Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  When he wasn’t on “Elliott Duty,” as he and Chester called it, Will continued to play chess against himself. He also set himself the task of putting the pages of his father’s journal in order the best he could. It was important to Will because they were his father’s legacy, and it was his duty to preserve them in case he ever made it back to the surface again.

  Many of the pages were badly creased, but Will smoothed these out, weighing them down to flatten them. Where Dr. Burrows’s writing or sketches were faint because they had been immersed in water, Will meticulously traced over the lines to make them more legible. When he had finished, he laid out all the pages on the floor, to see if there was anything he could glean from them. But try as he might, the strange letters and hieroglyphs recorded by his father were meaningless to him and didn’t offer up anything useful.

  While making an inventory of what kit remained in his rucksack, he came across his camera. Amazed to find it still worked, he now put it to use, taking a few snaps of the journal pages before placing them carefully in one of the map chests. He figured they’d be safe from the damp there, and from Martha, who had the habit of bunging anything vaguely combustible on the fire to keep it burning.

  Then he went to one of his favorite haunts — a small outbuilding that housed a multitude of items Martha’s son had brought back from his expeditions. The hut was crammed with trunks of nautical oddments, and Will was in his element as he opened them and sifted through their contents. He tried not to rush the task, rationing himself to one or two trunks at a time so that he had something to look forward to every day. Much of it was just scrap metal, such as iron brackets, thick pins that looked like they’d been made by a blacksmith, pulleys, and even some cannonballs.

  But in among all this, Will found a huge ship’s compass. And in the same trunk there was a battered leather case, inside which he discovered a rather wonderful brass telescope. Will couldn’t believe his luck. He immediately took it to the front of the shack to try it out. Although it wasn’t much good either in the darkness or the limited confines of the strangely colored garden, Will didn’t care. As he handled it, his imagination was filled with thoughts of the seafaring people who had once used it and might also have been responsible for building the shack.

  At the bottom of another trunk he also found a stethoscope. It was made from a dull silver metal and black plastic or rubber, which showed not the slightest sign of deterioration. To Will’s eye it looked very modern. He used it to listen to his own heartbeat, then chucked it back into the trunk, not giving it a further thought as he continued his search for more exotic objects.

  12

  ON HER WAY BACK from work, Mrs. Burrows dropped into the local newsstand to pick up an evening paper. She had taken a part-time position with a firm of solicitors, where she did some receptionist work, typing and general filing. It wasn’t as if she needed the money — the sale of the family home had brought in much more than she’d anticipated — but the job gave her a sense of purpose again, and she enjoyed the company of the other people in the office. And since she only worked a couple of days a week, she had time to continue with her own investigation and also keep the pressure on the police to come up with results.

  As she paid for her newspaper, she noticed that the shopkeeper was staring at her.

  “Hope you don’t mind me asking this, but are you Dr. Burrows’s wife?” he ventured.

  Mrs. Burrows didn’t reply immediately, studying the man’s face to see if there was anything in it that suggested hostility. After the incident outside the employment agency, she had grown chary of local people. She was only too aware of the looks she received while she was out shopping or on her way to the gym.

  “Yes,” she replied eventually. “I’m Celia Burrows.”

  “Ah, good. Then I have these for him,” the shopkeeper said, ducking below the counter and producing a sizeable pile of magazines. He began to go through it. “Curators’ Monthly … one … two … er, three copies,” he said, putting them in front of Mrs. Burrows. Without looking at her, he continued to speak. “I took the liberty of canceling his orders after a couple of months … but there are also three copies of Excavation Today, and some —”

  “You know he’s gone … he’s gone missing,” Mrs. Burrows blurted.

  The man’s expression turned to embarrassment, and he found it difficult to meet Mrs. Burrows’s gaze as he shuffled the remaining magazines. “I know, but I thought you might like them for …” He trailed off.

