Dark Side Darker (18 page)

Josh shook his head. “I’m just asking if you’ve heard anything—
strange
about it?”

Gary was looking at them both now, his paranoid mind weighing them up. “Why?”

Josh was quick to speak. “Just want to know how safe it is.”

“Well man, let me put it this way, from what I’ve seen, if you value your sanity you don’t want to do more than one at a time and you don’t want to do it too often. Don’t get me wrong though, this is some real good shit, one’s all you need and you ain’t gonna’ need too many because once that shit is in you it takes its sweet time passing out. you can kiss the next day goodbye.”

Mindy returned again this time holding what looked like a cylinder of aspirins.

Gary looked at him and then snapped back to Josh. “So you buying?”

Rufus cut in. “What? Aspirin.”

Josh groaned inwardly.

Gary gave him a fuck-you look and walked across the room to take the container from Mindy. He flipped open the lid and with a dark smile showed Rufus and Josh the contents.

The tub was jam packed with tiny blue balls. Each seemed to glow slightly with dim lights and occasionally Josh thought he could see something swirl within.

“Shit,” Rufus said in awe.

“Now, they’re ten each but I’ll do them for seven.”

Rufus picked out one of the pills. He felt a tiny rush of energy dance over his skin. “Seven quid each?”

“Yeah, and only this time, know what I’m saying? Next time you pay ten. So how many?”

Rufus was studying the tiny ball. He’d never seen anything like it. “I don’t know, four?”

Mindy smiled from under his hood. “That’ll fucking kill you. I’ll tell you, don’t take them all at once ’cause you fucking fry ya’ brain. Get me?”

Rufus looked up. “Yeah I get you.” He passed Gary a twenty pound note which was quickly placed into his pocket, made up the rest in change and then continued to examine the pill.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with it, man!” Gary snapped.

Rufus nodded without taking his eyes from the glowing ball. “Yeah man, I know, but I ain’t never seen anything like it!”

“Yeah, I was like that when I first seen the shit.”

Josh looked up. “So where does it come from?”

“I got connections!” Gary told him.

Josh realised this was a dead alley. “So what’s it made of, how’s this stuff made?”

Gary shot him a dagger. “You got a lot of questions boy. Any particular reason?”

“
No
, no not really. I’m just amazed that’s all.”

“Best be. Look man, you wanted Blue, you got it, so unless you need anything else I guess you know where the door is.” He dropped four pills into a camera film canister.

Rufus took it slowly. “Thanks man. So catch you about right?”

Gary seemed to weigh something up and he nodded reluctantly.

Rufus looked at Floyd, eyes now half-closed. “Yo Floyd ya’ coming?”

“Nah’ man, Nah’,” Floyd shook his head with a stoned and content smile. “Nah’ I’m gonna’ chill here for a while.”

Rufus nodded.

“Listen,” said Gary. “You want to do business again, I’ll give you my number. Only you don’t give it to anyone unless I say and you phone if ya’ bringing someone with ya’ I don’t know.” He shot Floyd a dagger glare. Floyd, too stoned to care, smiled and shrugged.

“Yeah okay,” said Rufus and got out his mobile phone. He flicked through it. “Okay,” he said and took Gary’s number.

Suddenly friendly, Gary smiled and extended his hand to be shook.

“A fucking pleasure mate, a fucking pleasure. know what I’m saying man!”

“Yeah sure,” said Rufus and shook his hand firmly.

“Well, you got ya’ Blue, Mind’ how about you show these boys out?”

Mind’ tiredly got up once again.

REVELATIONS

“SO WHAT THE FUCK are we gonna’ do now?”

Josh seemed to remember Rufus asking a similar question before, but he couldn’t be sure. Either way it was sure a valid one. They were no closer to anything.

“Give me the pills,” he said as they approached the car.

Rufus passed over the film canister and Josh popped the lid. There was definitely some kind of dim blue light radiating from the tiny capsules.

“Man, what the fuck is this stuff?” he said more to himself.

“I know, dude I ain’t never seen no other shit like it.
I mean what the fuck is it
?”

Josh shrugged. He looked Rufus in the eye. “Do you think
they
knew?”

