Lanterns And Shades - Part 2: The Daylight World

"In my eyes, indisposed, in disguise as no one knows. Hides the face, lies the snake, in the sun, in my disgrace."

I don’t scream when sunlight jolts me from my nightmare, but only because I’m getting used to it. When I was sick, suffering from what my dad calls The Touch and what JD and I refer to as being Shaded, I had it all the time. Goodbye consciousness, hello nightmare. Back then, I screamed a lot, and I didn’t always know why.

The sunlight makes it better. Even though there is a Lantern above every occupied residence on my street, even though I know for a fact that Shades can’t pass through Lanternlight (or through solid walls, for that matter), waking to darkness fills me with a horror so deep I can barely breathe. I think darkness, I think silence, I think Shade. It’s a natural, instinctive process; anytime I can’t see, I’m immediately terrified. This, more than anything else, is the legacy they have given us.

In my dream, I am walking through what used to be the town centre. I am going to the cinema to meet a girl, probably JD. We’re going on a date. I am dressed smartly. My hair is short and neatly styled. The dream smells of the kind of aftershave my parents might buy me for Christmas, the kind I might have worn to impress a girl when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. Everything is normal, the way I imagine everything was before. There are Lanterns, though, running the length of the high street and holding everything in the safety of their luminescent arms. They link my dream to my reality. It is always when I see the Lanterns that I realise I’m dreaming, and it is always just as I realise that they go out.

When the Lanterns die, the Shades come. I hear people yelling in the darkness. Somehow I am able to pick out my own voice. I am begging them to leave me alone. I am crying.

And then I wake up, biting back a scream and telling myself over and over that the lingering scent of aftershave is in my head.

But it’s a bright, cloudless day, a sight that quickly burns away the remaining cobwebs of nightmare. The sky is a perfect blue, and the sun – though small and distant – glares with fierce intensity. I roll out of bed and go to the window, delighting in such simple sights as my neighbour’s children playing in the garden, Mr. Cartwright from three doors down making his daily journey up and down the street to check everybody’s Lanterns, and the brunette from number thirty-eight hanging out her washing. This latter sight is the most delightful of all. I don’t know her name, but she moved in around the time I started working at the Curfew Bar. In the summer, whenever the day was warm, I would come to the window exactly as I have today and hope that she was out on her sunbed, tanning herself in a white bikini that haunted my daydreams just as the Shades haunt my nightmares.

JD rolls her eyes and occasionally hits me when I mention the brunette. She would refer to the scene I’m looking at now as just ‘another symptom of The DW’. JD is as quick in her speech as she is when running Witches Path, and she has acronyms for so many different things that I lose track sometimes. The DW is The Daylight World, and JD always invests in those two letters a disdain that genuinely puzzles me. While she seems largely uninterested and untouched by the night and the things that lurk in the shadows, she’s fascinated by the behaviour of our families and neighbours when the Lanterns are switched off and the Shades are something only to be remembered and anticipated.

“It’s not real,” she told me once. “It’s like they’re in shock. They just go through the motions of the things they used to do. Sometimes I wonder if you and I aren’t the only ones who even realise what’s going on.”

I didn’t question that at the time, because I know from bitter experience that arguing with JD is almost always a fruitless endeavour. Truth is, she herself is as much a reflection of The DW as anyone around her. She doesn’t talk about the Shades except in passing, and she does everything as if there’s a countdown going on inside her head. We all know what happens at zero, but nobody really acknowledges it.

In a lot of ways, that sums up life on Abbot Street and in Quarter B generally. JD was right when she said it wasn’t real. It isn’t. It’s like a movie. It’s more than real. Uber-real or hyper-real or whatever you might call it in a sci-fi flick, maybe Invasion Of The Body Snatchers or The Stepford Wives.

