by Damien Love
“Well, seeing as we’re swapping unbelievable stories,” the old man said. “You’ve already said that your fear is of something . . . unearthly happening. I’m afraid that’s exactly what we’re dealing with.”
As Alex’s grandfather relayed what he knew of the Shadow Gate legend, Metz started to squirm. Kingdom pursed her lips in a thoughtful frown.
“So, yes,” the old man summed up. “Seems to me that your Castle Boll was the lair of this great and greatly evil medieval magician. He supposedly created this thing as his way of thwarting death. But when he used it, your great calamity occurred. The castle fell, the pit opened, and all of that.”
“Well,” Kingdom said at length. She shrugged. “Why not. I try to keep an open mind. Phil?”
“This madness makes as much sense as any other part of it ever has,” Metz muttered.
“What about the Kandel mountain?” Alex asked. “The Devil’s Pulpit? Do you know if there’s a connection with the castle?”
Metz and Kingdom looked blankly at him. “You mentioned the mountain before,” Kingdom said, shaking her head. “Why should there be a connection?”
“The people who are stealing the paintings have been, uh . . . doing . . . something up there, too.” Alex shrugged apologetically. “We think.”
“Means nothing to me,” Kingdom said. “As your grandfather said, the Kandel must be . . . what, twenty-five miles away from the castle ruin.”
“Twenty-five miles and several hundred years away, to be precise,” the old man mused. “Well, here we are. So, what was your plan? You figured you’d just hole up in here and wait for them to come, using the painting as bait, and then—all or nothing? The Fishing Club’s last stand?”
“More or less,” Metz muttered, looking at the guns.
“Well, I admire the courage, but I would propose that, for the time being, discretion is the better part of valor. I say we take the painting down, get out of here, and try to come up with a better plan. Preferably one that ends with us all going out for a nice supper afterward, rather than going out in a blaze of glory.”
“But how many are in this gang?” Kingdom asked seriously. “If Harry Morecambe is your friend, then we’ve only ever seen two, maybe three figures. Surely between us we could handle—”
“There will most likely be five,” Alex’s grandfather said. “But there could be more. And, ah, they’ll have things with them.”
“Things?” Kingdom frowned.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “You know how you said you had a story that we wouldn’t believe? Well—”
“We can come back to that if needs be,” his grandfather cut in. “But my point is, given that they already have nine of the paintings, let’s not offer them the chance to get another. Although, they actually only have eight, of course.”
“What do you mean?” asked Metz.
“Hmm? Oh, didn’t I say? Yes, they only have eight. Harry got one back. Way to Beziers. It’s over there in my bag.”
Kingdom and Metz looked shocked all over again.
“You have it here?” Metz said.
“That’s right.” The old man slapped his hands. “What say, before we take your painting down, we get this other one out and try holding it up alongside it? Maybe if we see two together in the flesh, something might become clear.”
The pair sat speechless.
“Okay?” Alex’s grandfather said, striding across to his Gladstone. “Alex and I have come up with so many theories I’ve lost count. Maybe it’s something in the paint, maybe it’s a map, maybe it’s something to do with the trees . . . More trees in this new one, Alex. To be honest, I can’t see the woods for the trees anymore, ha-ha.”
As the old man stood happily unrolling the painting, Kingdom was first to recover her voice. “Did you miss the part where we mentioned we were members of a secret society who have taken a sacred oath passed down the centuries to devote our lives to keeping these paintings from ever being brought together?”
“Oh, pshaw,” Alex’s grandfather said. “What’s the worst could happen?”
Metz and Kingdom’s anxiety was genuine, and contagious. Alex had joined them in staring at the old man in silent apprehension. Seeing their faces, Alex’ grandfather hesitated, glancing from the picture in his hands across to the painting on the wall. The lonely mountain road. The old house shrouded in mist.
“Ah . . . just what is the worst could happen, do you think?”
The air filled with a deep, low pulsing sound that set Alex’s teeth on edge. The dogs sat up. Flat and ominous, the vibrating tone seemed to be coming from all directions at once.
“What’s that?” Alex said. “What’s happening?”
Metz drew himself unsteadily to his feet, face ashen.
“The alarm,” he said, sounding already defeated. “It seems they are here.”
XXVII.
LAST STAND AT CHTEAU DE SAINT-CLEMENT
Alex’s grandfather and Kingdom ran from the room toward the front doors of the house, dogs following. The pulsing noise continued.
Alex shrugged his coat on, shoved the toy robot deep in a pocket, and joined Metz where he stood, gazing at the bank of TVs. On the screens, numerous small white blips were gathering together to form large, vibrating white dots at the center of each stretch of the wall around the house, north, east, south, and west. After a moment, the large dots began breaking up again, spreading into swarms of spots that started closing in on the central gray block representing the building.
“The end of it,” Metz whispered.
The front door slammed and there came the sounds of keys and of bolts being rammed home. Kingdom, the old man, and the dogs reappeared, all looking serious.
“What’s happening?” Metz gestured at the rash spreading over his screens.
“Trouble,” Alex’s grandfather said. “We’re already surrounded.”
