by Sarah Rayne
Quincy would not be able to bear it if Imogen was treated like that, or if she stopped being able to swallow and dribbled everything. She thought she might kill Imogen rather than let that happen. At Briar House she had been allowed to feed Imogen with soup or milk pudding, or something called Complan, and she had done it neatly and carefully, using a small spoon. Dr Sterne said the fact that Imogen was awake enough to take the food when it was spooned into her mouth was a very promising sign; it showed that she was not very far away from them. Quincy had been pleased about this, but after he had gone, Porter-Pig spoiled it by saying, ‘Oh, we’ll probably put a naso-gastro tube down her. I can’t have my nurses wasting time feeding one patient.’ The nurses were not doing the feeding, and if Quincy could not have fitted in her other jobs, she would have stayed up all night just to go on looking after Imogen, but it would not have done to say so.
Quincy’s own bed was in the long narrow room which was the women’s dormitory. It was cold and stuffy, and there were rows of narrow, black iron beds. Each bed had its own locker where you were supposed to put your things – your sponge and toothbrush and soap, and any money you had. You could lock the little door and wear the key round your neck, but most keys fitted most locks, and last time somebody had stolen the ten pounds that Quincy had painstakingly saved up to buy shoes. No money was going in there this time! Imogen had a locker by her bed as well, and her things were so nice – the beautiful scented soap and powder and the lovely underclothes and lawn nightshirts – that somebody was sure to take them within forty-eight hours if Quincy was not very watchful.
The dormitory looked a bit better than last time but not much. But it did not really matter because Quincy was not going to be sleeping here; she was going to be guarding Imogen. That was why she had come back to Thornacre.
Supper was served in the room that was now the dining room, which the assistants had called the canteen last time.
This, also, looked a bit better. The walls had been painted and there was still the nice fresh smell of new paint instead of sickness and stale bodies, and there was a different arrangement for serving the food. At one end was a long display of all the different things you could have to eat, with everything kept warm on electric plates, like the motorway place where the ambulance men had taken her. You went up to the counter and took a tray and asked for what you wanted. The food was better as well. There was lamb stew or a fluffy fish pie with creamed potatoes on top. Tonight Quincy had a plateful of stew with cauliflower and a roast potato. There was apple crumble for afterwards or jam sponge with custard.
Last time there had been one long narrow table with benches fastened down to the floor so that they could not be drawn comfortably up to the table and you got backache after a while. Dr Sterne or somebody had got rid of these, and there were lots of small tables like a cafe, so that six or eight people could sit together.
At one of the tables was an older woman with wild hair and eyes and the most bedraggled assortment of clothes Quincy had ever seen, even in the Bolt Place years. She sat by herself, and there was a pile of plastic carrier bags at her feet, most of them spilling out filthy rags and rubbish. From time to time she looked furtively around the room and then snatched one of the bags on to her lap and rummaged through it crooningly, shielding the pitiful contents from everyone’s view. The bags smelt sour and stale, and the woman smelt of the bags. Quincy remembered her from last time.
She thought some of the others were familiar as well. There was a woman who talked incessantly to an invisible companion in a moaning whine, and another who prowled suspiciously around the tables, peering into people’s faces. The attendants kept taking her back to her place, but she would not stay put. At the next table was an ugly hunchbacked man with horrid mean eyes that swivelled in different directions. He might have been any age from twenty-five to sixty-five. He had been in Thornacre for years and his name was Llewellyn Harris, but everyone called him Snatcher Harris because he was always snatching at the groins of the women and sometimes the men and making ugly and obscene gestures at them. He was grotesque and squat, and his mouth was crusted with scabs that did not heal because he was always picking them. No one had ever heard him speak, and he communicated by grunts. Quincy did not know if this was because whatever had deformed his spine had deformed his mouth as well, or if he was too stupid to know how to speak, or even if he was just being sly and pretending.
Porter-Pig was there, of course, patrolling the tables, pausing occasionally to exchange a word with a patient like the royal family did on TV when they walked through a crowd of cheering people. When one of the women near to Quincy’s table stood up and started to cry and take her clothes off, Porter-Pig made a puckered, disgusted mouth. While she was telling the woman to sit down and behave herself, Snatcher Harris banged down his plastic knife and fork and scuttled across the floor, lunging at the moaning woman with the invisible companion and thrusting his hand under her skirt, gibbering with glee, and then grunting with a horrid nasal sound when she pushed him off.
Porter-Pig gestured impatiently to the attendants and they ran down the room, dragging Snatcher Harris away and ignoring his threatening fists. One of them said, a bit jeeringly, that Harris would not hit anyone because he was a coward, and the other said that if the Snatcher did not mend his ways they would tie a piece of string round his dick and pull it tight, and then wait for it to wither and drop off. Quincy did not think Snatcher Harris could understand much of this. Porter-Pig understood it, but she made a big thing of showing she was not shocked, folding her chins into her neck and nodding slowly several times.
Things were a bit better than Quincy remembered them but not much. She would not have minded anyway, or at least not for herself. She would have put up with much, much worse because it was all for Imogen.
