Once...

by James Herbert

  Reluctantly, yet resolutely, he made his way round to the rear of Castle Bracken.

  It was a coal hatch primarily, although it was large enough to use for moving in boiler machinery, or anything else that had to do with the mansion’s underground maintenance. The five-foot double doors were angled as though leaning against the building, and set in a concrete mount. As kids, Thom and Hugo would open one side and peer down into the gloom, Hugo usually daring Thom to climb inside, a dare he never took up, at least, not from that entrance. Thom remembered the last time he had visited these cellars and how he’d hidden in the darkness on hearing approaching footsteps. He had dreamed he was in the same predicament many times over since, nightmares that never seemed to fade with time.

  In those days, the doors were never locked and he saw no reason why they should be now. Drawing in a deep breath, he slipped his fingers between the middle crack and pulled at one side. The door was heavy, but it opened with a loud creak.

  The moon, still playing its tiresome hide-and-seek game, chose to reveal itself once more, bathing the land in a wintry light. It did Thom no favours, for the pit he was about to descend into looked blacker than ever in the contrast with the blanched landscape above. He wished he had thought to bring along a flashlight, but then he hadn’t known his journey would end in darkness. He stood there for a while, a hand keeping the flap open, building up the nerve to step inside. Another lightning bolt from directly above the house whitened everything again, and its glare was strong enough to penetrate the cellar below. In its strobe-lighting effect, Thom was able to see the hill of coal that swept down from the opening, and with no further hesitation, he let go the door flap, so that it crashed to one side, stepped over the hatch’s concrete base, and slid and tumbled down the treacherous slope.

  He had tried to control his descent, but footholds only slithered away, and he crashed against the partition that held the great heap at bay. He sprawled there in total darkness, for not only had the lightning flickered away, but the moon had resumed the game and was now hiding behind the distant clouds. He tried to catch his breath and sucked in coal dust that caused him to cough. Dear God, it was so dark. Pitch black. Nothing to be seen. Its blackness almost tangible. If you stuck a finger into it, you would feel the darkness yield, flow around your hand like inky syrup. He lay there, one shoulder against the wooden partition, his legs splayed over the lower regions of lumpy invisible coal, swirling dust clogging his nose, and he was a ten-year-old again, supposedly hiding from a friend, but in truth hiding from heavy footsteps that came along the corridor outside this basement chamber, growing louder as they approached . . .

  . . . As they did now, only these were scuffling footsteps, shoes dragging along the floor and, as it was all those years ago, a light came with the sound, a light that was warm but insubstantial, its arc widening with every step.

  Thom felt the same panicky fear he had felt as a child, his heart seeming to freeze, then begin beating again, so loudly he thought it might be heard by whoever drew near. He pressed his temple close to the partition and moaned inwardly as the wood cracked, the sound like a gun going off in the stark, cold boiler-room. As he hid there, a ten-year-old boy once again, his mother’s words came to him just as they had before in this sombre labyrinth of underground chambers.

  Listen to your inner voice, it said. Go into that secret place that no one can touch. Draw strength from it. And that was where he tried to retreat in an attempt to escape the post-trauma of his terrible and difficult journey and now this reliving of a constant nightmare.

  It almost worked. But when the scuffling footsteps stopped at the entrance to the boiler-room, the breathing that came with it heavy and rasping, the glow that travelled before it now stationary, he wanted to scream out his terror, let it loose, let the worst of it leave his body and echo around the walls; he wanted to precipitate whatever was about to happen, rush forward rather than hide from it. Wanted to, but found he did not have that kind of foolhardy courage. He wasn’t a coward, just not an idiot. He waited there behind the partition, praying that whoever guarded the doorway would not think to look behind the wooden wall, wouldn’t realize it was from there that the sharp sound had come.

  Yet even as he cowered in the shadows, the hill of coal he had slid down had not properly settled. There were still precariously balanced lumps and they shifted for no other reason than that their equilibrium was unstable; one toppled and others followed in a small avalanche. Thom gritted his teeth and hunched his shoulders at the sound, which was not loud, but like a major rock slide to him.

