by E. C. Hibbs
The huge space opened out underneath me. I felt a stab of shock and faint fear. It wasn’t the entrance to a warren like I’d originally thought: it was a break in the ceiling of one of the mausoleum’s underground burial chambers. I could just about make out the small doors lining the circular walls.
I glanced around, searching for the thing that had shined. The earth sagged slightly beneath me as I lowered my knees onto the soil. The snow soaked up into my jeans. And then I saw it, lying beside an exposed stone sarcophagus directly below: a green mobile phone, broken in two.
The raven cawed again, and flew away into the trees. I pushed my head further towards the hole, trying to let the light past my shoulders enough to still see. I could feel my blood pressure slowly creeping up. It took a few seconds before I fully adjusted to the darkness, but then I noticed something tucked away in the shadows opposite. In the glow of the torch, there was a figure; curled up tightly beneath a ragged blanket, face turned away and hidden beneath scruffy hair. The sleeve of a black pea coat was just visible on the stone floor.
My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t move, couldn’t even speak. For a moment, I forgot how to do anything. I had to remind myself to breathe, and stop the world from spinning. I couldn’t believe what – who – I was seeing.
“Lucy?” I whispered, too shocked to form anything louder. I leant closer, my head almost completely filling the hole. “Lucy, is that you?”
The earth under my hands buckled. Acting more on instinct than anything else, I leapt back; but the ground under my knees was unstable with my weight too, and before I could react, the tiny hole opened up and I crashed through. The torch clattered loudly on the floor, and the light snapped out.
In my mental fall through the bloodied shaft, I slammed into the ground, and didn’t move.
CHAPTER IV
The scream surrounded me as I smashed onto the sarcophagus. A shower of snow, soil and rotting leaves followed, as well as clouds of disturbed dust and the occasional rotten brick. Pain shot through my arm and shoulder as I landed on them, but I curled up until the noise of falling stones had subsided. Profanities hissed from between my teeth as I eased my knees away from my chest. I wiggled my fingers, testing them for breaks, but to my relief, they were fine.
“Bee?”
My eyes snapped open. It was Lucy. She had woken up, and weakly raised herself on her elbow. Forgetting all about my arm, I scrambled off the carved sarcophagus, tearing my bag from my shoulder and leaving it at the base.
“Bee!” Lucy wheezed. Her eyes filled with tears and relief. “What are you doing here?”
“I needed to be in early, I thought I saw you!” I replied, tossing the blanket aside and throwing my arms around her. Lucy grasped me back tightly, as though clinging to life itself. I felt her shivering against me, her fingers spread out across my back as though trying to hold all of me in her hands. The horrid stench of stale urine and her unwashed body filled my nose, but I forced myself to ignore it, as a million questions flashed through my head.
What was she doing here? How did she get here? Had she been here all this time?
After what seemed forever, I pulled back and took in her face. She was horribly white, eyes bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. Her bottom lip was bruised and puffy, and every inch of her skin that I could see seemed scratched. She was covered with particles of earth and dirt; her hair unkempt, the shine vanished – and her breathing was frayed and uneven. She quickly looked away, hollow with what I could only take to be shame.
“God, you look terrible!” I gasped, grasping her shoulders. “What happened to you?”
Lucy opened her mouth to reply, but suddenly her eyes widened with panic. They shot towards the door, set into the wall across from us; then glanced at the gaping hole in the ceiling. She clutched my hands and pushed me away.
I fell backwards and stared at her. “What’s the matter?”
“Bee, you’ve got to get out! Now! He can’t find you here!”
Her movements were desperate as she got to her feet and staggered into the wall. I quickly reached out to steady her. I was alarmed at how fragile she was; so feeble that any kind of hard touch might break her. Then I realised what she’d just said.
“He? Who?” The word ended sharply as I cut myself off, immediately remembering the stranger.
