“I don’t remember how far I walked but I’ve worked out since that it must have been just over a mile. The tunnel led from the manor house to an old ice house in the garden of Parkland Hall.”
Karl looked intrigued. “Does anyone else know this tunnel is there?”
“No one has ever mentioned it. I don’t know whether it was an escape route in the Reformation or the Civil War, or something much older. Meanwhile my sisters had opened the door and found that I’d vanished, and they were so alarmed they fetched my aunt. They got into terrible trouble for what they’d done, of course. When I reappeared I was scolded too, because I refused to tell anyone how I’d escaped. That’s why I’m sure Aunt Elizabeth doesn’t know about the passageway. I don’t know why I was so stubborn about it; except that it was my secret, and keeping it was the only revenge I could take.”
Karl was looking into the fire, thoughtful, his face half in shadow. “So you never told anyone. Can you find this tunnel again?”
“I hope so. If we could slip away so no one knows we’ve gone… “
“Now I understand why you ran down into the cellar when I had frightened you so badly. You were going to escape.”
“Not consciously, but I suppose it was half in my mind.”
“You are still free to go whenever you wish,” he said.
Charlotte looked down. “Don’t, Karl. I’ve made up my mind.”
His voice was grave, sad. “And by giving you the choice I have made things even harder for you. If I’d kept you prisoner, the responsibility would have been mine alone. Instead you have had to make a decision that you feel to be wrong, and to bear the guilt for it.”
A thin, hard trickle of coldness went through her. “That’s true. But if I took no responsibility for this at all, I’d be deceiving myself.”
“That’s a very brave admission.” She looked at him; she had never seen him look so serious. “We should go soon, while we have the cover of darkness and most of the night to escape,” he said. Yet he did not move, only went on gazing at the flames.
“What are you thinking?”
He gave a slight shake of his head, met her eyes. “That I would rather brave your brother and the police than the cellar.”
“Why?” she exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid, I won’t believe it!”
“Did I ever say that I don’t feel fear?” he said with a touch of self-mockery. “The atmosphere you described in the cellar—I sensed it too, both times I was there. You say you felt nothing evil in it, Charlotte—but I did.”
His words froze her. Suddenly she was very aware of the ancient house that contained them, its silence and shadows. She said, “The first time I really spoke to you was in the cellar, do you remember?”
“Of course.” His eyes were warm.
“We talked about ghosts, then you said we should go back upstairs because it was cold… “
“I was not being considerate. Something down there disturbed me. It still does. But I won’t be stopped by what is probably only some remnant of human superstition.”
“No, don’t dismiss it.” An old pain was surfacing inside her but she let it rise, let the words come. “I believe that events can imprint themselves on a place forever. My mother… my mother died giving birth to Madeleine. Sometimes at night I can still hear the echo of it—as if the screams have stopped but the air’s still ringing with them.”
Karl was silent for a moment; watching her, his eyes dark and intent. Then he said, “Yet you don’t fear your mother’s spirit.”
“They are two different things! Her pain is not her self. The pain is not a ghost.”
“Still a terrible thing of which to be aware.”
“Yes. And yet even that doesn’t really frighten me.”
“You are extraordinary, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “Just when I think I have understood you, there is another twist. To be sensitive to pain and death yet not to be frightened. What is it you feel?”
She felt defensive then, almost a touch of anger. “I know I’m strange, that I don’t react as people think I ought to. To be in such pain and only to be released from it by death—it makes me feel a kind of awe. It stops me breathing. I want to touch it… “
“Not to turn away?”
“No. To understand.” She sat pinned against the upright chair back, found herself shaking. “Perhaps it’s all in my imagination; I was less than two years old when she died, and I don’t know how much is memory and how much imagination. But I feel very close to my mother. I talk to her and she listens. She is everything I’m not.”
“You don’t think,” said Karl, leaning forward, “that what you are communing with is simply an idealised version of yourself?” Charlotte jumped up, suddenly rigid with indignation. “How dare you say that? You don’t know anything about it, you’ve no right to make such judgements.”
