Splinter

32

‘Hello?’

Marc had lost all sense of time. He didn’t know how long he’d stood staring out into the dark, rainy night. Up here on the third floor there was no fire escape or ledge, no scaffolding or window cleaner’s cradle anyone could have used to leave the flat by.

‘Constantin?’

His father-in-law had disappeared into thin air.

He shut the window, tottered out into the hallway and tried to turn the overhead light on, but nothing happened. He saw, when he looked again, that the bulb was missing.

‘Hey, where are you?’

His voice re-echoed from the pictureless walls of the small hallway.

Please let me wake up. Please let this all be just a dream.

Turning to look at the front door, he flinched when he saw that the safety chain was on.

‘Where have you got to?’ he whispered to himself, as if he already guessed what he would find in the bedroom after checking the kitchen: nothing.

Nothing apart from a double mattress and another box with a cheap bedside light standing on it. He left this on every morning so he didn’t have to fumble around in the pitch black for the little switch when he came home at night.

But he was wrong – so wrong that it redoubled his doubts about his sanity: the bedside light had disappeared.

Like Constantin. Like Sandra. Like my life.

Yet the room wasn’t dark, because faint rays of pale-blue light were seeping through the cracks in the box.

This is impossible.

He went over to the mattress, suddenly overcome by an almost irresistible urge to flop down on it, pull the bedclothes over his head and sink into an everlasting, dreamless sleep. But the dim light exerted a hypnotic attraction on him. At the same time, he remembered a conversation he’d had with Sandra years ago.

‘Hey, what’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Promise me…’

‘What?’

‘Promise you’ll always leave a light on?’

He opened the box, parted the flaps with trembling hands… and found his surreal vision confirmed.

‘What do you think?’

‘Hm… I’d call it, well… an acquired taste?’

‘Utterly hideous, more like.’

He shut his eyes, but the memories refused to fade.

‘What is it? Are you crying?’

‘Look, I know it sounds a bit weird, but I’d like us to make a deal.’

‘Okay.’

‘If one of us dies – no, please hear me out – the first of us to go must give the other one a sign.’

When he opened his eyes the hideous, battery-powered, baby-blue dolphin bedside light was still in the box.

And it was on for the first time in its existence.

I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night

Can’t stand here like this any more

For always and ever is always for you

I want it to be perfect like before.

Ohohoho… I want to change it all.

‘A Night Like This’, The Cure

Nothing sounds as good as I remember that

‘I Remember That’, Prefab Sprout