Lanterns And Shades - Part 5: After Curfew

"You're just looking for a boy bathed in infrared and sunlight. I'm all polish and reward. When I'm confident, I'm hopeless, just like everybody else right before they fall apart."

“Lanterns are out,” Shelley says.

The Curfew Bar is empty. It never gets particularly busy, but Sunday nights are the quietest of all, and for there to be nobody here at ten-to-midnight but Shelley, JD, and I is hardly unusual.

“What?” says JD. There is a faint smile on her face. “They can’t be.”

“They’re out,” Shelley says. She is standing at the window with her back to us, and because I can clearly see her reflection in the glass, I know there is no light in the car park.

JD is still smiling that little smile, like it’s ridiculous to even suggest such a thing. She is wide-eyed and breathing hard. The glance she gives me is fearful, almost accusing, and she moves quickly around the bar to join Shelley at the window.

“Just ours?” I ask, trying to keep the hope out of my voice.

Shelley shakes her head, but it is JD who answers me. “No,” she says. “It’s dark out there. I can see the old ones on Witches Path, but that’s it.”

“They’re on a different circuit,” I say, remembering a conversation with my father. “There must be a…”

And then JD screams and jumps away from the window, losing her balance and falling back. I see a Shade pressed against the glass, drifting in that slow and apathetic way of theirs, whatever substance it has making soft whispering sounds of contact and friction that carry in the silence of the bar.

“Kennedy,” Shelley says, utterly calm, “you’d best close the doors and check the windows. All of them. Janey, I need you to switch on the lights. I’ll close the drapes.”

JD hasn’t moved since she fell. Her mouth opens and closes, but no sound emerges. She’s starting to cry.

“Janey Dolores, I asked you to switch on the main lights, not sit there blubbing,” Shelley says. Her voice is raised, and there is something in the way she is so calm and still that makes her seem larger, more commanding.

JD gets slowly to her feet. Without looking at Shelley or I, without looking back at the window, she walks stiffly behind the bar and through the door to the staff room. Though something in me wants nothing more than to watch the languorous progress of the Shade at the window, I force myself to look away, to move. I take the keys from the bar, pass Shelley’s motionless figure, then lock and bolt the main doors. The night is cold, and I’m fairly sure all of the windows are closed. Nonetheless, I do a circuit of the bar, methodically checking each and every one. It is as I complete this task that the room is suddenly flooded with powerful light from the strips above us. I have never actually seen them switched on before, and it makes the place look dirty and unfamiliar.

“All secure, I think,” I tell Shelley.

“Check the trapdoor in the cellar and the fire exit in the staff room,” she replies. “Then you’d both best come back in here.”

I nod. I am trying to think, but my mind keeps catching on the image of the Shade pressed up against the window. There is something almost soothing in the way it moved, the sigh of its body against the glass like the tide pushing slowly up a beach. Its darkness makes me think of sunlight, its coldness warmth. I wonder, distantly, if I am in shock.

The trapdoor hasn’t been opened in years, and though it is secured only by a bolt that is more rust than metal, I am sure that it would take three or four powerful men to pull it open from the outside. The Shades are many things, but strong is not one of them. Satisfied that the cellar is secure, I go up to the staff room, where I find the fire exit closed and JD standing motionless against the wall.

“JD?” I say.

Silence. She stares straight ahead, breathing deeply and slowly.

“Janey?”

A flicker of recognition in her face. Her eyes move to mine, and my stomach turns over at the unhappiness and fear I see there. She blinks rapidly and the tears finally come. Her mouth trembles and she comes to me, anxious to bury her face in my chest, perhaps to feel small and helpless in my embrace. She presses herself against me and grabs at my arms when I wrap them around her, as though willing me to hug her more tightly.

“Hey,” I say, barely whispering. “Hey, it’s okay. They can’t get in here, JD. We’re locked up tight. We’re safe.”

She mutters something into the front of my shirt. I feel her chest hitching. She draws her head back and her eyes are red-rimmed and without focus.

“It’s okay,” I repeat, and it sounds as pointless as it feels.

“It’s not okay.” Her words are thick and slurred with grief. “It’s not ever gonna be okay. It’s just time. They’ll get everyone.”

“They won’t…it doesn’t…fuck, JD. It’s not written.”

She kisses me. I don’t expect it and don’t respond. I am aware of her open mouth against mine and her tongue pushing between my slack, surprised lips. I am aware of the way her breasts are squashed into my chest and of the way she seems to lift her hips, almost grinding herself against me. She tastes like chewing gum and smells like shampoo. There is a feverish desperation about her, and in those fleeting moments when her mouth is on mine, I know that in another time and another more private place, this could and would have been a precursor to everything else.

She breaks the kiss and steps backward out of my embrace. She stares at me for a few seconds. I stare back. I can’t think of anything I could possibly say. She brings her hands to her face and wipes quickly and aggressively at the tear-tracks. She offers an embarrassed grin, though whether it’s for her fear or her sadness or the kiss I have no idea. She turns and walks out of the room.

