Demons of Ghent

by Helen Grant

  ‘One – two – three – piano.’

  She didn’t bother to look behind her this time. Her gaze flickered down to the yard below, lit by that wide stream of yellowish light – flickered, and snagged.

  Veerle drew in breath sharply, held it. Her eyes widened.

  Someone was standing down there in the yard, just at the edge of the light.

  Veerle’s fingers curled around the ladder and tightened. She leaned forward, unwilling to believe the evidence of her eyes. Surely there hadn’t been anyone down there before?

  She blinked, willing the dark shape to be nothing more than a trick of the light, a shadow cast by some piece of lumber.

  No. It was a person. She saw the hem of a long dark coat move as he half turned. The head was cowled in a hood that completely obscured the upper part of the face.

  Probably a drunk who’d wandered into the yard looking for a place to piss, or some random druggie. Still, the sight of him standing there silently, as though waiting, was somehow sinister.

  Veerle put her head right over the parapet. ‘Bram,’ she said in the loudest whisper she could manage.

  Not loud enough; Bram didn’t even look up. He just continued down the ladder, concentrating on moving his hands and feet carefully down the metal rungs.

  Veerle looked past him, and the hooded figure had stepped out boldly into the yellowish light, as though setting his feet resolutely on an open road.

  Her heart rate speeded up a gear. This wasn’t just vaguely sinister; there was something very ominous about it indeed: the sheltered yard with its deep shadows, the jaundiced river of light spilling from the street beyond, and that dark figure standing there, the head muffled but the attention unmistakably focused on the descending figure of Bram.

  She abandoned caution. ‘Bram!’ she called. ‘Bram!’

  Now he had heard her; gazing down, she saw him glance up, and below him, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a sudden swift movement. The figure in the dark coat was striding forward, breaking into a run, making directly for the spot where Bram would land if he jumped the last section to the ground.

  Bram was still looking up, at her, and not down, at the approaching figure. In desperation, Veerle pointed. She saw his blond head turn, saw him glance downwards.

  How close was he to the bottom of the ladder? How close was the bottom of the ladder to the ground anyway? Veerle couldn’t tell, but from here it looked as though Bram was almost within reach of someone standing underneath it.

  ‘Bram!’ she yelled, apprehension spilling over, and at that moment she saw the moving figure below reaching inside the dark coat that flapped around him. Dread accelerated into a terrifying certainty that made her heart race and her throat close as though there were a fist around it. She saw the murderous intent before she glimpsed the thin gleaming object that came sliding out from some place within the dark fabric, like a snake extending its fangs.

  Bram saw that intent too. For one agonizing second he hesitated between fight and flight, then self-preservation got the upper hand and he lunged back up the ladder with a savage curse.

  Veerle was still staring down. She was gripping the top of the ladder so tightly that it cut into her hands. She could see the top of Bram’s head again as he concentrated on climbing back up, but she could see little of the man below them in the yard because he was almost directly underneath the ladder.

  The breath seemed to be stagnating in her throat. She was praying that what Bram had told her earlier on, about it being difficult to climb up the ladder because it started a couple of metres above the ground, was true. If not, the owner of that deadly glittering thing would be up on the roof about a minute after Bram was. The very thought made her stomach lurch sickeningly.

  What would they do? Could she and Bram defend the top of the ladder – even if it meant pushing another human being off it into the chasm that yawned below? If not, how far could they flee across the rooftops before they ran out of space?

  Veerle couldn’t move from her post at the top of the ladder. She had to see Bram climbing up; she had to listen for the sound of a second set of feet on the lower rungs, echoing the desperate tattoo of his shoes on the metal. In the tangled sounds of his hands and feet on the rungs she couldn’t tell, but as he neared the top of the ladder she was able to look past him and see the cowled figure standing at the bottom, motionless.

  Bram was breathing hard. Veerle sat back, releasing her grip on the top of the ladder, to let him climb onto the roof. The moment he was safely back on the parapet, the pair of them stuck their heads over the side to see what was happening below.

