by Bill Hussey
Jack breathed deeply. He threw the garments into the flames. Beads of red ember touched the edges of the cloth and the dresses caught. Smoke crept from the heart of the fire. It furled around Mendicant and rolled inside those sightless eyes before sending out tendrils towards Jack. When the vapour was within a few feet of him, it rose and touched his face.
It felt as if a hundred icy fingers were probing his body, testing invisible weaknesses. In some areas, like his scalp and chest, he felt a strong barrier. In others, like the base of his spine, he sensed frailty. The smoke touched his eyes, teased and violated … And now it searched inside him. Through the gauze, Jack saw the Doctor move towards him. They stood for a moment, face to face. A charnel stink filled Jack’s nostrils. Then the Doctor fell to his knees. Jack felt claw-like fingers open his shirt and stroke his chest. Nails dug into his skin. Pain seared through him. Blinding, tearing pain.
Jack clutched Mendicant’s head to his breast. Rain poured into the indentation in the Doctor’s skull and ran down his back. It made the flesh more pliable, and Jack’s fingers sank into the scalp. Mendicant had faded to little more than a shadow, but his teeth were still tearing and ripping.
The Doctor made quick work of his meal. Jack could feel the black tongue lick across his breastbone. He could hear the thrum of his heart in his ears. Exposed to the night air, it felt so cold inside him.
Over the groan of the wind, someone was crying.
She was still there. Dawn had not abandoned him.
And then, in a moment of exquisite realisation, disconnected memories knitted together. He laughed out loud.
He had the answer.
His hands passed through Mendicant and covered his gaping chest. He fell to his knees, the sound of his lungs in his ears. For a moment, it all seemed too unreal to credit. The pain was distant and he sensed it only empathetically, as if it belonged to someone else. With this new detachment, he watched the fire collapse into itself and die.
It was the fire, wasn’t it? That dull red flame before his eyes? So like the blood-moon that had watched their progress to Crow Haven. It was coming closer … Mendicant … Plunging into his eyes, delving deeper and deeper. Finding the path laid out for him.
She said nothing. She had no words, nor did she need them. All she had to do was cradle his head. In her peripheral vision, she could see his trembling torso and the wet edges of the wound torn out of his chest. The blood beneath her knees was cooling.
His eyes did not seem sad, but a few tears rolled over the white scar that bridged his nose. She felt his hand, cold and shaking, against her cheek, and she held it there, warming it.
‘I want … to see him …’ he whispered.
She turned his face towards the forest. Jamie stood between the trees, his head buried in his hands. Her own voice sounded distant in her ears. She heard herself calling to her son, telling him to let Jack see his face. Jamie pulled his hands away.
‘Go now …’ Jack groaned. ‘He is fi … finding his way … inside.’
‘No.’ She passed her hand over Jack’s lips.
‘Please, for me … Live, for me …’ he sighed. ‘Be happy, for me.’
‘I can’t … I can’t leave you here. Alone.’
‘Always alone … Please, Dawn … Something is coming …’
His pale blue eyes pleaded with her. At their corners, she saw a fleck of darkness. It began to streak out in veins, swallowing the whites. Without hurrying, she laid him down on the wet grass. Rain dripped from her hair as she leant over him. She tasted his blood as their lips touched. The final, warm breath left him and passed into her.
When she reached Jamie, she took hold of his hand and pulled him behind her.
‘We can’t leave him …’
‘He’s dead.’
A scream erupted from the glade. Dawn felt herself give way. Jamie fell against her and they both collapsed to the ground. The birds exploded from the trees, their calls lost against the resounding power of the cry. It was not of pain, but of anger. Of a primal, desperate rage.
It was Jack. Still alive. Fighting against something back in the clearing. And at that moment, as if mimicking the scream, the sky roared.
Asher Brody was standing at the door of the Old Priory when the scream tore out of the forest. Looking over Redgrave, he saw a flare of red light shoot above the trees. He knew that it came from the clearing.