“Bianka, just go, quickly!” Lucy snapped; voice tight with distress. She ushered me towards the wall, where a group of old roots were hanging down. They were thin and dry with age, and well out of reach, but Lucy didn’t seem to notice. “Climb them! Now! You have to get away!”
But I didn’t. I turned on her, and gripped the tops of her arms. I forced my voice to sound stern. “Lucy, what’s going on? Where is he? What has he done?”
She held my eyes for a moment. They were hollow and almost lifeless, struck through with some kind of deep, primal fear. I pushed my initial fury away and took hold of her hand. “You can tell me later. Come on.”
But before I could take a single step, my feet left the ground and I flew across the room. Lucy’s fingers snapped away and she grew smaller and smaller, until my back slammed into the wall. Breath shot from my lungs, and when I opened my eyes, I realised I was ten feet off the floor.
I frowned, staring down at the sarcophagus, covered in the blanket of debris that had fallen through with me. From this height, it was tiny. I could have blotted my bag out with the end of my thumb. But the shock was instantly shattered when I noticed Lucy reel backwards, as though someone had violently pushed her. A small cry escaped before she hit her head on one of the doors in the wall. She collapsed onto her side.
I struggled; kicking out and feeling for some kind of handholds, but there were none. I was convinced I’d hit my head, too. I couldn’t be ten feet off the floor with no support. For that matter, how could I be in an underground crypt? How do you manage that during a morning walk? Just because you decide to stray off the path for a few spare minutes, how can you come across something like this, and find your best friend alive, just beneath your feet?
Footsteps echoed around the room. My eyes darted towards every shadow, searching. Lucy pressed herself back against the wall as a young man appeared in the doorway, walking slowly forward, with the deliberateness of a cat within reach of a mouse. The pale light bounced off his face from above, highlighting his cheekbones as he approached.
He paused and looked down at Lucy. She cowered, eyes fixed on him like a rabbit in headlights. Her lips moved as though whispering something, but I couldn’t make out what it was. It registered in the back of my mind that the door hadn’t opened or closed.
“The sound of sorrow. I have heard it so many times,” he said, hands held casually at his sides. “But never before have I heard it followed by conversation.”
His voice was rich and certain, the Hungarian flowing like music, but I couldn’t guess the age. It was a strange mixture of youthful charm and an arrogant smugness that only experience could grant. And there was an underlay of something that I didn’t recognise to name, but which I knew in my gut was truly menacing.
He turned to face me, and my arms snapped down against the wall. “Who might this be?”
I froze as flames coursed across the shining surfaces of his eyes. The light blazed, like windows into hell. I couldn’t think of anything to say, let alone my name – but inside my head, my thoughts trembled almost unintelligibly, like the buzz of enraged hornets.
What the hell is this? Why’s he here? Why’s she here? What’s going on? What is he?
“You have awoken me from my slumber,” he said after a horribly long silence, “at this early hour.”
“Why do you have Lucy here?” I demanded. My voice wobbled, but I was too relieved about managing any words at all, to care about whether I sounded like a yodeller.
Lucy looked up. She saw that he was still facing me, and hurried to her feet before I could realise what she was doing.
“No!” she cried, running o
ver and shoving into his shoulder with all her might. She was so frantic; she screamed it out in English. “Put her down!”
His eyes snapped to her and, before she could react, his cold fingers were around her neck. She grasped at his arm, but then immediately stilled, as though all her energy had flooded out of her. I felt a wave of anger, all but pushing my own fear aside. I kicked out again, but still stayed up in the air.
“I do not take kindly to intruders,” he continued, holding Lucy’s gaze for a moment before looking back to me. “What is a suitable punishment, I wonder?”
“You leave her alone!” Lucy shouted. Fear swept over her face, but it wasn’t for herself. It was for me. The two of us felt the same: too worried about the other to think of ourselves.
I swallowed, trying to think. “Let her go. She’s sick. Can’t you see that?”
“She is no good to me dead.”
The way he said it made me steal a glance in Lucy’s direction. She caught my eye, and I took in her pale face again. Although her lips were pressed tightly together, her eyes were screaming.
