Darkness, I

by Tanith Lee

  ‘Hi. As you know we’ve got some lovely stuff here. Only fifteen to you.’

  ‘This is Ecstasy, is it?’ said the oldest one.

  He was about forty, but he had a weird face. White hair like a rock singer. The others were in leather too, and a tasty bird among them.

  ‘It’s E, mate,’ said Cliv. ‘Best in the home counties.’

  ‘Give me some,’ said the old boy.

  Behind him one of the other bikers, with a big fat gut and longer hair than Cliv, clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder.

  ‘No, Camillo.’

  The old boy shook him off. He looked happy already. He eased three fives out of his jacket with a stencilled hand ringed by silver, skulls and roses and swords. Cliv nodded, and Hyreesh took the money.

  One of the bikers was a Pakistani too, Cliv deduced. His hair was down his stinking arse.

  Cliv leaned round, and undid the Land Rover door, and Hyreesh brought out a white tab for the nutty old boy.

  The rest looked at Cliv as though, instead of Santa Claus, he was the Devil. Both powerful guys.

  Cliv said, ‘Don’t often see you people.’

  They had all been shouting, pitching their voices over the music. And suddenly Cliv found this tiring.

  Let them get on with it.

  He watched them go off, back into the dancing crowd, and said to Hyreesh, ‘Get Rhino. Tell him to tell them, watch out for that lot.’

  Hyreesh signalled across the spoilt pseudo-orgasm of light.

  Camillo did not swallow the tablet of Ecstasy.

  He held it, contemplatively, and he said, ‘White as cod.’

  All around them, the dancers danced.

  ‘Red,’ Camillo cried, soft as a murmur, over the noise, ‘what festival is this?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Tell me.’

  Connor thought, He’s done this to her since the hour they met. Asking for history. But only a couple of lines.

  Red said to Camillo, ‘Maybe the Dionysia, without the sex. Or the wine. Wanting to get close to the god. Or the frenzies of Cybele.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Camillo, ‘castration.’

  The air was furred with the scent of vapour rub and nasal inhalers. Nearby, a boy of seventeen, in long blue shorts and T-shirt, danced, waving and punching one arm, an inhaler stuck into each nostril by his free hand.

  ‘Why?’ said Camillo.

  ‘It clears their heads,’ said Rose.

  ‘Pollution,’ said Shiva.

  Camillo turned, slipped into the slipstream. It was hopeless, in the fractal of the strobes, the mania of the beat that had no tune, immediately to follow. Camillo swam away.

  He went to a girl of fifteen, with cropped shining hair. She wore a short white lycra skirt and a white lycra top that left bare her flat smooth midriff, save where tinsel tassels bounced.

  She danced, and saw Camillo, and, dancing, clasped him in her arms. Her face was washed by light, virginal, potent and pure as the face of a saint.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I love everyone. We’re one.’

  She held him, as she had held a hundred. There had been men at the rave who had felt her breasts, even handled her vulva, as she danced with them this way. But she had not minded. Love was love.

  ‘What’s your name?’ said Camillo.

  ‘My name’s Love.’

  ‘And who am I?’

  ‘Love.’

  ‘No,’ said Camillo, moving with her like a black snake of leather.

  ‘Yes. This is the truth. This is the reality.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll live?’ Camillo asked.

  ‘For ever,’ said the girl.

  ‘Who’d want to?’

  The girl laughed. She was sweet, delicate, under her razored mop of hair, her waist fine as a strand.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said. She kissed Camillo’s mouth.

  He drew away, like a snake.

  ‘Little girl,’ he said, ‘petite mignonne. Have you taken it? Are you in Ecstasy?’

  She laughed again. ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘You hunger for your entity, your group soul,’ said Camillo. ‘But you won’t find it here.’

  ‘Life, death, love,’ said the girl.

  ‘It eats your brains,’ said Camillo. ‘You’re happy now. But later you’ll be depressed. You’ll be suicidal. And if you see God through a tablet, how can you find the cunt again? Do you think God loves you? Do you think you’re love? You’re lost, ma belle.’

