Cold Fire Read online

  I shudder and pull back.

  The tears come at last. I cry for a lost ball when I can’t cry for my little girl.

  ‘We’ll get another one.’

  I can’t put it into words, because I’m sobbing. She knows anyway.

  You can’t replace something like that. You can’t get a new one. Not when the old one means so much.

  *

  47.

  Helen leaves me to sleep in the morning. Dimly, around the edge of sleep, I’m aware of her weight leaving the bed, the rustle of the duvet, the absence.

  Then I’m out.

  I’m on the estate, in the house on the green. I stand before the window in the master bedroom staring out toward the yellow grass. Even at this distance I can see the weeds in amongst the grass, wild flowers grown high, broken limbs on some of the spindly trees. Whether they were broken by the weather or kids, I don’t know. In the dream it seems important for a while. For too long.

  The sun is high, but the window faces north. The shadow of the house reaches to the edge of the road out front, but no further.

  It’s daylight. This is my time. The time for the living. I can’t smell the blood. Sometimes a dream will bring the memory of a smell, but all there is on the air is a kind of blank ozone smell/taste that leaves the back of my throat and my nostrils dry. My skin is parched, too, like the air in the house is recycled.

  I push at the window to let the air in, because I feel like I could suffocate. I am suffocating. I can’t breath. The window won’t open. I panic, pound at the frame. It’s jammed. I smash my fist through the glass. The glass shatters outward as my fist goes through. The cast is gone. My hand is not broken, but now it’s cut.

  Beyond the glass, where there was once sunshine and a tired green field, there is nothing but night. The night is pitch and oppressive.

  There’s a candle on the window sill. The night’s wind snuffs it out and the smoke is lost in the black, swirling away in the breeze.

  No way home, I think, as the night pours in through the jagged hole, over my hand, over my blood, making the two gashes look black.

  I can breath, but now I’m breathing, I’m breathing too fast.

  Because the night is here.

  Something comes in the night. Something that burns.

  In my dream I can’t remember, but behind me something is glowing. It lights up the bedroom, throwing my shadow against the glass that I broke. The shadow is tallen. Fullen. He’s screaming. Maybe that’s why he can’t find the words. In his terror, the shadow is convulsing…it’s a stroken. No.

  Stroke.

  The shadow is blind in one eye.

  But one word comes to him.

  Run.

  My feet move. The night is swirling, a black mist twining around my ankles. I trip as I reach the stairs and slide on my arse all the way to the bottom.

  The glow is stronger. Footsteps, coming, behind me.

  It’s the first sound. The thumping follows.

  Run, my shadow says.

  I run. My feet are silent. But I can hear the feet on the stairs. I can hear them very well. They are heavy, and they are wet. They should be dry. Wet won’t burn, but this is blood, and blood can catch fire.

  I can feel that. I understand how blood can burn.

  I fumble, get the door open. There is no front garden. No road. Just a building, foreboding, rising in the night time sky. White paint and brick and green age old moss on the walls.

  Eventide.

  A woman walks to the fence surrounding it. She’s dressed like a nurse, but painted red on the pocket is a cross.

  She leads an old woman. An ancient woman. Her hair is wispy. It forms a halo about her head. Her skin, even from a distance, is translucent. Thin and worn by years passing by.

  The nurse, if that’s what she is, opens a gate and nudges the old woman onto the green that separates this home, this eventide, from my estate.

  The nudge is almost gentle, but it is an absent gesture, too.

  The grass is long, but I can tell the old woman is wearing slippers.

  There’s a glow I haven’t noticed because in the dream I forgot.

  I remember now. I turn and they’re there. Hundreds of them, burning so bright against the flow of the dark. Men and women, young and old. All with their burning hunger, hunger that can never be sated.

  They don’t see me. They surround the old woman in a clump of bodies. Her hair is the last thing I see. I’m aware of a sound, sucking, smacking, like a toothless child feeding.

  A murmur rises from the feeding crowd. Then they break apart and spread. Where the old woman was, there is nothing. Some flattened grass.

