by Simon Clark
Forty-Two
In the gloom-filled forest Laura glimpsed Jay running through the trees. He ran with a herd of Saban. The animals’ blue eyes were like sparks of a flame.
‘Jay,’ she called. But he vanished into the undergrowth without showing any sign he’d noticed her.
The cloud brought an early dusk. Heavy drops of rain began to smack against the leaves. Tree trunks groaned as the breeze tugged at them. Laura pushed on. Her legs ached; she longed to sit down to catch her breath. But time was running out. When – if! – she found Archer she’d then have to find Victor. The second stage of this disease would addle his senses. In that state he might be capable of anything. And she knew he blamed Jay for the epidemic. Ahead of her stood the castle walls. Even though much of the fortress’s interior lay in ruins, the walls were intact. She knew Archer had been fascinated by the castle. There was a chance he’d wandered up here to play in its grounds. Moments later, she broke free of the forest. Raindrops burst against her head. A cold trickle ran down inside her collar sending shivers across her flesh.
The big twin gates to the castle were locked. Standing ten feet high they proved a formidable barrier. Without keys she’d need a long ladder to have even a chance of gaining entry. Wasn’t there a small side door? She paused, trying to remember whether it lay in the section of wall that lay to her left or to her right. Storm-force winds howled through the battlements as, shivering, she chose the right-hand flank of the wall. It ran like some bleak cliff face, more than twenty feet high, to a corner tower, then turned at a right angle. In this half-light it made for a gloomy, monstrous place. Laura devoted her remaining energies to searching for the door. Within seconds she’d found it, then came a heart-dropping disappointment.
‘Locked.’ She turned the iron handle, tugged, pushed, then kicked at the old timbers. ‘I don’t believe it.’ The solid slab of oak was fixed tight into its frame. It didn’t budge an inch. ‘Archer! Archer!’ But if the doors were locked how could the boy be in there? Damn. She’d have to return to the village. Maybe she could find people to help search for him. Then, again, so many of the islanders were either sick or looking after sick relatives. And Victor, himself, might be comatose by now. Laura ran her fingers through her sopping wet hair.
Gusts of gale-force wind tugged at her clothing like vicious claws. A vulnerable child that depended on her wandered the island in a storm. The island was under quarantine, so the police couldn’t help. The islanders themselves were dying . . . So wrapped up was she in despair that she ran by it without recognizing what it was. She’d staggered a dozen paces before she realized something strange projected from the castle wall that sat on its grassy mound.
Turning, she peered back through the rain. Am I imagining this? For there, projecting three feet from the stonework, and some six feet above the ground, was a slender metal pole. At the end of the pole a triangular pennant in yellow. Laura stared. The pole wasn’t fixed to the wall. It protruded through what appeared to be a ventilation block. She took a step toward the pennant as it fluttered. Now she could see that the ventilation block was set in modern-looking masonry, which formed a bricked-up archway the size of a garage door.
The steel rod jerked up and down. It’s not the breeze making that happen. Laura scrambled up the low mound to the wall. There were no other openings. Just a single block pierced with holes. Through one of them someone had pushed a slender rod with its fluttering pennant.
The moment she stood on tiptoe to try to see through the holes a frightened voice rang, ‘Laura! Laura! I can see you!’
‘Archer! Are you all right?’
The storm drowned out most of the boy’s reply, but she made out the words, ‘Stuck here . . . cellar . . .’ Then a heartfelt, ‘Please, Laura, get me out. I don’t like it . . . dark . . . she might come out again. She’ll hurt me.’
Frantic with alarm, Laura called, ‘Archer! Who’s in there with you?’
The pounding rain obliterated his answer. Quickly, Laura reached a decision. ‘Just stay where you are, Archer! I’ll get you out. It might take a few minutes, so be patient, OK?’
He shouted again. Even though she couldn’t make out individual words she all too clearly heard his fear. Once more she tried to see through the ventilation holes. They were way too narrow. What was more, it seemed as if there was no light in whatever place Archer had found himself. She tried to slip her fingers through the holes below where the pole emerged, but the depth of the block prevented her from even wiggling her fingers through at the other side to reassure Archer. All she could do was call out not to worry, she’d be back soon to free him.
