Under Cover of Darkness

by Julie E. Czerneda

  I am alone now. Mrs. Hudson has gone just down the hill to pick some flowers to decorate my braids. We’ll have to go home soon as dinner will be ready. I close my eyes so I can’t see the hydro tower looming above me and picture myself in a forest instead, full of colorful flowers and sweet-faced faeries dancing in a glade.

  The crickets are suddenly silent and the wind has stilled. Something is very wrong. I open my eyes and stare up at four figures. They are pale phantoms of men in long, black coats. Their skin has a luminous quality and their hair is long and silver. The faces are poor imitations of being human. Their features are oddly spaced; the noses too narrow and the eyes and mouths are too large. I recognize these creatures; Mrs. Hudson has an attentive seven-year-old sponge absorbing everything she says. They are the Slaugh, or The Host, unsan ctified dead who fly above the earth, steal mortals, and take great pleasure in harming them. They are part of the Unseelie Court, the unblessed faeries, the damned. I don’t know how they can be here. They are creatures of myth: Mum said so. Having them real is too much. I blink but they don’t go away.

  “Lookie-look,” a strangled male voice says. It sounds like he’s choking. Something wet lands on my cheek; it isn’t rain. Drool . . .

  I try to roll away, but sharp hands grab my arms and lift me from the ground as if I were a doll. Their bones tighten against my flesh. Something tugs on one of my braids.

  “Pretty,” another voice says. I kick and squirm but to no avail. “Can we have it?”

  “It’s only a snack.”

  “Maybe we should take it to the King.”

  “You have to go home now, young Nattie,” Mrs. Hudson says from behind me, her voice strong and clear. I don’t know when she arrived, but my tears of relief are making it hard for me to see.

  “Ooooo,” the choking one says. “Main course.”

  I am dropped like a broken toy. I cry out, but my voice is too small to be heard.

  The Slaugh ignore me and direct their attention to my neighbor, circling her, hissing. Their limbs are restless and their long, long fingers click together like branches in the wind. They are fast, too, and I don’t know how Mrs. Hudson is going to survive if they attack her. She seems small and frail by comparison.

  Mrs. Hudson is motionless, as if waiting to take a breath. She makes an abrupt gesture with her hand and one of the attackers keens loudly before dropping to the grass. He doesn’t move again. I suddenly realize she’s fought them before.

  She is going to lose this fight.

  I have to help. I get to my knees, scared but determined. A strange feeling sweeps over me, as if I’m being covered by a heavy blanket, and I collapse. I cannot move.

  Mrs. Hudson is protecting me.

  My eyes remain open, and I am only a spectator as the hydro tower fifty feet away groans under the strain of a force that pulls steel free of welds and concrete. It crashes toward the hill, dragging wires, ripping bolts, and crushing one of the creatures that doesn’t move fast enough. The remaining two scatter, silver hair and black coats floating behind them, and then return angrier than before.

  The wind has come to play. It rushes over my head and howls like the dog next door when it’s left alone. I try to scream, but the invisible blanket muffles my voice. I think I’m going to die. I want to close my eyes, but I can’t. Helpless, I witness the end as Mrs. Hudson staggers under the assault of their slashing claws and cries out. Her head is severed from her body and she falls from my range of vision. There are sounds I can’t identify. I lie there in shock, heart racing, waiting for them to find me.

  I wake with a scream crawling up my throat, scrabbling to get free. It takes me a moment to relax my rigid limbs. Tears burn my face as they track, unchecked, down my temples to dampen my ears and run into my hair. The Slaugh fled when family and friends, having witnessed the collapse of the hydro tower, rushed to the field. I was carried away without seeing the remains of Mrs. Hudson.

  Fourteen years ago. The creatures of silver and black linger in my memory and haunt me when my headaches are at their worst. I have never encountered them again.

  “Irish, Spanish, Chinese.”

