The Glass Demon

by Helen Grant

  His gaze roamed the room, as though searching for something. Perhaps he thought I had a Ouija board lying around among the piles of books and dirty cups cluttering every horizontal surface.

  Into the silence the sound of knocking fell like thunder. Grateful for the distraction, I ran to open the door. Michel was standing on the doorstep. He looked apologetic, but I was delighted to see him.

  ‘Fa– Herr Krause is here,’ I said in the most neutral voice I could manage.

  ‘Oh.’ He shrugged and would have turned away.

  ‘No – don’t go.’

  I almost pulled him into the house. I thought I could bear the brunt of whatever tirade was about to burst over my head like a tropical storm if I did not have to face it alone. Assuming, that was, that Herr Krause did not take Michel for another member of my coven.

  But Herr Krause had evidently thought better of whatever it was he had been meaning to say. He was fussily brushing the arms of his dark jacket with his hands, as though literally shaking off the dust from our house. Then he reached over and picked up the sheet of paper on which he had been writing to my father. Very carefully he tore it into little pieces and then swept them up and stuffed them into one of his pockets.

  ‘A letter is not necessary,’ he told me. ‘Please, tell your father I will call again.’

  He made me a stiff little nod instead of saying goodbye, a gesture which would have been cutting if it had not been faintly ridiculous, and strode to the door. He did not acknowledge Michel at all. As the door closed behind him, I let out a great sigh.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Michel in German.

  ‘Him.’ I tilted my head towards the door. ‘He’s probably going to go and tell half of Baumgarten that I’m holding black masses out here.’

  ‘Why does he think that?’ asked Michel suspiciously.

  ‘Because I asked him about… exorcism,’ I said, pronouncing the word carefully.

  ‘Lin!’ For the first time since we had met, Michel actually looked furious with me. ‘You didn’t tell him about the glass, did you? Tell me you didn’t.’

  ‘OK, I didn’t,’ I said crossly. I sat down on one of the wooden dining chairs and folded my arms. I looked at him. ‘I didn’t, all right?’

  ‘Well, why were you talking about exorcism with him, then? It’s not exactly a normal thing to talk about, is it?’

  ‘Look, if you don’t believe me… OK, he came to tell my dad something and I was asking him why everyone around here is so keen that the glass shouldn’t be found. I didn’t say anything about where it is. Do you think I’m stupid or something?’ I glowered at him. ‘He said people are superstitious and then we started talking about exorcizing the demon. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Michel in a hard, sarcastic tone that I had not heard from him before.

  ‘Michel –’

  ‘Do you have any idea what my dad is going to do if he finds out we’ve been in that church?’

  ‘But he won’t…’

  ‘How can you be so sure? Father Krause is bound to guess we know something about the glass. He’s obsessed with all that history stuff. And if he finds out, he won’t keep his beak shut. You shouldn’t have talked to him.’

  ‘Look, honestly, he doesn’t suspect anything. He’s the one who keeps saying the glass was destroyed, remember? He’s mad with me because he thinks I’m playing about with black magic or something.’ I raked my hands through my hair. ‘He started looking around like he was expecting to see upside-down crosses on the walls or something.’

  Michel was not mollified. He looked at me resentfully. ‘Well, we can’t do anything about it now.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  I looked at him, hoping for some sign of softening. He was still glaring at me sullenly, but I could not help taking in the freshly washed hair and neatly pressed shirt. He’d obviously made an effort with his appearance – as though he were visiting his girlfriend, I realized with dismay – but now I had totally ruined his mood.

  ‘At least promise me you won’t talk about anything to do with the glass with Father Krause again,’ he said.

  ‘I promise,’ I said promptly.

  I meant it too; there was no way I was ever going to raise the topic of exorcism with Herr Krause again. I had enough on my plate without him complaining to my father that I was dabbling in the black arts. I gave Michel what I hoped was a conciliatory smile and in spite of himself he smiled back. But all the time one thought was going round and round my brain: I didn’t promise not to tell Father Engels.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The following Monday I went back to school. There was nothing else for it, unless I could produce a doctor’s note, and I thought that was beyond my powers of forgery.

