There was a general move toward bed at an early hour. Selby looked in on Ruth Deeping, and found her heavily asleep. He went to his own room, to find Elizabeth already undressed and in her bed. She was wearing a nightdress he particularly liked; diaphanous, trimmed with silk almost the color of her flesh. Kissing her good night, he thought of making a more positive approach, but she had a strange and rigid sense of sexual proprieties and he felt he might offend her. Later, in his own bed, he heard her toss and turn, and thought he might have been mistaken. But it was too late to do anything about it now. And he was tired.
Someone was screaming in a nightmare, so loud that it woke him. As he fumbled for matches to light the lamp beside his bed, he realized that the screaming was actual —a woman, somewhere in the house. Elizabeth said something to him, and he mumbled a reply as he took the lamp out to the landing. The screaming was still going on, from downstairs, he realized. He saw that there was a light down there, a lamp. Ruth Deeping was holding it and the screams of agony and grief were coming from her. Selby raced downstairs to her; he put his own lamp down on a table and took hers from her also. Putting his arm around her, he said, “It’s all right.” He shook her, sharply and savagely. “Listen. Everything’s all right.”
The end of the screaming was almost as disconcerting as the sound had been. In the quietness, he was aware of other people appearing upstairs, of Elizabeth following him down. Ruth Deeping opened her mouth, and he thought the screams would start again. But she spoke sensibly, though in a voice hideous with wretchedness.
“He’s gone,” she said. “Someone has taken him.”
She had woken up and gone down, then found the wrong room in the basement. An easy thing to do, especially with her mind shocked, and clouded by the sleeping draft he had given her. He guided her with his arms, as he had done earlier that day.
“No,” he said. “He’s here still. Come, and I’ll show you.”
She offered no resistance. The door to the room with the coffin was just ajar. He pushed it open, to show her. The lamp hanging from the ceiling hook was burning. But the coffin was empty, as empty as the room.
In part, a birth; in part, a reawakening.
First there was an awareness of life, of sentience, somewhere close, and with the awareness came hunger. The hunger grew, and made its soundless cry—a command, an appeal, a wheedling, and an enticement—to the mind whose presence had brought it into being. Awareness quickened. There was response: curiosity, pleasure, and a coming nearer, nearer. And then contact. Flesh. Living cells. Nerve endings … The moment of consummation —swift, naked, intense—as the essence of the Possessor entered the Possessed, and found it good.
After that, for a time, quiescence. For the Possessor, the immediate hunger sated, there was calm, appraisement, the slow growth of memory. And the learning of this body, of its parts and purposes, all the things that would be necessary for control. For the Possessed, there was a kind of death. The heart stopped beating, lungs pumped no longer, flesh cooled, blood ceased to flow. But did not congeal. And the cells, the millions of cells that were the units of this superb construction, still lived. The house seemed tenantless, but was not. It had two tenants now, master and slave, shocked by their collision into inactivity, for the present functionless. But alive and waiting.
Waiting, also, to be left alone. After one learned the nature of the body, one learned its use, and this must be done unhindered, unobserved. The senses, first. Hearing . . . small distant sounds swimming up from the silence—the creak of old wood, the muted furnace noise, the soft thud of snow falling on snow. Touch … the smoothness and jaggedness of ice, the rougher texture where part of the hand lay against wood, the softness of the sheet against the face. Smell … a slight mustiness and another, fainter odor. Tea? One of the boxes from which the coffin had been made had held tea. Possessor and Possessed learned these things together, in a silent communion of question and answer.
Sight … Another stage required, the finding of the small muscles that would open the eyes, and then the directing. A strangeness here. Question and answer again. A heaviness, unknown before. Then, touch? Something that rested there, smooth—metal? The other muscles: arm, wrist, fingers. The hand moved slowly, lifted, plucked the coins first from one eye, then the other. Now the eyelids could open. Tears flowed from their ducts, the eyes blinked again and again. Sight came slowly, a blur of light, resolving itself, as fingers dragged the sheet back, into the shape of the lamp hanging from the ceiling.
A pause. Immobility, a brief exhaustion. The Possessed was shocked still, from time to time essaying a hopeless resistance. There could be no resistance, the Possessor’s calm thought said. But the Possessor was patient. A long time of partnership lay ahead. The little flutterings of fear and defiance would fade into the glow of union.
Movements, the next time, were more purposeful. The synaptic paths were known and charted, muscle and sinew took their orders more easily, acted more deftly. The body pushed up, bracing against its elbows. It rose awkwardly, stepped from the coffin to the table, from table to chair, and so stood, upright on the stone flags of the floor.
Those who had known the child would have thought him unchanged; and physically there was no change. Except in metabolism. For the Possessor’s memories were of a colder, heavier world than this. Heart and lungs worked more slowly, body temperature stabilized at a little over seventy degrees. This was a blessing the Possessor brought: the creature would live longer now, much longer, and in better health. The Possessor thought of this, with serene benevolence. Already it had become fond of its collaborator, its dwelling place, its slave.
