The Color of Darkness

by Ruth Hatfield

She grabbed the last bit of cake before Danny could get it, but Danny seemed to have forgotten the food entirely. He shook his head as though trying to dislodge a fly in his ear, and then Aunt Kathleen came back in from making her phone call.

  “Seems like you’ve got the whole town out looking for you,” she said to Danny.

  Cath stopped chewing. But maybe it was okay. The people looking for Danny O’Neill weren’t going to be the ones looking for her.

  “Sorry,” mumbled Danny into his plate. He wasn’t so bad when he was by himself, but he turned into such a sniveling little snot bag whenever grown-ups were around that it made Cath want to puke up a whole bucketful of scorn.

  “Have you had enough to eat?” Aunt Kathleen asked.

  “Yes, thanks,” said Danny.

  “No,” said Cath.

  A tiny smile flicked across Aunt Kathleen’s mouth. “I think your friend is hungry,” she said to Danny. “Though decidedly lacking in manners.”

  And instead of starting to screech like Macy would have done, Aunt Kathleen went across to the other side of the kitchen and opened a cupboard door.

  “Here, Hollow Legs,” she said, plonking half an enormous meat pie in front of Cath and giving her a knife to cut it with. “Fill your feet. I can hear the ATV coming down now—that’ll be Tom.”

  * * *

  Tom was almost as tall as Cath’s dad, but much thinner and blond, and his face shone with cheerful distraction. He opened the side door and slammed it behind him, stamping into the kitchen and heading straight for the fridge.

  “Worse than I thought,” he said, as though this was brilliant news. “Whole back edge of the fence on High Top is rotting. Going to take days to get the new posts in. Where’s that pie, Mum?”

  Swinging to survey the kitchen, he caught sight of the extra people at the table and his face froze for a fraction of a second. “Danny! Long time no see! What brings you here?”

  Then his face quickly moved again and he recovered his easiness, advancing on the meat pie and giving Cath a broad grin. Cath scowled. Tom cut himself a wedge of pie and took a bite out of it, leaning back against the kitchen counter.

  “Danny and his friend Cath are here to see you,” said Aunt Kathleen.

  “Oh yeah?” said Tom, chewing rapidly. “What about?”

  Aunt Kathleen raised an eyebrow at Danny, but Danny stayed silent, his cheeks reddening. His aunt held up her hands.

  “Right, okay, okay, no more interfering aunt,” she said, heading for the door. “I’ll go and finish cleaning out the henhouse. But don’t you dare set foot out of this kitchen, any of you. Your mum’s on her way, Danny. No running off, okay? Losing you once was enough.”

  With that, she left the kitchen. Danny, Cath, and Tom were silent until they heard the door close.

  “You met Sammael,” Danny whispered.

  The pie paused halfway to Tom’s mouth and then swiftly carried on. Tom bit again and swallowed before shrugging. His face had lost the easygoing smile.

  “Yep,” he said in a low voice. “I met him. He’s nothing like what you said. He gave me a book. I would have shared it, but you’re not really into finding stuff out, are you?”

  “Not that sort of stuff,” hissed Danny. “It’s an evil book. You can’t read it.”

  Tom snorted.

  “It’s a book of bird and animal calls, not some kind of brainwashing cult manual. It just means I can learn to understand them all and learn what everything’s up to. What terrible evil is that going to do to me?”

  “It’ll make you his,” whispered Danny. “You’ll belong to him. He’ll do whatever he wants with you.”

  “Oh, don’t be thick, Dan,” said Tom, letting his voice rise to a normal level and going over to fill the kettle. “Sammael isn’t some deadly creature of the night. He’s just a bloke who likes nature. You’re only scared of him because he doesn’t live in a suburb and drive a car and watch TV like everyone else. Just because he isn’t conventional, it doesn’t make him wrong, you know.”

  Cath cut herself more pie, but she did it quite slowly, so she could have something to do while she thought. Sammael did sound interesting. Maybe when she got back to Chromos, she could find him and see what everyone was talking about.

