by Jack Lewis
After all, what was the alternative? That he, Jay, and Mag all die? That he let this house, this family, and the blackness of its past take them just as it had their father, their grandfather, and a multitude of Harrow ancestors stretching all the way back to when their family was first cursed?
Three lives for one. If the cosmos had a scale on which to balance things on, it would have no choice but to side with him.
Jay and Mag wouldn’t see it that way at first. They’d think he was ill again. They start to get a strange look in their eyes when they listened to him, and then they’d go away and whisper together.
He’d have to convince them that he was okay and that he wasn’t sick again. The best way to start that was by not turning up looking like a butcher.
He spat on his hand and rubbed as much as the stain away as he could, but the crutch was covered in the stuff. He abandoned it, then gripped the handrail and carefully, agonizingly, pulled himself up the stairs.
At the top of them, he paused. He took a deep breath, feeling like an actor stepping into character, and then he left the basement.
As he walked through the corridor that led back to the living room, Alt spotted something. It was a cane. Wooden, varnished, with exquisite carvings running in a spiral from tip to base. Now he could walk better, supporting his wounded leg with his new cane.
It was one that he recognized, one that their father had prized. “This belonged to your great-great-grandfather, Alt,” father had said when Altair was very young.
Now it belonged to him, and it felt as comfortable in his hand as if it had been made especially for him. Altair liked the click-clack-click-clack it made as he hobbled through the house.
Soon he was sitting on a chair, while Mag tended to his hand, still covered in blood. She applied a kitchen towel soaked in cold water and gently dabbed at his skin. He winced.
“And you fell?”
“Yes, I’m a clumsy git. It’s my bloody leg, it gave way under me. It isn’t too bad though, honestly. Loe helped me up the stairs, but I was fine when I found the cane.”
She dabbed at his hand again, and then a thought hit him. She’ll see that it isn’t my blood.
He pulled his hand away from her.
“Sorry,” she said. “Is it sore?”
“It’s just cold.”
“Where’s Loe, anyway?”
He had to tell them something that they would believe. He had to tell it in a way that would make them forget about his past, about his old problems, and just focus on what he was saying.
With the book, he should have proof of everything, but he’d start slow. Drip feed them the truth.
Jay came back from the kitchen, holding a bottle of half-empty rum in his hand. He twisted the cap off and threw it across the room, took a big swig, wincing as if it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever tasted.
“Just what the hell happened down there, Alt? What’s Loe doing? Why hasn’t she come back up?”
Altair was struck by the fact that when something unexpected happens, people ask the most ridiculous questions.
“Sit down a second.”
“I better check on Loe,” said Mag.
Altair grabbed her wrist, hard, and the force yanked her back a step. She punched him on the arm.
“What the hell?”
“Sorry! Just listen to me. Loe wanted some time alone.”
“Down there?”
“This is all new to her. The manor, meeting us. I think she feels a little overwhelmed.”
“So, go take a nap. Take a walk. It’s not like we don’t have outdoor space. Who the hell would want to stay down there?”
“She said it was peaceful. If you ask me, Loe seems a little…odd,” said Altair.
Jay laughed. “If she’s odd to you, then she’d got problems.” Then he immediately regretted his choice of words. “Sorry, Alt.”
“Forget it. Listen, there’s something I need to tell you. Something that I have to show you.”
Both of them stared at him. Jay took another swig of rum and winced again, though his winces were becoming shorter and shorter with each drink as he got used to the spirit.
“Well?” said Mag.
Altair sighed. He gripped the book in his hand, feeling simultaneously tense enough that he could snap, and so nervous he could turn to wax and melt into the sofa.
“You know about Dad…about what he did.”
“Get to the point, Alt.”
“It doesn’t stop with him. It didn’t start with him, I mean. You better sit down.”
*
When Loe first woke up, she felt nothing. Then her senses came back, and she felt the cold stone against her cheek. She smelled dust, dirt, blood. Her head stung like she’d been attacked by a nest of hornets.
She put her hand against the floor and gritted through the pain that sprang in her wrist, and she pushed herself up. For a moment, she remembered nothing. She didn’t know where she was, why she was there, why she was in darkness.
Then the images came back to her. Altair hitting her with his crutch again and again. With each new memory, the accompanying pain intensified. With every hit, her scalp stung even more. She remembered lifting her arm to protect her head. Altair’s crutch smashing into her forearm. Then darkness and silence.
Pain sprang in her head and her wrist, and she tasted blood on her tongue. God, she felt sick.
She put her head down and heaved. Her heaves sounded louder than they should in the darkness, and they echoed in a way that made her know she was in a tiny space. Somewhere dark and enclosed.
Oh no! God, no.
She was locked in the cell!
Now the dread really set in, and she began to breathe quicker.
The darkness was thicker than anything she’d ever experienced. Darker than the forest outside the hall, worse than anything she could ever imagine, like being alone in the deepest, remotest depths of the ocean with no life around her, no hint of people, of the world she’d once known. A darkness that seemed to suck away all her hope and replace it with coils of fear that tightened around her chest, smothering her lungs.
