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30.9.06

Lanterns And Shades - Part 10: The Beginning Of The End

"This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend. The end of our elaborate plans, the end of everything that stands, the end. No safety or surprise, the end. I'll never look into your eyes again."

My mother and father were in love. That might sound like an odd and rather obvious statement to make, but then I’ve come to realise that there isn’t an awful lot of room for love in the Daylight World. Marriage, children, and a lifetime of tasks to be carried out before it gets dark, sure. But not much love. It’s been nearly thirteen years since she died, and if I’m honest with myself, I don’t really miss her. There is an ache, an absence, a sense that there was pain here once, but it isn’t grief and it isn’t mourning. I barely knew my mother, and trying to recall her features gives me that same feeling of distance. I can see her as a photograph, but not as a living, breathing person.

A few months ago, I came home from work to find my father sat on the sofa with a glass of brandy in one hand and her photo in the other. Of course, that was before all this, before the Daylight World began to show cracks and this sense of tension and finality became so all-encompassing. He’d looked up at me, eyes glazed and lips trembling.

“She was my little firecracker,” he’d said.

I’d remembered then. Not her features, not the way I’d felt when I was six years old and at my own mother’s funeral. Those things were gone forever. But I could smell her perfume and I could hear the angry yet somehow amused tone of her voice when they argued or when I did something wrong. Blue eyes, she had. Faded blue, like well-worn denim. Blue eyes and a soft voice that could harden so fast it scared me. My mother the firecracker.

Lanterns protect us from Shades, but not from each other. Laura Trent was stabbed in the throat for a purse containing only seven pounds and her house keys. The struggle that preceded the robbery was heard by several residents of the nearby houses, but by the time an ambulance arrived, she was already dead. By the time the police arrived, whoever did it was long gone.

Maybe that’s a part of it. My memories tell me my parents loved each other. When my mother was taken from us, it wasn’t such a literal thing as it is with those who get Shaded from our existence. She was dead, but there was a body, and we were able to bury it with all the ridiculous ceremony we attach to such things. Twelve times since then, once for every year that has passed, we have gone to her grave and laid flowers. We remember the woman we loved, and because of that, her absence from our lives is not a source of fear and insecurity.

Those clothes in the wood. I can’t stop thinking about them.

I’m standing at the front door, watching that weak winter sun come up over the rooftops, its light falling slowly over Abbot Street, Quarter B, and what once was a town called Oakfield. The birds are singing the dawn chorus, and from behind the house, I can hear a lone hammer thumping steadily at nails that will hold together a trap I’m hoping can cage a Shade. Henry works alone now, tireless in his rage and grief, perhaps the most determined of us all. Dennis and my father retired a few hours ago, JD long before that, as soon as her work was done. I haven’t been able to stop thinking and planning and speculating, and it seems foolish to even entertain the idea of sleep.

“Are you actually coming to bed anytime today?”

JD is standing at the foot of the stairs, wrapped in my blanket. Again it strikes me that she seems to have this knack for knowing where I am and what I’m thinking.

“Can’t sleep,” I say.

“Who said anything about sleep?”

And I can’t help but smile, can’t help but go to her. She opens the blanket to include me in its embrace. She’s naked beneath, and all of a sudden the thoughts in my head have nothing to do with Shades or Lanternmen. We kiss slowly, thoroughly, still exploring and adjusting to this change in our relationship.

“You should sleep,” she says, pulling away just enough to free her mouth. “You and Henry both. You said yourself you can still be Shaded. You need to be alert.”

“I don’t think I can, I really don’t. As for Henry…he’s like a convert to a new religion. He’s running on something a little stronger than the rest of us.”

“And that’s dangerous,” she says.

“You’re dangerous,” I reply.

“Me? How am I dangerous?” She frowns.

I pull her body closer to mine, bend my head to kiss her neck, inhaling the scents of sleep and yesterday’s soap. “You’re a distraction,” I tell her. “Why the hell would I want to go out there when you’re in here?”

