Through a Glass Darkly

by Bill Hussey

  There was still work to be done. Grief would have to wait. I collected Jim and Michael from the farm and we returned to the house. While they went from room to room, collecting up the belongings of the late owner, I sifted through his papers. I could find no identifying documentation. The date of birth given on a few official forms was the sixth of January 1910.

  He had bought the Redgrave land through an agent from the present Earl of Walmshire. I found evidence of an extensive share portfolio, handled by a stockbroker in Berne. From even a cursory examination of his assets, I could see Mendicant had died a very wealthy man. Last among the papers was a copy of a letter, dated a week before, and addressed to a firm of London solicitors. It revealed the well-laid plans of the late Doctor:

  My dear Sirs,

  Due to my failing health, I have decided to make a Will, which I would be grateful if you would draw up in the proper fashion. It should be a simple document, as there is only one beneficiary. Being of sound mind, I leave all my property, real and personal, to Master James Rowbanks, in recognition of the friendship extended to me by his family. You will find all the relevant documentation relating to my affairs enclosed, as well as the details of my worthy beneficiary. The Will should not be challenged, as I have no living relatives, but I set here on record my reason for bequeathing my fortune to the boy.

  The tragedy of the Rowbanks family has touched my heart. I, too, have led a tragic life and would have their grief eased a little. Of late, James has lost his four younger siblings. The babies, Mark and Paul, died in their sleep. Within the same week, his brothers, Luke and Joshua, were killed in a terrible fire. I feel the pain of this family keenly. I hope this gift, given in friendship, may bring them happiness when their benefactor is dust, scattered to the winds.

  E Mendicant.

  He had laid the way carefully, ensuring that the fortune he had accrued would not be lost. And he had revealed his plans for the disposal of Luke and Josh.

  Having collected all the books from the library, and the statues, idols, puzzle boxes and paintings from the rest of the house, Jim, Michael and I met in the courtyard. Luke and Josh still rested under our coats, shaded by the mountain of Mendicant’s strange collection. Once I had finished telling the brothers of my discoveries, I outlined a plan of action.

  ‘As I see it, there is only one thing we can do,’ I said. ‘We must follow the Doctor’s last instructions. We must burn the bodies so that the true cause of death cannot be identified. If we don’t, there will be questions that none of us could answer.’

  ‘I won’t burn my babies,’ Jim said.

  ‘We have to, Jim,’ Michael sighed. ‘We can’t explain it any other way.’

  ‘They’re at peace now,’ I said. ‘Fire can’t harm them. But we can’t do it straight away. Suspicion might be roused by the death of the babies and the boys within so short a time of each other.’

  ‘The same would’ve been true with Mendicant’s plan,’ Michael said.

  ‘Why should he have cared?’ Jim snorted. ‘He might have even made it look like me or Val had murdered our own kids. He’d’ve used my boy to do that.’

  ‘Very likely,’ I said. ‘But in this we have no choice. If we store the bodies for a month in a cool dry place, then we could arrange the fire to look like an accident.’

  ‘You seem to have the stomach for such things, Father,’ said Jim. ‘I do not.’

  I heard the fermenting bitterness in Jim’s voice. It would go on to poison his life. After that day, he would never speak to me again.

  By some strange alchemy of thought, which I have witnessed often among Crow Havenites down the years, the secret was shared among the village without a word of it being spoken. The community pulled together in a silent conspiracy. Old Arabella Nugent, headmistress of the school, kept a fictitious register of attendance for Luke, Josh and James up until the night of the fire. The Rowbanks did not blame those who had stayed behind their doors that night. It was, after all, the centuries-old practice of the town never to defy the Darkness. But perhaps it was a sense of guilt that made Crow Haven so readily complicit in the lie regarding the deaths of the boys. When questioned by the police, several eyewitnesses came forward to testify that they had seen the children screaming from the windows of the Rowbanks barn. Unfortunately, the fire was too fierce for anyone to attempt a rescue. With so many witnesses, with no cause to suspect foul play, and with pressure from the local press to leave the grieving family be, the police investigation was brief and delicate. Death by misadventure was the verdict.

