Advent

  Murder is done already.

  ‘She lies unhallowed in the snow outside. My servant broke her neck. That will be your inheritance from her. You and she will rot together. Do you understand me?’

  In place of the gruesome fear, a new feeling began to spread through him. Anger, hard as the frozen ground.

  ‘Unlock the door now or die.’

  So Miss Grey was dead. He’d known it, somehow. In a way it was better than thinking of her leaving him by choice. She’d known she was going to die. She’d come to say her goodbyes.

  The prophetess. Well then. Dead and gone she might be, but she’d left him with a prophecy. She’d given him a future. So he wasn’t going to let himself be hunted down by the horrible thing that boasted of killing her. No matter how exhausted and cornered he was, he wasn’t going to let it happen.

  The way out was below him. He’d have a head start if he hurried.

  The handle rattled furiously behind him as he manoeuvered his load down the awkward stairs. He heard a screech of inarticulate rage. Footsteps started away. She’d go through the hall, along the passage to the stairs, down and out the front door and round the house to the stables. He guessed he had maybe two minutes. Maybe one.

  Marina’s head jolted against the banister. No time to worry about that. He clumped down to the door, yanked it open and limped as fast as he could through the stable.

  Outside, the light had faded to a deep sullen grey. The snow was turning ghostly. He gulped in the clean air and hesitated a second. He hadn’t quite believed he’d ever see the outside world again, but he’d done it, he was out, he’d got her out. He’d never got as far as thinking about what to do next. It was easy, though, because there was only one thing to do. Keep running. Keep running. Not uphill: his legs wouldn’t make it. Not into the woods: he’d never be able to work through the tangle of wild rhododendron with Marina slung over his shoulder. Down, then.

  . . . her to the river . . .

  He pitched himself forward and ran.

  He ran under the long windows of the hall, the oak and beech crowns arching above, almost touching its parapets. His lungs felt like they were on fire, but what did pain matter now? Truth hurts. He reached a corner of the building. Out beyond the sloping field of unblemished snow and the lower woods he saw the coming night, the eastern horizon turning black as his dreams. He loped down the virgin field in long disjointed strides, battling the weight that threatened to tip him forward each time he planted a foot. It was desperately slow, but the wood was desperately close; he saw the opening in the trees marking the path Marina had led him along.

  There was a furious cry behind him. He faced the smothered dusk and made himself go faster, though the strain cost him tears of agony. Beyond and below was the river. If he could only get her that far he could die in peace. He thought he heard a different voice shouting from the house. It might have been her father’s. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered at all except staying upright until his legs gave way. The cleft in the trees came closer even as the deep snow clutched and dragged at his heels. Twice, three times, he stumbled badly and had to jam the staff ahead of him to brace against a fall, screeching at the pain that shot through his arms. The darkness under the trees beckoned him on like sanctuary. Someone was shouting Marina’s name, but if he stopped he’d be caught. He tumbled in under the branches. The path through the old wood stretched ahead of him. Another entrance reached and they hadn’t got him yet. He risked a look over his shoulder.

  For an instant the scene was perfectly still, as if winter had frozen them all. A silhouette was framed in the window of the corner room, looking out, the unmistakable tall wild-haired outline of Tristram Uren. Another silhouette was outlined against the snowfield, descending clumsily after Gawain: the thing that had once been Aunt Gwen. She’d struggled a little way down from the house but had gained no ground on him in the heavy snow, and now stood, arms wide.

  Her hands lifted slowly to the sky.

  The shout chilled Gawain to the heart. Not a scream of anger or frustration, this time; no empty threat. Its three words held no meaning he knew and yet somehow he understood them immediately for a summons.

  With a stab of terror he knew she was bringing the black dog.

  Two miles or so to the south, an elderly couple looked out of the picture window of a bungalow towards a stony beach.

  The husband said, ‘Don’t much like the look of that.’

  He took off his glasses to wipe them on his sweater and replaced them, studying the thing that had washed up on the shore.

  ‘Don’t do that, George. It only makes them worse. Do you recognise her?’ The wife, whose eyesight was (to her good fortune) worse, nosed closer to the glass. ‘Should we call the lifeboat?’

