The Gloaming Read online

  ‘Mara! Where are you going?’

  Mara stopped walking, looking at her feet as if she wasn’t in control of them. Ahead of her was only this: dozens of bodies turned to stone, and then the edge of the cliff. The glimmer of rocks. The lure and chew of the waves.

  ‘Nowhere,’ she said. The sea, the island, the sky. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  Clype

  MARA SLOPED BACK to the house alone. Her chin was tender from J’s stubble; as she walked she pressed the back of her hand to her face to cool it. The taste of his saliva was still in her mouth, an unfamiliar staleness like old chewing gum.

  A single light was on upstairs, her parents the only ones still awake. They didn’t need to wait up for her – it wasn’t that late, and anyway what could happen on this island, where every story ended the same way? Still, she knew Signe would keep that light on until she heard the click of the front door closing. She scrunched across the gravel.

  A light blinked from the warped door of the shed. What the hell was Islay doing? Mara was torn between curiosity, and not wanting her sister to know that she was capable of arousing her curiosity. Pride won; she turned away from the shed.

  Then she stopped. What a shame to pass up the chance to spy. It was always useful to have material for blackmail. She crept closer, straining her ears, trying to hear over the sound of her throbbing blood. She kept her steps as light as breath. She was delicate and elegant: a ballerina, a bird about to take flight. A high-pitched giggle burst from the shed.

  ‘I can heeeear yoooou!’ sang Islay.

  Mara sulked into the shed.

  ‘Nice job, elephant feet,’ said Islay, exhaling a long stream of smoke. ‘I heard you coming from a mile off.’

  Mara stuck her tongue out at Islay and slumped down in a torn armchair. Dust bloomed. Tea lights were lined up along the base of the walls, and in their flickering halo Islay perched on the windowsill, long legs dangling. Looping curls of cigarette smoke emerged from her hand. The tip glowed as she inhaled. Mara was disgusted and envious.

  ‘They smell horrible,’ she said. ‘Where did you even get them?’ She whipped the cigarette packet off the arm of her chair.

  ‘Watch it!’ snapped Islay. ‘You’ll dent the corners. I have to sneak it back into the first-aid box later. Mum won’t notice a couple missing.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Islay shrugged. ‘She never does. And you,’ she added, ‘can’t have one.’

  ‘I don’t want one! They’re disgusting.’

  ‘Convenient for you.’ Islay pouted, exhaling a perfect stream of smoke. ‘Seeing as how I won’t let you have one.’

  Mara lifted her feet, hugging her knees to her chest. The shed was always cold, lurking in the shadows between the house and the trees, away from the sunlight. It was a dumping ground for haunted things. Old objects from people who’d passed through the house, evidence of all the attempts that had been made to turn it into something. A three-legged milking stool and gauze that still smelled faintly of rancid butter; cardboard files, chewed by mice and rotted with damp; jars of pickled somethings, their contents blackened and sticky.

  The shed wasn’t meant to be a playroom. When they’d first moved in, it was just a place to keep garden tools and furniture that Signe was going to do up for the house – but then Bee was born, and shrieked through every night. Signe and Peter took it in turns to jounce him on their hips and wander the corridors, his cries eventually filling the whole house, and the shed became a secret haunt for unsleeping girls. Islay and Mara would sneak out, make a fire from candles in the middle of a circle of bricks, pull all the damp cushions onto the floor, toast marshmallows over the flames, and tell fairy tales where all the characters were called Islay and Mara, and they were all the prettiest and cleverest, and they all got to marry the youngest and bravest prince, and be the queen of something or another. If Mara dug through the flowerpots up on the shelf, she knew she’d find old packs of cards and tins of sweets, wrapped in months of grime. Someday soon Islay would leave the island, and no one would eat the sweets or play the cards or light the candles ever again. The thought made tears itch the top of her nose.

  ‘Mara,’ said Islay.

  Mara’s head jerked, twinging her neck. She’d slipped half-asleep to the whisper of the waves.

  ‘Remember that time we went down to the sea?’ asked Islay, her voice slow and sweet.

