Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  Neither spoke for a while; Sam busy picking the truck around what looked like the remnants of a demolition derby along the next road, and Mia looking down at her happily dreaming dog, his feet twitching as if he were running on air. By the time Mia spoke again the pub where Sam had met Clarence was just falling into view.

  ‘Would you let Hector and his sister go with you?’

  ‘Mia…I thought I explained…’

  ‘We both know that was bullshit, Sam. You don’t want me there because you know The Party are after me and you are worried that they will find me and land you and your aunt in trouble. Hector and Callie are meaningless to The Party. You’d be quite safe with them. You take them in your car and I will take the truck. I’ve already dumped enough strife on their shoulders, and they deserve to be safe somewhere. Take them with you Sam. Please. They are good people.’

  Sam rubbed at his right leg, the pain of the fall in the library now throbbing through him once more, all the way from heel to head. He tapped lightly around the skin under his right eye and felt a nice, meaty shiner blooming there. Mia was still looking at him, waiting for his answer and that was more painful to him than any bump or bruise and she knew it.

  ‘Sure,’ Sam sighed into the windscreen, making no attempt to mask his irritation, and then said no more until the truck came to a stop. ‘This is me then, Mia. Good luck.’ Sam was out of the cab and slamming the driver’s door shut before she had chance to respond.

  The truck was parked up in a lay-by a mile outside the northern part of the city. Just beyond the truck was a huge advertising billboard, behind which, hidden from the road, Sam’s car sat waiting for him. A poster was on the board. The same sort of poster that they had all seen hundreds of times before, up and down the country –

  Citizens. Friends. Neighbours.

  A NEW LIFE AWAITS YOU AT BLEEKER HILL

  Food. Shelter. Hope.

  The Party Loves You

  But this one had something else too, and it was that that had caught Mia’s attention. It was what brought Mia stumbling out of her side of the cab, and made her approach the billboard and stand before it. It was what made the dreams return.

  To the right of the text was a giant photo of a man’s face. He was smiling but it wasn’t real, it was forced and false, you could see it in his eyes. Mia’s heart leapt as those huge, sad looking eyes, the eyes of the man who had saved her life at Bleeker Hill, bore down from the poster and straight into her soul.

  The Party had called him a killer, but to Mia he was simply Sullivan.

  The last good man in a bad place.

  3

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘Beats me.’

  ‘Mia?’

  Hector, Callie and Sam were stood in a small semi-circle by the side of the truck, mystified by the statuesque figure seemingly frozen before them. In the cab Blarney was barking frantically at the window, clawing at the door to get out to his master.

  ‘I saw her do this before,’ Hector said. ‘It’s like she’s caught in a trance.’

  ‘Just where the hell did you say you met this girl again?’ Callie asked her brother, nudging him in the arm. ‘Any particular reason you decided to bring her along with you?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly have a choice, dear sis.’ Hector took a step away from the others and gazed up at the poster, trying to find an answer there that would explain Mia’s behaviour. ‘It’s like hypnosis, don’t you think, Callie?’

  ‘I think she’s a deeply weird woman, Hector. That’s what I think.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Callie asked Sam. She got no better response than a shrug. ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What do you think we should do?’

  ‘What I think is I’ve got to go.’ Sam plucked his car keys out of a pocket and made for the back of the billboard. ‘You’re welcome to come with me. But I want to get off this road. This city isn’t safe.’

  ‘Really, and just where would we be going?’ Callie asked.

  ‘Does that really matter right now?’

  ‘Who are you anyway?’

  Sam smiled to himself. ‘My name’s Sam, but I think the meet and greet should wait. Don’t you? You coming?’

  ‘We can’t just leave her.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Sam opened the driver’s side door and slipped behind the wheel. ‘Don’t think too long though,’ he called out of the window. ‘You don’t want to be on this road when it gets dark.’ Sam turned the car engine over and then sat staring at the dashboard, waiting.

  Blarney was continuing his crazy attack at the door of the truck, the side window now covered in condensation and slobber.

  ‘We can’t leave her, Callie.’

  ‘I know.’