The Possessor willed muscles to act, and they acted. Control was complete. But the movements would always be sluggish, judged by human standards, because of the Possessor and the Possessor’s heritage. The new entity that had been Andy Deeping walked with an unchildlike deliberation across the room, put out a hand, turned the handle, and opened the door. It walked through to the passage and stood, for a moment, considering.
Survival meant propagation, assimilation, but from now on it could not be swift, annihilating, sure. Possession, for the future, would have to be achieved through that which was already Possessed and could not be done quickly. It was unfortunate, the Possessor thought, that the first should have been a child, with only a child’s strength. Force was out of the question; there would have to be guile. The mother … But the mother was not alone, and the others, inevitably, were the enemy. Until, in time, they too submitted.
At present it was necessary to get away from them, to escape. In the house there was danger, but outside there would be safety and the opportunity to make plans. The cold was no handicap, but the body would need fuel.
The Possessor’s knowledge was the knowledge the child had had, and the child, playing in the basement during the blizzard, had seen the food store. Question and answer: such a thing was nourishing, good, this other not. A means of carrying—there was an old basket behind the door. The small arms reached up and pulled it down, filled it with the things that had been chosen.
Then that which had been Andy Deeping walked, a little stiffly, to the basement door, drew back with difficulty the iron bolts, lifted the latch, and walked out into the dark, freezing night.
4
Of the sisters, it was Jane Winchmore who was awakened first. She sat up in bed, pulled the cord on the bedside light before she remembered that it was useless, and felt fear grow, in her. There was moonlight outside, but Diana had insisted on having the curtains drawn across the windows. The room was dark, and she was conscious of the darkness of the house all around her.
Diana said, from the other bed, “My God! What is it?” The familiar voice, the realization of not being alone, was a relief. She slipped her feet out of bed, and went to draw the curtains. Enough light came in to enable her to find her slippers and dressing gown. She said, “I don’t know. Better go and see, though.”
“No! Stay here. It scares me.”
She went to Diana’s bed, and they held hands. When the screaming stopped, she said, “I’ll go and see what’s wrong. You stay.”
“I’m not going to be left. I’ll come with you.”
There were others on the landing—Douglas Poole and Elizabeth Grainger—and George Hamilton came noisily down the stairs from the floor above. Douglas had brought a light out, so they could see each other and, to some extent, their surroundings.
She asked him, “What’s happened?”
“I don’t know. It was Ruth Deeping. Hysterical, I imagine. Grainger’s down there with her, and he seems to have succeeded in quietening her.”
The child, she supposed. She felt at a loss. Her own bereavement gave her no insight into this different, so much more passionate one; and, of course, she herself had never had a child. Women did, she knew, sometimes go mad with grief, though surely they would be more unstable to start with than Ruth Deeping had seemed. Looking down the well of the stairs, she could see Grainger,
half supporting Ruth and talking to Hamilton. His voice was pitched low, and did not carry up to the landing. Hamilton said something, and Grainger took her off to the room that was used as a bar. Then Hamilton called up to all of them, “You’d better come down, I think.”
They gathered in the salon. Embers still glowed in the fireplace, and Mandy set to work with sticks, coaxing them into life. It was not cold—there were radiators in this room as there were in the others—but the prospect of a fire was cheering. Marie was lighting the two big oil lamps. Hamilton said, “Are we all here?”
Deeping began, “Ruth …”
“Selby’s giving her a brandy next door. I should leave her with him, for the time being. She’s had a pretty severe shock.” His gaze took in the small figure, standing beside his father. “Mandy, I think it’s caught now. Will you take Steve out and give him a hot drink?”
When they had gone, and the door closed behind them, Deeping said, “For God’s sake, what is it? Not what she was afraid of? Not …”
“He’s not there any more.” He spoke as though trying to convince himself as much as the others. “The coffin’s empty. And the room.”
“It can’t be!”
Deeping stared for a moment at Hamilton, turned, and went out. They heard him running downstairs to the basement. Hamilton closed the door, and stood with his back to it.
“Doesn’t make sense,” he said, “does it? A body doesn’t just disappear like that. It has to be somewhere.”
Douglas said, “He couldn’t have been dead, in that case. Catalepsy. Haven’t there been cases where people have been put in their coffins, and then recovered?”
“Yes,” Hamilton said, “so I’ve heard. Mind you, Selby said he was dead, and he ought to know. And he looked dead to me—as dead as anything I’ve ever seen. But we could have been wrong. The point is: where is he? If the kid woke up, found himself lying down there on a table, he’d go up to his mother, wouldn’t he? Or make some row, at any rate. But there’s just no sign of him. Far as I can make out, Ruth woke, and felt she must go and have another look at him. And found nothing there.”
Elizabeth said, “He might be badly shocked, surely. He might not quite know what he was doing. Gone off somewhere to hide.”
“Yes,” Hamilton said, “that’s the only way it starts to make sense to me, too. That’s why I’ve asked you all to come down. We’ll have to hunt round the house till we find him. All the cupboards, under the beds. I’ll do our floor, and Peter will do the attics. The rest of you do the first floor. Then we’ll all have another good look around the lower regions.”
