Almost Dark

by Letitia Trent

  The basement air was clear, still smelling faintly of disinfectant. Nothing moved. She closed her eyes, which had grown heavy.

  Sam, she thought, squeezing her eyelids together. Sam, I wanted to see you. And now I’m just going to fall asleep, if you’ll let me.

  Claire felt for the wall below the window. She pressed her back against it and slid down. Her skirt pulled away from her back and the bricks caught and scraped her skin, but she was too tired to care. She rested her face on her knees. For the first time in weeks, she fell asleep immediately.

  Sam ran toward the factory. Claire followed behind him, but her legs were heavy and she couldn’t keep up. The air was quiet and dry, not damp and windy, as it really had been. He turned around, as he always did, before he shoved his body down into the hole. He looked up at her for the last time, his black hair flipping up and away from his forehead. He grinned. He pushed himself down.

  As he disappeared, her legs came unstuck. She ran to the basement window.

  “I’m coming,” she said. “I’m coming through the front door. I’m coming now.”

  She stood and ran to the factory’s entrance. The front door was no longer shut and locked. It swung open easily. She ran into the dark room, dodging table edges, tripping over pieces of wire and machinery. She slammed her calf into the low edge of a table, registering the pain, moving past it. She kept going, feeling a warm trickle of blood as it travelled down her leg, over the bulge of her ankle and into her shoe. She didn’t stop to check the bleeding. This was farther than she had ever gone before.

  Maybe I’ll reach him. She didn’t imagine that she could save him. She only imagined that she could speak to him again before he was gone.

  I can tell him that I love him. And then, I can ask him to let me sleep.

  She reached the back wall and felt around for the knob. She almost tripped down the stairs, her feet travelling faster than her body was prepared for, but she clutched the railing and managed to catch herself before she tumbled down into the darkness. She imagined that if she fell she would wake up. She did not want to lose him now, not when she was so close. When she could let him know that she hadn’t forgotten, that he didn’t need to hurt her, that she wouldn’t ever forget. I will not wake up.

  Although it shouldn’t have been the case, the basement was brighter than the upper room. Blue light streamed through the windows as though spotlights were trained on the glass.

  In the light from the open basement window, Claire could see Sam outstretched on a cloth-covered table. He was pinned to it, his body stuck like a butterfly on display, speared through the chest by a blade. Blood poured down the fabric that covered the machine in long, thick trails. Sam’s hands, slightly curled, twitched, blood gathering in his palms, spilling down his fingers.

  “Sam,” Claire said. Her voice echoed like a shout in an empty amphitheatre. “Sam, I’m here. I made it.”

  A sound came from him, but she couldn’t make out any words. His hands twitched. She came closer, though she was afraid of this gore-streaked thing, which she didn’t quite believe was her brother, or the memory of her brother, or even a trace of her brother. Still, she didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to talk to him again.

  She moved closer to the figure, to Sam, to the heavy smell of pennies and dirt, of blood and sweat. She avoided the hand, palm open and dripping blood. She moved close to his face, not far above the place where the blade protruded from his chest.

  A splatter of blood like a birthmark crept up his chin and left cheek. His eyes were open.

  It was Sam, as he had been when she left him that night—she could smell a faint splash of Stetson cologne, which she’d given him for Christmas. His hair was long, curling up around his ears—he could never get it to lay flat. He blinked. He moved his mouth and a wheeze came out. Blood oozed from between his teeth.

  “I’m here,” she said. She touched his shoulder, where the blood had not yet soaked. He made a hissing sound between his teeth.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t touch you, I’m sorry.”

  He looked at her. The blood flowing from his nose was now a long, thin stream. He opened his mouth, which was turned slightly toward her, and a mix of blood and spittle honeyed from between his lips.

  “Claire,” he said, the world sounding like a gargle. He made a sucking noise when he breathed in. He was drowning in blood.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “Claire,” he said. “You have to get me out.” The word out ended in a sound like car wheels through slush.

  She remembered the closest house to the factory, just two blocks away, where the sidewalk erupted in a long rut—where she had almost tripped and fallen that night. She wondered if outside it would be her time or his. No matter—she would get somebody here. It didn’t matter how.

  “Sam,” she said, “I’m going to go right now and call an ambulance. I won’t go home. I won’t go far. I’m going to get you—”

  “No.” A string of sticky blood fell from his mouth. He did not blink. “No. It won’t work. I’m already gone.”

  “So what should I do?” The room grew warmer as she waited. Like a sound from a distance, she could vaguely feel the pain from the scratches on her back, but it wasn’t enough to wake her.

  “I need you to get rid of it.” He closed his eyes and turned his head slightly, wincing. His breathing heaved and his face was slick and waxy with sweat.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Help me to understand.”

  “I need you to get rid of it. Make it go away. Make it so nobody can be here. So nobody can work here or die here. Make it so I can leave.”

  Claire shook her head. “I don’t know how—”

  “Do it for me,” he said.

  His face clenched—he was struggling to breathe. He could no longer speak.