  After six months without communication from his client, the Swiss stockbroker contacted the English police. They made a cursory investigation, but it appeared that Mr Mendicant (he was never referred to as ‘Doctor’ in his papers) had vanished, along with all his belongings. He was filed as a Missing Person and soon forgotten. I have often wondered whether Jim Rowbanks, as James’ next of kin, ever received Mendicant’s fortune. I guess that, if he had, he must have given it away, for year on year the Rowbanks farmhouse fell into a sad ruin.

  Jim is now the last of the Rowbanks left. Valerie killed herself five years after these events, wrapping stripped wire around her body and switching on the mains. In the early Eighties, Michael, sickened by memories, defied superstition and left the village for a new life in America. He made it to the States, the farthest any Crow Havenite has ventured in centuries. When the maid at the Golden Plaza Motel on Orlando’s International Drive could not get into Mr Rowbanks’ room, she called security. Michael was naked, sitting on the floor, his back against the door. There was a half-written letter to his brother between his legs and a complimentary hotel biro thrust through his left eye. Suicide, of course.

  And so the first chapter of Mendicant’s life in Crow Haven is finished. The next chapter begins with the arrival of Peter and Anne Malahyde in 1984, eight years after the Doctor’s death. Yet there is no definite demarcation between these periods, for Mendicant continued to exist on some level, as he told me he would.

  I stopped walking in the woods after his death but often, on my way to and from the church, I would catch, out of the corner of my eye, the hint of a face watching me from the trees. And I was not the only one. The children of the village began to see him. In their nightmares, and sometimes at their windows in the dead of night. Come Halloween, they drew pictures of him and a song sprang up around him:

  He walks in the woods and he talks to the crows,

  A bent old man, with a hole for a nose,

  And holes for eyes: black as sin,

  A man tore one out and a bird poked one in,

  And he waits for a child, pure and good

  That he can whisper to and take to his home in the wood.

  Be very afraid of the trees and the grasses

  When they move on their own,

  The Crowman passes.

  Forty-seven

  Dawn decided to forgo the lift and trudge up the six flights to CID. It gave her time to think things over. She wondered whether it was possible that both Jamie and Jack were suffering from a kind of infectious hysteria. She had read about such cases at university: shared delusions and paranoia, mass hallucination. Maybe they had met while she had been abroad. That was possible. Just before she left, Jamie had been very keen to see Jack. What if they had got together and her son had been drawn into Jack’s madness?

  As she added layers to the theory, the awkward pieces that did not fit – the fact Jamie had recognised the old man from the photographs; the question why Jack would fixate on the Malahyde case – were swept aside. By the time she reached Jarski’s door, she was feeling a little better. She knocked and entered.

  Jarski was leaning back in his chair, his fingers pressed into a spire. A familiar smell, the herald stink of Pat Mescher, crept into her nostrils: a mix of dried sweat and something like Roquefort cheese. Mescher was trying to look grave, but couldn’t disguise the grin spreading over his ample face.

  ‘Well then,’ Jarski sighe
d, ‘it seems the shit has well and truly hit the fan.’

  Jamie woke with a start. Questions immediately started buzzing in his head. What had happened last night? How had he fallen asleep? Was the thing still waiting outside? He scrambled out of bed and tore back the curtains. The figure was gone. He scanned the rest of the garden and the farmland beyond. Nothing.

  The morning sun sat beneath a brow of black cloud. All across the fields, and in the garden, a pale mist crawled low to the ground and slunk, cat-like, through the picket fence. It was shaping up to be a shitty sort of day. Jamie reached for his watch on the bedside table. Nine-thirty a.m. His mum must have thought he needed a day off school. He knew, however, that she had gone to work. He had overheard her last night say that she would report in, explain ‘the situation’ and request a few days’ leave: ‘So we can get J some help.’

  Fair enough. With her gone, he might be able to give his grandad the slip and find Jack. He pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and scraped his hair into a parting. Before he left the bedroom, he took another quick look out at the back gate. There was no-one there.

  At the head of the stairs, he stopped and listened. There was the rattle of the washing machine on rinse. The late chime of the half-hour from the clock in the hall. The hiss and spit of frying bacon. But the burr of Johnny Yolendy, the football pundit who his grandad listened to religiously every morning, could not be heard. As the spin of the washing machine wound down, Jamie called over the banister:

  ‘Grandad? You down there?’

