by Neil Spring
‘Hartwell?’
‘I couldn’t be sure.’ Stealthily, he crouched down beside me in our hiding place, behind the desk. ‘Keep your head down, Sarah. Cover your mouth. Remember how we felt during the mill séance? How you felt beneath the picture house? Burning these leaves can induce visions, confusion and delirium, and, in large enough quantities, cause a complete inability to differentiate reality from fantasy.’
‘This is a colossal risk, Harry.’
His eyes held mine, unblinking. Shining. There was no going back now.
‘Whatever happens, I’m pleased we found a way to work together again, Sarah. Thank you.’
He smiled, and so did I. Then his glittering eyes flicked down to my lips . . .
Oh Harry, how different our lives could have been. We could have had a life together. A family together.
Then, from the bowels of the house, came a man’s voice. ‘Hartwell? It’s time! Oscar, where the hell are you?’
I started. This voice I recognised. It was Sidewinder.
An alarming thought struck me. ‘Harry, what if he’s armed? We’re trespassing, and he’s well within his rights to use maximum force.’
‘So are we,’ Price’s replied, his eyes glinting mischievously.
I saw then the dark clouds of smoke blooming in the outside corridor. That was the Devil’s Snare, burning. If Sidewinder was going to venture upstairs, walk in here and discover us, he would have to inhale the smoke.
Although Price was grinning, I remained dubious about his plan.
‘Harry, won’t he see it burning?’
‘Indeed, he might,’ Price whispered, ‘but I have concealed the hotplate well within the alcove of the corridor wall.’
‘That’s all very well,’ I replied, ‘but he’s hardly likely to be fooled by his own illusions.’
Price sounded assured as he said, ‘Perhaps Sidewinder, like his son, is no longer capable of discerning reality from fiction. And remember, he is afflicted by one chief disadvantage.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Sidewinder is consumed with a fervent passion to believe. And hope is the enemy of truth, Sarah. Hope makes us liars sometimes, even to ourselves.’
Dimly, from beyond the walls of the house, came the noises of the public rally: horns, drumming, chanting. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see the protestors charging furiously through the ruined village that had once been their home, challenging the nervy soldiers who were ordering them not to leave the road. And if they did . . .
I felt my limbs tense with unhappy foreboding, afraid that at any moment we might hear the blast of exploding military debris. I tried to keep my face turned away from the corridor; I was already feeling light-headed and dizzy. I saw then that Price was picking up – what? In the gloom, it was hard to make out.
Just then, a furious voice bellowed from out in the corridor: ‘What the HELL?’
‘Here we go,’ Price whispered.
The scratch of a match, the flare of a tiny blue flame, and Price ignited the candle that powered the magic lantern. An eerie, flickering light spooled out, jerky, throwing distorted shadows all around us.
In my head, suddenly, came the projectionist’s voice. ‘A bright beam cutting through the smoky darkness. A spectacle. Sometimes that beam is all you need.’
Floorboards creaked under approaching footfalls. Heavy. Slow.
I held my breath, my expectation building.
‘Who is it? Who’s in here?’ He was coughing against the smoke.
This isn’t going to work. He’s going to recognise the smell!
Peeking around the desk, I saw, venturing into the room, an angular figure in military uniform, and a shock of white hair. Sidewinder. His breathing was harsh and laboured, as if he feared a grave threat awaiting him here in the darkness. And as he stepped into the beam of ghostly light I saw that his hands were clenched into fists, the whites of his eyes shining with fear.
‘What on earth . . .’
When Sidewinder saw Price rising up in front of him, shoulders squared, he cocked his head to the side, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Then his whole body jolted. Behind his perfectly round spectacles, his eyes were at once stricken. They bulged at what Price was holding.
The blacksmith’s hammer.
Price raising it menacingly.
Sidewinder’s composure disintegrated, his face as white as a sheet. ‘Stay back, stay away!’ he yelled, throwing up his hands to shield himself.
