“No,” he told himself, quietly, though, because he didn’t want Teresa to hear him talking to himself.
Didn’t want to be talking to himself at all, in fact. With slightly shaking hands, he began to fold the print in half to take back to the coroner’s office in the morning. Then he saw it. The thing that ate away at him. The shot caught the bottom of the murderer’s prints up on the wall, and the array of body parts on the cherry sideboard. In particular, the shot on the wall showed the woman’s toes being clipped off. Two—one shot for one toe, a second shot for a second toe…
Two missing from the girl.
Three on the cherry sideboard.
12
The sheet atop Keane felt as though it weighed fifty pounds. It may as well have been a yak skin some Mongolian slept under to keep the snow off. Teresa, next to him, slept soundly with nothing but the occasional snorting snore. He, on the other hand, could not sleep at all.
His inner thighs were slick with sweat. His lower back, his brow, his balls; dripping.
The sheet beneath him was drenched. The heat hammered his chest with every breath. Even with the window and bedroom door thrown wide open, there was no breeze. No respite. Just heat, unrelenting.
Keane slid carefully from under the sheet and out of bed, going slow because the springs on the mattress were old and cranky. He walked softly across the bedroom with the little light the street lamps threw into the bedroom. Softly, still, down the stairs and into the kitchen. He thought about having a cup of tea, but there was beer in the fridge and it was cold. He let the chill air from the fridge wash over his nakedness for a moment, sudden goose bumps rising as the air hit his sweat and skin. He sighed, took the beer from the fridge. He thought about putting the tin against his forehead, but decided if anybody were watching him through the window, outlined in the fridge’s light, he’d look like an idiot in a beer commercial. What he really wanted to do was put the ice-cold tin on his balls.
“Fuck it,” he said quietly, and did exactly that.
He grinned and took his beer into his downstairs study. With a cigarette on the go and beer, now open, he finally allowed himself to do what he’d been wanting to do since seeing that snapshot in his work bag. He opened the bag, reached in, and found nothing.
The picture wasn’t there.
13
Shit.
His mind leapt through the trouble at work, the trouble with the wife, straight to the heart.
There’s someone in the house.
Images of a murder in progress taped to a magnolia wall.
“Teresa,” he said and in a sudden rush threw the chair to the floor and bolted for the stairs. He thumped his ribs on the newel at the bottom end of the banister and didn’t notice. He took the stairs two at a time, heartbeat going crazy from the unaccustomed effort and panic and terror.
It’s him.
Must have watched me come and go.
Along the landing with his footsteps thundering on the floorboards. Into the bedroom. To find Teresa had slept through it all, in the same position he’d left her. He thought, just for a second, that he’d killed her, but then Teresa’s breath came in that weird kind of snort and he knew she was all right.
He wasn’t, though. Not anymore. Because there, on his side of the bed, was the missing print.
He’s been in the house.
Might still be in the house, he thought. Cold waves washed up through him, up through his gut and chest. A small trickle of piss hit his leg. But scared or not, Teresa was here.
He could wake her, panic her, but he didn’t.
Instead, he checked under the bed. His legs were weak, but he did it. The wardrobe and the walk-in toilet. The spare bedroom, the toilet. Getting stronger, bolder, as he went.
He’s gone. He’s gone.
The living room, the kitchen, his study, though he couldn’t have somehow passed him on the stairs.
Nothing. Nowhere left to hide. Nowhere left to check.
Keane was freezing, despite the heat. Shivering like he was naked in the middle of winter.
He checked all the windows—downstairs windows, then back, front, and garage doors. All locked.
On his weak legs, shaking now, he walked back up the stairs. He knew he should wake his wife, tell her what had happened. But he didn’t, and then, when he picked up the print from the covers and flipped it over, he knew he wouldn’t.
There, on the back, was a message.
Make the most of Monday.
Tuesday, it ends.
14
Keane spent a moment staring at the script on the back of the print. Then he slid the picture between the mattress and the slats. He pressed the LED light on his watch—a generic brand. 2:37 a.m., Sunday night. He had until Tuesday.
He had an irrational urge to wake up Teresa with a kiss, maybe for making love, maybe just for kissing. She was the constant of his life. Changing jobs, houses, friends…things fell away in life—anyone’s life. Foundations crumbled, but they could be dug again. Teresa was the only one who’d stayed around. She was bedrock.
The urge to kiss passed.
Action, inaction. Simple choice between two simple options.
He chose action.
15
Monday
By 6:43 a.m., Keane was in his study, smoking his first cigarette of the new day. The sun was already burning the air. Sweat around the waistband of a pair of cargo shorts and the soles on his feet against his most comfortable pair of sandals. A short-sleeve shirt.
Coffee steamed next to his PC as he hung up the telephone, calling in sick to work—he was on call, still, but he didn’t need the police calling him. It didn’t cross his mind, either, to involve the police.
