Resonance

by Celine Kiernan

  The knocks came again. Rat, tat, tat. Then nothing.

  ‘They’ve caught us,’ groaned Daymo. ‘I’m not going out there.’

  Harry slipped from under Tina’s weight. Out the window there was nothing to be seen but a lamplit circle of fog. He could hear the horses panting in the stillness. He opened the door and stepped down into the cold.

  Joe was a dark blob perched high in the driver’s box; Harry could barely see him through the glare from the carriage lamps. ‘Joe?’ he whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’

  The young man lifted his arm, pointing forward. ‘The lock,’ he said.

  Harry shielded his eyes to look. Ornate gates hung suspended in the fog, blocking their way. ‘Joe, what about the Angel? What about the creature in the lake?’

  Joe shifted above him. Harry thought he might be looking back at the avenue of trees. There was a strange flatness to his voice when he said, ‘Vincent is coming.’

  This spurred Harry forward like a poker in the ass, and he staggered to the gates. He clung to the elaborate metalwork as he examined the lock. The chains were heavy and chill in his hands.

  Joe’s voice floated down from behind him. ‘Harry, can you drive a carriage?’

  ‘No,’ he mumbled, trying to insert a trembling pick into the keyhole. ‘So stay right where you are. You have no hope against that man. I don’t think he’s even human.’

  Shit. It felt as if he was going to fall over. He could barely focus. What if … ah! There it was: the lovely satisfying give and clunk as the lock succumbed to his charm.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered, kissing the cold metal. ‘Marry me.’ Then he was lurching about, hauling first one then the other gate aside and stumbling back to the carriage. He hesitated on the step, staring back into the dark.

  ‘Get inside, Harry.’

  Sure enough, there they were – the familiar, terrifying pinpricks of light: Vincent’s eyes, far off but getting closer as he ran towards them in the dark.

  ‘Shit, Joe. He’s faster than a steam train.’

  ‘Get inside.’

  The door hadn’t even swung shut before Joe urged the carriage forward again and they were through the gates and out on the road. Harry clung to the window frame, gazing backwards. There was a foot or so of snow on the road, and a wintry stillness to the world that spoke of miles of frozen wasteland.

  The carriage lurched and Harry sank to his knees on the jolting floor, clasping his stomach. Even the roughest Atlantic crossing had never crippled him like this. It seemed the further they travelled, the sicker he became.

  The carriage bumped again and Tina, all skirts and elbows, fell from the seat to land on top of him. Gasping, Harry wrapped himself around her unresponsive warmth and hung on.

  They seemed to be picking up speed. It felt like they were about to rattle apart. On the seat above him, Daymo was making a high, terrified whine. He was staring down at the bundle in his arms, holding it out as if to distance himself from it. All Harry could see was Miss Ursula’s crooked little hands, which she was holding up to the ceiling, her fingers moving slightly like she was reaching for a gift. Daymo was fixated on her face. Whatever he saw there was causing him to make that horrified sound.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Harry, his voice vibrating like a harpsichord note. ‘What’s happening?’

  Daymo thrust the bundle at him, begging him to take it. Harry drew back, not wanting to see. There was grey dust rising from the cowl of blankets. Puffing up with each bone-jarring lurch of the carriage, it was snatched by the wind through the open window to mingle with the snow as it was sucked out into the cold.

  Harry yelled as the carriage lurched again – a massive bump this time, as if the wheels had left the road. The floor tilted, sending him and Tina sliding in a heap. They rattled along like that for an alarming moment: the floor tilted, Harry and Tina tumbled against the door, Daymo yowling. Then it felt as though the carriage fell off a cliff, and they were all suspended in the air until, bam, they slammed down onto the floor again.

  Harry saw a blaze of stars as his head hit the foot-warmer, and then there was nothing, or nothing that he cared too much about, except the carriage jolting along beneath him for a while.

  HIS SENSES CAME dribbling back, along with the slow creak and moan of the carriage. He was lying on his back on the floor, and, oh, Tina’s weight was squashing him.

  ‘Get off,’ he whispered. ‘Tina. Please.’ He pushed weakly until she slid from him; then he just lay there, gulping at the cold air, which streamed down from the window above.

