‘What’s in that lake is wrong, Harry,’ she said at last. ‘It feels all wrong for this world. Like it will infect it. Like … I keep thinking the word “contagion”. It’s a contagion. The Angel is terrified of it.’
A contagion. A disease. Harry shuddered, images of boils and pustules and open sores spreading in his mind. ‘Maybe I should forget the lake,’ he murmured. ‘Maybe I should just let the Angel out … see what happens then.’
‘You can’t just let him out, Harry,’ said Tina. ‘He’s mad. He’s hungry. If you let him out, he’ll come straight for me and Joe. He’ll rip us apart. Do you understand?’
Harry nodded, dry-mouthed. She was so matter-of-fact. ‘Okay, I won’t let it out,’ he said. ‘But you two should leave while I’m under the water. Take advantage of the distraction and get as far away as possible.’
‘Sure, couldn’t we all just leave?’ said Tina, staring at him with a knowing kind of gentleness. ‘Couldn’t we all just sneak off, right now, and take our chances in the snow?’
‘I’m not going to abandon an angel to these madmen,’ said Harry. ‘But you should go. You’re used to horses, Joe. Take one of them from the stables – make a break for it!’
Joe shook his head. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘But Tina—’
As if to silence him, Tina turned back to the window. ‘Harry,’ she said, ‘if you’re going underwater, you’d better get moving. They’re starting to burn their way through the ice.’
‘What?’ Harry rushed to see.
Far out on the frozen lake, Vincent was straightening from a crouch. He pointed something out to the man called Luke, who was nodding and tugging at his whiskers, deep in thought.
They had constructed a large tripod and were just finishing the process of suspending a brazier below it. As Harry watched, Luke tossed something into the brazier, and its contents roared to sudden flame. The men stepped back, waving smoke from their faces, and yes – it was obvious – they were planning to burn a hole into the frozen surface.
Harry swallowed hard at the sight of the children sitting on the wall of the bridge. They were chatting and swinging their little legs, full of the innocent joys of youth.
Wolcroft was also on the bridge. He seemed to have put as much distance between himself and the children as possible while still taking advantage of the elevated view. His arms were folded, his posture tense, as he watched the proceedings on the ice.
The woman was occupied on the lake shore. Despite the overcast sky, she had stuck an ornate sun umbrella into the frosty ground and was busy placing a folding chair in its shade. She had a pram with her, filled with dolls. It seemed the entire family was set to watch the show.
‘It’s a circus down there,’ whispered Harry.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ said Tina.
Harry didn’t like how much he wanted to be persuaded by this. ‘Say now,’ he said, gesturing to the man on the lake. ‘If that guy can do it, then so can I.’
‘These people aren’t like us, Harry. I don’t think they can die.’
‘I wouldn’t mind testing that theory,’ murmured Joe.
Harry wet his lips. He had a question he very badly wanted to know the answer to. It was a hard question to ask, but it wouldn’t leave him alone. Especially now.
‘Joe,’ he ventured. ‘Tina told me … Tina told me you died. Is that true?’
Joe turned his calm, strangely immobile gaze to Harry. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I died.’
‘What was it like?’
Joe thought a moment. ‘Lonely,’ he said. ‘Empty. It got very dark.’
Harry’s voice felt too small and too dry when he asked, ‘But … did you see nothing? No heaven?’
Joe smiled gently. ‘Don’t let that bother you, Harry. If heaven exists, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let me in. Sure, why would they, when I never had the manners to believe in the place?’
Tina, her eyes still on the lake, tightened her hand in his. ‘Joe,’ she murmured. ‘Do you remember when I was sick, and all the neighbours were scared of me?’
Joe winced. ‘Stop,’ he said.
‘Nana and Fran were so good to me, Joe. But they wouldn’t talk to me about it. Do you remember? They never talked about it, and they were always bringing priests to the gaff, and holding novenas … and for a long time, it was like I was a stranger everyone was praying would go away, so their real little girl could come home.’
She looked up at Joe.
