Inferno

by Ellen Datlow

  Her answer chilled me with its simplicity. “Yes.”

  It was strange spending the day at Auderlene knowing that I’d be there again that night, so strange to see the suits looking so makeshift and ordinary, robbed of any trace of their nighttime power. This time I did grab a chair from the kitchen as Chris had suggested, and stood on it to check every suit. There were no speakers that I could find, no hidden wires unless they had been threaded up through the soles of the iron feet, an elaborate and unlikely prospect without public ghost tours to justify the effort and expense.

  Everything was different now, though Chris and I acted as if nothing had changed. I wasn’t sure how much he knew, whether Gilly had told him of my visit the previous night, so I said nothing about it.

  During the morning we searched the wine cellar and various outbuildings for any sign of the Pratican Star and he was as patient and helpful as ever. We did the attic in the afternoon, and spent two hours hauling boxes this way and that, doing a thorough search of the contents of each one. There was nothing that resembled a meteorite.

  We left off around four o’clock and climbed down, cramped, dusty, and exhausted from our efforts. After Chris had fed the horses, we spent the final hour till lockdown sitting on the front steps of the old house drinking a bottle of respectable red from the Auderlene cellar. We didn’t talk all that much, just watched the occasional cars that passed on the highway and how the light went from the land toward sunset and the great silence came up, how the lights came on at Sallen across the way. The article for Cosmos seemed a forgotten dream, part of another reality, another ordering of the world. Now I could only think of the silky scars on Gilly’s skin and her clinging to me, and how, even as the rooms behind us were falling into darkness, the iron suits in the ballroom were already crammed full of night.

  I was glad when Chris checked his watch, pushed the cork back in the bottle, and stood. “Let’s go, Nev. Time to lock up.”

  As we moved toward the front gate, a pair of new headlights appeared on the highway and Gilly’s Land Rover turned in at Sallen.

  This time she saw me off. At 11:30 P.M., with Lorna Gillard and Jim Camberson safely tucked away in their rooms, Gilly stood on the northern turn of the verandah and watched me cross into Auderlene.

  There had been a kiss on the mouth from her—full, firm, and brief, as dry and smoky as the evening had been—but no more words. What could you say? Be careful? Don’t let the boogeyman get you? There was often so much comedy in terror when you looked for it. It was the way of the world.

  What followed was very much a repeat of the previous evening, but without the self-recrimination and guilt. This time I had the permission of a custodian—all the custodians when I thought about it, given how much they seemed to share of this.

  This time I also had one of Gilly’s powerful household torches to light my way. Fifteen minutes after leaving her on the verandah, I was stepping through the front door at Auderlene and shining its light down the front hall. It banished the gloom so much better than mine had.

  As I entered the ballroom and took my position on the chaise longue, the strong beam of light emphasized the homemade quality of the suits, the sheer ordinariness. Only the eye-slits—five razor-cuts of night—kept their power. It was a relief when I switched off the torch and returned everything to an even darkness.

  Too even. Too complete. The curtains had been closed!

  Chris could have done it. Must have. It was getting to be that time of year. But it meant that the suits were no longer deeper strokes of blackness in the gloom. The windows themselves still had ghostly outlines, but the iron shapes were lost to me.

  Which made it so much worse. It had become like the child’s game where you crept up on someone while they weren’t looking. There was the awful sense that the suits were moving toward me in the darkness, would suddenly be there, frozen but closing in, the moment I switched on my torch. Then they’d come on again on unbending, stovepipe legs, iron hands reaching—

  I forced down the panic, amazed that things were getting to me this way. First the compulsion to visit after nightfall, now this ongoing dread.

  Still, as difficult as it was, I resolved to leave things as they were. The curtains could be opened easily enough, and Gilly’s torch was right there.

  I made myself stretch out on the chaise longue and listen to the house. This time I wanted to drowse but it was impossible. The ticking of the clock came from the hall behind, the sound of crickets and night birds still worked their way in, but these things all seemed just that much further off now. The sense of being stranded, no longer connected, was stronger than ever.

  I kept going over the events of the day, thinking of that single hurried kiss, of Gilly’s scars and what could have caused them, of a sixth suit hidden from view, one that couldn’t be mentioned because something would hear and respond. Couldn’t be talked about; couldn’t be thought about. Where did it end?

  Given my earlier funk, I tried not to think too much about the suits here either. When they started sounding—if they did—I would repeat my “inspection” of the previous night, but with one important difference. This time I wouldn’t simply pass the empty alcove. This time I would lean in and listen. Such an obvious thing, but I hadn’t done it. I would give the missing suit its chance.

  The waiting became a special kind of hell. My imagination kept playing tricks, providing things. Not just the suits creeping forward in darkness, creaking and sighing, not just house sounds—doors opening, things shifting—but doubts as well. What were the chances of Gilly and the others setting me up, serving me up to whatever lay at the heart of Nettie Pratican’s estate? It was crazy, but suddenly so real.

  Maybe the sixth suit was out there somewhere, moving through the darkness. Maybe it was the one heading this way. It would suddenly be in the alcove when I next switched on the torch!

