Dead of Light (17 page)

I stood still on the bridge, I held my dead sister in my arms and wasn't worried. Let come what would, the night's work was done already.

And then a voice calling, soft and nervous in the night. “Ben?” she said, and it was nothing, it was no one, it was only Carol come down from the road.

“Ben, you've been so long, and I heard, I thought I heard...”

“I thought you would have left,” I said; and though she knew I was there, though her eyes had half-found me even, still she jumped at the sound of my voice. “I thought you'd be gone by now.”

“Mick left,” she said. “But I couldn't, how could I leave you here? He wouldn't wait this long, not knowing what you were doing, whether you were coming back; but I said I'd stay, I'd see you back home one way or another.”

I shook my head, although she wouldn't see it. No business of hers, but I didn't think I'd be going home this night.

Closer now, her hands stretched half in front of her as though it were darker even than it was, as though she really didn't want to see, she saw despite that; and was too honest to deny it, to herself or to me.

“Is that,” she said, “is that your sister?” And then, not needing me to speak with the answer so transparent, “How is she?”

“She's dead,” I said, the words as light on my tongue as Hazel's body was light in my arms, and as facile.

“Oh God, my love, I'm so sorry. What is it, what happened to her, can you tell?”

I shook my head, part in answer and part denial as she stepped forward.
Don't come any nearer.
She wasn't family, she had no right to see.

She nodded and stayed where she was, just a little shy of the bridge. Water murmured a short fall beneath my feet, reminding me that I stood on no good ground here.

But stand I did, and nothing more. I could think of no move to make, nowhere to go. And Carol stood, for no better reason than that I wasn't moving; and we might have stood there all night, both of us stilled by the stillness that was Hazel in my arms, if there hadn't been other footsteps unexpectedly on the path, coming light and unhurried through the archway.

I turned just my head to look, thinking,
This time, maybe?
And still not scared, not concerned, barely curious.

And not this time either, as it happened.

This time it was Uncle Allan, appearing impossibly out of the night, a cavalry on his own and riding at last and too late.

“Benedict,” he said softly. “I heard her calling you...”

“Did you?” I said dully. “That was clever.” It had always been a private trick, strictly between us — strictly from her to me — or so we'd always assumed. None of the cousins could emulate it, at any rate. But Allan was ever the smartest, ever the most brightly talented and the most technically interested in talent. No surprise if he'd cracked this as he'd cracked so much else, so many questions. Sometimes he found answers to things we hadn't even thought were questions.

He looked at Carol then; and I think because I was there, and because of what had happened, he said please. He wouldn't have otherwise. I saw him read her and dismiss her,
only cattle, and hence of no account
, and then he did it aloud; but for my sake, at least he was polite about it. Even
in extremis
, you didn't hurt family feelings. Not if you were Uncle Allan.

“Would you leave us?” he said, glancing at her briefly, moving nothing more than his eyes. “Please?”

If she'd so much as hesitated, I think he'd have moved her himself, despite me. I'd seen him do that before, to an irritating punter. We'd laughed then, at the man's expression as his legs carried him away under another's will, in jerking marionette steps; but we'd been younger, I'd been too young to see that it wasn't funny. Too young to know, then, that I would never be one with my cousins, playing like that with the punters.

But Carol was sensitive to the night and the threat and the vicious edge of emotion, or else she was just nicely brought up. Either way, she nodded briefly, bluntly; and said, “I'll be, I'll be up on the road, Ben. If you want me.”

I sketched a wave of acknowledgement, and let her fade from my mind as the sound of her footsteps faded.

“Uncle...”

“Hush, lad. Let me see.”

He took my sister from me, and laid her out again on the dank boards of the bridge. Then he lifted his eyes, only his eyes, and set nightfire to burn all along the rails on both sides. Probably he just wanted to see better what had been done to her, but to me it seemed like a tribute, like a candle to a saint.

My sister was no saint, but nightfire is no candle either, nothing so holy.

