Chiaroscuro

  Roisin frowned. “How can she not be alive? I’ve met her. Talked to her. She’s a second-year degree student at the university. I touched her and she was warm, just like you and me. What else could she be but a normal girl?” “I don’t know about you, but my whole concept of the world just opened up like a melon dropped from the Tower of London.” Paul clutched his hammer tight to his chest. She could see the veins in his arm standing out with the weight of it, not that you’d notice to look at his expression. “Angels, devils. Heaven, Hell.” I thought it was all just a fairy tale to keep the peasants in line. Who knows what else is true.” He nudged Steve with his elbow. “What about vampires? And werewolves?” “I’ve never met any, so I couldn’t say.” Steve glanced back. “Look. Can we save this discussion for when there isn’t a malevolent entity outside our front door?” “Oh, sorry. Sure.” Paul lowered his voice. “Are you sure it’s malevolent, though? Ros says she’s just a student, a...

  “Wait! I’ll come with you.” Paul picked up his hammer and cold chisel and answered “You never know,” when Roisin gave him an inquisitive look. “Me too.” Steve stood, reaching for his spectacles, which Paul was still wearing, and putting them on. He looked like an old American prospector with his cheap glasses and unkempt beard and hair. He shook his head to Paul’s offer of the carver’s hammer and patted his other pocket. “I’ve got my cross.” “And that’ll work, will it? Against something that knocks on a door?” “We won’t know until we try, will we?” Steve took out the artifact but left it wrapped in its old cloth. He winked at Roisin. “It could be the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s scare the willies out of them.” Since they were in more light than they’d had down in the lobby, Roisin could see the cloth was intricately woven with lettering she recognised as Jewish. “What’s it wrapped in?” she asked. Steve glanced down. “Part of the Torah. Specifically, the section naming the ...

  “So…Angels just want everyone to be in Heaven and stay there?” Paul looked across at Roisin. “Isn’t that a good thing? I still don’t see a great problem. Heaven is paradise, isn’t it?” “For the angels, yes. They would become all powerful, as they were in the beginning. All the souls, the spirit, the energy… whatever you want to call it… would be theirs once more.” “I thought Heaven was all frolicking in the eternal sunshine and listening to choirs?” “No. Heaven is serenity, dude.” Steve glances at Roisin, as if for reassurance or confirmation, but she had no idea what he expected of her. “Serenity is nothing. No memories. No personalities. No form. No existence as a separate identity.” “But Jesus said there was, didn’t he? ‘Dwell in my Father’s house forever,’ he said.” “Yes, His Father’s house. Not as his guest, you’ll notice.   Whatever your soul is, it’ll become part of the Divine One.” Roisin leaned forward. “Who is the Divine One? God?” Steve shook his hea...

  “I shit you not,” Steve grinned as he extracted the glasses from his pocket. He inspected them carefully and used the corner of his shirt to polish the single lens. Satisfied it was dust free, he passed them to Paul. Have a look yourself.” “If this is an elaborate joke…” Paul left the sentence unfinished   and he took the glasses and examined them. He put his finger trough the gap where the right lens would be. “Why is there only one lens”? “Because you have no idea what it cost me to get just one. Let’s just say if I’d obtained two I probably wouldn’t have survived the purchase.” “Gee.” Roisin craned her neck to see them in Paul’s meaty grip. “What did it cost? Are they magical?” She put the tray on the floor and stood to get a better view. “They look the same as any other glasses, only without the black tape over one side.” “That’s because I got the frames in a pound shop.” Steve shook his head. They don’t actually sell magically enhanced glasses at Boots the Chemi...

  Steve shifted uncomfortably. “People,” he said, avoiding either of their eyes. “I can’t say more than that, you know? Client confidentiality and all that.” “You still haven’t said exactly what you sell.” Roisin spoke through a mouthful of the toast she’d dipped into her ramen broth. It was like tasting her student days all over again. You’d find anything to give your ramen broth a bit of flavour. Swiped packets of mustard and ketchup from fast food café’s, salvaged food from the skip at the back of Mark’s and Spencer’s, and (but only once) a chunk of salmon that had been dropped, raw, on the supermarket floor. To give Paul all due credit, however, this was the most tasteless she’d ever had. She didn’t care. It was food. “Artifacts. Items. You know the sort of thing better than anyone.” “But who would buy a chunk of old house brick? Even if it was from Richard the third’s grave?” “I didn’t say it was from the grave,” Steve’s expression was so shifty it was clear he’d never...

