Things We Say in the Dark Page 14

  They are as beautiful as women in paintings. More beautiful, even, because they look so solid, so real, like proper dead girls.

  *

  And she lay there in the coffin a long, long time, and she did not decay, but looked like she was asleep, for she was still as white as snow and as red as blood, and as black-haired as ebony.

  *

  ‘You be the vampire, Stokes,’ says Marybeth. She got them all hooked on paranormal romances; Stokeley didn’t actually like them that much initially, until she found that in some of them the girl got to be the vampire or werewolf or fae creature or whatever.

  Of course that then raised the question of why a werewolf-girl would be interested in a boring, hairless, lukewarm human boy, but still.

  ‘I was the vampire last time,’ complains Stokeley, though weakly, because actually she prefers to be the vampire and doesn’t understand why the others don’t want to be.

  ‘Well, that means you’ve had practice so you’ll be good at it,’ snaps back Casey.

  ‘Fine. But you can do the blood.’ Stokeley, reaching for the red lipstick, addresses this to Delilah, then loses her nerve and hands the black plastic tube to Casey.

  Casey paints Stokeley’s lips while the others swoon across Stokeley’s bed, complete with sighing sound effects. They don’t have flowing muslin gowns but they make do with bed sheets.

  Stokeley holds her blanket at the top corners, swooping round the room.

  ‘I’m a bat, a big bad bat, and I am batty for you!’

  Casey sniggers.

  ‘Come on, Stokeley!’ Marybeth is unamused; she has found the perfect swooning pose and won’t even open her eyes. ‘Do it properly.’

  Unseen by the others in the darkened room, Stokeley lowers her wings. She tilts her head down. She pushes out her throat to lower her voice.

  ‘Your blood,’ she murmurs, ‘smells delicious. Your lips tempt me. I must have a bite.’

  She lifts her wings and strides towards the bed, thinking: be sexy, be strong, be the vampirest vampire.

  ‘Your skin is warm and I am so cold. The centuries alone have chilled me to my bones. Warm me, sweet girl, with your hot blood.’

  Is that too far? She glances along the row of ready faces but no one is smiling. Not too far, then.

  ‘I am coming for your blood. I will taste you now.’

  The vampire’s kiss comes to them all, in the shape of two lipsticked dots at their throats. As each girl feels the dap of the lipstick, they let out an exaggerated, fake-sexy moan.

  ‘Oh, vampire! How cold you are!’

  ‘I’ll never be the same after this kiss!’

  ‘Is my blood the sweetest? Will you love me forever?’

  Afterwards they all sit up, giggling and fake-swooning, not quite managing to look Stokeley in the eye. She’s still holding on to her blanket-wings; she wants to wrap her arms around herself, enclose herself. Instead she leaps off the bed, wings aloft, and runs around the room cawing like a seagull.

  ‘I’m the bat!’ she sings. ‘The battiest bat! A rounders bat covered in bats!’

  Marybeth pouts and Delilah rolls her eyes, but Casey and Zeke join in, running around the room flapping their sheets like wings, pretending to be part of the first all-bat Olympic rounders team. They all take care not to rub off the marks of love the vampire left on their necks.

  They eventually fall asleep like that, wrapped in their sheets, red dots smearing into their pillows, laid out on a heap of duvets across Stokeley’s bedroom floor.

  *

  You’re so pretty like that.