  ‘There have been literally hundreds of times.’ Mara blinked fast so Islay wouldn’t see her tears. ‘I’m not bloody psychic.’

  ‘That first night on the island. We crept out of bed. We were still trying to figure out how things worked here, and we were so frightened, and so excited. We went down to the sea and stood there on the stones and let the freezing water eat our feet bite by bite.’

  Mara felt the world reduce to the glow of Islay’s cigarette and the low hum of her voice. She wondered if she was asleep after all.

  ‘We talked about what we thought happened to people after they died, and you said …’ Islay’s voice slid lower. ‘You said maybe this was dying. You said the sea would keep going, keep licking and licking at us until we were all gone. Until there was nothing of us but sunken bones, and then we would have to stay here forever.’

  Mara breathed in her sister’s smoke. Her eyes burned.

  ‘So what?’ said Mara. ‘You had weird ideas too. You said …’

  Islay had said that people might turn into stars and shoot up into the sky, or turn into ants and slip down into the soil, or shatter to glitter and get inhaled by a passing cow. She’d said that death might be just like this world but all over again, or flooded or burned or suspended from chains in the sky. She’d said that we might forget who we were and live the same life over again. She’d said we might be stuck in that final moment forever. She’d said … she’d said …

  ‘You said lots of things, Islay. And I never made you feel silly about them.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. I mean – what if you were right?’

  ‘No.’ Mara loved to say no to her sister, even if it meant admitting she was wrong about something. ‘It’s magic here. It’s the best life. You know it is.’

  ‘But what if?’ Islay looked at her sister. ‘What if it’s not?’

  Mara watched as the glow from Islay’s cigarette burned out to nothing.

  ‘Mara, I think you were right. I think this is dying.’

  ‘No,’ said Mara, and she got up and walked out of the shed without looking back.

  Stramash

  ONE SUMMER, MANY years ago, the Ross family visited the funfair. There were carousels and twisters and haunted houses with chipped, flicker-eyed movie monsters. There were people screaming and laughing and doing a mixture of the two. The lights were so bright they outshone the stars.

  The air was heavy with the smells of sugar and frying dough; it made Islay feel hungry and sick all at once. Signe got candyfloss for the girls. Islay unwound it with her fingers and made it into a crown, which she regretted as after ten minutes of prancing around giddily declaring she was the fairy queen, she went to take off the crown and eat it, only to find it was half melted and studded with loose hairs and dead midges. She put her lips to the clean edge of the cloud and it dissolved to sand on her tongue. She didn’t feel like she was eating it, as there was no chewing or swallowing involved.

  Mara was too small and Signe too nervous to go on any of the strap-in tumble-round rides, so they all had to stick to the sideshow games. Islay sulked that she wanted to have a shot on a roller coaster, but when did it ever matter what Islay wanted?

  They failed to throw hoops over wooden blocks, failed to shoot ducks with pellet guns, and failed to make a spinning wheel land on the smiley face. After yet another failure, Mara, ever the brat, stormed off and caught her toe on a stone. She opened her mouth to wail – but before she could, Peter scooped her up and onto his shoulders, kissing her toe where she’d stubbed it. From the ground, Islay scowled up at her sister. Ma
ra’s head was practically in the stars. She was the tallest and happiest girl in the world. From up there, she would win every game.

  The last in the line was a boxing game. In the front of the stall, three skull-size balls hung down, striped yellow and black like bees. In the back sat rows of cheap toys, leading up to the very top prize: a doll’s house.

  ‘Look!’ shouted Mara. ‘Look at that! Can I win that?’

  ‘Fear not, my princess! I shall win it for you.’ Peter spread his stance and flexed his arm muscles, making Signe giggle and Mara squeal and grab his hair.

  ‘Will I? For old times?’ he said to Signe.

  Signe looked at him with soft eyes. ‘For old times,’ she said.

  Peter won the boxing game, which wasn’t a surprise as it was rare for him to meet a man or a machine he couldn’t knock out. The stallholder congratulated him and did an announcement where he put his mouth too close to the tannoy so the speaker popped and squeaked and shouted in drawn-out vowels ‘WE HAVE A WINNER!’ and made everyone clap. Then when everyone had stopped looking the stallholder tried to give Mara one of the big cuddly penguins.

