The House of Storms (52 page)

His old bedroom, in the moonlight, was more than ever an expression of all the life of the sea which, he smiled to realise, he’d been the first person to bring to it. But the rocks and the leavings of the strand had multiplied, and been loosely strewn and returned to their natural randomness in the process. Even through his helmet, he could smell the rot of weed. His throat whistled and groaned. He dropped the useless torch. There, before him, dimly illuminated, blue-lipped and ghastly pale, floated a face.

‘What
are
you?’ he heard himself ask.

The face tilted. It smiled queerly. Even more odd was the way the look of it reminded him of Marion, or his own features in a mirror. Not, at least, a face of pebbles and fishscales, but then he saw that many other things, seemingly naked yet made partly of old leaf or rusted metal or naked bone, were moving at the far corners of his lost room and the far, dim edges of his helmet.

‘I know who you are.’
Know who you are … who you … are…
Echoes of the words rode on Ralph’s thoughts. He coughed and shook his head. The room twirled dizzily. The creatures which now stirred in the strands of moonlit darkness were one thing, but, for all his sea-filth and ragged attire, the one who spoke lispingly to him was unmistakably human. It reached out. Dimly, Ralph felt a finger indent the rubberised fabric which covered his chest. ‘You’re one of
us
. You’re the Diving Man.’ The spitting voice and the rustles of meaning which tumbled afterwards gave every word an extra emphasis. ‘And these are the Shadow Folk. This is our home.’

It seemed pointless to disagree, and it had begun to strike Ralph that, for all this lad’s wild manner and the bizarre other things which filled the room’s shadows—changelings, he was beginning to guess—his own appearance, suited, and with bloodstained glass fracturing what they could see of his face, was probably at least as strange, and as frightening. He tore at his gloves and thumbed the clasps to release his helmet. Ripe, rancid, blessed air broke over him. ‘And who are you?’ he asked with what was left of his voice.

‘I’m Klade,’ the lad replied. ‘I’m the Bonny Boy. I’m what Marion Price made. I went to Einfell until it grew empty and then I came here. I’m part of the War Effort.’

S
OME OF THE BRAVER
or more foolhardy followers had already entered Invercombe’s halls that night despite all Marion’s attempts at prohibition, and it was one of them, a buttoneer from Penzance, who found Ralph Meynell, and the wild lad called Klade who was with him. Ragged and wet and proud and exhausted, the rest of the followers took Ralph’s survival as a signal that this house was entirely safe. After all, why had they come this far otherwise? And wasn’t this, they exclaimed as they wandered, amazed, amid the halls and state rooms and the waiting bedrooms and bounteous kitchens, exactly what the Beetle Lady had promised? Candles were found and lanterns were lit and fires were set in grates. Boots were taken off and feet were ruefully inspected and massaged amid the spreading light and heat. The changed, the monsters, whatever threat there ever had been which might have existed here, had certainly fled. And good riddance. And who cared? Everywhere that night and on into the coming dawn, as the followers filled out through the house and faces were washed and fresh linen was found and instantly dirtied and people milled and talked and laughed in all the ways which their long journey had precluded and Invercombe’s chimneys smoked for the first time in almost two decades, there were expressions of surprised recognition.

‘Just like home.’

‘
You
never lived in a place like this!’

‘You know our
son
up in Nottingham?’

‘Nottingham ain’t where we used to live.’

‘Where
is
this, anyway?’

‘Look at the size of them chairs… !’

‘Me, I could murder a fag.’

‘Heard there’s a box in that room with all the books. Nah, I think it’s that way …’

‘Place is a bloody maze.’

‘Great, innit.’

‘Just like home.’

‘You know, I’m sure I’ve dreamed about this place.’

