Darkwater (14 page)

Suddenly Tom felt tired. He couldn't think. He pushed past Azrael and pulled himself up to the cliff path. “I'm going to bed.”

Below him, the tramp laughed and turned away into the dark. “That's telling us,” he muttered.

twenty-three

S
cuffles outside Sarah's door woke her; before she could jump out of bed and hide, a key rattled in the lock. Scrab came in sideways and dumped a breakfast tray on the table. He yanked the window curtains wide. “Always fetching and carrying for you! Thought this setup would be different.”

“Hello, Scrab,” she said.

His small eyes peered at her as she huddled in the quilt. “'Imself said the condemned woman should eat a decent breakfast. Daft beggar.”

He scratched, scattered a little dandruff, and scraped out. Sarah lay back on the pillow. After a while she managed a relieved smile. Her fate was all worked out. Why worry.

She forced herself to eat some toast, then dressed and went down. Darkwater Hall felt cold and deserted. All its pupils were at home now, having their warm Boxing Days, eating leftover turkey and watching TV. Quite suddenly, gazing up at the Trevelyan portraits on the stairs, she felt like a ghost, left over from an earlier age. She wanted to go home. But this was home.

She took the tray to the kitchens and stacked the dishes in the sink. It was completely silent down here. Except that deep below, something thumped.

She turned the cold tap off and listened.

There it was again.

In all her nightly prowls, in all the years she had lived here before, she'd never found the way back to Azrael's mysterious stairway. She'd even had the corridors upstairs peeled open by workmen, but there had been no panel, no door. Had it really been a dream? After all these decades she didn't even know.

She turned abruptly. The cat was there, and behind it, like a shadow in the doorway, Azrael stood. He had his lab coat on, and there were yellow sulfur stains on his fingers.

“Sarah,” he said quietly, “there's someone in the cellar.”

She stared.

“Was it your idea? Did the tramp put you up to it?”

“What?”

“Putting him there.”

“I don't know what you're even talking about.” She had rarely seen him so grave.

“Then come on,” he said, hurrying out.

She grabbed a knife from the rack and raced after him. “A burglar?”

Azrael shrugged. “I sincerely hope so.”

He snapped the lights on and ran down the steps to the cellars, huge shadows flickering behind him on the wall.

“How did you know about the tramp?” she gasped.

He glanced back, dark. “This time, Sarah, he won't spoil things for us.”

At the bottom it was damp. Sarah had been here often. The corridor stank of drains, old beer casks, mice. No one bothered with it. But as she raced after him she heard the sound again, a weary thump, faint, as if all the hope had drained out of it.

Azrael ran through the vaults to the door at the end, the strong-door. He gripped the rusted top bolt, grinding it back.

“Quick!” he snapped. “Hurry, Sarah!”

The bottom bolt was warped; she had to work it frantically up and down before it would shift. Someone had jammed it hard. The thump came again. Just over her head.

“They're locked in!” she said.

“I know.”

“But who . . . ?”

“Never mind! Have you got it?”

“Yes!”

The bolt slammed back. Azrael hauled the door wide. A pitiful figure, filthy with dust, tearstained, bloodstained, collapsed into his arms.

Scrab opened the front door so suddenly that Tom almost put the key into his eye.

“Oh my Gawd. Yer for it.”

“What?”

Scrab grinned and stood aside. Coming in, Tom saw the Christmas tree in the hall had been lit up again, towering in its green height against the stair-rail.

“And 'aven't we been a wicked little boy!” Scrab slammed the door; Tom almost jumped.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

The caretaker laid a dirty finger along his nose and tapped it. “Saying nowt. But 'imself's upstairs. High and mighty today, so I wouldn't keep 'im waiting. Always like this, after 'e's been 'obnobbing with the Powers that Be.”

Uneasy, Tom took the stairs two at a time and walked boldly into the library, his whole body listening for sounds from below. But the only thudding was his heart. He wondered what was coming.

The lab was gloomy.

Azrael was leaning against the fireplace on one elbow, watching him. To his surprise Sarah was there too. As soon as she saw him she leaped up. “You stupid, stupid fool,” she snapped.

