They stayed on either side of me until I reached my car. Although there were questions I might have asked, I was desperate to be rid of my captors. As I unlocked the car they sauntered away side by side, and I was letting myself breathe with relief when they turned to confront me again. Each of them held up his left hand, a gesture that might have been a warning or a parody of benediction. I tried not to look at their faces, because I had the impression that Black’s eyes and lips had grown perfectly circular while Farr’s nostrils were distended as wide as his mouth. “What’s happened to you?” I couldn’t help demanding. “What are you?”
Neither of them spoke until I met their eyes. While darkness lurked within their combined gaze, their faces were no more than mundanely grotesque. “What you’ll be,” Black said.
I sat behind the wheel of my car until they drove away, and then until my hands were sufficiently steady to let me turn the key in the ignition. Even then I didn’t start the car at once. I’d planned to go downtown to watch Body Double, a film that enough of my students had seen to make it worth including in discussions about Hitchcock’s influence, but now I’d been reminded of too much that was unresolved. At once I remembered pretending in my adolescence that I’d been to see films, having spied on Christian Noble and his activities instead. I could see Body Double another day, and I drove out of the city along a route that was all too familiar.
I had to tell myself that the sky wasn’t growing thinner as it widened, though it looked almost too attenuated to retain any colour. As the landscape spread around me, extending fields relieved by just a scattering of trees to the horizon, I could have fancied that it was making way for the Safe To Sleep site and whatever infested the land, allowing it more access to the void beyond the sky. Now that the house had gone, I was disconcerted to find I wasn’t sure where it used to be. I had to tramp on the brakes when I saw I was passing the gates.
I’d almost failed to recognise them because they were sagging inwards. Someone had closed them and secured them with a heavy padlocked chain, and they bore a notice warning the world to keep out because of dangerous subsidence. I parked across the entrance and climbed out of the car. Even the trees along the avenue had collapsed, pointing their trunks at the site of the house while they flourished roots clogged with soil at the road. I gripped two bars of the gates and stared along the gravel drive until I began to wonder why. I was close to forgetting where I was and what had brought me there, if I even knew. I was simply gazing at abandoned land, featureless except for a track that led between two flat expanses of grass bordered by fallen trees to a circular patch of earth several hundred yards wide. There seemed to be no reason why I shouldn’t seek a way in—but perhaps my nerves were somehow more alert than my mind, because my fists closed harder around the bars of the gates, bruising my fingers, which helped restore my sense of the situation. My memories were being drained, a process that felt as if the space they’d occupied within my head was filling with blackness that had seeped up from beneath the camouflaged landscape. I seemed to feel its tendrils start to range about inside my skull, as though a less than wholly insubstantial intruder was performing a kind of sluggish spiral dance to embed itself. I fled to the car, and when I trod on the accelerator I was terrified that blindness might hatch inside my eyes as it once had.
I didn’t feel remotely safe until I’d driven for miles, well beyond outdistancing any sense of a hold on my mind. I turned left at a crossroads before I quite knew why, and crossed another road between fields before turning left at the next one. I was so anxious to reinforce my memories, having felt them being stolen or erased, that I was bound for the Harvest Moon.
The pub had just opened for the evening by the time I parked outside. The pony-tailed barman gave me an imprecise loose-mouthed grin from behind the bar. “What’s yours today?”
I was happy to think this promised reassurance. “Just a pint of lager, thanks.”
He waved a finger at the pumps in front of him, which bore dauntingly authentic names. “Nothing realer.”
“I did try one last time I was here.”
“You did at that.” He squeezed his moustache with a thumb and forefinger, apparently an aid to recollection. “Hunt’s End, wasn’t it?” he said. “And you met your lady out back.”
“You’ve a good memory.”
“Never know when you’re going to need it in this job,” he said and levered out a pint of Viking’s Valour lager. “Too real for some.”
I hoped he meant the drink I’d had last time, not this one, and certainly nothing else. “That’s fine,” I said, the mouthful having proved palatable enough. “So did you see what happened to the house?”
