The Lamplighters

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Time for dessert.”

“There’s dessert?” Marla’s face lit up as her sweet tooth kicked in at the mere mention of something sweet. Yes, the smell and the taste of something sweet would put paid to the bitter aftertaste of that horrible cellar.

Afters, that’s what her adoptive parents had called dessert, or her favorite pudding—both terms betraying their Northern backgrounds. As she listened to Jessie clanking around out of sight in the larder, Marla imagined bowls brimming with apple pie with cream and custard, plate loads of fruitcake, immense trays buckling beneath the weight of crackers and cheeses. The sound of clinking glasses jolted her from her reverie and she stared dumbstruck as Jessie proudly deposited the big bottle of ouzo on the table in front of her.

“Jessie, no way…”

“Dessert,” came the characteristically wicked reply. “You pour.”

Marla reached out and unscrewed the bottle cap, instantly feeling intoxicated at the heady smell of the anise-laden spirit. A flash of that dirty cellar with its stained mattress, broken toys and tattered porno magazines pierced her brain, banishing all hope of sweetness. What the hell, she needed a drink—more than ever now. She poured a measure of the clear liquid into Jessie’s glass.

“Any mixer for this?”

Jessie’s lips curled slyly as she held out her glass. She clearly wanted it filled to the top. “Marla, please. After all we’ve been through together don’t go all pussy on me now.”

Marla sighed heavily and topped up Jessie’s glass, then filled her own.

“So… what do we drink to?”

“To the Big House. And to getting off this damn rock in one piece I guess,” Jessie said after a brief moment’s thought.

Good enough for me, nodded Marla as they each expelled a breath and gulped back their drinks. Marla coughed and spluttered as her natural gag reflex attempted to deny the harsh liquor from entering her body.

Neither of them could hear the banging sound from high up inside the house anymore, and both had forgotten about Adam working on the door lock up there. Outside, on the other side of the metal shutters that sealed them inside the sanctum of the Big House, a fierce wind picked up and propelled the clouds across the sky as if to make way for the sharp gloom of nightfall. Evening had fallen over the house like a shadow.

“Ladies, the DJ is in,” Jessie said, reaching out for the toy tape player and switching it on.

Marla grimaced at both the sudden tinny blast of Old MacDonald’s Farm and the sharp sensation of ouzo coursing down her throat. Trapped inside a maximum-security retirement home with a mad woman, drinking stolen liquor and listening to nursery rhymes. It was going to be one of those long, long nights.

Jessie spun the bottle again, cackling that it was her turn—her turn—to spin, and not Marla’s, despite the latter’s protestations to the contrary. The booze was making her mean, spiteful even. Marla hated “spin the bottle” with a vengeance; she’d only agreed to play it in an attempt to placate Jessie for a while. Her alcohol-clouded brain accessed cringe-inducing memories of the last time she’d played this game. Never again, she’d sworn then—so typical to find herself succumbing to the game’s dubious charms again. The rules were simple, spin the bottle and wait for it to stop rotating. If the neck of the bottle points your way, the person who went last (in the is case Jessie, always Jessie) calls “truth” or “dare” then thinks up a humiliating question or even more humiliating dare. Refusal to answer the truth, or to act out the dare, might be the biggest humiliation and so often the case was.

Marla shuddered at the memory of her younger self, kissing a pimple-faced boy whose breath smelled strongly of onions. Maybe refusing to play wasn’t such a humiliating prospect after all. But there again was the scraping sound of the bottle as it spun round and round on the hard surface of the floor. They sat cross-legged opposite one another, Jessie’s face almost entirely occupied by her grin. The smirk on her face was accompanied by a high-pitched squeal of delight as the bottle slowed and came to a halt again, pointing right at Marla.

She groaned, her body lolling to one side until her shoulder was almost touching the floor. Marla wished to God that Adam had agreed to play this asinine game with them when he’d popped downstairs to eat earlier, at least that way some of the heat would be taken off of her. But she and Jessie had put away most of the ouzo by then and she’d seen the clear disapproval on Adam’s face. The last thing he probably wanted to do was sit playing childish games with two half-soaked girls. The conversation had gone something like this:

“Where did you get the, um, nursery music?”