  *

  Sometime in the night, Delilah got up, maybe to go to the toilet or maybe to look at the stars or maybe to have another go at the vampire game, or maybe for another reason entirely, but we can never really know what goes on in a young girl’s mind, but whatever her reason she climbed over her sleeping friends until she got to Stokeley, who really did look pretty like that, her lipstick faded so it looked like her mouth was naturally reddened, the concealer and blush blended by her pillow so it looked like her real skin but better, and for Delilah’s own reasons she looked at the sleeping girl and she bent down so she could breathe in her breath, which smelled sweet and specific, and she leaned closer and closer and closer and Stokeley’s lips were open a little in sleep, just slightly, and her tongue was caught between her teeth, the pink peep of it, and Delilah smiled and poked her own tongue out a little in response, and because she was so close her tongue touched Stokeley’s lip, and she turned her head to the side like men in films did so their noses wouldn’t bump and she closed that final millimetre, thinking of the bit in the story she had only just remembered from a book she’d read as a little kid, where a kiss from a prince has the power to wake a princess, and who wants to be a princess anyway these days when you could be a queen, regal, elegant, unmoving, and Stokeley’s lips were soft and her breath stopped and Delilah what the fuck, Marybeth’s voice half laughing and half angry, not sure whether an accusation was needed, already thinking in the manic glee of playground taunts, but Delilah’s face looked scared, I don’t think she’s breathing, and Marybeth crawled across the duvets and knelt on Stokeley’s bed to peer at her, what do you mean, what’s wrong with her, wake up, Stokes, wake the fuck up, and it did smell a little like shit in the room but only barely, only a slight remnant that seemed to be in all the soft furnishings, mostly it smelled of body spray and sleep breath, sweet and a little stale, don’t shake her like that Casey jesus christ you’ll give her brain damage and even though it did seem like Stokeley wasn’t breathing they still all thought she was winding them up, it was clear in the way they were overdramatising, because it’s exciting, isn’t it, the spectacle of things, like TV but right in front of you and people you know, even when it’s sad or difficult there’s still a strange appeal to it, she’s already got brain damage you idiot why won’t she wake up, and we can all think several things at once, and while they were all thinking some small worries about their friend, they were also thinking that she always had to be a drama queen and make it all about her, and that at school on Monday they’d make it a certain kind of story, a little mean to Stokeley but not too mean, just kind of knowing and eye-rolling, what is she like, the way you can be when you know someone really well, Stokes please it’s not funny wake uuuuuup, and Stokeley’s dad heard the commotion and came running in, a tartan dressing gown with the hem ripped and the belt untied, his unmatching pyjamas, and they had to explain to him what was happening, how she wouldn’t wake, and although their voices were overlapping and high and their hands flapped they weren’t scared now, because her dad would fix things, but their calm instantly flipped over to terror because Stokeley’s dad wasn’t reacting right, not in a way that adults should, adults who are always calm and fix things, whatever is wrong they fix it, but Stokeley’s dad is at the side of Stokeley’s bed, rocking back on his heels, clutching at Stokeley’s hair and pawing at her face, moaning and wailing not her, not her too, I can’t lose her too, and the girls all back away in horror, hands to their mouths, backing up until their bare heels hit the wall, eyes wide and staring at Stokeley’s dad in his grief, how it’s too close and too real and they don’t like it, they don’t want it, they wish he is behind glass, safe and distant and observable, and all the lights go on and all the duvets are pushed to the side to clear the floor and someone goes to call an ambulance and someone else goes next door for the neighbour and someone else remembers the first-aid training from school, and it’s bright and noise and heat, and at the circle of this torrent of movement and fuss is Stokeley, motionless, hair dark against the pale pink of her much-laundered pillow.

  Her back is caught in a slight arch. Her skin is ivory, poreless.

  Her eyes are tilted half open. Her mouth is caught in a smile.

  And she is so, so beautiful.

  I’ve started leaving the light on in my cabin at night. At first I left the light on in the studio too, but then I could see it from my bedroom
window, and I didn’t like that. I felt that if I didn’t keep looking at it, it would move away from me, that tiny yellow glow swallowed up by the night. Then I worried that if I did keep looking at it, it would move away anyway.

  I go for walks at night and it’s black, black, black. All cloud, no stars. I might as well be an abandoned ship, tilted and floating on the night ocean. If I stand still and hold my breath, I get seasick.

  Sometimes I forget to breathe. I think I forget to eat too. I tried to go to the shop today, but it was shut. Or maybe that was yesterday. I tapped on the sliding glass doors, but all the lights were off inside. There’s nothing on the shelves even, just some cardboard boxes slumping musty in the corners. But there were things there before, I’m sure there were, and people and tills and lights and an Icelandic easy-listening radio station on the tannoy.