He turned from checking the contents of wine bottles in a refrigerator cabinet. “Which house was that?”
I felt a sensation in my guts too much like the one that had seized my mind outside the padlocked gates. “The one we talked about when I was here.”
“Remind me.”
“Where you saw them taking children.”
“I’ve got a vague memory. Some kind of home, wasn’t it?” This time pinching his moustache appeared not to work too well. “It was demolished, though,” he said, and I saw his eyes lose focus. “Must have been quite a while since.”
“Someone has to know more. They’ve made the place safe and put up a notice.”
“Know more about what?” As I tried to think how to respond the barman said “Hold on, I remember now.”
I might have held my breath, but I had to say “Tell me.”
“The council thought the road past there might be unsafe, so they closed it for a bit while they investigated. It’s open now.”
I could have felt defeated, but he’d prompted me to say “Unsafe how?”
“Seems like somebody reported subsidence, but they didn’t find any.”
Jim had reported it, of course. In a final bid for reassurance I said “You thought there was something odd about the area, if you remember. Something in the air.”
“It couldn’t have been much,” the barman said, fingering his brow as if to demonstrate its smoothness. “It’s gone.”
His answers were making my brain feel attenuated, leached of substance. When I turned away I hardly knew where I was going—not where I’d met Bobby, which had a view of the Safe To Sleep site—and then I noticed a pay phone in a corner of the room. Fumbling in my pocket for change, I made for the plasterboard niche. I felt desperate to reinforce my memories, however much I might have liked to be without them. I stood the glass on a shelf beside the phone and fed coins into the slot, and listened to a bell that sounded unnecessarily distant once I’d dialled. When a voice said “Carole Ashcroft” I pushed the button, a vintage mechanism I’d encountered very little since my childhood. “Could I speak to Bobby?” I said.
The pause might have been a reply. Seconds later Carole said “Is that Dominic Sheldrake?”
“Guilty,” I admitted, not much of a joke.
“What do you want with Bob this time?”
“Just to see how things are.”
“I’ll find out if she wants to speak to you.”
Carole’s tone made it plain she hoped not, and I was trying to decide if a plea would help my case when I heard Bobby in the background. “Is that Dom? Of course I’ll speak to him.”
I could have fancied that the plastic clatter denoted some kind of minor struggle, but surely it was just an amplified handover. “Is everything all right, Dom?” Bobby said at once.
“Pretty much,” I said, which felt overstated. “I’ve just been to look where the Nobles were operating. There’s no trace.”
“I told you’d they’d gone when I came back here. I’m still sure Christian sent me off so they could leave without me.”
I did my best not to her wistfulness in her voice. I was dismayed enough to hear her calling Noble by his first name. “And you still don’t know why they left so suddenly,” I said.
“I told you, I didn’t like to
hang around any longer than I had to. You’ve been, so maybe you can imagine how it felt to be in there on your own when I got back that day. I’m not even sure if I was on my own. I’m fine, Carole. I want to talk, especially to Dom.”
“Just remember I’m here if you want me,” Carole said despite retreating audibly into another room.
“I know,” Bobby called and lowered her voice. “Actually, Dom, I’m not sure it was so sudden.”
“Why,” I said with some unease, “have any of them been in touch?”
“Not a word. I’ve no idea where they are or what they may be calling themselves now. It’s just that I’ve remembered something that was said before they went.”
I couldn’t help blurting “Make sure you remember.”
“I don’t forget anything, Dom.” She sounded puzzled if not piqued, and I was wondering how much to explain when she said “It was at the end of the last sleep I took with them. I overheard it when I was coming back to myself. I thought he was talking about doing something with someone, but it wasn’t that at all.”
“What was it, then?”
“What we behold we summon.” Lower still Bobby said “I thought he was trying to sound excited, but he seemed a bit afraid.”
I felt as if the darkness of the niche had closed around my mind. To fend off at least some disquiet I said “Christian Noble did.”
“No, his grandson. It was Toph.”
