The Glass Demon

by Helen Grant

  ‘Run! Run!’

  I looked about me wildly, scanning the floor and the pews for anything that I could use as a weapon. There was a large stone on the tiles, surrounded by shards of coloured glass. I had some vague idea of throwing it at the Naaman window, to try to distract the killer, to shock Michel into moving – anything rather than stand there and watch him cut down – but when I tried to lift it, it was impossible. My right hand was almost useless and the pain when I went to move it was dizzying.

  Waves of nausea left me weak and trembling. I staggered against the end of the pew and attempted to steady myself without using my hands. Could I untie them? They were bound together with a heavy-duty vinyl tape, wound round and round my wrists. I knew before trying that it was useless to use my teeth on it, but I tried anyway, worrying at the tape while my gaze scanned the windows, praying that Michel would move in time when he saw who was coming for him around the end of the church, swinging the axe like a crazed headsman.

  I was making no impression on the tape. I glanced around me, looking for anything sharp. The remains of the Garden of Eden window – the bottom edge was now a row of buckled lead cames and jagged spikes of glass like glittering fangs. I limped towards it on legs which felt as though they would give way under me at any moment.

  Michel was shouting something. It sounded like, ‘What?’ His voice was hoarse and incredulous. He had not expected this from Father Krause any more than I had, any more than you expect a tame rabbit to turn and bite your hand to the bone.

  I prayed that he would have the sense to run. Glancing round, I saw his silhouette move behind the Naaman window; he was backing away.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I saw him move suddenly as something hit the stone window frame with a tremendous crunch. There was a howl from outside, but whether it was a cry of pain or anger I could not tell.

  ‘Michel!’ I screamed.

  There was no reply. Sick to my stomach, I wondered whether he had been hit, but to my relief I saw him pound past the remains of the Adam and Eve window. Abandoning all pretence at making a stand, he was running for his life. A second later the dark shape that was Father Krause passed the same window at a fearful speed; he might be decades older than Michel, but rage was driving him on.

  It was all too obvious what would happen. Michel could not run forever. His pursuer was strong and determined enough to lift a struggling teenage girl and hurl her to her death. He would have no trouble hunting Michel down, until Michel could run no further, and then – then, when he had dealt with Michel, he would come back for me, and with my hands tied I could do nothing to defend myself.

  I staggered over to the broken window and reached up, straining to pull my wrists a few millimetres apart so that I could saw at the tape without cutting my own flesh. There was virtually no give in the tape; he had known what he was doing. I bit my lip and tried anyway, hooking the edge of the tape over the largest shard I could find, a great jagged tooth of yellow glass. Feverishly I worked at the tape, but in my haste I pulled too hard. The tip of the shard broke off, slashing deeply into the side of my thumb. Now there was blood flowing, making the glass and the tape slippery. Swearing under my breath, I gritted my teeth and hooked the torn edge of the tape over another of the wicked glass points. Careful, careful, I told myself through a fog of pain. Cut an artery and you’ll be dead before he comes looking for you.

  Sawing back and forth, I finally managed to cut halfway through the tape. Now there was a little more play in it and I was able to move my hands apart enough to slash at the tape without cutting myself. I glanced over my shoulder. Nothing moving: no sign of Michel or Father Krause. I turned back to the window and sawed through the last centimetre of tape. The injured hand was agony. It was swelling up nicely, the flesh blue and puffy. If I had waited any longer to cut the tape it would have been too tight around the swollen hand and I would probably have cut myself to ribbons.

  No time to worry about that. Think, think! What could I use as a weapon? There were great shards of glass, wickedly sharp, scattered all over the floor but I doubted my ability to manipulate one of them with my left hand, even assuming I managed to get to close quarters. There were bricks and broken chunks of stone here and there, from Michel’s assault on the window. I hefted one in my left hand. It felt like a pitiful defence against an axe.

