Dead of Light (19 page)

Carol made a noise, a vague and helpless noise, took her arms from my waist and was no doubt making a vague and helpless gesture also,
have a heart, I can't tell you that...
I didn't turn my head to see it, just kept looking at the cop.

“Doesn't look like a girl's bike to me,” he said, sucking at his moustache as he paced around us. “Dead or alive. Just sit still, son,” as I twitched. “Tell you what I'll do, then, I'll call the number in, shall I, and we'll see what Swansea has to say?”

He walked back to his own bike, and fiddled with the radio there. I felt Carol's hands on my arm, heard her voice softly hissing, “
Talk
to him, for God's sake, Ben! You tell him, tell him who you are, he'll believe you...”

I shook my head, didn't take my eyes off the man. No giggle left in it now, but family pride still had a say. Held sway, even, stronger than I'd thought. I wasn't going to explain myself to a policeman, nor plead for clemency. Not tonight, not any night.

A minute of silence then, broken by the hiss-and-crackle of interference on his radio.
Busy old fool
, I thought,
unruly Sun
, warming up the atmosphere, setting everything awry. Just peeking now over the horizon, we'd be full in the light of it in a minute or two; and how many dawns had I seen in my life, I wondered, and never any as grim as this, rising after a night of such desolation...

And then a voice, little more than modulated hiss-and-crackle, and I wasn't even trying to listen in; but the policeman was fascinated. He nodded, asked a question, listened again.

Eventually he came back to us, staring at me now with too much interest altogether.

“What Swansea says,” he said, “is that the bike's not been registered with them at all.”

What, had my sweet sister not filled in the paperwork? Goodness, what a shock.

“But there's a note,” he went on, “on their computer. Belongs to a Macallan, they reckon. A girl, like you said, miss. A Hazel Macallan.”

“That's right,” Carol confirmed quickly, altogether too eager to please.

“Mmm. We know about the Macallans. Even up here, we know all about 'em. Really dead, is she?”

I heard Carol swallow against the confirmation of that news, felt her nod against my back. Heard her voice, thinned now with enormity, with what little memory she had, what she could have seen of my sister. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, she really is...”

“Not the first, the way we've been hearing it.”

“No...”

“No. Someone's doing our job for us,” and oh, the gloating pleasure in his voice as he said that, the radiant approval. Knowing himself safe, this far from town and the sun coming up: even not knowing me, he knew enough not to worry. Not to check his tongue. “And you, son, you're nicked. Your family's writ don't run this far,”
or not in daylight.
“That's if you've got any family left by now. Best thing to hit this coast in thirty years, the guy who's taking your kin to the cleaners.”

And I stood up suddenly, with the image of my sister's ruined face in my eyes to blind me; and the sun's light fell across me as I rose. And I could feel nothing but heat in my finger's ends, fire dancing to be free; and I could hear nothing but screaming as I freed that fire, as I lashed it and lashed it.

And over my sister's face now I could see the policeman's, laid with flame. I saw his mouth work, I saw his hands tear at his cheeks where my bright fire danced strictly in line, palely in the sun but leaving a dark path marked. I heard his cracked bellow and Carol's scream to underscore it; and I heard the hot sounds of his bike afire, and still didn't hear what I was listening for, my sister's voice to tell me I'd done enough.

There were chords in the air, though I could not follow their music. There were rhythms stranger than life —
all life is rhythm
, but not vice versa, Jacko — and colours I could see but never name. The sun laid threads on the breeze that my fingers found and plucked at. Afterwards, needing to label what I'd learnt, I thought it was like tripping: like times when I'd taken acid or mushrooms and seen the world through a different window, finding new patterns in what had only ever seemed chaotic.

At the time, though, it was only anger: all my life's anger right there in my hands to be hurled at the man who'd invoked it.