  ‘We’re late,’ said Michel by way of greeting when he picked me up.

  I looked at my watch. I didn’t think we were any later than normal but I shrugged and slid into the passenger seat. After that we sat in silence while Michel drove. It was not a companionable, friendly silence; I had the distinct impression that he was still angry with me. I pretended not to notice and stared out of the window at the forest flashing past. Michel was driving rather fast this morning and whenever we went over a pothole or rut the car lurched nauseatingly. There was no sign of movement under the trees, no reappearance of the bulky shape I had seen there once before on our morning drive to school. Still the forest struck me as somehow menacing. I could not drive under the overarching trees with the sunlight filtering down between them without being reminded of the church in the woods. There was no beauty in those tall pines for me now. They seemed like a towering palisade hemming us in, separating us from the outside world; within their limits something unearthly roamed, something beyond our normal perception and utterly malign.

  When we got to school Michel dropped me off at the gate and went to park without asking me to wait for him. I went inside, surreptitiously scanning the lobby for any sign of Father Engels’s suave black-clad figure, but he was nowhere to be seen. As I was standing there, someone brushed past me, then turned to look into my face. It was the blonde girl who had spoken to me on the stairs once before. The look she had given me then was rather arch; now her expression was curious, as though she were examining me.

  ‘Morgen,’ I said.

  ‘Morgen,’ she returned after a second’s pause.

  She sounded very faintly surprised, as though she had not expected to be spoken to. Her gaze flickered up and down my body until she must have taken in every detail, from the boots on my feet to the silver clasp in my hair. Then she turned and walked off. I looked down at myself in confusion, wondering whether I had made some terrible mistake putting my outfit together that morning, or whether I had my breakfast all down my front. But there was nothing to see.

  By lunchtime I knew it wasn’t my clothes or food down my front. They were all doing it. Glancing at me furtively and looking away. Staring at me when they thought I wasn’t looking. Half a dozen times I looked up from a piece of work I had just completed, to meet a pair of eyes which hastily turned their gaze elsewhere. The glances weren’t unfriendly, they were curious. Very curious.

  During breaktime one of the girls from my class came up to me and said, ‘Hi, Lin, is your brother OK?’

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ I said warily.

  ‘Oh.’ She waited, but I did not offer any more information. ‘Well, that’s good,’ she said, and beat a hasty retreat.

  So that was what it was all about. Their faces weren’t hostile, so I guessed they didn’t think I had had anything to do with the attack on Ru. But there was a hungry interest in their eyes. What is it like knowing that one of your family is a potential murderer? said those looks. Do you know who did it? Have you had to talk to the police? Are you scared it might be you next?

  When I looked up from the maths problem I had been working on to find Frau Schäfer staring at me in a speculative manner, I started to feel really uncomfortable and then annoyed.
I wondered whether she would say something, or offer some advice or support. But she didn’t. As soon as she realized I had seen her staring, she turned away. I watched her for a few moments as she fussed with the papers on her desk and flipped through the pages of a textbook, studiously avoiding meeting my eye. What would I have told her anyway, even if she had asked me if I needed help? There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t sound completely insane.

  You could still talk to Father Engels, though.

  My conversation with Herr Krause had taught me something. Even though he was no longer a priest and even though he claimed that the story of Bonschariant was just something which the uneducated had believed in the past, he had still been deadly serious when he warned me of the dangers of trying to carry out an exorcism. He had spoken of demons as dangerous adversaries, not as fairy tales to frighten children and the terminally gullible. Father Engels was actually a priest; that meant he must take my story seriously.

  The maths problem was forgotten, and Frau Schäfer did not call on me for the rest of the lesson, even though she must have noticed that I was miles away. In my imagination I was already pouring out the whole story to Father Engels and basking in the radiance of those fabulously good looks, while he nodded sympathetically and perhaps – thrilling idea – laid a hand on mine to comfort me.

