The Invisible Hand

by James Hartley

  For a long time the steps led only downwards but finally there was a levelling out. Sam gingerly felt for the one opening which presented itself – down here, with no fresh air, the empty space before their faces felt as thick as any wall – and they began to move forwards again, shuffling along like children playing trains. After a few minutes of this Leana cried out, “Listen!”

  “What?”

  “Our feet! Listen to the sound of our feet!”

  Sam began to walk forwards again and, sure enough, something had changed. They were walking on stones now, on some kind of soily, cobbled pathway. Both lifted their hands to feel what was above them but the ceiling was earth and it flaked away into their staring, blind eyes and open mouths.

  “This has to be one of the old tunnels,” Sam whispered. They were alone, in the darkness, walking under the graveyard, and it only seemed right to whisper.

  “Do you think it goes right to the school?”

  “Dunno. It has to go somewhere.”

  Although they were both excited at what they were discovering, Sam had noticed something hanging from the ceiling, blocking his way. Thinking the obstruction was a root, they both discovered, after careful examination, a grisly truth: what was hanging from the soil ceiling was a slimy femur, and the remains of an adult’s hand. A skeleton, it seemed, had sunk down from one of the graves above.

  Despite their best attempts to stay calm, Sam and Leana lost their sense of direction and panicked. They ran headlong into more human remains, crying out to each other as they became separated, clawing at the walls with their blind, bare hands as bones and dirt rained down on them from what seemed like every side.

  13

  Though Nothing Is Damaged, Everything Is Changed

  Sam woke up with a feeling of not being alone. He opened his eyes to white, sterile light and a boy in a bed eating grapes from a paper bag. The boy’s goofy mother, whose hair was stringy and greasy, smiled at him from the other side of the bed. “Hello, poppet. Are we awake, then?”

  “Where am I?”

  “The Berghof.”

  “The hospital?”

  “The one and only.”

  Sam rolled onto his other side – everything hurt – and stared down at a long, busy ward. Walking up the middle of it was Uncle Quentin, blowing on a small white polystyrene cup of machine coffee.

  Sam learned from his uncle that he’d been found lying in a ditch near St Catherine’s by a young man walking his boxer dog. There’d been no girl with him. He’d been alone, wet, unconscious and suffering from mild hypothermia.

  The police and Uncle Quentin seemed to think he’d been climbing a tree, or perhaps walking along the narrow stone wall of the churchyard, when he’d fallen and banged his head. Sam said he couldn’t remember. It seemed easier.

  Uncle Quentin lived in a nice house near one of the biggest racecourses in southern England and from Sam’s room he could oversee the course. Sam’s father stayed in the same room when he was in the country and one entire shelf was filled with the old man’s books and papers. On the wall above the small antique writing desk there was a map filled with place names Sam had never heard of: Erech, Ur, Tepe Mussian and Samarra. His father was somewhere there, digging and working.

  On his second night at Uncle Quentin’s, eating dinner downstairs for the first time, watching the television news, Sam was told that if he was given the all-clear the next day by the doctors, he could possibly go back to school the following Monday. “Wow, that would be great,” Sam had replied, meaning it.

  His uncle forked a piece of broccoli into his bearded mouth. “Everything all right there, Sammy?”

  “All right where, Uncle?”

  “At school.”

  Sam nodded. “Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. If you’re fine, you’re fine.”

  The news was a report on violence in the Middle East. Knowing Sam’s father was somewhere thereabouts, Uncle Quentin changed the channel to a quiz show with loud, bombastic music and machine gun applause.

  “Well, you know what? There is something I think we should talk about.”

  Sam guessed, from the tone, that his uncle had been talking to Mrs Waters.

  “I’ve heard a few reports,” Uncle Quentin began, putting down his knife and fork and knitting his fingers. “Nothing serious, but reports nonetheless, that you’ve been having a few problems concentrating in your classes. Obviously it’s not related, but this little incident – yes, I know it was an accident – but this little incident is a bit worrying, I’m afraid, especially if you look at everything together. The school’s rather worried, that’s for certain. I’m not so sure.”

