Dead of Light (7 page)

“Oh, not Marty, is that right? So who, then, tell me who?”

“There was a girl, right?”
There must have been a girl.

Morry paused, frowned; said, “Yes, there was a girl.” And he'd clearly given her no thought at all, he'd passed her over as unimportant. Listened to Marty's shouting, and no more.
Big mistake, Morry.
“The last time, there was a girl. But she was inside the shop already, I didn't realise at first that she was with him. Bella did, though, Bella put a flea in her ear...”

And his bull voice drained of strength then, realising what I was telling him. We both turned involuntarily, to glance again at what had been done to Bella. Hoarsely, almost whispering, he said, “They'd come on a motorcycle, and she was driving. That surprised me, I remember...”

I nodded, utterly unsurprised. “Her name's Hazel,” I said, figuring that I owed him this much, on my family's behalf. “She's my sister.”

And this was her work, no question. Webbing was her talent. And a poor thin moonlight talent it was, just a surface scratching next to the deep-mined riches that others in the family enjoyed; and so much in contradiction to what she was herself, loud and confident, assertive and demanding.

It was enough, though. Put her one-on-one with an ordinary human being and set a moon in the sky, and it would be enough. As it had been. Too much for Bella. My sister had the family pride in full measure, or perhaps a little more than measured, in compensation for the weakness of her gift; she expected herself and all Macallans to be treated with respect, and she didn't know Aunt Bella.

This didn't have anything to do with Morry's not paying up. He could have handed over every penny Marty demanded, it would have made no difference. Hazel had lost face; through her the whole family had been demeaned, at least in Hazel's eyes. And hence this. Punishment or revenge, it didn't matter what you called it. They're interchangeable concepts in any case, it's all a matter of perspective.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Is there anything...” Suddenly he was pleading, shaming himself, pride losing out in the face of need: not a concept that would ever have occurred to Hazel. “If you spoke to her, I mean, she could undo it, what she's done...?”

“I don't think so,” I said slowly, drawing back as his hand reached out to touch me, for added persuasion. “I don't think she can. She goes this far, it's a one-way street. I'm sorry,” again.

“But I sent the money,” he said, tears in his eyes now. “First thing this morning, I sent Marty a cheque for the money...”

Then you sent it to a dead man.
But I didn't say that. Maybe he was conning me here, maybe this was all cover:
Of course I didn't know Marty was dead, how could I? Look, I even sent him a cheque this morning, you can check the postmark, look...
Maybe his tears were only remorse, he was surely a sentimental man and if he'd taken a hard revenge on the wrong person, he'd enjoy the chance to regret it. But I didn't believe that. Looking at him, looking at what had happened here, I didn't think he'd had anything to do with Marty's death. His anger was too helpless. He was a strong man on his knees, and he knew it, and that was why he raged.

And he raged only against me, the one Macallan he could be certain wouldn't bite back. To the rest of the family, he sent a cheque. I very much believed in his cheque.

One last time, “I'm sorry,” I said. Wasn't the first time I'd apologised for my sister, though I couldn't remember having to do it in worse circumstances, or for a greater offence.

He nodded slowly, acknowledging my weakness in this, as in everything; and ran a meaty hand down over his face, and brought it away damp with sweat or tears, both; and said, “What will, what will happen to her now?”

Webbed like a fly, trapped and taken: what did he think would happen? “She won't die,” I said, and tried to make that sound like a positive outcome.
She'll be a living, breathing torment to you, she'll need constant care and she'll snag like wire at your mind, you'll never be free of questions: is she conscious, is she suffering, does she understand? And you'll never have any answers, because there's no way of finding out.
Hazel used to web us — usually me — in a temper, or for a joke, or just because she felt like it; but only ever lightly and only briefly, she never let go of the web. She didn't take risks with family.

Animals, though — animals were a different matter. We'd taken a sheep from the moors once when we were twelve, when we were curious and uncaring; got Cousin Ronnie to fetch it down to Uncle James' back paddock in his van, and Hazel had webbed it hard and left it twenty-four hours, moonlight to moonlight. When she'd tried to take the web off, she couldn't. Made sense, we'd thought. It really was like a web, like a net: keep tight hold when you threw it, you could draw it back again. Let go, and it was gone.