  I glanced up from the newspaper I’d borrowed from Mrs. Wu in 1B. The guy in 2A had his radio blaring again; some kind of modern jazz/funk mix, and the baseline was thumping through the brick building with all the subtlety of a gang war. I didn’t know him very well. His mailbox in the lobby read “Jack;” I was tempted to add “ass.” It irritated me that we seemed to work within blocks of one another and I often encountered him during the day.

  I peered down toward his small balcony, my expression of annoyance clear. He straddled an old wooden chair and fiddled with the radio, his short hair standing on end as fashion dictated. The frat boy look was complete with a taupe cotton T-shirt, coordinating khaki pants, and old cowboy boots. He grinned up at me and demonstrated that he knew how to lift his middle finger; I returned the gesture in kind. At least we were keeping it friendly today.

  “What?” I asked, trying to tune out the noise.

  My roommate, Ali Jones, squinted her pale blue eyes against the sun, too lazy to find her sunglasses. Her short, blonde hair held the shape it had assumed when she rose that morning. She was curled in the old vinyl office chair like a cat, sipping from a small glass that contained some of the orange juice we’d bought the day before.

  “Your family. Irish, Spanish, Chinese.”

  “Um, yeah,” I managed, feeling like I should say something just to fill the space. She was looping back to a conversation I thought we’d finished about five minutes before. I’d just revealed my immediate ancestry after almost three months of watching her not ask me about it.

  My glass of juice was already half empty—or half full, depending on your perspective—and we only had enough left for another two servings each. Anything imported always came at a price, especially with the U.S. being so picky about shipping their produce lately. The reserve list at the market was long, and affordable orange juice with pulp was rare.

  “Doesn’t sound like a family tree,” she stated after a lengthy pause.

  I shifted in my lawn chair, avoiding the strap that was broken, and took another sip of juice, savoring it. “What does it sound like, then?”

  Ali snorted and smiled impishly. “Fusion cuisine.”

  Well, I guess the “fusion” part works.

  When I looked in the mirror, I either saw a young woman still getting her bearings in the world or a puzzled girl who was trying to hide. It depended on the day. Genetics had given me the dark hair and pale coffee complexion that was my mother’s Spanish heritage. Mixed in was an Asian influence contributed by my grandmother on my mother’s side, especially noticeable in the shape of my eyes and the roundness of my face. I wasn’t sure if the Irish part was responsible for my height—five feet, eleven inches—or for my obsession with potatoes. Physically, I didn’t hit my stride until I was fifteen. According to a guy I played basketball with at school, that summer I went “from gangly to gourmet.” Whatever. I didn’t mind discussing my background with Ali. It just wasn’t a subject I wanted to share with the whole building.

  “Fusion cuisine?” I wrinkled my nose and tried to redirect her. “You’ve been listening to that guy at the sushi place too much.”

  “Hey, he listens to me, I return the favor.”

  I nodded, put my glass on the crate beside me and skimmed the pages for anything interesting. I handled the paper very carefully in order to prevent unnecessary wear as several people were still waiting to read it. There weren’t a lot of presses left that could afford to produce a paper daily and they didn’t print as many copies as they used to: took too much power, too many resources. Mrs. Wu fit a paper into her budget every other day and had it reserved at the convenience store two blocks away. As well as the newspaper, she shared her plot of vegetables with most of the building’s inhabitants. She had been in that ground floor apartment more than half her life and had taken over a fair portion of the c
ourt-yard for her garden. In exchange for fresh produce and time with the paper, I gave her a manicure and pedicure every two weeks and styled her hair when her family came to visit.

  Three brothers from a small village on the Baltic Sea near Kaliningrad lived in 1C, and they helped her maintain the garden. Ali told me they also shoveled snow for our building in the winter. I thought of them as “The Brothers Karamazov,” though they weren’t mired in angst like Dostoevsky’s characters. They were always energetic and in high spirits despite having the thankless job of city sanitation engineers. Most of the tenants contributed to some aspect of the building’s care. Mrs. Thomas in 3C, generally known as “That Bitch,” and the guy in 2A were the exceptions.

