White Crow

by Marcus Sedgwick

  They’re in the entrance hall, and sunbeams in which the dust dances like tiny moths spear through tiny chinks in the boards. There’s a different smell here, different from the kitchens and the pantry. This smell is really unpleasant, as if there are rats decaying under the floorboards. And worse.

  ‘Isn’t that pretty?’ Ferelith says, watching the narrow rods of sunlight stabbing down, the bright hot sun outside reduced to this backdrop of stars.

  ‘That’s how our sun would look from another galaxy,’ she adds. ‘Nothing more than one tiny star among millions. A pin prick.’

  Rebecca shudders. It’s cold in the Hall, and she’s only wearing a vest top, because it’s been another beast of a sunny day. Only now does she wonder why Ferelith is wearing a hoodie. She must have been baking outside.

  ‘Can we get on with this?’ Rebecca asks, still wondering what it is that she will have to do. She thinks about her father for some reason that she can’t place. She doesn’t feel angry with him, she doesn’t feel sad. What she feels is nothing.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Ferelith. ‘Sorry. This way, I think.’

  She turns and flicks the phone back on, heading into the bowels of the building and away from the weak light.

  They walk down a long corridor and make a couple of turns. Now the silence is complete but for their breathing and the creak of the boards under their feet, and the darkness is total but for the light from the phone.

  ‘Come on,’ Ferelith says. ‘This way. We’re nearly there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Candle Room.’

  Candle

  We came down the hallway and though I knew my way in the dark by then, I made a bit of a show of having to stop and think, and remembering the right way, and so on.

  I think I managed to make it look like an accident that we came to the Candle Room. I pulled aside the boards that I’d replaced after my previous visit, remembering the day I made, in my opinion, the greatest archaeological discovery since they found that Viking boat burial down the road in the thirties.

  I found the door handle and gave it a sharp tug. It’s stiff and needs a bit of force, but then I barged the door open and we were inside.

  I sniffed the air, and as usual, it stank of decay. Truth is, the inside of the Hall is such a riot of different horrible smells that one more terrible smell was neither here nor there.

  ‘Is this it?’

  I told her it was.

  ‘So what do I have to do then?’ she asked.

  I was about to tell her, when the phone’s light went out.

  ‘God!’ I said.

  ‘What?’ she asked, and I could hear the panic in her voice.

  ‘Phone’s dead. Damn. Listen, don’t worry. It’s only darkness. We can get out of here. It’ll be easy if we’re careful.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I don’t like this. I want the light back on. Give me my phone.’

  ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘It’s dead. No point.’

  ‘I don’t care. I want my phone back. Give it to me.’

  I heard her move and thought I should tell her to be careful.

  ‘There’s things on the floor in here,’ I explained. ‘You ought to watch your step.’

  She stopped, and swore.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Let me sort it. Stay where you are, I’ll come and find you. And don’t panic.’

  ‘Hurry,’ she said, and I knew she was spooked.

  I stretched my fingers out ahead of me, stroking the air till I touched her.

  ‘There. Look, there’s something behind you.’

  I felt around in the dark with my foot and found the chair.

  ‘Sit down here,’ I said.

  I was calm, but firm, just how you should talk to people who are panicking.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Because then you’ll be safe and won’t hurt yourself on anything while I find some light.’

  I gave her a gentle push, just to encourage her, and sure enough, she sat down.

  Then it only took a moment to do it.

  I found her wrists and flicked the bracelets over them before she even knew what I was doing.

  ‘Hey!’ she cried. ‘Ferelith!’

  She yelled at me then, because she immediately knew something was wrong, but I was already fixing the hoops round her ankles, and as she felt them tighten, she really started to lose it.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘Hey! Rebecca! Hey!’

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she yelled in the darkness.

  But then it wasn’t dark any more, because I pulled her phone back out of my pocket, and flicked the light on once more.

  ‘You said that was dead!’ she said, as if the fact that I’d lied was the worst thing I could have done.

  And maybe it was.

  Then.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she screamed. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s time for your forfeit. It’s time to find out if you’ve been a good girl, or a bad girl. I wonder who’s coming for you. The Angel or the Devil?’

  1798, 12m, 3d.

  Behold!

  Death and eternity, and a doom just and uncaring are at the door. Lord, be merciful.

  A sweet calm lies upon the land, the white snows have come to lay a virginal sheet upon everything, so that even the cattle shed and the byre are things of beauty.