  The petrol can. It was lying there on its side in the aisle. I limped over and picked it up. It was nearly empty but it had a satisfyingly solid feel to it. It was metal, not plastic, and there was a handle I could curl my fingers through. It would have made an admirable weapon if I had been left-handed. Still, it would have to do. I grasped the handle in my left hand and tried taking a practice swing. Pitiful. I had barely enough power to swat a fly, let alone brain someone. I tried again, using the heel of the damaged hand to steady the can. A little better.

  ‘Michel!’ I yelled as loudly as I could. I willed him to answer me. ‘Michel! In here!’

  There was no reply, but a second later I saw him pounding past a window on the other side of the church.

  ‘Michel!’

  It was no use. Either he had not heard me or he was too focused on flight to take any notice. A second shape tore past the window: Father Krause. I thought he was gaining on Michel. I imagined the edge of the axe, the bright sharpness of the blade, carving great arcs out of the air. I remembered the crunch the axe had made when it hit the window frame. All it would take was for Michel to stumble, to fall, and he would be finished.

  I looked up at the window closest to me, the one showing the Fall of the Angels. St Michael crowned the scene, overtopping the struggling group of winged creatures, driving the grinning demon with his crimson face earthwards with his spear. Sunlight shone through the pale glass of the saint’s face, illuminating the finely painted features with pure white light, lending them a radiant otherworldly glow.

  And in that moment I knew what I had to do.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  I put down the petrol can and picked up the largest stone I could see. I gazed up at the Fall of the Angels, my skin bathed in the coloured light which streamed through the glass. Over four and a half centuries ago, a genius had made that glass, a genius whose work was so exceptional that people believed his skill came from the Devil. My father would have given anything to stand where I was standing now. Anything. Even the lives of his children. Deliberately I took aim.

  It was a clumsy throw but it achieved what was intended. The stone caught the crimson face of the falling demon full on and shattered it into fragments, the leering features disappearing in an explosion of tiny shards which pattered down on to the floor like red rain.

  ‘Hey!’ I screamed at the top of my voice.

  I picked up another stone. This time the placid face of an angel with a sword crashed out of existence. I stood there motionless, panting and listening, my gaze scanning the floor for something else to throw.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted again. ‘In here!’

  A shape appeared behind the furthest window. I had no idea whether it was Michel or his pursuer. Swiftly I bent and picked up another stone. My eyes scanned the six unbroken windows. The faces of men and angels, of soldiers and saints, gazed down from the brilliantly coloured panes, their finely painted expressions unchanged for nearly five hundred years. It was impossible not to feel their ancient beauty. And yet I thought the Allerheiligen glass was beautiful in the same way that a great white shark is beautiful. Its history was one of obsession and death, as surely as if the flaming scarlet of the red panels had been painted in blood.

  ‘Here!’ I screamed, and flung the stone at the face of Abraham.

  I heard the satisfying sound of glass breaking, shortly answered by a bellow from outside. The rage in that cry almost paralysed me for a moment. It sounded as though all that was human in Father Krause had been stripped away, baring a damned soul which howled and screeched in its agony.

  Suddenly I doubted my ability to wound him at a
ll, certainly not with a left-handed swipe with a petrol can. For a dizzying moment I thought I really might sink down there on the stained tiles and let him come for me.

  ‘Lin!’

  That was Michel. I heard the choke in his voice and realized that he was nearly at the end of his strength, almost speechless, panting from running.

  ‘In here!’ I screamed back.

  Move! I urged myself. If I stood here doing nothing we were both finished. I swept the petrol can up from the floor, forming the fingers of my left hand into a fist around the handle. Then I moved as quickly as I could to the well of deep shadow behind the door. I braced the can against the heel of my right hand and slowly raised it.

  There were noises outside. Footsteps, running footsteps, and the ragged panting of someone who was exhausted. I tightened my grip on the handle of the petrol can.

  Oh, God, I thought suddenly. Who’s going to come in first? If it was Michel, I had to wait for him to pass before taking a swing at Father Krause. If it was Father Krause – any hesitation and I would be lost. He would see me and I would be trapped there behind the door. He could cut me down as easily as a reaper scything wheat.