Why?
Because some things you have to do yourself. He’d also seen enough to know what their involvement would cost him. His job, for certain, though he wasn’t worried about that. But also his sanity. Police round the house, constantly. The circus coming to town. His wife’s peace of mind. She didn’t need to know. He protected her. It was his responsibility.
Nobody else could do what he could do.
Because the man had threatened his wife.
Keane wasn’t shaking anymore, but he was still scared. Not for himself. He didn’t care for himself as much as Teresa thought he should.
But they were in it together. Always would be.
If he could escape? That threat…would that carry over? Was it like some kind of IOU?
He didn’t know. But he knew what to do.
He walked up the stairs carrying a second coffee from the pot he’d brewed. Walked past the cases he’d packed in the night.
She was still sleeping. Sound asleep, and still cute.
Beautiful, even.
“Morning, baby.”
She opened her eyes slowly, a little groggy, but smiled at him. That smiled told him all he need to know.
“Morning, handsome.”
He smiled back. Made the smile as real as he could. He was afraid. But it wasn’t just about him, but the two of them. That made him braver than he would have been. Better, perhaps, than he had any right to be.
“I called in sick,” he said. “Fancy a little drive?”
“Are you sick?”
“Nope.”
“You’ll get fired.”
“No, I won’t,” said Keane, and winked. “Drink your coffee.”
She pulled herself up the bed, fluffed her pillows. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he laughed. “Spontaneity. Good word, eh?”
She laughed. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
He kissed her on the lips. Slow, but not too slow. They had places to go.
“You want help out of bed?” he asked.
“I’ll manage,” she said. “Let me have my coffee and a shower and I’ll be down.”
He nodded and kissed her again.
“Don’t be too
long, okay? Got a bit of a drive ahead.”
She cocked her head to one side, raised an eyebrow.
“No,” he said. “I’m not telling.” But he smiled, too, and left her to get ready on her own.
16
Keane dished up bacon, eggs, beans and toast as he heard the stair lift whine.
Just as he placed the plates on the table, she came in, wheeling across the smooth floor. Smooth floors downstairs, for her, where she used the chair.
They’d had the doors widened, too, and handrails put in, and concrete ramps built at the front door and the back patio. She got about pretty well.
She looked at the breakfast and then Keane, then back at the breakfast again.
“Are you after a blowjob?”
“No? Unless you’re offering?”
“Nope.”
“Well, then…no. Just because I love you.”
“Thank you, baby. Looks great.”
They ate, companionable, not hurried. Keane itched to be on the move, but he wanted this, too. Time with his wife.
Just in case?
Don’t think like that, he told himself. He covered his disquiet by taking a last mouthful of beans, then put down his cutlery. He wasn’t hungry enough to eat, but he forced himself too, nonetheless, if only because he didn’t know when he might need the energy.
Tuesday. The last day? Wasn’t that specific, but he planned on midnight. Better to err on the side of caution, he figured.
Would Tuesday really be her last day? His last with her?
Not if he got this right. Of course, he didn’t even know what, or who, he was up against.
But then, neither did the killer.
III. The Hardest Dark
You can’t see into the dark from within the light. The light might be warm, comforting, even, for some. But not for you. The light makes the dark hard. It carves the dark with sharp, bold edges. You can cut yourself on the shadows. It’s a heat wave. Those shadows? They may as well be stone.
You can’t see into the dark from within the light. People don’t get that. They live in the light, they breathe in the day, they sleep in the warm summer nights, they laugh and drink and play and they don’t feel the dark.
A shadow in the summer sun. You can see the shadow. Just look. Black, short in the high, bright light. Your shadow. There, with you. But it’s so bright. You stare, you look, but it’s like looking inside.
There are things a man can’t do without blinding his eyes. Stare at the sun long enough and you can’t see anymore.
Stare into your shadow? You can’t, because it’s dark in that shadow. It’s where he lives. The man in the shade. He’s blind to the light, but it calls to him. He wants the light. He wants it so bad. But he can’t have it, because the light belongs to you. This is your world, your life. Your wife.
Not his. He’s the hardest dark, but he’s not you. He’s just a shadow, and shadows can’t exist without the light.
He’s not you. Of course, he isn’t.
He’s just your shade.
17
It’s happening again.
Keane paced his flat. The curtains, heavy drapes, were all drawn. The sun pounded down, but he didn’t open a window to let in even the slightest breeze. It was dark enough to hold down the shadows.
It can’t be him, he thought.
Seven years ago. 2006. He’d killed him. The man who’d killed his wife.
Seven years ago, he’d started running. Running from, not to. Running from the memories, the time, his loss and his past. Always running from, but seeking, too.
The void. Hunting it. Chasing it down.
