I had to glance around to reassure myself that he was closer than he sounded, and very nearly lost my footing on the tilted edge of the stairs. The flashlight beam mimed my unsteadiness as I sprinted into the right-hand corridor. The light fumbled at a heavy doorknob, and I was afraid the door might be even more thoroughly wedged than the front door had been. I freed a hand to twist the knob and then used all my force to thump a panel with my shoulder, and was caught off guard by how readily the door let me into the room.
Three panicked figures rushed towards me, displaying my face. I did my best to ignore them as I ran across the crooked floor to the window. I was unprepared for how disconcerting the view would look, of the gravel in front of the house puckered like a senile mouth to help swallow the building, and far closer to the upper floor than it had any right to be. I might have tried to welcome how it brought my car nearer if I hadn’t seen what had become of the mounds in the grass. Each one was indistinguishable from the blackness it was emitting—a filament composed of swarming particles that rose to arch over the house. The tendrils might have been legs or the mandibles of an unseen monstrous mouth, and the sight of them revived the crawling on my skin, a sensation that felt capable of invading my flesh. I knew they must surround the house, a situation I found so daunting that I was loath to open the window. The windows were our only escape route, and I stuffed the flashlight into my hip pocket and planted the exercise books on the floor in order to shove at the sash with both hands, having released the catch.
For a moment I thought the sash moved, but only the house had, together with the rising mass of gravel mixed with soil. No, not only them: my car had as well. I was afraid the handbrake had failed, and then I saw the disorienting truth. The car appeared to be creeping rightwards because the entire landscape was, or rather the house was being twisted into the earth. The sight drove me to a frenzy, and I was heaving at the sash to no avail when Jim urged “Make room.”
Although he was beside me, I could barely hear him. Whatever was occurring in the air—the change that made my skin feel infested—seemed to be consuming sound. Jim planted his hands beside mine under the top of the sash, and we wrenched at it together. I thought I felt the pane begin to give, but the sash remained jammed in the frame. As he redoubled his efforts Jim leaned his head nearly into my face. “Get something to break the glass.”
I might have suggested trying the next room, but why should any other window be more use? I had a desperate notion that we should try to kick the glass out, and then I realised that the room wasn’t quite as empty of potential tools as it felt; it wasn’t devoid of furniture. I ran to the dressing-table and saw my three selves stoop in obeisance—no, to pull out the top drawer.
The handle felt clammy and not quite like wood, unpleasantly suggestive of a knob of fungus. It stayed firm as I tugged at it, but my effort faltered as I wondered if the drawer could be hiding some occupant. Hesitating might put us even more at risk, but I had to haul the drawer all the way out before I was able to see it was empty. As I crossed the softened floor, gripping the heavy object with both hands, I couldn’t hear my footsteps. “Mind out,” I yelled and wasn’t sure if I was hearing my own voice except inside my head.
Jim didn’t move aside until he saw me ram one corner of the drawer into the pane. It felt like hitting gelatin, and yet I couldn’t see even a hint of a shiver. I swung the drawer again like a hopelessly unwieldy club and thumped the middle of the pane with every ounce of strength. I imagined I heard or at least felt a splintering, too faint for me to judge whether it was wood or glass. Another violent swing that nearly overbalanced me, and a thin diagonal crack no more than a few inches long glinted in the pane, only to shrink to half the length as I tried not to believe what I was seeing. “Let me try,” Jim shouted or at any rate mouthed, and I was glad to relinquish the drawer, since my hands were shaking so much I could scarcely keep hold. He slammed it against the glass, aiming at the crack, and at his third ferocious attempt the pane gave way, shattering outwards without a sound and more slowly than it should have, like an explosion of some viscous liquid. Jim used the drawer to dislodge jagged fragments from the sash and then flung it through the window. He clambered after it and turned at once to help me out of the house.
The sight of him almost paralysed me, because he was sidling past the window despite standing absolutely still. It made me feel that the world had begun to come apart, which distracted me so much that I had no idea what to do except seize Jim’s outstretched hands. I was halfway across the sill when my thoughtlessness caught up with me, and I stumbled backwards to retrieve the exercise books. Jim supported me with both hands while I ducked through the gap and knelt on the sill, then helped me to twist around so as to step down, all of which felt as though he was being dragged stealthily away from me. When my feet struck the gravel I might have lost my balance without his support, given the inexorable progress of the earth around the house.
My car was still where I’d parked it near the avenue. Beyond it a dozen hectic tendrils had risen from the mounds to close over Safe To Sleep. Whatever lurked beneath the ground must extend at least nearly to the gates, a realisation that brought me close to absolute despair. My sense that an enormous mouth had gaped under the house was overwhelming me, and I fancied that the tendrils were extending from it like incarnated shadows of the shape the mouth belonged to, an impression scarcely expressible in words. I could barely think, because I felt more infested than ever, as if some element of the change that had overtaken Safe To Sleep was about to make me its own—as if the invasion that had swarmed deep into my flesh presaged some form of hatching. The solitary thought I managed to grasp was that I wasn’t safe with the car, and as we ran across the sluggish vortex of gravel I thrust my keys at Jim. “You drive,” I shouted.