“Too fast,” I say, into the vacuum she leaves behind. “Slow down. Think.”

It’s an effort of will to push it all down, to clear my head of everything but the situation at hand. My mouth wants only to think of how she tasted and how her tongue pushed at mine. My ears hear only the sound of the Shade sliding along the window. I find myself staring at the panel of switches JD’s hand was resting on when I entered the room. Light, Lanterns, Old Dennis staring through the windscreen of the truck and telling me about the Dead Quarters. Strikes, Lanternmen, Shades, screaming. Where were the back-ups? Where are the back-ups?

Back in the bar, JD is sitting at a table and Shelley is pouring three glasses of whiskey. The drapes are closed now, and all is silent.

“Where are the back-ups?” I ask.

Shelley looks up and smiles. It’s not an expression I’ve often seen and I feel favoured and almost happy, like a boy in class asking the right question.

“There are only so many working generators,” she says. “Residential areas have priority. I doubt we’ll get the Lanterns back tonight, but the people at home are almost certainly safe.”

“Are we?” JD asks.

“Honey, everything’s locked. Shades don’t smash windows or charge through walls. If they can't get in, we don’t need to worry about Lanterns for now. We’ll just hang on for sunrise. No doubt your parents’ll be up here as soon as it’s light.”

“You’re so calm,” I say. I can’t help but smile.

“Lanterns don’t last forever and our friends out there can’t get to us. That old Lantern was bound to go sooner or later. They’re only lightbulbs in the end. Sit down, Kennedy,” she waves a hand at the glasses, “get that down you.”

I take a whiskey and she nods approval. We sit at JD’s table in silence, the three of us concentrating mainly on our drinks. JD glances up only once, and that’s to show me the expression of disgust on her face when she takes a sip. Neither of us are drinkers, and the whiskey is strong and sour in the mouth and throat, making me want to gag. Drinking it is an effort, but once it’s down in my belly, I understand why people do. It makes me feel warm and pleasantly dizzy, suddenly comfortable and safe sitting here in the bar with JD and Shelley, even though they are probably the two people in the world I’d least wanted to be close to tonight.

JD had barely spoken to me all day. By the time we’d met to take our afternoon walk up Witches Path to the Curfew Bar, we’d both heard that Judy Nicholls was missing. News, especially bad news, travels fast between the various tiny communities that make up Quarter B, and the disappearance of a local was always cause for concern and gossip. JD was waiting for me when I came out of the house, but she refused to meet my gaze and spoke only in monosyllabic answers to direct questions. On Witches Path, I stopped and picked up the shoe I was sure belonged to the unfortunate girl while JD walked on without looking back. The atmosphere between us had continued in the same vein right up to the point where she’d suddenly wanted to be held and kissed. Now everything was up in the air, and I had no idea what I could say to her, especially with Shelley sat at the third point of such an awkward triangle.

As for our employer, she had emptied her glass before JD and I had even tasted the contents of ours, showing no sign of enjoying or even being affected by the heat and flavour of the whiskey. She then refilled her glass at the bar and brought the bottle back to the table.

Shelley is the only person I can think of who could actually run an establishment like the Curfew Bar. She is old, yes, but that age shows itself in a kind of weary experience much more powerful than any apparent frailty. She is a large woman, though not in the sense of being fat. Shelley is both tall and wide, with a face that is unfeminine yet handsome. Her hair is a steely grey, forever tied back in a tight bun. Her hands are huge. The locals speak of her with awe and respect, though never within her earshot. I have never seen any of the customers, all of whom she knows by name, either argue with or question anything she says. I am not so much scared of Shelley as simply overwhelmed. Her very presence makes me feel young and stupid.

“So,” she says, lifting the bottle to refill her glass and top up ours. “What’s all this then?”

JD’s face goes an alarming shade of crimson and I feel my own face burning, even though I can’t help but laugh. Shelley is like the grandmother I never had. She is the only person who ever calls me by a full name even my father is ashamed to use. She always calls JD Janey. When angry, she calls her Janey Dolores, which JD absolutely hates. The only time I have failed to laugh at this was tonight.

“All what?” I say, looking straight at her and realising that I am a little drunk and that this is making me bold.

“You two,” she says.

I shrug. “It’s nothing, really. It’s been a strange few days.”

She smiles again. “We have a long night ahead of us, and I shouldn’t think we’ll be sleeping much.”

I take another sip of the whiskey, gulping down a cough and letting it slide down my throat and into my stomach before I speak.

“I went to the Dead Quarters last night, with Dennis McCluskey.”

JD looks up, startled.

“And what did you see?” Shelley asks.

“Shades. Just Shades, really. Dennis was talking about the Lanternmen.”

“Never had much truck with them, myself,” Shelley says. She drains her second glass. “Though I’ll need that Lantern fixed.”

“They’re thinking of charging for it,” JD says. “For repairs and maintenance, I mean. My dad says it’ll be a Lantern Tax.”

