She nods. There are no tears. There never were. Maybe that’s what we need. To wash it clean.
I imagine putting my face into the frigid sea to let it cry for me.
‘That’s what it is,’ she says. ‘For me, it’s the guilt. Why couldn’t we save her? You know? Stop it.’
We sit quietly. We sit that way for a long time.
‘Me too,’ I say finally. ‘Guilt. It still makes me feel the same even now. I should have known.’
‘How could we? I suppose that should make it feel better, but it doesn’t.’
‘No, it doesn’t. She was our daughter. We should have seen something.’
‘Is that why? You know, the drugs?’
I never really thought about it. I’m not stupid. I should have. But maybe I am. Stupid.
‘Not consciously. But maybe. Yeah. Probably.’
‘Were you trying to kill yourself?’
‘What? No.’
‘What do you call it, then? A ton of coke. Drunk most nights. So messed up you have a heart attack and a stroke.’
I want to tell her I call it an accident. But really? What do you call such abandon, over the course of years? Carelessness, or something more contrived, deep down where you don’t even realise where it’s sitting.
I want to say it’s ridiculous, but I think about it first.
It’s not ridiculous. Helen’s got no imagination but she’s never been stupid. Not like me.
‘Maybe,’ I say, after a long time. ‘Maybe it was. It hurt. I hurt so much. I just didn’t want the pain. I think I was trying to put it off. Does that sound strange?’
‘You left me alone, Sam. That hurt. I lost you when I lost Samantha.’
I never looked at it like that. She’s never said it, but it’s true. That hurts afresh.
I never said sorry. I know I should. How do you say sorry for that?
Nothing for it but to say it.
‘I’m sorry. I was selfish…’ I’m going to justify it. Tell her how much pain I was in. But that’s childish. This apology needs to be unadorned.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. Now I’ve opened it, I can’t seem to stop.
She stops me with a kiss.
‘I missed you,’ she says, holding my face in her hands.
We still don’t cry.
The moon’s out, but the sun’s gone and the sky is yellow. I look at the scar, still pale even though her face is tanned.
‘Tell me the truth, Helen,’ I say, eventually. ‘The crash?’ I trace the scar with my finger. She gently leans her head to one side and pulls her hair down along her jaw line, though she can’t hide it.
She nods. She can’t say it. I don’t blame her.
Then I click. It’s a physical thing, like when you turn your head too quickly and your neck cracks, but this is in my head.
I’m shocked at her confession, but somewhere deep down I probably knew it all along.
I’m more shocked at what it means for us, right now.
She tried to kill herself.
I tried.
Frank?
I’m willing to put money on it.
That’s why she could see the girl. It’s why we all see things. We’re linked, in more ways than one.
There’s some kind of joining happening. Frank, Helen, me. We’re feeding the thing that is the estate. It knows us. It knows what we are.
I think it wants us. We belong there with them.
Our future is fire. An eternity of fire.
Frank was right about the cat. I drew it. But the estate drew us. Because Sarah and Dana and Samantha aren’t enough. It’s never enough.
We’re damned too.
‘Helen,’ I say. The yellow’s fading. Soon it will be dark. I don’t feel safe in the dark anymore. Even here, with the sea watching over me.
But I need to know. It’s not just about Samantha anymore.
I can’t tell her anything about the estate, or the cat, or the lost girl, but I need to know. I’ll carry on lying to her, just like always, but this time I have to lie. She can’t know. She can never know.
‘Have you seen a cat in the garden?’
‘What? Why?’
‘Just wondering.’ Breezy. I pull it off.
‘Yes. Little forlorn thing. Stubby tail.’
Fuck.
‘I’ve been thinking about getting some food,’ she says. ‘Poor little thing looks like it’s starving.’
I don’t want her to do that, but whatever the cat is, I think we could do with a little goodwill.
‘We’ll pick up a couple of tins on the way back. Mind, though, we might adopt it.’
‘Cats pretty much make that choice on their own,’ she says. She likes cats.
I don’t know anything about cats. But I know kicking it, like Frank, is not the way. We’ve drawn it, like he says. But Helen’s drawn it, too.
I’m scared of the cat. Enough so I want to be nice to it.
I’m scared of the estate.
Most of all, I’m scared for Helen, because she’s in this and she doesn’t even know. I’ve got to make sure she never knows because I can’t lose her. She’s all that’s holding me on.
We’re finished for now, but it’s not over. We’ve got a lot of talking left to do.
‘Come on,’ she says. We get up.
I take out my tennis ball. I don’t know why. Maybe I just want to see it and take strength from it, like a talisman against the dark. It’s there, in my palm, my fingers around it. The cast stops my thumb from moving.
She sees it and she smiles. Then a gust of wind snatches it and it falls. It bounces, once, twice, and over the edge. I lunge for it, but way too late. It’s there, bobbing, twenty feet below me, then the sea swallows it.
‘Oh, Honey,’ Helen says. She rubs my back. I lean over the railing. I get an urge, just for an instant, when I want to dive over the edge, just sail over.
I shudder and pull back.
The tears come at last. I cry for a lost ball when I can’t cry for my little girl.
