Personal Darkness

by Tanith Lee

  Julie glanced at Blackie archly, but said nothing.

  Blackie shrugged. He got out a packet of cigarettes and a big gold lighter. He showed the lighter to Ruth. "See this? Present from a grateful customer. A bird." He put a cigarette in his mouth, flipped the lighter and raised the yellow petal of flame. When the cigarette was alight, he flipped the lighter over. "Look, it's inscribed to me. B to B."

  "Don't you believe it," said Terry. "He fucking knocked it off. Or someone left it in a car."

  Ash trembled from the cigarette to the carpet. Blackie rubbed it smartly in with his big black shoe. Julie gave a grunt and broke off from her dance. She went to the fire surround and picked up an ashtray, which she then set down by Blackie on the toffee-wood table, moving the tape player to do so. "Use that."

  "Use that. Yis, Modum. Lovely."

  "You brought the stuff?" Terry asked Blackie.

  "I might."

  "Where is it?"

  "Easy, man," said Blackie. "I got it." He patted his hip.

  Ruth stood up.

  "You know where it is," said Terry.

  Ruth moved out of the room. Terry watched her.

  "Nice arse," said Blackie. "Don't say much. Fine by me."

  Ruth went up the stairs, visible from the open door of the through-room. Terry went on watching her, out of sight.

  Jenny broke away from the dance now. "I think I'll just go up, too."

  Julie refilled her own wine glass. Blackie laughed.

  Ruth was standing inside the tiny bathroom trying to shut the door when Jenny called, "Can I come in," and came in, so Ruth was forced back. Jenny squeezed past Ruth through the two and a half feet of space between the bath and the wall. "Don't worry about the door. You can't ever shut it. The guys won't come up while we're here. I'm dying for a pee. Mind if I go first?" And she raised her pink skirt, lowered her white pants, and sat down on the lavatory.

  Ruth froze. Over the thump, thump of the music, there came the plash of running water.

  Ruth turned and went out of the bathroom.

  Through the open door of the bedroom the double bed lay dressed in red and gray triangles. The black and white cat crouched at its foot, ears laid back, eyes wide.

  Ruth went into the room and knelt by the cat. She smoothed its fur and kissed it between the ears.

  The cat got up and went to the wardrobe, and scratched at the panels. Ruth opened the wardrobe door. The cat darted inside. Ruth left the door ajar.

  The lavatory flushed.

  Jenny had come out of the bathroom and now stood in the bedroom doorway.

  "Julie gets fed up with that cat in her wardrobe." She forgot the cat. "I'd like a really big house, wouldn't you? Three or four bedrooms. And a swimming pool. Have you known Terry long?"

  "No," said Ruth.

  "He's not bad," said Jenny. "Better than that Blackie."

  Ruth stood against the hard forms of the bed, in her long, long hair and silence. There was something… childlike?

  Jenny frowned. "How old are you?"

  Ruth said, "It's none of your business."

  "Oh, you're going to be great, you are," said Jenny angrily. She turned and went away down the stairs, her bracelets clashing.

  Ruth looked at the bed. The duvet was folded back.

  Downstairs they all laughed suddenly. Ruth intently stared at the floor, as if she could see through it at the top of their heads.

  At about nine, when they had drunk quite a lot, Jenny and Julie were sent out to the Indian in the high street for a take-away. "Go on," said Blackie, "you're liberated. You don't need us to hold your hand."

  "Bring back some more beer," said Terry.

  Ruth did not offer to go out with the girls.

  After some argument, Jenny and Julie went.

  On some level now alone, the two men formed a sort of conspiracy, sitting on the floor and letting one of the beer cans spill over, and chuckling. Ruth sat above them on the settee, with the last of the wine.

  "Let's have a smoke now," said Blackie. "Before they get back."

  He drew out cigarette papers and some loose tobacco, and another substance, sweet and grassy smelling, in a cellophane packet. He began to make an untidy brown cigarette.

  When this was lit, the men passed it back and forth, drawing on it deeply, with half-closed eyes. A foreign scent, like the musk of ancient temples, filled the room.

  Terry offered the remaining half of the joint to Ruth. She shook her head.

  "Go on. It's good stuff."

  "No, thank you."

  "It'll make you feel good."