  “For when he comes back?” Mrs. Burrows finished for him. She was about to add, “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” but decided it wouldn’t be wise. The way public sentiment was against her, it might be taken the wrong way, and this man, too, might jump to the conclusion that she knew more than she was letting on. So, instead, she took some pound notes from her purse and thrust them at the shopkeeper. “Look, it’s all right, just give them to me. I’ll pay for them now.” The shopkeeper sorted out her change in the uncomfortable silence that followed. Without waiting for him to put them in a bag, she snatched them from the counter and left the shop.

  As she stepped outside, there was a flash of lightning followed by the rumble of thunder. “Great timing,” she muttered as a heavy rain began to fall. She used one of the magazines to shield her head from the downpour. As she struggled up Main Street, the glossy covers of the other magazines became more and more slippery, and kept sliding from under her arm. She’d just dropped them for the second time when she spied a trash can close by. “Sorry, Roger,” she said as she heaved them all into it.

  Hurrying along, she swore as the rain showed no sign of letting up. She’d stopped at the curb to check for traffic before crossing the road, when she happened to look back in the direction she’d just come.

  “What the —?!” she exclaimed.

  With their backs to her, two men were standing around the bin into which she’d thrown the magazines. She could see that they were carefully taking them back out and scrutinizing the covers, before putting them, one by one, into a suitcase. The men were both stockily built, and wearing dark-colored jackets with some kind of curious shoulder mantle. They looked like something from a different time.

  For some reason, possibly because she’d been upset by the incident at the newsstand, she was gripped by a precipitant anger.

  She had no idea who the men were. Too well dressed to be tramps, she thought. Her first guess was that they were truck drivers — not from England but the European Continent, because of their unusual garb. On the spur of the moment, she began to yell, breaking into a run toward them.

  “What are you doing? Leave those alone!”

  Although she’d thrown the magazines away, they had been so much a part of her husband’s life in the old days, so important to him, it felt wrong that anyone else should help themselves to them. Mrs. Burrows knew she was being irrational — it wasn’t as if she needed any more of Dr. Burrows’s junk, her apartment was stuffed with his possessions as it was. But if he wasn’t around to read them, she didn’t want anyone else to get them, either. And she certainly didn’t want them snaffled by people who wouldn’t have her husband’s appreciation for them.

  “Leave them alone, you buggers! They’re Roger’s! Buy your own blasted magazines!” she shrieked. Through the rain she could see that both men had on flat caps and, as one of them reacted to her shouts and slowly swiveled toward her, she could make out that he was wearing dark sunglasses. That made no sense at that time of day, with the light almost gone. With another flash of lightning, she saw his face clearly. His skin was startlingly white. She skidded to a halt. “Those pallid men,” she whispered, immediately recalling her husband’s description from his journal.

  Both men were regarding her now. She was close enough to see their wide jaws and grim-set mouths. The one holding the suitcase clapped it shut, and they started to stride determinedly toward her, completely in step with each other. Mrs. Burrows’s anger immediately turned to fear
. There was no doubt in her mind that they were coming for her.

  She glanced quickly around Main Street to see if there was anyone who could help, but the rain seemed to have emptied it of people. She turned and ran, her shoes sliding on the wet pavement. She scoured the shops for anywhere she could take refuge, but of course Clarke’s had closed down and it was far too late for the Golden Spoon café to still be open. There was nothing for it but to get across the road and take the side street in the direction of her flat. She would be safe there.

  As she ran, the pounding on the pavement behind her was getting louder, and it was as if her fear opened up a remote corner of her mind. She suddenly remembered the incident from the previous year, when three men had forced a lock on the French doors of the living room and broken in. It had happened at a time when Mrs. Burrows was in the clutches of a chronic depression, spending nearly every hour of the day asleep in her favorite chair in front of the television.

