Blacker

He’d almost forgotten how beautiful her deep blue grey eyes were. He smiled giddily and touched her neck with his fingertips, turning her face towards his. He explored her features millimeter by millimeter, pausing at each delicious freckle and the tiniest of contours. Her gentle eyes twinkled as she smiled. He could see that she was enjoying his attention – or giving a fantastic impression of doing so. He stared deeply into them, a hundred different thoughts spiraling out of control in his mind and tumbling on top of each other, falling like dominoes before he could allow any single notion in his mind to solidify. After a long handful of seconds, he opened his dry lips.

“I can see you,” he said. “How is that possible?”

“It’s my gift to you,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

She did not answer his question. Instead, she moved into the room as he stepped backwards to let her get past. Her soft yellow dress brushed against him as she moved. Again he smelled the chocolate scented perfume he knew she loved so well. The odor made him close his eyes, made the boundaries of the fantasy world he was trying to dissolve himself into seem all the more obvious. He ignored the stray thoughts and the feeling of the hairs at the back of his neck standing up.

“I cleaned things up a little for you,” she said simply.

“You cleaned up?”

“Yes. What do you think?”

He had never seen his room in the bedsit but it looked entirely as he expected it. The window was large and bright, the sunlight making the world beyond invisible in a stinging yellow fire that made him smile and squint at the same time. The deep, antiquated square white sink beneath the window was still filled with clutter and chaos but Carol Anne had covered it with a discolored green towel. There were dark patches on the threadbare cloth that reminded MacGregor of blood stains. The work surface alongside the sink had been cleared and the two cheap wall cupboards were closed. He looked down to the ground and spotted the large, thick black bin bag with a bright yellow tie. It was situated to the left of the sink where the cleaning products would have been kept if he’d owned any. The carpet’s original color was almost impossible to determine. It was so mottled with mold and dried up beer and vomit that it might have been a dark shade of anything. The walls were painted white, or had been some time ago. The paint had now yellowed and flaked away in large ugly chunks. Patches of it lay on the carpet and on his lonely bed, the bed itself a mess of grey sheets that were supposed to be white. The pillow was the ugliest thing of all – a lifeless collapsed lung flattened at the top of the bed. Again, this was dotted with blood stains and cigarette burns. Even though Carol Anne had obviously made an effort to adjust the pillow and bedsheets the whole scene of the bed was one of sad disgrace. The little bed had about six burn marks on it. The sheets were filthy. There was a large circular ash stain on the bed – presumably from the ashtray. He couldn’t find that anywhere in the room.

“I thought you’d want to come back here,” Carol Anne said. “I thought you’d want to say goodbye to this place and the people who were here with you.”

He looked away from the room and towards his feet. There was nothing here for him, nothing he wanted to keep or to even remember. He moved towards Carol Anne and pulled her towards him, his hands delicately around his waist.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But things are important.”

“No,” he said, “they aren’t important. Not anymore. But thank you for this. I can’t imagine what it must have looked like before you tidied up.”

“Messy,” she laughed softly.

He kissed her.

“I can’t believe…” He stopped himself and coughed instead. She was still kissing him but he withdrew gently. He looked at her chin, his smile fading. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”

“It’s really me,” Carol Anne said.

He wanted to believe the lie. He really wanted to. He exhaled loudly and closed his eyes. He rubbed his forehead. The skin there felt softer somehow and more sensitive. He thought of Hunter, her dead body lying broken and buried on the bridge to the north. He shook his head to clear it. He remembered the pistol. The weapon he’d carried with him, ready to end his own life with it such a short time ago.

“Carol Anne, what happened to the gun?”

“We left it behind,” she said. “Don’t you remember?”

He strained his memory. He shook his head subconsciously, his memory evading him. He had kept the gun close. He couldn’t remember giving it up, couldn’t think why he would leave it behind.

“Aren’t you pleased to see me?” She sounded sad and a little worried.