I didn’t know if he heard me; I wasn’t sure I did. Presumably my gesture was enough, and my expression might have helped persuade him. He took the keys and was opening the doors by the time I dashed to the passenger side. As I tugged my seat belt across me Jim twisted the key in the ignition, but I heard no response. Worse, I felt none, and I was afraid the transformation of Safe To Sleep might have rendered the engine useless, as perhaps it had drained the electricity from the house. Then the car jerked forward, but had it moved only because the ground under it had? Not until it sped into the avenue could I let myself believe it was travelling under its own power, though apparently without a sound, and I turned to look back at the house.
In the minute since our escape it had sunk a good deal. Just the roof was visible, turning with a dreadful stateliness that suggested a performance of a soundless waltz. All around it the tendrils towered out of the mounds, feeding the house into the whirlpool of earth that I knew was somehow related to the spiral we’d found beneath the mansion. The sight of the frenetic particles that formed the tendrils roused an answering sensation in my flesh. Were the tendrils hindering the car? No, Jim had slowed to watch the house in the mirror. I was about to exhort him to put on speed when the house sank beneath the earth, brandishing its chimneys in what I could almost have seen as a gesture of defiance. The multitude of tendrils descended with it, clinging to the roof, and I couldn’t tell whether they were helping it to be consumed or guiding it to some unimaginable form of acceptance, if not both. I was terrified to think that Jim and I might have suffered the same fate—that the tendrils might have a similar effect on me now that they were lowering themselves around the avenue, because my body had begun to feel as they looked. It was plain that Jim was unaware of them, and I was ready to urge him to leave the place behind—I would have to communicate in any way that worked—when he trod hard on the accelerator. Though I saw him speak, I heard nothing at all.
The car sped through the gates and swerved fast onto the road. We were past the hedge that enclosed the grounds of Safe To Sleep when I started hearing the engine. The faint whir grew louder as the swarming in my flesh dwindled into restlessness and then shrank beyond perception, th
ough a dismaying memory lingered like a symptom. I hoped with all my soul that I’d left the experience behind, and did my best not to think the process had only grown dormant, ready for revival if it encountered some cause. I had to concentrate on Jim, who was speaking again. “Sorry, what was that?” I said.
“I need to report this. There’s no telling how far it might spread. Do you know where there’s a phone box?”
His voice had grown more audible with each word. “We passed one close to here,” I said.
“I see it,” Jim said, and so did I—a bright red glimpse between trees a mile ahead. The sight seemed as unreal as the increasingly blue sky and the fields on both side of the road, irrelevant to the monstrous undermining of the world that we’d just witnessed. I was striving to retrieve a sense of the mundane, a reassurance I felt desperate for, when Jim said “My God, though.”
I had to learn why he felt provoked to profanity. “What, Jim?”
“That’s what I call subsidence,” he said with a sally at a laugh, and I saw that whatever he might have experienced at Christian Noble’s house, it was far less than the truth.
27 - The Recalling
“Thrills and spills. They’re the word for the year, are they, Dominic?”
I might have retorted that they were three words, not just one, but I said “I’m not sure what you have in mind, vice-chancellor.”
“Your choice of films. Imagine my surprise to learn that you were teaching Alfred Hitchcock.”
“I don’t think I could teach him much.” This was another comment I kept to myself. “He’s proving to be a popular choice,” I said.
“I rather think that has always been his aim, entertainment for the masses. I’m told he’s promoted as a trader in suspense.”
“He’s regarded a good deal more highly than that by quite a few critics. Some of the directors who created the new wave started the reappraisal.”
“Ah, the French. I was amused to hear that they take Jerry Lewis seriously as well.” Having made it plain that he was waiting for a laugh I wasn’t disposed to produce, he said “I remember Graham Greene had little time for Hitchcock.”
I was reminded of a confrontation about Greene in my adolescence. I could have thought my life was accumulating echoes and reappearances, by no means all welcome. “You’ll appreciate I take a different view,” I said.
“I did see a handful of his films while I was at school. One attempted Buchan, I recall, and another tried to make a fist of Joseph Conrad.” With enough reproach to be directing some of it at me the vice-chancellor said “They weren’t too fair to Buchan and decidedly unreasonable to Conrad.”
“I’m concentrating on his mature work. It’s been responsible for some lively discussions.”
“I take you to be saying you have, Dominic. So long as minds are being stretched.”
This served as an unwelcome reminder of how far mine had been. I had to pull back from a sense that the pale October sky above the campus was just a flimsy shield, a pretence of fending off the endless dark. I did my best to ground myself by remembering today’s discussion, where I’d outraged several students by suggesting that we couldn’t trust the happy end, since the vision that exonerated Cary Grant was what Joan Fontaine wanted to believe, and visually indistinguishable from the earlier vision showing him to be a murderer. I’d encouraged the students to consider why we should feel entitled to expect particular narrative developments and how we responded if they were withheld. I was about to convey some of this to the vice-chancellor, despite feeling I had no need to prove myself, when he said “May I conclude matters aren’t too lively elsewhere?”
