AS SOON AS I could get the dishes done and my hands dry, I shooed Dom up the stairs and out of everyone’s sight. I felt like I was herding a ticking bomb round the house. I felt like any minute now, everything would blow up. I needed time. I needed space. I needed to think things through.
We were almost at the top when Dad’s quiet voice called up to us: ‘Lads.’ He was peering at us from the turn in the stairs. ‘Martin’s leaving. Stay with your nan while I walk him to the car, will you?’
Damn.
‘Dom’s not feeling well, Dad. He was going to lie down.’
Dom’s voice came flat and deliberate from the stairs above me. ‘No, I wasn’t,’ he said. ‘You’re the one who needs to lie down.’
Dad looked from one to the other of us with a confused frown. ‘What’s up with you two? You’re like the hormone sisters this morning.’
Normally that would have made me laugh, but I was stretched a little thin for chuckles today. Instead, I blinked down at the old man, trying to give nothing away, hoping he’d relent and let us escape upstairs. Exactly how creepy we looked, standing one above the other in the gloom, staring down at him with our identical faces, I can only guess. Pretty bloody creepy, I’d say.
Dad’s eyes lifted to Dom, and my heart sped up a bit as something crossed his face – some fraction of understanding. ‘Whu . . . ?’ he said uncertainly. His eyes widened, his pupils spread, and he stared past me to where Dom stood, cold and silent, on the stairs above us.
I took a step downwards. Can you see it, Dad? I thought. Jesus, Dad! Try and see it!
But he only frowned and shook himself, scrubbing his hands through his hair, and let his eyes slip away from us. ‘Whew,’ he said. ‘Weirdness.’
My heart fell. Oh Dad.
He turned his back on us. ‘Come on down to your nan,’ he said. ‘Just for a minute while I walk Martin to the car.’
‘Dad!’ I called, and he looked back. ‘Are you leaving today?’
‘Yeah. After dinner.’
‘Stay ’til tomorrow, Dad. Please.’
If I’d said that in front of Ma, she’d have lost the rag with me, entirely; told me to get a grip and stop acting like a baby. Dad just grimaced in helpless sympathy and spread his hands. ‘Can’t, bud. Sorry. Justin needs me.’
We need you! Dom and me! We need you!
‘Just ’til tomorrow, Dad? Just one more day?’ Just one more night?
He locked eyes with me, and for a moment I thought he’d stay. Then he gave a shrug of those expressive shoulders and tilted his head in apology. ‘Sorry, bud. I’ll stay a bit late and watch Dr Who with you, if you like?’
I nodded. Dom, standing behind me like a black hole, said nothing.
Dad half laughed. ‘Jesus!’ he said ‘What are you like? All you need is a river of dry ice and a full moon and we’ll have the total Hammer House effect. Cheer up! You’d swear I was heading off to war or something.’ He clapped his hands as if to cleanse the air. ‘Come on down now! Sit with Nan for me.’
Then he was gone.
Dom stayed silent, and when I started back down the steps he made no move to follow me. ‘Come on,’ I said, without looking at him.
‘Wouldn’t you rather I went upstairs?’
The bitterness in his voice made me glance around, and I caught a diluted glimpse of what had creeped Dad out. Dom was almost lost in shadows, his face and his hands ghostly highlights, his eyes black-light pinpoints in the gloom. I wondered if I’d looked the same when I was standing there. Of course I had – we were twins, weren’t we? I shuddered. Imagine staring up at two of that; it was amazing the old fella hadn’t run a mile.
‘Just keep your mouth shut and don’t touch anyone,’ I said and made my way to the sitting room without waiting to see if he’d follow.
He didn’t, not right away, and I had time to do two prowling circuits of the cramped room, my hands in my hair, before I found enough composure to sit. Nan was sitting on the sofa, drowsing already. The TV was on, the sound turned down. The fire was low and hot in the grate.
I chose the threadbare armchair facing the door and sat waiting. My arse had hardly hit the cushions before I was fighting the urge to leap to my feet again. It felt like I was trapped in an airless room without windows or doors, and I wanted to pace. I grabbed the arms of my chair and dug in hard, forcing myself to sit still, because I could walk myself to the moon and back and still not escape this.
He came in quietly. Dom and not at all Dom. My brother’s lazy, C-shouldered slouch squared off somehow and tilted forward now, so that he led the way with shoulder rather than hip; Dom’s under-the-eyes, affectionately mocking smirk replaced with dark-eyed speculation – like someone sizing you up from behind partially opened shutters.
