by Jan Siegel
On the tower stair he found the head of Sir William. He tried to seize the hair, but it had less substance than a cobweb. “Go now,” said Dibbuck. “They say there is a Gate for mortals through which you can leave this place. Find it, before it is too late.”
“I rejected the Gate,” said the head haughtily. “I was not done with this world.”
“Be done with it now,” said the goblin. “Her power grows.”
“I was the power here,” said Sir William, “long ago . . .”
Despairing, Dibbuck left him, running through the house and uttering his warning unheeded to the ghosts too venerable to be visible anymore, the drafts that had once been passing feet, the water sprites who gurgled through the antique plumbing, the imp who liked to extinguish the fire in the oven. A house as old as Wrokeby has many tenants, phantom memories buried in the very stones. In the kitchen he saw the woman’s only servant, a hagling with the eyes of the werekind. She lunged at him with a rolling pin, moving with great swiftness for all her apparent age and rheumatics, but he dodged the blow and faded into the wall, though he had to wait an hour and more before he could slip past her up the stairs. He made his way to the conservatory, a Victorian addition that had been severely damaged fifty years earlier in a storm. Now three builders were there, working with unusual speed and very few cups of tea. The one in charge was a gypsy with a gray-streaked ponytail and a narrow, wary face. “We finish quickly and she’ll pay us well,” he told the others. “But don’t skimp on anything. She’ll know.”
“She’s a looker, isn’t she?” said the youngest, a youth barely seventeen. “That figure, and that hair, and all.”
“Don’t even think of it,” said the gypsy. “She can see you thinking.” He stared at the spot where the goblin stood, so that for a moment Dibbuck thought he was observed, though the man made no sign. But later, when they were gone, the goblin found a biscuit left there, something no one had done for him through years beyond count. He ate it slowly, savoring the chocolate coating, feeling braver for the gift, the small gesture of friendship and respect, revitalized by the impact of sugar on his system. Perhaps it was that which gave him the impetus to investigate the attics.
He did not like the top of the house. His sense of time was vague, and he recalled only too clearly a wayward daughter of the family who had been locked up there behind iron bars and padlocked doors, supposedly for the benefit of her soul. Amy Fitzherbert had had the misfortune to suffer from manic depression and what was probably Tourette’s syndrome in an age when a depression was a hole in the ground and sin had yet to evolve into syndrome. She had been fed through the bars like an animal, and like an animal she had reacted, ranting and screaming and bruising herself against the walls. Dibbuck had been too terrified to go near her. In death, her spirit had moved on, but the atmosphere there was still dark and disturbed from the Furies who had plagued her.
That evening he climbed the topmost stair and crept through the main attics, his ears strained for the slightest of sounds. There were no ghosts here, only a few spiders, a dead beetle, a scattering of mouse droppings by the wainscoting. But it seemed to Dibbuck that this was the quiet of waiting, a quiet that harkened to his listening, that saw his unseen presence. And in the dust there were footprints, well-defined and recent: the prints of a woman’s shoes. But the chocolate was strong in him and he went on until he reached the door to Amy’s prison, and saw the striped shadow of the bars beyond, and heard what might have been a moan from within. Amy had moaned in her sleep, tormented by many-headed dreams, and he thought she was back there, the woman had raised her spirit for some dreadful purpose; but still he took a step forward, the last step before the spell barrier hit him. The force of it flung him several yards, punching him into the physical world and tumbling him over and over. He picked himself up, twitching with shock. The half-open door was vibrating in the backlash of the spell, and behind it the shadow bars stretched across the floor, but another darkness loomed against them, growing nearer and larger, blotting them out. It had no recognizable shape, but it seemed to be huge and shaggy, and he thought it was thrusting itself against the bars like a caged beast. The plea that reached him was little more than a snarl, the voice of some creature close to the edge of madness.
Let me out . . .
Letmeout letmeout letmeout letmeout . . .
For the third time in recent weeks Dibbuck ran, fleeing a domain that had once been his.