  I could tell somebody, Claire thought. I could still save him.

  But he was already slowing, the struggle seeping out of him.

  She watched him until his chest no longer moved, his head fell back and hung loose from his neck at an impossible angle. She wanted to lift his head, to take the pressure from his slim neck, though she knew that he could no longer feel it. She touched his hand and his blood, still warm, felt tacky. She lingered, skin to skin, his blood thickening between them.

  Claire. Claire.

  The voice was in her ear, a hand around each shoulder. She smelled shampoo and the buttery scent of almonds.

  “Claire, are you all right?”

  She opened her eyes. Justin was crouched in front, staring at her. She struggled to keep her eyes open, to focus on him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just so sleepy.”

  “Why were you down here? Christ, you could have broken your ankle coming down those stairs in the dark!”

  Justin seemed angry in the same way her father had been when she was reckless while riding her bike.

  “I got lost,” she said. “I thought this was the bathroom.”

  Claire waited for Justin to point out how little sense this made. She was beginning to feel the first waves of cold that always hit her upon waking. She wanted to be home, in bed, away from here. She held the back of her hand against her mouth and coughed. Justin helped her up and to the stairs as she held back the sickness. She made it upstairs and to the sink in the washroom before throwing up. He held back her hair.

  She began to miss him already, even as he stood above her, smoothing her hair.

  On the way home, she apologized for ruining their date, for getting lost, for getting sick. He smiled and reached across the car, touched the crown of her head.

  “You can’t help feeling sick,” he said. “I still had a good time.”

  She laughed. “Really? What was your favourite part—me falling asleep in the basement or me vomiting all over your new bathroom?”r />
  As they drove through the downtown to her apartment, every light in every storefront seemed brighter, crisper. Even people she knew looked unreal to her when she saw them at night. But tonight, everything felt hyper-real, everyone vibrantly alive as they walked to bars or clocked out from the night shift. She felt more real, too, as though everything dark and leaden had been purged from her.

  She’d be able to sleep tonight.

  “Would you like to come inside?” she asked as Justin leaned in to kiss her on her front porch. “I have wine.”

  “But you’re sick,” he said.

  “I feel much better now.”

  He paused, toying with the links of his watch.

  “I’ll brush my teeth,” she said.

  Justin laughed. “There’s an offer I can’t refuse.”

  That night, for the first time in a long time, Claire slept soundly. Justin did not snore. He stayed curled at the other side of the bed, not a lingerer or a cuddler. Claire liked this. She couldn’t stand to be touched in her sleep.

  He left shortly after waking, apologizing for having to go. He had to be over at the factory for job interviews. He kissed her on the mouth and smoothed her hair, said that he hoped that she was free on Friday. She smiled and poured coffee for both of them.

  “How long will you be at the factory tonight?”

  “Just until six or so,” he said.

  She nodded. “Call me later on and we’ll figure it out.”

  They parted and she watched from her living room window as he got into his car, adjusted his rear view mirror, and put on his seatbelt. He drove by the book, like a person who’d taken notes in drivers ed.

  She watched until his car disappeared over the hill. He was gone.

  She left the window and went to the bathroom mirror to wipe the makeup from her eyes. The circles under them had lightened. Her skin was pink and clear, not troubled with blue spots or a throbbing vein in her forehead.

  “I’ll do it,” she said into the mirror. “I’ll help you escape.”

  Miriam ate her cereal slowly as she read the newspaper, scanning the Help Wanted column for the posting she knew she would find.

  Today, Justin was interviewing people for positions as cashiers and baristas. He had called her when the advertisement first ran in the Banner—to “keep her posted,” he said—and she told him each time that she was happy to hear from him, that the progress was exciting, that she wanted to be notified of every new development.

  She didn’t want to hear about any of it, really. She imagined all of the high school and college kids shuffling in, tennis shoes pounding on the boards, their voices echoing. It was like that girl had said—what was her name, Claire. It seemed wrong for people to be there. But it was silly to feel that way, Miriam knew, so she said nothing.

  But still, she wished he’d leave her alone. She couldn’t say anything that hinted at this, though. She knew that Justin was not somebody to ignore. Farmington, like the rest of the small towns in the country, was still struggling economically. Justin offered at least a dozen new jobs, maybe more, if they expanded hours after the first few weeks. If she didn’t treat Justin well, if she didn’t listen to every word he said, then she might come across as inattentive, unaware of how important he was. So she had to call him and smile and leave staff meetings early to shake his damp hand. She didn’t trust his sheer exuberance. She found all exuberance suspicious, but his, especially, seemed almost tragic, like that of a character in a movie who you knew, right from the beginning, was going to die because he showed everyone a picture of his fiancée back home.

  Jennifer, home again for the week, came down to the kitchen in her faux-silk pyjamas. Miriam admired her daughter’s body, so lithe, easily manoeuvring into chairs and around the sharp corners of the table. Miriam’s ankles and knees clicked; her muscles ached when she slept wrong.