“What?” Tom stopped dead. Simon came in behind him, reflected grotesquely in twisted tubing. “What have I done?”

“You know!” She seemed too angry for words.

Of course he knew.

They had found Steve.

Tom rubbed his face nervously. “Look. You don't understand . . .”

“I know what's been going on! But do you think doing it back to him will help?”

Azrael's silence was terrifying. Tom turned to him.

“Is he alive?”

“Alive!” Azrael's voice was airy and dangerous. “That's such an interesting word, don't you think, Tom? What does it mean, to be alive? Do you have to be born, to be alive?”

He paced under the spinning planets. “Are only the sons of men alive? Or are there different sorts of life, different deepnesses of being? Angels and demons?”

“Azrael . . .” Sarah said shortly.

“Maybe in a way that boy was not alive before. Not alive to the suffering he caused you.”

Tom shook his head. “Please. Tell me.”

Azrael put both hands down on the bench and leaned
over. “There is no place for revenge, Tom, in the Great Work. It's a corruption in the crucible, a gritty unburning cinder. You should never have done this.”

His anger was bleak, a darkness in the room. All his geniality was gone; this was a new being, relentless, unknown.

“Stop tormenting him,” Sarah muttered.

The alchemist turned in disgust. “He's alive. There. No thanks to you.”

The domed jar was on the bench. Tom bent over it, rubbing a hole in the dust. Cobwebs brushed his eyelashes as he gazed in.

Steve Tate lay on a white bed. He was still, as if asleep, and tiny—so tiny Tom could have picked him up with finger and thumb. His face was filthy, his hands bandaged, as if he had banged and scraped for hours on door and walls. He looked exhausted and half starved. Pitiful.

Tom should have felt glad. But he didn't.

“And the worst thing was,” Azrael's voice said behind him, “that you planned to offer this soul to me.”

Tom closed his eyes.

“And if you think”—Sarah stalked up and down in utter contempt—“that I would ever let anyone take my place . . .”

“You weren't supposed to know.”

Azrael came and covered the jar with a black velvet cloth. He turned. “Whose idea was this?”

“Mine.”

“Not entirely. Someone else suggested it.” He stepped closer. “I think I know who.”

“No.”

“Tell me, Tom.”

Tom was stubbornly silent. Simon's voice startled them all.

“The tramp put him up to it.”

Azrael looked straight at him. To Tom's astonishment he nodded, curtly. “As I thought.
Scrab!
”

He yelled it; instantly the door flew open and Scrab sloped in, a dark coat slung over one arm.

“'Eard it all.” He held the coat up; Azrael flung it on and was gone, sweeping through the library, all the book pages ruffling in his draft, the papers flying.

Tom looked at Sarah in terror. “What will he do to him?”

She looked uneasy. “I never saw, last time. But they're enemies, Tom, all down the centuries.”

Doors banged below.

Running down the stairs, they found the house was crackling into life, shadows gathering, the corridors full of footsteps, the slavering of hounds. Azrael leaped the last step, coat flying.

“Stay here!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Don't let them out, Scrab.”

Breathless, the caretaker shuffled behind. “Still giving yer blasted orders,” he muttered.

Out of the rooms, the cupboards, the desks, a host of presences gathered, invisibly slipping past on the stairs, a running emptiness. Sarah grabbed Tom. “Quick!”

They had to push their way through; the air hummed and jostled with the whisper and crackle of beings they couldn't see.
Powers and principalities,
Tom found himself whispering.
Angels and demons
.

“
Oy!
You get back 'ere!”

Scrab was screeching, but they were out, and the gray afternoon was agitated by sudden wind, and out to sea a storm cloud was looming down on them, terrifyingly black, its underside lit by electric glimmers.

“There he is!” Simon yelled.

Azrael was a fleet shape among the trees; they struggled after him. Huge drops of rain fell, icy, the wind buffeting them back.

“What do you mean, down the centuries?” Tom gasped.

“Never read your Bible?” Sarah thrust fir branches aside. “There was a war in heaven, remember.” Then she hissed, “The Quoits! That's where he's going!”

