Light Up the Dark

by Suki Fleet

  Nicky sank back into the pillow. Tiny drops of his blood spoiled the white sheet. It welled darkly in the crook of his arm, but he didn’t bother to wipe it away. He had no energy. No strength. But he was safe here. That was all that mattered, wasn’t it?

  “I’m going to hook you back up to the drip.”

  Nicky tensed. “There’s no point. I’ll only pull it out again.” His speech was slurred.

  The guy sighed. “Please don’t do that. You still need to rest.”

  Nicky felt cold fingers on his skin and didn’t resist as the needle went in. There were little vials of red fluid on the shelf behind his head, like the ones doctors used when they took a blood sample. Perhaps this guy was a doctor….

  “Who’re you?” Nicky could already feel himself drifting back into his dream. But he needed to know.

  “Lance. Just Lance. I’m a collector. You’ll feel much better when you wake.”

  Dreams do come true, Cai

  25 September 2012

  Standing in an overgrown flower bed, clutching a short-handled scythe in his hand, Cai peered into one of the crumbling mansion’s dusty windows.

  The place was giving him the creeps. Plus, he had the distinct feeling he was being watched.

  He needed this job, but he didn’t need any trouble. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time was something he had an unfortunate knack for. Eighteen months in a young offenders’ institute was proof of that. And Cai had no desire to repeat the experience.

  Cautiously, he tapped his finger against the dirty glass of the window in front of him, causing the whole rotten frame to tremble. It probably wasn’t such a good idea to touch anything so fragile. Cai didn’t have such a good track record with fragile things—or, for that matter, things that weren’t so fragile. In fact, his track record with things in general was pretty dire.

  So much dust and dirt covered the glass, it was difficult to see inside the house clearly, but at the back of the room a small light glowed, highlighting shelves of old books and far too many armchairs. The light was soft and small and it wavered a little. Like a candle would.

  It drifted across the room. Suddenly growing bigger. Closer.

  Heart thumping, Cai held his breath. But quick as a blink, the light vanished, plunging the room into gloomy darkness.

  Frustrated, Cai sighed.

  Whoever was in there really did not want to talk to him. This bloody job had sounded too good to be true from the start.

  He pulled at the wild rose briar that had wrapped around his legs, pricking his fingers in the process. The trip out to this house in the middle of nowhere had been a complete waste of time. Not that he had much to do with his time at the moment. He struggled back through the jungle of bushes and vines to the front of the house where he’d parked his decrepit van. If he didn’t get some sort of work soon, the loan he’d taken out to buy the piece of junk was going to cripple him. Probably quite literally, if the reputation of those sharks he’d borrowed from held any truth. He could likely buy a bit of time on his rent by doing some odd jobs for the landlord, but things had started to get real desperate, real quick.

  The late-September sun burned hotly. Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades, and his shirt clung to his back and chest. He licked his fingers and wiped away the tiny beads of blood oozing from the little cuts criss-crossing his arms. Belatedly he wished he’d had the forethought to grab a long-sleeved top to protect him from scratches. Not that he’d thought he’d be battling through prickly overgrowth this afternoon.

  It was probably a good thing he wasn’t going to get this job. He had no real idea about plants or gardens. He glanced at his rusted scythe. And he had no decent tools. The advert had wanted the grounds cleared quickly. By a professional. Not a professional waste of space.

  Dragging a hand through his hair, he looked around.

  Someone with questionable skills had had a go at a bit of topiary around the other side of the hulking great house—tall ugly shapes stretched wildly towards one another atop a square of impenetrable hedge. At night, in the dark, those sorts of shapes would easily become nightmarish.

  In fact, the whole neglected grey mansion with its huge blank-eyed windows and sheer expanses of weatherworn stone was the sort of place he didn’t think existed outside of horror movie sets, never mind in the peaceful Surrey countryside.

  Whoever got this job was going to have to have nerves of steel.