  ‘No thank you,’ said Peter. ‘My daughter wants the doll’s house.’

  The stallholder gave Mara and Islay a cuddly penguin each, and a tiger too. Islay would have been fine with them. She knew that even Mara, despite her sulks, would have been happy with any prize. But it was too late for that.

  ‘No,’ said Peter. ‘The doll’s house.’

  The stallholder waited until the crowd had drifted away. ‘Mate,’ he said, his tone reasonable, ‘I can’t. The boss will kill me if I give that away.’

  ‘Mate,’ said Peter, equally reasonable, ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t.’

  Signe leaned up and whispered in Peter’s ear. Sulkily, he gathered his daughters and let them hang off his arms like monkeys. Signe waited until her husband was out of earshot, then she spoke to the stallholder. They did not speak for long, but it was enough.

  Peter carried the doll’s house home. Mara skipped along beside him, high on sugar and attention. Islay barely noticed, too busy trying to find a stone big enough to stub her toe so she could have her turn on Peter’s shoulders.

  Bairn

  MARA WOKE EARLY, so she was the first to notice that Bee was not in his bed. She noticed it gleefully, sneakily, like she’d discovered a secret. She’d find him and bring him home before anyone else noticed, and then everyone would be grateful, and Bee would sit on her lap for ages and not fidget.

  But finding him was not easy. He wasn’t in the garden, or in any rooms of the house. Not hiding in a cupboard, not playing in the shed, not marching up and down the drive looking for bugs. He wasn’t even in the trees behind the house. Mara had to twist to avoid stabbing her legs with twigs, and to duck to avoid branches pulling out her hair. Finally she emerged at the beach to the pink summer dawning. Around her, long trails of seaweed draped the rocks, sopping green, parted in the centre like hair. The crowns of heads buried deep, sleeping warriors about to rise.

  Bee definitely wouldn’t be at the beach. He never went there alone; he was too frightened of the skittering crabs and too unsteady on the pebbled surface. He never would – unless, maybe, he’d given a beetle to the sea, and wanted to know what it had given him in return.

  Mara’s body shivered hot and cold. In the distant flip and forge of the waves she saw something. The glimpse of a round head. A reaching arm. A splash.

  ‘Bee!’ she tried to shout, panic shrinking her voice, even as she told herself it was a seal, just a seal and not a boy. ‘Bee, swim this way!’

  She yanked off her boots, fingernails scraping her skin, and stumbled into the shallows. Because this was stupid, so stupid, and she was no good at saving people, but there was nothing else to do so she kept going even as the chill of the water hit her harder than a punch. Off the edge of the sandbank and her feet kicked out into nothing and her fingers were already numb and she couldn’t see anything at all, not the curve of Bee’s head nor the splash of his arms. She let herself sink, let the black water close silent over her – then thrust herself up. Her shoulders cork-popped up out of the water and she could see him, his dark gold hair. She looked back at the shore. She was much further out than she should be, and the waves were pushing her further still, and at the same time they were bringing Bee closer to her. One more kick through the burning in her legs, one more pull through the ache in her arms – and there, just a glimpse of his grasping hand, and she was so close, and she could see that his face was tilted to the sky and his eyes rolled towards her just as a lolling tongue of water swallowed him up.

  She dived down and came up empty-handed. The waves clawed at her clothes, dragging their fingers through her hair and grinding salt into her eyes. It was fine for her to reach Bee but she couldn’t have him, she couldn’t bring him back; the sea wanted them both. Something bumped her leg: she reached out for Bee but couldn’t get a grip on the drenched fabric or slippery skin. Another dive, and a wave whipped at her closed eyes with something hard and solid, and the water was so cold that she didn’t know if it cut her but there was a warm stinging and all the air pushed out of her lungs and she flailed in the water and her hand found the silkiness of Bee’s hair. She held on, kicking until she met air, and then there was heat on her cheek and her left eye wouldn’t open and she realised that something was wrong, and that was stupid because everything was wrong.

