by Sarah Rayne
Quincy said, ‘Don’t let her – get Imogen . . .’
‘She won’t get Imogen. I promise you she won’t. It’s all right.’
‘Look after . . . Imogen . . .’
‘I will look after Imogen,’ said Dan.
‘So beautiful . . .’
Their eyes met. Dan said, very softly, ‘Yes. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I understand. I’ll look after her, Quincy.’
The filmed eyes focused on him with difficulty. ‘Promise?’
‘On my word of honour.’
He thought she nodded and gave a little sigh. Her head fell back on the ground, and Dan saw her eyes flutter and close. He looked up to meet Thalia Caudle’s mad red-lit eyes, and braced himself for what was ahead.
Thalia said, ‘In a little while we will burn what’s left of that one. But now it’s time for the bitch-whelp. It’s time to dig out her heart and give it to Edmund.’
Imogen had managed to hold on to a shred of courage while Quincy was killed, and this was mainly because of Dan. It was important not to let either Thalia or Harris know how frightened she was, but it was much more important not to let Dan know.
When the hunchback dragged her towards the table, she fought him for all she was worth, but he overpowered her, grinning and mumbling to himself. Imogen said, very clearly, ‘Take your disgusting hands off me, you repulsive insect,’ but the creature only gave a snuffling chuckle and lifted her on to the table, arranging her limbs caressingly.
Lying next to the thing that had been her cousin almost dissolved the last fragments of Imogen’s courage. There was a dreadful sense of finality about this and a stifling feeling of anticipation in the old coach house now. As if something unseen was pressing down from above. As if something huge and dreadful hovered nearby, waiting its chance . . .
Imogen stared up at the ceiling and terror swept over her, because it was really beginning to look as if this was it. She was about to die; there was not going to be any eleventh-hour rescue; the seventh cavalry riding in or the knight on the white charger. But I can’t die like this! she thought wildly. I can’t die in some disgusting warped ritual, before I’ve found out anything about the world and before I’ve done anything! She turned her head to one side to look at Dan, and as she did so she saw him look sharply towards the small, rather grimy windows as if he had caught a sound from outside. A flicker of hope surfaced. Had Dan heard something? Imogen strained to listen. The sense of something unseen, waiting and watching just outside the old coach house, brushed her mind, but nothing moved, and neither Thalia nor the hunchback seemed to be aware of anything.
It was obvious Dan had no idea how to get them out, and by this time Imogen’s heart was racing so fast she could hardly think at all. She thought she might faint, and she began to hope she would because then she would not know what was being done to her. It was as she was willing unconsciousness to close down that an angry little inner voice suddenly sounded inside her mind. You wimp! said this unexpected, unfamiliar voice. Why should he be the one to think of something? What’s wrong with you? Well, because I can’t. Because nobody ever expected me to think before. Well, start thinking now, said the voice. You got out of the wash house in Thornacre, so get out of this place as well, because if you don’t, it’s a sure thing you never will experience anything and you never will find out about the world!
Harris had left off the mouth gag, probably because out here you could scream for all you were worth and nobody would hear you. If there really had been something outside Imogen would have screamed until her throat was in tatters, but she did not think there had been anything.
She was so close to Edmund’s body that she could feel the cold wetness of the dead flesh, and little puddles of thawing ice were soaking her nightgown. She could smell the faint stench of corruption as well, and if she turned her head, she would see the dead face . . . But she would not look.
There was something outside. Thalia and Harris were bending over the knives and moving the candles, and the knives were scraping and clattering a bit, and Thalia’s whole attention was on what she was doing. But Imogen heard the sound this time: soft, rather heavy-sounding footsteps, as if someone was moving in the dark garden. You’re imagining it. You’re hearing what you want to hear. No, there it is again. Traffic? How near was the house to the main road? Imogen could not remember. What about thunder? It might easily be thunder. It might even be her own heart pounding with terror. Don’t think about hearts, Imogen. Don’t think that in a very short time this mad creature is going to try to cut your heart out and plunge it into the grotesque corpse next to you. The anger she had felt a few minutes earlier boiled up more strongly. I will get free! cried Imogen silently, and now she did turn her head, searching for a means of escape.
