Authors: Marcus Sedgwick

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Horror & Ghost Stories

White Crow (16 page)

BOOK: White Crow

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1798, 12m, 7d.

At two in the morning, rose and worshipped, but did not worship the Lord. Instead I went to the Hall and bowed down before what the doctor will have me call Science.

So I worshipped Science, and I saw what Science would deliver unto me, but as yet this new god had been as parsimonious as the Lord has been to me hitherto.

This god Science had shown us nothing of the other side, all he has shown us is the hideous spectacle that is the inner workings of the human engine.

And yet.

Last night, as we worshipped at the altar of Science, something happened that has given us renewed vigour.

And an answer must come at last, because we cannot I fear continue with our work for very much longer before rumours seek us out and destroy us.

Last night was number six.

But at long last we have a start!

I confess that I had begun to doubt the doctor’s skills, despite all he had instructed me on the lore he had discovered in his years of training in Paris.

I doubt him no longer.

We stood before the chair, such a brute of a construction, sitting on the rails that carry deep into the lower chamber, where all sound may go unheard.

The chair, aside from the shackles at wrist and elbow, is a simple enough throne, of solid oak, but it holds no great secret, nor mystery.

But when it departs the Candle Room, and takes its run underground, coming to rest against the other half of its being, then it truly becomes a machine for crossing the barriers to the afterlife.

It is here that the doctor’s greatest skills of physiology and the mechanic arts combine. It is here the blade that the doctor witnessed at first hand in the Terror in Paris is put to use, as the chair runs to meet the stop, whereon the blade is fixed.

Waiting.

And as I sluiced the blood away once more, I marvelled at what we had seen.

As before, the victim came willingly. It is true to say that the man was afeared, but merely for his future soul, not his present life.

Three times the doctor bade him.

- Are you willing?

And three times the man answered that he was.

As with so many of the others, he turned to me and wanted the Lord’s blessing on the proceedings. We bid him go to the chair, and he settled in to meet his fate.

The candles lit, we retired, and set to waiting.

The doctor had been experimenting with the time involved, and had shortened the candle stubs, so it was not more than one hour till the final flame flickered in the dark and died.

From the hidden room behind the panel, I called to him.

- And are you a God-fearing man?

And then we threw the lever, and throwing ourselves upon the wheeled dollies we had made, hurtled through the darkness after his retreating body.

By the time we arrived, it was done.

The blade had done its work, and once again, neatly bisected the head from the body, and yet, by the doctor’s great art, left it resting on the blade, so that very little difference could be discerned at first, save the release of some blood from the pressure within.

This, the doctor has told me oft, is the secret to his system, so that while the man was truly dead (for who can live with a blade between his body and his head?), there was still the opportunity afforded us to communicate.

The man was dead, and yet now the doctor leaned in close by the lamplight, and called to him.

‘Underhill! Underhill! Do you hear me? Do you hear me?’

And now, finally, did we perceive success.

For his eyes opened. Wide.

They shut again, and the doctor called again, urgently.

‘Underhill! Hear me! What do you see? What do you see?’

The eyelids of the dead man did open once more, and the eyes swivelled to look the doctor in the face, but inches away.

His eyes fixed the doctor, but this was not an end to the miracles before us, for then, O Lord, his lips twitched, and parted, so slightly.

And we thought that he was to speak to us, but no utterance came, and the mouth closed again, and then the eyes became as dull as stone, and our moment was gone.

Such success! Such glory!

And yet the final glory still denied to us, for whatever it was that Underhill had seen he had failed to tell us.

I thought long on this tonight.

I saw Underhill’s staring eyes, as he tried to speak to us from beyond the grave.

What did he see?

Clouds and angeldust?

Or devils and hellfires?

What did he see?

All I know is what I saw of him, the look on his face, which it has taken me all evening to put a name to.

The name I have now, and it is this: surprise.

Friday 13th August

R
ebecca has given up shouting now.

All that’s left is fear and confusion. Her heart is thumping as though she’s a frightened rabbit in a cage, and maybe that’s just what she is.

