Dark Rain

by Tony Richards

  “Where’s your bike?” I shouted.

  “Parked out back,” she answered. “Why?”

  “I have to get back to Raine Manor, Cass. I have to get back now.”

  FORTY-NINE

  We crested the Hill with the Harley’s needle teetering around one-fifty. I kept thinking, Saul would have a fit if he saw this. Raine Manor was looming up ahead of us. You could see its peculiar spire beyond the tangled mass of trees.

  Cass finally slowed down, then skidded to a halt beside the open gates. The driveway ahead was so overgrown, even she would have real trouble negotiating it at any serious speed. But that wasn’t why she’d stopped. Whatever might be happening now, she didn’t want to go any further. Dealing with the likes of Woody was my territory, not hers.

  I looked back. I had a perfect view of the center of the town from here. Torches, hundreds of the things, were blazing in Union Square. They gave the place an almost medieval look, as if the bad old days had come back. I could not make out the townspeople any longer. They were lost among the fire and darkness. The ceremony was well underway.

  So I slid off the pillion.

  “Wait here,” I told her.

  “Suits me!” I heard her shout, as I began to run.

  The house grew larger in front of me. The front door swung open as I reached the porch, Hampton standing just behind it, and back in his full uniform. So it seemed that Raine had known that I was coming.

  I went past the chauffeur, skidding to another halt. Once more, there was faint candlelight coming from the ballroom. There were plenty of other rooms in this place. Did he spend his entire life in there?

  I got a fresh surprise when I reentered, because Woody’s narrow shape was not the only one that I could see. Willets was still here as well, a surly outline in the shadows. He’d come back, in spite of all his earlier protests. His red-flecked gaze returned mine challengingly.

  “I simply thought that there was no sense going home, with all this happening,” he said.

  And let’s face it, a little while longer and we might not have any homes left to go back to.

  “I decided to wait it out, in case …”

  He faltered, seemingly embarrassed. I finished the sentence for him soundlessly, inside my head. In case he was needed again. He did want to get involved after all. He simply found it difficult to rationalize that, or explain it.

  Woody, naturally, had no such trouble, since ideas like that didn’t even come into the equation.

  “Nice of you to drop in again. But what do you want now, old chum?”

  His solemn manner of before had vanished. His tone was breezy, like we were all at a picnic. What was taking place seemed rather lost on him. And I would have got annoyed with him again, but this wasn’t the moment for it.

  “The Eye of Whosis. You made it look into the future, sure. But can it look into the past?”

  His features went unreadable. He’d obviously never even thought of that. But then he began pacing gently round, turning the concept over.

  “That’s an interesting question. Gosh, I wonder if that’s possible?”

  He and Willets exchanged glances.

  “Um … I suppose that we could take a stab at it.”

  He lifted his right arm, and the jewel came floating to his grasp. Woody balanced it delicately in his open palm, as though it were a living thing, a butterfly. And it behaved like that next instant, rising up again into the air between them.

  He and Willets spread their arms, the same way that they’d done before. Its facets all started to wink, sucking in the candlelight and increasing its glow.

  But they didn’t seem sure what they were supposed to do after that. This was a brand new feat of magic I was asking for. They tried out a few different incantations which had no effect at all. I just ground my palms together, wondering what was happening back in the square. How far had the ceremony gone? It was entirely possible that, whatever they managed, it was going to be too late.

  But then I heard the adepts go back to the first spell that they’d tried. They simply said it backward.

  “Got it!” announced Woodard Raine.

  I looked around at what they’d done.

  The pyramid of light had reappeared beneath the stone. And within it, the events of the past few days were being replayed, in reverse. There were me and Hobart, speeding to St. Cleary’s to do battle with the Dralleg. There I was, being chauffeured up here the first time around.

  Raine beamed at me delightedly, looking atrociously pleased with himself. I just ignored that, nodding.

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Isn’t it just? So, sport, how far back exactly do you want to look?”

  And when I told him, even his big golden eyes became a whole lot larger.

  It was night, pitch-dark above. The mob was beating at her door. The women in it – and there were plenty of those – wore shawls and white bonnets, tightly fitted. And the men had on those high, wide-brimmed felt hats that I thought were called ‘sugar loafs,’ in spite of the fact that they were uniformly black.

  It was nearly the close of the Sixteen Hundreds. And practically the end of a certain woman’s life. Probably the most famous event in all the Landing’s history. Certainly the most familiar name.

  Some of the crowd were carrying blazing torches, just like the folks down in Union Square. And a few of them had pitchforks too, as my grandfather had guessed. Their faces were lumpen and their eyes dull in the amber glow, their expressions savage and twisted. It was frightening to see how hatred became magnified as soon as it was shared.

  There was no sound, exactly like earlier. But these ancestors from our past had to be baying like a pack of hounds. I stepped around the pyramid of light anxiously, watching the dying moments of the person who had genuinely changed this town for centuries to come.