  Sam revved the engine and then trundled the car forward, his fingers strumming impatiently at the steering wheel. ‘Let’s go!’

  ‘I’m not leaving her!’

  ‘She needs our help, Sam, can’t you see that?’ Callie shouted over the engine.

  As if to underline Callie’s statement and then scream it just that bit louder in Sam’s direction, Mia suddenly buckled at the knees and slumped to the ground. For a split second she was lying on her back, her hands up before her, clawing at the air, her heels digging at the cracked tarmac in the lay-by, and then she was still again, her arms flopping lifelessly to her side.

  Three words drifted gently from Mia’s mouth, barely more than a whisper: ‘Singer. Dark. Shines.’

  Callie crouched down at Mia’s side, feeling for a pulse. ‘She’s still with us. Help me get her back in the truck, Hector.’

  ‘And what are you going to do then?’

  ‘Try and find her somewhere where we can help her. I don’t know. We have to try and do something. Now help me get her in the truck!’

  Hector gave a side on glance to the frantic, furious canine inside the truck, who now seemed to be trying to chew through the door. ‘Umm…’

  ‘For crying out loud!’ Sam kicked open the driver’s door of his car and strode across to the two women. Crouching down at Mia’s head, Sam ran his arms underneath her shoulders and began to drag her unceremoniously back to the truck. ‘Take my car. Follow us,’ he shouted. ‘If you scratch it I will shoot you.’

  ‘Really, kid?’

  ‘You call me kid again and I will shoot you twice.’

  Hector and Callie watched Sam haul Mia up into the cab of the truck, ably ignoring the lunatic terrier that was now trying to climb over his head to get to her, and then a second later the truck was spluttering into life again and moving out of the lay-by.

  ‘Have I just been threatened by a child, sis?’

  ‘You have, dear brother. You have. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.’

  ‘What a strange world.’

  ‘It is that. Now get in the car. Oh, by the way, I forgot to ask you, what the heck have you done to your hair?’

  4

  There were clouds above them now and they were starting to bloom together, the clear blue sky slowly diluting to dishwater grey. The impossible heat of just a few hours ago had cooled perceptibly, and the breeze now blowing at the truck and the car behind it, whipped up the loose debris on the road and scattered it back and forth.

  They drove for another half an hour, out along the A-road and then off through a small deserted town. They moved along slowly narrowing lanes, skirted past villages that seemed trapped in another time, and then finally they came out onto a winding gravel path that fed through fields and past dilapidated farm buildings before disappearing at the mouth of a small dark wood. The light dulled instantly, an ominous darkness chasing them down as they moved forward into the trees, Sam delicately picking the truck along the mossy floor, and around the many branches and carefree tree roots that marked their path.

  Mia sat slumped over in the passenger seat, her head bouncing lightly against the window as the truck rolled on along its higgledy-piggledy path. Blarney was sat in her lap, his upper body and
legs sprawled across her chest and shoulders. He would whine from time to time and try and lick her awake, sometimes he would give one small, low bark in her ear as if he were passing on a secret code word, but nothing he did shook her back to life. Blarney’s eyes never left her for the whole journey. With nothing else working, it seemed to Sam that Blarney was trying to will his master back to him on love alone.

  The truck and the car on its tail drove for another ten minutes, and then a clearing broke in front of them as the trees started to thin out. Beyond them a small cottage was sat at the edge of the wood, looking out across fields that seemed to suggest they could go on forever. A single orange light shone in a downstairs window and as the truck and the car slowed and came to a stop at the side of the house, the light moved away, and then appeared again at the front door. A woman was standing there, a tall candle in a brass holder burning away in her hand, watching them clamber out of the vehicles.

  ‘Wow, did this place fall out of a fairy tale?’ Hector was turning a full circle, taking in the scene, a smile painted wide and bright on his face.

  ‘That would mean it would require a happy ending,’ the woman in the doorway responded flatly, ‘and that remains to be seen. Wouldn’t you say?’ Sam approached the woman and they fell into a long embrace. The woman gently touched the skin around Sam’s puffed up right eye but merely nodded instead of asking him about it. ‘Who are these people, Samuel?’