Leo set up Imogen’s first treatment very carefully. He was conscious that several layers below his ordered thoughts there was a strong current of anticipation. This one’s different. This one’s special.
It afforded him a faint, ironic amusement to discover that he was going about the preparations like a priest preparing the high temple for some elevated act of worship, or a medieval squire undergoing fasting and purification on the evening before his knighting. The hypodermic syringes lay ready, and near to them was the remote control device for the video player. Medical science and media science hand in hand. Well, all right, not quite hand in hand, but on the same table, at any rate.
He was going to play the videos to her, but first there would be a single preliminary dose of methidrine for stimulation. I can just trigger an abreaction and release the suppressed terror, he thought, if I can once get her to hear me . . .
Leo admitted that what he really wanted to do was deliberately summon the strange lodestar power and call Imogen out of her dark sleep unaided. And play Pygmalion, breathing life into the statue? jeered his mind. Once you cross that line, you really will be entering the shadowlands of improper conduct.
He had to make a strenuous effort to remain calm while the attendants wheeled in Imogen’s bed and set it to face the small television screen. He was conscious of rising excitement, and the sudden need to be alone with Imogen was so strong that it was almost a physical pain; it was nearly sexual arousal, which was a very dangerous way to feel indeed. When the attendants went out, he drew down the window blinds and turned back into the room.
This is it, Imogen. I’m about to try to bring your mind up out of its silent ocean of nothingness. Here we go. Stay with me, Imogen.
The silence in the room was so complete that the preliminary whirring of the video tape sounded unnaturally loud. And then the jagged, splintering patterns began to whirl across the screen, casting crimson and purple and violet light across Imogen’s face, and the pounding of the raw, abrasively sexual music filled the room.
Leo sat back as the video whirred forward. After a moment he took Imogen’s hand in his.
Quincy waited until Imogen was with Dr Sterne, and t
hen slipped away from the dining room and across the huge shadowy hall to the east wing.
There was not really a good time to do this, but when Imogen was with Dr Sterne there was no need for Quincy to be on guard and so it was as good a time as she would get. She would be quick and quiet and she would be back in the dayroom before anyone knew she was gone.
It was not logical to be afraid that the ogres were still here. Quincy knew this. But she knew that there was something in Thornacre, something in the air surrounding it, something in the dark clouds that massed behind it as night fell, and she knew that it was something evil. It might not be inside the house at all, of course; it might be outside, crouching in the dark grounds, watching its chance to creep inside and pounce on Imogen. It most probably was outside.
But supposing it was not. Supposing it was in the east wing, hiding itself behind the black iron door. There was a saying, ‘Know your enemy’, which meant finding out who your enemy was so that you knew how to fight. Quincy would find out who Imogen’s enemies were and fight them.
The east wing was a rambling, echoing place, with long, soulless passages and the smell of pain and fear. Dr Sterne had changed quite a lot of things in Thornacre but it did not look as if he had done anything here yet. This might be because none of the patients lived in here, or it might be for some other reason altogether. Quincy understood that Dr Sterne was trying to make everywhere different but she knew it would take a long time, because you could not rub out years and years of unhappiness and pain like you could rub out a pencilled line in a drawing. You had to put layers of very good things over the bad and even then the bad things would linger.
She paused at the foot of a wide, shallow staircase. The wood was dull and scarred, but it was made from solid oak, beautifully grained, and there was a banister decorated with lovely carved fir cones and oak leaves. Quincy reached out to stroke the surface. It felt harsh and dead, like a cat’s fur when the cat was ill. Probably they would do something about that when they began work here; she would ask if she could help with the polishing, because it would be nice to feel the poor dry wood become satiny and warm under her hands.
Beneath the stairs, facing the door leading to the east wing, was the remains of a printed notice fixed to the wall, its surface pitted and dimmed by time but much of it still readable.
. . . no attempts should be made to touch the Lunaticks, for although the Diet is extraordinary Good and Proper, yet they may be subject to Scurvy and Other Disease . . . the Lunaticks may not be viewed on Sundays . . .
Viewed, thought Quincy, staring at the notice, huge-eyed with horror. People used to view lunatics. Like today they went out for a day to the seaside or the zoo, or to garden centres or to look round stately homes. Once upon a time, when this house had been young, mad people had lived here, and it had been a day’s outing to come and view them.
She went up the stairs, careful not to make any noise, hearing, very faintly, the ordinary sounds coming from the central part of Thornacre. There was the cheerful clatter of crockery and a door being closed and someone calling out something about going off duty.
The sticky spider’s web of darkness that crouched at the house’s heart stirred, and Quincy shuddered. It knows I’m here. It knows I’m coming, and it’s lifted its head and it’s listening and waiting . . .
She reached the corridor with the black iron door, and stopped. This was the worst part, this was the core of all the nightmares and all the frightening stories. If you don’t behave we’ll put you in the east wing, the nurses had said last time. The Cattersis-beast had said, if you tell what I’ve done to you, my dear, you’ll find out what’s behind the black door.
