by Paul Hazel
there was anything,” he said, “before we had even started to
notice, what already would not let us go.” His little gray eyes
stared without blinking. “Each of us,” he said carefully, “not
just the two of you.”
The Duke frowned stubbornly. He was about to speak.
“No,” Holmes said, gathering his thoughts together,
calmly. “You knew him.” He nodded toward Harwood. “You
both knew him. I did not.”
He drew again on his pipe. “It cannot be Wykeham,” he
said, stopping, pulling the fumes from the pipe deeply
inside him, “however remarkable he is. Rather, if you are
both right, if somehow he has been given the gift, or the
curse perhaps, of living forever, then really he is the very
last thing it could be.” He stopped, puffing once more.
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“Indeed, he could only be the enemy of what has taken
hold, of what— ”
The Duke turned on him. “It is not the dead man,” he
said angrily.
Holmes paused. “Not the dead at all,” he said. “But the
thing, Your Grace, whatever it is, that sees to the killing.”
“I don’t see— ” Harwood began, interrupting.
“Or you never read,” Holmes put in quickly. “It comes
down, I am almost certain now, to a sort of biblical question.
Though, of course, it’s in Milton. Everything’s in Milton.”
Harwood’s voice was like something tearing. “What is?”
he asked.
"Angels,” Holmes said. “Devils, too, for that matter. I
haven’t been able to decide which. They both can have
wings. But they are all, every one of them, men. You have
only to look."
“Look where?”
“In the Bible,” Holmes said. “From Michael to Gabriel.
Lucifer to Beelzebub.” He paused once more to consider His
Grace. “Or on the platform,” he said simply, “or the train.
Even here, in this place.”
The Duke was staring out at the room.
“Have you th o u g h t...? ” began Harwood, but Holmes
cut him short.
“I have tried not to,” Holmes conceded. “Not even to
remember.” His clear, open gaze was without emotion. They
had not, even then, begun to suspect what that had cost
him. “I have a daughter,” he said, “had a d au gh ter... a
wife.”
He was looking at the backs and the faces of the men
crowded under the rafters.
“Though by now,” he said quietly, “like all the rest, I
suppose, they are gone.”
At the front of the room a man stepped silently over the
threshold. For an instant, blocking the light, his huge shoulders threw a grotesque shadow over the floor.'
They were aware, at first, only of red hair sweeping out
like the halo of a furnace, a long red face as ferocious and
unsympathetic as flame.
At the center of the room the tall old man halted.
Wearily; he began removing his coat, freeing from the large
shapeless garment first one arm, then the next. He unfolded
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the third and the fourth from where they were strapped to
his chest. His mouth turning, as from some trivial discomfort,
he withdrew the last pair from his back.
The arms were long, their flesh mottled with bruises and
covered with fresh welts and scratches. Skillfully, with three
of six great hands, winding with each the little ragged strips
of the quilting, he began to bind his wounds.
“Someone fought you, then?” the barman asked.
“Some will,” Charon Hunt said defensively. Stung by the
implied criticism of his work, he turned away, looking instead
at the room full of men. His own large face was plain, his
grim frown dogged as an old hill fanner’s.
“Yet they must come with m e,” he said with a harsh
pride. “For how shall they cross,” he asked no one in
particular, “unless I carry them?”
The world fell silent, the men behind him gone. But
whether they found some hole to hide in was their own
business. Houseman was not curious about them. He had no
great interest in his fellow men. His duty, as he saw it, was
simply to find his own way. If now in the plain, shuttered
houses along the dark street there were no signs of habitation,
it did not trouble him. Though he was dead, he was not
remorseful. He was surprised, however, that he was clothed
in a good black suit and a white shirt with a firm, starched
collar.
In the drawings of the damned, which he had carried out
of childhood, the damned had been aggressively naked. The
drawings had stayed in his mind and, although he had never
been able to remember where he had found the book, he
recalled ever afterward the massive torsos and ponderous legs
of large, scornful men falling shamelessly into darkness.
He looked himself over carefully. I will need shoes, of
course, he thought, only half wondering why that one item
had been neglected.
Yet he could walk. The soles of his feet had somehow
hardened and he went quickly over the pavement. His
lungs, though they filled gently, scarcely needed the air: he
might just as easily, he imagined, have been sucking in the
enormous emptiness of the space between worlds. What
little light there was left on the hill was the light of worlds,
distant and receding. When he had entered under the
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interlocking boughs of the wood, the stars were not even a
memory.