  Roisin held up her hands. “I’ll be fine, honestly. I just need some rest, And maybe some food. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.” “Yesterday?” Paul looked at Steve. “Why hasn’t she eaten since yesterday?” “How would I know? I’m not responsible for feeding her. She’s not a pet.” “But you’ve been here and I’ve been at work.” “I might have been here, but she hasn’t. The first time I’ve seen her today was when she came in followed by the soul harvester.” “Wait. Guys!” Roisin had to raise her voice against the raised ones of her co-tenants. “Not only am I a grown bloody woman who is more than capable of looking after herself, so back off and just give me some food, please, but also ‘Soul Harvester?’ Is that what that shadow creature was?” She paused, frowning. “And thirdly, I thought we weren’t talking about souls, since that brought us into the realms of religion, which is a separate issue altogether.” “I’ll see what we’ve got in the kitchen’” Paul gave Steve a hard star a...

  Paul frowned. “So are you saying that this sparkly stuff Roisin says she sees—" “She really does, bud. It’s a rare talent, that.” “—Okay, this sparkly stuff she sees. Are you telling me she’s actually seeing people’s souls?” “Not souls, exactly.” Steve took a deep breath, as if his patience were running away and he was reeling it in, “’cause souls imply religion and all this shit has nothing to do with religion. Not as we think of it, anyhow.” He paused, scrunching up his nose in thought. “Except maybe Buddhism. The idea of being reincarnated in another form is not far from my own hypothesis.” “So let me get this straight.” Paul closed his eyes and began using his hands to emphasise his thoughts. “Every living being has a soul, or spirit, rather, and these spirits can leave the physical form and go into someone else?” “Broadly speaking,” Steve leaned forward, in serious danger of spilling his drink. “But everything has spirit to a greater or lesser degree; every three,...

The gas fire was on, not because it was particularly cold, but they all felt the need for a touch of artificial cheeriness. Steve had deposited Roisin in Paul’s chair, which they all considered the best one, and in the absence of any spare light bulbs, had fetched a small desk lamp from his room. He’d pugged it in near the door, and it at least highlighted the threadbare carpet. Paul entered bearing three brimming mugs from the kitchen. “This is a vegetable cube dissolved in water,” he said, passing one to each of them and keeping one for himself. “It was either that or black tea, because nobody’s bought any milk recently, and I hate drinking tea black. Unless we have lemon, but there isn’t one this side of the supermarket.” “Cheers bud.” Steve took a sip of his salt-laced drink and almost managed to control his hiss as the steaming liquid burned the roof of his mouth. “So is one of you going to tell me what’s actually going on?” Paul dragged the coffee table away from the good c...

  The glow flared — soft, steady, ancient, and Roisin felt her whole body being wrenched inside out. Not toward the darkness. Toward the cross. The bulb in the overhead light died with a soft ping; a quiet death for something that had spent its whole life illuminating the darkness. Roisin shrieked. Being town apart in darkness was far worse than experiencing her own death in the light. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she was about to die right after discovering the existence of the supernatural. It wasn’t fair that she would die without making her big break into the art world. She would die in obscurity, never having had a solo show at a London Gallery. Never having travelled the vast world that didn’t even know it was waiting for her. Never-- The front door slammed open, allowing the air to change. It grew cold immediately, frost particles sparking in the spilled light from the streetlamp outside. She could see the shadow now, its writhing, spherical form highlighted a...

  Steve gave a short bark of laughter. “The police? What would they do? There’s nothing to arrest here even if you could get them to respond to an intruder. They’d probably arrest me for possession of restricted items” Roisin felt her breath catch. “Is that what your artifacts are?” Steve nodded. “Technically they’re undocumented religious artifacts, so yes, assuming they recognised them for what they were. More likely they’d arrest me for petty theft from sites of religious interest.” Roisin pressed a hand to her chest. The pressure pulsed harder, having exhausted whatever the little figurine had given it. “It’s starting again.” Steve hesitated, his right-hand hovering over the little collection under his arm. He selected another relic, this time an irregular chunk like a small piece of brick, again wrapped in cloth, this one dusty rather than stained. Again he held it up and again she could see it simmering before the pull on her released its grip and transferred to the o...

  The pressure began to build again, and as she turned to face the door, thinking that it was better to face the threat than keep her back to it, the pressure switched from her shoulder blade to just above her ribs; probably the same spot inside her body but was now being released just below her clavicle. The pressure now pressed against Roisin’s ribs, growing like a slow pulse until she was gritting her teeth trying to bear it, then letting out a whoosh of breath as it died down again, leaving her with a moment of giddiness as pressure suddenly released. Her legs felt wobbly with the effort of bearing the pain, and she abruptly sat on the step of the second stair down as the pressure increased once more. The echo pulsed again. Harder, this time, causing her to let a tiny gasp of pain escape her lips. If it was like having a baby before, then this would be akin to contractions, though she hadn’t though to time the gaps between them. Why were these contractions coming, anyway? It’...

