Advent

Almost time for emergency-exit procedures. He was pretty confident the stream wasn’t going to throw up anything more about the prof next door. He’d never thought there was much of a story there anyway. It had all been his editor’s idea. Professor H. Lightfoot’s mad as a box of frogs, she got the sack, so what? Feckin’ typical of Vicky to send him off to try and squeeze an interview out of a lunatic.

  He was saved from having to make a run for the door by the ringing of Mrs Pascoe’s phone. Spotting his chance, J.P. Moss set down the saucer and began ostentatious preparations for departure: hand-rubbing, briefcase-packing, the works. He had his coat on and his hat in his hand by the time he realised the call was something to do with his quarry next door.

  ‘Well, this is the terrible thing, you see,’ Mrs Pascoe was saying, making eyes at the phone as if it could transmit some digital impression of immense sorrow. ‘I’ve been trying myself, all day. I’ve tried and tried, oh, I don’t know how many times, but you see, I think she must have unplugged her phone. Poor dear, you can understand it, can’t you – after all the . . . Oh yes. All right. Yes, all right, Mrs Jia – you needn’t worry. I’ll get a message to her.’ She nodded meaningfully towards J.P., or at least he supposed it was meant to be meaningful. ‘Yes, of course . . . No. No one could possibly expect you to be there in this dreadful weather. Dreadful! You think of the money they pay those weathergirls on the telly nowadays. Honestly I don’t know what’s happened to the BBC, I really don’t . . . No. Shocking. Ever since that lovely old fellow retired, what was his name, you know the chap, he always used to wear those cardigans . . . Oh. Yes. All right then, Mrs Jia. Yes, I’ll take care of everything . . . Yes . . . Goodbye, then. Bye. That’s Mrs Jia from next door.’ The flow changed course from the phone to J.P. without interruption. ‘Such a dear. Chinese, you know. I can’t think how she manages. She called to say she’s stuck in Falmouth and won’t be able to come to Hester’s house this afternoon. She does some cleaning in the village, it helps her keep body and soul together. I don’t know that Hester needs the help, really, now that she’s . . . Well, anyway, it’s a kindness, isn’t it? Not having the stress of work on top of—’

  ‘It surely is, Mrs Pascoe, it surely is. Can I help at all?’

  Flustered by the interruption, Myrtle Pascoe lost her thread. Her hands groped inexpressively. ‘Oh. Ah. Well, you see, Mrs Jia asked if I could just go over with a note to let Hester know she won’t be coming after all. We’ve all been trying the phone but she must have switched it off. But with my old legs in this snow, you see, I wonder, perhaps . . . if you wouldn’t mind terribly . . .’

  ‘Not at all,’ J.P. said, with his most accommodating smile. ‘Why don’t you just write that note and I’ll pop round and ring the doorbell.’ He was already late for lunch. The pub might well stop serving early in this weather and then he’d be royally buggered. He extracted his notebook from the briefcase, tore a page from it and handed Myrtle a pen. ‘It’d be a pleasure.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Oh yes, now where did I leave my specs? Oh dear . . .’

  J.P. kept the smile in place while she fussed. Concentrate on the bright side, he told himself. His car would be buried and the roads were hopeless anyway. There was every chance he’d be overnighting at the pub. A couple of pints out of his own pocket to get him through the afternoon, and the rest of his bed and board courtesy of that fine organ the Western Cornishman, God bless it.

  He got out of the house without being further delayed by Mrs Pascoe’s increasingly chaotic mix of apologies and farewells. Prodding carefully in the snow, he made his way across the lane to the mad prof’s house. He rapped on the door a few times just in case, but though Mrs Pascoe was far from the most lucid of witnesses, she’d been very clear about the fact that she’d seen her neighbour heading off out of town before the blizzard arrived. There couldn’t be any chance now that she’d have made it back. She’d be hiding out somewhere warm and dry if she had any sense at all. Just like he should be.

  He poked the letterbox open and slotted in the piece of paper. It occurred to him that he couldn’t remember repacking his notebook after tearing the page off for the old baggage’s message, but the very last thing he was going to do was expose himself to another ten minutes of the Pascoe Monologues. He’d go back later if he had to. After he’d fortified himself with a couple of rounds of something a lot stronger than her abomination of the name of tea. Though thankfully that wind had let up. At least a fellow could see where he was going now.

