Voices in the Dark

by Catherine Banner

  ‘Why didn’t I ever know?’

  Leo shrugged. ‘They have gone now. I gave them up the year you were born, and it didn’t seem worth telling you.’

  ‘Why did you give them up?’

  ‘All these questions …’ He shook his head and gave that same sad smile again. ‘I decided they weren’t any use. I mean, for anything that mattered.’

  ‘Is that true? Powers aren’t any use?’

  ‘It’s just what I thought at the time. Anyway, I would never have made a great one. And that’s all in the past now.’

  I lay still, trying to see him as a great one, a man initiated into an ancient line of heroes. I could not do it. He was just Leo, my papa, who stood at a market stall all day and spent the evenings sweeping the floor and carrying up the water and reading me stories. ‘Papa?’ I whispered. ‘Did you ever dream about England again?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I never did.’

  ‘But how could you stop having powers just like that?’

  ‘I didn’t. They keep their hold on you, Anselm. But I never dreamed about England again.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  But there was something very final about the way he said it, something that made me remember it long after that evening, long after he had left me and turned out the light. There was always a kind of darkness about Leo, a cold side to his spirit that none of us could reach. In that, he was exactly like Aldebaran.

  I never had nightmares again after that. Instead, I always dreamed about England. I saw it as a green and enchanted place, inhabited by minstrels and poets and wandering outlaws. And after that night, Leo became a kind of hero to me. I did not think about it all the time, but sometimes I would see him waiting at the school gates in his old leather jacket or bending tiredly to dig the cold ash out of the stove, and I would think, My papa was once a man of some importance. In those days, he had a market stall in the coldest corner of the square, and his coughing every winter’s night was fierce enough to rattle the windows. But I knew secretly that it would not last. Leo was destined to be a great man. It was written in the stars somewhere, and all we had to do was wait. In my dreams, I saw a shop with our name on the sign and Leo in a new suit of clothes presiding over the counter. Years passed before it came true, but I never lost faith. It would have taken more than years to make me do that.

  Our last winter in Citadel Street, the windows were leaking and the pipes were frozen and Leo was coughing worse than ever. My mother circled a shop for rent in the newspaper. The page lay on the table for several weeks, gaining dust and tea stains. Leo considered it in silence. Then I came home one day to find them packing up our things. I was not surprised by it; I had known he would say yes. It was his destiny.

  The shop was a dark building full of dust and broken glass. We moved in at Christmas, in the bitterest cold you ever knew, and the landlord left before we could ask him how to turn on the lights. Only Leo’s spirits could not be darkened. ‘We will fix it up,’ he said as he carried our boxes up the stairs by lamplight. ‘It will be the best secondhand shop in the whole of Malonia City.’

  ‘In the whole of the continent,’ said my mother. She carried Jasmine up the stairs and set her down on a mattress. Jasmine was two years old and would not sleep. She toddled about the floor, examining the boxes. ‘What do you think, Anselm?’ said my mother.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s not how I thought it would be.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Every step forward looks like a step back at the start. It’s always a struggle to move on to something better. Did you know that? But things will be better here, for sure. You can help your papa in the shop every evening and have your own room with a desk in it.’

  I nodded and followed Leo back down for the last boxes. ‘Let’s paint our name on the window,’ he said, taking hold of my arm. ‘What do you say, Anselm?’

  The idea caught my imagination in spite of everything. There was an old ladder in the back room, and we had a can of black paint. I held the ladder and Leo wrote.

  ‘What are you two doing?’ said my mother, coming out with Jasmine in her arms and laughing up at us. ‘Leo, that ladder does not look safe, and it is past midnight.’

  ‘It will not take long.’

  ‘You two!’ she said. She hugged Jasmine to her and laughed until tears fell from her eyes. ‘It will look terrible in the light of day. You should sketch out lines and draw it properly.’

  ‘We will, one day,’ said Leo. ‘What shall I write? Help me, Anselm. You are the clever one – give me inspiration.’

