by Brian Lumley
‘Jesus!’ said the old man. ‘Oh, my God — what are you?’ And he dropped the child. Or would have — but George had seen the glazing of his eyes, the slackening of his body, the blood’s rapid draining from his face. As the old man crumpled, George stepped forward, took Yulian from him.
Anne, also quick off the mark, had caught the old man and managed to lower him a little less than gently to the floor. But Georgina was also reeling. Like the other two, she had seen, smelled, heard nothing — but she was Yulian’s mother. She had felt something coming, and she knew that it had been here. As she, too, fainted, so there came a thunderbolt that struck the steeple, and a cannonade of thunder that rolled on and on.
Then there was only silence. And light gradually returning, and dust shaken down in rivulets from rafters high overhead.
And George and Anne, white as ghosts, gaping at each other in the church’s lightening gloom.
And Yulian, angelic in his godfather’s arms…
Georgina was a year making her recovery. Yulian spent the time with his godparents, at the end of which they had their own child to fuss over and care for. His mother spent it in a somewhat select sanatorium. No one was much surprised; her breakdown, so long delayed, had finally arrived with a vengeance. George and Anne, and others of Georgina’s friends, visited her regularly, but no one mentioned the abortive christening or the death of the vicar.
That had been a stroke or some such. The old man’s health had been waning. He’d lasted only a few hours after his collapse in the church. George had gone with him in an ambulance to the hospital, had been with him when he died. The old man had come to in the final moments before he passed forever from this world.
His eyes had focussed on George’s face, widened, filled with memory, disbelief. ‘It’s all right,’ George had comforted him, patting the hand which grasped his forearm with a feverish strength. ‘Take it easy. You’re in good hands.’
‘Good hands? Good hands! My God!’ The old man had been quite lucid. ‘I dreamed… I dreamed… there was a christening. You were there.’ It was almost an accusation.
George smiled. ‘There was supposed to be a christening,’ he’d answered. ‘But don’t worry, you can finish it when you’re up and about again.’
‘It was real?’ the old man tried to sit up. ‘It was real!’
George and a nurse supported him in his bed, lowered him as he collapsed again on to his pillows. Then he caved in. His face contorted and he seemed to crumple into himself. The nurse rushed from the room shouting for a doctor. Still convulsing, the vicar beckoned George closer with a twitching finger. His face was fluttering, had turned the colour of lead.
George put his ear to the old man’s whispering lips, heard: ‘Christen it? No, no — you mustn’t! First — first have it exorcised!’
And those were the last words he ever spoke. George mentioned it to no one. Obviously the old boy’s mind had been going, too.
A week after the christening Yulian developed a rash of tiny white blisters on his forehead. They eventually dried up and flaked away, leaving barely visible marks exactly like freckles…
Chapter Five
‘He was a funny little thing!’ Anne Lake laughed, shook her head and set her blonde hair flying in the breeze from the car’s half-open window. ‘Do you remember when we had him that year?’
It was late in the summer of ‘77 and they were driving down to stay with Georgina and Yulian for a week. The last time they’d seen them was two years ago. George had thought the boy was strange then, and he’d said so on several occasions — not to Georgina and certainly not to Yulian himself, of course not, but to Anne, in private. Now he said so again:
‘Funny little thing?’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. Weird would be a better way! And from what I remember of him last time we came down he hasn’t changed — what was a weird baby is now a weird young man!’
‘Oh, George, that’s ridiculous. All babies are different from each other. Yulian was, well, more different, that’s all.’
‘Listen,’ said George. That child wasn’t two months old when he came to us — and he had teeth! Teeth like little needles — sharp as hell! And I remember Georgina saying he was born with them. That’s why she couldn’t breast-feed him.’
‘George,’ said Anne warningly, a little sharply, reminding him that Helen sat in the back of the car. She was their daughter: a beautiful, occasionally precocious girl of sixteen.
Helen sighed, very deliberately and audibly, and said,
‘Oh, mother! I know what breasts are for — apart from being natural attractions for the opposite sex, that is. Why must you put them on your taboo list?’
‘Ta-boob list!’ George grinned.