Despite the childish hand in which the unfinished sentence had been added to my transcription of the journal, I’d hoped Bobby wouldn’t say this. Ducking out of the oppressive dark, I moved to the limit of the phone cord. “Anyway,” I said in a bid to contain some of my unease, “how’s your writing?”
“Chugging on as always. Only, Dom…”
I experienced a qualm I felt I mightn’t want to understand. “Only what?”
“Don’t think too badly of me, but I won’t be writing about the Nobles and their practices. Let’s hope they’ve scared themselves enough this time to stop.”
“Do you mind if I ask why?”
“Remember Eric Wharton and what may have happened to him.”
More than this must have deterred her, but I suspected she would rather not remember. “I wouldn’t want anything like that for you,” I said.
“Thanks for understanding. And don’t you or Jim provoke anything either.”
I could only hope our visit to the abandoned house hadn’t done so. “Let’s stay in touch, the three of us,” I said.
“We will. We always will.”
I couldn’t tell whether she was stopping short of our adolescent vow or meant to bring it back. I said goodbye and left the remains of my pint of lager on the bar. “I need to get home,” I said, mostly to myself.
Soon the site of Safe To Sleep was below the horizon, which only made me feel it was lurking under the world. When the suburban streets closed in they seemed less substantial than I would have liked. Before I reached home the sun was nowhere to be seen, and the streetlamps looked clogged with dusk. I was turning the car off the road when I saw that another was parked beside Lesley’s in front of the house. It belonged to Claudine’s mother.
As I shut the front door Judith came out of the lounge with Lesley at her back. “Finish your game,” she called, “and we’ll be off.”
I thought she was ensuring that her daughter spent as little time as possible anywhere near me, but then she extended a hand. “Dominic, I just wanted to say you were right to have your doubts about Safe To Sleep.”
“Well, I’m—” I thought it wiser not to express gladness until I knew why. “How do you think I was?”
“Even if they cured the children, and I’m sure they did, I can’t forgive them for closing the place down like that without letting anybody know. The least they could have done is contact all of us so we know where to find them if we need to.”
I saw Lesley willing me to accept this, the nearest Judith was likely to come to apologising. “As you say,” I said, “we don’t need them any more.”
I heard a giggle in the dining-room and hoped it meant only that the children were enjoying their game. “Still,” Judith said, having glanced towards the sound, “If they hadn’t gone to Safe To Sleep they wouldn’t be friends now. That’s worth the bother.”
Another giggle prompted me to ask “What are they playing?”
“Claudine’s teaching Toby chess. She’s the youngest in the chess club at their school.”
“It’s not chess, mum,” Claudine called. “It’s our game we made up.”
“Has it got a name?” I asked whoever knew.
“Trio,” Toby said.
I tried to be unobtrusive as I looked into the dining-room. He and Claudine were sitting at one corner of the table, where chess pieces of both colours lay beside the board. I watched Toby move the black queen up the board and follow her with both his knights, attacking the white king from three directions at once. “I’ve threed you,” he said.
“I’ll win next time,” Claudine said, and I thought she was making it sound like a ritual. “I’m coming now, mum.”
Toby waved her off from the front door while Lesley and I stood behind him, and I tried not to feel we were consciously playing the family on the lit stage of the hall with the night for an audience. Toby had already dined with Claudine, and once he’d had his bath he read us a Hans Andersen tale.
I saw Lesley’s eyes grow moist as the ugly duckling bent his head and waited for the swans to kill him. I tried to feel nothing except pleasure when he caught sight of his transformed image in the water, but the notion of bodily change made me nervous, and I kept recalling that the author’s middle name was Christian. As I kissed Toby good night I could see no darkness in his eyes, however deep into them I peered, and hoped this meant Noble had abandoned him for good.
Once I’d cleared away the game that wasn’t chess Lesley brought in her casserole—beef Bourgignon. As I opened a bottle of Syrah and filled our glasses I was dogged by a sense of enacting our marriage. I’d enthused about dinner, having savoured a mouthful, when Lesley said “How was your film?”
