Blacker

The morning was warm and almost humid. Hunter had been right. There were insects in the air. A heavy sounding bumble bee ambled in front of MacGregor’s face. MacGregor closed the Royal Hotel’s door behind himself as the bee buzzed off into the distance. The air outside was still, the sun feeling strong on MacGregor’s face. It felt more like summer than springtime. Pollen was heavy in the air. More than a few insects buzzed nearby.

“Storms at night, sun in the morning,” MacGregor commented. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but this feels like May or June to me now. I can feel the sun burning my skin. I burn really easily in the sun. I always have. And I know from experience that it’s usually about the end of May that I need to start thinking about sunblock. Otherwise I end up…”

“I get it,” Hunter grunted. “Yes, I agree with you John. It feels very warm today.”

Her tone suggested impatience, irritability. He didn’t know what was wrong. He guessed that she regretted their brief flurry in the bed. It made him angry. After all, she’d started it.

The car, of course, was parked where they’d left it. She unlocked the door with the remote unit. Without a word, she opened the boot and placed the rucksack into the luggage area. He groped for the boot, hoping that Hunter wouldn’t close it on his hand. Finding the edge, he removed his jacket and stuffed it into the right side. He felt the boot closing and removed his hand just in time.

“Fuck’s sake, Eilidh. What’s wrong with you?”

She didn’t answer. The boot clicked shut and she padded round to the driver’s seat.

“Are you driving again?” he said.

“Funny.”

The engine started as he made his way to the passenger door. There was a sharp pang of fear when he imagined Hunter driving off without him. Then he was getting into the car. He was barely in the seat before Hunter started off. The tires screeched as she spun the car around. MacGregor braced himself against the door.

“Jesus, Eilidh. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” she said. “We’ve made a good, early start. I just don’t want to waste more time.”

Again, there was something in the tone of her voice. The Mini’s engine screamed as she went through the gearbox quickly. She was driving too fast, he thought. She was putting them both in danger. He opened his mouth and drew a breath. He was going to shout at her, tell her to cool it. But then, before he could, the Mini was slowing down. Hunter said something under her breath. He didn’t quite hear it.

“Excuse me?”

“Fucking bollocks, John. I said fucking bollocks.”

The Mini was still slowing down. Hunter’s driving was less erratic and random. She was breathing heavily. There was something wrong with her breathing. It sounded like she was angry. Then, of course, he realized that she was actually crying.

“What’s wrong?” he said softly. “Eilidh? Why are you crying?”

“I’m being emotional, John,” she said. “I’ll be alright. Just ignore me.”

He felt her stabbing at the radio. There was a crackle. Just the slightest burst of static. A stray morsel of electricity bouncing around inside the dashboard mounted wireless receiver, but enough to make MacGregor’s heart leap to his mouth for a fraction of a second. When he realized that there were no actual signals, he leaned back to bump his skull against the headrest.

“Static,” he said.

“Yes. There’s nothing on the radio today,” Hunter said. “Nobody is out there.”

He was still angry, still confused. He’d shared part of his soul with Hunter. He felt that she’d done the same. They’d shared each other’s bodies. He’d thought that meant something. Now, it seemed that she was ignoring all of that.

He breathed heavily, stifling his anger. “So it’s just us then?” MacGregor said.

“It looks like that, John. At least for the time being, it looks like that.”

The emotionless tone of her voice maddened him. He felt his shoulders shaking and his face becoming hot with anger. He didn’t turn his face away. He wanted her to see what she was doing to him with her dismissive, infuriating blanking of him. After about a mile of driving he realized that she either wasn’t going to acknowledge his anger or she didn’t care to notice it. After another mile, he couldn’t take any more.

“So what the fuck is this, then?”

The car braked sharply. MacGregor wasn’t wearing a seat belt and instinctively threw out his hands to protect himself. The middle finger of his right hand caught against the gearstick, almost breaking it as it pulled back.

“Ahhh! Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “What the fuck are you doing?”

They’d been going faster than he realized. The car was still skidding to a halt, almost out of control. There was a strong smell of burning rubber. He fell back into his seat, squeezing the pain out of his staved finger.

“So what is it?” Hunter snapped. “What do you want to know?”

“You almost broke my fucking finger, for fuck’s sake.”

“Do you have to say the F word in every single fucking sentence?”

