by Helen Grant
‘I looked it up on the Internet,’ said Michel in an offhand voice, looking slightly embarrassed at the confession. ‘I was interested in that stuff when I first saw the glass.’
I didn’t ask him why he was no longer interested in it. It was incomprehensible that anyone could become used to such splendour, could become blasé about it. My father had said that Gerhard Remsich was a truly great artist. I thought that he was something greater than that. I also knew that no price tag anyone could put on the glass, whether eight hundred thousand pounds or a million pounds or ten million, could ever be meaningful. It was a priceless thing. I understood Michel’s reluctance to let me tell my father where the glass was. The Allerheiligen glass was worth more than one man’s career and one man’s fortune. It was a masterpiece; it was a miracle. I gazed at it, lost in wonder.
‘Look,’ said Michel. He pointed at one of the windows. ‘I think that’s the one that started the legend about a demon haunting the glass.’
I looked at the panel he was indicating; it was the one showing the Fall of the Angels. The upper part of the window was crowded with a throng of white-robed winged figures wielding swords and spears, descending out of skies the colour of Ceylon sapphires. Below them were the rebel angels, grotesquely ugly horned and winged creatures whose skin was tinted the crimson of blood or the green of decay. They tumbled down through empty space towards a bleak landscape of rock and fire far below, twisting and turning as they fell, jaws bared to reveal rows of jagged teeth snarling uselessly at their pursuers. Only one had his face turned outwards, as though staring out of the window directly at the observer. The expression on the red-tinted face was sly and complacent, even challenging, and painted with such detail that I could understand the rumours that Remsich had taken his figures from the life.
‘It’s creepy,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Michel, but he wasn’t looking at the window. He had stepped close to me – a little too close, I was thinking – and then suddenly he had his arms around me and was kissing me.
I was so shocked that for several moments all rational thought seemed to have short-circuited itself and I did not react at all. I simply let him go on kissing me. Eventually I suppose Michel realized that to all intents and purposes he was kissing a dummy; he stopped what he was doing and let me go.
‘I didn’t – I mean, I’m sorry…’ he mumbled, but he didn’t look particularly sorry; he was eyeing me covertly to see how I was going to react.
‘Michel…’ I began, and stopped. What was I to say? Think nothing of it? I looked at the floor and then at the window again, where the falling demon seemed to be smirking at me. ‘Michel,’ I began again more resolutely, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ I was instantly aware how lame this sounded.
Michel had that look on his face, the look that meant I was going to hear something very unwise. ‘Lin, it’s finished between me and Johanna.’
I hardly had time to digest this remark. Before I could interrupt him he said, ‘It’s just that – I love –’ He stopped abruptly, but the damage was already done. He might have been about to say, It’s just that I love sixteenth-century stained glass or even, It’s just that I love pepperoni pizza, but I doubted it. A scene of disastrous, train-wreck proportions was about to unfold. Underneath my alarm there was also a twinge of annoyance; I was pleased he had shown me the glass – all right, I was thrilled he’d shown it to me – it was fabulous – but that didn’t change anything between us. Did he think I was going to say, Great! Thanks, Michel. Now I’ll be your girlfriend?
I opened my mouth to deliver a watered-down version of this unpalatable sentiment, but then I noticed Michel’s expression. He was staring past my shoulder with wide eyes and his mouth open. For a split second I thought that he had somehow read my mind and knew what I was about to say to him, but then I realized that he was not thinking about me at all. His expression was almost comically shocked. I waited for a moment and when I saw that he was not going to shut his mouth I said very cautiously, ‘Michel?’
‘Shhhhh!’ His voice was low and urgent.
‘What?’ I said in a stage whisper.
Michel did not reply; he simply pointed. I half-turned and followed his gaze. He was staring at one of the windows, the one with the Garden of Eden scene in it. Clearly visible through the glass was a dark shape, a shadow as tall as a man, but grotesquely warped and crooked where it fell across the differing angles of the coloured panes.