His seeing meant that I saw too, at least until I turned my head away; but that was detail only, and detail meant nothing. In the cold light I could see that even the whites of her eyes were crazed like windscreen-glass. So? Her life was all run out, through wider cracks than that. Who cared for the whites of her unkind eyes?

I thought that, but still I turned my head away. She never liked to be touched, my touchy sister, and Uncle Allan's hands were all over her. Gentle and respectful, but still touching, still questioning. I resented it for her, didn't want to watch.

When I heard the sounds of her zips, when I knew that he was touching where — so far as I knew — no man had ever touched Hazel, not looking wasn't enough any more. I took myself off into the wood.

o0o

I walked among trees, only shadows of themselves in the thin, guttering nightlight that threw my own shadow in amongst them. They felt real enough to my fingers; but then so did I, and I felt myself only a shadow now. Shadow without substance, as I always had been. Only now the substance that had defined me was gone, the loud noise faded to which I'd only ever been an echo. I thought that I'd fade too, that my little worth would diminish to nothing without my womb-sister's rough strength to back it.

o0o

Uncle Allan understood, I think. When he called me, when his voice softly named me in the night and I turned back, Hazel was dressed again, as decent as she could be in her cruel death. Even her helmet was on her head again, its blank visor hiding what I couldn't bear to see again.
Thanks, uncle...

“Will you carry her?” he asked.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak; and hoisted her in my arms, and she felt like a china doll unhinged at all her joints. What had been flesh was cold and hard and hollow, utterly inhuman.

I followed my uncle up the slope, trying not to tangle what I bore in the sharp twigs and thorns of this wild wood; and he must have been ferociously angry where I could only mourn, because when we came to the wall there was no scrambling through gaps in fallen stonework. He marched up to the gates and didn't even reach his hands towards them, didn't come close to touching.

This was a Macallan, a true Macallan in his wrath. There was a glare of ice-light in the silence, and the gates crumbled and fell to dust, while the rusted wire sang and snapped and fell in a tangle of glitter and flare to the muck beneath his feet.

He walked out onto the road, and I walked behind him as rich in envy as I was poor in everything else. I'd have traded anything, the brightest future in the world, for a touch of that talent now. For the chance to be angry as he was, to set the night on fire to light my sister her hasty road to hell.

o0o

His car was down the road a way, he said; he'd come across the fields by a route I didn't know, to avoid that hectic slide down through the wood.

Carol was right there in the gateway, waiting for us. Staring now, backing off with her hands a nervous flutter against my uncle's magic,
keep your distance, don't come close to me.
Allan noted her and as before found her of no importance, this time wasn't even polite enough to acknowledge her with word or gesture.

Having no words in my too-full throat and my arms too full of Hazel, all I could do was jerk my head,
this way
, and look back briefly to be sure that she was coming, trailing behind us in our thin procession.

Uncle Allan drove a Volvo, cautious man. Big and blue and heavy, it had a back seat wide enough to lay Hazel out neat and nice, though getting her in was a humiliating hassle. I wanted to kiss her for once, for maybe the first time in my life; but even in the dimness I couldn't bear to, knowing what my lips would be touching on her cheek. I was terrified of the way she might taste.

Allan went round to the driver's side, and looked at me across the roof.

“Get in, then,” he said. “We'll go to my place. We need to talk. To the family also, but first I think to each other, and in private.”

I was already moving to open the door, an obedient nephew again and at last, when Carol spoke in the darkness behind me.

Just my name, just, “Ben?”

That was enough to hold me. The door swung open under my hand, the courtesy light was on; but I lifted my head to look, and found her fifteen metres away and holding station, shifting from foot to foot but not, definitely not coming any closer.

“Come with,” I said, remembering that she had no other way of getting home. Thinking that's what she wanted, that she wouldn't presume but was only waiting an invitation. “You can sit on my lap, plenty of room...” Well, she wouldn't want to share the back seat with Hazel, would she? Even if either of us wanted her to; and there at least I could have spoken for my uncle as well as myself, I could have said no for both of us.

