Things We Say in the Dark Read online

  She and Yara had been so busy in those days, preoccupied with hating their mother and pretending they were from a big city and trying to get their hair to do things it wouldn’t and wanting their periods to come and then wanting their periods to go away. She’d always had a thought that her tiny shitty town might some day be known for her; that she’d do something amazing and when anyone heard the name of the town they’d say yeah, isn’t that where Jay Kelly grew up? And instead it’s known for nothing at all. Just some people whose names she can’t even remember, if she ever knew them at all.

  Jay goes into the living room. It’s thick with shadows and she rips a sheet of newspaper off the window and lets in beams of dusty light. She’s not the first one in here; there’s a bucket with the remains of a fire in the middle of the room, and empty beer cans are snowpiled in the corners.

  Some dark nights, Pop used to tell them ghost stories. Inside there was a fire and hot chocolate and pyjamas, and outside there was rain. He told them all the classic stories: the hook, the rat, the babysitter, the licked hand, the phantom hitchhiker. Mam would be annoyed that he was winding up the girls before bed, because she’d be the one who’d have to deal with the nightmares, but in the end she would settle down to listen too. In the gaps between Pop’s words and the rain, Jay was sure she could hear the sunflowers growing, the slow creak of their stalks like someone calling out to her.

  Jay opens the door to the cellar, but she doesn’t go down the steps because she’s not a fucking moron. It’s gloomy and there’s no electricity and the steps are probably rotted through. Even from up here she can smell the stink of it: wet earth, old blood, secret rot.

  For a while Pop had turned the cellar into a mushroom farm. That sounds like it was a well-considered plan but it wasn’t; one day he found a crop of mushrooms sprouting in the corner of the cellar’s dirt floor, and he figured if they were already growing then he could make them grow more. Didn’t everyone complain all the time that this country was rotten with damp? Might as well make the most of it.

  He spent a whole season encouraging the mushrooms, fertilising the earth under the house with bonemeal and glass jars of frothing blood, which was a strange thing to be able to buy, Jay thought now, but she supposes he must have bought it all from somewhere. He hadn’t checked before he grew the mushrooms which were the edible kind and which were the poisonous kind; he just increased what was already growing there. Every dinner time Jay would fear mushroom soup, mushroom pie, mushrooms chopped and blended in secret into everything she ate.

  But she got tired of being afraid and chose instead to laugh. She and Yara decided that Pop was growing magic mushrooms, and they’d egg each other on to go and steal some so they could take them together. They wanted to lean back on the soft pillows of Jay’s bed and hallucinate freely, see new worlds blossom and flower around them as outside the sunflowers nodded and the scarecrows crept closer and their father sang, sang, all through the night. They wanted to take horror and flip it into magic, fantasy: just stories they could tell from another life.

  So in the autumn gloaming Jay and Yara had crept down the creaking cellar steps, ready for dares, ready to open new worlds – and found nothing but bare earth, the mushroom harvest gone. Pop had sold them, or given them away, or eaten them all himself, leaving nothing they could make a story from.

  Jay’s first job out of school was at a mushroom farm, a proper industrial one with flickering fluorescent lights and the choking smell of dried pigs’ blood and the dirt sucking at her boots as she tried to pick enough mushrooms to fill her container to the top so that she would have enough money for her rent. After her shift, she shucked off the heavy white boots and the thick white suit in the staffroom, replaced them with her thin ballet pumps and her black jeans and vest. She felt so light and so dark, insubstantial, like she could slip into the shadows and no one would notice.

  She remembers those times as being always night, always sitting gritty-eyed on the night bus with city lights swooping yolky past the window, always in that place between waking and sleeping. She didn’t sleep much then. Partly because she took on as many shifts as she could at the mushroom farm, but also because even when she got back to her tiny studio flat and fell into bed, she had such awful dreams. The dreams seemed to come before she’d fallen asleep, and they were always of the sunflowers, their heavy heads like hoods on drooping necks, their leaves twitching like hands.