‘I’m dreaming still…’

Everywhere, this constant happy babble of voices. There were families from Tipton and couples from Bracebridge and lonely men and absent lovers and the hunched, arthritic elderly, all reunited and re-joined, and Marion could almost feel that she was just another part of this as she settled the hunched creature who called himself Klade in Steward Dunning’s old office at the far end of an unpromising low white corridor with its lines of framed injunctions, where she imagined they were unlikely to be disturbed. The lad was wild and itchy and wary. He stank, and she could tell right away from the way he looked about him and shifted his elbows in the creaking swivel chair that he was uncomfortable in small, enclosed spaces. And the layout of the room meant that she had no choice but to sit like some figure of authority on the opposite side of the desk whilst all around her in the lanternlight, in that kidney bean paperweight and the old diary still open on the page for that last day of her and Ralph’s planned escape, her own lost past screamed out to her. In every way, she had made a bad choice of place.

‘Ralph, the man who found you here, says you might be—’

‘Who
are
you?’ he hissed back through bared teeth in an accent she’d never previously heard.

The question, simple though it sounded, made Marion pause. She certainly wasn’t the creature whose name the people were still shouting and banging out on pots as they ransacked—and this was something she would have to take in hand, it was certain no one else would—this house. But still, she had to say it. ‘I’m Marion Price. I think I might be your—’

‘You’re not! You can’t be … !’

He looked a little like the younger Ralph, she had to admit, but perhaps it was no more than the resemblance she saw etched in the pain of many other faces.

‘I’m sorry, but I am. It’s just that people have… the wrong impression of me.’

He leaned further back from her, still blackly tensed as steel. His chair creaked. But at least he hadn’t attempted to escape. Or attack her.

‘Were you really raised at Einfell?’

He nodded, or at least gave his chin a jerk. He doesn’t look old or young, she thought. He doesn’t look anything—he’s like the soldiers you can heal in the flesh but who still remain wounded. He’s something only this war could have made …

‘Do you know where you were born, Klade?’

‘It was …’ He licked his lips. He tended to spit as he spoke, and dampness flecked her face. ‘A place called Saint Alphage’s. That was what Silus took me to in Bristol away from the song and showed me.’

‘Silus?’
Song?

‘He was…’ The lad gestured vaguely. Like everything else he did, the movement was slightly off key. As if he’d learned to be human at one remove. Which she supposed would be the case …

‘Was?’

‘He and Ida raised me.’

Signatures on the papers she’d seen back in Saint Alphage’s, although she couldn’t remember the names. But, with a falling sense of horror, Marion realised that Klade must have stared through those same iron gates.

‘Ida’s dead,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t know about Silus and that man who said he was my father won’t say …’

Which father? When?
Did he mean Ralph, or the changelings? ‘I’m sorry.’ How many more times was she going to have to say that? Klade, with his reddened eyes and spiked dirty hair and murmuring hands and impossible voice and name, was more like a grown version of that thing she had discovered under the sink at Saint Alfies than the child she’d once dreamed she might have had.

‘What I mean is, I never
knew
about you, Klade. When I did… When I did, I’d have come this way sooner. But I’d learned then that you might have been sent to Einfell. And part of me feared that—’

‘What?’
His hands skittered on bright black metal. The bolt clicked back in an aethered glow. His eyes suddenly blazed. ‘That I’d be one of the chosen, a changeling?’

‘I didn’t know, Klade.’

‘Well, I am. Look.’ His fingers scrabbled ferociously at his sleeves. Rotting threads ripped. He shoved out his left wrist across Steward Dunning’s desk towards her. ‘Go on! Look! Feel!’

Touching her son’s flesh for the first time, conscious of its smoothness and warmth, the indentations of skin and bone, Marion could tell that he bore no Mark. ‘All that means is—’

‘What it means is that I’m like bastard Blossom. I’m like that fucking ravener out there. I’m the bloody moon in the sky over Inver-something. Now fuck off and leave me alone …’

Marion had dealt with too many suffering patients not to know when to comply with this simplest of human requests. Standing up slowly, moving as unthreateningly as she could around the desk, and leaving the door half open, she walked and then ran along the corridor and up into Invercombe’s main rooms. She didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know how she felt. After all, Klade and the few changelings which had now seemingly fled Invercombe had used as this place a haven. And look at it now.

