Sixty-One Nails: Courts of the Feyre (11 page)

    "Weirdo!" she mouthed back. Rattling her magazine, she went back to browsing.

    I tried not to look at her for the rest of the journey. At my stop I disembarked and waited on the platform until the train departed and the platform cleared, looking suspiciously at anyone who lingered. I picked out my ticket, climbed the stairs to the barrier and exited into the empty street where late-opening shops tempted the newly arrived commuters to alcohol and convenience foods. Self-consciously I walked past, trying to act like everyone else, to be like them without ever having thought about what that meant. How did you walk? What did you look at? What thoughts were in your head? So many times I had walked this way and had never given a moment's thought as to whether it looked normal or not.

    The suburban streets were damp and the street lights did little but highlight the shadows. I followed the route to my flat scanning the gardens along the front of the houses without any notion of what I was looking for. She said that the thing hunting me might know where I would go. Did that mean it might know where my flat was? Could it be waiting for me?

    My front door was dark, as I had left it. I turned the key and pushed the door open, hearing only the distant rumble of traffic and the background city murmur. Stepping inside I closed the door behind me. I stood, silent at the bottom of the stairs leading up to my flat, not sure what I was listening for.

    Berating myself for making something out of nothing, I spurred myself into motion, stepping stealthily up, avoiding the stair that creaked and staying close to the wall, sliding up to eye-level where the stairway turned a right-angle at the top onto my hallway and checking that the doors were all shut and the flat was as I had left it.

    I went to the first door, throwing it open onto my Lshaped sitting room to reveal only the battered sofa and chair my parents had given me, my television and the stereo. The street lights through the window made shadows across the rug. Stomach tight with apprehension, I turned on the lights, then prodded behind the curtains and peered behind the sofa.

    Going back into the hall, I moved cautiously along to where the kitchen and bathroom were. I pushed open the kitchen door. Both chairs were still tucked under my self-assembly table so I could get to the kettle and the four-ring cooker. I stepped across the hall and into the bathroom where I threw back the shower curtain. My shaving things were undisturbed on the shelf by the sink. I had saved my bedroom until last as it backed onto the small garden. I threw open the door and stepped back, letting the light from the hall fall across my double bed. I could see the security locks on the French windows that overlooked the half-balcony were still secure. I clicked on the light and dropped cautiously to my knees to look under the bed. Isn't that where the monsters always hide? I checked inside my wardrobe just to be sure.

    The dressing mirror inside the wardrobe door revealed my worried expression. I forced a smile, now I had been all through the flat, and returned to the French window to draw the curtains closed on the tiny back garden. The small patio behind the house that I shared with my ground floor neighbours showed dimly in the lights from the rooms below. The row of evergreens at the end of the garden cast pointed shadows across the small lawn, reminding me somehow of Kareesh's smile. It had been a strange day.

    Back downstairs, I locked and bolted the front door, pressing my back against it. I made my way back up to the bedroom and took my suit off, inspecting the mess I had made of it then hanging it up out of habit. I changed into a pair of sweat pants and an old T-shirt, then cracked open a cold beer from the fridge and started packing.

    Not knowing how long I would have, I concentrated on putting my rucksack together first, setting aside underwear, shirts, slacks and casual boots, a sturdy belt and several pairs of thick socks. After half an hour I had all this and more packed into a rucksack that I left at the bottom of my bed. I found a long rainproof coat and a fleece in case it turned cold.

    In the kitchen, I put together an odd meal of leftover ham, grapes, plain biscuits and fruit yoghurt. I smelled the yogurt as I opened it and consigned it straight to the bin. My stomach was sour enough already. The biscuits were soft, but tasted OK with the ham. I ate the grapes as I went through the fridge, dropping anything that wouldn't keep into the wastebin. Then I began clearing rooms.

    It's funny, it's not until you start clearing stuff out that you begin to appreciate how much you have. I didn't have that much, having recently cleared myself out of the family home and leaving much more behind than mere possessions. Even so, I found postcards from my parents behind the clock and little gifts that Alex had given me in my chest of drawers.

