Nothing But the Night

by John Blackburn

  ‘Have you some form of identification on you, sir?’ A police car was parked across the road and a uniformed serjeant climbed out.

  ‘Thank you, General Kirk.’ He shone a torch on the pass Cameron had written out and handed it back to him. ‘That’s quite in order, sir. If the laird says you’re to go through, I won’t stop you, though I don’t know what sort of reception you’ll get from them.’ He nodded towards the gate. ‘Time and again we’ve asked to put men inside and they’ve always refused. Dr Tyrell says they are quite capable of looking after themselves. Crazy, if you ask me, though there seems little doubt that the woman is dead.’

  ‘Dr Tyrell?’ The name rang a faint bell in Kirk’s memory as he tucked away the pass.

  ‘Oh, my mistake, General. That was her maiden name of course. She married an old chap named Rose a few years ago, but he died not so long back. Suicide it was; very sad. Dr Laura Rose you’ll know her as, sir.

  ‘Quite a party those kids seem to be having.’ The serjeant was watching a rocket curve up over the headland and Kirk could smell woodsmoke. ‘Personally I don’t approve of such goings on. According to my beliefs it is mocking the Creator to burn one of his creatures in effigy.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right, Serjeant.’ Fire and explosives, Kirk thought, recalling the orange flare obscuring the launch and the wreckage crashing down on the deck of the ferry. Five sticks of dynamite were thought to have been stolen from the store and the experts believed that three would have been ample to produce the explosion. A guy; a dummy figure and a murderess who had proved her skill at sabotage.

  ‘See you later, Serjeant.’ Kirk considered asking the man to accompany him, but he had no evidence only suspicions and the police had orders to remain where they were. The main doors were locked, but there was a wicket gate to the right of them. He pushed his way in and set off along an overgrown path that led through a thicket of stunted trees and shrubs. More rockets soared over the mock towers of the big house in front of him and smoke was drifting inland on the steady breeze. Children and old people, they would all be together, grouped around the fire on the headland and many things might be hidden in the body of a guy.

  Would they listen to him, Kirk wondered as he hurried through the thicket: Michael Fawnlee, Eric Yeats, Rose/Tyrell, Grace Alison and the rest of the survivors? Could he make them understand that the orphanage was the only place in which their enemy could be hiding, and that Mary Valley’s dreams of pain and violence came to her from a mother who was obsessed with fire? Could he persuade them that their bonfire would bring her out to witness the final act of her bent crusade? Once again he recalled that orange flash and he pictured the loving care with which a group of children must have cut and stitched and filled a cloth figure with rags or sawdust. Then, while the children slept, had other hands, skilled in the use of explosives, opened the stitches and inserted a detonator and the remaining sticks of dynamite? Was the huntress already out in the open and could each stunted tree and bush he passed be hiding her? A crazed and completely merciless creature waiting to witness the deaths of her own child and the people who had stolen Mary from her.

  Kirk was through the thicket now and he stepped out on to the quadrangle, his feet ringing on the cobbles and his breath coming in gasps. No more rockets were appearing over the buildings and he heard snatches of song drifting towards him. Soon would come the finale and they would be gathering closer to the fire, ready for the advent of the guy.

  There was the bonfire in plain sight at last. Kirk pounded through an arch in the quadrangle and he could see its glow less than two hundred yards away from him across the playing field. They had built it close to the edge of the cliff and it might have been a beacon to warn sailors. A great stack of blazing, bone-dry timbers, with flames fanned by the steady breeze so that they licked over the grass towards the figures before them. The men and women stood a little way back, but the children were very close to the fire and appeared to dominate the proceedings. They had formed two separate groups; those nearest to him wearing normal clothes for their age, but the others had put on fancy dress which made them look like stunted adults. The boys were singing and the girls dancing in couples, and above them was the thing he had dreaded to see. Tied or strapped to a pole, a life-sized figure towered above the flames. The body was human, but the face was a pig’s mask and the clothes stirred in the wind as if encasing a living creature. Two ropes held the pole back from the fire and Mary Valley was stationed beside one of them. In the firelight he could see that there was a knife in her hand and long black gloves covered her arms up to the elbows. Kirk had had to pause to regain his breath for a moment and, as he took in the scene, he realized that the child must have dressed up to resemble her dead benefactress, Helen Van Traylen.

