They are right, Cornelius. She does burn.
I know.
I can barely look at her. Even now I want to throw myself upon her. What power is this?
Cornelius shook his head. It has grown stronger the closer we get to home. Even the crone sensed it. She became so agitated by the girl’s presence that I had to tell her to sleep. His eyes slid to the driver’s box. Is she harmed?
Just shaken. Get back inside. I will fetch her in to you.
She does not do as she is told, Captain. She may struggle.
Vincent shrugged wryly. What choice has she, cully? I doubt she will stay here after our friends’ alarming enthusiasm.
As Cornelius made his pained way back into the carriage, Vincent glanced around the market square. The villagers had retreated to door and window again. Peadar was watching from the porch of the inn. Vincent stared at him until he lowered his eyes; then he braced himself against the girl’s strange magnetism and opened the gate.
She was sitting on the floor, the skirts of her coat puffed cheerfully around her. She had uncovered Matthew and was gazing into his face. As Vincent crouched beside her she whispered, ‘You took him, mister. You took him. I’ll kill you.’
Vincent reached and gently loosened her fingers from their grip on Matthew’s hand. She made two angry fists but said nothing as Vincent took the blanket and covered him once again. This time, the boy did not flinch as the coarse fabric came up to blot out the light. He simply kept staring up at the cloud-laden sky, his face slack and peaceful, his dead eyes filled with snow.
The Big House
PAST THE ABANDONED church, the high stone wall that surrounded the estate’s private lands began flashing by the window. Almost home. Cornelius knotted his fists, his mind speeding ahead as if his will could make the miles lessen. The Angel was a luminous presence at the edge of his senses now, the delicate aura of its power already tangible. Too distant yet to ease his pain, it only made him want to leap from the speeding carriage and run, screaming, the rest of the way.
Hurry, Captain, please.
Vincent did not reply.
The girl watched from the opposite seat, her hands clenched in her lap. Cornelius wanted to throw something over her so that she would stop hurting his eyes with her invisible light. She was weeping, the tears welling up and rolling down her face unheeded as she regarded him with an almost manic intensity. Every now and again her gaze would drift upwards, as if watching some invisible thing rise from his shoulders or his hair. Then her attention would snap back to his face.
Cornelius dredged his voice from some creaky place within him. ‘What do you see?’
She clenched her hands tighter. ‘Don’t you know? Can’t you see it?’
He shook his head. The girl hesitated. Her eyes roamed all around his edges – not looking at him exactly, but at something which seemed to surround him. She lifted her hand, uncurling a finger to point. Before she could speak, the carriage was plunged into a gloom so deep that the light was blotted almost entirely. The world outside had disappeared! There was nothing to be seen but featureless grey.
I am dead, thought Cornelius. Dead and dropped to hell.
They had driven into a fogbank. The realisation filled him with embarrassment and relief. Had he cried out? If so, he hoped Vincent had not overheard.
Within moments the carriage slowed, then stopped. There came the familiar sound of the estate’s great iron gates being opened. Cornelius leaned his head against the window. The wrought-iron canopy of the gate arch was just visible above. In the fog it seemed unattached to any earthly support, its heavy filigree floating in the swarming grey, the massive gate pillars and small keeper’s lodge invisible.
Vincent’s voice called down from atop the carriage, his words flattened by the damp. ‘You’ve been waiting.’
Luke’s gruff monotone replied: ‘Aye. Was in the lodge. Pull her through.’
The Angel’s presence sang a note higher as they crossed the threshold, and Cornelius shut his eyes. So close. The fog pressed, sly and inquisitive, against the glass as the unseen gates were dragged shut. There came the harsh metallic screel of the chain being drawn, the snap of the padlock. Cornelius watched the girl’s hand creep across to find that of the sleeping crone’s. Luke’s shadow passed the window and she flinched. Cornelius clenched his own hands against a sudden bout of shivering.
Please, Vincent, he thought. Please, take me home.
