Things We Say in the Dark Page 4

  ‘What do they look like?’

  ‘No one knows,’ Ash interrupted. ‘Because once you see them, they get you, and no one ever sees you again. Woooooo!’ He made ghost noises, waving his arms, spilling wine down himself. ‘Spooooooky!’

  ‘Fuck off, Ash,’ Jenette said, and lifted Ellen’s hair to whisper in her almost-sleeping ear. ‘They can be beautiful, the hidden things. People see them because they want to. There are so many wonderful things, if we would only let ourselves see.’

  Alone in her bed, Ellen wasn’t alone for long. The first she knew was a soothing hand placed on her forehead. Thinking it was Jenette, she smiled through her fever. But it was not: the palm too cold, the fingers too long. Ellen’s eyes were hot and weighted.

  Before she could open them to look, the hand had moved, stroking the damp hair back from her face. Shhhh, tinkled a voice, shrill as silver. The hand kept stroking, and then it was joined by others.

  Five, six, seven hands, smoothing back her hair. Then over her collarbones, cooling her hot skin. Pushing the covers down to her waist and further, further. The sweat on her skin turned to pearls and diamonds. Silver swirled behind her eyes. She was in the clouds, she was on a bed of leaves. Everything was cool and soft – and still the hands.

  Ellen could hear herself breathing faster. The room was quiet: only the beat of her heart and the soft slither of her bedcovers. Fingers plucked at her, not quite hard enough to bruise. Tender pinches at her earlobes, her nipples, her toes. The flash of pain followed by a tiny rush of endorphins. She wanted the feeling again, again, again.

  She pushed her back into a slow arch, her heels to the bed, her crown to the pillow. Again. Again. Her body was turning to something light and damp. A cloud, a wrung-out sponge. She couldn’t help it: she let out a cry.

  Shhhh, said a multitude of voices, sharp-edged. The hands lifted from her, her skin left throbbing, her nightdress clinging, her covers kicked aside.

  They were leaving, slipping out of the crack in the window, folding back into the waves. Shhhh, said the voices as they receded, the sound of the sea inside a shell.

  Ellen woke to whispers. A giggle, a thump against the wall, a laughing shush. Blinking back sleep, she opened her door and slipped into the hallway. Jenette’s bedroom on one side of hers, Ash’s on the other. No light under either door.

  But she was sure she heard something. She stood in the hall, waiting, and couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else that she couldn’t see, waiting for her to stop waiting.

  She held her breath, tried to slow her heart.

  Nothing, nothing.

  The next morning, when Ellen fumbled downstairs, she was surprised to find that Jenette and Ash were already up. Bleary-eyed and nursing black coffees, true, but still up.

  ‘Look at you two, all bright-eyed and keen.’

  ‘How’s your fever?’ Jenette asked. ‘The paracetamol is in the cupboard if you need some.’

  ‘Why are you up so early?’ Ellen turned to fill a glass with water and caught a look between Jenette and Ash that they thought she didn’t see. Was it knowing? Secretive? Guilty?

  No. Just the fever making her feel strange. Making her see things that weren’t there.

  Ellen fell asleep at the kitchen table, waking stiff-necked to a note from Jenette.

  OUT FOR A DAY TRIP. BACK LATER. XXX

  Ellen crept back to bed. The day felt stretched and compressed, hours pulling endless and then gone fever-fast. Light on glass bottles, sticky teaspoons left on windowsills, the curtains drawn, her head pulsing hot and cold.

  She felt like if she could just get through this, could just sleep it off, then her fever would fade. Every time she thought it had left her, the shivers overwhelmed her again.

  ‘Did you have a good day?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘It was great,’ Jenette replied, eyes dreamy. ‘Perfect, really. How about you?’

  ‘Well, not perfect. But better than I was.’

  ‘That’s good. One more quiet night, maybe, and you’ll be back on your feet. You just have to sleep it off.’

  ‘It doesn’t need to be quiet.’ Ellen went to the cupboard and rootled through the wine bottles. ‘There’s plenty left. Me and you and Ash could have dinner, play some games, maybe watch a film.’

  ‘We can’t tonight, Ellen. We’ve been invited to the neighbours’ for dinner again, same as last night.’

  ‘You don’t mean just you and Ash?’

