She had never been religious. This was ridiculous now. She was ridiculous (as Craig had again told her, when she protested at today’s policy of having a sandwich lunch in the hotel bar). She did not have the effrontery to go running to Jesus.
In the end, she had to face the fact the church could not help her. She got up and went out by the other little side door the priest had taken when he left her. She did this, she believed, quite innocently.
Outside was the narrowest, dimmest alley.
For a moment, she might have been anywhere in Italy, even in time. The encroaching walls were cracked and high and somehow black even in the shadowed daylight. Chrissie thought that she must go left, to return herself to the square. But the alley looked twisted that way, almost deformed - impassable, and it stank of urine and some sort of trouble - she did not know what that was, but vaguely she heard, or thought she did, angry male voices. Her independence, which was so pathetic, had maybe been stated enough when she left Craig at the hotel. So she went the other way along the alley. The wrong way. And here the light came, a topaz flood, and then she walked out into a place that seemed to have formed between two cliffs of sunstruck primrose plaster. High above, a delicate iron balcony let loose a torrent of violet flowers all down the wall.
And under these, they were waiting for her.
There came a wash of terror. But adventure, joy, always made Chrissie afraid. She laughed, and Arrigo and Gina laughed back at her, soundlessly, their teeth like summer-resistant snow.
And then - they were—
They were touching
her—
caressing her … they were covering her like a silk blanket.
Chrissie had not often been deliberately touched. In love-making, even then, the explorations of her flesh were (she surmised) unimpressed and, accordingly, swift and desultory.
But no one anyway ever could have touched her - like this. Their hands, sliding over her, their arms encircling her, their lips - their tongues - moving across her face, her neck, her skin - They pressed firmly against her. Every surface of her felt them on itself. And she could not particularly notice which was Arrigo, which Gina - it did not matter - they were, all three of them, One.
So warm, so electric. It was like sex, yet not like sex. It was another kind of sex? Perhaps, maybe - for it had its own glorious momentum, its own rising to summit after summit—
Don‘t let it ever stop.
She lay back on the wall, in their arms, holding them, feeling them against her (part of them) these hot, satiny-smooth bodies, that were scented of fur and sand and honey and - Was she conscious? Yes -No—
Her eyes were shut. She could not open them. She spun upward, mile after mile, swimming with Arrigo and Gina in a sea of sun, desire and flame.
They did not kiss her. They did not seek to probe her body in any way. She was not penetrated. No, she was permeated. It was - osmosis. Oh - God—
What were they? In her swimming blind delight, the questions darted round her, swimming too, like tiny pretty fish. Arrigo and Gina were not ghosts - for they were solid, she could feel and grasp them, as they her.
There had been another dream. Forgotten, now - with the questioning fish - it surfaced too. What had the dream shown her? Something visual - she had seen the square, and a banner floating there, as if in some renaissance festival. White, with golden words written over it, and what had the words said? Something spelled out in her own faulty Italian - what? What?
Who cared? Only this, with them. Only they - They—
Never let me go.
Never stop.
Don’t leave me—
Take me with you—
On the banner, seen now over hills of the mind, through hazes of unthought, the words, hardening. She read them from the drowning sea.
Popolo di Mezzogiomo.
A cloud must have swallowed the sun. She tried to ignore how abruptly cold she was, chilled and shivering.
But the wall, reality, pushed hard into her back, and the purple flowers so near her face gave off a tang that all at once she did not like, a cat’s-piss smell - and she was
alone.
Chrissie opened her eyes. A sob wrenched convulsively as sick out of her mouth. She coughed and swore. She raised her wrist, visibly shaking, and stared at her shaking watch. One minute after 2.00 pm.
She drew the withered weed out of the glass that afternoon as Craig slept like an exhausted rhinoceros. The stem was rotten, the rest of it parched and blackened. The scent, if anything, was slightly stronger.