As he ran, Tom felt Simon close; the sleet swirled down, freezing into flakes that soaked his coat and Sarah's sweater, and he saw that they soaked Simon too. Tiny flakes, like white feathers, that stuck to his lips and stung like acid. Simon grabbed him.

“Look at me! I'm cold!”

He seemed elated, holding his arms up to it, hair plastered to his neck, drops running down his face. “I can feel it, Tom! I can feel the snow!”

“It's like no snow I know,” Sarah muttered.

Nor was it. It was a storm of shards and slivers; it stabbed and stung, and the trees roared under it, even the muddy soil seeming to boil, and for an instant Tom was convinced they were running through the bubble and hiss of some vast cosmic experiment, until he crashed against the wet bark of a tree, and saw the Quoits.

The black stones streamed with frost.

His back flat against the nearest stone, the tramp stood, facing them. He had drawn himself up, and now he flung his arms open and laughed.

“So tha's come for me, Azrael! What good will it do thee, old friend?”

Lightning glimmered.

Among the dark trees, Azrael was barely visible. All around him the sleet hissed and the wood crackled with movement.

“I warned you,” he whispered.

A hound's tongue licked Tom's hand; he jerked back in terror. Close around his knees the darkness panted and pressed.

“Have I maimed thy work again?” the tramp said cheerily. “Well, I'm sorry, lad. But tha knows me. Only I can follow thee down the twelve stairways, and I will. I'll face thee in all the world's ages.”

The tramp dropped his arms. Rain dripped from his coat hem. “It's hard for thee,” he muttered. “All else is thine, but not me, eh? Not till the end itself. Tha'll never be free of me.”

Thunder rumbled, a hollow grumble. Azrael said clearly, “Come back to us.”

The tramp spread his hands. “Too late. I've changed.”

“You can be as you were.”

The tramp laughed. “Aye? But I don't want to.”

For a moment Azrael was silent. Then he raised his face, the rain dripping from his hair. “I'm sorry, brother,” he whispered.

Lightning cracked. A spear of it. It shot through the hand Azrael held up, and in one vivid instant the tramp was there, pinned to the stone with sheer light and a scream that shocked Tom rigid. An implosion of rock stung him; he was flung back into a wet hollow of dripping brambles, all the night seared with a horrifying, scorching smell. Dizzy, lifting his head, he saw a darkness slither away between the stones.

Snow fell, silent. Beside him Sarah scrambled up, blood running from a cut on her forehead; Simon looked stunned.

“Did you see?” he whispered. “He killed him.”

“You can't kill evil,” Sarah said.

Only the sleet pattered, and around them, for miles, the wood was empty.

Azrael lowered his hand, turned, and saw them. He pulled his coat tighter and strode past them. His voice was bleak and weary.

“I told you to stay inside,” he snarled.

twenty-four

D
ays passed.

On the twenty-seventh, Steve Tate was found wandering on the beach at Padstow, suffering, Paula said drily, from amnesia. Nothing seemed to be wrong with him, but he had no idea where he'd been.

Tom listened, staring out of the window at the sea. He was surprised to find he didn't care.

On the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth, it rained. He kept away from the Hall; the memory of Sarah's anger was terrible.

On the thirtieth he ventured out, tormented. Below the cliff the tramp's encampment was empty, the sleeping bag sodden, the dog gone. The middle one of the Devil's Quoits had a hole burned right through it, as if with a powerful laser. A rainbow pool of some oily stuff stank at its base.

He couldn't stand it any longer. He crept into the Hall and up to her room, but she'd locked herself in and wouldn't open the door.

“Get lost and leave me alone!” she yelled at last.

“Sarah, please! Never mind about me. You saw what he did to the tramp. Is that what he'll do to you? You've got to make some effort to escape at least!”

No answer.

Then Scrab came muttering down the corridor and Tom slid, shadowy, down the stairs.

He kept away from Azrael.

Finally, it was the thirty-first.

The last day.

All morning he felt confused and sick. Azrael had seemed so gentle. But the tramp was dead. He felt cold even thinking about it.

“I don't see why you won't come.” Behind him, his mother buttoned her coat.

Tom picked up the remote control. “There's a movie I want to see.”