  After a while, he reached to find her. ‘Sorry,’ he rasped. ‘Sorry.’ He closed his hand on her hair. Through the window, dimly illuminated by the flickering carriage lamps, he could see the ivy-covered stones of the big estate wall passing by with a stately lack of urgency.

  Why were they going so slow?

  Daymo was huddled on the seat above, his eyes shut and his lips moving in prayer. There was no sign of Miss Ursula – just a thick coating of ashy dust on the lacy coverlets, and a scattering of red crystals from Tina’s broken rosary.

  As Harry stared at these paltry remains of the vibrant, tragic old woman, the carriage slowed and juddered beneath him, and then came to a gentle halt. Somehow, he found the strength to drag himself outside.

  The air was brutal and still, snow falling lightly in the golden circumference of the lanterns. They were at a corner of the estate wall. Just ahead, the fragile ruins of a church rose delicate shapes against the scudding clouds. The road turned sharply left there, and made its way through a village of neat, dark houses. Everywhere, the blanketing snow caught the diffused moonlight like a reflecting mirror and made the world seem ghostly and impermanent.

  Harry groped his way around to the driver’s gate. ‘Joe?’ he whispered, fumbling the latch. ‘Joe, we need to keep going …’ He crawled into the box and knelt at Joe’s feet for what felt like the longest time, his burning forehead rejoicing in the snow-covered leather of the seat. Then he straightened.

  Joe was bolt upright in the middle of the seat. He had wedged himself in with the driver’s blankets, and had tied the reins to his hands so the horses would keep going in a straight line. But a dead driver gives no signals, and so, with no one left to urge them on, the horses had eventually come to a halt, waiting to be told what to do.

  ‘Ah, Joe,’ whispered Harry. ‘Ah, Joe, come on, pal.’ But Joe’s hands were colder than ice and his face was crusted in snow. Harry brushed the crystals from Joe’s cheeks; they melted instantly on his own feverish skin.

  There was a sweeping sound from the road behind them, and a jolt as something hit the carriage. A shape launched itself from the luggage-rack to the roof, then up to the wall on their right. It was Vincent. Perched on the wall, clinging with one hand to the bare branches of a great oak and pointing a pistol with the other, the man glowered down in fury. Harry couldn’t even summon the energy to be afraid, and when Vincent saw who they were, he lowered his weapon.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Harry. ‘He got us this far; then he died.’

  Vincent thrust the pistol into his belt and jumped lightly into the driver’s box. He went to gather Joe in his arms. Harry pushed him away. ‘No!’

  ‘There may still be time for him.’

  ‘No!’

  Vincent tutted, and stooped once more. Harry put his arms around Joe’s cold body and held on. To his surprise, Vincent sat back.

  ‘You cannot make this choice for him, boy.’

  ‘He’s here, isn’t he? He made the choice himself. Leave him alone!’

  ‘You want him to be dead?’

  Harry shook his head, gasping. He was so confused. The world was swimming, everything coming in waves. He realised he was sobbing into Joe’s shoulder. ‘Don’t take him back there. Please don’t.’

  Vincent sighed. ‘He only sacrificed himself to save another. How do you know what he might have chosen had she not been in danger? Are you really willing to reward him by t
aking him from here as a corpse?’

  Harry shook his head again. Yes. No. I don’t know.

  With another sigh, Vincent pushed him to one side and gathered Joe in his arms. Harry slumped against the seat, helpless, and openly crying now, the snow falling down on him in gently cooling drifts. In the carriage, Daymo’s prayers continued, selfish and useless, as Tina lay broken on the floor below.

  Vincent rose to his feet, a tall dark shape cut from the night. ‘Do you think you can manage to take the girl home?’

  Harry didn’t answer. He was staring at Joe’s pale dead face.

  Vincent huffed. ‘At least do him the justice of trying,’ he said. ‘If you drive through the village and then take the right-hand fork, you will be in the big town by evening.’

  The man seemed to think for a moment. Then Joe’s hair brushed Harry’s face as Vincent leaned in to look into Harry’s eyes. ‘Tell everyone there has been an outbreak of the cholera here,’ he said. ‘Warn them not to come. And, boy, if you ever, ever say anything more than that, I will find you, understand? I will make you do things you would wish yourself dead for. By protecting my family, you will be protecting your own. Do you understand?’