Lucas Walgrim sat at his sister’s bedside in a private nursing home in Queen Square. Their father visited dutifully once a week, going into prearranged huddles with various doctors, signing checks whenever required. Dana was wired up to the latest technology, surrounded by bouquets she could not see, examined, analyzed, pampered. The nursing home sent grateful thanks for a generous donation. Nothing happened. Dana’s pulse remained steady but slow, so slow, and her face was waxen, as if she were already dead. Lucas would sit beside her through the lengthening afternoons, a neglected laptop on the cabinet by the bed, watching for a quiver of movement, a twinge, a change, waiting until he almost forgot what he was waiting for. She did not toss or turn; her breast barely heaved beneath the lace of her nightgown. They combed her thick dark hair twice a day, spreading it over the pillow: there was never a strand out of place. In oblivion her mouth lost its customary pout and slackened into an illusion of repose, but he saw no peace in her face, only absence. He tried talking to her, calling her, certain he could reach her wherever she had gone; but no answer came. As children they had been close, thrown in each other’s company by a workaholic father and an alcoholic mother. Eight years the elder, Lucas had alternately bullied and protected his little sister, fighting all her battles, allowing no one else to tease or taunt her. As an adult, he had been her final recourse when boyfriends abandoned her and girlfriends let her down. But in the last few years he had been busy at the City desk where his father had installed him, and she had turned to hard drugs and heavy drinking for the moral support that she lacked. He told himself that guilt was futile, and she had made her own decisions, but it did not lessen the pain. She was his sister whom he had always loved, the little rabbit he had mocked for her shyness and her fears, and she had gone, and he could not find her.
At his office in the City colleagues eyed his vacant chair and said he was losing his grip. The malicious claimed he had succeeded only by paternal favors, and he did not have a grip to lose. His latest girlfriend, finding him inattentive, dated another man. In the nursing home the staff watched him covertly, the women (and some of the men) with a slightly wistful degree of commiseration. Purists maintained that he was far from handsome, his bones too bony, his cheeks too sharply sunken, the brows too straight and somber above his shadowed eyes. But the ensemble of his face, with its bristling black hair and taut, tight mouth, exuded force if not vitality, compulsion if not charisma. Those who were not attracted still found themselves intrigued, noting his air of controlled tension, his apparent lack of humor or charm. In Queen Square they thought the better of him for his meaningless vigil, and offered him tea that he invariably refused, and ignored the occasional cigarette that he would smoke by the open window. He was not a habitual smoker, but it was something to do, a way of expressing frustration. The bouquets came via florists and had little scent, but their perfume filled his imagination, sweet as decay, and only the acrid tang of tobacco would eradicate it.
He came there late one night after a party—a party with much shrieking and squirting of champagne and dropping of trousers. He had drunk as much of the champagne as found its way into his glass, but it did not cheer him: champagne cheers only those who are feeling cheerful already, which is why it is normally drunk solely on special occasions or by the very rich. At the nursing home he sat in his usual chair, staring at his sister with a kind of gray patience, all thought suspended, while his life unraveled around him. There were goals that had been important to him: career success, a high earning potential, independence, self-respect. And the res
pect of his father. He had told himself often that this last need was an emotional cliché, a well-worn plotline that did not apply to him, but sometimes it had been easy to lapse into the pattern—easier than suspecting that the dark hunger that ate his soul came from no one but himself. And now all the strands of his existence were breaking away, leaving nothing but internal emptiness. The excess of alcohol gave him the illusion that his perceptions were sharpened rather than clouded and he saw Dana’s face in great detail: her pallor appeared yellowish against the white of the pillow, her lips bloodless. He did not touch her, avoiding the contact with flesh that felt cold and dead. Somewhere in the paralysis of his brain he thought: I need help.
He thought aloud.
