by F. G. Cottam
‘Don’t we have to try?’
‘Of course we do. But we don’t arrive until after dark when concealment’s easier.’
‘We should set off now. We’ll probably have to walk there. It’ll take a couple of hours.’
Paul shook his head. ‘I came here in a hire car, remember? It’s parked outside. Illegally parked, but I highly doubt I’ve been given a ticket.’
They left at seven p.m. It wasn’t a journey that would ordinarily take two hours plus, but these weren’t ordinary times. Some of the roads had subsided in the flood. Sections of some had been badly damaged in the quake. Others had been deliberately blockaded. Before they left, Paul took a bayonet from one of the smashed-in display cases on the ground floor of the museum. To Juliet, it looked almost as lethal in length as a sword.
‘Planning to skewer her?’
‘This is for the journey. The streets are hazardous,’ he said. ‘It will be a deterrent if anyone tries to stop our car. Big enough to see through our windscreen. Big enough to discourage an opportunistic thief. Call it our insurance policy.’
‘Would you use it?’
‘It’s anarchy out there. The car could get stopped by a gang with ideas about raping you.’
‘So your answer is yes.’
‘Like I told you, Juliet, I wasn’t always a translator. I’m not squeamish about using necessary force.’
‘I’m glad you’re with me, Paul.’
‘You’d do this alone?’
‘With no alternative, yes. She has to be stopped.’
‘She’s pulled off something unthinkable,’ Paul said, ‘to make the sea respond like that. She’s reversed nature.’
‘She’s been reversing nature for a fortnight. We’re living with the consequences. Some of us are dying because of them.’
‘Any idea what she’s done now?’
‘I’m guessing Keller’s party piece,’ Juliet said. ‘The creation of life from nothing.’
‘He said that his attempt all but destroyed him. He had to use all his power to reverse it. Dawn Jackson’s an amateur. Whatever she’s done, she probably couldn’t undo.’
They were in the car, Paul driving, dipped headlights, the streets weirdly empty of traffic, human or otherwise. Juliet said, ‘It strikes me there are two ways you could bring a life into being. You could start from scratch. You could create a separate entity. Or it could inhabit you, possess you, kind of exile you from yourself. I’m inclined to believe from the Keller account of the spell that that’s what happened with him.’
‘So we might be denied the pleasure of meeting Dawn?’
‘We’ll meet what Dawn’s become,’ Juliet said. ‘If my theory is right – and I think it is, Paul. What Keller described sounded like a very personal struggle.’
‘And how dangerous is that?’
‘All of this is dangerous. Safety belongs to the world we’ve left behind. Unless we’re successful.’
‘Hopeful?’
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Desperate. Which is nothing to do any more with your friend Dan.’
They pulled up and parked a few streets away from Dawn Jackson’s address.
‘Why have we stopped here?’
Paul nodded through his side window at a Victorian rectory in the grounds of a large Gothic Revival church. There were slates missing from the church steeple. ‘I’ve done some research of my own,’ he said. ‘That’s where Father Gould lives. He’s expecting you.’
‘For what? This isn’t an exorcism.’
‘I’m going to scope out Dawn’s address. It isn’t safe for you just to sit in the car alone on the street while I do it. He’ll make you a nice cup of tea. Or you might hit the jackpot and score a glass of whisky.’
‘I don’t think so. We need to be sober for this. Paul?’
‘Yes?’
‘Be careful and come back safe?’
He grinned. He said, ‘I’m always careful.’
He left the car at the kerb outside the church grounds and walked to Dawn’s address. He walked past it on the other side of the road and glanced over with only the slightest turn of his head. The windows were dark, their curtains undrawn, the house entirely unlit.
It was a large and handsome period house, not just detached but isolated from its neighbours by its generous drive. Access to its rear was blocked by two high-flanking walls. The obvious route to the back garden was through, rather than around. And though its dimensions were opulent, to Paul the place had a neglected look. Even at dusk he could see that the windows were filmed with dirt. The front door was large, wooden and a lustreless shade of red. It hadn’t been wiped clean or had its brass doorknob polished for a long time. Patches of moss were green scabs on the gravel of the drive.
