by Sarah Rayne
She sat up in bed, cautiously because it was important not to make a noise until she saw what might be happening. You had to be quite cunning with ghosts, even when they were the ghosts of your own parents; you had to remember that they would probably be filled up with the panic and the desperation they had felt as they died, and that they would most likely look as they had looked at that moment—
Father, his chest burst open where the bullet had gone in. Mother, her whole body shredded and tattered. It was not too bad seeing father, but mother, oh, poor mother…
Don’t come, whispered Selina into the unquiet darkness. Oh, please don’t come. Please be all right, please be already on the other side of that Bridge.
It was no use. The shadows were moving, they were like curdled ink or clotted blood; there was a horrid dull red tinge to them that might have been the light from the harvest moon beyond the bedroom window, but Selina knew was really the blood from her parents’ wounds, oozing out into the darkness…
Father appeared first. That was all right, that was not so bad at all, because his jacket was hiding the ragged-edged hole where the bullet had torn into his heart. His face was spattered with blood where his chest had burst open, but he could still smile in the way he had always smiled, and his hair was still crinkly and dark and nice. Selina loved him very much indeed.
But mother was with him. She was just behind him and she was holding out her hands exactly as she had held them out in Alwar that night, imploringly, pitifully. Mother had once had such pretty hands, but now there were only bloodied stumps. Blood poured down her face and dripped from her chin.
I’m sorry, whispered Selina to the terrible thing that had been mother. I’m so sorry. But it wasn’t my fault, it truly wasn’t.
Mother’s hands were still groping blindly in front of her. Selina could see the wedding ring glinting in the mess of squelched-up bones and raw flesh. It was suddenly unbearable and pitiable that mother should still have this symbol of her marriage to father when her flesh was so torn.
Selina wanted to look away, but it was impossible. She clutched a fold of the sheet tightly and after a moment she said, very softly, but very earnestly, ‘I’ll find a way to make the shrine for you again–I swear I will!–and then you can go back to crossing the Bridge and the three steps you have to take, and then you’ll get to where you should be. And I’ll pray much harder for you, I’ll do it every day–I’ll be so good, I promise I’ll be so good—’
Had they nodded then, just very slightly? Had father made to touch mother’s shoulder, as if to pull her back? Selina waited, not daring to breathe, her hands trembling.
And then it was over. There was only the moonlight lying in bars across the floor, and the feel of the crumpled sheet in her hands, and the stickiness of fright-sweat prickling her scalp.
The children had not tried to fight as the sun went down behind the terrible tower on the edge of Alwar. They had been much too frightened to even think about fighting by that time. Christy had whispered to Selina and Douglas that they must watch their chance and make a run for it if they could, and Douglas said something about grabbing the reins of the pony and driving back down the bare dusty road, leaving the men behind. ‘But what about the guns?’ said Selina. ‘What if they shoot us?’
‘They won’t, not when it comes to it,’ said Christy valiantly. ‘They wouldn’t shoot children. And my father will be here by then, anyhow.’
‘And mine,’ said another of the children. But they all knew that nobody really believed this any longer.
In the event, there was no opportunity of taking over the cart, because once it stopped the men pointed the guns at the children and ordered them out. ‘Out of cart now,’ they said. ‘You get out of cart, and line up against tower.’
‘Why are we here?’ demanded Douglas. ‘This is a funeral place. This is where people bring their dead. I thought you had respect and honour for dead people in this country.’
The man who had ordered them out of the cart, who seemed to be the only one who could speak English, said, ‘This place where no one come. No one think to look here. That why we use it.’ He grinned suddenly, displaying his rotting teeth. ‘You die in Tower of Silence. Place of dead,’ he said. ‘That how it should be. A good message to send to your British government who refuse to let our people go.’
Christy said, ‘But it isn’t our fault that your friends are in prison,’ and Selina wanted to say, ‘And people who do wrong deserve to be in prison,’ but she did not quite dare.
The man gestured to the tower again, this time using the gun to indicate what he wanted. ‘All line up before wall. Do it now, or we not wait for sunset to shoot.’
As they shuffled into line there was a moment when Selina thought Christy was going to defy their captors. Her lower lip jutted out mutinously, and her eyes shone angrily in the glow of the dying sun. Her fists were clenched as if she might be going to hit the man, and Selina’s heart gave a huge bump of panic and excitement, because one half of her was terrified that Christy would do something that would get them all shot there and then, but the other half–and it was a bit more than half, really–wanted somebody to get them out of this. And Christy or Douglas were the only two who were brave enough.
Seen like this, the tower was much, much worse than it had looked from the road. It was built from harsh stone that would graze your hands if you touched it, and its sides sloped steeply, so that it was narrower at the top than it was at the base. Most of the time it would be black, but with the setting sun directly behind it the dark walls were streaked with crimson. Selina stared at it and remembered all over again about the ogre’s tower. You could very nearly imagine that the walls were that colour because all the squelched-up bodies inside had reached the top and all the blood was slopping over the rim and oozing down the outside.
