Personal Darkness

by Lee, Tanith

  The girl paused. She looked very self-contained.

  "Oh, yes."

  Pamela had gone up into the children's playroom; they were making so much noise, perhaps they had spotted the damn fox again. The house was on a corner, and looking out beyond the garden wall, Pamela had seen this young girl with long black hair in conversation with two uniformed policemen. The dialogue seemed completely ordinary, and it did not occur to Pamela that the police might have stopped the girl rather than the other way about. In any case, a police car suddenly pulled up, and another uniformed officer jumped out and ran across. They left the girl abruptly. All three men got into the car and drove off.

  The girl did not appear either surprised or annoyed, although Pamela, in her situation, would have been decidedly irritated.

  Then the girl came in through the gate, and Pamela realized that Trevor had got on to the agency at last, dealt with everything, and they had sent the au pair.

  She was certainly easier on the eye than the previous one.

  Pamela buzzed her through the hall into the kitchen.

  "Would you like a coffee? As you can see, we've got most of the gadgets, it shouldn't be too awful for you. Washing machine there, dishwasher, microwave. We'll have a drink and I'll take you over the house. It is honestly just light work—making the beds, a bit of dusting, Hoover once a week or if Trev's got someone coming. Help me with a dinner party now and then. And, of course, the brats. They did tell you about the brats, didn't they? The last girl didn't realize we had two. It was a bit of a shock." This girl nodded, obliquely.

  "They're super kids. Really bright. But they are a handful sometimes. Dominic goes to school usually, but it's one of their holidays. Violet's only three. And what's your name?"

  "Ruth."

  "Mm, lovely. Biblical. I like the old names. That's why I chose Violet. I try to dress her in violet, too. Did they tell you about us at all?"

  "No," said Ruth. "They didn't tell me anything much."

  "Your English is awfully good," gushed Pamela, preparing weak instant coffee. She wondered to what ethnic group Ruth belonged. Probably Slavic, although there was a delicacy, a small-boned, fragile endurance that reminded her only of the Chinese.

  When the kettle had boiled and hot water had gone into the cups, Pamela put them on a big pine table with a bowl of sugar and a carton of single cream. Feeling expansive Pamela also brought the biscuit barrel, which was formed like a pig, and contained the luxury biscuits with apple, raisins, and icing sugar.

  "Help yourself. I feel we're going to get along fine. I'm an artist, that's why I need some help in the house. I work full-time at home. Book jackets mostly. I'm working on something at the moment. Absolutely dreadful, some fantasy book. But I always do my best, even when I don't like the material. That's one thing I have to make plain. When I'm in my studio, I'm afraid it's a no-go area. I mustn't be disturbed. Unless something dire happens with the brats."

  Pamela noticed that Ruth had taken her sixth biscuit. She might have to be firm, there. It would be a shame for Ruth to spoil her lovely figure.

  Pamela sighed inwardly. She had been eight stone when she and Trevor got married. But after the children she had put on weight. Of course, her shape was still all right, but she was three stone heavier. Ruth made her feel it, although Pamela did not acknowledge this. She shut the stomach of the pig and stood up.

  "Well, I expect you'd like to see what you're in for. Bring your coffee."

  "I've finished it, thank you."

  The tour of the house was quite brief. Pamela would walk into a room, wave her arms artistically so her large breasts gesticulated in her cotton shirt, and then lead Ruth out again. Downstairs was a brown room with two large modern paintings, Trev's "study," which was done in beige with a poster of Corfu, and a small dining room with a chandelier and orange walls.

  Upstairs on the second floor were the bedrooms and two bathrooms, one black and white with sepia photographs, and one yolk yellow, with a red abstract, and Pamela's studio, a large chamber in vermilion. On the vermilion were the large framed paintings Pamela had done for particularly successful books, and framed letters from authors and publishers thanking her. On an easel was an unfinished oil of mountains, towers, a girl and a winged horse. On several tables lay tubes of paint and brushes, bottles of turps, rags, various implements.

  When they reached the third floor, there was a very small room which had been varnished purple. This was apparently to be Ruth's.

  "I can't stand all that pink and chintz," said Pamela.

