Thirteen Days of Midnight (3 page)

He’d been eating well, you could see that, and his white suit looked a size small for him. His beard was like something you’d pull out of a drain, his fingers laden with rings.

Dad was talking intently with an old woman who was convinced her dead husband was still lingering in their house. She had seen him in his favorite chair, she said, or not seen him exactly but she had sensed him. She had smelled his scent, the aftershave he’d always worn since his days in the army. She mentioned this point several times, that he’d been in the army, giving it greater weight than the fact he was dead. A man of habit, Dad said, sympathetic, and she agreed. The woman said she’d seen cushions pressed back, as if by an invisible head. And every morning, she said, his shoes would be laid out beside the welcome mat —
no matter how many times she put them back in the attic.
She said this last part with the breathy intensity of the truly batshit insane.

My dad nodded and said he’d like to see the chair, if he might. The camera followed through to the living room. She solemnly indicated the chair her husband still favored, and Dad took off one of his rings and hung it on a chain, then dangled it over the chair saying, “Yes, yes, I can feel his spirit lingering here. He has not crossed over.” He took the widow’s hand in his and, looking into her eyes, told a grieving old woman that her husband needed help getting himself to the afterlife, and that he was the one to provide it.

Seeing the look of feigned love and concern on his face — because he looked at me like that before he left, whenever I fell down in the park or came to talk to him about the monsters in the closet — hurt an amazing amount, like being stabbed, and I changed the channel and was careful not to watch his show again.

It’s fully dark, spotting with rain, as I walk down the drive and come in through the front door. I realize with a jolt of annoyance that I’m not muddy or carrying my sports bag, which calls my rugby story into question, but Mum doesn’t come close to noticing. She’s sitting on the sofa with a face mask packed with ice strapped to her head, which is never a good omen. She’s ignoring a soap opera. Ham lies like a living rug at her feet.

“Hello, love.”

“All right, Mum.” I squeeze her hand.

“We had some sparrows in the garden today. I’ve always been so glad we came out here. Real birds, you know? Not just pigeons. How was your day?”

I discovered that my estranged father — your ex-husband — is dead. I met Dad’s weird solicitor and signed for four million pounds, conditional upon who knows what. I don’t know if I did the right thing.

“School was all right. Nothing happened.”

Mum smiles in a half-focused way.

“Are you OK?” I ask.

“I’ve been getting some fireflies, just this past hour. Don’t worry yourself.”

The “fireflies” are sparks and flashes Mum gets in the corner of her eyes when a big headache is coming on. I should have said something to her this morning. She’ll barely be able to stand up for the rest of the week. I won’t get any help from her. I decide we can talk about Dad when she gets better. She looks strange in her neon-blue ice mask, like an extra on a cheap superhero show.

“Get some rest, Mum. I’ll get myself dinner.”

“Good lad. Glad to hear it. Be a darling and feed Ham, would you? He’s been doing my head in all day, scratching and yelping.”

“All right.”

I feed Ham a tin of Mr. Paws’ Doggy Deluxe before shoving him outside. I put some pasta on, and by the time it’s done, Mum has dragged herself up to bed. She probably wanted to go hours ago, but I know she likes to wait until I’m back in the house so that I don’t come home to empty rooms. There’s a proper rainstorm starting, and when I let Ham back in, he’s soaked to the skin, his downy gray fur plastered over his thin back and legs. He gives me a pained look when I laugh, and slinks off to lie under a radiator. I check my texts. Kirk sent one this afternoon, saying he and Mark set Nick Alsip’s tie on fire with a Bunsen burner in chemistry today. Kirk says it was “legendary.” I obviously missed a big day at Dunbarrow High. I wash up and then, on a whim, go into the hallway and take Dad’s green book from my raincoat pocket. The wind rises outside. I look the book over in the dim light of the hall. Berkley said it was valuable. What’s so special about it? I run a finger over the eight-pointed star on the cover. The leather is smooth and cold.