  The pub turned out to be more or less empty, which meant he could pick his spot by the blissfully authentic fire. He was just about dry and relaxed and content when a tinny rendition of the Darth Vader march struck up inside his briefcase.

  The boss. He dug out his mobile, giving it a doleful stare before answering.

  ‘Your wish is my command,’ he said into the phone, and then a moment later, ‘Ah, I felt sure you would, Victoria my dear. So what have you got for me?’ He listened for quite a while and then began miming eye-rolling despair in the direction of the ceiling. ‘Well now,’ he told the phone, ‘it is indeed not too far, but there’s the small matter of the Helford River between here and there. Plus, as your finely honed editorial instincts will have noted, there’s a feckin’ blizzard out there.’ More listening, with his eyebrows raised. ‘Of course, send it along. I’ll take a look . . . Is it? . . . Sorry, run this past me again. What is this fellow saying? . . . Right. And how drunk was he at the time? . . . Yes, yes, all right. So since we can’t find lunatic number one, this bloke will do as a back-up, is that it?’ Ah, humour. He ought to know better by now. He sighed while the phone chattered crossly, wondering what terrible childhood accident had got the broom handle wedged so far up Miss Victoria’s backside that she made even average everyday English uptightness seem positively mellow. ‘All right . . . Yes, I’ll have a look at it and then see if I can track the fellow down.’ Right after the steak and ale pie, that is. ‘Send it along. I’ll let you know.’

  He snapped the phone shut and took a moody swig from his pint. As promised, the phone beeped again, this time with the chime that indicated the arrival of a message. He flicked the tiny screen up and watched the photo assemble itself. All right, he thought wearily. Let’s have a look at whatever’s got Vicky straining at her lead. There’s a path and some trees – that’s all clear enough – and someone standing on the path, a young fellow it looks like, back to the camera. And the other thing, the thing the young fellow’s facing, is . . .

  Is . . .

  He cradled the phone and bent over it, then shifted a couple of seats along so that he was next to a lamp at the end of the bar. He stared at the tiny image for a long time.

  The black shape stared back at him until he could no longer bear its gaze. He turned the phone face down onto the counter of the bar, his hands shaking.

  Struggling down a track of virgin snow, Horace tried to push every idea out of his head except one: getting home to his mother.

  Other thoughts kept trying to break in, terrible ones. Mum would make them go away. Mum would sort everything out.

  He went as fast as he could, but it was hard going, even for him. Trying to run through the deep snow was like wading in chest-deep water. Still, at least he was going downhill now, and at least he knew the way. When he’d come round, he’d had no idea at all where he was, except that someone had knocked him out and tossed him in the back of a car. He’d lain very still for a long time, afraid to move. When nothing happened, he began lifting his head just inches at a time, listening hard, and that was how he saw that other kid slumped in the front seat. It looked like he was dead. Through the gap between the seats he could see bare feet like a corpse’s.

  He knew right then he had to get away. He couldn’t remember what was going on, but he knew it was crazy and bad and he had to get out of it. He slithered along the back seat and reached for the door. He noticed he was covered in the cloak thing, which meant that bit at least couldn’t h
ave been a dream, but forget all that, he told himself, forget all that, just get out of here. Leg it.

  The door had opened with a scrape of dislodged snow. He tipped himself out almost soundlessly. He was groggy with cold and confusion and his head throbbed but he still knew how to move without making much noise, especially now he was escaping from kidnappers. It was a conspiracy, he remembered that much. He wasn’t worried about what Mum would say any more. She’d just be glad to have him home. He wrapped the cloak around him once he was out of the car. As he fastened it round his neck he touched a silver chain. The thing he’d taken from the angel’s dead hand, the ring on its chain, it was still tucked inside his jumper. So some of that hadn’t been dreams either, though they couldn’t have been anything else. The snow made everything confusing. It fell straight and soft, like static in the air. Forget it. Get going. None of it could be right. Mum would sort it all out.