Just as he managed to regain himself, the clouds, hanging low over that scarlet firework, were rent open. A deluge, the like of which Brody had seen only during the season of El Niño, roared from the rift. The foaming edge of the clouds looked like the lip of some huge crevasse, down which a booming torrent of water cascaded. The rain that swept across the village, though not comparable to the wall of water that pummelled the clearing, was strengthening. Within a few minutes, the drains that serviced the Conduit Road had flooded.
Brody ran back to the rectory. He went to the study and turned out all the drawers. While he searched, he felt his heart rattle in time with the drumming on the window. At last, he found the keys in an old biscuit tin and tore back out of the house. Ignoring the sting of rain against his face, he managed to unlock Garret’s car and threw himself into the driver’s seat. He turned the key and flipped the wipers. They did little good. He ground the gear stick into first and roared down the drive. The engine gargled and the tyres span as the car hit the running stream that had once been the Conduit Road. With minimal control of the vehicle, Brody headed towards the mouth of trees.
‘Its evil abideth within and without;’ he quoted, ‘until the Darkness exhausts Itself and the Flood taketh away all Sorrow … Godspeed, Jack.’
Jack opened his eyes. He felt gingerly across his chest. The wound was sealed. Mendicant was inside. There was not much time.
Save for the beat of blood in his ears, he could hear nothing. He guessed that the searing crack from the heavens moments before had ruptured his eardrums. He was standing, though he did not remember getting to his feet. Rising to a level of about three feet all around him was a wall of running water. The source of it, a great cascade falling from the sky, sent up a spray that reached the tops of the tallest trees. The water did not touch him, however. Somehow, it was held back, either by Mendicant or himself.
The rush pressed against the trees and undermined their foundations. Those that bordered the clearing stood resolute, but beyond they were falling like dominoes, ancient earth flying from upturned roots. He prayed that Dawn and Jamie had reached the village and were safe.
But now he must concentrate.
Find him, Jack, he told himself.
He shut his eyes on the world: the weeping moon, the harried sky, the dying forest. He prepared to welcome his visitor.
Fifty-eight
He stood in a long stone corridor. There were archways and passages leading off in all directions. Blue light shone on the bare walls and floor, but he could not see its source. For the first time in centuries he was afraid.
He had seen it in the eyes of so many but, for countless lifetimes, he had only observed the mechanistic effects of fear. The tears, the trembling, the pleading and the screaming. If asked, he could not honestly have described the shape and texture of terror from memory. But now his flesh began to creep and fear slithered inside him again. The sensation acted like Proust’s madeleine, bringing back memories he had thought long buried. Memories redolent of pain and horror.
It had started in a corridor much like this. A sweet-sour smell pervaded the place; the stink of horse piss on straw. The windows had been so high that all he had been able to see was a hint of troubled sky. He could not now remember how old he had been. Ten years? Certainly no more than that. And his name had not been Mendicant or Elijah. His name … Nathaniel. Of course, Nathaniel. But somebody had called him Natty. An affectionate nickname.
He had been very cold, waiting in this corridor, and his little fingers had turned almost blue. Someone had wrapped them in her skirts. Someone beaut
iful. Someone warm. His mother.
She cried when the men came out of the room, their terms negotiated, a price bartered and agreed. Catching one of them by the arm, she had pleaded. What had she said? He could not remember. The man, dressed in a threadbare shirt, slack trousers and worn shoes, tried to comfort her. The other, a face as hard as granite, sneered at the display and barked:
‘I will keep him well enough. Would you rather he shared your fate and starve in the street? Just remember my condition. You are never to see him again.’
The poor man nodded, knelt and shook hands with his son. Then he turned, masked his tears, and dragged his wife away. She had screamed, as if her soul were tearing itself apart. Then the man, whose face was a mass of pockmarks and sores, said to him:
‘Tell me, boy, what dost thou know of God?’
‘That He is good. That He loves all little children.’
Nathaniel felt an iron grip on his arm.
‘Well, my learned friend, we shall test your theory. In here.’