“You need distracting, and you need sleep. Come upstairs.”

And she does distract me. And - after she has dressed and gone out with a bagful of leaflets for the residents of communities A and B - I do sleep.

The voices from the living room drag me back to consciousness. It’s still daytime, but the quality of the light is fading, and it’s time we were moving. I take the briefest of showers, more to wake myself up than anything else, then dress and head downstairs.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” my father says.

“Right,” I say, suppressing a smile.

Here they are, the people I’m relying on to carry off a plan that seems more ridiculous every time I think about it. My father sits in his usual seat, tall and stocky and looking somehow younger then he did just a few short days ago. His eyes are bright and alert, and he is clearly both tense and excited. He is not, as far as I know, a fighter, but he’s big enough to be physically intimidating, and smart enough to know what he needs to say to the Lanternmen. Sitting beside him is Dennis. An old drunk, they say, but a wily one. He’s been around the community for a long, long time. He will back up my father’s words. The combination, I hope, will have enough credibility to make them think, to make them argue. I don’t think it’s an argument we can win, not if Nolan and his supporters mean to have their way, but it should buy us enough time.

Us. Henry Nicholls and I. Henry sits in the armchair opposite the other two. Like my father, he seems tense. Like my father, his eyes are wide and bright. Something like hysteria in Henry, though. He is already dressed for Witches Path, gloved hands clutching each other, one heel bouncing almost frantically up and down, like he can’t stay still. JD was right; he’s dangerous. But there’s no way I’m going to catch a Shade by myself, and no time to find and convince other sufferers of our rare affliction.

Perhaps surprisingly, it is JD that seems the most relaxed. She’s worried, of that I have no doubt, but compared to the terrified girl I had to force to flee the Curfew Bar, the woman perched on the edge of the coffee table is a picture of confidence and calm.

“I’m not going to have a lot to do with this once those leaflets are posted,” she’d told me this morning. We’d been lying in bed, the sweat still drying on our bodies.

“You’d be surprised,” I’d replied. “You’re a reason to do this, a reason to pull it off. Maybe even the reason, for me anyway.”

“I’m not a damsel in distress, Ken. The Lanternmen are mostly a boy’s club, and they look at a girl, especially a girl my age, as an inferior. There would be no point in going with Dennis and your dad. As for going with you and Henry, that’d be suicide. Unless you need bait.”

I’d laughed at that. I’d pecked her on the lips and it had turned into another of those long, slow kisses that set butterflies loose in my stomach, butterflies that had kicked it up a notch when she’d slid her lips away from mine and her warm breath had tickled my ear as she’d said the three words that meant we had to make it through tonight. Somehow, we had to.

Now, standing in the living room and staring at her in a silence that’s dragged out for long enough to embarrass everybody, I offer her a smile and ignore the heat in my face. I take a deep breath.

“Everybody ready?” I ask.

Dennis and my father nod. Henry looks up at me with his disconcerting green eyes.

“I’m gonna go crazy just waiting here,” JD mutters.

“Why don’t you go home, see your family?”

“And tell them what?” she asks.

I shrug. I don’t know.

“Better than being alone here,” Dennis says.

It’s that very thought that makes her nod. Lanterns or not, doors and windows and walls or not, there is nothing comforting in being by yourself after dark.

We go outside in silence. My father closes and locks the front door and we stand in a loose circle on the driveway, shivering with cold. The Lanternmen meet only two streets away, and Henry and I have a burden to carry. It is for that reason that we will take the Lantern Truck while Dennis and my father will walk.

“Take care with her, Henry,” Dennis says, handing over the keys.

Henry nods. He has spoken only three or four times since he arrived.

“And you take care of yourself, Ken,” my father says to me. “Please…be careful out there.”

“You too, dad,” I say, sparing a glance for Dennis. “Both of you.”

He hugs me a little clumsily, kisses the side of my face. When he steps back, he is blinking rapidly.

“What he said,” JD says.