“Jesus Christ, of course I’m pleased to see you,” he said. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you in years.”

“Well that’s just alright, then,” her Irish accent twanged pleasantly. “I’m here now and so are you. It’s morning time. We have the whole day ahead of us.”

“I don’t remember falling asleep,” MacGregor said.

“You were tired. It was a long walk back to the flat. We managed to lose our way a few times and that made things very difficult. It was almost light by the time we got home.”

MacGregor felt more hairs standing up at the back of his neck. He frowned. Carol Anne’s fingers found their way to the back of his neck, soothing his nerves. Her touch was so familiar. He watched her face carefully as she gazed at him with her deep and soulful eyes. In every way, this seemed like the Carol Anne he remembered.

He leaned forward to kiss her. She turned her head a little to the right as their lips met, her mouth parting to invite and accept his tentative tongue. He felt her hands on the back of his neck and at the base of his skull, pulling her to him. He had his arms around her waist.

“You feel so good.”

He felt his arousal build as Carol Anne moaned in response to his kisses. He devoured her mouth with his own, sucking breath in noisy snorts through his nostrils. Her hands were in his hair, her fingers lost in his thick flame-colored locks. She was pushing him backwards. As her teeth nibbled his bottom lip he realized they were heading for the bed.

“Oh, John.”

“Carol Anne,” he gasped, “I… I want you so badly.”

“Oh, I know,” she breathed. Her small hands were tight on his shoulders now, pushing him onto the little bed. “Oh John, fuck me now please.”

He pulled away from her as if she’d physically slapped him. The words he hated so much, the words she’d never said to him before. He held her arms tightly, holding her back. Subconsciously, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He felt cold. He was about to speak but there was an almighty crash from outside the door. The building shook and MacGregor heard the now familiar sound of falling masonry and shattering glass.

“What the fuck is that?”

They were half on and half off the bed. Despite the noise and commotion Carol Anne did not seem too intent on leaving it. MacGregor pushed her to the side, running for his door. He pulled it open and ran into the hallway. He’d never seen this room before, but it was not a surprise to see it. There were four other rooms. All of the doors were the same as his own – except for the room directly opposite his. This door was solid wood. MacGregor remembered McQuade replacing it after the drug addicts had locked themselves out of their room and broken the plastic panel in an attempt to get back in. This door was closed, but the other doors were open. A thin cloud of dust was coming through the door he recognized as Jackie’s.

“John?” Carol Anne was behind him, “just ignore it, John. It was an accident.”

He didn’t understand what she meant, but it didn’t matter. He was already going through Jackie’s door, waving his hands to ward off the white dust. There was a lot of bright sunlight mixed in with the dust, almost occluding his sight completely. It was too much light, he thought. As he stepped into the room he realized why. Half of the room was missing. Where the wall had been there was a large ragged hole. Jackie’s sink was dangling over the edge of the broken bricks and mortar, a thin steel pipe away from falling to the street below. But the hole in the wall was not the most shocking thing in the room. That was the pathetic bundle of rags, hair and bone that lay half on and half off the small bed. It was the desiccated corpse of his friend, Jackie Glenn.

“Oh dear,” Carol Anne’s voice was quiet and almost pensive, “this is so sad.”

He stared with his brand new sight at the white bones adorned with dry, petrified skin and morsels of crumbling flesh. She had been kneeling on the floor, he thought. Her left arm was invisible beneath the ruby bathrobe that she had been wearing but her right hand lay on the bed that she had been leaning against. There was a four-color pen near to the mummified claw of her right hand and, beneath that, a dust covered slice of browning A4 paper.

“Yes.” MacGregor whispered a redundant and ancient response to Carol Anne’s statement, “Yes, it’s so sad.”

He reached towards the bones. His friend. Jackie. His companion. The only voice in his quiet life for such a long time. The only light in his darkness. And now, this is all that she was.

“Jesus,” he shivered, “Jesus Christ, Jackie.”

