Aria Remains
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

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The candles had died but there was still just enough light creeping through the curtains to allow Aria to see the atrocity inside the room. The coffee table had been knocked onto its side, the glasses and bottles left lying nearby on the carpet, while all of the cushions had been tossed from the sofa, which itself had shifted several feet across the room. The walls were stained with something dark, in long splattered lines that reached from ceiling to floor, and at the side of the room the television was on, the cosmic static born from the beginning of all things silently replaying across the screen its infusion into all that had existed before it, rippling against the veil that separates each macrocosm.

She went further into the room and saw, partly hidden by the sofa, the lifeless, mutilated body of her best friend.

She screamed, bending down towards her, trying to cradle her, trying to scrape the bloodied hair from her face.

‘Ruby, Ruby,’ she said, over and over, her face now flooded with shining rivers of tears, her friend’s blood seeping onto her clothes, smothering her hands and arms.

She looked around the room in a panic, trying to spot something that might help her, even though she already knew that Ruby was beyond help, that she had been taken so very far away that there was no prospect of any return because even if she was to return she would be so frail and aged and filled with dust and insects that fed upon the dead, would be rendered almost useless by the enormous, titanic distance any return journey would by necessity require. She grabbed a cushion to lay carefully beneath Ruby’s head and placed her hands across the profuse number of cuts and stab marks on her body, as though she might be able to stem the flow of blood, that she would become absorbent, to assimilate her pain and her blood so that she would somehow revive. Roses began to bloom from the wounds, blood red and perfumed, elegant and radiant, the stems prickly, the leaves glossy, the petals blossoming with a terrifyingly beautiful efflorescence.

‘Ruby.’

Suddenly she heard a sound from the kitchen, the sharp thud of someone slamming the back door. Unsure what to do, her heart pumping, mind racing, she looked again at Ruby, at the wide laceration across her throat, at the rapidly forming bruises under her eyes, and then quickly moved to the kitchen, thinking she might, perhaps, be able to at least see who had been responsible even if she were unequipped to stop them, even if the action of pursuit would throw her into the direct line of danger.

The door was open slightly, as though its frame had pushed it away so that cool air could enter from the garden beyond, the diluted fragrance of night time flowers and the distant sound of a train carrying passengers who were afraid of falling asleep and missing their stop that soon drifted away into the ether, creeping into the kitchen.

Cautiously Aria stepped outside, straining her ears for any other sound, staring into the gloom. The night seemed to have taken a much firmer hold than usual and she noticed how much darker it was, the trees and plants and lawn chairs a great deal more indistinct than they should be for the time of day at this time of year. Holding her position at the edge of the patio, the spiders and slugs watching her carefully, she saw that the thickness of the night began to ripple as if pebbles had been tossed onto the surface of a lake, tiny fragments of reflected light appearing and disappearing and slowly, as she stared into the blackness, she began to perceive shapes moving within it. They were trying to break through, it seemed, as if pushing against a heavy sheet of plastic, writhing and probing as they searched for a way through because they would not be denied, would not be swayed from their course. She gasped and took a few steps back, her eyes fixed upon the scene as they tried to comprehend what they were seeing. As the shapes finally started to break through, the atmosphere tearing with neither sound nor complaint, she could see that they were people, their forms silhouetted against a shining light, a brilliant white light coruscating through the lacerations and breaches in the fabric.

The night has come alive, she thought, and these spirits are coming for me, these sylphs, these wraiths of the nighttime revealing themselves.

They are here, and they want me.

The idea, she was startled to replace, relaxed her, calmed her. Thoughts of the terror, of the brutality inside the house floated away from her and she found herself beginning to hope that these spirits, which is what she was somehow sure they were, might offer an answer, might lend her their guidance and would make everything better, would make all of the dreadful things that had happened simply disappear as though smoke from a dying flame, so that she could return to her normal, uncomplicated life where she had little to concern her other than her sewing machine running out of cotton, or her printer running out of ink. Or, if that was not to be, then at the very least, if this nightmare were to persist, that they would tell her what she should do, where she should go so that she would be able to replace what she was looking for, so that she could determine her own withdrawal from this hideous, pestiferous maze.