We'd dragged the sheep into a muddy dip where no one was going to notice, and charted its progress over the next several days. It had got thinner and dryer, and eventually it had died; but not of the web, we thought. Only thirst and hunger, maybe shock. Maybe pain. We'd tried to find out, we'd experimented as best we could, but we never could be sure if the pain went on, after Hazel let go of a web.

One certain thing, there was no way of asking Aunt Bella, nor would there be. Wherever she'd gone, she wasn't coming back.

o0o

Another certain thing, I wasn't coming back to Morry's. If Hazel were concerning herself with his business, I was out of there. Out and gone, I didn't need Morry or anyone to push me. I wouldn't willingly cross paths with my sister, let alone swords.

“I'll come with you,” Laura had said, doing her friend-in-need bit and doing it well. Doing it very well, considering. “Of course I will,” she'd said. “If you're sure you want to go.”

I wasn't sure I wanted to go, no. I wasn't even sure I'd be let through the gates if I did go. But I had all that history pressing at my back, cold and heavy, positively glacial in its resistibility; and I had a conscience of sorts, or at least some kind of moral aesthetic saying that it would be a right deed and a good deed and very possibly a beautiful deed if I did go. And then I had that extra little promise, Laura beside me when I went; and that was the decider, that shifted ‘maybe' into ‘yes'.

And so I went, we went to Marty's funeral.

o0o

I wasn't particularly pleased with myself, for taking Laura. She'd seen the Macallans at work now, or at least their aftermath. In the flesh, rather than simply by report. Took her a long time to stop shaking after, and this didn't feel good, bringing her back into their ambit. Good for me, no doubt, good for my craven soul and aesthetically a delight as ever; more than delightful to have her face catch at the corner of my eye when I wasn't even looking for her. Morally, though, not clever. Not right action.

Still, she was here now, I couldn't send her back. And
know thyself
was always a good principle, something to cling to. I knew myself for a coward; and this was appropriate action for a coward, surely, taking his beloved into danger where a brave man would walk alone. More than a confession, then, an honest declaration: I could hold my head high, stepping off the bus and seeing the cemetery railings and reaching instantly for her hand. No shame in it, only fit and proper behaviour for the thing I was...

And so on, all the games you play in your head to convince yourself of something patently untrue, to make yourself look a little better in the mirror of your mind. I was playing them all that day, and losing badly. But facts remained, and she
was
there, dressed in black denim and even her lustrous hair looked raven-black today, as if it had darkened a couple of shades as a sign of respect for the departed. Ah, my changeable love, reconfiguring herself for strangers when she wouldn't do it for me, she wouldn't change the simplest thing about her, the one perversity in her, that she didn't love me...

o0o

Off the bus, along the pavement and here were all those cars again, parked both sides of the street with their wheels up on the kerb and never mind the double yellow lines, no one was going to be handing out tickets to that lot. Macallans and civics, both had immunity in this town.

In at the gates and yes, as expected, there were a couple of heavies on guard. Cousins both, so no riff-raff could fool them, no journalist could claim a spurious relationship or any other right to be there.
Know thy cousins
was a family rule, though it was pretty much unnecessary. Most of us carried the family features, stamped heavily on face and body. Big noses and broad flat hands marked out nineteen Macallans in twenty.

Just now two of those noses were pointed directly at us, and the hands that came with them were reaching already. Briefly I thought we really were going to get bumped straight out of there, arse-first if we didn't run now.

But I didn't run, and those hands didn't in the end do any damage. Steve shook my hand, with about as much genuine feeling as he would have accorded to the dignitaries who'd arrived before us. He at least seemed to have taken me at my own estimation, rubbed me out of the family bible and barely remembered my name.

Meanwhile Lamartine was scowling, hard fingers right at my throat as he pulled my tie straight.

“Show some respect, for Christ's sake, Ben.”