  ‘Shit,’ said Bram almost inconsequentially. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What’s his problem?’

  They stared down. The dark-clad figure was still standing there underneath the ladder, as though considering his next move. The slender gleaming thing Veerle had seen in his hand had gone, vanished back into the lining of the coat, no doubt. Veerle could see the edge of the hood, but nothing beneath it; he had his back to the light.

  She scanned the yard with her gaze, wondering whether there was anything there – a bin perhaps, or a discarded pallet – that he might climb onto to reach the bottom of the ladder. But he showed no sign of wanting to do so.

  ‘Bram,’ said Veerle in a low voice, ‘he had a knife.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Did you see it?’

  Bram was shaking his head. ‘I saw him running at me. I could tell he wasn’t playing about, but . . . are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I can’t see one now.’

  ‘He had one, Bram.’

  ‘Crazy bastard.’

  Neither of them liked to take their gaze off that silent figure.

  ‘Bram – is there another way down?’ whispered Veerle.

  ‘Yeah. Not as easy as this one, but if we’re careful . . .’ Bram frowned. ‘What’s he doing now?’

  They watched, but could make little sense of what they were seeing. The hand that had wielded the blade delved into another pocket and brought out something they could not see. The arm moved once, twice, with the motion of someone sowing seeds. Back into the pocket, and the hand removed something too small to be seen from here, but which made the tiniest metallic clink as it touched the ground.

  A moment later the man had turned and was moving upstream in the river of amber light, heading for the opening into the street. Veerle watched him go and saw that there was a hitch in his step, slight but noticeable, as though he were a finely calibrated machine in need of oiling. He reached the place where the yard gave onto the street, turned right and vanished from sight.

  Veerle heard Bram let out a long breath. He relaxed, sprawling back on the roof and running both hands through his blond mop.

  Veerle didn’t relax. She watched the gap between buildings for signs that the man was returning. Nothing. Seconds spooled lazily past and that wide river of yellow light was blank and empty.

  After a few moments she felt Bram’s hand on her shoulder and realized how tense she was; he might as well have been trying to rub some life into a marble statue.

  ‘That was’ – Bram struggled to find the right word – ‘weird.’

  Veerle glanced at him. ‘It was close, Bram.’ She hugged herself. ‘If you’d . . .’

  She didn’t finish. She had been about to say, If you’d been nearer the bottom he might have had you. The idea was appalling. Veerle had seen the dark figure running, the uplifted hand with the blade in it, and for one moment she had relived with sickening clarity the moments when she herself had fled from a brutal assailant with a knife. Her heart rate, her breathing had accelerated; she had almost felt the dusty floorboards of the old castle reverberating under her feet as she ran for her life. She put a hand over her face, feeling the warmth of her own breath against her skin, trying to take comfort from it, as though reassuring herself that she was still alive.

  ‘Hey,’ said Bram after a moment.
‘Are you OK? You look freaked out.’

  Veerle made herself nod.

  ‘It was just some nut,’ Bram told her. ‘I mean, what was that stuff with sowing seeds? Bizarre. Probably totally out of it.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Veerle managed to say. She had seen the savage intent in the way the cowled figure had launched himself at Bram. She didn’t think he was a confused and shambling druggie. She thought he knew exactly what he was doing – what he wanted to do.

  She said, ‘I thought you’d never had any trouble up here, apart from the woman who threw a flip-flop at your friend.’

  She felt Bram shrug. ‘I haven’t. Well, nothing serious. Mostly just threats.’

  ‘Threats?’ Veerle looked at him.

  Bram’s expression was unconcerned. ‘We’re not supposed to be up here, right? I try to stay out of sight, but now and again someone sees me. Sometimes it gives them a fright and that pisses them off. Or else you get some busybody threatening to call the police because you’re trespassing.’ He grinned. ‘Like I’m going to pinch their chimney pots or something.’