  It was a cabin that the crowd was pressed around, out on the edge of what had merely been a good-sized village. It had stout log walls, but only a thatched roof. The door was obviously barred from the inside. The mob kept pounding at it furiously.

  I became uncomfortably aware of Willets’s gaze on me, and glanced across at him a moment. What exactly was I looking for? We were both wondering that. I’d only know it when it came in view.

  So I returned my attention to the scene.

  The cabin door crashed inward, the next second. And the outraged mob went spilling through.

  They emerged, a short while later, dragging someone with them. A woman, in her early thirties by the look of her. I hadn’t understood until now just how beautiful Regan Farrow had been. She was absolutely striking, in spite of the way her face was twisted up with fear. She was very tall and slender. She had tousled auburn hair that ran halfway down her back. Her eyes were olive green and had a brilliant sparkle to them. Her complexion was extremely pale.

  There was a long gray cloak thrown over her day clothes, like she’d been planning on going somewhere. The hood was tilted back. And, as she was dragged clear of her front door, she began to scream.

  The mob had her by the wrists and shoulders and were towing her remorselessly along. Some of the fury had gone from their expressions. It had turned to something even worse, a sadistic amusement. I could see a few of them were even laughing.

  One of them lobbed his torch onto the cabin’s roof. The flames took hold, crackling fiercely.

  The rest paid it no attention whatsoever, hauling Regan off toward the Common. Where the stake was waiting, and the piles of kindling. And a priest was standing there.

  I remembered what I had been told, all those years ago. It was the site of Union Square, these days.

  I felt pretty uncomfortable, watching the scene unfold. And it wasn’t just the horror of it. What if I was wrong about this? If it was merely Regan Farrow who had been the Changer of our World, then there was nowhere left to take this thing.

  Or … could there have been something else involved, not merely her? All I could do was keep on watching
, almost shaking by this stage.

  Regan had stopped screaming and – just like in the legend – she was pleading with the crowd instead. I couldn’t hear the words that she was speaking, but remembered what they were.

  “I’ll go away, and never come back. You’ll never hear of me again.”

  The mob’s answer was more laughter and jeers.

  She began struggling furiously, but there were far too many of them. They hoisted her up against the stake and tied her there with lengths of thick rope, wrapping it tightly round her upper arms and body. They had left her forearms free, I saw.

  “They did that,” Willets explained, stepping quietly up beside me, “so that, in her final moments, the witch could put her hands together and pray for forgiveness. Ugly, ain’t it?”

  Yes, it was. I set my teeth.

  Woody had stepped in closer too, his face illuminated by the cone of light. And even he looked strangely moved. Did he identify with her, I wondered, one sorcerer to another?

  Regan Farrow was still begging with her captors as they piled the kindling around her. But it did no good at all. They were not listening. They were moving practically like automatons, absolutely certain that what they were doing was just and proper. It struck me what an awful thing belief like that had been.

  As they started to apply the flames, she went stiff and stopped begging. Regan seemed to understand that there was no talking her way out of this. I could see it by the coldness that swept over her fine features and her olive gaze. She realized she was done for.

  Her expression filled with anger and defiance. And she stared around at her tormentors, showing them they’d not get the better of her. She’d not spend her final moments sobbing like a child.

  The flames were climbing up around her. They were scorching the hems of her cloak. The heat had to be washing over her, because her features creased with pain. Then she pushed her head forward, and her whole face caught the light and seemed to shine.

  I watched, aghast, as she began to mouth the words that had cast this town into its solitary abyss. I’d never thought I’d get to see this.

  “If I cannot leave, then none of you ever shall. And you shall dwell alone here.”

  It was so much a part of our heritage. Those words … they had made Raine’s Landing what it was today. I felt light-headed, watching her actually speak them.

  But what was that? My gaze jerked, and I tried to understand what I was looking at.

  The witch was clutching at something directly below her throat with her right hand. I couldn’t make out what it was. The cloak was hiding it. And something had happened to her features. They seemed blurrier than they’d been before. Was that the fire, or perhaps the spell was going wrong, somehow?

  Next instant, the flames spread up her cloak. She howled, and let her grip go.

  “Poor girl,” I heard Woody sigh.

  But I had caught sight of the briefest glitter, just above her breastbone.

  An instant later, Regan Farrow’s entire body was engulfed in flame.

  It was sickening to watch. But I was not here simply to be horrified. I had to find out what she’d had her palm pressed to.

  “Can you run it back?” I asked, in an urgent tone.

  When Woodard Raine stared up at me, I could see that there was dampness in the corners of his eyes, glistening like liquid gold. A line of it ran down one cheek. His face was oddly rigid, except that his lips were trembling slightly.

  So he did have a human side. His voice was very hushed when he replied.

  “This isn’t a VCR, old chum.”

  But then he looked across at Willets.

  “We can start the scene again though, I guess.”

  “We can take it from the point where they begin to burn her,” Willets added, nodding quickly.

  There was a curious look on his own face. So he had probably spotted something too.

  They both raised their hands and shouted a few words. The scene disappeared. I began to pace, massively frustrated, while they prepared themselves again.

