by D B Nielsen
‘Tiens! That’s your half hour!’ he shouted, throwing his arm about me and dragging me forward.
‘Hurry!’ I cried, my lungs screaming for breath.
The stench of sulphur and the smell of decay were made toxic by the inferno. It was as if butchered meat was being roasted on a spit, sizzling and spitting, as the various macabre specimens and artefacts went up in flame.
At the end of the corridor, the bizarre fish tank reflected the lick of flame as it raced over the carpet to devour the panelled walls and fittings. But, as we approached the stairwell to the tower, horrified, I saw further evidence of the Grigori’s absolute evil. Preserved within the tank’s aqueous interior was a foetus, roughly twenty-four weeks gestation, winged and female.
Sickened, I had no time to think what it might mean, no time to react, despite my desire to retch, as the smoke was billowing up the stairs, blanketing the hallway with a thick, sooty fog.
Throwing back the tapestry, Gabriel grabbed my wrist, dragging me up the circular stairwell to the stone tower, which was mostly shrouded in darkness except where moonlight and lightning flashes spilt onto the scattered pieces of furniture draped in thick white dustcovers and the heavily carved dado wall panels from the diamond-paned windows. Outside, the battle between Anakim and Rephaim raged, as the smell of scorched earth and the crack of thunder mingled with the inferno inside Satis House. Inside and outside, Satis House was besieged by flames. The fire had not reached this part of Satis House yet, but it wouldn’t take long.
‘Gabriel, in here!’ I cried, setting off a fit of coughing as I attempted to push the grand piano away from the trap door which lay beneath it. My hands were slippery with sweat, and I couldn’t manage it.
Gabriel roughly moved me out of the way and, effortlessly, shoved the piano aside, sending it careening into the corner, landing with a discordant crash and a cacophony of notes. Leaning down, he threw back the Persian rug and, raising an eyebrow in my direction as if to ask how I knew that this existed, tugged on the antiquated iron ring embedded in the wooden panels. The trap door swung open to the muffled groan of heavy iron hinges revealing the narrow stone staircase beyond, which plunged downwards into the dark void, just as I had remembered.
I took a deep, wheezing breath before stepping down into the darkness, and nearly swooned. I felt suddenly light-headed, and would have toppled down the stairs if not for Gabriel picking me up and throwing me unceremoniously over his shoulder. Lowering the trap door behind us, we made our way through the secret passageway beneath Satis House and out into the woods.
The tips of my long chestnut hair trailed along the dirty stone steps as Gabriel took us further and further away from the conflagration, and I felt myself becoming suddenly dreamy with exhaustion. But the rush of cool, sweet air of the underground tunnel revived me – which was just as well, as the tunnel narrowed till there wasn’t enough room for Gabriel to continue to lug me about.
We finally burst out of the tunnel into the deep forest, under the canvas of ancient oak trees.
I clung to the thick trunk of the oak next to me, weeping burning tears and coughing up soot. My face and hands were streaked with the stuff. My clothes charred and smouldering, and blackened with stains.
But, against all odds, I was alive.
Against the dark of night, Satis House was burning, lighting the sky with a kaleidoscope of colour. I had never seen a night sky like it in all my life – a spray of bright orange that ignited the heavens, ravaged it with a fountain of flame, till it resembled a false sunrise.
I felt hysterical laughter well up within me.
‘I was right, all along. I told her there was a Miss Havisham!’
DELIVERANCE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Hey! Snap out of it!’
Sage’s voice startled me, making me jump as she snapped her fingers in front of my face.
‘I want you to stop that right now! It’s over, Fi!’ she warned, eyeing me challengingly over the rim of her teacup.
I sighed heavily, dragging my gaze away from the window with its view of a fine spring morning, and the direction of Satis House – or what was left of it. Though I had as yet to return, the sketchy reports on the local news, which had, in turn, been enriched by Sage and St. John, claimed that the conflagration had raged uncontrolled for hours. Though the public would never be aware of it, this time, for real, the centuries-old manor had been destroyed, the blaze virtually razing it to the ground. Now only a shell remained.