  Roisin let him guide her upstairs, every step feeling like her insides were being pulled out through her shoulder. She’d never given birth and never intended to, since she’d learned the root cause of pregnancy, but if it was anything like this, she’d quite honestly worship any woman who went through it voluntarily. At the top of the stairs, not daring to look back in case her intestine were spooling out like fishing line, she automatically stepped toward the living room. The pain pulsed harder with each step, as though resisting the movement, pulling her back toward the hallway. Steve noticed. “It’s attached to the threshold.” Roisin frowned. “Why?” “Because that’s where it entered,” Steve said. “And where it wants to stay.” Roisin felt a chill crawl up her spine. “Why the threshold?” Steve hesitated, looking back down the stairs toward the door, then said, quietly, “Because thresholds are the junctions between worlds, and junctions are where things can pass between the...

  Roisin froze. She looked around for something – anything – to use as a weapon, but the vestibule contained little other than a bin full of junkmail, a pair of Paul’s heavy boots and the coat pegs. Out of desperation, she ran her hands across the pegs in the hope of finding a coat hanger and her hand closed over a hard, rolled piece of plastic cloth and she lifted it off the peg, gripping the umbrella like a club. Footsteps followed — slow, deliberate, descending the stairs. She readied the umbrella: one hand on the steel tip and the other just above it to get the biggest swing she could. It would have help her do have played rounders when she was in school, but she was terrible at sports and was generally the last to be picked for a team. Even Linda Rawlins got picked before her, and she only had one arm. She took a deep breath in, her mouth open to avoid a hiss of air, though if the intruder couldn’t hear her heart thumping against the back of her ribs she’s have been surprise...

  The house looked different. Not visibly — not in any way she could point to — but Roisin felt it the moment she stepped through the gate. The air around the building was thicker, heavier, as though the night had pooled against the walls and refused to drain away. The windows were dark, but not blank; they seemed to hold a faint sheen, like eyes adjusting to the dark. The assistant stopped at the edge of the property but leaned forward. It was reminiscent of someone at the British Museum straining against the ‘Do not touch the Display’ ropes strung around the fossilised lizards. “I’m not going in.” Roisin looked past her. The road was quieter than usual. She’d expect to see some traffic going past and the usual people giving their dogs an evening walk or popping to the local shop for cigarettes, but apart from the two of them, the road was empty. “Why?” The assistant shook her head. “Because whatever’s following you… it won’t cross with me here.” Roisin felt her pulse qu...

  Roisin considered the odd thoughts she’d been having; the man stabbed to death, the strangled child, the woman in the bath. Was it possible those were real deaths and the gallery assistant had performed them? The woman hit by a car, too? The lady who fell down the art gallery steps? She looked at the other woman. Was she bluffing? Or double bluffing? She was never good at card games. Someone had tried to teach her Bridge, once, but she got carried away with the bidding and invariably lost. The gallery assistant laughed. “You should see your face! I promise I haven’t killed anyone. Now come on. I need to get you away from here before you go loopy.” They walked in the opposite direction to the casino, staying silent for several minutes, the assistant’s hand still wrapped around Roisin’s arm as though afraid she might collapse or bolt or drift away like smoke. The street was empty, the lamps casting long, trembling halos on the wet pavement. The night felt heavier now — not dark...

 “You could be right. I never thought of them as something that changed over time. I just thought you either had them or you didn’t.” She nodded silently, the movement caught by the lights of the taxi idling outside the casino. “I like the idea that there are angels inside us, though. That’s quite poetic.” “If they’re angels, then you should have one too. And me.” Roisin looked back at the gallery door. The faint glow behind the glass flickered, as though the lights inside were struggling to stay steady. The assistant followed her gaze. “We should go. He gets upset if he thinks we’re spying on him.” Roisin didn’t move. “Do I want to know what he does to someone he thinks is spying?” The assistant’s voice dropped. “Nothing good. I never see them again, anyway.” Roisin felt a chill crawl up her spine. “What do you mean, never sees them again? He’s seen you before tonight, hasn’t he?” “Yes,” she said. “But he’s never taken any interest in me.” Roisin swallowed. “Why not? I mean, you d...