The War in the Dark

by Nick Setchfield

  The stairs took him to a wide, broad landing. There were taxidermied animals on display – a fox, a white leopard and a wolfhound. Their teeth were bared in mummified snarls, their eyes stolen by glass.

  The walls behind the dead animals held framed cases. Winter walked up to one and saw that it contained a collection of mounted insects, individually labelled in neat copperplate script: cuckoo wasps, shield bugs, mayflies. Their thoraxes were skewered by tiny silver pins. There was a date, too: 1894. And a word: Gothenburg. The paper they were mounted against was yellowed, like parchment.

  He moved on. The landing branched into three passageways, spaced equally apart. They looked gloomier than the rest of the house, lit by the dim glow of wall-mounted gas lamps. After a moment’s deliberation he chose the middle passage.

  Some of the doors were open, spilling light into the corridor. Winter walked past a succession of rooms, glimpsing half-lit couplings and other carnal acts. From one room came the sound of laughter, low and furtive. From another came what might have been a scream. It was hard to tell if it was agony or pleasure or something in between. He ignored it all.

  A door flew open and a woman strode out. She wore only a velvet domino mask and a ribbon of black lace at her throat. Winter felt momentarily unnerved by her nakedness, by the sheer force of her self-possession. For the second time that night he felt deeply British. Joyce had always undressed in the dark. He heard a man call after her, his voice muffled, possibly gagged.

  The walls of the passage narrowed, converging on a single door. It was different to the other doors; wider, taller, more elegantly crafted. There was a silver handle on it, carved in the shape of a rose, each petal intricately sculpted. Winter reached out to turn it.

  He snatched his hand back.

  The rose had pricked him, drawn blood. He sucked at his smarting thumb, and squatting on his haunches, examined the handle. There was a spiked metal thorn, located just below the bloom. A malicious little touch.

  This time he twisted the handle more cautiously, lifting his fingers away from the hidden barb. He felt the bolt shift, the hinges loosen. The door opened.

  Another corridor confronted him. This one was darker, more tapering, its doors firmly shut. Winter couldn’t quite see what lay at the end of it.

  He tried to recall the shape of the building. He had studied it through the binoculars but the structure he had seen from the hill refused to map onto the mansion’s interior. A corridor of this length didn’t belong here. The dimensions simply didn’t fit.

  There was an unusual taste in his mouth. He took a moment to identify it. It was almost like diesel, just at the back of his throat. Odd.

  Winter began to explore the passageway. He tested a couple of the doors and found that they were locked. He pressed an ear against one of them. He couldn’t hear anything. Not even the sounds of the party below. The dark length of the corridor was completely hushed. This was clearly a private wing of Harzner’s residence, off limits to the pleasure-seekers.

  He continued walking, his vision struggling in the gloom. Something stung his right eye, causing him to blink. It was a drop of his own sweat, beading from his forehead. Another followed it, hitting his cheek. His shirt-cuffs, too, felt clammy.

  The taste in his mouth was stronger now. A rising sense of nausea accompanied it. He thought of that metal thorn, the prick of pain in his thumb. Could it have been laced with a toxin? Christ, he was an amateur.

  Yet another door waited at the end of the corridor. Winter warily rotated the handle. This door, too, swung open.

  He was back where he had begun.

  Winter stood on the landing, at the top of the great stairs, by the stuffed remains of the fox, the white leopard and the wolfhound. And there were the mounted insects on the walls, their glass cases bright as mirrors as the light from the bone chandelier hit them.

  He could hear the party now.

  His internal compass spun. This made no sense. It was impossible. For a moment reality lurched.

  Winter focused his thoughts. This was an illusion, he told himself. Momentarily inexplicable but just an illusion. It was something an opponent had designed to confuse and disorientate. Standard psychological combat procedure. Clever, but you could conquer it. You just needed to crack how it was done.

  So how was Harzner doing this? Winter had a sudden vision of Krabbehaus as an immense Chinese puzzle box, its walls sliding and realigning in ever-shifting combinations. Hidden engines, concealed mechanics.

