Hello Darkness

by Anthony McGowan

  A little further on I heard a racket. Furious barking, hissing, yowls. I looked around. The council had planted a few feeble saplings here and there to create the illusion that they cared about the environment. Most had been ripped up or kicked down or just plain poisoned by the rotten air. But a few remained. And now a skinny black cat was perched a couple of metres up one of them, and a dog was leaping at it, its jaws snapping just below the leafless branch.

  The dog was some kind of cyborg killing-machine. Not pure pit bull, but pit bull mixed with the meanest genes from the meanest dogs. The cat was as high up as it could go in the flimsy tree and the dog was going insane. It frothed at the mouth and its eyes were filled with hate and death lust.

  I thought about walking on. Did, in fact, for a couple of steps. But then I turned. The cat was going to be dog food, and I didn’t want that on my conscience. The trouble was that I couldn’t see how I could help without getting myself chewed up too.

  I walked towards the dog. It was still in psycho mode and had started to bite its way through the slender trunk of the sapling. Either it had worked out that if it could chomp through the wood, it would get the cat, or it was just in the mood to bite anything that got in range.

  “Easy, boy,” I said, in a soothing voice.

  The dog stopped chewing the tree, looked at me for a second, then got back to work. You could almost see the thought going through its head: Cat first, then him.

  I walked closer. It really was a beast of a dog. There was definitely some Rottweiler in there. Japanese Tosza probably too. Heavy muscles rippled around its neck like waves in lava. Every nerve in my body was screaming at me to run. But sometimes you have to slap yourself in the face, grit your teeth and go on.

  There was a splintered piece of wood on the floor. I picked it up and waved it in front of the dog. It stopped chewing the tree again; its black eyes followed the movement, back and forth, back and forth.

  “OK, boy, fetch,” I yelled, and gave the stick a mighty hurl. I couldn’t believe my luck when the dog bounded after it. I quickly went up to the tree, expecting to have all kinds of trouble coaxing the cat down. But as soon as I put my hands up to it, the little creature leapt into my arms. It wormed its way into my jacket, and trembled, light as an autumn leaf. It was so insubstantial it hardly seemed to exist at all.

  The dog was still busy killing the stick, but it wouldn’t be long until he remembered that cat tastes better than wood, so I legged it in the opposite direction down the street, going at a lick to give Usain Bolt a scare. I imagined the beast tearing after me, jumping onto my back, its solid bulk forcing me down, the huge teeth sinking into the nape of my neck. But for a change, the worlds of imagination and reality stayed separate, and I reached my front door unsavaged.

  I put the cat down on the doorstep. I thought it would slink away, but it coiled itself around my legs, purring like it was running off an electric motor.

  “Sorry, Cat, you can’t come in. My mum’s allergic.”

  But the purr began to sound so much like “please” that I gave in.

  “OK, I’ll feed you, but then you’re gone. There’s probably some kid out there who’s missing you already.”

  I opened the door on a house as empty as a skull. I’d forgotten that they’d all gone to the funeral. My eye went to the cork noticeboard:

  Johnny, remember to take your medication.

  That irritated me. Why couldn’t they just trust me? I scrunched the note and slam-dunked it into the bin.

  “OK, Cat,” I said, “let’s get you something to eat.”

  I found a can of sardines.

  “Who the hell eats sardines?” I wondered aloud.

  “Meeeeee,” mewed the cat.

  “Come on then; let’s do this on the roof. You’ll like it.”

  I had the attic room, which suited me fine. There was a dormer window sticking out from the slope of the roof. It wasn’t a tough job to climb out and sit up there, on the flat of the dormer. I took the cat and the sardines out with me. She sniffed at the edge of the roof nervously, but then relaxed. I opened the can and before I put it down, she was greedily lapping at the oil.

  “Hungry, eh?”

  She was too busy eating to answer.

  The roof was my favourite place to be in all the world. Nothing could reach me here. It was pure and free.

