Bloodeye (5 page)

It’s happening again.

Keane paced his flat. The curtains, heavy drapes, were all drawn. The sun pounded down, but he didn’t open a window to let in even the slightest breeze. It was dark enough to hold down the shadows.

It can’t be him,
he thought.

Seven years ago. 2006. He’d killed him. The man who’d killed his wife.

Seven years ago, he’d started running. Running
from
, not
to
. Running from the memories, the time, his loss and his past. Always running from, but seeking, too.

The void. Hunting it. Chasing it down.

But he couldn’t catch it. Not yet. He wasn’t strong enough. His legs couldn’t take it.
He
couldn’t take it.

The void was the only place he knew where the memories would leave him alone.

But, if it was happening again?

He’d killed him.
It couldn’t be.

But he saw the woman and the man, dead in the pub. He saw them. He did.

No messing.

Keane paced in the low light all day. Thinking things through, thinking if there was some way, any way at all, that he could have lived.

Maybe,
said the voice of his wife.
Maybe, baby,
she said, a smile riding her ghost-voice.

He was gone, remember?

Keane shook his head. Shook the voice hard enough to make it stop.

There, in the dark, the shadows were at bay. But his wife was not. Memories could not be stilled with light or shade.

His body wasn’t there, baby. Remember.

This time, not a question. A statement.

And it was true. Of course there’d been no body.

18

Keane strained. An almost physical thing, his face contorted. Thinking back, ugly as it was. Trying to remember the day and night he’d killed his wife’s murderer.

Flashes surfaced—dead, bloated memories floating to the murky surface of a pond.

He wanted them submerged, down in the deep. But they were coming up.

But he couldn’t remember what happened to the killer’s body. Couldn’t dredge it from the depths, like it was caught on a root.

So he strained, his jaw tight and his fist clenched.

“NO.”

He spoke to the darkness within, trying to get out.

But it couldn’t. It wasn’t strong enough.

You might have to let it loose,
said his wife.

He’d loved her. He still did and always would. But he told her to shut up, just the same.

She was right, though. She was right.

He’d tried something similar before. The cost had been high. Higher than he’d been able to bear. He’d lost her, lost himself. Lost, looking for the void when all he could find was the abyss and those great black walls.

“I’ve got to find him,” he told his wife, aware he was speaking to her ghost within his head, his shattered mind.

Run?

No. Wouldn’t work.

Then,
he thought,
give him what he wants.

Me.

19

It’s not an easy thing to bind yourself.

Keane had managed it before, but with Teresa’s help. This time he was on his own. Completely alone.

Nearly.

He opened the curtains and called in the light. Made the shadows hard, like the hardest dark.

To let him in. To make him come.

The beast that lived in the hard, dark places in his soul. The creature that hid in his shadow.

It’s not an easy thing to do, to call up your shade. But he did it.

This time, though, he wanted him out.

Before, in the cave, he’d wanted him to stay in the shadows and because of that failure, Teresa was dead.

This time, he needed him out.

To kill him for good.

IV. The Shade; ’06

People crave the light, yet shield their eyes lest they be blinded and coat their skin to save themselves from the fire of the sun. They crave the light so badly they created fire and lightbulbs and night lights and torches and gaslights and candles to keep the dark at bay.

You understand this dichotomy while wishing for nothing more than a blanket, a cloak, of darkness.

Nyctophilia—love of the dark, the night. You lean toward the shadow, hug the shade. You are not the opposite of people; you do not fear the light, but
shade
.

With no light, there is no shade.

Blackness. The well, the pit, the abyss…all that is inside you and you are inside it; the black dog’s slavering maw.

But this is not true dark.

Blackness, like the void, must be absolute. It must be everything.

There is no black within a city, nor the lightless country on a clouded, moonless night. This is not black, not absolute. Where there is a memory of light, the darkness is not, never will be, pure.

The void. The void is pure.

Is there a place in the world the light has not touched, ever? You don’t know. You can’t know the history of the world and the explorations of all mankind with their fear of the dark, fascinated by it, just the same.

You can’t know these things.

But there is a place. A place you’ve been before. With a torch, yes, but man’s light and not the one true light. There is a place that never saw the sun. A place below, an inverted heaven, down in the earth.

Heaven, hell…just a matter of turning toward the light or the dark.

20

Teresa fell asleep an hour into the journey to the caves. She slept a lot since the accident.

Just a little longer, honey,
he thought at her, trying to somehow plant the thought in her sleeping mind with the strength of his will alone.

Of course he wasn’t telepathic, but they shared a link, nonetheless. More than just husband and wife. She’d called out to him before, hadn’t she? And he’d heard her. Saved her.

For what? To bring her with you, into the dark? Because you can’t face him alone?