  ‘Write “L. North and M. Andros, Dealers in Secondhand Goods”.’

  ‘Don’t put my name on it,’ said my mother, still laughing. ‘I want nothing to do with this. I am going out to my own sensible job, and you two can carry on your schemes without me.’

  ‘Mama, what Papa write?’ murmured Jasmine. She was falling asleep in my mother’s arms.

  ‘I know what,’ said Leo.

  He climbed up another step on the ladder. From where I was, I could not see what he was writing. He was balanced on the top rung now, in his oldest shirt and faded soldier’s boots, his eyes fixed in concentration as the dark got darker. ‘Maybe it is too late,’ I said. ‘Maybe we should finish it tomorrow.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I can see well enough.’

  He worked in silence, frowning as he painted in each letter. ‘Look at the stars,’ whispered my mother. ‘You can tell how cold it is.’

  I turned without letting go of the ladder. The stars looked as if they were shivering, very low down over the houses. In an inn nearby, music started rustily, a violin and an accordion. It was a song the travelling musicians used to play at the new inn on the corner of Citadel Street. It made this place already a kind of home. The song was by Diamonn and called ‘I Would Follow the One I Love’. My mother sang the last verse very quietly in Jasmine’s ear:

  ‘Love brings down many captives, and lifts up many princes also.

  Love is both the cruel cold sea and the mariner’s true star.

  And love is the poison in the blood and in the heart the arrow.

  I’d follow him, my heart’s own soul, and never ask how far.’

  ‘There,’ said Leo, jumping down from the ladder. ‘Look at it, Anselm, and tell me what you think.’

  I stepped back and narrowed my eyes against the dark.

  ‘It is not straight, is it?’ he said. ‘But what do you think of the words?’

  ‘I can’t see.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Leo. He went inside and lit an oil lamp, then held it up behind the window. His face was ghostlike through the dusty glass, but the letters stood out blackly. They shimmered as the light moved: L. NORTH & SON.

  Nearly five years had passed since that night. I was eleven then and still dreamed of England. Jasmine was a two-year-old who had yet to show any sign of powers. But between then and Aldebaran’s death, our lives became what we had wanted them to be. I don’t think we realized it then. I only knew it afterwards, when nothing was right any more.

  After Aldebaran’s funeral, the street sweepers came out in the driving rain and cleared away all traces of the crowds. And I kept expecting that life would return to normality. But the days passed and it didn’t. My mother and Jasmine were both prone to fits of angry tears. Leo went about quietly with his eyes on the ground. I began to wish school would start again, to give me a reason to leave the shop. And every morning the newspaper was full of reports on the hunt for the assassin.

  One night Leo and I sat up late counting the day’s takings, and afterwards neither of us had the heart to get up and go to bed. We listened to the rain against the windows instead. Every time I glanced up, I would think I saw someone in the alley opposite. The fourth or fifth time, I got up and went to the front window. But the street was deserted. No one passed in the rain-washed dark except a couple of stray dogs chasing a newspaper. The face of the
latest suspect was emblazoned on the front of it – a thin man about Leo’s age who was with the New Imperial Order.

  ‘Do you think he did it?’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ Leo asked me.

  ‘That man from the Imperial Order.’

  Leo considered the question, his cigarette halfway to his mouth, then shook his head.

  ‘Why not?’ I said.

  He sighed. In the half-light he looked very old; the grey hairs on the sides of his head showed unforgivingly.

  ‘Why not?’ I said again.

  ‘Because I don’t think Aldebaran is dead.’

  He spoke so quietly that I thought I had misheard him. ‘What?’ I said, but he got up and began shifting boxes around without meeting my eyes. A crate of books slipped and went thundering to the floor. We both bent to pick them up.

  ‘This shop!’ he said. ‘It is getting out of hand.’

  ‘Papa, tell me what you just said.’

