The Perils and Dangers of this Night

by Stephen Gregory

  I imagined him, a frightened, stubborn, middle-aged man, lying in a dusty moonbeam. He'd stretched up and tugged down a jacket and a pair of jodhpurs and pressed them to his face. The scent of her, the warmth of her, the lingering energy of the horses she'd ridden, the sense of the shortness of the time they'd had together before she . . . I thought of him inhaling deeply, intoxicated by the love of his wife and the need to hold her again, and then crawling to the top of the stairs and starting to bump himself down, feet first.

  Agony in his belly. The grease of sweat and blood on his hands. A swirl of giddiness in his head.

  When I heard that thud, I knew in my heart – because I knew Dr Kemp – that he'd pitched into the hole, banging and crashing head over heels, and landed at the bottom of the stairs.

  Sophie and I seemed to swim through the snowstorm. The pale moonlight through the blur of the blizzard made our shadows flicker like old newsreel. I pulled her across the yard, where the snow was deep on the cobbles, and in seconds I was struggling with the latch of the far stable. Ignoring her questions, the sound of her voice somehow muffled and woody in the snowfall, I pushed the door open and we fell into the darkness.

  She leaned on me, hopelessly lost and confused by what I was doing. The stillness in the stable was a comfort, however. It simply felt better and safer to be out of the school building, blanketed by the snow outside and the silence inside. The girl didn't know where she was; she had no choice but to trust me as I lugged her unceremoniously through strange and secret places to a temporary refuge. She listened, holding her breath, as I scratched and scratched a match, saw it flare and smoke, and she watched as I held it close to the wick of the lantern. The flame licked and fluttered, steadying into a warm golden light.

  She stared around the dusty interior of the stable. It felt warm, although there were no animals, and the floor was bare, uneven cobbles. No straw, no feed, nothing alive to breathe and steam and stamp and keep the air from freezing – until she caught a tiny tinkling, fidgeting movement in the far corner and saw the bird staring at her.

  'Take this.' I handed her the lantern. No time to explain. She followed me on tiptoe, and when we were close to the bird I bent to the floor and picked up a feather. I whispered over my shoulder, 'Just hold up the light, that's all you have to do, as still as you can.'

  Fascinated, she did what I said. As though hypnotised by the flame and the gleam of the jackdaw's eyes, she obeyed me without questioning the connection between the horror of the game and this calm, oddly irrelevant business with a bird in a stable. If there was a connection, for the moment she gave up trying to understand it and just stood with the lantern.

  I stroked the jackdaw's belly. With the tip of the feather I caressed its throat. I whispered, 'Are you ready for this, my little imp?' and with my other hand I untied the leather thong that attached its leg to the perch. With a tinkle of bells, the bird sprang to my wrist.

  'My imp, my imp . . .'

  And then the sweet, blissful moment was over. There was a crash outside, the sound of the changing-room door being banged open, and the slam of it falling shut. We heard the crunch of footsteps in the stable-yard.

  'The lantern! Blow it out! Quick!'

  Sophie blew and blew. The flame died, then fluttered alive again, obstinately tall and strong. She blew harder and it went out in a plume of smoke.

  The three of us, boy and girl and bird, peered through a crack in the stable door. Pryce was shoving the chair through the snow. It slewed and stopped, the buckled wheel stubborn and hard to control.

  Cursing, he bent all his strength against the handles, too much, so that the chair slid sideways and fell over. He cried out, in anger and frustration, and kicked at it with his right foot, so that the good wheel spun fast and threw a spray of snow across the yard. His left foot, still bare, was a mess of blood and blackened skin. He righted the chair and forced it on and on, until it was close to the opposite stable door.

  He unlatched the door and pulled on it with all his weight. It refused to move: the snow had drifted deep against it. Oblivious of the cold, his wound numbed by it, he scuffed and scuffed at the snow with his bare foot then pulled on the door again. This time he dragged it wide open. He manoeuvred the chair close to the boot of the red Jaguar.

  Sophie said, 'Oh Jesus,' and clapped her hands to her mouth as though she were going to vomit.

