by Cliff McNish
Elliott almost laughed. ‘We’re her knights in shining armour?’
‘Yes.’
‘But how do we make her come with us?’
‘Shush,’ Janey said under her breath. ‘She’s here.’
Janey extinguished the light in her hand and hustled Elliott into a shadowed corner behind the door.
Daylight illuminated the room from the window, falling like a bar across the embroidered knight. Elliott waited nervously, and as he did so Eve entered.
She was singing a quiet rhyme about one of the dead boys, about Leo, but it ended when she took her first step inside. Just as Janey had predicated, Eve stopped in front of the tapestry and quickly knelt down. She smoothed out her red dress and crossed her legs under her. She was silent. If you could say it of anyone in the East Wing, she looked content.
‘Eve,’ Janey whispered.
Elliott heard the quaver in her voice, the anxiety. It was the first time he realised that Janey was herself deeply afraid, and he turned to Eve to see how she reacted.
Eve gasped, looking back at them with an exaggerated O. Then she smiled, grinning in a way that made Elliott realise the initial gasp of surprise had been staged – a bit of fun.
‘I thought you’d be here,’ she said.
Janey had been moving tentatively towards Eve, but now she stopped. ‘Did you?’
‘Yes, at least Daddy thought so. He got me to do a drawing for you when you arrived. I took ages over it. Do you want to see it?’
Eve reached into the inside pocket of her dress and pulled out a folded piece of creamy-white paper. In overlapped lines of hard pencil, she had sketched the entire present scene in the room. There was the knight rearing up in the tapestry. There was Eve kneeling on the worn carpet beneath it. There was an old woman peering at the sketch, looking baffled.
Elliott heard a tight, compressed wheeze from Janey. He didn’t know what the noise meant at first. Then he sensed it was fear – that he was witnessing the wholesale wreckage of all Janey’s plans. Cullayn had been waiting for her. She hadn’t outwitted him. He’d predicted she’d come here. Dangled Eve as a prize. All Janey’s subtle traps, turns and tricks were for nothing.
‘Welcome,’ Eve said, her tone child-like but abruptly pitched like ice. And she bowed – but not to them.
Elliott did not need to be told whom she was honouring.
Janey registered Cullayn’s presence before Elliott, and fervently raised her hands to increase the light in the room, but that gesture was not enough to ward him off.
Eve chuckled, and Elliott became aware of stirrings around him so centuries-old and deeply wrought that their intent was unfathomable.
The light began to fade.
For a few moments Janey struggled against the dimming, held it in check. Then she dropped her hands, gave a terrible groan of defeat, and the room flared red and orange as the master of Glebe House brought his long-considered plans into place.
The air thrummed and shifted of its own accord.
Janey backed against a wall.
‘He’s coming!’ Elliott shouted at her. ‘You have other things you can do, don’t you? It’s him! You brought us in here. You must know what to do next!’
Janey clung to the wall. She looked like she might snap. The light was being unmade in front of her eyes and she did nothing except gape at Elliott in bewilderment, her face shaking in soundless fear.
It was, of course, exactly the reaction Cullayn had been waiting for before he made his grand entrance.
‘What time is it?’ boomed a voice from the darkness as brash as the midday sun.
‘Five minutes to midnight,’ Eve answered at once, standing to attention.
‘Five to midnight?’ the voice questioned. It was full of odd, light tones, far more melodious and lively than Elliott had expected. ‘High time, then. High time. No victory ever so sweet as this, Janey, or so longed for. Once you danced to my door to give battle, but now I see you come in secret with a boy in tow. Was it truly with such obvious artifice as your sleight-of-hand entry and these tricks of light that you intended to unman me? Yet I am an owner with simple appetites. A simple man.’
‘A simple man,’ Eve echoed.
‘Yes. The hunter always,’ the voice said from the darkness. ‘Therefore shall we continue with this fine game of ours, Janey? So far we have merely tested our intentions and resolve with lights, fingers and wagging tongues. That’s a beginning, but shall we now prepare for the hunting ground?’ The voice waited, as if expecting an answer from Janey. When none came, it gave a loud guffaw of absolute triumph and suddenly all eyes turned to the centre of the room.
24
PICK A WEAPON!