  I pursed my lips and turned the page. Everyone bartered for something. I could give manicures in my sleep now. When I’d studied the art of nails at the age of twelve so I could freak out my friends, I had no idea how valuable a skill it would be. It was the most popular form of barter I had.

  There were a few merchants over the years that had expressed interest in another option, but I was determined never to go down that road.

  I turned the page and folded it neatly. The article at the top proclaimed: “Hydro Issues Continue.” Like that was news. My parents had lived through the economic changes, and I grew up hearing all about it. For twenty-five years Ontario had dealt with brownouts and blackouts and “no lights between 8:00 AM and sunset.” The struggle for electricity along the eastern seaboard had played havoc with essential services until the Special Permit Program had given them the unconditional right to run required equipment by restricting other usage. The average citizen could apply for more time so they could use their computers, lights, and so on into the night, but they had to pay extra, by the hour. The population of the GTA had initially panicked and Internet addicts had to make life choices. They adapted quickly, though, as Canadians were stereotypically known to do, a “fact” right up there with everyone north of the forty-ninth parallel owning a team of sled dogs.

  “Well, I gotta go.” Ali drained the rest of her juice and stood.

  “What’s up?”

  “Mrs. Petrovich needs her massage.”

  We grinned at one another. Mrs. Petrovich was very good to us. A massage meant we were having chicken for dinner.

  “It isn’t as exciting as it might seem, you know.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “My family tree. I’m Canadian, right? This kinda thing is normal.” I released one side of the paper long enough to make quotation marks with my fingers. “We’re a ‘Mosaic.’ ”

  Ali shrugged and grabbed her knapsack. “Hey, I’m Canadian, too, but I’m just a boring white chick. Whatta I know? Later.”

  “Later,” I echoed and returned to the paper.

  There was a short blurb on the back page regarding the latest homicide. It was the third bizarre death in the last two months. The police were frustrated and the answers seemed to elude them like the threads of a spiderweb. You’d think it would be front page material, but no, that was reserved for some fluff actor who was in town to cut a ribbon on a new theater.

  Thirty-three years into the “clean slate” of the twenty-first century and we still had our priorities screwed up.

  I reread one of the sentences. Third bizarre murder? Surely they meant the sixth? I sighed. Journalism was going down the tubes. I could keep better track of what was going on than the pros.

  The sun was getting hot, and it was still fairly early. Such was the nature of the weather my generation had inherited from our great-grandparents. No doubt there was an article about that on page nine. I sighed again and turned my baseball cap around so the brim shaded my face. My sunglasses had shattered the previous week during a short struggle with a thief on the TTC. The driver and I had the kid pinned on the floor of the bus in fairly short order but not before my knapsack was crushed in the struggle. They’d been nice glasses, too, found them at the Salvation Army soon after I’d arrived in Toronto. I hadn’t made the time to replace them. They didn’t help my headaches, either way, so what did it matter?

  At least the lady was happy to get her purse back. Mission accomplished. I thought of the sunglasses as a small price to pay for being a Good Samaritan compared to other ways that situation could have ended. It turned out the kid had a knife in his boot.

  I glanced at my watch: almost nine. The paper was due at Mr. Bernard’s in 2C in seven minutes. He was a spry man in his sixties who had a huge laugh and didn’t leer at me. Ali thought she knew what he shared with Mrs. Wu in exchange for his turn with the paper and fresh vegetables. None of my business: they were both widowed, consenting adults, after all.

  I didn’t want to think about it.

  Mrs. Wu was scheduled for a wash and set at ten. Her son and daughter-in-law were visiting around noon and bringing grandchildren and lunch. I eased from the chair.