Price stepped forward, his voice deep and ragged. ‘Tell the truth, Sidewinder. You know what you did to me. We both know.’
Sidewinder was frozen to the spot. ‘But you’re dead, you’re not real!’
‘I’ll show you how real I am,’ Price growled.
I squinted at him through the smoky room. Price appeared . . . different, somehow.
Was it Price?
I wasn’t sure. Price had become . . . someone else.
A blacksmith?
It’s the Devil’s Snare, Sarah. It’s only the Devil’s Snare!
‘I’ve done nothing wrong!’ Sidewinder stammered. ‘I did my duty.’
The room began spinning.
‘GET AWAY FROM ME!’ Sidewinder screamed at Price, waving his arms frantically.
‘You know why I’m here, Warden. Confess. Tell the secret.’
‘No.’
‘We both know what you did. What control does Hartwell wield over you? How has he blackmailed you? Why?’
‘Leave me in peace,’ Sidewinder pleaded, his voice cracking, and suddenly my perspective shifted, the fringes of my vision exploding in light, as if I were seeing this scene in a moving photograph.
What’s happening to me?
‘You’re dead!’ Sidewinder screamed, staggering back. ‘Keep away!’ At the entrance to the room, where the Devil’s Snare fumes were most intoxicating, he stumbled on the fallen bricks, sending him sprawling to the floor.
‘You will admit your guilt,’ Price instructed, looming over him, furious, dark as hell.
He was going to compel Sidewinder into confessing what happened to the blacksmith eighteen years ago outside the Imber church, and I had no control over what that truth would be. Would he confirm my direst fear? Had my father done something despicable to an innocent man in this village? I felt terror then, seething, black terror that I would hear the truth.
My vision blurred with soft pastel colours. The smoke and the light had become a flickering projection of another time . . .
A remote village, miles from anywhere, where the winters are cruel and the summers stretch forever. An iron sky hangs over the downs, which are hard with the morning frost. No sun, no warmth, just a damp, keening wind.
Outside Mrs Daniel’s bakery is an abandoned wagon that will soon turn to rot. There are people about, but not many. In their tough, hard-wearing boots, they lumber towards the wagons. Their tractors line the road behind me, the road out of Imber. Like the homes they are leaving behind, their faces look weathered and bereft of hope.
Rain begins to pour down, turning the terrain to mud. The military have already begun commandeering other parts of Salisbury Plain. I hear the thundering hooves of cavalry horses. I see trudging soldiers. Tented accommodation.
In my military uniform, I take it all in. I observe the desertion of the shell-shocked village.
A superior barks an order at me. ‘Private Grey!’
I am taking control, showing the men and women who have lived here which way they must now go. As I carry out my task, I pretend not to see the villagers’ tears. I must not disobey orders. There’s a war on now, and I must do what I’m told. It is my duty.
One man has chained himself to the church railings. The blacksmith. A desperate attempt to remain. The warden, a man called Sidewinder, orders me to sho
ot – actually shoot! – this civilian in the head.
I can’t! I can’t!
‘We have to evacuate this village if we’re to win this war. Whatever the cost.’
I shake my head, stepping back.
The blacksmith pulls himself to his feet. He speaks with heart-breaking passion. ‘This village may be lost, but it will never belong to you. You have treated us appallingly.’
Sidewinder raises his pistol. The blacksmith stares into the barrel of the gun, paralysed with fear. But then Sidewinder stops, lowers his weapon. Presses the infernal thing into my own shaking hands.
‘Do it. There’s one bullet left.’
A black despair spreading through me, I shake my head in refusal. My family. My dear wife and daughter. My Sarah, what would she think of me?
‘That’s an order, Grey!’
I raise the gun, my hand trembling. Close my eyes tightly as I squeeze the trigger. The gunshot blasts across the valley. Echoes. Dies.
I open my eyes slowly. The blacksmith’s face is pale and drawn, but he is alive.
The bullet has lodged itself in the stone church behind him. There’s a long, heartfelt moment of understanding and respect between us. He looks such a kind man, and grateful. I know disobeying the order wasn’t wise, but I’m beyond caring. I’ve kept my humanity.