With panic ripping through her, she scrambled back until her spine hit the wall. When she put her hands down, she felt dust on her fingertips. This meant she was sitting against the wall where she’d found the book, which in turn meant that the door was opposite her. On the walls on either side would be the metal fixings, and attached to them were the chains.
Oh, hell. Trapped in the cell. Alone.
Or worse…not alone.
A slither of dread crept through her, starting in her stomach and writhing through her body until she felt icy all over.
She remembered the painting now. The girl facing away from the frame, with her long, stringy hair, her dirty dress, the handcuffs biting into her wrists, chains spreading her arms apart as if she was being crucified.
And now a presence awoke inside Loe. One that she knew all too well. One that she’d done so well in keeping in check, even with everything that had happened so far.
Him. He was awake.
Don’t think about Clive. Don’t think about the girl. Ignore the darkness. It’s just as dark when I close my eyes, and closing my eyes is a normal thing. So why should this darkness be any different?
They were logical thoughts, but that was the problem with logic - if she’d gotten to the point that Clive was waking, then logic was already useless. Like spraying an extinguisher after a fire has already devoured a building and left it as a smoldering carcass of cinders and brick.
Her throat tightened. Her breaths were shallow, as though the air was struggling to find a safe route into her lungs, as if her own throat was trying to suffocate her. Her veins pulsed. Thump-thump-thump over and over again, picking up speed each time.
Not even the deepest of breaths could help her. No amount of repeating her focusing mantras slowed down the beast stirring in her mind.
It was too late. Clive was awake, and soon she’d b
e a prisoner to him.
All that good work…months of doing her exercises and meditations to keep him under control….
A chain rattled.
This time, Loe knew she hadn’t moved. Metal clanked on the stone in front of her. Noises in the darkness made not by her, but someone else.
Something else.
Then she could feel a presence in the room, sharing that tiny cell with her.
In the same way that a person can feel a hand getting closer to their face even with their eyes shut, Loe could feel this thing in front of her. The darkness was too thick to make anything out, but she sensed the figure getting to their knees.
She sensed them crawling toward her.
The girl.
She felt their face in front of hers. Getting closer.
Leaning toward her.
Loe’s mind raced so fast that her thoughts swam in time with the thump-thump-thump of her pulse. She felt confused, weak. Her stomach empty, her blood cold, her breaths shallower and shallower.
The moment was now. The only chance she’d have.
She either fought through it right now, or she passed out.
The figure, its face inches from hers, stared at her. She couldn’t see it, but she could sense it, on its knees, leering at her from across four inches of darkness.
Thump-thump-thump.
She felt her consciousness begin to slip…
No.
No!
She fought back, forcing her own will to resurface, to take control of her mind.
Getting to her feet, she felt the presence shrink back, as though it was surprised at her sudden movement.
She edged around it, hearing chains rattle as she stepped on them. Feeling the door from top to bottom, she searched for something. Anything. A mechanism that might unlock it, a bolt, perhaps, a latch, anything.
Metal clattered behind her. The presence was on its feet now.
She was on her feet, standing behind Loe. Reaching out…
Loe felt something hit her palm, something protruding from the door. Only slightly, but it was there. It only stuck out enough for her to grip it with her fingertips, but she pulled it. A dozen locks clicked, one after another until the final one released and Loe pushed on the door. It swung open, revealing a tunnel beyond her.
It was the tunnel that led out of the basement. Still dark, but a softer kind of darkness, complexly unlike that of the cell. One that was kind enough to let her eyes adjust to it even if only a little.
She sprinted out of the room, her footsteps echoing against every wall, bouncing around above her, to her side, behind her. Only when she reached the end of the tunnel did her adrenaline begin to leave her, and her aches came back.
The throbbing of her head in three places. A pit of nausea in her stomach.
She lost her footing, colliding into the wall. Her skull pains redoubled, throbbing all over her head as hotspots of agony. Taking deep, ragged breaths, she became aware of how wet her face was, and she wiped her forehead and pulled away her hand, seeing her fingertips stained with a mixture of sweat and the blood that had trickled from her wounds.
There, sitting back against the wall, she glanced back down the tunnel. The cell was all the way on the other side, the vine door half open.
A figure was inside it. Submerged in the darkness of the cell, but not leaving it. Not following her. Not coming after her. Instead, just watching her.
Loe glanced at the top of the stairs, where the door to Harrow Hall waited. Where Altair might be waiting.
Then she glanced at the cell again, where the presence was content to watch her.
The steps were her only way out of here, but the door at the summit of them led back into the upper level of Harrow Hall. Altair would be there. Jay and Mag were part of this too. Loe didn’t know that for a fact, but it seemed only sensible that she assumed it was true. She couldn’t go back.
In her current woozy state, she couldn’t overpower them. Even if she managed to sneak through the house and get by them unseen, what then? She’d have miles and miles of inescapable forest to deal with. No, the stairs and the doors didn’t offer a way out.