Before Ferelith left her, she’d wandered round the chair, and from a darkened corner of the room had produced a five-branched candelabra.

She’d placed it in front of Rebecca’s feet, but out of reach. Then she’d gone to a high narrow rail that ran round the whole room, and rummaging, her fingers closed on something she had obviously put there earlier.

She’d rattled the matchbox as she’d come back over to Rebecca, and bending down, had calmly lit the five candles.

And then she’d gone, and all Rebecca’s pleading and shouting and threatening and begging had done no good at all.

All Ferelith had said was, ‘Farewell, sweet love.’

Now Rebecca waits, and watches the flames of the candles.

She wonders how long the candles will last, and whether Ferelith will come back before they go out.

She’s sitting in a windowless room, in the centre of a derelict manor house, and she’s shackled to a chair that’s bolted to the floor. She knows this because she has tried to stand and lift the chair, but it wouldn’t move any more than she can. She’s been tied to the chair by someone she thought was her friend, but now she has no idea who, or what, Ferelith is. No one else knows she’s in the Hall, and even if she could get free, she doesn’t have her phone. The only light in the room is coming from five flickering candles set in a candelabra on the floor in front of her, and just as she’s thinking these things, the first of them, which was very short, splutters and goes out.

Suddenly, with no other explanation, she knows what’s going on. Ferelith intends her to stay in the room until all five candles have gone out. She wants her to wait for an angel or a devil.

Rebecca laughs, but it’s not a laugh with any joy in it.

She sees that this is another of Ferelith’s freaky games, and she’s fallen for it. She knows there are no such things as angels, and certainly knows that there are no such things as devils. She’s not some ignorant country bumpkin from the past who might have believed in such things, she knows there’s nothing to be scared of. She tells herself this three times, just to be sure.

Nothing to be scared of.

Nothing.

Be scared.

Ferelith had told her the legend of the Hall, of this room.

If the legend were true, then somewhere is a place where Ferelith is sitting watching her, just as the doctor waited for his victim’s end, and she suddenly looks round the room again, staring through the gloom at the walls.

She can see nothing, but the thought that Ferelith might be watching her through some slit or grille makes her mad again.

‘Ferelith!’ she yells, startled by the strength of her own voice, startled by the fear in it. ‘Ferelith! If you’re there . . . You listen to me. You come and let me out right now! Let me out now and I’ll forget about it. Ferelith! Ferelith? Are you there? If you’re watching me, I swear . . .’

She stops, and then suddenly the panic rises in her throat, bubbling up from her beating heart, throwing itself out of her mouth with rage and anger, and she screams.

She screams, a desperate, incoherent scream. A shriek, and then she screams something that terrifies her. It terrifies her because she means it.

‘Ferelith! I’ll kill you!’

She screams again and then her head hangs and she begins sobbing, and before long she’s choking on her tears and snot, unable to wipe it away, since she’s bound to a chair in a darkened room.

Four Sea Interludes - IV

I went for a walk, because to tell the truth I find it a bit creepy in the Hall. It’s dark and dusty and there’s this whole feel about it. Like an aura, but not an aura of light, an aura of sucking darkness.

I went to the Lover’s Seat and sat in the sun and fiddled with Rebecca’s phone. After a while I got too hot and took my hoodie off and it was nice to feel the sun on my shoulders and arms.

I scrolled through her address book but nothing was very interesting.

Then I went to her inbox and looked through her texts. The most recent ones were from me, and I noted that she’d deleted some of mine, but not others. She’d kept ones where I’d said something nice, like one where I called her
Best of Friends
. I scrolled down to a couple from her dad, and again she’d kept boring ones which said
I love you
, or
You are my angel
, that kind of thing. It kind of makes me sick, apart from the fact that I liked the way he called her an angel.

Because if Rebecca was an angel, then that must make me the devil. That made me laugh.

Then I found some texts from Adam, the boy. She was holding on to them, though why she’d want to do that when he’d dumped her I don’t know.

They were the usual mushy stuff.

Miss you! xxx

Hey. I was just about to text you! I love you too x

I’m always happy to hear from you. Call me? X

The usual mush.