When she looked right up at the very top, she saw a dark outline against the fiery sky. Something round-shouldered and dark-cloaked seemed to bend its head to look down at her, and she shuddered and felt an icy fear clutch the pit of her stomach because she knew what it was. It was not the ogre who caught men to grind their bones for bread, but it was something very near to it. After a moment, a second shape came to sit beside the first, and then a third.
Vultures. Huge, clawed birds who ate the dead bodies brought out here, and left only the bones. At Selina’s side, Douglas said, ‘Don’t look at them. They won’t come down here; they don’t attack people who are alive.’
But his face had the white, scared look again, and with the idea of trying to take it away, Selina said, ‘Why do they bring dead people here? Why don’t they just–well, bury them, like we do?’
‘My father says it’s because their religion won’t let them–um, what’s the word?–when you foul up something?’
‘Defile? Corrupt?’ Christy liked words and was good at them.
‘Yes. If they bury people it defiles the ground, and if they burn them, like we cremate people, the smoke defiles the air. So they let the birds take them.’
‘You mean eat them?’
‘It’s quite a–a pure thing to happen when you’re dead,’ said Douglas, trying to sound as if he believed this.
The armed men were glancing along the road, consulting the large wristwatch belonging to their leader every few minutes. Several times they shaded their eyes to look into the sinking sun, pointing and nodding to one another. There was still a thin crescent of the bright orange sun showing over the far horizon, but Selina understood that the men were waiting for the exact hour of sunset. They were giving the children’s parents until the very last minute to release their friends from prison. Once that brilliant rim of sun went down below the dark horizon they would shoot all the children, exactly as they had said.
Selina’s heart was pounding so hard she thought it would burst out of her chest. She felt for Christy’s hand. It was cold and it felt small, but it held on to Selina’s hand firmly. Selina stood there and thought: I will never forget thi
s. If we escape from this, I will never, ever forget how it felt to stand in front of this giant’s tower, holding Christy’s hand, watching the sun go down and down into darkness.
With the hunched-over shapes of the ogre-birds watching from the tower’s topmost rim, waiting until they could swoop on the bodies…
But the men won’t shoot us, she thought. I don’t believe that they’ll do it, I really, absolutely don’t—
And then one of the men gave a shout, and pointed down the road, along the way they had just come, and Selina’s stomach did a flip-flop of hope, and she turned round–everyone else turned round as well–and saw a jeep being driven along the road at a furious rate.
Douglas said in sudden anguish, ‘But I can’t see who’s in it—’
‘It might not be anyone,’ said Christy. ‘It might be some more of the plotters.’ In a whisper, almost to herself, she said, ‘Oh don’t let it be that, please don’t let it be that—’
‘It’ll be our parents,’ said the smallest of the girls. ‘I’ve been asking God to send them, and my daddy says God never lets you down.’
The jeep was coming towards them, and whoever was driving it was doing so very fast indeed. It bounced and bucketed over the road’s dry surface, and even at this distance Selina could smell the hot red dust that its wheels were churning up; she could feel it stinging the back of her throat and scratching her eyes, but none of that mattered because it had to be some of their parents in the jeep–she did not care whose parents they were, as long as they got here in time.
The jeep slewed to an abrupt halt on the side of the road, and two people got out and came running towards them. The man had dark crinkly hair and he carried a gun. The woman was sobbing as she came, holding out her arms.
Selina said, in a queer tight little voice, ‘It’s my mother and father. They’ve found us.’ She made to run forward but one of the men snatched her arm and jerked her back. A second man grabbed Christy and put the muzzle of the gun to her head. ‘Englishman, you throw gun down,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘You throw gun down, or I shoot this one and then all the others.’
Selina’s father stopped dead, his eyes going from the gun-men to the children. Selina wanted to call out to him to please do what the man asked, because they were evil and bad, these plotters, and they meant it about shooting everyone. And now there was only a small piece of sun left, like the top of a blood-orange…
‘We not talk to you if you have gun,’ said the leader. ‘We shoot. Put gun down.’
John March looked at the children again, and Selina thought that a kind of angry helplessness showed in his face. She said, ‘Do what he says–you must—’ and her father made an angry gesture as if he would like to punch the man and kill everybody. Then he nodded and the small gun he had been holding fell to the ground. Selina’s mother gave a sob, and clutched his arm.
‘Better,’ said the leader. ‘You are sensible man. Now you tell me if you bring what we want. You bring freedom for our people that British government imprison?’
This time Selina did not just see her father’s hesitation, she felt it. She felt his thoughts in the way she occasionally did when he read a story to her and put his own bits in, and she knew before he spoke that there was no pardon for the imprisoned men. She was not sure if her father was here because he had been told to bring the message about not freeing the gaoled men, or if he was here simply because he had somehow managed to find out where the children had been taken and had driven out here to get to them. It did not matter. She loved him for coming here–and her mother, of course–with a huge hurting love. But if he told these men a lie they would know it, and they would shoot everybody.
John March did not lie, but Selina did not think he told the complete truth. He said, ‘They’re still talking. Trying to arrange things. You haven’t given us enough time. That’s why I’m here–to ask for another twenty-four hours.’
