Inferno

by Ellen Datlow

  The house was quiet but for the ticking of the big grandfather clock in the hall. I moved past the large front rooms, grateful that the curtains had been left open and that enough moonlight found its way in to show doorways and hall fixtures. More than ever I was certain that no silent alarm was registering on a far-off security desk. Five years from now maybe, but not yet.

  Soon I was at the ballroom and relieved to find that the curtains had been left open there as well. Later in the year they would probably be closed to protect the furnishings from the harsh summer sun.

  Getting my bearings, I crossed to the chaise longue in front of the carpet and sat while considering how best to proceed. Switching on the house lights was out of the question, and using the torch to explore the upstairs rooms would make passing motorists think there were burglars on the premises.

  Which meant that there was very little I could do other than soak in the atmosphere. At Sallen that had seemed reason enough. Now I was left wondering why I had risked so much by insisting on a nocturnal visit. I could hardly believe it had seemed so important. But here I was, and there was no need to hurry. I had time to get the feel of the place without watching eyes.

  Human eyes at least. The suits were right there, darker shapes in the gloom, so many streaks of coal-cellar midnight flanking the blackness of the central doorway.

  I settled back and listened. The clock was ticking in the hall. The sound of crickets came from the dry grass and modest gardens beyond the locked windows, otherwise nothing. No traffic on the road from town that I could hear. None of the big city white noise sounds I had become so used to.

  The sense of being watched by the suits was inevitable under the circumstances, but, oddly enough, it was that silence that bothered me most of all. It was too quiet. Which, I told myself, smiling wryly, was precisely one of those touches of atmosphere and local color I’d been looking for. But all things considered, Auderlene was just a large empty house, like a deserted theater or a school gymnasium after dark, any other large open space.

  That silence soon took its toll. Apart from the clock, possibly the drip of a tap way off in the kitchen, all sound came from out there, from the world beyond, and it lulled me. I’d only meant to sit a while, to listen and consider options, then head back. But without meaning to, without even knowing I did so, I drowsed. I was at the end of a long drive and a busy day and the adrenaline rush of sneaking away from Sallen. I just slipped into a reverie that quickly became something else.

  Till something woke me. I activated my watch display, saw it was 2:23 A.M. So much time had passed.

  Crazy thoughts were there then. What if Gilly had decided to check on me? What if she had come by, found me gone, and realized where I’d be? Crazy thoughts.

  I couldn’t be sure I’d heard anything, of course, but the shock of believing I had was there to deal with. Real or imagined, something had woken me.

  I kept as still as I could and listened. There was nothing, just the clock ticking and night bird and insect song beyond the windows. Just the conviction that something had stirred in the quiet house and gone silent again.

  But what? What?

  Then it was there: first as a sense of sound, more felt than actually heard, like a low-level tinnitus, something you shook your head to be free of. But within seconds, minutes—however long it was—it crossed that border between unreal and unmistakably real, became a low keening in the darkness, building toward a distinct and eerie moaning.

  One of the suits was sounding!

  I was sure of it. Suit four or five, there was no knowing for certain, but from one of the alcoves to the right.

  I swung my legs off the divan, set my feet firmly, silently, on the floor.

  The keening continued, kept growing if anything, and, strangely, was easier to take than the do-I-hear-it? do-I-not? uncertainty.

  I grinned in the darkness. Of course. Gilly was off somewhere playing tricks, goosing the outtatowner, what I deserved for breaking faith as I had. She’d waited and she’d followed.

  But then a suit to the left of the display began sounding as well, making a distinct harmonic to the first, impossible for one person—a single voice—to manage. It, too, grew in the darkness, clear and separate.

  She had friends helping. That was it. The other custodians. Reliable old Chris Goodlan. Or Lorna, and Jim Camberson. Or there were hidden speakers. They’d done this before. It was their usual strategy for curfew breakers.

  Messing with my mind, Gilly. In more ways than one.

