Personal Darkness

by Lee, Tanith

  Michael and Cheta did their shopping in the London village stores, perhaps classed as an eccentric foreign couple.

  Books were brought from the library, and punctually returned. Also tapes and discs for Eric's machine. Tapes too were carried from Bonanza Videos. They liked the videos, particularly horror films and thrillers. These they watched with straight moral faces, reminding her of gray hamsters thinking.

  Such things were very different from before. There had been no television in the first house. But here there were several. The greater one crouched in the drawing room. Eric, Sasha, and Miranda had each a set in their bedroom. A set had been presented to Michael and Cheta, and one installed in Rachaela's room. They had given her a music center too, and her own video, which she never used. She seldom watched her TV either. But one or all of the other sets were always on the go.

  There were electric lights now.

  In the kitchen, with its cream and black tiles and the collector's piece, an old, rusted, green mangle, standing by the wall, were now the mod cons: a washing machine, a dishwasher, an electric cooker, food processors, fridge. In the pantry stood a huge chest freezer where the servants inserted enormous joints of meat and the frozen swords of vast fish.

  The house was not so large as the first house.

  There were more bathrooms, adjoining all the bedchambers and sitting ready on each floor. The bathrooms were white and collectible, like the mangle, having claw-foot baths and brass Edwardian showers. They had green tarot glass windows. Rachaela had found that her bathroom window would open, and also the window in her room. This must have been especially arranged for her. She had a view out across the common. The undulating, heavily treed slopes, like a wilderness, a glade; where only occasionally some solitary walker might go by (staring up). At night, sometimes, an owl called.

  The scarred table was in the drawing room.

  Rachaela sat down at it. She did not touch the scratches.

  Was she trying to understand them at last, the Scarabae, or only herself?

  Rachaela, seated on the ground, her back against a tree, had watched the surviving Scarabae, as the house burned to the earth. They stood in a little loose group, at a safe, silent distance. Their clothes were scorched half-off. Bare, skinny witch arms, old, hard, naked legs, holes that showed antique sooty camisoles, withered lace.

  In the house, burned, all the rest: Livia, Anita, Unice, Jack, George, Teresa, Stephan, Carlo and Maria. And with them, the already dead, Anna, Alice, Dorian and Peter, stunned by Ruth's hammer and impaled through the heart by hammered knitting needles. The staking of vampires. And, of course, Adamus, Ruth's father, and grandfather.

  Beautiful, black-haired Adamus, cold as ice, now warmed through by fire. Hanged from a rope. Suicide.

  And Ruth, murderess and arsonist, leaving the house ablaze from her handy candle, had fled across the heath. She had had the mark of Cain on her too. The bruise on her face where Adamus had struck her.

  It was hard to dismiss this image of the fleeing Ruth. As it was hard to curtail the other image of her in the blood-colored dress, when the Scarabae betrothed her to Adamus, father, grandfather, and their names were written in the book.

  But Ruth was not ready, not old enough, only eleven. She would have to wait for consummation. And Adamus had lost interest in her, vanished back into his dark tower to play the piano alone. And that was when Ruth, disappointed, turned on them with her needles.

  The Scarabae were vampires. Or they thought they were. She killed them the proper way. And when she saw Adamus on the rope, she burned the house.

  Ruth was a demon. Rachaela had always known. The black and white ugly beauty. The powers of silence.

  Probably Rachaela was only too glad to see Ruth disappear into the darkness beyond the fire.

  When the fire finished, there was only the darkness. And the Scarabae, all that were left of them, Eric, Sasha, Miranda and Miriam, Michael and Cheta, they stood there in it.

  The Scarabae never went out in the daylight. Only Michael and Cheta, that was, muffled up and masked in sunglasses.

  And darkness was on the land like mourning, but after that the sun would rise. What then?

  The sun rose.

  They gazed up into the lightening sky, not fearfully but with a bitter sadness. They had seen it all before, through their two hundred or three hundred years of life. Violence and destitution. Exile. The tyranny of the sun.

  She heard Miranda say firmly, "We must go to the village."

  Then Michael came over to Rachaela, and his black dusty eyes seemed diluted by the light.

