Tim Lebbon - 30 Days of Night - Fear of the Dark

“No, I…” Marty half smiled, not sure if she was messing with him. But it seemed not. She squeezed past him, never once taking her eyes off him, and backed past the staircase into the kitchen.

“Well, come on, then!” she said. “I’ll make tea. Tea?”

“Please.” This is fucking insane! He followed her through the house, and it was only then that he noticed some of the things around him. The place was stinking and cluttered, but hidden behind this was a treasure trove of archaeological items, paintings, and old weapons. A display unit narrowed the corridor, and it was loaded with a dozen reconstructed clay objects. Some were pots or jugs, others sculptures of some sort, and a couple he couldn’t quite identify. Beside the display case stood a few spears which, though dusty, seemed so complete and neat-looking that he thought they weren’t old at all. There for protection? he wondered.

It was the most unusual kitchen he’d ever seen. There was a cooker, a table, and a chair, but all the other units were filled with more items from Ashleigh’s past. They were stacked and shelved neatly, many were tagged, but there was a thick layer of dust over everything which must have made them feel at home.

“Milk?” she asked, shaking a carton that stood beside the cooker. It did not sound fluid.

“Black, please.”

“So what did you say your name was?”

“Marty. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You’re real, then?” she asked without turning around, and with no sense that it was at all an unusual question.

“Completely,” he said. “Flesh and blood.” She paused at his mention of blood, then stirred his tea. Does she know about the vampires? He would have to tread carefully.

“I’m afraid there are no biscuits.” She placed his cup on the small table, spilling a slick of weak-looking tea. She didn’t seem to notice. Her fingernails were black, her arms streaked with dirt, and she smelled like some of the beggars he sometimes saw on the streets. There had been an old guy who used to sit outside their local shop, just away from the pavement along a narrow alley. The kids used to make fun of him because he rarely moved, and a slick of piss had run downhill and stained the pavement. He’d soon been moved on, but Marty had never forgotten that smell. It was the stench of hopelessness, and giving in. Ashleigh did not smell quite that bad—the piss stink came from elsewhere in the house, he thought—but her eyes held the same look of defeat.

“I’m not hungry,” he said. “Mrs. Richards—”

“Ash. I am always Ash. Was always Ash.”

“Ash… I came to ask you about something. Something you dug up once.”

Ash laughed, and it was a delightful sound. For a woman living in such fear, it showed she still had some sort of a life, deep inside.

“I’ve dug up a lot of things. Some of them are around you, here! Some are in other places. A few were worth something, and they’re on display in museums. They were… of interest. Used to be of interest to me, but I’ve had enough of old things. Times gone by. There’s nothing to be learnt from it.” She glanced away and started rubbing at her hand again.

“It’s an amazing house,” Marty said. He took a sip of tea because he thought he should. It was bland and insipid, but at least it didn’t seem like it would kill him.

“Maybe,” she said.

“I wonder if—” Marty began, but then Ash started talking as if he weren’t there. Perhaps she spoke like this when she was alone, and now it was her only way to communicate. He wasn’t sure. But by the time she’d finished, he had an idea of how he could get what he wanted.

“There’s a darkness to the past,” she said. “Shadows cast by time. We enter the shadows, but can’t cast a light there. We don’t know how. Too ignorant. Wrapped up with celebrity gossip and television shows about… maintaining your house. We’ve lost touch with the darkness. Time turns out the lights, and we feel around in history’s night and try and understand it by touch alone. We’ve lost all other abilities to understand. We dig up a sculpture made four thousand years ago—”

Four thousand years!

“—and use supposed expert knowledge to see what it was for. Fertility object, seasonal watch, battery, charm, present to the gods, likeness of one particular god… we don’t really know. How can we? The past is as remote to us as the future, apart from the shards left behind to confuse us even more. At least the future… at least…” She rubbed at her hand more vigorously. “I’m lost in the past. Floating there in the dark. I never thought I would be, never thought all that contact would have such an effect. I’m educated, you see. Learned. I knew what I was doing. But then that thing… that bleeding thing, the bane of my life…”

Can she really mean the Bane? Marty wondered, and the possibility scared him. If she was talking about the Bane, then the chance that it truly held such power was much increased. From what he’d heard, it was little more than some vampire superstition. But now he was talking with someone who might have touched it. And it had driven her mad.

“I’m here to help,” he said. “I’m here to take it away and destroy it.”

She looked at him with dawning realization, as if she’d only just noticed that he was there.

“It can’t be destroyed.”

“Then I’ll make it a shard again. Give it back to the past, so that it’s no longer here to…” He nodded at her hand. “Hurt you. Whatever.”

Ash looked at her hand and started rubbing again, though more gently than before.

“You’re not one of the faces?”

“No,” he said, though he wasn’t sure exactly who she meant. Maybe it was best not to know. “I’m not one of the faces. Not them.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” And she dropped the towel and sat at the small table.

“Will you tell me about it?” he asked.

“No!” The shout was sudden, its volume shocking. “I can’t tell anyone. It’s not part of me anymore.” And then, as if to contradict all she had said, she started to cry, her head lowering more with each wrenching sob until her forehead was resting on her hands.

Marty wanted to help. But he thought if he touched her, he might startle her out of whatever state she was in now, frighten her protective wall into being once again. So he left her bereft, and listened.

“I found it when no one should have. I touched it, and no one was meant to. I sent it away… not far enough, but away. And now I can’t even begin to find it again. Not me. Not like this.”

For the first time, Marty felt a chill at the idea of the Bane rather than a childlike excitement. That excitement had been nervous, true, but nervous like a kid sneaking downstairs after lights-out to watch a horror movie on TV. A thrill. Now he was genuinely scared.

“Tell me where it is,” he said, and Ash looked up at him, inspiring a shattering few seconds of déjà vu.

Tell me where it is, his mother says, looking at him with tears in her eyes, because he’s taken something of hers and now he can’t remember what he did with it. It was only some old postcard with a scrawl on the back that he couldn’t read, and a black-and-white picture on the front of people sitting at the seaside in long coats and jacket. Maybe he’d taken it into their small garden… perhaps he’d torn it up to make pellets for his elastic-band wars with his friend Gaz… but he couldn’t remember right then, and her tears drove any shred of memory deeper.

“If I tell you where it is, will it go away?”

“Yes,” Marty said. “I’ll make it.”

“But…” She started rubbing her hand again, but she’d dropped the towel and now she was just scraping her nails across her skin.