  Except that thoughts of the day crept in, feeler-first, like cockroaches.

  There was something I was missing. Something not quite right. Aside, I mean, from the massacre of the stick insects and the various beatings I’d taken.

  I tried to get the universe to come into focus. But it was like when you stare at a light bulb and then look away, and the yellow image of the bulb is superimposed on whatever you’re looking at. Except this was as though I’d been staring at a light bulb in the shape of the world, and the light-bulb world was now lying over the real world, but was shifted out of sync by a degree or two.

  I got lost in that thought for a while, the thought of the different worlds, one made out of light and one made of earth, and then when that got me nowhere, I scrolled through the memory tapes a few more times, pausing at the key events.

  Funt and Bosola.

  The Shank.

  Vole.

  Chinatown.

  Mrs Maurice.

  The Queens.

  I tried fitting them together this way and that, but all I got was the jabber of modern jazz played by a deaf Bulgarian.

  Hungry. I’d forgotten that I was hungry. And I had to take my pills. The cat had licked the tin clean. I tried to pick her up to bring her back in, but she slid through my hands. Then she jumped down nimbly onto the balcony on the floor below, from there leapt to the garage roof, and then was lost in the twilight.

  “Bye, then,” I said, and heard an answering purr from the shadows down below.

  In the kitchen I opened a tin of peaches. Some people thought it was weird that all I ever seemed to eat was tinned peaches. But I have a dark secret: I like tinned peaches.

  I crashed down on the sofa and tried to shut out the events of the day. I tried to pretend that it was all make-believe, a fantasy. It worked, and I was half-asleep when the phone rang.

  “Hi, Johnny.”

  I was still groggy. For a second I thought it might be Ling Mei. I saw her face, but then it dissolved into Emma West. But that wasn’t right either. It was…

  “Hello, Mrs Maurice.”

  “Hey, Johnny. I’ve been thinking about you. And your little friends.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “I’m your teacher, Johnny. There are all kinds of things I know about you.”

  I didn’t want to get caught up in one of those conversations with Mrs Maurice, so I cut to the chase.

  “Did you find out what happened to the sticks?”

  There was a pause. I could hear her breathing into the receiver. Then she answered, and her voice was cool and professional.

  “I believe I did, yes. You see, there was something about this incident that puzzled me. The stick insects had been killed and then thrown onto the floor in the lavatory block. That all suggested some random act of violence. But I couldn’t find a mark on the bodies. If this was some little brat’s idea of a jape, some spur-of-the-moment thing, then you’d have expected him – or her – to squash the stick insects. But they’d been killed without violence.”

  “Killed by a pacifist. Nice irony.”

  “Quite. Though perhaps I should have said without undue violence. And that requires a certain amount of expertise. There are various ways of killing bugs without damaging them. You can suffocate them. You can freeze them. Or you can poison them.”

  “And how did these guys meet their end?”

  “I’ve already told you, these weren’t guys. You see the phasmids – that’s the stick insects and their relations – usually reproduce by parthenogenesis. That is to say the females do not need to … mate in order to produce fertile eggs.”r />
  “Jeez, another reason not to be a stick insect.”

  You know how sometimes you can hear a smile? I heard one now.

  “So,” she continued, “we’ve finally found something we agree on.”

  There was a danger of veering off-piste. I took us back onto a blue run.

  “Mrs Maurice, what killed the stick insects?”

  “Ethyl acetate. Harmless to humans, but deadly to invertebrates.”

  I was impressed.

  “How did you trace it?”

  “Well, you can use a combination of a custom-designed ion mobility spectrometer with an ultra-violet ionization source and a high-speed capillary column. That will pick up a range of volatile organic compounds, including acetone and ethyl acetate. Or you can … sniff.”

  “What?”

  “Do you remember the faint smell that the stick insects gave off?”

  “Yeah, vaguely…”

  “Recognize it?”