“I didn’t go. I was delayed and then it was too late.”
“That’s annoying. What was the delay?”
“The vee cee collared me on the way to the car park. He wanted to know how we’re doing.”
“And you said…”
“That we’re all back together.” It was a statement that tried not to sound like a hope. I reached for my glass while I said “What would you have told him?”
“Just that,” Lesley said but gave me a lingering blink. “Surely he didn’t keep you all that time.”
“No, of course not.” At this point I had to leave truth behind. “I knew you’d be busy with Judith and Claudine,” I said, “so I took the time to do some thinking.”
“No need to make it sound as if you were excluded. That really isn’t fair.” When I found no answer Lesley said “What were your thoughts, then? No, I won’t ask unless you want to say.”
“About us,” I said, which felt true enough to pass for truth, “and how I never want to be without you two again.”
“Then don’t give me the reasons you gave me ever again. What Judith said before, let’s leave it at that,” she said and reached to take my hand. “We’ve been through what we’ve been through, and now let’s live for the future.”
I wondered how much she had Toby’s happiness in mind. I knew his pleas to her had helped keep our family together, though I wasn’t sure how crucial they might have been. More than anything, the fact that we no longer monitored his sleep let me think we might be returning to normal, even achieving the normality we’d never previously had. Perhaps that was the last time I was able to delude myself.
We glanced into Toby’s room on our way to bed. He was asleep, and far more importantly, lying on his side. When I joined Lesley in bed she drew my hand around her naked waist, and I thought we didn’t need any more words. I let my hand stray tow
ards her breast, but she moved it gently back where it had been. This felt like a wordless postponement rather than a rejection, and I was content, even calm for a change. Before long I was asleep.
I lurched awake with a sense that I was about to have a dream I would be desperate to escape. Perhaps I was already dreaming, since although my hand was still on Lesley’s waist, I couldn’t make it work. I wanted to cling to her to hold myself back from the imminent nightmare, but my hand, not to mention the arm, hardly felt present at all. The harder I strove to hold on, the more remote the useless object grew. It wasn’t merely distant but insubstantial, and as my sense of it fled beyond reach I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I would have needed my body to dream.
I was outside in the night, where countless lights did far too little to dispel the dark. I thought I might be snatched into the black sky, but I was racing breathlessly—with no breath at all—above the streets. Now and then dogs barked as if they sensed my passing. The last streets gave way to empty darkness, and I was terrified to think I knew where I was bound. I managed to stave off the prospect until I saw the padlocked gates that used to lead to Safe To Sleep.
I swooped along the avenue of fallen trees and then, unable to find any way to prevent myself, slid into the ground like a worm. I could have thought the denizen was waiting for me, because its unnatural hunger drew me deep into the earth. I was slipping, blind and helpless, down a spiral that might never end. Certainly the descent seemed to leave time behind. I wasn’t even protected from sensations; I could feel how soft and slimy the walls were, and crawling with some form of life. The swarming mass was their actual substance, and it was starting to become mine. At some point I realised that I’d passed through the centre of the spiral, but its geometry was so abnormal that it simply led further into its own kind of darkness. I no longer knew whether I was rushing up or down. All that was clear was that I might never escape.
I felt the spiral begin to reveal more of its dreadful nature, mouthing at me like a colossal deformed maw that might have been eager to consume its victim or to deliver a monstrous welcoming kiss if not both, before I was released. It was made plain to me that the denizen hadn’t been my summoner. Then I was above the faintly luminous fields, and after those the lit streets of the city, and by no means soon enough in bed with Lesley, where I had to remember how to take a breath. No doubt my body had kept up the process in my absence. I managed to relax my grip on Lesley’s waist before it could waken her, though she murmured a sleepy complaint that fell short of words. However fiercely I might have clung to her, it wouldn’t have made me feel safe. I was still hearing the voice I’d heard in my mind as my captor let me go—Toph’s voice, sounding less than ever like a child and yet childishly gleeful. “You’re ours when we want,” it said.
Born To The Dark Page 31