  "Miss Rachaela. We must go to the village."

  She rose, wearily. There were tiny burns all over her, she could have screamed as if viciously nipped by a hundred miniature beasts.

  "All right. How will they—"

  But he had turned away.

  Like survivors of a plane crash in the desert, they moved out over the heath.

  They went the habitual way. The way Ruth had gone?

  Skirting the stone like a lightning, going through the gorse and flowers, the dragon places, inland. Stands of pine. Gulls wheeling overhead. Birds loud in thickets, flying off at their approach.

  It seemed to take hours before they reached the road. The Scarabae moved out onto it, as onto some desert trail. Rachaela recalled the cars which employed the road, now, but there were no cars.

  On the road, she began to see them better.

  They moved gaunt and upright. Their faces had been blackened and through the grime, like their bodies through the burned clothes, gaped pale old spaces of flesh. None of them seemed to have received actual burns. Yet material and even hair was singed away. They looked impossible, comic, and this was somehow dreadful. Rachaela felt vaguely frightened. She did not really know why. Was she the child and they the adults, and at their faltering she too lost her grip? That was absurd. She had been away from them twelve years. With Ruth.

  She was in her forties. She did not look it. She looked twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Adamus—young, beautiful—had supposedly been in his seventies. No, that too, ridiculous.

  Once she stumbled and tumbled on her knees. They did not wait for her, but they were progressing so slowly she caught them up with ease.

  Miranda perhaps cried. If so, she did this very quietly, smoothing her face now and then with a piece of burned stuff. Eric did not cry. He marched in slow motion forward, like a soldier in a dream. Sasha merely moved. Michael and Cheta were possibly more resilient. It was difficult to be sure. They appeared—but it was hopeless to describe them, even to herself. They were beyond all things, fitted nothing. They must all of them be doomed.

  But it was Miriam who suddenly fell straight down on the road.

  The Scarabae, Miranda and Eric and Sasha, gathered around her. They did not lean to her. Eric said, "Miriam."

  Miriam did not stir.

  "Michael," said Eric.

  And Michael came up at once and raised Miriam in his arms. She seemed like an old valuable doll. She had been wearing a plum dress with beads, and the remaining beads took the sun and flashed cheerfully, as though Miriam might after all be on fire.

  They went on, Michael carrying Miriam, Cheta stolidly walking, Eric marching, Miranda and Sasha gliding haltingly as if detached, asleep. Rachaela stumbling behind.

  Not a single car. Would a car have been helpful? More likely the driver would have put his foot down.

  The hedges, in treacly summer leaf, barricaded off the fields.

  They passed the spot where the farm had been pulled down. Two or three black crows picked at the ground.

  Every moment Rachaela expected Eric, Sasha, and Miranda to collapse.

  The sun had not, seemingly, burned their flesh, just as fire had not. But in some way, the sun made them transparent, like phantoms, although that, of course, was only a trick of the eyes. Fantasy. Rachaela was herself unwell, shocked. Obviously she must be.

  In the end, they were on the hilltop and
below was the village, the new village, as it had become over the twelve years.

  Everything was shut, naturally. It was very early.

  They went down past the estate of brown houses, like lepers past the doors of the feast.

  Ignoring the dwellings and the shops, the Scarabae moved without consultation, or hesitation, to the newly built pub, The Carpenters.

  It was bright and fresh in the early sun, geraniums in window boxes, bay trees by the door. Above, the rainbow sign of jolly men hammering. Hammering.

  Michael put Miriam down, among the others.

  They waited in the noiseless sunny street and Michael went to a side door. He rang the bell.

  Rachaela recollected coming to this village long ago, early, knocking up the publican of the other, shabby pub. He had not been friendly.

  Michael only rang once.

  After an interval, someone opened the door. It was a young man, collected even brought from sleep, his hair combed, in a green and silver dressing gown and leather slippers.

  "There has been an accident," said Michael.

  The man stared. He saw the Scarabae. He winced.

  "You'll need the police."

  "No. We'll take rooms here. We shall need a telephone."