  Harry nodded. The man held his eye just a moment longer. Then, with Joe’s body still in his arms, he sprang to the roof, then to the wall, and was gone.

  Goodbye

  TINA WATCHED THE lacquered wall, listened to Daymo pray, and sensed Harry shiver and moan as he tried to keep the horses moving. Now they had passed beyond the Angel’s sphere, the poison in Harry’s system was running riot. He had begun to talk to himself, and laugh and cry. Sometimes he paused to get sick. Still he stayed up there, the cold eating at his face and hands, stubbornly guiding those horses through the deepening snow, trying to get her to town.

  She had been broken in some way she was not certain could ever be fixed, and she floated within herself, calm as a lily on a pond despite the great depth of her grief; despite the knowledge that everything was lost.

  Joe was gone. She had felt him go. As the light had grown weaker and the distance between him and the Angel increased, he had simply faded away. When the man took him, there had still been the smallest spark of him left – just the tiniest, tiniest fragment – and then the carriage had moved on and he had disappeared from her entirely.

  Still she had kept calling out to him, as she had been calling since he’d wrestled her from Wolcroft’s arms, hoping that he would hear her, hoping that her thoughts would reach his across the growing distance and through the storm of damage that Cornelius and the Beloved and the vast torturous pain of the Angel had done to her mind. I love you, Joe. I love you. I love you, Joe. Save him. Save him. I love you. I love you. I love you, Joe. Save him.

  The carriage stopped moving again, and she listened as Harry spoke to people who were not there. He was saying the same thing over and over: ‘There’s cholera. Don’t go to the village. There’s cholera.’

  Come on, Harry, she thought. Get moving. You can make it. The carriage lurched as he opened the driver’s gate. Ah no, Harry. Stay up there.

  He was babbling as he made his way to the carriage door. ‘Promise me, okay? We can’t go back.’

  A deep, familiar voice said, very gently, ‘Why don’t you stand back now, son?’ and the door opened in a blast of snow and cold. A woman’s voice cried out, and there was a great confusion of shadows as someone piled into the little space beside her. She was turned onto her back. The woman groaned, ‘Oh, acushla. Oh no.’

  Tina felt herself being lifted into a sitting position.

  Daniel Barrett was frowning at her from the door, a shotgun propped on his shoulder. ‘Cholera,’ he said. ‘Cholera, Fran. If folk hear that, they’ll never let us back into town.’

  The woman’s arms tightened around her, and Tina was comforted by the smell of apples. ‘We’ll say nothing ’til we get her home, Danny. No one need know. And when we warn the theatre boss, he won’t have to tell the performers the truth. Sure, he can make something up.’

  Daniel’s eyes hopped from Tina to Daymo, who still moaned and sobbed on the seat above her. Fran the Apples squeezed Tina even harder. ‘You’re scared of some germs, is it, Daniel Barrett?’

  The man smiled, a gentle, adoring smile, and shifted the shotgun so that he could reach in for Tina. ‘After travelling the length and breadth of the country with you, woman, I’ll be scared of nothing again.’

  The sky was falling down in soft pieces, filling her eyes, as they carried her to a covered cart and laid her down on blankets there. Fran bundled Harry in beside her, a blanket round his shoulders. Tina heard Daniel bully Daymo up onto the driver’s seat. She felt the cart begin to move.

  Harry kept mumbling to himself and trying to leave, and finally Fran put her arms around him. ‘Shush now, acushla,’ she said. ‘Shhhh, now. It’ll be all right.’

  Harry started to cry, very quietly, his face turned away. Fran rocked him and murmured to him, all the time gazing across his shoulder to Tina, who could not turn her head or look away from his defeat, nor take a breath to say the name that echoed in her mind.

  Endings

  i. Vincent

  TAKING THE LONG walk back from the church gate, Vincent shifted the weight of the boy in his arms and savoured the tranquilly falling snow. No matter how weak the Bright Man, he still had hopes this boy might revive. ‘It will be good for Cornelius to have you around. You may even find that you are happy here – certainly I was for long enough.’