I had watched as the house had gone up in flames that night. But I still couldn’t bring myself to face this truth.
Emerging from the canopy of trees after escaping from the inferno, Gabriel and I approached the lit torch of Satis House, gathering with others to watch it burn.
Fire engines had arrived. Some locals from the neighbouring houses and farms stood around in overcoats and dressing gowns, heavy boots and slippers, dazed at the sight, watching the professionals do battle with the blaze. Women and men, a young boy in pyjamas, a dog barking loudly, mesmerised by the choking, thick black plumes rising into the sky.
We joined Sage and St. John, and some of the other Anakim who had fought in the battle against the Rephaim, as they stood at the edge of all the activity and chaos.
Mutterings and wisps of conversation could be heard from the locals as they shuffled their feet and vented their directionless anger – ‘...a couple of youths out for some fun, teenage arsonists. Maggie saw them hanging round the old place the other week... ’, ‘...them Arabs are to blame. Al-Qaeda. ISIS. You mark my words...’, ‘...I can’t believe it. An act of terrorism on our doorstep...’ – while we remained silent, watching the futile efforts of the firefighters attempting to stop the fire from spreading further.
By the first light of dawn, Satis House was little more than a smouldering ruin – though some might have said that it had been that way for more than a century – and the part of the forest closest to the west wing had also gone up in flames, set alight by the tinderbox conditions created by the firestorm and the Nephilim battle which had devoured the historic manor house.
The local fire was a nine-day wonder. Later, investigators attributed the blaze to the freak weather conditions, the unexpected electrical storms and lightning strikes which had occurred during the past few weeks. Now it was all but forgotten.
But not by me.
I could not forget. But there was no peace or mercy in the remembering. There was no relief from the hollow sensation in my stomach. But I knew that it had nothing to do with my former eating disorder. Nothing to do with food. The hollow sensation was an icy feeling of grief, and I could not free myself from that cold.
The cold gripped me still.
‘Fi, I’ve been talking to you for the past ten minutes and you haven’t been listening,’ Sage complained.
‘Yeah?’ I shrugged in response, rolling my eyes at her. ‘Well, you’ve been boring me out of my mind for the past nine-and-a-half.’
‘Shut up! This is coming from the person who can’t think for herself! If Wikipedia crashed, your IQ would drop thirty points!’ she automatically retorted, but without any force behind her rebuke. I didn’t have it in me to respond. Then, on a more sober note, she said, ‘But, seriously, Fi, I mean it. He’s gone. He’s not coming back.’
The shrill ring of the telephone sounded somewhere in the background, but I barely noticed it, along with my mother’s shout for one of us to pick it up. Instead, Sage’s words resounded in my head.
He’s gone. He’s not coming back.
Finn was gone. I knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t be coming back. I still wasn’t sure, however, how I felt about it.
At first, I’d been shocked and miserable, had felt terribly betrayed. It was impossible to express just how betrayed I had felt – the only word that came to mind was “violated”. I’d trusted him. I wondered if I might have been falling in love with him. Though I now felt a fool for doing so.
Of course,
it was true he’d repeatedly warned me not to trust him, but that had been impossible to do – he’d saved my life, not once, but on several occasions. And he’d been so strikingly different, so unusual, nothing like the other guys I’d met previously. Whilst his personality had often been abrasive and taciturn, yet there’d been times I’d glimpsed behind his aloof demeanour, something more, a passion and empathy he’d tried to hide from me, which had inevitably, during the course of our tempestuous relationship, revealed itself. And so the betrayal had cut deep, and shock had turned to anger.
If I could have vented my rage, things might have been different. Instead, it was left to brew. I was not forgiving and pragmatic like Sage. That was not part of my nature. Like the ferocity of our conflicts, I hated him with an equal vehemence. But several weeks had softened my anger slightly, had taken the edge off, and provided a fresh sorrow.
‘Fine!’ Mum entered the kitchen, with a tone of complaint directed at Sage and me where we sat motionless at the breakfast table. ‘If no one’s going to get it, I might as well get it myself!’
