by Gary Fry
“Madness,” Anthony said, because he believed that such crazy notions were better off outside than held within.
And that was when he noticed what he’d been looking for.
Maybe he’d overreacted, he thought while stooping towards a ragged hole in the original wall. This was the size of a crouching boy or girl and presumably led to a tunnel he knew must be the second way into the cellar. Perhaps the chairs had been intended for some other purpose, and a morbid villager with a fertile imagination had embroidered this innocent scene into something horrific. If the room was accessible from the moors, anyone could have come here and contributed their ghoulish tale to the specious pool of gossip that attended any locality.
Anthony offered such notions free reign; the alternative was too awful to contemplate.
Then, just beyond the hole in the wall, he spotted a wooden box.
The scent from the chute stretching away into shadow was stagnant like unclean water. The passage must lead to the lakeside and the Yorkshire Dales; he couldn’t be mistaken about that.
But about everything else he’d located since arriving in the house today, he realised this was all he had been.
The footprints had grown more frenzied here, and none bore the conventional shape of a shoe. Innumerable people had cavorted in the tunnel, as if they lived here and might return at any moment.
But this wasn’t the worst of Anthony’s latest discovery—nowhere near.
He stooped to examine the contents of the wooden container on the floor. It was a solid box, built to last, but rot had nibbled its corners in a way redolent of savage rats.
But the objects inside were more terrifying than mere rodents.
Anthony placed one foot to each side of the box, cringing as water subsumed his ankles. He stared at each for long seconds, as if the image should mean something…but then returned his gaze to the things in the box, each writhing in his failing light.
There were about forty of them, all piled up in a sepulchral stack.
He was looking at bones.
Small human bones.
Bones that, possibly over a hundred years ago, had formed delicately jointed children’s thumbs.
PART THREE: THE RECKONING
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Carl! Carl?”
He might be hiding. In which case, Melanie was keen to encourage his sense of fun.
Life had been difficult lately—Anthony adjusting to the loss of his parents, and the knock-on effect this had had on his family—but except for a few normal problems, things would surely work out well.
She moved along the hall passage for the spare bedroom, tiptoeing to prevent her approach from being heard. She’d called Carl twice and he’d failed to reply, and so she assumed he was either engrossed in his science kit or had concealed himself somewhere—under a bed, maybe, or inside a wardrobe—before leaping out to scare her. Kids often dealt with fear in this way, she’d realised years ago. They identified with the aggressor, pretended to be monsters, and drew on other intuitive strategies. Anthony hadn’t taught her such basic psychology; she’d experienced it directly or seen it dramatised in novels.
After reaching the spare room, she pushed open the door, letting its hinges squeak. There was no immediate response, and when she poked her head around the door frame, her smile faltered, becoming a thin line of confusion.
This was odd. Nothing was on the bed. Surely if her son had opened his new toy, he’d have done it here. Perhaps he was on the floor, nearer the window. Melanie hurried forwards, a little more urgently, her hands flapping at her sides.
He wasn’t there either.
The room was empty.
She returned to her original notion, turning for the wardrobe in which she’d found her late in-laws’ wallet and purse several days ago. The recollection stepped up her anxiety, but surely this could be alleviated by tugging open the doors and glancing inside.
She did so and started speaking to marshal her mood. “I’m coming to get you, Carl! I’m big and I’m hungry and I really like…”
Darkness from inside the wardrobe clotted her vision. And when she finished her playful threat, she wished she hadn’t bothered.
“…boy meat!”
There was nothing inside the wardrobe other than unfashionable clothing that reminded her of the past and the PhD funding proposal she was working on. But what did that matter now?
Her son was gone…but where?
Panic overruling reason, she hurried back the way she’d come.
“Carl?” she yelled, and then repeated it with even more volume: “Carl!”
No answer.
“Hey, this is not funny!” That was how she sometimes talked to Anthony, whenever he’d slipped into academic preoccupations and neglected household chores or failed to listen to what his family had to say. “Carl! I’m warning you!”
But still there was nothing. Even Lucy had failed to come bounding from master bedroom, whose door was slightly ajar. Surely the dog wasn’t too scared to emerge—what was there to be frightened of?
Melanie thrust aside these questions and realised the dog must be asleep. Then she recalled forgetting to look under the spare room’s bed. She turned, rushed back to her son’s temporary lodgings, and dropped to her knees.
“Right, that’s enough, my lad! Come out of there at once! You’re…you’re worrying me now.”
She looked under the bed.
He wasn’t there either.
Close to the carpet, however, she noticed tiny threads of fur caught in its pile. Was Lucy molting? But these strands looked darker than the dog’s silvery coat. They also led in a shaggy row towards what Melanie had first ransacked, the place she’d thought most likely to contain her son. The choice had been intuitive; the Narnia book on the table beside Carl’s crumpled pillows had reinforced her hunch. But he wasn’t in the wardrobe. He wasn’t under the bed either.
So where was he?