I go and sit on the sofa in the living room, with the TV still burbling in the background. I mute it and try to undo the clasps on the book. They’re stuck, stiff as corpses. There’s no give to them at all. I try to work out how to force them, but I don’t want to damage the book. It looks so old. I definitely don’t want to break it open — that’ll ruin the sale value. I put it aside and watch soccer on TV. The white ball is a tiny speck against green grass.

I don’t know what time it is. The windows are black eyes in the wall. The TV is on standby, projecting a hollow blue light. Ham lies asleep in front of it, furry chest inflating and contracting as he whines in his dream. The wind is a muted rushing noise outside, and I can hear something — a pipe, maybe — rattling in the walls. I’m lying on the sofa. Dad’s green book is on my chest, clasps closed.

I sit up slowly, feeling like I’m still asleep. I move the book off my chest and onto the arm of the sofa. The boiler must have shorted out or something, because I can see my breath hanging in clouds. I stand and walk quietly across the living room into the kitchen. There’s no light except the glow of the microwave control panel. Weren’t the lights on when I sat down on the sofa? Did Mum come back and switch them off? As my eyes dilate the darkness seeps into me and I see more clearly, the way you do when there’s no light, see the kitchen in soft shades of gray. Outside the window in the garden, the apple trees are thrashing. The noise of the wind is louder in here. The sky is a whirl of blacks, the horizon stained dirty orange by distant street lights.

The cold from the stone tiles is climbing my legs, heading for my insides. I want to turn the lights on, but something stops me, saying that if I turn on the lights then whatever is outside the house will be able to see me.

This is stupid. I’m scared because it’s dark and cold and my deeply buried monkey brain has been programmed by millions of years of evolution to be freaked out in situations that are dark because my eyes are not as adept at seeing in the dark as our predators’ eyes used to be. This is the reason I’m afraid. There’s nothing outside the house. I listen for Mum coughing or moving, but there’s no sound from upstairs.

Walking with deliberate care, I exit the kitchen and stand in the hallway. There aren’t any windows in here, and even though that makes it darker than the kitchen, I feel calmer. This is ridiculous. I’m sixteen, not a six-year-old with a night-light.

Before I can think this over anymore, I stride back into the kitchen and flick on all the lights. For added defiance, I turn on the kettle. The house echoes with the sound of bubbling water and angry steam. Relaxing completely, I walk over to the fridge and pull out a packet of processed turkey. As I eat one of the delicious, if rubbery, slices, I congratulate myself. It’s perfectly natural to feel uneasy when alone in a dark place, but giving in to such animal fears is shameful. I am a candle of reason in the demon-haunted world, etc.

I’m interrupted during these thoughts by a gigantic crash upstairs, like someone just dropped a bowling ball through the roof. Ham starts yowling. He rushes into the kitchen and presses himself against my leg.

I put the turkey back in the fridge — I should make it clear that my hands are definitely not shaking as I do this — and reach over into the fancy-cutlery drawer and take out the sharpest meat skewer that we own. Emboldened by the eight-inch spike, I force myself across the kitchen and into the dark hallway. Ham follows with his head bowed, moaning softly.

“Shut up,” I tell him, and he obeys. I try to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach like I just stepped off the side of a bridge and am plummeting toward black frozen water. I focus on the skewer. I am an Alpha Male with testosterone leaking out of my sweat glands. Ham, my loyal and subservient pack member, is looking to me for guidance in this situation.

“Mum?” I ask, projecting my voice upstairs.

The trees creak.

“Mum!”

Ham pushes his head harder against my legs. It would be just like her to sleep through this, but the stillness upstairs is freaking me out. I need to know that she’s all right.

I take a deep breath, straighten my spine, and quietly put one foot and then another on the stairs, and then the landing. It’s hard to say exactly where the noise came from. Was it the bathroom? Ham pads past me and points his nose toward Mum’s room.

“You’re sure?” I whisper. He whines.

I stare at the white wood, breathing hard.

There’s nothing inside the house . . .

I put my hand on the door.

Ham shifts his weight and whimpers.

I close my eyes and imagine that Holiday Simmon, blond and gorgeous, is watching me somehow, on TV maybe. She wants to see me win. This is where I prove I’m worthy.