  I smiled and stood. Using the new sounding to orient myself toward suit one, I switched on my torch. Let the locals see torchlight flickering. Who’d be out at this hour anyway? And more rationalizations covered it: I’d been out walking and heard a noise inside the old house. Chris mustn’t have shut the front door properly. I just came in …

  The weak cone of light caught suit one in its glow. The iron helmet glowered back, eye-slit fierce in the meager light. It was so easy to imagine the glitter of eyes in the narrow slot, too easy to imagine a poor soul trapped within, crying in the night. One of five.

  I crossed the ballroom as quietly as I could, keeping the torch beam on the eye-slit in the narrow bucket-shaped helm.

  The song kept swelling. It seemed that three, possibly four suits were sounding now, but how could I be sure? The harmonics were too diffuse, the actual source points too difficult to judge in such a large space. I kept shaking my head to make sure I was actually hearing it. Was it me? Could it be me?

  When suit one was within reach, I stretched out a hand, placed my fingers on the black metal chest.

  It was vibrating. It was! There was a resonance in the old iron, a deep thrumming.

  I felt such relief. Not me then. Not something in my mind. Something in the world, of the world.

  I fought down the dread, the panic waiting right there. There were answers. There had to be. I just needed daylight to check for audio leads and concealed speakers. Short of switching on the house lights, there was no way of doing that now.

  Go or stay: they were the only choices.

  I made myself move along the row, shining my torch on the eye-slit of suit two as I reached it, then doing the same with suit three, touching each iron shape as I passed and feeling the same deep thrumming in the metal.

  So far so good.

  The open space of the central doorway was there then—a sudden maw of black in black—and I was at suit four, reaching out to touch the breastplate. The vibration was there as well, deep and constant, resonating so powerfully that I snatched my hand away.

  Keep moving! Keep moving! One to go!

  The empty niche was so welcome with its silence, but I didn’t linger. Couldn’t. I was nearly done.

  I moved on to suit five, placed my fingers on the iron chest. Again, the nightsong was there, adding its harsh edge to the whole.

  All five were sounding.

  I’d done it, made myself finish, but mainly because I kept picturing Gilly hiding close by, stage-managing all this. That was what stopped me from fleeing the house, rushing back to Sallen, back to town, back to Sydney. There was a prankishness, an absurdity to the whole thing and it kept the panic at bay, brought cautious fascination instead of fear, a determination to grasp what was happening and how it was being done.

  I had managed, was managing.

  Provided I didn’t look at the eyes-slits too long, didn’t imagine the whites of eyes trapped behind the midnight slots and perforations, following every move.

  It had to be Gilly and the others. Had to be.

  And I had to stay rational, in control.

  I made myself start back along the row, this time on a “science-and-logic” run—how I thought of it—an attempt to learn how these effects were being achieved.

  I was at the empty alcove when the keening stopped.

  Just like that. The suits were silent.

  Such a simple thing, but all that was needed. More than ever I knew there were eyes pee
ring out, staring in the silence.

  In the world, of the world!

  Which was more than I could bear.

  I scrambled across the ballroom, rushed along the dark hall to the front door and out into the night, imagining those fierce unblinking eyes on me all the way back to Sallen.

  Gilly seemed not to have noticed my absence. She said nothing about it over breakfast the next morning and I detected no signs that things had changed between us.

  She had another 10 A.M. shift at the Arms, she told me, but said that Chris would be happy to show me through Auderlene again if I thought it would help. I thanked her, and almost called her on the night’s “entertainment” with an oblique challenge: “First round to the Summerton crew, I guess,” but decided against it. What if I was wrong?

  After chatting in the kitchen a while, she gave me a tour of Sallen in daylight. It ended with us sitting in the lounge room, rarely used these days, she explained, but a large sunny formal space from days when ushering neighbors into parlors and serving them Devonshire tea vied with taking them straight through to the kitchen for an informal, no-frills cuppa.

