A Dusk of Demons

by John Christopher

  He had repeated that cry four or five times before the darkness overhead started to lighten. I looked up and saw brightness spreading out from the broken top of the mill. It was something like moonlight, but more intense and more beautiful. At the center of the brilliance I noticed a single spot of black, but that spot grew and grew.

  They came out of that, swelling until they appeared to fill the sky. I saw a writhing tangle of shapes, winged and scaled and slimy, rotting faces oozing filth, hideous reptilian arms stretching out . . . reaching down to grasp me. All around I heard shrieks of fear, cries for mercy.

  The Demons were crying now too, a stridulation that rose above that clamor and seemed to pierce the skull. They used no words I could understand, but their hatred was plain and so was the message they conveyed: There could be no hope of resisting their anger, no end for their victims but a hideous death and after that damnation.

  The phantoms in my nightmare had been terrifying, but one woke from dreams. This time I knew I was not sleeping. The horror was real and inescapable.

  Terror distorted time. I could not tell how long it lasted, but eventually an end did come. The Demons faded from the sky, the Summoner spoke a final prayer to the Dark One, and we scrambled awkwardly to our feet. Slowly the congregation dispersed, first in silence, then whispering, at last openly chattering. From relief, I guessed, but not merely from relief. I detected excitement in their voices, like magpies around a carcass. I did not care for that sound, either.

  • • •

  The following day was market day, and just after ten o’clock a small procession set off from the villa, headed by the General’s carriage. This was an opulent vehicle, drawn by two handsome black horses with plumed headbands, which had cushioned seats and windows for protection against bad weather. The Mistress and her daughters rode in that, wearing dark gray cloaks over their dark gray dresses but with hats sporting little colored feathers for the occasion. The General and Ralph had, as usual, ridden down to the town immediately after breakfast.

  Mother Ryan, Antonia, Paddy, and I followed in an open trap drawn by an old chestnut cob. A clattering wagon, pulled by an even greater dobbin of a horse with a wall eye, and crammed with servants who had been given brief leave from their duties, brought up the rear of the cavalcade.

  The carriage wheels scattered spray which occasionally blew back into our faces, but the sun came out as we set off. There was woodland immediately below the villa, but the road soon emerged into fields. That was where it forked, one heavily potholed branch heading north, the other curving around the hill toward the town. I looked toward the mill as we passed it. There was no appearance of menace now, but I shuddered at the sight of it.

  We were quickly past, though, and into the outskirts of the town. Not long after, our convoy came to a halt in the main square, and Paddy and I hastened to scramble down from the trap. We were eager to explore the market, and the Mistress had promised us money to spend.

  The square was dominated by a red-brick building, fronted by a white-columned portico, which was the courthouse, the seat of General Pengelly’s authority. The big carriage had drawn up directly outside, and a uniformed servant was helping the Mistress to alight. I headed that way but stopped as I heard Paddy’s voice raised behind me. I thought she might be rebuking my haste to get the spending money, but when I turned, embarrassed, she was not looking my way. I followed her gaze and saw him standing, white-shirted among the press of gray, his black beard unmistakable.

  “Joe!” I called. We raced to reach him and confused him with questions.

  “Easy,” he said. “Easy. One of you at a time.”

  “Has the Sheriff banished you too?” Paddy asked. “Are you in trouble because of us?”

  “Mother Ryan will get the General to help you,” I said.

  I looked for her, but Joe shook his head. “No trouble. All’s well. I brought Sheriff Wilson across this morning, and he paid me for it. Paid me well. He’s not usually so generous.”

  “The Sheriff?” I said, and was alarmed. The days of imprisonment and isolation, of sitting opposite him at the table in an atmosphere of silent menace, came sharply back. “Here—on the mainland?”

  “Nay, more than that. Here, in this courthouse place. Along with the General. And it’s you they wants to see, young Ben, both on ’em. I was told you’d be coming down with the main party and put to watch for you.”

