Demons of Ghent

by Helen Grant

  Panic broke over her like a wave, and for a moment she could not breathe. She could hardly believe she was still alive, that she was not at that very moment being dragged along the grey Ghentish cobblestones in bloody tatters.

  ‘Fuck, what the hell are you doing?’ said someone, and Hommel blinked once, stupidly, and found that she was in the grip of the man with the long black coat, the one who had spoken to her about the cold. His hand was still grasping her upper arm, so tightly that it hurt, and he was staring down at her, his face white and shocked. ‘You trying to kill yourself?’

  Hommel looked at him and her mouth opened, but what came out were not words; it was not even a sob or a scream but a kind of animal wailing sound, the keening of a hurt thing. She twisted in his grasp, trying to wrench herself free, but he wasn’t letting go.

  Some people were starting to push past them to get onto the tram, but others had stopped to stare at the blonde girl writhing in the tall man’s grip.

  Finally Hommel found her tongue, and the words burst out of her, as raw and shocking as blood coughed up from damaged lungs.

  ‘He pushed me!’ Her pale eyes were round and panicked. ‘He pushed me!’

  Now more people were stopping, and others were beginning to push from the back of the queue, impatient to move forward.

  ‘What? The hell I did!’

  The shock on the man’s face was dissolving into indignation and a kind of horrified fear; he could tell people were listening just as Hommel could. Now he wasn’t just holding onto her, he was shaking her, and the pain in her outraged shoulder joint intensified. Tears sprang to her eyes, blurring the watching faces.

  ‘I didn’t push you. I saved you!’

  His face was close to hers now, distorted with emotion that turned pleasant features into a caricature by Brueghel.

  ‘Crazy bitch!’

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’ This was the tram driver, who had departed from custom and come out onto the pavement, pushing his way through the clustering passengers. The driver had the same look as the man who was holding Hommel’s arm: a toxic mixture of fear and anger. He had peered over the edge of reality into an alternative universe where he had just run down a young blonde woman who had thrown herself into his path; he could practically see the crimson blood leaking out from under the tram, smell its coppery odour. He would have had to move the tram, in case there was any chance that a spark of life remained in the body, and he really, really, wouldn’t have wanted to look at what was under it; the mere thought made him sick and sweaty, and since he was an older man, close to retirement, and not given to weeping in the street, he became angry instead.

  ‘What the fuck did you think you were doing?’ he shouted into Hommel’s face. ‘You want to kill yourself?’

  Hommel looked from one furious face to the other, and then she darted a glance around and saw other faces, expressions deliberately neutral, eyes gleaming with avid interest as though through smooth masks. The feeling of panic was so strong now that she felt as though she might implode. Everything she had ever done since she arrived in Ghent was aimed at making herself as inconspicuous as possible, at trying to live her life under the radar. Now she felt trapped by the searing gaze of all those eyes, as though she were poised in the centre of a web of security lasers. All she wanted to do was bolt, to put as much space between herself and them as she possibly could, but she couldn’t move; the man in the black coat was still gripping her upper arm tightly enough to cause pain.

  ‘No,’ she blurted out. ‘He pushed me.’

  ‘Who pushed you? Him?’ The tram driver spoke so roughly that she knew immediately that he didn’t believe her.

  Hommel was about to protest, but then it came to her in a sudden rush. She had felt two hands in the curve of her back, two hands shoving her forward, in almost the same moment as the man in the black coat had grabbed her arm with jarring force. It was not possible that he had pushed her.

  ‘No,’ she said in horrified amazement, then: ‘No. Not him. Someone . . .’ She was going to say, Someone else, but the words died on her lips because she was turning her head this way and that, looking for the person whose two hands she had felt shoving her towards the tram, towards a bloody death only averted by the quick reflexes of the man beside her.

  It was useless, of course, with all these people milling about. The sound of raised voices had attracted the attention of passers-by who hadn’t even been queuing for the tram in the first place, and they were slowing down, adding to the crush on the pavement. If you added to that the people getting off the tram and the ones still trying to push past to get onto it, it was impossible to pick out any one person who might have done it. All the faces looked alike to Hommel anyway: the raw cold weather made people red-faced and haggard-looking.

  It was him, she thought, the one who followed me, but she couldn’t see anyone she even half recognized in the crowd.

  ‘Too right,’ the man who held her arm was saying bitterly. ‘It wasn’t me. The stupid bitch tried to jump in front of the tram and I stopped her. I didn’t push her. I saved her life.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Hommel managed to say, but the words were inadequate, as though she had shouted them into a howling wind. Now that he was exonerated, the man who had pulled her back from the path of the tram was working himself up into a righteous anger at having been accused. She tried to pull away again, but he simply tightened his grip. Pretty soon he would be shaking her again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the tram driver was saying. ‘I’ll have to call this in to the company.’