He reached out and took her wrist, stroked his thumb over her pulse. “Forgive me, I went too far. But, my dear, it is not your fault that she died, that your father could not accept it. You should not feel guilty for not being her. In trying to please your father and your family you have lost sight of your self. When they attack you, you cannot defend yourself, because you see no self to defend. People love Madeleine because she believes she’s worthy of it. But you are just as worthy, you have just as much right to consideration and respect—not only from others but from yourself. Do you believe what I am saying?”
She looked at him. He sounded so earnest, so purely human, that the knowledge of what he was—the incongruity of the two—slid through her like ice. Her friend, her lover; yet also a ruthless creature that fed on life… She knelt down, leaned across his knees, felt his hand stroking her hair. “I’m frightened to be myself, Karl.”
“You cannot let the patterns of your childhood poison your whole life.”
“It’s not that. Father thinks I’m some kind of angel; my sisters and aunt think I’m just a mouse. But inside I’m neither of those. That’s why I’m shy, why I hide from everyone. I am scared of what I really am. I am a bad person, Karl. The fact that I’m here with you, doesn’t that prove it?”
***
Pierre lay in the hedgerow where Karl had abandoned him like a toppled mannikin, watching the half-globe of night slide towards morning. The loss of blood had turned his limbs stone-heavy and he was paralysed.
Not once did he lose consciousness; it would have been a blessing, he thought, if vampires had that human weakness. Instead he remained aware of every second dripping into the lake of time, every tiny shift of the stars across an interminable night.
You bastard, Karl. You won’t get away with this. Throw me away as far and as hard as you like and still I will come creeping back…
Now the grass was sheened grey with twilight and he watched tiny beetles struggling and stumbling along the blades; frantically busy, yet desperately slow. A bird began to sing in the hedgerow; he was aware of its bright eyes through the stiff mesh of twigs. Oh, shut up, he thought. You are no use to me.
Pierre began to hallucinate. Revolutionaries were rushing towards him, arms raised, ragged clothes flying. Bandaged necks, they all had bandaged necks. They were dragging him towards the guillotine and he was fighting them, shouting, “I am no aristocrat, you fools, I am one of you… ” But they saw through his words; they knew what he was and that the only way to destroy him was to decapitate him.
He shuddered from head to foot with horror and the figures faded… all except two which kept coming towards him, their necks all wrapped up, and they must be real because he could feel their heat…
Fool, he told himself. These are human beings, not figments of my imagination!
Their heat flowed out before them like a bow-wave as they came along the lane, reaching him long before they did. Relief swelled through him, and with it the lashing, ravenous snake of thirst. Yet he still could not move.
Two boys of about twelve, muffled up in caps and scarves, on their way to school. With all
his strength he forced a groan from his lips and they saw him and came to him.
“Is it a scarecrow?” said one.
“Nah. It’s a tramp. P’robly drunk.”
Scarecrow? Tramp? Don’t they realise how much this overcoat cost? They leaned over him; clouds of breath, sweet with milk. Bright hard eyes, like the bird. Yes, that’s it, come closer…
Pierre pushed the words through his fossilised lips. “Help me… “
“Sounds foreign,” said the second boy. As he reached down, starvation cracked through Pierre like a whip and his arm shot out as if controlled by a primitive brain of its own. Suddenly he was half-sitting up, pulling both children towards him. Tearing a scarf away with his teeth and then, oh then, life flowing hot into his collapsed veins.
While he fed on one boy he held the other to his chest, his grip tightening as his strength returned. It had happened too fast for them even to struggle, though one was letting out faint, high-pitched moans of protest.
As he fed on the second child he found himself sobbing with gratitude, murmuring, “Merci, merci… “ But as his head cleared he pushed them away, appalled at himself for being thankful. He propped them against each other on the grass verge and thought how sweet they looked, a pair of grubby sleeping cherubs.