  My hands are shaking. When I blink, the world jolts to the side.

  There is the door to my cabin. It’s open.

  Sweeter Than the Tongue I Remember

  The heat and the dreams came together. All afternoon a warm rain fell, churning the grassy parks into mud and making my toes slide out of my sandal straps. All night sweat itched along my ribs like walking flies, slicking across my shoulder blades, along my top lip, off the tips of my hair. All morning the washing machine grumbled with the night’s soaked sheets. I slept like I was at the bottom of the sea; I needed three alarm clocks to wake. But with sleep came dreams.

  Pleasant at first: a man with black eyes and soft hands. Skin-touching, mouth-kissing. Like a sleazy film with all the narrative cut and only the dirty bits left. I’d been single for a while, and the dreams were a thrill. The man in my dreams looked like every man I had ever desired: the star of my favourite film, my high-school boyfriend, my father. Every night he pushed me further until the clamour of my alarm pulled me, sweating and exhausted, away from him.

  In those early days I felt naive, coveted. My lips were always swollen, my throat raw. Colleagues teased me about my secret lover and I didn’t correct them. I liked my new glow.

  One night, mid-orgasm, with my legs bent impossibly and my blood soaring high, I changed my mind. No, I said. No. Suddenly I didn’t want the man and I didn’t want to come and I didn’t want to twist my body that way and I didn’t want, didn’t want.

  But the man did want. So that was that.

  My dreams were vivid, and I woke with reddened thighs and catfight scratches along my collarbones. There was only one solution that I could see. He came for me in my sleep; I would not sleep.

  I tried coffee and sugar and vigorous exercise. Bright lights, spicy food, long night walks, splashing my face with cold water, a variety of substances sold by a friend of a friend.

  It only took a few days for my constant wakefulness to affect me. My fingers started twitching, spilling drops from my coffee cup onto the carpet. Words jumped across the page as I tried to read them. I couldn’t tell if traffic lights were red or green; I just crossed my fingers and accelerated through them.

  Sometimes, in the afternoon heat haze, I’d blink and my eyes wouldn’t open again. The man lurked at the edges of my vision, his heavy hands over my eyes. I’d wake with a shout or fall off my chair.

  Finally a friend, noticing my shadowed eyes and clumsy steps, sent me to her doctor. I’d thought he was just a GP, but he made me stare at a metronome and asked about my childhood. I don’t know what I wanted from him: special pills, a golden key, magic beans? Something, anything.

  When he asked about my nightmares, I told him all the stories I could think up. I told him about eight-legged beasties, sitting exams naked, falling from mile-high rooftops. But it didn’t take long for my tired mind to run out of nightmares. I couldn’t even remember what normal people dreamed about any more, and my exhausted brain refused to invent new terrors to tell him about. Meaning to tell a lie, out of my mouth came the truth.

  The doctor smiled, restful and soft.

  ‘I can make it better,’ he said. We made a date for Friday.

  That was three nights away. I spent them standing by my kitchen window, sucking on ice cubes. When I started to nod off, I bit down.

  At the restaurant, the doctor ordered for me. He fed the food to me in bites. Afterwards, he took me back to his place. The sex was like watching a porn film: unreal and too real, out of focus and full of close-ups. His last kiss contained three tiny, sugared pills, from his tongue to mine.

  I slept. It was empty and silent and perfect.

  I was pulled away from nothing by the doctor’s alarm clock. Dozing beside me, he looked like he belonged in a piazza: marble-cold, marble-still. I pressed my back against his. I wanted to absorb his cold, but I would settle for him taking my heat. The doctor went to work, and I called in sick and stayed in his bed, eating waffles and reading his out-of-date magazines as the rain pattered at the windows. He came home with a brand-new raincoat in my size.

  For a week, I stayed dry and clean. Around me, the raining city festered, fruit peel and flowers starting to rot. But I slept blankly every night against the doctor’s marble-cold back. His skin smelled of nothing. His last kiss was always sweet with pills. I had to bring my own alarm clock from home, as his alone wasn’t enough to wake me.