  ‘That’s what we told them. We figured you still weren’t well enough.’

  ‘I’m not. But a couple of paracetamol, a quick nap, and I’ll be fine.’ Ellen stroked her fingertip down Jenette’s forearm. ‘Promise I won’t fall asleep at the table and embarrass you.’

  Jenette pulled away – not much, but enough. ‘It’s probably best if just Ash and I go. As a couple, you know?’ Jenette rubbed at her thumbnail, base to tip, over and over.

  Ellen laughed. ‘A couple. Right.’

  Jenette didn’t look at Ellen. If she kept rubbing her thumbnail like that, she’d make it bleed.

  ‘Jenette?’

  ‘Come on, Ellen. This is getting silly. Let’s stop pretending.’

  And just like that, the house was gone. The walls, the roof, the floor: gone. The trees closed in on them, claustrophobic, seeking. The ground was black with dead leaves, the rustle of hidden insects.

  ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know,’ Jenette said, and she went to put the kettle on, and her voice seemed to come from a long way away. ‘I mean, God. We’ve been so obvious. You couldn’t have missed it.’

  The ground cracked apart and they both fell into the earth, down into the dark, and Ellen couldn’t see anything except Jenette’s eyes gleaming silver. Tree limbs scraped at her feet, her hands, her eyes.

  ‘And you were playing up to it, Ellen, you know you were.’ Jenette’s laugh was high and hard. ‘Flirting with me in front of Ash last night, trying to be sexy for him. You must have known what that did to him.’

  ‘No,’ Ellen says. ‘No, of course. I was just—’ and she smiled, down there in the dark, in the belly of the earth, and her face shattered with the force of it, and beneath it was just blood and bone, the tear of muscle, and still she smiled. ‘I was just kidding.’

  ‘Cool,’ Jenette said. ‘Love you.’ And she kissed Ellen’s cheek, and went to Ash’s room to get ready.

  Even after Jenette and Ash had left – laughing, leaning, tipsy already – Ellen lay in bed for a long time, feigning sleep. Finally, after midnight, when it was clear that they wouldn’t be coming back for a while, Ellen got up and went to the window. She opened it wide and leaned out into the night. She held her breath.

  She waited for the silvery figures to slip out of the trees and towards the cabin; waited to see the shadows they cast as they stretched out their spindly fingers up her window, their long teeth click-clacking; waited to smell the coppery, sweet-rotten scent of their magic; waited to hear a staccato crack crack crack as the borders between worlds broke and remade to let in yet more beautiful, terrible things. She knew they were always there, hidden, waiting for something they wanted.

  She stayed at the window for a long time. She saw trees and stars and night. She stayed there for so long that her legs went numb and her eyes blurred with tears, and then she went to bed.

  She wasn’t disappointed, exactly. It would be silly to wish for danger. It would be silly to want to be taken.

  My wife is not my first reader any more. She won’t hear any more of the stories. She won’t even let me talk about them. She hasn’t heard anything I’ve said for a long time.

  Girls are Always Hungry When all the Men are Bite-Size

  Thirteen people around the table. Our hands splayed along the edge, pinkies linked. A black velvet cloth splotched with wax, itchy-slick. And candles, obviously – bloody hundreds of them, and I’ve had to stop using hairspray for fear my head will catch on fire. Mum would likely film it and make a mint, call it spontaneous
ghost combustion.

  Mum works so hard to set these things up. Books from the library about olden-day seances, endless internet searches to get the words right, all that shit. She makes everyone call me Eleanor now, not Ellie like when I was little. Sounds more old-fashioned, she says, more ghostly. More like a girl who would actually be haunted.

  I’m at the shadowiest part of the table, my hair pinned up on my head, my dress buttoned right up my throat, my skirts tent-wide. Mum wasn’t kidding about the old-fashioned look. The bigger the skirts, the more secrets live inside. She tends to go for a sluttier look, a kind of Eastern madam. Lots of kohl, lots of cleavage, lots of costume jewellery. The clink-clank of her bangles can cover a lot.

  I check my hair, check my throat, check my skirts. I’ve done this approximately three billion times now. There’s something different about this one, though, because there’s a man.

