Personal Darkness (38 page)

The fire crackled.

It might have been any rainy slope of the world, long ago and far away.

Connor heard the soundless step of giants on the earth.

Where the stairs divided into two, there was a window with a sort of medieval band playing peculiar instruments on a pink sky. The other windows had rose-haired women with harps. Musical windows—that made a kind of sense.

Under the stairs was a big white room with highlights of gold.

Nobody seemed to be there.

Nobbi stood on the floor, looking around at the windows and the pillars. The butler bloke had left him there and gone somewhere. Trusting. Or else every inch of the place was wired up.

As he waited, Nobbi heard a large dog bark, down in the levels of the house.

Not so good.

The sun came out, and the hall glimmered into rose colors, but then the sun vanished, and it was an area of shadow.

The anger was building up again. The way he had been left here, as if he did not count for anything, as if it did not count what he did, being helpless.

Nobbi bristled and his brown face reddened.

He let out a shout.

"Hey!
Hey
!"

He broke off because a man was coming down the stairs. He was old, older than the butler bloke, dressed in some stagy suit like something from a black-and-white film. His hair was gray. He wore rings.

"All right," said Nobbi, loudly. "Which one are you?"

The man halted on the stairs and gazed at him.

"I am Eric. And you, I believe, are here for your daughter."

"Dead right, squire. Got it in one." Nobbi was shouting again. His loud red voice filled the hall. "Where the fuck is she?"

"Michael is looking for her now. With Miranda, perhaps."

"Miranda? And where's he, the feller she come with? Yeah I know about it."

"Camillo is outside."

"Camillo?" Nobbi laughed. His fists were clenched. "Great names you go in for. Well, I want this Camillo. I'd like a bleeding chat with him."

Something in Nobbi, which strangely had the voice of Star, was trying to tell him to calm down. But it had all gone on too long. And he was afraid. Afraid of the two enormous dogs being let out on him, and of a gang of thugs being summoned up. Afraid of this bloody old weirdo, who might be anything.

Afraid of what he would see, when Tracy came.

There was a feel to this house. Nobbi could not have said what it was. It was like eyes watching from the walls and shapes behind the pillars. Bloody crazy stuff, but pressing in.

Just then two more men appeared from a side passage. It was the first one, the butler, and a bigger taller gink with black hair. They pulled up about ten feet away from Nobbi.

The one called Eric said, "It's in order, Kei. This man wants to see his daughter."

"Yes, Mr. Eric."

All right. Two of them at his left and the old actor type on the stairs. No dogs. All right.

Then two women came along one side of the stairs.

Nobbi saw them. They were old. Done up in mothy, silky dresses, faces pale as paper, with long dark hair. Two old women… who were also young.

He realized that one of them, the smaller one, was Tray.

Something battered Nobbi in the side. It was his heart.

There had been all sorts of trouble in the past, the people she got in with. But always she had come out to him, maybe scared, maybe defiant or weepy, but always Tray. Shining and lovely. Not like this.

"What they done to her?" Nobbi said. Then he bawled, "What they done to you, love? Come here. Come here quick. I'm here. What is it, love?"

And Tray, vampire pale in her tresses of coal, Tray all one with the shadows and the hidden eyes, shrank back against the other young old woman. And in a little voice he heard her say the precious name she had had only for the Old Girl: "Nan-Nan?"

"She don't know me," said Nobbi. Did she? His heart did not think so and it attacked him with huge blows. "What have you done to her? Eh? What you done to my daughter?" And he lurched up the stairs toward Tray, or toward Eric.

Without a sound, the two waiting men were on him. They had him and they held him. Christ, they were strong. Nobbi roared.

On the slope, Malach turned his head.

Connor had heard something, too. Some sort of engine or even music in the house, revved up loud.

Camillo giggled.

And Malach looked back at him.

High up, Ruth had also heard.

She moved slowly about, in a wave of hair.

Her dress was dark green, the mantle of a wood at dusk.

She listened.

Malach was in her body still, and in her brain. Malach was her teacher.

Now she knew what
Scarabae
meant.

She turned again, and paced across this room, pale and scarcely decorated, fashioned for him.

On the wall, the stone knife. She touched it.

And from down in the house, a kind of rumbling came, like an earthquake at the foundations. And then a man's voice again, like the roar of a bull.

Common sense, not the murmuring of Star, made Nobbi stop fighting.

He forced himself to relax in the grasp of the two men, the old one and the young one, both so
vital
.

"All right. All right."

The man on the stairs said, "You can let him go."

And they did. They released him.

Nobbi was shaking.

In the house of fear—

He had done everything he should not have done.

He looked up at Tray again. She seemed frightened now. She seemed like Tray.

Of course. It was only her hair, the makeup, the dress.

And if they had got her on to something, well, he would get her the best treatment. She would be okay.

But he must keep cool.

"Sorry," said Nobbi. "Het up. Didn't mean to come on so strong."

"She's your daughter," said Eric. He glanced back, and said, "Miranda, she must come down."

And then another figure came on to the other side of the stairs.

Something… Something dark.

No. Only the girl. The one he had seen before. The film-star girl.

She poised, above them all, looking down at him.

She wore a green dress and a green belt knuckled with silver.

"Didn't mean to cause no bother," said Nobbi. He was trying to be jovial.

The faces were all set, still. And Tray's face was set, but with a kind of human embarrassment now.

Only that other face, the highest one, was odd.

Yes, that girl was on drugs. Her eyes were blank and black as quags. Pools of paint. Nothing in them.

She started down the stairs.

"I've come a long way," said Nobbi. "I worry. You got to understand."

"You are her father," said Eric.