But he couldn’t catch it. Not yet. He wasn’t strong enough. His legs couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take it.
The void was the only place he knew where the memories would leave him alone.
But, if it was happening again?
He’d killed him. It couldn’t be.
But he saw the woman and the man, dead in the pub. He saw them. He did.
No messing.
Keane paced in the low light all day. Thinking things through, thinking if there was some way, any way at all, that he could have lived.
Maybe, said the voice of his wife. Maybe, baby, she said, a smile riding her ghost-voice.
He was gone, remember?
Keane shook his head. Shook the voice hard enough to make it stop.
There, in the dark, the shadows were at bay. But his wife was not. Memories could not be stilled with light or shade.
His body wasn’t there, baby. Remember.
This time, not a question. A statement.
And it was true. Of course there’d been no body.
18
Keane strained. An almost physical thing, his face contorted. Thinking back, ugly as it was. Trying to remember the day and night he’d killed his wife’s murderer.
Flashes surfaced—dead, bloated memories floating to the murky surface of a pond.
He wanted them submerged, down in the deep. But they were coming up.
But he couldn’t remember what happened to the killer’s body. Couldn’t dredge it from the depths, like it was caught on a root.
So he strained, his jaw tight and his fist clenched.
“NO.”
He spoke to the darkness within, trying to get out.
But it couldn’t. It wasn’t strong enough.
You might have to let it loose, said his wife.
He’d loved her. He still did and always would. But he told her to shut up, just the same.
She was right, though. She was right.
He’d tried something similar before. The cost had been high. Higher than he’d been able to bear. He’d lost her, lost himself. Lost, looking for the void when all he could find was the abyss and those great black walls.
“I’ve got to find him,” he told his wife, aware he was speaking to her ghost within his head, his shattered mind.
Run?
No. Wouldn’t work.
Then, he thought, give him what he wants.
Me.
19
It’s not an easy thing to bind yourself.
Keane had managed it before, but with Teresa’s help. This time he was on his own. Completely alone.
Nearly.
He opened the curtains and called in the light. Made the shadows hard, like the hardest dark.
To let him in. To make him come.
The beast that lived in the hard, dark places in his soul. The creature that hid in his shadow.
It’s not an easy thing to do, to call up your shade. But he did it.
This time, though, he wanted him out.
Before, in the cave, he’d wanted him to stay in the shadows and because of that failure, Teresa was dead.
This time, he needed him out.
To kill him for good.
IV. The Shade; ’06
People crave the light, yet shield their eyes lest they be blinded and coat their skin to save themselves from the fire of the sun. They crave the light so badly they created fire and lightbulbs and night lights and torches and gaslights and candles to keep the dark at bay.
You understand this dichotomy while wishing for nothing more than a blanket, a cloak, of darkness.
Nyctophilia—love of the dark, the night. You lean toward the shadow, hug the shade. You are not the opposite of people; you do not fear the light, but shade.
With no light, there is no shade.
Blackness. The well, the pit, the abyss…all that is inside you and you are inside it; the black dog’s slavering maw.
But this is not true dark.
Blackness, like the void, must be absolute. It must be everything.
There is no black within a city, nor the lightless country on a clouded, moonless night. This is not black, not absolute. Where there is a memory of light, the darkness is not, never will be, pure.
The void. The void is pure.
Is there a place in the world the light has not touched, ever? You d
on’t know. You can’t know the history of the world and the explorations of all mankind with their fear of the dark, fascinated by it, just the same.
You can’t know these things.
But there is a place. A place you’ve been before. With a torch, yes, but man’s light and not the one true light. There is a place that never saw the sun. A place below, an inverted heaven, down in the earth.
Heaven, hell…just a matter of turning toward the light or the dark.
20
Teresa fell asleep an hour into the journey to the caves. She slept a lot since the accident.
Just a little longer, honey, he thought at her, trying to somehow plant the thought in her sleeping mind with the strength of his will alone.
Of course he wasn’t telepathic, but they shared a link, nonetheless. More than just husband and wife. She’d called out to him before, hadn’t she? And he’d heard her. Saved her.
For what? To bring her with you, into the dark? Because you can’t face him alone?
His own fear shamed him, as did his weakness. He wanted to face this alone, to leave her out of it. But yes, he was afraid. He could admit that much to himself, if no one else.
Tuesday, it ends.
And he’d spent most of Monday driving.
The air conditioner was on full, blasting cold air into the car. The windows were still hot, though, and he could feel the dirty heat on his skin. His pores were clogged with it, despite sweating constantly, air conditioner or not.
She stirred, and he wished her back to sleep.
Little longer, baby. Little longer.
Well out of Norfolk now, the hills were in sight. Within them, the one place he knew where the dark was pure and they could not be touched by the shade. By his shadow.
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