  I mean, there are men sometimes. Weird and old, ears hair-tufty, breath a fight between onions and cigarettes and peppermint. But not men like this. Not men that make my heart beat hard against my corset – no, really, Mum actually makes me wear a corset too. She trawls through endless vintage fairs and online auctions to find them, proper ones with laces, not zips or clips. And right now I wish she didn’t, because I’m finding it hard to catch my breath.

  He’s not much older than me. Tousled hair, stubble, skin, all a kind of pale muddy brown. Eyes bright green, smudged under with shadows, staring at me like he’s haunted.

  And I could make that be true, I think, sitting there in my old-fashioned clothes in my weird tiny house about to do some minor fraud with my mother. I have that power.

  *

  Another dog and pony show. This one I will debunk in moments. I barely have to try any more, so predictable are their ploys. When I began I quickly filled a website with details of their scams. Now such lack of originality barely warrants a blog post. Vomited ectoplasm is strips of gauze unravelled from the cheek. Shivers and sweats are from ice or heat packs. Mysterious voices are speakers hidden in the walls. Easy to destroy this one and move on to the next. So deeply, deeply dull. The mother’s name is Theo. She has black lines crayoned around her eyes and piles of clacking rings. Her breasts swell gelatinous over her tight dress. In combination with the house she is nothing but a rank mix of clichés. The tatty velvet tablecloth and bank of candles are textbook Victoriana, while she is a Halloween gypsy. And the daughter. Miss Eleanor, we’re instructed to call her. Lord help me, I can’t even bear to comment on that. Such an odd, languid child to have grown up in this flimsy plasterboard house. There’s something of Alice in Wonderland about her. The child so clear inside the almost-woman. There are thirteen of us around the rickety dining table, and the room is so small that the backs of all our chairs touch the walls. I can’t see any doors other than the one we came through from the street. The only other way out is upstairs. Is this house nothing more than a tower, a stack of tiny rooms? It might be of interest to explore, though I doubt that will be necessary. I will reach the root of this deceit. This Theo is no genius, and there are no new tricks she can teach me. Help us all, here we go. The candles are burning, the girl is in her trance, the mother is intoning commands to the spirits. My recorder is running, my eyes are open. I will find what they are hiding.

  *

  His eyes spark when he looks at me, like he’d like to set me on fire. I try not to smile, but I know that I’ve already taken up residence in his head. Oh, wait until he sees. He has no idea what lurks beneath these tight-lacings.

  Mum starts her spiel about how important it is for everyone to stay in their seats with their hands splayed. They mustn’t break the circle, mustn’t stand or move or flee in terror. Mum says this is for their own safety among the spirits, but obviously it’s so they don’t see the strings and hidden things.

  Under the table, I slip off my shoes. The hot guy is right opposite me. I wonder what would happen if I stretched out my leg and pressed my bare foot between his legs. Would he shake me off, stand up, storm out? Would he slip his hand into his lap and hold my foot so I couldn’t do my tricks? Or would he stay still, keep his face blank, and just … let me?

  But I don’t do anything with my foot except what I’m meant to do, which is wait until Mum calls three times for a message from the spirits and then crack my toe joints against the floor, making the sounds echo through the laminate boards, which is easy to do because they don’t have underlay. Oh, and I also have to pretend to swoon and sway in a trance. It takes some coordination to do that all at once, let me tell you. And in a corset too. I never got to go to ballet classes, but I would have nailed that shit.

  I’m just getting into it, the cracking and the swooning, and Mum has got herself high as a kite, practically frothing at the mouth, demanding answers of the spirits and telling everyone that this is the most dangerous point, they mustn’t break the circle, they mustn’t open their eyes, they simply mustn’t, oh the spirits, the spirits, their power, oh her poor dear child, and I can see through my half-open eyes that every one of the idiots around the table is really into it, faces raised and expressions ecstatic.

  Except the hot guy. He’s staring at me, jaw steady, barely blinking. He doesn’t look angry or scared. He looks … amused. A little bored, maybe.

  I feel a jolt of excitement that any second now he’s going to reach down and grab my bare feet, pull my body towards him, hold me still and say: Let’s see you make those noises now. I could make him do that; I’m the one in control here. It makes me giddy.

  But he doesn’t do that. Instead, something else happens, and it makes me forget to crack my toes and makes him stop looking bored and start looking intrigued.

