Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

Tim Manor is going to torture my hands again tonight. He doesn’t come every night. I’ve been getting ready to go out to dinner with my parents. I’ve changed into my nice new evening dress that Dad bought for me. My arms are bare. I come down into the living room and he’s there, talking to Mum. She sees me enter and smiles at me, but she can’t meet my eyes.

“Are you ready, teya?” he asks me.

I shake my head. “Please don’t.”

He stands and extends his hand to me. “Come along, you know we have to.”

But no-one’s ever explained to me why. No-one even says it’s for my own good. Long ago I gave up asking for or expecting an explanation. It’s just something they have to do, from time to time. He doesn’t even seem to take pleasure in it. It’s just a job.

I can’t resist, I have to go to him and let him seat me. He’s always the perfect gentleman. I have to lay my hand in his and let him draw my arm straight across the coffee table. At least I’m allowed to look away. My arms are both shaking with remembered pain and anticipation. I know Mum and Dad are behind me, watching. They don’t like it, but they never intervene.

Anticipation is answered. One by one I hear him closing the clamps, each one snapping shut with a distinctive metallic snick as the cold iron squashes my fingers tight, and my thumb and my wrist. My hand aches in the pressure and the cold, completely immobilised. I can’t jerk away when the pain comes. I squeeze my eyes shut but I can’t help but cry out as he inserts the needles under each of my fingernails. I’m sobbing and weeping, as I always do, punctuated by cries as the still-boring needles pierce nerves and work their way between the joints of my fingers and the other bones of my hands. He has to wiggle them back and forth to get them all the way in so the venom reaches every part.

It seems like an age but I know from the clock it’s only an hour later that he’s finished both hands. I still avert my eyes as he gently, carefully, withdraws the needles and removes the clamps.

“There,” he says. “The tissue’s regenerating nicely already.” A gentle hand at my chin, to raise my head. I look at him. “That’s beautiful. You’re doing so well, Tani,” he says, smiling.

Freed at last, I pull my hands up to my chest, crossed at the wrists as if bound, as if I can protect them there. They’re still twitching uncontrollably, the tremors even shaking my shoulders. Trembling, I get to my feet and run to the downstairs loo and turn the light on with my elbow. In the mirror, not daring to look directly, I can see my hands look perfectly unharmed. I know they should be twisted and broken and bloated and bruised and bleeding. Their perfection is an affront to my memory.

I look at my face. My eyes are too dark, too large. My ears aren’t nice and round like they’re supposed to be, and I rearrange my hair and clip it into place to make sure they’re covered before I go outside. My hair feels like serrated steel wire being dragged along the skin of my fingers. I open my handbag and, with my hands still shaking and nerves twanging, I start to fix my face make-up. I can hear Mum saying goodbye to Tim Manor at the door. “See you again,” she says.

And I know what will happen next. I’ll come out of the loo, and Mum will fuss around me and help me into my nice coat, and Dad will say I’m his beautiful little girl, and we’ll go out to the restaurant as if nothing had happened.

I’m sitting in the back of the car as Dad drives. Sodium street lamps slide past outside, their beams swinging across me like searchlights. I look at my dark reflection in the glass. My hands won’t stop trembling.

“Shh, Tani, Shh,” Sam says. She’s rocking me. No, that’s just the motion of the ship under my back. I open my eyes. She’s there, of course; and behind her, the cabin wall.

The dream splinters and shards, the apparent logic behind it disintegrating in my waking mind. But I can remember the pain. I can remember acquiescing to it. Where’s the sense in that? Where’s the sense in being Taniel in Paul’s parents’ house? Where’s the sense in them standing by and letting someone hurt me?

Sam takes my hand. It feels like the needles are being pushed in between the joints again. I cry out and pull my hands protectively up to my chest, just like in the dream. They’re twitching.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Sam starts.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m awake.” I see the Satthei standing in the doorway, looking concerned and sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Satthei. I woke the ship—”

“No you didn’t, teya,” Fareis says. “You were only crying a little.” She steps into the cabin and puts her hand to my head.

“I haven’t got a fever,” I say.

“No,” she agrees. “It’s the same dream?”

I nod. I haven’t told her all of it, of course. Nothing about it taking place in Paul’s parents’ house. Nothing about who it is that’s doing it. I’m sure she thinks it’s Kerilas and I just won’t admit it. But I know he wouldn’t, couldn’t hurt me like that.

I can see she’s frustrated. She doesn’t know how to deal with this, and she’s not used to not knowing. I don’t react the way a Neri child is supposed to react to things. “I’ll be all right now Satthei,” I say. I just want her to go and leave me alone with Sam.

Finally she does go. Sam comes forward again and sits on the edge of my bunk and holds up my own pair of sealskin mittens. She must have dug them out of my clothes-chest. I sit up and hold out my hands, in turn, and she carefully pulls the mittens on to them. My fingers slide in through the interior fur lining. Sam ties the drawstrings at my wrists.

“Sorry,” I say. My voice trembles. “Feel so stupid.”

“Shh, don’t worry about it. Hey, d’you think she’d understand ‘psychosomatic’?” It’s a slight jolt to hear the single English word.

“Just a stupid dream.”

She puts her arms around me. My own hands automatically fold back protectively over my chest, safe between our bodies. I’m still trembling a little with the memory of pain, but she’s warm and strong. “What are we going to do with you, Tani?” she asks rhetorically.

“There’s never a shrink around when you need one,” I reply in English. I can’t steady my voice.

Sam strokes my hair and slowly, slowly, my body calms down.