‘But you talked to me about it, Joe. You talked to me as if I was still the same person. And when it happened again, you and Saul went and found Dr Taxol’s epilepsy book and Mr Aristotle’s list and all them other things. You made me see I wasn’t on me own; that it wasn’t the devil doing these things to me. You showed me there wasn’t anything wrong with me that other people hadn’t already gone through. Do you remember all that, Joe?’
‘I remember,’ he whispered.
‘Good. I’m glad you do.’ Tina stretched up and kissed Joe on his lips. ‘Any god that wouldn’t let you into heaven deserves a kick in his arse,’ she said.
‘Now.’ She turned from him. ‘You and Harry are going to have to help me sort something out, because we’re not leaving without Miss U.’
Burning Down
VINCENT SHIELDED HIS eyes from the billowing smoke and steam and examined the shoreline, trying to map the shape of the boating pond in his mind.
‘Luke,’ he murmured, ‘have you ever read Jules Verne?’
‘Pah!’ spat Luke, crouching to check the padded feet of the tripod. ‘Fiction is for women.’
Vincent huffed softly. ‘Fiction is the human mind exploring all the possibilities of what is and what might be, Luke. Every progress ever achieved began as a fiction, in one form or another.’
As he spoke, he pondered the ripple of hills that bordered the southern end of the pond, and then turned his attention towards the north shore. The breeze blew the smoke away in that direction, a stream of acrid darkness tumbling across the ice until it was swallowed by the fog.
‘I cannot believe that I have never noticed this,’ he murmured.
‘Noticed what?’
‘The pond. The shape of it.’
‘Oh, aye,’ said Luke. ‘You could see the shape clearly from atop the monastery tower before Wolcroft tore it down – like someone plunged their fist through a field of mud and left a great big hole. Old folk named this lake Stad an Púca – said the divil ploughed it up with a smack of his hurley; that the lights over it were himself looking for his lost slíotar. Story was that the Bright Man was sent by God to find it and deny the divil the satisfaction of collecting it.’
He grimaced up at Vincent from where he was crouched. ‘But you know all that, Captain. Sure I bored the trousers off you many a night on board with these tales. Trying to tempt you and Himself back here to free my land.’
‘I confess, I never thought too deeply about it. My mind was always occupied with the Bright Man, and plans for his capture and preservation.’
‘Huh. May chance had I writ it down as fiction you would have paid more heed.’
Vincent let himself smile. ‘May chance.’
‘It’s strange to be crouched here o’er the lights that featured in so many stories from my childhood,’ said Luke, laying his fingers against the surface of the ice. ‘I hadn’t ever thought to see them myself – allus believed they were nothing but a tale inspired by marsh gas or such. What brought ’em about now, do you think, Captain?’
‘Perhaps they have always been here – perhaps the presence of the ice concentrates them somehow and makes visible that which previously the waves hid from us.’
‘It’s said they once shone bright as stars,’ murmured Luke, rising to his feet. ‘That the surface glittered at night like scattered emeralds. If so, they lost their lustre long before I was born. Perhaps the extravaganza will restore them, Captain? It’s said …’
His voice trailed off when he noticed that Vincent had switched his attenti
on to the bridge, where Cornelius brooded and scowled.
‘Himself is in a right scorp, ain’t he? Doesn’t fancy your present enterprise much, I reckon. Too dangerous for you.’
‘At least he is above ground for once, and engaged. It gives me hope that he might be improving. And Raquel! Look at her, out and about.’ Vincent slapped the nearest tripod leg. ‘I should do more public experiments, Luke, if they will animate the others so. Why, I can feel it in the air myself, can’t you? A renewed vibrancy – a freshness. It is quite gratifying. And there is very little hunger today, did you notice? Even the children seem content. It makes me …’
He trailed off at the look on Luke’s face. It was a miserable look, filled with reluctance and uncertainty; it turned Vincent’s happy zeal to wariness.
‘What is it?’ asked Vincent.
Luke shook his head and waved a hand, went to turn away.
‘What?’ Vincent grabbed his arm. ‘Say it!’
Luke seemed to squirm internally. ‘Captain …’ he said. ‘Captain, you know it ain’t just Himself and the missus. Don’t you?’
