No Shelter from Darkness (32 page)

He took a deep breath and roared, letting out all his anger and the pain he was about to feel. Quickly, he put the rung of the chair in his mouth and bit down. His thumb gripped the trigger. The muzzle pressed into his thigh, close to the bone. He heard Sergeant Mack shout up to him from the bottom of the stairs. With his eyes clenched tighter than ever before, Bill squeezed the trigger.

*   *   *

Dawn was still a few hours away, but the air in the shelter wasn't cold. Bill watched his daughter. Her reaction was a lot better than the last time he'd told a story in here. She'd been stunned into silence at how he orchestrated his return to his family. And to her.

“There was so much blood that the bullet in the floor was missed,” he continued. “The paramedic said the wound was too bad to simply patch up, and I was on the fast track home. They had me pumped so full of morphine I can hardly remember Jeff's visit, but he got the blood ready and as soon as I could, I came here. To you.”

Beth still sat silently. Bill went into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a piece of blood-smeared paper. He paused in recollection before holding it out for his daughter to take. When she
opened and read it, her eyes widened further. It was the letter he received from Jeff, the one which had made him do what he did. She folded it back up and looked at him.

“Did you do it for me? Or for Mum and Oliver, out of fear that they were in danger from me?”

“Honestly? I did it for all of you. I only had the bare facts. I knew you were ill, and I had to assume Jorge's theory was correct; that hormones had triggered …
it
. You needed me, and in turn that meant the rest of the family needed me.”

“So Jeff's a Minister too?”

“Yes. He's retired, like me.”

“You told me he didn't know.”

Bill shook his head. “Not explicitly.”

Beth tutted in disgust.

“I didn't want to lay too much on you,” Bill said. “As it is, he doesn't know everything about you. He was only brought in to keep an eye on things while I was away.”

“Is he an old army buddy? Like Mum said?”

“No.”

Beth shook her head and sighed. “Where does it end? What lie am I going to uncover next?”

“It will never end, Elizabeth. This is what we have to do to protect those we love.”

“How am I supposed to live like that? Like this?”

“You live with the knowledge that the family you love, love you in return. I'm not saying it's easy. It's not. But you have a mother and a brother in that house who love you for who you are, not
what
you are. They've always been there for you, and that's genuine. You have a friend who cares about you, because you're you. Do you really want to throw all that away? Do you want to put them through the hurt they'd feel if you just left? Hate me all you want, but you can't take it out on them.”

THIRTY-TWO

IT WAS THE LAST WEEK OF AUGUST,
and autumn was just around the corner. For now the warm weather persisted, and Mary walked to the first day of the new term talking with Beth and Oliver. The shortened summer holiday meant that she was returning to the place she hated so much far too soon. She'd have much rather continued working at the county hall, helping out with those who'd lost their homes and more. Helping them had given her a sense of fulfillment. School just seemed like a waste of her time now.

A lot had changed over the last two weeks.

It started when she woke one night to the sound of the shelter door squeaking open at some unearthly hour. Assuming it was Beth coming in to use the toilet, she really woke up when it was unmistakably Beth's father returning to bed. The two hadn't spoken to each other for so long, she wondered what could have happened for them to start at such an odd hour. But almost immediately the change was clear to see. After being so quiet and distant for so long, suddenly Beth was talking. Not much at first, but over the course of those two weeks she approached something resembling her normal self. Then she moved the blankets back into her own room, though she insisted on sleeping on the floor. But Mary could sense Beth was still hiding something. Nothing was completely back to normal, but for Mary it was good enough.

She never had confronted Beth about the wild adoption accusation, but to a degree she hadn't wanted to, thinking it would probably be best left alone. But she still found herself wondering if any of it might be true, especially considering how her father had reacted.

And most recently, Mary had received her first letter from Gibson. He was working on the farm up in York, not too far from Mary's own distant relatives. It sounded like his entry into the army was guaranteed, though not for another year. Her heart had seemed to skip when she'd read the words, and already she'd started composing a reply. She wondered if she'd ever see him again, and even wrote it in the letter.

