The Faceless

by Simon Bestwick

  “It wasn’t that simple,” said Anna. “I was going to move a couple of years back. Dad left me the house. I was going to sell it, split the proceeds with Martyn and clear out. But then he lost his job, and the housing market went down the pan at the same time.”

  “I’d’ve sold the place for what I could get, bunged him a share and got out of this shithole fast as I could.”

  “Maybe.”

  Anna looked down. Warm fingers found hers and squeezed.

  “Sorry,” said Vera. “Just being a bitch there.” The corner of her mouth twitched; her thumb stroked the back of Anna’s hand. To hell with it all. Anna leant forward; Vera parted her lips.

  Light flashed; they sprang apart, shielding their eyes.

  Someone was at the end of the corridor, shining a torch on them. It raised a hand, beckoning. Then it turned and began to walk away, flickers of receding light playing on the wall.

  Anna re-packed the Thermos and stood. “Come on.”

  “But what if...”

  “Would you rather wait here and die?” She managed a smile. “We can pick up where we left off later.”

  Vera smiled back, and stood.

  The figure waited silently for them to catch up, then walked on. Anna glimpsed the khaki of a uniform, but didn’t shine her torch. Maybe it was best not to know. Nothing to do now but follow, and hope.

  “YOU KNOW WHO I am?”

  “Gideon Dace.”

  “Sir Gideon. I inherited the title from St. John when he died.”

  Alan wouldn’t gratify him with a title. “Your father built Ash Fell. You...”

  “Yes?”

  “Embezzled the hospital funds, tortured the inmates, and finally died here, alone and despised. Have I left anything out?”

  “A great deal. But I’ll overlook your manners. There’s a lot you’ve left out, but that’s hardly your fault. Or the Mason woman. She knows more than anyone alive, but this place has secrets it keeps from the living.”

  “Even I know that.”

  Gideon glanced around. “It’s never quiet,” he said. “In here you can never be alone.” He turned back to Alan and smiled. “But I digress. This way. We’ve a lot to discuss.”

  Gideon stepped out of the light. Alan hesitated; all around him were whispers, like feathers brushing glass.

  Gideon laughed. “Not afraid, Alan, surely?”

  Alan followed, keeping his eyes on Gideon; better to see him than the other shapes around him.

  “I was no angel, I’ll admit. But I have suffered a somewhat bad press.”

  “You think so?”

  “Of course.” At the end of the attic, Gideon descended a flight of steps, opened a door at the bottom. “I wasn’t the son my father wanted – too much the Hedonist, not enough the Stoic – but I applied myself diligently enough to my studies. Certainly enough to try to put right my father’s wrongs.”

  He ushered Alan onto a landing. There was no visible light source, but nonetheless Alan saw quite clearly. “Wonderful Sir Charles Dace! Noble Sir Charles Dace! Noble? Ash Fell is one great monument to my father’s vanity. However high-minded his aims, he not only beggared his own children, but almost destroyed a business that had run for almost two hundred years – and which, in case you’ve conveniently forgotten, was the town’s chief employer. Bankrupting the family business was bad – even humiliating – for us, but a potential catastrophe for the men who worked in those mills. I found a buyer for them at a fraction of their true value. If I hadn’t, thousands would have lost their livelihoods.” Gideon breathed out, forced a smile, drew on his cigarette. “Note that it was I who found a buyer and saved the mills from collapse. Oh, I’ve no doubt St. John was a better man than I – more honourable, chaste, temperate and so forth – but he was nowhere near as worldly. He didn’t understand betrayal.”

  “And you did?”

  “I’ve experienced treachery as well as dealing it out, Alan, I can assure you. St. John was father’s favourite, remember. And he looked up to father... you know, I honestly think that to him, father was almost a god. He was devastated by what father had done. Paralysed, in shock. He could do nothing. But I could.”

  “Is there a point to all this?”

