Winterking (1987)

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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  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