“Uh, sorry, Mar — I mean, Lamartine...” He'd been Little Marty all my life, standing just half an inch down from his namesake; but that namesake had sole possession of the name today, and maybe from here on in. Would keep tight hold in his box, maybe, not let it out for common use again.

Lamartine nodded, accepting his full name without violent protest for the first time in my memory; Steve gestured us on down the hill, past another line of cars. Larger, these, more expensive. Distantly, they turned black and enormous. That would be the cortège proper, the hearse and the limousines for family only with the Mayor and his cohorts tagging along behind, chauffeured and official, trying to pretend that they counted for something here.

Tough luck, guys and gals. Lords and knights and ladies. They wouldn't, couldn't fool anyone but themselves and each other. In a gathering like this, only blood counted. The civics were here on sufferance; they could posture as much as they liked, but there were no cameras here to see them. They'd get their hands shaken, no doubt, they might even get their egos stroked a little, a few words from a clan major; but it would mean nothing. If they were honest, they'd know that. Physically rubbing shoulders with Uncle James didn't mean they stood close to the centre of power, or anywhere near it.

But then, of course, if they were honest they wouldn't be civics. Not in this town.

o0o

Down the hill, past all the shiny cars; and for the second time in a week I was hand-in-hand with Laura, and for the second time in a week I couldn't give that its rightful priority, I couldn't mark it up as a red-letter moment in my private, all-too-slender volume of such moments. Her hand in mine had too little to do with us, too much to do with the crowd of Macallans down there where this line of cars ended, the family standing all together around an open darkness while the civics clustered at their backs.

Traditional people as ever, my family was all in black, as I was; and the only white stood out whiter in consequence. I suppose it's always like that at funerals, I suppose it's meant to be; but even surrounded by a mass of Macallans, any one of whom would act like a magnet on the eye if they were alone, it was the priest who held the power here. The stark surplice helped, limning him in light; that he had the only speaking part, that helped too; and that he had the voice to carry it, a booming baritone we could hear already, carrying to us clear and easy.

What helped most, though, was his simply being himself, the man inside the cassock that was under the surplice, Father Hamish MacDowd.

Our family priest, was Hamish. He baptised us, married us, buried us when need arose. It had never occurred to me that anyone else might stand at Marty's grave-head. No one else had the qualifications. Greed and corruption, those were crucial, and Hamish had them in generous measures; but along with them he had a burning faith and a sense of showmanship that had kept us all gobsmacked when we were children, and kept us quiet still. And whatever it was that he did to work that rare magic, it worked as well on the older generations. He had a vampire soul, he could suck the aura from any number of Macallans and appropriate it to himself in an instant charisma-transplant. I never suffered myself, having nothing to lose; but I'd seen cousins and uncles stranded and temporarily baffled, feeling their charm being stolen from them. Those moments were among my happiest adolescent memories, quiet unfading pleasures. Nothing like it when you're ultimately weak and unregarded, to see the strong laid low.

o0o

Laura's eloquent hand stilled me at the back of the packed mourners, among the civics. Suited me. I wasn't proud, couldn't afford to be; and no more than she did I fancy squeezing through to the place my blood might entitle me to, right upfront with family at both elbows and at my back, Marty's new home dead ahead. I'd settle for this, hanging around at the fringes and seeing little, only glimpses through the crowd. It all felt woefully familiar. I'd lived most of my life at the fringes, acknowledged and tolerated, but always too weak to be truly welcomed even before I turned traitor and fled.

Besides, it was safer for Laura. Hamish could take it, Hamish could stand in a tight circle of Macallans and feel nothing, seemingly; but I wouldn't chance Laura's more tender flesh among the strange currents and contrary fields that would be warring around that grave now. Mortal girl wasn't made to keep that kind of company. I'd once seen four cousins pack around a punter in a pub, just for the joke of it; he'd done them no harm, only a man trying to get served at the bar. Marty's idea, and no surprise there: “Let's show Ben,” he'd said. “Come on, all of us, make it better that way.”