The air swirled with meticulously-crafted points of light. Like stars erupting from slowly condensing nebulae, the points joined to form an outline. It was the outline of a shoulder and arm – a hunter’s arm, gathering itself, balanced to strike.
Eve knew her place. She now stepped smartly aside.
Cullayn’s lustrous beard grew before them. He was very proud of his beard. Bathed in a persecution of shimmering light, initially it was only a faint flowing of hair, stubble on the rise. Then its whole girth came loose to sparkle against the room’s darkness. First the beard, then the mouth, writhing, a near-purr of contentment on lips that were already open and ready to command. Above the mouth, two stars globed into circles and, as they levelled their radiance on Elliott and Janey with terrible purpose, Cullayn detached himself like a nightmare kissed into life from the darkness.
He was already half the hunter: he was never anything less. Feet trussed and booted, peaked hat angled rakishly with child-like pride, he brushed his close-cropped curls. Cullayn did not waste time. Even now, as Elliott watched in dismay, the hunter was girding his limbs, preparing for the joy of the fight ahead. He brought one of his muscular forearms up to fasten the brass buttons of a sturdy leather long-coat. His other arm tightened a black-buckled belt.
Once he was ready he smiled indulgently, glowing with light, and raised both hands.
‘A game!’ he bellowed. ‘A game, if you will!’
Next moment a variety of weapons appeared above his head. Cullayn juggled them in a conjuror’s circle: guns, whips, stones, arrowheads, swords, flames, all kept constantly aloft.
‘Pick one, pick a weapon!’ Cullayn said, turning his gaze on Elliott. ‘At least have guts enough to choose one this time!’ He laughed, spitting out a sod of cold phlegm large enough to fill a mouth. His rough voice was that of a market street trader. ‘Or pick two!’ he cried. ‘I offer you choices of dispatch! Two for the price of one! What do you say, kind sir?’ Cullayn bowed and in a practised and elegant move knelt, whipped off his hat and spread his fare of weapons like a feast before Elliott.
Elliott did not know what to do: not pick, and perhaps Cullayn would cut him down where he stood; pick, and he knew the hunting ground would fast follow.
Cullayn gave Eve a cheery wink and offered the weapons to her instead. ‘So choose for the boy,’ he said. ‘He’s shy.’
‘A bit of blood will cure that,’ Eve said. ‘A bit of his own.’
‘It will, it will,’ Cullayn replied, immensely pleased by her words. Eve giggled as the knives and swords clattered around her feet.
Elliott backed away across the floor. So far he’d seen Eve as the innocent party in all this, but her ruthless words, that giggle and the way she touched and felt the blades made him doubt there was any innocence left.
Janey said nothing. She did not even glance up. Her head was bent. She suddenly looked remarkably old, her neck thin enough to break with or without Cullayn’s intervention.
‘I’ve offered Eve a part in the final moments of your hunt,’ Cullayn said to Elliott. He made it sound like good news. ‘Not too big a part. She’s only a little girl.’ He and Eve both laughed when he said that. ‘But she’s anxious to play her role, aren’t you, Evey?’
Eve smiled at him and made a moue with her mouth,
snatching the weapons up, pretending to like none of them. She picked a whip, threw it back. Picked a net, discarded it.
‘So, the little girl’s all a-flutter! She can’t decide! She’s all agog!’ Cullayn beamed, the points of light forming his mouth writhing counter-clockwise to the beard.
He squarely faced Elliott. ‘You’re not sure I’m real, are you boy? You think I’m just a set of cruel intentions buried inside a light display. Janey never understood what would happen if she let Ben in here. She never grasped that even without the first gusts of his life-force in my gut’ – Cullayn hugged his stomach in –‘even without Ben’s death, I’d be more than she could ever handle.’ Cullayn sighed contentedly, smashing a leisurely fist into the ground as if he had so much surplus energy that he had to find an outlet for it. The floor shook. ‘But what next?’ he said. ‘Not long now before your brother’s dead, Elliott. It’s nothing personal, but I’ll have Ben’s strength, you understand? And I’ll have yours, too. A hunter can never have too much stamina.’
Elliott could tell that Cullayn was waiting for a reaction from him, so he gave none. But he couldn’t help sneaking a look at Janey.
