The Glass Demon

by Helen Grant

  ‘Polly?’ I waited until she had turned her pale eyes back to me. ‘If you don’t want to go, then don’t.’ I saw her open her mouth to protest and hurried on. ‘They’ll make a fuss, but so what? It’s your life. You could get a job for the rest of the year. You could get yourself sorted out…’

  ‘You mean the eating?’ Polly’s gaze met mine and I was relieved to see that there was no anger in her expression. She looked relaxed and calm. ‘Lin, I wanted to tell you about that.’ She smiled at me. ‘Look, I had a problem, but I really feel much, much better now. Honestly, Lin.’

  ‘Polls –’

  ‘It was the stress of doing my A levels and then having to move. I really feel OK now. I want to eat, Lin.’

  I looked at her doubtfully. It was the way she kept saying my name all the time – Lin, Lin – that made me suspicious. She sounded as though she was trying to persuade me.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m fine.’

  ‘Polly, you’re so thin.’

  It wasn’t just that. Her skin had a bluish tinge to it, as though she could never quite get warm enough, and her hair was dull and lifeless. She didn’t look as though she was fine.

  ‘I’m –’ For a moment I thought she was going to lose her cool, but then she smiled reassuringly. ‘Look, Lin, it’s bound to take a while for me to – to look better. I was really stressed out. I know I wasn’t eating enough, all right? But really, you don’t need to worry about me. Once I get to Italy – all that pasta…’

  And no one watching to see whether you eat it, I thought.

  I studied my sister’s face. She sounded so calm and reasonable that I doubted my own opinion. More than that, I wanted to believe her. I wanted her to be healthy; I wanted everything to be all right. It would be such a relief. I wouldn’t have to have these endless internal discussions with myself: should I tell anyone about Polly, and if so whom, and how could I stop her from hating me for it?

  You have your own problems anyway, said a selfish little voice inside me. You have to decide what to do about the glass. You have to deal with it. If you try to tell anyone else the truth, they’ll think you’re absolutely insane. Polly says she’s fine now. Maybe she really is fine.

  Maybe. That was the crux of it. I stared at my sister and still I couldn’t make up my mind. When eventually she got out of bed, she was almost entirely covered up with a huge baggy T-shirt and leggings. I could see that her legs were painfully thin, but even if she were eating properly again, it would take time for her to put the weight back on…

  In the end I decided to do what I had already been doing for so long, which was to wait and see. I would wait for a week or two, I decided, and if I could see that Polly was really eating and looking better, I would stop worrying about it. If she seemed just the same, or worse, then this time I really would tell someone.

  At the time, the decision seemed perfectly reasonable.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Later that morning Michel called at the castle to see how I was. My father and Uncle Karl had gone into the town together with the intention of speaking to the agent who had rented us the castle, to see whether we could extricate ourselves from the rental agreement. Polly and Ru had gone with them; Polly said she would rather push Ru in his buggy around Baumgarten for the entire day than stay at the castle. Of Tuesday there was no sign at all; at ten o’clock she was still in bed, doing her best to sleep through all the unpleasantness. It was left to me to open the door to Michel’s rather diffident knock.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I lied as I stood on the doorstep in an ancient T-shirt and a pair of old jogging bottoms. I knew I looked horrible but I was past caring. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at school?’ I asked.

  In truth I wished he had stayed at school; I knew it was ungrateful, since he had called the police for us, but I couldn’t face talking to him or anyone else.

  Michel shrugged. ‘I said I had to go to the dentist.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What happened? Is your little brother all right?’

  I closed my eyes briefly, trying to shut out the brilliant morning sunshine. ‘He’s all right.’ I really didn’t want to talk about it, but I realized this wouldn’t be enough. ‘Someone got into the house. They tried to attack him but they missed, or… I don’t know, maybe they missed on purpose. Maybe it was a warning. But he’s OK.’

  ‘They attacked him? What with?’

  I sighed inwardly. There was a horrid inevitability about the reaction my reply would provoke.