  I sat on a sofa by the large front windows, with Gilly close by in an armchair beside a display cabinet filled with Nescombe heirlooms: trays of old coins, war medals, a collection of vintage perfume bottles, the body of a headless china doll.

  “Been in the family forever,” Gilly said, indicating the display. “Funny how we keep things because we’ve kept them for so long. How real reasons are lost.”

  It gave me my cue. “Gilly, what happened to Mrs. Pratican’s son back in 1912? You know, down at the weir?”

  Gilly’s eyes flashed with an odd mix of emotion. Surprise? Anger? Relief? Whatever the rush of feeling was, she had it under control just as quickly. “No one’s really sure. Andrew was down there with some kids from town. They were skylarking around, you know, like kids do, throwing rocks, pushing and shoving. Andrew was out on the old skiff they kept down there. Someone threw a rock and hit him on the head. He went over the side. They found his body the next day.”

  “And don’t tell me. There were five other kids with Andrew that day.”

  The flash of emotion was there again, showing mainly in a tightening of the eyes. She quickly looked off through the nearest open window. “Four or five. Something like that.”

  “Or six.”

  She looked back at once. “What are you saying, Nev?”

  “There are six alcoves at Auderlene, Gilly.”

  “You’re not seriously suggesting—”

  “Just seriously asking. What happened to those five or six other kids?”

  She tried to put me off. “How the hell would I know? They grew up. Moved away. Died. They could be anywhere. You think they took your meteorite, is that it?”

  More deflection, but it didn’t stop me. “Not at all. But you would’ve tracked it back surely. You know the local families. You’ve had access to the district records. You would’ve found the names, tracked it back.”

  “Nev, what’s with all this? Why the private eye stuff all of a sudden?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “I heard the suits, Gilly. I went out to Auderlene last night and I heard them.”

  Gilly feigned outrage pretty well. She stood, even put her hands on her hips. “And that’s the thanks I get for trying to help. Listen, Nev—”

  “You knew I would, Gilly. You wanted me to. You left the keys out.”

  “I what?”

  “You know the suits start sounding at night.”

  “Lots of folks round here do.”

  “No they don’t. That sort of thing would get out, especially if there’s a quick buck in it. There’d be ghost tours, souvenir hunters, the lot. I might be wrong, but I’m thinking that you and Chris and Harry Barrowman and the rest keep this pretty quiet.”

  “As if we could.”

  “As if you haven’t. The question is why. You knew I’d want to go out there alone, that I’d probably want to see the place at night. You wouldn’t tell me about the suits, but you wanted me to know about them. That’s why you picked me, why the come-on at the Arms yesterday. You wanted me here at Sallen.”

  “What a bloody nerve! Who the hell do you think—?”

  “Gilly, it’s okay! I accept that there are rules here. Promises being kept; things you can’t share. But since we’re coming clean, let me ask if there really was a meteorite?”

  Gilly seemed caught between genuine relief and maintaining a proper indignation. “Of course there was. Letters mention it. It came down on twenty-four January 1904. Mrs. P. had Myron Birch dig it out and bring it over to the house in his wagon. The local newspaper wrote it up; you can check the edition for the following week, if you want. It was probably kept somewhere in the house originally.”

  “But not displayed. People don’t record seeing it when they visited.”

  The emotion still translated as anger. “It didn’t go away, if that’s what you mean. People still talked about it. But it was just a local thing. No big deal. There’s so much meteorite activity in the skies out here. Tektites. Aus-trolites. You do things differently when you live on the land.”

  “But it was never seen after 1912? After what happened to Andrew?”

  She sat in the armchair again, but didn’t settle back in it, as if ready to leap up at any moment. “What are you driving at, Nev? Look, I did do a bit of a beat-up on the thing yesterday—”

  “Though you won’t say why.”

  “Can’t say why. You were here. You’d heard about the Pratican Star. You made it easy.”