I ignored my mother’s grumbling, as Sage was looking at me expectantly for a reply to her words.
‘I know that!’ I said, not quite willing to discuss it just yet. ‘I’m not an idiot!’
She huffed. ‘Then what is it? Is it the Scroll? St. John says that we’ll be able to work with the stuff we’ve got from the spectral-imaging.’
‘That’s good,’ I replied distractedly, my mind elsewhere.
‘I wondered if you might look at it soon?’ she asked.
I looked beyond her towards the woods, where a dark bird of prey circled lazily in the clear blue sky.
‘Fi? Do you think you might?’
Young leaves on the trees had turned the wood a lush, dewy green. Shadows lay within the woods, and unexpected falls of light on fertile soil, encouraging seedlings to push up at the needles on the leafy forest floor. Familiar rituals of the season. Ancient. Mysterious. Predictable yet unpredictable.
‘Yes,’ I answered, locking gazes with her. ‘I might. Soon.’
Sage opened her mouth to say something more, but Mum interrupted.
‘Well, that was your father,’ she said, replacing the phone on its carriage, ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened.’
Mum’s face still registered her surprise.
‘What?’ I asked, curious, pushing away my half-eaten bowl of cornflakes.
Sitting down beside me, Mum said, ‘It seems the investigation’s over. Interpol have found their man.’
It was like being plunged into a cold bath. Sage whitened. Luckily, her teacup was empty; otherwise I feared she might have dropped it from nerveless fingers. She gave me a sharp look; I pretended not to see it.
I quickly asked, ‘Who? What man? What happened?’
‘They believe Ellen Jacobi is the culprit.’
I was taken aback. ‘What? No way!’
Mum shook her head, no doubt as bewildered as I was. ‘It seems that she has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. She’d been acting odd lately. And with the rumours of her pregnancy, no one knowing who the father is, maybe even money issues, there’s a suspicion she might have been an inside-man – or, in this case, inside-woman.’
‘That’s just insane! Ellen Jacobi? They’re mad!’ I exclaimed, shaking my head in disbelief.
‘So,’ Sage said in a subdued voice, ‘the investigation’s closed?’
Mum’s smile held relief. ‘I believe so.’
Sage didn’t speak, but sat back in her chair, considering. She stared at the empty teacup, deep in thought, while I cast anxious glances in her direction, trying to divine her reaction to this pronouncement from her face.
‘And Louis Gravois?’ she asked, managing to hide her interest and concern. ‘Will he be returning to the Louvre now that it’s over?’
Mum shrugged her shoulders in response, gathering up breakfast plates from the table. ‘I’ve got no idea. That’s up to Dr Porterhouse to decide. You can ask your Dad or St. John when you get to the museum. When does your shift start?’
With that, the conversation turned and, after a small wait, I slipped away from the table. But I didn’t go up to my bedroom. Instead, with one thing on my mind, I silently crept out the front door and started off briskly into the woods. I hadn’t been back to Satis House since the night of the fire, and my return was long overdue.
But as I walked through the woods on that clear spring morning, the season threw up many distractions, a hundred wondrous things to catch my attention – saplings growing between mossy roots, wood anemones, wild mushrooms, hogweed and bluebells, a lazy badger, a Great Spotted Woodpecker – and I cursed myself for not bringing my camera with me yet again, resolving to come back later. I deliberately walked past all the forest’s distractions. Resolute. And for every peck the woodpecker gave, the harder my heart pounded.
After a few hundred yards, the great iron gates came into view and Satis House loomed before me. But not as I remembered it. Its haunting, mellow beauty was gone. Instead, it was almost exactly as it had been on my very first visit; a dismal, derelict, gutted wreck. But this was no glamour.
Upon the gates was a signpost. Official notification proclaimed that the site was dangerous and to keep out, and that trespassers would be prosecuted. I ignored the notice and walked past the chained gates, making my entry onto the grounds of Satis House by way of my usual route.
The gravel driveway bore the scars of the emergency crews and fire engines; the pebbles underfoot were now patchy, interspersed with bare earth where pockets of grass and weeds were beginning to sprout.