  *

  To conduct a proper investigation, I must be aware at all times. When Theo instructed us to close our eyes, of course I did not comply. Such a cheap trick to hide her other cheap tricks. However, this means that I am the only one looking. So only I see that the cherries that drop to the table and roll over the velvet towards me do, in fact, manifest from thin air. They do not drop from the ceiling. They are not thrown by a hidden accomplice. They are not there, and then they are there. Before I can react, there’s a sound in the walls. It comes from all sides and all at once. Moans and sighs. They sound real, not from a speaker. Then on the ceiling. The floor. The phantom breaths come faster. Well, now. This is something. Perhaps this dog does know a trick or two. Let us see where the lies end and the truth begins.

  *

  Is Mum doing this? She didn’t tell me she was going to do this. When I glance over she looks as shocked and frightened as the rest, but then that’s the face she would be doing in any case. She always got the lead in the church play as a girl. Says she’s died as more saints than I’ve had hot dinners.

  Mum must have secretly had her eyes open all along because now they’re wide, staring at the random pile of cherries that’s dropped from thin bloody air to roll in front of the hot guy. Cherries, for fuck’s sake, and why would she do that? She already has me swoon while wearing a corset that pushes up my boobs, so this seems unnecessary.

  There are noises, too, and it’s not the cracking of my toes. It’s like a sighing, a soft moaning, and my cheeks burn hot because, honestly, it sounds like people fucking. I can feel that everyone is pressing their hands down on the table, so hard it’s vibrating.

  The sex noises get faster, louder, turn to cries of joy, the sound avalanching, and I can feel the pressure building in my hands, under my feet, in my lungs, between my legs, a steady throb in the core of me, and before I know what’s happening I’m on my feet and my hands are over my eyes and I’m backing away from the table, but there’s nowhere to go, my back is against the wall, and a shriek is building from somewhere, so loud it hurts my ears, and when I drop my hands from my eyes to put them over my ears instead I realise it’s me, the shriek is me, and my body gives one final thrum so hard I drop to my knees at the same time that the hot guy stands up from the table and steps toward
s me.

  The sounds stop and the vibrations stop and everything –

  stops.

  *

  This was more interesting than I expected. I will come again.

  Things calmed down a bit after everyone left. The hot guy – Luke, he’s called, though I don’t know if that’s his real name because he hesitated at first like he had to think up something fast. Luke took the cherries with him. I think he said he wants to study them. I mean, what? They’re just cherries. Ones that appeared from thin fucking air, but still.

  Mum’s so into it. She did the whole decent-mother thing of helping me upstairs and tucking me into bed, and I think she liked the idea of bringing me chicken soup but we only had that powdered tomato kind so she brought me that instead.

  I sleep and I sleep and I sleep, and I only wake when the phone rings. I wish I had the power to make the ringing sound stop without having to pick up the phone. I know, somehow, that it’s him.

  *

  Of course I am an entirely rational man. I do not fall for fickles and flimsies. But if I did not know better I would say the house is jinxed. The mother is an idiot and the girl is a mere pawn, so it must be the house. Something strange is happening here. I will dig out the root of it. I have paid the mother well to stay away while I explore it properly. Of course they want to hide their little tricks, but for people like that, money speaks louder than pride. The house, such as it is, seems to have been thrown up to fill a narrow alley between red-brick terraced houses, roughly 1940s-built. Most have lace curtains in the windows, while this house’s front window is taken up with a blinking neon sign: PSYCHIC READINGS SEANCES REAL TRUE CLAIRVOYANCE POWERS MISS ELEANOR KNOWS ALL. Clearly neither excelled in English at school. This house is less than half the width of the others. I’d estimate its width is less than my height, though I can’t say for sure as I won’t be lying on the ground to check. Each floor comprises one room: sitting room on the ground floor, where the seances are held. Then kitchen and tiny bathroom above. Then a bedroom in the attic, which the mother and daughter must share. Although I am alone when I study the house, whichever room I enter I hear noise on all sides. Noises are to be expected from next-door neighbours. But what of the ‘neighbours’ on the ceiling or floor of the empty house? The whole place throbs and hums with energy. I began this sure that the house was the source of the trickery, but I see now that was a trick too. It must be the girl. It’s always the girl. Whatever she is hiding, I shall find it, and I shall take it from her.