His attention was almost immediately snagged by the TV. At first he just blinked at it, trying to figure it out. Then he was over and touching it – the flickering screen, the sides, the back – tentatively at first, then with genuine, almost scientific interest.
‘Gracious,’ he murmured. Bill and Ben were on, those crazy twins. Dom tapped the glass of the screen and peered at the figures moving across it. ‘A laterna magicka of some sort?’ he whispered. ‘A picture show in miniature?’
He turned shining eyes to me, his enthusiasm for TV overwhelming everything else.
‘Sit down,’ I snapped. ‘Just sit down, and shut up, and let me think.’
He glowered again and turned back to the telly. He peered into it one more time, pressing his face to the glass the way people do at aquariums. Then he reluctantly went to sit at the opposite end of the sofa from Nan. He regarded me with tightlipped concentration, his hands folded in his lap, far too grim and upright to be Dom.
Dom. Where was he? Had I lost him?
It happened all the time, didn’t it? All the time. People were snatched away, and they didn’t come back. Gary Halpin’s brother, for example – snatched away at the age of seventeen. Smeared along the side of the Tonlegee Road, his bike a scattering of parts. Grandda Joe – he just fell down dead. Alive one minute, dead the next. Nan – still here, but snatched away nonetheless. It happened all the time, and holy water and Latin and all that Hammer House of Horror bullshit didn’t bring them back.
I had to get that thought out of my head somehow, so I slammed my palms down onto the arms of the chair, raising twin puffs of dust and making Dom jump.
Nan muttered but didn’t wake up.
‘Where’s Dom?’ I said. ‘What have you done to him? How do I fix this?’
His face darkened. ‘There is no Dom, Lorry. There never was a Dom. Why can’t you remember? The old lady remembers.’ He gestured at Nan. ‘The little girl knows. Why don’t you?’
I gripped the arms of my chair very, very tight.
‘I want. To talk. To Dom,’ I said.
He looked me up and down, pity not quite winning out over anger. ‘What have they done to us, Lorry?’ he asked quietly.
‘There’s no they. There’s just us. There’s just Ma and Dad, Nan and Dee and us!’ I leant forward, appealing to whatever I could find of my brother in there. ‘Dom,’ I hissed. ‘Wake up. Please! Fight him, Dom. Please.’
He tutted in frustration and looked away. This made me want to hit something, so I clamped my teeth shut and sat very still for a moment, throwing bolts and turning locks all down through my body, not looking at him. Eventually, I was tied down enough to speak to him again. He was watching me with frowning impatience.
‘Dom,’ I said.
He grimaced.
‘Dom! Why is this happening? Why?’
‘Why?’ He spread his hands in exasperation. ‘Are you only asking that now? All that time in the grey, were you not constantly asking why? I was! Why did they hurt me? Why did they take you away? Why did they send me to that place?’ He searched my face, finding only incomprehension. ‘You didn’t want to go, Lorry. They took you from me – but you didn’t want to go. Don’t you remember? Say you remember!’
I shook my head. His face fell, his desolation and sense of loss so obvious that I actually felt sorry for him. He lowered his hands. He looked so betrayed.
‘How could you have forgotten?’ he whispered. ‘You were screaming. You tried to hold on to me, but they pulled you away. They had to do it again and again, because each time they dragged you off, you’d get free and come running back to me. They were big, though. Big men, so much bigger than us. And there were more of them than you could fight, and eventually they took you away. I was hurting so much that I couldn’t help you.’
He put a shaking hand to his throat and his eyes focused inwards, remembering. ‘Then the pain stopped, and the choking, but I couldn’t move my arms and legs anymore. I kept thinking, Please let him hold my hand. I wanted so desperately . . . ’ His voice hitched and he had to take a second. ‘I wanted so desperately for you to hold my hand, to give me a hug. I couldn’t understand why they took you away. And then they sent me into the grey, and the world was gone. And after a while the soldier came, another big man, just like the others, with his anger and his noise, and he was in the grey with me and I was running and running. For years, it seems. But I never forgot!’ He glared up at me then, his eyes black as night, and this time he was accusing me, all the pity gone from his face. ‘I never forgot, Lorry. I spent all that time remembering and waiting and where – were – you?’