  Worse yet, maybe that sixth suit was for me. I’d find myself the one peering through the slits and perforations, unable to move, unable to cry out!

  Completing the array. That was what the keening was: a summons!

  It changed everything. I imagined the other suits watching through their narrow edges of darkness. Yes! Yes! Join us!

  A special hell indeed, made for a solitary watcher on a quiet spring night.

  I was actually relieved when the song started at 1:39. Again, it came as the barest sense of something, just as it had before. Then, across seconds, minutes, a suit near the center of the display had definitely begun to sound.

  I switched on the torch and moved the powerful beam along the row, saw the suits watching in their ones and twos, always with the sense of eye glitter as I moved the torch beam on. All tricks of shadowplay and a shifting light source, of course, but an alarming optical effect: eyeslits empty and unmoving until you looked away, then the sense of eyes rolling back at you.

  I win! I win!

  I found myself actually switching the torch beam back and forth, trying to catch the whites of those imagined eyes, then considered the shock such a discovery would bring and stopped at once. The thought of it was enough.

  Yes, imagination was the real enemy here. Imagination and uncertainty.

  Gilly’s scars were real, looked real. Yet could it all be a hoax? The possibility was there.

  But in the torchlit darkness, with the suits keening as they had the night before, I chose to believe in Gilly and the others. It went against so much, but it was what I decided.

  Keeping the torch beam as steady as I could, I crossed to suit one and touched the breastplate. The metal was thrumming, jarring my fingertips even more than I remembered.

  I moved on to suit two, then to three, touching each one the same way. They were both sounding, adding their fierce harmonics to the whole. Such angry iron.

  Then there was the doorway, a gaping darkness with suit four beyond.

  I dared not hesitate. I crossed the gulf, reached for the breastplate, lighting only what was needed, not dar
ing to look for eyes peering down.

  Singing. It was singing.

  The fifth alcove was still empty, thank God. No new arrival.

  Not far now. I continued on, reached out, and pressed my fingers to the final metal chest. It was thrumming, jarring like the rest.

  All five were sounding, keening.

  Screaming. That’s how it seemed.

  Time to finish it. I turned back to the empty niche, moved the few steps needed and leant forward into the opening.

  Angle of the head, angle of reality, it was enough. A single word filled the space, came again and again in a voice that was a rasp and a curse, a cry of despair and an accusation all in one, that—like a whisper gallery to infinity—seemed to cross a great gulf and yet was right there, intimate and close.

  Yes.

  That single word.

  One way or another it answered every question I needed answered.

  Is there a sixth suit?

  Yes.

  Can it be found?

  Yes.

  Is it close by?

  Yes.

  Can I save her?

  Yes.

  Then, while still straining to catch the forlorn, achingly desperate voice and its single word, the keening stopped.

  And the torch went out.

  There were eyes in the helmet slits now, I was certain. Fixed and staring.

  I fumbled with the switch, tried again and again. Nothing.

  Panic came like iron hands, closing hard. I threw the torch aside and went scrambling across the carpet, found the hall, the door and blessed night beyond. In moments, precious seconds, I was deep in that other darkness and running toward Sallen with a smile on my face. It was relief and reprieve. We had our answer. We truly did.

  I was left to work out for myself where the sixth Pratican suit would be. It wasn’t so difficult once I accepted that they knew, all of them, but couldn’t tell, couldn’t speak of it directly. Once I remembered the clues they’d been trying to give me all along.

  Chris Goodlan and I had checked the official outbuildings maintained in the Auderlene Charter, but, as he had told me that first day, there were some old work sheds off the estate proper, back through the trees; buildings the Birches had used for the cutting, shaping, and final suit assembly.

  Off the estate.

  What were the chances?

  Gilly nodded when I told her what I intended doing, and surprised me by wanting to come along, but she said very little when she parked her Land Rover off the highway beyond the Auderlene estate and we started walking the northern fence line toward the northwestern corner.

  There were three structures in among the gum trees, one large and two small, all ramshackle and badly run-down, all made of the same weatherworn gray timber and sheets of rusted iron. Without Gilly telling me, I knew it would be the farthest one out, just did, and led us to its sagging wooden door.

  “I can’t go in, Nev,” she said.

  “But it’s off the estate.”

  “That suit is from the estate. It is the estate. What Auderlene exists for. You go in.”

  “You’re talking about it now, Gilly. I thought you couldn’t.”

  “Depends on whether you find something.”

  “How so?”

  “It happens at night, Nev. If you’re wrong, then I may not survive the night.”

  “Your—visitor—will come calling?”

  “Let’s just say that coming out here again, I’ve broken the rules.”

  Again. Gilly said again. She had been out here before.

  “Gilly—”

  “Please, Nev. I’m sick of this, after all these years. It’s the other part of the story. Go and see.”

  I said no more, just hauled back the old door and stepped inside. The interior was cluttered with lengths of timber, rusted irrigation pipes, pieces of old farm machinery. Once it would have been a gloomy space, but no longer. The roof was sprung, sagging where fallen tree branches had struck. The walls bowed under the weight of the remaining roof beams. Hot sunlight streamed in.