  ‘A spear.’

  ‘A spear?’

  I looked down at my bare toes curling over the edge of the doorstep. I supposed that I would be having this conversation a hundred times in the next few days. The thought of it made me weary.

  ‘Somebody put a spear through the bed. Ru was in it, but it didn’t touch him.’

  How neat and succinct that sounded. It could no more summon up the horror of seeing that spear thrust through the mattress just centimetres from where my brother had lain than a trite epitaph on a gravestone can express the horror of losing a loved one. I did my best to tune out of Michel’s exclamations of shock and sympathy.

  ‘Michel, he’s OK,’ I said eventually.

  ‘Do they know – I mean, the police, do they know what happened?’ he asked. I noticed that he avoided asking whether the police knew who did it.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Michel moved a little closer and lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘What do you think happened?’

  I didn’t reply to this. Instead I asked another question. ‘Michel, what do you think we saw when we were in the church? The shape on the other side of the glass?’

  Michel was silent.

  ‘Supposing…’ I lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘Supposing it was him? Bonschariant?’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  He didn’t have to tell me that. Twenty-four hours ago I would have said it was crazy too. Demons don’t exist in the real world. But now the rule book had been torn up. The real world, the world of school and home and arguing with Tuesday and dreaming of being a scientist one day, all that was a bubble, a mirage. That reality was as thin as an eggshell, and outside it monsters prowled.

  ‘You saw it,’ I said. ‘It was moving along behind the glass.’

  ‘It could’ve been –’

  ‘It could’ve been who? Your dad was away that day, remember? And we didn’t see anyone else in the woods the whole time. Anyway, I thought nobody else knew about the church.’

  ‘They don’t,’ said Michel unhappily. ‘At least, there are rumours… you know. But nobody really wants to know.’

  ‘So maybe it was him. The Glass Demon.’

  Michel was shaking his head.

  ‘Look, when we came out of the church, there was nobody there, was there? And when we got back to the castle and Polly came out… whatever happened in Ru’s room, well, it had already happened.’ I hugged myself, shivering. ‘He went for Ru because he couldn’t get at us. And glass – Michel, there was broken glass, like at the cemetery.’

  Michel wasn’t listening. ‘Nobody would ever believe this, Lin. You can’t tell the police a demon attacked your brother.’

  ‘I’m not going to tell the police. I’m not stupid. I know they wouldn’t believe me.’ I ran a hand through my hair. ‘I don’t know whether I believe it myself.’

  ‘Then what’s the point of even discussing it?’ There was a tinge of exasperation, or perhaps anger, in Michel’s voice. ‘There’s a reason why people round here don’t want to know about that glass, you know. They’re right. It’s unlucky.’

  ‘Michel.’ I put my hands on my hips. ‘It – he – came out of the woods and tried to kill my brother. And that time the house nearly burned down – that was him too.’ My eyes scanned Michel’s face. ‘I can’t just pretend nothing is happening. We’ve got to do something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like finding a way to stop this.’ My voice was beg
inning to rise and I saw Michel glancing around nervously to see whether anyone else was within earshot. With an effort I controlled myself. ‘We have to do something before someone else is killed.’

  Michel rubbed his face with his hands, as though trying to wake himself up. Then he looked at me. He was standing quite close, and now that his eyes were staring into mine I realized they were not mud-coloured at all, but a clear hazel.

  ‘Look, Lin,’ he said in a voice which was considerably firmer than his usual tones, ‘the best thing we can do is forget about that church in the woods. I should never have taken you there. I shouldn’t have gone myself in the first place either. We should forget about it.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘If there is any such person as –’ he lowered his voice – ‘Bonschariant, then he’s trying to scare us off. We have to stay away from the church and we can’t tell anyone else. Nobody. Especially not your father. If anyone else goes there, God knows what will happen next time.’ Michel shook his head. ‘We keep this a secret, eventually your dad gives up and then maybe the attacks will stop.’