“Gratitude is so undignified,” he said, regarding them with affection. “But thank you anyway, children.”
Pierre thought they were not quite dead; perhaps they would survive, if someone found them soon. He wasn’t really interested. Turning away, he tried to enter the Crystal Ring.
It was like pushing against a closed door. Nothing there. His usual shimmering awareness of a dimension layered beneath the visible world had gone. It was like losing a sense, being human again, a mole pushing blindly through a tunnel…
It will come back. It always does. But still there was that undercurrent of panic. What if this time it doesn’t?
Nothing for it but to walk. I should have asked them where the hell I am before I breakfasted. He sighed to himself, but as he strode out along the lane his spirits began to improve. It was a cursed nuisance to have to travel like a human, but perhaps he could catch a train. To move among them, to pretend to be one of them, was always pleasant. And by tonight, my dear Karl, I shall return to Parkland.
***
“Dress as warmly as you can,” said Karl, “and bring some food. I think the workmen will have left a flashlight or at least an oil lamp in the kitchen.”
Now the moment had come, Charlotte did not want to leave. Talking to Karl, she had felt more and more at ease with him, bathing in his radiance as she had that night in the study, when she had only wanted to sit with him and listen to the rain… but time, as always, stabbed cold fingers of reality into their refuge.
She glanced out at the black sky streaked with smoky violet. David was waiting out there in the cold, worried sick, his heart aching for Edward and for her. Dear God, what am I doing?
She wrapped herself in the warm brown coat that Elizabeth had sent, trying fiercely to suppress her guilt; trying not to think of anything at all—except finding the way out.
Pulling on a hat and gloves, she followed Karl on to the landing and down the stairs. Lit only by the faint fireglow from the solar, the hall was as dark and fathomless as a cathedral. No longer did this house feel benign to Charlotte; the air was fogged with malevolence, as if the dreaming ghosts imprinted in its walls were beginning to stir into consciousness.
She kept her eyes fixed on Karl’s back as they descended. He looked prepossessing and in complete control; but the ring of their heels on the treads recalled other echoes. David shouting a warning; Edward rushing up the stairs, blindly heroic. The narrow gleaming fire of Karl’s eyes as, silent and ruthless, he tore into Edward’s neck then sent him sprawling down the stairs…
The house had absorbed these events and now screamed them back at Charlotte’s heightened senses.
Strange and terrifying, that her perception of Karl could change so suddenly. He had seemed gentle and protective in the glow of the fire; but this darkness, cold and pain-laden, seemed to strip away his humanity and reclaim him as its own.
In the kitchen, they found a well-fuelled hurricane lamp. “We had better not light it until we are in the cellar,” said Karl, “in case someone sees the light moving across the window.”
Someone outside. Oh God. An image of herself breaking a pane and crying for help… but it was too late for that. She moved stiffly to the cellar door and opened it. The latch felt heavy and clammy, shedding rust on to her fingers. Karl went through and she pulled the door shut behind them.
Blackness enveloped them, thick and stringy as cobwebs. Karl struck a match, and lamplight flared and spilled down the steps.
Where the beam fell, a four-legged shadow slipped across the steps. It no longer seemed cat-like but elongated, sinister. Neither of them commented, but Karl put his hand on her shoulder.
“You’re trembling,” he said. “I thought you weren’t afraid of being here.”
She could not answer. In the lamp glow, against the shadows, he looked so completely what he was. “Shall I go first?” she said. “I think I can remember which way to go.”
“If you feel safe with me following you.” He spoke drily, but as she looked at him, something black as night and thorn-sharp passed between them. Knowledge that if he grew desperate enough for her blood, his word not to harm her might mean nothing, and she would not be able to stop him. He would not be able to stop himself. No, she did not feel safe. This danger had always hovered between them, but something in this place froze it to its stark essence.
