Authors: Marcus Sedgwick

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Horror & Ghost Stories

White Crow (20 page)

BOOK: White Crow

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As it did, Rebecca moaned quietly.

‘No,’ she said. Just that. No more.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘We’ll find our way out.’

And I knew we would.

We began to climb towards the mouth of the hole, where Rebecca’s torch still shone.

‘Don’t go too far ahead,’ Rebecca said, and we moved on, but after a while I couldn’t sense her behind me any more.

I stopped, and then I heard she was crying.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘What is it? We have to keep going.’

She sniffed a bit more.

‘I was thinking. About my dad. He’s locked up in a prison cell. Tonight. Like he’s a prisoner, when he’s actually a policeman. A good man. He hasn’t done anything wrong. Anybody could hit some idiot reporter, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘I think you’re right.’

‘He’s alone and I’m stuck down this stupid tunnel and if we never get out . . .’

‘We’re going to get out,’ I told her.

‘But anyway, it’s just been so rubbish between us, but I don’t know what to do any more, or what to say, or how to be.’

I thought for a moment. I was getting really cold and stiff, and I wanted to move, but I could tell I needed to get Rebecca out of her blackness first.

‘You said he hasn’t done anything wrong,’ I said. ‘Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘But what about the whole thing. Do you think he did wrong. About that girl?’

Rebecca didn’t say anything, but sat in the dark in silence, thinking about what I’d said, I guess.

She didn’t move, or speak. She just sat there.

I fished in my pocket and in the gloom, I found her hand, pushing the heart-shaped pendant into it.

‘I found it. I knew it was yours. I thought you might want it back.’

From the way her breath caught in her mouth, like she was holding back the tears, trying not to sob, I knew I was right.

She did want her father’s heart back, after all.

Across the Breeze

And then, before either of us could say anything at all, the world began to fall apart.

It started with a low vibration, a groan and a rumble and a crack.

Heedless of the dark, we scrambled up the tunnel. I hit my head on the floor as we got to the top, but by then I didn’t care.

The Hall was shaking.

Bits of the ceiling started to fall on us, and though they were probably just tiny bits of plaster, it was terrifying.

I groped my way to the door of the Candle Room.

‘Don’t leave me!’ Rebecca shrieked, grasping for my hand.

Hand in hand, we staggered into the hall, and I tried to get us towards the kitchens and the pantry, but as we came out into the entrance hall again, we stopped, because it was raining. Indoors.

Then the world shook again. A terrible roar of failing wood and gusting wind tore through the room, and I guessed that the roof had given way, or been ripped off.

‘It’s the storm!’ I yelled stupidly over the noise.

Rebecca couldn’t hear me, even though I was standing right by her.

‘The storm!’

More rain fell on us from somewhere way above our heads, and with it some bit of the building giving way deafened us.

We both screamed, and I think that was the first time I was really afraid for our lives.

Still blind, I pawed my way along the corridor that led back to the kitchens. Panicking, we pulled each other out of the pantry window, kicking the boards completely off this time, since there was no need for subterfuge any more.

We stumbled out into the storm.

Hell had arrived and ripped into the coast. The storm that had started in Holland had torn across the channel and thrown itself at Winterfold.

Trees were threshing madly, bending low to the ground in places, and every now and again there was a tremendous tearing noise as one of them was uprooted, though even this noise was drowned in the maelstrom of the wind and rain battering us from all sides.

‘Oh God! What shall we do?’ Rebecca screamed. To run through the woods now seemed like suicide, and behind us the Hall was making its own threats to collapse completely.

‘The footbridge! It’s stone. We can hide underneath till the worst is over.’

So we took our lives in our hands, and ran towards the bridge, throwing ourselves under its protective arch and gasping for breath.

And there we lay, listening to the destruction all around us, as the lightning flashed across the woods like a horror film, and the thunder banged, right over our heads.

But if we thought that was the worst of it, we were wrong, because from nowhere, our small bit of the world literally fell apart.

Sunday 5th September

D
awn breaks, and casts a weak light on the remains of Winterfold Hall.