“Please yourself.” She checked her purse and unlatched the door. “I'll be back about ten. For New Year.”

He didn't switch the TV on, couldn't stand all that fake jollity. He didn't know how long he'd stared at the blank screen or even what he was thinking, when the door opened again.

“Tom.”

It was Sarah. And Simon.

She was pale, warmly dressed, with the backpack, her hair scraped back into a blue elastic. “I can't go through with it,” she muttered.

He jumped up. “What?”

“I've tried, but I can't. I've got to do something! Even if you think I'm a coward, I'm going to run, Tom. If Azrael wants me, he's got a hunt on. Maybe he's not as powerful as I thought. Maybe I can get away. Anywhere. I can't stand waiting anymore.”

Tom grabbed his coat. “You're not a coward. And I'm coming.”

“That's what I said.” Simon had been missing for days.

Now he seemed thinner, his tired face drawn.

“Where is Azrael?”

Tom shrugged into his coat.

“In the lab. Night and day. It's a furnace in there, everything bubbling, dripping. Scrab's taking food in; says ‘'Imself's so close to success he can't sit still for excitement.'” She shrugged, wan. “So now's my chance.”

“Right.” Tom crammed some chocolates from the tree into his pocket. “We go over the cliffs to Marazy Head, then cross the moor. At the main road we'll hitch a ride to Bodmin, and you can get a train.”

“It's New Year's Eve!”

“Then we'll hurry! They'll run till about eleven. Come on, Sarah!”

She ran a hand through her hair; it was dark at the roots. “Lead on, hero.”

They ran down the lane and across the caravan field. There was no way to avoid the village; Tom saw Steve's dad up a ladder scrubbing the white letters angrily off the post office.

All across the cliffs they kept to the footpath, the stiff brown umbels of summer hemlock scraping at them. The afternoon was rapidly darkening. Home-going ramblers passed them, with quiet hellos.

At the Darkwater, Sarah stopped.

“Be careful. From upstairs in the house, you can see this stretch.”

“Azrael's busy.”

“Scrab isn't. We should cross the beach.” Without waiting for him to agree she ran down the steps. He and Simon raced after her.

The gulls circled, screaming, their cruel yellow beaks wide. Newhaven was a dimness of salt and seaweed, sand gritty on the steps.

They struggled over the soft sand. The harder ridges
were easy, their footsteps clear across them, and Tom saw that even Simon left them now, faint footmarks. At the north cliff they scrambled over fallen rock, sliding on huge banks of slippery bladderwrack, splashing into pools, over limpeted boulders corrugated with barnacles.

Finally Sarah reached the cliff. “Up here?”

“There's a path.” Tom pushed past. “This way.”

He'd climbed Star Cliff before, but it was tricky; the path slid and shifted year by year. Tides washed it away. Handholds of soft rock stuck out, some with fossils embedded.

Tom hauled himself up. Below, Sarah's boots scraped. Suddenly he felt good, even elated. Tate would never remember, but he did, and it would all be different now. That memory of the tiny tearstained boy in the jar had changed him. Steve might be as obnoxious as ever, but he, Tom, was already different. Grabbing a handful of wet bracken, he dug his toes in and squirmed up over the crumbling soil.

A hand reached down.

“Come on,” Simon said. His brother's grip was wet and firm. And warm.

They hauled Sarah up and crouched, breathless. The sun was almost gone, deep in veils of mist.

Inland, over the fields and combes of its estate, Darkwater Hall glowed red. All its facade burned, warm light lapping it, every window a blaze of flame. For a second Tom thought it really was on fire, but the sun sank and night enveloped the house, dimming it to a dark hulk against the purple sky.

Crossing the moor was a nightmare. Threads of path were too easy to lose, the ground
boggy and tremulous. The light was almost gone. Simon led them, Tom stumbling last, twice plunging his boots into water over the ankle, so his feet were soaked and squelching.

It grew so dark he could barely see. Gnarled shadows of wind-bent trees rose up like claws; distant tors were bizarre shapes of toppling rock. Toward Bodmin the sky glowed with streetlights.