As she watched, waiting with a growing optimism that, one way or another, these strangers would be able to help her, and as the air warmed again, still and unmoving as she as though it, too, had paused expectantly, the figures made their way through the barrier that had been holding them back and stopped before her. For several seconds everything was silent, everything was tranquil.

The visitors appeared to be something very close to human, except that they were somehow weaker and not fully formed. Almost transparent. Almost a reflection of themselves, seen through mirrors that were misaligned, that had been coated in a dull sheen of dust and desertion, forgotten and left to gather the fine particles of repudiated time as it revolved within the attic of a great mansion, all its residents long perished, their graves savagely and endlessly unattended. There were four of them, all of a similar size, smaller than Aria without any obvious gender or any perceivable features. They were there, standing in front of her, yet in the same moment they were almost not there at all. The more she looked at them, standing serene and prodigious before her, the more difficult she found it to really see them, not because they had become even more pellucid but because, instead, she was replaceing it harder to understand, to make sense of what she was looking at. She could recognise no specific details about them, not the colour of their eyes or even whether they had hair. It was almost as though they were hiding themselves from her, showing her nothing more than what they wanted her to see, the merest hint of themselves, a suggestion of corporeality inexplicably disconnected from the existential. But, she considered as the silence continued, thunderous as a crashing ocean, was it they who were cloaking themselves, or was it some failing of her own that was precluding her from understanding?

Standing close, no more than a few feet apart, Aria began to feel that she was becoming a part of the group, that her own spirit was being pulled towards them. At the same time, despite none of them moving any nearer to her or touching her in any way, she felt that they were holding her, embracing her, that they were welcoming her as one of them. She felt arms around her, across her shoulders and around her back, and rather than being frightened she instead felt a peacefulness within the closeness and within herself. The group standing in front of her, drawing her towards them, wrapping her in their arms, made her feel safe, made her feel that she was a part of something more, something greater, and that they had indeed come to bring her a message, a communique dispatched from hundreds of years ago and millennia into the future.

Then she became aware of something else. Others had arrived - or perhaps they had appeared, had revealed themselves - and at their advent the main group seemed to withdraw and become withdrawn, a sensation of reverence filling the arena. As the group split into two, Aria saw through the gap they had left that the newcomers were sitting at a long wooden table, set at the far end of her garden where the tall trees with the glossy red and green leaves would have been, should she have been able to see them but, since she could not, she assumed they must no longer be there. The three women, young and beautiful, shining as if lit from within, halted what they were doing and looked over to her. She was given to understand that they were sisters, and that they were very important and their showing was a significant thing. At the left of the table one of the women was spinning thread from a distaff, casually winding it around her spindle, while in the centre the second woman seemed to be writing something in a large, heavily-bound book, gilded and venerated. To her left sat the third, a lengthy, lustrous piece of thread held between her hands, a pair of dulled shears on the table before her. While her sisters continued their work, this third woman looked again to Aria, reached for the shears and then, almost as though she were trying to tell her something, she released them with drama and the insinuation of high consequence onto the grass with a muted thud.

The group moved back together, blocking Aria’s view of the women. A narrow shaft of light rose into the night from where she had seen them, a white-blue beam of such brightness she was forced to close her eyes against its glare and the moths, too, who had come to investigate were now edging away from such insistent coruscation. At the same moment she was galvanised, uplifted, experiencing a redoubtable force of virtuousness and eternity, feeling that she was suddenly invulnerable, that she was, and had always been, perpetual. The group gathered closer to her again, bringing her back amongst them, absorbing her into them, and she became aware that the three women, the sisters, had now gone, had been reappointed to their rightful position somewhere amongst the upper air, and she also knew that she would be seeing them again, that they would return when she most needed them.

She had no idea how long she and the four figures had been there, the night torn, the white-blue beam now gone but the lustre that had emerged through the aperture still aglow. It might, perhaps, have only been a few seconds, a few tiny moments. It might have been several hours. Whatever it was, she felt that it didn’t matter, that there was no need to record and quantify this period, that assigning to it an evidential constituent would senselessly demean and devalue it. A serenity washed over and through her, an intense calmness and then, without any hint, any suggestion they were finished with her, with no farewell or further incision into the night, they were gone.