  Go on. You must go on, you idle old fool. Kirk’s whole body was weak with exhaustion, but he forced himself for­ward, running faster than he had imagined possible. He was quite certain he knew what that grinning, pig-faced thing contained, and if even one rope was severed it would topple into the fire.

  ‘No, no, no . . .’ A hundred and fifty yards to go . . . a hundred and twenty . . . a hundred. He shouted as loudly as he could, but he knew that his voice was a croak and the wind was blowing the words away from them. His heart pounded in agony, his feet slipped and stumbled on the grass, but rage and horror forced him forward. A little girl who screamed at the very thought of fire, yet was also obsessed by it, a boy whose feet and hands had been pierced ritually and six old, broken bodies drifting out to sea. Now, straight in front of him was the last act, and he had to prevent that guy from falling.

  ‘Mary, stop it. You must not cut the rope.’ Seventy yards left and there appeared to be blood, not saliva in his mouth. But some of the children had seen him at last. They glanced indifferently at him for an instant and then turned and stared towards the fire again.

  ‘Mary, listen to me.’ Less than fifty yards, and he couldn’t run any farther. He could do nothing except put every remaining ounce of strength into his voice and stagger slowly forward. ‘Drop that knife, Mary. I order you to drop it.’

  Mary Valley heard him, but all she did was to smile. She stood quite motionless, one gloved hand on her hip in a slightly coquettish stance, the other holding the knife firmly, and her little white teeth shone in the firelight as she watched him hobble towards her. She let him approach to within twenty yards and then the knife started to saw at the rope.

  Kirk threw himself to the ground. His legs would no longer obey him, he had done all he could and it was finished. He gave one final croak of ‘get back’ as the ropes parted, the pole swayed and began to topple forward, and then he screened his face against the coming explosion. At almost the same moment he heard a sudden choking, gasp­ing sob of agony and terror and he looked up again to see a sight that proved him completely and utterly wrong and which would haunt him for the rest of his days.

  The wind had torn the cardboard mask from the face of the guy to reveal the human face that had been hidden behind it. He saw Anna Harb, with eyes and mouth wide open, fall screaming into the flames.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kirk was old and weary and weak and it hadn’t taken much to overpower him. Twenty pairs of small but capable hands had held him to the ground while children laughed and sang and a woman was burned alive. Now it was finished and Anna Harb was dead, buried deeply in the embers of the fire which still flared in the wind, constantly fed with fresh supplies of driftwood.

  ‘You almost spoilt our party, General Kirk. Nobody is allowed to come here without an invitation.’ They had bound his hands and feet and little Mary Valley frowned down at him. ‘This is our home and I wanted my revenge to be private. It was very wrong of you to try and stop us.’

  ‘You burned your own mother alive, Mary, and they allowed you to do it.’ Kirk was kneeling on the ground with his back to the fire and the girl stood in front of him. At either side of Mary, the children were still stationed in their separate groups.
Those in fancy dress looked bright and interested, enthralled spectators at some exciting enter­tainment, but the others appeared crushed and subdued and at least two of them were sobbing.

  ‘They! The guardians! They would never stop me doing anything, General. After all I am the mistress here.’ Mary half turned and nodded towards the buildings at the end of the field. The old people had drawn back there and stood with their heads bowed as if the proceedings had nothing to do with them.

  ‘Listen to me, Mary. Listen to me carefully.’ Kirk had to concentrate to form the words. He could still see that pole sway and then start to topple forward; slowly at first, as a tree falls, and then faster and faster till its living burden shrieked and scrabbled in the fire and then suddenly became still and there was nothing except the crackle of the flames, the steady drone of the wind and the shouts and laughter of children. The first part of his theory had been correct enough. After the murder of Sidney Molson, Anna Harb had hidden in the orphanage grounds, but she had been discovered and her intended victims had taken their own terrible revenge.

