by Tim Clare
She could sneak from the smoking room to the green baize door northwest of the banqueting hall, with its steps leading down to the servants’ quarters. She had no idea whether the hallways along the way would be swarming with . . . what had she said to Mrs Hagstrom?
Monsters.
The ground whipped from under her. Her chin bounced off the floor. She bit her tongue and cried out.
She had tripped on a ruck in the carpet. When she glanced back the creatures were coming. What she had taken for smooth torsos were quilted leather jackets worn over serge trousers cut off at the knee. They were wearing clothes. The fur on their faces flashed bronze in the electric light, their teeth like chips of glass. She pedalled her legs and started to crawl backwards but she was too slow and they were almost upon her and the frontrunner spread its horrible ripped-bodice wings and she raised her arms to shield her face.
A patch of light spread between her and the monsters. A door had opened inwards. Standing in the doorway was Dr Lansley.
‘Up – now!’
He stepped out into the hallway. In his right glove he held a heavy brass poker, the end decorated with several vicious flukes, like a grapnel.
The bat-monsters hesitated.
Lansley steamed into them with an underarm tennis swing, embedding the poker’s spiked tip in the throat of the leader, lifting it off the floor. He pivoted and dashed its head against the wall.
Its three fellows skittered backwards. Lansley wrenched the poker from the convulsing body. Purple blood flecked the wallpaper like rain shaken from a brolly.
He turned to her. ‘What are you waiting for? Move!’
Delphine scrambled to get up, slipped. Lansley grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. There were more creatures clattering down the corridor.
He dragged her into the room, slammed the door and slid a bolt across.
A bang sounded from the other side. Another.
She was in the chimera room. She saw her own pink face reflected in a multitude of glass cabinets. Her hair was heaped up on one side of her scalp and her chin was grazed. She winked. The battered girl in the reflection winked back.
In the centre of the windowless room stood Dr Lansley, dark blood soaking the sleeve of his tweed hunting coat. He was panting and shaking. In a corner, standing over a wheelchair with his back to her, was Mr Propp.
Propp turned slowly. His face was sunken and pale.
Delphine glanced at the wheelchair and saw that it contained not Lord Alderberen but the old lady with the bare scalp and fine white cowlick; the old lady she had watched sleep so many times. Under other circumstances, she might have felt surprise.
The old woman had a loose knitted woollen blanket draped over her legs. Her eyes were half-open but she was staring vacantly into the middle distance. Her lips were parted; her chin gleamed wetly.
Lansley’s breaths worked up to a crescendo.
‘Well, they picked a bloody good time, didn’t they?’ he screamed, swiping at the air with his poker. Little spots of congealing blood studded the floorboards. ‘Fine, you said! Don’t worry, you said!’ For a moment, Delphine thought he was going to strike Propp.
His arm went slack.
‘What’s going on?’ she said.
Lansley glanced back at her over his shoulder. ‘Are you going to tell her what’s happening, then? What you’ve done?’
Propp sighed with his whole body. He slipped a rough hand into the pocket of his waistcoat. He ran a finger across the length of his moustache.
‘Dr Lansley is right. I am at fault.’
‘Oh, that’s bloody big of you,’ said Lansley. ‘That’s bloody magnanimous.’
Two sharp bangs rattled the door.
‘In truth, I am not sure how this has happened. For now it is enough for you to know it is not these creatures you should fear but their masters.’
The clicking noise was building, like a carpet of insects frothing over a jungle floor.
‘Professor Carmichael and Mrs Hagstrom are out in the Great Hall,’ said Delphine.
Propp looked grave. ‘Then I fear they are beyond our help.’
‘Where is everybody?’ she said.
Propp shook his head. ‘I do not know.’
‘Where’s Mother?’ She tried to feel panic, or love. ‘Where’s Daddy?’
‘I do not know. I am sorry.’
Lansley rushed at her, reaching into his pocket. She raised her arms to defend herself. Something clattered to the floor at her feet.
‘Not much, but better than nothing,’ he said.
She looked down. It was her pocket knife. She went to pick it up but Lansley dropped and snatched it and the point was at her throat. He met her gaze. He was so close she could see the thick brown fibres in his irises.