  ‘Maybe?’ I was incensed. ‘I’m not sitting here hoping it’s all going to go away. What if they don’t stop?’

  Now Michel looked alarmed. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I had to admit. ‘But I’m going to do something.’ I paused. I had no idea what the German word for exorcism was; it was not a word I had ever had to use in my studies to date. Eventually I settled for, ‘We could get a priest to come.’

  ‘No,’ said Michel emphatically. ‘We’re not telling anyone else.’

  ‘Michel!’ My voice was rising again. This time I found myself glancing round, but there was no sign of Tuesday stirring. ‘We only have to tell the priest. We won’t tell my father or – or anyone else.’

  ‘You think it’s not going to get out if you do that?’ demanded Michel.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Aren’t priests supposed to keep everything you tell them secret?’

  ‘Only if it’s in confession. But anyway, if he thinks we’re crazy or we’re trying to play a joke on him, he’ll tell for sure.’ Michel grasped my upper arm. ‘Lin, please, don’t tell anyone. It could make things a lot worse.’

  I tried to pull away. ‘How much worse can it be? My brother nearly died.’ We glared at each other. Eventually I dropped my gaze. ‘All right, if it’s that much of a problem, we don’t have to tell anyone.’

  Michel let go of my arm with a sigh of relief.

  ‘But,’ I continued, ‘we still have to do something about it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘We go back to the church,’ I told him. ‘We go back, you and I, and we find a way of stopping this ourselves.’

  ‘That’s insane. No chance,’ said Michel.

  ‘In that case, I’m telling someone,’ I said defiantly. ‘I’m not just forgetting it.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Michel sounded resentful. His hands hanging at his sides had curled into fists. ‘Look, I have to go or I’ll be late. I’ll come back later, OK?’

  I nodded.

  ‘But in the meantime, you don’t tell anyone, understand? Nobody. Especially not your dad,’ he added.

  ‘I won’t,’ I promised.

  All the same, I was thoughtful as I watched Michel step through the green gate and heard the sound of his car’s engine firing up. I had promised not to tell my father about the glass, but I still had to make up my mind about the other person I had considered telling.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  A couple of hours later we had a less amicable visit. Tuesday was still in bed when I heard the knocking. I ran my hands through my still-unbrushed hair and went to open the door.

  There were two of them on the doorstep, a man and a woman. They were both in plain clothes but there was something indefinable about them which screamed police, even before the man showed me an ID. At the first glance I decided that the woman was the harder of the two. She was small and skinny, with rather lank-looking blonde hair and blue eyes like gas jets. The man was tall, broad-shouldered and heavily built; with just a few kilograms more he would actually be fat. He had a very full brown moustache and as I stared up at him I found myself thinking how terrible it would be to have to kiss him; I wondered if he had ever persuaded anyone to.

  ‘Good morning,’ said the man in English. Incongruously, he had a distinct American accent. ‘We are looking for Dr Fox.’

  ‘He’s out,’ I said.

  This earned me a distinctly unfriendly look. ‘Is Mrs Fox in the house?’

  ‘She’s… um, she’s in bed. Sleeping.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He didn’t look particularly sorry, nor did he offer to go away and come back later. He waited for a moment with an expression of long-suffering patience on his stolid features, then he said, ‘May we come in?’

  I stood back to let them both into the house. Once inside they had a rather oppressive effect on the room. He was so tall that he seemed to blot out the light from the window.

  ‘I am Mr Schmitz and this is Mrs Ohlert,’ drawled the policeman.

  I wondered where he had learned English; on a foreign exchange with the States, for sure. It was unnerving listening to him – like watching a well-known actor who had been dubbed into a foreign language.

  ‘I’m Lin Fox,’ I said.

  ‘The daughter of Dr Fox?’

  ‘Ye-es…’ I said reluctantly.

  ‘We are from the Bonner Kriminalpolizei. We need to speak to your mother, please.’

  ‘Tuesday’s asleep,’ I reminded them.