  Hommel saw herself quite clearly then, as though she were hovering some three or four metres above her own head; she saw herself in the grip of the man in the black coat, and hemmed in by the tram driver; she saw the ring of interested spectators around her, and beyond that other people, passers-by drawn in by the promise of a scene, and if you moved even further out there were people coming down the street who hadn’t even seen the commotion yet, but who would inevitably be attracted to it, as though they were iron filings and she the magnet. Pretty soon officialdom would come pushing its way through the crush of interested onlookers, and then she would never get away.

  Panic lent strength. Hommel twisted in the man’s grip and aimed a kick at his legs. Her boot connected with his shin, not hard enough to knock him over, but enough to make him lose his balance. His grip on her arm slackened for a second and she wrenched herself free.

  The tram driver saw what she was doing and made a grab at her, but she was too quick for him. She ducked away, shoving at the nearest bystanders with her open hands to make them let her through. Most of them were too startled to react, but someone quicker than the rest caught her by the little pack on her shoulders. Hommel twisted savagely, pulling her arms out of the straps. She felt a moment of resistance and then one of them actually burst and she was free. She abandoned the pack – her ID card, wallet and phone were in her jacket pocket anyway – pushed past a couple more people, and as soon as she saw her way clear before her she broke into a run.

  The shock of what had happened and the wild beating of her heart made her feel sick and tremulous, but the sheer driving need to put as much space as possible between herself and the scene of the incident drove her on. Hommel ran down the street as though the gates of Hades itself had opened and every horned and leathery-winged creature in it were bounding after her, shrieking and cackling. Behind her there were shouts, and for a few moments the slap of feet on the cobbles, but either her pursuers were not determined enough or she was simply too fast for them. She pelted down the centre of the street, ignoring a sudden squeal of brakes and the blare of a horn. An intersection was coming up; instinctively she bolted right into the side road, without slackening her pace.

  The glass shop fronts and the lights and the strolling pedestrians were sliding past her in a blur, as though she were swimming upstream. She could hear her own breathing and it was indistinguishable from sobbing. All thought of her original desti
nation had evaporated; Hommel ran for home, for the music shop, like a terrified animal going to earth.

  She was only a couple of blocks from Muziek City when it came to her that she was doing precisely what she had always avoided doing: running straight back to the flat without taking a single detour or bothering to check behind her. If the person who had stood behind her at the tram stop and thrust her into the path of the tram with both hands were following her now, she would lead him straight back to her hideout. The realization struck her like a slap in the face and she stumbled to a stop, her chest heaving and her hair hanging over her eyes in damp tangled strands. Her gaze slid from side to side, eyeing the shop fronts as though pursuers might be lurking anywhere.

  Verdomme. Where now?

  It was no use standing still; if anyone had followed her this far, her hesitation might alert him to her mistake. She had to keep going.

  Hommel took off again but she had lost impetus. The first rush of adrenalin had gone out like a tide, leaving her battered and exhausted. She became aware of the ache in her shoulder, and the agonizing throbbing in the hand that had struck the side of the tram. She tried to flex her fingers, and the resulting explosion of pain was nauseating; she stumbled, gasping, barely able to think coherently.

  Keep going. Stay away from the shop.

  Hommel staggered onwards, and when she was so worn out that she could no longer manage anything faster than a walking pace she limped on anyway, cradling the injured hand. She had no specific destination in mind, no motive other than to keep moving, but at some point she must have doubled back on herself, because now she found herself emerging from a side street onto Cataloniëstraat, and in front of her was the great grey bulk of the Sint-Niklaaskerk.

  Hommel looked up at the old church with dull eyes. The architecture of the Sint-Niklaaskerk had a mathematical precision, a clarity of line that was both chilly and reassuring. Over seven hundred years have I stood here, said those cold lines. Another seven hundred shall I stand. It drew her in like a great bird lifting a wing to let a fledgling nestle into its side. Hommel crossed the road with a ragged weary tread and entered the ancient building.

  43

  Veerle held the phone to her ear, and for several long moments she said nothing at all.

  ‘Veerle?’

  I should hang up, she thought. Whatever Kris wanted to say to her, he had waited too long to say it. She took the phone from her ear and looked at the tiny screen, her thumb hovering over the END CALL button. Kris’s voice was still coming out of it, faint and tinny, saying her name.

  In the end she couldn’t do it. Veerle was in the corridor, with other students pushing past her, so she couldn’t speak, either – at least she couldn’t say any of the things she might have said to Kris with anyone else within earshot. She put the phone back to her ear and shouldered open the door of an empty classroom.

  ‘Yes,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Don’t hang up.’

  ‘I’m not going to.’ She waited.

  ‘Veerle, I’m sorry—’

  ‘Sorry?’ Veerle felt a lump in her throat, and swallowed. She was tingling with hot indignation. ‘For ringing me at school or for dumping me like that?’

  She heard a brief noise of frustration over the line. ‘I didn’t dump you. I—’

  ‘True,’ said Veerle. ‘You didn’t even do that. You just moved in with Hommel and didn’t tell me, remember?’ She let out a shuddering breath. ‘So why are you ringing me now? Did she drop you?’

  ‘Veerle! Just listen.’

  ‘No, Kris.’

  She was about to end the call but his next words snagged her attention.

  ‘Look, someone’s just tried to kill her.’