“I fucking well don’t, but I fucking well will, if you don’t tell me what the fuck this fuckery is all about!”

He was surprised at his own intensity. For a moment, it occurred to him that he should apologize. He was so angry that he’d forgotten himself for a moment. And he wasn’t even sure why he was so angry. What had he expected from her? How was she supposed to act after they’d made love? Did she regret it? Was it a mistake she couldn’t run away from? He was embarrassed by his feelings, but the pain in his hand kept him from apologizing.

“What do you want to say, John.”

He flexed the fingers of his right hand. With his left, he rolled down the window of the car. All the way down. He wanted to smell the air and feel the wind on his face. He sniffed generously. The burned rubber smell overpowered nearby wild flowers and some animal’s distant, decaying carcass.

“Well?” Hunter pressed.

He cleared his throat. “Last night was just amazing. It really meant a lot to me. And now you’re acting like we’re just two strangers.”

“We are two strangers, John.” Hunter said. “You don’t know anything about me. I don’t know anything about you. We’re two people who’ve known each other for a total of about ten hours.”

He swallowed hard, blind eyes looking out the window at the infinite darkness. The sun was hot on his face, burning his skin. Hunter’s voice was calm and serene, but her breathing wasn’t even. She was breathing loudly through her mouth, sniffing slightly as if she was about to catch a cold.

“Last night was just something that happened. It doesn’t mean that we’re any closer than we were when Simard introduced us a few days ago.”

He turned away from the window, replacing his dark glasses. The bridge of his nose hurt from where they pressed down on his skin. “I don’t even know what that means,” he said, shaking his head.

She sniffed quietly. “It was something that happened between us because we were both stressed and anxious. It was a way of releasing tension.”

“Okay, well I can fucking just fuck myself if I want to release tension.”

“Charming.”

“And it’s worked a fucking charm, too, hasn’t it? I mean, look how fucking relaxed we both are? What is it you said you did for a living, again? A fucking psychiatrist?”

“I’m a psychologist,” Hunter said.

“Whatever. I don’t even know what the difference is.”

“I’m not a doctor,” Hunter said. “I work with people who have beha…”

“Shit, I don’t really care,” MacGregor snapped. “It’s all the same to me. I just don’t like being used, that’s all. If your work is to do with the mind and all that then you’ll understand.”

Hunter hesitated. It was a long pause. MacGregor wondered what she was thinking. Finally, she said: “I don’t think you were used, John. I think what happened last night was good for both of us.”

“Let’s just agree to disagree,” MacGregor said. “I thought it meant something. That’s why I’m angry.”

He hadn’t realized that the car engine had stopped until it Hunter turned the key in the ignition. The starter turned several times and there was a smell of petrol.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

They were moving, but slowly. Somehow, the subject of was closed. He didn’t feel anger anymore. He felt like closing his eyes and sleeping. He removed his glasses again and leaned back into the soft headrest, closing his eyes. He tried to clear his thoughts. Hunter had a point. They’d only known each other for a short time.

There was sweat on his forehead. He wished he’d thought to find some deodorant at the hotel. It was hotter outside now, maybe twenty degrees. He kept the window down, enjoying the cool air on his face. The Mini picked up speed. MacGregor imagined a long straight road. He guessed that Hunter was driving at about forty or fifty miles an hour.

“Where are we?”

“I’m not sure what it’s called. It’s the bridge just before Inverness. The Kessock Bridge, I think it’s called.”

“That’s right. Kessock Bridge,” MacGregor echoed, “Is it clear?”

“Mostly,” Hunter said. “It’s a dual carriageway. I’ve passed about eight or nine cars ahead of me, but they’re all at the side of the road. One of the cars was a people carrier. It looked like the whole family was still inside it. The others were empty, but there are dead people here and there. The cars broke down and the occupants got out to walk, I suppose.”

“Poor bastards,” MacGregor commented.

“Yes,” Hunter whispered.

They drove straight past Inverness without stopping. The radio was silent the whole way, not hitching on to even a pop or a crackle of static. After twenty minutes of silence, MacGregor decided it was time to speak.

“What do you think we’re going to find in Glasgow?”

Hunter waited only a second before answering. “Nothing,” she said.

“Yes, that’s what I think, too.”