She took the lamp from him and began to walk down the steps. A miasma of damp, dirt and mould sucked her in, like stagnant water; chilling, repugnant. She found herself beginning to recite the Lord’s prayer, stopped herself. How dare I ask God to help me?
It did not help that she had been here before. Familiarity only made her more sensitive to the atmosphere, the nuances she’d missed before.
The pillars that arched up into the low roof made the cellar cavernous, labyrinthine. She led Karl through a maze of barrels, jars and ancient storage chests, all coated in centuries of grime and mildew. Shadows leapt and contorted in the lamp beam; rats and insects scuttled unseen over the debris on the floor.
Ghosts, reverberations of pain from a lost time; whatever dwelled in this place, she could feel them all around her. She could feel the wordless whispers flowing from the walls, but now they were imbued with malicious anger. It might have been naïveté that had made her assume they were harmless… But no, she was sure that their mood had changed, that something was drawing their hostility. Have we intruded once too often?
“What are you looking for?” Karl’s voice in the stillness made her jump. “Another door?”
“No, a trap in the floor,” she said raising the lamp. “I thought it was here somewhere. It’s hard to remember.”
“Shall we try there?” Karl pointed into a far corner, where the beam did not fall. It gave her a strange sensation to realise that he could see in the dark. Charlotte pushed on through the murmuring shadows as if through a nest of spiders; holding her breath, her skin crawling.
Suddenly the light spilled over the edge of a hole, half-hidden behind a pillar. The trap door that had once covered it had rotted away.
The steps looked steep and forbidding, the walls slick, mottled, unpitying as an oubliette. How much simpler this had seemed when she was a child. Now she felt gutted by fear. A mile was such a long way, underground. As she hesitated, she felt the light touch of Karl’s hand on her back.
“Go down a little way,” he said. She obeyed, almost losing her footing on the narrow treads. She saved herself, only for the screech of metal on stone to set her heart pounding again.
Karl was hauling a chest across the opening above them to conceal it. The easy strength of the action astonished her, but the sense of being sealed underground was disturbing. Lamplight danced
coldly on the wooden base of the chest and on the narrow walls.
Seeing her worried expression, Karl said, “I can move it again, if we have to come back this way.”
You could… but I couldn’t, she thought. She turned and began to descend as quickly as she dared. The wall felt furry and damp under her hand; there was the sharp scent of earth. Thick cobwebs broke over her fingers. Karl was so quiet behind her that once she turned with a stab of panic, thinking he was no longer there.
“It’s all right,” he said, realising what was wrong. But in the lamplight he looked supernaturally pale, his eyes too intense, too deeply coloured.
The stairs led deep underground, curving at the base into a small, low-roofed chamber. It felt as claustrophobic as a cave; the stonework was crumbling and drifts of soil lay across the floor. The inky mouth of a passageway yawned before them.
Charlotte stopped, her chest so tight she could hardly breathe. Whispers swirled around her like fog, more in her head than in her ears, turning her cold and giddy. So hard to think. Karl seemed calm, but his gaze moved over the walls and the curved ceiling, distracted. No need to ask if he could feel the presence of evil; he seemed electrified by it. More affected than she was… and that was weird, frightening.
Charlotte remembered how she had groped her way along this tunnel, following the left-hand side of the wall. It would be all right. Yes.
Once she had steadied herself, she walked into the tunnel with Karl at her side. The light sketched grainy, dancing shadows on the stone. There was something poised in the air, like a held breath; something flattened into the walls, watching, waiting. Inimical. She wished Karl would say something; yet she knew that to speak would make it worse, like invoking demons.
The passage dipped and rose and meandered, so they could never see far ahead. The air hung thick and clammy as earth. An oddly clotted shadow ahead of them… she halted as the beam illuminated a pile of barrels and planks that lay heaped in their path, blocking the tunnel.
She felt a twinge of dismay, but it passed. She remembered squeezing through a narrow gap, not knowing what the barrier was or whether anything lay beyond.
Freda Warrington - Blood 01 Page 29