Almost Dark

by Letitia Trent

  He couldn’t believe what he had done, though his arm ached from the force with which he’d thrown his hand out and smashed the brick into her skull. He looked down at the floor. Look at what this man has done, he thought.

  Tony felt strange, outside of his body, but his mind was working again, that foreign anger dissipated. If somebody found her as she was, bleeding to death or dead already, his fingerprints everywhere, he’d be in trouble. And he couldn’t get out the basement window—it was too narrow for him to get through.

  He’d have to run up the stairs, go through his office, and leave out the back door. Tony looked at his watch—it was fifteen minutes before twelve. The girls didn’t take lunch until twelve, and they were punctual. This was one of the virtues extolled by the previous foreman, a fat, hairless little man who’d beamed at the girls with a sexless, paternal pleasure when he spoke about them.

  Tony looked down at Charlotte, her eyes wide, her mouth and nose streaming. He felt his eyes filling against his will; he had not cried since he was a child. He couldn’t smell the kerosene anymore, but a headache crept around the base of his skull, one that pounded along with his heartbeat and shook his whole head.

  He went to her purse and dug through the mess of lipstick tubes, tissues, pens, and lottery tickets, and found a little silver lighter. The kerosene bottle was still open. He felt the wicked twinge in his neck again, where Charlotte had twisted it with her slap.

  Tony took the open bottle of kerosene and poured it on Charlotte’s body. The thin, cold fluid soaked into her clothes, splashed on her face and washed away the blood. He poured some on the bolts of cloth, too, and on the floor around her.

  Tony thought of explanations as he poured the kerosene. The girls smoked down here illegally, he imagined himself saying to the police chief, a tall, black-haired man that looked nothing like the small-town police chiefs in movies. He seemed strong and smart, and not susceptible to bullshit; Tony would have to make what he said as free of bullshit as possible. Filled with real sadness, real regret. He didn’t think he’d have trouble with that.

  He imagined himself tearing up, wiping his eyes, forehead in his hands. They must have left the kerosene lid open, he’d say. It must have gotten kicked over, or maybe some ash fell in—it was a terrible tragedy, terrible.

  Tony mouthed the words as he rolled up his sleeves to avoid spilling anything on himself.

  His back was to the door when he heard somebody call his name.

  “Tony,” a voice said. “Tony, I wanted to talk to you before lunch.” He turned. It was Joan, the pretty, young blonde who worked on a sewing machine down with all the older ladies—tall, sweet figure, but a little bit of a snob. She opened her mouth.

  Joan had decided to catch Tony early, before lunch, when he usually went across the street to Kelly’s Deli. She had gone to his office and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. She then went out back, where he often went to smoke; she found nothing but a pile of cigarette butts and the river, as always, surging up and over the wheel.

  The sky was grey, covered in a thick blanket of clouds. Joan crossed her arms and hugged her body close.

  Maybe I should go somewhere warm, she thought. Like California.

  She went back inside and looked around the factory—no Tony. There was only one place he could be. The basement.

  As Joan started down the steps, she thought she heard somebody talking. Maybe he was in a meeting. Strange to have a meeting in the basement, which was always cold and smelled like mould.

  Joan touched the door, knocking lightly. She pushed it open. Tony’s back was to her. He was not wearing his jacket, and the sleeves of his dingy white shirt were rolled up to his elbows. Even from the back, he was shabby—sweat stains spreading from his armpits and down his back, the tail of his shirt un-tucked and hanging from his pants.

  “Tony,” she said, stepping into the basement, turning to shut the door behind her. If she had stopped to think, if she hadn’t been so consumed with her task, she would have noticed the smell in the room, the static in the air.

  “Tony, I have something to tell you.” She looked up. He had turned, and she saw the kerosene can in his hands. The room smelled, overwhelmingly, dizzyingly, of kerosene. She held her hand to her nose. On the floor, by Tony’s feet, was a woman’s body, her back to the door, blood on the floor around her.

  Run, Joan thought. You have to run. But she had already shut the door behind her.

  She didn’t understand what was happening until Tony took her by the elbow, jerking it out of the socket. The pain was sudden, so blinding that she could not think to right herself as he threw her toward Charlotte’s body. She fell on her knees, her head resting against Charlotte’s waist.

  Then she felt a sharp pain at the back of her skull. Tony was more efficient this time—she felt the crack, the dulling of her senses, but not before thinking, no, no. I am going to leave. I was going to quit today.

  I don’t get to leave here, she realized as the pain lessened. Her body was covering her mind with a protective veil of shock. But still, she knew. She knew and it was too late to do anything about it. I don’t get to leave.

  Tony was out of kerosene, but he figured that the pool she’d fallen into would be enough. Oh yes, his mind hummed, it will surely be enough. He opened the basement door a crack, just enough to see into the stairway—nobody. He took Charlotte’s silver lighter and touched it to the pool of blood-tinged kerosene by her hair. The kerosene caught fire, flames dancing across the fluid’s surface. Her whole head was soon ablaze. Then he thought he heard Joan moan quietly.