  "Perhaps she feels good enough," said Blackie. He tore open a beer can, showing her the raw edge. But his voice had slurred now, his eyelids were at half-mast, he looked sleepy.

  Terry was brighter, energetic. He pushed the joint at Ruth. "Haven't you smoked before? I'll show you how."

  "Stop pissing about and pass it here," said Blackie.

  "I fucking paid for it," said Terry.

  "And I fucking got hold of it."

  Terry gave the joint to Blackie, who finished it off.

  "The girls'll smell it when they get back," said Terry like a naughty little boy who had been reading in bed after lights-out.

  But when the girls came back they too were high, for they had had a couple of gins at the restaurant while they waited. Jenny sang the praises of the Indian waiter she fancied. "Oh, his eyes. They're beautiful."

  "Not so beautiful as Ruth's," said Terry. He lifted Ruth's hand and kissed it, but Ruth neither pulled away nor seemed pleased.

  Julie picked up the torn can and took it out to the bin in the kitchen.

  The aluminium dishes were opened up and another foreign fragrance filled the room. This time it was Julie who asked Ruth for the money for her chicken tikka.

  They had not brought back any beer, only two more bottles of wine.

  Julie and Jenny began their prawn curries, and Terry forked up a lamb passanda. Blackie, who had ordered a tandoori mixed grill, potato bhajee and vegetable curry, had spread his dishes out along the carpet, dipping in naan bread and splashing.

  They all ate hungrily. The music, now habitual as air, blared on, ignored.

  Jenny wiped her lips and fingers on a Kleenex. She looked across at Terry. "Would you like to see my new bra?"

  "Black lace," said Terry.

  "Wrong," said Jenny. She stood, a little unsteadily, and, unzipping her dress, pulled it up her body and off over her head. "What do you think?" She was not wearing a bra. Her two breasts stared at them like eyes with round beige pupils. Jenny shook herself, and her breasts wobbled.

  "And what bra is our Julie wearing?" said Blackie.

  He had taken out the paper and tobacco again, and among the empty smeary dishes, was constructing another joint.

  "You'll have to guess," said Julie. "I'm not sure you're really interested."

  Blackie nodded. "Maybe not. I bet Ruthie's got a good one on."

  "Well," said Jenny, "I bet you won't get to see it."

  Blackie lit the joint from his gold lighter B to B, and drew on it as if performing a yoga breathing exercise. He passed the joint directly across to Jenny.

  "Ruthie'll show me." He looked up at Ruth and bared his teeth. "Won't she, eh?"

  Ruth looked down into Blackie's face. Her eyes were the night of temples far, far to the east, a night deeper than the neon dark which had settled on the house. Terry stared at her long mascara lashes. He realized he had not felt anything like this for a girl for half a year.

  "You stay here, Ruth," he said, stumbling on his words, on the taste of curry and hash and beer and wine, and on the chill-sweet bottomless aroma of desire. "You stay with me."

  But Ruth got up, and Blackie had got up from the floor.

  Julie said loudly, "Blackie, you cunt."

  "Dead right," said Blackie.

  "Don't use the fucking bedroom," shouted Julie.

  "We'll use the camp bed," said Blackie, with kindly reassu
rance.

  Terry tried to stand up. Jenny pulled on him. He sank down and Jenny put her hand possessively over his fly.

  Thump, thump, went the music, and the house went on thrumming like a space ship, thump, thump, thump.

  Blackie walked in front of Ruth into Terry's lair and turned on the light. The curtains were drawn. Blackie sat down on the camp bed, bouncing once, to test it. Then he undid his trousers. His penis burst free.

  "Take your clothes off," slurred Blackie. "And then come and try this. It'll taste of curry. Wait and see."

  Ruth had shut the door behind her.

  She poised in the small room, looking at Blackie, and at his penis. Her face was whiter than the rice they had eaten but her lips were scarlet and he would be a lovely fit.

  Her eyes were funny though. Who cared?

  Ruth ran her hand lightly over Terry's table, among the books and spent cans. She took up a Biro and drew off the cap.

  Blackie was not concerned with the pen. Everything was in a wonderful slow motion. He was looking forward to the T-shirt coming slowly off. Ruth was a big girl, better than that bloody Julie, like two gnat bites, stupid mare.