  “I’ve just been having some really weird dreams.” Sam said. “Trying to get used to all the rules and things, too.”

  “What have you been having strange dreams about?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Nothing really. Just really vivid ones. Kind of difficult to know if they’re real or not. That kind of thing.”

  “At night, or – or in the day too?”

  “I’m not seeing things, Uncle. They’re just dreams, that’s all.”

  “Well –” Uncle Quentin went on eating – “It’s been a big change in your life, for sure. Lots of changes.” A pause. “Do you think you’d like to speak to someone about all of this? Do you think that make things easier? The transition and so on?”

  “Talk about what? The dreams?”

  “Yes. Everything. About how you’re feeling. All the changes. Your mum and dad, maybe?”

  Sam thought about it. “No.”

  Uncle Quentin nodded. “Righto.”

  There was something about the way he gave Sam one last look, the way he studied him when Sam thought he wasn’t looking, that told the boy that his uncle was not going to let the matter drop. It only made Sam more determined to keep everything secret.

  He sat up in his room that night feeling very alone.

  I’m going mad, he thought. I’m actually mad. I see things and hear things that I think are real. I have a girlfriend who is not real.

  Girlfriend?

  He thought of Leana. Perhaps she was his girlfriend. Now he was very glad he hadn’t asked his uncle more about her when he’d been told what had happened to him. Something, some feeling, had stopped him. If he’d mentioned Leana that would have been that: straight to the psychologist and very probably straight into a padded cell.

  Leana, it seemed, had gone back to school or to her world. That’s the only thing that could have happened. If she was at school, Sam would see her next week. If she was back in her own world, well – Sam glanced at the clock and yawned – perhaps he’d see her tonight?

  But in the morning he woke up in his uncle’s house and sat up and looked down on a lone rider galloping along one of the snowy straights of the racecourse.

  She’s at school, he told himself. She has to be. I just need to get back there and I’ll see her.

  After breakfast Sam drove through the slush with his uncle to the hospital and a woman in white shone lights in his eyes, inserted him into a machine and, finally, after a long wait in a busy room, declared him “fighting fit”. In the car on the way to a restaurant for lunch, his uncle asked him, apparently breezily, “So? Any dreams last night?”

  “Can’t remember,” answered Sam, honestly. But then he made up a good tale about an army of huge birds which seemed to make Uncle Quentin happy.

  “You’ve got a vivid imagination all right.” His uncle chuckled. “Want to know what I dreamed about?”

  Sam didn’t say anything but his uncle told him anyway. While he was talking, Sam looked out of the window at the people passing by. It all seemed so cluttered here, in town. To his surprise Sam realised that he wanted to go back to the school, to the countryside. He missed his dorm-mates. He missed the routines. He missed the peace of the hills and woods.

  And yes, he wanted to see Leana.

  When he thought of her it was like the darkness in his mind suddenly lightene
d.

  On his last night at Uncle Quentin’s, after dinner, Sam brushed his finger along the spines of the books on his father’s shelf. One of them, lime green and old-looking, took his fancy. It said Desk Diary and the date showed it was three years old. Sam opened it, saw it was full of cuttings and notes, and, careful not to drop anything, took it with him to his bed.

  There were odd pencil engravings, scratchings and weird symbols in the book but Sam was used to such things: he’d grown up in a house were a tablet on the table would be made of clay not silicon. It felt strange to see his father’s writing, though, and to see the almost whole coffee cup stains on some pages. How close was he, but how far?

  In the diary he saw that on some days his father had scribbled notes like “Do people know which plants they pass? Which trees they see? What makes the sky? What lies in the soil beneath their feet” and this brought back acute, bittersweet memories of being in a park in sunny weather, on his father’s shoulders, having different trees and plants pointed out to him. He felt an old ache inside which he’d been slowly learning to ignore. It was easier here, where no one was looking, to admit that he missed his dad.

  Come on, concentrate. Keep reading. Keep yourself busy.