‘George!’ said Anne again, more forcefully.
‘Nineteen seventy-seven,’ Helen scoffed, ‘but you’d never know it. Not in this family. I mean, feeding your baby’s natural, isn’t it? More natural than letting your breasts be groped in the back row of some grubby flea-pit cinema!’
‘Helen!’ Anne half-turned in her seat, her lips compressing to a thin line.
‘It’s been a long time,’ George glanced at his wife, semi-ruefully.
‘What has?’ she snapped.
‘Since I was groped in a flea-pit cinema,’ he said.
Anne snorted her exasperation. ‘She gets it from you!’ she accused. ‘You’ve always treated her like an adult.’
‘Because she is an adult, very nearly,’ he answered. ‘You can only guide them so far, Anne my love, and after that they’re on their own. Helen’s healthy, intelligent, happy, good-looking, and she doesn’t smoke pot. She’s worn a bra for nearly four years, and every month she — ‘ ‘George! ‘Taboo!’ said Helen, giggling.
‘Anyway,’ George’s irritation was showing now, ‘we weren’t talking about Helen but Yulian. Helen, I submit, is normal. Her cousin — or cousin once removed, or whatever-is not.’
‘Give me a for-instance,’ Anne argued. ‘An example. Not normal, you say. Well then, is he abnormal? Subnormal? Where’s his defect?’
‘Whenever Yulian crops up,’ Helen joined in from the back, ‘you two always end up arguing. Is he really worth it?’
‘Your mother’s a very loyal person,’ George told her over one shoulder. ‘Georgina is her cousin and Yulian is Georgina’s son. Which means they’re untouchable. Your mother won’t face simple facts, that’s all. She’s the same with all her friends: she won’t hear a word against them. Very laudable. But I call a spade a spade. I find — and have always found — Yulian a bit much. As I said before, weird.’
‘You mean,’ Helen pressed, ‘a bit nine-bob notish?’
‘Helen!’ her mother protested yet again.
‘I get that one from you!’ Helen stopped her dead in her tracks. ‘You always talk about gays as nine-bobbers.’
‘I never talk about… about homosexuals!’ Anne was furious. ‘And certainly not to you about them!’
‘I’ve heard Daddy — in conversation with you, about one or two of his man-friends — say that so-and-so is gay as a defrocked vicar,’ said Helen matter-of-factly. ‘And you’ve replied: “What, so-and-so, nine-bobbish? Really?”’
Anne rounded on her and might well have lashed out physically if she could have reached her. Red-faced, she cried, ‘Then in future we’ll have to lock you in your bloody room before we dare have an adult conversation! You horrid girl!’
‘Perhaps you better had.’ Helen was equally quick to rise. ‘Before I also start to swear!’
‘All right, all right.r George quietened them. ‘Points taken all round. But we’re on holiday, remember? I mean, it’s probably my fault, but Yulian’s a sore point with me, that’s all. And I can’t even explain why. But he usually keeps out of the way most of the time we’re there, and I can’t help it but I hope it’s the same this time. For my peace of mind, anyway. He’s simply not my type of lad. As for him being how’s-your-father — ‘ (Helen som
ehow contrived not to snigger) ‘ — I can’t say. But he did get kicked out of that boarding school, and — ‘
‘He did not!’ Anne had to have her say. ‘Kicked out, indeed! He got his qualifications a year early, left a year before the rest. I mean to say, do qualifications — does being intelligent above the average — certify someone as a raving… homosexual? Heaven forbid! Clever Miss Know-it-all here has a couple of second class “A” levels, which apparently make her near-omniscient; in which case Yulian has to be close to godlike! George, what qualifications do you have?’
‘I fail to see what that has to do with it,’ he answered. ‘The way I hear it, more gays come out of the universities than ever came out of all the secondary moderns put together. And-‘
‘George?’
‘I was an apprentice,’ he sighed, ‘as you well know. Trade qualifications, I’ve got them all. And then I was a journeyman — an architect earning money for my boss, until I got into business for myself. And anyway — ‘
‘What academic qualifications?’ she was determined.
George drove the car, said nothing, wound down his window a little and breathed warm air. After a while: The same as you, darling.’