With each step, I was brought closer to the house.
Satis House was in ruin. Looking at its visage, there was no roof, no doors, no windows; merely a decaying facade. Fire stains marred the once golden stone and brickwork, and the panes of broken glass revealed the house had been disembowelled by the blaze. Around the towers, birds seemed to have set up roosts, and blue sky could be seen peeking out from almost every orifice.
Yet the estate exuded no menace today. There was no longer an atmosphere of foreboding. Against the cloudless blue, the scene was all innocence.
This time, I could have entered Satis House by its front entrance, if I had wished. But I preferred to enter through the west wing, retracing my steps of that last visit. Walking along the terrace, I had to step over broken masonry and charred woodwork, noticing inside that beams had fallen down, cutting the room at diagonals, so that it resembled a broken geometric puzzle.
The smell of smouldering building material was still evident as, avoiding touching the French doors – not because they disturbed me, but because they were hanging loosely by their hinges and badly blackened – I stepped inside. The walls were still intact, but the wallpaper had peeled away with the heat. The furniture that had remained was charcoal, bits of protruding wood, unidentifiable. The same could be said for the room itself. It bore no evidence of its former function.
I squinted at the debris, the mounds of burnt beams and timber planks, and fallen plasterwork ceiling. This lesser drawing room was brighter now than it had ever been. There was no ceiling or, for that matter, roof atop this room; just fresh, outdoor air. The two storeys of this wing had been destroyed by the fire. The thick smell of scorched brick still lingered.
Carefully I made my way around, testing my footing at every step.
Moving into the gallery, I edged along its perimeter, determined not to be unnerved by the dangers of the place. Watching where I planted my feet in case the old floorboards should give way beneath me, I peered into every niche, corner and dark crevice, looking to find some trace of Satis House’s former glory. But whatever dark objects and artefacts that had once composed Semyaza’s bizarre and macabre collection, there remained not a trace. Not even a ghost could survive here now. It was almost impossible to believe that there had once been antique rugs and draperies, furnishings and chandeliers, sculptures and paintings. None were le
ft.
Not that I expected to find any of these things – I had, after all, experienced the inferno firsthand – but I hadn’t been able to help myself, to stop myself from looking and from wondering. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here. The anger and grief were still raw. But I soldiered on.
At the end of the gallery was muted light. I imagined it to be the sky, the same as I had viewed in the minor drawing room and in the patchwork of cavities along the corridor. But I was mistaken.
Across the great paving stones of the entrance hall, the charred, heavy double oak doors leading to the Victorian-styled drawing room still remained in their massive timber frame, as did the elaborately carved banister of the stairwell, though now it was missing some of its balustrades, and was badly damaged in places. The ceiling of this section had endured the firestorm, but it threatened to collapse at any moment. And I was wary of making any movement or wrong footing that might cause it to come down on top of me.
Astonishingly, what had survived was the enormous stained glass window at the top of the dark carved staircase. It was miraculously intact, and looked as beautiful as it must have done when first installed. I had never seen it properly in the daylight before with the sun shining upon it, lighting the window’s coloured glass. Now I noticed that it depicted an amalgamation of biblical scenes; ironically, the Angel of the Lord appearing to the shepherds and to the Magi to go to Bethlehem and find the Christ child. It was a fanciful depiction done in ruby reds, cerulean and purple-blue, sunflower yellow and silver. The angelic messenger read from an unfurled scroll, the shepherds on their knees, the Wise Men on camels before the heavenly host sent from God, and a background of what appeared to be olive and date trees beneath the Star of David.
I cursed myself for not bringing my camera. I felt that it would be a very long time before I made my way here again. If ever.
Sighing, I turned away to continue my examination of the house.
The gentle spring breeze blew through the stone portico and whistled down the empty doorframe where the front door once hung, keeping away unwanted visitors. Soot stirred, blowing across the entrance hall and against the closed double oak doors of the Victorian-styled drawing room where last I’d seen Finn, and Louis, and Semyaza.