‘Let us take the children back,’ said Selina’s mother. Selina could see now that her mother was crying and that she had probably been crying for hours. She was usually so neat and pretty, her hair always combed nicely into a shiny shape, but now she looked as if she had dragged on the nearest clothes she had, and her hair was streaming over her shoulders. Her face was swollen and streaked with tears and dust, and she was holding out her hands imploringly as if she could reach Selina and snatch her up and keep her safe.
‘You not have children back,’ said the man sharply. ‘If you not do what we ask, we carry out our promise. Then you see–your country and your government see–that we are people of our word.’
‘But you can’t murder children,’ began Selina’s father, and at his side Selina’s mother gave a cry of pain, and half sank to the ground.
‘We do what we have to do,’ said the leader, and as if these words were a signal, the last thin orange-paring piece of the sun went below the horizon.
The darkness surrounding the dreadful tower was not a complete darkness; Selina could still see the faces of the other children, and she could see her parents’ faces as well. She could see that the plotters were lighting chunks of wood and sticking them in the ground to give some light, and this was almost worse than the darkness would have been, because the twisty flames cast moving shadows everywhere. When the gun-men moved, their shadows moved with them, but they were huge shadows, ugly and misshapen, and they did not quite match the men. You could easily think the shadows might suddenly take on a life of their own, and come prowling towards the children. You could even more easily imagine the ogre-birds unfolding their cloak-wings and swooping down to snatch them up.
Selina had been trying very hard not to cry because when all this was over she wanted her parents to say she had been brave: to say they had been so proud of her for being brave. But the shadows were frightening her very much and the watchful birds were frightening her even more. She thought she might start crying quite hard at any minute, and she swallowed hard to force the crying down.
Four of the men had surrounded Selina’s parents, and pushed them forward so that they were standing with their backs to the tower, only a little way along from the children, but not close enough to reach them. Selina’s mother had thrust her clenched fist into her mouth to try to force the tears back, and her father had his arm round her shoulders.
‘They won’t do it, Selina,’ shouted John March. ‘I promise you it’ll be all right.’
‘Hold on, darling,’ cried her mother. ‘All of you must hold on–Christabel, Douglas–everyone.’ She sank to her knees, as if her legs would not hold her upright any longer. ‘We’ll get you out of this.’
‘Keep on being brave,’ said Selina’s father.
‘No more time left,’ said the leader suddenly, and he swung round and levelled the gun at her parents. ‘And because you two have lied to us, you die as well.’ There was a click of something within the mechanism–the gun being set to fire! thought Selina in terror, and the fire-streaked darkness began to spin around her, making her feel sick.
‘We love you, Selina,’ cried her father, and her mother shouted with him, ‘We love you more than anything in the world, Selina,’ and through the sick dizziness Selina felt the hurting tears coming up from her throat, because she loved them so much and they were going to die, and she would not be able to bear it. She thought she said, ‘I love you,’ but her throat had closed up with the crying and the being afraid, and she did not think they heard her.
Two shots rang out, one after the other, splitting the quiet night, and John and Elspeth March fell to the ground.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For a moment there was absolute silence around the tower. The children pressed close together, their eyes huge and scared, all of them staring in horror and disbelief at the two prone bodies.
Christy threw her arms round Selina and hugged her so tightly that Selina could hardly breathe. ‘I hate them!’ she said into Selina’s ear. ‘I hate them, those men, and I’ll kill them if I can!’
The smaller children were crying with fright, their wails echoing around Selina’s head. She felt peculiar and unreal, as if none of this was really happening. Perhaps it was not. Perhaps it was a horrid dream, and she would wake up in a minute and find that everything was all right. But there on the ground were the crumpled bodies of her parents, looking somehow much smaller than they used to. Selina’s father had an expression of frozen surprise on his face, and it was nearly possible to believe he was still alive. But his eyes are open, thought Selina, cramming her clenched fist into her mouth in case she began to scream. I didn’t know that people had their eyes open after they died. She could not see her mother’s face, because her hair had tumbled over it. She’s untidy, thought Selina. She’d hate that, looking untidy. Perhaps they’d let me go and smooth down her frock and put her legs straight. But when she looked back at the gun-men she knew they would not let her do anything of the kind.
The six children were pushed into line again. Douglas was at the far end, and Christy was standing next to Selina. This is it, thought Selina. We’re going to die. We really are. She heard Douglas say, valiantly, ‘Don’t worry, any of you. Remember Peter Pan? “To die will be an awfully big adventure”,’ and she saw the little ones’ faces turn to him.
‘It’s true,’ said Christy. ‘It’ll be the biggest adventure of all, and listen, Selina’s mummy and daddy are waiting for us. They’ll meet us, and they’ll help us, won’t they, Selina?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Selina. ‘Yes, they’ll be there. They’re probably waiting now. And they’re wonderful–my daddy tells the best stories in the world. You’ll all like him so much. And we’ll all be together, that’s good, isn’t it?’