Thereafter, in spite of the darkness, he had gone swiftly
for what may have been hours, except that it was not a matter
of time. It was not, he supposed, exactly a matter of space
either.
It was more like a jigsaw puzzle. The vague gray shape of
the hill, the snaking contour of a wall, even the wood’s feral
darkness, while useful as points of reference, were only
phantoms. There was a deeper order, an arrangement in
which hills, walls and woods, the clearness or mistiness of the
evening were merely decorative. Underneath their momentary divisions, deeper and more permanent, there were lines.
He had thought of them as lines at least, although he
suspected they plumbed the depths and rose up, virtually
without limit, through the heavens. They could not be seen,
could not, either with hands or by the shiver of the flesh, be
felt, but he had known when he crossed them. Having seen
and experienced nothing, he had been forced nonetheless to
acknowledge that he had passed from one sphere of reality to
the njxt.
He had recognized it first on the train. He had awakened
into the light, coming back to awareness on an old, damp seat,
staring out at the smoky yellow light of the evening.
He had counted three worlds then: the one he had been
born into and in which he had toiled unceasingly, year by
year, at the bank for a reward that, when fate had granted it,
death had taken; death itself, which although
it was dark and
empty, he was certain was also a place; and the world after,
which was not empty and not, he was equally certain, either
world he had left. For one thing, it was summer.
He had watched the huge evening sun falling past the
vast roof of Water Street station. Feeling the light sweeping
through him, he had smiled, a slight yet cunning smile filled
with purpose, as if, by daring and perseverance, he had
outwitted an ancient enemy.
He had crossed the fourth line at Bristol. From the train
window he had stared straight ahead at the fires, smiling his
brief triumphant smile at the glowing ruins of houses. He had
licked his lips greedily, watching the bright bands of flame.
But under the eaves of the wood it was dark again. The
village was long behind him. As he pushed his way in through
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WINTERKING
heavy brakes and sharp brambles, there was nothing to be
seen. The hill had vanished, even the grim old trees were
invisible and, conscious only of darkness, he was left with a
feeling of inescapable dread. At the back of his mind he could
hear now and then a distant crow complaining somewhere in
the branches. But the sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. Perhaps direction itself, he thought apprehensively, is immaterial. And yet he felt more and more certain he was advancing toward the fifth line. At all events, it did
not matter which way he came at it, it was now Wykeham land.
His jaw had fallen open and he was drooling as he
lumbered on blindly. Twigs cracked under him and he nearly
slipped on the path.
He must burn, Houseman thought, angrily, imagining
the purifying breath of flame that alone could free him, that
would free them all, he hoped, from the damned white-faced
English. But it was the rustle of the bare soles of his feet over
straw that convinced him that he was outside the barn.
He stopped and, for a time, stood staring wildly into the
darkness. At last, grown impatient, ignoring the one clear
order Wykeham had given him, he gave a heave to the door
so that the car, riding the double line of the track, could
enter. He had, he knew, really no alternative: a door will not
open by itself. His long clawed fingers clung for a moment to
the latch.
The stench as of some old heavy animal in its lair was
overpowering. He coughed and clamped his mouth shut.
The sound of men running, when it came to him, was
slow and unnatural. The roar of the gun itself was deafening.
Something crossed in the air. With a jolt he felt it enter him,
felt the wall of his chest ripping open. And yet it was not
until he had been lifted by what seemed too many hands onto
the back of the ancient Ford pickup that he noticed the odd
treacly smell of his blood. He lay groaning. Bitterly, with the
shattered fragment of a wing, the young dead man covered
his head.
Nora put her hand on his bed, passing her fingers
caressingly over the sheets. In the warm summer darkness
she felt more than saw that he was gone. She had expected
that. He rose early. But he has been here, she thought, and
so sooner or later, would be there again. Everything returned.
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In all her life she had not known it to be otherwise. But all
the same she had wished for one last meeting. During the
night she had dreamed of him; now with the sight of his bed
she remembered her longing. “Ah, men!” she whispered but,
knowing only too well her own inadequacies, she sighed.
Kneeling down, she ga/.ed without jealousy into the sleeping
face of the girl, jane was quite naked, her wide, ungirlish
mouth open. Her bare arms were stretched lazily above her
head.
“It is time,” Nora said.
The girl’s breathing went on quietly.