  Was that his voice or his father’s?

  The newspaper stories were clippings about sites and digs and Sam soon decided he didn’t want to upset himself anymore by looking through the diary. “Be brave, Sam, be brave,” he could hear his father saying and, just as he was about to close the covers, his eyes were drawn to small illustrations of the moon’s phases at the bottom of each page of the diary. Staring at these, Sam could feel his own mind trying to tell himself something. He had the feeling that something about the symbols was important; that they were something he needed to know.

  And then it hit him:

  The Moon. Leana. Him.

  Things happen when there’s a full moon.

  Do they?

  Quickly Sam checked the dates for the nights he’d gone to Leana’s world but with a sinking feeling he saw that none matched the times of the full moons in the diary. Again, he felt like crying. I’m trying to make sense of nonsense.

  As he tucked the diary back onto the shelf he took out the next book, The Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses. This was well thumbed and Sam had read it many times before – he liked the pictures. No wonder I’m a nutter and have weird dreams if this is the sort of bedside reading I’ve had since I was a child, he thought. But there was pride in the thought, too. Even as a child he’d loved what his parents did, sailing or flying off to far-off places to sift through the sands looking for the past. It had been normal to him. Birthday parties at museums. Private walks and tours of Egyptian treasures. He’d held ancient Roman coins in his own hands, touched Bronze Age weapons.

  Turning the pages, lying flat on the bed and yawning, he found himself staring at a beautiful, horned woman with wings and a chariot. His eyes focussed on the page properly and skipped to the text: “In Greek mythology Selene was the Goddess of the Moon,” the entry began.

  “Selene,” Sam repeated aloud.

  ’Til Selene’s eyes blink thrice, he heard again in his mind. Isn’t that what the witches had said that night, when they had appeared to he and Leana?

  Sam stared at the picture on the page again. What he’d thought were horns was a crescent moon which she wore in her beautiful flowing hair. “Until your eyes blink?” Sam repeated, addressing the goddess. “What does that mean?”

  He went back to the diary and checked the dates again for the crescent moon, for the full moon – for any connection between the phases of the moon and the days and nights when he and Leana had journeyed between worlds but there was nothing. No connection.

  He wandered back to his bed and stared at the maps and bookshelf and the shadowy corners of the room in something like desperation. What am I doing wrong?

  Sam brushed his teeth in a state of dejection. But as he switched off the light in the bathroom and wandered back down the landing he noticed his uncle’s alarm clock display by the bed. He read the time and, most importantly, the date. And then it struck him. Of course the dates in his father’s diary were wrong: the diary was three years old!

  He stopped with his hand on the bannisters and looked down to where his uncle was sitting in an armchair watching television. “Uncle? Can I speak to you a sec?”

  “Come down, come down.”

  Sam danced down the stairs.

  “What’s up, big man?” his uncle asked. “Have I got it too loud?” He picked up the hand-control and began lowering the volume. “That’s the trouble with not having neighbours, you see. You start getting indulgent.”

  “No, it’s not the television.”

  “Bad dreams?” Uncle Quentin looked nervous.

  “No, no. It’s something. A project I’m doing. For school.”

  “Ah, just remembered your homework, eh? Now you’re going back?”

  Sam smiled ruefully. “Yeah.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need to know when the last full moon was. Actually, I need to know when all the full moons have been and will be this year.”

  Uncle Quentin picked up his phone. “I can probably get something on this.” He stroked his chin. “No. Use my computer. It’s there on the table there. All yours.”

  “Really?” Sam skipped down the last of the stairs. “Thanks so much.”

  “Go mad,” replied his uncle, turning back to the television.

  Sam flipped up the lid and fired up the computer. “What’s your password, Uncle?” he asked.

  “Macbeth,” his uncle called back.

  Sam stopped dead. He peeped around the screen but the back of his uncle’s head remained still. It hadn’t been a joke.

  “Macbeth,” Sam repeated.

  “It was your aunt’s idea. Some detective she liked on the telly.”