“From Toys R Us, stoopid.” (Sniggers).

“Any food left?”

“Sure… and getch yershelf a glass… we’re nearly out of ouzo.”

“No thanks, just wanna grab a quick bite.”

“Did you find out wasss behind the door?”

“Yeah. Another door.”

And with that, he’d gone back upstairs taking a bowl of cold pasta with him. Strains of Humpty Dumpty echoed after him. His parting look had rattled Marla, and Jessie could see its after-effects on Marla’s face.

“Truth,” Jessie said mischievously.

Marla rolled her eyes, took an acid sip of ouzo and nodded in resignation to her fate.

“Did you do Pietro? You know, before he tried to jump the shark…”

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…

Jessie’s giggles echoed around the bare surfaces of the room. Marla looked around, studying her surroundings as if for the first time. What they hell was she doing locked in here, getting drunk with Jessie? She exhaled loudly—a tired, vaguely angry sound.

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men…

“You did! You did, you dirty girl, I just knew it!” Jessie’s voice trailed off into high- pitched squeaking giggles, sounding more like hiccoughs than laughter. “At least you gave him a good send off…”

Couldn’t put Humpty together again…

That was the limit. How could Jessie be so insensitive? Marla stood up sharply, swaying slightly as the alcohol nausea hit her. She rocked forward on one foot then kicked out at the bottle as hard as she could with the other. The bottle spun past Jessie’s shocked face and crashed against a cabinet, shattering on impact. There, spin the fucking bottle now.

“What the hell!?” Jessie spluttered.

“In answer to your question, I did sleep with Pietro. But only because I was drunk, and he couldn't get it up anyway. As I’ve been drinking again, with you again, I may as well see if Adam’s up for it. If he is, maybe I should do him on the stairs right now. Anything if it means I don’t have to play your stupid games.”

Her words chilled the stuffy air in the room. Before Jessie could reply, Marla moved through the space between them coolly and towards the door.

“What’s gotten into you? I only wanted to blow off some steam.”

Marla turned and looked back, hearing the hurt in Jessie’s voice. She did look genuinely upset, and vaguely pathetic, like a child who knows it is way past bedtime. Garbled thoughts and emotions trampled over each other inside Marla’s brain, fuelled by the alcohol and the aftertaste of her anger.

“I came to this island to turn my life around,” she sighed. “But all I’ve done since I got here is repeat the same old fucking mistakes.”

“This island can change you, Marla. Believe me, it can.”

“Maybe it doesn’t, maybe it just brings out the worst in you.”

Now Jessie heard the bitter disappointment in Marla’s voice. Something changed inside her tipsy brain and Marla could see she felt exactly the same, after months trapped on this island—this false paradise. Jessie blinked up at Marla and the surface of her eyes glistened wetly.

Marla thought of the jetty and the gunmen aiming right at her. She thought of Adam and how she’d secretly burned for him in her bed at the summerhouse. She thought of Pietro and his broken body, lying bleeding in the lighthouse, impotent and spent. All of it was so far away from the dream she’d been sold at those shiny offices in London—a fantasy to which she had so willingly subscribed. She tried to find the words that might articulate all her hopes and fears, struggling to show Jessie once and for all that she was no mere plaything sent to the island for her own personal amusement. But no words came, only a cold, empty feeling. She felt hollow and useless, adrift like the dust in the house and at the same time tethered to its cobwebs.

Marla became quickly aware that Jessie’s expression had changed from one of dismay to a shock of disbelief.

“What is it? Jessie?”

Trembling, Jessie raised a hand and pointed to the space beyond Marla, her eyes fixed on something there. From behind her, in the subdued half-light of the hallway, Marla heard a voice.

“What are you doing in my daddy’s house?” the voice said, quietly.

God help her, it was a child’s whisper.

Marla turned slowly, chilled to the bone at the sound of the child’s voice. Standing in the gloom of the doorway was the little boy she’d seen running across the beach and into the cove. He looked ready to run again, already backing up as she instinctively took a step towards him—her arms held out like an offer of motherly care.