The unfamiliar words touched a chord deeper than memory. Without realizing it, he drifted into a daydream. He was in a city—not a modern city but a city of long ago, with pillars and colonnades and statues of men and beasts, and the dome of a temple rising above it all flashing fire at the sun. He heard the creak of wooden wheels on paving, saw the slaves shoveling horse dung with the marks of the lash on their backs. There was a girl standing beside him, a girl whose black hair fell straight to her waist and whose eyes were the pure turquoise of sea shallows. “—help,” she was saying. “You must help me—“ but her face changed, dissolving slowly, the contours re-forming to a different design, and he was in the dark, and a red glimmer of torchlight showed him close-cropped hair and features that seemed to be etched in steel. The first face had been beautiful, but this one was somehow familiar; he saw it with a pang of recognition as sharp as toothache. There was a name on his lips—a name he knew well—but it was snatched away, and he was jerked abruptly, not knowing where he was, reaching for the name as if it were the key to his soul.
One of the male nurses was leaning over him, clasping his shoulder with a scrubbed pink hand. “You called out,” he explained. “I was outside. I think you said: ‘I need help.’ “
“Yes,” said Lucas. “I did. I do.”
The young man smiled a smile that was reassuring—a little too reassuring, and knowing, and not quite human.
“Help will be found,” he told Lucas.
A damp spring ripened slowly into the disappointment of summer. Wizened countrymen read the signs—“The birds be nesting high this year,” “The hawthorn be blooming early,” “I seed a ladybird with eight spots”—and claimed it would be hot. It wasn’t. In London Gaynor moved back into her refurbished flat and stoically withstood the advances of her host of New Year’s Eve in his quest for extramarital sympathy. Will Capel returned from Outer Mongolia and invited his sister to dinner, escorting her to the threshold of the Caprice before recollecting that all he could afford was McDonald’s. Fern drank a brandy too many, picked up the tab, and went home to dream the dream again, waking to horror and a sudden rush of nausea. In Queen Square, Dana Walgrim did not stir. Lucas devoted more time to the pursuit of venture capitalism, doing adventurous things with other people’s capital, but rivals said he had lost his focus, and the specter that haunted him was not that of greed. And at Wrokeby the hovering sun ran its fingers over the façade of the house and poked a pallid ray through an upper window, withdrawing it in haste as the swish of a curtain threatened to sever it from its source.
It was late May, and the clouds darkened the long evening into a premature dusk. The sunset was in retreat beyond the Wrokewood, its last light snarled in the treetops on Farsee Hill. Three trees stood there, all dead, struck by lightning during the same storm that had shattered the conservatory at the house, and although there was fresh growth around each bole, the three crowns were bare, leafless spars jutting skyward like stretching arms. Folklorists pointed out that Farsee Hill was a contraction of pharisee, or fairy, and liked to suggest some connection with an occult curse, the breaking of a taboo, the crossing of a forbidden boundary, though no one had yet come up with a plot for the undiscovered story. That evening, the clouds seemed to be building up not for a storm but for Night, the ancient Night that was before electricity and lamps and candles, before Man stole the secret of fire from the gods. The dark crept down over wood and hill, smothering the last of the sun. In the smaller sitting room, another light leaped into being, an ice-blue flame that crackled and danced over coals that glittered like crystal. On the floor, the circle took fire in a hissing trail that swept around the perimeter at thought-speed. The witch stood outside it, close to the hearth. Her dress was white, sewn with sequins or mirror chips that flung back the wereglow in tiny darts of light. But her hair was shadow-black, and her eyes held more Night than all the dark beyond the curtains.
Dibbuck crouched in the passage, watching the flicker beneath the door. He heard her voice chanting, sometimes harsh, sometimes soft and sweet as the whisper of a June breeze. He could feel the slow buildup of the magic in the room beyond, the pull of power carefully dammed. The tongue of light from under the door licked across the floorboards, roving from side to side as though seeking him out. He cowered against the wall, shivering, afraid to stay, unable to run. He did not fear the dark, but the Night that loomed over him now seemed bottomless as the Pit; he could not imagine reaching another dawn. Within the room the chant swelled: the woman’s voice was full of echoes, as if the thin entities of air and shadow had added their hunger to hers. There was a whoosh, as of rushing flame, and the door flew open.