‘One stroke,’ he said. She felt a breeze as he flicked the blade from left to right. ‘Snick. Across the windpipe.’ He turned the knife round in his hand, closed his leather-gloved fingers over the blade. He held it out. Delphine grasped the handle. Lansley did not let go. He took a couple of very deep breaths, huffing and puffing like someone lowering himself into a hot bath. He looked at her. ‘If you’re going to use a knife, don’t wave it around like a feather duster. Go for their throats. Remember. One stroke.’
He released the blade and walked away. She saw the seam of his hunting jacket on his unguarded back, felt the knife in her hand.
Lansley went back to passing the poker from palm to palm. He spoke to his reflection in the glass cabinet.
‘In a moment, Mr Propp and I will distract the vesperi in the hallway. I suggest that you use that opportunity to attempt an escape. If you stay, you will certainly die.’
She glanced at the door. The popping was rising to a crescendo.
‘Those things . . . are they from Hell?’
Lansley sniffed. ‘Not as you understand it.’
‘Where, then?’
Propp reached beneath his coat and slid the revolver from its holster. Delphine started at the drawn weapon, took a step back. Lansley was pacing.
‘We must haste,’ said Propp. He broke the barrel and began chambering rounds. His hands were shaking. His fingers slipped and a cartridge rolled across the floor. Delphine stooped and picked it up. A .38 hollowpoint. Nasty. So his revolver was a Mark 4, after all.
Delphine pursed her lips. ‘Dum-dum rounds.’ She tossed the cartridge back to him.
The men stared at Delphine.
‘We need to get to the gun room,’ she said. ‘We can arm ourselves.’
Propp pushed the barrel up and the stirrup lock shut with a solid click. ‘We cannot stay here, this is true. We leave now or not at all.’
Lansley weighed the poker in his fist. ‘We’d never make it. Besides, Mrs Hagstrom has the only key.’
‘I’ve got one.’ Both men gawked at her. ‘I’ve got keys to most of the rooms. I made copies.’
Propp smoothed his white moustache.
‘So. In this case I must entrust you with great responsibility.’ He walked across the little beef-paste-coloured rug to the old lady in the wheelchair. ‘Take her. Get her away from house.’ Then, apparently seeing Delphine’s confusion, he added: ‘She is my sister.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ said Lansley. ‘It’ll be hard enough escaping alone. You can’t ask her to drag a wheelchair as well.’
‘So perhaps you think we should surrender? Hand child over?’
Delphine’s chest froze.
Lansley glanced from the old lady to Delphine. He shook his head.
‘Damn your eyes. You were right all along, pompous oaf that you are. We can’t negotiate. They’re animals.’
Propp turned to Delphine with those huge grey eyes. Propp the Bolshevik. Propp the deceiver.
‘Will you help?’ he said.
Delphine looked at Propp’s sister in the wheelchair, pale and limp as a burst chrysalis. Her feet were propped on the wooden footrests inside mustard-coloured socks.
Bangs shook
the door. It sounded as if the creatures – had Lansley called them ‘vesperi’? – had found something to use as a battering ram. The bolt was barely finger-width; already the screws were working loose. A few more blows and it would give.
‘What about my parents?’ she said. ‘What about everyone else?’
Propp and Lansley exchanged a look.
‘We will do our best to find them,’ said Propp. ‘Perhaps they flee already. But if you do not escape, everyone in house will die, I think.’
‘Why?’
‘Because vesperi will have what they came for. Once that is so, they gain nothing by letting us live.’
‘What are they?’
‘Beasts,’ said Lansley, blinking rapidly. ‘Quick, tenacious. Some understand English. No real intelligence to speak of, but a rudimentary, savage cunning. Poor discipline. Given to cowardice. Beasts.’
‘I think . . . I think one attacked me in the woods once.’
‘What? When?’
‘Just after Easter. It chased me.’
‘I knew it!’ said Lansley. ‘They’ve been watching us for months! Why the Hell didn’t you say something?’
‘I did! No one bloody listened!’
BANG
The wood round the bolt splintered.