“How did you get in here?” she asked, then glancing at Jessie, “Don’t be afraid, we’re not going to hurt you…”

“Speak for yourself,” Jessie muttered. “Creepy little bastard, sneaking up on us like that, I nearly had a heart attack…”

Marla quickly shushed her before she could do any more damage with her ouzo-sodden tongue, then fixed the boy with as open and calm an expression as she could muster.

“It’s all right… How did you get in here?”

The boy put a dirty finger to his mouth, chewed on it childishly.

“Were you in here already, is that it? Before the shutters came down? Poor thing, you must have been so frightened.”

At this, the lad’s attitude changed, his physicality shifting into a posture of defiance. He raised one bare foot off the floorboards and stamped it down, making a dull slapping sound.

Then he spoke.

“What the fuck are you two doing in my house?”

Marla’s jaw dropped. Whatever she was expecting him to say, it certainly wasn’t this. The profanity was utterly at odds with the boy’s age, yet somehow suited his disheveled demeanor. Jessie cracked up with laughter, clutching her belly as she did so. Then the boy spoke again and her giggles began to subside.

“You made a big mistake coming here and locking yourselves in.”

“We’re waiting for some…for some friends,” Marla tried to explain. “And when they get here, the shutters will open again.”

“HE will know you are here. HE will be coming,” the boy replied.

Something in his tone unsettled Marla. She tried to rub some warmth into the gooseflesh pricking at her arms, peering into the gloomy doorway to get a better look at the boy’s face.

“Don’t worry, kid, it’s like the lady says, Fowler and his cronies can’t get to us in here—they’re stuck outside. You’re perfectly safe with us…”

The boy snorted. “Not Fowler. Not outside.”

“What…what do you mean?”

“HIM. HE’S inside with us.”

Flushed, Marla looked over to Jessie, who just shook her head.

“Little bastard’s just trying to scare us. There’s no one in this museum except us two and Adam.”

Marla turned back to the boy, crouched slightly to better meet his eye level.

“Who? Who’s inside with us?”

Then, just as suddenly as he’d appeared, the boy turned on his heels and ran.

Incensed, Jessie took off after him first, knocking a surprised Marla to the kitchen floor. There was no time to dither, nobody spoke to her like that and got away with it, least of all a snotty kid. Marla would be okay. The boy was agile, and fast, darting this way and that through the halls and rooms of the house as though their layout was imprinted in his brain matter. A couple of times, she almost lost him in the shadows— only to pick up his trail again at the sound of his dull little footsteps on the floorboards. As she followed him through the glum interior of the games room, Jessie got an inkling of where he was headed. The cellar must be his bedroom. At this, she felt a sudden pang of pity for her quarry. What kind of life must this kid be living in such squalor, she could only guess. For him to even be in this house alone when all the families on the island were away just didn’t tally. Had he been abandoned, she wondered as she ran, left behind by mistake when everyone set sail to the mainland for the season? She recalled the stagnant mattress and the ripe stink of the cellar and shuddered. She’d get him away from here, get him cleaned up, and make him talk—just as soon as she could catch him. Easier said than done when he was so damned fleet of foot.

“Get back here!”

She skidded around a corner and careered into the facing wall of the narrow passage she and Marla had walked down earlier. Steeling herself for a moment, Jessie filled her lungs with air and continued her pursuit to the basement door, which was open. Just as she’d suspected, the boy was headed to his sorry little hideout all along. Damp air smothered her respiratory system as she descended the steps into the gloom. Reaching the foot of the stairs, she did a one-eighty, looking and listening for signs of the boy.

“Hey? No need to be frightened, I just wanna talk with you.”

At the sound of her voice, there was a movement, slight and rat-like from the corner of the room. There he was, a tiny phantom in this hellish little underworld, crawling towards a large flap of mildewed wallpaper that hung from the wall like skin from a wound. She started towards him, but knew the folly of her actions even as she did so. The flap of wallpaper gave access to a hole in the wall, through which the boy was wriggling even now as she took clumsy adult-sized steps towards him. The boy grunted with difficulty as he worked his distended little belly through the tight gap. Jessie remembered a picture book from her youth and almost chuckled out loud at the memory—Pooh Bear stuck in a hole in a tree, looking for honey. Looking for honey. Was the child suffering from the effects of malnutrition? Had he truly been forgotten—left here like some lost boy to fend for himself? Her eyes alighted on the pornography lurking on the shelves near the filthy nest-bed just a few feet from the hole in the wall. A dark kaleidoscope of images rushed at Jessie—abuses all too awful to consider, yet imminently possible given the implications of this dreadful scene.