Thalia’s eyes were glittering, her face white and thin, and Imogen could feel the mad power emanating from her. For a truly terrible moment she thought she was paralysed in every limb, as if Thalia had spun a sticky, mesmerising web round her, holding her fast. Imogen reached for the anger again, and took hold of it properly this time, because anger could send the adrenalin pumping; it could make you capable of performing the most extraordinary feats-fighting madwomen, overpowering hunchbacks, creating diversions so that you could get free . . .
Diversions.
Like Imogen, Dan had thought there was someone prowling through the garden but, also like Imogen, he had eventually discounted it.
As the hunchback arranged the table, his mind was working furiously on several levels. Thalia was clearly so wildly insane that any attempt to bargain for Imogen’s life would be pointless. And Thalia would be physically very powerful; not only had she the gun and the hunchback, she had madness on her side as well.
But Dan was blowed if he was going to sit meekly here and let Thalia kill Imogen in some mad ritual, the climax of which was intended to give Edmund Caudle back his life. He would get Imogen free if he died in the attempt – he was probably scheduled to die shortly anyway.
When Thalia finally waved Harris back from the table, Dan saw that the hunchback went back to the corner on the other side of the kiln. Thalia was at the table, facing the room, her gaze unfocused, her lips moving silently, as if she was praying. Dan’s heart leapt with hope. The kilns had been partly built into the whole back wall of the studio, but the front portion of the one fired tonight jutted out by a couple of feet; Harris, on the far side, was for the moment out of his line of sight. But was he out of Harris’s? Was it possible that he could inch along the wall towards the kiln and not be seen? It was worth a try.
Harris had not tied Dan’s hands behind his back, as he had Imogen’s; he had tied them in front, probably because it was quicker. It would make an attack easier. Dan had not quite sunk down to the floor after Harris had tied him up; he had remained in a half-kneeling position, resting lightly on his heels and facing the room, thinking it would be easier to spring upright if any chance presented itself. He stayed in the same position now and, keeping his eyes on Thalia, began to move towards the kiln in a kind of sideways crawl. If Thalia looked round or Harris scuttled out from the other side of the kiln, Dan was ready to freeze into immobility. But neither of them looked in his direction, and by dint of moving slowly and tortuously, Dan was eventually up against the jutting side wall of the furnace. It cast deep shadows on each side, and only a thread of scarlet showed round the rim of the door, but heat pulsated outwards. Dan was relying on being able to get level with the edge of the door and reach the handle of the iron locking spline and twist it free. The door was about four feet across, and the iron key was a little longer. Four and a half feet? If he could wrench it free it would make a good weapon.
His skin was already flinching from the heat, but he had seen instantly that this was a potter’s studio and he was working on the assumption that a furnace used as a kiln would need to be opened easily and frequently. It was not unreasonable to hope that the handle of the spline would be cool enough to grasp.
Thalia spun round at once, with a little hissing sound of anger, and Harris came darting out of the shadows and launched himself straight at Dan. Dan was holding the spline a bit awkwardly, but he had a firm grip on it, and as Harris came towards him, he swung his bound hands as far to the left as possible and brought the iron shaft hissing across the air at waist level in a scything movement. The heavy iron slammed into the hunchback’s spine and Dan actually felt the sickening crunch of bone as the iron connected. Harris let out a yelping grunt and half fell to the ground, rolling in agony.
Imogen had not waited for the blow to connect. The instant Dan moved, she brought her knees up to her chest and kicked out hard against Edmund’s body. It yielded at once, slithering to the edge of the table, and then fell to the ground with a soft, squelching thud. Thalia screamed and lunged towards it, unheeding of anything else, and crouched over her son.