What brought me back, who brought me down was Carol. She snatched at me, seizing my arm and pulling it out of the weave of light, so that I lost grip on the net I was casting; and I turned on her in my fury, reaching to snare her also in a new web of fire. And saw the terror that was in her, branded on her face; and lost hold of the anger in that crucial moment, and let it all go, not to harm her.

Stood sobbing, staring, seeing her face blur beyond my fingers; and she was crying too, but against me rather than with me, everything she knew about me suddenly as disjointed as everything she knew about the world.

The air crackled now with questions that neither one of us was asking, or wanting to ask. I couldn't have told her in any case, what I'd done or how I'd done it; and sure as God made little green apples to be sour on your tongue and sour in your belly, I didn't want to ask how the policeman was.

o0o

Had to look in the end, though. Had to grind the heels of my hands into my eyes and lift my head and look, only to see what I knew already, all I was certain of.

That stupid, stupid man. Thought he could mock a Macallan, for God's sake, thought he was
safe?
Believed the rumours and figured it was okay to gloat in sunshine? If I'd been my sister maybe he'd have had longer to enjoy himself, but not long. Half a rotation, maybe; a little longer still if he was lucky with his timing, but only till the moon rose in darkness. And that would have been max. If she'd called a cousin, starshine would've been enough.

But bad cess to him, it was me he pulled over. Me he sneered at, with my fingers still clammy from the touch-memory of my sister's body; and me finding something in sunlight in answer, finding the family blood suddenly in me after all, though perversely twisted twelve hours out of true.

Me raging, a Macallan come unexpectedly into his true and terrible power; and him lying thrown onto his back, a fire-tossed destruct, a shell burned and broken and cast away. His bike was fallen and still flaming behind him, but that was only a smoke machine and a sound effect, only background, like the thin traffic that slowed and saw and hurried on away with no one stopping.

His arms outhurled, palms upward, I could see how his hands were scorched; but his sleeves weren't marked at all, nor his legs, nor the lower half of his jacket. Up towards the collar, though, closer to his face: there there were scorch-marks and stains, molten nylon with seared edges,
something's gone bang around here.

And his helmet, his white helmet had black to border it now, and again it was half charred, half molten in a frame around his face.

Only that his face wasn't there any more, or nothing you could call a face. First glance, that frame seemed empty; took a good close look really to see detail. Black in black: within the helmet's shadow his face, all his head was a seamed and blasted ball, flesh seared black and deeply trenched where the cords of my net had tightened.

Put plain, with the horror of it put aside, the facts remained: he was dead, and I was a murderer.

o0o

Join the club
, my family ghosts, all my ancestors whispered inside my skull.
A little late, but nonetheless welcome
, they giggled as Carol moaned behind me, as I choked and turned away from the rancid smells of burning.
And so dramatically done
, they celebrated,
well done, lad, never seen it done better. And in daylight, too, that much we never managed, no, not at all, not a chance of it for us...

o0o

Special, they were telling me I was. Different I'd always been; now suddenly I was special, and though I didn't believe in ghosts or ghostly voices, I still felt as though I'd been through a rite of passage, proved myself in a desperate court; and I needed desperately to talk to Uncle Allan.

Walked over to my sister's bike, touched it with pale fingers that still held a tremble in them, claimed it for my own. Never mind what records said: for the first time in my life, I felt confident to take something from Hazel. Okay, she wasn't there to argue, but that only underlined the point. It had been hers and now it was mine, by right of survival.

Rights and duties ride pillion behind each other, take it in turns to drive. It was more than the bike I was claiming here, more than a possession I was taking on. And I knew it, and that was the choice I made. Swung my leg across the seat, settled myself, gripped good and hard and made my mouth work, called my passenger over. Said, “Carol, get on. We're out of here.”

“Ben,” she said, thin and sick, “you can't. You can't just drive away...”

“Would you rather stay here?” I demanded.
With him?
unspoken but very much there, as he was so very much there between us.

“We shouldn't leave him...”