  And the jackdaw, reacting to the terror in her voice, erupted from my wrist. It beat and beat in the air, it screeched, and then, as I tried to control it by drawing in the jesses, it dangled upside down and thrashed its wings in a blind, hysterical panic. The bells were loud in the still air of the stable.

  Pryce heard them. He turned from the car and stared through the falling snow towards the door from which the sounds were coming. He limped across the yard.

  The bird gripped my wrist so hard that its claws drove into my flesh. Stifling a yelp of pain, I folded its wings under my arm, grabbed its leg, silenced the bells. I grabbed Sophie in turn, and we scrambled as far as we could go into the furthest corner of the stable and ducked behind the empty stall. We could do nothing more but crouch there, stare at the door and wait for it to open.

  The footsteps came closer. The door opened. Pryce was a looming silhouette.

  'Who's there?' he said. He took a step inside, caught his wounded foot on the cobbles and hissed like a cat. He stared into the darkness. He sniffed the air, as though to distil and distinguish the whiff of the lantern from the other unfamiliar smells in the stable. He heard a rustling, fidgety movement.

  'Who's that? Alan, is it you?' He came on. Step by step he moved deeper into the shadows. When he reached the stall, he bent around it and felt the air with his fingers, so close to my face that I could smell the blood on them.

  I let go of the bird. It seemed to explode, a nightmarish screaming creature, a raggedy black piece of the night with wings and a tearing beak and raking claws. As Pryce staggered away, it scrabbled and clung at his face so that he covered his head with his arms and fell back to the door. At last it whirled past him and out of the stable, trailing the jesses and the bells attached to its foot.

  With a yell, Pryce disappeared into the snow. I tugged Sophie to the door, and we saw him stumbling across the yard. He was a hunched, wretched figure, shaking his head to flick the blood from the fresh wound on his face, still leaving a bloodied print from the wound in his foot. The blizzard whirled around his shoulders.

  'We've done it,' I mouthed at Sophie. She blinked at me, uncomprehending. While Pryce huddled in the shelter of the other stable and wondered what it was that had cut him, I took the girl firmly by the hand and we padded across the yard to the door of the changing-room.

  We slipped inside. Sophie groped in the darkness and threw the bolt, and then she bent and dry-retched into a corner. Anxious to see what Pryce was doing, I peered out of a window.

  He was leaning wearily on the bonnet of the car. Then, with his back to the stable wall, he put his right foot onto the long red snout and pushed. The flat tyre squelched, the rear wheels crunching into the snow, and then he bent and shoved with both hands under the front bumper. The car slid out of the stable and stopped in the yard.

  The snow was still falling steadily, although the whirl of the blizzard had slowed. He limped outside and moved the wheelchair close to the back of the car. In just a few moments, his hair was whitened with big soft flakes.

  He took a deep breath, opened the boot, peered into it and then stretched in with both his arms. There was something heavy and awkward inside and he struggled to lift it out.

  Sophie pulled me away from the window.

  SIXTEEN

  Still intact, we moved silently through the house.

  I remember a strange feeling, the tiniest inkling of triumph, at the thought that for a short while we'd regained the territory. I knew that Pryce would come back, the bolt on the door would not stop him; but just then, as we padded through the changing-room and past the chap
el, into the main building and along the bottom corridor with staffroom, library, music practice rooms and classrooms, Pryce was out and we were in. And I was determined to maintain the initiative, earned by my local knowledge and the way I'd led the mission to release the jackdaw from the stable, so I immediately made for the boys' staircase and started up it. Sophie followed me. She only muttered, 'What about the woman?' as we saw the glow of firelight from the great hall, far ahead along the corridor, and then demurred when I said firmly, 'No, let's find Dr Kemp.' She was right behind me as I climbed the stairs, unerring even in the deepest darkness, up and up, past the first floor and onto the second, to the little door at the foot of the narrow staircase to the attic.

  I expected to find Kemp lying unconscious, or dying, or even dead. He wasn't there.

  We paused together and listened to the silence in the house. We could see, in the feeble glow of the overhead bulb, that the lino was smudged with footprints and tyre-prints, all smeared in a mess of blood: a lot of blood, from Pryce's foot when he'd dropped out of the lift and pulled off his sock; and then a long, wide swirl of it, as if something had been dragged along the floor. The sock was there, black and sodden.

