Angela Slatter
“Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.”
Yes, children will always be afraid of the dark, and that’s because they’re smarter than adults. Men — and women — with “minds sensitive to hereditary impulse” are rare. As we grow, our minds fill with logic, with reason. We learn to explain away all the things that go bump in the night, all the items that disappear for hours or days and then are found returned to where we first left them, and the people we meet who don’t seem quite… grounded, who have one foot on this firm earth, and with the other straddle those gulfs beyond the stars. They mean us harm, the strange things, although modern storytelling would have us believe otherwise — that ghosts protect us, that vampires want only to date us, and that creatures from outer space desire nothing more than to phone home. The dead and the moonstruck envy our very breath, our very solidity.
In our willful blindness, we leave ourselves open to threats we refuse to even countenance. We assume everything is harmless — unless it carries a chainsaw — until it is too late.
But children see between worlds. They hear the ringing of the dead bell across the empty gulfs and know that something wicked this way comes. They hear the gentle tap-tap-scrape of nails upon glass reaching across dimensions, looking for a way through, a way in. Children are generally smart enough not to open those windows, those doors, but adults… adults will let the thing in because they are too proud to do what should be done: hunker down by the fire, ignore the summons, and pray until daylight comes and breaks the hold of the night. Yes, children will always be afraid of the dark, but sometimes this prepares them for survival.
Becky heard the clink of the beer as he tried to slide it silently out of the fridge.
“Put it back,” she said, “or I’ll tell Mama.”
Micah swore almost under his breath, but loud enough for her to hear what he thought of his little sister. The bottle made an angry sound as he replaced it; then there was the soft thud of the juice bottle and the little fermented sigh as he uncapped it that told her it was almost out of date. She knew without looking that he was drinking straight from the carton; it was the kind of thing he did nowadays. She heard him slip back onto his chair and start hacking at the fried chicken on his plate. On her lap, Riddle, the fat ginger cat, stirred and sniffed, settled again, knowing that no food escaped the boy.
She tuned out the noises of her brother’s meal and watched her mother, as she always did, through the sunflower gauze curtain. Becky wasn’t sure if Suellan knew she was there, but she thought not; the woman was too focused on the sky. The stars were bright the night Aidan, Becky’s eldest brother, had disappeared, and Suellan, by her own admission, couldn’t help herself, not even two years down the track. Not even a new town, new house, new life, could stop her from going onto the narrow porch, a glass of red in hand, after she’d served up their dinner (always late, always around nine) and taken a few bites of her own, to stare upwards, judging the quality of starlight, hoping that one night they’d shine bright enough for her boy to find his way home.
And Becky understood. She understood a lot of things: that her mother hadn’t believed the police when they’d said Aidan had run away, nor when they changed their story to abducted. That Suellan sure as hell hadn’t believed them when they’d tried to tell her that the decomposed body lying on the steel tray at the Arkham morgue was all that was left of her son after he’d finally been found in the river. After all, she’d said to Becky’s father Buck, there was really only the right forearm with enough pale, puffy skin left to show the places where it seemed something had suckled and bit with all those tiny ring-a-ring-a-roses of sharp teeth, and that could have belonged to anyone.
It didn’t matter that the ragged clothes wrapped around the rotted form were identical to Aidan’s. Didn’t matter what they told her about DNA. Didn’t matter when they said Aidan wasn’t the first Essex County boy to whom this had happened. Didn’t matter that she’d eventually given in to Buck’s pleas that they move, start again. Becky remembered her father asking Didn’t the other kids deserve a future that wasn’t overshadowed by their brother’s passing? but she couldn’t recall her mother answering.
Didn’t matter, Suellan told Becky and Micah more than once, coz one day their big brother was coming back, and he’d know where to find them because of the starlight, because it would lead him home. To her.
“You got homework?” Becky asked Micah and received a grunt, which she interpreted as yes, and said, “Leave it on my desk.”
In Suellan’s memory, Aidan was fifteen forever, unchanging and perfect, filled with potential and always just on the cusp of returning; she had hung onto that idea, but Becky could see what it did to Buck. He’d given up, in the end; she and Micah had come home from school one day, and he told them. Wanted them to understand he couldn’t bear it any longer, couldn’t bear Suellan, how she’d brought everything with her, the sadness, the baggage, the hurt, everything they’d needed to jettison if they were to become light enough to keep living. He said things like that sometimes, poetic things, pretty things, useless things. Buck had taken just two suitcases, and the new house was as cluttered as the old with golf clubs, wetsuits, tennis rackets, the speargun Suellan had given him one birthday so he could take the kids snorkeling. So many discarded things spilling from the garage and into the laundry, taking up corners and shelves, because Buck’s wife couldn’t be bothered to get rid of it all even after he left.