  My alarm was heightened by a sense of being trapped. Both of them? Joe said, “I went back to the isle first, to see to things. When I next landed on Sheriff’s, his men were waiting on the quay. He didn’t ask where I’d been or what I’d been about.” Joe shook his head. “He knew just where you were and told me he wanted taking there. I had my doubts at first, but he swore no harm was intended ye. Swore it on the Dark One. He were altogether pleasant, which surprised me somewhat. But how did he know—where you were, I mean? That’s the puzzle of it. Anyway, I can vouch he’s in a better temper. You’d better do as he wants and go on inside and see him, all the same. Important men don’t care to be kept waiting, and it don’t cost much to humor them. Paddy’ll keep me company while ye’re about whatever ye’re about.”

  • • •

  The General was wearing his uniform: royal blue with gold buttons, a high silver collar, and silver markings on the sleeves. Sheriff Wilson had a dark-blue shirt and trousers under his crimson cloak. I felt drab and insignificant in my shapeless gray tunic.

  Despite Joe’s reassurance, my apprehension increased as the guard ushered me into the General’s office. It was a big room, with a floor of alternating black and white squares of polished stone on which footsteps echoed disconcertingly, and a long table set out with miniature figures of soldiers in a scene of battle. There was also a large desk, behind which sat the General in a leather armchair, which he swiveled to look at me. On the other side, the Sheriff was in a smaller chair that did not swivel, so he had to turn his head. The affable smile was back on his face. I knew better than to trust it, but even an untrustworthy smile was more reassuring than a frown.

  The General was smiling, too. I advanced warily, bowing to him first. He said, in his soft, faint voice: “Sheriff Wilson has something to tell you, Ben.” He indicated an empty chair next to the Sheriff’s.

  I said, “I’ll stand, sir, thank you.”

  “It’s good to see you again, Ben,” the Sheriff said, and nodded amiably. “I can see you are being well looked after. But I’m sure you will be glad to be back in your homeland.” I looked at him in disbelief, and he went on, “There has been an unhappy misunderstanding. It appears Summoner Hawkins misinterpreted the intention of the Demons.”

  A joke, I wondered? But although he was smiling, he was scarcely a joking man. He said, “The Demons did not burn your father’s house in anger. It was done rather as a mark of respect to one who had been a faithful servant of the Dark One. The house was sacred to his memory, not to be used or dwelt in by any other. It is more proper to build a new house for the new Master—for you, Ben.”

  I stared in utter incredulity.

  “We have already put workmen to clearing the rubble. A house will be built on Old Isle to your directions. Meanwhile, you will be given accommodation on Sheriff’s that befits your status.”

  It had to be a trick. The General, though, had taken us in when we were fugitives. I appealed to him.

  “Do I have to go back?”

  “No, Ben,” he said. He glanced at the Sheriff with a look of satisfaction. It was almost as though they were competing for an important possession, but that was absurd. “You are at liberty to stay here, if you wish. The choice is yours.”

  Before I could speak, the Sheriff said, “You may, of course, bring Mrs. Ryan and her daughters back with you. That was another misunderstanding. You can bring whomever you wish to the Isles. They will be most welcome, and I am sure you will want them with you when your new house is built.”

  “If that is what you choose,” the General sai
d.

  It was him again I looked to. “Do I have to decide right away?”

  They both said, “No,” but the General seemed the more pleased of the two. My head was spinning, and I wanted to get out of the room and talk to Paddy. I said, “I’ll think about it, sir. May I go now?”

  The General nodded affably. As I turned away, the Sheriff stood up and started toward me. Involuntarily I drew back, but he only pointed to my neck.

  “What’s that, Ben?”

  “What, sir?”

  He put out a hand to the chain, which must have been visible inside my open shirt. He drew out the medallion and examined it.

  “Who gave you this? Your father?”

  “Mother Ryan gave it to me, but it was from him. She said he always wore it.”

  He dropped it back, his fingers unpleasantly warm against my skin. “And so you must, Ben. It is the symbol of your inheritance. Keep it with you, always.”

  “Yes, sir. May I go now?”