‘No, she’s no ideas left,’ Cullayn said, almost regretfully. ‘I’ve seen that look on her face before, haven’t I, Janey? No good looking to the old nag for anything, Elliott. You’re on your own.’ Cullayn brought Eve close and hugged her tight. ‘Look at this!’ he said to her. ‘They came to rescue you from the castle, but they forgot about the ogre in the moat, didn’t they?’
‘And he was all ready for ’em!’ she squealed back.
‘He was! He was! He splashed out and grabbed ’em!’
Cullayn looked delighted as he swung back to Elliott. ‘Ah, listen,’ he said, offering a magnanimous snort. ‘There’s honesty in you coming so willingly into my home to save your brother and your father. I’ll give you a fair chase for that, boy, and dispatch you sharply when it’s time to be done. But what does Janey deserve? What’s she done to improve herself in all these years? A lifetime of self-loathing and fretting. What’s that worth, Elliott? What respect has she earned?’
Cullayn knelt down, tapped Janey’s bony knees. ‘She’s such a coward, such a wretched cowardly woman. She never dared come into my East Wing again till your family arrived, Elliott. Did she tell you that? Too scared, she was. But she wanted so much, poor girl. Still does. To free the ghost-children, of course. But to prove herself as well, to feel the special power of defeating me on such a day as this, to follow through truly, despite the fear, and what’s more to do the right thing, even by you.’
Cullayn smiled, his whole lower jaw pressing towards Janey like a hyena. ‘And then to gracefully retire and say adieu to all her cares. To finally gain her well-deserved peace. There’s a mildewed bench in the graveyard, Elliott. It’s virtually as old as her. Our Janey likes that seat. Looks over the south downs, it does, lovely little view, and I’ve seen the wistful look she has there sometimes. I understand her better than she knows herself. She’d love to know that the ghost children have passed on because they’ve vanquished the evil owner of Glebe House, and then – ah! – then to be able to sit alone in peace at last, on her stupid bench, curled up with a racy book.’
Cullayn shook with laughter. ‘That’s quite a set of ambitions, isn’t it, Elliott? That’s something worth drinking to, eh?’ He thumbed towards Janey, who was still backed against the wall, staring mutely into space. ‘Here’s the thing, though. That’s all just rubbish in her head. But what do you think Janey fears most?’
Elliott did not reply. He was too frightened to say anything.
‘Tongue need loosening?’ Cullayn asked. ‘I can help with that. I will help with that. But first let’s have a little hunt.’ He turned back to Eve. ‘What do you say, Evey?’
‘A hunt for the brave boy!’ Eve called out, and Cullayn laughed.
Levelling his glowing eyes on Elliott, Cullayn pretended to hide his next words from Eve behind his big hand. ‘Eve likes to hear me talk of hunting in a childish sort of fashion,’ he whispered. ‘But the doing of it’s another thing, eh? Is she ready? She still thinks it’s a kind of pageant, a slice of fun. But I need her all grown up for the plans I have for us after this. She’s got a lot of my strength inside her now, and I need all of it on my side to see my ambitions go fruitfully forward. So, now, will you give us a worthwhile hunt, Elliott? Will you help me get her ready?’
Cullayn chuckled as he said that, leaning closer.
‘Your father’s in a bad way, son,’ he tutted. ‘We’ll let him rest, shall we? But Janey, we’ll not let her rest, no. She broke an oath to me. She was meant to bring you to me, but not hidden in the dark glamour she conjured. I bring the darkness here. So now I want that heart of hers bursting.’ Cullayn stood. ‘Therefore, let’s set the terms of the hunt, the contest, the conditions. Eve will ensure all parties play honest and fair. I’ll even give you a head start, boy. What time is it?’
‘Five minutes to midnight!’ Eve cried instantly.
‘Five minutes to midnight.’ Cullayn beamed. ‘Fair enough. I’ll give you till midnight then, Elliott. Five minutes to get lost and find yourself somewhere else. There’s a way out. I’ve opened a door to outside no one knows about. If you can find it I’ll let you go. By god, if you make it out I’ll drag your father there myself, and Ben, and hand ’em back to you! I’ll give you them both, your family entire. What do you say to that?’