‘None whatsoever!’ Anne was triumphant. ‘Why, Yulian’s cleverer than all of us put together. On paper, anyway. I say give him time and he’ll show us all a thing or two. Oh, I admit he’s quiet, comes and goes like a ghost, seems less active and enthusiastic about life than a boy his age should be. But give him a break, for God’s sake! Look at his disadvantages. He never knew his father; was brought up by Georgina entirely on her own, and she’s never been altogether with it since Ilya died, has lived in that gloomy old mansion of a place for twelve years of his young life. Little wonder he’s a bit, well, reticent.’
She seemed to have won the day. They said nothing to dispute her logic, had apparently lost all interest in the argument. Anne searched her mind for a new topic, found nothing, relaxed in her seat.
Reticent. Helen turned her own thoughts over in her head. Yulian, reticent? Did her mother mean backward? Of course not, her argument had been all against that. Shy? Retiring? Yes, that’s what she must have meant. Well, and he must seem shy — if one didn’t know better. Helen knew better, from that time two years ago. And as for queer — hardly. She would greatly doubt it, anyway. She smiled secretly. Better to let them go on thinking it, though. At least while they thought he was a woofter they wouldn’t worry about her being in his company. But no, Yulian wasn’t entirely gay. AC, DC, maybe.
Two years ago, yes…
It had taken Helen ages to get him to talk to her. She remembered the circumstances clearly.
It had been a beautiful Saturday, their second day of a ten-day spell; her parents and Aunt Georgina gone off to Salcombe for a day’s sea-and sun-bathing; Yulian and Helen were left in charge of the house, he with his Alsatian pup to play with and she to explore the gardens, the great barn, the crumbling old stables and the dark, dense copse. Yulian wasn’t into bathing, indeed he hated the sun and sea, and Helen would have preferred anything rather than spend time with her parents.
‘Walk with me?’ she’d pressed Yulian, finding him alone with the gangling pup in the dim, cool library. He had shook his head.
Pale in the shade of this one room which the sun never seemed to reach, he’d lounged awkwardly on a settee, fondling the pup’s floppy ears with one hand and holding a book in the other.
‘Why not? You could show me the grounds.’
He had glanced at the pup. ‘He gets tired if he walks too far. He’s still not quite steady on his legs. And I burn easily in the sun. I really don’t much care for the sun. And anyway, I’m reading.’
‘You’re not much fun to be with,’ she had told him, deliberately pouting. And she’d asked, ‘Is there still straw in the hayloft over the barn?’
‘Hayloft?’ Yulian had looked surprised. His long, not unhandsome face had formed a soft oval against the dark velvet of the back of the settee. ‘I haven’t been up there in years.’
‘What are you reading, anyway?’ She sat down beside him, reached for the book held loosely in his long-fingered, soft-looking hand. He drew back, kept the book from her.
‘Not for little girls,’ he said, his expression unchanging.
Frustrated, she tossed her hair, glanced all about the large room. And it was large, that room; partitioned in the middle, just like a public library, with floor to ceiling shelves and book-lined alcoves all round the walls. It smelled of old books, dusty and musty. No, it reeked of them, so that you almost feared to breathe in case your lungs got filled with words and inks and desiccated glue and paper fibres.
There was a shallow cupboard in one corner of the room and its door stood open. Tracks in the threadbare carpet showed where Yulian had dragged a stepladder to a certain section of the shelving. The books on the top shelf were almost hidden in gloom, where old cobwebs were gathering dust. But unlike the neat rows of books in the lower shelves, they were piled haphazardly, lying in a jumble as if recently disturbed.
‘Oh?’ she stood up. ‘I’m a little girl, am I? And what does that make you? We’re only a year apart, you know…’ She went to the stepladder, started to climb.
Yulian’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He tossed his book aside, came easily to his feet. ‘You leave that top shelf alone,’ he said unemotionally, coming to the foot of the ladder.