There was a bad moment when she heard someone open the door from the main part of the house and cross the hall below, and her heart beat so fast she thought it would burst out of her chest. She ran silently back to the head off the stairs where she could see down into the hall, but it was only poor old Mad Meg McCann, the bag woman. She had got hold of a trolley again today – probably she had given the attendants the slip and walked into the village and stolen it – and she was trundling it along the corridors, counting the bags of rubbish as she went, darting furtive, fearful glances from side to side. She was not in the least afraid of the east wing because she had no room for anything in her scatty old brain except her bags of rubbish. In a minute she would run off down the corridor with them, hugging the dirtiest to her withered chest. Quincy waited, and sure enough Meg grabbed the bags up and went scuttling and limping away.
Quincy went back along the corridor. This was the door; she could see the black iron bands and the huge steel hinges. She could feel the strangeness that breathed outwards. This was the black core and the evil heart of Thornacre.
She took her courage in both hands and went right up to the door and pressed her ear against the panels. Nothing. Absolute silence. Or was there? Quincy listened again. Her heart was beating so furiously that it was difficult to hear anything else, but she thought that something moved on the other side. Something that had come to stand against the door, pressing against it in exactly the way Quincy was doing. Something that sniffed the air for human blood, and that snatched up children to cook them for supper . . . The ogres still here? But this was the most ridiculous idea in the world.
Quincy sank to the floor, huddling in a tight little ball and wrapping her arms about her bent knees. The door would certainly be locked.
But I have to know, thought Quincy with helpless despair. I have to be sure. Know your enemy. She took a huge gulping breath and stood up.
The door had a latch and a lever, and Quincy saw, with horror, that her hand seemed to have developed a life of its own; it reached out to the lever, depressed it and turned the latch. Both clicked down easily, as if they had recently been oiled. The door swung open and Quincy’s heart came up into her mouth.
A sour, faintly greasy smell wafted out of the black room. It was the kind of fat-laden smell that brought all the nightmare things rushing back again. Quincy took a cautious step forward. It was fairly dark in here, and there was a bluish flickering light. Television?
Her eyes were adjusting now, and she could make out things in the room. Objects. Chairs and a table and a rug on the floor. There was a window high up in one wall, and a muddy, uncertain dusk trickled into the room and lay across the floor, showing up the drab furnishings. And beneath the window, huge squatting things. Quincy frowned, and waited for her eyes to adjust a bit more.
She was dimly aware that she had thrust a fist into her mouth to stop herself screaming, because what she was seeing was dreadful, it was the most dreadful thing she had ever seen. It was not believable, it was a nightmare, and in a minute she would wake up.
In the corner of the drab room, positioned just far enough from the small window to escape most of the light, was a plain, heavy-looking table, the kind you saw in large, old-fashioned sculleries. The remains of a meal was set out on it. Quincy could make out bowls of soup and a bread board with bread and a crock of butter or cheese, along with a dish of the stew that had been served in the dining room earlier on. The greasy scent of cooling meat lay on the air, mingling with a faint, stale odour.
Drawn up to the table were four or five chairs, and seated on each of the chairs—
The badly-lit room with the flickering bluish light that looked like television but could not possibly be television spun dizzily before her eyes and she gasped.
Seated on each of the chairs was a grotesque figure, squat, repulsive, immense. Giant bodies and giant faces. Giant hands resting on giant knees, all sitting back after eating their dreadful meal.
Supposing the meal had not been lamb at all, but something far grislier? Giants like their bread made from human bones, Quincy . . . They like their dinner made from human meat . . .
Confused, fragmented shreds of knowledge whirled through Quincy’s mind. All those poor children cooped up in here, waiting for the ogre men to come stamping and shouting out of t
he forest to snatch them up. But the ogre men were still here; it was exactly as she had feared, they had got into the house and they had made a horrid lair in the deserted wing, and they were sitting here feasting and drinking.
As Quincy stood there, frozen into the most appalled horror she had ever known, the monstrous things turned to look at her. The repulsive heads with the overhanging brows nodded and smiled.
‘Hello, little girl . . .’
Quincy gave a strangled scream and tumbled back down the dark corridor.
Imogen was fathoms down in the violet and turquoise mists; she was at the silent secret heart of an old, old forest where nothing moved and no one came and where frightened crying did not reach.
At times there were sounds, splinters that came jaggedly through the thick undergrowth. The rasp of a voice calling her name, the brief jangle of music. Once – perhaps two or three times – there had been tiny pinpoints of light flaring somewhere out beyond the trees; darting will o’ the wisp specks, glow-worms or fireflies or perhaps dancing cressets borne by mischievous spirits, like the elusive creature in the old Irish play who was bent on seducing the humans into the land of heart’s desire. Come away, human child . . . Come away to the land of faery . . . Where nobody gets old and godly and grave . . .
It was important to remain very silent and very still so that no one could see her and no one could hear her, and so that she did not have to go back, up and up through the mists and the twilit undergrowth. So that she could remain here. In the land of faery, where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue . . . Stay with us here, Imogen . . . Where it is safe . . . Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise . . .
Where it was safe.