‘Look,’ Lansley said, ‘we don’t have time for this. You’re right,’ he was talking to Delphine, ‘the gun room is our only hope. With weapons, we can bed in, hold them at bay.’
‘No,’ said Propp. ‘She must run. She cannot stay.’
Delphine fixed Dr Lansley with a hard stare. ‘I want to fight.’
Lansley rolled his eyes. ‘With the greatest respect, young lady, you failed to best an unarmed man in his late forties. I hardly think you will fare much better against waves of bloodthirsty skinwings.’
‘I will if I’m holding a twelve bore.’
The Doctor tipped his head back, regarding her down the broad slope of his nose.
‘Good. With that attitude you might just live through the next half-hour.’ He turned his attention to the bat-winged chimp sitting on a branch inside its display case. ‘Propp’s right, though. You can’t stay.’
‘I’m not leaving.’
‘We don’t need an extra gun – we can use the corridors as choke points, counteract their numerical advantage. What we need is for someone to fetch help.’
Propp laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder. The old lady bleated dreamily.
‘She cannot escape alone. Please.’
‘I’m not abandoning everybody!’
BANG
The door coughed slivers of wood. The bolt jangled loose on its screws.
‘Can we please postpone the strategy briefing till we’ve worked out how to escape from this bloody room?’ said Lansley.
‘Once we’re out there it’ll be too late,’ said Delphine. ‘We need a plan.’
‘We have plan,’ said Propp. ‘Doctor and I head for gun room. You take my sister, run.’
‘That’s not a plan. I can’t just stroll out the front door.’
‘Why not? Is quickest way.’
‘I’m dead over open ground. They’ll run me down in seconds.’
‘We have no choice.’
‘Then we’ll die.’
‘Will you shut up!’ Lansley brought the poker down so hard it lodged in the floor. When he tried to pull it out, he levered up a floorboard.
Delphine looked from the gap in the floor, to the glass cabinets, to the locked door. She grabbed the Portuguese card table and tipped it onto its side.
‘Quick,’ she said, stepping behind it. ‘I know this room inside-out. Do exactly as I say.’
CHAPTER 21
BEASTLY THINGS
The bolt housing broke from the door frame with the clean report of an icicle snapping. The door swung open. Delphine watched from behind the card table. Vesperi darted from either side of the doorway, forming a pack. Some clutched javelins, some small hooked knives. Others carried coils of black rope. She stared at their horrible grasping hands. Fur on their knuckles gleamed with the lustre of iced tea.
The tallest stopped, its huge ears twitching. Its snout was a snarl of dark cartilage ringed with rigid gills. She watched the quick in-out of its chest beneath its sleeveless quilted leather jacket, a chip of red glass winking on the breast. Slowly, Delphine became aware of a mass of bright eyes focusing on her. The clicking dropped to a murmur.
The tallest raised its chin. It spat a noise at her – a flat puk that ricocheted off the upended tabletop like a tossed bottle cap. She glanced at the empty ground between them: a few yards of bare floorboards, and that ugly pale brown rug, spread like a welcome mat. The scene floated ghostly and reversed in the line of glass display cases, bat-monsters superimposed over a scorpion dove, a unicorn. One of the cases stood slightly forward from the rest.
The tallest vesperi whipped a bootlace tongue across the yellow spines of its teeth. Its wings hung bunched and leathery behind it. She could feel her mind reeling against it, rejecting the evidence of her senses, rejecting the earthy, oily musk wafting across the room. They could not exist, they did exist, they could not, they did.
The tallest vesperi took a step forward. Behind the card table, she tightened her grip on the pocket knife. One stroke. Snick. Across the windpipe.
The creature glanced about the room. The wheelchair sat empty in a corner. The creature clicked to its fellows. Warily, they advanced on the barricade.
At Delphine’s knee, the old lady lay hidden in her blanket, nodding, gazing at her curled fingers. The clicking did not disturb her at all – she seemed soothed by it.
The tallest vesperi glanced across at the display cases, stopped short. At first, Delphine thought it was startled by the taxidermied monsters, then she realised: it could see Propp’s sister reflected in the glass.