  But this beauty brings no relief from suffering, for the village freezes, and the poor struggle to warm themselves at feeble fires made of thin kindling.

  This cold has held the land fast in its grip these past weeks, and yet I feel it not.

  I feel no cold. I feel heat. I feel the heat of the pit. I feel the heat of Satan’s breath upon the back of my neck. I feel his eyes scorch my soul.

  Further, I feel the warmth of human blood as I, as we, toil in Winterfold Hall, I bathe in rivers of hot human blood as we continue to explore.

  My Holy Christ!

  I had no idea, I freely confess, of the physical nature of man.

  I see now I had merely a superficial knowledge of the workings of the human machine. I did not know about these various things that the doctor has shown me.

  I did not know about veins, and their cousins, the arteries. I did not know about muscles, and tendons and ligaments. I did not know of the spinal cord upon which the head sits. Such a strong thing is the neck, and yet, ultimately, not so very hard to break. Not so very hard at all.

  And I did not know about the blood.

  I knew of course, that there is blood to be found in a human, but I had little idea of its utter quantity.

  There is so much of it. So very much of the hot, thick stuff.

  And so I understood why the doctor had gone to the trouble of introducing the series of grates and sluices in the lower chamber.

  But, O Lord. My spirits are weak.

  It has been five now.

  Five.

  1798, 12m, 5d.

  What yet do we lack?

  Why are the secrets denied to us?

  What more can we do?

  I left the house this afternoon. I found Martha skulking in the kitchens, and though I bid her cheerily tell me what lay in store for my supper, she merely grunted a reply. She has been this way several times of late and I wonder what has occurred in her.

  So I left the house, and I turned to the church, and sought refuge there. I sat, as before, in the pews of the common man, and I lifted my eyes to the holy of holies, but my soul looked down, through the flags at my feet, down to the evil hidden, way below.

  I stirred, and dragged myself from the pews to my pulpit. I climbed the narrow wooden stair, unhooked the gate and stood my ground, as I must have done on many thousands of days.

  I rested my hands on the edge of the pulpit and tried to summon something within me. I occasioned to think of the many times when I had found the Holy Spirit enter me in my pulpit, and yet these moments seemed as fleeting and as meaningless as the dreams of a dead man.

&
nbsp; I was alone.

  I had tried to summon the Lord, and yet He deserted me.

  I thought of other summonings, less noble ones, devilish and ill-starred, and I thought of the five who had come and gone, now.

  Each had expected a summoning. Each praying for an angel, yet fearing the Devil would come, and each the biggest fool in Christendom.

  Fools, all five.

  Each one the doctor had asked.

  Three times, that they should be sure they knew what they faced.

  And yet each was fooled.

  For none of them knew what it was that truly came upon them.

  Not one suspected the truth, the truth that it was neither an angel nor a devil who would come to greet them, but a piece of burnished French steel, a foot across; as sharp as Lucifer’s mind and as hard as his heart.

  1798, 12m, 7d.

  At two in the morning, rose and worshipped, but did not worship the Lord. Instead I went to the Hall and bowed down before what the doctor will have me call Science.

  So I worshipped Science, and I saw what Science would deliver unto me, but as yet this new god had been as parsimonious as the Lord has been to me hitherto.

  This god Science had shown us nothing of the other side, all he has shown us is the hideous spectacle that is the inner workings of the human engine.

  And yet.

  Last night, as we worshipped at the altar of Science, something happened that has given us renewed vigour.

  And an answer must come at last, because we cannot I fear continue with our work for very much longer before rumours seek us out and destroy us.

  Last night was number six.

  But at long last we have a start!

  I confess that I had begun to doubt the doctor’s skills, despite all he had instructed me on the lore he had discovered in his years of training in Paris.

  I doubt him no longer.

  We stood before the chair, such a brute of a construction, sitting on the rails that carry deep into the lower chamber, where all sound may go unheard.

  The chair, aside from the shackles at wrist and elbow, is a simple enough throne, of solid oak, but it holds no great secret, nor mystery.

  But when it departs the Candle Room, and takes its run underground, coming to rest against the other half of its being, then it truly becomes a machine for crossing the barriers to the afterlife.

  It is here that the doctor’s greatest skills of physiology and the mechanic arts combine. It is here the blade that the doctor witnessed at first hand in the Terror in Paris is put to use, as the chair runs to meet the stop, whereon the blade is fixed.