  So much for item number four, I didn’t say. Gilly was frowning, clearly troubled by something.

  “So you can’t tell me why. Listen, Gilly—”

  But she cut me off, as if something had just occurred to her. “Nev, do you really think the meteorite could be in those suits? Melted down and mixed in? You asked Chris about it.”

  Why does it matter? I wanted to ask, but went with the deflection, needing to keep Gilly this side of shutting down altogether and kicking me out. She wanted me to know things she couldn’t talk about directly, whatever the reasons.

  “If the Birches worked with existing plate, just cut and bent scrap they had on hand, then maybe not. If they actually melted the iron ore themselves at their foundry in town, then sure. It would be a lot more work, a very different scale of work, and there’d be a very small distribution given the size of the Star.”

  “Like that ‘memory of water’ thing in homeopathy.”

  “I guess.” This was my chance. “And correct me if I’m wrong, Gilly, but I’m guessing you’re a descendant of one of the six responsible for Andrew Pratican’s death back then.”

  Gilly looked out the window again before returning her gaze to me. “You keep saying six.”

  “There are six alcoves. Mrs. Pratican had the suits made for a reason. Yes, I believe there’s a sixth suit somewhere.”

  “But where?” Gilly said, and seemed encouraged by my certainty.

  No, not encouraged. Encouraging!

  She already knew where it was!

  I dared not say so, dared not ask. Not yet. “Come and help me look for it. Take the day off.”

  “I can’t, Nev. I can’t set foot on the property. Why do you think I never gave you the tour myself?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Something will—hurt me.”

  I didn’t know how to take that. Literally? Metaphorically? “Something?”

  “Just trust me. Look, I have to get to work. We can talk about this later.”

  “Gilly, I have to know. We’re very close to something here. Why can’t you go inside Auderlene?”

  “It’s not just the house. I said I can’t set foot on the property!”

  “All right. You can’t set foot on the property. Something hurts you. Tell me the rest. Please.”

  Gilly didn’t speak. She just grabbed my hand, pulled me up from the sofa, then led me out of the lounge room an
d along the hallway to her bedroom. My thoughts went every which way in an instant. It was so easy to misread the signals and take this as some impulsive reprise of our modest flirtation at the Summerton Arms. Even more so when she’d closed the door behind us, because in moments she was unbuttoning and removing her blouse, reaching round and unbuttoning and unzipping her skirt and stepping out of it so she stood before me in bra and panties. It was all done so quickly that I nearly said something stupid before the real reason registered.

  Gilly’s body was covered with scars. Healed ones, a myriad tiny wounds like punctures and slashes on her breasts, belly, and groin, on her back too when she turned to show me. Nothing above the neckline or that extended to the arms and legs. A very selective maiming, like stigmata, but all healed over, laid like dozens of silky threads against her skin.

  “Gilly, how on earth—?”

  “Don’t ask. Please. Just know that I didn’t do it, okay? That no husband or boyfriend or neighborhood sicko did it. No one passing through.”

  Don’t blame you if you’d rather pass, Nev, she didn’t say, didn’t have to say because her eyes did, quickly and eloquently. It was there in the way she reached for her blouse and skirt.

  “Gilly—” I just stepped forward and held her.

  She clung to me. It was the sort of simple, desperately human act we get to experience maybe two or three times in our lives if we’re truly lucky, one we all need to know—as giver and receiver—to complete our full equation of humanity. Without it we are creatures forever lacking.

  Her sobbing lasted barely moments. Gilly had the habit of being strong in the world and she rallied quickly, though she didn’t break the embrace.

  “If I say too much, it’ll start again,” she murmured into my shoulder, burying the words in my shirt. Auderlene was ten minutes away, listening, watching.

  “It’s a haunting,” I said, because I could.

  “I’ve said too much, Nev.”

  “I have to go back, Gilly,” I said. “I have to go back tonight.”