Diana stayed close to Jane, and she stayed near Douglas. Elizabeth, who searched the first floor with them, made a separate check. Aware of her own weakness and uneasiness, Jane felt a touch of resentment at the other woman’s capability and calm. It was hard to imagine anything ruffling her. She chided herself for the lack of charity, and furiously pulled dresses to one side in her wardrobe-cupboard.
Diana objected. “He can’t be in there.”
“We’re supposed to look everywhere.” She detected a sharpness in her voice, too, and said more quietly, “We’re directly under the Deepings’ room. He might have mistaken the floor, then got scared and gone into the cupboard.” There was no sign of the boy. They went down and were joined by the others.
Hamilton said briskly, “Well, he’s not upstairs, and he’s not here on the ground floor. Mandy’s checked that. The basement is the only place left. There’s that big room next to the washhouse with all those crates and things. I suppose he may have got into or behind one of them. Leonard will want to help, of course, and Douglas can lend a hand, too, but we shan’t need the ladies. You can stay here, or go back to your beds, as you choose.”
Elizabeth said, “I’d prefer to come and help you look.” Hamilton shrugged. “As you like.”
“We’ll all come,” Jane said. “There’s no point in thinking of going back to bed while the child’s missing.”
They covered the other rooms in the basement first, looking behind rows of tins, sacks of potatoes, and big sugar and flour canisters in the food store. The room that Hamilton had mentioned was a jumble of crates and boxes, stacked almost up to the ceiling in some places. They worked as systematically as possible through them, moving them from one side of the room to the other. It took about half an hour, and although there was no radiator, they were sweating by the time they finished. Hamilton looked at the rearranged junk, and shook his head slowly.
“I really thought he might be here. It’s next door to the one he was in.”
They went out silently, and were heading for the stairs. On their left was the small bare passage leading to the basement door; the lamp Hamilton was carrying gave enough light to make it plain that no one was there. But the thought came to her, and she said automatically, “The door …
They all stopped. Hamilton said, “What about the door?”
“Could he have gone outside? It’s probably silly.”
“In weather like this?” Hamilton asked. “And I don’t see that he’d have the strength to draw those bolts. All the same …”
He went past her along the passage to the door, and lowered the light toward the floor.
“They’ve been drawn, all right.” With his back to them, and stooping, his voice sounded odd. There was a resonance in the passage. “I don’t like the look of this.”
Hamilton lifted the latch with his free hand, and pulled the door open. It swung heavily toward him, and they shivered in a blast of freezing air. Outside there was the long slope of snow, lit by a half-moon. Hamilton stood looking out, and they crowded after him.
“Footprints?” Douglas suggested.
“If you can tell new prints from old. Everyone’s been out there since the last fall. The boys, too. They were playing there yesterday morning.”
“He would be barefoot,” Elizabeth said.
“Doubt if that would show either, in this kind of snow. You don’t see any sign of anything, do you? Anyone?”
Diana repeated, “Barefoot…”
“Yes,” Hamilton said, “and wearing pajamas. The sheet is still in there. I think some of us had better go and put some warm clothes on.”
Grainger listened to Hamilton in silence. When he had finished, he said, “What’s the temperature out there?”
“I’ve not checked the thermometer. I’d say at least fifteen centigrade below—twenty more likely. And a nasty wind from the east.”
Grainger shook his head. “Even in shock, he wouldn’t go out into that. It’s absurd.”
“The bolts were drawn. I wouldn’t have thought he could draw them, for that matter.”
“Perhaps he didn’t.”
Hamilton stared at him, with what might be the beginning of anger. His nerves had been frayed, Jane thought, as all their nerves had, and she suspected that underneath the bonhomie there could be sensitivity and a quick temper.
“What the bloody hel
l do you suggest happened, in that case?”
“Someone might have taken the body outside. The child was dead, in my judgment.”
“And who would do a stupid, filthy trick like that?”
“I don’t know. But it’s rather more probable than that the boy was alive, and that he got up and walked out into the snow.”
“Not to me, it isn’t. Anyone would have to be a maniac to do it.”
“A sleepwalker would do as well. Or someone with an obsession about not being under the same roof as a corpse —your chap Peter, maybe. How does a Swiss peasant’s mind work? I don’t know.”
He sounded tired, himself overwrought. Calming Ruth Deeping had probably taken it out of him. He had managed to get her to take more Nembutal, Jane gathered, and Mandy was with her now, having got Stephen back to bed and asleep.
Hamilton, on edge but in a different way, said, “Is that what you’re suggesting? Are you seriously putting that one up as a proposition—that Peter came down from the attic, and carted the kid’s body out into the snow somewhere?”
In a sharper, colder voice, Grainger said, “All I’m doing is suggesting alternatives to your own incredible story. The fact that they are almost as unlikely is beside the point. As things stand, we don’t know what happened. We can only guess.”
Beside her, Douglas said, “Can’t we leave the theorizing for the time being? If there’s even a faint chance that the boy’s alive out there, surely the important thing is to try to find him.”
Grainger said, “Yes. You’re quite right, of course.” He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I’m not thinking very straight. I’m sorry, George.”
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