by Simon Clark
Josanne stood aside. When they descended the staircase he went first. His flashlight swept through the shadows below. He was watching for that first tell-tale movement. But if they were attacked, what happened then? God alone knew.
Within eight minutes they’d climbed into the van. It was ten to five on a cold March morning. Dawn hadn’t even begun to break yet. Josanne sensed the pressure of the darkness here, as if it had the power to crush her if it chose to exert its will. The Tower loomed over them. A thousand tons of icy stone. It stood against the night sky; a menacing rock face that harboured a loathing for anything human. At least now they were leaving. Fisher was at the wheel. Fabian sat beside him up front. In the back, sitting on a blanket, were Marko, Sterling, a grey-faced Adam and herself. Jak stood by the rear doors. The dog appeared on edge. He couldn’t relax yet.
There was plenty of room, the band had elected to leave their gear behind in the ballroom. They’d collect it once the police had taken care of Cantley. The clock on the dash scrolled forward to 4:52. Eight minutes to five. Just eight more minutes before the blind clock in The Good Heart struck five chimes. And I don’t want to be sat here when they strike. She shivered when she imagined those five grave notes ghosting through the night air to the van. We’ve got to get away from here … right away.
A sudden anxiety gripped her. ‘What’s wrong? Why aren’t we going?’
The battery’s dead. When Fisher turned to her those were the words she was sure he’d utter. ‘There’s a problem,’ he said. I knew it! ‘I’ve told Fabian there isn’t time, but—’
‘Listen to me,’ Fabian interrupted. ‘I’m not leaving the songs here. I’ve worked too hard to abandon them.’
‘Abandon them?’ Fisher echoed in disbelief. ‘Fabian? They’re not human beings. They’re pieces of paper.’
Josanne intervened. ‘You’ve got copies at home.’
‘I revised them on the way here. They’re the only copies in that form.’
‘Hell’s bells, Fabian.’ Marko couldn’t believe it. ‘The songs will be there when you get back.’
Josanne put her hand on Fabian’s shoulder. ‘We’ve got to leave … I don’t want to be here when the chimes sound again.’
Fabian glared. ‘It’s a bloody clock.’
‘Maybe you’re immune to what it can do, but if you’d heard the chimes when the house screws with your head, then you wouldn’t say that.’
‘Listen to yourself, Josanne.’
‘Please, I just want to get away before the clock strikes five. If we’re here when it does … look what happened to Belle. Something bad will happen to us if we’re here when the chimes sound.’
The clock on the dash rolled forward to 4:54. Six minutes until the metal hammer fell on the chime bar somewhere deep within that house within a house. In her mind’s eye she could glide over the corpse of Belle lying on the floor to that evil-looking tomb of a house. There the medieval façade would stand in defiance of time, and in contempt of humanity. A mass of skull-like stones … with gloomy apertures for windows … the stunted doorway … a stone mouth with a gluttonous appetite for human misery and fear.
Then, thank God, Fisher started the motor.
4:55.
Josanne could imagine the striker already being cranked up with all the dark promise of an executioner’s axe. In five brutally short minutes the hammer would fall. She could sense the resonance building before the strike – an impossible resonance; a grave full of echoes waiting to burst forth and release its deadly power on them.
Fabian opened the van door. ‘I’m going for the songs.’
Ignoring shouts of No! Leave them! he swung his legs out of the van. Fisher leaned sideway over the passenger seat as Fabian exited. Whether he was going to yell at Fabian or even haul the man back into the vehicle Josanne would never know because Fabian slammed the door back with a powerful sweep of his arm. There wasn’t a metallic crash. Instead, the concussion came as a thud. Fisher’s face immediately deformed into a snarl of pain.
‘Hell, Fabian!’ Marko shouted. ‘You shut the door on Fisher’s hand. Fabian, hey, Fabian!’
Fabian ran across the driveway, through the twin doors, and into the house. Fisher straightened up in the seat behind the wheel. He cursed as he clutched his injured hand in the other.
‘What an idiot,’ Josanne hissed. ‘Fabian doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Fisher, are you all right?’
