Resonance

by Celine Kiernan

  Convergence

  JOE HAD BEEN with Tina until her hand touched the water. What had he believed would happen then? He hadn’t known, hadn’t given it a single thought. He had simply been entranced by Tina, by her bravery and her strength; by her determination that the Angel would not die alone. So he had not uttered a word of protest, and had simply watched through her eyes as the creature rose from the jar and closed like a gentle trap around her arm. By the time he understood the coldness of it, the vastness, and how little Tina meant in the grand scheme of its perception, it had been too late.

  The creature had bent its mind to hers, and Joe experienced an instant loss of energy as the light that fed everything here found itself strongly diverted through the creature’s body. It felt as though the whole world had dimmed. Tina’s voice came clear and loud in his head: Oh. You are killing me. Then her thoughts disappeared behind a veil of alien calm, and she was gone.

  He spent a stupid amount of time battering himself against the door, screaming her name and straining his mind to find the thread of her, before he realised he had another option – he could make his way into the underground tunnels and find Tina by finding the Angel.

  He had just begun a blind and awkward descent into the darkness when the latch clicked above him and golden light spilled down from the opened door. Raquel was outlined there, all crinolines and flounces. She stepped back in a gesture of invitation. ‘Come up now,’ she said. ‘It is time for you to leave.’

  Joe advanced cautiously, not knowing what to expect. Before he had reached the top Raquel stepped from sight, her grave profile catching the light as she turned to go, and he ran the last few steps, afraid she would slam the door in his face. But she simply crossed the room and stood in the library doorway, staring back at him. Her children were waiting in the hall. They had multi-branched candelabras in their hands. The many flames, blazing high, illuminated their little faces with almost painful brightness.

  ‘Mama is going to play with us,’ whispered the girl, obviously delighted.

  ‘You may take that,’ said Raquel. She gestured, and Joe turned to find the pram waiting by the French doors. ‘The girl can keep it.’

  She lifted her skirts and gracefully made her exit. The children followed her down the hall. Joe heard the soft tap of their heels and the susurration of Raquel’s skirts as she led the way up the stairs. The light from their candles threw a bright nimbus of light on the banister and ceiling, which vanished as they passed onto the middle landing. He stood, breath held, waiting for the creak of their passage overhead, but all was silent.

  Miss Ursula burbled in distress and Joe went to the pram and bent over it. ‘I can’t find her, Miss U. She’s disappeared from my mind.’

  Ursula Lyndon paid him no attention. She just waved her crooked claws and mewled like a child in need of food. Joe frowned in sympathy and tried to tuck her in, jiggling the rosary to make her happy. But she struggled free of her swaddling and once again grasped and mewled. Joe looked in the direction she was reaching. He looked back down at her. Experimentally, he pushed the pram through the opened doors and out into the night. Ursula Lyndon reached, fingers flexing, towards the path that led to the trees, and Joe, his heart hardly daring to hope, followed her lead.

  He travelled blindly into the maze of the woods, trusting completely the compass of Ursula Lyndon’s reaching arms. Pushing his way through tangles of undergrowth, he broke into the open with unexpected abruptness. A wall rose up ahead of him, the branches of trees peeping above it, and beyond that the craggy teeth of a ruin. Joe knew this place; he had seen it from Matthew’s window.

  Miss Ursula was in a small frenzy now. Straining her arms over her head, she scrabbled her crooked fingers into the hood of the pram, as if trying to scratch through and reach to the orchard that lay on the other side of the wall. Tina must be in there. Why could Joe not feel this? Even the ropes of light were invisible now, as though the girl whose eyes he had seen them through were …

  ‘TINA!’ he roared. ‘Tina, where are you?’

  He jolted the pram through the gap where a section of the wall had fallen down. The orchard was all stillness, filled with ghostly trees. A man emerged from between them – Wolcroft. At the sight of the limp figure in his arms, Joe rushed forward. Wolcroft shifted his burden, and from beneath the tangled cover of Tina’s hair and dress he aimed a pistol.

  ‘I am not sure what you have become, boy. But you have not spent so long in the Angel’s sphere that a shot to the brain will not end you.’

