The Dying Fall
The Dying Fall
Chapter 16: Because I Need It
Song for this chapter:
Chapter 16: Because I Need It
Darkness wrapped the house like a shroud, seeming to stifle every small sound with its thickly-woven folds. Even Carrie’s breathing sounded faint in her ears, as if she were hearing someone else’s breath from a distance. It had been an interminably restless night, wrestling with her conscience, her fears, and thoughts of her unlucky predecessors: her grandmother, her father, Savannah, Mrs Giles… and now, Meg.
Carrie shifted closer to the edge of the bed so she could check her bedside clock. As she suspected, it wasn’t yet seven in the morning, still a little way before dawn began to fully break. It was too early to get up on a Saturday, but Carrie wasn’t going to salvage any sleep now, and she couldn’t bear lying in the dark with her thoughts for a minute longer. Still, it was an effort to get out of bed and expose herself to the freezing air. Throwing her dressing gown on over Mrs Giles’s knitted jumper, Carrie crept out of her room and downstairs to the kitchen. She flipped on the light, put the kettle on to boil and stared out of the back window, where the outlines of the shed and apple tree were starting to solidify against the charcoal sky.
As the kettle finished boiling, Carrie heard a noise in the hall and turned to see Molly standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Are you okay?” Molly asked.
“Yes,” Carrie replied. “I couldn’t sleep.” She went over to a cupboard. “Do you want tea?”
Molly glanced at the clock on the wall. “Might as well,” she said with a yawn.
Carrie made the tea, aware of her mother watching her from the doorway. Not a word had passed between them yesterday evening about Meg, and Carrie hoped the topic wasn’t going to be raised now. It was clear from Molly’s initial expression that she’d come downstairs expecting to find Carrie sneaking out of the house. Her suspicion was understandable; Carrie hadn’t been around much at weekends, spending her Friday nights with Meg and most of Saturday and Sunday with Nano. All of Carrie’s household chores were yet to be ticked off the list her mother updated every week, despite Carrie’s efforts to get some of them done in the few hours between getting home from work and the WiLS curfew.
Molly came and sat at the kitchen table as Carrie set her tea on it.
“I’ll get washed and dressed and then I’ll start cleaning the oven,” Carrie said, hoping this would pre-empt any questions about her plans for the day.
“Okay,” Molly said. “Are you going out later?”
With her mug of tea in her hands, Carrie hesitated on her way to the hall and half-turned. Molly didn’t look at her but stared at the empty seat on the opposite side of the table.
“Probably,” Carrie replied cautiously.
“Okay,” Molly said again. “If you go to the store, could you pick up some dried coriander?”
“Sure.” Carrie waited for a second in case there was anything else, but as Molly simply sipped her tea, she continued upstairs to wash and dress.
Carrie expected Meg’s arrest to be raised at some point that morning by her mother, even if it was only an indirect reference. When the subject remained untouched, even as she headed out the door after noon, Carrie assumed her mother felt the issue clearly spoke for itself and didn’t need her input. Presumably she thought Meg’s arrest should be warning enough to discourage Carrie from getting herself into trouble. Carrie couldn’t help smiling wryly as she walked briskly up the street, her green cloth bag stuffed in the back of her waistband, the data bracelet and EPROM chip tucked into her boot. If the loss of her father and death of her sister hadn’t deterred her thus far, she wasn’t sure why her mother would expect this new turn of events to make a difference.
All the same, Carrie was a little more cautious than usual as she made her way to Reddick Hill. There were patrols about, but they didn’t seem to be stopping and searching anyone—just parading the streets to demonstrate their watchful presence.
Nano was a little twitchy when Carrie met him in the woods and he looked relieved to see her. He seemed surprised when Carrie sat on the log next to him and took the data bracelet and chip from her boot.
“You must be all guts and no brains,” Nano said as he took the items from her. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. I had to call off all my appointments today—not worth the risk with the Patrol sniffing out bud-dealers.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Give them a few days to get bored and then go back to business as usual. This happens every time someone gets caught with a bud.”
“You think it’ll blow over that quickly?”
“Does usually.”
“Have you heard anything about what’s happened to Meg?” Carrie asked hesitantly. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know, if he had.
Nano shook his head and Carrie could tell he felt the same uncertainty she did. Any news, when it came, could only be bad.
“What was she thinking?” Nano said. “She knew better than to activate a bud in the street.”