  She shook back her shining aura and looked at him through the torture of the strobe, which, to her, was enlightenment.

  ‘Listen,’ said Camillo. He drew her close, and whispered into her ear.

  All about the dancers danced.

  Their faces were lit, outside, inside. They raised their arms to the white heart of the strobe, like antique worshippers to the core of a sun.

  Dionysos, Cybele...

  The madness whereby to find the soul and free it from the shackles of the flesh.

  Some embraced. As in the grave they could not. Some only laughed with happiness.

  They were one.

  Camillo, lips to the ear that had been corporeal such a little while, told her, carefully, strategically, what E would do to her. Alive. And dead.

  She did not believe.

  She slid away, and he brought her back.

  Then, she believed him.

  Red clipped Connor’s arm. ‘What’s he doing? Oh, I can’t stand this noise. The light—Connor—’

  Connor said, ‘Rose, take her out.’

  ‘No,’ Red sobbed. ‘Damn him, what’s he said?’

  The girl in white had slithered to her knees. She was writhing on the ground. (The tassels bounced.) Dancers shied from her. Some bent near.

  Camillo hovered in among them.

  In that stroboscopic jigsaw of pastels, his black leather was hard and shining like a carapace. He drew them up. He spoke to them.

  There was a sound. Under the beat of the beat-without-a-tune.

  Like the earth moving, in pain.

  Over the phone, Zephie sounded stupid. But she was not. She had a great body and gel-slicked hair, like a boy’s. Red Revlon lips. Long pale eyes.

  ‘And then I’ll put the cream on you and I’ll eat it, Zephie. But I’ll mix a little something with the cream. And we’ll kiss—’

  ‘It ain’t half noisy there,’ said Zephie.

  ‘It’s always noisy,’ said Cliv, righteously.

  ‘No, I mean, it sounds like, well—what track is that?’ Cliv listened.

  ‘Don’t know, babes.’

  ‘Well,’ said Zephie.

  Cliv had been off into the ruin of the mansion, with Hyreesh, while Rhino and Bobby took over the Land Rover. Hyreesh had lit a candle and Cliv had smoked a glass pipe, like something from a science lab, and risen up and up, until even Hyreesh looked good. Then, to be sensible, Cliv had a small chaser of smack, to level off.

  When Cliv came back, he opened a new bottle of iced milk. After that he phoned Zephie again.

  Zephie said, ‘It sounds like howling.’

  There had been a dog barking somewhere, when they drove in. Probably that. Was it?

  Cliv listened.

  Not in the way the girl in white had done, but, nevertheless, attentively.

  And he heard.

  ‘Jesus fucked. Zephie—I’ll call you later.’

  Outside the Land Rover, the fug of vapour rub and sweat and deodorant and hot damp lycra. Usual.

  But another smell. Sour. Untraceable.

  Had one of them freaked out? Like that guy at Cleathorpes. Hyreesh had carried him into the fields. They left him there for some lucky farmer to find. E sometimes... they could not take it.

  He had been howling.

  And now—now some of them were.

  Spectacular strobe effects still blatted over, and the music still pounded through the floor. But the DJ was signalling, and huge Bobby was going across to him.

/>   ‘What’s up?’

  Hyreesh grinned. He said, ‘Doc.’

  Cliv looked blank. ‘Come on, you brown git. What gives?’

  Hyreesh composed his Asian face.

  ‘They can’t handle it.’

  ‘There’s something wrong with the stuff?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what—’

  Hyreesh said, ‘Man, we’re losing the plot.’ He touched the little automatic at his crotch.

  Cliv saw people lying on the floor.

  He had seen that somewhere else. He tried to forget. When that IRA device went off. He had only been seventeen.

  But it looked—like that.

  Only there was no blood or puke. No glass. Only fractured light.

  Cliv was responsible for the rave, its success or failure.

  ‘Get the boys,’ said Cliv. ‘We’re going to have to stop it.’ He pointed at the music. ‘Tell that bloke to pull the plug.’

  One tear alters an ocean.

  It was like that. For an ocean they had become, no man being an island, not here.