Now Rufus shrugged. “Man you know I ain’t even sure. I mean I got the impression they didn’t, but if that’s true then how the fuck do they get it?”

Josh was silent as they reached the car.

“I tell you what I do know,” said Rufus as he opened the car door. “We still know precisely dick!”

Josh was inclined to agree as he got into the passenger door. He looked back at Karen instinctively.

“So where’s the monkey?” Karen asked.

“Stoned and happy,” Rufus told her as he buckled his safety belt.

“So what did you find out?” she asked Josh. “Anything?”

“No,” said Josh, nothing. “All we did was buy these.” He passed Karen the film canister.

She took it cautiously, looked in at its contents for a few silent seconds then looked back at Josh. There was a look of awed concern on her pretty features. “What the hell are they?”

Josh shook his head. “Apparently that’s Blue.”

Karen looked down at the pills for a little while longer. “It’s beautiful,” she said to herself in a breathy whisper, and then, “this is what Sarah took, this is—
this is what made her eyes
...” She was close to tears. Could barely speak.

“Yeah,” said Josh.

Rufus had slung his arm over the back of his seat and was watching her.

“So what the hell is it?” she asked him.

“Honey, I really couldn’t tell you,” he said. “But it’s dangerous, real dangerous!”

Karen eyed him suspiciously. “How exactly do you mean?”

Rufus struggled with his image of what had once been Cally in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes and looked away.

Josh sighed. “When we found Sarah, she wasn’t alone.”

Karen’s concern was growing. She knew she wasn’t going to like what she heard next. “Who was with her?” She paused, looked inward. “Cally? It was
this Cally
girl,
right
?”

Josh nodded. “Whatever’s happening to Sarah isn’t finished. She’s... changing.”

“What?”

Josh couldn’t speak for a second. Next to him Rufus was quietly crying, but trying not to show it. He had turned to look at the street, but his silent tears were clear in the dark reflection. He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand and then held it to his mouth with a distant and troubled expression, seeing things he would rather not. Finally his mind was moving through the terrible shock and stoned stupor and now beginning to accept the terrible truth. “Jesus,” he whispered to himself.

“Changing,” said Josh quietly. “Changing into a monster.”

Karen laughed, caught the look in his eyes and abruptly stopped. “What? How? you can’t really believe what you’re saying?”

Rufus had begun to sob, his face in his hands. He looked back, eyes tear-streaked. “Man she looked like something out of the fucking Thing!”

Karen looked horrified. She passed quick glances between her two friends.
What they were saying was madness and yet
...

“You saw her eyes,” Josh told her. “How can you possibly explain that?”

“But—
monsters
??”

“If you’d seen,” Josh said.

“
You don’t never want to see
!” Rufus told her.

Karen was silent,
how could
...

“But drugs???” she said exasperated. “Drugs can’t do that! How could they?”

Josh shook his head. “I’ve no idea but
that
,” he pointed at the tub she held, “
that
did it.” Karen looked down at the small blue pills. “
These
?” she said softly. Karen stared into the canister. It was nearly night now. The sky was dark blue, the street lamps were coming on but there was little light in the car. yet there was a quite visible unnatural, electric blue glow lighting up the walls of the film tube. She found herself being drawn into the pills. She began to notice tiny lights dancing within. At first she wasn’t sure she was really seeing them, but there seemed to be something swirling at each of their centres, nondescript, lucid and alive.

“Jesus, it’s full of stars,” she whispered.

“What?” Josh asked.

“Oh nothing. So what exactly are you going to do now?”

Josh looked at Rufus and saw he was wiping tears from his eyes again. “You alright?”

Rufus nodded quietly and turned his face away so Josh couldn’t see. He rarely cried, made strong by a tough childhood. Josh reflected that most people’s opposite self was usually relative to their true one. He found himself moved by Rufus’ tears and thought, yeah that’s why I love him.

He looked back at Karen. “I really don’t know, I mean those kids didn’t tell us anything really. I don’t know what to do.” He thought of Sarah and then of Cally. “But I’ve got to do something.”

“Well, who are they then? The dealers I mean.”

“That’s the point, they don’t seem anything special. Just some Asian kids who deal drugs.”