Without another word Nora began to undress. When she
had taken off everything, she went to stand by the window. A
small, hot breath drifted over the sill. Her nostrils twitched
curiously. There was something uncertain in the air. But the
yard below looked as it always did, the gray meadow quiet
and still, the gardens harboring darkness. In the dawn the
tops of the tallest elms seemed to sputter. Nora drew herself
up. Around her the room was gradually brightening. But for a
long moment she stood undecided, examining herself in front
of the window.
Even now her body was slim and white. Her knees and
the tips of her breasts were likewise pale. She lifted her
arms. Only there was there darkness, prickly and damp, in
two spots, and a third, in the crease where her belly ended.
Nora shook out her hair. Her head fdled with memory,
she tried to recall the bodies of the girls in the faraway village
and found, surprisingly, that she was ignorant of what had lain
under their shifts. She had not, although they had shared but
a single room, seen even her own mother naked. Finally, she
turned. The girl, the sheet drawn away from her, was, she
had to acknowledge, the limit of her experience.
Watching her, a brief smile passed over Nora’s lips.
Deliberately, her hand no longer trembling, she reached
down, touching herself. In the crease between her legs the
feathers were not as yet thick, just soft black quills.
Jane did not speak but Nora saw she was watching.
“I cut them ,” Nora said. “In the pocket of my apron I
carry a pair of sharpened scissors." She gave a short laugh.
“There is always the chance a man may wish to sleep with
me. And being men they are easily frightened.”
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WINTERKING
She managed a grin. “But always they grow again,” she
said.
Jane’s fingers moved restlessly down her leg. “I don’t
think he noticed.”
“Not in the dark,” Nora said. “Never the first time when
they are filled with impatience.” She no longer looked at the
girl. Where on earth had she ever learned such things? she
wondered.
Her husband, of course, had been frightened. Yet his
misfortunes he had brought on himself. He had not touched
her. In the ignorant way of men who have learned what they
know of honor out of books, he had never taken her to his
bed until they had married. What is done is done he had said
afterward; but in the small bedroom over the shop his eyes
were swollen with sleeplessness,
“Why did you never tell me?” he had asked her once,
abandoning all caution.
“It has always been so,” she had told him.
Jane dropped her feet to the floor.
“You go out and I’ll dress,” she said.
Nora’s smile lingered. “What is the need?” she asked.
“They are gone.”
In the kitchen Lizzy and Olivia were already naked.
Lizzy was packing away the last of the dishes. Olivia lowered
her eyes rather than look at them. “Who will take care of the
house?” she asked. “Who’s going to make breakfast?�
��
“They will have to manage without,” Nora said evenly.
They went onto the porch and down the back steps. But
they did not start out. They were waiting. In the east the
immense sky shone like a mirror. Even under the elms there
was a blink of watery sunshine. But in the wood under the
hill there was darkness. The wind that only brushed at their
ankles seemed to blow harder there. The old, dark trees
seemed to beckon. They tried not to look. Instead for a time
they stood quietly, sunk in memories of the house and of the
men they were leaving.
At last they heard the sound of Plum’s heavy feet on the
gravel. She came around the com er of the house, the crow on
her shoulder. Its wings were spread, its weight gently balancing on the air, so the murderous claws would not tear her pink flesh.
"Well, it’s begun,” Plum said. Her large round face was
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haggard. In their black sockets her eyes had an expression
Nora had never seen in them.
Jane lifted her head. She was the youngest and her face
conveyed her confusion. “It’s women and children first, isn’t
it?” she asked.
“The children have already gone,” Lizzy told her.
“There was a boy,” Nora said all at once, remembering.
But it was much too late. Under the eaves of Black Wood the
village women were gathering.
V.
O ctober Wars
/
1.
The letters that morning, because the postman had punctured two of his fingers with the toasting fork, were smeared with blood. “Daughters of Belial!” the postman
muttered, thrusting both fingers into his mouth. Standing in
the middle of his kitchen he glared at the window and
wondered why it was not yet light. He had half expected to
see his old wife spreading strawberry nets in the garden; but
the garden, like their bed, was empty. “And I was ever kind
to her,” he announced to the rooms from which she had gone
empty-handed. The postman shook his gray head. Lifting his
bag onto his shoulder, he stepped out onto the porch.
Above the long village street the stars were still shining.
In Black Wood John Chance rocked contentedly, taking