  That was why they did it, as they tried to say, impatient that you did not cotton on, because you were too far gone in life to dare, or to credit.

  They were young, and they knew. The young always know. They know more than they know. And life hammers it from them on the anvil of living.

  The drug made them one. A group consciousness. And the joy was shared. The boundless energy and the mind-rocking beat that wove them together like the tiny creatures of the beating sea. Like the thunder of a heart common to all.

  They danced. Hour after hour. Not needing to stop. Needing no other stimulant, alcohol to lift them, nicotine to calm.

  They were one.

  But then the poisoned tear was dropped into the golden water.

  Since they were merged, what one felt was communicated to every other. The group soul, the entity. One had been wounded, and all of them were wounded.

  Agony spread like napalm, burning not the skin but the psyche.

  They lay howling, pausing only to draw breath to howl again.

  ‘Christ,’ said Cliv. ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘We’ll have to go down,’ Basher said.

  And Meato whined. Jezebel had gone under Owl’s Jubilee.

  The night was otherwise absurdly dumb.

  The noise, the beating, had stopped. Abruptly. And the strobe lights flailed and coiled over like a broken wing, snapped off into the dark.

  They felt deafened, blinded.

  Owl said, ‘I got my knife.’

  Jas said, ‘Let’s take it slow.’

  They mounted up, the women and animals left on the hill. Cathy was upset and Ray furious.

  Viv would not be held. She sat in the grass, upright, ready.

  And when the bikers started down the hill, she ran after. But not making a sound.

  When they breached the gravel, between the pines and the cars, they slewed to a halt.

  They could hear another noise now.

  It was a crying, low and deep.

  Such a sound, maybe, had risen from Egypt when the first born were taken. From Rotterdam, when the German bombs stopped falling.

  ‘Christ, Christ, what is it?’

  ‘Bad trip, man,’ shouted Whisper.

  They told him to shut up.

  And as they went towards the mansion, from the blackened door, Camillo came, spry and fly, and after him the others.

  In the very doorway a big bald man in shorts tried to tackle Connor. But Connor smashed him in the groin, and the big bald man dropped down. Another one appeared. He was dark, like Shiva. He saw Shiva, hesitated. The unknown man had a gun, Connor was sure, a little, dangerous gun. But he turned away, went into the house again, as if they were invisible.

  Everyone could see Red was weeping. Crystal ribbons ran out under her dark glasses.

  Rose scratched the tattoo of a rose on his head.

  Their hands were marked black as if with stigmata.

  ‘’Ere, Conn,’ said Basher, ‘do we go in?’ Basher too had seen the man with the gun.

  Connor said, ‘We ride.’

  Camillo said, ‘And goodbye.’

  Connor glanced at Camillo. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. I manumit you. I’m off. And from the red-haired woman. She can remain. I’ve had enough of you. You’re too like a family, Connor, you and your tribe.’

  Red retreated from them. She leaned forward and retched into the gravel. Her vomit was starry in the absolute dark.

  Connor thought, Her urine is magma, her shit is gold. And she’s off with an old man called Mark.

  But not with Camillo.

  Camillo walked uphill now, away from them, towards his fabulous bike.

  Viv came running. Connor caught her up. Oh God he loved her, she was the only one. She bit his ear in her love, because he lived. He could have bitten her back.

  And behind them, from the house, the awful noises went on.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  They climbed the hill, the bikes veering, the way they had descended. Rose was partly holding Red. She had thrown up the past. She had finally got sick of Camillo.

  The sombre sky seemed scarred by the strobes.

  They drove away from that place, and soon the softness of the summer night was there, scent of fields, horses, manure; stars like gems. Viv sat in the saddle-bag, with her goggles on, and Meato and Jezebel rode behind Owl and Rats. They were a fellowship.

  Red travelled with Rose, her head down on his shoulder.

  Tomorrow he would bring her back to the pub, and wait and see. Red would be safe with Rose.

  But beyond the fields, where the world tipped towards the distant burning glare of the town, Camillo cut away. The Electraglide fuming and swerving, he took the vast concrete highway, off from the ageless starlit land and into the flat ochre heartlessness of the sodium lamps. And music boomed from the machine, and died. No more music. Camillo was gone.