  Lumps of coal settled with the noise against him and when he listened, when he listened intently, he could no longer hear that terrible rasping breathing. He checked his own, wishing he could do likewise with his pounding heart. Then came a long, drawn-in sigh, as raspy as before, and the shuffle of feet on the concrete floor coming towards his hiding-place.

  The scene was being played out almost the same way as before, but there was nothing repetitious about it; it was too bloody fresh and scary for familiarity to blunt its edge. Thom huddled into himself, that same child trying to make himself smaller, and the dragging steps on the other side of the partition grew louder, came closer. The cobwebbed ceiling above glowed orange. Now the creak of wood, someone leaning against the partition, the feeling of a presence above him, eyes cast downwards. Blindly, Thom reached into the pile beside him, his fingers closing on a good weighty piece of coal. He was no longer that child. He was a man who wouldn’t be threatened any more by some unseen thing, who was only human anyway, for it walked (scuffled) and breathed (rasped) as humans do. Thom clasped the coal rock in his fist and made ready to leap up and strike out.

  First though, he looked up. And it was the same scene as seventeen years ago, so for a brief and very insane moment he thought he was that child once more. The long cadaverous face. The dead eyes. All lit by candlelight. The same nightmare that had haunted him ever since. The only difference was that both he and Bones had aged, Bones terribly so.

  The head slipped away and Thom heard Hartgrove’s body slump to the floor on the other side of the thin wall. Scrambling to his feet and dislodging more coal so that the hill rushed in to fill the space he had just left, Thom stumbled around the partition and knelt by Hartgrove’s collapsed body. The candle was lying on its side on the dusty floor, its small flame still alight so that its glow picked up the crumpled figure of the old lean manservant. He gave out a soft moan as Thom touched him between chin and neck to feel for a pulse.

  The dry, chilled, parchment skin was abhorrent to the touch, but Thom persisted, not sure why he was suddenly anxious about Bones of all people. He had always been afraid of him, and even now, older and presumably, though not necessarily, wiser, he was still wary of the man. The pulse was weak, but the quiet moan and sudden raspy intake of breath informed Thom that the manservant was very much alive.

  Hands beneath Bones’s thin shoulders, he pulled him up as gently as he could, propping his upper body against the partition. Then he reached for the fallen candle and brought it closer to the semi-conscious man’s face.

  ‘Jesus,’ Thom said in a low voice. ‘What happened to you?’

  The injured man tried to speak, but no words would come.

  Thom persisted. ‘Are your arms, your legs, okay? Can you feel if anything’s broken?’

  A mumble of incoherent sounds, nothing more.

  ‘Let me get you upstairs. I’ll call an ambulance.’

  ‘No . . .’ Bones muttered.

  ‘You need—’

  ‘No time.’

  The hand tightened as if to hold Thom there.

  ‘I think you’re badly hurt, Mr Hartgrove. You need attention.’ Thom made ready to pick up the old manservant, hoping he had enough strength left to get him upstairs. The rules dictated that an injured person should be left unmoved where they were until injuries could be properly assessed, but Thom did not like the idea of leaving Hartgrove down here in this dank
, dirty place.

  But again, Hartgrove protested. ‘No time. You must help . . .’ He seemed to lose breath once more, and the words trailed away.

  ‘Who did this to you?’ Thom asked, desperately concerned for the man he had never liked, had always feared.

  ‘She . . . she did. They . . . both . . . did,’ came the muttered reply.

  ‘Nell Quick and Hugo?’

  Hartgrove nodded his head as if that might be easier than speaking.

  ‘Where are they now? Are they with Sir Russell?’

  More slow nodding of his head. ‘You must help . . .’

  ‘I will. I’ll get you upstairs. I’ll call an ambulance.’

  The hand gripping his arm left to grab his damp shirt. ‘No. You must . . . you must help Sir Russell.’

  ‘Is he in danger?’ Thom already knew the answer, but watched as Hartgrove nodded his head yet again.

  ‘They threw me down the stairs.’ His voice became stronger with anger. ‘They wanted me out the way while . . . while . . .’ Hartgrove groaned and tried to touch the bruises on his face, but his hand fell away uselessly.