“Forgive me, you’re asking what is where?”
He gave this—my response or the situation it referred to—a pitying look. “At home, Dominic.”
“We’ve come to an agreement. I thought Lesley might have said when you’ve kept up with her news in the past.”
“Is it anything the university should know about?”
“You already do. We call it marriage.”
A pained frown nipped his brow above the nose, “Life has returned to normal, then.”
I was far from saying that, however much I wished I could. I was about to offer him a neutral answer when I realised that his frown, having turned acute, was no longer aimed at me. As I wondered who he regretted letting overhear him he said “May I be of some assistance?”
“No, but he can.”
I knew the voice too well, but at least this time I had a witness. I swung around to face not just moonfaced Black but his fellow policeman Farr, whose enlarged nostrils flared as if he scented me or my reaction. “Good afternoon, Mr Sheldrake,” he said.
“And a good afternoon to you, gentlemen. Why don’t you introduce yourselves to my vice-chancellor.”
“No call for that. It’s you we want,” Black said.
“Dear me.” With no decrease of regret the vice-chancellor said “Will this be a university matter?”
“Just routine, sir,” Farr told him. “We have reason to believe Mr Sheldrake may be helpful.”
“It’s Doctor, actually.” Having established this on behalf of the university, the vice-chancellor glanced at students who were passing. “Perhaps your interview would be better conducted in private.”
“No need for that either,” Black said. “We’ll walk him to his car.”
His stare grew more round-eyed while his mouth turned rounder, an expression that seemed to trouble its recipient. Nevertheless the vice-chancellor said “If I can be of any help, Dominic—”
“You aren’t now,” Black said and thrust his face towards him.
I never knew what the vice-chancellor saw, but I thought I glimpsed Black’s eyes swelling to a size the sockets should never have been able to contain. “Let me know what transpires, Dominic,” the vice-chancellor said and strode away as if an imperative appointment had occurred to him.
Farr and Black watched his retreat, and then they turned to me so much in unison that it looked rehearsed. “Shall we walk, Mr Sheldrake?” Farr said. “I should think you’re wanting to be home.”
Students were staying well clear of us, but I raised my voice for them to hear. “So this is just routine, you said.”
“It’s one of those all right,” Black said half as loud.
“I shouldn’t think you’d want to draw any more attention to yourself, Mr Sheldrake.”
“Or anyone you’re close to either.”
My voice came out low, not least because my throat felt as if an assailant had clutched it. “Who are you threatening?”
“Why, nobody at all,” Farr said. “Certainly not your loved ones, Mr Sheldrake.”
“We don’t have to do a thing to your family. It’s been done.”
As I stumbled to a halt I had an acute sense of how fragile reality was, how much of a disguise: the campus buildings felt as insubstantial and impermanent as the sky. Even my own body was untrustworthy, since it left me barely able to pronounce “What has?”
“Why, your child has been prepared.” As I tried to find more of a voice Farr added “He was some years ago.”
“Like ours,” Black seemed at once to regret admitting.
Farr glanced at him with disfavour before turning it on me. “Do keep on, Mr Sheldrake. You’re meant to be walking, you know. I shouldn’t think you’d want your pupils to see you being escorted by the police.”
“They already can.” All the same, I was anxious to make for my car, and I’d regained my voice. “Just what do you want with me?”
“More like what you want with us,” Black said. “You and your pal on the force.”
“He’s really quite inquisitive, your Inspector Bailey. I expect he must have been surprised where his enquiries led.”
I found I was nervous of asking “Where did they?”
“No bloody where,” Black said. “We’ve got friends that are higher up than him.”
As Farr sent him another glance I risked saying
“So you’ll have no reason not to leave him alone.”
“Unless he annoys us again,” Farr said. “We’ll say as much for you, Mr Sheldrake.”
“Or have we got to call you doctor like your vice man said? I’ll promise you we wouldn’t want you looking after any of our kids.” I wondered if Black was trying to provoke me in public so that he could treat me worse. He’d only reminded me of Phoebe Sweet, which prompted me to ask “So where are the Nobles and their doctor?”
The policemen exchanged glances across me, and I thought they might pretend some kind of ignorance. “Who needs to know?” Black said.
“I’d like to. That’s why I asked.”
“Somewhere they can wait,” Farr said. “That’s all any of us have to know.”
Belatedly I grasped that Black had meant they were as uninformed as me. We were in sight of my car now, and a police vehicle stood on the double yellow lines alongside the car park. Since my escorts had fallen silent, I said “You’ve finished with me, then.”
“We already had,” Farr said.
“There’s worse than us on the way,” Black said. “Just wanted to remind you nothing’s over.”
Born To The Dark Page 30