  He ran his hand over his face. ‘I just can’t see him as dead. I don’t know how, but I can’t see it. I did, after the funeral, but I’ve lost all certainty now. Anselm …’ He shrugged, and I knew by his carelessness that he was getting to the most important point. ‘I have these dreams.’

  I tried to see into his face, but he kept his eyes lowered. ‘What about?’ I said.

  ‘The past or the future – I can’t tell. Aldebaran is in some of them.’

  ‘But maybe …’ I hesitated. ‘Maybe he is still living. I mean, in another place but still watching over you.’

  Leo shivered and ran his hands over his arms as though to warm them. ‘We had better finish this and get to bed,’ he said.

  We began shifting the piles of old things, though tomorrow was Sunday and we would not have to open. Upstairs I could hear my mother and Jasmine’s voices. ‘How was trade this evening?’ I said to drive out the silence that lay between us.

  ‘No one came in,’ said Leo. ‘You saw yourself.’

  ‘What did we take today?’

  ‘About four hundred.’

  ‘It’s not so bad.’

  ‘It is not good either,’ said Leo. ‘Not really. And I had Doctor Keller here again while you were out talking to Michael.’

  The doctor was our landlord and fond of making unexpected visits. ‘What did he want?’ I said.

  ‘Just to look around. What does he ever want?’

  ‘I’m sure Jasmine kept him entertained.’

  He smiled. Leo’s smiles were hard-won and faint, the more so since Aldebaran was gone. He picked up a box of books and set them down on the counter. ‘Mr Pascal gave me these,’ he said. ‘Maybe they aren’t worth anything. Have a look – tell me what you think.’

  I turned over the pages of the book on top. It was an adventure story by a John Sebastian Urquhart, printed in fancy type. ‘Jasmine might like it,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. As long as there are pirates and violent deaths and a villain with a glass eye.’ Leo smiled and then shivered again, as though a draught had passed over him. He bent his head over the box and began examining the other books.

  ‘Papa,’ I said, ‘did you ever open that book Aldebaran left you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Maybe you should,’ I said. ‘Maybe it would help. If Aldebaran was trying to tell you something, it would be in that book, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘It just seems to me that’s how he thinks.’

  I had expected him to argue. But he only nodded and went upstairs. I heard him go heavily across the living room. He paused for a moment, then came back down. ‘Maybe there is some clue in it,’ he said. ‘Maybe you are right. At least it might set my mind at rest.’

  ‘Open it, then.’

  His hands shook. I leaned over his shoulder as he took off the paper. Onto the counter fell a battered hardback, with the gold type on the cover nearly worn away. He turned up the dial of the lamp, and I made out the title: The Darkness Has a Thousand Voices, and under it ‘Harlan Smith’.

  ‘Harlan who?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. I have never heard of him.’

  ‘Did Uncle write in it?’

  Leo fanned out the pages carefully and shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  It was not what I had expected, and I saw now why Leo had not opened it. The book was a disappointment. It did not alter the fact that Aldebaran was gone, and now we had nothing left to rest our hope on. Leo examined it half-heartedly. A yellow watermark ran halfway up the spine, and the words were obscured by stains. He turned over the title page. ‘It’s only two years old,’ he said. ‘And published here in the city. Look at the figures here – this one is a first edition. First and last, I suppose.’

  ‘I have never heard of Harlan Smith,’ I said.

  Leo shook his head. ‘You can tell they hardly printed any copies of this. Look at the way it is bound. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was printed privately. Seven Sisters Press. John Worthy, Printers and Bookbinders. Have you heard of either of those?’

  ‘No.’

  I went on watching him. He was absorbed in the first page now, leaning close to the lamplight. I finished sweeping the floor and washed up the plates that lay about the back room. When I came back into the shop, Leo was still studying the book. ‘Anselm,’ he said, touching my arm. ‘Listen to this.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  He read quietly, so I had to stand very still to catch all the words. ‘“Midnight,”’ he began,‘“and still no one came. And outside the window of his cell, in the restless darkness, voices rose up and spoke to Jean-Michel. The voices of everyone he had ever lost and everyone he loved. These voices haunted him. It is a fact not well known among the rulers of this world, that the darkness speaks to the lonely.”’