There came the familiar sway as Luke put his weight onto the footplate, meaning to step up into the driver’s cab. ‘You’re in trouble with your missus, Captain,’ he groused. ‘She’s not happy at all.’
Vincent said, ‘Get into the carriage if you want a lift.’
Even through the haze of his suffering, Cornelius was shocked by that rudeness. He turned his face towards the ensuing silence, as if he could see through carriage and fog to read Luke’s expression.
Vincent spoke again. ‘I do not have all day, Luke! Do you want a lift to the house or not?’
There came the sound of the driver’s gate being slammed. ‘I’ll walk,’ snarled Luke.
The words had barely been spoken when the carriage jerked to life. They took off at immense speed, the drive spitting gravel beneath the wheels. The trees, the boathouse, the furthest stretches of the pond, all were lost behind the grey face of the fog. It felt like an eternity before Cornelius felt the bump and clatter of the cobbled stretch leading to the river. There was a jolt, and the sound of the wheels became hollow as they crossed the bridge; then gravel hissed under the wheels again as they sped the last half mile beneath the poplars.
The light grew, the fog cleared, and they were travelling past broad sweeps of daisy-speckled lawn. The trees fluttered their greenery in graceful bounty above. Birds sang in summer profusion. The scent of roses filled the carriage.
The Angel’s power sang high and clear, its proximity an embrace, and Cornelius almost wept in bliss. Home. Thank God. Home.
Outside, Raquel – all crinoline and flouncing overskirts – was pushing one of her baby-carriages across the misty grass. She pretended not to notice their arrival and continued her haughty progress without looking their way.
As the carriage rounded the last long curve of driveway, Cornelius realised he was going to be sick. Like the first rush of an opium-pipe after a long time at sea, the abrupt return to the Angel’s power was making him ill. He reached for the door and almost flung himself from it before remembering that they were still travelling at a tremendous rate.
Stop, Vincent! he thought. Then he shouted it. ‘Stop!’
The house slammed into view. The carriage came to an abrupt halt, and Cornelius threw himself out the door. His legs did not respond as he would have wanted them to, and he fell to the gravel, the harsh stones biting his knees. From the corner of his eye he saw Raquel startle at the sight of him, saw her step away from the baby-carriage. She began to run towards him. But Cornelius knew how he must look, how ill and wretched and ugly, and he knew she would not be able to face him. He lurched to his feet.
Raquel came to a halt at the edge of the drive, her toes touching the gravel, her expression conflicted. She struggled hard. With only yards between them, Cornelius saw her try to will herself across to him. He waved her concern aside – No bother, my darling, no bother – and staggered for the house.
‘Raquel,’ yelled Vincent. ‘Escort our guests inside.’ The tone of his voice brought Cornelius to a halt. Why was he speaking to her like that? ‘Raquel!’ yelled Vincent again. ‘I have no time to waste! Escort our guests inside.’
At the word ‘guests’, Raquel’s mouth tightened. She did not move. Exasperated, Vincent discarded the reins, about to leap from the driver’s box.
Distressed that his friends might be reunited on such sour terms, Cornelius called out, ‘Wait, wait … I shall …’ Waving Vincent to stay where he was, he stumbled back around the carriage and flung open the door. The girl had moved to shield the old woman’s body wi
th her own. Her eyes were everywhere at once, darting from his face to the house, to Raquel and back again, as if tracing a web of lines only she could see.
‘Come out,’ demanded Cornelius, desperate now to be gone. ‘This is the end of your journey.’
He saw her force herself to focus. ‘You …’ she whispered. She lifted the old woman’s hand. ‘You told her to sleep. Now she won’t wake up.’
Goddamn it. ‘Miss Lyndon! Wake yourself!’
The old woman jerked awake and regarded him with startled blue eyes.
‘Out!’ he cried.
The girl emerged slowly, like a pretty animal from its cage. She was not so dazzling here as in the village. It was the proximity of the Angel, perhaps – like a candle flame in sunlight, the girl was eclipsed by its aura. But she still emanated a bright power; still one felt the urge to squint. At the sight of her, Raquel took two fascinated steps onto the gravel. Then the old woman appeared within the dark frame of the carriage and Raquel stopped dead, her wonder turned to horror.
