Darkwater (8 page)

thirteen

A
t once all the clocks had started ticking. Lying in bed now, shivering under the heavy covers, she remembered that, and it seemed to her as if the house had woken up at that precise moment, that the windows had begun to rattle and the boards creaked, as if far below the Darkwater raging through its underground caverns had roared with a strange fury. Even lying here now, barely awake, she could hear tiny movements that had not been in the house before, gusts and the bang of a door, the rapid scuttle of a beetle across some wainscot.

It took her a long time to fall asleep.

When she did, her dreams were a jumble. She found herself in a room full of clocks, their ticking so loud she put her hands to her ears, staring around. It was the laboratory. But Azrael's experiments had dust all over them, the alembics cracked, the liquids and chemicals in every tube dried and crusted.

“Where are you?” she called.

There was someone standing by the mechanical model of the planets. A dark man, shadowed by the heavy curtains. As she watched he set the model moving, and the planets spun off their wires and went careering around the room, whizzing past her. She had to duck, feeling their fiery glow, the ends of her hair singed by Mercury's sizzle.

“Stop it!” she hissed. “You're breaking it!”

It wasn't Azrael. It was the tramp. He stepped out of shadow and she saw how big he was, taller and broader than she remembered, his coat tied with string looking more like a belted robe, and a great sword in his hand.

“Tha's done it now, ain't thee!” he said angrily. “Tha's made the pact with him!”

“I had to. I had no choice!”

“There's always a choice!” he roared. “Thou'rt lost now, girl! Lost forever and all eternity!” And he swung with his sword, and the glass vessels crashed and tinkled, the top of the bench cleared with one terrible sweep, a thousand fragments bouncing and shattering on the floor.

“This too,” he raged, and she jumped aside as he shoved the telescope over and dragged everything off the mantelshelf, notes, papers, books, carvings, globes, and hurled them all into the fire.

The fire! She had never seen it so huge; it snarled and crackled and spat like something alive. She was almost sure she could see hands in it, tiny red hands that grasped and seared and curled the paper, a demonic delight in the roaring and heat. It had spilled out of the grate; now it rampaged through the laboratory, devouring benches and tables, and in the heart of the smoke the tramp was unlocking the wall safe with a great black key.

“Come on,” he yelled to her. “This way!”

There was a glass jar inside, and with another key he opened a tiny door in its side and grabbed her hands and pulled her in, the fire laughing hoarsely behind them.

The room was a strange one. There was a bed in it, and the odd lamp she had seen before, and a box-like contraption and small, cheap-looking furniture. All its colors were bright. On the walls huge colored pictures of men in ridiculously short trousers with numbers on their garish shirts shocked her. They were photographs. She was amazed at their color, at how real they looked.

The twins were there. One lay on the bed, the other sat by the window, looking out. He was talking. “I would have died if it hadn't been for you,” he was saying.

Sarah was alone; the tramp had vanished. Now the twin on the bed sat slowly up. He was staring at her.

“Tom,” he said softly. “She's back.”

Tom turned. They were identical, both about her age. “I can't see anyone.”

“She's here.” The other boy stood. There was something misty in his outline. He blurred as he reached out to touch her, and she twisted away with a hiss of fear as his hand became the paw of a black cat, soft on her fingers.

Then, a long time later, she was dreaming of the beach. It was gray and raining, and the gulls screamed over her head. Azrael sat on a rock elegantly, as if it were a throne. He wore his dark expensive coat, and behind him stood a huge grandfather clock—the one from the oak dining room—and it ticked, but its tick wasn't mechanical, it was a human voice, infinitely weary, repeating the same words over and over. “Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.”

She stepped nearer. “Is that . . . ?”

Azrael smiled sadly. “Your grandfather, I'm afraid. Doomed to be trapped in eternal torment. Until, of course, your actions release him. Oh, and your father. Do you want to see him?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

The rain drifted apart. She saw him lying on the sofa
in Darkwater Hall, wrapped warmly in cashmere and wool. A great fire blazed in the grate. He poured tea into a vast porcelain cup.

Azrael came over to her. “You'll see. It will be worth it.” He put a small card into her hand. “But I will come for you, Sarah. Wherever you go, wherever you think you can run, there'll be no escaping me. No one ever does. The experiment has to run to the end.”

The mist closed around him. A small beetle ran into a hole in the sand.

She turned. Mrs. Hubbard put the cane into her hand. “You're a menial!” She took a huge pinch of snuff out of an open desk. “What are you?”

Silent, Sarah watched the cane. It grew a tail, and back legs.

“What are you?” Mrs. Hubbard snapped ominously.