A stifled squeak escaped my lips and without thinking I grabbed Michel’s arm. We stood there in silence, not daring to move, and watched as the dark shadow shifted, writhing across the planes of the glass, and then moved to the side of the window. It vanished behind the wall and a moment later it reappeared with a horrid stealth behind the window showing Abraham and Isaac. Bonschariant! boomed my thoughts. In that moment I believed. I was really afraid that I might faint. I hung on to Michel’s arm with such ferocity that it must have hurt him, but he was oblivious. I saw that he had gone a sick grey-white colour.
Was this what had happened to the abbot of Allerheiligen? I wondered. Had he seen the same dark shape moving through the windows, keeping pace with him as he passed along the cloister? Had the fear of what lay behind the glass been enough to stop his aged heart, or had the demon shown him its face? And had he had long enough to take it in, to realize the full horror of it, before Death had sealed his eyes forever?
‘Michel!’ I hissed under my breath.
He didn’t react.
‘Michel! Lock the door!’
For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard, but then without a word he pulled away from me and slipped over to the door, treading as lightly as he could. It was still half-open, but he pulled it swiftly shut and jammed the key into the lock. He was struggling to turn it when I caught a sudden movement at the edge of my vision and realized that the misshapen shadow beyond the glass had vanished. There was a click as the key turned in the lock.
Michel came back to me, his face pale and serious. Silently he put his arms around me. I pushed my face into his shoulder as though to shut everything out, but still I was listening, listening with straining ears, and I knew he was too. I don’t know how long we stayed like that; it could have been as little as five minutes but it felt much longer. There were no sounds from outside – no tapping on the glass, no footsteps. Michel was stroking my hair. At first he was just doing it mechanically, as though he were petting a dog, but after a while there seemed to be more purpose in it, so I pushed him off.
‘Do you think it’s gone?’ I asked him in an urgent whisper.
We looked at each other.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you ever seen him – I mean, it – before?’
Michel shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t hang around here if I had.’
‘So you think it’s…’
My voice trailed off. I didn’t want to say it; it sounded too stupid and too frightening. Bonschariant. The Glass Demon. I didn’t want to believe it myself, but I had seen the grotesquely shaped shadow with my own eyes. It was too soon to start rationalizing it away. I shivered.
‘I want to go back to the castle… but what if it’s still out there?’
‘I don’t think it is…’ began Michel.
‘What if it is?’ I asked, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.
There was a silence.
‘I’ll go and look,’ said Michel finally.
There was a brittle resolve in his voice. I knew he didn’t want to go any more than I did. I stood and waited while he unlocked the door and went outside. A moment later I could hear him crunching through the undergrowth. While I waited for him to come back I tried to distract myself by looking around me.
If the windows were magnificent, the rest of the church was in a sad state. The pews – those which had not actually collapsed – were broken and filthy. The patterned tiles underfoot were cracked and missing altogether in places. There was a pulpy mass on the floor which might have bee
n the waterlogged remains of a hymn book; it was difficult to tell. I touched it gingerly with my foot and it broke apart like the gills of a fungus. There was no pulpit and the altar – if there had been one – was gone too. In its place stood several wooden crates fastened with metal bands. I judged them to be perhaps a little over a metre and a half long, which made them just long enough to be…
‘Coffins,’ I said under my breath.
I eyed them for a moment, then swung round so that my back was turned to them. That was no better; now my imagination peopled the little church with pallid, red-eyed creatures, horribly thin in the arms and legs, clambering out to lurch across the broken floor towards me… With a shudder I went to the door and looked out.
‘Michel?’
He appeared a second later around the corner of the church.
‘There’s nothing,’ he said, trying a smile with limited success; I could see the strain on his face.
‘Then can we go?’
‘I have to put the boards back first,’ he pointed out. ‘Otherwise…’
He didn’t need to finish. Otherwise Michel Reinartz Senior, when he next called to check the church was still secure, would know that someone had been there. I didn’t like to think how he would react to the discovery.