Suellan had continued to function, though, and Becky was grateful for that, grateful that her mother could hold down the freelance copywriting jobs and work from home, get paid a good wage, with a healthcare plan and all. She looked after her remaining offspring, and Becky knew she tried hard not to punish them for being Buck’s kids, or for not being Aidan.
“Any more chicken?” asked Micah, surprisingly articulate when he wanted something. Becky, having eaten two packets of Red Vines after school, wasn’t hungry. The cat began to purr, a low thrum that sent gentle vibrations through her knees.
She shrugged, didn’t take her eyes off Suellan’s thin shoulders and narrow back. “Have mine.”
Adolescence had changed Micah in a way it hadn’t for Aidan, making him a surly, slouching, testosterone-scented troglodyte. But Becky, with love and guilt — so much guilt! — reminded herself everyday to cut him some slack. They’d both suffered from the loss of Aidan, but Micah had taken Buck’s desertion especially hard. He wore T-shirts and jeans that had belonged to his brother. Sometimes their mother’s eyes caught on a shirt, recognition sparked and so did a tear, but she didn’t say anything, just watched Micah as if she imagined he was her lost child.
Becky wondered if the terrifying transformation that had taken Micah would affect her, too. She had a year before she became a teen, and she watched the time pass with a kind of resigned fascination. Maybe there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
“Can you hear that?” Micah asked, words pushed out around masticated chicken and crumbed crust. Becky didn’t turn, just tilted her head and listened carefully.
“Nope. You’re hearing things. Did you leave the TV on?”
He didn’t dignify that with a response; the television was always switched off as soon as dinner was on the table. Becky didn’t get resentful like others might; she was a good student, a good daughter, a good sister. She was patient with her mother and brother, and accepted her self-imposed burdens and duties, and she did it a lot out of love, but even more out of guilt.
Because Becky had seen the girl and told no one.
From her bedroom window, she’d watched Aidan leave the house and wander down the path that starry night. Seen the dim shape of someone waiting outside their fence, where the porch light was weakest, where the gloom hid the sloping bank and the river that was sometimes sweet, sometimes salty coz it ran out to the sea not so far away. Seen it resolve itself into a strange-looking girl who drifted back and forth, as though she swam through the air. Becky almost called out, but then saw her brother lift a hand to the visitor. She couldn’t see his face, but she thought he was wearing that shy smile he had, and went straight to the girl’s arms and snuggled right into her as if it was the place he most wanted to be. It was then Becky realised what had drawn her to the window in the first place was the girl’s song, guttural, like one frog calling to another.
And that girl with skin as pale as a fish’s belly, thick lips, and wide-set protruding eyes that even in the moonlight appeared to have no whites, had looked up at Becky’s window. That girl seemed to see her, even in the darkness, even through the lacy curtain. And that girl smiled slowly to let all those tiny teeth catch the rays of the moon and stars.
And Becky had peed her pants.
And Aidan hadn’t come home.
And Becky had never told.
She’d never told because inside her head she’d heard the girl’s voice, her words all wet and throaty and slow. Words that numbed Becky’s mind until everything the girl said was reasonable, a seed planted that kept the younger girl’s mouth shut forever afterwards, because Becky knew she’d made a bargain, and, if she broke it, she would lose even more than she already had. So, she let Aidan go and was grateful to have kept Micah.
Behind her there was a burp, deep and long, the kind produced only by the stomach of a teenage boy. The kind that penetrated the double glazing and made Suellan startle and shiver. Becky shook her head and threw Micah a withering glance. He shrugged and stood, leaving his plate where it was. That was okay: it was her week to stack the dishwasher. He took the distance to the living room in two long strides.