  But which way was home? The car he’d just crawled out of had crashed into a hedge. Made sense. That kid had kidnapped him, crashed in the snow, killed himself. And thank God he’d crashed at a junction because there was a signpost and Horace had been able to work out where he was.

  He pressed on faster, down the clogged road.

  He made it to the village at last. No one was about. His boat was still there, right where he’d left it. The sight of it almost made him feel himself again. It sat on the whitened shingle, tilted over. The rising tide was maybe ten minutes away from tickling its stern. He jogged down towards the bridge and the mouth of the stream. The screen of snow was by now not quite thick enough to hide the opposite shore. He could just about see the moored boats, the pub, the ferry landing. Long familiarity with the tides told him it was around two in the afternoon, give or take an hour. He was nearly away. Whoever or whatever had done this to him, he’d almost escaped them. Forget about all of it, he told himself. Forget about ever bothering with that freaky place again.

  He was kneeling on the foreshore, scooping armfuls of snow out of his boat, when a guttural howl ripped through the air.

  In that one moment Horace’s tenuous determination blew away like dust. He looked wildly around the harbour. Up on the road above he caught a glimpse of a blurry black shape, moving. That was enough to set him heaving and dragging the boat down the few feet towards open water, gasping, swearing. His bladder loosened and soaked his crotch. The hull scraped the stones with a noise like grinding teeth, and the howl answered, closer. His hands shuddered and slipped and his legs lost their footing, but terror also gave him a frantic strength and at last he forced the stern into the shallows. He splashed after it, pushed and ran until he was knee-deep in the river and flung himself into the boat. His relief at discovering he’d forgotten to lock the outboard was so intense he almost fainted. His hands were shaking like a drunkard’s, but it was only a moment’s work to fumble out the pin and tip the propeller down into the water.

  His head swivelled madly from the outboard to the foreshore and back again. Tears stung his eyes; he couldn’t see properly. The terror was like a living thing inside him, a squirming maggoty knot. He managed to get hold of the throttle and twist it, but the handle of the starter cord kept slipping out of his grasp. He swore in a constant choked whisper, keening in agonised frustration each time his fingers failed him. On the fourth or fifth attempt, he got his fist around it. He yanked.

  There wasn’t even the slightest cough from the motor.

  He pulled the starter again, ferociously, and then again, so hard that his hand flew free and he lost his footing. The boat yawed wildly. He got up on his knees, shaking snow off his face, and saw a black stain spotted with firelight on the bridge above the mouth of the stream.

  Hope, desperation, everything, drained out of him. His face was smeared with tears as he crawled back to the outboard. He hunched over it as if it held the world’s last warmth. Pulling the starter again and again, he looked back at the shore, and whispered, ‘Please,’ a pinched and dry whisper, as if the jaws were already closing on his throat. ‘Please. Please.’ But the outboard was silent. Something was wrong with it, it had died completely. He heard the scrunch of pebbles. The blackness had taken shape. He watched its burning eyes, and its unhurried steps, standing out against the snow. He wanted not to look at it, but it was impossible. The boat was drifting serenely, held near the shore by the tide. Horace imagined jumping into the river and swimming, or screaming at the silent village for help, or heaving the outboard off its hinge and using it to club the dog, but he did none of those things. His will had forsaken him; he was powerless as a baby.

  The dog came down to the edge of the water.

  Its lips twisted into a snarl. Fiery saliva flowed over them, spilled, slicked on the surface of the river. It stared, measuring the distance for its leap. Then it paced backwards, steadily, deliberately. Its hind legs tensed and began to quiver. The boat was drifting further away from the shore. The dog sidled after it, keeping the shortest distance, and pawed at the snow for a better grip on the shingle beneath. It coiled and crouched.

  But the boat’s idle drift had become a steady impulse. Smoothly, without current or engine or paddle, it was sliding out into the harbour, among the empty buoys and the few tethered vessels, carrying its shaking, weeping cargo towards the open river. The dog skittered forward, but the gap had become too wide and it pulled up short as it reached the water. It hesitated, then dashed into the river, only to stop again when it was up to its chin. Now Horace’s boat was gliding soundlessly away, a widening arrowhead of silver ripples in its trail. Already it had passed the moorings. Daring to lift his head, Horace slowly released his death grip on the useless engine.