In a gully underneath the old stone footbridge, two girls lie against each other, exhaustion having overcome their fear and the cold and the wet, so that they sleep a troubled sleep in each other’s arms.

The storm has destroyed the woods, the Hall is a ruin, the roof gone, the floors collapsed; it looks like a pile of matchwood crushed by a giant’s foot.

Rebecca stirs, and shivers. She opens her eyes, and sits up, and then she sees something that makes her scream.

She’s not looking at the Hall, but in the opposite direction.

Ferelith sits up too, rubbing her head. Blood flows onto her hand, and she realises that something must have cut her head during their escape from the Hall.

Fresh blood stains her soaked T-shirt, but she doesn’t care.

Neither does she scream, but she swears silently under her breath as she sees what Rebecca has seen.

When they hid under the footbridge, the cliff edge, at the bottom of the path, was twenty metres away. At least.

Now, the edge of the cliff is within a stone’s throw of where they lie cowering.

‘It’s collapsed. My God!’ Ferelith says, standing up.

The whole landscape has changed. The woods are decimated, unrecognisable; they can hear the crash of the waves beneath the new cliff edge easily now, so close they can smell the sea.

Rebecca stands up too.

‘We could just have been . . .’

She stops, but Ferelith nods.

‘And no one would have known. We wouldn’t have known it either. Here one minute. Then . . .’

The two girls say no more, and without a word, start walking towards the new edge of the cliff.

Somehow, coming so close to death, they are heedless of danger, and stand at the very brink.

The whole coastline has changed for a few hundred metres.

‘Jesus!’ cries Ferelith. ‘Look! The church!’

But there’s no church to be seen. It’s gone, almost entirely, swallowed into the sea in a single night. All that remains, now visible through the shredded woodland, is the boundary wall and a few graves, lucky enough to be further inland than most.

‘Come on,’ says Ferelith.

There’s nothing else to do. The way the cliff has collapsed has cut them off, leaving them on a kind of peninsula. There are two paths off and both appear equally dangerous. But there’s a path down to the beach, that looks just possible to scramble down. From there they can walk along the shore, and home. If the tide’s out.

There’s nothing to be scared of.

So they start to climb down, and then Rebecca sees something in the side of the cliff.

‘What’s that?’ she asks. ‘A grave?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ says Ferelith. ‘No. No, it’s too big. It’s way too big.’

They scrabble sideways along the fallen earth and stones, and get close enough to see that halfway up the new cliff face is a gaping hole. A chamber, hidden from view for only-God-knows how long, now exposed to the bright still morning.

It gapes dreadfully like a wound in the side of a horse, and there’s stuff hanging from it; bits of wood; long boxes. The hole is partly closed on one side, a smashed mouth, but nevertheless they can see it goes some way inside the cliff.

‘What is it?’ Rebecca asks, over the noise of the waves below. The sea churns, a thick brown and angry mess, eating away already at the newly fallen soil that the storm has presented to it.

‘I don’t know. But you know something . . .’

‘What?’

‘Our tunnel. Our tunnel pointed out to sea. Our tunnel pointed to the cliff.’ She stops, and lifts her hand, jabs a finger towards the chamber. ‘Right about there . . .’

Bones of You

It didn’t take much doing.

It didn’t need any discussion.

We both knew we were going to get inside that chamber.

The hole was in a section of the face that had fallen off, sheer and almost vertical, but we soon realised that it wouldn’t really be so hard to scramble over to the cave mouth.

From there, the beach was a long way down. Somehow, though we both knew that to slip, to miss a hand- or foot-hold, would be to fall and die, we were not afraid. It was just something that had to be done.

I turned to Rebecca.

‘You first?’

She shook her head.

‘You first.’

‘I was afraid you’d say that.’

But actually, it wasn’t so hard. Going across wasn’t hard at all. I moved myself bit by bit, and though my arms ached and complained, very quickly my feet found the edge of the cave mouth, and I staggered in.

‘Come on! I’m there!’ I called, and by the time Rebecca’s face appeared in the chamber’s entrance, I had already seen everything.

