Midnight Chapter 1
Copyright H.R Phoenix 2021
Chapter one
Charlie Marsh said that it all started when Dad and I found Mum in the garden. I told him it all started way before that. It started on my fourteenth birthday, when me and my friends went to the big shopping centre for lunch. They all lived on the other side of town, so I always took the train back alone on the way home.
I was stepping onto the train when I saw two of the strangest eyes I’ve ever seen. They were gold with green flecks with them or the other way round, I can’t quite remember, but they were mesmerising. They belonged to a lady who was around the same height as me, with sharp elbows, a pointed chin and high cheekbones that poked out of the sides of her face.
Her eyes were wild, excited almost. Maybe excited to see me? I have no idea but they were so strange that they stuck in my head for a very long time.
Anyway, so there I was, shuffling down the full train. I found two empty seats and well, sat. The lady was watching me with hawk eyes and she was standing near the sliding doors. Her face was tilted towards the thick glass, but her eyes were fixed on me.
I looked at my hands and the train pulled away, jiggling on its tracks, and rumbling along like it always does, and I looked up and the lady was moving with it. She was moving towards me.
I started panicking, because she scared me so bad. She came so close to me that I felt uncomfortable and then she glanced at the empty seat beside me and gestured that she wanted to sit. I let her. Because I was brought up as a polite young girl and you know what, I didn’t even give her a bad look.
She had no bags, no jacket, no nothing. I don’t know where she was coming from and I don’t know where she wanted to go.
There was a long silence. I had about six stops before I had to go off, so I wasn’t in a hurry. But the lady seemed to be. Every time the train halted and a voice from somewhere stated the name of the stop, the lady would quickly look at me, like, turn her head and search my face. Probably to see when I was getting off. Which really freaked me out.
I had about four stops to go and I tried to relax. Soon the train was almost empty, except for this teenage boy who was staring at his phone, a girl who was blowing bubble-gum, and an old man who held a puppy in his hands. And me. And that lady.
The lady’s head turned to me again. “Your name?” she finally said. The corners of her lips curved upwards. She was smiling. In a not so right way.
“Mary,” I lied. It was the name of my cousin, who was exactly the same age as me. We were very close and looked so alike that I could’ve told anyone that Mary was my twin and they would’ve believed me.
“Mary,” the lady mused. She didn’t tell me her own. “Which stop are you getting off at, Mary?”
I didn’t like how she said my cousin’s name. She said it like how I would imagine a donkey to say it.
Like it was MaRy or mArY but not Mary.
“This one here.” I felt comfortable lying again. “What about yourself?”
“Same. This one here, Mary.”
MaRy.
“Oh! What a coincidence!” I exclaimed in a somewhat sarcastic voice.
“Yes. Coincidence.”
The train screeched to a stop. The door slid open. The lady walked out like the platform was a catwalk. I hoped she would forget all about me. But oh no! She just had to swivel around and look at me expectantly. She beckoned to me with both hands like I was a baby or something.
But oh no! I wasn’t getting off here – no way! The doors closed and she realised that I had lied to her, but it was too late for her to do anything.
The train dragged on and her eyes followed me through all the windows, stayed on me till I could no longer see her.
A week later my dear cousin Mary died.
And I wondered what would’ve happened if I told that lady that I wasn’t Mary.
And that my name was Iris Midnight.
One year later
It was around the time when me and Dad discovered Mum’s new hobby. Burying things. That’s when Dad said we should move. That’s when Mum went crazy.
I remember the day we found her in the garden, surrounded by at least a hundred small mounds of soil and grass. Dad had rushed out and yanked Mum’s arm but Mum was too busy to notice him. Dad had called the Police and the Ambulance and they carried Mum back inside. At first I thought he was making a big deal but now…
I remember when everyone was shouting inside so I headed back out into the garden with my hands shoved in my pockets. I wanted some quiet and the garden was quiet.
There was a patch of flat grass, where Mum had sat.
And a spade and a bucket, the sort you’d take to the beach, only they were made out of metal. I have no idea where she had gotten them. Without thinking, I remember that I grabbed the spade and started to dig up what she had buried. Her mother’s gold watch. Her best China tea set. I remember finding all sorts of things. I just kept digging up what she had put under: A hardback storybook, a gold fountain pen in its box, pink flip-flops.
Then my things, from my room: My perfume bottles, my box of hairbands, the teddy bear I’ve had since I was ten, my shirts and jeans folded neatly. As if Mum had taken whatever she had found and shoved them under the earth.
Dad was so confused, so sad because Mum started to change until she was a woman that neither of us knew. She wasn’t the Mum that scolded me when I ate without washing my hands, she wasn’t the Mum that bought me a new book every week, she wasn’t the Mum that taught me science, she wasn’t the Mum who would not stop pestering Dad to get us a dog, she wasn’t the Mum who laughed whenever she fell over or tripped or got hurt.