  He’s the right person to tell, I said to myself. It’s irrelevant that he’s the best-looking man I’ve ever seen in my whole life. I’m telling him because he’s the only person who can help. That’s why. He’s the only person. Who was I trying to fool?

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  It was after lunch on that same day that my sister collapsed. Tuesday had – unusually – taken Ru out with her, so my father had cooked a late lunch for us when I got home from school. I think he was aiming at pasta with a tuna and vegetable sauce, but it was rather difficult to say. Even my father was rather discouraged when he took his first bite of overcooked and slimy pasta twists, and Polly ate nothing at all. I couldn’t blame her; I ate hardly anything either. After the meal my father went into the kitchen to make coffee, though I could not imagine what effect strong black filter coffee would have on a stomach traumatized by the tuna sauce. I followed him into the kitchen and rummaged around in the cupboard until I found a tin of biscuits.

  I was closing the cupboard door when I heard a noise in the living room. It was undramatic; there was no shriek, no sigh, no loud crash. Just a sound as though a stack of books had slipped over, spilling across the floor, or a heavy bolt of cloth had fallen down, unfurling as it went.

  ‘Polly?’

  I stood in the kitchen doorway and for a moment I could not see her anywhere. I thought that the living room was empty. She must have gone upstairs. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw something pale against the darker hues of the carpet. It was Polly’s foot. She was lying on the floor on the other side of the dining table.

  ‘Polly? Dad!’

  I ran around to the other side of the table, the tin of biscuits still clutched in my hands. Polly was already trying to sit up. She looked grey at the lips and groggy. She said she was better, I thought. How could I have believed her? How could I have been so stupid?

  ‘My God, Polly!’

  My father came out of the kitchen, the jug of the coffee machine in his hand.

  ‘Lin? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Polly fell over. I think she fainted.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Polly feebly.

  She reached up for the back of the nearest chair and began to try to struggle to her feet, using it as support.

  ‘Just stay there for a minute,’ I said, reaching out a hand to help her up. ‘You need to –’

  ‘I’m fine. Stop fussing.’ Polly glared at me.

  In truth, she did not look fine at all; she looked like some starving medieval ascetic carved in white marble. Even my father couldn’t fail to see it now.

  He came around the table, with the coffee jug still in his hand.

  ‘Polly, you don’t look well.’

  ‘Dad…’ Polly sounded irritated. ‘I just felt a bit dizzy. It’s nothing.’

  He studied her for a moment. When the set line of his jaw began to relax I knew that he had made the decision to defer the whole thing to Tuesday. He was so transparent that he might as well have been one of the figures in the glass he was so desperate to find. I could see him thinking, Polly’s not well, Polly’s a girl, that’s Tuesday’s department. I looked from his weakening face to her resentful one, and I knew with a horrible sense of fatality that I was going to have to do something. I took a deep breath.

  ‘Dad, it’s not nothing. Polly’s not eating enough. She –’

  ‘Shut up, Lin!’

  I shook my head. This time I was not shutting up, not for her or for anyone. ‘She’s hardly eating anything and she’s running all the time. She’s so thin – she looks like a skeleton –’

  ‘I’m not listening to this! This is crap!’ Polly sounded beside herself with fury.

  ‘It’s not crap,’ I said. Before she could turn away I grabbed her arm. It was like grabbing the handle of a broom. It felt as though there was no flesh at all on her bones. I looked at my father beseechingly. ‘She needs help. She’s already made herself ill and she’s going to starve herself to death.’

  Death. The word dropped into the sudden silence that had fallen between us with the horrid finality of a funeral bell tolling.

  ‘Maybe…’ began my father at last, and stopped. He put down the jug and looked at us both helplessly. ‘Maybe… when Tuesday gets back…’

  I was so disappointed that I could have screamed. When I was little my father had always seemed so strong and clever, a hero. Now I looked at him and I could see a weak man who was going to turn his back on a difficult problem. It was all I could do not to pummel him with my fists.