Paul knew with sudden certainty that Dawn, whatever had become of Dawn or whatever Dawn had now become, was entirely alone there. And her grandfather and brother weren’t on a fishing trip in rural Ireland. Nothing so idyllic as that. Dawn had disposed of them. They’d inconvenienced or inhibited her occult cabaret. Three had been a crowd, and even two had been too much for Dawn. Dawn was a loner.
FORTY-SIX
Paul Beck got back from his scouting mission forty minutes after his departure. He knocked on Father Gould’s rectory door with raw hands and the knees of his jeans stained with brick dust. He was invited inside. Juliet Harrington had said she wasn’t drinking, but the priest certainly was. Judging by the pungent scent from his glass, Paul thought, probably the single malt, Oban.
He said, ‘I thought whisky priests existed only in stories written by Graham Greene.’
‘There’s a time and there’s a place,’ Father Gould said, ‘and it’s now, here.’
‘The boiling sea got to you, Father?’
‘If you two don’t find a way to stop her, we’re living through the End Times.’
‘Could you sketch me a plan of the ground floor of the house?’
The priest shook his head. ‘She guided me straight from the front hall to what I assumed to be her grandfather’s study. In retrospect, I know there were things there she didn’t want me to see. Inviting me in was a double bluff. Clever, because it worked. I doubt her poor brother’s still alive.’
Paul turned to Juliet. He said, ‘I scaled the back garden wall. Sort of in the gloaming, not quite full dark. It isn’t overlooked by a neighbour, which makes it a good hiding place. There’s the remains of a shed I guess was totalled by the hurricane. There’s an overgrown lawn with a shallow depression where the turf has been cut and relaid. The work’s been done quite skilfully.’
‘But not quite skilfully enough,’ Father Gould said.
‘She’s buried something there. She’s done it more than once.’
Juliet said, ‘Obvious question, but why didn’t you dig it up?’
‘No time,’ Paul said. ‘The kitchen light came on. Or the light in what I assumed was the kitchen.’
‘Did she see you?’
‘There’s a shrubbery a few feet from where she dug. Overgrown, neglected. I dived for that, hid there until the light went off again. Concealment was part of my training, back in the day. I’m able to remain quite still. I’m almost a hundred per cent certain she didn’t see me.’
‘Adolescents don’t do that,’ Juliet said.
‘Don’t do what?’
‘Bother to switch off lights.’
‘This one would,’ Father Gould said. ‘I’ve met her, remember.’
Paul looked at Juliet. ‘We need to get this done,’ he said.
Father Gould said, ‘Is there any way in which I can help?’
Paul said, ‘You can lend me a trowel if you have one, Father.’
‘What about salt, Paul?’ Juliet said.
‘In the glove compartment of the hire car. Maldon sea salt.’
‘As recommended by Delia Smith,’ Juliet said.
‘Never heard of her,’ Paul said. ‘Culinary tip from Desperate Dan Carter. I’ve never looked back, frankly.’
Juliet smiled. The levity seemed at once strange and completely normal. She knew that they were about to do something that could bring their lives to an abrupt and possibly grotesque conclusion. But she knew also that if the Almanac continued to be used, they would perish anyway. Their world had become bleakly, rudely impossible. It was their responsibility to try to do something about it. She believed it was also their fate.
Before they left, the priest insisted on blessing each of them. He’d had a drink or two but Juliet, only an intermittent believer, thought that was probably OK. Endowing a blessing wasn’t driving a car.
Then they set off, a short and wordless walk through uncannily empty streets in the one area of London left largely unscathed by the once great city’s catalogue of calamities. The people had gone from here despite that. Nowhere in the metropolis had been left immune to the mood of despair prevalent in choked gutters, along cracked pavements, housed in those deserted dwellings which were still intact, coursing like a poisonous current through air rank with death and despoilment.