  ‘Bit late now,’ the husband sniffed.

  The bungalow was one of a shabby row on a low rise overlooking the beach, testament to a species of seaside holiday that was already nearing extinction when they’d been built. The tide, turned now to the ebb, had exposed a grey rim at the edge of the crescent of snow. A battered sailing dinghy was tilted at a forlorn angle on the stones, its creased white sail shuddering weakly.

  ‘Dan Frye’s boat,’ the man said. His wife tutted as if the name itself was unlucky.

  ‘Oh dear.’ She peered again. ‘Are you sure? I don’t know how you can see anything, it’s almost dark.’

  ‘You know you can’t see anything. Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘Dear me. Poor old fellow. Isn’t he the one who—’

  ‘Always took his boat out, in all weather.’

  ‘But wasn’t it because he . . . Oh you know, George. He went a bit mad. That chap. His wife left him because of it. Myrtle knows her. She—’

  ‘Hello,’ the man interrupted, cupping a hand over his eyes against the glass of the window. ‘Look at that old fellow.’

  ‘Look at what?’

  ‘There.’ He pointed. ‘Look at the size of him. He must be half a wolf.’

  The wife nudged against him. ‘Is that a dog?’

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t just put your specs on.’

  ‘It can’t be out by itself in this weather? Honestly, some people. The poor old chap must be half dead with— Oh! I see him! He is a big . . .’

  A huge coal-black creature had come padding with eerie purposefulness over the shingle at the very edge of the sea. The reason the wife hadn’t finished her sentence was that she’d noticed its eyes.

  It was impossible not to. Against the uniform grey of sea and sky, they shone like beacon fires.

  ‘What on earth . . . ?’

  The massive dog stalked closer, its blunt wedge of a head lowered slightly as if to follow a scent. It never stopped, looked around, fidgeted. There was nothing animal about it except its brute form. It loped up to the dinghy and sprang inside it. They lost sight of it behind the sail, but heard a violent clatter as it began to ransack the hull.

  ‘George?’

  The black dog emerged with a small, grey, limp-looking thing in its mouth. For a horrible moment the husband thought it was someone’s foot, as if the beast had found Dan Frye’s corpse down there in the bottom of his boat and torn it to shreds. But when it bounded down onto the pebbly strand and released the object, he saw it was just a shoe.

  The dog bent down, turned it over with its nose, sniffed it.

  It bared its teeth.

  The man clutched at his heart as flame spewed over the beast’s jaws. Its lips curled back, back, releasing rivulets of ghastly fire, and then it snarled and lunged. He fell. He didn’t see the dog stab one paw into the shoe and rip it apart, shred it, snap wildly at the fragments it tossed in the air, shake and claw them again. The last thing he heard before the veil closed his ears and eyes and everything was its gigantic, dismal howl.

  Everyone in the village heard it too, whatever they were doing – everyday things, ordinary things, things they’d later look back on with a helpless nostalgia, as one looks back from the far
side of a catastrophe on the vanished happiness that preceded it and wonders how one forgot to notice how happy it was – and stopped. Some of them knew it at once, instinctively, for what it was: a black portent, a warning siren.

  The howl was all the valediction drowned Dan Frye received. The sea-creatures he had longed to see again – longed unbearably, incurably – had not even noticed him as he threw himself overboard and sank, nor had they helped his empty boat to shore. Only the tide and a faint wind had washed it up, Gawain’s shoes still tucked in the bows.

  The dog was staring over the water that had a second time denied it its prey when it heard its master’s last summons. At once it turned to the north and began to run, vanishing with deadly speed into the gathering dark.

  Thirty-one

  When he reached the spot where the path crossed the streamlet and divided, Gawain made the mistake of stopping. It was only for a second, but a second was long enough. The burning muscles in his legs cramped up. He collapsed into muddy snow, howling, Marina pitching off his shoulder and sprawling uselessly beside him. When he could move again, he hauled the dead weight back towards him. Spasms of excruciating pain shot through his legs, but he couldn’t stop: the dog was coming, and this time its command would be to kill him as Holly’s had been to fetch him, and no word of his would hold it back. He made a couple of agonising attempts to lift Marina again. Both times his legs tightened to iron and then gave way. ‘Jesus, Marina,’ he whispered fiercely, ‘can’t you . . . just’ – he heaved again – ‘wake’ – another heave – ‘up?’ No good. On all fours, bare hands and feet deep in the icy slush, he shifted her until she was slung over his back like a sodden pink sack, but that was the most he could manage.