Carrie felt a jolt of shock. “She did what?”
“She was listening to a bud—it’s what gave her away,” Nano explained.
Carrie stared at the her feet before murmuring: “At least she didn’t get herself shot.”
Nano cast her a look and she got up quickly from the log.
“Come on,” she said in a lighter tone, “It’s bloody cold out here.”
“I’m sorry about Savannah,” Nano said unexpectedly.
Carrie faced him with a quizzical look. “What for? It wasn’t your fault.”
“I sold her that bud.”
Carrie could see this was something he’d been wanting to say for a long time, even though he must have known it was a pretty obvious fact. Rox had said that Nano felt some sort of guilt over Savannah’s death, but Carrie only realised how responsible he felt as she looked at him now. His distress resonated with a note deep in her own conscience.
Carrie gave a slow nod and a half-shrug. “I asked Savannah to buy that bud,” she said simply. “She bought it for me and then asked to borrow it that morning. I should have said no.” Carrie had never admitted this to anyone before, and as the statement hung in the air she felt surprisingly numb—as if the words had lost all meaning.
Nano rose from the log and planted one foot on it as he pushed the data bracelet and chip into his sock. “Come on then,” he said when he was done. “This song isn’t going to finish itself. Gubbs had said he’ll play it at the next undersound if it’s any good.”
“You told Gubbs about it?”
“I just said I might have something for him soon. Don’t you want to hear it played out on the tower speakers, lapped up by a real audience with willing ears?”
“What happened to pleasure not business?” Carrie scoffed.
“There’s pleasure in having your work appreciated.”
“And payment too?”
“Gubbs doesn’t pay new artists for playing their stuff on his sets. It’s a favour. I don’t have to give him this track though, if you don’t want me to—it’s your song.”
“It is,” Carrie agreed, enjoying Nano’s disgruntled expression. “I’ll think about it—we still have to finish it first.”
“Easy,” Nano said confidently. “We’ll have it done by curfew this evening.
They didn’t have it done by curfew. As it was, Nano had to catch the 5 p.m. bus to visit his family in Greenwell. It was a sibling’s birthday, so he was only going to be gone for twenty-four hours, but it meant they couldn’t continue with the track until Sunday evening. Carrie was keen to get home early anyway, to avoid the late patrols, so before it started getting dark, she left Nano still at the laptop, tweaking Rox’s vocals. Rox had spent last Sunday with them in the basement, giving soul to Savannah’s lyrics and adding a new layer of depth to the melody. She’d recorded several takes and given them feedback on their work so far. Rox had a good ear and Carrie knew Nano respected her opinion more than anyone else’s when it came to music.
There was a particular riff in the middle of the track that was bothering Carrie and she churned it over in her head as she made her way home. Lights were starting to flicker on in the gloaming and the streets were nearly empty of foot traffic as she hurried through them. It was with a shock of adrenaline to her brain that Carrie was stopped by the bark of a command from two Patrol officers, who were striding across the road to meet her. A moment of panic seized her until she remembered she wasn’t carrying anything suspicious.
As the officers came towards her, one of them began moving more briskly. “You too!” she shouted gruffly. “I said ‘stop’!”
It took Carrie a second to realise the officer was addressing someone on the street behind her. She tried to turn to see who it was, but didn’t get a chance before the officers reached her and one of them, a young woman with a strong northern accent, began questioning her. The first officer, who was older and much more intimidating, passed Carrie at a run.
“Oi! Stop! Patrol!”
“Where are you heading to?” the young officer asked Carrie, almost casually, as if they were friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while.
“Home,” Carrie replied.
“Where’s that?”
“Batisell Street.”
“And where are you coming from?”
“Seeing my boyfriend.” This was Carrie’s stock answer unless it was obvious she was out on an errand. Mentioning a boyfriend rather than a friend usually meant the officer didn’t follow up with asking exactly what she’d been doing, the answer assumed to be obvious.
“Where does he live?”
“The Machina Estate.” Carrie gave her answers confidently, knowing there was no reason to detain her. She was more interested in what was going on up the road behind her, where the other officer was still pursuing the pedestrian who had refused to stop.
“Which road?”
“Florence Road.”
“You don’t mind if I search you?”
“Go ahead.” Carrie lifted her arms and tried to glance over her shoulder as officer began to pat her down. She spotted the older Patrol officer returning down the road alone, with a look of chagrin on her face.
“Bastard little oik,” she muttered as she joined them.