The latest bottle, whisky this time, still two-thirds full as only brought up here this afternoon, stood on the little desk between the windows.
Craig slept, but carefully she kept her back to him. She undid the whisky and crumbled into it the frond, which swirled in the clear brown liquid, for a moment like flakes from a fire, then melted, disappeared.
Chrissie did not know what the frond was, its exact nature or name. Only that it had fragilely forced its way through stone. She did know what it would do, approximately. It was no use making out she did not. So she would fail to be at all astounded at following developments and would need to take extra care, be cautious, and, in the theatrical sense, act. As she had acted for years with Craig, pretending to a light-hearted tolerance and respect that had long since died. And instead of a thick grey rhinoceros hide, like his own, that she had also tried to pretend she had, she must become soft and startled, emotional and desperate. Just those very things she had always had to keep inside, from about the age of thirteen.
After she had seen to the whisky, Chrissie took another shower. (He cursed and grumbled at her when she came out, for waking him, then went back to sleep.)
Having dressed, she went down and had an espresso in the bar. There were a few people there by now; it was about four-thirty, and the light deepening, thickening, the lamp-like bottles turned to chunks of green and tawny shadow.
She engaged the barman in a little touristy banter. He flirted at her, kindly, nicely, seeing she would know enough not to push her luck, but would appreciate the civility.
‘My husband’s been getting so tired,’ she added sadly. ‘We so want to go to the city, see the red and white cathedral. But he just can’t face it. And I’m afraid the food isn’t agreeing with him. Such a shame. I love the food.’
When she had finished the espresso, she went out for a stroll. In the lobby, an oldish, blond man was standing talking to the reception clerk. She heard the blond man say, ‘They won’t listen, never will, won’t believe what you tell them. About the streets, the square. Especially the square.’
Chrissie thought he spoke in an accented English; how else could she understand? An American, perhaps.
As she crossed into the spotlight of levelling sun at the threshold, as if into a red-gold box, isolated, she heard the man say, ‘Only a couple of hours. Does it hurt to watch out, to take precautions, just from twelve till two? Little enough. Doctors say you should keep out of the midday sun now, anyway. For the skin. Too many bad rays getting through.’
Chrissie found she had hesitated. Pretending now to examine the strap of her sandal.
‘Popolo,’ said the man. ‘Citizens of noon,’ the man said. ’Mezzogiorno.’
And then she realized he spoke in Italian, not English, and suddenly she could not understand him.
She stepped out into the street, where cats were lying on balconies and in doorways, and a woman was selling bunches of flowers from the hills.
The bell sounded in the square. Five o’clock.
Inside, upstairs, behind her, Chrissie visualised Craig rolling off the bed, pouring himself two or three stiff drinks before taking his shower.
Craig did not want dinner, he said (he told her why not; the disgusting food), but she, being a wimp, would make a fuss if they did not go out.
They walked down to the restaurant, through the square. (The families were strolling. Two handsome young men on Lambrettas entertained a batch o
f beautiful girls - bella! bella! Stars had appeared.) Craig’s colour was not good. He looked a little older.
In the restaurant he pushed most of the food far from him across the plates.
‘Filthy fucking muck,’ he said, too loudly. Around the room, faces glanced and away. The other diners looked almost fearful. But not precisely of Craig. Of something.
Although he did not eat, Craig drank copiously. He had the brandy, all the bottle.
His speech was slurred.
His little bluish pinkish eyes peered at Chrissie.
‘What are you staring at me for? Eh? Fuck you, you stupid cunt bitch.’
If he had made a public scene like this previously, and now and then it had come close, Chrissie would have curled together, shrivelled with embarrassment and terror. Tonight, she sat looking obediently away from Craig, her face stamped with a sort of compassion.
The other people in the restaurant would see how much he drank, how he behaved, his violence, the purple-red and porridge-sludge tones that alternated in his face. And they would observe how sorrowful Chrissie was, how meek, how she did her best, stayed quiet and unruffled. And yet so concerned - she had often pretended to solicitous concern before.