“It wasn’t painful,” Carol Anne said. “Everything just drained away like…”

“No!” MacGregor snapped. “Please, please you must stop!”

Carol Anne was silent. With careful precision, MacGregor slid the piece of paper out from underneath Jackie’s skeletal remains. He shook the dust off with a slight movement of his hand, worried that the paper might just disintegrate altogether if he moved too quickly.

“What’s that?” Carol Anne asked.

“Nothing,” MacGregor whispered.

He blew the last thin layer of dust from the paper and started to read.

John. I know that what’s happening in the city has something to do with those men who took you away last night. I hope that everything will sort itself out soon and you’ll be back here with me. The lights have been out for hours now. Not just the lights. All the power is out. Not just the electricity. My phone won’t start up. Even my watch stopped working. The hands are frozen at four twenty eight. It’s really weird. Out the window the whole street is dark. There isn’t any light at all. I can see a few people moving around out there. It’s a bit creepy, but I’m sure they can’t see me up here.

It was quiet outside for a long time. I suppose most people were asleep when the lights first went out. I heard a few voices outside early in the morning. Men talking. The shouting didn’t really start about an hour later. Maybe it was longer than that. It’s so hard to keep track of time. I’ve just been lying here listening to the silence. Anyway, the shouting started and it didn’t stop. Shouting, screaming. People are fighting outside. I’m really scared. Really, really scared. I wish you were…

There was nothing else. He guessed that this was the point at which Jackie and everyone else in the city had died. Six hundred thousand people dead.

“Six million people in Scotland,” MacGregor whispered. “Sixty five million people in the United Kingdom.”

He placed the paper back onto the bed. He could feel the thing standing behind him. He closed his eyes, clenching his right hand into a fist.

“But it wasn’t just Scotland or the UK, was it?” he said, not looking at her. “It was everywhere, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carol Anne said. “What was in the letter?”

He couldn’t bear to look at her. There were tears in his eyes.

“Seven billion people all dead.” he said. “It’s monstrous…”

He was on his feet suddenly. He turned to look at Carol Anne. She looked confused and frightened. But there was something else in her eyes. For the first time he saw it. There was something else there, something that did not belong to her.

“I need to see Eilidh’s body for myself. I’m going back to the bridge.”

“I don’t think you should,” Carol Anne said.

There was a new tone in her voice. A confidence that somehow was out of place. He wasn’t paying attention to it. He pushed past her and ran back towards his room.

“I don’t understand!” she called after him.

“Where the fuck are my clothes? My shoes?”

“They’re here. Please don’t go!”

It was the sound of her voice, the frightened tone of it. He couldn’t help himself. He had to turn around, had to look. Her large eyes were rounder, impossibly larger than he’d ever seen them before. Her mouth was wide open. A silent scream. She was welling-up. Any moment, a stream of tears would fall down her cheeks. But this was not Carol Anne.

“My clothes?” He spoke with forced calm. His eyes stung from his own tears. His shoulders trembled with the tension he felt ripping through his body. “Please tell me where my clothes are.”

“I have them here,” Carol Anne said, “but please don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“I told you, there’s nothing we could have done for her.”

“Yes,” he hissed, “but that was when I couldn’t see. Now… well, I need to see for myself.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Jesus Christ, Carol Anne!”

She was by his side. In her hands she held a bundle of clothes. He recognized the trousers and shirt he’d put on before entering the SOD. There was a dark, dried-up bloodstain on the shirt. The left leg of the trousers was splattered with other smaller blobs of dark red.

“Thanks,” he said. He took the clothes from her as gently as he could. He didn’t want to look at her. He could hear her crying quietly. He couldn’t bear to see it. He pulled on the trousers and fastened them. The shirt followed. He was on his way to the heavy main door of the bedsit with the shirt flapping around his waist when Carol Anne shouted loud enough to stop him in his tracks.

“I don’t want you to leave!”

