When she roused, it was from a febrile vision of murky corridors stinking of brine and decay. Midden of slops. Human carrion. Machines in alcoves burbling like simpletons. Otherwise, her brain was void. She knew only a throbbing in her ankle. She sat there shuddering. Then her memory returned to her, slowly, piecemeal.
She looked about. Amid the shoe and boot marks in the dirt on the floor, she saw hoofprints and another, strange, spoor, skittering scratches. Staggering to her feet, she stood tottering, head cocked, listening. A faint clanking drifted down the tunnel to her. It waxed, then she saw, in the distance, a withered old hunchback, matted grey beard, shrunken head, sparse white hair, wearing a filthy torn robe, sackcloth, shambling, leaning on a crutch tipped with an iron ferrule.
(I didn’t realize at the time, but the next section of Jane’s tale cleaves closely to Robert Browning’s fevered poem of 1855, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’. I’ve often mused on the meaning of this.)
Jane started towards the old man, thinking to ask if he’d seen her sons. Nearing, she called out, but he ignored or didn’t hear her, didn’t even glance up at her hail, continued walking, with his slow, awkward gait, toward her, looking at the ground, and, from time to time, fretfully shaking his head. A starling, spangled breast, flitted hither and yon above him, now and again alighting on his shrivelled skull to rest a moment.
Jane closed the distance. The old man, eyes fixed on shuffling feet, did not, or feigned to not, note her till she was right before him. Then he started, cringed back. The bird, which was, at that moment, perched on his crown, flew off. He stopped, and, leaning on his stick, peered up at Jane. Rheumy eyes, mouth hanging slack, strands of spittle strung over the gape. Then, after working his lower jaw from side to side, he spoke.
‘What’re you doing here?’ he croaked
‘Looking for my sons. You haven’t seen them, have you? Two young boys?’
‘Young,’ he said, leering. ‘How young?’
He spat on his free hand, tried to smooth down his wispy hair.
She backed away.
‘What?’
The old man started chuckling, then choked, took several wheezing breaths, hawked, spat a dark clot. Then, squinting at Jane, he said, ‘A symmetry in that. I’m seeking me old mum, see. Well, at least I think I am.’
‘So you’ve not seen my sons?’
He shook his staff at her, lost his balance, fetched up sitting on the floor, cursing.
‘Now hold on,’ he groaned. ‘I never said that, did I?’
Jane reached down, helped him back to his feet.
‘If you know anything, anything at all, please tell me.’
He puckered his leathery lips.
‘You’ll find them through there,’ he said, pointing out a service hatch in the tunnel wall, metal, painted a dull green. Jane turned. She’d not noticed the hatch before. Thanking the old man, who doffed a figmental cap and grinned sly, she turned the handle, swung the hatch open, and stepped through. Turning her ankle again, on uneven ground the other side, she fell to her knees.
All was dim. After getting to her feet once more, she stood still, waiting for her eyes to adjust. But, before they did, her surrounds were lit up. She saw she was somehow above ground once more, on a barren heath, desolate scrubland to the horizon’s bound. The hatch, the tunnel, gone. Overhead, an overcast sky. Gloaming, night gaining the upper hand in the endless war in the firmament. But the dying sun had rallied and flung a spear through the clouds. Then all fell dark once more, the light again occulted.
‘Jeremy, Peter,’ Jane called out, but feebly. She despaired; it was a forlorn hope; the cripple had lied in every word.
Then, rummaging in her handbag, she found her mobile phone, took it out. She’d never upgraded; it was an old model, a brick. She knew the tired horror trope, expected to see she’d no signal. She did not expect to see, on the screen, a pixelated, but finely detailed picture of a dead and scorched oak trunk, with a cleft in it like a mouth awry. She gawped, and that mouth gaped to show, within, a chubby pinkish infant stuck with a spear, its own mouth a puckered ‘O’. She dropped the phone. It lay there on the ground, screen up, showing a staring eye. She kicked it from her into the dark that beset her.
At that moment, light stabbed through the clouds again, and Jane saw a swathe of the wretched quitch grass, gorse, ragged thistle, dock, and heather had been trampled, sign that a rout had crossed the plain. She set off, followed this trail a time. Before long, she grew used to the crepuscular, cloud-blotted light, and, while it lasted, found she could see, but dimly, but enough.