And then the man had opened the Room of Fear.
There was more he could dwell on if he chose. The branding, the scorching, the fracturing and resetting of his bones. The lectures on the purity of pain. The twisted philosophy of his master, who believed that one might hold counsel with God through the ecstasy of a child’s torment. It was memory drowning in tears and blood. Neither in prayer, that was swiftly abandoned, nor in his fear, which endured for years, did he hear God’s voice.
But he heard other things. Secrets whispered when his master thought he slept. Tales of ancient mysticism, lost knowledge and heathen rites. And of a path to eternal youth. Eternal perfection. He listened down the dark years, while his own youth wasted away and his body was contorted until he dreaded the sight of a mirror.
When the old man died, and Nathaniel had ground the tormentor’s face beneath his foot, he stayed on in the Room of Fear, reading all he could. He might have left, of course. Hidden his face beneath sackcloth and gone to seek his mother. But could he bear her horror as she looked at him? No, let the poor woman retain the unspoilt child of her dreams, rather than return to her a crippled devastation to haunt her nightmares. His family would not know him, but Nathaniel determined that he would be allowed to live again. The world owed him much for his suffering, and now its debt must be paid.
Having learned to read by surreptitiously observing his master, he sought out the clue that might restore him among the dead man’s papers. A veritable library of uncatalogued myth, superstition and heresy awaited him. It took two long years to piece together the rite, but there it eventually was, laid out before him. His path back home. To his youth, to his fairness. He gazed across what he must do and his soul balked at the ugliness of it. And yet, by degrees, he overcame his squeamishness. With each possession, his remaining shreds of pity dwindled. He was changed. But he could not now escape his old lessons. Fear, he had known. Fear he became. Forgetting his mother, forgetting his name, he adopted his old master’s moniker: Mendicant.
And now, was this that long forgotten corridor? Did one of these doors lead to the Room of Fear? Was his master waiting for him? He felt very small. Just as he had found it difficult to remember his past, he was now confused as to who he was and what he had done since those days spent poring over his master’s papers. Why was he here? Was this Hell? And if it was, what had he done to bring damnation upon himself?
He shuddered and sobbed. It occurred to him that his voice was higher than it had been. He had changed again, but from what? A shadow passed over him and he covered his head with his hands. His master had come. The pain must soon begin.
‘Are you afraid, Nathaniel?’
‘Yes … He hurts me. I’m just a little boy … I don’t want to go back into the room …’
‘There is a room you must enter, but it’s not the one you’re thinking of. There are no rooms like that here. Will you come with me?’
The man’s voice was soft. Nathaniel put his crooked hand into the stranger’s. He looked up and seemed to recognise the man, though he could not remember from where.
‘What’s your name?’ Nathaniel asked.
The man smiled. ‘My name’s Jack.’
The water reached the level of the drive, flushed the gravel away and made the tyres skitter on the track. In the deep gullies on either side, a bisected river was felling young trees and tearing through the subsoil. The car skidded to a halt. Brody jumped out and ran to the wrecked Range Rover. There was no-one inside.
Just as he caught sight of Anne Malahyde hanging from the gate, the frame gave a violent shudder. Anne pivoted forward. There was a groan of rust-furred bolts. Then the foundations gave way. Brody raced back to Garret’s car. With a chorus of splintering glass, the gate crashed into the Range Rover, trapping Anne’s body beneath.
They waded waist-deep in floodwater, Jamie helping to shoulder the weight off Dawn’s torn ankle. The destruction of Redgrave continued to roar on all sides. Creepers and roots caught at their feet, tripping them into the filthy water. Occasionally their hands met the silky touch of dead things floating by. As they tried to traverse a small trench, the uprooted remains of a tree swept over the rise above them. Dawn saw the thorny arm rip through Jamie’s shirtsleeve. He stifled his yell. She urged him on; even if the gash was deep, they could not stop now. They must reach higher ground.