  The Sheriff nodded. “Go, Ben, and think about it. To be Master of Old Isle, as your father was before you . . . but meanwhile we know you are safe and know where you are.” He smiled, and I wondered again that an expression normally registering amiability could seem so malign. “We found you here and will always find you, wherever you may be. Remember that.”

  • • •

  While I had been in the General’s office, Mrs. Pengelly had given money to Paddy: a whole shilling for each of us. We were free, she had said, to explore the market until three o’clock, and had told Paddy there was no excuse for being late for the return journey because the courthouse clock chimed both hours and quarters.

  My impulse had been to blurt out my news, but I did not. At first that was because of Joe: He would, I knew, be delighted at the prospect of all of us returning to the Isles, and hurt if I showed hesitance. When Paddy asked what they had wanted with me, I said nothing much and suggested Joe might explore the market with us. He shook his big head emphatically; he could not be doing for long with mainlanders and their ways. He was glad to have seen us and hoped he soon would again, but his boat waited in the harbor, and the return journey to the Isles, against the prevailing wind, would not be easy.

  As we watched him stride away, I reflected that mine should not have been a difficult decision. Joe was returning to the place I knew and loved. It would be good to be with him there, still better to be the means of taking back Mother Ryan and Antonia and Paddy. Even if I did not trust the Sheriff, what could he do to harm us? The Demons had spoken, and I was confirmed as Master of Old Isle. And there was to be a new house built for us, to my specifications!

  Although I was free now to speak of it to Paddy, I found myself strangely reluctant. For one thing, I realized that talking about the restoration of my status as Master might well invite her ridicule. And my own feelings about what had happened were confused. It had been so unexpected, and much of it was still puzzling. I felt I needed to think about it before I spoke to anyone. Meanwhile, the market lay before us. I put consideration of the future to one side, and we pushed through the press of people, hand in hand.

  Between the main square and the sea front, stalls had been set up in almost every street and alleyway. Country people had brought in all manner of goods: meat, cheeses, vegetables, fresh-water fish, dried apples and tomatoes, pickled eggs, pies and cakes and biscuits. There were stalls selling shirts, frocks, knitted stockings, pots and plates and cutlery of both wood and iron. What had taken place in the General’s office may have been very important, but my immediate interest was engaged here. One stall was given over to wooden clocks with pendulum weights and painted faces, some with little panels that opened on the hour to release a calling bird. Eleven was striking, and the air was loud with hoots and trills and cuckooings. I was fascinated, but Paddy dragged me away, pointing out that our two shillings would not run to even the smallest of them.

  Instead, for a couple of pennies, at a nearby stall we took the edge off hunger with lardy cake and lemonade, and roamed on. There was so much more to see within a few yards than in the whole of Sheriff’s. I privately vowed I would revisit the market after we were back on Old Isle. Joe would bring us across. I could not resist a thrill of satisfaction in thinking I would have the power to do that, and other things as well.

  Among a heap of junk I discovered an ancient knife which had not merely blades but a little saw, a file, a fish scaler, and a corkscrew—and a tiny pair of folding scissors! Six precious pence went on that, but I could not imagine money better spent. At the same stall, for tuppence, Paddy got a glass pendant showing a white eye against a turquoise background. An amulet against Demons, the store-holder said, but she said she bought it simply because she liked it.

  Time, which recently had often crawled, now galloped apace. The courthouse clock struck twice, and then a first quarter. We had reached a square with entertainments on offer, and watched the end of a Punch-and-Judy show. A tent nearby bore a sign:

  FANTASTIC CREATURES

  • • •

  Underneath, straggling writing proclaimed:

  See the Mermaid,

  Queen of the Watery Deep!

  See The Giant Tortoise,

  a Thousand Years Old!

  See the Bear that Walks like a Man!

  See the Monkey . . . Giant Rat . . .

  Talking Bird!

  The notion of being within reach of such wonders and not viewing them was unthinkable, but another sign read “Admission Two Pence,” and my purchase of the knife had emptied my pocket. It was lucky Paddy had enough left to pay for us both.