It was Tom who stopped and looked back. For a second he had heard it clearly, a sound that froze him.

The snuffle and pad of a hound.

Or was it the wind, the dead bracken hissing?

“Come on!” Sarah yelled.

He ran after them. This was Temple Combe, a ravine that plummeted between bushes and a stand of trees, dark firs, rare on the moor. In their pitch blackness he ran right into Sarah before he saw her.

“What's wrong?” Her voice was a whisper.

He glanced back. “I thought I heard something.”

In the silence the branches sissed, an eternal sound. The snuffle, or whatever it was, would be lost under them.

Wordless, Sarah pulled him on. They walked into blindness, their only guide the puddles on the track; ghostly echoes of the lighter sky. Ahead, as they slipped and skidded down, the track turned a corner. Eerie sounds came toward them, voices wailing, far across the moor. Heart thudding, Sarah stopped.

They listened, under the pine smell of the branches.

“It's a black dog all right,” Tom said in relief. “But not that sort.”

At the pub, when they reached it, the New Year revels had started. The windows spilled warm light; the parking lot was lit with multicolored lanterns.

Sarah walked past quickly, clutching the stitch in her side; Tom followed, till the well-known voice stopped him rigid.

“Tommy! Look lads, it's lover boy!”

After a second, he turned.

Steve Tate was sitting on the doorstep with a can of beer in his hand. He crushed it now; the metal crumpled with a loud crack. The other two, Mark and Rob, came out of the pub.

“Come on,” Sarah said uneasily.

Tom didn't hesitate. As he marched straight up to them, Steve scrambled to his feet; even before Tom grabbed his collar, there was a startled disbelief in his face.

“I never liked that name,” Tom said pleasantly. “I don't want to hear it again. Okay?”

Steve tried to pull back; Tom gripped tighter.

“What's gotten into you?”

“I pushed you into a cellar and slammed the door on you,” Tom said quietly. “And I saw what it did to you.” For a second Steve was still; then he wrenched away and laughed a startlingly false laugh. “You're a bloody nutcase.”

Tom turned away.

“Happy New Year,” he said, over his shoulder.

Sarah had her arms folded; Simon was grinning. They swung into step beside him.

“Well,” she said, “I'm impressed. But he'll be furious.”

Tom glanced back. Steve was yelling at Mark, flinging the beer can at him. “He won't change. But I have.”

“They might come after you.”

“I don't care.” The strange thing was, it was true.

Sarah opened the farm gate. “So maybe Azrael was wrong and the tramp was right. There is a place for revenge.”

“I should have been able to do it without all that.” He slipped through after her, jarring rows of hanging drops from the gate-bar.

Far off, the Mamble church clock chimed; they counted, silent. Eight.

Four hours to midnight.

Now they ran hard. Down Branscombe, spattering the mud at the bottom, into the black, empty stretch of moor toward Stee. This was treacherous ground. Faint steams and wisps of fog rose from it, gathering in hollows.

And then, close behind, the dog howled.

Tom turned. They waited, a breathless hush. To their left another howl, nearer.

“They're out,” Sarah said grimly. “He's hunting me.”

Dark shapes loped and slithered.

“Water!” Tom caught her hand and they splashed into the bog, sinking instantly, Simon behind them. Floundering, they struggled in the cold to keep their footing, stumbling on buried tussocks.

The howls were nearer. All around them now the midnight hounds slavered and ran. Tom glanced back. “Keep up,” he called anxiously.

Simon's face was a paleness in the mist. He slipped, and yelled. Tom let go of Sarah's arm and swore. “I'll have to go back for him!”

“Wait!” she gasped, but even as she said it a rapid barking rang out; Simon was swallowed in the clinging fog. Only his voice screamed, terrified and in agony. “Tom! It's got me!
Tom!
”

Tom didn't hesitate. “Go on!” he yelled. Floundering back, he burst through the fog into a knot of darkness. Hounds flew apart; one backed slowly, head down, growling. But the other held its grip, and to his amazement he saw it had hold of Simon's arm and was pulling him down. He had fallen on his knees in the marsh, struggling and swearing, clothes sopping with water. He looked terrified.

And his arm was bleeding.