  She’s still alive, he thought, but he couldn’t to do anything about that, as much as he might want to give her mercy. His mind raced to ease him, to push him forward, to get him to do what needed to be done to remain alive and free. He was glad for his body then, how it could break his indecision, push him past doubt. He flicked the lighter shut and put it in his pocket. He took his keys and left the room, shutting the door behind him, and went quickly, but did not run, up the stairway. Running meant guilt. He skirted the edges of the factory. Most of the girls didn’t even glance up as he passed. He went into his office, locking the door behind him, and left out of the back door, which led out to where he usually smoked a cigarette before going over to Kelly’s for a sandwich. He needed the cigarette but skipped it, heading straight over to the deli instead. His cigarettes were in his office, in the desk drawer. He could see himself putting the cigarettes in the drawer—he had done so just that morning, before everything had happened, when all he’d been looking forward to was lunch and seeing Charlotte and possibly a quick nap between 2:00 and 2:30, when he could lock his door and claim he was working.

  He remembered the Tony of that morning with great nostalgia. That was the real Tony, he thought, the sound of his own name jarring in his head, twisting and expanding with noise all around, like loud music coming through a broken speaker. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He would not listen to the noise. He would move and speak as he always did. He would be calm. He would survive.

  Tony crossed the empty street to Kelly’s Deli and went straight to the bathroom in the back. He scrubbed the kerosene scent from his hands, wiped the blood speckles from his shoes and shirt. He covered the blood spots on his white shirt with his jacket. Then he splashed his face with cold water and looked in the mirror. I look fine, he thought.

  A little tired. A man with responsibilities—somebody with a lot on his mind.

  I should look different after what I’ve done, he thought. He looked into his brown eyes, his familiar, lined face. He imagined the girls might be evident in his eyes—everybody would know what he had done as soon as they looked at him. Isn’t that how it was supposed to be—the blood would call out from his hands? That was something from the Bible, wasn’t it? But he couldn’t see anything different at all—he looked exactly the same on the outside as before, e
ven though his head was screaming, even though he didn’t feel that his hands were connected to his body. They burned from the sting of kerosene and the scrubbing he’d given them.

  Tony wiped his face with a towel. He would go out and order a sandwich, probably a Philly cheesesteak with extra onions, and he would eat the sandwich while leafing through the Farmington Reformer, as he always did. When somebody from the factory rushed in to the diner, one of the girls, soot on her cheek and dress, shouting that there was a fire, he would shout at the deli owner, a fat man in overalls, to call the fire department right away. He would express the most sincere surprise. He would show his leadership by going to the girls and offering comfort. He would give them paid leave for two days and send gift baskets to their homes. He would be the kind of person he had been when he had sat down to work that morning.

  Smoke began to pour from the basement almost immediately. Because the interior of the factory was constructed with slabs and beams of wood, the fire zipped up the stairwell, travelled up the wooden columns that supported the ceiling, and roared through the interior.

  Fire first reached the girls who sewed on the buttons. In their small, windowless room, they did not realize what was happening until it was almost too late. Smoke poured through their open door, and when they went to find the source of the smoke, they saw fire already spiralling up through the stairway, spreading its fingers across the wall, across piles of finished dresses, running toward the main entrance of the factory floor. The women ran for the door screaming fire! Those who had lined up at the other end of the factory, ready to punch their time clocks for lunch, paused to watch the button girls shouting and running, the smoke pursuing behind them.

  By this time, the fire had roared through the button room. It had found the piles of bolts by the foreman’s office and enveloped them, the flames licking the ceiling, dancing across the rafters. The women ran, some with their time cards still in their hands. But the fire came so quickly there wasn’t time to decide what was important enough to take.

  Tony sat at a small, dark table well inside the deli, a table he had always avoided because it was near the bathroom, and he hated having to see people go in and out of the bathroom, hearing the door slam, hearing the toilets flush. He sat there as a punishment.

  Soon enough, somebody would be coming for him. He ate his sandwich methodically, the edges first, then the middle, bursting with meat, almost too big to put in his mouth. It was oozing with mayonnaise, like the liverwurst sandwiches his mother made him as a child, like the olive sandwiches she made when they had run out of money and couldn’t afford the meat she got from Gouger’s market—cheap cuts of beef, chicken thighs, and liverwurst in bright red plastic. He watched sauce from his sandwich dribble out and tried to remember that he was hungry, that he’d been hungry for hours, that he had not had anything that morning but black coffee and a cigarette. Remembering the morning helped. He found his hunger again and began to eat.

  When Tony saw people standing, rushing to the window, shouting Tony, Tony, he ran to the window. He was surprised at the shock he felt at seeing smoke pouring from the opened front door and out into the street, how frightened and sickened it made him. The women from the factory were gathered in the gravel parking lot, bent over, some retching, on their hands and knees, their stockings torn and dirty against the rocks.

  “Oh God,” he said aloud, with real urgency. “The factory is on fire. Call the fire department. Please. Somebody call.” His voice shook. He bruised his hand on the metal bar as he pushed the deli’s glass doors open. He smelled the smoke coming from the factory, a sickly, rubbery smell of burning polyester. He closed his eyes against a wave of hot, ash-filled wind. He kept his eyes shut until one of the women from the factory rushed over to him, tugged his hand like a child.