The creature squealed.
The javelin-bearers raised their weapons and the pack surged forwards. The dagger-bearers ducked and struck out in front. A vesperi flung its javelin; Delphine snatched her hand away and the javelin struck the tabletop, its shaft shattering on impact. A deliberately low throw. A warning.
The pack was dividing, preparing to flank the barricade. Propp’s sister cooed with delight.
The dagger-wielders hit the tasselled rug and fell. Their chins thudded into the floor. Behind them, javelin-bearers stumbled into a depression left by the collapsing rug, which disguised a hole where Lansley had wrenched up the floorboards. As vesperi tried to pull themselves out, the rearguard blundered into them, trapping the frontline beneath a mound of struggling, flapping bodies.
The hole was shallow. It had halted the charge but already the vesperi were scrambling out.
Delphine stood.
‘Now!’
In the display cabinet, the unicorn shuddered. It slid forward till its horn struck the glass – tink. The fallen vesperi started at the noise. The cabinet whinnied. Too late they realised what was happening. A shadow fell across the pit. One vesperi managed to drag itself clear before the great glass display case tipped, moaned, and bore down on the rest with a final cacophonous smash.
Gasping, greased with sweat, Propp and Dr Lansley stood in the gap left by the fallen cabinet. Propp raised his pistol and took aim at the one remaining vesperi. The monster lay on its backside, breathing in rapid fits. It saw the gun. Its short, downy throat tightened. It began crawling backwards, hooked wings scraping along the floor. Its ears had scalloped edges, as if they had been cropped. Delphine watched, horrified, fascinated.
‘No.’ Lansley placed a hand on the barrel of Propp’s pistol. He pushed it down. The vesperi shut its eyes and exhaled. ‘Save your ammo.’ Lansley marched round the cabinet, glass crunching beneath his boots. The vesperi was unarmed. Lansley stood over it. The creature looked up at him with flinty little eyes, grasping a tin ankh fastened to its breast.
Lansley stamped on its leg.
Delphine felt the crunch. The vesperi rasped. Lansley swung the
poker into its head and the sound stopped.
He turned. ‘Time to go.’
Delphine tried to stand and discovered that her legs were shaking. She frowned. The room whirled; she felt as if she were on a carousel.
Propp was beside her with the wheelchair.
‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Help me.’
Delphine used the table to steady herself. She and Propp picked up his sister and sat her in the wheelchair. Delphine smelt urine, partly masked by talcum powder. Propp flung a loose-knit blanket over the old lady’s head. ‘To protect,’ he said.
Lansley had the poker raised; the spiked end was the colour of dead roses.
‘Remember, no detours,’ he said. ‘We head straight for the master bedroom. Every second we’re out there, we’re exposed.’
Propp gripped the pistol in both hands and advanced on the doorway. His sleeves were rolled up and his throat growled as he breathed. Delphine glanced at her pocket knife and tried to believe she was ready to use it. Propp hesitated.
A vesperi peered round the lip of the door frame and he fired. The report boxed her ears. When she opened her eyes a vesperi lay dead in the doorway, the skirting board pebbledashed with blood and skull fragments.
Delphine gripped the wheelchair handles and made herself think about guns. .38s were such a waste at this range. Far more punch than necessary, no spread – unless you counted the enlarged exit wound from the expanding tip.
It was as if Propp was expecting to face something far bigger than bats.
Lansley was at the door. He turned to Propp.
‘Hear anything?’
‘No. Go, go.’
Lansley stepped into the corridor and there was the whumph-whumph of wings and a tarry rag launched at his head. He jerked aside – the creature snagged his deaf-aid cable, pulling him off-balance. The wire went taut; the brick-sized battery slipped from its holster and clipped the vesperi’s temple. Dazed, the creature slashed at Lansley and missed. Lansley clubbed its head into the wall and was still clubbing it when Propp grabbed his arm.
‘Enough.’
Delphine tilted the wheelchair’s front casters off the floor, feeling the old lady’s weight shift to the back of the seat. Her palms were slippery. She pushed the chair towards the doorway. From under the cabinet came rustling, pops.