Uttuku The Books of Darkness by Robert N. Stephenson	Table of Contents
Chapter 7 part 1 of 2

I watched TV, and managed to write a new chapter; the morning’s strangeness pervaded my words. Vampires and devils littered the prose, something I had avoided in all my works. The day’s writing was wasted. I’d edit everything out eventually only to be left with a workable paragraph.

I sat in the darkness letting the colour of the TV throw shapes over the walls and ceiling. The colour reached into me, helped me feel alive after a night within a darkened apartment, and what was it with the copper lighting? Sarina was insane, which saddened me as much as surprised me. Deep down I’d hoped something good might have come from the night.

I poured another scotch and sipped on it through a commercial break. A tampon ad. All light and fresh, a woman’s new freedom. I hated the ads. They always looked like they’d been written by men. There’s not much freedom in cramps, a bloody tampon couldn’t fix that. The scotch helped. My period was late again. I hated irregular cycles, never knowing when the mess will begin.

Something smashed against the wall above the TV. I dropped my glass. It thudded on the floor. The TV blinked off, plunging me into darkness. Steven.

I rolled from the chair and onto the mat. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel the coldness of his presence. I waited, steadying my thoughts, thinking of what to do. I crawled around the chair and looked towards the doorway. He was standing there, a non-casting light in the room. He held a vase in his hand.

“Follow!” he yelled. One fist clenched at his side.

I ducked back behind the chair. The vase smashed against the wall. Braking glass, the slosh of water on the floor. He’d never shown violence before. What had changed?

“I’m sorry,” I yelled from my hiding place. “I didn’t mean for you to die.”

“Follow.” His voice had changed, become firm, urgent. “What have you done with it?”

That was new. Done with what? I looked to him again, both hands at his sides.“Done with what?”

“Does she know?”

She? Who? “Does who know? Who are you talking about, Steven?” I dropped out of sight again.

“Follow.” Then silence, the cold lifted. He’d gone.

I didn’t know what he wanted. What he was talking about. I grabbed a cushion off the sofa and held it close, trying to will comfort out of it. The TV came back on, another commercial. I felt like crap.

He was gone. I sat on the floor, knees drawn up. I couldn’t move, the smell of my body thick. Fear, real fear. Who was Steven talking about? Who was “she”? The only “she” I knew was Samantha, and we hadn’t spoken since his death. Sarina, I thought. That was last night and this morning. How could Steven know about that? The man under the jetty? Orlando? But what would he know about Steven?

Steven wanted something, something I had. I didn’t have anything of his. I got up and looked out the front window, was Steven waiting for me? Should I follow him? Standing across the street, under single street light I saw the man in black.

I escaped to my spot on the floor. I grabbed the phone off the lounge and called the police. I went back to the window, they’d want a description. He’d gone. The phone answered.

“Sorry,” I said. “I saw someone and panicked. It’s nothing, sorry to bother you.”

“Are you sure, miss?” A woman’s voice.

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry. Just a bit edgy, everything’s okay.” I hung up

I stared at the snow between channels for hours, my backside aching from sitting on the hard floor. I wanted to go to bed, to sleep away the nightmare. I couldn’t. Would he be waiting for me in the bedroom? The cramps grew worse. My smell stronger. I didn’t want to move. Too many questions, too many questions.

I wished I’d never uncovered Steven’s fraud, or gone to Sarina’s place. As soon as the sun streamed through my front window I felt the grime of a sleepless night clinging to my skin like grease.

“Hell with it.” I headed for the shower. “Could it get any worse?”

Showered and looking at the rings under my eyes in the bathroom mirror, I knew I had to go back. As screwed up as I thought Sarina was, she’d probably be the only one who’d understand.

I ate some toast, washed down with two half-coffee cups of scotch. Still the nerve, settle the stomach. The drive to the bay was as uneventful and boring as always. I paid the parking fee and put my little timer ticket on the dash. The wind, blustery, wasn’t as chill as last night, but it still manged to get my hair in a tangle before I entered the apartment building.

I stood outside Sarina’s door, leaning on the wall beside the lifts for what felt like an hour. Would she be home? Would she attack me? Go crazy and bite me? I didn’t know what was worse, Steven, the guy watching me last night, or the idea of visiting a vampire or what ever she was. I pressed the button, the doorbell rang, a dull tune of deep notes. My jaw tightened. The door opened. She said nothing, just stepped aside and let me in. So far, so good.

Sarina sat at the kitchen table. I told her about Steven and his visits, about his visit last night. Sarina had been right. Orlando had followed me, and I needed to know what it meant. Had she known about Steven?

After an emotional outpouring punctuated with my most-used words, she left the room for a moment and returned with a book. She slid the photo album across the table. The cover old, tattered black leather. My hands shook. Last night didn’t leave me with too many choices. I opened the first page.