When Craig smashed his brandy glass - part accident, part dislocated rage - the manager came out with his son, a tanned and muscular youth in jeans and a white shirt.
‘I regret, signore, I must ask you to—’
‘Leave? My fucking pleasure, you nonce.’
At the door, she slipped back.
‘I’m so sorry. He’s not himself. He’s been feeling ill. He works too hard.’
‘E ben difficile, signora. But - it is nothing. Yourself, you are always welcome, while you remain.’
But in his face, as well, even in the face of the burly and competent son, a shifting of unease, a carefulness.
Outside, suddenly Craig swung sideways and vomited raucously on to the cobbles.
This went on some while, during which Chrissie stood, a picture of anxious helplessness, wide-eyed, clutching her hands together. Calm, and unmoved.
Raising his now mozzarella-coloured face, wiping his mouth. ‘There’s the advert for this crap joint,’ croaked Craig at the empty street. ‘That’s what their food’s good for, in that shithole.’
But then he had to lean over and commence puking again, and for some time, his sounds were restricted by and to this activity.
IV
All night Craig vomited. At first he made it to the bathroom, returning, staggering, to crash on his bed. Later he told her to bring him the waste-paper basket, and presently he told her to empty it. This became the routine. The colours changed, however. Black appeared, and crimson.
Between the bouts of his sickness, Chrissie slept a little, lying on her bed. There was an awful smell in the room, but this time he did not object when she opened both windows.
Above her, in the faintly luminous night, she saw the stains in the ceiling were quite different after dark, yet still she could make nothing of them. And then she believed she had, and she followed the map of stains and came into a place of nothingness, crowded with unseen, incredibly tall trees, but then a fearsome noise began and she woke up and it was Craig being sick again.
(The sounds he made now were so alarming, she was half-surprised no one had come to knock on their door. If they did, she was primed and had her performance all ready.)
When first light began, Craig spoke to Chrissie, in what was left of his voice. ‘Get me a doctor.’ So she got off the bed and went out of the room, closing the door behind her. She had kept on her clothes from the previous evening, and now she ran her fingers through her hair which never, anyway, looked like anything, so why bother. Then she turned the sign round on the door handle, so that it read, in Italian, French and English, Do not disturb.
There was already movement in the hotel. Spectral maids pattered through the corridors with armfuls of linen. In the lobby, the doors stood open to a cool nacreous dawn and they were watering the flowers in tubs by the doors.
Outside, birds sang.
Chrissie went straight to the square and sat at one of the tables left out, but its umbrella folded to a pencil, the doors of the cafe shut.
It was very early. She would have to wait.
She could smell the dew, the morning. She might never ever smell that again, or see a dawn or a night. She understood this quite well, and what she had renounced.
Each day, there would only be two hours of life. But a life of gold and crystal, a life of perfection. Spent - with Them.
All this they had promised her when they showed her the venomous frond. If only she would be brave enough. They had really wanted her. They had made that so obvious. Why did not matter. And armed with that she had been brave. Although, in fact, it had needed no bravery at all. Which was as well, since her courage had been entirely used up by the years of staying with him. To kill him - that had only been, ultimately, common sense.
Chrissie sat calmly, almost mindlessly, at her table, and when the cafe opened just after eight, various people came and put up her umbrella, and wiped the table, and brought her coffee and an orange.
She enjoyed them so much, the black bitter drink with its caffeine zing, the tart fruit - the last foods she would eat in this world.
She knew They did not eat, and when she became one of them, neither would she.
Were there others? Other people of the noon - perhaps. Possibly, when no longer visible to the susceptible human eye, they assumed, or returned to, some other form. Which was—? - diamante lizards -gleaming smokes - that glitter which sometimes came, when glancing away from something bright, and was thought to be some reflex of the optic nerve—
Was she excited at the prospect before her? Oh, she was radiant. She thought of how she would change, her skin turning to copper and her straw hair to spun gold. She thought of their embrace. Their love.