Front paws. A great head, its jaws wet and slobbering, growling, the red eyes opening, nostrils fuming with smoke, and as she turned, it sprang on her and she screamed, and yelled, “A menial!”

Sarah opened her eyes.

She was soaked with sweat. The fire was out, a gray gather of ashes, and through the curtains the dimness of a winter afternoon filtered.

She sat up, dressed in a furious rush, and ran down the stairs.

The servants' hall was empty. Here too the fire was out. There was no sign of the cook and nothing to eat; she picked up some bread from the table, but it was stale, rock hard. Annoyed, she flung it at the ashes.

“Scrab!” she yelled.

No one answered.

The library was a mess. Somehow the wind had gotten in and whipped everything out of order; it would take days just to sort it out. Dumping armfuls of pamphlets on the desk she marched through to the laboratory, and flung the door open.

The room was completely empty.

She stared in disbelief. It was all gone: the benches, alembics, astrolabes, boxes, charts. The walls were bare. Even the telescope had gone. All she saw was a dusty space, with an old clock ticking on the mantelshelf and the curtains thick with cobwebs. As if none of it had ever been here at all.

“Azrael?” she whispered.

A cold fear moved inside her, a sickening emptiness in her stomach.

She turned and ran out, into other rooms. Everywhere it was the same. The house was deserted. And more than that, it was transformed. Time had come back. Decay had resumed. It was a palace festooned with webs, the doors warped from long neglect, the Trevelyan portraits lost under grime. In the hall the black-and-white tiles were cracked, choked with leaf dust and melted snow that gusted under the door.

Her face white, she went into the drawing room.

It was cold. Through the tall windows she could see nothing but snow, swirling in silent cacophonies of storm outside. Far out in it the sun was setting, a sliver of scarlet into the invisible sea.

The piano was covered in dust. On Azrael's footstool a small white card was pinned. She pulled it off quickly.

 

ALL YOU WANT IS YOURS. MY SOLICITORS WILL SORT OUT THE LEGAL PROBLEMS. BE GENEROUS. ON THE LAST STROKE OF THE CLOCK ON THE LAST NIGHT OF THE YEAR IN ONE HUNDRED YEARS LOOK FOR ME.

 

He hadn't signed it.

Folding the corner over in her fingers she looked around, bewildered. She had done it. She had the house. Her father could come home. Azrael had gone.

It must be some sort of mania, she told herself. All his studying, all those years of guilt and disappointment, all that medieval nonsense about spirits and elements and demons had deranged him. She should have seen it before. Everyone else had.

But as she stood there in the empty house all she could hear in the silence were the clocks, ticking.

They had never seemed so loud.

fourteen

I
t was his bedroom all right, but something had happened to it.

For a start, all the walls had turned to glass. Tom sat up in the bed, swung his feet out, and whispered, “Simon!”

No answer.

Pulling the bedcovers back, he saw his brother's warm, empty place. Tom got up, crossing the worn carpet. Carefully he reached his hands out and felt for the invisible wall, and it was there, behind the football posters, smooth and cold and curving in slightly as it rose. Like a dome. Or a jar. Even standing on the bed he couldn't reach the ceiling.

Outside, it was dark. Vast dim shapes moved, spheres and planets, an enormous far-off door opening and closing, and then the sudden nightmare swelling of a great whiskered cat, that made him crumple back with terror against the pillow. The creature's vast soft mouth and nose were pressed against the glass. It mewed, its rough pink tongue rasping hopelessly, so close he could see the tiny hooks on it. Wide green eyes watched him.

Then it was gone.

After a second, pajamas drenched with sweat, he said, “Simon. Please. I need you.”

Something large and dark swished outside, and he ducked. Sounds came to him, distorted and filtered, of footsteps and a distant roaring that might have been water. And voices, asking some question. Scared, he plugged the lamp in quickly and switched it on, and Simon sat up in the bed, tousled and sleepy. “What's going on?”

“I don't know. I think this is a dream.”

Simon stared over his shoulder, eyes widening. “Look!” But Tom could see her. Her face was huge, an enormous pitted surface of skin, vast nostrils, stretched eyes. Her breath misted the glass. With a yell he leaped away, and the room shook; it toppled over and fell and plummeted into darkness, a huge warm darkness and—

A heart was beating.

Loud. Really loud.

It was thumping all around him, and he and Simon were tiny, lying close, curled in its rhythm, in a red landscape of tunnels and caves and hollows, veins and womb, all breathing, rising and falling. Beside him then he felt his brother's warm, empty place.