The girl helped the crone to disembark. They were scarcely out the door when Vincent slapped the reins, causing the horses to start forward with a jerk. The carriage took the corner, its wheels spraying gravel. Then it was gone, heading for the stable yards at the rear of the house.
‘Must …’ mumbled Cornelius, stumbling up the steps. ‘So sorry, my dear … guests …’ He waved his hand as he headed in the door. ‘Be nice …’
And he stumbled away, leaving the guests to their own devices and the chilly uncertainty of Raquel’s care.
The Terrible Voice
AS SOON AS he was alone Vincent slid to the floor of the driver’s box and tore the blanket from Matthew. The horses knew their own way, and they trotted into the yard and under the carriage-house arch without guidance as he gathered the boy into his arms. Matthew’s body was cold and pliable, a loose-limbed collection of meaningless flesh and bone. His skin was blue-tinged with frost.
Intently, Vincent took the boy’s face between his hands. He stared for a long time at the thin and barely recognisable features. There was no life; no movement but Vincent’s own breath stirring the ragged strands of dirty-blond fringe. But Matthew was still there. Vincent knew it. Matthew was there. ‘You hold fast, boy,’ he whispered. Then he ducked his shoulder, flung the boy across his back and leapt from the carriage.
The horses whinnied as he ran past, shied as he kicked open the door to the orchard. And then he was out in the open air, dashing through the knee-deep grass of the neglected kitchen garden, stumbling away from the newer portions of the house towards the ruins of the castle, the old moat and the dark, open maw of the under-tunnels.
Vincent could barely remember the last time he had used these steps. Not even at the very beginning, when he’d had the crew drag the creature down here and batten it fast in the darkness – not even when his curiosity had been at its very highest – had he much ventured below the ground. Truth was, he did not like enclosed spaces. Vincent knew this originated in his childhood abhorrence of the packed and stinking cargo-holds of his father’s ships, but even so clear an understanding of the cause of his unease could not help him conquer it. So he avoided the tunnels, and only ever ventured below if Cornelius spent too long underground and Raquel requested he be fetched out.
Yet here I am, he thought, once again submitting myself to the deeps.
As he shifted the fragile weight of the boy on his shoulder and wended his slow way downwards, Vincent thought wryly that only three people in the entire history of his adult life could have enticed him to do this. Raquel, Cornelius and Matthew – what a fool he had become for them.
‘Now, Matthew,’ he said, ‘you are a long and lanky bundle these days, and these stones are slick. I should be most happy to see you dance a jig when we reach level ground, but pray do not be tempted to stir until then.’
The echoes that whispered back at him seemed to tighten the already close space, and Vincent immediately began to speak again.
‘Cornelius … Cornelius will have run straight for the Bright Man, of course, but do not worry. He will have taken the house steps; we shall not stumble across each other in the dark. He is most likely sitting right now on the other side of the tunnels, only a few yards from the lower door, gazing up at his angel. In your day he would have had to venture much deeper to find it, but the creature never seems to wander far from the door now. It is almost as if it cannot bear to be any further from Cornelius than he can from it.’
Vincent paused, his hand on the wall, this knowledge suddenly very clear to him. The Bright Man had indeed taken to loitering near the lower door. Vincent knew this because Cornelius had been easier and easier to find recently – slumped only yards from the door, often on the steps themselves, while the creature paced or leaned or lay close by.
It is almost as if the creature is waiting for him, thought Vincent. Could it be that two centuries of proximity had finally made Cornelius visible to it? Vincent allowed this idea to percolate as he carried the boy deeper.
‘Perhaps Cornelius’ curious dependence is no longer one-sided, Matthew. I must detail my recent theories on mutualism to you. What think you of the idea that we are as indispensable to the creature as it is to us? That it – all unknowing to itself – now craves the proximity of creatures it does not even see?’
If Matthew had an opinion on this, he did not choose to share it.