Elliott stared at the star-eyes of Vincent Cullayn. A hint of truthfulness underlined his expression: he meant what he said. At the same time Elliott knew by now that Cullayn only made such an offer because he didn’t expect to fail.
‘You’re right, boy,’ Cullayn said, seeing his hesitation. ‘I never lost a quarry before. Sam nearly outlasted me, but I got him in the end, and I’ll get you as well.’ He patted Elliott’s shoulder amiably. ‘I’ll introduce you to my hunting ground soon, but first you’ve got to earn the right. We’ll have a prior bit of a chase in the East Wing. Evey, are you ready?’
Eve stamped her feet. At first Elliott thought it was some kind of petulance, but then he saw it was a stamp of pride in Cullayn.
Cullayn clapped his hands, and all the daylight began to fade again.
‘What … what about Janey?’ Elliott managed to stutter, his heart sinking.
‘The old dear gets to live as long as her legs can carry her,’ Cullayn said indifferently, tugging at his beard. ‘That old quailing bell of hers is already hammering away. If she falters on the hunt, I’ll cut her down where she stands.’
Janey bent towards Elliott, hurriedly whispered, ‘Just run. Even if I survive the East Wing, he’ll kill me in the hunting ground, there’s no escaping that now. I’ll keep up as long as I can, lighting the way.’
‘That’s the spirit!’ Cullayn said brightly, but he looked distracted now, wanting to begin. The darkness in the knight’s room gradually became so complete that only the owner’s starlit outline enabled Elliott to see anything at all. Cullayn’s weapons rose up from the floor, and he juggled them, his feet dancing under him, his knees crossing back and forth too fast to see.
‘Choose, choose, or get none!’ he shouted wildly. ‘I’ll give you one weapon, Elliott, and in return I’ll take nothing. How’s that for an honest fight? Quick! Choose! Or I’ll kill you.’
‘A gun,’ Elliott said immediately.
‘Why?’ Cullayn asked, still juggling. ‘Scared of a knife? Scared to get so close?’
It was true. Elliott had been thinking he didn’t want a close-quarter fight.
Cullayn roared with laughter. ‘Then it’s a gun, but since you did not ask for ammunition you may have to bludgeon me with it. Still, choices have been and will be honoured. Do you agree to the terms?’
‘What if I refuse?’
‘Then I’ll strike you dead now,’ Cullayn said bluntly. ‘I’ll have my hunt, if you please.’
Elliott reached for the gun. It vanished.
‘A je
st! Only our hands!’ Cullayn cried, crackling with laughter, and Eve laughed with him. ‘Should we give the boy some help?’ Cullayn asked her. ‘He looks so forlorn, poor lamb.’
‘Yes!’ Eve piped merrily.
‘All right, all right, we will. What shall it be?’ Cullayn made an exaggerated gesture of thinking deeply, drawing his fingers across his chin. Then he grinned, peering at Eve. ‘Let’s show ’em how much you’ve learned under my artistic guidance, Evey. Make a spider-map!’
Eve nodded eagerly as Cullayn blew a puff of dust at her. She rapidly fashioned the particles into a delicate spiderweb-thin diagram depicting the East Wing. Adding details, sticking out her tongue in concentration, she handed it to Elliott.
The spider-map showed an exit somewhere behind him. But it was only a working of air and dust, never meant to last, and it was already crumbling in his fingers. He desperately tried to memorise the details.
‘What time is it?’ Cullayn thundered.
‘Five minutes to midnight!’ Eve yelled.
‘So then! What’s everyone waiting for?’ Cullayn waggled his fingers. ‘Tell him, Janey.’
Janey looked hard at Elliott.
‘Run!’ she said.
25
AS LIGHT AS A SMALL GIRL
When every room, corridor, crease and tuck of air is your pursuer’s vantage-point and trap, what do you do? Where do you go?
Elliott held the spider-map in front of his eyes and dashed back the way he had come. Janey raised her hand, illuminating the way. For two minutes she was able to pick up her legs at a fair pace and stay close enough to guide Elliott while he read the map. Left he went, right, straight on, and straight again, through a blur of rooms.
In Elliott’s hands the dust-map disintegrated on draughts.
‘I can’t follow this!’
‘Stop a minute, then!’ Janey yelled, gasping for breath.