Melanie started to panic. She got up and hurried along the hallway for the property’s front door. Only the other day, Carl had snuck out to meet his friend in the street, hadn’t he? Now recalling the boy her son had called Suman, and the trouble caused by this little sod, increased Melanie’s concern. She let herself outside.
The grove was deserted; she could see almost all of it from the cold front step. Leaving the door open, she went back into the bungalow and plucked the cordless telephone from its plastic base in the lounge. After heading back outside, something hollered out on the moors. The sky had got dark early today, great clouds stacked like blundering forces, promising rain or possibly worse.
She dialed 999. Derek Gardiner—yes, that was the name of the man who’d visited the other day, who’d filled Anthony’s head with more thoughts than were good for him. Oh, why wasn’t her husband here now?
“Carl!” she yelled, as the line began pulsing.
The vast, barren countryside responded only with a faint echo. But then she received a real reply, both on the phone and along the pavement she’d reached. Anthony was running towards her and a voice had come on the line.
“What service do you require?” said the female telephonist, and when Melanie explained, she addressed both listeners, wondering if either could help.
TWENTY-NINE
It was all true—he had to accept that, hadn’t he?
After exiting The Conjurer’s House, Anthony remained unclear how the knowledge he’d accrued fitted together in a coherent narrative. Part of him suspected that his startled mind was reluctant to bind it into a terrifying whole. All he knew, while running along the grove towards his parents’ home, was that he must get his wife and son out of the village as soon as possible. He might return alone later, to see what he could do to put Deepvale’s murky past to rest. But after what he’d learned about how Peter Suman had used children to conduct his mad experiments, he must first make sure Carl was safe.
Reaching the pavement, Anthony saw Melanie standing at the end of his late parents’ g
arden path, a cordless telephone clutched in one trembling hand and barking words into the mouthpiece. The sight caused pain to grip his chest.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he called, sensing a few neighbours standing at their windows, presumably responding to his wife’s shrill voice on the phone. But she’d stopped talking now, had terminated the connection, and was glaring at him.
“He’s gone,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “Our son has gone!”
They heard a noise way above them and simultaneously looked up. It had surely been only the wind scudding off the moors, setting a conspiracy of dark clouds in motion, like animals jockeying for position before stalking prey. This rumbling mass heralded an early evening at this time of the year; eerie shadow suffused the area, as if the night was eager to visit and maybe not only that…
Anthony returned his attention to his wife. “What do you mean gone? I…I don’t understand.”
Perhaps he understood all too well, but he must keep from Melanie all the facts he’d learned for as long as possible.
“The…police are…on their way,” she replied, her voice broken by emotion as well as the inclement weather conditions. Then she stared at him severely. “Ant, this is no time to be secretive. What’s going on? Tell me!”
Her truncated use of his forename only made him feel more insignificant. A shape scuttled in the gloomy distance, across the hills behind the housing on the far side of the grove. But it was just a tree waving its limbs amid others as a wind assaulted their limbs.
This brought back a mental image of the severed thumbs he’d seen in the building at the junction. He shouldn’t mention these to Melanie, should he? Surely he wouldn’t have to return there to find Carl…But then Anthony realised this was exactly where he must go. They all must, his three friends inclusive: Paul, Lisa and Andy—the artists he’d summoned for a greater reason than he’d suspected.
The notion remained nebulous, but unfinished business involving his younger brother and the evil former occupant of that property proved impossible to ignore. It all sounded crazy, but he couldn’t deny the thought: Peter Suman wants all four of us, just as he had fifteen years ago…
Several doors had opened in the grove and people emerged from their homes. Anthony remained unable to respond to his wife’s questions, mainly because he was suppressing the unthinkable implications of time collapsing, of achieving a God’s-eye view…But that was nonsense. For the first time in his life, however, what he felt in his heart overruled what he knew in his mind. He realised that it was all true and that something terrible was about to occur…unless he did something about it.
A police car arrived, providing Melanie with something positive to focus on. She pushed past Anthony, her disappointment apparent in her body language. Once the panda was parked at the curb, Derek Gardiner climbed out, slotted on his hat and then raised both hands in a paternal gesture: Okay, let’s all be calm and establish a few facts.
Anthony doubted his wife would be willing to be so levelheaded. This arose from her artistic temperament, a characteristic leading to passionate engagement in life. But when situations required a more rational approach, he believed such an attitude could serve as a hindrance. Although his son had gone missing from his late parents’ home, Anthony maintained clarity of thought, a cool reason. And he agreed with everything the policeman said in response to Melanie’s frantic demands.
“I do appreciate your concern, Mrs. Mallinson. But please let’s think for a moment. There’s almost certainly a sensible explanation for the boy’s absence.” But that was when Derek lost Anthony’s support. “Has he made any friends lately? Could he have visited any other children in the area?”
A few more people had joined them on the pavement, illuminated by a moon that had made a premature appearance in a sky as dark as dreadful deeds. Paul was there, along with Lisa, and, at the rear of the gathering crowd, Andy stood with misery palpable in his bearing. Each of their parents looked on apprehensively. The older folk surely wouldn’t want their only offspring involved in whatever malice had again befallen their neighbourhood.