  ‘Mr Hartgrove, you know me, don’t you? It’s Thom, Thom Kindred.’

  Hartgrove’s fingers fluttered in the space between them. ‘I know . . . you.’

  ‘Can you tell me what this is all about? Why Nell Quick and Hugo have hurt you, and what they’re going to do to Sir Russell?’

  ‘Threw me . . . down . . . cellar . . . stairs . . .’

  ‘I know, I know. But why? Just take your time and try and tell me why this is happening.’

  ‘I hid the Will from them. Sir Russell’s last Will and Testament. It left . . . left everything . . . to you.’

  Thom was stunned, not sure he’d heard correctly. ‘Surely everything will be passed on to Hugo on Sir Russell’s death?’

  Hartgrove shook his head from side to side and the effort was too much for him. He seemed to lapse into unconsciousness.

  ‘Hartgrove? Can you hear me?’ Thom gently cupped the manservant’s cheek in his hand.

  Hartgrove’s eyelids flickered, opened. He regarded Thom in silence for a few moments, then seemed to summon up whatever strength he had left.

  ‘Hugo is not . . . a good . . . son. He has hurt . . . his father in many ways. Let him down, disgraced him. And now . . .’ his lipless mouth formed a half-smile, half-sneer ‘. . . and now he wants to sell Bracken Estate to developers. Do you know . . . what kind of developers?’

  He began to cough and the spittle on his lips was pinkish. It turned red as the coughing went on uncontrollably and Thom guessed he had sustained internal injuries. Maybe a broken rib had pierced a lung.

  ‘Don’t try to talk.’ he told the manservant. ‘Rest here while I get help.’ Now he knew it would hurt Hartgrove even more if he tried to take him up upstairs.

  But when the coughing had stopped, Hartgrove continued, as if anxious to impart as much information as possible before it was too late.

  ‘The developers, Thom. Do you know what kind? Can you . . . can you guess?’

  Thom shook his head and added, ‘I’ve no idea,’ in case Hartgrove’s vision was not too clear.

  ‘They’re . . . they’re experts in things . . . what do you call them? You know, Thom, don’t you?’

  And suddenly, Thom did know. This ancient country mansion, set in beautiful acres, with its own woodland, river and lake: Nell and Hugo could only have one thing in mind. Open up Castle Bracken to the public, certainly. But that wouldn’t be enough, it still wouldn’t bring in enough income for Hugo. No, they probably wanted to turn the whole estate into a theme park of some kind. Jesus, that’s what it was all about. And Sir Russell knew, somehow he had found out. Perhaps Hugo and Nell had even discussed their plans in front of him, thinking him comatose at the time. Sir Russell had then changed his Will in favour of Thom, who was, after all, his natural grandson. My God, how could Hugo even think of such a thing? To turn this wonderful countryside into a theme park, to tear away its privacy, its stillness, its beauty. Hugo must be desperate. And Sir Russell must have hated Hugo for it.

  Thom had room to feel wretched. It was not what he wanted. Hugo had always been a good friend . . . hadn’t he? Thom thought of the item that had gone missing from his London home, the pair of dividers he’d had for years so that they were almost a mascot to him, a talisman even. Probably the shirt button too. And the photograph had been Hugo’s. Hugo must have taken the items and supplied the photo. To Nell Quick. Who, no doubt, would soon become Hugo’s wife. Yet Thom still had no desire to come between father and son. As much as he loved Bracken’s woodlands and the cottage, they did not rightfully belong to him. They were Hugo’s inheritance. Maybe it wasn’t too late to talk to him, make him see sense. He had to try, he felt he owed it to his friend. His one-time friend? Even if the estate was left to him, Thom, they could share it. He could persuade Hugo there were better things to do with the land.

  Hartgrove was stirring, clutching at Thom’s shirt again.

  ‘It . . . must . . . go . . . to . . . you,’ he gasped. ‘Only you . . . will understand.’

  Even in his pain, there was a special gleam in Hartgrove’s eyes. Thom was curious. What exactly did the injured man mean? There was a knowing look in his tired old eyes, one that went beyond words, an understanding that the manservant obviously assumed was mutual. And probably, it was.