    In the bathroom, Alex's hair-mousse was still in the cabinet from her last visit and there was a toothbrush she left with me for the occasional sleepover. I knew Alex's impromptu visits were more often driven by a need for some distance between her and her mother, but I treasured them nonetheless. I tried not to take sides, simply offering tea and sympathy and a place to stay where she was always welcome, always loved. Having her things in my flat was a reminder of her presence. Nevertheless, I binned the items ruthlessly. We could always buy more hair mousse.

    Methodically I cleaned each room, looking under the tables, inside tins and boxes and behind anything moveable. Everything specific to my family or myself, I stacked on the kitchen table. The rest I trashed, flushed or left.

    When I had finished I went back and cleared again, finding a novelty corkscrew in the kitchen drawer that Mum had bought me ages ago and a letter from Kath which had slipped down the back of the dresser. I put all of the things into padded envelopes on the kitchen table and stuck address labels onto the outside. The first note I wrote to my parents asking them to hold onto the items for me said far too much and I knew it would only worry them. The second told them that I was moving out of the flat unexpectedly and needed them to hold onto things until I found a new place. They would still worry, but it was better than before.

    I wrote a cheque to my landlord with enough money to cover three months rent and the outstanding bills, then added an apologetic note that a death in the family had meant I'd had to leave at short notice and wouldn't be back for some time. That much of the truth I could tell him. I asked him if he would mind keeping an eye on the place while I was gone.

    The note I wrote to Kath reiterated what I had told her earlier and explained that I didn't know when I'd be able to make good on maintenance. I sent her the card for my savings account and then sent the code in a separate envelope, telling her to use it to support them both until I got back in touch. That would probably scare her more than anything else.

    Then I cracked open another beer and sat at the kitchen table, looking at the paltry three envelopes containing anything of significance in my life. The whole process had depressed me. I just wanted to go to bed and sleep but my conscience nagged at me until I went through the whole flat again, finding nothing new this time, and finally came back to the kitchen emptyhanded.

    Taking stamps from one of the drawers, I split them between the packages, assuming it would be plenty of postage to get them where they needed to go. I didn't put a return address on any of them. I put on the raincoat and, loading the parcels into a plastic carrier bag, walked back out to the strip of shops around the tube station. I had some trouble getting the envelopes into the postbox, but with some shifting and shoving they eventually dropped down inside. At the cash machine I took out all the money from my current account that my card would let me have so my wallet bulged with it. There, it was done.

    Rain spotted onto the darkened pavement, adding its mood to mine. By the time I got back to the flat I was beyond playing hide and seek and simply locked and bolted the door behind me, climbed the stairs and stood in the hallway of the empty flat. I left the damp coat draped over the back of the kitchen chair and went into the bathroom where I stripped off and stood under the shower, letting the hot water wash away the dust and sweat. I had hoped I would feel better after a shower, but I felt hollow, as if it were my life that had washed down the drain.

    I packed my wash-gear into a small bag to add to my rucksack after I had showered in the morning and went around the flat turning the lights off. I finally fell naked into bed, dragged the quilt over me and lay in the dark. Now I was finally able to rest, sleep wouldn't come. I turned the light on and set the alarm for 6am then turned off the light again. I shifted position and tried to relax, knowing that tomorrow would be no easier than today. Shattered thoughts of the day kept wheedling into my brain, pushing aside the sleep I badly needed. Kareesh had said I would sleep well, proving she didn't know everything.

    Thoughts of Kareesh brought back fragments of images from the vision with momentary nausea and a dull headache. Oddly the sensation helped to ground me after the strangeness of the day, making it more real. I rolled and tossed, tangling the quilt around my legs, unable to get comfortable. I felt feverish, too hot with the quilt over me and too cold without it. Flashes of the vision kept jerking me out of slumber. Eventually I fell into sleep, but it wasn't restful.