  It didn’t take long to find. The suit was lying on its back, one more half-rusted shape near the shed’s far wall, almost indistinguishable amid abandoned farm machinery. Hidden in plain sight really.

  And not complete—or rather not intact, which had further helped conceal it. The helm had been sawn away and left to one side, a cylindrical casque like a discarded bucket.

  I crouched next to the broken figure and peered into the chest cavity. It was a cave with stalactites and stalagmites! The hollow space was filled with them, spines pointing in from front, back, and sides. They were probably in the groin and legs as well.

  I hauled the helmet around and peered within. More spikes. The whole suit was like the inside of an iron maiden, that engine of torture and death from crueller times.

  Not crueller, no. Nothing was crueller than this: a hollow but sealed prison, impossible to escape yet impossible to inhabit because of those knives.

  Special knives. Each one tipped with its tiny bit of the Pratican Star, I was sure of it. Restless iron from out there. Metal from somewhere else.

  Trap them and never let them rest.

  But there had to be more to it. The meteoric tips were the avenger’s pièce de résistance, a bereaved mother’s ultimate reward for those who had been present at the death of her son. Perpetrators or innocent bystanders, it hadn’t mattered to Nettie Pratican, hadn’t been an issue in that inconsolable mother’s plans. A look at the town records would probably show nothing either, no sudden accidents or disappearances. Nettie Pratican had been patient. This was a revenge taken after their deaths, quite likely after her own. And one of Gilly’s ancestors—great uncle, great aunt, great cousin, someone in her family’s past—had been one of those bystanders, witnesses, accomplices. Privy to a game gone wrong, to teasing taken too far.

  More questions for Gilly when questions could be answered again.

  But there had to be something else she couldn’t mention, possibly didn’t even know herself: how Mrs. Pratican had trapped them inside!

  The shed still had lifting tackle on one of the roof beams, chains and pulleys from back when these materials were moved on a fairly regular basis. It was no coincidence that the rig was positioned above the suit, from when it had last been used, though then the suit must have been lifted at the shoulders so the helmet could be sawn off.

  So what had been trapped inside could be released!

  I had to know. Getting the chain around the ankles and hooked in place was easier than I first expected because of the tapered jambs and the flattened spur-butts on the iron feet.

  The block and tackle was old and rusty; the supporting roof beam less than completely sound, but the chains moved in the double pulley system easily enough and the surrounding beams held. The legs rose off the earthen floor, tipping the chest at an angle.

  It wasn’t enough. If something was trapped inside, it had to get through the forest of spines. I doubted the roof could take the weight of a full lift, but all I needed was a steep enough angle. I hauled on the chain, hoisted the legs higher.

  Just when I thought I might have misjudged the whole thing, something rattled down over the spikes and appeared in the neck opening.

  The head of a doll, battered and hairless. Something that had belonged to Gilly’s great-aunt, great-cousin, whatever, but the other part of the broken doll I’d seen in the heirloom cabinet at Sallen.

  I lowered the suit to the ground and went out to where Gilly was waiting.

  When she saw what I was holding, tears sprang to her eyes. She took the tiny head from me, gripped it hard between her hands and turned away.

  I waited till she turned back.

  “Who did you get to saw off the helmet, Gilly?”

  “That truck driver who told you about Summerton and the meteor. Three years ago. He was passing through and I told him the story, asked him to help. I thought opening the suit would do it. He helped me bring it out
here.”

  Part of me wanted to ask if he’d inquired about a “number four” option as well, but I didn’t. None of my business, yet completely my business, both.

  Gilly understood that. “He was just trying to help, Nev. Sending someone else along. Looking out for me. He never saw the scars.”

  The weight sank away. “You both saw the spikes?”

  “We did. But we thought that was it. That we’d released it. We never thought that there’d be—” Gilly searched for the right term.

  “Something keeping it there,” I said.

  “Right. This bloody doll’s head!”

  “And the spikes, Gilly. I think you’ll find they were tipped with metal from the Pratican Star.”

  Gilly frowned, saw the connection, and nodded. “But why was it angry with me? I’m kin. Why me?”

  “The old story of the genie trapped in the bottle. For the first thousand years he swears to reward whoever frees him. For the next thousand he swears to destroy whoever does it. Maybe your family became the reason it was trapped in there. Maybe communication just becomes messed up—”

  “When you’re dead.”

  “When you’re dead. The prison was open but it still couldn’t get free. Not completely. Imagine the agony, the fury. How did you know which suit to open?”

  “Whenever I heard them sounding at night, whenever I passed close by, that one suit called out a word. In my mind.”

  “What word?”

  “Just the one. You.”

  “Gilly, I’m guessing that Harry Barrowman and others you can name are descendants of those kids at the weir that day. I’m pretty sure they’ve heard the same word in front of a particular suit too, yes?”

  The barest hint of the smile was there. She could talk about it now. They couldn’t, but she could. “They didn’t dare open the other suits after what happened to me. They’ve got families to think of. You’re good at this, Nev.”

  “I’m outside of it—was outside. It helped. So you tell them what has to be done. They open the suits and remove whatever objects were used as lures.”

  “We’re imposing our sense of justice on someone else’s here, aren’t we?”