Rather than weave her way through the forest, she ran back to the main castle gates. From there a lane ran back along the island to the village. The first thing she was saw when she rounded the corner was Victor.
He approached the castle, calling out as he did so. There was such sorrow in the cry. ‘Ghorlan . . . Ghorlan, where are you?’
The rain blurred his image so much he’d become a ghost of a man. Laura ran to him, then grabbed his shoulders. He gazed right past her.
‘Ghorlan!’
‘Victor. It’s me, Laura. Snap out of it.’
‘I saw her,’ he muttered. ‘I was on the ship . . . the N’Taal . . . all those people, they didn’t stand a chance. I-I held on to the baby . . . I really tried. Ghorlan! Where did she go?’
Fiercely, she shook him. ‘Victor. Victor! Listen to me. Remember who I am. Remember what you’re supposed to be doing. Victor, give me the name of the boy you’re looking for.’
He stared as if she babbled a language he didn’t understand.
‘You’re not well, Victor, but I know you can still hold it together. What you’ve got to do is to want to help me. Then you can start thinking clearly again. Use your willpower, Victor. Want to be well enough to help. You can do it.’
He studied her features. It was as if he saw someone familiar, only he couldn’t quite place the face.
‘Victor. Who am I?’
As the rain streamed down his face he shook his head.
‘Remember this.’ She grabbed his hand, then held it to the side of her head. ‘Can you remember when you stroked my face, and what you said about the line of my jaw?’
‘Soft. Like apple blossom.’ He blinked. ‘Laura?’ His eyes sharpened. ‘Laura, where’s Jay?’ He twisted round. ‘Jay was here a minute ago. My God . . . he showed me you. You were at Badsworth Lodge. A girl with bandaged wrists. You had a puppy.’
‘Scraps.’ She grinned with relief. And, dear God in heaven, it felt such a big, stupid grin. But it was so good to see the man back to his old self. Even if it might only be temporary. ‘But he’s grown into a big old pooch now. The dog with the bottomless pit for a stomach. The children love him.’
‘They love you, too.’ He rubbed his face. ‘The ship. I stood on the deck. I was there when it sank. At the end the refugees weren’t frightened. They were furious. Their anger! It was like standing inside an exploding bomb.’ He began to walk. ‘We must find Jay. I think I’m starting to make him understand. We’ve got to persuade him to realize that what he’s doing is wrong.’
‘Victor.’ She caught his arm. ‘I’ve found Archer. Somehow he’s got himself trapped in the castle. There’s an old dungeon or something.’
‘Archer will have to sit it out. Jay’s our priority.’
‘Victor. Archer’s terrified.’
‘Jay is the cause of all this mayhem. If we can—’
‘No, listen to me. Archer says there’s someone in there with him. He’s frightened they will hurt him.’
Victor paused. ‘Who is it?’
‘A woman. That’s all I could make out. Please, Victor, Archer’s so vulnerable. If we don’t get him out the shock alone could kill him.’
‘And my sister is in a coma. I’m deep into second stage. Sometimes it’s hard to remember even my name. Islanders are dying. Jay is probably already planning to inflict even worse carnage
on human beings. What if he decides he can get inside the heads of nuclear technicians and make them detonate a nuclear reactor? Or tricks the army into releasing nerve gas?’
‘Archer’s a little boy. It will only take a few minutes.’ She explained what she’d found emerging from the wall.
Victor inhaled deeply. ‘OK. I’m pretty sure I know where he is. It’s the old smugglers’ vaults.’ He hurried toward the castle gates. ‘Until a few years ago they were used to store maintenance equipment. Then the structure was declared unstable so the castle’s trustees had the place bricked up.’
‘Victor, it’s no good going that way,’ Laura told him. ‘The gates are locked.’
‘OK, there’s a side door that—’
‘Locked.’
‘It’s never locked.’
‘It is now. I’ve tried it.’
‘Damnation. No doubt another of Jay’s tricks.’
‘Victor. Keep a grip.’