It was Shelley that told me the town used to be called Oakfield, but I found the information about Quartering at the library. It was something the government did in the early days of the Shades, dividing communities and councils in an attempt to bring focus to a crisis situation. The idea, I think, was that smaller councils controlling a smaller area would be more efficient and more able to keep our utilities and – crucially – the Lanterns running with as close to one-hundred percent reliability as possible. My dad told me he remembered people using the name Oakfield quite often as a child, but that it had gradually slipped out of use as he grew older and the divides between these new communities became permanent. Now we live in Quarter B, one of hundreds of Quarter Bs across the country. The name has no real meaning in terms of community, so people tend to stick to their own streets, huddling together beneath the Lanterns that remain.

Quarter A of what used to be Oakfield is to the northeast of the old town centre. B is to the northwest. C and D used to be in the equivalent positions to the south, except nobody lives there anymore. The town centre itself was to be used by members of all Quarters. It was where the shops and various entertainments were. There are no books in the library about the local area. Most of my knowledge comes from more generic texts about the old-style government and the rise of privatisation. This is one of the reasons I like to listen to Shelley talk. I’m a little too intimidated by her to come right out and ask about Quarters C and D and what happened to leave us alone here, but I think she knows I’m curious, and I think she’ll eventually tell. Keeping me on tenterhooks is just one more way of making me stay at the Curfew Bar. If JD and I leave, it’ll probably close.

I stretch in my room, working the stiffness out of my muscles and easing gradually into my daily exercises. I began working out after recovering from being Shaded. That was when I stopped seeing Witches Path as a challenge and started being genuinely afraid. I exercise to keep myself in good shape. I eat well. I don’t smoke and I don’t drink. Being quick and alert has become one of my obsessions. Staying alive has become my chief motivation.

I shower and head downstairs, where dad is making lunch in the kitchen.

“Janey dropped by,” he says, without turning from the stove.

“Yeah?” I can smell baked beans and coffee and his cigarettes; the mingled scents of comfort and safety.

“Sounded like you two had quite an adventure last night.”

“We got through.”

He doesn’t reply for a while. I sit at the table and watch his broad back, listen to him buttering the toast and turning a spoon in the saucepan. Eventually he turns and puts a plate in front of me. He isn’t smiling.

“How are you doing?” he asks.

I feel like crying. His scrutiny always makes a child of me.

“I don’t know. Witches Path…it’s pretty bad. Some nights it’s okay, but the bad ones are worse than they used to be. It was close last night.”

“Janey seemed worried about you.”

“She hates it when you call her that.”

Now he smiles. “I know.”

“What do you want me to say, dad?” I say, around a mouthful of beans. “If we’re careful, I think it’s still okay. What happened last night was that JD got caught by surprise and she fucked up. We made it, and I think she learned a lesson. Ask Dennis.”

“I will, when I see him.” He chews, swallows. “Some of the Lanterns on that truck need renewing.”

“You want me to quit.”

“No. I want you to quit but I understand why you don’t. We need the money. If things go the way I think they’re going to go, we’ll need the money even more. But I don’t want Dennis at my door instead of you some dark night.”

“If it gets that bad, I promise you I’ll quit, okay?”

He nods. We finish the rest of the meal in silence.

I’d planned to go straight round to JD’s, but the day is too good to waste inside. I walk past her house and on up the street. Mr. Cartwright waves to me from his ladder and I wave back as I turn off Abbot Street and slip down the short alley that opens out into Oak Park, ever-mindful of a rumour I heard a few weeks ago that somebody’s sister’s friend had seen a Shade in the daytime, still and semi-opaque in the shadows. I didn’t really believe it, but you can never be too careful. I stick to the sunlight.

The park is even busier than I expected. There are two games of football going on and several groups of spectators, some picnicking as if it’s summer. I recognise a few faces, but there’s nobody I’m really friendly with, and I’m more than happy to walk a couple of circuits of the park by myself, enjoying the sun and the light, winter breeze. It’s surprisingly warm for the time of year, probably the last day of its kind before next spring. The thought makes me shudder. December is almost upon us, and there are a lot of short days and long nights between now and Easter.