Then the sun fell though, the hordes of night overran the sky, and it was as if her eyes had been tarred. She then kept on a way in the dark, but, hearing the gush of a swift stream, wanting not to blunder in, stopped, and sat on the damp sod to bide till dawn.
But she didn’t have to wait that long, for, by and by, the cloud cover broke up, and a reddish moon cast its light on the plain. Jane, tilting her head back, gazed up at the stars. Usually she saw only chaos, murk in the night sky, for she’d never learnt to pick out the constellations, never learnt their shapes, their names; but the engraving on that strange welkin had been chased by an apt, if devilish hand, and she saw its lurid scenes clearly: bloody battles, torture and torment, bizarre beasts locked together in brutal strife or grotesque lust.
She walked on, the rush of water growing louder, and soon came to a foul-stinking brook; it was in spate and, seen by the unwholesome light of the bloodmoon, seemed a torrent of gore. Gnarled alders and forlorn sallow lined its bank. She broke a branch from one of these lorn trees, then, shuddering, forded the stream, using her stick to probe for rocks and hollows, picking her way, tentative, in dread, at every step, of setting her foot on a dead man’s cheek. Once, as she thrust the branch out, she struck something living, and it gave a horrid shriek, too close to a baby’s wail, before thrashing away. On gaining the other side, Jane then had to struggle through a briar patch, thorns rending her clothes, and, tearing free of the thicket, found herself on the edge of a churned field strewn with bodies, men hacked to hash, horses with bellies slashed, guts spilled, strange blooms. The shambles reek stifled.
Not far from her, on the edge of the battleground, a gaunt nag skittishly pawed the ground, rolled its eyes. Its quivering flanks were spattered with mud and cruor.
In the distance, across the field, a dark tower loomed, its many turrets clawing at the stars, its flanks warty with bastions. Jane felt drawn to it. She trudged on, over that awful plain, wary of the scattered blades and caltrops, hardening herself to the stench and terrible sights. It was eerily quiet: the crows made no cawing squabbling over morsels, the blowflies barely thrummed. She passed many war engines, gory travesties of farming implements. There were harrows and ploughs for raking and furrowing flesh, not soil, bladed wheels and flails for reaping and threshing men, not crops.
That morning, feeling summery, Jane had put on a pretty floral-print pleated skirt, that, knee-length, left her calves bare. Then, she stumbled over a severed hand, looked down to find her footing, and saw her shins were flecked with gore. Something broke within her; she pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, moaned, low.
When she took her hands from her eyes again, her surroundings had changed utterly. She now stood amid a parched waste, with, overhead, a moon like a pitted and tarnished coin, and, underfoot, coarse grey sand. The battlefield and its horrors were gone, but that desert was too a place of death, strewn with crosses botched from planks; with horse, pony, and mule carcasses, hides turned to leather and part-flayed by dust storms, ribs jutting like the timbers of wrecked coracles; with covered wagons, canted, warped, and sun-bleached; and with the bones of men, women, and children, gnawed, scattered by scavengers.
A little way before her, set between two humped knolls and a craggy peak, was a squat keep of drab stone. There was but a single oak door, with iron battens, in sight, no windows or loopholes. The merlons of the parapet, eroded t
o stumps, looked like rotten teeth.
Jane made for the tower, raising, as she walked, ashen familiars that scampered in her wake.
She stood a moment, before the door, then tried the handle. But the door was shut fast. She reached out, chary, took hold of the brass knocker, a ring hanging from the jaws of a crocodile’s head, knocked. After waiting for the echoes of that one knock to die, she hammered away, bellowing her sons’ names.
Inside the tower, all was still.
(At this point, I interrupted to ask Jane how she knew Peter and Jeremy were within.
‘I just knew,’ she replied. ‘A mother knows.’)
Jane walked round the tower, seeking another way in, but found none, no other doors, no windows or loopholes at all. Coming on the door once more, she kicked it. She jarred her bad ankle, but the door swung open, had been unlocked while she circled the turret.
The hinges wailed, another tired horror trope. Jane heeded them not.