“He's dead, Carol. Our staying isn't going to help that. It'll just make trouble, as soon as someone comes.” More messages not needing to be voiced:
it could happen again
the loudest of them,
do you want it to happen again?

And no, she didn't, because she didn't argue further; but she didn't come to me either. She only looked at me, directly across this little distance, and she said, “I don't want to ride with you.”

“How, then?”

“I'll hitch it.”

“No one's going to stop. Not for you, not after this.” A burning bike and a dead policeman, and a girl trying to hitch away? No chance. “You'll just get picked up, and they'll screw you. You know they will.” Whatever they thought and whatever she told them, she'd not be allowed to walk away from this. Could be a long,
long
time before Nicky saw his mum again. “Get on the
bike
, Carol...”

Her hands made shapes in the air, blank of any meaning, just little gestures of weakness and uncertainty; and at last she came warily over and got on the bike. Sat way back on the queen seat, putting her hands behind her for a hold and trying not to touch me at all with the least part of her clothing.

I felt briefly desolated. Powerful, dangerous, desolated. Not good, any one of the three.

Said nothing, nothing more to say; and turned the key, kicked the bike off its stand, put it in gear and drove away from the climbing shadow of smoke.

o0o

Steady and careful now, too late, not to attract any more attention. I didn't ask what Carol wanted, I only took her straight to where she lived, a terrace in a village in the city's hinterland. Free of me she could maybe reclaim a little of her life, a little of her confidence in the world before she went to reclaim her son from his father.

She dismounted awkwardly, still trying not to touch; and stood looking around, breathing deep for a second or two before she could bear to look at me. And then it was only a glance, her eyes brushing across mine, any greater contact too much for her. She didn't speak, though she did try to sketch a nervous farewell with her hands.

I nodded, not to break that silence that was seemingly giving her some kind of shelter. Nodded and left her, and thought that was probably it. Another friendship dead on the altar of what I was, or what I was becoming. Goya had it wrong, I thought: it was only ever blood that begot true monsters. My begetting might have been a little delayed, but clearly blood would out in the end; and she'd been right there at the outing, and I thought she would never forgive me for that.

Hard enough to forgive myself, maybe that also would prove impossible. I had no right to expect it from her, neither did I.

o0o

I drove quietly through town, to Uncle Allan's house in the suburbs. Parked in his driveway and got off the bike, stretched in the cold sunlight and felt my traitor blood sing around my bones, soul's music too revealing to be borne; felt the unaccustomed tingle of power, and hated myself for smiling at its touch.

Allan and Jess didn't have money on Uncle James' scale, or if they did they didn't flash it about. Allan wouldn't be interested in extravagant cars and country houses, comfort was enough for him; Jess, I guessed, would think it ungenteel to be so ostentatious. Whatever, they lived in what was really a Victorian semi, albeit a big one: three floors of red brick, with gables and mullions and mansard dormers and all the fun that architects used to be allowed. It was an expensive street, where high walls and mature trees separated each family from its neighbours; but those neighbours were mostly surgeons or solicitors, successful but not exclusive. Nothing warned you here, nothing said that at the head of this short drive and behind that slightly weathered door lived the man who kept the town in his pocket, his to milk if ever he should choose to. Uncle James was the family milkman, but Allan could have taken that role to himself at any time. I used to think maybe that was one reason why Uncle James did wield his power so widely, simply because his quiet elder brother had so much more.

No grandeur inside the house either, unless there'd been a radical change since the last time I was here. Rare for my family, these two had had no children; but they still needed a large house, to demark the space between them.

Uncle Allan's Volvo was there in the drive; I felt a brief touch of gratitude — mingled with surprise — that there were no other cars, no family gathering yet convened. I couldn't stop myself glancing quickly through the back windscreen, to confirm what was surely obvious, that Hazel's body was gone from there. I didn't want to ask even myself where she might be lying now, though I would certainly have to ask Allan.