  The money was taken by an old fat woman sitting beneath the sign, who wheezed like a broken-winded horse as she opened the tent flap to admit us to a scene of dimness and unsettling scents. The only light came from a flickering oil lamp tied to a tent pole. The smells were rank; they sickened me a little but were exciting too.

  Sounds were disturbing also. A hairy brown creature, no bigger than a baby and somewhat similar except for having a flat, wrinkled face, showed yellow teeth as it chattered angrily. And that noise was pierced by screams from the shiny curving beak of a big bird, feathered part green, part red, which hopped from foot to foot on a perch within a wooden hoop. The monkey and the talking bird . . . in the background shadows, a large mound that heaved and snored must be the bear.

  A man, old like the woman but small and wiry, sat in a battered armchair. He had a ragged white beard, specked with black, and one eye closed and sunken. In an outlandish accent, he growled, “Young sir—mam’selle—welcome! Do not fear these remarkable beasts, but neither venture too close. Pol there may draw blood from an impertinent finger. That apart, look freely—feast your eyes. These are marvels such as you will not soon see again.”

  In disappointing fact, there was not all that much to see. The mermaid, a fishlike thing with a face resembling the monkey’s, was stuffed, and there was nothing to the giant tortoise but an empty shell, though admittedly that was over a yard long. True, the giant rat was alive. It crouched in a wire cage, eating roots and snuffling, ten times as big as any rat I’d seen, but it lacked a tail and looked more like an oversized guinea pig.

  There were other disillusionments. The monkey was bald in patches and mange-ridden. Paddy asked to hear the bird talk. After much chivvying and prompting from the old man, it squawked, “Pretty Polly,” and relapsed into screams and silence.

  The man, on the other hand, turned garrulous, telling of his adventures in accumulating the items on display. He spoke of ice mountains floating in the sea, sands too hot to tread, prodigious steamy forests where monkeys leaped from branch to branch while snakes of enormous length writhed and hissed and flashed forked tongues beneath. He swore if he talked till nightfall, he could not begin to convey the wonders of the lands he had visited.

  He talked too much, and I sensed skepticism in Paddy, but I could not help being excited by his stories. They struck that chord in me which had been touched by the pictures in
the book we found in the ruins on Sheriff’s—and those other pictures of great ships on the corridor wall in the Master’s house. This was another hint of a world that might exist beyond the world of ordinary living—no, not just a hint, a promise almost. There was, I was sure, more to life than so far had appeared—much more.

  The old man fixed his single eye on me. “And yet you, I would hazard, are a likely lad for adventuring. Most landsmen are dogs, ready to snarl or wag tail as their masters bid them. You have the look of a boy of spirit.”

  The flattery, I guessed, like the talk, was meant to compensate for the inadequacy of his show. He had already told Paddy that though he had met with comely maidens in a score of countries, he had seen few as pretty—nay, none! It had its effect, all the same. I told him I was not locally born, but from the Western Isles. He nodded and winked the single eye.

  “Did I not judge you soundly? A man of the sea, as I am! Born to wind and spray, and a sky untroubled by Demons. Lad, you must not rot away in this dull clime, but seek marvels while the spring is in your limbs. Would I enjoyed your green youth still!”

  Even though I knew it for flattery, I was affected by it, and intrigued by the thought of traveling to strange lands. That too was surely something a Master of Old Isle could do, if he chose. My father had never left the island, but he had been an old man. In his younger days there had obviously been journeyings. I too might explore the world—perhaps even discover the mysterious land from which he had come.

  Paddy, though, was plainly bored. She had not warmed to his remark about comely maidens, and cared even less for the urgings that were addressed to me. The old man did his best to keep us, making a fresh but unsuccessful attempt to provoke the bird to talk, prodding the giant rat to abandon its gnawing at roots and run laboriously about the cage, finally waking the bear to tower sleepily over us. It yawned bad breath, and Paddy said firmly that we must leave. He was rambling about moonlit tropic seas as we scrambled into the sweeter-smelling air.

  And into the arms, almost, of General Pengelly. Paddy, in her haste to be away, did not look where she was going, and his hand caught and steadied her. He frowned toward the tent.