  She’d surprised the intruders, and they’d dragged her out into the hall. Then she’d surprised them some more. With the almost superhuman strength of someone not in their right mind, she’d walloped the intruders about their heads with a frying pan. They’d been scared off. The verdict from the police was that the thieves must have been watching the house from the Common, and that they were after the usual — the TV, cell phones, and any cash lying around the place.

  But now, as these men pursued her, something in the way they carried themselves recalled to mind the intruders of that night.

  As she reached Jekyll Street, there was a loud peal of thunder, and she hared it across the road to the opposite sidewalk. She didn’t see the approaching car until it was too late. She heard the squeal of brakes and tires sliding across the wet pavement as the car slewed to a halt. Blinded by the headlights, she threw her arms around her head. The front bumper struck her, and she went over.

  In an instant, the driver was out of the car and at her side.

  “Jeez, I didn’t see you! You just stepped out into the middle of the street!” he said. “Are you hurt?”

  Mrs. Burrows was sitting up now, her wet hair in her face as she peered over her shoulder to look for the strange men.

  “Where are they?” she mumbled.

  “Does it hurt anywhere? Do you think you can walk?” the driver asked, his voice full of concern.

  She pushed her hair back, seeing the driver clearly for the first time.

  It was the bearded American from the library.

  “I know you,” she said.

  The man crinkled one corner of his mouth as he squatted by her, his dark eyes searching her face. “You do?” he asked.

  “Ben … something.”

  “Yeah,” he said quizzically. “Ben Wilbrahams.”

  “Yes. Mr. Ashmi in the town archives said I should talk to you. I’m Celia Burrows,” she told him.

  He frowned, then his eyebrows rose in an arc above his wire-rimmed glasses. “So that would make you Dr. Burrows’s wife,” he said as Mrs. Burrows got to her feet, wincing as she tried to put weight on her left leg.

  “I think I’ve sprained my ankle,” she said.

  “Look, you’re completely drenched and I live right near here — at the end of Jekyll Street. Let me make sure you’re all right — it’s the least I can do.”

  Ben Wilbrahams lived in an imposing, wide-fronted Victorian house. He gave Mrs. Burrows a hand into the hall and from there into the living room. He sat her down on the sofa and lit a fire in the hearth. After fetching her a towel so she could dry herself off, he went to the kitchen to make them some coffee. Mrs. Burrows limped over to the wide marble fireplace, taking in the old paintings in the room — mostly landscapes and classically English. With its high ceilings the room was impressively large, running the full length of the house. Still drying her hair, she hobbled a few steps toward the garden end of the room. Even though it was in darkness, she could make out a number of large boards set up on easels.

  She found a light switch and turned it on.

  There were six boards in total, on which were pinned a mass of maps and countless numbers of small cards covered in neatly written notes. But the farthest board consisted only of photographs, and one of these photographs made her do a double take. She hopped over to it. It was a small black-and-white portrait of Dr. Burrows.

  “That’s from the Highfield Museum website,” Ben said as he entered the room carrying a tray with cups and a French press of fresh coffee on it. “They haven’t updated it yet.”

  “Did you ever meet him?” Mrs. Burrows asked. “My husband, Roger?”

  “No, never had the pleasure,” Ben Wilbrahams replied, noticing Mrs. Burrows’s interest in the other photographs pinned around the one of her husband. There was a color photograph of a smiling family on which had been written The Watkins Family.

  “The people in all those other pictures, they all went missing, too,” Ben Wilbrahams said, setting down the tray.

  “So what is all this? What precisely are you up to here?” Mrs. Burrows asked suspiciously as she hopped over to another board. She leaned on the back of a chair for support as she examined a map of Highfield, which was peppered with red stickers.

  “You’re not a journalist or a writer or anything like that?” he asked, narrowing his eyes in a less than serious way.

  “Not yet,” Mrs. Burrows replied.

  “Good, because I don’t want anyone stealing my ideas,” he said. “I came across to England five years ago to write and direct an episode of a new cable TV series called Victorian Gothic. My episode was about London’s cemeteries, and when it was finished, I never went home. That’s what I do — I make films and documentaries.”