  Waiting.

  And as I sluiced the blood away once more, I marvelled at what we had seen.

  As before, the victim came willingly. It is true to say that the man was afeared, but merely for his future soul, not his present life.

  Three times the doctor bade him.

  - Are you willing?

  And three times the man answered that he was.

  As with so many of the others, he turned to me and wanted the Lord’s blessing on the proceedings. We bid him go to the chair, and he settled in to meet his fate.

  The candles lit, we retired, and set to waiting.

  The doctor had been experimenting with the time involved, and had shortened the candle stubs, so it was not more than one hour till the final flame flickered in the dark and died.

  From the hidden room behind the panel, I called to him.

  - And are you a God-fearing man?

  And then we threw the lever, and throwing ourselves upon the wheeled dollies we had made, hurtled through the darkness after his retreating body.

  By the time we arrived, it was done.

  The blade had done its work, and once again, neatly bisected the head from the body, and yet, by the doctor’s great art, left it resting on the blade, so that very little difference could be discerned at first, save the release of some blood from the pressure within.

  This, the doctor has told me oft, is the secret to his system, so that while the man was truly dead (for who can live with a blade between his body and his head?), there was still the opportunity afforded us to communicate.

  The man was dead, and yet now the doctor leaned in close by the lamplight, and called to him.

  ‘Underhill! Underhill! Do you hear me? Do you hear me?’

  And now, finally, did we perceive success.

  For his eyes opened. Wide.

  They shut again, and the doctor called again, urgently.

  ‘Underhill! Hear me! What do you see? What do you see?’

  The eyelids of the dead man did open once more, and the eyes swivelled to look the doctor in the face, but inches away.

  His eyes fixed the doctor, but this was not an end to the miracles before us, for then, O Lord, his lips twitched, and parted, so slightly.

  And we thought that he was to speak to us, but no utterance came, and the mouth closed again, and then the eyes became as dull as stone, and our moment was gone.

  Such success! Such glory!

  And yet the final glory still denied to us, for whatever it was that Underhill had seen he had failed to tell us.

  I thought long on this tonight.

  I saw Underhill’s staring eyes, as he tried to speak to us from beyond the grave.

  What did he see?

  Clouds and angeldust?

  Or devils and hellfires?

  What did he see?

  All I know is what I saw of him, the look on his face, which it has taken me all evening to put a name to.

  The name I have now, and it is this: surprise.

  Friday 13th August

  Rebecca has given up shouting now.

  All that’s left is fear and confusion. Her heart is thumping as though she’s a frightened rabbit in a cage, and maybe that’s just what she is.

  Before Ferelith left her, she’d wandered round the chair, and from a darkened corner of the room had produced a five-branched candelabra.

  She’d placed it in front of Rebecca’s feet, but out of reach. Then she’d gone to a high narrow rail that ran round the whole room, and rummaging, her fingers closed on something she had obviously put there earlier.

  She’d rattled the matchbox as she’d come back over to Rebecca, and bending down, had calmly lit the five candles.

  And then she’d gone, and all Rebecca’s pleading and shouting and threatening and begging had done no good at all.

  All Ferelith had said was, ‘Farewell, sweet love.’

  Now Rebecca waits, and watches the flames of the candles.

  She wonders how long the candles will last, and whether Ferelith will come back before they go out.

  She’s sitting in a windowless room, in the centre of a derelict manor house, and she’s shackled to a chair that’s bolted to the floor. She knows this because she has tried to stand and lift the chair, but it wouldn’t move any more than she can. She’s been tied to the chair by someone she thought was her friend, but now she has no idea who, or what, Ferelith is. No one else knows she’s in the Hall, and even if she could get free, she doesn’t have her phone. The only light in the room is coming from five flickering candles set in a candelabra on the floor in front of her, and just as she’s thinking these things, the first of them, which was very short, splutters and goes out.

  Suddenly, with no other explanation, she knows what’s going on. Ferelith intends her to stay in the room until all five candles have gone out. She wants her to wait for an angel or a devil.

  Rebecca laughs, but it’s not a laugh with any joy in it.

  She sees that this is another of Ferelith’s freaky games, and she’s fallen for it. She knows there are no such things as angels, and certainly knows that there are no such things as devils. She’s not some ignorant country bumpkin from the past who might have believed in such things, she knows there’s nothing to be scared of. She tells herself this three times, just to be sure.