Mary was still thinking about the letter not yet sent when they reached the school gates. Oliver joined his friends, and that's when Mary saw that changes were afoot at school, too. She spotted Susan Pullen. The tall girl walked over toward them but then passed without so much as a glance or infamous death stare. If anything, Mary noticed her look down at the floor as she passed Beth.

“Bloody hell, did you see her nose?” said Mary when Susan was gone.

“What about it?” Beth asked.

“It was all crooked. Looked like someone had walloped her. ‘Bout time if you ask me. I wonder who did it?”

“Yeah, I wonder,” said Beth, disinterested.

“They must've been pretty big to break
her
nose.”

Beth hummed in agreement. Mary decided to feel the satisfaction she thought Beth should be feeling, and smiled.

*   *   *

That afternoon, all three children returned home to find Mr. Wade walking around with a new wooden cane, the crutches nowhere to be seen. It seemed to have cheered him up, and he had more news at dinner. He announced that the Home Guard had welcomed him in an advisory role. It wasn't much, but at least it was something, and his first evening shift would be later that week. But his cheerfulness seemed to dampen slightly at something Mrs. Wade said.

“What's happened to Jeff, then?” she inquired.

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Wade.

“He's not there anymore. There's a new chap in his place, Simon. I asked what had happened but Simon said he didn't know, only that he'd been asked to take over for a while.”

Mr. Wade had stopped eating, and Mary could see the confusion of missing knowledge in his frown. “Hmm, I'm not sure. Can't be anything too serious.” He looked at Beth, so Mary did too, seeing a similar look of confusion … or possibly worry.

THIRTY-THREE

JUST WHEN THINGS WERE BEGINNING
to get better, they changed again. Jeff's absence from the butcher's was presumed temporary, but when he still wasn't back on the all-important Wednesday, Beth started to worry. Every day after that for the past eight days Bill made a visit. It was now Friday and the ninth day in a row that he would enquire as to the whereabouts of Jeff. It marked the sixteenth day Beth had gone without blood.

It was almost half-past two in the afternoon when it started to grip.

She had already been finding it hard not to snap at the smallest thing. The hole in her left sock was her mother's fault, the dental cream in the sink was Oliver's, her brush had Mary's blonde hair dangling from it, and Bill was the worst of them all for not getting her what she so desperately needed.

But that afternoon, barely an hour after the end of Bonner Street School's lunch break, Beth burst through the front door of her home.

“Elizabeth?”

Beth ignored her father who called to her from the sitting room. She ran up the stairs, bunched up the sheets and blankets from her floor, and then ran back down. Passing her mystified father who had risen onto his cane, she opened the backdoor and strode across the small yard, down the steps carved out of earth, and back into her own, not-so-private sanctuary.

By the time Bill had made his way down, Beth was sitting on the edge of a side bunk biting her nails with her left knee jumping up and down like a jackhammer.

“Elizabeth? What's wrong?”

“Where is he, Dad?” The name tasted sour, but it hadn't been forced, and Beth had no patience to struggle with what to call the man before her. “Where's Jeff?”

Her father shook his head. “I told you, I don't know. I've even contacted the Ministry, but everything's gone quiet.” He sat down opposite her. “What's happened?”

“I need blood. I don't know how much longer I can go without it.”

“But it's only been a couple of weeks. I thought you'd gone longer.”

“I have, but only when I didn't know what I was craving. Now I do and it's so much harder to ignore. It's all I think about.” She sniffed the air and looked into her father's eyes in shame. “I can smell yours.”

Her father sat silently and Beth heard him swallow at her observation.

“It's the worst time,” she said.

“I know.”

“No, you don't. My back's aching and my abdomen feels like it's in a vice. I'm about to get my period.”

Her father looked both confused and worried.

“That's over six weeks since the last one,” continued Beth. “And the last one was pretty bad. Can't you get some blood from somewhere else?”