  Ruth came toward Blackie, slowly, slowly, and he took hold of the edge of the T-shirt. But he had slowly raised it only half an inch when she stabbed him quickly and thoroughly through the windpipe with the Biro.

  Terry and Jenny had had sex, on the carpet. Julie had been expected to join in, but where was the fun in that, making it nicer for them and nobody bothering with her?

  Now Jenny was asleep on her back on the floor wearing only her shoes and her bracelets. Terry was probably finished. He had taken out the Polaroid camera, the flash sparking white in the sixty-watt lamplight, and was snapping Jenny with her hair in the curry dishes.

  Julie went toward the door.

  "Let those two get on with it. That bastard. That cow," said Terry.

  "They can rot," said Julie. "I'm going for a fucking piss."

  "Bloody bitch," said Terry. Perhaps he meant Ruth.

  They had certainly made a noise up there, rolling on the floor, judging by the way the ceiling rocked, even over the music.

  Julie went out and up the stairs. Halfway, she paused and took off her high-heeled green shoes, allowing one to drop back into the hall, carrying the other up to the bathroom, then aimlessly letting it fall outside.

  While she was in the bathroom, she listened. Not a whisper from the lair.

  That Blackie. That was the last time. They were going to stop all this. She did not—had never liked it. And Terry. He had drunk far too much, he would be sick in the morning. And the bloody milkman would come at six o'clock. Well, he could wait.

  Julie flushed the lavatory and walked from the bathroom. As she came onto the landing the light went out. Julie swore, and then Ruth stabbed her in the throat with one of her green high heels. Rather as Blackie had done Julie tried to throw up around the obstruction. And died.

  Terry put on another tape. He turned it up, but the volume control was at its limit. He could not see why old mother Macdonald had complained. It was not very loud.

  The room was a mess. Julie would be ratty. He felt a little queasy. Must have been something a bit off in the curry.

  When Ruth came in, he took a Polaroid shot of her, and the flash exploded, Terry laughed when she jumped. She held one of Julie's shoes in her hand, in fact the one from the bottom of the stairs.

  "Got ya."

  Ruth turned to him.

  "You are a bitch," said Terry, weaving on his feet.

  Ruth ripped out the side of his neck with the metal point of Julie's heel.

  Terry squealed, and as he went down, the Polaroid photograph ejected from the camera. He lay on the floor, trying to get up, his neck all wet but not hurting, and saw Ruth lean over and pick up the tape player from the table. She brought the machine down on his head, with enormous strength and great attention.

  When Terry was still, Ruth took one of the empty beer cans and tore it open as she had seen Blackie do. And moved to the sleeping Jenny.

  When Ruth had let Victoria from the wardrobe, she fed the cat in the kitchen. Victoria had come out quite willingly once the music was switched off. She sniffed the body of Julie on the landing, and next Terry's body briefly, below, but the corpses did not hold her interest. When she had eaten, Ruth carried Victoria back upstairs. The cat sat on the side of the bath as Ruth washed off the ejected blood.

  The bed in the bedroom was clean and they slept there, the cat on Ruth's pillow, Ruth's cheek in the cat's soft fur.

  Ruth had a lie-in in the morning. About midday, she got up, fed the cat again—the last tin but one of the cat food—and made herself beefburgers, peas, and oven chips from Julie's slender stores.

  The milkman had not roused her. He often could not rouse Julie and Terry.

  When she had had the food, Ruth checked the house for anything useful, and took some T-shirts of Julie's and Terry's, and a small amount of paper money which she found in a drawer.

  At two o'clock, Ruth, carrying her bag and Victoria on alternate shoulders, used Blackie's lighter to set a small fire in Terry's lair, utilizing some of Terry's short fiction for the purpose.

  The cat glared at the fire, and when the door of the lair was shut, Ruth carried the cat down and out of the house. She put Victoria by Mrs. Macdonald's door, separated by the safe distance of the garden passage. Ruth left Victoria on the Macdonald doorstep, eating her last tin of cat food off a saucer. Before she went away, Ruth rang Mrs. Macdonald's bell.

  From farther up the street Ruth witnessed Mrs. Macdonald coming out, and Victoria trotting into her hall.