  The darkness was closing in. He remembered Marina telling him the downhill path led to the river, but he couldn’t see anything that way. It couldn’t be far, but the best he could manage now was an aching crawl, and the hunter was coming. Swift as the wind.

  The other path led up to the chapel, to the well that had saved him and his mother.

  He thought of how one mouthful of its water had cleared the pain away before. He had another idea too. There was no way of knowing whether it would work, but the chapel wasn’t too far, and the racking pains shooting through his calves and thighs told him he wasn’t going to make it much further the way he was.

  He shuffled his back and pulled Marina’s arms round his neck, gripping them tight with one arm. The other hand held the rowan staff. He bent his forearm, propped himself on it, gritted his teeth and forced himself to crawl up the slope.

  Up and on, over the gentle crest, towards the hollow where the chapel was, trying not to think of his pursuers, one slow but remorseless, one deadly quick. Beneath the layer of snow the flints and roots shredded his shirt and trousers. He looked like a tortoise struggling under a dirty pink and blonde shell. Not far, he kept telling himself, expecting at every moment to hear the howl that would mean he’d failed, he was dead. Not far. The last steep little slope, where he’d once watched Marina scramble unthinkingly towards her capture, was an unspeakable torture, but he managed it. The ancient building appeared in the gloom. He scraped and gasped his way through the straggly hollies and found the door still open.

  He dragged himself to the edge of the pool and with a final heave of his shoulders tipped Marina off his back. It was all but pitch black inside, and utterly silent beyond the heaving rattle of his breath. He reached down and cupped water into his mouth.

  He often thought later that if he could have bottled one instant of his life to keep for ever that would have been it, despite the hammering terror and the desperate ignorance. The pain washed out of his legs and arms as if it had been no more than dust, rinsed away. Where I began, he thought, and for a blissful moment he felt like he’d sloughed off his aching and scratched and battered skin and emerged new-born, pristine.

  It was only a moment. There was no time. He grabbed Marina and turned her over until her head dangled over the stone lip. ‘Last chance,’ he muttered. He was still breathing hard; even the effort of kneeling up beside her made him suck air. ‘If y’don’t . . . wake up . . . now’ – he reached down to the pool – ‘I’m . . . leaving you . . . here.’ He tipped her head up and splashed the handful of water into her mouth.

  He’d become so used to the sprawled, awkward weight of her that he almost dropped her head when it twitched in his hands.

  He knelt closer, whispering urgently, ‘That’s right. Wake up.’ There was no time. The dog was coming, there was no time. ‘Come on. Come on.’ He scooped another trickling fistful between her lips. She quivered again. ‘Got to drink some.’ He cradled her head in the crook of his elbow. She squirmed reluctantly. He guided his cupped palm to her mouth. ‘Drink up.’ He tipped the water onto her tongue. ‘Do you good. There you go.’ He felt her swallow. ‘And another . . . There.’

  At the third mouthful she spasmed like a struggling animal. He held on, waited for her to relax. Her head turned, and though it was too dim to see her face he was sure her eyes had opened.

  ‘Mummy?’

  It was the small clear voice he remembered.

  ‘Marina!’

  ‘Hello,’ she said. She hadn’t moved. She seemed suddenly quite comfortable, propped against him. ‘I think I might be asleep.’

  ‘Marina. We need to go. Right now.’ But he couldn’t let go of her. It would have been like dropping a baby.

  ‘You aren’t my mother, are you.’

  ‘Jesus.’ He straightened and felt the gnaw of frustration as she adjusted herself to settle back against his arm. ‘No you don’t. Come on. Get up.’ The seconds were ticking away.

  ‘I don’t want to, I’m comfy.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ Her head dropped back with a squeak of indignant surprise. ‘Stand up. Now.’ He tugged her upright with him. She wobbled, clutching his arm.