  It felt good to have finally decided to leave, but for once in his life Vincent was not going to turn away without speaking. He would talk to Cornelius. By force, if he had to. He would turn his friend’s face to the mirror and make him look himself in the eye; ask him how many lifetimes he intended to squander on this existence of dust; how much love and life and opportunity he would continue to waste. Better one brief life lived to the full than an eternity of fear, cully.

  Then Vincent would leave. He would take his chances, with the disease and with the world, and he would live – really live – for as long as his body would last. He would take Raquel with him. Gently, kindly, he would show her that the world held more than the brutalities it had previously revealed. What a life he would give her – he would fill every day with wonders.

  The children would be difficult. They must be disposed of – but how best …

  Vincent hesitated as he emerged from the last of the southern woods, the smell of burning timber pulling him from his thoughts. He paused a moment only, not comprehending; then he saw the top windows all ablaze with light, and he ran.

  The entire village was arrayed on the grass, staring up at the brightly lit top floor, their faces slack. The atmosphere was thick with awe. Vincent ran into it like a wall of hot syrup, and it stopped him in his tracks.

  What can it be that is amazing them? he thought. It is only fire. But he knew, the devil take him, he knew already: it was the thought of what the fire consumed, the spectacle of its tragedy, that held them entranced.

  Vincent searched in vain from face to upturned face. ‘Cornelius?’ he called. ‘Raquel? Where are you?’

  Luke came running from the house, trailing smoke and coughing. He staggered across to the nearest villager, Peadar Cahill, and grabbed him as if repeating an action he’d already tried in vain. ‘Help me!’ he gasped. ‘Help me. I can’t get him to leave!’

  Suspended as the Bright Man fed through him, Peadar did not react.

  Realising the boy was still in his arms, Vincent dropped him to the gravel and ran to grab Luke. ‘Where is Raquel?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘I can’t get Himself to leave her. I tried. He’s determined to break down the door.’

  Vincent spun for the house. Luke staggered after. His eyes were swollen with smoke and he could hardly breathe. ‘She’s barricaded herself in,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t hear the childer anymore.’

  As he ran into the house Vincent heard the villagers make an awed sound, and
he felt the violent, coring sensation of the Bright Man latching on to him and beginning to feed.

  Smoke was pouring down from the upstairs landings. Vincent ripped his cravat from his neck, tied it across his nose and mouth and battled the stairs. Even his eyes could see nothing in the blinding air, and he had to grope his way to the upper floors.

  In the sewing room, everything flared with light. The playroom door was a sheet of flame, and Cornelius was hurling himself at it, bellowing and snarling as he tried to break it down. His sleeves were ablaze when Vincent hauled him away. He had to be punched in the jaw to prevent him struggling free. Vincent threw him across his shoulder and fled for the hall. He could feel the heat on his back as they descended the stairs – from Cornelius’ burning coat or the advancing flames, he could not tell.

  By the time they reached the porch, Cornelius was thrashing blindly, all aflame. Vincent threw him to the ground and stripped him of his coat. He hurled the blazing garment away into the gravel. It illuminated a ring of watchers there, their avid eyes all fixed on him.

  Vincent staggered back from them as if from a blow. Luke was running from one to the other, slapping them and screaming, ‘Stop! Stop looking at them!’ But he could do nothing to break the spell, and the villagers continued to drink deep from the wondrous circus of anguish and fire of which Vincent and Cornelius had become the heart.

  Vincent barely had the strength to turn from them. He fell onto Cornelius, who was attempting to crawl back into the house, and clung tight. Cornelius’ hair had begun to streak with white. Vincent’s strong hands were beginning to age.

  Cornelius’ thoughts were loud in Vincent’s head now, directed only at him, screaming and crying and calling over and over: Help me save her, Vincent. Help me save her. She cannot end like this.

  But there was nothing that could be done. Raquel was not even a whisper inside their minds. She was gone. So Vincent wrapped his arms around his friend and gathered him in, and with all his strength held him in place as the spectacle of their pain fed the Angel, and smoke poured from the doors, and the flames overhead ate the only person left who they had ever loved.