  Carrying the paper and the rest of my juice, I spared one more glance at the radio below me, rather pleased when it lost the signal, giving the guy nothing but static. Maybe there was a God. Listening to his curses, I sought refuge from the sun—burn in five minutes, the paper reported about yesterday’s weather—and focused on planning my day.

  The TTC at street level was running slowly so lots of people were walking. There was a joke about that, referencing a time when it wasn’t really “slow,” just not always as frequent as the commuters would have liked. That was before I was born. The fact that remnants of the Toronto Transit Commission still functioned at all said something about the persistence of humanity in the face of adversity. The surface vehicles were usually on schedule—when they worked.

  The subway was another matter, only running during the day and sometimes not at all. There were designated hours when pedestrians used the tunnels as sheltered routes around the city: no sun and low pollution. Steps and ramps were placed into position and then folded away when the subway was operational. The tunnels provided refuge from the winter storms, too, and some people lived down there, staking claim in the disused areas. The city evicted them periodically, but that didn’t seem to deter them from returning. An exception was Union Station, which was still a very busy spot for commerce but could definitely be considered an official community. The merchants and restaurant owners lived at their stores, raised their children, and held worship there.

  A modern Depression with its own evils and ingenuity. What was it some wit at the sushi bar had said? “Economic collapse is a bitch, but sometimes the puppies are cute.”

  In the summer, it was still hot under the city, as vents were free but air-conditioning was prohibitive. I walked there now, pushing my precious bike and moving east from Bathurst Station with a throng of others. I was wearing my standard uniform of sneakers, jeans, and a T-shirt, so I was fairly comfortable. Above us, Bloor Street was probably equally busy—but down here, I didn’t need to use my sunblock.

  I emerged at Yonge Street, deciding the crowd going south on the subway was a little too much. Catching the sun in my eyes, I silently cursed the thief who had destroyed my sunglasses and made another mental note to replace them. After liberally applying sunblock from a bottle I kept in my knapsack, and pulling on my nylon jacket so my arms were covered, I mounted my bike, pulled my cap as low over my face as I could, and entered the rhythm of riding south with the traffic. My shift at Levar’s started at one; I had half an hour to make it to Front Street.

  No matter what, folks needed to eat and “Levar’s Kitchen” was there to ensure groceries and home-cooked meals could still reach the customer, even those without gas for their cars. At the current price of fuel, many couldn’t afford any drive that didn’t involve an emergency or abandoning the city for a better place.

  Marie and Extreme Phil had loaded their bikes and were leaving as I arrived.

  “Lots today, Natalie,” Marie commented, sounding tired already.

  “Busy, busy,” Extreme Phil added, chipper despite the shiner he sported on his left eye. I raised a
n eyebrow in question, but he just said his usual response: “You should see the other guy.”

  I laughed and went to check my route.

  By nine that night I had one delivery left.

  The Taylors were nice folks and bought from Levar’s regularly. They always placed their orders early, so I’d known since six o’clock that I’d see them that evening. We’d chat a bit and they’d offer me a slice of the pizza I was bringing, then I’d be off home to eat my share of Mrs. Petrovich’s chicken.

  I parked my bike in the lobby of their Bloor Street apartment. It was more a narrow hall than a lobby as the access door was squished to the right on the ground floor next to a used bookstore. Living above books wouldn’t be too bad, I thought, having been an enthusiastic reader as long as I could remember.

  I could feel the heat from the bottom pizza even through the insulated bag. Both of them smelled delicious. One had mushrooms and pepperoni, and I couldn’t wait to sit at the kitchen table and catch up on all their news while I savored the gooey cheese. The wooden stairs creaked as I climbed to the dimly-lit landing and looked up at the apartment door, expecting Mrs. Taylor to be waiting for me with a big smile.

  My own smile was stillborn as I froze in place, like a butterfly pinned in a display case. A crease of light crept from the lower hall to meet the faint light leaking down the steps to my feet. Shadows flexed around me and I held my breath. Something was very wrong.