‘We’ll get another one.’
I can’t put it into words, because I’m sobbing. She knows anyway.
You can’t replace something like that. You can’t get a new one. Not when the old one means so much.
*
47.
Helen leaves me to sleep in the morning. Dimly, around the edge of sleep, I’m aware of her weight leaving the bed, the rustle of the duvet, the absence.
Then I’m out.
I’m on the estate, in the house on the green. I stand before the window in the master bedroom staring out toward the yellow grass. Even at this distance I can see the weeds in amongst the grass, wild flowers grown high, broken limbs on some of the spindly trees. Whether they were broken by the weather or kids, I don’t know. In the dream it seems important for a while. For too long.
The sun is high, but the window faces north. The shadow of the house reaches to the edge of the road out front, but no further.
It’s daylight. This is my time. The time for the living. I can’t smell the blood. Sometimes a dream will bring the memory of a smell, but all there is on the air is a kind of blank ozone smell/taste that leaves the back of my throat and my nostrils dry. My skin is parched, too, like the air in the house is recycled.
I push at the window to let the air in, because I feel like I could suffocate. I am suffocating. I can’t breath. The window won’t open. I panic, pound at the frame. It’s jammed. I smash my fist through the glass. The glass shatters outward as my fist goes through. The cast is gone. My hand is not broken, but now it’s cut.
Beyond the glass, where there was once sunshine and a tired green field, there is nothing but night. The night is pitch and oppressive.
There’s a candle on the window sill. The night’s wind snuffs it out and the smoke is lost in the black, swirling away in the breeze.
No way home, I think, as the night pours in through the jagged hole, over my hand, over my blood, making the two gashes l
ook black.
I can breath, but now I’m breathing, I’m breathing too fast.
Because the night is here.
Something comes in the night. Something that burns.
In my dream I can’t remember, but behind me something is glowing. It lights up the bedroom, throwing my shadow against the glass that I broke. The shadow is tallen. Fullen. He’s screaming. Maybe that’s why he can’t find the words. In his terror, the shadow is convulsing…it’s a stroken. No.
Stroke.
The shadow is blind in one eye.
But one word comes to him.
Run.
My feet move. The night is swirling, a black mist twining around my ankles. I trip as I reach the stairs and slide on my arse all the way to the bottom.
The glow is stronger. Footsteps, coming, behind me.
It’s the first sound. The thumping follows.
Run, my shadow says.
I run. My feet are silent. But I can hear the feet on the stairs. I can hear them very well. They are heavy, and they are wet. They should be dry. Wet won’t burn, but this is blood, and blood can catch fire.
I can feel that. I understand how blood can burn.
I fumble, get the door open. There is no front garden. No road. Just a building, foreboding, rising in the night time sky. White paint and brick and green age old moss on the walls.
Eventide.
A woman walks to the fence surrounding it. She’s dressed like a nurse, but painted red on the pocket is a cross.
She leads an old woman. An ancient woman. Her hair is wispy. It forms a halo about her head. Her skin, even from a distance, is translucent. Thin and worn by years passing by.
The nurse, if that’s what she is, opens a gate and nudges the old woman onto the green that separates this home, this eventide, from my estate.
The nudge is almost gentle, but it is an absent gesture, too.
The grass is long, but I can tell the old woman is wearing slippers.
There’s a glow I haven’t noticed because in the dream I forgot.
I remember now. I turn and they’re there. Hundreds of them, burning so bright against the flow of the dark. Men and women, young and old. All with their burning hunger, hunger that can never be sated.
They don’t see me. They surround the old woman in a clump of bodies. Her hair is the last thing I see. I’m aware of a sound, sucking, smacking, like a toothless child feeding.
A murmur rises from the feeding crowd. Then they break apart and spread. Where the old woman was, there is nothing. Some flattened grass.
They fall away, like the old woman was a pebble and they a pond.
They turn to me.
They reach.
Their touch is ice. Their fire burns cold.
So cold.
*
48.
When Helen pulls me from the dream I don’t scream.
I’m shivering, though. I’m chilled to the bone. I can’t stop shaking.
Helen’s concerned. It’s all over her face.
She holds the back of her hand against my forehead.
‘Sam, you’re burning up!’
But I’m not. I’m freezing.
I can’t speak properly. My teeth keep clacking together.
‘Cold,’ I manage.
‘You feel cold, but you’re not. You’ve got a fever. I’ll get you some paracetamol.’
I grab her hand. With my wrong hand. The one in the cast.
She winces.
‘What?’
‘You’re so hot.’ She looks down. I see what she’s seeing. The skin around the cast is livid red, tendrils snaking up my arm.
‘What is that?’
I shake my head. It’s all I can manage.
‘It looks like blood poisoning. Did you cut yourself?’
‘No.’
‘You should go to the doctor.’
‘No,’ I say. Not again. It wouldn’t make any difference. I know what’s wrong.
They’ve touched me. Their fire is in my blood. It’s poison. But not the sort a doctor could fix. There are no antibiotics for this.
My hand’s so cold it’s numb. The numbness is travelling up my arm. If that gets to my heart, I know what will happen.
