Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

The real Nicholas — the one with a gun, dummy! — had rushed back, looked at Hannah, and his eyes had widened. He’d raised the gun and, just when she thought she was dead for sure, swung the barrel away. Then, blammo! , and a sting ten times worse than any bee’s had rammed like a hot darning needle into her left calf muscle, which now ached like hell. Tears had rolled down her face as she watched her twin self pull out a syringe and stick it into Nicholas. He folded like a dropped doll, and then her twin came over to her. ‘Sleep tight,’ the other Hannah had said, and stuck the needle into her arm. About ten minutes ago she’d woken from a black sleep to here, a fly stuck in the spider’s parlour.

Hannah realised she was crying. Fat lot of good that would do.

‘Help!’ she called.

Her voice was muffled and sucked up by the blackness; it was like yelling from inside a wardrobe full of clothes. The dead sound and the spoilt butter smell of rancid earth confirmed she was underground. It was as if she was dead already.

Hannah expected this to make her sob even more, but instead she found her tears drying up and her tummy growing warm. How dare they? How dare they do this to little girls ! She understood why her parents got so angry when they saw the results of bombers in the white hot streets of the Middle East, why men and women wailed in anger as well as grief when they lifted the limp bodies of children from the rubble. How dare they? No. She wasn’t going to die like this, wrapped up like some helpless baby.

She concentrated, trying to picture herself. There was no weight on her feet. She was vertical. Her heels, back and shoulders were pressed against something hard and cold — the earth wall. She was hung like a side of lamb. She sent a testing kick of her twinned legs against the wall behind her, and heard a small shower of earth trickle and a faint rattling like glass. She kicked again. Another small fall of soil, another rattle like glasses on a shelf. If only she could see . There was only one way that was going to happen.

She strained and forced open her mouth, and stuck her tongue between her teeth. It touched a fibrous skin that made her wet flesh instantly recoil and her stomach jumble. Come on , she told herself, there’s no other way. She opened her mouth again, wider. She felt the binding silk around her jaw stretch. She closed and opened again, wider, the muscles in her neck straining hard. Come on!! She closed and opened one more time. . and felt the horrible fabric tear a little.

She put her tongue out and felt the raw edges of the torn silk. She looped her tongue around them and drew them into her mouth. Just a little bit , she thought. That’s all I need to free my eyelids. She pulled the tasteless web between her teeth and ground, pulling her jaw down in a grimace — it felt as if she was eating the very skin off her face. But the silk over her eyelids shifted. She opened her mouth and gagged, her stomach heaved and finally let go, and a warm gush of acidic mush jetted out. She spat and sniffed up snot. Her eyes opened a crack.

It was impossible to judge the room’s size because it was almost completely dark. The inkiness was broken by three weak slices of light that shone down onto a set of ascending stairs made of old bricks. The far wall was swallowed by the darkness — it could be three metres away, or three hundred for all she could see. She twisted her head to the right. From the corner of her eye, she could just make out the wall she was hung from; into its earth were cut rows of horizontal shelves, and on them were jars and jars and jars. So that’s what was rattling. She twisted her head left, and bit back a scream.

The skull looking back at her had its mouth open. The spider webs that bound the mummified child had long turned grey, and now sagged morosely. The child’s skin was the black of old book leather. Curled black hair poked dully between the smoky silk around its skull. Its eye sockets had been built over with fresher webs.

She looked away, heart cascading. How long had she been here? How long would she need to hang here until she was too weak to do anything and met the same fate? How much time did she have? A fresh wave of tears built up inside her, threatening to burst out. How much time?

Time.

T-i-m-e. T-I-M-E. T-I. .

If she screamed now that she’d spat the gag, the witch would surely hear her. She closed her eyes, focused on the letters. T-I-M-E. T-I-M-E. Tick tock. Tick tock goes the clock. Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. . Her breaths came more evenly as she ran the children’s rhyme through her mind. The bird looked at the clock. The dog barked at the clock. The bear slept by the clock. . Her heartbeat slowed. Before she realised what she was doing, she moved her legs left, just a little, then let them drop back. As she swung down, she lifted her legs right. And drop. Tick tock. She began a rhythm, a human pendulum, swaying on the wall. She didn’t ask herself why; she knew it felt right . With each drop and swoop up, she strained, getting higher and higher. She felt her back, her bottom, her elbows, her heels, scrape on the dirt, grinding through the silk. That’s it! Scrape! Tick! Scrape! Tock! She swung herself, straining left, straining right; swing-scrape, swing-scrape. The tightness around her chest eased just slightly. Her strapped ankles grew slightly freer. She felt wet, cold earth trickle into her shirt, down her back. Left-swing-scrape. . Right-swing-scrape. . a little higher, a little higher. . She could flex her arms, just a little, but that little bought her room to swell and contract as she swung. A couple more! She could hold her legs a few centimetres apart. Her shoulders could shrug. She could slide her hands across her belly. Yes! One more! She swung. .

And felt a line of fire draw across her shoulder blades. She yelped. Her body scraping across the raw earth had exposed a sharp rock, and it dug deep into her flesh as she slid across it. It felt like a line of boiling oil had been dribbled from shoulder to shoulder. Hot tears poured from her eyes and she bit her bottom lip hard to stop the scream from coming out. She stopped swinging.

And, despite the tears, grinned in triumph. Her feet were on the floor.

Laine watched the very last of the day’s colour leach from the sky. A thin slip of cobalt blue kissing the western hills was being subsumed by the black arch of night.

She turned to Katharine. They’d hesitated and delayed, both hoping Nicholas would walk through the door, but as each minute passed it confirmed what they suspected: that he’d never gone to the library, instead had slipped into the woods to deal with Quill himself.

‘He’s in trouble,’ said Katharine.

Laine nodded.

Then they heard a key in the front door.

‘Nicholas?’ called Katharine.

‘Mum?’ called Suzette.

She was halfway down the hall when she must have glanced into her bedroom and seen what was pinned to the floor with a pitchfork — she let out a shriek. Katharine and Laine ran to her.

Introductions were quick, but Laine felt a warmth when Suzette took her hand. She liked these Close women.

They explained to Suzette that Nicholas had not come home.

‘The fucking twit,’ said Suzette.

‘Well,’ said Laine. ‘Let’s go get him.’

The three women looked at one another, and smiled.

‘Yes,’ said Katharine. ‘We’ll need some things.’

Laine found it hard to suppress nervous, insane giggles as she watched Katharine rock the pitchfork free of the mass that had been Garnock. The massive spider’s flesh was rotting at a rate that reminded her of time-lapse clips where flowers sprang forth, bloomed, wilted and died in seconds. As Katharine yanked the fork out, the corpse fell apart into a grey, pungent soup that made both women retch, and which — ironically, it seemed to Laine — buzzed with flies.