“What have you done?”
There was a low chuckle in response. “Shall I show you?”
He reached towards her arm with his free hand. Lucy’s face instantly dropped in panic and she wrenched away.
“No!” she screamed; the sound bouncing off the stone. I thought my heart had shot into my mouth as I watched, and I couldn’t bear it anymore.
“Stop it!” I bellowed.
The anger exploded like bullets. I knew there wasn’t much I could do, stuck on the wall like a fly in a web, so I was shocked and relieved when he did pause. An icy stillness descended, and tore at us as he slowly turned his eyes to me. Lucy glanced over. I gazed at her for a moment, and then fixed him with a hard stare.
“You can’t get away with this!” I snapped. “The police will have you, you hear? They know you took her!”
The corner of his mouth twisted into a calm smirk. “Ah. The police will try, but they will not succeed. Although, I must admit I was beginning to wonder if they would ever become as relentless as they are today. One hundred and fifteen years ago, they could not care less, and matters were made impeccably simpler for me.”
I swallowed hard, and looked at him again. I was numbly shocked that the artist’s impression was impressively accurate, but now I saw him with my own eyes, it was still nowhere close to even eclipsing his face. Those faultless, curving features that were the epitome of youth, captured in a haunting form before me – almost like they were frozen in ice. But his eyes shone; even now, the fire behind them was a subtle giveaway to the truth. The malevolence from deep within sent chills through me, like blades.
I took a shaking breath, pressing the rage from my mind as I tried to think clearly. There had to be some way to help Lucy. I grasped at the first thought that came to me, but knew as I said it – fast, as though it was a hot mouthful of food – that I meant it.
“Let her go, demon. Leave her alone... take me instead.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. “Bee, no! You don’t know what you’re doing!” she squealed.
I heard her, but it was like trying to listen through water. “If I did that, would you let Lucy go?”
A horrible quiet settled over us. Goose-bumps formed under my sleeves. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his. We remained motionless, as though trapped in a single space of time. He still held Lucy with one hand, barely moving. My fear played back into my mind and I struggled a little, but I managed to subdue it enough to focus: to show that I meant what I’d said. My heart fluttered; the silent battle between us was deafening.
Then I fell. I couldn’t stop the scream, but I barely heeded it over the sudden roar of blood and air in my ears. At the last moment, his will caught me again and pushed me back against the stone, with my feet hanging a few inches from the ground. Lucy cried out my name as he let go of her, but as soon as she was free, she dropped onto her knees heavily, and stayed there.
He cocked his head, black eyes shining with malice. “How interesting you are,” he mused. “Tell me your name.”
I pressed my lips together nervously. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Answer me.”
I tore my eyes from Lucy, so I didn’t have to see the fear on her face. Somewhere deep inside, a part of myself bawled out that it was the stupidest thing I could have done, to even try and stand up to whatever this thing was – but I ignored it. What else was I supposed to do? What would Lucy have done for me, if our positions were reversed? She’d seen off my old bullies, and I’d just watched her try to throw down her own captor, for me.
She did more than I could ever do. So I needed to do everything I could.
I fixed all of my attention on him. Where I was suspended, we were the same height, but he still seemed to tower above me like an ever-growing shadow.
“Bianka,” I replied eventually. “Farkas.”
“What did you say?” he said, a sudden snarl in his voice. His expression had tightened, as though he was trying to read something written behind my eyes. The seconds dragged by, and the tension could have been cut with a knife. I swallowed, but the action just made my already-parched throat close up even more. I couldn’t speak another word, and aside from my hands’ uncontrollable shuddering, I didn’t dare move. The fear had come back in spades, and if he hadn’t have been holding me, I probably would have collapsed on the floor from it.
He grabbed my hand and whipped it up between us. I glanced at my fingers, clasped in his, shocked at the iciness of his touch. It wasn’t the coldness of someone who had walked in the winter air. It wasn’t even what I imagined a corpse would be like. It was a cold I’d never felt before. I’d never even believed anything that cold could exist. It chilled every bone in my body, spreading through me so bitterly that it burned.