“Did you catch him?” her colleague asked.
“He disappeared up an alley. Must’ve been carrying something.”
Carrie felt relief for the escapee.
“Turn out your pockets,” the younger officer ordered.
When Carrie had obliged, the officer gave her senior colleague a nod. “She’s clean.”
“Did you check her shoes?”
“Really?”
“Most officers don’t bother, so if there’s anything to find, that’s where it will be,” the senior officer said. She looked Carrie up and down with a firm eye but then seemed to have a change of heart. “It’s getting dark,” she observed to Carrie. “Are heading home alone?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carrie replied.
“You didn’t know you were being followed?” She jerked her thumb up the street behind them.
“Followed?” Carrie repeated.
“Looked like it,” the officer replied. “It’s getting darker earlier now—you should be careful on the streets at this time of day. He was probably looking to mug you. You get yourself straight home now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carrie said, shoving her hands into her pockets as the officers stood aside to let her pass.
She couldn’t bring herself to thank them, even if they had perhaps saved her from a violent crime. For a start, if the mystery pedestrian had really been following her, Carrie didn’t believe it was because he’d intended to rob her. She wasn’t exactly top choice, unless a thief was having a really bad day. Carrie did remember feeling as if she was being watched though, the day Nano had shown her the Dextinction graffiti at the DReG. She couldn’t think why anyone would be watching her, but since she’d been with Nano that day and was coming back from his place now, it was more likely that Nano was the one under surveillance.
Carrie hoped the Patrol officer had been mistaken and the other pedestrian had only been walking behind Carrie because they happened to be going in the same direction. She couldn’t help thinking though of her father and how he had made contact with Savannah. Had he just stopped her in the street? Or met her off her bus from work? Would he be out on the streets at the moment with the current rise in patrols? If he was stopped and recognised he’d be arrested.
And then Carrie thought of Meg. For all Carrie knew, the two officers who had stopped her were the two who had stopped Meg yesterday. The Patrol were supposed to be a comforting presence but Carrie only ever thought of them as the biggest danger on the street. Any time she saw a pair of Patrol officers, Carrie wondered if they were the pair who had shot Savannah. There had been an investigation into Savannah’s death, but the names of the officers involved had been kept out of the news reports. Since their actions had been judged as a ‘reasonable response’ in the final report, their identities had also been kept out of the public records.
Agitated and a little annoyed, Carrie tried to refocus her attention on the tricky riff in the song. Reaching her house, she decided she probably had enough time before dinner to try out some ideas on the bottlephone. Guessing her mother was probably in the house, Carrie slipped round to the back garden and let herself into the shed. She switched on the lamp and squeezed past the boxes to her private little space at the back. Immediately she swore. The bottlephone was gone. The nails in the back wall of the shed were still there but the box with the bottles had disappeared. Carrie checked the suitcase where she kept the music theory book, the instrument booklet and her buds. It was empty.
A thick soup of emotions surged up through Carrie’s chest like lava and she nearly fell on her face as she scrabbled back through the boxes, out of the shed and to the kitchen door. She didn’t stop until she was standing in the living room, her heart beating like a war drum as she struggled to contain her inner eruption.
“Where are my things?” she demanded of her mother, who looked up from her book with a stony face.
“What ‘things’?” The question was an accusation.
“The things in the shed.”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Molly replied stubbornly.
“Fine!” Carrie returned. “Where are my buds and my books and my things?”
“The glass bottles are in the recycling bin, where they won’t get us fined again. The rest is gone, where it won’t see you in the same position as your friend—or your father, or your sister.” Molly’s long-simmering anger bubbled to the surface with each word, until she threw down her book and rose from her chair, face white and eyes burning.
Realising this meant her music books and buds had been sacrificed to the purging flames of the wood burner, Carrie glared at her mother, trembling as her own rage struggled against the last thread of her restraint.
“Those were mine!” she said. “I paid for them—you had no right to touch them.”
“I won’t have that stuff in my house. Have you learnt nothing, Carrie? After everything we’ve been through, how can you still choose to go the way of your father?”
“Because I need it!” Carrie finally snapped. Her indignation, frustration, hurt, anger and fear tumbled over each other as they rushed from her. “I need it like I need air to breathe. It’s the only thing that gets me through the day—it’s what makes this life bearable. Without music I’m not me. You don’t get it—that’s why you’re still angry at Dad, when you should be angry at the Patrol, and the government, and the stupid law. They’ve outlawed music and it’s not my fault, or Savannah’s fault, or Meg’s or Dad’s fault that we were born at the wrong time. I’ve tried living without music and I can’t do it. I can’t. I won’t. You can hate that, and me, and Dad, as much as you like, but it’s not going to change anything.”