  He balled his fists and scrubbed the sweat from his eyes. And then he entered the corridor he had originally chosen, the one that led to the door with the carved rose, the one with that damn silver thorn.

  It seemed to be exactly the same passageway as before. Did it seem darker this time? A little narrower? Possibly. But then his vision was beginning to telescope, fuzzing at the edges. Winter wasn’t sure if he could trust his eyes.

  He stepped cautiously along the corridor, past the open doors and the shadowed couples, his senses alert for any trace of architectural subterfuge. He heard nothing, saw nothing. There was no hint of secret clockwork turning in the walls.

  Again there was a strange taste in his mouth. The diesel flavour was gone. In its place was something brittle and metallic on his tongue. He found himself wondering if this was how mercury poisoning tasted.

  A door flew open. The same door as before. And the same woman strode out, as defiantly naked as the first time Winter had seen her. But now there was something very different about her. Something terribly wrong.

  There was the skull of a beast where her head should have been.

  Winter stared, incredulous, as she approached him. The ribbon of lace at the woman’s throat separated her body from the obscene thing perched above it. For a moment he assumed it had to be a mask, but no, her head would never have fitted. It was the elongated skull of an animal – a dog? A stag? A horse? – its eyes like craters, its jawbone riddled with teeth.

  She strode past him, her flesh rippling, as soft as the skull was hard bone. The gas lamp played on the pitted cranium, illuminating the cracks and fissures that scarred its surface.

  Winter felt sick. A sudden gag reflex flooded his mouth with bile. He was spooked now.

  He took a moment to calm himself, to reclaim his breath, to try and exorcise the horror of what he had just seen. It was an illusion. It had to be. It was either a theatrical trick or some kind of hallucinatory phenomenon. Yes, that was it: the toxin that had doubtlessly coated the thorn was a psychotropic agent. It was inducing visions, scrambling his mind.

  And yet he remembered the priest in the church, the one whose body had erupted with insects. And then there was Hatherly. He could still see those dead eyes flashing open, lit by some unholy approximation of life. No psychotropic drug had summoned those visions. He had seen so much in the last few days, so much that was impossible, unaccountable.

  Winter steadied himself. He was aware of a creeping heat in the corridor, accelerating the sweat seeping from his pores. He wrenched his tie and tugged at his shirt collar, prising it open. He had to breathe, even though every breath felt raw, tasting of metal.

  Focus. He had to focus.

  He took a step forward. As he did so the corridor kaleidoscoped. It seemed to tilt on its very foundations. The walls themselves began to pivot and wheel. One wall rose to meet the ceiling even as the ceiling itself shifted, chasing the opposite wall. The passage spiralled like a funhouse tunnel.

  Winter lost his footing, convinced the floor was sliding beneath him. He rammed his hands against the wall, as if trying to hold onto a remnant of gravity. He shut his eyes, tightly. Was this only inside his mind? If so, then the corridor was his mind, reeling and treacherous.

  Winter kept his eyelids closed, blocking the vertigo as best he could. He concentrated on the sound of his torn breathing. As he did so he felt the whirl of the passageway begin to slow. His inner compass slowly settled, though his heart stayed tense, thumping erratic
ally against his ribs.

  Tentatively he opened his eyes, blinking through a sting of sweat. His senses were ready to be betrayed again.

  The corridor had steadied itself. Or else his mind had shaken the deception. He gathered his wits and continued to walk. Each step felt loaded, a potential landmine, primed to shatter his hold on reality.

  The door with the silver rose was deep in shadow. As Winter drew nearer he saw that there was something on it.

  It was a spider the size of a fist. It crouched there, its legs splayed across the oak, its engorged abdomen pulsing beneath the gas lamps. The creature had a legion of eyes.

  It wasn’t there, Winter told himself. It had simply been plucked from his unconscious. Some psychotropic poison had stolen into his veins, rooted around in his memory and snatched the sight of that brass spider on the door in Blutgasse. It was a fever-dream image conjured by a clever combination of chemicals. That was all.

  Winter reached for the rose handle. One of the spider’s legs quivered. It curled and tapped against the wood, as if anticipating a moment to strike. The creature seemed fat with threat.