  Jay goes up the stairs carefully, catching her breath at every creak, but the old treads hold. The landing window is spiderwebbed with cracks and she can’t see the dead field she knows is out there. She remembers now that it wasn’t the sunflowers that bothered her, but the scarecrows. Every time she looked she was sure that there were more than before. Now the sunflowers are withered and so are the scarecrows, all their clothes and flesh gone to leave the wooden crucifixes bare.

  One night Yara was going out with her friends to see a film so she ran a bath, and just before the hot water ran out there was a splutter-splat and into the tub plopped a mess of tiny white bones, scraps of black velvet, and two rows of doll-like razor teeth. Yara came screeching out of the bathroom and Mam smacked her hard on the bare thigh, and told her to stop being such a princess and that there was no more hot water in the tank so she’d just have to wash in the water as it was. Jay can’t remember now whether Mam scooped out the rotted bits of bat or not. She does remember that she made fun of Yara for weeks about her bat-bath. Though now she sees what she hadn’t at the time: that bat was down to the bones, so couldn’t have died in the water tank that day. They’d all been having bat-baths for weeks.

  Jay goes into the bathroom. Or rather her head and upper body go in; she keeps her feet on the threshold because the floor of the bathroom is rotted, the boards smashed right through in places, the kitchen downstairs visible through the splinter-edged holes. Everything here has been ripped out too: the sink, the tub, even the toilet. The walls are gouged with holes and she figures maybe that was to get at the pipes, for copper or something.

  She laughs then, out loud, standing there on the threshold, remembering the scrap-metal dealer in town whose sign was always getting the ‘s’ stolen off it, and how much she and Yara used to laugh at that, though they had to spell out the word c-r-a-p as they didn’t dare say it even when they didn’t think Mam was listening.

  One winter it got so cold and the wind blew through the gaps in the walls and everyone complained about it, even Mam. Pop didn’t put in central heating or anything poncey like that – instead he built a thin inner wall of wooden matchboard, about a foot from the outside walls. It was warmer, afterwards, though the rooms were much smaller and they had to push all the furniture closer to the middle. There was no space to walk around it so you had to climb over everything all the time like you were playing The Floor is Lava.

  But Jay didn’t mind that: what she did mind was sitting with her back to the walls, because she knew how big the space between the walls was, and she knew that it was big enough for a person to stand in there. She taped squares of newspaper over all the knotholes in her bedroom walls so that nobody could put their eye to one and watch her sleep.

  Jay goes into her bedroom. No bed, no posters pinned up, no line of trainers along the wall. Empty. She walks around the edge of the room, counting her steps, checking to see if the room is bigger than she remembers. When she was a child this house enclosed her whole world, everything she knew, everything she’d ever loved or hated; but also she felt trapped in it, held tight, her limbs stretching too wide for the walls. She reaches the empty space where the window used to be and looks out to the field of rotted sunflowers and straight away she’s thrown back into the past.

  The scratch of the straw against her skin as she hoisted the bodies up, the straw hands stroking the nape of her neck, the moans that she knew must be the wind but sounded closer and more alive, the booted legs bumping against her calves and trying to wrap around her ankles, the warmth of them. Pop telling her higher
, lift higher, and she strained her arms as much as she could because they were heavy, much heavier than she thought they could be, and finally Pop got them tied to the crossbar and Jay could go inside.

  At bedtime Jay would wait for Pop to come and tuck her in, which she desired and feared in equal parts, but she shouldn’t have bothered because since he planted the sunflowers he was rarely ever in the house at all. When the moon came up and licked the world silver, Jay opened her window and anchored her feet against the bedstead and rested her belly on the splintery sill and closed her eyes and leaned right out so that she could hear Pop singing to the flowers and imagine that he was singing to her.