  There was also a small bathroom. Across the landing were the children's bedrooms, and next door, their playroom. Quite an amount of noise was still coming from here.

  "Isn't it ghastly," said Pamela, with a strange pride, "so much energy. We put them up here out of the way. Trev says we should fit them with silencers."

  She opened the door. The room was white, and all over the walls were the drawings Pamela had encouraged her children to make, so the immediate effect was one of dangerous lunacy.

  Violet was sitting in her violet frock and mauve tights on the carpet. She was holding her doll, whose head had just been pulled off by Dominic. Her expression was of surgical interest, interrupted.

  Dominic was hiding behind the door. He burst out on his mother with a yell. She caught him laughing and held him off.

  "Now don't be naughty, darling. Look who I've brought up to see you. This is Ruth."

  "Wooth," said Violet. She widened her eyes, and dropped her headless doll. Standing up, she raised her skirt. "Ook. I've dot villip panties." She had.

  Dominic pointed at the violet panties. "Rude."

  Violet came slowly and determinedly across the floor to Ruth, staring at her. "Do you wand teer my song?"

  Pamela said, "Not just yet, darling. You can sing to Ruth in a minute."

  Dominic shouted, with great force, "Ruth! Bloody old Ruth!"

  "Darling!" cried Pamela. "They pick up this swearing," she added. "Now you mustn't say things like that."

  "Bloody!" shouted Dominic. He beamed at his mother. "Bloody old Ruth!"

  Pamela ignored him. Violet had gripped Ruth's hand.

  "Luff, luff medoo," sang Violet on one note.

  "She likes the Beatles," said Pamela.

  "Luff, luff medoo," sang Violet. "Luff, luff—"

  "Actually," said Pamela, "Ruth, do you think you could hold the fort here for a minute? There's a phone call I should have made…" She backed into the doorway and Dominic said, "Bloody phone."

  "Now, Dominic, I've told you not to use that word." Pamela was gone.

  Dominic looked up at Ruth.

  "Who the hell are you?"

  Ruth did not answer.

  Violet said, "She's the opar." She seemed to be making a concentrated effort to speak in an odd, cute way.

  "She's ugly," said Dominic, "and she's stinky. Stinky Ruth."

  Ruth looked down at Dominic.

  Dominic held her gaze for perhaps ten seconds and gradually his own flattened out. Then he turned away and punched Violet briskly on the arm. Violet fell at Ruth's feet. "He hid me." She took hold of Ruth's leg. "I wan Mommy. Mommy pud me terbed. I wan my doll. My doll's called Penny she's god real hairan she widdles bud he pulled haheadov."

  Dominic went to the window and Violet sobbed but without tears, looking up to see if Ruth would respond. Ruth did not respond.

  At the window Dominic tensed.

  "There it is." He glanced at Ruth. "It's a fox. Mommy says the council men will come and poison it."

  Violet said, "Smelly old fogs. It goes in the dudspin."

  "Mommy put out some poison," said Dominic, "but the old fox didn't eat it."

  "Kill the fogs," said Violet.

  Ruth walked over to the window and Violet let go of her jeans perforce and sprawled on the floor.

  Dominic had eased open the window and was leaning out.

  Like a premature autumn leaf, the fox was in the garden. It had jumped cat
like over the wall, and now doglike it nosed about a tub of geraniums. Its tail had a white blaze. It was young and whole, vital and mysterious. Dominic went over to a child-sized chair and raised the seat. He took out a catapult and some small sharp stones.

  "Mommy says," said Violet, "you musson have a cadapull."

  "Be quiet or I'll kick you. I'm going to hit the fox."

  "Hid it," said Violet. "Hid it in the eye."

  She too came to the window. Violet and Dominic stood there, he in his Lilliputian trousers and shirt and she in her violet clothes, and the little boy took aim with his catapult, and the little girl squeaked excitedly, so he had to tell her again to be quiet.

  The catapult was homemade from a strong twig and a strong elastic band. As the elastic tautened, Ruth leaned across and drew it further back, past the child's ear, so the band snapped. The whiplash caught Dominic on the cheek and he yelped with pain and amazement.