In Mum’s place was a woman who vomited every hour, hardly talked, hardly ate. Whose brown hair got darker until it was a jet black like mine. A woman who seemed scared every time I looked at her, a woman whose blue eyes were always filled with tears, a woman who I had to call Mum but inside…wasn’t really.
When Dad noticed all her changes, that’s when he said we should move. Get a fresh start.
I was really angry when he said we should move to Penville because it was really far away and I had to move away from all my friends to a stinking town for upper class people. I knew Dad was kinda of rich, but I didn’t like everyone knowing that I was going to be rich too. I just liked being ordinary like everyone else.
It wasn’t a town anyway, just a bunch of houses in a forest.
But Dad said it was somewhere peaceful where Mum could unwind and recover. Which sounded nice and almost worth it.
And… Charlie’s reading this over my shoulder. He’s wondering when I’m going to put his name here.
Okay, Charlie, calm down. I’m writing it, see?
So we all moved to rainy Penville, and that’s when I first met him. Charlie Marsh.
Oh God. Charlie’s jumping up and down beside me. Stop it, Charlie, you’re jogging me. Please ignore him. He’s so excited. He’s always wanted to be in a real life book.
Back to the story.
We had just moved into No. 24 and I was unpacking my boxes in the study-room, and they were, of course, full of books.
I arranged them neatly on the bookshelves that lined the walls. Since I was home-schooled, Mum, before she went mad, always said that if we moved, we moved somewhere that had a study-room where I could concentrate on my upcoming exams. I never saw it as a study-room, nor did I want one.
I just wanted a small library, with walls full of shelves and a small stepladder in the corner, and a big, cosy armchair by a fireplace. Somewhere where I could read, and read, and get my mind off everything.
I arranged the books in alphabetical order, with the largest ones first. I left the non-fiction hardbacks and textbooks in the dusty boxes and put them in the living room. This library was going to be for novels, and novels only. Particularly adventure and mystery novels. I was never interested in cliché romance stories or novels about robots and the future.
I tore open another cardboard box and pulled out an Agatha Christie novel. Murder on the Orient Express. My favourite. I trailed my fingers along the shelves, found a place beside all the other ‘M’s and pushed it in gently.
That’s when the doorbell rang. Scowling with frustration, I got to my feet and went and opened the front door. A lanky boy with a messy mop of black hair and a pointy nose stood on the doorstep sheepishly. He looked no more than thirteen years old, two years younger than I was.
“Morning,” I said, raising a questioning eyebrow, because at that time I had no idea who he was.
“It’s afternoon actually.” He had an Australian accent. He pulled a grey jacket tighter around his scrawny figure. “So you’re living here. I’ve always liked this house. It’s huge and….well, very interesting. I always wondered who would move in.”
The boy held out a gloved hand. I shook it tentatively.
“I’m Charlie Marsh,” he said. “Stoked to meet you. I live across the grass. Right in that building over there.” And he pointed to a looming, dark-looking house made of red bricks.
“I’m Iris. Midnight. I live here,” I said.
“Iris Midnight is an adventurous name. Unlike Charlie Marsh.” And he pulled a silly face.
“I was born at midnight,” I said.
“That’s interesting,” he mused. “I was born at five a.m.”
We stood there for a while, awkwardly, in the cold.
“Well, I better go,” he said, giving an awkward wave. I gave an awkward wave back. “Erm. Welcome to Penville.”
“Thanks,” I said, and went back inside, shivering from the cold.
I thought about the strange boy with the Australian accent and his strange house as I took out the books from the boxes and pushed them into their places. About half an hour later, I clambered to my feet and wandered upstairs.
Our new house was a large, crooked one. Warm and snug, filled with so much unnecessary furniture that there was hardly enough space to walk. There were wide clocks that ticked on the walls, and framed paintings of darkly beautiful scenes.
I was staring at a big canvas on the wall, a painting of a forest. All the colours were wrong. The trees were blue, the sky red, the rays of sunlight bright green, the flowers black, and yet it looked strangely realistic. It was truly beautiful. I couldn’t stop staring and might’ve stood there for a while if I didn’t hear the crash.
I raced to the room that Mum and Dad had claimed as their own. It was on the third floor and when I clambered up all the steps, panting hard, I found Dad staring reassuringly at me.
“I heard a crash,” I said, gripping the banister for support.
“Oh, it was just a vase. It broke. The ugly blue one,” he said, waving a hand. “I could get a new one if you liked it. It was only a few hundred pounds or something like that. Do you want a new one?”
“Oh no, it’s fine, I just thought that it was happening again.”
Dad tutted, took my hand, and led me to his room. Mum was lying on the bed, her eyes shut, her dark hair streaming across hers and Dad’s pillow. I could hear her snoring faintly.
“See? Nothing to worry about. Look how peaceful she looks.”