  He descended, gripping the weft of the carpet with his toes.

  ‘Yo, anyone about?’

  The smell of burnt bacon. The pop of the toaster. Grey smoke threading out from the kitchen.

  ‘Grandad …?’

  The post lay scattered on the mat. The cat was crying to be let in. The kitchen door stood open a crack. Jamie padded down the hall, feeling his guts knot tighter with every step.

  ‘Grandad, are you all …?’

  A hand rested on the linoleum, like a huge upturned spider.

  Dawn listened to Pat Mescher’s bullshit story. It seemed that he had decided to check up on ‘his old pal’ after Jack’s no-show at work yesterday. Mescher then gave a long-winded account of how personnel had given him Dawn’s father’s address. His intention had been to head on over and see if he and Dawn could figure out between them what was up with Jack. Finding Bob Peterson’s car parked outside the house, he had questioned the private detective and got the full story.

  ‘Now, I didn’t want this getting all over the papers,’ Mescher said, ‘that’s why I brought it to Roger.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Dawn spat. ‘You’re a self-serving, arrogant prick and …’

  ‘Cut it,’ Jarski exploded. ‘Right, let’s get straight what we’re looking at here. Professional misconduct – dereliction of duty – inciting a member of the public to commit a serious offence – vagrancy – and … and pissing me off!’ After each indictment, Jarski brought his fist down hard on his desk. ‘How much did you know about this, Dawn?’

  ‘She knew the whole story,’ said Mescher. ‘She was outside the house last night. I saw her talking to that crackpot Elvis wannabe.’

  ‘That was the first I knew about it,’ Dawn snapped. ‘I was coming to speak to you this morning, Sir. Jack … He did have my son followed by this Peterson guy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s fucking nuts,’ Mescher said. ‘You wanna know how he caught that freakshow Greylampton? Because it takes a schizo to catch a schizo.’

  ‘He had Jamie followed because he thought my son was in danger,’ Dawn said.

  ‘From who?’

  ‘The same man who’s been killing these kids.’

  ‘What? Malahyde?’

  Dawn hesitated. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Well, you better un-complicate it,’ Jarski muttered. ‘Give it to me nice and easy. No big words.’

  ‘Jack spoke to me in confidence, Sir.’

  ‘Confidence? No such thing in police work.’

  ‘You’re asking me to betray a trust.’

  ‘I’m asking you to save your career, Sergeant. I don’t want to put you on suspension. I don’t even know if I have the grounds, but there are ways and means, believe me. You tell me now what Jack Trent said to you or …’

  ‘Don’t threaten me. I don’t care what you …’

  ‘I’ve got Jack for inciting use of an unlawful firearm. If you don’t tell me what you know, I’m going to make life very, very unpleasant for him. If you do tell me, we’ll get him some help, but you’ve gotta be up front with me.’

  ‘Okay! Fuck!’ Dawn breathed deeply. ‘Jack believes … he thinks Simon Malahyde … Christ! He thinks Simon was possessed. He thinks the spirit of whatever possessed Simon committed these murders. He thinks this spirit wants to take my son.’

  Guilt flooded her mind. All the logical arguments she had summoned to defend her view were washed away in that moment. A small voice railed against the tide: I had to do it. For his sake …

  For your own – the tide answered – to protect your safe little world. To protect the world you feel you must control. Order, order, order. Ever since Richard left. Order in parenting, work, love. Control, control, control.

  Pat Mescher was laughing. A full, thick, guttural laugh. Jarski cut him short.

  ‘Get out.’

  Dawn looked up. Jarski had swung round in his seat and was staring at the Lowry print on his wall. Dawn and Mescher threw bitter, questioning looks at each other.

  ‘I mean you, Mescher. Out.’

  Mescher crossed the room and leaned over the desk. His moist bottom lip trembled as he stared at the back of Jarski’s head.