  Joe regarded him with jaw-clenched rage. ‘Is she dead?’

  The man shook his head. Joe thrust out his arms. ‘Give her to me.’

  ‘To what purpose?’

  ‘Are you mad? So I can get her home! Look what this place has done to her!’

  In the dim moonlight, it was not easy to see Wolcroft’s expression. But there was something about the way he hesitated then, some kind of diffidence and regret, that made Joe afraid.

  ‘You give Tina to me, mister. We’re leaving.’

  ‘I do not think you can go home, boy.’

  ‘Give her to me.’

  ‘I … I am not certain that she can either.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Joe ran the last few steps between them, slapped Wolcroft’s weapon aside and jostled Tina from his arms. ‘Tina,’ he whispered. ‘Hey. Tina. It’s me.’

  Her head lolled into the crook of his arm, her blood-filled eyes staring at the sky. She was nothing but a weight in his arms. He groaned and gathered her close, backing from Wolcroft.

  ‘I’m taking your carriage,’ he said. ‘Don’t try and stop me.’

  At the pram he faltered, not knowing how to handle it and Tina and make it across the uneven ground. A soft sound at his back made him whirl. Wolcroft was right behind him.

  The man put up his hands in a gesture of peace and, bending over the pram, gathered its contents. Miss Ursula cooed and sighed as he laid her into the cradle of Tina’s lap. ‘There,’ he said.

  He looked up into Joe’s eyes. Joe cut him off before he could attempt the travesty of an apology. ‘How do I get to the stables?’

  Wolcroft pointed. ‘Follow that path.’ Before Joe could run, Wolcroft grabbed his arm. He withdrew from his pocket what Joe recognised as Miss Ursula’s ring, and laid it into the old woman’s hand, closing her gnarled fingers around it.

  ‘This was hers.’

  ‘I know it was,’ hissed Joe. ‘She loved that ring. She’s had it since she was thirteen – got it at an emancipation rally run by some black fella and Mr Daniel O’Connell. What are you doing with it?’

  ‘I stole it from her.’

  ‘You stole a damn sight more than that, you shameless bastard. I hope your fucking angel kills you. I hope it eats you alive.’

  Wolcroft nodded. ‘I’ve poisoned everything,’ he agreed. ‘All the good things … I let them all die.’ He flinched suddenly, as if startled by a shout only he could hear, and looked to the house. ‘Are the children within? They … they tell me Raquel has locked the doors.’

  ‘What did you do with the thing from the lake?’ asked Joe.

  Wolcroft, his attention on the upstairs windows, did not answer.

  ‘Tina was trying to save it, you know. She thought it was important. She wanted to bring it to the Angel.’

  The man just kept staring at the house, his brow furrowed in concern, and Joe, sick to the very core of him, walked away.

  THE STABLES WERE filled with scuffling, desperate whispers. The stub of a misshapen candle threw guttering light. Joe laid Tina on a nest of hay and warily rounded the stalls. Harry was stumbling about, trying unsuccessfully to back the horses into the traces of Wolcroft’s carriage. Joe took him by the arm and Harry spun, wild-eyed, his fist cocked.

  Joe lifted his hands. ‘It’s me,’ he said.

  To his astonishment, Harry grabbed him into a hug. He was trembling. Joe could feel his feverish heat. He awkwardly patted Harry’s back. ‘It’s all right, H
arry. I know how to do this.’

  Nothing

  VINCENT CALLED OUT, Raquel? Raquel! Answer me! But there was not even a flicker of a response.

  When he got to the back of the house, none of the villagers had seen her. He dismissed them to the hunt, and they left eagerly, communing with the hoots and whistles whose purpose was solely to frighten their prey. Vincent closed his eyes, quelling the urge to simply scream Raquel’s name into the night.

  Luke, he thought, where are you?

  In the woods to the south of the house. Got the dogs with me.

  Have you seen Miss Raquel?

  No. The childer still ain’t answering me, neither.

  If you see her, tell me.

  Himself not about?