Imogen rolled off the table and landed heavily, several of the knives and what sounded like the gun clattering after her. Her hands were still tied behind her back, but she rolled over a bit more and by dint of twisting and slithering managed to get one of the knives between her hands. Dan crawled towards her and took the knife.
‘Turn round.’ There was the feel of the knife slicing through the scarf, and then Imogen’s hands were blessedly free. She grabbed the knife back and sliced the twine round Dan’s hands. Dan was just freeing his ankles and Imogen’s, when they both looked up involuntarily. The sounds they had both thought they heard earlier were there again.
This time there was no doubting them. This time Thalia and Harris heard them too. Whispering. And huge, heavy footsteps. Ice and fire formed lumps in Imogen’s stomach, and memory skittered backwards. Giantish creatures that lumbered through the night, whispering as they came . . . She looked across to the door and let out a gasp of horror.
Peering through the small, multi-paned windows on each side of the door were the brutish creatures from Thornacre.
Chapter Thirty-seven
The four people in the old coach house – Dan and Imogen, Thalia cradling Edmund’s head in her lap, Snatcher Harris squirming on the floor – all froze, staring at the window.
With the glow of the candle flames flickering across them and the dark trees of October House’s grounds as a backdrop, the acromegalics looked like creatures out of the time-foxed pages of Middle European fairy stories; they were the beings who walked through every dark legend and every macabre folk tale ever whispered before a chimney corner or told around a roaring fire with the doors double-locked against the night. They were terrible and pitiable; they had no place in the twentieth-century world, no place in any world other than that of nightmares.
The whispering came clearly through the night.
‘This-s-s is-s-s the way, my dears-s-s.’
‘This-s-s is-s-s where the hunchback s-s-showed us-s-s.’
Harris was lying on the floor, still grunting in pain, but at the sound of the whisperings, a curious blend of fear and sly triumph showed on his face for a second. Imogen had just time to think: he brought them here! Somehow he showed them how to get here and told them to break in. How did he do that? The whispering voices said, ‘Through the door, my dear-s-s. This-s-s is-s-s the door he s-s-said . . .’
The studio door was dealt a heavy blow from the other side.
Imogen saw Thalia lift her ravaged face from Edmund and stare at the door. For the first time, real fear showed on her face.
The creatures were pounding on the door, and against her will Imogen remembered how, a million years ago in Thornacre, they had hissed to one another about smelling the scent of a girl. She shivered and shrank back into the corner of the studio, gripping the knife in her right hand as if it was a talisman that could banish the intruders to whatever dark subterranean twilight they had emerged from.
The door was quivering under the repeated blows. Dan remembered how Thalia had directed the hunchback to lock it, but he thought the lock would never hold against such an onslaught.
It did not hold. It snapped suddenly, with a sharp metallic sound, shocking in the listening silence, and the door burst open and flew back against the wall with a deafening crash. In the same instant, jarred by the impact and freed of its locking iron spline, the kiln door swung wide, and scorching heat belched outwards.
Thalia was the first to move, darting forward to the door like an eel. Imogen drew breath to shout, ‘No!’ but the giants barred Thalia’s way, their great hands reaching out. They began to back her into a corner of the studio, greed in their brutish faces.
‘A hos-s-tage for us-s-s!’
‘Take the hos-s-tage!’
‘Back to Thornacre with her!’
Thalia was standing against the far wall, the pulsating light of the furnace showering over her, so that for a moment it looked as if she was wearing a rippling crimson mantle of fire and blood and heat. Imogen blinked and shuddered and the image vanished.
Harris was lying where he had fallen, but at the giants’ approach, he squirmed nearer to the furnace door, one hand flailing desperately for the iron key.
‘I think his back’s broken,’ said Dan softly as he and Imogen shrank back into the shadows, trying to see their chance to reach the door. And despite himself, he added, ‘Poor sod. God Almighty, he’s trying to close the kiln door. He’ll never do it.’
‘He’s not trying to close it, he’s trying to reach the iron thing you used on him,’ said Imogen.