  One night, driving home with Pop, the rain lashing and his breath steaming the windows and the smell of hops and fart filling the car – Jay didn’t know whether to make a joke about that or just keep quiet – and the country lanes were winding hairpins and the hills left her tummy behind like a roller coaster. The trees seemed closer to the road than usual, like they were raising their arms to scoop her in and whisper secrets. Branches blatted along the roof of the car and wet leaves stroked Jay’s window, and she wanted to roll it down, and she turned her eyes front to ask Pop if she could and a big black shape loomed up fast and smack against the car’s front bumper and thuck over the bonnet and Jay screwed up her eyes so she wouldn’t accidentally see anything in the wing mirror. The next second she snapped her eyes open and turned round in her seat but the road had doglegged and she couldn’t see behind them.

  A deer, Pop said, hands tight on the wheel.

  But, Jay said.

  A fucking deer, Jay, he said, it shouldn’t have been on the road.

  And perhaps that should have changed everything; perhaps she should have felt differently about her father then. Scared of him, or suddenly sure that he was a monster; or reassured, even, more trusting that she was a kid and he was a grown-up and he knew what was and was not a deer. But it didn’t change anything. Why would it? They lived in the country, and it’s all nature there. In nature, things die.

  Jay goes back downstairs and through the kitchen and out of the house. She ducks her head and covers the back of her neck with her linked hands to protect it from skittering seeds and she goes into the sunflower field.

  There are four crucifixes in the field but she only checks one. She digs a little way into the dry earth, feeling it stick under her nails and settle on her tongue. Her nail catches on something hard and she pulls it out.

  A tooth.

  It’s big, a molar maybe. No filling.

  It could be hers, or Yara’s; sacrificed to the Tooth Fairy and buried out here for some reason. She digs further and finds another hard object; she scoops at it and her palms come up full of teeth, more than ever came out of her and Yara’s mouths combined.

  She puts her hand back and her fingers close around a hank of hair and she tugs it from the earth, thinking it still could be hers, it could be Mam’s, remnants from a hairbrush or – the hair comes free and there’s scalp attached, a rough square the size of a tea bag.

  Everything is spinning and she hears the dead seeds clacking and the sunflowers creaking and the empty crucifixes leaning down towards her and she digs, she digs, and all the way down it’s teeth and hair and bones and teeth and hair and bones and teeth and hair and

  My wife has always been my first reader. When we met I was halfway through writing the first draft of a novel, and before going to sleep I’d read her a chapter as a bedtime story. She has a difficult job and by the end of the day is very tired, so if she didn’t fall asleep while I was reading then I knew it was a good chapter.

  When I started writing this book, I wanted to read the stories to her. I was proud of them and wanted her to love them, even though I know she doesn’t like horror. She tried to listen. But she stopped me before the end of the first story.

  Sleep, You Black-Eyed Pig, Fall into a Deep Pit of Ghosts

  Night whispers. Ellen woke instantly, eyes wide, no fog. Her feet took her to the window. Her hands slid the sash up. From the smudged mass of trees came a suggestion of voices, clear and pointed as glass, all hiss and high vowels. Clouds of glossy insects flickered, reflecting the moonlight, becoming night again. Ellen leaned out of the window to try to see better, her feet straining on the floorboards, the sill pressing into the tops of her thighs. Somewhere in the shadows, shrill angles of silver. She held her breath and strained her eyes against the dark.

  ‘Jenette?’

  Spindled figures, limbs long and thin, on all fours. The light of them pulsed. The longer she looked, the closer they came. The outside wall was rough on her hand as she pushed her upper body further out of the window. Her bedroom was on the first floor, but the ground didn’t look far. She could easily jump down. She’d probably fly. They’d probably all catch her.

  She blinked hard until she was sure: every one of them was staring up at her window. They reached for her. Their silver fingers beckoned.

  She pulled herself up to kneel on the windowsill. She could see them clearly. They were bright as mercury, except for their black eyes. Their faces were terrible and beautiful. Inside their narrow chests, their hearts throbbed so hard the skin pulsed. Their voices filled her head.

  Ellen took a breath and tensed her thighs, ready to tip forwards out of the window and float down to them. Her knees grazed hot against the window frame, the air so cold it took her breath.