  "Well, look," said the young man in green and silver, smiling, "it's just that it is very early—" He had a nice London accent. He kept smiling. He meant to do well. He was lovely to the customers and could limit himself to three G and T's a night. He did not stand for nonsense.

  Did not expect nonsense, particularly at six in the morning.

  "We must come in," said Michael. He sounded barbaric. Sure. He produced and held out a wad of notes, twenties, fifties. The nice young man gaped.

  "For God's sake—"

  "This," said Michael, "is an emergency."

  Had Rachaela not said that, years ago? Would this work? Had the green and silver man seen Miriam, lying against Sasha on the road?

  He only looked exasperated now.

  "Oh—all right. Okay. Just hold on. I'll open up."

  The Scarabae waited. Without tension. Without relief. They were not arrogant or insecure.

  The pub door was opened a foot.

  "Come in. Quickly. Okay."

  They stood in the lofty interior now. A fake log fire which would burn in the vast hearth. Old china, perhaps made last week.

  Eric said, "We will have champagne."

  "Now look," said the young man. "I haven't—I mean, you can't."

  Eric said nothing else.

  Sasha said, standing by Miranda, whose dark eyes looked clear as forgotten ponds, "In a room."

  The young man registered that Michael was now carrying a woman, scorched and hapless as the rest, but also prone and lifeless.

  "You want a doctor."

  "No," said Eric. "We want champagne."

  The rooms were little and chintzy. The beams were not real. False flowers, dyed deep purple and cerise, poked from jugs.

  Michael had laid Miriam on a bed, and in this room the others sat. They did not say anything, but Michael had paid the man, and he brought them, grudgingly, two bottles of a good champagne, on ice.

  Michael had also apparently used a telephone, for no one approached the telephone in the room.

  Who had been called?

  Rachaela was given a glass of champagne.

  She drank it, and tears flooded her eyes.

  No one spoke to her, and she wiped the water from her face with toilet tissue from the bathroom.

  They all drank. All but Miriam.

  On the chinz coverlet Miriam lay, patiently dead.

  In the afternoon, things started to happen.

  They had been left alone, with the champagne, and Miriam. Rachaela had eventually got up and gone to the room Cheta said was hers. Here she lay on the bed and slept, the strange daylight sleep of alcohol and fear.

  About four—the twiddly shepherdess clock in the room said it was four—she was woken by a sort of soft commotion in the corridor.

  She got up and went out, and there in the doorway of the first room, where Miriam was and the other Scarabae, the nice young man who ran the pub was standing. He wore casual fawn slacks, Italian shoes, and a blue shirt and aesthetic tie. He was white as chalk, and, even from her doorway, Rachaela could see that he was shaking.

  "It's just—you have to understand—I didn't know. I'm sorry. Please, you must believe me."

  Rachaela walked out into the corridor, the carpet furry under her bare feet. Unlike the man, she must evidence wildness from sleep, her torrent of black hair un-brushed, her smoke-grimed face not yet washed.

  But he turned to her and gazed at her in terror.

  He said, appealing to her, "I'm trying to explain. I must have seemed—rude and unhelpful. It's only—it woke me up. Anything—anything I can do—will you have a meal now? Can I get you anything? Anything at all?"

  He was terrified. He had not treated them properly. It would seem someone had put him right. But who? Why?

  He was afraid he had offended the Scarabae.

  Rachaela shrugged. Cruelly she watched him flounder. He was sweating. It was Miranda who came, soft, to the door, and said to him: "It's all right, young man. Please don't upset yourself. We have all we need."

  Rachaela went in again. She took a bath and washed her face and her hair. The bathwater turned dark. The stink of smoke was now so ingrained in her nostrils it might never go. But the burns seemed to have healed.

  As she was sitting in a towel, Cheta knocked and came in. She brought new clothes, which fitted exactly. Pants, bra and slip, tights, a cotton skirt and silk top, all in oatmeal colors. There were even shoes, perfect, they might have been made for her. Some powder came too, in a dainty compact, eye pencil and mascara, the things she used. In addition there was a discreet box of deodorant, toothpaste, tampons, a brush and comb, tissues, an expensive shampoo that made her sorry she had used the hotel soap, a manicure set, a toothbrush.