  Veerle took her thumb away from the red button. It passed fleetingly through her head that perhaps this was some new story of Hommel’s, some attention-seeking ploy.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked cautiously.

  Kris spoke rapidly, trying to get it all out before Veerle decided to hang up. ‘Someone tried to push her under a tram. She was on her way to the station – she was going to get out of Ghent for a few days.’ He didn’t say where. ‘And while she was waiting at the tram stop someone came up behind her and tried to shove her under the tram.’

  Veerle tried to absorb this. ‘Is she—?’

  ‘She’s hurt. It was hard to get any sense out of her but I think maybe her hand is broken – or her arm.’

  ‘So – wait – you’re not with her?’

  ‘No. I’m in Overijse.’

  ‘So where is she?’

  ‘In some church in the middle of the city. Sint-Niklaas.’

  ‘Well, why are you . . .?’ Veerle thought quickly. ‘Are you coming to Ghent?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s going to take me at least three hours. I’ve got to get to Brussel-Zuid first and then take a train. And . . . someone needs to go to the church now.’

  ‘And this is why you’re ringing me?’ said Veerle slowly.

  ‘Veerle, I know it’s not fair to ask you. I just don’t know what else to do.’

  ‘Kris . . .’ Veerle put a hand to her head. ‘What makes you think I can get away that easily? I’m at school. I can’t just bunk off.’

  I’m already under a curfew. Dad will go ballistic if he finds out I’ve gone off again during school hours. She didn’t say that. That was about her and Bram, and she wasn’t about to share it with Kris.

  ‘Please, Veerle. There isn’t anyone else I can ask. She rang me about ten minutes ago and she was hysterical. I tried to get her to call the police but she wouldn’t. She was crying with the pain.’

  Kris went on talking, trying to persuade her, but Veerle already knew she would have to go. Not for Kris. Not even really for Hommel, but because she knew how she would feel about herself if she didn’t go, knowing that Hommel was hurt. Knowing how it felt – the pain, the shock of realizing that someone had tried to end your life, just like that, without a second thought, without pity.

  Of course she would go. There was a terrible, self-destructive inevitability about it, like having to jump from the top floor of a burning building: it was something you had to do, you couldn’t avoid doing it, but it would almost certainly end in disaster, with your life pumping out of your shattered body in crimson spurts while people stood around you with wide eyes, their hands over their mouths.

  I might just manage it, she thought with a shifting sense of unease. She glanced at her wristwatch. It’s a little past one now. If he can get here in three hours . . .

  Veerle calculated. I’d be late home, but probably not enough to cause a really big scene. Anneke will report me to Dad, of course she will, but if I’m back not too much later than normal – and if the school don’t notice I’ve gone and ring him before then . . .

  Still there was a cold empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. If Dad finds out about this I’m worse than dead.

  ‘Look,’ she said at last, ‘I’ll do it, but it will take me a little while, OK? Did she say exactly where she was? Inside the church or somewhere outside it?’

  Veerle listened carefully. Once she knew exactly where to find Hommel, she ended the call. She didn’t want to listen to Kris’s thanks. If he tried to say something about caring for her she thought she would start screaming. She cut him off with a curt statement that she would call back later, and rang off.

  She slipped the phone back into her pocket. She waited for a moment inside the deserted classroom, thinking.

  I registered this morning. There’s a chance no one will notice I’m not here, as long as I can get away without anyone seeing. She considered. I could tell them I’m going – say I feel sick and have to go home. That was just as risky, though. Geert was bound to have alerted the school – she was pretty sure of that from the way the teacher double-checked her presence at registration. If they rang him to say she’d gone home sick, then after the two minutes it would take him to call Anneke and see whether she’d come home he’d know she’d
bunked off. Nothing for it. I’ll have to go without saying anything and pray nobody notices.

  She left the classroom and headed downstairs, making for the main door. Luck seemed to be with her; she didn’t run into a single teacher, and the only other students from her class that she passed had their backs to her, studying a notice board. In a couple of minutes she was out on the street, drawing the chill January air into her lungs and feeling her bag bounce against her back as she hurried to put as much space as possible between herself and the school. Even after she had turned a corner she felt uneasy.

  Please God, she thought, don’t let them notice I’ve gone.

  44

  When Veerle reached the Sint-Niklaaskerk it was beginning to rain. The skies had darkened ominously during her hasty journey from the school to the old church, and she could feel the first droplets on her face like icy tears.

  She crossed Cataloniëstraat, headed for the church door and slipped inside. There was one middle-aged man whom she took to be a church warden standing in the aisle with his hands clasped behind his back, contemplating the towering Baroque altar with its mitred saint and flaunting angels. Other than that, the church appeared to be deserted.

  Where had Kris said Hommel was?

  At the back.

  Veerle made her way down the side aisle, past a silent rank of white marble saints, their graven eyes staring blindly as she passed them. The church warden (if that was what he was) turned his head as she went by. She gave him a quick strained smile and then walked on purposefully, hoping that he would understand that she did not need answers to questions, or assistance, or interference of any kind.