  “Only that I wasn’t acting from purely selfish motives. My family was a consideration, trying to preserve and restore it. And there was – is – a thing called noblesse oblige. A contract between the leaders and the led. Most people just want sufficient food and water; shelter, a wage. They don’t want to wrestle with issues of state. My... class, for want of a better term, takes care of those things. We provide leadership and stability; in return we need the common herd to work the factories, harvest the crops, buy the goods–”

  “Fight in the wars?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid, Alan, that wars are sometimes necessary. When they are, we do what we have to, to convince the herd. That’s the system, and it works. Even after Passchendaele and the Somme, even after the parade of ruined and mutilated souls that passed through here and places like it, we could still send the young men marching if needs be. Not because we want to, not because we’re cruel; because we must. It’s how the system survives and maintains itself. And before you decry it, consider the other systems out there. Compared to, say the Kaiser’s Germany, the English ruling class of 1914 were positively benign.”

  “Matter of perspective.”

  Gideon snorted. “Well, I’m sure the Irish peasantry and African natives might take issue. But there was give as well as take. Surely even you can’t deny our colonies benefited from our presence also. In any case, we’re straying from the point. We each have responsibilities to the other. And ‘from him to whom much is given, much will be asked’. If I recall the Gospels correctly.” Gideon led Alan off the landing and into a corridor. “My father, however worthy of respect you find him, failed in his responsibilities. Someone had to retrieve his error. St. John was incapable, so the task fell to me. My methods might not have been the prettiest, but you can’t always choose the time or place of your battles, or the weapons at your disposal. I didn’t create the situation, remember.”

  “I understand,” Alan said at last.

  “Do you?” Gideon smiled. “I hope you weren’t hoping to lay the ghosts of Ash Fell with a single expression of sympathy. We’re rather past that now.”

  “I thought as much.”

  “And it’s not me who needs laying to rest; I’m not the villain of this piece.”

  “Then who is?”

  “In my time, Alan, not yours.”

  “But that doesn’t explain everything.”

  “Oh?”

  “The treatment of the patients, for example.”

  “Unfortunate, but I was left with little choice. Had to raise money somehow. Again, St. John’s responsibilities devolved on me. He couldn’t do what had to be done, but I could. I plead guilty to an excess of zeal.” He looked around. “And anything I may have done, I paid the price for. Remember how long I’ve been here, living and dead.”

  “Why vanity?”

  “Mm?”

  “You said this place was a monument to your father’s vanity. But he built this place to help others. Even if it caused your family hardship... what?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Gideon dabbed his eyes with a yellow handkerchief; his titters died away. “But to hear you paint him as some dewy-eyed humanitarian... My father had far bigger considerations than that, Alan. Do you really think he’d throw away everything the family had built up over a few loonies and missing noses?”

  “Well, I thought that’s what he did.”

  “No. Ash Fell wasn’t built out of humanitarian motives, I can assure you.”

  “Then why was it built?”

  “You’ll see.”

  ANNA LOST COUNT of the twists and turns their route had taken, but finally their guide led them out into a large, pentagonal hall, with a spiral staircase in its centre. The uniformed man turned and went up the staircase; it crea
ked and rattled as he climbed.

  At the top of the staircase was a landing. The uniformed man walked down it. Torchlight gleamed on grimy, frosted glass in the doors along his way. Anna and Vera followed in his wake. Anna had turned her torch off for now, but kept ready to switch it back on, just in case.

  The uniformed man stopped, shone his torch across the plaque on a door and stepped into the room. Anna stopped outside the doorway. Bright, pale sunlight streamed in through the wide window opposite. In front of it was a desk, a tattered swivel chair behind it. There were bookshelves and a pair of armchairs, split and shedding stuffing. The door-plaque read DIRECTOR’S OFFICE.

  The uniformed man turned to face her: tall, thin, with reddish-brown hair, a neatly trimmed moustache and pale eyes.

  Sir Charles Dace raised his hand and beckoned. Anna shuffled in; after a moment, Vera followed. Dace looked from one to the other of them. For all Anna could read of his expression, he might as well have worn a prosthetic mask. Was there sadness in his gaze, regret? Pity or contempt? She couldn’t tell.