Fisher grimaced. When he tried to flex his hand, sheer agony brought a spasm to his face. ‘It caught me across the fingers …’ He grimaced again. ‘Marko, you drive. When he gets back, floor it. Just get us away from here.’
As Marko climbed out through the rear doors so he could dart to the front of the van, Josanne watched the relentless progress of the clock. 4:56. Four minutes before the chimes rang out. Dear God, she knew something dreadful would happen if they were here when they did. Either Cantley would step out of the bushes with a shotgun, or it would be something worse. Something only the house could throw at them. She remembered only too clearly how the water had thundered through those ruptured pipes.
A moment later Fisher joined them in the back of the van. A grunt burst from his lips as he leaned back against the metal panel, his injured hand clutched inside the other. Jak gently nuzzled his forearm. Meanwhile, Marko sat behind the wheel with the engine idling. He’d already switched on the vehicle’s headlights, so they cut a dazzling swathe through the darkness. Hawthorn bushes restlessly twitched as a breeze passed through their branches.
‘What’s keeping the guy?’ Sterling hissed.
Everyone stared at the house. They willed Fabian to appear. But what if Cantley had been lying in wait? Might Fabian lie dying in a pool of his own blood? Josanne bit her lip. Four minutes to five. What if the dashboard clock is slow? Four minutes slow. Any second now she’d hear the tolling of the chimes. They’d fly into her heart like bullets. The sound was death. Make no bones about it. The chimes announced when it was your time to die. Her heart quickened. Perspiration forced itself through her skin. She found herself staring at the clock. The numerals hypnotized her. 4:56. Tension constricted her chest. She found it difficult to breathe. The metal hammer of the clock would be fully raised by now. Changes in tension would occur within the mechanism. Its power would be increasing as it readied itself for the first blow against the striker. And in the build up of that mechanical tension would be another form of tension. A dark power that suffused The Tower’s stonework would be tensing now. Ready to leap out at the first chime of the clock. 4:57. Her eyes were watering, but she couldn’t blink. She had to watch those numerals. She realized she no longer inhaled. Her breath was locked tight inside her aching lungs.
The clock blinked. 4:58. At that moment a crash shook the van. A cry shot from her mouth with shocking power.
‘Got them!’ Fabian bounced into the passenger seat. He showed them the leather briefcase that contained his precious music.
Fisher slammed his good hand against the panel of van. ‘Marko! Drive!’
Fabian was still closing the door as Marko crushed the gas pedal to the floor. The van lurched forward, its tyres spinning, flinging gravel up against the wheel arches with the sound of machine-gun bullets striking the metal.
Josanne watched the headlights sweep over the hawthorn as the van careered in a loop, then tore down the driveway. Trees flashed by. Gaunt skeleton creatures at this time of night. The engine howled. Pot-holes buffeted the vehicle. The concussion made Fisher clench his teeth as he tried to protect his injured hand.
The clock on the dashboard said 4:59.
One minute … just one minute left. The words echoed inside Josanne’s head. One minute. Then the clock strikes five.
She could feel the house reach out to her. Its toxic power crept into her flesh. A cold touch snaked down her back. It would reach into the motor. That malignant energy would infect the wiring. Every weakness was something to be exploited by the grim deity that dwelt in the core o
f the house. The van’s motor would fail.
Josanne’s eyes fixed on the clock. 4:59. Any second now.
At that moment Marko struggled to hold the van as it cornered a bend in the drive. The vehicle careered off the gravel to run on soft earth. The slushing sound of its tyres told her that the house hadn’t been beaten yet. The speedo had been touching forty. Quickly it fell to thirty, then twenty, then with aching finality it dropped to ten. The machine made slow progress through the mud. She could see The Tower through a stream of mud that the rear tyres threw up. The rear lights appeared to turn it a bloody red. Branches struck the van. They could be bony hands fighting to hold the vehicle back until the blind clock struck five.