“Don’t forget your homework,” she called after him, but the only answer was the thud of his overly large sneakers on the carpeted stairs. She listened, tracking him along the corridor, into his room, out again, to hers, door thrown back to hit the wall as always, then three steps to her desk. She imagined the harsh whisper of the school books hitting the cheap laminate, then Micah’s footsteps as he retreated to the bedroom set up just as it had been when he’d shared with Aidan at the Arkham house. Bunk beds and the two desks cramping the much smaller space, walls covered by the same posters, shelves heavy with the same baseball mitts, interesting rocks, pieces of driftwood, and assorted sporting trophies. As if Micah was wrapped in an Aidan-cocoon. He’d be asleep soon; he slept so much, early and late.
“Frogs are going crazy out there,” said Suellan and slammed the kitchen door. Riddle, startled, dug his claws through Becky’s skirt and into her thighs, but didn’t bother to leap off. Becky bit back a curse and looked reproachfully at her mother. Suellan smiled, leaned down, and scratched her shocking-pink nails along the amber fur.
“Stupid cat,” she murmured, then switched her attention to Becky and ran her fingers through the girl’s mouse-brown hair. Becky, like Riddle, closed her eyes for a few seconds, just that tight temporal sliver when everything was okay: the darkness behind her lids was warm and the hand upon her was gentle. For that tiny moment, there was comfort and things were all right. Then Suellan moved away, and Becky heard the sound of her wine glass being set carefully on the bench, then the running of water into the tumbler her mother always took up to bed, to wash down the tranquilizers the doctor kept giving her. “Night, Becky.”
“Night, Mama. Lots of stars tonight,” she said but got no response. When she opened her eyes, Suellan was gone, moving silently as always on her long legs. Becky blinked, and couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt a goodnight kiss on her forehead. She sighed and rose, dislodging the cat, who squeaked indignantly. “Oh shush, hair bag.”
Riddle sat in front of the cat door, as if threatening to desert, but he’d never used that exit in his life, preferring to yowl until someone opened the people door for him, and he wasn’t about to change habits now. He began to wash his ears, watching as she packed the dishwasher, which took more time than it should because they only ran it once a day. Becky didn’t mind. It was quiet time for her to plan, to get her ducks in a row. She always did her homework as soon as she got home from school, so there would just be Micah’s — it was Tuesday, so probably algebra and English.
She slotted the last coffee mug into place then put the soap tablet in the tiny box that was supposed to release as soon as she closed the dishwasher. Becky remained convinced it sometimes hung on for a while, freeing the thing only when it felt like it. Just like she was certain the fridge light stayed on that little bit longer, to assert some kind of independence. Straightening, she peered out the window into the shadowy garden.
Becky took in the colour of the night, how it changed the objects it touched: the swing set she hardly used anymore; the folding sun chairs; the defiantly unhappy Rosa rugosa bushes; the palings leeched silvery by salty air. Sand blew up from the shore and piled against the fence, crept through to make the lawn grainy. She looked beyond the yard, out to where the land fell away and a path led down through a thin barrier of shrubs and stunted trees until it met the beach proper. She stared and stared, lost focus and fell into a kind of trance until something pale ran right past the pane, leaving a smear of after-image on her surprised gaze.
Becky gasped and stumbled back, then leaned close again and scanned the empty ’scape. Something else moved further away, between the trees, paler still, glowing, and then it was gone. At the door there was the sound of the handle being tried, and Becky turned; she didn’t know if Suellan had locked it when she came in. Becky always checked just before she headed upstairs, and sometimes it was locked, others not. The doorknob rotated, slowly at first, then faster as it became obvious that the latch held and whatever was attempting to get in became increasingly frustrated.
She had only just begun to savour her relief when the square-cut flap at the bottom of the door was pushed open, and a greenish-grey hand with long nails and webbing between its fingers darted in, found Riddle’s fat rump, and dragged the surprised animal out before he managed even a squeak of protest.
Reaching out, her first instinct was to open the door, try to save the cat, but the cold part of her brain said no. It stayed her hand, and she backed away, spun on her heel and ran up the stairs, past Suellan’s door — experience had shown that her mother would not be roused until the sun came through her window in the morning — into her own room. Becky crouched by the window, peering over the sill, trying to see where the thing was.
And there it stood, in the middle of the yard, head raised, flattish nostrils dilating as it drew in great lungfuls of sea breeze. Becky thought it — she — wore a dress, something long with sleeves, something bleached. In its — her — arms was the cat, who lay frozen as the talons brushed up and down his pelt. Only the gleam of moonlight in Riddle’s eye told Becky how afraid he was.