She ignored him, looked at the titles, read out loud: ‘Coates, Human Magnetism, or How to Hypnotise. Huh! Mumbo-jumbo! Lycan… er, Lycanthropy. Eh? And… The Erotic Beardsleyf She clapped her hands delightedly. ‘What, dirty pictures, Yulian?’ She took the book from the shelf, opened it. ‘Oh!’ she said, rather more quietly. The black and white drawing on the page where the book had opened was rather more bestial than erotic.
‘Put it down!’ Yulian hissed from below.
Helen put down the Beardsley, read off more titles. ‘Vampirism — ugh! Sexual Powers of Satyrs and Nymphomaniacs. Sadism and Sexual Aberration. And… Parasitic Creatures? How diverse! And not dusty at all, these old books. Do you read them a lot, Yulian?’
He gave the ladder a shake and insisted, ‘Come down from there!’ His voice was very low, almost menacing. It was guttural, deeper than she’d heard it before. Almost a man’s voice and not a youth’s at all. Then she looked down at him.
Yulian stood below her, his face turned up at a sharp angle just below the level of her knees. His eyes were like holes punched in a paper face, with pupils shiny as black marbles. She stared hard at him but their eyes didn’t meet, because he wasn’t looking at her face.
‘Why, I do believe,’ she told him then, teasingly, ‘that you’re quite naughty, really, Yulian! What with these books and everything…’ She had worn her short dress because of the heat, and now she was glad.
He looked away, touched his brow, turned aside. ‘You… you wanted to see the barn?’ His voice was soft again.
‘Can we?’ She was down the ladder in a flash. ‘I love old barns! But your mother said it wasn’t safe.’
‘I think it’s safe enough,’ he answered. ‘Georgina worries about everything.’ He had called his mother Georgina since he was a little boy. She didn’t seem to mind.
They went through the rambling house to the front, Yulian excusing himself for a moment to go to his room. He came back wearing dark spectacles and a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. ‘Now you look like some pallid Mexican brigand,’ Helen told him, leading the way. And with the black Alsatian pup tumbling at their heels, they made their way to the barn.
In fact it was a very simple outbuilding of stone, with a platform of planks across the high beams to form a hayloft. Next door were the stables, completely run-down, just a derelict old huddle of buildings. Until five or six years ago the Bodescus had let a local farmer winter his ponies on the grounds, and he’d stored hay for them in the barn.
‘Why on earth do you need such a big place to live?’ Helen asked as they entered the barn t
hrough a squealing door into shade and dusty sunbeams and the scurry of mice.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said after a moment, his thoughts elsewhere.
‘This place. The whole place. And that high stone wall all the way round it. How much land does it enclose, that fell? Three acres?’
‘Just over three and a half,’ he answered. ‘A great rambling house, old stables, barns, an overgrown paddock — even a shady copse to walk through in
the autumn, when the colours are growing old! I mean, why do two ordinary people need so much space just to live in?’
‘Ordinary?’ he looked at her curiously, his eyes moistly gleaming behind dark lenses. ‘And do you consider yourself ordinary?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well I don’t. I think you’re quite extraordinary. So am I, and so is Georgina — all of us for different reasons.’ He sounded very sincere, almost aggressive, as if defying her to contradict him. But then he shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s not a question of why we need it. It’s ours, that’s all.’
‘But how did you get it? I mean, you couldn’t have bought it! There must be so many other, well, easier places to live.’
Yulian crossed the paved floor between piles of old slates and rusty, broken-down implements to the foot of the open wooden stairs. ‘Hayloft,’ he said, turning his dark eyes on her. She couldn’t see those eyes, but she could feel them.
Sometimes his movements were so fluid it almost seemed as if he were sleep-walking. They were like that now as he climbed the stairs, slowly, step by deliberate step. ‘There is still straw,’ he said, voice languid as a deep pool.
She watched him until he passed out of sight. There was a leanness about him, a hunger. Her father thought he was soft, girlish, but Helen guessed otherwise. She saw him as an intelligent animal, as a wolf. Sort of furtive, but unobtrusive, and always there on the edge of things, just waiting for his chance…
She suddenly felt stifled and took three deep, deliberate gulps of air before following him. Going carefully up the wooden steps, she said, ‘Now I remember! It was your great-grandfather’s, wasn’t it? The house, I mean.’