  Sam forced a dry chuckle. He keyed in the password and started searching.

  All the dates matched.

  ’Til Selene’s eyes blink thrice.

  She’d blinked twice now, Sam thought.

  One blink left.

  14

  Castles And Air

  Leana felt enormous pressure on her chest. She had a mouthful of goo and a clanging, dizzying ache ringing through her head. Somehow she knew that if she didn’t move, she’d die. She could see nothing. She was buried.

  Move she did, forcing her body to turn from side to side – it was like she was stuck in syrup – until she could use her hands to push the slimy soil packed tightly around her away. Wriggling upwards, Leana felt cold air on her fingertips and managed to force her head out into damp, dirty but fresh air.

  There was muck in her eyes, her hands were gloved in stinking mud and she was in some sort of pit. As sweet as it was to breathe, the stinking air made her retch and, pulling herself out of the slime and onto her knees, Leana scoped anxiously around for an escape route. Up above her, in the roof, was a grill. Half-light was leaking through the squares, and what looked like seaweed or entrails were dangling from the ironwork, swinging gently where they hung lowest.

  As Leana’s eyes adjusted she noticed a series of steps leading up from one corner of the pit not far away from where she was and she forced herself to wade across to the first slippery stone. In her hurry to get out of the sludge, Leana misjudged the smoothness of the step, slipped and tumbled backwards into the pit. Half-swimming, she crawled out again, hauling herself onto the step as a fat rat ran over her knuckles. Using tiny crevices in the wall as handholds, Leana managed to stand and began moving gingerly upwards.

  The staircase was narrow and attached to the wall. There was no bannister or handrail on the other side and Leana knew that if she made another wrong move she’d fall again. Halfway up she thought of Sam, calling out to him with both names, but in a kind of scared half-whisper and with no real conviction. She knew she was back in Scotland and not at the school. The smell of the place, the feeling in th
e air, was completely different here. She hoped Sam was not with her, as lonely as that made her feel. He didn’t belong in this place.

  Near the top of the staircase she could see a wooden trapdoor near the grate in the roof and she took the air at a tiny archer’s slit in the wall. A knife-blade winter wind cut in through the gap and made her eyes water but she could see, out on the beaten, pale green heathland, the flag of the Thane of Ross. His party – her people – were riding away from wherever she was, towards the brow of a hill where the sun was setting.

  “Pray don’t leave me,” she whispered.

  At the top of the steps Leana reached and shouldered the trapdoor upwards, doing her best to ignore the slippery stones she was standing on and the long drop to the pit which lay next to her. The wood rose to reveal a straw-strewn cellar floor but no signs of life.

  Leana managed to clamber up onto the floor of this room and let the trapdoor softly down behind her. Now she was aware of being in a castle, a room in the Keep she thought, but she couldn’t be sure which castle she was in. She hadn’t recognised the countryside and didn’t recognise the room.

  Walking down towards its farthest end, where a spindly torch flickered on the wall in a draught, Leana heard vague cries which she took to be gulls. Unbolting and easing open the main wooden door she saw a staircase and an open window. She was in a tower and, peering out of the open window, she realised the cries she’d heard weren’t gulls at all: they were the shrieks of women and children.

  Peering down from behind the dirty flapping cloth covering the window Leana witnessed a grim scene of chaos below. Flashing swords turned tunics from white to red. Pigs and goats were squealing, running out of the dwellings pressed up against the inner castle walls which were being systematically set alight.

  What devilry is this?

  Leana looked up and saw Macduff’s standard flying from the castle roof. She knew some great war was raging here in the castle and in the country beyond: she could sense the turbulence in the air and the crazed, murderous rage of the invaders mercilessly slaying whoever crossed their path. The sound of armoured boots clanking up stone steps alerted Leana to imminent danger and she ran upwards, hearing a sickening cry from further below in the stairwell. The shriek of a sword on stone echoed up to her and scared her so much she ran on, hitching up the hems of her sodden skirts, eager to get as high up the tower as she could but not knowing what she was going to do when she got there.