She had no options. Nothing. Nobody to help her.
Even as she thought that, she couldn’t help looking at the cell. At the figure crouching in the darkness. A presence she couldn’t see, not properly, but one that she could still sense strongly.
If the presence meant her harm, surely it wouldn’t just stand there? If it didn’t mean her any harm, then maybe it had opposite intentions.
Could it help her?
What choice did she have?
The people in Harrow Hall were flesh and blood, yet she knew they wanted to harm her. Whereas this presence, whatever it was, had unknown intentions.
Better taking a half-chance of getting help, than running willingly into certain danger.
Cautiously, Loe walked back down the corridor, toward the cell.
*
“That’s everything,” said Altair. “Everything that I could piece together, anyway.”
He felt beyond relieved to have finally told Jay and Mag what he knew. What he’d researched all these years, everything he’d learned. The things that the book, after flicking through it, seemed to confirm.
Was his relief born from the book backing him up? Or was it because he could finally share his burden with his brothers and sisters?
After all, it was their burden too. The curse didn’t wrap its fingers around one Harrow but completely miss another. As the surviving Harrow children, the burden was theirs.
So, Altair had told his brother and sister everything he’d discovered before coming here, the things he’d been scared to divulge until he knew he was right, lest they think something was wrong with him again. That his illness was coming back.
While Jay sipped from a bottle and Mag folded her arms and glared at him, Altair told them the truth about their father. About why he’d banished them from Harrow Hall. About why few generations of the Harrow family had ever lived in the hall together at the same time. About how all the little accidents and misfortunes that had resulted in their ancestors’ deaths over the years weren’t so accidental at all.
Out it all came, in drips at first, but soon becoming a tide of water rushing over a broken dam, unstoppable. All these things he’d uncovered, theories he’d constructed from scant evidence, truths he’d had to keep to himself until he was certain they stood up to scrutiny.
Ah, this felt good.
His relief was short-lived. It soon turned to a feeling of moths dancing in his stomach, because what if he hadn’t done enough? Hadn’t said enough? What if he hadn’t convinced them?
If they didn’t believe him, if they thought he was sick again…
If they went into the cellar and saw Loe and what he’d been forced to do to her for all their sakes…
But it was too late now. He’d told Jay and Mag everything, and now he had to wait to see what they thought. To bear this silence while both of them digested everything. To withstand the little looks they were giving each other. Little flicks of the eyes that said everything and nothing.
“You should have told us before now, Alt,” said Jay.
Alt stared at his younger brother. He couldn’t see any doubt in Jay’s face. He believed him! Jay didn’t think Altair was ill again, he believed him!
“I wanted to, but I was worried,” said Alt, overjoyed.
“Well, you should have come to us, and trusted us with it. We would have gotten you help.”
“Gotten me help?”
Mag put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay to admit when things get too much, Alt. Remember? Keeping everything in, you know what it leads to…”
Altair shrugged her off. He got to his feet with such an explosive motion that his leg screamed with pain, and he stumbled, only just putting his weight against the cane to steady himself.
Mag reached for him.
“Get away from me!” He spun around
, brandishing the cane like a sword and swinging it this way and that. His anger was so intense that it smothered his leg pain. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me!”
He swung his cane again and again, lashing at everything and nothing. He hobbled across the room, still thrashing, a red mist fogging his thoughts. Mag and Jay backed away, clearly worried, but he didn’t care. His anger was red hot, flashing in his eyes like burning magnesium.
He lashed out with his cane and heard glass smashing. He limped across the room, lashing again, smashing more glass. He crossed the room yet again, this time hearing glass crunching under his feet, and he broke something else, he didn’t know what. A cabinet window? A bottle? A vase? He didn’t know, didn’t care.
All he knew was that when he turned around, Mag and Jay had backed far, far away from him, as though he was a monster. He stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
It was only then, in the hallway with Harrow Hall’s front door ahead of him, that he stopped. He stood there, alone. He brushed glass off his shoulder. He took deep breaths, and he listened, and he heard voices beyond the door.
“Did you believe any of that shit?” said Mag.
“I’d have to be a hell of a lot drunker for that.”
“I just…” said Mag. Altair heard the way her voice trembled, but he didn’t care. Not even a rare display of emotion from Mag could get through to him now. “All that stuff. About curses passing through our family. From Dad to us. From Granddad to Dad.”
“Don’t give it a second’s thought, Mags. You know what it is.”
“I thought he was better? I mean, I know we haven’t kept in touch, but I spoke to him every so often. You know? He didn’t mention getting sick again.”
“He was always good at hiding it. Maybe we were, too. We wanted him to be better. To be our big brother. So we ignored it, too.”
“Part of me wonders,” said Mag. “About Dad hanging himself. About granddad, and the…”
“Grandad fell off the roof. He took his stupid arse up there to fix some slates, and he fell and snapped his neck. Mum told us. Come on, Mags.”