  The doorbell pulled me from a dreamless sleep. The bed was empty; the doctor had gone to work already. I opened the door and held out my hand for the post, but the skinny man on the doorstep was not holding any envelopes. He had shadows under his eyes and was biting flakes of dry skin off his lips. Suddenly I wished I’d left the chain on the door.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Take me back.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I moved so that the door was between us.

  ‘Please. I deserve another chance.’

  ‘Just give me the post.’

  ‘I love you. Don’t do this.’

  ‘I think you have the wrong … ’ I stared at his face. ‘Have we met?’

  He laughed, but it turned into a cough. ‘You know we have.’

  I slammed the door and ran into the kitchen.

  How could it be him? How could this be real? Maybe I never woke up at all.

  I turned on the shower as hot as it would go, and stood in the water with my eyes shut. I couldn’t look down; if I saw my own skin, I’d see his hands on it.

  When I walked out of the bathroom I stopped breathing. Through the stained glass in the front door I saw him: leaning on the door frame, smoking, his back to me. How long had he been there? Should I call the police? A friend? The doctor?

  I put the chain on the door and inched it open.

  ‘What do you want?’

  He spun round and flicked his cigarette into the flower bed. ‘You.’ He exhaled his lungful of smoke. ‘I just want you. I miss you.’ He reached out a hand and I pushed the door so that I could only see him out of one eye.

  ‘I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what you want. You must have me confused with someone else.’

  He smiled, his eyes shining. His T-shirt pulled tight across his chest, bulked out by his muscled arms. I saw then that there was no need to be afraid of this man. No need to close a door against him. He didn’t want anything from me except to kiss me with that pouting red mouth, put those strong hands around my waist, touch my …

  Red mouth? When I first opened the door, he was biting flakes of skin off his lips. They were pale, thin and unhealthy-looking, like the rest of him. I scrunched my eyes shut so tight that green and orange lines wavered behind my lids. I opened them, properly awake, and stared at his chapped lips and scrawny arms. His smile was gone.

  ‘I’m asking you nicely,’ he said.

  ‘Leave me alone.’ I slammed the door and stood in the middle of the hall, watching his shadow as he stood on the doorstep.

  ‘You love me!’ he shouted through the letter box. ‘You know you do!’

  I watched his blurry shape through the stained glass until he skulked off.

  The doctor suggested repressed memo
ries, an overactive imagination. He suggested I’d dreamed the whole thing: a by-product of my insomnia.

  ‘I’ve been sleeping fine for weeks! Ever since you … since we …’

  Even to my ears, it sounded petulant. I stopped talking and he carried me to the bedroom. No, I said. No. Sleep came for me.

  I woke at dawn, shivering with sweat. I felt wet and aching, fever cramps between my legs. My dreams slunk away beneath the sheets.

  The doctor was already up, clattering cups in the kitchen. I heard the low mumble of talk radio, the white noise of morning traffic.

  I got ready to leave, then checked my bag – wallet, keys, phone – and opened the front door. On the doorstep stood the skinny man in a dirty blue tracksuit. He was biting his lips and tapping a cigarette against the door, watching the sparks fly.

  ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

  He licked his lips and stepped closer. He looked like a film star, my high-school boyfriend, my father.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my knuckles against them, counting my breaths as the colours flashed across my vision. When I looked again, I saw a stained tracksuit, sallow skin, bloodshot eyes.

  I locked the front door behind me and stalked to my car without looking back. In the rear-view mirror I saw him sit down on the doctor’s doorstep and pull out a cigarette.

  Every night I take my sugar-kiss pills and sleep beside my cold marble doctor, who I do not desire. Every morning I walk past the ghost of a dream, who I do and then don’t and then do desire. I can’t have both of them. I don’t think I want either. But no is such a small word.

  I don’t remember the houses here having lights on. I don’t remember the shop having food in it. I don’t remember anyone else being in the pool. I don’t remember a car passing on the road.