Lucy exclaimed in horror as he pierced the pad of my thumb with one of his nails, and then placed it fleetingly to his lips. I recoiled and went to snatch away, but it was like trying to break the hold of a stone statue. His eyes widened ever so slightly, and locked onto mine. The pressure on my chest intensified. His fingers tightened and my knuckles cracked under them.
“Impossible,” he breathed, black eyes boring into me. I couldn’t break from them. It was as though the walls of my mind had suddenly fallen away, and there was nothing I could hide. He saw every thought and emotion: all of my past and hopes for the future; laid out like a list on a sheet of paper. Memories and wishes that were beyond words, all re-enacted in a second.
A furious snarl ripped from his lips. I jumped in fright; felt his power, suddenly even stronger, and heavy with rage. He threw me across the room, and I slammed into the floor a few feet from Lucy. My teeth dug into my lip and I tasted blood. He stormed over, and I rolled onto my back, wincing as I put pressure on my arm. Lucy shouted something, and the air pulsed all around me: hatred so deep that it threatened to paralyse me where I lay. Fighting it, I frantically crawled away in terror. He was almost upon me, teeth bared and eyes flaming. He reached out towards me.
Carried on the wind, I distantly heard Mrs. Fekete’s cockerel crow in the new day. He suddenly collapsed forward, barely five feet away, clamping his hands over his ears. The pale dawn light shone down from the ceiling in a shaft of stray snowflakes. I didn’t know what was happening or why he’d stopped, but I wasn’t about to wait to find out. I leapt to my feet; he swiped out viciously and caught my leg as I jumped over his arm. I felt my jeans rip, but I stayed upright, and he snatched back, to block out the sound of the cockerel.
I grabbed Lucy’s shoulders, spitting blood out of my mouth. His eyes were on fire and glaring at the two of us, hands trembling over his ears. He hissed: an enraged, inhuman grating sound that chilled me to the bone – then threw himself towards the edge of the crypt. The shadows outside the ring of light enveloped him, and he rolled his shoulders back fluidly. I thought I saw two huge leathery wings fly out behind him, before he leapt in
to the air and melted away into the darkness, leaving nothing but writhing grey mist. It whirled around the two of us and we screwed our eyes shut. Lucy screamed; I felt a burst of hot flame explode up the walls. And as quickly as it had begun, it was over.
I glanced up warily and looked around, but there was nothing. He had vanished, and all that was left was a cloud of dust, drifting down to find a new place to settle. Shaking, I turned to Lucy and tugged at her arm.
“Come on,” I urged. She didn’t move.
“Come on!” I shouted. Lucy jumped and stared round at me as I pulled her to her feet. For a second, she looked as though she’d forgotten I was there. She stumbled, and grasped me tightly. “Can you walk?” I asked, snatching up my bag. Lucy nodded, and I wasn’t staying still for a moment longer. I turned for the door, dragging her along behind me.
“No, we can’t get out that way!” she gasped. “I’ve tried!”
But my hand was already on the rusty handle and I ignored her, pushing it down hard. And sure enough, the heavy oak door swung out, a second room opening up on the other side.
“How...?” Lucy muttered, but I pulled her through and slammed the door shut behind us. We emerged in the middle of the larger room, circular and lined with crypt doors as the other had been, but there was one difference. Between the name-plaques and cobwebs, a spiral staircase gradually snaked up towards the ceiling, and another door – a metal one – stood waiting at the top.
I took the stairs three at a time; and twenty feet above the floor, I grasped the door handle. I vaguely noticed that it was bolted from the inside, but didn’t pause to think about it. I threw the bar back and we tumbled out into the snow. Lucy yelped and held her hands in front of her eyes. It was still dull, but it must have been blinding to her after the semi-darkness. She tripped over her own feet and fell, but I quickly pulled her back up and hooked her arm in mine.