The doctor will come. Helen will cry. It’ll be a heart attack, but I won’t be dead. I’ll be screaming, forever on the estate, going through a door that says, ‘Welcome Home,’ hoping for warm, but knowing the fires for the damned burn cold, colder than ice.
My whole body is shaking now. Helen tries to hold me down, but I push her away.
‘Sam, stay in bed!’
I don’t waste words. I swing my legs from the bed. My bum leg wants to give way as I stand and I push past her but I won’t let it. Maybe the stranger won’t let it. He’s strong in me, now.
We get down the stairs, me holding the banister, the stranger lending me his strength. I stop half way down the stairs as a shudder runs through me, one foot hanging out over a riser. Helen’s there, though. She holds me up.
I can’t talk. I just stagger on, into the kitchen.
I shake the kettle. It’s full. Not long boiled.
I’m not thinking. If I did I’d send Helen away. But there’s no time. The cold’s spread. I can feel it taking root around my heart.
I flick the kettle on, concentrate on standing up.
‘Sam.’
I can barely hear her. It’s like she’s talking from another room. My head’s pounding. Fighting it. My chest is so tight. I can breath, but barely.
Helen runs out of the room. It doesn’t matter what she does, just as long as she doesn’t stop me.
Steam roils across the kitchen ceiling and the kettle clicks off.
I pull the lid free with effort and throw it to the floor. Then I do the only thing I can think of. I thrust my hand half way up my forearm into the boiling water and scream.
The feeling comes back in an instant. The cold is gone. Now I’m burning.
The water in the kettle hisses and bubbles. I hold my hand under, exercise what little will I have, taking it with tears of pain and shouts of rage.
Helen’s shouting on the phone. Her feet are heavy as she runs through the house to me.
But it’s passed. I pull my hand out before she can see. The colour is back to normal. I feel OK. Not great, but anything not dead is OK with me.
‘Sam! Sam!’
I realise she’s been calling my name. I look into the kettle. There are chunks of ice and slush floating in the kettle.
I reach out and take her in my arms, hold her still. Then I take the phone from her hand and hang up.
‘Sam! No!’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Sam, what happened? You screamed. I thought…’
She’s crying and shaking, but I’m solid. I’m a rock.
She shakes while I hold her tight, but I don’t talk. I can’t talk just yet. The pain, the memory of the pain, is still too fresh.
She pushes me back and looks at me through watery eyes.
‘Sam, you’ve got to talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.’
‘Nothing. It’s alright now.’
She punches me in the face. She takes a real swing, pulling her fist right back over her shoulder and unloading into my chin. I feel my teeth clack shut and taste blood, but I’m shocked more than I am hurt.
First Frank, then Helen.
I’m two for two.
‘Don’t. Fucking…’ she loses what she’s going to say.
‘I can’t, Helen.’
‘Five years on coke, you think I don’t know what’s going on? Don’t you fucking dare. I want my husband back you fucking bastard!’
She’s talking to the stranger. She’s actually talking to him.
‘I can’t, Helen. It’s…it’s not coke.’
‘It never was! It wasn’t about the coke, it was you, not being there. Don’t do it, Sam. Please. Don’t leave me again.’
That hurts more than I thought it would. But
I’m set. I’m rock.
‘I promise, Helen. I’m done with that. But there’s something I’ve got to do. I’ve got to do it alone.’
‘Bullshit. I’m your wife. You’re leaving again. I don’t know where you go, but I want you back. I want my Sam!’
It’s the stranger that takes her and sets her aside. Just picks her up and puts her out of the way.
Sam sees the hurt on her face. It’s Sam that hears her tears follow him up the stairs. But it’s the stranger that gets dressed, goes down the stairs, walks across the back garden and knocks on Frank’s door.
It’s the stranger that says, ‘Tell me how you tried to kill yourself.’
*
49.
Frank’s still angry. He goes to say something, maybe to tell me to get fucked, but then he looks at me, really looks at me, and he sees what Helen saw. He sees just as well as anyone ever has.
The words he was going to say die on his lips.
‘You’d better come in.’
I step into his house.
‘Take a seat. Coffee?’
‘How, Frank?’
‘Coffee first. You look like shit.’
The fight goes out of me. It’s not sudden, but the adrenaline that’s been holding me up drains down, through my belly, into my legs, and out of my toes. I crumple into the chair.
I start to shake. This time it’s from exhaustion. I could just go home, put my head down, and sleep for a week. I can’t, though. They’ve found my dreams.
If I sleep, I die. I understand that perfectly. That’s OK, though, because I’m going to finish this one way or another.
‘Coffee would be good,’ I say, but he’s got a pot on anyway.
I put my head in my hands and wait for the brew.
He doesn’t ask me about milk and sugar. He just puts it in a mug and waves it under my nose.
The smell lets the world back in.
I take the mug clumsily. It’s hot, but it doesn’t burn. It takes both my hands to hold it steady.
I watch Frank with wary eyes as he sits opposite me. He puts his coffee down in a set of dark circles that look like the Olympic rings.
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 38