As if I could ever kill an innocent.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Sidewinder asks, straining to sound as though he’s still in control. He snatches the revolver from me. I give him a look of hardened contempt.
And Sidewinder gives the blacksmith a slow, horrible smile. With his free hand, he reaches down and closes his grip around a long, hefty hammer. He feels its power, the supremacy it gives him.
This blacksmith who has chained himself to the church railings and means never to leave this village is a problem, but a small problem. An obstacle. And small obstacles can and must be overcome. Sidewinder thinks that it will be easy. And if I won’t accept his duty, he will. He must. The hammer rises . . .
The blacksmith shrinks back, screws his eyes shut.
‘You should have left with everyone else,’ says Sidewinder. He is already fantasising about how he will dispose of the body. He could burn it. He could throw it in the chalk pit at the top of Carrion Pit Lane, where it will never be found. Or in the deep millpond.
I step forward, intent on stopping him, but it’s too late. He dodges me, raises the hammer and swings it.
I yell out! A ragged, high cry, a sound I didn’t know I could make.
There’s a wet, heavy thwack.
The blacksmith’s mouth falls open, as if he’s trying to say something, or draw a final gasp, but there’s no sound, no scream. A trickle of blood from his ear. A long, slow drip.
His face goes slack. Sidewinder lifts the hammer to land another blow, but I lunge at him, knock him to the ground. There’s a struggle, frantic. He’s stronger than me, on top of me, raining down blows. One almost knocks me unconscious.
Sidewinder is on his feet again, his eyes full of insane malevolence.
‘Stop, stop!’ I shout, as I see the hammer come down.
The blacksmith’s head implodes with a hideous crack.
Then he’s gone. He slumps, face forward, with a sickening thud.
I lie there, frozen, gazing in abject horror at what is now an unrecognisable pulp of hair and blood and brains. ‘What have you done?’ I hear myself whisper. ‘Oh Jesus. What the hell have you done?’
– 35 –
IMBER’S HORROR
I tried shaking these shadows from my head as I drifted back to Imber Court, to the smoky secret nursery, lit with the ghostly flicker from the magic lantern. The first things I saw were the padded bodies and bone-china faces of those unnerving Victorian dolls. Then I turned my head, and saw the hammer raised high. Price was standing over Sidewinder, who was struggling to his knees, swiping wildly at the smoky air.
‘No nearer! You hear me? I wasn’t responsible. It was Harold Grey!’
But I wouldn’t allow that.
‘Liar.’
He spun round, dumbstruck, as at last I stood up from behind the desk.
‘My father was a good man. An innocent man. You murdered Silas Wharton.’
Sidewinder was looking frenziedly at me through the haze and seemed almost ready to confess. Ghastly pale, he stammered:
‘But – but – try to understand.’
‘I do understand. Perfectly. You acted alone.’
‘I was under orders,’ he said, wringing his hands.
Suddenly, a new voice was in the room: ‘Shut your mouth, bloody fool! You’ve been had!’
‘Christ’s sake – it’s not my fault,’ said Sidewinder, swaying where he stood, glancing fearfully from Price to me. ‘Hartwell made me collaborate with him, do you see? He threatened me. Forced me.’
‘I said silence!’
There was movement in the yellowy smoke, and a figure stepped out of it. It was Hartwell. Coughing against the burning Devil’s Snare, he grasped Sidewinder’s arm and shook him roughly.
‘What . . . what happened?’ Sidewinder murmured. Disorientated, he rubbed his swollen eyes.
‘Harry and Sarah here thought they’d play a trick to induce you to spill your secrets.’ The light from the magic lantern flickered on Hartwell’s fierce face. His imperious tone suggested he was managing to maintain his composure, but his fluttering eyelids revealed the truth: the drug was already working its strange effect on him. He glared at Price, at the hammer in his grip, and said cuttingly, ‘Mr Price, take your companion and leave my property. Now.’