  Jennifer didn’t yet have an inkling of those strange, inexplicable pains. She folded herself onto one of the tall, narrow stools along the kitchen bar and reached for the box of cereal, holding the edges of the bar as she leaned.

  “Good morning, sweetheart.”

  “Morning. Hey, what was the name of your aunt, the one who died in that fire?”

  Miriam turned from the sink, where she’d been scalding coffee sediment from the bottom of her cup. “Why do you ask?”

  Jennifer shrugged. She poked at her cereal. “I thought of maybe applying for a barista job at that new coffee shop in the old factory this summer, if it’s still around by then. But I didn’t know how you would feel about it.”

  Miriam seated herself across from Jennifer.

  “What makes you think I would mind? I was just a child when that happened.”

  Jennifer shrugged. “I don’t know. I always got the impression you didn’t like that place.”

  Miriam felt her cheeks grow hot. She stood up and went back to the sink. “But why would you think such a thing?”

  “We don’t drive past it. You never talk about this big new building project, even though it’s supposed to be bringing in all these new jobs and money. You talked about that rug company for weeks and weeks before it came to town, and it only hired like ten people. I figured you’d be crazy about this. But you don’t say anything about it.”

  “Well, there’s a lot going on in town, more than just a new little business. We have to buy sand and salt for winter. We have that taser case—”

  Jennifer nodded. “I know, I know.”

  “That was so long ago,” Miriam said. “Tragic, of course, but it’s been, what, over fifty years?” The words seemed incredible to Miriam’s ears, though she knew it was true. Over fifty years. Long enough for her to go from girl to adult to old woman.

  “So you don’t mind if I apply?”

  “Of course,” she said. “You do what you need to do.”

  Miriam put her cup in the sink, went back to the table, folded the morning’s Farmington Banner, and picked up her keys.

  “Her name was Joan,” Miriam said. “My aunt’s name was Joan.”

  “I’ll see you later,” Miriam said, not turning to acknowledge Jennifer’s goodbye. She left so quickly that she forgot her sweater. Autumn was setting in. The trees that towered above the driveway, dappling it with lacey darkness, had, overnight, developed yellow patches. It would be cold soon.

  Justin stood in the basement amongst boxes and boxes of supplies—stacked paper cups, cardboard sleeves that fit around the belly of the cup, and stacks of brown paper napkins, along with many boxes of tea and whole-bean coffee.

  The basement was cool, damp, and completely still.

  He made himself stand in the middle of the room until the cold seeped through his clothes. He remained there until he felt his stomach churning, faintly.

  I won’t run.

  Claire had fallen asleep on the floor, apparently not affected by the room as he was. He could be as strong as her.

  He had heard of places with disturbances in their electromagnetic flow, places that triggered hallucinations, that caused migraines and made people vomit. It was a natural reaction, and some people were more sensitive than others. He’d researched the phenomena and imagined that he was just sensitive to something about the factory’s basement. He had gone so far as to ask the electricians if there was anything wrong with the building’s wiring.

  The electricians said that everything was in order.

  So Justin imagined that it was just something in the ground, something about the spot where the factory had been built, so close to the water. There were places like that—he’d read about them, too, on the Internet. Places of power, somebody had said, though he hoped there was a more scientific explanation for it. He had never been much for the paranormal. Life was hard enough as it was without a whole layer of terrifying things beyond his understanding.

  He stood in the base
ment until his stomach heaved, until he had to swallow fast to keep from spitting, from choking. He waited until he felt the cold so deep he imagined that the tips of his fingers might turn blue and flake away. He waited until his legs turned him and took him upstairs, almost without his permission,

  As he bent over the gleaming, bleached-clean toilet, waiting for the sickness to pass, for his body to calm and warm again, he thought about tomorrow. Tomorrow he would interview more baristas and cashiers. Tomorrow he would find the perfect people for each spot. Tomorrow he would begin to make this place useful again.

  III

  Claire bought a small can of kerosene and a clean batch of rags after work. She told the man at the hardware store that she had to clean the rust from an old bicycle chain. She remembered, vaguely, her father saying that you could clean rust or sludge with kerosene. She hoped she had remembered correctly. The man at the hardware store did not seem to care about her reasons and simply took her money without looking at her.

  She came home and changed into black jeans and a black shirt. Marcus had left a pair of shoes that she kept at the back of the closet, a strange sentimental token. She put them on and laced them tightly. She would have to go by foot—she couldn’t risk being seen in her car, with its dull paint job, cracked passenger-side window, and her familiar Kerry/Edwards sticker still hanging in shreds.

  She set out after midnight without a flashlight. She knew the streets to the factory well. She knew exactly how to get there within twenty minutes—by cutting through the Danners’ backyard and walking down the sidewalk-less Oak Street. The streetlights there were sparse, but it would take her all the way to the factory side of town and she wouldn’t have to take the wide sidewalks of Main Street. Though it was late, there might be people out wandering the streets who would recognize her—people she had gone to school with who remembered her name but nothing else about her, only that she was a fixture in Farmington, like the catamount statue and the deer park.