  Violet screamed and Ruth slapped her face.

  There was, finally, true silence.

  And out on the lawn the fox, perhaps sensing some feral current more intense than poison and stones, sprang away over the fence and into the adjoining row of gardens.

  "I'll tell Mommy," said Dominic, "what you did."

  "And I'll tell my father," said Ruth, "about you. My father only comes out at night. He's tall and pale and his eyes glow in the dark. He's dead. He can do anything. He can walk up walls. He'll walk up this one. He'll break the window without a sound. He'll come in and drink your blood."

  Both children stared now. Violet whimpered, and was motionless. Tremulously Dominic said, "You're a bloody old liar."

  "Wait and see," said Ruth.

  Dominic said nothing more.

  A minute later, Ruth came out of the playroom and went down to the second floor. She could hear Pamela talking animatedly on the phone in the first floor hall.

  Ruth went into the studio. She passed the gaudy, unmagical canvas of mountains and winged horse. She unerringly went to one of the tables where, bright as silver, a scalpel blade lay shining like a star.

  Trevor Bellingham worried all the way home, about how Pamela would go on. He had forgotten to keep after the agency and probably that would mean another week without an au pair. They never stayed anyway, daunted by the stacks of boring domestic chores Pamela left them, the snack meals, the troublesome children…

  Trevor worried all through the late-afternoon traffic, which presently became complicated by fire engines.

  Then he reached his street and could not get through.

  Standing irate by his car, he soon discovered that his chore-filled house, Pamela, Dominic and Violet, had all ceased to be a worry.

  CHAPTER 14

  A DAY LATER, THE IVORY TELEPHONE rang. The notes of it passed through the house like awls.

  Presumably it called in answer to the use Eric and Michael had made of it. Presumably one of them lifted the receiver and spoke.

  Rachaela did not go to see. She did not ask.

  And a day after that, two days after the Scarabae had used their telephone, Malach came.

  The sunset had been hot and threatening, fires, blood. The Scarabae kept to their rooms, and if they watched the news there Rachaela did not know. From the upper apartment leaked the dim organ wash of Camillo's new music, but perhaps only Lou or Tray was playing it.

  After the sunset came the night.

  Rachaela sat in her window, and watched the common alter. It became a stage set for Swan Lake, which once she had seen danced. The great trees were stroked with platinum by the early moon. Only the lake was missing; instead the clearing, the glade, lay down the slope where by day dogs were walked and bicycles wheeled. Camillo had come from this direction, northwest.

  A swan did not fly over to alight upon the lake of glade.

  It was a helicopter.

  The stammering drone of it pressed up over the house, growing too large, as the noise of Camillo's trike had done.

  Then the peeled lights tore down. The moon was eclipsed.

  Without complications, a preposterous insect, the helicopter landed in the glade.

  The wind from its aerial blades poured back against the house. Rachaela felt it on her face, a dry chemical simoom.

  She stood up.

  A tracery of colored streaks still glimmered on the slope, reflections of the windows of the house. Michael moved out among them, and went down toward the powerhouse of the helicopter. The wind pushed at him, but he moved upright and unwavering.

  She imagined all the Scarabae, all that were left, up at their lit casements, watching. Eric, Sasha, and Miranda. Perhaps Cheta. And herself.

  The lights of the helicopter glared between the trees, and the blades rotated. Then it was lifted again, straight up, over the pines into the night. And was gone.

  The moon came back.

  They moved out from the glade between the trees. Four figures. There were two men, Michael and another, carrying four dark bags. And then two more, fantastic.

  Black and white.

  Rachaela thought, Camillo again.

  But this was not Camillo.

  He was tall, straight as a creature of black iron, and the moon found out the pale angles of face and hands, and the ghost-shadows of two whitish dogs that padded up the slope ahead of him. They wore black collars with silver spikes, and went unleashed, not looking back, not straying, warrior dogs marching to a drum. The drum must beat in his brain, to hold them like that.

  Adamus…

  Not Adamus, either.

  As he passed between the trees, the moon took, and became, his hair. It was a mane that fell to his waist. It was white as a nuclear explosion, the blind white of a thousand suns.