They drove in silence for another hour. MacGregor was still feeling tired and decided to close his eyes. The air had turned cooler again and his window was up once more. The radio was still searching from 88Mhz to 108Mhz. The whole commercial FM band. But there was nothing to be heard. From time to time he’d hear Hunter stab at the buttons there, keeping the radio scanning for signals that weren’t there. The little car’s engine was quiet, its tires making a steady and almost hypnotic burring on the road surface.

“You’re everything to me, John,” Carol Anne said, softly. “You always were and always will be.”

“That’s so nice,” he said. “Really, that’s just so great.”

He knew it was a dream. Vaguely, he realized that this wasn’t real. But he didn’t want to end the dream just yet. He had a feeling about what was going to happen next and he wanted it to happen. If it went wrong, then he would decide to end the dream and wake up. But there she was, just as he remembered her. The cute twinkle in her eyes. The lopsided pirate’s smile, almost sad but not quite. Her freckles and long brown hair. Those big eyes, so inviting and warm. Her natural beauty.

“Oh God,” he said, “I’m so glad you’re here. Everything’s so bad now. Everything’s so bad since you went away. I want you to come back. I want you to be here with me now. Or I want to be there with you. I just want us to be together.”

The boundaries of the dream’s fragile reality wobbled. He tried to relax, knowing that once he awoke she’d be gone. It had been years since he’d dreamt of her. Years since he’d seen her smile. Those eyes. The only girl he’d ever loved.

“We can be together,” Carol Anne smiled. Her eyes twinkled. He could see the stars in them.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said. “Your eyes are just so beautiful.”

He was looking into her eyes, but he was somehow looking into the stars. He was looking through the great void of space. And then he was looking into an endless velvet darkness. A soft blackness that wrapped itself around him.

“Carol Anne!”

“I’m here. I can see you.” He heard her voice all around him, inside him. Still, there was only blackness. The blackest black. Blacker than anything he’d ever seen or known.

“I’m blind,” he whispered, “I can’t see.”

“You’re not blind.” Carol Anne’s voice was inside his head, vibrating deep into his soul. “If you really try, you can see me.”

He had the sensation of falling. But he couldn’t be sure if he was falling down or soaring upwards. He realized that the latter was true. He was moving upwards, accelerating into the dark and becoming a part of it.

“I’m scared,” he muttered.

“We understand.” The voice sounded like Carol Anne, but not the Carol Anne he remembered. The dream had become unpleasant. It was time to wake up, he thought. He couldn’t see Carol Anne anymore. He wasn’t sure where she was or where he was going. There was only darkness and he was moving faster and faster into it.

“I’m sorry I let you go.” He felt tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m really sorry I let you go.”

“I know,” Carol Anne said.

He was flying ever upwards. Moving faster than a rocket. He was staring above himself, but there was only the infinite blackness. But then there was something else. The tiniest dot of blue, far in the distance. His body continued to accelerate through the nothingness and the tiny blue dot was now a shining blue marble. And in the next breath it was the size of a ping pong ball. He realized that it was the planet Earth, his home. He was moving towards it at the speed of light, perhaps faster. And the Earth was just so beautiful and so very blue.

He was beginning to wake up. He didn’t want to, he realized. He tried to relax, but consciousness was creeping back. He knew it was too late. Knowing, in itself, was one of the problems with waking-up. The real world once more pervaded his mind, flattening his memory of the elusive and oh-so inviting dream world. The dull rumble of the Mini’s tires was the prevailing thought in his mind now. That, and the fact that the blackness all around him was real again and no longer imagined. And he was no longer falling or flying into it. He was just trapped within it. Imprisoned in the darkness, forever.

The Mini’s wheels rumbled over the road surface. There was a light pattering of rain on the windscreen. Hunter flicked a lever on the steering column. The windscreen wipers moved once, swishing away a few droplets of water.

“You nodded off,” Hunter’s spoke kindly, softly.

MacGregor felt a great sadness. Carol Anne was lost forever. Everyone was lost. It was the end of the world, the end of hope itself. He felt a tear trickle from his left eye down his cheek. He smoothed it into his skin with the back of his hand.

“We’re just north of Perth. Almost half way there.” Hunter’s voice seemed to have a new optimism that was obviously fraudulent.

“Okay.”

“You were asleep for about two hours.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Now fully awake, he realized that he was still angry with Hunter. He wasn’t in the mood to converse with her.