  They fall away, like the old woman was a pebble and they a pond.

  They turn to me.

  They reach.

  Their touch is ice. Their fire burns cold.

  So cold.

  *

  48.

  When Helen pulls me from the dream I don’t scream.

  I’m shivering, though. I’m chilled to the bone. I can’t stop shaking.

  Helen’s concerned. It’s all over her face.

  She holds the back of her hand against my forehead.

  ‘Sam, you’re burning up!’

  But I’m not. I’m freezing.

  I can’t speak properly. My teeth keep clacking together.

  ‘Cold,’ I manage.

  ‘You feel cold, but you’re not. You’ve got a fever. I’ll get you some paracetamol.’

  I grab her hand. With my wrong hand. The one in the cast.

  She winces.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re so hot.’ She looks down. I see what she’s seeing. The skin around the cast is livid red, tendrils snaking up my arm.

  ‘What is that?’

  I shake my head. It’s all I can manage.

  ‘It looks like blood poisoning. Did you cut yourself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should go to the doctor.’

  ‘No,’ I say. Not again. It wouldn’t make any difference. I know what’s wrong.

  They’ve touched me. Their fire is in my blood. It’s poison. But not the sort a doctor could fix. There are no antibiotics for this.

  My hand’s so cold it’s numb. The numbness is travelling up my arm. If that gets to my heart, I know what will happen.

  The doctor will come. Helen will cry. It’ll be a heart attack, but I won’t be dead. I’ll be screaming, forever on the estate, going through a door that says, ‘Welcome Home,’ hoping for warm, but knowing the fires for the damned burn cold, colder than ice.

  My whole body is shaking now. Helen tries to hold me down, but I push her away.

  ‘Sam, stay in bed!’

  I don’t waste words. I swing my legs from the bed. My bum leg wants to give way as I stand and I push past her but I won’t let it. Maybe the stranger won’t let it. He’s strong in me, now.

  We get down the stairs, me holding the banister, the stranger lending me his strength. I stop half way down the stairs as a shudder runs through me, one foot hanging out over a riser. Helen’s there, though. She holds me up.

  I can’t talk. I just stagger on, into the kitchen.

  I shake the kettle. It’s full. Not long boiled.

  I’m not thinking. If I did I’d send Helen away. But there’s no time. The cold’s spread. I can feel it taking root around my heart.

  I flick the kettle on, concentrate on standing up.

  ‘Sam.’

  I can barely hear her. It’s like she’s talking from another room. My head’s pounding. Fighting it. My chest is so tight. I can breath, but barely.

  Helen runs out of the room. It doesn’t matter what she does, just as long as she doesn’t stop me.

  Steam roils across the kitchen ceiling and the kettle clicks off.

  I pull the lid free with effort and throw it to the floor. Then I do the only thing I can think of. I thrust my hand half way up my forearm into the boiling water and scream.

 
The feeling comes back in an instant. The cold is gone. Now I’m burning.

  The water in the kettle hisses and bubbles. I hold my hand under, exercise what little will I have, taking it with tears of pain and shouts of rage.

  Helen’s shouting on the phone. Her feet are heavy as she runs through the house to me.

  But it’s passed. I pull my hand out before she can see. The colour is back to normal. I feel OK. Not great, but anything not dead is OK with me.

  ‘Sam! Sam!’

  I realise she’s been calling my name. I look into the kettle. There are chunks of ice and slush floating in the kettle.

  I reach out and take her in my arms, hold her still. Then I take the phone from her hand and hang up.

  ‘Sam! No!’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Sam, what happened? You screamed. I thought…’

  She’s crying and shaking, but I’m solid. I’m a rock.

  She shakes while I hold her tight, but I don’t talk. I can’t talk just yet. The pain, the memory of the pain, is still too fresh.

  She pushes me back and looks at me through watery eyes.

  ‘Sam, you’ve got to talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Nothing. It’s alright now.’