  I put my head into the staircase. 'Dr Kemp, are you there?' I called, hoping I'd been wrong and he was still sitting meekly in the attic. No answer. I clambered up and looked. Nobody.

  I came down. The steps were sticky with blood. From where Sophie was waiting for me, from where she stood in the swash of blood and urged me to follow her, the trail of it glistened into the darkness – a gruesome brush stroke painted onto the lino by the slither of the headmaster's stomach as he'd dragged himself along the corridor.

  We reached the landing and craned over it, in time to see him bump and bump on his backside down the last few steps into the great hall. From the top to the bottom of the staircase, he'd left the round, fat print of his blood-soaked trousers.

  'Dr Kemp!' I hissed down to him. 'Sir!'

  I didn't know why I called out to him, or what I would have said next if he'd looked up and seen me: it was an instinct, to make contact with him, either to reassure him that we were there or to lessen my own fear. In any case, he didn't hear, he didn't look up. Having reached the hall, he sat in the mess of his own blood and slowly rolled onto his back, groaning as though the effort of every movement were killing him. He dug his fists into his wound; he coughed and coughed and spat a gobbet of blood onto the carpet. From the way he clutched at his chest, I thought he'd bruised or broken his ribs, and I imagined again how he'd cartwheeled down the stairs from the attic and thudded into the corridor.

  'Where is she?' Sophie hissed into my ear. 'Where's the woman?' From the top landing we could see the flicker of a dying fire, but no sign of Mrs Kemp.

  I gazed down, and my head swam. I squinted at a dark pool by the hearth – it could have been shadow or blood – the place where she'd been lying. She wasn't there.

  I trod down to the first-floor landing. Saw what Kemp had already seen.

  His wife was sitting in an armchair beside the fire. Her head was propped against a cushion and her eyes were closed. She might have been sleeping. Indeed, if the old dog had been snoring at her feet, it mightn't have looked so different from any other wintry night in the great hall at Foxwood Manor: Mrs Kemp relaxing before bedtime, the glow of the embers on her face and in her hair.

  But there was no dog. There was a Christmas tree draped with shattered bulbs; a lot of broken glass from the photographs and trophy cabinets; an abandoned dining-table; plates and bowls of congealing fat and greasy gravy; spattered pools of candle wax. There was a slick of blood on the rug.

  'Sarah,' the headmaster called softly. He heaved himself to his feet and groped his way across the hall.

  'No, sir! Please sir!' Those were the words I wanted to call out, as he blundered forwards and I knew he was enmeshed at last in the trap that Pryce had laid for him. But no words came. Pryce must be there – only he could have moved the woman into the chair – and now he was waiting, watching and waiting. My lips moved, but I just gaped and stared, dumbstruck with fear, and I felt for the warmth and strength of Sophie's hand.

  I felt into empty air. She'd gone.

  The headmaster knelt at his wife's feet. 'Sarah, Sarah!' he whispered, and he took them in his hands – her icy feet, his hands like fire – willing all the life and heat of his body into hers.

  And suddenly the lights flickered on. The music started.

  There was a deafening blast from the record player. It was inches from the headmaster's ear. The sound had been rude and ugly enough when he'd heard it from high in the attic; now it was a physical assault. Jagged chords, a primitive beat, an uncouth, snidely insinuating voice – you really got me you got me so I can't sleep at night . . . Thrown off balance, Kemp let go of his wife's feet, fell away and rolled backwards onto the blood-soaked rug.

  Sophie must have thrown the switch. In the time it had taken me to realise she wasn't there beside me, in the short, holy moment which Kemp had been allowed with his wife, she'd flown up to the attic, reached for the fuse box and turned on the power.

  Kemp had forced himself upright. In the gloom of the Christmas tree at the further end of the hall, he saw a figure sitting at the piano – motionless, so bizarrely hunched in the wheelchair that its forehead was resting on the keyboard, the face hidden by a fall of dark hair.

  The woman's eyes flickered open. Kemp reached for her hands, and, despite the hellish cacophony, for a second they gripped each other's fingers – her lips moved, she tried to smile at her husband, but only a trickle of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth. He lifted her hands to his face and kissed them.

  The last glimmer of life faded in her eyes. Then it was gone.