  Dace took a deep breath and pointed across the room. Anna looked, saw a print of an undistinguished country landscape. Dace gestured to the floor; after a moment Anna crossed to the picture, took it down. Dace waved her aside; he stared, unblinking, at where it’d hung. His pointing hand opened, until the exposed palm faced the wall. Then he curled his fingers into a fist.

  The floor shuddered. The desk rattled. Old, loose papers drifted to the ground; a book toppled from the shelves in a flurry of dust. Powdered concrete spidered down from the ceiling as the wall began to crack.

  GIDEON – OPENING YET another door, leading onto yet another flight of steps – stopped, cocked his head. “Now, whatever can that be?”

  “What?”

  “Can’t you hear it? Or feel it?”

  Alan touched the wall; a faint trembling seeped through it. From somewhere in the distance came a groaning, rumbling sound. “What is it?”

  Gideon chuckled. “Father, I believe. Talk of the devil. Still trying to interfere, even though it’s far too late. We’re beyond his reach here.”

  “Interfere with what?”

  “You’ll see, soon enough. It’s all to do with why you’re here. He can’t get to us, so he’s trying something else. It won’t work, of course. He’ll just antagonise the others, and they won’t like that at all. Silly pater. Still, he’s a big boy.”

  Gideon’s smile made Alan want to run, but he didn’t. This was where he had to be. “Daddy never loved me,” said Alan. “Is that really the best you can do?”

  “I wasn’t aware,” said Gideon, “that I needed to justify myself to you. Do you really think that I’ve been waiting all these years for you to absolve me? Do you really think that your approval is what will make the difference between damnation and salvation? If so, you’re sadly mistaken.”

  Allen swallowed hard. “Shouldn’t we be getting on?”

  Gideon’s smile vanished; his eyes were black empty voids like the barrels of guns, tunnels to nowhere. “I lead, not you. You, Master Latimer, follow.”

  “Alright.”

  “It’s this way.”

  THE CRACK WIDENED, spilling dust and gaping black. Dace pulled his now-clenched fist in towards his face. The room juddered; dust-streams hissed down from above.

  “Oh Christ, what now?”

  Anna held Vera’s hand between hers. “Easy.” Still, she was oddly calm. This was easier for her than Vera, perhaps; Anna was used to going with the flow, bending with the wind, while Vera, she was sure, was used to being in control. But the cold fact was that right now there was little she could do.

  A final climactic shudder; something fell out of the crack to thud on the worn carpet, and the room became still. A few last motes of dust drifted down.

  Dace’s hand dropped to his side, then gestured weakly at the object on the floor.

  Sounds outside; footsteps in the corridor. Dace put a finger to his pursed lips and walked past them, out into the corridor. The door clicked shut behind him.

  “Wh–” began Vera.

  “Sh.”

  From outside came the sound of a struggle – the dull thump of blows connecting, the thud of feet on the landing, a crash as bodies cannoned into the locked door. But no cries; not a word, not even a gasp or breath.

  Finally, the struggle subsided; the plodding footsteps began to recede. With them came the sound of a heavy object being dragged away. And then at last there was silence again.

  After a few minutes, Anna crossed the room. The object that had fallen from the wall was wrapped in oiled cloth. At the desk, Vera at her shoulder, she unwrapped it to reveal a battered tin box. It must have been sealed in the wall for decades, but the lid came off easily enough.

  “What is it?” asked Vera.

  “Some kind of journal.” A small, brown, leather-bound book, yellowed pages covered with thin, precise handwriting. Underneath was a wad of paper – several large sheets, folded several times. She spread them carefully out across the desk. “Bloody hell.”

  “What?”

  “I think these are the original plans for Ash Fell.”

  “The ones that were lost?”

  “I think so. Careful, they’re old. Each different building, floor by floor, and... that’s interesting.”

  “Come on, Anna, stop playing games.”

  “Sorry. But have a look at this.”