Karen was thoughtful for a while, still looking at the pills. “Maybe we should just wait here awhile, see what happens?” She paused. “Or maybe we should just tell the police.”

“Fuck that!” said Rufus quickly. “Josh is right, this shit is way too weird to involve the Man. I mean how we gonna’ explain our involvement?”

“Well, we could...”

“Nah’, nah’ Karen, he’s right, fuck the police!”

“So should we just wait then?”

Josh shook his head. “Nope, I don’t see that really gets us anywhere. I’ve got to do something quickly. I don’t know how much time Sarah’s got.”
Sarah
, he thought to himself and then he knew what he had to do.

He looked to Karen. In the darkness his eyes gleamed intensely with his inner lights.

“Pass me the drugs, Karen.”

Karen didn’t like the tone in his voice. “
Why
?”

“I know what I’ve got to do!” he told her.

“That’s crazy Josh! you can’t possibly be thinking of taking this stuff. Not after what you’ve told me. I mean
if
it does what you say?”

“Karen honey, I don’t have a choice.”

“No,” she said.

“Karen, give me the pills!” Josh said sternly.

Karen shook her head, pulling the container closer to her. “I won’t let you!”

“Jesus, Josh, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Rufus asked.

Josh ignored him. “Karen give me the pills!”

“Josh this is crazy!” Rufus told him.

“I know what I’m doing. Karen, the pills!”

“No, Josh, no. I won’t let you. I don’t want you to.”

Josh spoke with sudden ferocity. “
Give me the fucking pills!!!
”

Karen handed them over without thinking, felt compelled to do so. She felt suddenly shaken, scared by Josh’s intensity.
Had that voice been his
?

Josh sat looking at the pills.

“Josh man, this is probably the most stupid idea you have ever had. Don’t do it.”

Josh took out one of the small capsules. He felt a slight prickle of energy caress his fingertips. The pill was ice cold and squashed with pressure. He couldn’t tell what it was made of.

“Josh,” Rufus said.

Josh sat holding the pill, staring at it, building up the will. He was scared shitless. He’d seen what it could do.

He raised his hand to his mouth.

“Josh, don’t do this,” Rufus said softly, although he was making no attempt to stop him. In his heart he knew he couldn’t.

Josh opened his mouth and before he had the chance to let his panic at the unknown seize him, swallowed the pill and gulped it down.

That’s it
, he thought,
no going back
.
Whatever happens now there’s no going back
.

He sat silently. Both Karen and Rufus were staring at him expectantly. He returned their troubled glances.

Nothing happened.

“WE LIVE INSIDE A NIGHTMARE...”

THE WORLD FELT ICE-COLD and distant. The hospital ward around her seemed dim. The sky outside the dirt-caked window was slowly dying into night. When she breathed, hot vapour appeared at her pale lips and escaped into the freezing room. Ice seemed to be gathering inside her body, crystalising inside the network of her veins. The cold veil of death clung to everything.

Clouds raced past at impossible speeds and sometimes there would be dim figures, wraiths, standing above her. Phantoms dressed as nurses with dead-head grins. They flashed into existence, shadows holding clipboards, and then vanished just as quickly.

The world had become timeless and alien. Tiredly, Sarah closed her eyes. A chaotic wall of sound filled the void. The bored thoughts of a thousand patients locked inside their sterile cells, some dying, some in incredible pain. It all washed over her, became her. Conversations, visions, she saw the bored occupants of the Big Brother household sitting around staring at walls decorated with childlike paintings, saw it from the eyes of a child somewhere within the building.

“I need a cigarette, I need a cigarette, I need a cigarette—I’m gonna’ go fucking mad if I don’t get a fuckin’ cigarette! Why won’t those bitches let me smoke? I need a cigarette, I need a...” And on it went. Someone had been thinking this repeating thought-chain for hours now. Days maybe.

She opened her eyes again, the only way she could even remotely take control of the assault on her mind.

The strip-light above her looked dirty and flickered like stop motion animation. She stared at it for an infinity, watching the gaps between when the light flared on and off becoming increasingly long. Stretching from seconds at first, then minutes and then hours and then complete darkness. The room disappeared and she dissolved back into a place she had been at before.