‘I’m fine. And I know what Solomon told us is true. And that’s no delusion on my part. Jay is a vengeance weapon. One that I’m going to stop – or die trying.’
‘Where are you going?’
Victor nodded at a tree that grew close to the wall. ‘If the gates are locked there’s only one way in.’
‘You’re joking.’ Laura watched as the tree whipped around in the storm. Its branches beat at the battlements as if furious at the castle’s temerity to dominate the island.
Victor gave a bleak smile. ‘Right at this moment I can’t see myself joking ever again.’ He nodded upwards. ‘Use only the branches I use. Stay as close to the trunk as you can. And don’t, whatever happens, look down.’
Forty-Three
Victor climbed the tree. At that moment it seemed more animal than plant. Storm-winds made it buck as if it tried to shake them off. Twigs whipped his face. Branches flapped wildly. Leaves, torn away by blasts of cold air, stung his face. Despite his warning to Laura not to look down he shot glances back at her as she climbed those dripping branches. The rain made them dangerously slick. What was more, he expected Jay to manifest himself at the bottom of the trunk. If Laura saw him standing there, mouthing her name, would that be enough to topple her into a bone-breaking fall?
As he inched along one of the bucking limbs to the battlements he also expected to see Ghorlan down in the courtyard of the castle. That image of her as she hurried to meet a man stayed with him. He couldn’t stop himself imagining what happened to his wife after that. Perhaps she’d rushed down to the beach to meet the mystery man there? A little while after that she’d gone into the water. Maybe she’d used the boulders as stepping stones to reach the next bay, then slipped off them into the river. But how did that explain the position of her green island ranger fleece? Victor had found it above the high tide mark. Possibly, as Victor had done in the past, she’d left it there to wade into the river to save one of the Saban Deer that had become entangled in discarded wire. Then she’d lost her footing. The currents could be brutal.
‘Victor!’ Laura had reached the stonework, too, but still remained on the branch because he’d not lowered himself over the battlement on to the walkway. ‘Snap out of it. Let me on to the wall!’
As he clambered down on to the walkway he realized that those symptoms had struck again. His mind had wandered. Lately, it had become so difficult to keep a grip on his thoughts. With that, came a creeping lethargy. It would be so good to lie down now.
‘Victor! Let me get on to the wall . . . I can’t hold on.’
Savage gusts wrenched at the branch. The entire section of tree moved away from the castle so it no longer touched the masonry. Below Laura, a long drop to solid earth. Victor hurled himself, so his upper-half stretched out over the top of the wall.
‘Grab my hands,’ he shouted as the woman receded through a fog of driving rain. At that moment it seemed as if the storm was determined to catapult her from the tree.
Laura let go of the branch before running along a lower one as if it were a tightrope. Then she leapt at the wall. Victor grabbed her hands. Rainwater had made one so slippery it shot through his fingers as if it were wet soap. Desperately, he grabbed her wrist.
‘I’ve got you,’ he panted. ‘I won’t let you fall.’
Her eyes met his; they signalled absolute trust.
‘OK, when I pull you to the rim of the wall, get one of your arms round the back of my neck. Then I’ll haul you over. One, two, three.’
The top of the battlement reached shoulder height from the walkway. So when he dragged her over the rough stones it must have been painful. Yet she didn’t so much as murmur as he hauled her to safety. What was more, she didn’t pause to catch breath. Instead, she ran for the steps that led down the inside of the walls to the yard.
‘How do we get into the vault?’
‘It’s not that straightforward. The only doorway was bricked up the same time as the archway outside.’
‘So how did Archer get down there?’
‘I guess that’s a mystery he can explain when we’ve freed him.’ He pointed to the groundskeeper’s cabin. ‘There are tools in there; we’ll have to break him out.’
Now they could barely see it was so dark. It took precious moments for Victor to find a piece of masonry that he could use to break a window, then undo the latch to the door. Once inside he could flick on the yard floodlights as well as the light in the cabin. In one corner stood a desk covered with paper coffee cups. At the other side of the room were shelves on which there were power tools, boxes of light bulbs and jars of nails.