  Hauling Bee under her arm, making sure that his face was out of the water, she turned for shore. But she couldn’t swim like that, with only one arm and trying not to jolt Bee, and she saw then that she didn’t know how to be in the sea, not really. She could laze through the warm shallows with her legs kicking angles like a water beetle’s, but now her muscles juddered and her eyes swelled and she couldn’t fight the waves and the cold and the sodden weight of a child. She held one hand under his body so his face wouldn’t go underwater and she pulled at the water with the other arm and she kicked harder and harder through the ache and the sharp and the panic.

  The water was up around her ears, and her spine ached from keeping her head tilted back, and the sky spun above her, and she felt like her body was more sea than skin, and she wanted to just give up. Sink down. Know quiet. But the weight of Bee, the sea pulling at him, and she wouldn’t let it have him. She made a last desperate kick and felt sand graze her toes. The sandbank.

  She staggered upright with the sea pulling at her knees and lifted Bee out of the water and stumbled onto the beach. She lay him down on the stones. She was shivering so hard that she retched. She couldn’t open her left eye. Icy water dripped from her hair onto Bee’s body. Breath gasping, she pressed her hand to his bird-fragile breastbone. There. Again, again. A fast pulse, heavy in her fingertips.

  He was fine.

  Everything was fine.

  She rocked back on her heels, tiny stones embedding into her shins, and sobbed out a laugh. She reached for Bee, ready to scoop him into her arms and carry him home for hot chocolate and a bath and a proper scolding about never ever going anywhere near the sea by himself. She’d never let him go anywhere by himself again. She’d be with him, always.

  It took far too long for her to realise that his chest was not rising. The pulse had not come from Bee, but from Mara’s own heartbeat, hard in her fingertips. She snatched her hand away.

  The eyes rolled back, all white.

  The blood clotted black in the mouth.

  The skin already clammy.

  The body was dead, and she was afraid.

  Mara skeltered into the house, her hands held over her left eye, her cheek and throat sheened in blood, shrieking fit to wake the dead. Signe and Peter rushed for wet cloths and telephones, but she grabbed at their hands, trying to pull them back out of the door. Her terror made the whole house tilt. Signe forced Mara – still stuttering about Bee and the beach, Bee is at the beach, the beach, Bee, Bee – into a kitchen chair. She was shaking so hard that her feet drummed on t
he tiles.

  ‘We’ll go and get him,’ soothed Signe, ‘we’ll go now, it’s fine, it’s all fine, hush now.’

  It took all of Islay’s nerve to keep Mara upright in the chair and hold the sides of her face together. Mara’s cheek was a mass of red. Islay’s hand slipped in the blood and the wound gaped, revealing the teeth underneath. She couldn’t hold in a sob. Peter had phoned for an air ambulance and then dropped the phone onto the table in his haste to go for Bee, and Islay could still hear the operator’s voice, a soothing muffle through the plastic. She wiped the blood from one hand onto the thigh of her pyjamas and reached for the phone.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said the operator, ‘stay calm, it’s all okay,’ and it didn’t seem like she was even listening to herself, but she must have known that it didn’t matter what the words were as long as someone was there to say them.

  Signe and Peter rushed into the garden. Somewhere in Signe’s mind she wondered if she should be running harder. But to run would be to accept that there was a reason to run. Mara’s panic was so extreme, so theatrical, that Signe couldn’t join it. She was so calm she felt drugged, as if she was floating above them all, observing.

  Together, Signe and Peter fought through the dark trees. They emerged from the shadows into the bright day. Before them the beach stretched, a vast nail clip. Every inch of the stones was covered with a mass of jellyfish. Peter strode towards the water, his boots slip-sliding, squealing on the juddering bodies. Signe followed, trying to step in the wet dents he’d left, her ankles already nipping from the stings. Together they waded into the water. A red drone was getting louder in their heads. There was nothing and nothing and nothing. Becoming more frantic, their shouts for their son beginning to waver and break, they searched the shore and the sea, wading out past the shallows, reaching off the end of the sandbank. But Bee was not there.