  The sounds from outside were coming closer. I could hear someone stumbling towards the door, stones crunching under their feet. My fingers felt slick on the handle of the petrol can; my hands were sweating. No time to wipe them on my clothes.

  Someone came hurtling through the doorway. At the last moment I managed to arrest the swing I had started, though the jerk sent a stab of pain through my injured hand. It was Michel, bent double, wheezing with exertion, still clutching a jagged stone like a talisman, as though it would provide any defence against an axe. He was ready to collapse.

  There was no time to call out to him, and it would have given away my hiding-place. I saw him sprawl on the worn tiles, red-faced, his chest heaving, the perfect bait for the berserker who was raging up to the door. Now it all depended on me, on whether I could summon up the sheer strength to disable his pursuer.

  Footsteps were approaching, heavy and ominous. I raised the petrol can again and as the demon who had clothed himself in the flesh of Father Krause came roaring through the doorway I swung it with all the force I could muster. With a dull thud the corner of the can met bone. He staggered, but did not fall. The axe was still clutched in his hand; I could see the whitened knuckles tight around it. In wild desperation I lifted the can and struck again, with a clanging impact which drove him to his knees. I think I was screaming, but the sound seemed to come from a long way off.

  Michel was scrambling to his feet, the stone still in his hand. It seemed to take forever for him to cross the short distance from the spot where he had fallen to the place where I stood, sobbing, trying to take a third swing with the petrol can. With a great grunt of exertion he raised the stone. There was a sickening crunch as it made contact with Father Krause’s skull, then, with a groan, the man slumped to the floor and the axe fell from his hand. As soon as I dared, I pushed it away with the toe of my boot.

  I was looking at the back of Father Krause’s head, at the bloody contusion matting the greying hair, gore already welling from it.

  ‘Is he dead?’ I tried to say, but nothing came out except the laboured whistling of my breath.

  The petrol can slipped from my grasp and clanged on to the floor. I bent forward, my reeking hair falling over my face, and cradled my injured hand. Still I could not take my eyes off the body on the floor. I kept thinking, He’s going to get up again. He’s going to get up again and lift the axe and –

  Michel was sitting on the floor, with the bloody stone still clutched in his fist. He was looking at it, at the red which stained its rough surface, with a kind of horrified fascination. He looked at me, looked back at the stone, then opened his fingers and let it fall on to the tiles. We stared at each other.

  After a while Michel crawled over to the prone figure and, with more bravery than I could have summoned up, grasped its black-clad shoulder and turned the body over. We gazed at the still face, blood streaking the skin like warpaint. Mercifully the eyes were closed.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ said Michel. ‘When I saw him. Father Krause. How could it be him? He’s just…’

  His voice trailed off. I knew what he was thinking. Father Krause – he was just a geek. Just a sad little rabbity man, the sort of person who’s more likely to bore you to death than anything. But he was wrong.

  ‘He was a devil,’ I said.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  For a while we just stared at the body. Blood was slowly oozing out of the wounds Michel and I had inflicted on him, staining the tiles red. Blood that we had spilt.

  ‘We killed someone,’ I whispered.

  Reaction was setting in; I was beginning to feel deathly cold. I could not seem to stop shivering.

  ‘We had to,’ said Michel.

  He meant to sound firm, but there was something in his voice that made him sound as though he was trying to convince himself.

  ‘Michel, I’m cold.’ My teeth were chattering.

  Michel crawled over to me and put his arms around me. For a while we clung to each other, my face buried in Michel’s shoulder, but I could not dismiss the fear that Father Krause might somehow rise up and attack us again. When my eyes were not on him I could feel a prickling at the back of my neck, as though someone was watching me. I could not stop myself from peering around Michel to look at him.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come in time,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t go back to the farm,’ said Michel. ‘I had this feeling…’ There was a faint tone of accusation in his voice. ‘I turned round and went back and you’d already gone. I knew what you were going to do. Why didn’t you let me come with you?’