  “You don’t get it!” Danny frantically crumbled a bit of piecrust between his fingers. “You never listened to anything I said about him! He isn’t even a person—that’s just what he wants you to think! He asked you for your sand in return, didn’t he? Do you even know what that is? It’s your soul, Tom, your entire soul. He’ll find some way to kill you, then take it and use it to put dreams in people’s heads. To give them nightmares. Horrible nightmares … Oh, I knew this was a stupid idea.”

  “Why come, then?” said Tom, getting out a mug and a tea bag. “Sammael’s not going to kill me—he’s given me a book to make me live. Mum’s already on my back half the time—I think she reckons I’m going to go as crazy as you have. Well, I’m not. I’m just having fun and learning about the fantastic world out there. If you’re still too scared to come and see what it’s got to offer, just go back to your video games and leave me alone.”

  “Yeah,” said Danny in a sharp, sarcastic tone that Cath hadn’t heard him use before. “I would’ve. But then that came along.”

  He pointed at Barshin, who had nervously struggled into a sitting position under the table. Tom, pouring water into a mug, looked around and kept pouring for a second too long. Hot water splashed onto the counter, flying drops scalding his arms. He put the kettle down.

  “Wow,” he said softly. “Where did he come from?”

  “He came to warn us that you were in danger,” said Danny, throwing pie crumbs down against the wooden table. “Don’t you get it?”

  “Yeah, right,” said Tom, raising an eyebrow. “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. It’s just another of your crazy tricks. That’s no wild animal, it’s just something you got from a pet shop.”

  He turned away to get a cloth for the spilled water.

  Cath looked down at Barshin. “It ain’t working,” she whispered. “He don’t believe it.”

  “Try the other idea,” said Barshin. “Maybe Danny’ll agree now.”

  Cath shrugged. “Come on,” she said to Danny. “Tom ain’t gonna listen to us, is he? Let’s go to Chromos and get that dog and deal with Sammael ourselves.”

  Danny was silent for a few seconds. Tom finished mopping up, threw the cloth into the sink, picked up his mug, and turned back to them, lifting the tea bag in and out of the darkening tea.

  Cath almost thought Danny had ignored her, but then he said, “Okay, I’ll do it. We’ll go off to some weird, dangerous place where Sammael lives and I’ll risk my life again. Because it wasn’t enough for me just to save my parents, was it? Apparently I’ve got to go around saving all my family, even though they’re adults and I’m twelve. Fine. Brilliant. That’s what I’ll do, then. Let’s go.”

  Tom laughed. “Please,” he said. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account. This week alone, I’ve dealt with badger baiters, stampeding cows, and an angry mouse in a feed bin. I’m pretty sure I can save myself from the perils of reading a book.”

  “What’s so good about this book?” asked Danny, his voice rising. “What’s so good about this book that it makes you so completely dumb?”

  Tom gave a tight smile, and his pleasant face became sharp and clever. “Oh, you know, just the possibility of learning more about the natural world than anyone’s ever known before. A small thing, really. You’re not the only one in the world who gets to have adventures, Dan.”

  “I don’t want adventures,” said Danny. “I just want to be left alone.”

  “Well, toddle off, then,” said Tom, chucking his tea bag in the garbage. “In fact, I think I can hear a car coming up the driveway. That’ll be Mummy, won’t it? Come to take Dannykins and his Bunnykins home, and make everything safe again.”

  He got some milk from the fridge. Nobody spoke as the
sound of wheels crunched up on the gravel outside. A car door slammed, and footsteps came toward the house.

  Tom smiled mockingly at Danny and went out into the hallway to open the front door.

  “Where’s that girl?”

  A voice, uglier than a jagged knife wound, burst through to the kitchen. Cath leapt out of her chair and sprinted for the side door, but her legs were suddenly tangled with something warm and furry that squealed, and she was sprawling forward onto the floor, banging the side of her face against the table. A crash of pain battered into her temple and she tried to ignore it, scrambling to her feet, but her head spun with whining nausea and the room filled with tiny spots of color.