They scrambled up a dirt bank. A sturdy oak was resisting the barrage. With some difficulty, they managed to use the trunk to lever themselves over the ridge. This level, though unstable, was at least free of running water. They hobbled through the undergrowth until they came to an opening in the trees. And there stood Simon Malahyde’s work shed, the rain drilling on the tin roof.
Jack first saw him here, she thought. Only a week ago.
But now Jack was surely dead. And Mendicant was safe inside his new body.
They left the cabin to its certain destruction. Up the incline, not even noticing their pain and grief now. Listening only to the ravaging of nature by Nature. They came out of the forest and stood before the house.
A lifetime ago, she had thought it incongruous. This cold, magnificent structure, so obviously a design of man, set in the tortured heart of Redgrave. Now she wondered. There was a detached pitilessness in the spirits of both house and forest. Neither cared for living things. As they stepped onto the driveway, the windows exploded outwards. Razor-sharp shards fell just short of where they stood. In the dusky moonlight, the ground glinted, as if spotted with tiny red pools.
It’s bleeding, Dawn thought. The house is bleeding. She was glad.
It was hard to believe that the misshapen child walking at his side was Elijah Mendicant. And now that Jack had glimpsed the torment he had suffered all those centuries ago, he pitied him. Still hidden, however, because at present Mendicant was too weak to remember it, were lifetimes of fear that he had inflicted on others. Soon enough the Doctor would regain himself, and this last vestige of purity, here represented by his child-self, would be gone. Jack could waste no time on sympathy. He must take the child quickly through the avenues of his mind. He must bring them both to the room.
He had first glimpsed the answer during his connection with Brody, when he had witnessed the last scene of the priest’s story. It had not been until he had despaired, however, that a possible solution hit him. With his chest gaping open, his blood watering the ground, he had laughed and given thanks to Father Asher Brody. The crazy old bastard had been right. The answer had been buried in those dread memoirs of his:
The way Mendicant had collapsed after forcing Brody to inflict the stigmata injuries upon himself – The fact that the Doctor stayed away for three weeks after his first attempt to drive Brody’s faith from him – The mystery of why Mendicant had not taken the time to prejudice Peter’s mind against Brody during the ‘supernatural infection’ – The relative lack of resistance Mendicant had shown when Brody and Jim Rowbanks set about destroying him. These and other instances point
ed to the fact that, after he expended a great deal of psychic energy, Mendicant was very weak. Already tonight, the Doctor had used his powers during his trick at the station and in his manipulation of Dawn and Jamie. If Mendicant was left disorientated by these acts, then Jack might be able to corner the creature on his own terms.
Of one thing Jack was certain: he was well versed in the manipulation of his own mind. If he found Mendicant temporarily suggestible, he would be able to effect his plan. So far that plan was working. He did not know, however, how much longer Mendicant would remain pliable to his will. Soon the Doctor might regain himself and tear down the rooms and corridors that imprisoned him. Then would he really honour his promise to leave Dawn and Jamie unmolested? Fate had twisted and broken his nature, just as his old master had broken his body. Jack could have no confidence in any promise the creature had made.
‘It’s getting darker,’ Nathaniel said, drawing closer to Jack. ‘And the passage grows thin and low. There is a fell air to this place.’
It was darker in this, the farthest corner of Jack’s mind. The air was dank, like that of an abandoned lighthouse. Jack felt inside his pocket and brought out a single key. As he slipped it into the lock, a high chittering sound came from behind the door.
‘I don’t want to go in there.’
Jack looked at Nathaniel. He saw the child behind the deformity.
‘We must,’ he smiled, ‘and we must not be afraid.’
He threw open the door. The air was fresh. Jack’s mother always opened the windows first thing. There was the bed with the homely patchwork eiderdown, his unfinished homework strewn across it. The neat row of the Junior Encyclopedia that he had hardly ever touched. The old hornbeam tree outside, tapping the window with a familiar tick-tick-tick. It was night in the fantasy world outside, but the nightlight was on and there were his precious comic books.
‘Where are we?’ Nathaniel asked.