  ‘You had every reason to hate and fear your mother, Mary, but you are ill, my dear. You don’t know what you are doing and you need help. Anna Harb was a wicked woman. She killed Haynes and Sidney Molson and the people on the launch and many others. She may have intended to kill you too. But you should not have revenged yourself like that, Mary. That showed me that Mr Haynes was right in what he said. You need help very badly indeed, but they cannot give it to you.’ He nodded towards the forlorn group of adults. ‘What has happened, what has been done, has made them ill too and they cannot protect you any more. Now, I want you to untie me, my dear, and I will take you to people who can help.’

  ‘You fool, General Kirk. Oh, you poor, stupid fool.’ Mary Valley laughed. She threw back her head, chuckling and giggling, and then pirouetted round and round on the grass, the long dress swirling to show the chubby legs of a child. But somehow the glare of the flames made her face look old and bitter and diseased.

  ‘You think Anna killed Haynes, General?’ She stopped dancing and grinned at the embers at the bottom of the fire. ‘You still don’t understand anything, do you?

  ‘I killed Haynes, General Kirk. He wanted to lock me up and separate me from my friends. Then he brought Anna to see me and they talked about mental disturbances at first and then about supernatural possession. They were still a long way from the truth, but getting closer so I had to stop them. I snatched Anna’s great vulgar hatpin and stabbed Haynes between the eyes.

  ‘Wasn’t that clever of me? Anna was a convicted mur­deress and everybody was bound to blame her. After all, who would imagine that an innocent child of seven would do such a thing. Anna knew that and she lost her head. She dragged me out of the room and was going to hold me over the well of the stairs till I confessed what I had done. One day I really must thank Sir Marcus Levin for helping me, General.’ She gave him a curtsy and another flashing smile. The white teeth were bright in the smooth, youthful face, but there was nothing youthful in the eyes above them. ‘Do you understand now?’

  ‘I am beginning to.’ Haynes had diagnosed schizo­phrenia, Kirk remembered. Had that been only partly true and was there indeed such a thing as psychic posses­sion? He glanced away from Mary to the children on her right. The boys all wore long trousers and the girls, flowing dresses and for a second time they made him think of stunted adults. ‘But go on with the story, my dear. Anna was insane when she followed you here. She murdered the people on the launch and your friend Sidney Molson. But what about the others? The people before—Mrs Van Traylen, Colonel Anderson and the rest of them . . .’

  ‘Oh, General Kirk, I thought you would have been an intelligent man, but you disappoint me so badly.’ Mary shook her head and the long fair hair streamed out like flames before her. ‘Anna arrived here three days before the launch was destroyed. She came at night with a hood to disguise her appearance and she talked to the guardians. She told them what I had done to Haynes and she asked them to help her prove her innocence.

  ‘Can you imagine such stupidity, my friend? Anna did not realize that we are a Fellowship in every sense of the word.’

  ‘They knew? They knew all the time and they did nothing?’ Kirk stared in horror towards the bowed figures across the field. He had thought in terms of group mania but he suddenly realized what the truth might be and it was far worse than anything he had imagined.

  ‘Of course they knew. And Anna was so useful to us. We kept her well hidden and she took the blame for the launch and what happened to Sidney Molson. You might almost call my mother a gift of God, General Kirk.

  ‘Sidney was such a naughty little boy. He was frightened and tried to run away so we had to make an example of him.’ Mary glanced from one group of children to the other. Those on the right smiled happily back, but the others stared at her in complete awe like devotees before a priestess.

  ‘None of you will be naughty now, will you, children? You may be frightened, but you will never try to run away. Not after what happened to Sidney Molson. What a weight Sidney was when we carried him out on to the moor; a dead weight.’ She giggled and performed another swirling dance, her little feet light on the grass and her gloved arms stretched out towards the fire and the cliff behind it.