  Winter hesitated. And then he placed his hand around the carved rose. This time he took care to avoid the thorn. He rotated the handle, sensing its inner mechanism click and shift.

  There was a sudden, excruciating flare of pain, in the soft flesh between his thumb and his forefinger. The spider had punctured his skin. Now its legs were locked around his wrist. Winter shook at the thing, violently. It finally flew free of him. Hurled to the floor, it scrambled away, a scurrying blur.

  Winter held his wounded hand. The bite throbbed, in time with his pulse.

  He opened the door. And stepped into darkness. Absolute darkness, as thick as ink. It drowned him. His other senses raced to compensate.

  He wasn’t enclosed. He felt certain of that. He was standing in a room, not a passageway. A sizable, spacious room. And there was a sound, too. A low, seething drone. The sound of swarming. And it was growing closer in the cloying dark.

  There was a skittering sensation across his face. A flurry of tiny wings, flicking against his skin. Something danced on his eyelids. Something else crawled at the edges of his nostrils, as if seeking entry. Blindly he batted them away. The frantic cluster of insects surged around his hands.

  The drone was piercing now, a shrill, furious buzzing that bombed his ears. He felt something flutter on his lips. He spat it away and something else found his tongue. Winter collapsed to his knees, scratching at his face, desperately trying to tear the unseen swarm away.

  At last the creatures abandoned him, their agitated drone fading to the far corner of the room.

  Winter dared his eyes to open.

  The enveloping blackness had marginally receded. Now there was the faintest suggestion of light. He glanced up and saw pinpricks of brightness. The more he looked the more there were, multiplying as his eyes adjusted. They were stars, he realised. He was looking at stars.

  The stars were behind glass, framed by circular windows set in a high ceiling. Was this a private observatory of some kind? He hadn’t spotted any such room from the hill.

  There was something odd about these stars. This was Western Europe and yet he could see no sign of the Great Bear. In fact he couldn’t recognise any constellations at all. It was a sky that seemed to belong to a different corner of the world altogether.

  Winter heard music then. A melody that he took a moment to place. It was the tune that Malcolm had played on that broken piano in the Fairbridge. ‘A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square’. It sounded spindly and spectral now, as if it was being played by an antique music box.

  The melody was summoning him.

  Winter picked himself up. He was a mess of sweat and nausea but he had to go on. He slipped his gun from his holster. Its cold weight was comforting in his hand.

  He followed the sound of the music, his unsteady footsteps echoing in the empty room. He became aware that there was a shape ahead of him. Something white and luminous, moon-bright in the corner. At first he imagined it was a pile of discarded ivory silk. It resolved into a hunched figure. Its back was turned, its face concealed by lace and shadow.

  Winter levelled his gun. ‘Turn around slowly,’ he said. He could hear his words reverberate along the walls.

  The music box continued its clockwork serenade. There was a smell like stagnant water, a scent of weeds and dead ponds. Winter drew closer to the still, silent figure. It was wearing a wedding dress, he saw. There was something very familiar about that dress.

  ‘I said turn around!’ he demanded. The gun shivered in his hand.

  For a moment the shape remained motionless. And then, almost lazily, it began to turn. It was his wife’s wedding dress. He realised that now.

  ‘Joyce,’ he said, uselessly.

  She raised her hands. Her flesh had the texture of rotted bark. The veil lifted. She had hollows for eyes, black as wells.

  Winter tore his gaze away, repelled. He had to find Griggs. They had to escape this place.

  He turned to retrace his steps. As he did so the room exploded into sudden, blinding light, so bright it almost had a sound. It made him stagger.

  There was a panoply of mirrors, each as tall as a wall. They surrounded him, every last shining surface reflecting his own bewildered face. An infinity of faces, an infinity of Christopher Winters.

  Except for one mirror. The man who stood directly in front of him had no face at all.

  Winter flung his hands against the silvered glass. He confronted his reflection, determined to defy its mocking blankness. For a moment he was sure he could glimpse traces of his features, blurred and obscured as though they had been wrapped in gauze.

  It was then that the reflection spoke.