‘We know the secret,’ Price said tightly, his eyes glittering with abhorrence. ‘We know your son is alive, we know you have deceived others into believing he died. We know that you drugged him, kept him tethered below ground. And we know the warden here is guilty of a murder you’ve known about, sir, for eighteen years! You have used that knowledge to work upon his fears, to blackmail him. Did you see him commit the murder, I wonder? Were you watching? Did you obtain proof?’
‘May God in His mercy punish those who have wronged us,’ Hartwell snarled. ‘Grant it so that His heavenly wrath stains the souls of those who have stained Imber with the blood of innocents.’
Clutching the lantern slide tighter, I took a step towards him. ‘Why did you do it?’
Hartwell hesitated. He looked wild-eyed and haggard, the light from the magic lantern turning his face a sickly yellow. ‘I won’t be trodden on. I won’t be deprived of what’s rightfully mine – my ancestral heritage.’
My vision swirled, bright white, and I was ripped from the room again.
Marie Hartwell, young. Here in the room, cradling a dead baby. Wracked with grief.
I opened my eyes. ‘No, it goes deeper than that,’ I insisted. There was a secret here, one that had to do with Marie Hartwell. And her children, perhaps. ‘What was so important about this room that you had to hide it behind a wall?’
Before he could answer, there came distant cries and horns from the public rally, hundreds of voices calling to the drumbeat in unison for Imber to live. That chorus of voices was much nearer now. The sinister image of the warning signs outside came back to me disturbingly, along with an almost certain premonition of approaching disaster.
‘Get outside,’ Hartwell said to Sidewinder. ‘What we need is a well-timed accident. Order the guards to allow the protestors onto the range. Don’t let them near this house, just the rest of the village. Do it!’
Sidewinder hesitated, his gaze unfocused.
‘Do it now!’ Hartwell barked.
A wave of panic swept through me. Price and I both stepped forward, intending to block Sidewinder’s exit, but we stumbled. Price looked unsteady on his feet and my own vision was swimming. We had breathed in too much Devil’s Snare.
Hartwell saw his chance.
With a snarl of anger, he charged at Price, sending him stumbling back and crashing onto the ancient desk, which collapsed in a cloud of dust.
‘Harry!’
The two men scrambled on the floor, Hartwell on top of Price, pinning him down.
I started forward. I had to help if I could.
‘You should have left when I said!’ Hartwell raged. Price was writhing beneath him, trying to buck him off, but Hartwell had one murderous hand around his neck, the other reaching back, groping for the hammer still in Price’s hand. Then Price dropped it and I darted forward, stumbling in the haze.
An arm roughly grabbed me from behind.
‘You bitch, you stinking bitch!’ yelled Sidewinder, right in my ear. ‘I should have killed your father!’
Pain exploded in my back as he landed a punch, sending me staggering into the shadowy corridor. I fell forward, face down, just a few paces away from the shadowy alcove where Price had left the Devil’s Snare burning in a metal dish.
So close to my face.
Don’t inhale, don’t inhale.
But it was impossible not to gulp in the smoke. Just a few short and panicked breaths and my vision disintegrated into a blur.
Hartwell’s a murderer.
A sudden wave of certainty washed over me.
He murdered his family, probably in this house.
I saw it clearly.
This nursery, decades ago. The ash light of dawn filtering through the shuttered window. A boy of around ten, with shaggy dark hair and dressed smartly in a suit, a boy who looks very much like a young Hartwell, sits on the edge of the bed, completely still, listening to another man sitting next to him. I can’t hear the words, I can only see the dreadful purpose in the older man’s eyes. Finally, balefully, the boy nods, understanding what he must do. It will be for the good of the family. For the good of Imber. The boy’s eyes are terribly wide and dark. Murderous.
Opening my eyes, coming up from the vision, I found I was lying on the floor in the dark, smoky corridor. Above the noise of the horns and whistles outside, the voice of a demonstrator on the village road was still amplified.
