Dark Ages. John Pritchard
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they dropped towards her face like falling stars. Her scream was just a whimper in the stillness of the room. She curled into a ball, and didn’t wake.
3
The sound was just a rustling at first: like rain against the flat roof overhead. Martin lay there, semi-conscious, trying to ignore it. But slowly it grew louder: a crackling noise that seemed to fill the room. Like burning wood. He sat up with a start.
The bedroom was in darkness – he could see no sign of flames. And yet there was a bluish gleam, infusing the dense air. He sat and squinted, baffled – then looked down.
His hands were glowing.
He raised his palms, and stared at them in frozen disbelief. His skin was radiating cold blue light. The frosty crackle sounded like a Geiger counter now. He rubbed his hands together – no effect. The light was welling up from every pore.
Springing out of bed, he stumbled over to the mirror. His face was luminous as well, a disembodied mask. The snap and sizzle of decay was growing all the time. Yet Claire was still asleep – she hadn’t heard it. She couldn’t feel the particles that soaked into her skin.
I’ve touched her with these hands; she’s kissed my face. So she must be contaminated too. Together with what was growing in her womb.
Did magic have a lethal dose? A power to deform?
The crackling reached a peak – and then cut off. The ghostly blue plutonium-glow went out. He thought he’d been struck blind again, and felt his heart freeze up; then realized he was buried in the bedclothes. The bed was hot, and stank of sweat. Claire lay snug against him, moaning softly.
He shrank away from her, got up, and blundered to the bathroom.
Waking up, Claire clutched herself; revulsion made her squirm against the headboard. Her skin was slick, her nerves still itching madly. The dream itself was like a web. It took her several moments to break free.
She slumped against the headboard with her arms around her legs. Her fringe was matted, hanging in her eyes. Shower, she thought – and realized there was nobody beside her. A fleeting twinge of dread, and then she heard water splashing. Light reflected through the open doorway. Shit, he beat me to it, she thought wryly.
Better join him.
Going through, she found him there, beneath the steaming blast – still scrubbing at his raw, abraded skin.
1
Daylight made the Burnt House seem much smaller.
Martin stood and watched it from across the busy road. Lunchtime traffic put it in perspective – a backdrop to the modern urban grind. The sunshine showed its cracks and crumbled brickwork; the window-boards were brittle cataracts. A blind, decrepit visage that the passing world ignored.
He’d heard that it was down for demolition. A Planning Application had been fastened to a telephone pole nearby. Soon the JCBs would come, and smash the building open like a skull. Myths matured in darkness would shrivel in the light. Emptiness would gawp from every window.
I wonder what they’d find inside my head?
He looked both ways, and crossed the road towards it. Today, there was no sense of being watched. He could picture the place as a dusty heap of rubble, perhaps with one wall standing, and a window framing sky. Its ghosts were shadows: primal fears. The only exorcists were light and thought.
Walking slowly round the house, he forced himself to think of last night’s dream. It seemed to say so much – if he would listen. His experience in Dad’s study was still damaging him now. Vibrations from the past were finding flaws inside his mind. In time, they would develop into fissures. Unless he took some action, he’d crack up.
He’d put this off for long enough: casting round for evidence of ghosts, where none existed. Trying to tell himself it was a scientific quest. Avoiding the truth like a credulous child.
He’d had some kind of episode, that night two years ago. Paralysis, a fit, hallucinations. No wonder that he’d looked for other answers. It could have been a one-off, and the lapse of time suggested that it was. But what if it recurred, from out of nowhere?
It wasn’t just his problem any longer; there was Claire. And someone else, he thought. And someone else.
He’d watched her sleep this morning, in the clear light of day. Her belly was still flat and slim, despite the hidden wonder it contained. Martin had reached out, and very gently touched her skin, stroking in a circle round her navel. He had a life ahead of him – if he could face the past. And that meant telling all, and trusting her.
Resolved, he turned and started back. The empty house receded in his wake. An outpost of his fears, destroyed by reason – like a sandcastle demolished by the sea.
Coming home, he knew he was committed. A sobering prospect – yet he welcomed it. A bridge out of the haunted past; a road towards the future. Perhaps it meant he’d finally grown up.
He hadn’t seen this far ahead two years ago, at school. Back then there’d been no call to settle down. He liked girls who were clever, but they had to have nice tits – the impossible perfectionism of Playboy and Page 3. He’d only slept with Vicki twice before they’d broken up. Other girls had come and gone (Nadine had been quite noisy on both counts). He’d never really thought of growing old with one of them.
Lyn, meanwhile, was always being asked out. He could see her now, in slinky black and made up to the eyebrows (he thought she put too much powder on, but what did he know?). He’d tease her as she waited in the hallway for a date – and feel like swearing vengeance if a boyfriend made her cry. But that was different: she was his own sister.
It had taken Claire to match the angles up. She made beauty everyday, and sex a part of something so much greater. He’d never lived so close to someone else, or shared so much.
So grab her with both hands, and hold on tight.
The flat was quiet, full of stagnant sun. Today was her day off: she might be spending it elsewhere. He’d been morose this morning – still shaken by the dream and his reaction. Perhaps she’d gone round to a girlfriend’s, for a moan.
But no: he found her curled up on the sofa, catching up on lost sleep from last night. An open book still rested in her lap. She had her faded jeans on, and an England rugby shirt. Kneeling down, he leaned across, and blew the wispy fringe back off her forehead. She frowned to herself, and opened bleary eyes. A pause – and then she smiled at him. ‘Hiya …’
‘Sorry about this morning,’ he said softly.
She stretched, and shook her head. ‘’S … all right.’
‘And last night,’ he insisted. ‘And the past however many weeks it’s been.’
She looked at him more shrewdly. ‘It’s okay, Martin. Really. I just wish you could talk about whatever’s on your mind.’
‘I’m going to,’ he said.
She frowned again, and raised herself. Still kneeling there, he took her hands and gripped them.
‘I know you’re going to take this like a psychie nurse,’ he muttered.
‘Take what?’
Martin swallowed, staring at their hands. ‘Two years ago … I had some kind of fit. I couldn’t see, or move … it lasted hours. I thought I heard and smelled things in the house – but it was empty. And I had a sort of vision, in my head.’
‘What of?’ she prompted quietly.
‘A