  He thought about walking up the front steps and knocking on the imposing front door one last time, but what was the point? Whoever was in there had ignored him so far. His persistence was unlikely to be welcomed. It wouldn’t be the first time curiosity had gotten the better of him. But it never ended well.

  Before getting back in his van, he turned and looked back down the windy driveway. It wouldn’t be long before the place became so difficult to navigate it was inaccessible. Even now, it was more of an uneven rutted track with weeds pushing up through the gravel. At his feet a few delicate-looking flowers had somehow pushed through the gravel. Their yellowed heads were drooping in the unexpected heat. Soph would appreciate them—yellow things made her smile. He thought about picking one for her, but it’d most likely wither and die in the heat of his van. And a dead flower was not a great present. Some things were better left alone and appreciated from afar.

  Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he stifled a yawn and texted Soph.

  Before he’d hurried off on this useless mission, he’d told her she needed to take the bus this afternoon. But if he left now, he might just be back in time to pick her up. Getting the bus home after school was not something she looked forward to.

  Cai got into the van and started the engine before he saw the thick white envelope tucked underneath his broken windscreen wiper.

  That definitely hadn’t been there a few minutes ago.

  Winding down his window, he reached for it. The envelope was full of what felt like paper. A message was messily scrawled across the front:

  Half the money now. Half when the garden is cleared.

  Ps. Did no one ever tell you spying is rude?

  Raising an eyebrow, Cai opened the envelope.

  He’d never seen so many twenty-pound notes. Eyes wide, he stared at the cash. Each note was so crisp it looked as though it had been ironed. Was it real? He brought the envelope up to his nose and inhaled. It didn’t really smell of anything but a sort of newness. He pulled out a few of the notes and rubbed them together. The thick paper rustled. They had to be real.

  But what the hell. This couldn’t be right. Someone was going to jump out in a moment and laugh at the stunned expression on his face, tell him this was all a joke.

  Suppressing a sudden shiver, Cai looked around. Whoever had left the envelope must have been watching him the whole time, must have known when he hacked his way around the side of the house. The same person with the candle? They must have run.

  Whoever it was, they really hadn’t wanted to talk to him. But why?

  Well, he wasn’t here to make friends. So it didn’t matter that they didn’t want to speak to him, as long as they paid him.

  But who gave someone a stack of cash like this without even knowing their name? He could leave and never come back. Not that he would. But still. It was either incredibly trusting behaviour… or something else.

  Cai kept staring at the money. Wow, if this really was half the money, there was four thousand pounds here! It looked like he had the job.

  He had the job! He wasn’t sure he should let himself believe it, but still a helpless grin spread across his face. Money spread across his lap, he gripped the steering wheel, pushed himself deep into the car seat, and for moment sat there, letting relief as big and wide as the sky spread through him.

  Then he shoved the money back in the envelope and pushed it into the already overflowing glove compartment. Sticking the car into first gear, he drove away before whoever it was could change their mind and take away the first gardening job—the
first official job—he’d had since stepping out of the YOI six weeks ago.

  When the sun rose tomorrow morning, Cai was going to work so hard to earn that money, no one could take it away from him.

  Nicky is a dancer in his dreams

  Nicky stood in what he supposed had once been Thorn Hall’s formal drawing room and watched the dust cloud fill the air outside as his new gardener’s van sped away down the winding driveway.

  Employing someone from an ad placed in the local paper without even talking to them first was probably one of those bad decisions that made other people raise their eyebrows, pull incredulous faces at and whisper I told you so when everything went pear-shaped.

  Giving someone he knew absolutely nothing about four grand on trust, with the hope they’d come back and complete a job, was a laughable long shot. But currently long shots were all Nicky had left, and it wasn’t as if he was likely to miss the money.

  This house was a tomb. Clearing the garden Lance had neglected would at least make Nicky feel less like he was being buried alive in it. He’d grown to hate the summer green suckers the straggly vines had attached to every downstairs window. Grown to despise every leaf that darkened his world. Summer had smothered him with life. And Nicky had long since stopped living.