Then I checked her sent items, because lots of people forget to delete the texts they’ve sent, and to my great joy I discovered that Rebecca was one of them.

The battery gave me a warning beep then, and I knew I wouldn’t have long.

There they all were.

Texts to me. Texts to her dad.

I hate you. How can you be my father?

What am I supposed to do? I don’t know what to say.

And an older one.

Daddy. Please tell me that what they’re saying isn’t true. Please.

That had to be about the start of the case, when it hit the papers. I checked the date on the text and it pretty much fitted with what I remembered reading. So Rebecca must have been at school with all her friends when the news came out about how her dad made the wrong decision, and how he called off the team that were investigating the woods, and how if he hadn’t they might have found that girl tied to a table in a hut. While she was still alive, that is.

Then I found some texts to Adam, and among them I suddenly realised she was talking about me.

It’s okay for you. I’m stuck here with a freak. She’s weird.

I looked out to sea.

I watched the blue-grey waves heaving and felt like going for a swim, but I knew there wasn’t really time for that. I had to get back to the Hall.

Eventually.

Maybe.

I played with my knife for a bit, stabbing the dry earth around me, digging up the dusty soil, idly thinking about sun and rain. Lots of the first, none of the second. And me being a freak.

I stabbed the dry ground again, and I thought about Rebecca and Adam. Texting about me.

I was just doing that when her phone rang.

It surprised me so much that I dropped it. I picked it up again and read the display.

Dad.

I answered it.

‘Hello?’ he said.

‘Hello, Mr Case,’ I said. ‘Your daughter is with the angels now. Or the devils.’

And that’s when the phone died, the battery finally gone.

1798, 12m, 10d.

A Christless day today.

We toiled hard and long, but I was merely an innocent. I had become a simple labourer in the employ of Dr Barrieux.

The doctor was in a foul and sunken mood, and he spoke little, indeed, he spoke only to give me further command or direction.

And Lord! The reek and stench from the lower chamber is becoming unbearable. Our coffins are thin and makeshift, and do not keep as much in as we had hoped. The air in the chamber has become noxious, and though we wore wettened kerchiefs across nose and mouth, it was poor defence against the onslaught of putrefaction.

The day ended. The doctor straightened his back as we pulled ourselves from the tunnel and back into the candle room.

- So, he said, and he looked at me with a level countenance. Tonight will make number seven, will it not?

- It shall, I agreed.

- Then let us pray that seven is a holy number, a number of God, and that we achieve success tonight?

- Pray? I enquired. Pray? God? Since when have these been your methods?

And at this the doctor had no answer, but hung his head, and disappeared into the Hall proper.

We had several hours to dispense with before our seventh investment arrived, but I did not fancy to return to the Rectory, so I made a turn about the various rooms of the Hall, and read awhile in the library. There I found a translation of a long poem from the Italian tongue, by a man named Dante.

And therein the most accurate and terrifying depictions of Hell I have ever read. I was dumbfounded, struck with mortal terror, and my soul was torn with dismay.

It seems that Hell is far more complex in its multifarious horrors than I ever have imagined. I read of the various circles and planes of the damned, and the appalling and unbelievable tortures that await us there.

I read for hours, then could read no more. I slammed the book shut and lay it back on its shelf with a trembling hand, but though I had closed the covers of the book, what I had read remained burned across my brain like the branding fork of the Devil on the buttocks of the sinner. I had spent too much time, brooding on my own self. For as I wandered around the Hall, I thought that I heard some other presence in the rooms, thought I saw something stir behind a curtain, and knew that I was imagining things. More than once I thought I caught the shape of a small figure, a boy, from the corner of my eye.

I found the doctor later, and he was drunk, half-asleep on the couch, and in his arms he cradled the portraits of his wife and his daughter.

His cheeks were caked with dried tears.

I prodded his shoulder roughly.

- Doctor.

He stirred not.

- Doctor! Awake!

This time he stirred.

- The time is nearly here. Come. We have work to do.

And so he rose to do that work.