  He had no more time with her. There was a rush of movement from the piano, and when he turned to see what it was, the dark figure in the wheelchair was careering straight at him.

  Kemp couldn't move out of the way. The chair rammed into him, two bony knees catching him full in the chest and smashing him back into the record player. The speed jolted down to 33 rpm. But still the record turned, ear-splittingly loud but horridly slow, the words just a ghoulish groaning.

  Kemp lunged at the wheelchair. All of his anger and hatred erupted inside him. The pain, that had been salved in the few moments he'd had with his wife, now flared through him, dazzling hot. It was the pain he needed to mobilise every last ounce of his strength.

  'Damn you! Damn you!' His hands grabbed at the flopping hair, twisted and yanked, clawed at the face and throat. He shoved and bellowed so that the chair spun away from him. 'Damn you, Pryce!'

  The music stopped.

  I'd seen it happen, unable to believe what I was seeing. Martin Pryce, appearing from behind the piano, stepping forwards, lifting the needle from the disc.

  He loomed over Kemp, who'd collapsed onto the floor, heaving with rage and exhaustion. Kemp stared up at him. Then he looked at the figure in the wheelchair. He did a double-take, from the one to the other and back again.

  Martin Pryce leaned over, put his hand under the chin of the body in the wheelchair and tried to lift it. But it was too stiff to move. He pulled the curtain of hair to one side.

  A swollen, purpling face. Bruised lips. Eyes staring, glazed. Blackened skin. A dead face. The gleam of a piano string, embedded in the flesh of the throat.

  'Don't you recognise him?' Pryce said.

  With a terrible wrench of one hand, he grabbed Kemp by the hair. With the other hand, as if by magic, he dangled a piano string. He looped it around the headmaster's throat.

  'It's Jeremy, your little Dolly Boy – I've brought him back for you.'

  He tightened the string. Kemp squirmed and flopped, like an animal caught in a trap. He clawed with both hands to try and stop the wire from cutting. But it cut deep. And it was easy for Pryce, who was tall and strong and on his feet, while the headmaster crumpled to the floor, gurgling, gagging, tongue out, eyes popping – so e
asy for Pryce that he could reach with a free hand, drop the needle randomly onto the record and restart the slowly grinding blast of sound.

  He dropped the headmaster onto the floor, jamming him against the wheelchair. Kneeling suddenly, he tore off his dead brother's left shoe and sock. A second later, he'd melted back into the shadows behind the piano.

  I'd seen it all. Sophie hadn't. She'd left me and gone upstairs to turn on the power – and for something else, a thing forgotten and lost while the house had been in darkness. When I blinked over my shoulder and up to the top landing, she was standing there with the gun.

  She came down the stairs and flew right past me. I was on my feet, grabbing at her arm and trying to stop her, but she was too strong, too quick.

  She reached the bottom of the stairs before me. She saw Mrs Kemp slumped in an armchair. She saw the figure hunched in the wheelchair, its left foot bare and swollen-black – hunched over the body of Dr Kemp, who was gurgling, twitching, flapping pathetically at a piano string tight around his throat.

  She strode forwards. At close range, she raised the gun and fired just over the headmaster's head. The bullet slammed into its target.

  'Help me! Alan, help me!' she yelled. 'Quickly!' She threw down the gun. As I hurried forwards, as I tried to drag my horrified eyes from the figure in the wheelchair, she knelt to the headmaster and struggled with the piano string.

  Too late, too late. She couldn't do it. The string was too tight and deep in his flesh. As she fought with the wire, Kemp rolled his bloodshot, bulging eyes at the ceiling. His blood-filled mouth opened and closed, and his final breath was a long bubbling cry. At the end of it, his head rolled slowly forwards onto his chest.

  The music stopped. Silence, at last.

  We knelt for a long, lovely minute. The sense of peace was almost overwhelming. I knew that Martin Pryce was looming nearby, I knew Sophie would soon realise that her bullet had found the wrong target. But I didn't care. A great weariness settled on me. The whole building breathed an exhausted sigh at the passing of Dr and Mrs Kemp, its guardians for the past twenty years. The only sounds were the flutter of the fire and the click-click-click of the disc turning on the record player.