  “Tony,” she said, “we can’t find Charlotte and Joan. Everybody else is here. What should we do?”

  “We can’t go in there until the fire department arrives.” His voice was appropriately grave, fatherly and soothing. He would have to comfort them all with some kind of speech. “We can only wait until they come. We don’t want anyone else to get hurt. And who knows? Maybe the girls ran off in a panic. I bet they’re fine; everyone else made it.”

  She dropped his hand and they watched the fire together, the orange fists punching through the windows in long, rolling licks. Smoke poured out, the stench rolling off like dampness from a bog. The sound of sirens, which had started faintly, came now from downtown.

  “Maybe, if Charlotte and Joan are still in there, the firemen will find them,” Tony said. He almost meant it.

  Those who survived the fire all had the same symptoms—that was the word their doctors used, though they rarely ventured to say exactly what they were symptoms of. But what do I have? The women would ask, and the doctors would shrug or sigh or sometimes make an attempt to answer, though the answers weren’t much more satisfying than the word symptoms.

  It started with headaches for most, which was normal according to all of the doctors they consulted—all that smoke, the black air they’d gulped in panic when rushing away from the burning factory, not to mention the stress, the shock to the nerves. But the headaches lingered for weeks, then months, and some even had blinding, migraine-like headaches for years afterward.

  Some reported visitations, the strange, vague word the women came up with to explain what was happening. Some of them saw Charlotte, blood coming from her mouth and nose, holding out her open purse, which was black and empty inside. Charlotte looked weary, blood dripping from her nose and mouth and even her eyes, sticky and clumped in her carefully curled eyelashes.

  And some saw Joan. While Charlotte stood, imploring, bleeding, communicating nothing, her ghost displaying her empty purse, Joan was angry. This was the one description that each woman gave of dead Joan, though the living Joan had been anything but. She’d been too cool for anger. As a ghost, she stormed in and out of their dreams, her mouth bloodied and dribbling down the front of her dress, her hair on fire. She came to the edges of their beds and shook them from sleep. She tried to speak, the women reported, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.

  III

  I

  September, current day

  Claire waited several weeks to schedule a meeting with Miriam Hastings. She imagined, for a short time, that she wouldn’t do it at all—why bother? What good could come from it? And why did she always rush to do what her mother told her anyway?

  But the dreams continued, made her sleep as tense and stressful as being awake, made her hands shake, made her hear voices and forget if she’d turned off the oven or if she’d locked her doors and windows.

  Her usual Sam dreams all took place on the night of his death, all the events happening again, slowly, in excruciating detail. The scene would begin in front of the factory as he ran for the busted basement window. She would protest, claw at his clothes, tell him, No, let’s just go home. She would hang from him. But he laughed at her. He didn’t look down. She hung from his belt hooks and he dragged her across the yard, her heels digging furrows in the soft, pine needle-packed ground. He didn’t seem to notice her. He didn’t seem to feel her weight around his waist. He went straight for the basement window, and she let go only as he turned to shove himself through the hole—no matter how much she didn’t want him to die, she didn’t want to go down there with him, she didn’t want to fall down that hole. So she let go, and each time she wished that she hadn’t.

  Then, just as she thought he would not speak to her, that she was invisible to him in this dream world, he would look right in her eyes and say, Don’t worry, Claire. I’ll unlock the door.

  But these new dreams were different.

  They kept going. She shouted down to him after he fell, and a muffled echo came back, a blast of lukewarm air like the air inside of a mouth, and the faint smell of burning. Sam, she called, Sam, I’m going to get you help. I’m goin
g to get you out.

  In dream logic, Claire imagined that she could get him out—she knew what was going to happen, that he was bleeding to death, and that in real life, the one she had already lived, he would not make it. But her dream self believed he would not die. Instead of going home, she would go next door and ask them to call an ambulance. The ambulance would come in time.

  Claire. His voice drifted up, small but clear. Claire, you can get me out.

  I know I can! she shouted down the hole, on her hands and knees. I’m going to go next door.

  No, he said. His voice slushed and gurgled like water swirling down a drain. It was happening again, just like last time. No, I’m going to unlock the front door for you. I’m going to unlock the door.

  As she was about to lean down to tell him that she had to hurry, that she knew what was going to happen and she could stop it, she felt heat unfurl from the window like a campfire igniting under her hands, and the window’s empty square lit up orange. She pushed back to avoid the flames that jumped from the windows. She moved backward, scuttling like a crab on her hands and feet.

  The first night, she woke kicking, her heart beating fast. The vague feeling that she could still do something was left over, fog from the dream that had not yet burned away. The feeling remained throughout the day. It made her feel as though she was missing something, forgetting something important, like an iron left on, the fabric beneath it burning. At work, she left her keys in the ignition and did not notice until she went out to her car at lunch to find a pack of cigarettes, to see if she still had some in the glove box from a few years ago when she had taken up a minor smoking habit. There were no cigarettes, of course, and she wondered why she wanted them. She saw her car keys hanging from the ignition and wondered what was happening to her mind.