The house was locked, thought Becky, they were safe.
It couldn’t get in; everyone else was asleep.
There was just Riddle, poor old Riddle, and he was a goner.
Becky bid him a silent guilt-ridden goodbye, and slumped against the wall. In her heart she was affronted that the thing, the girl, had broken their bargain; that she’d come seeking again, but she knew she shouldn’t have been shocked: hadn’t she spent all that time reading after Aidan had gone, researching in the library? Hadn’t she seen a pattern?
Disappearances stretching back so far that those old microfiched newspapers called it the “the Harvest” or “The Arkham Harvest.” Didn’t she find over one hundred years of reports saying annually how baffled the police were? It didn’t matter that they’d moved, because Kingsport wasn’t so far from Arkham, as the crow flies… or the fish swims… and hadn’t she’d found evidence of teenage boys vanishing not just here but across the length and breadth of Essex County? All the strange girl had to do was follow the path of starlight and the scent of Suellan’s longing, to come up from the cold waters and trek along the beach until she reached their front door. All she’d had to do was wait, bide her time until Micah had ripened, until he was giving off those odours and hormones that said he was fresh meat.
But the house was secure, and Micah was asleep, wrapped in that heavy, unbreakable teenage-boy sleep that rivalled Suellan’s drugged slumber. Becky just had to wait. Sacrifice the poor old cat and wait for the dawn, figure a solution tomorrow when the sunlight burned away terrors. The rush of adrenaline began to wear off, and, in its place, came the sluggish flow of exhaustion. It crept through her limbs, and she closed her eyes. She sat there in front of the window so long that she began to drowse, head drooping; from somewhere a song seemed to start, at first lulling her, numbing her mind, calming her until she had almost slipped to the bottom of night’s well… but then she realised that the beat was wrong. It wasn’t a lullaby, or a comfort, it was familiar and the memory of it made her shudder and fight, swim up from the darkness and wake.
The girl had begun, at some point, to sing: a siren song of amphibian longing, a soothing, a calling, a summoning, so low at first that Becky barely heard it. But it had gotten louder, triumphant, and then Becky had recognised it. She wondered if Aidan had fought or simply given in because it was easier than anything else, because the tune had convinced him to go quietly as easily as it had convinced her to let him go.
Then she heard, quite distinctly, the slap of large bare feet on the linoleum downstairs, the kitchen door being unlocked and thrown open to bang against the wall. She struggled up as if swimming in glue and stared down through the glass, watched as the girl’s smile widened and she opened her arms to the boy covered only by his ratty boxers. Riddle, released, sped back into the house, a streak of frantic flame, passing Micah as he padded into the yard.
It was only when they’d trudged off into the gloom that Becky found she could move freely again. She took the stairs so fast she almost fell, yelling without hope that Suellan would wake. Sprawling into the kitchen, she hauled open the cutlery drawer, looking through the knives, rejecting each one because none seemed big enough for the task at hand. Then, as she sobbed, she remembered all Buck’s abandoned things, the remnants of him that haunted the house: the golf clubs, the tennis rackets. The speargun, that waited atop the laundry cupboard, where Suellan had stashed it when Becky was smaller and unable to reach, but now… She’d grown just enough that she could jump and tap the handle visible at the edge, just enough to dislodge it; one more jump and it dropped, followed by one — only one! — of the spears. But she didn’t have time to climb up and see if there was another; she had to get out, out, following her brother and the girl. Becky slid that precious bolt into place, just as her father had shown her.
Outside, the clouds had covered the moon and the stars had dimmed, so she ran in the direction they’d disappeared, guided only by the textures under her bare feet: grass soft then gritty; then small stones, some sharp, some smooth; then coarse sand as she found the path; and finally the shingle itself with all the fine loose particles that made movement so difficult. And it was dark, so very dark, and she couldn’t make out anything in that blackness as she hefted the weight of the gun and felt… not the trigger, but the button, the button of the light Buck had fitted to the weapon. She remembered how proud he’d been when he got it to work. Becky pressed the switch and a weak yellow light leaked. She swept the pitiful circle ahead of her, across the beach until she found them in a huddle halfway to the water, as if the girl couldn’t wait.