In the beginnings of grey daylight, the noisy chaos stilled as she moved through it. Eyes followed her. Prayers and whispers were made, and in many ways the situation of being in this place wasn’t so unfamiliar. A house requisitioned and in need of order; in need, above all, of someone to take the lead. For all that she had seen and experienced, the sense of being
here,
of being back at Invercombe, suddenly broke over her. For she was alive, and so was her son, and she could sense the power of this house which had delivered him to her stretching out towards her in lazy welcome like the paw of a yawning lion. After all, there was so much that needed
doing
here. Grime on the windows. Leaking pipes. Tiles in need of resetting. Statues fallen from their pedestals. Blocked sluices and perished valves. The gardens gone entirely wild. And dust everywhere. And half the sheets and towels filthy already. And this ridiculous shore-detritus. And beds unhygienically unmade. And mess. And grime. All to be fought against. What
would
Cissy Dunning have said? Work to be organised and prioritised. Order to be found and then maintained. After all, these people believed she was Marion Price, even if Klade didn’t, and it was time, Marion decided, as she rang the dinner gong in the hall and climbed on a chair and the people gathered around to listen, to prove to him and the world who she really was.

I
N THE DAYS AND NIGHTS
which followed, guildsmen and women returned to their old labours. There was enough work in Invercombe for a battalion of lost trades. From electricians to stonemasons to chefs to the common washers, there were few who couldn’t apply their skills. Disputes about guild demarcation arose which only Marion Price could settle, and she couldn’t be everywhere, hard though she tried. But still the work went on, and still, and more certainly now, they sang her name.

Flues were cleaned. Fires were lit. Boilers filled and leaked. The house rang and creaked and steamed, and light-bulbs were found and set wildly ablaze against the dull midday as the generators were reapplied to the business of powering the house. Clothes were washed, bleached and hung up in dripping fronds. And everywhere, in this bustling frenzy, people were singing as they washed and wiped and dusted until the windows steamed grey-white. Klade sought solace in the wild gardens and the sharp taste of strewn windfall apples and rotting lemons amid the passing sweeps of rain. The lush and noisy house which shone out at the centre of it all, where Outsiders ate, and talked, and bustled, and walked arm in arm, mouth to mouth, hand in hand, was no longer the place of refuge which had once welcomed him. The Shadow Ones had fled with the followers’ arrival to Inver-something’s furthest caves and caverns which even he couldn’t reach. Amid all this touching, shouting, feeding, dancing, cleaning, shining, breaking, bothering, eating which went on day and night, he was entirely alone. Klade would have blocked his ears, but there was no escaping this song of the Outsiders.

There was to be a Dance on the third night. Dance was what they called it, although as far as Klade could tell these Outsiders had never stopped jigging and dancing and singing to the orders of the woman who called herself Marion Price since they’d got here. It was too much for him, and once more he had to go outside into the welcoming dark through the big main door where the balehound which now stood guard growled at him. Klade snarled back. Inver-something had been everything he’d hoped for, a haven of Sweetness and Home, but now nothing, nothing, nothing was the same …

Voices. Faces in the sharp glow from the windows. Succumbing to old instincts, Klade cowered and hid.

‘Breathe that air.’

‘So
mild
here. Could almost be spring coming again.’

‘Finest drop of cider I ever tasted.’

‘You’d drink your grandma’s piss to get yourself tipsy.’

‘I would, that.’

‘Know what they say—well, it ain’t exactly
her
that used to live here, but her sister.’

‘Makes sense that she did as well, then, dunnit?’

‘Nah, nah. Marion Price was brought up in Einfell by the goblins, see. That’s why they’re here, hiding in the walls …’

A long pause.

‘They say it’ll all be over by Christmas.’

‘Can’t be long then, can it?’ A woman’s laughter. Low and liquid.

Klade watched the Outsiders entwine. And the Singing and the Dancing went on, and there seemed to be no escape from it, not even outside, for here was the ravener, being coaxed to roll a barrel up from the cellars by two young Outsiders who briefly stopped laughing when they saw Klade. He wandered further afield. He found a quieter place as it began to rain, and squatted there, listening to its ticking dripping as the singing house glowed out at him through the flashing, waving leaves. But at least, if he hummed to himself, or if he opened his mouth and screamed as he drank the acrid, chilly rain which rattled over his skull and let the truer, deeper song flow over him in chilly rivulets, he couldn’t hear it.