  I shook my head, which is always a little futile when you’re on the phone. Then I had a vision. My mother getting ready to go out. Sitting in front of her dressing table, draped in towels. Using little pads of cotton wool to clean the old nail varnish off, leaving a clean canvas for the shiny new coating of red.

  “Nail polish remover,” I said.

  “Precisely. The active ingredient of which is—”

  “Let me guess: ethyl acetate.”

  “Good boy.”

  “So,” I said, thinking aloud, “we’ve got someone who, for whatever reason, didn’t want to mash up the bugs, and who had access to some nail varnish remover—”

  “Which means almost anyone.”

  “Yeah, OK. Anyone who paints their nails. But it’s something to go on. I don’t know how to thank you, Mrs Maurice.”

  “Oh,” she said, innocently, “I’m sure if you tried really, really hard you could come up with something.”

  “I’ll bring you an apple.”

  “It’s a deal. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  I flicked through the TV channels. Nothing but garbage, so I climbed back upstairs and out onto my roof.

  The evening was clear, but the red hum of light from the city wiped out most of the stars. Just one big, bright planet glowed low down, to the south. Too big and yet too dull for flashy Venus. Jupiter, I guessed, screwing his way through the cosmos. And then I heard a mewling growl, and the cat was there.

  “Hey, Cat,” I said.

  I was happy she’d come back. She stuck her claws into me with delicate spite as she climbed up onto my lap. She licked her paws and cleaned her face and then melted warmly into me. I felt along the wall behind me for the little box I kept my cigarettes in. I’d started coming up here because my parents would have gone ape if they’d caught the smell of smoke in my room. I lit the cigarette, lay back and blew smoke into the empty night, and thought about nothing, nothing at all.

  That night I dreamed I was a defenceless stick insect. I was the last one. The others had all been crushed. And whatever had crushed them was after me. I was doped up on – what was it? – ethyl something. My stick legs moved so slowly. My stick body swayed and trembled with each laborious step. There was a shadow. I looked up. It was coming. It was huge. It was pink.

  I woke up drenched in sweat, but then drifted off again, remembering too late about my meds.

  DAY TWO

  WEDNESDAY

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE GIRL

  FOR the first six minutes of school the next day everything was normal. I’d walked through the heavy drizzle, and made it through the gates and into the school building. I’d gone down two corridors, and hadn’t yet been strangled, coshed or vamped. I was standing in front of my locker, ready to retrieve the PE kit I’d stuffed in there, still damp and grimy from the week before.

  My locker was number 526. It was at the end of the row. The two lockers next to mine – 525, and the one next to that, 524 – had always been vacant. I guess it was a cordon sanitaire, a quarantine zone, to make sure nobody caught whatever it was I had.

  Well, now someone was in the zone. Close enough to catch it…

  I could tell, even from the side, that she was a stunner. Her features had a calm, almost grave perfection, brilliantly counterpointed by the fact that she was more pierced than Saint Sebastian. Ears, nose and eyebrow I could see: the rest was speculation, although I was prepared to put real money down on her tongue. She was tall in a way that hovered just on the right side of gangly. She had purple nails and purple lips and there was tragedy in her eyes, as if they’d seen bad things. Seen them, forgotten about them, then remembered them again.

  I shovelled my crusty sports gear into my bag, hoping that the faint puff of malodorous gas didn’t reach her in exchange for the delicate and decadent aroma of violets and smoke she was sending my way.

  I’m a guy who prefers to work to a plan. I can improvise a melody, but I like the rhythm track laid down nice and solid. So I quickly formulated one. I’d glance over in her direction. Then, if she glanced back, I’d give her a smile. I went through a few of my smile options:

  There was sardonic.

  There was conspiratorial.

  There was sexy.

  There was the smile that said, Hey, I’m deep, but I also have a good sense of humour.

  There was a smile that said, Stick with me, babe, and I’ll show you a heck of a good time.