“She’s asleep already?” I glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s only two! Two p.m.!”
“She was tired. I’ll wake her up for dinner. Let her rest.”
He turned around, closing the door softly behind him and let go of my hand. “I’m going to put the roast in the oven. Also, Miss Cheryl popped over, dropped off a chocolate cake as big as my face!”
“That’s nice of her.” Miss Cheryl was our old neighbour when we used to live in our old house. She wore cherry-coloured everything, from her glasses to her socks, and she loved birds. From budgies to parrots, I’m pretty sure she had every single bird you can think of as a pet.,
I was always a little scared of her, and her birds, especially her birds, but she turned out to be a pretty nice woman.
“Ok,” I said. But when he took a step towards the winding staircase, I called out his name.
“Yes?”
“I’m worried. About Mum.”
“She’ll be fine, sweetheart. I’m keeping an eye on her.”
“But I’m worried it’ll happen again.”
But he had already disappeared down the stairs, humming a jaunty tune.
I was worried about Mum for months. She was sick for ages. Woke up with headaches every day. Spoke nonsense.
One time, in our old house, a few days after we found her in the garden, I had heard a loud crash and when I raced to Mum’s room, the window was broken and she held a shard of glass in her hands and her eyes were rolling in their sockets and she was like…
It was like she was possessed.
I crept back downstairs and sat in the armchair in the study-room. I buried my head in my hands and sat like that for ages. Then I went over to the window and yanked at the curtains.
The boy was crying bitterly, his face red, his ears red. He sat outside his house on the winding path. In his lap was a black cat.
I grabbed my coat from the living room, pulled it on and stepped outside. A harsh wind whipped my midnight-black hair over one shoulder. I gritted my teeth and walked on. When he saw me coming over, he wiped his eyes hastily and stood.
The cat came over to me and brushed against my knee.
“Hey Charlie,” I said. “Hello cat.”
“Iris!” he said, pointing to his house. “I was just about to go inside. That’s Daisy, mummy’s cat. We have another one called Grey.”
“I love cats.”
Daisy started to purr and I picked her up and held her against my chest, cooing. “I came here because I saw you from my study-room. You were crying.”
“I was not,” he said rather indignantly. “I was not crying.” Then he scowled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Alright, just a little.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“No. Well. It’s just my mum,” he said and sighed. “She’s gone crazy. She’s in there, with Mr Safer.”
“Who’s Mr Safer?” I asked.
“The tailor. He just moved here a couple of days ago.” Charlie rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “He opened a shop too. In the market down the lane. Sells clothes. He’s horrible.”
“Really?”
“Well, firstly, he wants to mend everything in my house. Mummy invited him in for tea. He inspected all our clothes. He called me Charlotte two times and said it was an accident.”
“Maybe it was an accident,” I said.
“No, Iris, he’s horrible, trust me. He wants to take some of Dad’s clothes. He finds them…interesting.” Charlie screwed up his nose in disgust.
“And what does your dad say about that?”
“He’s dead, Iris.”
“Oh.” I put Daisy down and watched her race around.
“He died two years ago. Mr Safer kept asking questions about him. Now he wants to mend a hole in Dad’s jacket. He even went into Dad’s old study when Mummy was making tea. I caught him looking through Dad’s things. And then when I said I’d tell Mummy, he grabbed me and slapped me.”
I looked at Charlie’s red ear and face.
“That’s why I’m crying. It stings.”
“Call the police.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, they’re ages away and they wouldn’t listen!” Charlie exclaimed. “Anyway, I hate him. I don’t even want to see his horrid face. He looks like a drowned rat.”
“That’s not nice to say,” I reprimanded.
Charlie Marsh stuck out his chin. “But it’s true! Wait till you see him, you’ll see. he has a face like a rat.”
“It’s cold out here.” I looked up and saw Mum in the study-room. She was staring at me through the large window. I shivered. Dad was home. He’d take care of her. I needed a break.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” I said.
“I’d be stoked,” he said and then we got up and I let him show me around.
I wasn’t joking. It really was a bunch of houses in a forest. There was a small market amongst the trees and a couple of shops in the middle of nowhere.
Charlie pointed out the grocery stall, and his favourite cart that sold strawberries and cream and sometimes cakes with nuts and honey.
“And that,” he said and jabbed a finger at a shop painted in streaks of black and gold. “That’s Mr Safer’s shop and that,” and he pointed to a man with a face like a rat who was putting clothes on a mannequin in the window. “That’s Mr Safer.”
The man with the face like a rat noticed us watching him and looked up with such angry eyes, that I got rather frightened.
“Let’s carry on walking,” I said, clearing my throat.
“I’ll show you…the river that I used to go to with my Dad for fishing.”
And then we started to walk. And walk. And Charlie Marsh didn’t say anything for a while. And I realised that he was trembling.