  Once the van had entirely disappeared from view, Nicky sank back against the peeling flock wallpaper and slid down the wall until he was crouched on the rough floorboards. The ancient peacock mural painted on the far wall eyed him suspiciously, its once bright feathers dulled. Everything in this room had faded to an organic shade of browny grey—whether it was from the sun that occasionally shone through the tall windows or because it was covered in a heavy layer of dust, it didn’t really matter.

  His hands were still trembling. He chewed on his nail, but almost immediately the sensitive skin beneath his thumb nail tore and the coppery tang of blood filled his mouth. Quickly, he wiped it on the back of his dirty trousers, not wanting to see the blood. He should probably get changed. Braving the panfuls of icy water he tipped over himself while standing in the mildewy downstairs bath and scrubbing his skin raw was pointless if he kept putting these filthy rags back on. Problem was, the dirt had become so ground into his clothes, they didn’t seem clean even after he washed them. They probably stank, but all he could smell was the dust.

  The fact that he could right now afford to walk into whatever designer store he liked, and buy all the new clothes he could ever want, didn’t matter either. He couldn’t leave this house. Ironic considering how he’d coveted designer labels growing up, dreamed about moving to New York or Milan, where half his life would be spent as a ballet dancer as famous as Mikhail Baryshnikov, and for the rest of the time he’d transform into a model as beautiful as Sophia Loren. He’d been such a stupid, stupid kid.

  Keeping clean and brushing his hair was as far as his beauty routine went these days. He hadn’t even bothered to look in a mirror for God knows how long. He told himself he no longer cared.

  Today was the first time he’d been outside in over a week, and his heart was still punching madly against his ribs. Once upon a time he’d loved feeling his pulse racing—loved excitement—but now feeling anything big just terrified him, made him desperate for something to calm him, slow his rushing blood and stop the awful shaking, before his fragile body broke apart at the seams. Whatever was wrong with him had intensified these past few weeks, though the shaking had eased and was no longer constant.

  Fuck, he needed to calm down. And there was only one way he knew how.

  Problem was, Lance refused to have anything that was in the least addictive in the house. So he knew there was nothing he could find that would either bring him help or relief. No drugs—not even over the counter painkillers—no alcohol, no caffeine. He only had himself, and his fucking broken nails, and his too easily bruised skin. And he was going to have to deal with it.

  Wrapping his arms around his skinny chest, he concentrated on taking one slow deep breath after another. He fixed his gaze on the bright slither of sky that was visible out the window, until blue was all he could see.

  Yesterday, when he’d finally got up the courage to venture beyond this little corner of the house, he’d found himself in the eerie gloom of the east-wing library with Lance’s collection of broken hunting rifles. Most of Lance’s collections were of broken things. Or, Nicky thought darkly, perhaps Lance liked to break them. But whatever his reasons, there, in amongst the dust and the dry, antiquated texts on medicine, geology and pest control, he’d discovered a couple of newer books on meditation. They’d been tucked away on one of the harder to reach shelves. Last night he’d read them both from cover to cover.

  Who’d have thought Lance would have been into meditation? The man was full of surprises even in death. Maybe they’d belonged to another stray that Lance had brought home. Though from Lance’s family’s reaction to Nicky’s presence in this house, he’d be surprised if anyone else had ever wanted to stay.

  Nicky the whore, the family had called him. Before the first solicitor’s letter had arrived, he’d thought they might call the police about him still being in the house, but they hadn’t. Instead they’d left endless calling cards—hand-delivered envelopes, imaginatively addressed, and filled with live maggots, or dead spiders, and once, a drowsy queen bee. When the phone had been working it had rang and rang. Though Nicky had never answered, he’d played back a few of the whispered messages on Lance’s antique-looking answering machine, before ripping all the phone cords from the wall. Surely the line would have been cut, like everything else, by now.

  Nicky the whore.