  Behind him walked, nonchalantly, a black-haired woman in a black velvet coat. Not Lou, nor Tray. She was not a handmaiden, so much was obvious. Nearly as tall as he, striding on her high and inky heels.

  They were thirty feet from the house when the owl cried in the oak.

  The man with white hair checked, and at his back the black-haired woman halted.

  He answered the owl, softly and persuasively. His mimicry was passionlessly exact. Then he raised his arm.

  The owl floated from the tree top like a demon on silken sails. It came to him, and settled on his wrist, a falcon.

  This scene burned through Rachaela's eyes like hurt or fire. It was so curious, so beautiful, so bizarre, unsuit—able and marvelous.

  For perhaps one minute he stood there, the white-haired man, the owl resting on him, its wings outspread. Then it lifted up, as the helicopter had done, and soared away into the common woods.

  He laughed. She heard him. It was an arid sound.

  One of the dogs barked. He spoke then.

  "Quiet, Oskar. You are not yet introduced."

  His voice was musical, as the voice of Adamus had been, yet not the same. This voice was the color of a white spirit, some brandy distilled in the dark. It had too the faintest trace of accent, or maybe only a different rhythm.

  As they moved into the reflections of the windows, he glanced up and noticed her, but that was all. She could not see him well for shadow and shine. The woman, however, smiled, raising her face which caught a pane of daf-fodil light. She was beautiful, extraordinary. They walked around the wall.

  Then the house received them.

  Rachaela came down the stairs, and, rather to her surprise, Miranda was coming down after her. They stood together on the third step up, and through the open door, out of the night, Michael had come, and the other man, carrying the bags.

  Sasha and Eric were already in the hall, and Cheta, to one side.

  The great rosy oil lamps, which were also lighted at the same time as the electricity, fluttered against the pillars like pink moths.

  The woman entered first. Her beauty was astonishing, for it improved with proximity. Her black hair was like Rachaela's, very long and slightly curling. She was very tall, perhaps six foot in her high heels.

&n
bsp; She stood aside like a royal herald, and the man came in with the two dogs.

  "Malach," said Eric.

  "Eric," said the man. He came forward and held out his hand. Eric clasped it. They stayed quite still, looking at each other.

  The man was tall and spare, as Rachaela had already seen, and framed in the flood of wintry hair his face was that of an adventurer, a commander, one who fought. High cheekbones and thin muscular jaw, nose aquiline but not thin, lips inclined to refinement but perhaps of cruelty. The eyes were the pale blue of aquamarines. Not black. She had expected black, like those of the Scarabae. (But then, her own eyes were pale.)

  On his left hand were four large rings of tarnished silver. He took his right hand from Eric's as Eric let him go. Turning to Sasha, this man called Malach raised her fingers and brushed them with his mouth. He indicated the woman gracefully. "Althene." And then the man who stood with Michael. "Kei." And lastly the two dogs. "Os-kar, Enki." He added, "The dogs behave well in the house. I shouldn't have brought them otherwise."

  "Enki howled in the helicopter," said the woman, Althene. She had a deep voice, velvet like the coat. Also the trace of accent.

  "Yes. Enki howled." Malach ruffled the head of the paler dog. Both were albinos, wolfhounds tinted by a strain of something else, and both vast as lions, with long curved tails and oddly bluish amber eyes.

  "You are all welcome," said Eric.

  "And the dogs," said Sasha. She smiled. "We've missed animals."

  Miranda took Rachaela's arm and drew her down the stairs. Rachaela had not expected this. It was a medieval scene, or something from a Renaissance film. She was led to Malach by Miranda in the lamplight.

  "Miranda," said Malach. He kissed Miranda's hand lightly, courteously. Rachaela looked up at him, steeling herself. But when his blue eyes came to her, she flinched.

  "This is Rachaela, the daughter of Adamus."

  "Yes," he said. "And the mother of Ruth."

  "And who are you?" said Rachaela.

  He did not take her hand.

  "Malach. Didn't you listen?"

  "You're Scarabae."

  "Of course," he said. "All of us. Why else are we here?"

  "And why are you here?"