  ‘Hector, Callie…this is my aunt Albie.’

  ‘Hello to you both.’

  ‘I had to help them…they were…’

  ‘Tell me later, Samuel. Take them inside.’

  ‘There’s another, she’s in the truck. She’s…’

  ‘I know, Samuel. Take Hector and Callie inside. I’m sure they could both do with a cup of tea.’

  ‘What do you mean, you know?’

  ‘Do as you’re told, Samuel.’ Albie moved out of the doorway, passed Sam the candle, and shook Hector and Callie’s hands in turn. ‘How lovely to meet you.’

  ‘You too,’ Callie replied. ‘Thanks for…’

  ‘Okay, Callie, no need to thank me.’ Barely breaking stride Albie moved on towards the truck, rounded the back and then gently opened the driver’s door and pulled herself inside the cab. Blarney greeted her from the driver’s seat with a small whimper and a quick flutter of the tail. Backing off just enough for her to sit he was then launching himself onto her lap and squashing himself against the door. ‘Hello, there boy, that’s a nice welcome, who are you then?’

  ‘Blarney. Did you ever hear such a stupid damn name?’ the voice said from the passenger seat. Mia was sat upright in the seat, staring off through the windscreen at Sam, Hector and Callie as they entered the cottage. Her arms were stretched out before her, the palms flat against the glass.

  ‘Hello, Mia. I wondered when we would meet.’

  ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘No, and I don’t know you either. So why have I been dreaming about you?’

  Blarney suddenly started to howl and Albie realised that he was shivering; that those whimpers he had offered her weren’t a greeting so much as a warning.

  Mia looked absently around at her dog and this new stranger sat in the driver’s seat of the truck. Slowly her right arm, pulled straight before her, began to move the wrong way, a horrid crunching sound filling the cab. The bullet wound on her arm was starting to ooze blood. Those scarred letters underneath showed themselves to Albie, and now the scabby markings were opening and weeping red tears onto the seat of the cab. Mia smiled once, a devious, broken grin and then her eyes rolled back until nothing but the whites were visible. When Mia spoke again her words came in another voice, a deep, booming voice that belonged in a nightmare.

  ‘I have her within me. This girl. The girl that came back. She doesn’t belong here. I need her back in the city. This bitch is my vessel and I haven’t finished with her yet.’

  5

  Jacob Silence had been standing on the edge of the wood, watching the taillights of the car disappearing in the hugging gloom when the truth about Mia Hennessey hit him. He had been revelling in the control he had over Tommy Bergan, playing back the young man’s nervous conversation with him over the last half an hour or so. Watching Tommy drive that clapped out old car that the patrol had found for them, into the woods and towards Mia and that young boy called Sam, his own would-be assassin, he had felt as powerful and in control as he had ever been. That old Jacob Silence arrogance was back.

  But at that moment, the images running through his mind – so bright and clear since the library – suddenly seemed to fold in on themselves and then started to come at him as big, bright flashes, soundless explosions just behind his eyeballs. The wood before him started to shimmer to white and then it whizzed past his vision and disappeared all together. He was staring into a large, dark emptiness. He was in Mia’s head but the space he had found before was being closed off, and he was being chased out. He pushed on but was immediately shoved back again. Suddenly the thoughts were not Mia’s at all but the corrupted dark nightmares of someone altogether different.

  Silence’s mind was racing through the empty corridors of a building. He fumbled his skeletal hands across his face, rubbing the index fingers at his eyes, trying to scour away the images that were playing.

  The girl that came back.

  This bitch is my vessel and I haven’t finished with her yet.

  Singer. Dark. Shines. Darkshines. Darkshines…

  Silence was yanked roughly out of Mia’s mind, the connection severed, all those caught images released to scatter away to useless memories.

  It was not the girl you feared.

  It was the person inside her.

  The first drops of rain in weeks started to fall from a bruised sky. Silence tilted his head forward, let the hood fall down until it was over his eyes and then disappeared into the darkness of the wood.

  There’s a storm coming.