  For a moment Cath’s heart leapt—Chromos! This was Chromos! She’d stumbled back into it again and in a split second Zadoc would pound his way into the kitchen and lift her up, away from this whole place—all she had to do was focus on the spots of color, not let them fade away and die, to reach out for Barshin—

  Something yanked her up from the floor. Its presence was much darker than she’d remembered Zadoc being, and it was roaring like a sea lion, clods of sound wailing around her ears. Instead of setting her on her feet, it swung her against the wall, so that the other side of her head cracked against the plaster and a picture frame came crashing down, its corner stabbing into the skin above her eye. The frame tumbled to the floor and the glass inside it smashed, but Cath was already being dragged to the hallway, out into the open air, and there was a voice of protest, the gentle, deep voice of Danny’s cousin Tom, but he was just a boy against this hulk of fury—what could he do? What could any of them do?

  No one could beat Dad in a fight, not without a weapon deadlier than any animal on earth. Dad was a grizzly bear, his claws sharper than iron spikes.

  He slammed Cath against the side of his car and the last breath was smashed out of her lungs, as he’d meant it to be. He opened the car door and threw Cath inside, closing it with a furious bang. She wouldn’t be running now. She wouldn’t be trying to find the door handle of the car to jump out and escape. She’d be lying on the backseat, thinking only about how to pull breath into her body and how to stop her head from spinning in a galaxy of tiny white stars.

  “Don’t even think about calling the fuzz,” Dad said to Tom, who had followed him outside. “I know where you live. I’ll torch this place to the ground.”

  * * *

  Danny clung to the edge of the door frame, unable to move.

  “Stop!” yelled Aunt Kathleen, running out into the yard. “Stop that!”

  She ran down toward the driveway, toward the car, toward the man. She ran without any hesitation in her step, and her arms were waving in the air as though she were reaching out to Cath, trying to pull her away and save her.

  The man looked up and for a terrible second Danny thought he was about to get out and attack Aunt Kathleen. Instead, the car shot down the drive in reverse, leaping and bouncing as it hit potholes. The man leaned out to shout something at Aunt Kathleen, then he swung the car into a gateway, turned it around, and screeched off toward the main road. A smell of burning engine oil sat waxily in the air behind him.

  Danny stood in the doorway, biting down hard on his knuckles to stop the tears of panic spilling down his face. Something pulled at his chest, tugging and tugging, and when he looked down at himself he realized that it was his own lungs, begging him to breathe.

  Tom swore, his stunned hands raised to clutch at his blond hair. He kicked a bit of metal clean across the graveled yard and then kicked the ground.

  “Who was that? Who was that man? I’m calling the police now. He can’t do that to a kid. Jesus!”

  He swung around on Danny. Danny, knuckles still in his mouth, couldn’t think of a single word to say. He didn’t know anything about Cath Carrera other than that she was from the Sawtry estate. That man must have been her dad. Stan had gone straight off the farm and told Cath’s dad where she was, even though he’d been friendly and kind and Cath had seemed to trust him.

  Danny didn’t understand any of it. That hare— He looked around for Barshin, but the hare had disappeared. Maybe he’d gone after Cath. Yes, Barshin would go after her, Barshin would help her. Maybe Danny could just go back home …

  Down at the bottom of the hill, Danny watched a familiar blue car turn up the driveway. His parents’ car, with his mum at the wheel. Soon he would be inside that car, sitting in the seat next to his mum, watching the world scoot past from behind the windshield as they drove home.

  Of course the hare would help Cath. They’d both go to this Chromos place and live happily ever after. And Tom would read his book and belong to Sammael. And Danny would go home and never have to see any of them ever again.

  Danny’s mum got out of the car. Something in Danny’s brain sent a vision of himself running over to her and hugging her, burying his face in her coat and feeling the rough fibers against his cheek, and everything—the feel, the smell, the sound of it rustling—being the essence of home.

  But his actual, real body stood in the yard and watched her close the car door neatly, and he realized with a huge, sickening lurch that she was just a person, and he was another person, and that even if she wanted to, she couldn’t solve this for him.

  “Darling,” said his mum. “You should be in school. Why did you come here? What’s wrong?”