    I found myself walking under a starlit sky. The grass under my bare feet was frosted and brittle, though it wasn't cold. Evergreen trees encroached all around the crown of the hill on which I stood and although there was no moon I could still see the shadows of the branches etched in stark outline onto the grass. There was no wind and the stars were hard and bright against the black of the sky. All was silent.

    There was something in the forest. In the dense shadows at the edge of the trees, something was trying to get closer without being seen. I spun around, trying to catch a glimpse of it as it moved. There were only still shadows across the grass. I started to move down the side of the hill, convinced that once I was unable to see beyond the crest, it would slide, unseen, out from under the trees.

    I woke with a start, sweating, the dream hanging over into the waking dark. I knew it was much later because the background city sounds, omnipresent even in the outer suburbs of London, had died down to the minimum. The alarm clock confirmed that it was close to 4am. My bladder told me the beer had followed its natural course and I got up in the chilly darkness, still half asleep, finding my way by faint moonlight out to the bathroom to relieve myself. I shook my head to rid myself of the remnants of the dream, flushed the toilet and headed back to bed.

    As I reached the bedroom, I stopped. The moonlight in the room was moving. I jumped back, expecting something to leap out from behind the door, but everything remained quiet. I glanced at the window, wondering if I had absent-mindedly left the curtains apart, but they were pulled tight. Strangely, the light was on the inside of the curtains.

    My heart was beating fast now and I was wide awake. The unseen pursuit of my dream came back to me and I strained to see what was causing the shifting light. Cold sweat condensed down my back as I tensed, waiting for it to jump out.

    But now I looked, the light was with me in the doorway. It was following me around. I went hesitantly back into the bedroom, observing that the strange luminescence accompanied me, falling on the back of the door as I pushed it closed. I turned into the room to find the light dancing on the walls, like moonlight through a leafy tree canopy. It had a bluish night-time tinge and while it wasn't bright, you could make out the whole of the room by it. I turned up my palm, but my hand was dark. How could my hand be dark when everything else was glowing?

    I went to the wardrobe and opened it so I could look at myself in the long mirror on the inside of the door. The reflection made no sense. In the mirror, the room around me danced in the faint flickering light, but I was completely dark. I was so dark, even close to the mirror I could see no feature of my face in the strange radiance. What on earth was going on?

    I turned around and the light shivered as if it passed through water disturbed by a languid hand. Even when I was completely still it shifted as if rippled by a wind I did not feel. I turned to the mirror and placed my hand upon the surface. Where my hand touched it was completely black but around it the glow intensified as if the glass itself had taken in the light, outlining my hand in a nimbus. When I moved my hand the glow trailed behind it, fading back to normal after a second. Experimentally I wrote "HELLO" on the glass with my finger, but the letters didn't last long enough for the word to show. There was no doubt, though, the glow was connected to me.

    I stepped back, perplexed but intrigued. I looked around me and tried to encourage the glow, or at least that was the closest I could come to describing what I did. The glow pulsed and brightened, allowing me to pick out creases in my pillow and the darker pattern in my dressing gown. Then I damped it and it dimmed down until it flickered and died away. I stood in the near dark of my room, but it didn't come back. I turned back to my reflection and noted that even though it was now darker, I could see the features of my face and body in the meagre light leaking around the edges of the curtains.

    Is this what Blackbird had meant by my magic? Is this what I could do?

    Having done it once, I had to try again. I tried to glow, thinking of the strange light, but nothing happened. I looked at my hand, wishing it dark, but there was no change. Why didn't it do it again? Had I exhausted it? I thought not, but I wasn't sure what had started it. How did one glow when one wanted to? I wished Blackbird were here to see it as I was sure she would know, but then I remembered I was naked and somehow those thoughts didn't mix. She was sixty or something, or a lot older. Either way I could not imagine being naked in front of her. It felt wrong.

    I went back to thinking about the glow, putting aside that troubling train of thought. What had she said to me? Magic responds to need? I tried to need to glow, but you can't just need something because you think you can.