She found herself stood in the hallway of her own house. Fear faded away. As if she’d drunk a draught of nepenthes. She looked about her, saw nothing unwonted, though the rug spread out on the tiles at her feet put up her hackles. She’d a memory of throwing it on a bonfire in the back garden, years before, but that memory was dim, seemed merely a figment. Of course, the rug hadn’t been burnt; it’d never been blood-matted, gruesome.
Then she heard chattering from the dining room. Peter and Jeremy larking. Crossing over, heart light, she opened the door, looked through, saw her sons sitting at the table, which was set for dinner, draped with the checked cloth, laid with four places. An open, half-empty bottle of red wine in the centre. Beyond, seen through the kitchen door, a man, stood with his back to Jane, wearing an apron, stirring something in a pan on a stove. The smell of frying onions, their sizzle.
Peter smiled.
‘Mum. Come in. Dad’s cooking.’
The man turned. Roderick. He smiled.
‘Have a seat. And some wine. Won’t be long.’
Jane sat, poured herself a glass, sipped. It was good.
‘What’re we having?’
‘Risotto,’ Peter said.
‘Lovely.’
She felt buoyant, yet calm.
‘Mum,’ Peter said. ‘Are you ill? You look it.’
‘Well, I don’t feel great, Peter. Writing’s been tough these last weeks. I haven’t been sleeping well, either. But don’t worry, I’m definitely on the mend now. I’ll be fine, especially with my boys to look after me.’
‘But you need to see a doctor, Mummy,’ Jeremy said, near to tears.
‘No. I’ll be right as rain. Soon as I’ve had some rest.’
But, just then, she heard, faint, a squeal. Reeling, clutching at the table, she saw, in her mind’s eye, a blood-mad, lorn horse on a carrion field. She blinked, shook her head, swigged her wine. Peter and Jeremy stared, worried. Wind in the old horse chestnut in the garden, she thought. A shot from a film watched long ago, forgotten save that bleak image.
Roderick put a lid on the pot, crossed over to join them.
‘Nearly there,’ he said, raising his eyebrows, rubbing his hands together. ‘Think I might have some wine myself, you know.’
He glugged out a glass, draining the bottle, raised it.
‘Here’s to us.’
The others echoed the toast; glasses of wine and cups of squash were clinked.
Then Jane heard scrabbling, and, turning, saw a scrawny-necked vulture at the garden window, perched on the sill. She started, gasped. The carrion bird leered at her, wicked, then flapped off. Then she noticed Roderick’s faint reflection in the glass, hanging, caught in the branches of the briar out there. His apron was gore-smeared, there was something wrong with his face…
She moaned, squinched her eyes. Then felt Roderick’s hand on her shoulder, blenched.
‘What is it, my love?’ he asked, gently. ‘Not feeling right?’
She turned to look up at him. There was no blood on his apron, his face was handsome, as it ever was.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong.’ She shuddered. ‘Mind playing tricks.’
‘Stress,’ Roderick said. ‘You’ve nothing to worry about. Not with the three of us looking after you.’
‘Yes, don’t worry, Mum,’ Peter put in.
Jeremy gripped her hand.
‘I’ll try not to. Thanks so much, all of you. What a loving family. I’m so lucky.’
Roderick smiled, bent down, kissed her. There was a putrid waft, a greasy feel. Only her frazzled brain. Then Roderick cleared his throat, mimed tapping with a pen on a pad.
‘Are you ready to order?’
Peter and Jeremy giggled.
Jane pretended to mull over a menu.
‘Difficult choice. What would you recommend?’
‘Well, the chief’s special today is Isle of Divels Crab Risotto, Madame.’
‘Sounds great. I think we’ll all have it.’
‘Excellent choice, Madame.’
Roderick returned to the kitchen, came back bearing a tray laden with four steaming bowls, set it down, passed out the dishes.
‘Right, tuck in,’ he said. ‘I’ll just open another bottle of wine, won’t be a moment.’
Closing her eyes, smiling, Jane leaned over her bowl, breathed deep. Then retched, choked by fetor. Squinting down, she saw a welter of grubs. Looking about, frantic, she saw Jeremy with a writhing forkful halfway to his mouth. She leapt to her feet, slapped the fork from his hand. It clattered to the floor.