He stopped at the door. The ancient, grubby, 1970s style phone was off the hook. The receiver was dangling by its worn out, straightened cord. Strangely, there was a thumb print of blood on it. The yellow white buttons were also stained with fresh looking blood. He stared at the phone for a moment before turning his gaze to Carol Anne.

“Come with me,” he said, “I need to do this.”

He stared at her but his right hand was reaching for the door handle. She seemed less like Carol Anne now. She was frowning and her arms were folded. Her hands had balled into fists. He touched the door handle but withdrew his hand quickly. He looked at the palm of his hand and it was crimson with fresh blood.

“What is this?” he asked.

“It isn’t anything. Please, don’t open that door.”

He pulled the handle. The door was locked. He looked back towards Carol Anne. Her expression was not one he recognized. Her eyes belonged to someone else, or something else.

“Wait!”

He flicked open the Yale lock, thumbing the latch to keep the lock open. It was a purely instinctual move. Wiping his hand on the hip of his trousers, he pushed open the heavy old door. The stairwell was dark, but there was light filtering in from two dirty windows on the ceiling and another broken window on MacGregor’s right. This window had been overgrown by a persistent Scottish buddleia bush. There was enough light to see by. He immediately noted that there was a dark stain on the grey stone floor. More blood.

“Shit.”

He whispered the word to himself. He started down the familiar steps, his hand on the black metal railing. He was following the blood trail. Something had been dragged this way. It had happened not long ago. Some of the blood was still bright and red. There was a lot of it.

“Please don’t go there!”

Carol Anne was screaming from the second floor. It wasn’t Carol Anne and it had never been Carol Anne. He ignored the sound and followed the blood trail. The light from above was reflecting the ground below. He realized that some of the thicker parts of the deep, dark stain were still wet. He straddled the wide trail until he reached the open door of the flat beneath the bedsit. A middle-aged couple had lived there, he remembered. They were called the O’Donnells, O’Douglas or the Donnellys or something like that. He couldn’t remember exactly. The middle-aged and constantly angry man’s name had been Charlie. Charlie’s wife had shingles, MacGregor recalled. Charlie had frequently been very verbally upset by this fact and had shared it often when shouting at the occupants above him to keep quiet.

MacGregor stopped at the door, looking over his shoulder to Carol Anne. She was coming down the stairs. Her right hand reached out to him. Her eyes pleaded with him to stop.

“I didn’t have time to clean everything up!” Her voice was shrill with anxiety. “I was going to clean it all away. I was, John. I know how it will look to you. I understand now.”

Her face was a mask of horror and fear. He frowned at her. She was still coming down the steps, skipping from side to side to avoid the blood.

“Clean what all away? What do you mean?”

He turned back to Charlie’s door. There was a bundle of yellow rags lying in the shadows. MacGregor moved nervously into the near darkness. There was a pair of shoes similar to the strange off-white shoes that Carol Anne was wearing. The pile of rags was the same color as the yellow summer dress he was so fond of, but of course it wasn’t a pile of rags. It was a figure. The strange shoes gave way to a pale white ankle spattered with blood. He couldn’t see the figure’s other foot. It was crumpled somewhere beneath the collapsed, cut-string puppet of the lifeless body. Two porcelain hands were clasped together in the dead girl’s lap. The yellow dress was crimson from her abdomen to her chest. The body’s back was arched, the head flung back and the thin-lipped mouth wide open. There was blood on the face. Blood and freckles.

“I would have cleaned her up,” Carol Anne said.

She was standing directly behind him. He could feel her breath on the back of his neck, fast and hot and nervous. He didn’t dare turn around. He was frozen to the spot, terrified and disgusted all at once. He felt her hand on his shoulder, a touch so light it might not have been there at all. Even the thought of its hand on his shoulder made him shiver uncontrollably. He couldn’t look away from the life-sized and blood-soaked broken body at his feet. Finally, as his fear increased to audible grunts and gasps, he looked into the sad and lifeless blue grey eyes. It was suddenly impossible not to scream.