Harris was hauling himself to a standing position by means of the furnace wall, using it for support. He dragged himself almost upright, so agonisingly slowly that despite herself Imogen suddenly wanted to run across the room and help him. At her side, Dan said shortly, ‘Don’t do it, Imogen. Just try to reach the door without those things turning their attention to us.’
‘Dan – how did they get here?’
‘God knows. We can’t think about it yet. Concentrate on getting out.’
‘What happens if they turn on us?’
‘I’ve got the gun,’ said Dan.
Thalia had backed up against the wall, alongside the yawning furnace, her palms pressed against the wall, her eyes darting to and fro seeking a way of escape. And then her eyes fell on Harris, still struggling to reach the iron key. His fingers were within inches of it as Thalia pounced, snatching it up and thrusting the thick key end deep into the glowing heart of the kiln. She’s heating up a weapon to use on them, thought Imogen in horror. She looked unwillingly back at the acromegalics, and for the first time saw the rather childlike expressions.
Thalia was pointing at the helpless Harris.
‘If you want a hostage take that creature!’ she cried, her face white but her eyes blazing with madness. ‘Take him! Do whatever you want with him! And then,’ said Thalia slyly, ‘I’ll help you to get free!’
There was a sudden silence, and Imogen held her breath. The giants hesitated, and turned to look at Harris. They’re trying to understand, thought Imogen. I don’t believe they’re evil at all; they’re bewildered and they don’t fully understand what’s happening.
Thalia moved forward until she was standing over the crouching hunchback. ‘You failed me,’ she said, staring down at him, speaking as if no one else was in the room with them. ‘You failed me, you miserable worm, and now you’ve betrayed me as well. You brought these monsters here, didn’t you? Why? To have more repulsive mutants on your side? To ruin my plans? Did you show them the tunnel under the road? Did you tell them my secrets?’ Her eyes narrowed to glittering slits, and her hands curved into claws. ‘For that – for all of that – you must be punished,’ she said, on a soft hissing note.
Harris’s face was twisted and almost unrecognisable with fear and pain, a
nd he was holding up both his hands as if to ward off an attack. He shook his head wildly back and forth and a stream of unintelligible grunting sounds issued from his mouth.
As the giants stood irresolute, Thalia moved again, taking up a stance near the open kiln, silhouetted blackly against the glowing interior. She pointed again to the hunchback. ‘He’s a traitor! He brought you here to trap you!’
The heavy dull-eyed faces turned to the squirming figure half on the ground, half clinging to the side of the kiln.
‘Traitor!’
‘Brought us-s-s here to trap us-s-s.’
‘The Lady s-s-said s-s-so.’
‘But he pretended we would be his allies-s-s, s-s-showed a picture of this-s-s hous-s-se where we would live. A nic-c-ce hous-s-se . . .’
‘But he tricked us-s-s-s . . .’
Harris, stark terror in his face, began to drag himself across the floor in a last desperate attempt to escape. As the giants circled about him, he tried to draw himself up, holding out his hands in a gesture of dumb entreaty. Imogen gasped and bit her lip in sudden unwanted sympathy. He was trying to stand and he couldn’t. It was gut-wrenchingly pitiful.
Harris staggered backwards against the open kiln and let out a scream of agony as his shoulders and the upper part of his damaged back fell against the burning iron surface. Thalia darted forward, between the acromegalics, and pushed him hard. He clutched at her hands, vainly fighting her off. The two figures struggled together for a moment, and Thalia screamed, ‘Traitor! You brought them here! You intended to ruin my plans! You intended to stop me from reaching Edmund.’ And then, on a terrible note, ‘Edmund!’
The lumpish, squat figure of the hunchback tumbled backwards straight into the open furnace. The flames leapt at once, like hungry mouths, like greedy tongues, and for the count of half a dozen heartbeats Dan and Imogen both saw the blazing, burning shape still moving inside the furnace.