  Then Raine whispered, “Ready.”

  They resumed their backward chanting. And I stopped dead still. We were back to the point where they’d applied the flames.

  I knew what the problem was. Why I’d missed the things I had been looking for. I’d been so fascinated, watching Regan mouth her curse, I hadn’t taken too much notice of the other things that had been going on.

  But I knew exactly where to look on this occasion. I went around a little to the side, anticipating it. The pictures in front of me were not flat, like a movie screen. They were three-dimensional. And I needed to see under her cloak a little better.

  Just before she spoke those words, something happened that amazed me. I’d noticed her face becoming less distinct before. But now I could see that it wasn’t only that. It didn’t simply blur.

  I squinted. Willets did as well.

  Then I drew in a sharp breath. It had happened in an instant, but … there seemed to be another face, superimposed over hers. Who was that?

  It was smaller and far narrower, and looked very old. Creases covered it, and there was gray hair hanging down from its scalp the same dry texture as straw. A woman’s face though, definitely that. But my guess was, not European. This looked native. The cheekbones were flatter, the temples more prominent, and the nose was hooked. The eyes were almost black and they looked very sad and wise.

  There was a double scar below her left ear, too, that looked as if it had been carved into the flesh deliberately. And she wore large earrings. They seemed to be made of bone.

  All of her features were faintly realized. Just a phantom image, superimposed over the more solid one. But the lips appeared to be mumbling gently, in perfect time with Regan Farrow’s.

  And as soon as the curse was out, the older face disappeared. I had not been expecting anything like that. A profound sense of shock rushed through me.

  Regan’s hand was still inside her cloak. I stepped a little further round, the doctor following me.

  He let out a puzzled sound. But I bent in and just stared harder.

  She was wearing a gemstone pendant in there, on a narrow silver chain.

  The same pendant that Jason Goad had been wearing, on the day my family had disappeared.

  The same one that had stayed behind, when they were gone.

  And was now sitting in the living room of my own house.

  FIFTY

  I pounded back along the driveway. Cassie came in sight. She wasn’t looking in my direction, in spite of the fact that she had to be able to hear me coming. No, she had her back to me instead. She was facing out across the town. A quick glance beyond her told me why.

  The daylight was almost completely gone, only a few faint glimmers of it remaining. And directly over Union Square, a huge cloud had begun to form.

  First, it simply drew in the smaller clouds around it, merging them into a greater whole. But then it started taking on a life of its own, churning and expanding.

  The darkness below it grew even thicker. The torches seemed to shine even more brightly in it. How much longer until Saruak snuffed them out?

  Cass swung round sharply as I made the last few yards.

  “What now?”

  “My place!” I yelled at her.

  She peered at me cockeyed. But we both got on the bike.

  Normally, we would have headed through the middle of the Landing, but that was impossible. We peeled back down the hill, the tall hedgerows and high walls melting to blurs around us. And then, hitting Sandhurst Avenue, we started heading north.

  The shrieking of the engine was a sharp physical presence round me. The air battered at my face so hard that I could barely breathe. I tucked my head down and hung onto Cassie’s waist. And tried desperately to figure all this out.

  A gemstone. A material object. Could it be the Changer we’d been looking for? But I’d been told that couldn’t happen. How about the woman that I’d seen?

&
nbsp; There was a blue glow, deep inside my head. And the Little Girl reappeared there, a floating, childlike image.

  She was not rotating anymore. And it was hard to tell with her eyes closed, but she seemed to be exactly as surprised as I was.

  “Is the pendant it?” I asked her breathlessly. “The Changer of Worlds that Willets talked about?”

  She seemed to be concentrating intently, as though she were trying to study something very far away. Then her mouth dropped open a little and her tiny white teeth gleamed.

  “I think it might be, Mr. Ross.”

  “But you told me it cannot be an object. That it has to want to change things. Has to have a will, you said.”

  There was so much noise around us, Cassie didn’t even notice that I was talking to anyone. She was peering straight ahead, concentrating on covering the distances as rapidly as she could. The Little Girl had my complete attention, and was pondering the matter, her whole face slightly twisted.

  Then her narrow eyebrows lifted. And amazement spread across her features. I wondered what exactly she was seeing, the closer she looked.

  “It seems … the crystal is aware. It has a consciousness.”

  And then she almost drew back in the air.

  And cried out, “Oh, Mr. Ross!”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s the soul of a lady in it! She is trapped in there, I think!”

  I tried to get my head around that.

  “Regan Farrow?”

  “No.”

  Her tiny head shook. She looked pretty breathless now.

  “It’s someone from an earlier time, a good deal further back. She is sorry for what happened to your family. And, ever since they disappeared …”

  Even she seemed to be having trouble taking all this in.

  “I think she’s been watching over you, Mr. Ross! I think she’s been trying to protect you! You must fetch her now!”

  “I’m doing that!”

  “She will try and help you,” the Girl told me. “I am sure of that. And I wish you the best of luck.”