  Nicky told himself he didn’t really care what Lance’s family thought of him. Cyril, Lance’s nephew, and Lance’s sister, Claudette, were the only ones Lance had ever spoken of. The rest Lance had lumped together, as though they were a single entity: The Family.

  Nicky had met Cyril but that was all. The rest were a mystery.

  Sometimes Nicky heard his name whispered in the dark corridors at night Nicky, Nicky, Nicky. Nicky the Whore. He tried to convince himself it was paranoia. But the fear kept him awake, paranoia or not.

  Nicky wasn’t a whore. Lance had never paid him for sex—he wouldn’t have needed to. He could have taken anything he wanted from Nicky, and Nicky would have let him, figuring he owed Lance.

  Instead, Nicky filled his days with pointless tasks that amused Lance and gave Nicky the sense that he was making some form of repayment. Like the chess games Nicky sometimes fell asleep in the middle of, and the endless folding of shiny origami ravens and fat colourful chaffinches to be hidden around Lance’s apartment upstairs, for him to find when he came home from wherever it was he went every day.

  Lance offered a place to live, food to eat, safety. That was all Nicky had wanted. It had been a trade. Yet now he had nothing.

  At some point, Nicky presumed Lance’s will was going to be read. He didn’t know how these things worked for rich people with big houses and land to be shared out. Nicky’s gran had had no will to be read. Always pragmatic, she said she’d leave the world as she’d come into it. Though she failed to mention how much of Nicky’s heart she’d take with her.

  Lance didn’t seem to have people who’d cared for him, but he had a great many things. So every day, Nicky waited for a letter to come, telling him he needed to leave now, that Lance’s house belonged to someone else.

  It was living in stasis. And Nicky was sick of it, yet he didn’t have the strength to do anything but survive.

  After around a hundred slow deep breaths, a brief sensation of calm took Nicky by surprise. It’s going to be okay, he thought suddenly. I am okay. This house cannot hurt me. No one is coming for me. I am safe. But even as he said those words to himself, the tight band of tension began slowly squeezing his chest again, making him doubt them almost immediately. It just wasn’t true. Whoever had taken him two years ago was still out there. And now Lance wasn’t here to protect him. He was no longer safe.


  He picked his stubby unlit candle up off the floor. He was tired. It was only mid-afternoon, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept all night, or even for more than a couple of hours in one go.

  With plants grown over so many windows, an inner gloom filled the downstairs of the house whatever time of day it was. But Nicky could navigate these wide ground-floor corridors blindfolded by now, which was going to be very helpful when he ran out of matches to light his candles with. His one working torch was for absolute emergencies, and he kept it tucked under the seat of the chair where he slept. Or at least tried to sleep. Sometimes he wasn’t sure what his restless body wanted any more. It was as though it needed something he couldn’t give it. Maybe it was hunger.

  Since Lance’s death his supplies had dwindled to almost nothing. Before the electricity had been cut off he could have tried to place an online shopping order on one of Lance’s computers. Perhaps they would have accepted cash left in an envelope on the step outside as he lacked a credit card. He didn’t really know. But it didn’t matter. The terrible shaking that had wracked his body for weeks meant he’d not felt up to dealing with anything, and now it was too late. He’d thought about checking to see if the phone line was still working, but he wasn’t sure he could cope with speaking to anyone. His nerves were too frayed. Even the thought of holding a conversation, having to pretend his life hadn’t fallen apart around him, filled him with dread.

  The strange solicitor was his only regular contact with the outside world. Every week Nicky would receive another bizarre letter.

  Last week Nicky had realised this weekly delivery gave him a chance to do something about the garden. Nicky left an envelope dangling through the letter box when the postperson came. He addressed it to one of the local newspapers Lance used to bring home, and inside he placed an advert he’d written. He’d left some money for the postperson to deliver it (far, far more money than the cost of a stamp, but then the stashes of money Nicky found only contained twenty-pound notes, and old ones at that). Nicky wasn’t sure the envelope would reach its destination but it obviously had.