  Veerle tried to grin back but the attempt felt unnatural. She said, ‘Bram, the guy we just saw – he really did have a knife.’

  Bram was silent for a moment, and when he spoke he neither contradicted Veerle nor agreed with her. He said, ‘Look, we won’t run into him again. We’ll go down the other way. He’s gone anyway, but just to be certain.’

  Veerle could hear it in his voice – the desire to play down what had happened, to smooth things over. She had heard the staccato rattle of his feet on the metal ladder; she knew that the sudden assault had panicked him too. The fear in her own voice as she screamed down to him had infected him. Now he was beginning to think that he had let it be too obvious.

  And he didn’t see the knife.

  Bram had only seen the man running at him.

  He asked me if I was sure.

  Bram hadn’t accused her of seeing things, but he’d asked her whether she was sure about the knife. She had to see it through his eyes; he knew what had happened to her the previous summer. Anyone who’d been chased by a killer with a knife big and sharp enough to slice right down to the bone was going to be looking over their shoulder for a very long time. They’d be jumpier than someone who’d never been through anything like that. Maybe they’d be seeing knifemen everywhere.

  Is it possible I imagined it? That I mistook what I saw?

  Veerle bit her lip.

  No.

  She knew what she’d seen. What it meant, that was a different thing altogether. Perhaps Bram was right, and the figure she had seen in the yard below was simply some random druggie. But somehow, Veerle didn’t think so.

  She thought about it all the way across the shadowy rooftops, to the other way down that Bram knew. He was right about that: compared to the service ladder it was a pain. Part of the route involved crossing a flat roof in full view of lighted windows on the other side of the road, and the final climb down to the pavement was exposed; they spent a long time waiting for the street to be empty of pedestrians.

  Bram seemed perfectly relaxed now, squatting on the rooftop and eyeing the street below. Once he reached out casually and tucked a strand of dark hair behind Veerle’s ear for her, his fingertips lingering on the soft skin of her face. She could feel that he would kiss her if she turned her face to his; she could feel that only half his attention was on the people moving up and down the street. What she couldn’t detect was any sign that he was unnerved or anxious.

  Can he really shake off what just happened that easily? she wondered. His nonchalance made her doubt herself again.

  When they were finally back at street level, walking back towards Bijlokevest, Bram said, ‘So you’ll definitely come?’

  ‘To the Gravensteen?’ Veerle felt a cold, shifting excitement in the pit of her stomach, a tightening in her throat. This was the tipping point, the moment at which she could still change her mind, still say no.

  Bram was nodding, Yes, and there was only a single second before she had to reply one way or another; a single second in which the reasons to call the trip off were fighting for supremacy in her mind: the need to deceive Geert, the fact that Bram wanted things to move faster than she did, the dread churned up by the inexplicable assault she had witnessed.

  In the end, though, her lips opened and out came the inevitable. In spite of everything, in spite of the scars and the heartache and the fear, Veerle never backed off from a challenge.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll come.’

  24

  Veerle went to the school office. There were two school secretaries, one of them fairly young, thin, untidy and harassed-looking, the other approaching retirement age, imposingly robust and forbiddingly stern. She had been hoping for the younger one, who would probably be too overburdened and disorganized to ask questions, but when she saw that it was the older one she decided to go ahead anyway. Time was too short to wait for another day. She leaned against the door with her shoulder to push it open, and stepped into the office.

  The secretary saw her coming in, must have seen her, or at least heard the door slapping back into place, but still it was perhaps half a minute before she looked up from her avid contemplation of the morning’s post.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The class trip to the Rijksmuseum,’ began Veerle. ‘In Amsterdam . . .’

  ‘I know where the Rijksmuseum is.’

  Veerle didn’t rise to the bait.

  ‘I can’t go.’

  There was a short silence during which Veerle was aware of a pair of steely grey eyes gazing at her over the top of the secretary’s half-moon glasses. Then the woman was reaching for a folder on the shelf beside her.

  ‘The trip is the week after next.’

  ‘I know.’

