I suppose that was how they found me, the police, when they came to Chalke House.
They would’ve driven into the overgrown beech wood, the oak wood, the medieval forest in the valley of the wolds, much deeper and denser than when I’d first arrived in May, with the grasses so tall they could hardly nose their neat, new police cars to the open back door of the hearse.
They would’ve got out and stared, incredulous. A carpet of dead birds, fifty or a hundred? No, some of them still alive, and crawling and fluttering. A Daimler hearse. Two dead bodies on the bonnet.
And they found me. I was in the greenhouse, I’d climbed the vine and I was clinging to the roof, as high up as I could get. I was pulling out the wads of weed that the boy had put there. A policeman came in, having gazed on the dreadfulness at the foot of the Scots pine, and saw me, a man dangling from the ceiling, a naked man stuck with feathers and spittle. He must have cried out, what are you doing up there? And I would’ve answered, what does it look like? I’m taking out the weed, I’m opening the holes... how else will the swifts, after their miraculous migration, be able to return to their nests next year?
Epilogue
THE NURSE LED me up the stairs to my father’s room, opened the door and let me in. She’d told me he was weakening, he wasn’t eating, he couldn’t speak. She said she’d tried to call me on the number I’d used, but it sounded like the phone was disconnected. I followed her upstairs. I was carrying quite a heavy wooden box, and she wanted to help me with the door.
He was propped up in his armchair. A skeleton of himself, swaddled in an enormous dressing-gown. He looked so thin and fragile that he might topple out of the chair if I touched him or the cushions which bolstered him in place. A shrunken man. But his eyes glimmered with warmth and recognition as I moved toward him. I put down the box, leaned to him and kissed his forehead.
I pulled up another chair and sat down, close enough so that my knees touched his. I gently took hold of his hands. They were very warm, and when his fingers closed on mine with surprising strength, I felt a tingle of tears in my eyes.
At first I didn’t speak. It seemed enough that I was there, with him. I wanted to say I was sorry I hadn’t been to see him through the months of the summer, maybe to express some inkling of what had happened to prevent my coming. But the way he stared at the wounds on my face, as though he might read them, made me pause. I could see in his eyes that he was trying to recall something, a name he’d seen somewhere or read somewhere, or maybe just a word...
The burns on my face, the scalding, had dried into a spatter of red scabs. I’d studied them myself in the mirror, as they’d gradually stopped weeping and become encrusted. Unmistakably a splatter of liquid, from one side of my face to the other. He was studying it all, and his mind was figuring.
Thinking to distract him, I prised his fingers open so that I could press the keys of the Daimler into his hands. I told him that the car had been great. He folded his hands around the keys, for their familiarity, their age, and everything they signified for him, the places he’d been to and all the work he’d done. I said, would he like to see these? And I opened his tool box, which I’d brought out of the car and carried from the faraway wolds to his room in Grimsby. I was glad, because a light of love and joy and pride gleamed in his eyes as he stroked the smooth wooden handles of his hammers, as he tested the blades of his chisels with the ball of his thumb. The box itself, I lifted it onto my knees so he could smell the oils, the very cloths he’d used to wipe and clean and treasure the tools of his trade.
At last I set the box down and carefully rearranged the tools into it. When I closed the lid, with the sweet little thud of wood on wood he’d heard hundreds of times, I looked up to see he’d lolled his head back on his pillow and shut his eyes. I took his hands again. He squeezed, but his grip was weaker. He was very tired. More than that, he was shrinking into the cushions of the chair. Weakening, the nurse had said.
I sat there with my knees touching his, my fingers holding his. In a strange and marvellous way, he was beautiful. His face was a work of art. No, it was a work of life, the life he’d had. No, more than that. It was the life he’d made.
Behind him, the estuary was silver in the light of an autumn afternoon. A flock of gulls whirled this way and that, brushing their wings on the water. Their voices were harsh and cold. And the air through the window was cold, a shiver of winter I hadn’t felt for years.
I thought he was asleep. I unfolded my hands from his hands and made to stand up.
No. He jolted upright, as though a tingle of electricity had passed through his body. His head came off the pillow and his eyes opened wide. He stared at my face, he read the signs on it, and he found the name and the word he’d been reaching for.
He opened his mouth, his lips moved. Lundy... two clicks of his tongue. Wax... a single puff of sound, as soft as a kiss.
His body sank back into the chair, he shrank into the dressing-gown, he closed his eyes. The effort of remembering had weakened him even more. I didn’t stand up. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to let go. I stayed with him as the afternoon grew darker, until it was night and the gulls fell silent, and I felt the warmth and the strength fading in his fingers.
THIS IS THE HOTEL WHERE OUR NIGHTMARES GO...
It’s where horrors come to be themselves, and the dead pause to rest between worlds. Recently widowed and unemployed, Richard Carter finds a new job, and a new life for him and his daughter Serena, as manager of the mysterious Deadfall Hotel. Jacob Ascher, the caretaker, is there to show Richard the ropes, and to tell him the many rules and traditions, but from the beginning, their new world haunts and transforms them.
It’s a terrible place. As the seasons pass, the supernatural and the sublime become a part of life, as routine as a morning cup of coffee, but it’s not safe, by any means. Deadfall Hotel is where Richard and Serena will rebuild the life that was taken from them... if it doesn’t kill them first.
‘Tem’s Deadfall Hotel makes The Shining’s Overlook Hotel look like Butlins. Eerie, disturbing and yet strangely touching, you’ll check in but may never check out.’
Christopher Fowler, bestselling author of the Bryant and May Mysteries and Hell Train
‘Rasnic Tem is at the height of his powers with this effort.’
Fearnet.com
‘Truly brilliant.’
Denver Post
‘Steve Rasnic Tem is a school of writing unto himself.’
Joe R. Lansdale
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Imagine there was a supernatural chiller that Hammer Films never made. A grand epic produced at the studio’s peak, which played like a cross between the Dracula and Frankenstein films and Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors...
Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the ‘Arkangel’ races through the war-torn countryside, they must find out:
What is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of? What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them? Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men? And what exactly is the devilish secret of the Arkangel itself?
Bizarre creatures, satanic rites, terrified passengers and the romance of travelling by train, all in a classically styled horror novel.
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ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE
Each step leads you closer to your destination, but who, or what, can you expect to meet along the way?
Here are stories of misfits, spectral hitch-hikers, nightmare travel tales and the rogues, freaks and monsters to be found on the road. The critically acclaimed editor of Magic, The End of The Line and House of Fear has brought together the contemporary masters and mistresses of the weird from around the globe in an anthology of travel tales like no other. Strap on your seatbelt, or shoulder your backpack, and wait for that next ride... into darkness.
An incredible anthology of original short stories from an exciting list of writers including the best-selling Philip Reeve, the World Fantasy Award-winning Lavie Tidhar and the incredible talents of S.L. Grey, Ian Whates, Jay Caselberg, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Zen Cho, Sophia McDougall, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Anil Menon, Rio Youers, Vandana Singh, Paul Meloy, Adam Nevill and Helen Marshall.
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The Waking That Kills Page 21