As the tumult of her words came to an end, Carrie braced herself for a furious outburst from her mother to immediately follow; but instead there was a pause whilst Molly’s expression melted from vexation to a kind of disbelief.
“You think I’m angry at your father because he loved music?” she said, her voice calm but sorrowful. “You think I hate music?” For a few seconds her gaze flitted past Carrie as if disengaging from the present and reconnecting with a distant memory. “You’re wrong,” she said bluntly. “I do understand. I met your father at an undersound. We fell in love over our shared passion. I was as much an addict as he was—as much as you are.”
Carrie felt a band tightening around her chest as her mother spoke and she swallowed hard, unable to articulate the protest that rose in her throat.
“When I fell pregnant with Savannah,” Molly continued, “We made a promise to give up undersounds and the highs. The risk was too great and we agreed we wouldn’t sacrifice our family for our addiction.” Molly’s face hardened and she folded her arms defensively. “Your father broke that promise. He kept buying and using buds, collecting music sheets and album covers—anything he could get his hands on. He tried to hide it from me, but I knew what he was doing. He promised over and over again he would stop, but he never did. And then he was found out and the Patrol came for him and it ruined our lives.”
“He couldn’t help it,” Carrie managed to say, barely able to catch her breath as she tried to understand her mother’s story.
“I did,” Molly replied sharply. “It hurt me to give up music—to relegate it to my dreams—but I did.”
“How could you?” Carrie asked. “If you really loved it, needed it like he did?”
“Because I had something more important to protect,” Molly replied. “I had two little girls to think of—” she closed her eyes for a few composing seconds and took a deep breath before continuing. “And I learnt to find music and the joy it brought me elsewhere: in the sunrise, in the birdsong, the colours of autumn, in hearing about your school day, in the sound of your father’s voice, Savannah’s laugh, your smile—when you used to smile. And, yes, some of those things have gone now and it’s hard, hard work to find that joy sometimes, Carrie. But I keep at it because I don’t want to lose what I have left—and that’s you. I don’t want you to miss out on all that life has to offer because of a single obsession.”
“Music is my life,” Carrie said, her voice still taut with emotion. “It’s in my head all the time—in my blood and bones. Letting it go would be like dying. Please, don’t ask me to try.”
“It’s illegal, Carrie,” Molly stated. “You don’t have any choice. Look what’s happened to your friend—”
“Don’t!” Carrie snapped. “Don’t bring Meg into this. It’s not fair what has happened to her. It’s not fair we’re criminalised because the state has decided music is dangerous. They’re wrong. It gives life and if you can’t see that—if you’ve given that up—you’re just as bad as them. They are the ones who have ruined everything—”
“Carrie!” Molly anxiously tried to silence her, even though Carrie’s voice wasn’t raised enough for anyone outside the house to hear her words.
Carrie’s expression became firm. “I’ll die before I give up music,” she said.
She turned and swept defiantly out of the room, thudding upstairs to her bedroom, where she slammed the door shut behind her and fell back against it as she tried to keep down the sobs that bubbled in her chest. Tears trickled out of the corner of her eyes, but she didn’t let a single cry of grief escape her lips. She had to fight her urge to grab some cash and a bag of clothes and leave the house for good. That would be a stupid move. She had nowhere to go and it wouldn’t solve her problems.
In that moment, it suddenly occurred to Carrie that if her mother had found the stuff in the shed, she had probably been through the bedroom too. Springing from the door, Carrie rushed to Savannah’s bed and lifted the bed sheet to check the slot in the mattress where she had recently started to hide the journal. To her relief it was still there. Hugging it to her, Carrie sat on the floor and closed her eyes, no longer able to keep in the sobs that shook her shoulders.
The thought that the journal could have gone up in flames with the music books and her buds hit her with the same impact as the news of Savannah’s death. She hadn’t cried then—freezing in an instant from the inside out—but now she did, crying like she’d lost her sister all over again.
Next weekend: Chapter 17—Vannah
Author’s Notes:
We finally get Molly’s side of the story.
Chapter 17: Vannah, coming next weekend.
PJ