A black and white photograph stared up at me. The first page showed a tall man in military uniform with three stars on each collar and some kind of medal on the left shoulder. He wore an impressive handlebar mustache. Standing beside him was Sarina and another woman. Sarina wore a long, black evening dress. The backdrop was artificial, a staged picture.

“Archduke Franz Ferdinand,” she said. “His death sent a friend to war, gave him the injuries which would later ruin him.”

“Why are you showing me this?”

“You need to understand what I am before I can offer any help, Diana.”

“This could have been photoshopped.” The picture didn’t prove anything as far as I was concerned.

“There is a picture like this in the archives in Austria. This hasn’t been altered, I can assure you.”

She turned the page. More photos. Sarina in a black uniform beside a tank, then I saw it. Sarina standing beside Adolf Hitler. She looked exactly the same as she did in the first pictures, exactly as she looked now. Her off-the-shoulder evening dress and necklace of black stones clashed with the greyness of Hitler’s uniform. She towered over him with elegance as well as stature. Despite a deep reluctance, the belief in Sarina’s age started to penetrate. My palms became sweaty, hands shaking even more.

“What’s this to do with Steven?”

“I don’t know yet. You have to believe and trust in me if I’m going to help.”

I looked at the photos again. “You’re a Nazi?” It was all I could manage.

“Turn the page.”

There was a photograph of her with Winston Churchill, his black suit fitting in well with her full formal dress. They were seated in a study, a wall of books behind them. Another showed her with a man with braces on his legs, yet another with a small Japanese officer in a white uniform.

“I don’t understand.” I looked up and no longer saw the beautiful woman I’d had sex with, the crazy bitch who said she’d bit me, but someone else entirely. Maybe even crazier.

“I couldn’t stay in one place for too long.” She touched the photographs with the tips of her fingers. “My obvious attributes were useful in creating protections others couldn’t afford.” She sounded weary. “I learned a few things about ghosts. Hitler had one, Winston had several. Franz, of course, became one.”

“And you think you know what Steven wants?”

“I didn’t say that. Only you know what he wants. What I do know is there are several kinds of ghost, and the one you have in your house sounds like the worst kind.”

“Great. All I need.”

“You have a Drifter,” she said. “Someone whose ghost is controlled by another.” She looked grave. “A Ta’ibah is the only one with that kind of power. Your Steven held a vase; a normal ghost can’t do that.”

“Orlando?” This was getting worse by the second.

Sarina shook her head. “Maybe, but it could also be something else. You know the religious meaning for devil?” I nodded. “Well, in that context Orlando would be the son of the devil, or The Dark One. The night, a darkness as great as time and space itself. In my context, the one you should accept. Orlando hunts for him. He takes all the light energy from his victims. It is what sustains him. The Dark One seeks completeness in all things.”

If not for the album I would have laughed. What had I become mixed up in?

“Which is?”

“Total darkness, the abolition of light. All light.”

Not a good prospect to look forward to. I told her how Steven had died and that it was my fault, and that was why he was haunting me. My thoughts were that Steven wanted me to follow him into death, to take my own life as he had done.

Sarina thought on this, telling me that a normal ghost would just talk to her; it wouldn’t be so cryptic. Steven was being controlled; to her it stood out clearly, but the reason for the control wasn’t clear.

“It is possible a Ta’ibah or even The Dark One took him.” She looked grave. “They could have taken Steven’s light or life energy and put the empty, still alive shell of Steven into the car and set it up as a suicide.”

“That’s a lot to buy into.” A lot of effort as well, I thought.

“He’s being controlled. Only two things in this realm can do that, and they are connected.” She touched the back of my hand. “The only way to know what they want is to follow him.”

Not something I wanted to do. A new, and pleasing thought came to mind. I wasn’t responsible for Steven’s death. I pondered that for a while. Could this The Dark One have really killed Steven? In my heart I wanted to accept this explanation, needed to accept it. Three months of beating myself up, suffering under the judgments of others. All for nothing.

There was no way of proving any of this, so despite my knowing what might have happened, the rest of the world would still blame me. My guilt lifted a little, not much, but enough to ease my own mental assault, self-flagellation. I still felt depressed.

Of course, Sarina could still be a complete nut case and I’d been drawn into her strange aberration of reality. A depressive and a psychotic; not a healthy combination. What would Doctor Sholan make of it? And would I tell him? For now I could live with not being responsible, the prospect would at least solve one of my personal problems. Why Steven would be taken wasn’t something we’d found an answer for, and what The Dark One wanted from me was equally confusing, but it was a start.

“Did you know The Dark One was looking for me?” I gave in a little to weariness. Learning about a whole new world’s existence was tough going. I needed a drink.