  From downstairs, the creak of the front door, the click of Jenette’s heels. Giggly drunken whispers, the thud of a body falling against a wall.

  ‘Sorry, Ellen!’ Jenette couldn’t seem to decide whether to whisper or shout, and chose something both and neither.

  Ellen froze, wide-eyed. Her bedroom door had warped in its frame, and it let in a glow around the edges. A line of warm light stretched across the floor, reaching out to her, just touching the tip of her bare toe.

  Her toe.

  Her foot.

  What the hell was she doing?

  She looked down at herself, barefoot and freezing and kneeling on the windowsill. She looked further down: the ground, twenty feet below, cold and solid and ready to snap her spine. She stumbled back off the sill, landing with a thump on her bedroom floor.

  Without looking, she shut and latched the window, her hands shaking. She wished it had a lock, so she could hide the key from herself. She edged back to the glass and looked outside.

  The black trees, the bright stars. She was awake. There was nothing.

  Downstairs, the air in the kitchen felt warm, expectant, unfamiliar. Half the room was too bright, making Ellen squint, and half was in shadow.

  ‘Hey, sick girl! Did we wake you from a dirty dream?’ Ash was drunk; she could tell by his shifting eyes, his unsteady hand pouring the wine, the way he was shuffling his feet off the beat of the music.

  ‘Mmm,’ Ellen replied. ‘Sort of.’

  Jenette leaned up off the couch, sloppy-sexy, her lips shiny, and pulled Ellen over onto her lap. ‘Poor wee beastie. Snuggle in, eh?’

  ‘Get off, daft bugger.’ Ellen laughed and pushed away from Jenette, but not too far. She settled on the couch, making sure her leg was pressed against Jenette’s, and Jenette tipped Ellen’s head onto her shoulder and stroked her hair.

  ‘Soft,’ she said. ‘How do you get it so soft?’

  ‘Get this down you. Warms the blood.’ Ash swaggered over to the table and slapped down two overfull wine glasses. Ellen lifted one and sipped. Her head still throbbed with her fever, her skin too hot and too cold. With a laugh, Jenette leaned forward and licked the circular base of Ellen’s glass, where a drop of wine threatened to fall.

  Ellen settled her wine glass on her sternum, relaxing in to Jenette. She thought about tilting her head up and kissing her, but she didn’t, not yet.

  It felt like the right time, this trip. The thing between her and Jenette had been building for so long, and now they were here, playing house. Ten days off work, budget flights, this pretty little Finnish cab
in surrounded by woods. Together, alone – and okay, Ash was there too, technically, though he hardly counted. Ellen could feel him watching her with Jenette. She felt like someone would have to be blind not to see this thing between them, not to sense the build of it, the inevitable climax.

  But she wouldn’t kiss Jenette in front of Ash. She’d wait for the right time – under the northern lights, or in a forest clearing in the middle of a fairy ring. Somewhere epic and foreign and mythical.

  ‘So what were they like?’ Ellen asked. ‘The neighbours?’

  ‘Isn’t it weird?’ Ash said, flopping to the couch next to them, draping his leg over Jenette’s, ignoring the roll of her eyes and the giggle into Ellen’s hair. ‘Isn’t it the weirdest fucking thing? You build a holiday cabin right out in the middle of nowhere, and someone comes along and builds theirs next door. There’s literally fucking miles of nothing, and that’s what they do. Fucking people.’

  ‘Come on, Ash! They were nice. Really, Ellen, they were nice.’

  ‘Tell Ellen about the stories.’

  ‘What stories?’ Ellen was woozy from the fever and the wine. She could just fall asleep right there on the couch, with the heat of Jenette’s skin and the rhythm of her breath.

  ‘Weeeeird stories!’

  ‘Ash, don’t be a dick. They weren’t weird. They were interesting.’

  ‘Hmm?’ Ellen said, which was all she could manage.

  ‘It’s like an old folk story,’ Jenette said. ‘They said that there are things hidden out here, and you don’t see them until you’re ready.’