I’m thinking about the conversation I’ve just had with dad. I’m thinking about JD and the Curfew Bar and why it is I don’t quit. There are too many reasons and it’s hard to separate them. Quarter B has no real council anymore, and nobody I know has paid taxes and utilities in some time. The Lanterns, by and large, have been run by the various communities. Everybody has an equivalent of Mr. Cartwright on their street, a man or woman who knows how the Lanterns work and need to be maintained. Problem is, many of them are realising how much their services might be worth. As the light from the old council Lanterns becomes less prevalent and we rely increasingly on the likes of Mr. Cartwright and Old Dennis, they acquire a kind of power. According to my dad, many of the Lanternmen and women of Quarters A and B have formed a kind of union. He thinks it’s only a matter of time before they vote to charge fees for their services. That, he says, would be the equivalent of a Lantern Tax, and something of a return to the old ways. I see what he’s driving at, but I can’t say I entirely understand it. My idea of the ‘old ways’ is fuzzy at best.

The other thing is JD. Her family will need money every bit as much as mine if any kind of ‘Lantern Tax’ is enforced. If I quit my job at the Curfew Bar, there’s really no guarantee that she’ll follow suit. She’s hard-headed, and she’ll happily argue for the sake of arguing. I don’t know how I can raise the subject without it turning into a game of one-upmanship.

“Ken.” Her voice startles me, and I’m sure I must look guilty as I turn around, as if caught in thoughts I shouldn’t have been having.

“Hey, JD,” I say, hitting what I consider to be a nice combination of nonchalance and pleasure.

“You…okay?” she asks.

“I’m good.” I wave a hand at nothing in particular. “In my own world. I was just heading up to your place.”

She looks good; tall and slim, almost statuesque. Her face is scrubbed clean, her dark hair tied tightly back, her skin looking even paler than usual against the dark materials of bra-top and jogging bottoms. If I had to describe JD, I’d dress her like this, give her face a layer of sweat and colour from running or swimming or cycling, have her wearing the kind of smile she displays when you offer her a challenge or a dare. In my mind, she almost always looks that way.

“I saw you go past and I was going for a run anyway. I thought you’d be here, you and your DW friends.”

I shoot her a look and she grins. Same old JD.

“Dad said you dropped by this morning.”

“Checking on you. Last night was…my fault. I wanted to make sure you were alright about it.”

“I’m fine about it. I don’t have to wag my finger at you and tell you not to do it again, do I?”

“No,” she says, “you don’t.”

I shrug. “Same time, same place tonight?”

“You want to quit the CB, don’t you?” she says, apropos of nothing.

I turn away and start walking, not wanting her to be able to read my thoughts on my face. JD and I have been friends since we were kids, and we’re pretty good at knowing what the other is thinking about. She falls into step beside me, waiting quietly, looking over my shoulder as a crowd of children comes thundering and shouting past us, eagerly pursuing a bouncing ball.

“I think you do, too,” I say. “But it’s not the best time, is it?”

“It’s just that I don’t know what I’d do if you did, Ken. If some other job comes up, then great, but it isn’t likely. You know that. I can’t afford to quit.”

“Neither can I. But better unemployed than Shaded.”

“If we have to pay for Lanterns, unemployed and Shaded may end up being the same thing.”

We’re quiet for a while after that, making our way through the alley and back onto Abbot Street. I look up at the Lanterns on each roof, and for a moment I wonder if any of it makes any difference. Cities became towns, became Quarters, became streets. You can only be backed so far into a corner before you’ve nowhere left to go. That’s the thought that no-one voices or admits to having. Regardless of all the talk about taxes and unions, the Shades are taking over. They may already be a silent majority.

“What?” JD asks. We’re facing each other outside her house.

“I’m scared,” I say, and here, standing in winter sunlight, it sounds childish and ridiculous.

She hugs me, reminds me with her body and her scent of soap and fresh sweat that she’s a woman and not a girl anymore. The brunette and her white bikini flit briefly through my mind, and I wonder what it might be like to kiss JD, to hold her and tell her that she has to quit the Curfew Bar while there’s still time for us to live a life that doesn’t revolve around running through and from shadows.

I don’t. Of course I don’t. I hug her back and then let her go. She winks at me and walks away.

“We’ll be more careful tonight,” I say.

“We’ll be fine,” she calls back over her shoulder.

She slams the front door behind her and I stand there for a while, trying to think of anything but Lanterns and Shades.