Dark Terrors 3 (11 page)

Cynthia uttered an alarmed mewing sound and abruptly wiped the glass. Relieved, she found her own, accustomed image looking back at her.
An illusion. I’ve had enough of this
place, enough of Emma.
Sniffing, Cynthia turned around. This time she meant to leave.

A tall figure stood in the doorway, caught in the beam of Cynthia’s flashlight. She cried out in alarm. It was a young man, arms above his head, resting his hands on the door frame. There was a certain proprietorial air about the pose. The silence lasted only seconds but in that time, Cynthia saw and realized who he was. She recognized the beautiful face, the red hair, the long, white hands. This man had Emma’s face, Emma’s hair, Emma’s eyes, Emma’s cruel smile of the nightmares. She had seen his image in a hundred of Emma’s sketches and paintings. She had seen him naked.

The man came into the room, leisurely closed the door and, folding his arms, leaned back against it. He said nothing, although he didn’t seem surprised to find Cynthia there. Had he watched her enter the house?

Cynthia tried to take a step backwards and found she couldn’t. Her shoulders were against the mirror. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she demanded, aware of the tremor in her voice. She realized she was trapped. Fear paralysed her.

‘I might ask the same of you,’ said the man.

‘My husband and I look after the place. He’ll be over here soon . . .’

The man laughed. It was a melodious, musical sound. ‘You’re a good woman, Cynthia,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you liked my paintings. I’m glad you saved them. You’ve been a good friend to Emma.’

Cynthia’s mouth had turned to glue. Her jaw ached and she was conscious of a numbness creeping through her limbs, as if presaging a faint. Images of her own comfortable, safe living-room flashed before her eyes. A mockery; she was neither comfortable or safe and further away from home than she’d ever been. An image of violence and murder superimposed itself over the fading memory of her familiar setting.
‘Who are you?’’

‘A friend,’ he answered. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ He unfolded his arms, rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ve been waiting to speak with you. I want you to help me.’

This apparently reasonable request slightly reassured Cynthia. Perhaps everything would be all right. ‘You had better come over to the house. My husband .. .’

‘Who is still at work. . .’ The man laughed again. ‘I want you to help me
here,
Cynthia. It won’t take a moment.’

Panic slipped back into Cynthia’s mind. He knew her name. Her voice was a squeak. ‘What do you want?’

‘It’s quite simple. I want you to turn around, very slowly, and take down tie mirror from the wall.’

‘Why?’

‘Please do as I say.’

Cynthia’s mind quickly juggled the thoughts of whether it would be wiser to comply or refuse. She would be helpless with her back turned. Why did he want
her
to move the mirror? But even as she was still trying to come to a decision, she could feel her body moving by itself, turning round. Her neck felt wrenched; she did not want to take her eyes from the intruder. An urge to scream built up within her, a scream she knew would never escape the constriction in her chest.

‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘Gently now.’

A weird sound, that of strangled sobbing, whined from Cynthia’s throat as her neck cricked round to face the wall. She watched as if from a distance as her arms moved automatically to ease the glass from its hanging. Its damp surface pressed against her cheek and she staggered under its weight. The man didn’t move to help her. ‘I still need it, you see,’ he said. ‘Just for a while, until I know what I’m doing. You can help me, Cynthia, because I don’t think the new residents of this place would want to, do you?’

Cynthia was draped over the mirror, mouth hanging open, fighting for breath. ‘Who
are
you?’ she managed to whisper and then the fatal question, the one she didn’t want to ask but couldn’t stop. ‘Did you kill Emma?’

The man smiled. ‘I suppose I did, in a way, but not in any manner you could imagine or comprehend.’ The smile faded from his lips. He moved quickly towards Cynthia and put his hands on her face, ignoring her cry of horror. ‘Cynthia, please know me! Please! I need your help!’

Cynthia’s flesh chilled. She wanted to pull away from the warm, slim hands. ‘No!’ she said, but it was a weak sound.

‘Yes! Yes!’ There was fire in the man’s eyes, a dancing light. ‘Cynthia, I had to do this. I can’t explain why to you, because you wouldn’t understand. It’s something that’s been with me for a long time. I created the image, and put it into the mirror. With my eyes, with my sex.’

‘Emma,’ Cynthia said.

‘I had to undress myself from the flesh, for the new flesh to
become.’

The man moved away from Cynthia’s tense, crippled stasis. He glanced around the room. ‘Everything’s destroyed. It’s as it should be, but you .. .’ He turned to her again. ‘You kept some of it back. You are my gateway, Cynthia. Felicia is my guide, but I’ve missed her somehow . . .’