  PART 2:

  SAVAGE LITTLE ANGELS

  THE HIDEOUT

  1

  It was like being in the sea, that was Mia’s first thought. She found herself slipping into the skin of herself as a child and then her mind was replaying images of paddling out into the beautiful blue sea with her father on one of their many holidays by the coast. She had loved the seaside – the air, that salty tang, the old chalet they would borrow from their friends that was seemingly standing up by wishful thinking alone, the donkey rides, the ice cream, the pier, and most of all the sea itself.

  Her father had been adamant that he would teach Mia how to swim in that sea. Her mother had talked about swimming lessons at the local baths but Lucas Hennessey had been determined – he wanted Mia to swim in the sea, and he was damn well going to make sure she did. He had bought the armbands and a small pink inflatable ring with a crazy looking cartoon flamingo head on one side but she had laughed at such a notion. He had then dragged her around various shops on the seafront until she found a swimming costume that took her fancy. She had told him that she wanted flippers but had no reasonable answer when he asked her why. ‘Just do,’ she had said, but he didn’t buy her any. That afternoon, under a lazy, hot sun, they waded out into the sea together whilst her mother dipped in and out of some trashy thriller on the beach, Mia’s tiny little hand in Lucas’ adult sized one, swallowed up by his over-protective grip. Mia loved the sea from that day onward. She took to it quickly, understood it, and respected it.

  ‘I want to put my head under!’ she would say to her father and then try and push herself under on her own, not quite grasping the fact that the arm bands wouldn’t let her. Her father was laughing at her as she tried again and again, but it was a laugh of love. He looked handsome when he laughed. ‘I want to put my head under! I want to see if there are fishes!’

  ‘First things first, Mia. Let me move back a bit and then you start swimming to me. Keep your legs kicking and remember what I told you about your hands.’

  Mia did as s
he was told, swimming to her father’s welcoming arms and then letting him step back further so she could do it again. She would try and stick her face in the water as she swam but would only get it up her nose or swallow a mouthful and then cough and splutter and cry, and then Lucas would laugh again and be there to take her in his arms. That first time swimming in the sea (or clumsily splashing back and forth as it really should be called) was one memory that would never leave her. It was perfect. Even constant replays had never dulled the vividness of it.

  ‘I want to put my head under!’ she kept saying, over and over to her father. She got her way in the end. With her mother pacing back and forth on the beach, tapping an imaginary watch on her wrist, her father gave her a thumbs up and started to lead her back in. Her mother’s fussiness sated, Lucas quickly turned his back to his wife, sneakily slipped off the armbands and held his daughter tightly in his arms. She saw him wink and knew that he was hiding her from her mother. He rolled his eyes up and pulled a funny face and then jerked his head back in the direction of the beach. She laughed and nodded enthusiastically to show that she was okay with this particular secret and then she braced herself and pulled in a large gulp of air. Her father dunked her under the water and held her there.

  Now, all these years later, Mia was back under that water, held tight in strong arms, looking for the fishes.

  At least that was what it felt like.

  Only now she couldn’t get back to the surface. She could see faces staring but couldn’t make them see her or hear her screams. Her father’s handsome, laughing face was long gone. She couldn’t loosen the grip that held her. She would get to the surface only when the grip allowed her to. Fighting it, she knew, would only make her sink deeper.

  The bottom of the sea is a long way down, Mia.

  2

  The small square room off the kitchen, the one she had set up as her bedroom, was colder than Albie had ever known it. Her breath was visible before her face whenever she spoke, and so too was the breath of the girl lying on the bed looking at her. She had had the windows open all day as the sun played its hand high above, but even now, with the early evening breeze carrying the gentle rain shower, and the windows locked tight and the curtains drawn, there was no way the room should have been as cold as it was. Albie pulled her hands up into her jumper sleeves and then crossed her arms. Even the small wooden rocking chair she was sitting on was starting to feel cold. The candle flame next to her on the bedside table flickered briefly as if rogue breath had blown at it and then the chair started to slowly rock her forward, just slightly, moving her closer to Mia Hennessey.