  She punches me in the face. She takes a real swing, pulling her fist right back over her shoulder and unloading into my chin. I feel my teeth clack shut and taste blood, but I’m shocked more than I am hurt.

  First Frank, then Helen.

  I’m two for two.

  ‘Don’t. Fucking…’ she loses what she’s going to say.

  ‘I can’t, Helen.’

  ‘Five years on coke, you think I don’t know what’s going on? Don’t you fucking dare. I want my husband back you fucking bastard!’

  She’s talking to the stranger. She’s actually talking to him.

  ‘I can’t, Helen. It’s…it’s not coke.’

  ‘It never was! It wasn’t about the coke, it was you, not being there. Don’t do it, Sam. Please. Don’t leave me again.’

  That hurts more than I thought it would. But I’m set. I’m rock.

  ‘I promise, Helen. I’m done with that. But there’s something I’ve got to do. I’ve got to do it alone.’

  ‘Bullshit. I’m your wife. You’re leaving again. I don’t know where you go, but I want you back. I want my Sam!’

  It’s the stranger that takes her and sets her aside. Just picks her up and puts her out of the way.

  Sam sees the hurt on her face. It’s Sam that hears her tears follow him up the stairs. But it’s the stranger that gets dressed, goes down the stairs, walks across the back garden and knocks on Frank’s door.

  It’s the stranger that says, ‘Tell me how you tried to kill yourself.’

  *

  49.

  Frank’s still angry. He goes to say something, maybe to tell me to get fucked, but then he looks at me, really looks at me, and he sees what Helen saw. He sees just as well as anyone ever has.

  The words he was going to say die on his lips.

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  I step into his house.

  ‘Take a seat. Coffee?’

  ‘How, Frank?’

  ‘Coffee first. You look like shit.’

  The fight goes out of me. It’s not sudden, but the adrenaline that’s been holding me up drains down, through my belly, into my legs, and out of my toes. I crumple into the chair.

  I start to shake. This time it’s from exhaustion. I could just go home, put my head down, and sleep for a week. I can’t, though. They’ve found my dreams.

  If I sleep, I die. I understand that perfectly. That’s OK, though, because I’m going to finish this one way or another.

  ‘Coffee would be good,’ I say, but he’s got a pot on anyway.

  I put my head in my hands and wait for the brew.

  He doesn’t ask me about milk and sugar. He just puts it in a mug and waves it under my nose.

  The smell lets the world back in.

  I take the mug clumsily. It’s hot, but it doesn’t burn. It takes both my hands to hold it steady.

  I watch Frank with wary eyes as he sits opposite me. He puts his coffee down in a set of dark circles that look like the Olympic rings.

  ‘Tell me, Frank.’

  ‘I’m sorry I hit you. For what it’s worth.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Not now.’

  He looks me over. I don’t like to think what it is he sees.

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Things are moving faster.’

  ‘Are they?’ he says. That’s all he says, but for the first time he sounds old and weary. But I need him.

  Part of him needs me, too. I’ve got the feeling that living with this is killing him.

  And with that revelation, the veil is lifted from my eyes. I look with my true eyes. Both at once. My dead sight overlays my real sight.

  I see a man on the edge. What I once took for Paul Newman eyes are watery and pale. Dark bags hang under his eyes. His skin, though tanned, holds a hint of grey, too.

  Grey, I think, that would be yellow.

  His large, clever hands shake as he rolls a cigarette.

  Frank’s tired. Why didn’t I see it before?

  It’s not because he hides it well. It’s because I didn’t look. I was so busy looking after myself that I forgot Helen, and I forgot Frank. I saw them all the time, spoke to them like a lover and a friend, but I didn’t look.

  Frank’s my only friend. He might be the only friend I ever had. He’s heart broken, and I was blind to it.

  Me and Helen, we’re all he’s got.

  I wind myself in. It’s like coming down after a heavy bender. The colours of the kitchen return to normal where they had been bright and real, hyper real.

  My breath comes easier. My heart skips then steadies into a more comfortable rhythm.