I saw the chamber.

It was large.

I saw the rails coming from the tunnel, entering the small room, coming to rest against a huge iron stop, into which was mounted a massive blade, at neck height, I guessed. It was rusty, almost completely eaten away, and yet it still looked terrifying. Absolutely lethal.

I saw boxes. Saw that they were roughly made coffins. Some lay spilled on the floor. I saw the skeletons inside.

I saw that they had no heads. Not one of them.

And I saw the niches in the wall, and in those niches, I saw seven skulls. Above each one was a label, written in a spidery hand, and so faded that I couldn’t really read the writing. I think I made out a name; it might have been Mason.

And I saw the eighth body, the eighth skeleton, and this one still had its skull, lying a little way up in the tunnel, as if heading for the outside.

We were silent.

I was filled with the horror of it all.

It was time to go.

I don’t know what it was that made me do it. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t know, I just don’t know.

Not really. I’d been playing games, all summer. At least I think I had. But when I decided, as we agreed to climb back out, to send that girl down to the rocks, I knew I wasn’t playing games any more.

The girl had to go, that was all I thought. I’d had enough of her, and she had to go, and find out for both of us what lies on the other side.

And do you know, she didn’t find it hard to die.

In fact, it seemed to be really, really easy.

1798, 12m, 24d.

The morrow is the day of our Lord’s coming on earth, yet I will pay Him no heed, nor His idle father.

It has been long long days since I last wrote in this book. And I will not write in this book for much longer, indeed I write now for the last time, perhaps.

When I wrote last, I heard the knock upon my door. What do sounds convey to us? How can it be that from the mere sound of that knock alone, I knew trouble had come? For it was not the knock of the kindly passer-by, or the concerned parishioner, or the troubled soul. It was a hammering of the enemy.

My heart fought to betray me, as I made my way down the stairs, and to the front door.

As I opened the door, among the rabble and taggle there, in the thick of the angry crowd, I saw Martha.

She saw me, and looked away, and so I knew I was correct. At her side stood a small boy, whose slim figure reminded me that I had thought a ghost troubled us at the Hall, when in truth, in truth . . .

What?

What is
truth
, now?

I have killed it.

They called for me.

I stood in the door and they called for me, and though they had brought iron and steel with which to hurt me, yet they did not dare, for I am of the cloth, and they still have the fear of God living in them, that I myself set there!

But oh!

They did call and wail and were ready to ignore the bounds of God and tear me limb from limb, and then I saw my only possible path ahead of me.

- Come, Children! I cried.

This was mine.

My moment. My skill. I knew my worth, for I have stood in the pulpit a thousand times and I have made these same cries to the world. These same lies.

I know how to speak lies and to make them sound like the truth.

- Come, Children! Hear me!

And now they heard. They listened to my call, and they swallowed my bitter lies, as if they were sweet honey.

- We are all betrayed, I cried. We are all betrayed by the evil in our midst. A foreign devil! The foreign doctor! He is at work among us and we have all been duped by his wrongnesses. We must go now. We must take him! Now! Now!

And in their eager hate, the stupid sheep took all my words as the gospel of the Lord, and they did rush, streaming with terrible vengeance through the village and towards the Hall, shouting and cursing and waving their sharp irons above their heads.

All of them went, save one.

Martha.

She stood alone, after the others had gone, and she stared at me.

And then she spake not, but she did shake her head at me, and made the shapes of words with her lips.

So, now, did I understand the shapes of her lips, and her words were these!

- You are the Devil.
You
are the Devil.

And I shuddered and I fell on the floor, for now at last I saw that these were the very same words that our seventh, Mason, had mouthed to me, before his eyes had closed for the last time in his severed head.

- You are the Devil. You are the Devil.

Tomorrow is the Lord’s day, the day He came upon us, and by chance it is the day that the doctor will be bricked up alive, in the chamber he built, with the remains of his doings around him.

Our doings.

My work here is done.

I leave tomorrow, for who knows where, but one thing I do know, is that I will take not God with me, for He is empty, and I shall go alone.