  ‘It’s no use telling Tuesday,’ I retaliated furiously. ‘She’s half the problem.’ I could still hear her words echoing in my head: Don’t be a pig and eat all the tomatoes…

  Polly wrenched her arm out of my grasp. ‘Shut up!’ She looked at me with naked fury. ‘Can’t you keep your nose out, Lin? What’s it got to do with you anyway? It’s my body.’

  ‘I’m your sister.’

  ‘So – bloody – what?’ shouted Polly, punctuating each word with a shove as though trying to push me away, out of the room, out of her life altogether.

  I was so stunned that I simply stood there with my arms by my sides and let her shove me. I couldn’t remember Polly ever losing her temper like this; it was as though some dark oubliette inside her had suddenly overflowed and vomited out its noisome contents.

  ‘Polly… Lin…’ began my father, but I don’t think Polly even heard him. She was halfway to the stairs already. She stormed up them and a moment later we heard the bedroom door slam shut with a thunderous crash.

  Suddenly I felt weak and shivery. I sat down on one of the dining chairs and put my head in my hands. Well handled, Lin, said a spiteful little voice in the back of my brain. Bloody well handled.

  ‘Polly?’ called my father uncertainly, but he did not attempt to go after her.

  I looked up at him, shaking my hair out of my eyes, but any last little hope I might have been cherishing died at that moment. He was standing there looking after her, but still he did not move, and there was something hesitant in his posture, as though he were a young boy on the edge of a fight or a football match, wanting to join in but afraid to try. He saw me looking at him and grimaced.

  ‘Dad?’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, Lin?’

  ‘I’m not making it up. She’s making herself ill. She hardly eats anything and she just runs and runs all the time, trying to work off food she hasn’t even eaten. You haven’t seen her without all the jumpers and stuff – she’s like a skeleton.’

  ‘Lin –’ He spread out his hands helplessly. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t have any experience of things li
ke this. Maybe your mother –’

  ‘My mother?’ My voice was rising. ‘She’s –’

  ‘Lin, no,’ snapped my father. ‘We are not discussing that again.’

  I glared at him. ‘Say what you like. There’s no point in telling her.’

  My father controlled himself with an effort. ‘Well, I’m not an expert. If what you say is true –’

  ‘If it’s true? Of course it’s bloody true!’

  ‘If it’s true,’ he went on, ‘Polly needs professional help.’

  I felt like screaming. ‘It’s no good just saying that. I know she needs help. But where are we going to get it, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere? Polly can’t speak German – it’s no use trying to see anyone here. We have to – we have to –’ Suddenly I had got it. I made myself stop rushing on, hurling the words at my father like projectiles. Deliberately I lowered my voice. ‘We have to go back to England.’

  I heard the intake of breath as my father opened his mouth to say something. Then he changed his mind. He eyed me for a moment and then he swung around until he had his back to me and he was apparently gazing out the window, lost in thought.

  ‘Dad?’

  For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘We can’t just go back to England,’ he said in a low voice, without turning round.

  ‘Why not?’ I demanded.

  Now he did turn round and face me. ‘You know we can’t go anywhere until the police inquiry has finished.’

  ‘Well, we can go as soon as they’ve finished asking questions, can’t we? Or we could tell them it’s an emergency.’ I glared at him. ‘I mean, it is an emergency.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ said my father. ‘You’re not a psychologist.’ He raked his dark hair with his fingers until it was standing up in all directions. ‘I don’t know…’ he said in a curiously vague voice. ‘To leave now… without anything…’

  For one mad moment I seriously considered blurting it all out, telling him everything, saying, ‘But it’s all here, the Allerheiligen glass, it’s right under our noses.’ But hot on the heels of that first wild impulse came the realization that it would not solve anything at all. In fact it would probably make things worse. Finding the glass would not be the end of the story; it would not enable us to go home. My father would never relinquish the trophy so easily. He would want to stay here and supervise every aspect of its publication. He would want to be photographed and interviewed, and most of all he would want to be the first academic to make a full assessment of the windows.