Unaware that her eyes had been closed, it was only when she opened them again that she realised she was alone. There was no sign of the visitors or implication of their visit, nothing to suggest that the night had been changed or disturbed in any way. She blinked and looked around, feeling a chill despite the warmth of the air. The garden was now bathed in the soothing waters of an atypical chiaroscuro, presenting the plants and the trees and the lawn chairs almost as they should have been, as they usually appeared, but at the same moment everything had changed forever because it had bore witness to something whose shadow and essence would always remain. Turning back towards the house, relishing the feeling of lightheadedness, she wondered if anything had happened at all.

Back in the kitchen, closing the door behind her slowly, quietly, she glanced at the green digital clock on the microwave.

3.15.

What time had it been when she first opened the door and went outside? Why had she gone outside at all?

She sat at the table and tried to remember what she had been doing earlier. Had she been to bed, fallen asleep and then been disturbed by something? She looked down and saw that she was still wearing the same clothes as the day before, so she couldn’t have undressed for bed. Could she? She had fallen into the habit of wearing yesterday’s clothes again over recent weeks, so perhaps she had been awakened and then dressed before coming downstairs, drawn into the garden to meet the past and the future and the pathways that ran from one to another and back again, as they joined together to show her something. But what had they shown her?

It was only then she remembered poor Ruby, lying alone in the lounge, her body destroyed, her life at its premature cessation. She pushed her chair back with a jarring whine and ran along the hallway, into the room.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Ruby asked, looking up from the sofa with a slightly inebriated grin, glass in hand.

‘How did…’ Aria said.

‘Did you go outside for something?’

Aria went over to her, sat beside her and embraced her, pulling her as tightly into her as she could.

‘Aria, is everything okay?’ Ruby asked, wrapping her arms around her with much less vigour. ‘We usually don’t get to the hugging stage until at least half the bottle has gone.’

‘I thought you were dead,’ Aria said, her voice muffled against Ruby’s shoulder.

‘I’m close to being dead drunk,’ Ruby grinned. ’Just how much have we had to drink?’

Aria pulled away from her, just far enough to be able to see her face.

‘Im serious, Ruby. I saw you. I saw you lying there on the floor. You were dead, your throat was slashed, your stomach just…just open. There was blood everywhere, I was covered in…’

She looked down at herself again, realising that there was no blood, nothing soaking through her dress or smudged along her arms. She looked at the walls and saw they, too, were clean, that there were no dark streaks staining them.

‘You saw me? Dead?’ Ruby asked. She, too, suddenly looked very serious, very concerned. ’Like, you actually saw me? You were in the room?’

Aria nodded, releasing her hold but dropping her hands to Ruby’s legs, just so that she could be sure she was still with her, just so the experience of feeling her emphasised her existence.

‘Yes, I touched you, I held onto you, trying to see if I could do anything. But I was too late. You were already…’

’Sssh,’ Ruby said, as Aria begin to sob. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine. Look, no blood, no slashing, guts where they should be, even if they are a bit liquidy now. But…this isn’t good, Aria. This isn’t good at all, seeing something like that, as if it was actually real.’

‘I told you. I said that I was losing my mind.’

‘I think we need to get someone to look at you, someone who actually knows what they’re doing,’ Ruby said, suddenly a great deal more clear-headed, an earnest tone to her voice. ‘I’m not saying you’re losing your mind, but there is definitely something going on in there. It probably is trauma, a hangover from everything that’s been happening, and I’m sure there’s something we can do to make it stop. But, we absolutely do have to get you to see someone.’

Aria nodded, returning her head to Ruby’s shoulder.

‘Do you think it will stop?’ she asked softly, blinking her eyes, trying to erase the image of her friend lying lifeless on the floor.

‘Yes, of course,’ Ruby assured her, gently stroking her hair. ‘It won’t be anything they haven’t seen before. I’m sure it’s very common, this kind of thing, when someone’s had some kind of shock or distress. They’ll probably have you in for a chat, sort you out some meds and then, in a few weeks, you’ll be back to your old self.’