  ‘The . . . land must stay . . . privately owned, Thom. They . . .’ he emphasized the word ‘. . . depend on it.’

  He knew of the faerefolkis? And if he did, then Sir Russell must also know.

  ‘You must keep . . . their secret, Thom. They will count on you.’

  Thom was about to speak, to question Hartgrove, find out how he knew of the others that lived in the woods and the lake, how long he had known, but Hartgrove raised a faltering hand.

  ‘You must go now. Sir Russell, you . . . must . . . you must . . . stop . . .’ His words trailed away and he slumped down the partition, his body stretched out.

  Thom wanted to stay and help him, but was aware he could not waste another moment. Something bad was happening up there in Castle Bracken’s roof room, and only he could prevent it.

  If there was still time . . .

  HE’D HAD no choice. Thom had had to leave Hartgrove lying unconscious on the cold dusty cellar floor. The old manservant was in a bad way, his breathing shallow, the full extent of his injuries unknown. By candlelight, his thin, cadaverous face seemed to have a deathly pallor and his eyes were mere slits, neither open, nor quite closed. His stillness had something of death about it.

  Thom reached the top of the creaky cellar stairs and he saw the bank of light switches by the door. He flipped a couple, but nothing happened. Now he was sure the mansion’s main fuse had blown, but he didn’t have time to locate and fix it. He had to get to the roof room.

  He twisted the handle to the cellar door, half-expecting it to be locked – in which case he would kick it open, regardless of noise – but as soon as he pushed, the door opened. He went through, the candle’s flame creating unsettled shadows like darting spectres in the great hallway. The eyes of portraits around the walls seemed to be watching him from the surrounding darkness, statues on plinths seemed to agitate because of the wavering light. The inset doorways contained deeper, concealing shadows. The house’s familiar smell came to him and it was stale, degenerative, different from the stronger smells of the dusty cellar, but even so, somehow more intrusive. There was a corruptness about this odour.

  Thom did not linger. He quickly moved to the stairway and began to climb, the candle held before him like a weapon against the dark. His left hand swept along the curving banister, ready to grip tightly should he stumble, or should anything emerge from the gloom above to throw him back down. He was not quite sure what he expected – a lunatic Nell, the succubus again? – so was ready for anything.

  The darkness retreated before him on the first-floor landing, but only so far: the can
dle was a weak champion after all. He could just make out the tapestries on the half-panelled walls, the longcase clock at the far end, for some reason its trunk door left open. Pausing only to catch his breath – his left leg had to be dragged up every step so far, his left arm felt like a dead weight on the rail, and although the shock of seeing Bones down there in the cellars had set adrenaline on free-flow again, exhaustion had returned like an unwelcome guest – he went on. The smell of corruption was even stronger here. It wafted down from the stairway to the floors above, becoming more odious with every tread of the stairs. And it was unlike two days ago, when he had ascended this stairway with Hugo for, although pervasive and unpleasant, the smell had been bearable; now its pungency almost made Thom retch. He began to question his actions. In his present state, what would he do, what could he do, when he reached the ‘penthouse’ room? He was weak, badly debilitated, and no match for the two of them, Nell and Hugo, let alone whatever evil she had conjured. If he had thought to bring his cell phone, he could have called the local police and they would have at least have been on their way by now. Then again, he couldn’t be sure the mobile would work in this area; it hadn’t at the cottage. Find a phone here. Go back downstairs and find a phone. The power cut wouldn’t affect the telephone lines. Even as he considered retreating (and in his heart he knew he was looking for an excuse not to venture up those stairs any further) he realized if he wasted time it would be too late to help Sir Russell, that only he could prevent any more harm coming to the sick old man. He had to keep going. Besides, it was probably already too late. There were noises, quiet noises, quiet noises combining to make a fuller sound, coming from the floor above.

  Coming his way.

  He stopped climbing.

  He looked upwards.

  They poured over the lip of the top stair like a rippling river, a mass of blackness flowing from the greater darkness, hundreds – thousands, millions maybe – of them.