“I know I said that you don’t know me and I don’t know you.”

He turned his head in her direction but didn’t speak.

“Don’t be angry with me because of that,” she said. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

“I’m not angry,” he lied. “Anyway, let’s focus on what we’re trying to do here. We’re going to Glasgow to find your dead husband and then I’m going to find my dead flat mate. And then… and then what? Then I guess we’ll just figure it out as we go along.”

“That’s very cold, John. I’m sorry that you’re angry with me. Like I said, we’ll get to know each other as time passes. It’s likely that there won’t be anything in Glasgow for either of us. But we have to do it. For closure.”

He grunted indifferently. “Closure. I suppose for you, yes. I don’t have anything to close. I shared more with you than I ever did with Jackie.”

The weight of his words sank in then. Hamish was still a part of her life, regardless of the state of their relationship. You didn’t just forget someone once you fell out of love with them.

“I’m sorry about Hamish,” he said. “I’m sorry for you.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He expected more, but Hunter didn’t say anything else. He was trying to think of something else to say, but then Hunter’s driving became unusual. She seemed to be slowing down and turning the car at the same time. The tires were biting into gravel and dirt. She was leaving the road, he realized.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh my God!” she said. “Oh my God. It’s…”

She screamed. The car was coming to a slow halt, turning to the right.

“Oh my God. Oh I… I don’t…Oh my God!”

“Fuck’s sake Eilidh! What’s going on?”

“That’s the Forth Road… no, it’s the Forth Rail Bridge. It’s…in the sky. I mean… the Rail Bridge it’s being lifted into the sky.”

MacGregor had never crossed the Rail Bridge, but he’d seen it many times when driving across the nearby road bridge. The iconic Cantilever Bridge was a famous Scottish landmark.

“What the fuck? Being lifted by what?”

“Nothing. It’s just… it’s just rising into the air.”

“Shit. How far are we from it?”

“Twenty miles, perhaps more. I don’t believe what I’m seeing. It’s just rising into the… oh my. Now it’s turning on its end. It’s turning on its end. Some parts of it are falling away…. Falling down to earth. I can’t see the ground. It’s on its end and… it looks like it’s being… it’s being unraveled.”

“How do you unravel a one and a half mile long steel bridge?” MacGregor said.

“I… I don’t know. Some of the metal looks like it’s falling away. There are just two long sections left. They’re being twisted. It’s like something’s tying them into knots, John. I really can’t believe what I’m seeing. Oh shit!”

“What?”

“It’s dropping. Whatever was holding it up just let it go. It’s gone. Into the Forth Estuary or onto land somewhere I don’t…”

She stopped talking. The Mini shuddered for a moment. MacGregor realized immediately what he was feeling.

“Holy fucking cow,” he said. “That was it hitting the ground, wasn’t it?”

Hunter didn’t reply. She was leaving the car.

“Wait!” he shouted after her.

“I need to see something,” she shouted back.

He might have stayed put, but when she closed her door he moved without thinking. He was out of the car in a second and making his way around the bonnet towards the driver’s side. He flinched as a heavy drop of rain slammed against his forehead.

“Eilidh!” he shouted, “don’t leave me!”

“I just need to see! I’m not leaving.”

She was moving away from the car. He stumbled towards the sound of her voice, flicking open his cane. The cane opened swiftly, feeling different in his hand than he remembered it.

“Eilidh!”

“I’m here. I’m just looking at the sky. I’m trying to see what’s up there.”

He was beside her now. He reached out his left hand and she grabbed it tightly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I needed to look up at the sky. Before it went away. I thought there would be something up there. I don’t know what I was looking for, but there’s nothing there. There’s nothing in the sky.”

“Was it really the Forth Rail Bridge?”

“Definitely. For a few seconds I could see the shape of it. But then it became contorted. It began to fall apart. But it was being twisted and tangled. Like something was playing with it.”

“We should keep going,” MacGregor suggested. He didn’t have a real reason. He just didn’t want to be standing outside. Somehow, he felt they’d be safer in motion. Hunter might have agreed with him as she began to drag him back to the car.

“There’s nothing up there,” she said. “ I don’t know what I was expecting to see. A big hand. A flying saucer. I don’t know. But there’s nothing there.”

“Okay.”

She started the engine and the little car moved off.