  ‘Frank, forget it. It doesn’t matter. Just listen. Will you do that?’

  ‘I can do that.’

  He’s old. We need each other more than I realised. Where I was thinking of trying to push him, maybe trying to pull him into my way, I just tell the truth.

  ‘Last night…no…this morning, they got into my dreams. They nearly killed me. They got inside, somehow, in my blood. They’re cold, Frank. So fucking cold.’

  He makes like he’s going to interrupt. I just hold up my hand.

  ‘I don’t know what they are, but they’re getting stronger. Something is happening. Whatever borders there were, they’re gone.’

  ‘What do you mean, Sam?’ his voice is calm, but there’s a coldness to it, too.

  ‘I think there’s something about us, something they’re feeding on. They’re hungry, and we’re a banquet. We’re making them stronger. Maybe it’s because we all tried to kill ourselves. We’re damned, too.’

  He doesn’t deny it, but then that doesn’t matter, because I knew anyway, didn’t I?

  ‘I don’t know it all, Frank. Fuck, how could I? But I think I’m right. They feed on us. Feed on our souls.’

  That doesn’t sound exactly right, but it’s close enough.

  ‘What it is, what they are, it doesn’t matter one fucking bit. I’ve got to stop it. They’ll kill me. Maybe you. Maybe Helen.

  ‘It’s cold over there. We’ll burn, but we’ll never be warm. There is no warmth for us. Not there. I can’t let that happen. Not to any of us.’

  Frank wants to say something, but I won’t let him. My words are coming fast, now, fast and hard. There’s no room for dissent. No room for rebuttal.

  ‘I’ll die, Frank, if need be. I swear I will. Happy, too, if it comes to it. But I can’t leave my girl with them. It’s some kind of hell over there. She’s stuck. If I don’t do something, my whole family will be caught like flies in a web. And have no doubt, it’s spreading. Their reach grows every day. If I don’t move, keep moving, I’ll die and this chance will be a waste.

  ‘My death certificate will say heart attack, but it
won’t be natural. They’ll get into my dreams. But I’ll be dead, just the same, and my girl just as lost.’

  I taste tears in my mouth. I don’t want to cry. I want to rage, to fight. But I’m getting tired, just from the talking.

  Frank steps into the lull, before I can go on.

  ‘Sam, you can’t stop something like this. Whatever it is, it’s like trying to fight smoke. This is…I don’t know what the fuck it is. It’s religion. If it’s anything, it’s religion, and that needs a priest or an exorcist. Seriously, what do you think you’re going to do? What do you think you can do?’

  ‘I want to kill them.’

  ‘They’re already dead. They’re souls, Sam, or ghosts, or fucking vampires, but whatever they are, you can’t kill them. Dana’s dead and gone. She’s not there, and neither is Samantha. It’s just…’

  I see it then, in his words and in his face. I don’t believe it. I see it just the same, before he says it. A heavy wooden lid closing on his belief with a dead thud.

  ‘Shit, Sam, you, we, could just be imagining it.’

  I just stare at him. He looks away first.

  He’s scared. I get it. But I’m scared.

  Maybe that’s the difference; I’m scared, but I don’t fucking care.

  ‘You know I’m right. I’m going to do it. I’m going to set them free.’

  ‘With what, Sam? Don’t be stupid. You can’t fight phantoms. They’re built of guilt. Survivor’s guilt, they call it. What can you fight that with? Holy water? Stakes in the heart of a phantom in your head?’

  I ignore him. I ignore the scorn. I know it’s built of fear, just like I know my phantoms are real. They aren’t built of guilt or of imagination.

  Thinking like that could damn us all.

  ‘I’ll burn them. Burn them all.’

  Frank laughs. He’s entitled to it.

  ‘Burn them? A whole estate?’

  But I’ve thought it through. Not for long, but enough.

  The kettle decided it for me. I didn’t understand until then. Their fires are cold. Mine won’t be.

  ‘Sam, you’re losing it. We’re friends, right?’