Aria listened to what she was saying, wanting to believe her, wanting whatever it was that was happening with her, happening to her, to be something that could be fixed after taking a few pills, but she wasn’t convinced. Clearly Ruby wasn’t dead, she hadn’t been slaughtered and left to bleed out, and maybe the village and the church and the old woman and the dog, maybe they were just in her head, too. The stone bottle in her room, though - that wasn’t just her imagination. The man she saw everywhere - that, too, was real. He was real. From somewhere else, perhaps. From a different plane, maybe, somehow breaking through because there was something he was trying to tell her, something he wanted her to know, that she needed to know. But, whatever it was, he was real, he was there and he did exist.

But then, what if Ruby was dead? What if all the terrible things she had seen, the places she had been, what if they were the reality and moments like this, being with her friend, sitting at her desk at home, drinking coffee in her kitchen, what if it was these things that were in her imagination? What if it were these things that were illusions, were nothing more than visions? And what about those things in the garden, the three sisters and the translucent figures? Where did they fit into it all?

‘How do you know?’ she asked, since she couldn’t begin to think about replaceing an answer of her own. ‘How do you know what’s real and what’s fake?’

‘What do you mean?’ Ruby asked. ‘In what respect?’

Aria pulled her head away again, looking into her eyes.

‘In life. I mean, how do you know what’s real, what’s actually happening? How do you know, how can you be certain that you and I are sitting here right now, on this sofa, at this exact moment?’

Ruby thought about the question, then said, ‘I remember seeing something recently, when Josh was actually reading a novel for a change, and it was something like, you know reality is real when you stop believing in it and it doesn’t go away.’

‘I don’t think I understand what you mean,’ Aria said.

‘It’s about perception,’ Ruby told her, thinking about what she was going to say next as she spoke, trying to enunciate clearly, to ignore the effects of the rum. ‘Most of the time we just know that what we are seeing, what we are experiencing are the actual things out there. And I think that, when things happen to people, things that they can’t understand or can’t deal with, that kind of sensible part of their brain, the pragmatic part, doesn’t know what to do with it. So, there’s another part, another way that the brain looks at things, which compensates for that and tries to add its own…’ She stopped to think, then finished, ‘add its own interpretation, fills in the blanks, I suppose you could say.’

‘That’s actually…that does make sense,’ Aria said, trying to smile. ‘I don’t know if it helps, but I do know what you mean.’

‘I did do a term of psychology at college,’ Ruby shrugged. ’Before they started talking about whether reality was mental or physical, and physics and all that stuff. That’s why I changed to doing art instead. I’m like you - won’t do numbers, can’t do numbers and absolutely won’t do numbers.’

Aria smiled again, then asked, ‘So, do you think I need to see a psychiatrist? I wouldn’t even know how to start looking for one.’

‘Tomorrow I’ll call the doctor,’ Ruby promised. ‘At the very least they’ll be able to point us in the right direction. For now, maybe you should try to get some sleep? I can stay if you like. Josh won’t mind, he’s probably given up on novels and is happily back to reading a book about how to write a book.’

‘Actually,’ Aria said, ’that would be good, if you don’t mind. Just having someone else here, having you here, might make a huge difference.’

Ruby kissed her forehead, then said she should go up and get into bed.

‘I’ll just call him indoors, get the blanket out of the cupboard and sort myself out on the sofa. If you need anything, just give me a shout. It’ll be like old times.’

‘Thank you,’ Aria said, pushing away from the sofa and rubbing a hand across her face. ‘I really don’t know what I’d do without you. I dread to think what kind of state I’d be in now. Hopefully we’ll both have a quiet night. I love you.’

‘I love you,’ Ruby replied, watching her walk unevenly from the room and listening to her footsteps as she walked slowly up the stairs.

As she brought the blanket from the cupboard in the hallway and plumped up a couple of cushions to use as pillows on the sofa, she worried for her friend, for her state of mind. She wondered exactly what it was that was going on with her, hoping that she was right and that a psychiatrist or a psychologist, or at the very least a prescription for some medication, would help ease her mind and see her through to the other side of this terrible experience.

Lying on the sofa, shifting her body in search of comfort against the ridges and gaps between the cushions, pushing the blanket away from her chin to allow more air to her body, she did not notice the gentle fluctuating light from the garden edging around the curtains and could not hear the soft whispers of those who had travelled across the summation of existence, who were wondering whether the young woman now standing at her bedroom window, looking across the universe, examining her philosophy, had understood any part of what they had wished her to understand.