Vincent released him. Luke went on apologetically.
‘Who is it you think has kept that laboratory of yours going these past fifty years or so, sir? Who is it you think has topped the water up in all those tanks, and kept all those bellows working? Clockwork don’t wind itself, you know.’
Vincent backed away. He tried to recall the last time he had maintained the aquariums, or checked the cages. He came to a halt against a leg of the tripod. Smoke and steam gushed from the slowly sinking brazier, the roar of the flames and hiss of melting ice filling his head. Luke gave him a fleeting glance of pity, and Vincent was too frightened to even be angered by it.
‘Where … where do I be, at such times?’
‘Sitting. Just sitting. Sometimes it feels like the childer and I are the only people left on earth, Captain: walking those dusty halls; seeing you and Miss Raquel so still and quiet; knowing Himself is down there somewhere, just the same, with his angel watching over him.’ Luke shook his head.
‘And the villagers?’
‘Just the same, sir. Was a time they tended their gardens and their animals, and went a-céilídhing even, out into the world. But not this long time since have they done anything but sit. It’s only when the hunger began to set in that folk started stirring again, and then only to moan and feel bad.’
Vincent sagged against the tripod, his mind stretching back and back for some tangible memory that wasn’t from around the time Matthew had left, or since the hunger of the Bright Man’s decline had begun to ache within him. He could think of nothing. Nothing.
‘In fairness, Captain, you and the missus’ve been the best of ’em. Every now and again I’ll bring you a new delivery of periodicals and she her bookkeeping, and you’ll rouse yourselves awhile to work at your projects and such …’
‘But not for long,’ whispered Vincent, recalling.
‘Not for long, sir. And not for a long time. It may even be as much as ten year since you last stirred yourself in such a way.’
Vincent felt like sinking to the ground. He felt like losing himself in the smoke and steam that now rolled about their feet as the brazier shuddered and sank into the ice. He looked up at Luke from beneath his brows. ‘How is it that you are not affected? What is so special about you?’
‘Me and the childer,’ Luke reminded him.
The children. Vincent glanced across at them. Laughing in that tinkling, high-pitched way of theirs, they were busy flinging stones from the parapet of the bridge, attempting to shatter the new ice that had formed since they’d tried to drown Cornelius’ dogs.
‘The childer always find something to occupy them,’ murmured Luke. ‘Though it burns my heart, sometimes, to acknowledge what it is that pleases them most.’
Vincent looked to him, questioning: And you?
Luke shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you, Captain. All I know is I just want to keep moving – just keep working my land. It never fails to please me: the working of the land, the walking of it, the knowing that it is mine. But shall I confess something, Captain? I haven’t ever felt the Angel’s presence – not the way the rest of you seem to. Even now, I can see you feel it, but this “freshness” you speak of, this “renewed vibrancy”? I don’t feel that, sir. Today is just a day, to me. That’s all. A day like any other. Maybe that has something to do with why I haven’t … haven’t ever fallen away?’
Vincent’s expression must have told him that he didn’t know, because Luke nodded. ‘Matthew was the same, you know. I suspect it shamed him somewhat, because he only ever spoke to me of it once and never again. I told him it was on account of him being already so full of happiness – what need had he to borrow that of the Angel’s?’
Luke fell silent, and his eyes slid to the horizon. ‘Reckon I feel a bit awkward now,’ he said at last. ‘Reckon you might be angry with me, for speaking out so true.’
Vincent shook his head, his mind in turmoil.
Luke cleared his throat. ‘Will we lay out more slack for the chains?’ he suggested. ‘Winch them loose a bit so as—’ He squinted past Vincent, up towards the house, then gave a half laugh. ‘By God, Captain, but here comes a quare trail of ducklings!’
Vincent turned to look. It was the seer and her friends, treading their way carefully across the lawns, obviously intent on joining them. Vincent’s heart gave a startled little bump when he noticed what the girl was pushing. At the same time, Luke emitted an anxious whistle, and his eyes dropped to Raquel. She was poised like a china doll within the shelter of her umbrella, her back to the approaching threesome, her eyes shaded with one lace-gloved hand as she watched Vincent go about his work.