Micah was draped across her knee and left arm; her right steadied his shoulder, while her head bowed over his chest. Sensing the pale wash of light, the girl lifted her face, and Becky saw how full of teeth her mouth was. And her tongue, her long tongue, the tip of it suckered lamprey-like to the boy’s bare torso. Becky screamed, and the girl hissed, dropping Micah to the sand and standing, arms at her sides, the bat-wing sleeves of the dress spread.
Becky fired. She had the girl dead to rights, and the barb flew straight, but at the last moment she shifted like an eel, and the spear went through the wing of her sleeve… no, not a sleeve, Becky realised.
Webbing.
The webbed skin tore and the girl shrieked, flapping the left arm against her side in pain, making the wet hole bigger, bigger. Becky took her gaze from the girl, just for a second, to see if Micah was moving, but she couldn’t tell. Then the girl, the thing, moved faster than Becky would have thought possible and rushed towards her, the uninjured arm striking out and connecting with Becky’s jaw. She saw starbursts against her eyelids, and she wished as hard as she could that she’d had more than one spear.
Becky dropped the gun, and the light flickered off, and it didn’t matter that she opened her eyes, because clouds had rolled in and the night was pure pitch, and all she knew was that the girl was looming above her, and then the breath whumped out of her as the creature settled on her chest. Then there came the oily sting of something attaching itself, snake-like, to her shoulder, between the neck and the collarbone, and Becky couldn’t believe how much it hurt. She couldn’t believe Micah hadn’t been yelling and screaming when she’d found them, not with this happening to him. She wondered if the girl would just injure her badly, incapacitate her, then make her watch as Micah was taken; wait until her heart, already battered by the loss of Aidan, was broken completely, and only then kill her.
And Becky could feel something other than blood flowing from her: life and energy were drawn out, replaced by pure anguish, because she knew she couldn’t do anything to stop it.
Then, as despair settled on her, heavy as the girl herself, the clouds were caught by a new wind, and pulled apart. The moon and the stars were revealed in all their shocking brightness, lighting up the stage of sand and sea as if it was an open-air theatre, and the girl, her tongue releasing Becky and falling limply away, froze.
Becky twisted, finding the girl easy to throw off. She half-scrambled, half-crawled towards Micah but, realising the beach was brighter than it should have been, she glanced around. A shape, in the form of a young man, drifted over the waves and the sand, untroubled by salty water or grit, for he floated above both. As he drew closer, Becky recognised him, and whispered a silent apology for ever doubting her mother.
It was Aidan, drawn home, but Aidan remade, with starlight and moonlight running through him.
Aidan, but Aidan as if he wore light as a shroud.
Aidan, but Aidan as if his life, his death, his afterlife were transparent layers. Becky could see the skeleton innermost, then the pale muscle and flesh, then the punctured, suckled-upon skin holding all the marks to show how he’d died, and, finally, the astral radiance that wrapped him all round, and shone from his eyes and his mouth and his nose. His light began to pulse and pulse and pulse.
And the sight of him, oh! The sight of him made the girl, who’d taken his life so boldly, cower and shrink.
Becky smiled at her eldest brother, but he didn’t smile back, didn’t seem to see her, just concentrated on the girl, as the shining intensified and then blazed out surely as a solar flare, engulfing everything.
Becky was blinded for long moments. When she at last blinked away the searing whiteness, was able to focus and remember what had happened, she became aware of a scent: ozone and fried fish. Not far away she saw Micah, sitting up as if waking, rubbing his head. She struggled over, hugged him until he laughed and told her to stop. And they found they were both crying.
“What happened?” he asked, and she didn’t know how to explain.
Then she realised that the beach was still lit, though moon and stars were once again hidden by clouds. She turned and found Aidan, hanging in the air a few feet from them. She wondered if he would fade, disappear, his work done, his siblings saved. But though they stared for a long minute, then another, then another and another, their brother, transparent and luminescent, remained in place.
Becky didn’t know what was worse: having sacrificed him, or having him back. The remorse that made its home inside her welled up and stuck in her throat. Did he know? Did Aidan know what she’d done? What was he, now? Swallowing, she made a decision, and, with halting steps, Becky approached. She reached out and took Aidan’s hand, which was as fragile and airy, as cold and sharp, as she imagined starlight to be. She tugged at him, and he floated along beside her. Micah stood, watching, waiting, afraid to touch.
“What do we do?” he asked, and Becky shrugged.
“Tell Mama she was right.”