“No different from what the council used to do,” Shelley replies. “We need the Lanterns. Anything people need has a price.”

“Was it always that way?” I ask.

She nods. “One way or another. You don’t remember the times before the Lanterns, but there were always taxes. If the government didn’t tax for it, you could be damn sure you wouldn’t get it free. It’s always about money.”

“But I thought money didn’t really matter anymore,” I say. “I thought people were happy with the communal way of living. I don’t really know that much about it, but things were different when the towns had names, right?”

“Some things never change, Kennedy. Some are written in stone. Some will be passed down forever. If it wasn’t Lanterns, it’d be something else.”

That slow and somehow peaceful whispering at the window again. We all look up.

“They come to the light,” Shelley says.

“What for?” JD says. She sounds both terrified and curious. “Why?”

Shelley looks at her for a long moment before replying. “Nobody knows, pet. Back in the day, they tried to figure out why. I think they even caught a few for experiments. But they never could say why or how they do what they do.”

“What do you think?” I ask her. I can feel my heart beating hard and fast.

“You’ve talked to that old drunk McCluskey, Kennedy. He’s seen more than anyone, though no doubt he pissed most of what he knows up the wall. They’re not alive, are they? Not like us. They just float around out there until they sense light and warmth.”

“But why?” JD suddenly blurts. Her voice is rising, bordering on hysteria. Beneath the table, I slide my foot between hers, hook it around her calf and pull gently at her leg.

“I believe in a creator,” Shelley says. “I believe in heaven and I believe in an afterlife. Always have. These days, not so many have those faiths, and those that do have them as a retreat and an excuse. If you want to know what I think, then I’ll tell you. We’ve been abandoned, and the Shades are a symbol of that abandonment. In the past, God took in our dead with willing abandon. He understood that we were lost and alone and waiting only for His love. He understood that we did such terrible things because we were lonely and sad and frustrated. Somewhere alone the line, that changed. God has closed the gates of heaven because we are no longer worthy. We have gone too far. When we pass on now, we become shadows of our former selves, Shades if you like. We drift in the night and when we see light, any light, we rush toward it just as fast as we can, hoping – in our tired, dead way – that this time it will be the light that means we can finally come home.”

Sometime during the course of this speech, JD’s ankles had come together to hold my foot with the same desperation as she had hugged and kissed me. We’re both staring at Shelley.

I take another drink of the whiskey, a bolder drink. I let it offend my tongue and burn my throat and explode in my belly. I stare at Shelley and she stares right back, our eyes locked in what suddenly feels like a battle of faith. I feel somehow betrayed. I hear my glass slam down on the table, though I’m barely aware of the angry movement I have made to cause such a sound. My anger is hotter than the alcohol in my stomach, pushing adrenaline into my system until I feel as though I might stand and throw the table over, bend down to scream my rebuke in Shelley’s face.

“Bullshit,” I say. My voice is quiet, trembling with the sheer size of my anger. “Your God was Shaded a long time ago, Shelley, if He ever existed at all. Fuck, even if He did, it’s not like it matters now. According to you, we’re on our own, right? So fuck it. No point looking up for inspiration. No point at all.”

JD looks horrified, but Shelley’s face is as infuriatingly placid as it has been all along.

“That may well be,” she says. “But there is nowhere else to look anymore.”

I have a reply. The thoughts and words are building inside me, all the arguments that have been dancing inside my head since the day I was Touched finally falling into wonderful coherence. I’m actually smiling. I open my mouth to speak, and then something hits the main doors with such violence that the breath rushes out of my body in a gasp of shock. JD and Shelley both stand so suddenly that either the bottle or one of the glasses falls and shatters on the floor. The doors creak as though a great weight is being forced against them, and that sibilant sigh of insubstantial flesh against glass is suddenly all around us, filling the air and making me want to clap my hands over my ears.

“They can’t,” Shelley mutters. She is shaking her head, denying the evidence of her eyes and her ears.

“Ken?” JD gasps. “Ken?”

“The back door,” I say. I feel hollow and strangely calm. “Run, JD.”

“It’s dark,” she says. “Please…”

I turn and see that her face is a mask of utter terror, eyes and mouth open, all colour drained from her skin. I grab her shoulders and kiss her fiercely. Then I push her away. Behind me, I can hear Shelley muttering incoherently, hear the thuds and cracks of the doors giving way. JD stumbles but doesn’t fall, still staring helplessly back at me.

“Run!” I scream.

JD blinks at me. She reaches out and I wave her away with such anger that she finally relents, turning on her heels and doing what she does better than any of us. In the blink of an eye, she is through the door to the staff room and gone. I turn back to Shelley, and in the split-second before the doors finally give way, she plants those huge hands on my shoulders and shoves me to the floor.

I hear wood splintering and glass breaking. Stunned and breathless, I look up and see Shelley standing stoic and still beneath the harsh lighting. I see glittering slivers of flying glass. I hear the crash of a door hitting the floor. I see dark shapes dancing and twisting and blacking out the world. I scream.