  ‘We are the Half-Claimed Man,’ it said, in a voice that was, and was not, his own. Winter realised his own lips had moved exactly in synch with the words.

  Acting utterly on reflex now, he fired point-blank at the mirror. The bullet smashed the glass into shards. For a moment the reflection remained.

  The pistol tumbled from his hand, clattering across the floor. Winter sagged, his knees buckling. He fell, the last of his resolve gone. His mouth was a flood of metal.

  He lay there, broken, hearing the tinkling melody fade. He saw the mirrored walls rising from the ground, summoned to the ceiling by great, grinding pulleys. A puzzle box, he repeated to himself. A puzzle box. The house was a puzzle box.

  As the walls slid away they revealed a blaze of chandeliers. There was a ring of partygoers watching him. They held drinks and they murmured and they laughed.

  The elegant bulk of Emil Harzner walked towards him, his shoes as bright as black diamonds. He held a silver-topped cane that rapped the floor, triggering vibrations that knifed Winter’s skull.

  Harzner smiled. ‘I trust tonight’s entertainment has been to your taste, mein Freund?’

  Winter saw what they had done to Griggs.

  11

  It took Winter a moment to register that the blood pooling in his left eye was not his own.

  Another drop spattered his eyelid. He wiped away the thin, warm liquid and stared at the smear on his finger. It clung to the contours of his skin. It was another man’s blood.

  It was Griggs’s blood.

  Winter looked up, blinking to clear his vision. Joe Griggs was suspended some twelve feet above him, lashed to an enormous wooden wheel that swung in the air, manoeuvred by an intricate cradle of chains and gears. He had been stripped to the waist and his torso was criss-crossed with knife wounds, the gashes sunk deep in the flesh.

  They were not frenzied or animalistic, these lacerations. There was a sense of ritual to them, a clear sense of purpose. As the wheel pivoted Winter saw that the struts supporting it were etched with symbols. They were pentagrammic in design, echoing the markings that had been inflicted on the man’s body.

  Griggs was alive, for the moment. He was chalk-pale and had clearly lost a peri
lous amount of blood. From the twisted angles of his limbs Winter suspected that some bones had also been broken. The SIS man was breathing hard, his slashed chest heaving, exposing a knuckling of ribs that couldn’t help but remind Winter of the macabre architecture of Krabbehaus.

  He met Griggs’s gaze. It was blank, full of a dread so overwhelming that it had nearly left him catatonic. Winter tried to flash some reassurance to his colleague but his gaze faltered. Ashamed, he broke eye contact, returning to the sickening maze of wounds on the man’s body.

  With a rusty jangle of chains the wheel moved across the room, orbiting the crowd that had gathered behind Harzner. As the disc spun more blood fell from the mutilated flesh. It dripped upon the partygoers. To his revulsion Winter saw a woman smile and slide her tongue across her lips, savouring it.

  Two of Harzner’s men broke from the crowd. They seized Winter by the shoulders and wrested him to his feet. He was half dragged, half shoved across the floor, the heels of his shoes scuffing marble, his fallen gun receding behind him. His senses were still a mess but the room was beginning to stabilise, shedding some of its dreamlike strangeness. There were familiar stars above him now. When he glanced at his hand the spider bite was gone. He fought to retain this clarity of focus. He needed it.

  The partygoers were assembled in front of a large arched window, the floodlit spires of Krabbehaus visible behind the glass. He heard the crowd murmur delightedly as he was brought before them.

  Harzner was flanked by two figures. There was the woman – Sabīne. Her eyes were shadowed by the butterfly mask, her expression impenetrable. For all that she had warned him earlier that evening her posture now radiated total, unassailable loyalty to Emil Harzner. She stood by his side, silent, vigilant, a weapon.

  To the right of Harzner was Albrecht. Winter only recognised him by his freakishly bony frame. His face was concealed by a layer of dark, moist clay, shaped into a grotesque approximation of human features. There was an oily sheen to it, like a sculpture in progress, pinched and twisted and reconfigured. It was like a primitive, shamanic mask. The wet clay soaked into the crisp collars of his dress shirt.