  The dog shook itself as it came out of the river. It stared after the boat and then planted its feet, threw up its head and with a gush of oily flame from its mouth howled its thwarted rage.

  There were neat indentations in the white plain outside the car. Gawain crouched to examine them. Fat flakes tumbled down noiselessly, already eroding the traces of Horace’s passage. He didn’t know how long he’d slept. The kid had vanished as quietly as if he’d never been there, leaving only the line of small vacancies. Gawain’s dream shimmered behind the white landscape, like a mirage. Waking up hadn’t banished it. He felt half asleep still, not sure which of the things he thought he remembered might also have only happened in his sleep. Only the lingering soreness in his shoulder confirmed that he’d actually carried Horace to this directionless crossroads. Now the kid was—

  Lost in whiteness.

  The words appeared inside him as if spoken by another voice. In his dream there’d been a voice at his ear, invisible. Miss Grey.

  But Miss Grey was gone, wasn’t she?

  Lost in whiteness. You will bear it on your back.

  What was the voice talking about?

  You will lose it.

  He put his hands over his ears. There was no one there. No one was talking to him. Miss Grey had never whispered over his shoulder.

  Then, startlingly, he did hear something. The crunch and squeeze of footsteps in deep snow. He stood up, alarmed, remembering all of a sudden that he had an enemy.

  A thickly wrapped figure was struggling up to the crossroads from the south. Gawain was about to duck out of sight behind the high snowbank piled against the car when it stopped for breath, raised its head and saw him. Gloved hands reached to wipe snow from its glasses, then pulled down the scarf wrapped over the lower half of its face.

  ‘Gavin?’ it said.

  The combination of mildly perplexed voice and squinting scrutiny jogged Gawain’s memory: Owen Jeffrey, the priest, the first person he’d seen at Pendurra, unless you counted Marina disguised as a corpse.

  It was just the two of them, the white nothing all around. Gav thought he could still smell the pines, soft bark rich with rot.

  ‘Not really,’ he answered.

  Padded in layers of clothing, Owen waddled up to him like an outsized toddler. His eyes travelled down to Gav’s roll
ed-up trouser legs and bare feet, then back to his face. He frowned thoughtfully, as if an interesting possibility had just occurred to him.

  ‘You’re not God,’ he asked, ‘are you?’

  ‘No.’

  The priest shrugged, apparently a little deflated. ‘Oh well.’

  Gawain waited for him to go away. Owen was peculiarly passive, though. There was that inexplicable tranquillity about him that occasionally comes over mad people.

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ he began after a moment, ‘you’d be able to explain’ – his cocooned arms spread – ‘this?’

  ‘No,’ Gav repeated, and then, seeing the wrinkle of disappointment, ‘Sorry.’

  Owen looked up. The snow went on around them, quietly relentless.

  ‘Do you know what the word “apocalypse” actually means?’

  ‘No,’ Gav said a third time. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘It’s Greek. It means “unveiling”. Literally, taking a cover away. Lifting the lid. That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?’

  Gav thought about what was happening. ‘I’m getting cold,’ he said.

  Owen’s eyes refocused. ‘Oh yes. Sorry. Is this . . .’ He waved at the car. ‘Have you been . . .’

  Gawain stepped round to its sheltered side. If he closed his eyes for even a moment, if he so much as blinked, he could feel the atmosphere of the ocean-fringed forest. He was light-headed with exhaustion and cold and something else, something that had scooped him out hollow inside and unmoored him from the world.

  ‘I came up past here this morning,’ Owen said, as Gawain climbed in the back seat. He spoke in a mildly conversational tone, as if neither of them should be at all surprised to see the other, as if nothing had particularly changed since their first encounter. ‘On my way to . . . Ahh. There.’

  Gav folded his arms and tucked his chin down. The priest leaned on the open door, looking around irresolutely.

  ‘I got as far as the gate. This morning. I just thought I’d stop in and let them know what . . . Anyway, I looked in the gate, you see. Where. It.’