  Veerle watched the secretary leafing through the pages clipped into the folder.

  ‘De Keyser, yes?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’

  ‘You’ve paid. Or at least, your parents have paid.’ The woman shook her head. ‘You can’t have the money back. If you’d cancelled a month ago . . .’

  ‘OK,’ said Veerle, doing her best to look regretful. ‘I’ll . . . tell my parents.’

  For a moment the secretary said nothing and Veerle wondered whether the conversation was over, whether she could simply turn and leave the office. She was about to say, ‘Thanks,’ and do just that when the woman said, ‘I could speak to the directeur.’

  ‘Uh?’ Veerle was momentarily confused. She’s going to report me? A hot sensation of guilt swept over her; she hadn’t lied in any way, she hadn’t in fact given any explanation at all for her sudden cancellation, but all the same, she had the uncomfortable feeling that the secretary knew she was up to something. She’d probably seen it all before, after all.

  The woman was looking at her impatiently. ‘He might be prepared to refund part of the money – if you have a pressing reason for cancelling.’

  ‘A pressing reason?’

  ‘Why can’t you go?’ That steely gaze was on her again.

  I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that.

  ‘Um . . . it’s personal.’

  ‘Well, obviously.’

  After a few long moments Veerle realized that she was going to have to drop something into the silence.

  ‘My . . . stepmother just had a baby.’ Veerle didn’t want to say my father’s girlfriend. She was relying on presenting the whole thing as family business. Girlfriend, that sounded too temporary. Stepmother didn’t sound particularly cosy either, but it sounded better than girlfriend.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And my dad has to go away. On business.’

  ‘And he doesn’t want to leave her alone.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well,’ said the secretary, ‘I don’t think we can really claim that these are unforeseen circumstances, can we?’ She raised her eyebrows.

  Veerle said nothing.

  ‘I’ll speak to the di
recteur anyway, though,’ continued the secretary.

  ‘Thank you.’ Veerle was already backing away from the woman’s desk.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ said the secretary sharply. ‘It is an educational trip, after all. I’m sure the directeur will say—’

  But what the directeur would say was something Veerle was not destined to hear. The telephone on the secretary’s desk began to trill. While she was occupied in answering it, Veerle made her escape.

  Striding down the corridor, she put a hand to her breast pocket where her mobile was, touching it as though it were a talisman. As soon as she had the opportunity she’d text Bram and tell him that their plan was on.

  That smouldering guilt about lying to the school secretary was giving way to the fizz of exhilaration, a feeling that was all the sharper because it was stained with apprehension. For more than thirty-six hours she’d been thinking about the thing she was going to do, and all that time the strange and appalling attack on Bram by that unknown person had been on her mind. Was there more to it than just some random act of madness? As the hours slid past, the idea seemed less and less probable.

  Just a druggie. Just some klootzak looking for a fight.

  Nobody could have known where she and Bram were. It had to be chance that he had spotted Bram coming down from the rooftop, whoever he was. There was nothing to say that he had attacked them because they had been on the roof. Maybe it was an attempt at a good old-fashioned mugging.

  At any rate, she wasn’t going to let some paranoid fear stop her visiting the Gravensteen with Bram. Just the thought of it made her heart race. She imagined herself soaring up to the rooftops on great plumed wings, Geert and Anneke and the painful memory of her mother’s death, and yes, Kris, all of them dwindling below her as she flew higher and higher, until they were specks lost in the distance and the landscape of Upper Ghent, the roofs and corbie steps and chimneys that were its mountain ranges, stretched away before her.

  There were risks, of course; risks to be negotiated as though she were picking her away along a knife-edge mountain ridge, where any false step would lead to disaster. The school secretary or indeed the directeur might take it into their head to telephone Geert about the cancelled trip. Someone she knew might spot her in Ghent when Geert and Anneke thought she was in Amsterdam. She and Bram might be caught and thrown out of the Gravensteen. Bram would almost certainly try to kiss her again . . .