Victor selected a couple of lamps that were powered by bottled gas. ‘These will give us the best light once we get into the vault.’ Quickly, he lit the pair.
‘How are you feeling now?’
‘If I keep busy I’m sure I can keep all the little grey cells together.’ He shot her a smile. ‘But if I seem to drift away into my own world again jab me with something sharp. OK?’
‘OK.’
Victor handed her a steel bar. ‘For jimmying. I’ll take this.’ He chose a huge hammer with a handle a full three feet long. After that he took a gas lamp, which cast a brilliant white light around the room. Laura held the other. ‘Can you feel it, or is it just me?’
Her eyes were grave. ‘A sense that time is running out?’
He nodded. ‘It’s like watching the clock on a time bomb tick down to zero. I can feel the air’s different, even the ground is changing. I thought it was part of the second-stage symptoms, but now I’m certain that Jay is transforming the molecules – the very atoms that everything is made of. Back there in the forest I thought the trees would turn into animals.’
She poked his arm with the steel bar. ‘Stay focused, soldier.’ Her smile was a dry one. ‘There’s work to be done.’
Victor led the way to a section of inner wall that clearly revealed an area of new brickwork in the shape of a door. Savagely, he attacked it with a hammer.
‘Watch your eyes,’ he shouted as sparks fired off in every direction.
The concussions were explosive. He noticed that Laura also covered her ears as well as turning her head at an angle to avoid exposing her eyes to shards of brick that shot into the air every time the steel hammer head struck. He worked oblivious to the rain streaming down. For now, he even put aside the memory of Ghorlan rushing to meet a mystery man. Another crash of the hammer knocked a brick inward. From the oblong void the smell of decay oozed. Victor pounded the hammer home again. A brick shattered. He aimed another huge blow at the barrier.
‘Stop!’
Laura put her hand on the wall, just where Victor intended to land the next strike. In the nick of time he pulled the hammer back before the block of steel smashed her fingers to pulp.
‘Victor, it’s Archer!’
When Victor raised the gas lamp to the small hole he’d made he saw a pair of wide eyes staring out.
‘Archer, we’ll have you out in a minute. Stand right back while Victor takes down the w
all. Put your hands over your eyes so no sharp bits hurt them.’
Archer continued to stare out with frightened eyes.
‘Please,’ Laura said gently. ‘Move back from the wall.’
Archer cried, ‘No. I’ve got to give Victor this.’ He pushed his bunched fist through the narrow void in the brickwork.
Victor put his own hand under Archer’s as the boy opened his fingers. Glittering links fell into Victor’s palm.
Victor reeled. At that moment he couldn’t have been more shocked if the entire edifice of the castle had tumbled on top of him. He stared at the bracelet.
‘Victor. Keep holding it together. You’re nearly through.’
‘My good God,’ he breathed, then louder, ‘Archer, where did you find this?’
No reply, just a pair of eyes gleaming through the slot-shaped opening.
‘Archer. Did you find this on the beach?’
Then a choked reply. ‘From here. From the car. Lady gave it!’
Laura said soothingly, ‘Don’t panic, we’re nearly through. Victor, he’s starting to go into shutdown. It’s time we got him out of there. Victor? What’s wrong?’
‘This.’ He held the bracelet in a cupped hand. Raindrops sparkled on gold. ‘I don’t understand where this came from. Archer, tell me exactly where you found this?’
‘Don’t question him now, Victor. He’s near to collapse.’ She eyed him as if expecting him to flip out. ‘Why? What is it?’
Victor couldn’t drag his gaze away from the delicate jewellery in his palm. ‘See what’s engraved on the link?’
In the light of the gas lamp Laura read out the twin names. ‘Ghorlan. Victor.’ She caught her breath. ‘It’s your wife’s . . . Victor, careful!’
He called through the tiny opening. ‘Archer, stand back.’ A strength he’d never known before filled him. In five tremendous blows he felled the wall. Bricks cascaded to his feet. Red dust billowed up into the falling rain. Before the dust had cleared, they picked up the lanterns and rushed inside to find that Archer had already vanished.