Anthony knew he had to figure out what was going on. His son was involved. There was little time to waste.
He approached his childhood friends and said loudly enough for all to hear: “We have to go inside that house, guys. The one we didn’t dare enter when…my brother vanished so many years ago. That’s where we’ll find Carl; I simply know it. Will you…help me?”
“What are you saying?” Melanie looked aghast. “What aren’t you speaking to me about this?”
“Mel, please. Go back in the house. Let me…I mean, let us deal with this. Only we can.”
This comment upset her even more. “But he’s my son. It’s me who needs to do something. And not these…people.”
Paul, Lisa and Andy appeared embarrassed, fearful and sympathetic.
“I think your wife is right, Ant,” said Lisa, perhaps drawing her conclusion from all the books she’d written about life.
“That’s because you’re scared,” Anthony replied, his voice forceful. “I can understand that. I’m scared myself. But we’re all involved—everyone who was present back then. You all know that…don’t you?”
Paul and Andy bowed their heads, the pressure they’d suffered from the demands of creativity inscribed in their faces. It was as if they were reluctant to confront whatever had haunted them since that dreadful day, something that had informed their respective efforts in music and painting.
These notions came at Anthony like wild beasts, reminding him of his dreams lately. Everything he’d begun to suspect failed to coalesce, but he knew he could trust intuition. Maybe it was impossible to draw together such nebulous knowledge; perhaps all one could ever attain were vague impressions to tease into an inadequate order…
But now he felt as if he was losing control of the episode.
That was when the policeman stepped in, however.
“Hey, listen up, folks. Everybody is understandably upset at the moment. So allow me to draw on my experience.” He hesitated, flinching from a breeze that nearly knocked off his cap, and then continued. “In cases such as these, it’s standard practice to organise a search party. There’s no need to panic. The boy might have just taken a walk to the village shops. We know what kids are like. Hell, we were all that age once.”
That’s almost too discomforting to acknowledge, Anthony thought, but conformed at once to the chorus of agreement from the gathering massed around him. The more he could waylay anyone who might interfere with what he and his friends must do, the better.
“I agree,” said Mrs. Jenkins, looking directly at Anthony. “Let’s hunt the moors. Your son’s probably out there searching for…for…”
She was unable to finish, but her sentiment was nonetheless encouraging. Even Melanie, despite a tearful anger, endorsed the older woman’s proposal.
“Okay, that’s a…good idea,” she said with sudden resolution. “I’ll do what Mr. Gardiner suggested. Carl might have returned to the shops. He found it hard to decide between the science kit we bought him and a toy farm earlier. He might have gone back to change it. The box wasn’t in the house when I looked.”
None of these comments made Anthony feel comfortable, but he knew the proposals would free him up for the task he had to complete. He turned to his three childhood friends, expressing his intentions without words, but with a fixed gaze to which each eventually succumbed. He nodded in gratitude and then looked back at his wife.
She was crying, but in her unsteady gaze, he detected a glimmer, which, after eight years of marriage, he knew implied trust—apprehensive trust, yet trust all the same. He thanked her with a tenuous hug.
“I wish you’d stay here,” he said, holding her by the shoulders. “I know how hard it must be, but I wish you’d go back in the house and let me…let us sort this out.”
“What do you mean, Anthony? I…I still don’t understand.”
She was trying to
get information from him, but the truth was he hardly knew where to begin. Time was slipping by and he must act immediately by moving on. He turned to face Derek Gardiner. “Can you contact more people in the village—tell them what’s happening? And ask them to keep out an eye for my son and wife?”
“No problem, Ant,” the policeman replied, ducking for his car radio. “I’ll call the vicar…oh, no, perhaps not. Maybe a few local gossips might be more useful. They’ll get word around and no mistake. Rest assured, we’ll have your boy back safely at home in no time.”
Was Derek tacitly supporting what Anthony intended to do? As a lifelong resident of Deepvale, did he understand something others didn’t?
It was too confusing to figure out, but Anthony realised he could no longer postpone his return to The Conjurer’s House. He gazed at the property…and it gazed back, with implacable indifference.
It was time to put an end to the horror, and he hoped he wasn’t too late.
THIRTY
Time seemed to have stood still for ages, but then felt as if it was rushing by.
After the frenzy of his abduction, Carl had been placed in a dark chamber bigger than his grandparents’ wardrobe, but featureless. The walls looked as if they were made of fur—he was sure of this. Although he hadn’t dared approach them, he’d spotted in the gloom an uneven surface, as if the material that should be brick was hair. His fear grew whenever he stirred from one corner and the walls moved, as if in hatred of him.
The walls surely weren’t composed of children like himself, forming a square to keep him trapped like an insect in a web…were they?
This was a horrible image and he tried suppressing it. But then a door opened, or one of the fuzzy figures stepped aside, to allow a person to enter, mercifully whole and boasting natural flesh. Carl was put in mind of the terrible creature that had snatched him from his grandparents’ house, its skin shredding off like meat from a chicken’s carcass. But he tried eliminating this thought, too, as a boy stooped in front of him.