  Chapter Eleven

  As Rachaela kneeled there, a cloud covered the sun.

  Althene opened her eyes.

  In shadow she said, ‘I’m alive. You must go and find someone.’

  Rachaela stood up. Althene turned her head and fluid came from her mouth, streaked scarlet.

  ‘A telephone.’ Althene coughed. ‘Call the house.’

  ‘Reg—’ Rachaela said.

  ‘No, Eric. Tell Eric. He will know—what to do.’ Rachaela turned and Althene said, ‘Don’t speak to anyone of Anna.’

  Rachaela thought, Normally I would run distraught to the police. The mother of the kidnapped child. Or would I?

  She had always feared the police, not because she was a criminal, but because she trusted no one, certainly no one in uniform.

  Althene said, ‘Duizelig —’

  Rachaela ran along the path, between the green towers of grass and ivy and the grey graves.

  Round a glory of tomb, in the dark under the cloud, a thin young man was pulling at a weed. A proper gardener? Rachaela ran to him.

  ‘My sister—’ she said, ‘my sister’s ill. I must use a phone—’

  She must seem deranged, for he did not argue, took her to a tiny hut concealed among the trees, gave her a portable phone. Probably he knew who she was, one of the three special visitors who had been allowed in.

  Rachaela imagined Althene dead among the grasses.

  The phone rang on. Then Michael answered. Surely Michael would do.

  ‘Michael—Althene’s—hurt. It’s serious.’

  Michael did not dither. He asked where they were. Then Eric came. Eric said only, ‘There will be an ambulance in ten minutes.’

  This seemed unlikely. Then Rachaela remembered that they were the Scarabae. She seemed always to have to re-remember this. They—I—

  She wandered out of the hut and could not recall where Althene was.

  Rachaela stood on the path, with her arms crossed over her body, and stared up into the tops of trees ali
ght with birds and frittered sun. The clouds had gathered.

  She should have run after them, the men with Anna. And then what? They would have struck her, too.

  The thin young gardener appeared and said quietly, ‘I’ve put a blanket over her. She keeps being sick. Did you phone? That’s all right then.’ He too seemed in the know, and led her back.

  Althene was conscious and in terrible pain, held rigid against the physical onslaught as sometimes Rachaela had seen her in the throes of sex.

  The young gardener went away.

  Rachaela sat by Althene. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Something—has given way. Don’t panic, Rachaela. I shall mend. Did you call Eric?’

  ‘He said—an ambulance—how will you...? I mean, your clothes—’

  ‘Oh,’ Althene, even in pain, looked ironical, blasé. ‘Don’t worry, little girl. This is not your NHS.’ And then she said, dimly, ‘Mijn dochter—’ My daughter.

  Do I even care about Anna now?

  Oh God, make them hurry.

  They had hurried.

  A few minutes later two men came with a stretcher, incongruous, up through the ranks of the dead who no longer needed such things.

  When they moved Althene, she cried out. A man’s voice. Unmistakable.

  But it was not going to be a problem, that.

  The private hospital was soothing, attractive. Dove grey and cream-pink walls. Flowers everywhere.

  In Althene’s room, which had a private bath, the flowers banked to the pigeon-breast ceiling, white carnations, white roses, mauve lilies, lemon-curd chrysanthemums.

  ‘It’s not fortuitous,’ Althene said, ‘to send red and white flowers. Blood, and bandaging.’

  And chrysanthemums mean death, Rachaela thought. But then, not to the Scarabae.

  There had been a muttering, peritonitis. Then they had left it. They had told Rachaela her sister—although now, they must know Rachaela’s sister was not a woman—was strong and had come through the surgery wonderfully. Now she had only to get well.

  Quaint nurses in elegant uniforms, nurses not sick from lack of sleep, fluttered round Althene, flirting. Did they all know?

  Althene, by the fourth day, wore dark purple silk, soft make-up, her hair brushed, perfume. Her face was not sunken any more, only pale.

  Rachaela was not afraid for her, but of her.

  They did not talk of Anna, not until that fourth day.