‘Come on, come on,’ Marko urged. The engine screamed. Sliding and lurching, the van crept back onto the drive. Then the tread bit deep. Seconds later the van cannoned from the driveway onto the road. Marko pushed the van’s motor to bursting point. It roared as he accelerated away. Trees blurred by. The speedo nudged seventy. When the dashboard clock at last rolled forward to read 5:00 Josanne heard no chimes. There was only the sound of the motor and the tyres on the road. She looked back through the rear windows. The dark block of the house shrank into the distance. Then a moment later The Tower was gone.
CHAPTER 34
In the back of the van, Fisher cradled his left hand on his lap. The door had cracked across the second joint of his fingers and they hurt like hell. Pains shot up his forearm directly, it seemed, into the centre of his head. Although a milky glow on the horizon told him dawn had begun its debut it was still too dark to examine his hand properly. In the gloom it looked like a claw. The fingers curled inward. Although the little finger kinked outward.
That’s a break if ever I saw one, he told himself, while shooting a smouldering glance at Fabian in the front seat. The jerk. He jeopardized all our lives for the sake of his songbook.
Everyone rode without talking. Jak sat by the back doors. His head swayed to the motion of the vehicle. Marko’s driving wasn’t so frenzied now. The dog allowed his eyes to close.
Eventually, Sterling asked, ‘How long to the ferry?’
Marko slowed the van to a crawl. ‘We’re not going to the ferry.’
‘What?’
‘Take a look out front.’
Fisher knelt up so he could see between Fabian and Marko. Josanne and Sterling did the same. Adam roused himself, too. His face was still blanched with grief.
Marko said, ‘The road’s flooded. Is this the same stretch that stopped you, Adam?’
Adam’s voice sounded dead. ‘Yeah, I can see the rails. There’s a bridge somewhere under there.’
Fabian spoke up. ‘Clearly we can’t make it any further this way.’
Marko didn’t want to be beaten. ‘I could wade across.’
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Josanne told him. ‘You don’t know how deep it is.’
‘Look how fast the current is.’ Fisher grimaced. It hurt his hand even to talk. ‘It’d sweep you away.’
For a second everyone stared through the windshield. The van’s headlights illuminated an ugly stretch of brown water that swallowed the road. Branches rushed by as a current swept them down to join the river.
‘There’s no crossing that,’ Josanne told them firmly. ‘So no one even think of trying, OK?’
Marko grunted, ‘I’m not grabbed by the notion of returning to the house.’
Josanne echoed the heartfelt grunt. ‘Neither do I. Nor do we need to. We passed a road branching off a couple of miles back. If we follow that it should take us east in line with the river. We’ve got to reach a town before long.’
‘Even a farmhouse would do,’ Fabian muttered. ‘Anywhere with a bloody phone … that works.’
Marko pulled a U-turn. Soon the floodwater receded into the gloom. Moments later Josanne pointed out to the right. At least it was a metalled road, not a dirt track. Fisher gazed out the back window as above the tree-line a faint streak of red appeared. Just when you were beginning to think that the night would last forever, he told himself. He steadied himself with both hands as Marko took a bend and grunted with pain. That blow across the hand had been a bitch. Jak made a small yip sound in the back of his throat. Fisher accepted that as a note of sympathy.
‘Hi there, boy. You get my vote for the hero of the hour.’ The dog regarded him with its amber eyes. Their dark pupils moved just a touch from side to side as if Jak read the expression on his face. Smiling, Fisher stroked the dog’s head. He heard the thump of the wagging tail as it struck the side of the van. Once more Fisher glanced through the rear windows. Now it was a little brighter he could just make out an object – a series of objects, in fact, that caught his eye.
‘See the telegraph poles? There’s a wire, too.’ His smile broadened. ‘If there’s a telephone cable then it must reach a telephone at some point.’
Five minutes later Marko braked sharply.
‘Not another flood?’ Josanne sounded anxious.
‘No.’
‘Seeing as there’s been no traffic since we left the house I was beginning to wonder.’
Marko looked back with a grin. ‘How’s a garage and a motel for you?’
‘Really!’
Josanne’s pleasure at a pair of mundane conveniences of the twenty-first century made Fisher smile again.
Marko said, ‘We can drive on, or stop here.’