  Vincent allowed a long pause between them, and Luke’s next thoughts were tight and disapproving: I see. He assumed Cornelius had retreated underground and left them to deal with the crisis alone. Vincent was perfectly happy to let him think the worst. Luke was almost certainly right – Cornelius was most likely, at this very minute, slumped on the lower steps, gazing up at the Bright Man and doing nothing.

  Are you really going to speak of doing nothing? You who have spent your whole life closing your eyes and turning away? ‘Shut up,’ Vincent told himself, snarling at the empty air as he stalked back around the house and onto the gravel drive.

  Just like you did nothing that day in the orchard, when you heard those awful words and saw poor Matthew’s stricken face?

  ‘Shut up!’

  Or do you consider turning on your heel and sneaking away ‘doing something’?

  ‘Shut up!’ cried Vincent again, only marginally aware that he was yelling.

  Or the next day, when Cornelius came to you and said he had done something wrong and that he needed to speak to you, and you told him ‘perhaps later’? Or the next, when you found Matthew crying and you, once again, turned away?

  Vincent groaned, turned full circle on the gravel, and bellowed into the night.

  ‘RAQUEL! ANSWER ME, WOMAN!’

  This was it. This was absolutely it. He was leaving. As soon as he found Raquel, and by the devil he would find her, he was taking her and they were going. He had had enough of Cornelius’ inaction and Cornelius’ silence and Cornelius’ poisonous fear. He …

  Ah, yes, Raquel. Raquel, whom you left trapped in that cesspit of a home with that animal of a husband until she was driven to murder. It was Cornelius who saved her. Not you. Cornelius who broke her from prison, Cornelius who brought her here. Cornelius who gave you the new life you had wished for but would not act upon. Matthew and Raquel, your new family – Cornelius’ gift.

  Vincent came to a halt by the front steps, shook his head. ‘Shut up,’ he whispered. ‘He only did it because he knew I was restless.’

  All these years his friend, and you have done nothing, said nothing, fixed nothing when he needed you most.

  Vincent recalled the look Cornelius had given him only this afternoon, slumped on the dungeon steps, on the very brink of finally speaking – that hopeful, terrified, yearning look, from which Vincent had dropped his eye. How many times over their lifetime had he turned from that look? And how many things would be different now, had he responded to it as a friend and not retreated from it nor allowed Cornelius to retreat from it, like the cowards they both were?

  ‘Oh, Matthew.’ Vincent pressed the cool metal of the pistol to his forehead. Matthew. I am sorry.

  But what use was sorry? What was lost was lost. Vincent was not about to beggar himself for the forgiveness of the dead. With a scowl, he glared out into the fog-shrouded garden.

  I will not stay, Cornelius. You may continue this travesty if you wish, but I am tired of being prisoner to my disease. I am leaving.

  A minute fluttering of the air startled him. Peering upwards, it took him a moment to realise that it was snowing. The liberal dusting on his jacket suggested it had been doing so for quite some while. Holding his face to the sky, he closed his eyes and let the flakes numb his skin.

  The air had grown markedly cooler. Soon the roses would be crusted with frost. Soon winter would be here. The thought filled him with an almost savage happiness.

  Let it come, he thought. Let everything die. Let everything crack. It is time.

  A heavy rumbling sent him spinning, and he raised his pistol as a huge bulk of darkness lurched around the far side of the house. For a moment Vincent thought it was death, come in response to his bitter command. Then he was ducking and shielding his head from a storm of gravel as the great wild shape of his own horses and carriage thundered past. The carriage swayed dangerously on the turn and careened off up the carriageway at tremendous speed.

  Vincent lowered his chin, bared his teeth and started running. The intruders are out the front, he called. They have stolen my carriage.

  Flight

  i.

  JOE BENT OVER the reins and mercilessly cracked the whip. He usually despised whips, but in this case, with this cargo, he would bare these horses to the bone if he had to.

  There came the faintest brightening of the air as the trees thinned, and the humpbacked bridge loomed ahead. The lake. Joe was so terrified that he closed his eyes. Sounds hollowed out as the carriage crossed the bridge. His thoughts beat to the rhythm of the horses’ hooves: Let me live, let me live, let me get her home.