She had never been loved. Had she ever, herself, loved? No. Not until now.
‘Arrigo,’ she murmured, ‘and Gina. And … Chrissie …’
Men and women came and went around her and about the square. A cart rumbled by, a lorry. Mopeds. A girl who shouted. Children tumbling. A striding man with striding dogs. Her table was no longer approached; the waiters did not come to chivvy her, ask her what else she would have. They left her in her thrumming peace. As if they could see the shining cloud which contained her, as she waited for her lovers in the sunlight’s unfolding sunflower.
At about ten to twelve, Chrissie rose. When she did so, a curtain seemed to hang down from the burning sky, which drew itself all round her. Beyond the curtain, the quietness throbbed faintly with the undertones of other things, separate existences. The square had emptied entirely; no one was there any more, but for herself. All around, barricaded inside the glass windows of the cafes, she saw them, these others, at the tables, eating and drinking, playing cards. And in windows above the square, high up, she saw them too, their backs turned, their shutters closed. Already she had left them all.
Chrissie stood by the fountain. Its spray leapt up and over, over and up. She had brought nothing with her. She would need nothing ever again.
She knew, this time, she would see them arrive. The midday sun would bring them out, like flowers, like blisters in paint, like creatures from under a rock.
The bell rang from the church, cracked and irreversible.
They came up out of the rim of the fountain’s bowl and up from the ground. It was the way something might squeeze out of a tube, except that the tube was invisible. They were ectoplasmic, yet liquidly glassy. She thought of the wings of insects which, emerging from the chrysalis, must harden in the sun.
And then they were really there.
The light flared off them, through them, out of them, and heat radiated from them.
Chrissie smiled, and Arrigo and Gina smiled. Chrissie stretched out her hands, and as she did so, the sun flamed on her skin, the harmfully bad rays of twelve o’c
lock till two. And her skin was altered. It was peachy and translucent - Already, it began.
‘I did it,’ Chrissie said to Arrigo and Gina. ‘I poisoned him with the plant.’ They smiled. ‘He’ll probably be dead by now.’
Chrissie thought abruptly, perhaps not everyone uses the poison that way. Maybe they swallow it themselves. Or even sometimes it isn’t poison, that isn’t appropriate - a knife concealed in a wall, a razor-blade in a dustbin - we are all their potential victims, we susceptible ones. We won’t heed the warnings. They can do their work through us, one way or another way—
But she was not scared, no, not at all. For the first and last time in her life, Chrissie was exalted.
And then - what was it? Some new sound, some other awareness - Chrissie felt that after all, she and they were not quite alone in the noon square. And although she did not care, she looked over her shoulder. This was when she saw the two policemen, in their dark uniforms, with their spouting guns, standing across from her, at the entry of the street which led to the hotel.
Like Arrigo and Gina, the policemen wore sunglasses, very black, and as she had infallibly known it with Arrigo and Gina, Chrissie now knew that the policemen were staring directly at her. She turned again, away from them.
Arrigo and Gina smiled.
‘Well,’ Chrissie said. ‘They must have found him - I thought it would happen in the night, someone coming in - I was all ready to act upset, frantic - but then it was morning and - oh, I forgot, didn’t I, to empty out the last of the whisky - I thought it wouldn’t matter. It can’t now, can it? It’s too late. See my hands - my hands are almost transparent, aren’t they—’ But no, she thought then, something in her stumbling, the motion-sickness of the fall, no, her hands - were just as always. Bony, opaque, white, thin and thick.
Chrissie began to feel the new feeling, which was of utter darkness, there in the sun. Darkness and a wild flash of anger. For the town had known, this nice Italian town, most of them. They had seen, and warned, and stood aside, protecting themselves, knowing that Chrissie was the dupe - was the one - who would be lost—
Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 57