  ‘Mary, try and understand what I am going to tell you.’ Kirk’s mouth felt as if it were choked with cinders and though the fire was scorching his back his teeth were chattering. ‘I do not know why you did these things, but I do know that you are not responsible for them. Something has possessed you, my dear, and is controlling you against your own will. Mary Valley didn’t torture Sidney Molson, Mary didn’t murder those old people on the launch, or burn her own mother alive, but something . . .’

  ‘Didn’t Mary Valley kill her mother, General? I thought you saw me cut the ropes.’ A child laughed but it sounded like an old woman cackling. ‘Anna used to beat me when I was young. She would lock me up in a dark cupboard when her lovers came to visit her. Wicked, wicked Anna Harb, but how loudly she screamed when she felt the fire. Those last few seconds of her life made it all up to me.’

  ‘But the old people in the launch hadn’t harmed or beaten you, Mary. They befriended you and looked after you and were always kind to you. Why should you cause their deaths?’

  ‘You still think that?’ The rest of the children were laughing now and Mary turned and whispered something to one of the older boys. He nodded and ran off towards the house.

  ‘You have not grasped anything at all, General. You think that some psychic force has possessed us, don’t you.’ Tears of laughter trickled down the smooth cheeks and dried in the heat of the fire.

  ‘Let me help you to understand, then. Nobody died on that launch. Nobody has been killed except Anna Harb and Haynes and little Sidney Molson. There is nothing evil about the things we have done and all of us are still alive—George L’Eclus, Paul Anderson, Naureen Stokes and the rest of our friends. They are all here with us; secure in our Fellowship of love. The founder is here too, General. That poor clever woman who felt her body melt in a metal box and dreamed a dream of salvation.

  ‘Is it clear to you now, General? Do you realize who we are? Do you still think of me as Mary Harb or Mary Valley?’ She pulled off her gloves to show the plump, creamy flesh beneath them.

  ‘No.’ Kirk shook his head, seeing the boy returning with a coil of wire slung over his shoulder. Behind his back, the fire crackled, the wind howled and suspicion turned to certainty. An officer of the British army on his knees and in terror before the body of a seven-year-old child.

  ‘Perhaps Anna Harb really did have second sight be­cause she recognized you from the very beginning.’ He forced himself to look at the young eyes mocking him and the old evil thing which possessed them. Above the unlined forehead the wind was parting her hair to show a thin white scar and Kirk knew that it was the doorway through which the poison has been inserted.

  ‘You are no longer Mary Har
b or Mary Valley. You are “the soul that should not have been born” and your name is Helen Van Traylen.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Sir Marcus, this is too much to swallow.’ The Chief Constable glowered across the operating theatre. ‘You have thrown completely new light on to the case by showing that this man L’Eclus was dead several hours before the launch was sabotaged. I accept your word for that because you are an internationally respected scientist. But what you now suggest is preposterous.’ Cameron was longing for a drink and his flask was pressed comfortably against his hip, but the presence of death on the slides and in the metal con­tainer held him back.

  ‘You are telling me that L’Eclus and the others may not have been killed at all. That they are still alive.’

  ‘Only part of them will be alive, Chief Constable. I be­lieve that certain areas of their memory centres were removed before death and grafted on to the brains of other human beings.’ Marcus’s background had made him more cautious than most men. He hated venturing an opinion without definite evidence and he fully sympathized with Cameron’s doubts. All the same, his theory was the only one that fitted in with the evidence and he knew it must be correct.

  ‘When my wife telephoned me earlier this evening, she quoted a maxim of Sherlock Holmes which tells one to reject all impossibilities and whatever remains must be the truth, however improbable it appears. Tania and John Forest considered that Mary Valley’s dreams were the result of psychic possession. That the child’s mind had been taken over by the soul of Mrs Van Traylen. They were wrong about the supernatural and had jumped to a false conclusion due to a lack of sufficient information. The fact that L’Eclus was dead long before the loss of the launch and that all the previous bodies had been mutilated gives us that information and it must add up to the truth, how­ever unpleasant or unlikely it appears.’ Marcus kept looking at each of his audience in turn. Cameron and the in­spector wore expressions of complete disbelief but Dr Knight was watching him like a terrier at a rat hole.