterned cheap carpet, a fourth silent partner and stern reminder, of which no one but Julie took any apparent notice. While in the kitchen, which led off the one through-room of the downstairs area, last night's washing-up teetered above the sink.

  Terry had brushed his teeth and splashed cold water on his face. He now had the pale morning-look which Julie once found very attractive, so brooding, and forlorn.

  Between them, he and this Ruth ate a whole packet of custard creams, and went on to the chocolate wholewheat Julie had been saving.

  Ruth had come from somewhere out in the country, by the sea. Mrs. Watt had asked her up. This was really all the information Ruth gave or had to give, for Terry quickly took over, talking to Ruth about himself, the boring office and idiotic people where and with whom he worked, holidays at the ocean, his plans for going abroad with Julie and Blackie, and the get-together he was having for a few friends tonight.

  The music had been turned down, by Terry, for Ruth did not seem to like it.

  "Any more coffee?" asked Terry.

  "You know where it is," said Julie. "I mean the kettle." She got up, and marching to the back window, looked out on a further, longer patch of weeds. An apple tree grew at the bottom of the garden, and on a lower bough the cat was sitting, black and white as a magpie.

  "Did you feed the cat?" Julie demanded.

  Interrupted in a statement on Cornish cider, Terry said, "No."

  "It's been next door again. It goes over the fence."

  "Who cares what the bloody cat does."

  "She gives it things to eat. You know what she's like."

  "Well, it saves us feeding it."

  "One day she'll poison it," said Julie, with a premonition of annoyance.

  She crossed back to the music center, and turned it up very loud.

  "For Christ's sake," said Terry. He too got up, and going to the machine switched it off.

  "I like it on when I work," said Julie.

  "Well, you're not working, are you?"

  "I've got to finish the hoovering. Then there's the washing-up. And the bathroom. And I've got to change the bed."

  "A woman's work is never done."

  "You're bloody right there."

  "Leave it then."

  "I can't, with your friends coming."

  "Coming, yeah," said Terry. He looked back at Ruth and smiled in a slow enticing way. "Like to stay for the party?"

  Julie said, "That's not a very good idea."

  "Yes," said Terry, "yes, it is."

  "I'm sure," said Julie, "Ruth has to get on to her Mrs. Watt."

  "But she doesn't know anymore where Mrs. Watt is."

  "She could phone her. Couldn't you, Ruth?"

  "I don't have a telephone number," said Ruth.

  Julie said, "Isn't that a bit odd?"

  Terry shook his head at Ruth.

  "Don't worry about Julie. She'll come around."

  "I could get the phone book. We could look it up," said Julie briskly.

  But Ruth said, not flurried: "They had to have it changed."

  Terry made more coffee, and Julie turned on the Hoover. She went around the room, moving furniture, and then around Ruth, who did not move, simply lifting her feet off the ground until the appliance had passed. Then Julie did the stairs, banging quite a lot, and dragged the Hoover off into the bedroom and the upstairs room Terry called his Lair. It was a tiny place he had managed to fill with shed clothes, half-made model airplanes, paperback thrillers, and empty beer cans. Sometimes Terry also wrote short pieces of fiction in here. Julie had admired this talent when first they met, but now she did not bother with what Terry wrote. Squashed in the corner was a camp bed. That would need to be made up, too.

  Julie cleaned the bathroom, managing to knock all the toothbrushes and makeup off the shelf under the mirror.

  Terry must be mad to ask this girl to stay tonight.

  They had agreed, months ago, that it was just as well to play safe. They had their regular friends. But what did they know about this Ruth?

  How trustworthy was Terry? There was that girl at his office, Sherry, and perhaps—

  Julie did the beds.

  When she came down, Terry was still holding forth to Ruth, and Ruth still listening, sitting composed in a black T-shirt and jeans on the two-seater settee. Terry sat on the floor by the electric fire and his mug had made a wet ring on the top of the surround. There were biscuit crumbs on the carpet.

  While Julie washed up, Terry went out to get some wine and cans of Carlsberg Special Brew.

  The cat appeared at the kitchen door, and Julie let it in.

  "I suppose I've got to feed you now."

  She opened a can of cat food and put it down.

  The cat approached the food, and ate, standing up, tail laid flat to the floor as if to earth itself.

  Ruth came into the doorway of the kitchen.

  "You have a cat."

  "Cat? Yes."

  The kitchen was unwide and Julie found herself hoping that Ruth would not enter it, for then they would brush against each other, something she did not relish. The cat saved her from this by looking around from behind the cooker, and then walking straight up to Ruth. "What's her name?" asked Ruth.

  "Mohawk," said Julie. Terry had called the cat that, and she had thought it clever, at the time. But it was a stupid name, typical.

  And Ruth did not employ the name. Instead she got down on her knees and held out her hand for the cat to sniff. The cat inspected her fingers, finding something fascinating.

  The cat's face was coal-black with one white dot, like a speck of paint, on its forehead. The yellow eyes shone like lemon fruit-drops.

  " 'Dark they were and golden eyed,' " said Ruth.

  "Pardon?"

  "It's Ray Bradbury," said Ruth. "The Martians in the short story."

  "Oh. Terry reads sci-fi," said Julie, dismissively.

  Ruth did not respond. She had picked up the cat, and held it in her arms, her cheek against its sleek black back. The cat purred with a high grasshopper whirr.

  Julie felt annoyed, as she did about that Macdonald woman next door, the one who had complained about her music and who stole her cat. Ju
lie would often shut the cat in, but then the cat would shit in the bath.

  After all, Julie pushed by Ruth with an aggressive "Excuse me," and went to the music center. She selected one of the most vibrant tapes, put it on, and stepped up the volume.

  The beat came, and she moved to it for a moment, knocking against a toffee-wood table by the settee.

  When she glanced round, Ruth had gone with the cat out of the back door into the weedy garden.

  Usually over the weekend Mrs. Macdonald tried to keep to herself as much as possible. It was at these times that she felt the most threatened. Weekends, and in the evenings, when the loud music was played and the noisy visits went on. Her house was separated from the house of Julie Sawyer and Terry Purvis only by the width of the wooden door, which was joined onto both their properties, and led into Mrs. Macdonald's back garden. The two gardens ran side by side.

  She did not go into the garden at weekends or in the evenings, once the better weather came. Julie and Terry, and sometimes their friends, were often out there, and then they took a portable tape machine out with them.

  Occasionally, on Saturday nights, beer cans were thrown over her fence by the one they called Blackie.

  Today Mrs. Macdonald had risked going out quickly, because the cat had drunk all the water she put out for the birds.

  It was as she was coming back between the hydrangeas that she saw, over the low fence, a girl with long black hair and red lips, standing holding the cat in her arms.

  Mrs. Macdonald hesitated. The way the girl held the cat was benign and pleasing to the eye. She had never seen Julie Sawyer, let alone Terry Purvis, hold the cat in this way. It was the manner in which cats should be held.

  The girl was looking at her.

  The girl said, "You're Mrs. Macdonald."

  Mrs. Macdonald felt threatened again. She tried to frown, but she was only nervous. She was sixty-five, but appeared much older. She secretly thought the proximity of Julie and Terry had worn her out. On their other side, the house was empty. Another aggravated neighbor might have assisted Mrs. Macdonald.

  "You feed the cat," said the girl. Then she said, "I came out because of the noise."