Suddenly, they were there. The façade of the house was pale and blandly handsome. But the windows, lightless and black in the night, hinted at the dark secrecy within. With a last swift kiss, a final tender expression of mortal feeling, they parted from one another.
Alone now, Juliet took a deep breath. Trepidation made it shudder through her. She unlatched the gate and strode across the crunching gravel of the drive, a sound loud in the prevailing, brooding silence. She climbed the three stone steps to the substantial front door and, with a shaking finger, rang the bell. But that provoked no response. So she hammered at the heavily tarnished brass knocker and then waited, her heart a delinquent thudding in her chest and her mouth parched, wishing she had drunk something potent after all to prepare her for the impossibility of the moment she now faced.
The thing that had until quite recently been Dawn Jackson opened the door. And Juliet knew, even before it grinned at her. It had retained most of Dawn as it settled into its new life. It would walk and talk as Dawn, would retain Dawn’s knowledge about matters, her idiom and even her mannerisms. They were the basics of its survival during its induction period in the ways of the world it now inhabited.
But it wasn’t Dawn any longer, not truthfully. Children didn’t have black eyes or skin with that sickly porcelain pallor. Human hair didn’t possess that sandpapery texture. The nails were really talons on hands that now more closely resembled claws. Dawn had been a monster of sorts, of course. But she’d only been the precursor to this sly abomination.
‘What can I do for you?’
The voice had the echoey resonance of a sound emerging outward from deep inside a cave.
‘It’s what I can do for you, Dawn. I can tell you interesting stories about that book you recently discovered.’
The Dawn-thing seemed to muse for a moment on this. Then it nodded its head slowly and turned and led the way into the house. There was something light and insectile about its gait that made Juliet think two things. The first was that four limbs were insufficient for this creature. The second was that she was blundering without hope into the sticky intricacy of a spider’s web.
The Dawn-thing led her into what she assumed had been Mr Jackson’s study. There was a Victorian fold-out desk and there were shelves full of books and framed lithographs on its walls. The once white-painted ceiling was nicotine-stained a sickly yellow. They sat in opposing straight back chairs and the Dawn-thing studied her with those obsidian eyes. They were as lustreless as her hair. It was as though this creature was completely animate without remotely possessing the spark of life. The feeling that she was prey had not left Juliet but only deepened in her. Her skin crawled with foreboding. She had to will herself not to let it turn into a sort of hopeless dread.
It treated her again to that dead-eyed grin. It said, ‘You know, don’t you?’
‘There was an Augury. You might have missed it.’
‘I didn’t miss it. It was on TV. The sea boiled.’
‘You’ve come into the world prepared.’
‘I’ve everything of hers. It’s insufficient.’
‘It’s Gunter Keller’s most powerful spell.’
‘Flatterer.’
‘I speak only the truth,’ Juliet said. ‘Where’s the book now?’
‘In a safe place. There was a policeman here today. My predecessor dealt with him quite well for someone so immature in age. But she suspected a possible return.’
Juliet studied the thing facing her that until very recently had been a clever and capricious child. She said, ‘How old are you?’
The immediate response was a throaty chuckle, not a young sound at all. The black eyes seemed to gleam for a moment in consideration of the question.
‘Recently born,’ it said. ‘Older than you can imagine. Older than time.’
‘You’ve been here before, haven’t you? Summoned by Gunter Keller?’
That brought forth a smile of reminiscence. ‘What a paradox he proved to be. Both a powerful adversary and the perfect host. It was close, that struggle, but the great alchemist of the age prevailed. No matter. I was younger and less mature and perhaps without the guile I now possess.’
‘Dawn was weaker.’
‘The girl had weakened herself. Her resilience had diminished.’
Despite herself, despite all the damage done, Juliet felt a stab of grief then for the lost child who would never now be redeemed. She said, ‘Is there nothing inside you left of Dawn?’