“Don’t run, come back, I won’t hurt you.”

Just his feet now, disappearing through the hole into the crawlspace beyond, or God only knows where. Jessie covered the final distance and dropped to her knees, intent on catching a glimpse of where the frightened, abandoned little lad was going to. As she kneeled there prostrate, peering into the gap, the air seemed to cool around her. A shadow fell, monstrously large, engulfing her. Something large was blocking out the scant light, turning the basement world into that of a photographic negative. Jessie felt suddenly so vulnerable and afraid that she inadvertently whimpered. Blind panic gripped every nerve ending, fear flooding every pore in her skin like coolant. Her eyes searched the filth for something to grab onto, some weapon or totem of defense. But there were no such amulets here. only the piss-stinking rags and tattered detritus of a childhood denied that increased the burden of her despair.

“M… Marla?” The sound of her own voice was hopeful as it rang in her ears. All hope was gone when she finally turned her head to see what was standing over her.

Marla picked herself up off the kitchen floor and dusted herself down. Damn Jessie, damn her all to hell. She’d done the worst thing possible in chasing the boy like that—he was already frightened enough. As she followed the distant clatter of footsteps through the house, Marla recalled seeing the child on the beach. He’d looked like a ghost then. But here he was a real flesh and blood thing, trapped in a big dark house and being chased by a mental American hippy chick half-soaked on ouzo. Marla picked up the pace—it would be better for everyone if she could do the talking.

Reaching the basement, Marla fancied that she heard Jessie’s voice. Not the usual cocky, wisecracking tone, but rather a—whimper? Had she injured herself? Perhaps she’d fallen over on the stairs or tripped in the mess of the cellar. Marla headed down the steps to the basement, taking care not to tumble down them herself, her nose wrinkling at the stagnant cocktail of smells emanating from the depths.

Marla’s eyes adjusted from the gloom of the stairwell to the dark of the basement, pupils widening to admit the scantest extreme of the spectrum. Another whimper. She turned to spy out its source. What she saw there shook her to the core. Jessie was, impossibly, levitating a full two feet off the floor. Her face was horribly contorted and streaked with dark shadows. Marla stood dumbstruck at the sight of her and tried to focus on what she was seeing, her eyes struggling to make sense of the details in the dim light. In what seemed like slow motion, her panicked brain pieced together the jigsaw. The dark streaks on Jessie’s face were rivulets of blood, held in their course by great fingers. Fingers that penetrated the flesh covering Jessie’s skull so Marla could not tell where the fingertips ended and where Jessie began. Even as the horror of the scene dawned on her, Marla saw that Jessie was not floating above the floor as she’d first imagined. The hideous fat fingers that had burrowed their way into her soft face were connected to great hands—as big as shovels—and these in turn were extensions of massive arms, like those of a circus strongman. The hulking form anchoring the weight of Jessie’s helpless body loomed darkly, becoming clearer to Marla’s eyes as it shifted its bulk in the shadows. Jessie looked like a doll in its massive hands. She made a pitiful whimpering, gurgling sound as the red lines of blood quickened from her face into the sinewy network of fleshy guttering that was the man’s hand. Marla took a step back, bile rising in her throat as she did so, and heard her foot scrape noisily against some hard object. A brick? Did he hear it too? Eyes, black and shiny as an insect’s, burned their answer at her from the shadows. She felt them on her. The hulking thing had seen her and mortal panic took her breath away. Then, a sickening crack as the shape twisted Jessie’s head in mid-air, snapping her neck as casually as a snap of the fingers. Marla turned and fled, desperate to be rid of the sight of this horror, feeling the sensation of her revulsion at the cellar and its secrets creep through every fiber of her body.

She clambered up the steps and wondered breathlessly how many—no, how few seconds would pass until she felt the grip of those foul butcher’s hands on her body.