The Darkening

‘Who are you?!’

He whirled at the shout, startled.

Mrs Boye stood behind him, brandishing a fireplace poker.

‘Nicholas. Nicholas Close,’ he replied, hiding the tremor in his voice. A woman who could spit on Christ from twenty paces would be a wildcat with a poker. ‘How are you, Mrs Boye?’

‘Ah, Nicholas,’ said Mrs Boye, lowering the weapon. ‘You want to see Trissy. Tristram!’ She wagged a bony finger at Nicholas. ‘I don’t want you two making a racket.’ She gestured for him to follow.

She led him through the house to Tristram’s bedroom door. The sight of it made Nicholas feel suddenly cold. She rapped sharply.

‘Tristram? Your friend is here.’

She looked at Nicholas with an expression that said: boys, how intolerable. ‘Go in, but I need you going home by five. We’re dining early.’

‘Thanks, Mrs Boye.’

She walked away, stiffly whistling a tune that should have been tripping and joyful, but from her sounded broken and lost.

The large house became eerily quiet.

Nicholas twisted the low-set knob and opened the door.

He flicked on the light.

The room had not been touched since Tristram’s death. A Battle Beyond the Stars poster was stuck to one wall with yellowing tape, one corner detached and weeping down. The alarm clock had burnt out, its panelled numbers frozen at 11.13. The air was husky and dry, and smelled like sick soil. A thick film of dust coated the wooden floorboards. In the middle of the floor sat a board game; at its centre was a hard plastic bubble in which was a die on spring steel that would have click-clacked loudly when it was last pressed by small hands. Now, the steel was rusted and dust had painted the dome a cadaverous brown. Cobwebs hunched in the ceiling corners and around the depending light shade. A large spider had spun a web above the bed; the creature seemed to creep a sly step towards him. Watching. The small single bed was still unmade, a gritty patina of insect husks on the Empire Strikes Back sheets. The room was unutterably sad.

‘Nicholas?’

He turned.

Laine stood behind him, dressed in jeans and a woollen jumper. Her anxious fingers twined amongst themselves.

He stepped out of Tristram’s bedroom and closed the door.

Laine looked at the floor a moment, then up at him again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Getting changed, I thought about it. I don’t think I really want to talk with you much about anything.’

Nicholas felt a guilty stab of relief. He nodded. ‘I don’t think I have anything to ask.’

She gestured towards the hall. He could see her fingers vibrating. She was holding herself together with sheer willpower. Husband suicided. Yoked instantly with the care for a senile mother-in-law. No one to help. She led him to the hall.

‘I do have a question,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘Did you shoot him?’

She lifted her chin and watched him with those inscrutable grey eyes.

‘No,’ he answered.

She pursed her lips and stepped away.

They walked past Gavin’s bedroom. As they passed the boxes, Nicholas peeked down again into the half-filled one. And he saw what had caught his eye earlier: the rifle magazines were roughly rolled together and shoved in a plastic bag. On the side of the bag was printed Plough amp; Vine Health Foods. Rowena’s store. Mrs Quill’s old shop.

‘Do you shop there?’ he asked, nodding at the bag.

Laine stopped to see what Nicholas was looking at.

‘No. Gavin took a liking to dried pumpkin seeds. For the zinc, he said.’

And rifles for the lead, thought Nicholas.

She opened the front door for him.

‘Good night, Mr Close.’

Before he could reply, she shut the door, closing him out in the cold.

Nicholas placed the phone book on the coffee table. Its cover was torn and heavily graffiti’d by the previous tenants: a Rosetta stone of cartoon tits and spurting phalluses.

As he walked home from the Boyes’ house, the sight of the plastic bag from Rowena’s health food store kept popping into his mind. Gavin took a liking to pumpkin seeds; for the zinc, Laine had said.

He’d shopped in Quill’s old store. The mark on her door, on the rifle, on the bird. He touched the bird. It should have been you.

It wasn’t coincidence. He knew it wasn’t. The links were growing too strong.

He flicked quickly through the directory’s residential listings for ‘G’. He had an inkling.

I’m right, he thought. I know I’m right.

His finger ran down the surnames. Gull. Gunston. Gurber. Guyatt. There were a dozen Guyatts.

Guyatt, A., Guyatt, A. amp; F., Guyatt, C., Guyatt, E., Linning St, Toorbul. Guyatt E., Paschendale Ct, Mt Pleasant.

Then he found it, just as he knew he would. Guyatt, E., 93 Myrtle St, Tallong.

Nicholas sat back.

Elliot Guyatt, the unprepossessing cleaner who had confessed to the murder of Dylan Thomas and died of a stroke just days later, had lived on the same street as Plough amp; Vine Health Foods.

Rowena’s shop. Sedgely’s shop. Quill’s shop.

Gavin Boye — deliverer of a cryptic message with a self-destruct ending — had shopped at Plough amp; Vine Health Foods. Nicholas was certain that Winston Teale, the huge man with the small voice who had chased Tristram and him into the woods, would have had the frayed linings of his work suits repaired at Jay Jay’s haberdashery.

He reached into his satchel and pulled out Gavin’s rapidly emptying packet of John Player Specials, and realised he no longer had a lighter. He turned on the coil of the electric stove and waited for it to glow. Ridiculous. Rowena was young; Quill and Bretherton were old. Rowena was unthreatening and guileless; Quill had stared from her shop and Bretherton from her photograph through the same cunning eyes. Rowena was pretty and without any air of perfidiousness; Quill/Bretherton/Sedgely was malevolent.

And yet. And yet. .

Someone lumbered into the front door with a crash and Nicholas jumped.

‘Nicholas!!’ came the voice on the other side.

‘Suzette?’

‘Open it!’ she yelled.

Nicholas felt his stomach swirl — something bad had happened. He ran for the door, undid the latch and threw the door open. Suzette sagged inside. Her face was pale and her eyes were wet. She was on the edge of hysteria.

‘Jesus, Suze. .?’

‘I finished dinner with Mum and heard something scratching at the front door,’ she whispered. ‘I opened it. . idiot. . and a white dog bit me.’

Suzette staggered to the toilet, smacked up the lid and vomited. The air thickened with tangy brine.

Nicholas felt the world suddenly grind into slow motion. ‘We have to take you to a doctor,’ he said quietly.

She held on to the porcelain pedestal with both hands. Her right had twin puncture marks just above her