  “Really,” Mrs. Burrows said, impressed. She thought back to her own television career and how much she had given up when she and Dr. Burrows adopted Will.

  Ben Wilbrahams pushed down the plunger on the French press. “At the moment I’m doing some general research on Highfield and all the crazy — or maybe not so crazy — stories that fascinated your husband, too.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about them?” Mrs. Burrows said.

  Will sat up and rubbed his eyes, convinced he’d heard a bell ringing. If he really had heard one, he could only think it was the bell on the barricade.

  From the chaise longue, where he’d been sleeping, he watched Bartleby, who seemed to have been roused, too. The cat had been curled up in his favorite place at the fireside, but was now glancing lazily at the garden. He let his head sink slowly to the rug again and promptly went back to sleep. Since Bartleby appeared to be so relaxed, Will told himself he must have dreamed it. He lay down again, also intending to go back to sleep.

  Just then Chester, all in a fluster, burst in from the side room, where he’d been watching over Elliott.

  “Well, don’t just lie there!” he shouted.

  “Huh?” Will said drowsily.

  “The bell! You must have heard it.”

  Will hauled himself from the chaise longue to join Chester at the front door.

  “Are you sure it was the bell?” Will asked as they both looked down the path toward the barricade.

  “Absolutely.”

  “It might be Martha,” Will suggested. “Maybe she went outside to check the traps.”

  Chester didn’t need to reply — Will’s question was answered as, without a word, Martha barged between them and launched herself down the front steps. Still dressed in the ankle-length, dirty white gown she usually slept in, she’d clearly gotten up in a hurry. But she also had her crossbow in her hands and, as she stormed down the path, she cocked it and drew a bolt from her quiver.

  “Looks like she’s expecting trouble,” Chester observed.

  Reaching the barricade, she checked through the peephole in the door. With a quick glance in the boys’ direction, she unbolted the door and flung it open. As she took a step through the opening, her crossbow was trained on something, and she looked tense.

  “What co
uld have rung the bell like that?” Will pondered. “Spider-monkeys?”

  “Shhh!” Chester hissed. “I think she’s talking to someone.”

  “Martha never stops talking,” Will replied. “Even if there’s no one there.”

  “Will!” Martha suddenly cried out. “Get down here! Somebody’s asking for you.”

  The boys exchanged bemused looks.

  “Says she’s your sister,” Martha added.

  “No! No way! I don’t believe it!” Chester exploded, thumping the doorjamb. “Your sister the Styx! Those foul murdering cows have followed us here!” He turned and dashed inside the shack, but Will was already making his way down the path to the main gate, racked with curiosity, and dread.

  Martha didn’t look up from her crossbow, her lips tight as she spoke. “Know her?”

  Will poked his head cautiously outside the doorway.

  It was Rebecca.

  One of the twins was standing there, her hands clasped before her and her fingers interlocked. Her face was streaked with filth and shiny with tears.

  “Oh, Will,” she croaked as soon as she saw him. “Help me. Please … please help me.”

  Will was speechless.

  “She’s wearing a Limiter’s uniform,” Martha spat, her fingers clenched so tightly around the crossbow that her joints were white. “She’s a Styx.”

  Will found his voice. “Yes … a Styx. I told you she was a Styx,” he said to Martha. Then he spoke to the Rebecca twin. “What is this? Why’ve you come here?”

  “Oh, Will,” the lame twin pleaded. “You’ve got to help me. She threw me down the Pore.”

  “Are you by yourself? Are there any other Styx with you?” Will demanded, as his brain kicked into gear. He scanned the gloom behind the girl. “Her sister might be here, or more Styx. This might be a trap,” he said in a rush to Martha.

  With her crossbow still aimed on the girl, Martha advanced toward her. She stopped, then glanced quickly both ways along the tunnel. “Seems clear,” she whispered.