“If anything happens…” I say.

“Shut up. No speeches. You’re going to be okay. We all are.”

She wraps her arms around my neck and holds me tight for a few seconds, a few seconds that make me feel the first surges of panic. I don’t want to go to Witches Path and catch a Shade. I don’t want my father and Old Dennis to be anywhere near Daniel Nolan. Most of all, I don’t want to be so far from JD.

She draws away and turns her back, probably because she doesn’t want to cry in front of all these men. I watch her walk up the drive to the pavement, turn and head towards her house.

“Janey?”

She turns back, and even from a distance I can see the Lanternlight catching the tears on her face.

“I love you.”

It doesn’t feel stupid or awkward. It feels right. It feels true. JD walks backwards a few steps, blows me a kiss, and then turns away again. My father is looking down at his feet. I’m pretty sure he’s grinning. Even Dennis, that drunkard and one-time scourge of Quarter B’s womenfolk, is looking at me with raised eyebrows and just a hint of a smile. For Henry, it barely registers.

“Come on, Dennis. If we leave it much longer, they’ll be drunk,” my father says.

Dennis nods. The four of us look at each other a moment longer, and then they break away, moving quickly and purposefully up Abbot Street, two men with their heads down and their hands in their pockets, looking for an argument and perhaps even a fight.

“Ready, Henry?”

“As I’ll ever be,” he says.

“Then let’s go hunting.”

A few minutes later, the Lantern Truck is coasting slowly down the main road. In the back, where JD and I always sat when Dennis picked us up after work, a tarpaulin covers our trap, an amateurish construction of wood and nails that is, essentially, a box with one removable side. The plan is to lure a Shade into the three-sided cul-de-sac and then close the box. That simple. Despite all that has happened, I am still sure that a lone Shade is not strong enough to break anything that a man cannot, and though we had tried our hardest to damage the oak panels that Dennis had suggested we use, they had resisted. A weaker creature in a confined space, I reasoned, couldn’t possibly get out.

Henry slows the truck and steers it to the side of the road. Again I’m reminded of JD and I running Witches Path. This was safety and sanctuary, and never more so than the night I was Touched.

“Henry?”

He’s clutching the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. He’s shaking.

“Henry. Get it together.”

“I’m together,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “I’m just scared, Ken. They killed my daughter here.”

“I’m scared, too. But we’re the only ones. You know that, right? They don’t see us.”

He closes his eyes and nods, swallowing. I reach into my coat pocket and pull out my gloves. They’re leather, the insides lined with a thick layer of soft cotton. In order to get the Shade into the box, one of us may have to touch it. I know it won’t be Henry.

“If anything goes wrong, run if you have to. I will. Whatever happens, remember that they can still touch you. We’re looking for one, and I’m prepared to wait a while if the opportunity doesn’t immediately present itself. We can’t risk a pack of them.”

“How long do we have, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Dennis and dad will be there by now. Let’s say no more than half an hour.”

I get out of the truck and Henry follows suit. Together, we pull back the tarpaulin to reveal our trap. It looks flimsy and ridiculous out here in the dark, and we both know it. Henry actually manages a smile.

“That film,” he says slowly. “With the shark.”

“Jaws,” I reply, looking across at him, knowing exactly what he means. “Except neither of us is going in this thing.”

“Still…” he says.

“I…” I freeze, staring back up the road.

“Ken?”

I’m not breathing. My heart is thudding hard in my chest. I’m realising that for all my thinking and planning, I have forgotten a detail, and it is not a minor one.

“Cartwright,” I manage, in a strangled voice. “Cartwright. He…he never came back.”

I raise my arm and Henry turns, his gaze following my trembling finger to the streets of Quarter B, where everything looks somehow different. He doesn’t immediately realise what it is, just as I hadn’t, but then the sheer enormity of what we’re looking at strikes him and he lets out a low moan of horror.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Oh, fuck me.”

In Quarter B, the Lanterns have gone out. In Quarter B, all is darkness.

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