‘I was here. I’ve never been anywhere but here! Listen to me. Maybe . . . maybe you were alive once . . . ’ His eyes widened at that and he glared at me. ‘Maybe there was a Lorry too, once. But I’m not him! And you’re not my brother!’
‘Take that back,’ he whispered.
He was gripping the sofa with tremendous pressure, his face and body rigid with anger – or perhaps with terror; it was hard to tell. I was stunned to see mist beginning to rise from his shoulders and hair.
‘Take it back,’ he cried.
‘Dom!’ I whispered, pointing to his hands. Blossoms of frost were beginning to radiate from his clutching fingers, spreading in glittering patterns across the fabric of the sofa.
He didn’t seem to notice. All his attention was focused on my rejection of him. He had begun to shake with rage. There was a rim of hoarfrost developing around his lips, where his angry breath was condensing. It was his anger; his anger seemed to be dragging the heat from the air. I could feel it now, emanating from his corner of the room like a door opening onto a black void. The angrier he got, the colder it became.
You can’t freeze a tomato. My dad’s voice came to me sharp and clear, as if he were in the room. He’d told me that at Christmas. You can’t freeze a tomato. Somehow the freezing process bursts all the cells in a tomato’s flesh and, though it looks alright while frozen, it damages the way the tomato is held together. And when it’s defrosted, the tomato falls apart.
Stop it!’ I said, beginning to panic for the damage this might ‘be doing to my brother’s body. ‘Stop!’
‘She knows me!’ he screamed, pointing at Nan. ‘Explain how she knows me!’
When he lifted his hand, it left a perfect five-fingered frostprint on the sofa cover.
‘Calm down!’ I shouted.
He made a dive for Nan. I think his intent was to shake her awake.
‘Lady!’ he shrieked. ‘Tell him! Tell him you know me!’
‘Don’t touch her!’ I dived for him and wrestled him away from her, yelling in pain as my hands made contact with his frigid flesh. I dragged him backwards and we landed on the floor, my arms wrapped around his chest. His attention switched instantly to me and we were suddenly grappling with each other again, scuffling on the dirty floor like street thugs. ‘Calm down!’ I yelled. ‘You’re hurting yourself! You’re hurting Dom!’
It was like wrestling frozen stone; there was no yield or give to his flesh at all. I just hung on, my arms around his chest, as he struggled to get away from me. I don’t think he intended to hurt me or even to fight me. But I had grabbed at him, and our blood was high, and he just wanted to get away. He elbowed me hard in the ribs and it was like being hit with a sledgehammer made of ice.
‘Lemmego!’ he screeched.
‘Just calm down! You’re hurting yourself!’ My head smacked the floor as we rolled again, and I saw stars.
Then I was hauled up by my collar, my father’s voice an unaccustomed bellow in the already overcrowded space. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
I’d never before experienced my father’s physical strength, and it stunned me to be jerked bodily to my feet and hurled into one corner while my brother was similarly manhandled to the other side of the room. I rebounded off the wall and stood breathless and dishevelled, my burnt hands tucked into my armpits, my hair hanging into my eyes. Our father stood in the middle of the small room, a hand held out to each of us like the referee at a boxing match. He didn’t know which of us to be looking at, so he swivelled his head between the two of us.
‘What. The hell. Are you doing?’ he repeated.
Dom glared at him from the opposite wall, eyes black, skin pale and marbled blue, and I was raging suddenly, at my dad, for being able to stand there and ask what the hell we were doing when Dom was dying in front of his eyes. I glowered at him, all kinds of words knifing through my head, none of them making it past the blockade of my throat. Dom just loosely clenched his fists and said nothing. Dad’s fury morphed very quickly to exhaustion and disappointment. He flung up his hands in despair, then covered his eyes.
‘Jesus,’ he sighed.
Nan’s voice surprised us all. ‘You always were a hot-headed little man, Francis.’
She was still huddled up on the sofa, in the exact same position she’d been when asleep. But she was smiling up at Dom in clear-eyed amusement. Dad looked at her, and he seemed to reach the end of his tether. He shook his head, his face crumbling, and waved at us in shaky dismissal.
‘Get out of my sight,’ he croaked.
‘Dad,’ I said.
OUT!’ He didn’t even look at me, just pointed at the door. ‘
As Dom and I left the room, I heard Nan say, ‘Ah, they’re just lads, David. Let them blow off their steam.’
Dad said nothing that I could hear, and I didn’t look behind me as I led the way to the room that I now shared with this thing called Francis.