The wereglow sliced down the passage like a blade, missing the goblin by inches. It cut a path through the darkness, a band of white radiance brighter than full moonlight, stretching down the stair and beyond, piercing the very heart of the house. And then Dibbuck heard the summons, though it was in a language he did not understand, felt it reaching out, along the path, tugging at him, drawing him in. He pulled his large ears forward, flattening them against his skull with clutching hands, shutting out all sound. But still he could sense the compulsion dragging at his feet, and he dug his many toes into crevices in the wood and wrenched a splinter from the wainscoting, driving it through his own instep, pinning himself to the floor with a mumbled word that might have been flimsy goblin magic or a snatch of godless prayer. He had closed his eyes, but when his ears were covered he reopened them. And he knew that if he endured another thousand years, he would never forget what he saw.
There was a mist pouring past him along the beam of light—a mist of dim shapes, formless as amoebas, empty faces with half-forgotten features, filmy hands wavering like starfish, floating shreds of clothing and hair. Even though his ears were blocked he seemed to hear a buzzing in his head, as if far-off cries of desperation and despair had been reduced to little more than the chittering of insects. He wanted to listen, but he dared not lest he respond to the summons and lose himself in that incorporeal tide. He saw the topless torso of Sir William grasping his own head by its wispy locks: the eyes met his for an instant in a fierce, helpless stare. He glimpsed the tonsure of a priest slain in the Civil War; a coachman’s curling whip and flapping greatcoat; the swollen belly of a housemaid impregnated by her master. And among them the fluid gleam of water sprites and the small shadowy beings who had lived for centuries under brick or stone, now no longer able to remember what they were or who they had once been. Even the imp from the oven was there, trailing in the rear, clutching in vain at the door frame until he was wrenched into the vortex of the spell.
When the stream of phantoms had finally passed, Dibbuck plucked out the splinter and limped forward, still blocking his ears, until he could just see into the room. The pain in his foot went unregarded as he watched what followed, too petrified even to shiver. Within the circle, the ghosts were drawn into a whirling, shuddering tornado, a pillar that climbed from floor to ceiling, bending this way and that as the spirits within struggled to escape. Distorted features spun around the outside—writhing lips, stretching eyes. The witch stood on the periphery with her arms outspread, as if she held the very substance of the air in her hands. The spell soared to a crescendo; the tornado spun into a blur. Then the chant
stopped on a single word, imperative as fate: “Uvalé!” And again: “Uvalé néan-charne!” Blue lightning ripped upward, searing through the pillar. There was a crack that shook the room, and inside the circle the floor opened.
The swirl of ghosts was sucked down as if by an enormous vacuum, vanishing into the hole with horrifying speed. The goblin caught one final glimpse of Sir William, losing hold of his head for the first time since his death, his mouth a gape of absolute terror. Then he was gone. What lay below Dibbuck could not see, save that it was altogether dark. The last phantom drained away; the circle was empty. At a word from the witch, the crack closed. On the far side of the room he registered the presence of Nehemet, sitting bolt upright like an Egyptian statue; the light of the spellfire shone balefully in her slanted eyes. Slowly, one step at a time, he inched backward. Then he began to run.
“We missed one,” said the woman. “One spying, prying little rat. I do not tolerate spies. Find him.”
The cat sprang.
But Dibbuck had grown adept at running and dodging of late, and he was fast. The injury to his foot was insubstantial as his flesh; it hurt but hardly hindered him. He fled with a curious hobbling gait down the twisting stairs and along the maze of corridors, through doors both open and shut, over shadow and under shadow. Nehemet might have been swifter, but her solidity hampered her, and at the main door she had to stop, mewing savagely and scratching at the panels. Outside, Dibbuck was still running. He did not hesitate or look back. Through the Wrokewood he ran and up Farsee Hill, and in the shelter of three trees he halted to rest, hoping that in this place his wild cousins of long ago might have some power to keep him from pursuit.