  She emerged again at half-past five, and went to the other room. They were gone. All of them. Miriam too. She had heard nothing.

  A wave of panic overcame her.

  She stood in the room, boiling, a child bereft.

  But Miranda—she thought it was Miranda—had left her a note on the hotel pad.

  "We have gone with Miriam. We will return before dark."

  They had moved out again in the sun. Perhaps it did not matter now. Perhaps it never had. Except to Miriam.

  The curtains had been drawn over their windows, it was true.

  Rachaela went back to her room, and presently a service trolly came courteously and deferentially to her door. It was the pub's best. Avocado with a lemon sauce, steak and a green salad, strawberries, wine. A rose, real, poised in the vase.

  To her surprise Rachaela was ravenous. She ate fiercely, sometimes with her fingers. When she had ended the meal, she buried her face in her hands and wept. She did not know why. She was in her forties. She did not want Ruth. Adamus had been a devil, her enemy. The Scarabae were insane.

  They came back after sunset. She heard them, as a child hears in an empty house.

  They too wore new clothes, modern clothes that were ageless. They looked like ancient film stars, all in black.

  Rachaela went down the corridor, and then she smelled their scent. The odorless inanition of age. Cologne and perfume. And, far stronger, ashes and fire.

  They had been at another burning.

  It was then, so curiously, that Miranda held out her arms, like a white crystal bird that attempts to fly. And Rachaela went into the arms of Miranda, and together they wept, in the corridor of the modern pub, like ancient sisters in a tragedy.

  No one disturbed them. Not Sasha, not Eric. Not Michael, nor Cheta.

  Below, the pub made sounds of festival as the village came in for food and drink to drive the dark away. But the Scarabae were the dark, and Rachaela clung to them. Just for a minute. There. That night.

  CHAPTER 3
<
br />   AMANDA MILLS WENT QUICKLY INTO HER bedroom. To immediate scrutiny, it revealed nothing untoward. The teak fitted wardrobes, the plush carpet, the velvet bedroom chair and curtains were undisturbed. But it was the bed which concerned Amanda Mills.

  She advanced on it. The duvet and toning pillows were pristine, as she had left them. Nevertheless, she prized them up. Not a ripple on the undersheet.

  Amanda sniffed, cautiously, thoroughly. She detected the faint familiar aroma of fabric conditioner, nothing more.

  Her sharp shoulders relaxed a little. Not very much. She would go to Timothy's room next.

  At her dressing table she paused. A pair of earrings lay on the polished surface, before the jars of cold cream and night cream, the battalion of regimental bottles. Surely she had not left the earrings lying there. Had that ghastly girl—

  In her late forties, Amanda Mills had had the gray tinted out and her hair shaped into wings and cemented by lacquer. She was thin from careful dieting. She wore the sleeveless dress in antique sand she had put on for dinner at the hotel, and smart costume jewelry, which, as she moved, clacked like a chain of bones.

  There was a strong fragrance about the dressing table which harmonized with her own. The girl had been spraying Amanda Mills's perfume.

  Amanda checked her jewel box. It was spread with the expected items. Not a thief then, or had not had the chance to be.

  At Timothy's door Amanda did not hesitate. She went straight in.

  Timothy's bed was as it always was, except on the days the cleaning woman made it, flung wide, disemboweled. Multiple rape might have taken place there always. But going close, Amanda Mills found no trace- of the giveaway perfume. There were no long black hairs. And the odor of the male, which in any case she recoiled from, was muted.

  Probably nothing had happened. Coming back as they had, they had been in time to stop it.

  Coming back of course had been bad enough, without finding this.

  Clive had ruined the weekend. It had been spoiled swiftly by him. Friday night was pleasant, almost romantic; the stroll in the hotel gardens, the candlelit dinner. She had had a little too much wine and had felt rather good, rather young. But in the large hotel bed Clive had been his usual self. He was so selfish. She would not deign to protest, could not, had never been able to find words to explain… Irritable and nervy she had lain awake listening to him snore. The noise made her ears ring.