But Carol was shaking her head, shaking it hard,
you'll not get me in there with him. With her.
And, “Stay,” she said.

“What?”

“Don't go with him. You don't need him, Ben. Last thing you need tonight, going back with him.”
And with her
, unspoken but very much there, underlying everything she said.

If I was shaken, I think Uncle Allan was truly stunned. He wasn't used to contradiction, even from inside the family; from cattle, it was heresy. His head turned slowly, his eyes reassessed her. I was watching him, we both were, and I saw him rate her still at no account.

“Get in the car, Ben,” he said, one last charitable gesture, pretending she hadn't spoken; though clearly she'd blown her chance of a lift.

“No,” she said. “Please, Ben. For your own sake, you've got to think of yourself now...”

I thought she could usefully be doing the same thing, thinking of herself. She'd seen already what Allan could do, what he had done to the gates; and this wasn't putting him in any better a temper.

“Why,” he said softly — surprising me, deigning to speak to her about this, even if the question was meant to be purely rhetorical, no answer required — “when his sister lies dead in my car, why should he not come with me? With us? He must. This is not a matter for you. Be still.”

Be still
, I echoed in my head,
and be glad you're still breathing.

But no, Carol wasn't going to be faced down. She was scared— and more than simply scared, perhaps, too smart not to know what she was doing here, what she was risking — but she caught her hands together to stop their fluttering, and went on regardless.

“It's a, it's a matter for Ben,” she said. “He goes with you, he gets caught up in it all again. He won't get free again, you won't let him...”

“He never was free,” Uncle Allan said, cold and blunt and truthful. “He is of our blood. That is not accessible to change. And his sister is dead.”

“And he'll be dead too, if he comes back to you. The person he is, the person he's tried so hard to become — he shouldn't throw all that away. Not without thinking about it, at least, not without knowing what he's doing.” And she turned to me then, and said, “It's your choice, Ben, it has to be. But for God's sake, no, for your
own
sake, just look at what you're doing...”

That was it, that was all she had the strength or the courage or the words to say. She fell silent then, only looking at me; and Allan looked at me also, and the burden of decision was all mine, and I didn't want it. I couldn't handle it, too heavy for me. I turned away from them both, from both their tense faces; and the movement brought Hazel into my sight where she lay lit inside the car, all the terrible damage hidden but still true, still there to be dealt with.

And then my feet did it for me, took the responsibility. It was simple enough, at the last. I didn't want to get into that car.

Only the latest and greatest betrayal of my sister, that was all it was. I'd been too late and too weak to save her, to answer her desperation; and now I couldn't bear even to sit in the same small space with her. Guilt and horror and disgust, all of them fierce in my body, twisting my gut, driving me off.

So I stepped back from the car, and Uncle Allan took that as a rejection although it truly wasn't meant that way, I hadn't thought it out that far. Behind me I heard the car doors close, oh so quietly, and the engine start; and he drove slowly and carefully away from us, respectful of what he carried, and he left us standing in the road.

o0o

Not a long while before I heard the hushed sounds of her footsteps, of her breathing coming close. Not long, but long enough. It wasn't until she touched my arm that I realised how I was shaking.

She felt it too, I guess. Maybe felt the same shiver building inside herself also, tension released, adrenalin pumping into the system and finding nowhere to go. At any rate, she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me hard.

It was so welcome, so unexpectedly welcome. Just the touch of a warm and living body was good, to set against the touch-memory of Hazel; better was what underlay it, to have someone see the need in me and bring her own need to meet it.

Truly a long while, before I even thought to let go her trembling body and turn my mind and hers to the first and necessary question, where we should go from here.
Nowhere but down
, my private thought was; there was an emptiness in my head where my sister used to be, should still have been. A silence where the threat if not the actuality of her voice had always lurked, where I'd always had half an ear listening out.