  She tapped the centre of the plans for the Warbeck building. “Right here. See? In the middle.”

  She felt Vera leaning closer. “Is that–”

  “Yes. Some sort of secret chamber. In the shape of a pentagon. It’s not on the plans that were available to the public. Seems to be directly under the centre of the Warbeck building. Buried deep, too. Under the sub-basement, as far as I can make out.”

  “But what for?” Vera’s hands rested on her shoulders; Anna slipped free of them. Not now, not just yet – later, if we live.

  “Let’s see if the journal sheds any light.”

  GIDEON LIT A cigarette. “My father was certainly a man of parts. Soldier. Businessman. Dabbled in politics at one point. He was also a student of the occult.”

  “The occult?”

  “Oh yes. Surprised you, didn’t it? I’m not sure where it came from; even dead, we don’t talk much. He kept it quiet, of course. Regular churchgoer. I never suspected, in his lifetime or even mine.”

  Gideon trod his cigarette out. “I don’t know how seriously he took it, till after the War. He believed in the Empire, you see. Thought it was a genuine force for good, and that it was now doomed to collapse. The war had weakened it economically, killed thousands of its young men. Britain had become almost unrecognisable to him. But worse, people didn’t have faith in it anymore – not their leaders, or the monarchy, or the Empire. There’d been a great deal of social change – votes for women, the rise of Socialism. Everything was changing, in flux. My father was convinced this would lead to the collapse of the Empire, and to permissiveness, decadence, moral laxity. The last three being my favourite things, of course. Well, he was right. But you can’t turn the clock back. Can you?”

  Alan wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical.

  “But what to do? There were political movements, of course, but my father believed the damage was irreversible in normal terms. However, he had other options.”

  “The occult?”

  “Oh yes. There are spells for almost everything. Make someone fall in love with you. Heal a broken heart. Even raise the dead. But they’re meant to be used on individuals. Father wanted to affect an entire nation. An Empire. However, he was an industrialist; adapting a process for mass production was his business.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “The first problem was power. Does the phrase ‘there’s a price for everything’ ring a bell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought it might. Ritual magic requires energy, like any other process. A motor needs fuel; a
watch requires winding. Some spells draw their power from the focus and concentration required by the ritual itself. But others require sacrifice. It all depends what you want. In this case, nothing less than a blood sacrifice would do, and the scale of the task meant a sacrifice on an almost unimaginable scale. And then he realised, it had already been made. Oh come on, it’s obvious.”

  “The War?”

  “Just so. My father realised that the First World War constituted the greatest blood sacrifice in history. Millions had died, to say nothing of those condemned to a lifetime of suffering by disfigurement or madness.” Gideon offered Alan a cigarette.

  “No, thank you. But it’d already happened. How could he use it to... reverse itself?”

  “He wasn’t trying to bring them back to life. That wouldn’t have worked. But he could use that energy to reverse some of the war’s ill effects. There was still time to harness the energy that had been released. And that’s why he built Ash Fell.” Gideon tapped the wall. “He paid agents to... harvest the battlefields of Passchendaele, the Somme, Loos, Mons, the Marne, Verdun.”

  “What do you mean, harvest?”

  “They collected items he could use. Simple as that. Earth from the battlefield. Spent bullets, broken bayonets, guns, even human remains. All of which found their way into the walls of Ash Fell.”

  Something finally clicked for Alan. “Of course. It was right in front of me.”

  “Oh?”

  “Five blocks around a central building. Like a five-point star. A pentacle.”

  “Close,” said Gideon. “But not quite. You can’t see it, because it’s hidden. But don’t worry. I’ll show you.”

  “THINK IT’S SAFE to smoke?”

  “No idea.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Go on, then.”

  Vera settled back in the least ratty armchair and lit a Sobranie. Calmer now. Christ, she’d dealt with Walsh and that bastard priest, faced Fitton down. “Was he mad?”

  “I’d have said yes before today.” Anna adjusted her reading glasses and turned another page. “You’d have to be to believe in this.”