  There was a jolt as they crossed the hump and then they were rattling over cobbles once more, and he was looking over his shoulder as the bridge faded into the fog. He was alive!

  He turned forward again. He was alive. And he felt fine. There was none of that floating heaviness he had suffered on the lake. He felt perfect! It had been the water, that was all! It had made him sick. Sure, poor Harry could hardly stand after being down in it, God love him; he was weak as a kitten.

  Joe stood in the box, bared his teeth in a grin, and cracked the reins. They were going home.

  Flight

  ii.

  HARRY CLUNG TO Tina, his legs braced to prevent them both from bouncing off the seat. Every bump in the road lurched his stomach and brought kerosene-tasting bile into his mouth. He hadn’t felt this ill since he’d had influenza and had missed the New York boxing championship.

  ‘I ever tell you I’m a champion boxer, kid?’ he whispered.

  Tina’s head battered his shoulder, her dull eyes fixed on the ceiling. He gathered her closer.

  ‘I’ll … I’ll show you my medals when we get outta this. You can help me polish them.’ He belched kerosene again, and groaned. ‘Of course, I might have made some of those medals out of bottle tops. But I’m not admitting to which …’

  In the seat across from them, Joe’s cousin was crying like a baby. Shut up, thought Harry. Just hold on to that poor old woman and stop crying. Truth was, though, Harry wanted to cry himself. He’d never felt so useless and scared.

  They bumped violently over the hump of the little bridge and Daymo screamed with terror. Miss Ursula was curled in his lap, wrapped in the blankets from her pram. She was gazing at Tina, perfectly content so long as the girl was in sight.

  What was going to become of the poor thing? What was going to become of Tina? She was like a warm corpse in his arms. She seemed completely broken.

  ‘Kid?’ he whispered. ‘You still in there?’

  He wondered if she had saved the Angel. He had tried to find out, staggering after Joe as he had rigged up the carriage, asking again and again what had become of the creature in the jar, what had become of the Angel, until Joe had rounded on him.

  ‘Do I look like I care what happened to the Angel?’ he’d yelled. ‘Look what it did to Tina! She was trying to help it! She was trying to help and she meant nothing to it, you understand? Nothing.’ He had pushed Harry aside and gone back to snapping things into place. ‘The Angel can choke for all I care.’

  ‘But Joe,’ Harry rasped. ‘That thing in the lake. If we don’t fix the Angel …’

  He’d rambled on, dizzy and sick, bare
ly keeping his feet, trying to make Joe understand just how apocalyptic that thing felt, how terrifyingly end-of-the-world.

  Joe had laughed, a harsh and bitter laugh. ‘End of the world.’ He’d grabbed Harry by the scruff and bundled him into the carriage. ‘Every day is the end of the world for someone, Harry. But I’ll be damned if today is hers.’

  He’d pushed Harry over to Tina, who lay on the rear carriage seat like a bloodstained fairytale. He’d snarled at his cousin, who was already cowering inside. Then he’d slammed the door on their faces and banged his way up onto the driver’s box to send the carriage lurching from the yard.

  Once they’d crossed the bridge, the air grew much colder. Harry was aware of the lake to his right. He peered out, trying to get some inkling of the creature that lurked there, twisting and turning under the placid water. There was no sense of it at all. It was as if it did not exist.

  Harry remembered standing on a snowy New York street at Christmas. He had not been able to understand how it could still go on – the crowds smiling and jostling, the glittering prettiness – when his brother Armin lay on the other side of the wall, coughing his life up in gobs of blood and pain. Harry had wanted to grab the laughing crowds and shout, Listen to me, listen! He is real! His life is real! He’s not a dream! Then Armin had died, and it was as if the world had been right, and he had never existed.

  ‘But he wasn’t a dream,’ whispered Harry. He put his hand to the window. ‘And neither are you.’

  He did not think this creature would let the world ignore it.

  There was a grind of brakes, and the carriage halted with a suddenness that almost flung Tina from his lap. He held her tight, staring across into Daymo’s crazy eyes. Had they been caught?

  Three knocks from above sent them cowering. Harry looked up. ‘Joe?’ he called softly.