  Smoke was already issuing from the top of Julie and Terry's house, but Mrs. Macdonald did not seem to notice it yet. She would say later the silence had puzzled her, for by eleven on Sundays Julie normally had the music center going.

  The music center blew up at three o'clock arid the top floor fell through into the downstairs room, precipitating all that was left of Blackie and Julie onto the cheap carpet, which was by then also on fire. By then, too, Mrs. Macdonald, with a purring Victoria in her arms, had called the fire brigade.

  CHAPTER 10

  BEYOND THE CONSERVATORY THERE WAS a terrace laid with peach and terra-cotta tiles. A statue stood on it, a draped stone woman with a stone basket on her shoulder. As summer had begun, red and wine geraniums had come from the basket.

  Under the terrace six steps went down into the garden.

  The garden had high walls of sepia brick, up which wisteria, clematis, and ivies grew, and other climbing plants with tendrils and heart-shaped leaves. Over the wall tops the trees of the common massed thickly. Trees had assembled inside also. It was a dark, overgrown, and in parts sunken garden, into which the sun pressed sharply in two or three places.

  Lou and Tray were on the terrace, on long garden chairs. Their golden bodies were metallic with sunscreen. Each wore a tiny black bikini, Lou's with one diagonal strap. Tray had a small tattoo of an orchid around her navel. Their hair had changed as the days passed and Camillo let them, or ushered them, out and about; Tray's gold was streaked with white and Lou's was rose-red like the women in the hall windows. They were painting each other's toenails black with little stenciled designs in silver.

  "Hi, Rach," said Lou.

  "Isn't it lovely and warm," said Tray.

  In the house, the Scarabae had gathered, as they sometimes did, to watch the TV news in the drawing room.

  Lou pointed her flawless arm. "Cami's down there."

  Tray smiled at Rachaela with flawless teeth.

  Each girl was adorably beautiful, as if they had been fashioned out of some material, custom made, like Camillo's trike. There was not a pore in their skins, not an imbalance in their bodies. Their hair was silken floss. Lou had hazel eyes but Tray's were smoky blue. They could never conceivably age or deteriorate.

  They had infiltrated the house more and more. Sometimes they even watched television with t
he Scarabae. But both girls were in a sort of dream that had only to do with their own perfection. They seemed to think Camillo was a film director or perhaps an elderly rock singer. Being dolls, they apparently expected to be often set aside, picked up again when required.

  "You've got lovely hair," said Tray as Rachaela crossed the terrace.

  To them she would look about thirty, therefore past her best. Tray was being kind, genuinely good-hearted, in offering the compliment.

  "Thank you."

  Rachaela went down the steps.

  She followed the path into the thickets of oak trees, and came to what seemed a grove in a forest. Here an apple tree grew tall and bent and wild, fruitless. The terrace, the house, were invisible. A fountain in the form of a twisting fish rose from a mossy bowl. A little water still dripped from the jaws of the fish. On its head now was a straw hat with enamel cherries.

  Camillo sat on the ground, cross-legged, watching her.

  She had been able to find him in the past. She had found him now.

  "Can't get up," said Camillo. "Too old."

  He wore, as usual, his leathers, and a T-shirt which read, under the chain-mail, Wild Thing.

  "It's time you told me," said Rachaela.

  "Told you what? How impressive you are?"

  "How you survived."

  Camillo said, "Do you like the fish's hat? I found it in a jumble sale. Too good for a woman."

  "You gave me the key," she said, "which let Ruth out. They won't talk about Ruth. Ruth burned the house. Did they tell you about Miriam?"

  "They don't tell me things, they never did."

  "But you're resurrected, Camillo. That must make a difference."

  He did not look like Camillo anymore, not with the dreadlocks and beads. His old forearms were muscular as steel. Hair grew on them, steel colored.

  Yet since he had come here, he had grown introspective. He had shut himself away, sending the two girls out alone with handfuls of money so they could have their hair done, and could buy countless almost identical tiny black clothes, and silver for their golden limbs, and bags of chips and ice-creams, which was all they ever seemed to eat.

  On his new music machine above in the house, Camillo played The Sisters of Mercy, Carter U.S.M., and Iron Maiden. Rachaela heard the murmur of these musics, like the sea in a cave.