It struck Nobbi Eric was agreeing, backing him up.

"Too right," Nobbi said.

He had broken out in sweat.

The girl in green was still descending, but Tray was just standing there with the other woman.

"Come on, love."

"Oh, Dad," said Tray.

He felt himself breathe again. It was the usual voice, the whine of protest and self-justification.

"Come on, love. Your mom's worried."

The girl in green came down the stairs, all the way. She walked toward Nobbi with a sheer paralyzing grace, so he had to look at her.

God, her eyes—

"What is it, love?" Nobbi said to Ruth, concerned for her, bewildered.

He had always liked women.

Her left hand flicked out and there was a flash, like the sun again through the windows.

A spurt of scarlet burst upward and hit the pillars. It splashed over Ruth, into her hair and onto her white face. Beads of blood on her lashes, blinked away. Red tears.

"Oh!" exclaimed the old woman with Tray. "Oh! Oh!"

Nobbi was confused. He tried to look around. A violent hiccup tore out of him, and there was a terrific itching in his head. He scratched, and then the hall turned over.

Nobbi lay on the floor with the blood gusting from the severed vein in his short, short neck. His eyes were open. He could say nothing.

"Michael," Eric said.

Michael ran to Nobbi and kneeled down. He pressed a wad of something white against the blood, but the white changed to red.

"Daddy," said Tray.

Ruth stood over Nobbi, the gold razor in her fingers.

"Scarabae," said Ruth.

Nobbi gazed up at the ceiling. He felt silly. He wished this had not happened. He felt sorry for the girl with the paint-pool eyes. Then he was in the car and it was sliding away downhill. The sensation was quite pleasant.

He thought,
Poor Marilyn
.

"Daddy!" screamed Tray. She screamed again. "I want my daddy."

On the floor of the hall Nobbi's dead body with Michael kneeling there, and Ruth standing totally motionless.

And above, Tray screaming and next rushing down. And then Tray tumbling into the blood. "Daddy! Daddy!"

Eric and Miranda were statues.

Tray lifted her head. "I want my daddy!"

Sounds came out of her that human things cannot make, yet do.

When the screaming sounded in the house, like a siren, Malach moved faster than Connor had ever seen occur. But Camillo cowered down, and, over by the trees, the idiot Lou-girl put her hands over her ears in her fake red hair.

Cardiff scrambled up, and Pig and Rose and Whisper all tried to bolt toward the house.

Connor planted himself on the slope above them, holding wide his arms, and Viv crouched at his feet, snarling.

"No."

They fell back, staring at each other.

"But," said Rose.

"No," Connor said. "And no. And no."

One by one they sat down.

The Lou-girl chased off into the oak trees.

The first screams had stopped.

Malach lifted Tray up off the corpse and turned her into his body. He held her as she resisted, and the touch of his hands made her give in. Then she hung against him a moment in silence.

She said, "I want my lion."

Miranda came and took Tray from Malach, and Tray explained, "My lion. He's my friend."

Tray was covered in blood, as Ruth was covered in blood. The blood had covered them, however, differently. In any case, the blood was Tray's, had made her. Ruth had no right to it.

As Miranda led Tray up the stairs again, softly, Malach looked at Ruth.

"He threatened them," she said.

"Who?"

"That man."

"No," Malach said. "You learned nothing."

"Yes. The Scarabae. I killed for them."

"You're filth," he said, "like some plague. I taught you nothing, you learned nothing."

"Yes," she said. Her eyes came slowly back to life and fixed on him, swimming, startled. "Malach—he was an enemy—"

"Only a fool. But you, with your gold claw.
You
."

Above, miles high, Rachaela had come on to the top of the stairs, alone. Drawn by the screaming as if to some ancient rite. From a tower, she looked down and saw Malach standing, warrior in armor, priest in stone. And the child, Ruth, cringing there in her clothes of green and blood.

"But," said Ruth, "he was—"

"Nothing," said Malach.

"Then—I was wrong. I was wrong."

"It doesn't matter to me," he said.

Rachaela thought:
These words come out of vaults of time. Spoken over and over
.

"Malach," said Ruth.

"Don't say my name," he answered. He turned to Eric. "Put her into some room or cellar. Where you had her before. Keep her there for three hundred years. Like Camillo. She can learn that way."

"Malach," said Ruth. "Malach."

"Not to you."

"But I'm yours. I'm to go with you."

"You're not mine. Go into the furnace. Burn up. Finish."

Tray said, "Miranda, can I have a sweet?"

"Yes, dear," said Miranda. "Lots and lots of sweets. Hold my hand."

Then Eric must have gestured to Kei and to Michael, because they came together and took hold of Ruth in her blood.

And they began to carry her, as if to her execution, up the other side of the stairs.

They had incarcerated her before. When she killed. Then.
That time, she was silent
.

Now Ruth screamed. Not like the other girl, not like a machine. These were raw cries, to which every pore of the body responded. The wails of sacked Troy and Jerusalem, the blinded shrieks of Hiroshima.

Malach stood under the stairs, and listened.

Rachaela saw him listen, his face like a shell in ice.

And then they bore Ruth past her, and Rachaela reached out her hand— "Ruth—"

And Ruth cried, "Malach—Malach—"

Her screams went on, her cries, the repetition of his name. Up into the pinnacles of the house.

"Dear God." Rachaela put her hands to her lips. She was torn open, as if Ruth had been born again out of her body. But Ruth now, finally, at last, was dead.

HADES.

Through the dark a monster had passed, sucking slowly at the moistureless black milk of the vaulted tunnels. It was vacuuming up the asbestos dust that clung to the walls and roof. Secret thing of night, no one must know the poison that pollinated the airs under the earth.