  ‘Wait. What . . .’ The sleepiness had gone, replaced by anxious alarm. ‘Where—’

  He took advantage of her hands on his arm to pull her towards the threshold. ‘Just come with me. Fuck’s sake, hurry!’

  He drew her out into the scraps and shreds of dying light. She stumbled next to him, looking around in confusion.

  ‘This is the chapel,’ she said, sounding more and more panicky. ‘And you’re . . . you’re—’

  He held her shoulders to make her look straight at him. Her sallow, beaky face had lost all its elfin animation. She was deeply frightened.

  ‘Marina, listen. You have to come with me. OK? Now. Fast.’

  ‘But what—’

  ‘Now!’ He tugged her and set off down the path, clinging fiercely to her wrist as if she was a child having a tantrum.

  ‘Gavin? What’s— Ow! Stop! What’s happening?’

  ‘Can’t stop to explain. We have to get away.’

  ‘Away?’

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘But— no, stop!’ She planted her feet and tried to hold him back. He was stronger. ‘Ow!’ she yelped again, pitching forward behind him.

  ‘Just come on.’

  ‘Ow, no!’

  ‘Yes, Marina, yes.’

  ‘What about— No! Stop! Daddy!’

  They were slipping together down the steep incline. He wished she’d be quieter. He wished she’d hurry. He had the prickling, shivering, distracting certainty that something was coming closer. They’d been far too slow already. They’d never had a chance. The hunter was almost on them.

  ‘Come on!’ he urged, and his tone was almost as panicky as hers.

  ‘I can’t leave Daddy! He was crying!’

  ‘We have to. Please, just—’

  ‘No. No! Caleb disappeared and then she . . . she . . .’

  She was slowing him down. He was too tired to battle her, too weak to drag her along. ‘We’ll go back afterwards,’ he said. He was seeing black shadows everywhere in the deep darkness under the trees, closing in. ‘We’ve just got to—’

  ‘Afterwards?
After what?’

  ‘We have to get you away.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Down to the river. Quick! For fuck’s sake, please, hurry!’

  ‘The . . . No! I can’t! Stop!’ Her voice rose to a shriek, and she tried with both hands to haul him back. ‘I’ll die!’

  ‘Marina—’

  ‘Not like winter. I won’t come back. I’ll die properly. For ever!’

  ‘Marina!’ He whirled round. They had passed the dip in the path and stood at the top of the long slope that descended to the river. ‘I swear, if we don’t hurry up, right now, we’ll both be dead in five minutes. OK?’ And without loosening his grip on her wrist he turned back down the path; but they didn’t have five minutes, after all. They didn’t have one.

  They had no time at all, none.

  The black dog was there, standing on the bridge. Its eyes were two dying stars in the near-night of the wood.

  Too late, Gawain thought to himself, with a strangely empty sigh. Oh well. I almost made it.

  It growled like distant thunder and stepped towards them.

  My death.

  To his surprise, he found himself thinking of the promise he’d made his mother. Not his mother. Iz. The one he hadn’t meant to make until he said it. Telling her he’d come back some day and find her. How long would she hang on to that promise? When, he wondered, would she give in and admit to herself that he’d lied to her, that he wasn’t coming back, while he rotted away among the discarded leaves with his neck broken and his throat torn out? Never?

  ‘That’s not a real animal.’ Marina’s voice behind him was a tiny frightened whisper. For a couple of paces the dog trotted, gathering itself. Then it was charging.

  This must be what they mean by one’s life flashing before one’s eyes, Gawain decided, as he released Marina’s wrist and took the rowan staff in both hands. It was as if he was standing to one side of himself, watching himself having these thoughts, his last thoughts, with a curious kind of detachment. It wasn’t that he suddenly remembered everything all at once; it was that the few seconds remaining to him seemed to be happening incredibly slowly, while his mind raced at light speed. How come he had time to find Marina’s remark so comically ridiculous? Not a real animal. Hmm, you think? With fire trailing from its onrushing mouth and the blazing fury in its eyes? No, not exactly the pooch next door. Although given that it’s been sent to kill me, excuse me for not caring too much whether or not it’s a fake. He was swinging the staff up in front of him to make a barrier, though it was perfectly obvious he might as well be trying to stop a cannonball with a chopstick.