‘Jesus son of Mary, Captain. Tell me the missus gave them permission to take that baby-carriage, or there’ll be blood on the water before we can blink an eye.’
Vincent hopped his gaze from Raquel and the seer to Cornelius, who was standing tight-lipped and unaware on the bridge. He put a hand on Luke’s arm. ‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘The discomfort will do us good.’
Behind them, the chains sang, the tripod creaked, and at last the brazier fell through the ice, its fire extinguished with a roar of steam as it began plummeting on its chains into the depths below.
Vincent turned from the oncoming storm and, with his eyes on the churning water, began unbuttoning his shirt. ‘Stop looking up at the house,’ he said. ‘You will alert Cornelius to their presence.’
‘But they’re halfway down the hill now, Captain.’
‘Stop looking, damn you, or I shall push you in to test the depth.’
Luke moved a little further back from the hole, purposely averting his eyes from the gardens. Vincent removed his boots and his trousers, adding them to his shirt in a growing pile of neatly folded clothes on the ice. He untied the lacing at the knees of his underbritches but kept the garment on. Then he stepped to the edge. The water was black and choppy and depthless, the chains racing down into it, swallowed, link after link, by darkness.
The cold of the ice gnawed up into the soles of Vincent’s feet. The air clamped itself around his naked chest and arms. His skin began to steam. Still the chains paid out, rattling madly through the winch head as the brazier sank away from them.
‘Will we have enough to reach bottom, Captain?’
‘Even if we do not, I shall follow the chains as far as they go, then follow the lights from there.’
‘What if you run out of rope?’
Vincent did not look up.
‘Captain, don’t act rash down there. If you run out of rope, come back for more. You can’t be down there without a lifeline.’
The chains ran to the end of their length and came to a jarring halt. The tripod moaned, the winch creaked, and the chains began to turn and sing as, far below, the brazier swung its weight at the end of them.
Vincent lifted the coil of fine rope intended as his lifeline and looped the end over one shoulder
. He pointed to the second coil. ‘That is for the magician,’ he said. ‘He may join me if he wishes.’
When he sat down on the edge of the ice, and the water closed around his lower legs, Vincent shuddered. It felt dead: like dead hands gripping his flesh. He could not see his feet.
‘Captain,’ said Luke, but Vincent slipped over the side and into darkness before the man could finish his sentence.
Dead Water
TINA CROSSES THE lawns with me, Harry striding ahead, determined and terrified. The light is pressing hungry fingers against them, the creature attempting to force its grief into Tina’s mind. But I am holding Tina’s hand, and so she is calm, because I am her anchor.
We are pushing the pram with our free hands. The thing within blinks up at the passing sky, the beads of Tina’s rosary twinkling between its fingers.
I remember this rosary. It is made of Austrian crystal, and Fran and the Lady Nana gave it to Tina the day she made her first communion.
I remember that day. She and all the little girls of our parish paraded down the street, happy and proud in their veils and dresses. There were white crepe ribbons on all the buildings leading to the church. White paper bunting hung from one side of the street to the other. I stood on the corner in my scruff, and Tina grinned at me from behind her veil.
That was when she was seven.
I remember when she was fourteen, and suddenly it was like she was made of crystal, she was so bright and shining and alive. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She had already moved from our street, but we were always together. I remember Mickey began following her with his eyes, then. He began to go quiet when she was near. I knew if I wasn’t hanging around her, she wouldn’t be in his vision. I knew I should remove myself from her life. But I didn’t want to.
I remember Mickey followed her to her building. I watched the door swallow him while I stood paralysed on the street. It was just a moment’s hesitation, but even now the shame of it burns me up. By the time I ran in, Tina was descending the stairs like an Amazon, whipping him ahead of her with that selfsame rosary. I remember the fierce glittering arc of it, swinging through the sun from the skylight. It must have been the first thing she’d snatched up, and he was lucky it wasn’t a poker, because she nearly took his eye out with it.
Resonance Page 26