  ‘Will you wake her up, please?’

  I could imagine how delighted Tuesday was going to be about that, but I didn’t say anything. I went upstairs and knocked on Tuesday’s door. When there was no reply I went in and shook her shoulder.

  ‘Tuesday!’

  She had been lying with her face pressed into the pillow; now she turned her head and looked at me blearily.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Tuesday, the police are here.’

  ‘Tell them to go away, then.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘I need to sleep. Can’t you see that?’ She thumped the pillow and put her head down on it again.

  ‘I told them you were asleep. They said to wake you up.’

  Tuesday gave a grunt of irritation but she did finally sit up. ‘They can’t do this! For God’s sake! I’ve been up practically all night…’

  She continued to grumble as she groped for her dressing gown and slippers. Her mane of fair hair was a tangled mess and she had dark rings under her eyes. I thought of the police waiting downstairs and for once I felt sorry for her. I went to her chest of drawers and found her hairbrush.

  She slapped it away. ‘I’m not tarting myself up for them.’ She glared at me. ‘If they haul me out of bed like this they can put up with me as I am.’ All the same, she glanced in the mirror and gave a groan. ‘I look ill. I hope they feel good about this, dragging me out of bed…’

  There was more in this vein as she made her way downstairs. I followed her in silence.

  The tall policeman was looking at one of my father’s books, which lay open on the table. I recognized it as the collection of Dürer’s woodcuts. That was all we needed, I thought. Let them take a look at all those pictures of skeletons on horses and horned demons and they would think we were all completely mad. The policeman looked up as we came down the stairs and he carefully closed the book.

  ‘Mrs Fiona Fox?’ he said.

  At that Tuesday’s face creased into a thunderous scowl. Above anything in the world she hated people to use her given name, which she considered far too pedestrian. The only reason it still appeared on official documents was that Tuesday had never summoned up the energy to do anything about formally changing it. To her friends and acquaintances she was always Tuesday, and she would have died before she let any of them know her real name.

  ‘I don’t use that name,’ she
snapped.

  At this a slight flicker of interest crossed the policeman’s face. I suppose he thought Tuesday was admitting that she was living under an assumed name.

  ‘Fox?’ said the blonde policewoman.

  I had not heard her speak before and her voice was very harsh, like the caw of a raven.

  ‘No,’ said Tuesday irritably. ‘Fiona.’ She made the name sound like a swear word. ‘I don’t use that name. Everyone calls me Tuesday.’

  I could imagine how this piece of information would go down. Added to the pictures of monsters and tortured saints lying about our house, we went around naming ourselves after days of the week. I was thankful they had not asked me for my full name.

  ‘Mrs Fox, may we ask you some questions?’ That was the tall policeman again.

  ‘Oh, if you must.’ Tuesday’s voice was deeply ungracious. She threw herself into a chair and raked through her hair with her hands.

  ‘May we sit down also?’ He had his hand on the back of one of the dining chairs.

  Tuesday nodded wearily. She looked at me. ‘Lin, would you make some coffee? I’m not going to stay awake otherwise.’

  Reluctantly I went through into the kitchen, though I would much rather have stayed to hear what the police were going to ask her. I glanced back and saw the blonde policewoman opening a laptop. Then I had to concentrate on making the coffee. This was no easy task, since the filter machine was clogged with what looked like the droppings of some prehistoric creature, there was not a clean cup in the entire kitchen and nor was there any washing-up liquid with which to wash one. As I scrubbed and chipped uselessly at a mug with a plastic brush, I realized that I had better make some coffee for the police too, though they were risking poisoning themselves with anything which came out of this kitchen.

  When I finally went back into the living room, the tall policeman was saying, ‘Can you think of any reason why anyone would attack your son, Mrs Fox?’

  Tuesday made a vague gesture which might have been confirmation or dismissal; it was hard to say. ‘Reason? I don’t know what reasons they might have.’ She didn’t say whom she meant by they. ‘That man from the farm is completely off his head –’