Her father shook his head. “I've tried other butchers but they don't keep any, at least they say they don't.”

“What about the hospital? Can't we just tell Mum that I'm getting ill again? I'll get a transfusion.”

“We can't risk it.”

“Why?”

“It's complicated. There's a doctor there who thinks he might be on to something. Giving him an excuse to look into things any more than he already has would be a very bad idea.”

“What about a different hospital?”

“I'm sorry, but we can't risk exposing you. One curious doctor's bad enough; we don't need any more.”

“But Dad, I need some.
Now
. I'm afraid what'll happen if I don't.” She shook her head. “I can't sleep in the house. I won't. I don't think I should go to school either, not until I've fed.”

Her father looked at her with curiosity. “Has something happened?”

Beth shook her head. “Nothing I want to think about.”

“Elizabeth?” His tone demanded that she tell him.

“I ran out before I had the chance to do anything,” said Beth, catching a confused look of horror and concern in her father's eyes. He studied her, thinking. Beth didn't need a mirror to know that she looked desperate.

“Well,” said her father, letting out a lungful of air. “There is one way …”

Beth knew she wasn't going to like the suggestion. But she needed blood. “What is it?”

“All things considered, you'd have to do this sooner or later anyway.”

He was trying to sugarcoat it now and it made Beth uneasy.

“You're going to have to catch your own food.”

Beth's jitters seemed to vanish in an instant. “You're joking, right? Please tell me you're not serious.”

“You've done it before.”

“I can't even remember doing it. I'm still astounded it happened. And disgusted.”

“Still, you did it.”

Her father's words brought fabricated mental imagery of how she must've created such a mess. It made her want to heave. “Whatever happened at school today,” reasoned her father, “it sounds like it was bad enough that you should at least try.”

In an involuntary flash, Beth relived the hour after lunch break. She saw herself sitting in the classroom at her desk. She held her pen in her hand, but the nib was dry. It hadn't been dipped into ink since the lesson began. She liked school, but history bored her senseless and always had. And when she was bored, her mind drifted … and when her mind drifted and the thirst had begun, there was only one train of thought.

At the front of the room Mrs. Humphries talked away, but the words she spoke could've been jumbled up or said in a foreign language for all Beth cared. They seemed to slow down, as if the teacher were a record and someone pressed their finger on her vinyl; softly at first, but increasing the pressure to make her sound more like a man talking in slow motion. All the sounds around her began
to fade, as did movements. Hands scribbling on paper, and arms being slowly raised into the air, all began to blur. Everyone may as well have been ghosts.

Everyone except for Peter.

Beatrice sat directly in front of Beth's desk, serving as a small shield from the teacher's sight if Beth slumped forward a little. With her head turned slightly to the left, toward the window, Beth furtively stared at the boy a year younger than herself. He sat as motionless as the rest, but something outside the window had caught his attention. Beth didn't know what it was, and she didn't care to look, because she was too fixated on
him
. Whatever it was proved to be a constant distraction for the thin, short-haired Peter. It was when he was first distracted that Beth noticed it. She stared as he turned his head to face the front, and she waited, hoping his distraction would occur again.

It did.

Peter turned his head and looked out the window. The thick tendon running from his jaw to the collarbone grew pronounced. The skin stretched and followed tightly the contours of ligaments, tendons and flesh beneath. In a small shallow, just above the collar and between two vertical tendons, the skin twitched at regular intervals.

A vein.

It throbbed a little faster than once a second as the boy's heart forced blood around his body.

Beth subconsciously sniffed the air. In an instant she sorted through the smells of unwashed clothing and dirty hair, her nose scrunching a little at the repulsive stench of shit that someone had failed to wipe from their shoe. She smelled through the ink, the wood and the paper and ignored the faintest hint of chalk, before settling on that sweet, rusty, metallic scent. It was slightly different than blood in a jar, masked by living flesh, but it was there.