‘Do you want to wait in the church?’
‘No,’ I said hastily. ‘I’ll wait out here.’
I hugged myself and watched as Michel went to pick up the first board. A moment later he had disappeared round the side of the church and I heard a thumping sound as he pounded it back into place. Clearly the job was going to take some time; there were at least eight boards. I looked at the silent trees and bushes. Was it always this quiet in the forest? I could not hear a single bird singing, or the rustle of wind through the trees or the crack of a falling twig. Once again I had that feeling of being watched. I began to whistle through my teeth.
Hurry up, Michel.
I glanced around me. There was no movement anywhere. Far off in the woods I heard a faint cracking noise, which might have been a twig snapping or the creak of a branch. In the end I hauled my useless mobile phone out of my pocket. Predictably there was still no signal, but I could mark the minutes as they dragged by from the time and date display on the tiny screen. It took twenty-seven minutes for Michel to replace all the boards to his satisfaction; twenty-seven minutes which stretched out interminably.
In spite of the sunlight filtering through the trees I found myself shivering. I hardly dared to think of the twisted shape we had seen moving outside the windows; to think of it was to beg the question of whether it had really gone – whether it might come back. Could it come back? I wondered. Perhaps it could only be seen through the stained glass. When Michel boarded the windows up again, it was like placing a patch over an open eye, blinding it. A momentary image flashed across my mind: Bonschariant, freakishly two-dimensional, trapped within the glass, writhing and shrieking in frustration… With an effort I thrust the thought away from me. It’s not possible, I told myself. Whatever you saw, it can’t be a demon. I stared at the mobile in my hands, a little chunk of modern technology, loaded with fuzzy snaps of my friends back in England. That’s the real world, I tried to tell myself. There are no such things as demons. But my teeth were chattering and I was afraid to turn my back on the church.
By the time Michel returned, wiping his green-streaked hands on the legs of his jeans, my imagination had almost driven me into a state of blind terror. Ironically, the one thing I did not think about was what someone else might have done with those twenty-seven minutes. It was quite enough time for someone to race through the woods to the castle; quite enough time for him – or it – to carry out their plan. As I stood there among the trees, trembling and hardly daring to look around me, it was not I who was in danger at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Michel and I hardly said a word during the walk back to the castle. It was an unspoken agreement that he would go with me; I could not have faced the trip through the silent forest on my own. When he took my hand I did not resist. The warmth was somehow reassuring. Michel looked preoccupied; I guessed he was worrying about the boarded-up windows, whether he had done a good enough job. If Michel Reinartz Senior noticed anything next time he went to check on the church, we were both for it.
If we had been talking – if I had been happily babbling to Michel about the wonder of having seen the lost Allerheiligen glass, as I should have been – we might not have heard anything at first. As it was, the cry was so faint that I was not sure what I had heard. It might have been the shriek of a startled bird rising up out of the undergrowth, or even the distant yelp of a fox. I broke my stride for a split second and then carried on, eyeing the ground as I went so that I could avoid the muddiest places.
Moments later the cry sounded again and this time there was no mistaking it: someone was screaming. I pulled up short, dragging Michel to a stop, and twisted my head this way and that, trying to fix the direction of the screams. It was always difficult to orient myself in the forest but whoever it was could not be far away. With a sickening lurch in my stomach I realized that the cries were coming from the castle. I wrenched my fingers from Michel’s grasp and broke into a run, hurling myself across the last few metres of forest and out into the clearing in front of the castle. As I ran towards the green gate someone burst through it in a jumble of stumbling feet and wheeling arms. It was Polly.
She spotted me at once. ‘The phone!’ she screamed.
I looked at her stupidly, not understanding.
‘Your phone!’ she shrieked at me, her face contorted with fear and frustration. ‘Give me your phone!’