  The silence hummed. ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘It sounds like something, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Leo was still studying the first page of the book. In the square, the church clock chimed twelve. ‘Go to bed, Anselm,’ he said, and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s late. I will come up in a minute.’

  I went upstairs, but I sat awake for more than an hour and did not hear him come up after me. Eventually I blew out the lamp and slept.

  When I went down to the bathroom, somewhere near dawn, Leo was still there at the counter. His face was grey with too little sleep, and he was on the last pages of the book. ‘Anselm,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘I think it means something,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell what, but it does.’

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He coughed and rested his head against his hand. ‘It’s the first time,’ he said. ‘It’s the first time in years that I’ve read a book and it’s said anything to me. I mean, here.’ He put his fist against his heart. ‘Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think Aldebaran is gone,’ said Leo. ‘I think that’s what he’s trying to say. Either that or …’

  ‘Or what?’

  He closed the book and opened it again, then ran his hand backwards through his hair so that it stood up untidily. ‘You’ll think I’m crazy,’ he said. ‘If I tell you, you won’t know what to say.’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘It sounds like Harold North,’ he said. ‘It’s like he could have written it.’

  There was a long silence, in which all the antique clocks on the walls of the shop ticked out of time with each other. Then he pushed the book across the counter towards me.

  ‘Should I read it?’ I said.

  ‘Just a few pages.’

  I turned to the beginning. Leo leaned across the counter, and I could see his hands trembling. All the time that I was reading, they went on shaking. Eventually he reached across and touched my arm, and I looked up. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s like h
im.’

  ‘A lonely man,’ Leo said. ‘A journey. Politics. There is even a ruined church, like in The Sins of Judas.’

  ‘Or The Shattered Wheel. You know, when they get lost out on the moor and they come to the hermitage. That’s what it reminds me of.’

  ‘It’s something about the way he tells it.’

  In the dim light, our eyes met. Leo had spent half my childhood searching the city for Harold North’s books, looking for copies that had not been destroyed under the old regime, and I knew them almost as well as he did.

  ‘It’s strange,’ he said. ‘That’s why I became a secondhand trader, because of those books. I mean, for that reason more than anything. I fell into it by accident. I know that he’s gone, and I’ve still spent my whole life thinking …’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve spent my whole life pretending that he’s still guiding me. Is that stupid?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This sounds like him,’ said Leo, and shook his head. ‘I swear it does.’

  ‘Do you think that’s why Aldebaran gave it to you?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Leo lit a cigarette carefully and closed his eyes. I watched him. ‘Maybe it’s just because they are similar,’ he said. ‘Maybe he thought it would say something to me, because it’s like what Harold North used to write. Or maybe …’ He shook his head again. ‘Maybe he meant something else.’

  ‘Harold North can’t be still …’ I said, and did not finish.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’ The wind lulled, and the silence came down more heavily than before. I could hear every coal in the stove shifting among the dying flames. If it hadn’t been so quiet, we might not have heard the gunshots.

  They came from somewhere in the city and made Leo start and raise his head. ‘What was that?’ he said, his eyes on the window. The lamp had gone out. I felt for Leo’s matches and tried to relight it, but he put his hand on my arm. ‘Listen,’ he whispered. ‘It sounded like … my God, Anselm—’

  The sound had come again, two sharp cracks, and closer. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Leo, you’re scaring me.’

  ‘It’s gunshots. I know it is.’

  I had heard gunshots before. But never this close and never four or five within a minute. We both stood listening, separated by the darkness. A sliver of moonlight cut down through the window and turned Leo’s head to silver. ‘It was probably just a trader with a shotgun,’ I said. ‘Someone killing rats—’