  She put her arms around him in a warm hug and pulled him gently toward her. Not angry, not threatening, just loving and kind. He’d run out of school and gone off without telling her, exactly as he’d promised never to do again, and she didn’t have a cross word to say to him. A year ago, she would have at least yelled a bit. Was this still his mum?

  I have never really known any of these people in my life, thought Danny. They are complete strangers. There is only one creature whose face I can picture. And I’d give anything to get that face out of my head.

  But that wasn’t quite right. The face of Sammael had been joined by another picture now. No matter how many times Danny shut his eyes, he knew he would never forget it. It was Cath Carrera’s skull thudding against a wall.

  Danny turned away from his mum and was quietly sick.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE STAG

  “Had enough yet?”

  The face above Danny’s was almost indistinguishable from the night around it. He knew what it looked like, though. He knew every angle of the sharp, lean cheeks, the slanting black eyes, and the close-curled hair.

  Was he awake or asleep? Did it matter?

  If I’m awake, he’s in my room. And if I’m asleep, he’s in my head.

  On the whole, it was better not to know.

  “Leave me alone,” he managed to say. “I’m sorry about your dog. I’ve said I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “How about…,” said the face, coming closer to Danny’s own, “how about giving me something in exchange?”

  Danny’s skin began to feel cold. Was it the night breeze coming in through his bedroom window? Or was it the puff of ice clouding Sammael’s figure, stretching out toward him in soft wisps? He shivered.

  “I won’t give you anything,” he said. “It wasn’t my fault. I won’t give—”

  Sammael put a hand on his chest and pushed down gently.

  “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly,” he said, his thin lips close to Danny’s ear. “I don’t know why…”

  Danny’s arms stayed by his sides. Why couldn’t he lift them? Maybe if he concentrated on only one … He pushed all his thought into his right hand—just bend one muscle, one finger …

  “… she swallowed the fly…,” said Sammael.

  Danny’s hand refused to move. His finger refused to move.

  “Perhaps…,” whispered Sammael, touching his cheek to Danny’s cheek.

  A scalding burst of heat shot through Danny’s brain and scorched its way down his neck, out to his limbs. His arms and legs went rigid, held in place by rods of pain. A cough swelled up in
side his chest and tried to break free, but it couldn’t force itself up his taut airway. He began to choke.

  “I haven’t got the taro … I’m no threat to you anymore…,” he tried to say, but it came out as nothing more than a stream of dribble.

  “… she’ll die!” said Sammael, right into Danny’s ear, in a whisper as shrill as the grating of ancient machinery. “You’ve always got the taro, Danny. Don’t you even know that by now? And weapons in the hands of fools—they’re the most dangerous of all.”

  Sammael’s hand pressed down harder on Danny’s chest. Danny tried to gasp. A thick bubble of spit rolled from his mouth, and he tasted the hot metal of blood.

  “Please…” He gulped. “Please…”

  And Sammael’s cheek next to his own cheek pressed closer and closer so that Danny couldn’t feel anymore where he ended and Sammael began, and he thought, he’s melting into me, I’m melting into him, and soon we’ll be one and the same, and I will have black hair and black eyes instead of my own brown ones, and I will have a face that looks like it’s been carved out of rock, and I will wander around the world and never come home again, and spend the rest of my life searching for my dead dog …

  * * *

  The bedroom window slammed into its frame. Danny was alone, as usual, in his bedroom, and outside a breeze had picked up. He hadn’t put the catch down and the window was banging as the wind grabbed at it.

  What was inside his head? Sammael, of course. And Cath. And Tom—but Tom was a lost cause, wasn’t he? No, there was something else, something he’d been trying hard to forget—something his brain, even now, didn’t want him to think about.

  Sammael’s hand pressing down on his chest. I know an old lady who swallowed a fly. Sammael’s cheek melting into his own. Sammael’s dog …

  And the taro. You’ve always got the taro …

  Except he didn’t have it. The taro was the thing that had caused all the trouble in the first place. The taro was a small, innocent-looking piece of stick that had been lying in the ashes of the burned sycamore tree. When Danny had picked it up, he’d found out about Sammael. And Sammael had seemed just as evil then, just as threatening, so Danny had chosen to bring him down.