‘She’s been here,’ Cynthia said.

The man nodded. ‘I know. She’s waiting for me, somewhere. Once the image was fuelled, it could act, it
became.
I know this all sounds bizarre to you, but there are wondrous things in the world, things you can be, and do, if you only admit the possibility. I’m here now, Cynthia. This is me as I want to be.’

‘You killed yourself,’ Cynthia said. Her instincts hadn’t lied to her the day Michael Homey had turned up. Emma had been fine, more than fine. Cynthia wanted to sit down; her skull felt as if it was about to crack with the weight of the unbearable knowledge it now contained.

The man smiled at her gently. ‘Do I look dead? You have touched me, haven’t you?’

‘What is the mirror for?’ Cynthia asked.

‘I’m not fully out of it,’ replied the man. ‘Not yet.’ He shivered. ‘It’s yours now, Cynthia. You must put it on your bedroom wall.’

‘No,’ Cynthia said, uselessly.

‘Come on, it’s cold in here. Let’s go home.’

* * * *

Back in her own house, the mirror propped up against the wall, Cynthia curled up in an armchair and drank a large tumbler of Scotch. She was alone. The back door had been left open and all the rooms were in darkness. She hugged herself tightly, cold. Cars passed the house, lights from the other houses glowed into the dark. Behind other doors, husbands talked about their day to wives, and children splashed in steaming, bedtime baths. Dreams would settle, and when the new residents of Wren’s Nest moved in, memories would fade. Life would go on.

Cynthia, sitting somewhat apart from this world of cosy domesticity, gazed into the mirror and drank her Scotch. The moment when the unseen becomes seen changes life for ever. There is a sense of loss, when ignorance dies. Emma Tizard seemed such a nice girl.

* * * *

Storm Constantine’s
most recent fantasy novels are the ‘Grigori’ trilogy:
Stalking the Tender Prey, Scenting Hallowed Blood
and
Stealing Sacred Fire,
which explore the theme of fallen angels, drawing upon angel mythology from around the world. As the author explains, ‘“Such a Nice Girl” is a sequel to another story of mine, “Candle Magic”, which appeared in the anthology
Blue Motel: Narrow Houses Volume Three
(edited by Peter Crowther), although the two stories can be read as stand-alones. After I wrote “Candle Magic” I wanted to know what happened to the protagonists, and “Such a Nice Girl” just kind of popped out!’ The tale will also be included in a limited edition collection of the author’s fiction, to be published in the USA by DNA Books.

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* * * *

RAY GARTON

I’ve been coming to pieces lately. It seems that the more things come together in my mind, the more I come to pieces.

I’ve been in therapy for a long time, but it really hasn’t seemed to help. Oh, sure, it’s made me break down and cry a few times - something that men, in our society, aren’t really supposed to do, no matter
what
Phil Donahue says - but it hasn’t improved things any. I wasn’t even sure why I was there in the first place, except that something just seemed . . . wrong.

Just a few days ago, it hit me. It was like a lightning strike, like a sixties acid flashback, or some sort of memory flash a Vietnam vet would have. My father hovering over me in bed in the dark of one rainy night, telling me that we were just playing a game, that’s all, but a secret game, a
secret
game that no one else could know about, so I would have to keep it a secret, a deep dark secret, and tell
nobody.
But the game hurt. It hurt bad.

It came to me while I was sitting alone one night on the sofa in only my underwear reading a magazine article about child abuse, and it seemed to come out of that part of my brain that was only black, with nothing in it, like a blind spot in my eye. In fact, it
exploded
from that part of my brain and, at the same time, the fourth and fifth toes dropped off my left foot, which was dangling loosely from my knee, and fell to the carpet with soft little tapping sounds.

Of course, that wasn’t my only problem at the time. My wife had just left me because, as she put it, ‘You are un-understandable. There’s something about you that is unreachable and untouchable and it seems to make you just as angry as it makes me sad. I can’t take it any more.’

So she left. A few hours later, my right earlobe broke away and peeled off like a piece of dead skin.

But I guess that’s getting off the subject, isn’t it? Back to the secret games. I’m not sure when they happened or how long they went on. I’d never brought it up with my therapist. I’d stopped therapy some time ago because I figured I could sit home and cry for a hell of a lot less money, and the memory flashes did not start until my appointments stopped.

I had six weeks of vacation coming at work - I’m a shift manager at a power plant - and after my wife left me, I decided to take them all at once. I had nothing in mind, just . . . rest. A relief, I guess.

I remember something my wife told me. She said, ‘There’s something inside you that you know nothing about and you have
got
to take a break, just take a vacation from your life and find out
what it is!’