And the jar was falling; he was tumbled roughly, buffeted against its sides, great hands clasping him, pulling him out into the terrible light, a light that made him scream, and the huge face said, “One's alive, Doctor. Just the one.”

He sat up, sweating. “Simon?”

His brother was on the window seat, reading a football magazine. “At last,” he said, without looking up. “You'd better get up. Mam's been calling you.”

Of all places, it would have to be the post office. Tom chewed his toast and looked down at the package in cold despair. “Now?”

“Well, the post goes at ten. And when you've sent it, come up to the Hall and I'll get the new caretaker to sign you on for a few hours' work, if you want. I'm desperate for the help, Tom.”

His mother took the tray out to the kitchen, and Tom shoved the package between the cereal box and the sugar bowl, and ran his hands through his hair in terror. “Oh God. Not there,” he whispered.

Simon was lounging on the sofa. “It's all right. We'll be quick. And he might not even be there.”

“He'll be there.”

It was Steve Tate he was afraid of. Steve's dad kept the post office, and Steve helped there during the holidays. Or rather, he loitered around the cash register drinking beer with his friends. Little Mark Owen, the sneaky one. And Rob Trevisik, big and thick. Tom dreaded them all. He never, ever went near the place.

His mother came back, rolling her apron into a plastic bag. “Don't forget. Pound of potatoes. Margarine. And the package.”

“Can't you drop that in?” he asked, too casually.

“Tom, I'm late as it is. You'll come to the Hall after?”

He shrugged, appalled. “Nothing better to do.”

Paula kissed him on the head, not listening. “Good. Think of the three pounds an hour.”

She went out. They heard her wheel the bicycle out of the shed. Then Simon stirred. “Come on, lazy.”

Tom scowled at him. He cleared the table and dumped the dishes in the sink, seeing his own double reflection in the shiny taps, his face twisted and scared. As the hot water gushed out he thought that his mother never noticed when he was being sarcastic. He had plenty of things to do. Course work for one.

While he washed up Simon vanished, only coming in through the back door as the last plate was dried. “It's raining. Hard.”

Tom glanced at him. Today his brother wore expensive jeans and a green sweatshirt and had his hair slicked down in the way Tom secretly wanted his. He looked tall and confident. There wasn't a drop of rain on him. But then, there wouldn't be.

Tom pulled a coat on and shoved the package in his pocket. “Are you coming?” he asked, into the mirror.

Simon came up behind him, and he turned, facing again the wonder of his own face saying things he wasn't saying, thinking what he couldn't think. His brother said awkwardly, “Look, Tom. You know it's up to you. Keep strong, or I can't help.”

The rain was heavy. It poured off the cottage porch, soaking him as he went through it, and all the stone walls of the lane gleamed granite-gray. The sea was invisible in squalls and clouds, but the gulls were raucous, screaming and mewling over the far cliffs. Tom pulled his hood up and trudged, jumping puddles, past the caravan park to the stile in Martinmas Lane. A few expensive-looking mobile homes were still there, locked up for the winter. Underneath one, a child's stroller with a wheel missing lay forlornly. Tom climbed over the stile and saw Darkwater Hall.

In the November rain, shrouded with ivy, it looked like some house out of an old Cornish tale of smugglers, demons and squires, all gothic windows and gargoyles. People said the devil had lived there once, and that under it he had dug a tunnel that led straight down to hell.

“Daft.” Simon sat on a wall. “It's a natural chasm in the rock.”

“I know that.”

“It's just you prefer the other yarn.”

They grinned an identical grin, but glancing back, Tom's face darkened. Darkwater may look like some lord's house, but it wasn't. It was a school. A really good school. But he didn't go to it. His mother was just the cleaner.

“You'll miss the post,” Simon muttered.

Tom didn't move. Outside the Hall a taxi had pulled up, a sleek black one. A man was getting out. He was tall, dark-haired, and wore a long black coat. The driver came around and opened the car trunk, dumping two suitcases ungraciously on the steps of the Hall, and the tall man paid him. But he didn't ring the bell. Instead he stepped back and looked up at the building, a long look, with something of reminiscence about it. Then he turned, looking up at Tom, high on the cliffs, curiously. He wore a neat dark beard.

Tom jumped down.

“New teacher,” he said sourly.

Then he ran. Down the lane, the wet umbels and ferns soaking his boots, past the school cottage and the converted art gallery and the craft shops, racing past the garage and around to the post office with its front stacked with Christmas trees, freshly cut.

He stopped dead, feeling Simon thump into his back.

“Well. They're here.”

Outside, among the fir branches, two bicycles leaned.