They were deep underground now. Vincent could sense the waters of the moat pressing against the wall to his right, exuding moisture into the stones. Fed via natural channels from the waters of the boating pond, it ran all the way around the estate, enclosing the entire complex of ruins and the manor house itself within its cool green borders.
Vincent respected the moat as the last unchanged bastion of the estate’s defences. It served to remind him of all that Cornelius had achieved when, two centuries ago, in the heart of famine and plague and war, he had convinced the original Wolcroft to sheath his sword and silence his cannon. In reconciling tenantry to landlord, Cornelius had succeeded in replacing parapet and drawbridge with manor house and garden, and in the process had shaped this crumbling fortress into a home.
‘Into our home, Matthew. It all came a little too lightly to you, I suppose. But perhaps now you’ve seen something of the world, you might understand exactly what he has built for us here, and work a little harder to hold your patience with him. Ah …’ Vincent came to a halt at the entrance of the Bright Man’s cave.
‘Here we are,’ he said, laying Matthew onto the gritty sand. ‘The site of your restoration.’
The cave was small – hardly larger than one of the estate’s cellars – but even so small a space was a relief after the close confines of the tunnels. Vincent squatted for a moment, his hand on Matthew’s motionless chest, gazing out across the ghost-fire shimmer of the pool that took up most of the cave’s floor. Wisps of vapour rose from the warm stone walls. The air was alive with the soft plinks of dripping water and the resulting whispered echoes. Matthew’s head had lolled to the side, his face turned to the pool. The water reflected a trembling rim of light onto his hollow features.
‘This pool means something to the Bright Man, Matthew. It is drawn to this place. Soon I will fetch Cornelius upstairs, and when he is gone I am certain the creature will come here and spend some time with you.’
Vincent rose to his feet. The Bright Man’s strange footprints punctuated the sandy shore all around them, but they were concentrated most heavily on the far side of the water, at the mouth of the tunnel that led to the lower door. According to Cornelius, the Bright Man habitually sat or squatted or lay by the side of this pool, gazing into the water. Cornelius said it listened to the water. Vincent had no idea why he should put it like that.
He glanced down at the motionless boy, nodded, and turned back the way he had come. ‘I shall be locking the grill behind me,’ he called, taking the iron key from his pocket. ‘If you wake, do not panic. I shall not lea
ve you alone with the creature any longer than I feel is necessary.’
A sound made him pause at the threshold of the cave. At first it did not even feel like a sound. It was more a trembling in his chest, the barest irritation of his heart, and he paused only to see if it was really there. Then it rose, a great howl of sensation, as if emanating from some depth of his body, as if produced by his own body: an inhuman feeling, conveying inhuman pain, but conveying pain nonetheless – an emotion so consuming it made Vincent want to tear his chest in order to reach his own heart.
Vincent knew – he knew – that this was the Bright Man. For the very first time, the Bright Man had a voice.
He turned back and ran for the lower door. Leaping Matthew’s body, his boots sent ripples across the surface of the pool. The walls and ceiling came alive in geometries of fire as he dashed through the shallows. Vincent plunged into the far tunnel, his footsteps puncturing those of the Bright Man’s as he followed their path.
AT THE LOWER DOOR, the creature seemed in the process of trying to escape. Its spider-like hands roamed the surface of the iron-bound wood as if seeking a crack large enough to slip through. The great appendages Cornelius referred to as wings but that Vincent saw as tentacles – those spreading fans of eel-like protuberances that emanated from its hips and shoulders – were writhing in agitation, their tips probing frantically at ceiling and walls. Its massive head was low between its shoulders, swinging to and fro like that of a chained bear, and its voice – its voice! Vincent was certain it would drive him mad with grief.
He fought forward through the noise, his hands clamped to his ears.
Cornelius was pressed to the wall at the base of the steps, his arms braced against the stones, his eyes wide and filled with reflected brilliance as he stared up at the Bright Man. Vincent marvelled that he could tolerate the creature’s searing presence. ‘Cully!’ he cried. ‘Come away from it!’
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