The boys stared, shrank from her. Looking again at the bowls, Jane saw they held only creamy grains of rice. She broke down. As did the others.
Roderick appeared in the doorway.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Sorry,’ Jane said, shaking herself, blinking back tears. ‘I’m not myself. Need some fresh air. Can you get Jeremy another fork, my love? I won’t be long.’
She got to her feet, went out into the hall. Roderick started towards her, then, grimacing, stopped. Her heart juddered. She gritted her teeth, fought for calm. Then, she opened the front door, went outside, slumped down on the doorstep, breathed. The cool night air did her a little good.
But then all lurched, reeled; the moon shone down, not on a terrace of Georgian townhouses, but on a barren plain, strewn with broken-down covered wagons and carts, horse, pony, and mule carcasses, graves, bones. Vultures wheeled overhead.
She whimpered, then retched. Spewed bile. Her boys! Oh fuck, her boys! She bit her cheek hard, blood filled her mouth, tottered to her feet, went back inside the tower.
A dark dank chamber. Ceiling beams so low she was stooped. Moonlight from outside, but weak, unable to burrow far. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, then she looked about. It was not her entrance hall.
Hunkering down, she stroked the rug on the floor, the same that had disconcerted her before, even when the glamour was on her. It was roughly like the one she now recalled, clearly, carrying out into the garden, retching at its shambles stink, then burning. A breeze had blown the foul smoke back towards the house. It had been a warm day, and all the windows had been open, and she’d had to run inside to shut them, crumpled, breathless, sobbing, once she had. The rug in the dark tower had a similar pattern, of muted blotches, a similar deep pile. But it was antic somehow, shabby, matted, patchy. Bending down to peer closer, she gagged on a gore reek, realized what she was looking at: a patchwork of human scalps. Cringing back, she staggered, hit her head on the hard stone wall.
As she stood, rubbing the knock, she saw, hanging to her left, a scrap of animal hide with a crude painting on it, a horrid mockery of a photograph she, Roderick, and Peter had sat for, when Peter was just a baby.
It was not her entrance hall. But it was an awful apery of it. The dining and living room doors were here just chalk outlines on the wall, though. Where then were her boys? Jane peered about, noticed a wall-hanging that had no counterpart in her house, walked over to it. It was threadbare, its colours dulled, but
she could still just make out its design. In the foreground, a company of armoured men, on foot, cowered, a winged beast, with black hide, leathery pinions, long jaws, and snaggle-teeth, stooping on them. And, in the top right of the picture, smaller, three mounted knights, one clad in swart armour, herding a rabble of peasants, in sackcloth, towards a narrow fissure in a rocky escarpment. There was an eerie sense of residual energy about all the figures, as if they’d been moving the instant before.
(When Jane finished describing the tapestry, Duncan, Elliot, and I turned to William to see his response. But, though he was listening attentively, nothing in his expression suggested he’d noted the resonance with his tale. Jane also seemed unaware of it. At the time, I wondered if this was feigned, if she’d deliberately evoked William’s story, though I couldn’t fathom why. Revelations later that evening suggested, however, that all our experiences had been wrought by a sole malevolence, and that, just as it is thought all mankind’s dreams come from a collective oneiric pool, all dark experiences are drawn from a single well of horror, into which, from time to time, a poor unfortunate unwittingly lowers his pail.)9
Putting out her hand, Jane touched the tapestry. It gave slightly under her fingers. She reached out, took hold of the cloth, drew it aside. A wild writhen thing leered out at her from the passage the arras concealed. Cowering back, letting the wall-hanging fall, she tripped on the warped boards, staggered, fell down heavily. Throwing out an arm to steady herself, she felt, beneath her hand, the gruesome rug. And it too yielded, sagged into a hidden opening.
Some beast beneath was disturbed; a scuttling started up. Leaping to her feet, Jane backed away, breathing hard. The rug was abruptly seized, pulled down into a ragged hole. The scratching waxed louder, more frantic. Edging closer and looking down through the hole, Jane saw a dingy pit, floor strewn with gnawed bones, some with gobbets of flesh still clinging to them. Then she glimpsed a mottled carapace and a brutal pincer, shrank away.
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