His own fear shamed him, as did his weakness. He wanted to face this alone, to leave her out of it. But yes, he was afraid. He could admit that much to himself, if no one else.

Tuesday, it ends.

And he’d spent most of Monday driving.

The air conditioner was on full, blasting cold air into the car. The windows were still hot, though, and he could feel the dirty heat on his skin. His pores were clogged with it, despite sweating constantly, air conditioner or not.

She stirred, and he wished her back to sleep.

Little longer, baby. Little longer.

Well out of Norfolk now, the hills were in sight. Within them, the one place he knew where the dark was pure and they could not be touched by the shade. By his shadow.

Is he your shadow?

The truth was, Keane didn’t know. Something within his shadow, a demon? A haunting? Maybe he’d never know. But he couldn’t let it out again. Wouldn’t.

For her.

She muttered something in her sleep, unintelligible yet curiously endearing, like a kid who laughs in her sleep.

Keane pulled away from the main road onto a smaller road. Still tarmac, but potholed. The car jolted with each dip and bump, even though he’d dropped his speed below 20mph. He slowed even further as he turned from the road onto a shingle track through a canopy of trees. Some hung low enough to scrape the roof of the car, some weeds on the track below high enough to scratch at the undercarriage.

It felt cooler already, from under the gaze of the sun. For an instant, coming into the sun again before a chained gate, it burned and the sudden switch from shade to sun made Keane’s head swim with bright, starry lights. He blinked it away, aware that he’d bitten his tongue.

Nothing serious. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

The gate didn’t present much of a challenge. The gate itself was sound, the chain thick. But the fence was rotten and down in places. He drove off the shingle and onto the bone-dry grass, over the fallen fence and back onto the shingle again. It would be maybe a degree cooler here, because of the slight elevation above sea level. Only a small range of hills, but enough.

And he knew the way. He didn’t know why he knew the way, but it seemed hardwired into him. When he’d thought this through, planned it out after seeing the note (
Tuesday, it ends
) on the back of his own photograph, he’d known exactly where to go.

He didn’t remember ever coming here…and yet here he was. Here they were.

At the mouth of a cave in the side of a modest hill. Maybe a prehistoric mine of some kind, or just a natural formation. He wasn’t a geologist or historian, or even a spelunker. Just a photographer with a deep black shadow calling him back to the dark.

Still Teresa slept. He longed, once more, as he had so often, to kiss her.

But he didn’t. Instead, he switched off the engine and opened the door. The heat hit him like a blast and he was aware of blood in his mouth.

Bit your tongue again, Keane,
he thought.
Careful now.

He remembered packing his medication with the rest of the supplies for this trip.

No. No you don’t,
he thought. And he knew it was true, because he couldn’t remember packing half of the things he saw as he unloaded the trunk of the car. Rope, yes. That made sense. But the rest of it? Not so much, no. Not so much.

Don’t remember, do you?

His shade’s voice? His?

He didn’t, but then, that’s what this trip was for, wasn’t it? To deal. To get his life back. To see his shadow in the grave, dead in the deep dark with no hope of return. To end this second life.

Keane stood out in the sun for a second. This time, his face felt numb. But it wasn’t a stroke, but an aura. A precursor to the seizure he’d felt coming on, driving along with that bastard sun beating down into his eyes.

You’re getting what you wanted,
he thought, ferrying the last of the supplies to the darkness.

Be careful, brother,
said his shade.
Tread light.

“Fuck you,” said Keane, this time aloud.

But he smiled as he picked his sleeping wife from the car and carried her (light…so light) into the cave.

21

What do you do when you’ve got one day to live? Jump from a plane? Skate naked in parliament? Piss on a police car, tell someone you love them, give all your money away, take your library books back, fuck your wife, fuck someone else’s wife, eat a thousand sausages, watch that one movie you’ve always wanted to see, invent a decent can opener, blow all your money you’ve got and all the money you haven’t got on a Ferrari, hide toy soldiers in your arse and go for an X-ray, pretend to be a lollipop man and help old people cross the road, fight a tiger, learn to juggle, dive from the high board at the swimming pool…?

Just live? Be alive, and fuck everything else, all the shiny, showy, shit.

That’s what Keane figured. It wasn’t about the last day, because it wasn’t his last day (
maybe, Keane, maybe, for fuck’s sake
) but hers. It wasn’t about celebrating or commemorating life, but about getting through it. Get through just one day, 24 hours. Do that, and live on. Live to fight another day.

How?

By the dark. By hiding from the light.

“We’re here,” he said.

Teresa opened her eyes…to nothing.

22

“Keane…I can’t…”

“You’re not blind, baby. It’s dark.”

“I can’t see you.”

“Don’t panic, okay?”