“But by who—” Kingdom started. She paused when she saw Alex’s face. “Or . . . what? I couldn’t see anyone, maybe some movement at the trees.”
“Yes, well, you’ll see soon enough,” Alex’s grandfather muttered.
The alarm kept pulsing, maddening in its monotony. On the monitors, the first wave of blips was almost at the gray block, more coming behind. As the spots lined up around the building, the picture across the screens suddenly changed, zooming in from a map of the grounds to now show a rough plan of the house itself, its outline flashing in distress as the first dots touched it.
From the hallway, there came a strange scratching at the front doors.
It grew louder, as though more and more sharp little blades were joining in to hack at the wood. The alarm’s flat, steady tone was augmented now by a new note of a higher, more urgent pitch.
“Is there any chance,” Alex’s grandfather said, “we could turn that noise off? I think we’ve got the general idea now.”
Metz, standing gazing vacantly, took a moment to respond. He clicked a button on his remote and the alarm ceased, allowing a stark new appreciation of the sharp chatter thudding into the door. The noise echoed oddly around them, behind them. Then Alex realized it wasn’t an echo.
“They’re at the back, too,” he said.
“The kitchen door!” Kingdom turned and ran.
Following her, Alex and his grandfather found themselves in a modest kitchen that lay just off the ballroom along a narrow corridor. Low ceilinged and dim, its single small window was thick with dirt and covered by iron bars inside and out. Beside it, the old wooden back door looked solid and heavy. Amplified by the acoustics of the tiled walls, the scratching noises from the other side of it grated harshly.
“Door should hold for a little while,” the old man said. “But if there are life-sizers coming, it won’t last long.”
“Life . . . sizers?” Kingdom repeated.
“Mmm,” Alex’s grandf
ather muttered, raising his eyebrows as he went back past her. “Big as life. Bigger.”
Kingdom turned questioningly to Alex. He tried thinking about the best way to explain it. After a second, he shrugged. “Robots.”
Even in the circumstances, it felt slightly stupid saying it aloud. Kingdom opened her mouth and narrowed her eyes. Then she simply nodded.
“Okay, then.” She thought about it a second longer. “Although I don’t know how Philippe will feel about that.”
“No,” Alex said. “He’s close to losing it already, isn’t he?”
“Maybe. I don’t know him that well, to be honest. We’ve only met a few times over the years.” She gestured around. “You have to understand, for us, all this was always just a strange horror story our parents told us. A kind of secret game. But now it’s all coming true. Phil always struck me as a man fighting a battle with his nerves. I don’t know how he will react. Or how I will, come to that.”
The chopping commotion at the door suddenly grew louder.
“I suppose we’ll see,” she said.
They ran back into the main room. Alex’s grandfather stood at the door to the hallway. He leaned out and craned to look up the stairway that curved to the next floor.
“As we were coming in,” he said over his shoulder, “I noticed a concrete outbuilding around the side of the house. Garage?”
“Yes,” said Metz. He had sat back in his wheelchair, looking like he had given up.
“Car in there?” the old man went on.
Kingdom produced keys, twirling them around her finger and catching them with a slap in her palm. “Gassed up and ready to go. But can we make it out there?”
“I think upstairs might be our best bet. Out a window, maybe over the roof . . .” He trailed off, turning gravely to consider Metz in his wheelchair. “Ah. Do you think you could—”
The sound of breaking glass from upstairs cut him off. Alex’s grandfather crept into the hall, heading toward the staircase. Alex and Kingdom moved to the doorway, in time to see him turn wildly from the bottom step and come sprinting back.
“Shut the door!” he shouted as he hurtled past them. But Kingdom had already stepped out, and stood peering curiously up the stairs. There was a whishing whirr from above, and a silvery cloud came sweeping down around the curve of the staircase, rushing at her.
Alex lunged, grabbed her arm, and hauled her back in as his grandfather slammed the door, turning a key in the lock. They heard several objects hitting the other side of the door, followed by the now familiar scraping of small blades against wood, closer than ever.
“What in the name of—” Kingdom said. Her eyes were round.
“Fliers,” Alex said. “They, uh. Fly.”
“Help me barricade it, Alex,” his grandfather said, running to drag a sofa over. “If you’d be so kind as to lend a hand,” he added to Kingdom, with a grunt.
The hellish scratching at the door continued as they worked to pile everything they could against it. The dogs stood in a semicircle, watching. Metz sat behind them, eyes wide, staring at nothing.
“Philippe,” Kingdom called matter-of-factly, as she moved a chair across the room. “Maybe you could finish preparing the weapons?”
Metz blinked. “Of course.” He rolled his chair to the bare table where the extra shotguns lay and started loading them from a box of ammunition. Alex noticed the man’s hands trembled.
Alex’s grandfather joined Metz, picked up a red shotgun shell, and stood studying it. “Do you have much in the way of salt in your kitchen?”
Metz frowned, bewildered. “There is a container from the supermarket, I think perhaps half-full.”