The creature licked its upper lip with a tongue that seemed long, sinewy, serpentine. ‘She had some qualities I’ve chosen to retain. But the frailness was a serious flaw. At present, it remains so.’
‘Do you intend to use the book?’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve ambitious plans.’
The Dawn-thing studied its clawed hands. The nails really were talons, thick and curved and horny and sharp. It let them clack and chitter together, apparently in thought. Juliet had become aware of a smell emanating from the creature; perhaps it secreted the odour. It was oily and rank with a hint of decay. Juliet had the giddy thought that this last ingredient in the cocktail of smells might be Dawn Jackson’s parting gift to the world.
Juliet realized then that the thing in front of her was as much parasite as predator. What life it possessed was stolen. This gleefully malicious entity squatted in the body it had distorted already into something hideous.
She could hear it breathe. The exhalations had an ancient character, wind scoured off sand in a desert storm occurring thousands of years ago. Waves lapping in darkness at the edge of a land still emptily young.
‘Do you want to know about the book you found?’
‘I am Dawn. The new Dawn. The risen Dawn. I know all about the book I found. Some of it I know by heart. The rest I’ll learn.’ Another smile, this one splitting into a shark-toothed grin. ‘I’m a quick study.’
‘Using the book has consequences,’ Juliet said.
‘They’re no concern of mine.’
‘They’re unforeseen, dangerous.’
‘Not dangerous to me.’
‘Where did you come from?’
‘There’s an obvious answer to that. The warnings were there. They’ve gone unheeded.’
That remark was followed by a silence between them, to Juliet a chasm of noiselessness she thought might swallow her. She was playing for time, of course, not just frightened but consumed by fear – and something else, something wretched she knew was dismay provoked by the abomination with which she was trapped in a small suburban room.
She said, ‘You should fear them.’
‘Fear what?’
‘The Auguries.’
But the creature ignored this. It said, ‘A child is inadequate. I need a more fitting host. One stronger, physically.’ It gave a high-pitched giggle, with a loudness that made Juliet jump. ‘But beggars can’t be choosers,’ it said. And abruptly, it stood and moved forward.
Paul had unearthed the book in the garden and taken it to the left-hand corner of the rear of the house where he couldn’t be seen through the kitchen window. He decided to risk using the torch-light on his phone for illumination. Seated on the ground with his back to the house to shield the torch beam from being seen from within, he began to put the salt crystals between each page of the book.
He was horribly concerned for Juliet’s welfare, deeply anxious about the jeopardy her decoy role would be placing her in. He was unsurprised at the depth of feeling he had for her after so short a period of time together. She was brilliant, she was beautiful, and she was demonstrating at that very moment how brave she was too.
There had been an intensity about their shared experience. As events brought their world to the brink of extinction, an intimate bond had been formed. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, certain they would be happy if they could just live through this latest, perhaps last ordeal. He knew, though, that this was far from guaranteed. Dawn Jackson had not been fastidious about death. She’d apparently treated the collateral damage inflicted by her occult antics with complete indifference. Why should the thing inhabiting her now come into the world with any kind of morality after a birth so profoundly corrupt?
Made clumsy by his hurry to join Juliet, he had a few false starts where sweat from the pads of his fingers caused the salt crystal he was handling to dissolve into uselessness. So the job took longer than he wanted it to, with Juliet all the while risking the deadly job of distracting the creature in the house.
He did it listening to his own breathing, thinking how scholarly the text looked that had triggered so much chaos and tragedy. The characters looked antique and entirely harmless, and when he completed the task and closed the book it just looked elderly, the cover untitled, the vellum blandly innocent.
When he tried the kitchen door he found it locked. Picking it with a hairpin he’d borrowed from Juliet earlier for the purpose was the work of only a minute. But the minute was stretched out almost infinitely for Paul by the dread of what he might find in the house.
He found Juliet almost immediately, on the ground floor. She was in the study, and she was quite alone there.