‘Stop here, for God’s sake,’ Fabian’s clipped, lordly diction had returned at long last. ‘We’ll phone the police from the garage.’
As soon as Marko pulled up in the forecourt they all tumbled out into the fresh morning air to stretch their limbs. Now the chill felt good. Even better was the light creeping over the fields. Of course it revealed nothing but trees and ploughed earth, but it was God-given light. It chased all the night shadows away.
Fisher stood there supporting his left hand in his right. The fingers had become bulbous across the knuckles where they’d begun to swell. Fabian slamming the door across his hand like that was an accident, but that didn’t stop Fisher aching to kick the guy in the rear. He was sure the little finger was broken. That meant his bass playing would be curtailed for the next couple of weeks at least. Thanks a lot, Fabian, you self-centered, great—
‘Garage is shut,’ Sterling announced.
‘It can’t be.’
‘There’s only the security light on inside. The pumps are dead.’
Fisher felt as insignificant as a fly in the midst of that vast tract of land. They’d gone through hell. The Tower was miles behind them. Now they’d reached a petrol station complete with integral grocery store, candy stripe awning, three pumps standing smartly to attention as they waited for custom, and yet … and yet the damn thing was shut.
Josanne asked, ‘Any sign of life?’
Sterling and Marko checked. They shielded their eyes so they could peer through the windows.
‘Not a bean,’ Marko said, as he rattled the door. ‘Locked up tight.’
Fisher winced with every step he took. The pain throbbed to the same rhythm as his pace. He found a card wedged into the bottom corner of the frame behind the glass. ‘Opening times,’ he read. ‘Weekdays seven a.m.’
Sterling shrugged. ‘Today’s Wednesday.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Twenty-five minutes to six.’ Fabian used his best pedantic tones. ‘Another hour at least before our pump jockey rides in.’
‘Marvellous, bloody marvellous.’ Adam’s voice was as dark and as flat as before.
‘Any sign of a payphone?’ Fisher asked.
‘There’s one inside the store.’ Sterling nodded at the window. ‘There’s some pretty hefty rocks round the front. We could put one through the glass.’
Josanne clicked her tongue. ‘Of course, we could just take a walk across to the motel.’
Fisher followed the others. The dog trotted quickly to keep up. Josanne’s answer appeared to be the smart one, but the entire facility ap
peared deserted. Not a single car occupied a space in the car-park. The curtains on the motel windows were all open. So unless anyone had walked here …
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said kicking the door. ‘This is locked too.’
Fisher checked the telephone cable again. He saw the black licorice whip of wire ran from a timber pole to a cleat that fastened it to the motel fascia board, then the cable ran into the building through a drilled hole.
‘There are phones inside.’
‘I know.’ Josanne seethed with irritation. ‘There’s probably a phone in every bloody room. It’s just they’re in there and we’re out here!’
‘Breaking in’s going to be a difficult option,’ Sterling said. ‘See those steel bars over the windows?’
‘Surely the motel can’t be closed, too.’
Fisher stepped closer to the bright yellow doors. In one window was a notice. ‘It’s the equivalent of a vending machine,’ he said. ‘I’ve stopped in one before. Look, it’s all automatic.’
‘You mean they don’t have staff?’
‘They do during the day. But if you arrive at night you just use your credit card like a key. See the slot?’
Fabian pulled out his wallet. ‘Stand back. I’ll get us in.’ He moved in that waspish way of his. A controlled speed that got the job done fast. He inserted the credit card. After a moment the door buzzed. A green light flashed above the card slot as the door locks disengaged with a click. The door admitted them into a small hallway where there was something like an ATM. Fisher had to insert the card again. Tap his code into the keypad, then follow more instructions on a touch screen.
‘I’ll order two rooms,’ he said. Then with a rare flash of humour he added, ‘It says no dogs allowed … but they can go to hell.’
As he cradled his throbbing fingers Fisher prayed that the machine wouldn’t swallow the card, or declare it invalid. If recent events were to go by anything could happen. He even glanced out to the road that was awash with early morning light. He half-expected to see Cantley loping toward them with a shotgun in his hands.