I grip the skewer tightly, and then, before I can think twice, I burst into Mum’s room, ready to stab as many burglars with my meat skewer as I can before they take me down.

There’s nobody except Mum in the room.

I whirl around in case they hid behind the door, but there’s simply nobody else here.

I also can’t help but notice that Ham didn’t actually follow me into battle. He’s still standing out on the landing, with just his shaggy head peering around the door frame.

“Judas.” I spit the word at him, waving my skewer. “You furry little Judas.”

He pads into the bedroom and licks my hand.

Cowardice aside, it seems Ham was right about coming in here. The windows are completely open, and wind is ranting into Mum’s bedroom. This must’ve been the source of the noise. Mum’s green-and-orange curtains are flapping about, but apart from that, nothing seems out of place. Her tribal masks are still hanging on the wall, her map of the stars is still in prime position. She’s lying in bed, hair tangled over her pillow.

“Mum?”

She raises her head like a swimmer, takes a breath.

“Yes, love?”

“Mum, your window just flew right open. You didn’t hear anything?”

“No, no. Oh, gosh . . .”

“You didn’t —”

“Luke, love . . . please. I need to rest.”

“OK,” I say, unable to believe she didn’t notice her window blowing open in the middle of a storm. Her doctors aren’t shy with the prescriptions.

She’s already sinking back down onto the pillow.

I close her window, making sure to latch the bolt properly. I stare into the backyard, which is lit by the lights still burning in the kitchen. Mum’s breathing becomes deeper and slower. There’s nobody out there, or rather no evidence of anyone that I can see. I don’t know what I was looking for, whether I expected to see Mr. Berkley out on the lawn or what. It starts to rain again, and the droplets are like little diamonds on the glass. Soon there are too many of them for me to see anything.

“It was probably just the —” I start to say to Ham, and then stop myself. Whenever someone in a film says
it’s just the wind,
they’re immediately murdered.

“Let’s not let our guard down.”

Ham rubs his head on my thigh. Outside, the storm roars. Mum sighs and turns over. Two of her pills and she’s out of it. No help.

“Look,” I say to Ham as we leave, “this will be a one-time-only event, but how do you feel about sleeping in my bedroom tonight? On the floor, obviously.”

I
wake with a woozy headache and a mouthful of sticky gray fluff. There’s a warm weight on my back, which turns out to be Ham, who decided at some point during the night that the floor was the raw end of the deal. He whines bitterly when I push him off the bed.

In the sunlight, last night seems like a strange dream. Dad’s green book is sitting on my bedside table. I remember trying to get it open, and then sleeping, waking up, Mum’s window. . . . I lie still, looking at the ceiling, and think about Dad. I decide that I’m going to be fine about it. What was I expecting, that he’d come back and apologize to me? Beg my forgiveness? Whatever final grovel I’ve missed out on, it’s probably for the best. He’s gone and he left me his money and that’s all I need to think about. Me and Mum are going to be fine.

I spend a little bit longer in the shower than usual to wash every trace of Ham from my hair, then wrap myself in a towel and take a good look at my face — the face of a millionaire, I remind myself with a sugary thrill. I’m not looking like a millionaire, it has to be said. My midnight adventure took a toll. My eyelids are dark and baggy, and my teeth are kind of furry because I forgot to brush them. I do two swirls of mouthwash rather than one, and then spend ten minutes taming my hair with gel. I’m working on a new style of bangs where they kind of swirl to the right rather than the left, but I’m not sure about it yet.

When I feel my face is in order I stroll back into my bedroom and put on my uniform — black trousers, gray sweater, and my newest sneakers. They’re Lacoste, green accenting on white leather. You can’t wear sneakers to lessons, obviously, but it’s not done to turn up at school wearing school shoes. You come in your sneakers, have a kickabout, let everyone see them. I keep my school shoes in my locker. Since I woke up in good time I have a little look at the sneakers from various angles in my full-length mirror before heading downstairs to feed and reassure Ham. I have yet another thought about the money Dad left for me. I can have new shoes every day of my life if I want.