  And then there was goofy.

  My fear was that I’d go for sardonic or sexy and hit on goofball by mistake, like a prospector striking fool’s gold. Anyway, if she answered my smile with a smile, then I’d ask her a question. And if she said yes, then we’d be married in a week and spend the rest of our lives together in a cottage in the woods.

  But when I finally got around to glancing at her, she was too focused on getting her key into her locker to notice. It looked like there was something wrong with the key. Or maybe the lock. Finally she rammed the key home and twisted.

  I guess what she saw when she opened the door was supposed to make her scream.

  Most kids would have screamed.

  Not this one. If I hadn’t already been looking at her, then I probably wouldn’t have realized that something was happening. But I was looking, and so I saw her flesh freeze, saw her body become utterly rigid, saw the fine bones in her face sharpen. She had the stillness you sometimes see in a spider, perched at the edge of its web, its long legs alive to the slightest movement of the threads. It was a stillness that comes not from peace, but from an intensified electric energy.

  Then I looked down at the locker. I couldn’t see what was in there, the thing that had frozen her like that. But I could see the inner side of door. There was a red dot, as if someone had stabbed the door with a marker pen. Except that the ink from a marker pen doesn’t drip, and this red dot had two small, dried rivulets running from its bottom edge.

  I scanned the area. There were plenty of kids around, but none close enough to see.

  She shut the locker.

  And for the first time she looked at me. Not so much at me, as at the space I occupied.

  “Are you OK?” I asked, not bothering with any of the smiles. If only I’d had one that said, I know something really, really awful has just happened in your locker, but you can trust me and together we’ll get through this. You’d need some mouth to get that one across.

  Her eyes took a while to focus. They were lovely eyes. Here in the shadows they were the colour of the sea on a rainy day.

  “You’re that kid, aren’t you? The one that killed the roaches. The psychopath.”

  Word travels fast. The worse the word, the faster it goes.

  “Stick insects. And, yes, I’m that kid, but, no, I didn’t kill them. I was just there.”

  “And now you’re just here.” Her face was distant, but desolate, like a wilderness seen from afar. “Did you do this too?”

  She sounded almost dreamily calm.

  “What’s i
n the locker?”

  “Dead stuff.”

  The idea formed in my head like a figure stepping out of the fog: it was another of the school animals. I knew it the way you know a familiar face in a crowd.

  “Let me guess.” I made like a chicken, flapping my elbows and doing that chicken thing with my head. I don’t know why; it would have been easier just to say “chickens”.

  She shook her head.

  “Guinea pigs?”

  She nodded.

  “Can I look?”

  “I said you were a psycho.”

  She spoke with that same detachment, but she moved away a little and I opened the locker door.

  The two guinea pigs were there, side by side. They looked weirdly peaceful. Almost as if they were sleeping. I poked one of them with my finger, half thinking it might open its little black eyes, and the whole thing would turn out to be a joke, that it really was a dot of red marker pen on the door. But Snuffy fell over, and his throat gaped like a second mouth. I didn’t need to look to know that Sniffy had suffered the same fate. I swung the door to again.

  “Looks like whoever did this sliced them open somewhere else, then came and arranged them like this. There’d be more blood otherwise…”

  “What is this, CSI Hamster?”

  I let that ride. The girl was in shock.

  “It also looks like they forced your locker – see these scratches here around the keyhole?”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “Like you said, plenty of psychos about.”

  “I didn’t say there were plenty. I said you were one.”

  “You’re pretty cool,” I said, “for a girl who’s just found two mutilated bodies in her locker.”

  And then I wished I hadn’t said it, because I saw that the stillness I had perceived was an illusion, and that she was trembling. I put my hand on hers. It was as cold as a corpse, and I felt a shiver run through me.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Zofia Novak.”

  “Cute: a zed name. I like zed names.”

  For the first time she smiled. It was the briefest smile, like a bird flying across a window.