  ‘I thought you’d stop me smashing them,’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t –’ began Michel, then stopped.

  He had been going to say, I wouldn’t have stopped you, but then he had realized that he probably would have. We both fell silent.

  ‘You smell strange,’ said Michel eventually. He touched my hair. ‘It smells like… petrol.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘What was he going to do?’ asked Michel, but I could tell from the note of incredulous horror in his voice that he had already guessed.

  Very gently he pushed me away. He got to his feet, grasping the end of a pew for support, and took several steps down the aisle. He was looking at the Pentecost window – looking at it with the sick fascination of a bystander staring at a road accident. When he turned his face to me it was pale and shocked.

  Standing up again gave me some trouble; my legs felt as though they would buckle under me at any moment. Still, by hanging on to the backs of the wooden pews I was able to make my way unsteadily to the spot where Michel was. I stood beside him, clutching his arm, and stared up at the window.

  I looked at the brilliant colours, at the delicacy and precision of the brushwork on each upturned face. At the bright corona of flames surrounding each head.

  I thought of my father, of the years he had spent dreaming of a discovery like this. The interviews he would give, the papers he would write, the inevitable coffee-table book crammed with full-colour photographs of the glass. I thought of him sailing into a future glittering with promise, and I saw him turn to us as he sailed away into the dazzling sunshine, turn and wave farewell.

  And Polly? Polly would be left behind, frozen in a moment in time, a footnote in history. ‘The tragic circumstances surrounding the discovery of the legendary Allerheiligen glass by Dr Oliver Fox…’ That would be my sister’s epitaph.

  Carefully I disentangled my arm from Michel’s. Then I stooped and picked something up from the tiled floor. It was a large chunk of stone. I took a step back, aimed and hurled it at the window as hard as I could. It made a sound like an explosion.

  I took a step back, my boots crunching shards of glass, and bent to pick up another stone. It was awkward throwing with my left h
and. I was not sure I could do this on my own.

  ‘Help me,’ I said, and threw the stone.

  After a moment Michel joined me, scanning the tiled floor for anything he could throw. When we had used all the stones he had flung through the Adam and Eve window, we went outside and collected more.

  A mighty crash and the Slaughter of the Innocents, the inspiration for the attack on Ru, was gone forever. Another explosive impact and Naaman, suspended in the blue water, had winked out of existence. Crash! went the depiction of Lazarus rising from his tomb which had inspired the desecration of the cemetery.

  The coloured glass rained down, and there was an end of King Herod, of Moses, of Isaac, of Michel’s father’s secret, of all my father’s long-nurtured dreams.

  And because we were intent on smashing the last of the windows, neither of us noticed until afterwards that Father Krause’s body had gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Neither of us had the energy to react very much to the discovery. Michel put an arm round my shoulders and we stood staring at the blood congealing on the floor. There was absolute silence apart from the sound of our own breathing and distant birdsong from the forest outside. When either of us moved there was a crackle of broken glass underfoot. But there were no sounds of anyone else moving about in the church, no sounds of running footsteps receding into the distance. Father Krause had vanished. Later I remembered the day he had first come to call at the castle, how I had rushed outside with the forgotten card case and he had already gone. Evidently he knew the woods like the back of his hand. But at this moment I did not think about that. It seemed right, somehow, that he should vanish as though spirited away. I imagined him flying over the treetops as Bonschariant is supposed to have done, a snarl of frustrated malevolence distorting his face.

  There was no point trying to lock the church again, or to put the boards back up on the remains of the windows. Michel took my hand in his and we walked out of the church and into the forest. Sunlight streamed down through the treetops. Far ahead of us a red squirrel suddenly ran on to the path, paused and then darted up the trunk of a tree. Otherwise we seemed to be the only living creatures in the forest. Strangely, I felt no fear. Father Krause could undoubtedly have ambushed us somewhere along the tortuous route back to the castle, but I instinctively felt that he had gone, that we would not see him again, and besides, I was too shocked and exhausted to care.