“No, but it is strange he hasn’t found you.” She sounded surprised. I felt pleased he hadn’t. “Steven has a psychic connection to you, The Dark One or his Ta’ibah would only need to follow it to get to you.”

“Steven and I hardly spoke, we rarely even attended the same functions.” I thought of Samantha. “We did have sex with the same woman.”

Sarina crinkled her bottom lip in thought, a funny look. “That’s why he hasn’t found you.” She considered something, slid her fingers across the table as if ordering thoughts, switching the letters in game of scrabble. For a while I thought she started drifting away, becoming lost in the puzzle.

She lifted her hands, clasped them together then glanced at me. “The connection is secondary, a minor thread that leads your way, but it isn’t strong enough. They can create the ghostly link through Steven, only they can’t trace it. He might be able to find Samantha. I don’t know if he has, or if not, why not.”

“That’s good, right?” Samantha could have the ghost, he was her boyfriend after all.

“If I’m right, yes, but I’m only guessing, Diana.”

“I could call Samantha and ask if she’s been contacted by The Dark One, or Orlando” I wouldn’t mind shifting the madness on to her. I might have loved her once, maybe still did, it was just that Steven’s death had crushed that emotional state.

Sarina shook her head. “The Dark One doesn’t work like that, if he wants her, then she’s already dead.” I couldn’t hide my shock. “If she’s in the death notices we’ll know why. I don’t want you to contact her, because you might complete the connection with Steven.” She hesitated.

“And?”

“It would be your name in the paper.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t a good thing.

We sat, the quietness the apartment afforded us time to contemplate. Me thinking about all this and Sarina, well I had no idea what had crashed through her mind. She studied the table top, gently shifted her hands over its surface as if conjuring a spirit. Was she? The thought troubled me. What else could this woman do?

“Why did you really approach me at the Writer’s Centre?” Her meeting had started the mess. “Did you know something like this was about to happen?”

“No.” She broke from thought. “I wanted you to write a book for me, a special book, it’s for me to keep as a kind of memoriam.” Sarina showed the first signs of real emotion then. A sadness turned her lips down, her eyes clouded. “I wouldn’t have brought harm your way, Diana. The arrival of The Dark One, your ghost... Orlando, it’s all joined somehow, but I don’t know what to make of it.”

She took my right hand. “The book could help,” she said, eyes brightening. “It might help solve what is going on, and at least the work would help us understand.”

I wasn’t sure. Steven haunted me real enough. I’d seen Orlando, his dark form on the beach, in front of my house. Thinking surrounded by black was difficult. Bad thoughts, negative thoughts flowed in and out of the walls, were framed by the black squares above the table. My reflection in the high-gloss table top offered respite with its shadowed coloured image. Could I believe Sarina? Trust her?

She watched, I thought, and tried to find answers amongst the lines of the kitchen cupboards, the gleam off the refrigerator. Black on black, thought on thought, nothing resolved itself, nothing was clear; somehow everything was connected, I could feel it, and Sarina played a role. My gut was rarely wrong.

Within the black, the one deep and heavy in my gut, slowly edging across my heart, the solution did seem to involve the both of us.

She caressed my hand. Fingers long, nails manicured, shiny.

“Will you still write it?”

“Is it about Orlando?” I didn’t want to.

“I want you to write about the greatest love of my life. I lost him many years ago.”

I frowned. How could she think of love? I’d also thought she was lesbian. I had good bisexual radar, this time I’d received no warning.

“I didn’t always crave the affections of a woman,” she said. “I fell in love with a great man, a man who could have been more than he ended up as. Diana, please understand that Uttuke do not find love easily, or all too often. I have found it once and never want to forget it.”

This was a plea, not a request. With all the happenings of the few months, days even, I didn’t think I could manage the task. Writing took a lot of work, a lot of me went into the words. Right now there wasn’t a lot to go around.

“Who do you want me to write about?” I hoped it wasn’t Hitler. The world knew him as a madman. I couldn’t make a lover out of him.

“Bela Lugosi,” Sarina said. “The man who, funnily enough, played a vampire during his stage and film career.”

“You’re kidding me?” I did laugh this time.

“It’s not funny.”

“Sorry. All this stuff is really creeping me out.” Any time now I’d wake up and go have a cold shower. “You got any booze? I really need a drink. This stuff is really hard to get my head around.”

“Talking to a human isn’t all that much fun either.” She sounded hurt.

I apologized again.

“I loved Bela.”

I thought of the photographs on her bedroom wall, the only images displayed in the whole apartment. He must have been at least twenty years older than she, in appearance anyway. I’d seen some of his films late at night when I developed insomnia after working on a chapter. I wouldn’t have called him handsome or even mildly attractive.

Proceed to part 2...

Copyright © 2009 by Robert N. Stephenson

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