‘I –’ I was stricken, not understanding what was going on but seeing clearly that something was dreadfully amiss. I fumbled in my pockets, trying to find the mobile phone’s smooth pebble-like shape among the crumpled tissues and loose change. My fingers closed around it and I yanked it out of my pocket. ‘It’s here –’ I began, but before I could finish Polly had grabbed it from me.
She began stabbing at the buttons with her forefinger, almost weeping with frustration.
‘Polly –’
‘Shit!’ She pressed Cancel with her thumb and began jabbing the buttons again, so wildly that it was clear she would never succeed in entering the correct number.
‘Polly –’
‘Shit! Fuck! What’s wrong with it?’ She grasped the phone in her fist and I could see that for one moment she considered hurling it to the ground, where she could stamp it into the dirt. With an effort she restrained herself, but I could see that she was shaking with emotion. ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong with it?’
‘Polly – it won’t work here,’ I said, putting a hand on her arm.
A cold feeling of dread washed over me. I had never seen Polly like this before, not even after the fire.
‘Calm down –’ I started.
Polly shook me off, glaring at me through dishevelled strands of sand-coloured hair.
‘There’s no signal here, remember?’
‘Shit!’ This time she let out a roar that was almost incoherent and the phone did hurtle to the ground. ‘What are we going to do? Oh, God!’
She was weeping. I looked at Michel, who was standing a couple of metres away, staring at this scene with his mouth open. No hope of sensible assistance there, I judged. I reached out and grasped my sister by the shoulders.
‘Polly! What’s the matter? What’s happened?’
‘It’s Ru,’ she choked out at last, sending icy splinters of fear into my heart. ‘It’s Ru – it’s – it’s –’
‘What do you mean, it’s Ru? Is he hurt?’
She stared at me with eyes that were blank with shock. ‘Someone –’
She didn’t finish and I was terribly afraid that she had been going to say, Someone’s killed Ru.
‘Polly.’ I spoke to her as sharply as I could, desperate to get her attention. ‘Where are Dad and Tuesday?’
‘Th
ey’re in the house. Somebody’s been there – in Ru’s room – while we were downstairs.’ She looked at me wildly. ‘We were downstairs – we didn’t know – and he was asleep. He –’ Her hands fastened in her fair hair, as though she would uproot clumps of it.
This time I actually shook her. ‘Polly! Is Ru alive?’ I was almost shouting. ‘Just tell me! Is he alive?’
Slowly she nodded, and I let out a long breath. ‘Who were you going to call? Police? Ambulance?’
‘Po-police,’ she stammered.
‘Michel.’ I turned to him, but he did not react. ‘Michel!’ This time he responded to the harshness of my voice and looked at me with a dazed expression. ‘You have to run back to the farm and call the police. Right now, Michel. And tell them to come to the castle, OK?’
He was staring at me so stupidly that I thought there was a real danger he might send them to the farm instead of the castle.
‘Tell them –’ I realized that I did not know exactly what he should tell them. ‘Say there’s been a break-in.’ I glared at him. ‘Michel – go!’
Michel finally stumbled off and I turned back to Polly.
‘Where are they?’
Polly pointed back at the green gate. ‘In the house. In Ru’s room.’
I pushed past her and ran for the gate. If I thought about this for too long I would lose the nerve to do anything at all. I was across the courtyard in seconds, burst into the living room and raced for the stairs. As I hurled myself up them three at a time I could hear raised voices coming from above. My father’s booming voice drowned Tuesday’s higher, wavering tones, as though a Great Dane were trying to bark down a chihuahua.
Abruptly the voices broke off. Tuesday came out of Ru’s room at top speed, as though she had been propelled from behind. She was holding something in her arms, a white bundle which she pressed close to her body. Her gaze flickered past me but I might not have been there. Without a word she hurried into the room she and my father shared and a second later the door slammed shut.
I ran down the landing and into Ru’s room. My father was standing there, by the cot Ru slept in. I hardly glanced at him. I was looking past him instead, and the shock of what I was seeing hit me like a sucker punch.