  ‘But, Sir … I thought, seeing as Trent’s … incapable of …’

  ‘Let me tell you something, Pat,’ Jarski spat the name as he faced the DI. ‘If I had to choose who to head up a major investigation, a fully lobotomised Jack Trent or you, I’d choose Trent every time. Now, fuck off.’

  Dawn watched the two fleshy slabs that were Mescher’s hands tense and discolour. Jarski returned his gaze with steady indifference. As he went to the door, Mescher seemed to collapse into himself, like an accordion. Then he rallied and turned to her.

  ‘Next time you see that freaky fuck, ask him how he enjoyed the pussy-for-hire. He didn’t want me to tell you,’ Mescher said, glaring at Jarski, ‘but I was tipped off about just how off the rails Jacky boy is. His whore told me. How does that make you feel? To know he’s been picking up pussy behind your back? Guess you couldn’t give him what he wanted.’

  ‘Out now!’ Jarski roared.

  Mescher slammed the door behind him.

  ‘You okay?’ Jarski muttered.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Dawn said. ‘What’s next?’

  ‘Next,’ Jarski sighed. ‘Next, we bring him in.’

  Forty-eight

  Jack woke to find the last page of Brody’s story still clasped in his hand. He stretched, and felt the muscles in his back and shoulders knotted from the few hours of sleeping upright. He blinked and took in the room.

  ‘Jesus, what time is it?’ he groaned.

  ‘It’s a quarter to ten.’

  Jack started. He wondered how he had overlooked the man sitting opposite. Perhaps it was the exhaustion that still lay heavily upon him, making his senses dull. Or maybe it was because he had become so familiar with Brody from reading his story, that it would have been strange, in a sense, had the old priest not been there.

  ‘I thought you were watching Jamie.’

  ‘The boy’s as safe as he can be at the moment,’ Brody said. ‘But for the sake of his future well-being, the time has come for us to talk.’

  Jack held up the manuscript bundle. ‘Do you really believe all this?’

  ‘Are you playing devil’s advocate, Mr Trent?’ Brody snapped. ‘We don’t have time for you to start setting the
world back to its proper order.’

  ‘Okay, let’s say it all happened exactly as you describe. I find it hard to believe that no-one ever let slip about the deaths of the children.’

  ‘Secrets of Crow Haven are secrets of Crow Haven. I can’t explain the nature of the place any better than that.’

  ‘But you’re talking about a community-wide conspiracy. There’re always weak links …’

  ‘I’m talking about a way of life, Mr Trent. I’m talking about something that is so ingrained in these people that to behave in any other way, given those circumstances, would have been as impossible for them as it would be to change their genetic makeup.’

  ‘Well, let’s talk about genetics,’ Jack countered. ‘This whole thing about them never being able to leave the village. How can a people survive that long in isolation?’

  ‘You misread the situation. Outsiders do come in occasionally. To flavour the gene pool, if you like. Some talk of dreams that drew them to Crow Haven. Other unlucky souls stumble across the place and find they cannot leave. Those outsiders are soon made complicit in the ways of the village. There are cases, however, showing that centuries of related genes rubbing against each other is not a healthy thing. I have seen children born that … that had no chance of living. And sometimes you will also notice a lesser deformity; something in the arrangement of a face that will strike you as wrong, but which you cannot describe …’

  Jack kneaded the corners of his eyes.

  ‘All right, let’s say I buy the Village of the Damned scenario. What about Mendicant? What was he?’

  ‘What is he. That’s the proper question. And the answer: I’ve no more idea now than I had twenty-five years ago. After his death, I read a great deal of ancient writing on the story of Lilith, the she-demon who Mendicant claimed had sired demonic children with Adam. Certain things did strike me in those old legends. In the Sumerian myths, Lilith lived in the desert beyond the Euphrates. She would go to the river and steal unbaptised babies and murder them, possibly drinking their lifeblood. In the epic of Gilgamesh, it was written that Lilith, maid of desolation, built her house in the trunk of the huluppu tree, between the dragon at its root and the bird in its branches. And in all these stories, she was identified as a succubus: a night-creature who confused the minds of men with dreams. The taking of children. The affinity with trees. The ability to manipulate dreams and inspire obsessions … It made me wonder whether Lilith had passed her powers down to her half-breed children.’