“Could you pop in and fetch that, Alex?” The old man had found a Swiss Army–style knife in his bag and was picking carefully through its attachments.
“In the cupboard nearest the outside door,” Metz said to Alex, utterly perplexed.
The metallic scraping at the back door continued as Alex entered the kitchen. A little chip of the black paint fell away, leaving a pale scar near the lock. A second later, there was a dull glint as the tip of a scalpel-like blade pushed through. The scrabbling noise intensified around the spot.
Alex did his best to ignore it and opened the cupboard, running his eye hurriedly over its contents: scales, a blender, a handheld blowtorch of the kind he’d seen countless TV chefs using, a dusty rolling pin. He finally found a plastic tub of salt lurking behind a box of sugar. He paused, then grabbed it, relieved when he felt no sting. He ran back through, the scratching from the door singing after him.
“But it is senseless,” Metz was complaining. “It will cause almost no damage.”
Alex’s grandfather stood over him, working at one of the shotgun shells with his knife. “Bingo,” he said, prying open the casing. Tipping the cartridge up, he poured out the lead shot from inside. “Salt please, Alex.”
Alex sat the tub on the table, then watched as the old man briskly packed the shell with salt. Using tiny pliers on his knife, he crimped the casing closed again, then held up the finished article for Metz’s inspection.
“Trust me, a shell like this will do us a world more good against anything coming through that door today.”
“But—” Metz looked to Kingdom for help. She shrugged.
“We always knew this was a strange business, Phil,” she said. “I think it’s safe to say we’re through the looking glass now. These two seem to know what they’re talking about.”
“Very well.” Metz took the proffered knife and started opening another cartridge. The task seemed to calm him.
“You empty them, I’ll fill them,” Alex said, moving to stand at Metz’s side.
“Meanwhile,” Alex’s grandfather said to Kingdom, “we can have a think about what’s the best way to get out of a locked room with no windows when there are things at the only two doors trying to get in and kill you. I used to love trying to solve puzzles like this.”
The old man and Kingdom stood surveying the room while Alex and Metz worked on the cartridges. As Alex bent to fill the first, he froze. The salt definitely burned his fingers faintly. The plastic tub must have protected him. The sting wasn’t too bad. He gritted his teeth and filled the shell faster, resolving to worry about it later.
The scrabbling at the door had been joined by a faint, low buzzing. After a while, the dogs padded to the center of the room and sat there together. Watching them, waiting for the next shell to be filled, Alex realized Metz had stopped working. Glancing around, he saw the man was staring at the monitors, fresh horror spreading over his face.
“Eh, you okay?” Alex asked, knowing he wasn’t.
“There.” Metz pointed a shaking finger. “You see?”
Alex squinted at the old TVs. As far as he could tell, the display looked depressingly the same: the flashing plan of the house, like a terrible video game adaptation of Clue, the swarming dots moving around it.
Kingdom had noticed them. “What is it, Phil?”
“They’re here,” the man said, still pointing at the screen. His voice and his arm both shook. “They’re here.”
Alex, his grandfather, and Kingdom exchanged a worried look.
“Yes, Philippe,” Kingdom said gently. “We know. That’s why we’re all trying to figure a way out of here.”
“No,” Metz snapped. “They are here! Look! According to the monitor, they’re already here!”
The three of them looked at him dumbly.
“In the room!” Metz screamed, looking around wildly. “This room. They’re in this room with us!”
XXVIII.
SPIDERS, FLAME, WOOD
For a panicky few seconds they danced a silent twist in the old ballroom, ducking and turning rapidly to scan in all directions, finding nothing. Alex’s grandfather called them to a stop.
“Shhhhh.”
He held up a finger. They froze. The scraping at the door kept up. The buzzing was louder. Nearer. The dogs suddenly stood, forming a circle around the spot where they had been sitting, all staring intently at the floorboards, ears up.
“Ah, call the dogs away from there, please, Evelyn,” the old man said. “Everyone, take what you need and back up to this side of the room.” Grabbing his Gladstone, he gestured toward the far wall, where the painting hung.
“What is it?” Alex said as they gathered under the picture, backs to the wall.
The old man scratched his forehead and winced apologetically: “Diggers. I’d forgotten about them.”
“You mean . . . ?” Alex stared back to the place in the floor the dogs had found so interesting.
“’Fraid so.”
There was a muffled but mighty crash from the hallway—the sound, Alex was certain, of the main doors smashing open under a life-sizer’s fists. The buzzing grew louder, a depressing, toneless song from under the floorboards. His grandfather took the box of salt and strode over, surrounding the spot with a thin circle, then pouring a larger mound at its center.
“Should buy us some time,” he said, returning and spreading another line on the floor in a semicircle before them. “Well, a few seconds. Still, better than nothing. We can save these last handfuls of salt for throwing. How many shotgun shells did you manage to prepare?”
“Six,” said Metz, setting them out on the blanket over his knees. He was breathing fast, Alex saw, but holding himself together.
“Three each then,” Kingdom said, pulling her sword sheath across her back and breaking open a shotgun. As they worked preparing their weapons, Alex stepped closer to his grandfather.