Incantations

by SIMS, MAYNARD

  ‘And what was your price?’ Crawford said sourly.

  Jarvis shrugged and lowered the unconscious girl down onto the sand at Crawford’s feet. ‘I’ve known Martin since he was a baby, and God knows his father has always been there to stifle any joy in the boy’s life. Let’s just say I’m helping restore the balance a little. I think she’ll be good for him.’

  Crawford shook his head. ‘God save us all from blind optimism,’ he said to the man’s departing back.

  Jarvis didn’t turn. When he reached the others they walked together across the beach, until they were lost in the shadows of the dunes. A minute later a car started and sped off into the night.

  Crawford crouched down and stroked the hair away from Meg’s brow. Yes, he thought. Very pretty.

  She would do.

  Martin Stein opened the door of the hotel room and carried Narina Dressler over the threshold, shutting the door behind them with a backward kick of his heel. He laid her gently on the bed and kissed her. She responded by wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down on top of her. They’d left Jarvis in the bar, nursing a pint of bitter and a fat wallet. They’d paid him well for today, but there was no doubting the man’s sincerity in his reluctance to accept payment.

  Narina’s fingers deftly unbuttoned Martin’s shirt and entwined themselves in his chest hair. He rolled away from her and lay staring up at the ceiling whilst her fingernails scratched soft intricate patterns in his skin. ‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered.

  ‘Can he be trusted?’

  ‘Finlay? Of course. He’s bound to be angry, but it’s not as if we left him high and dry. We gave him an alternative. He will appreciate that.’ She rolled over and straddled him, her hands reaching behind her to unzip her dress.

  ‘I worry that we’ve underestimated him.’

  She got to her feet and let her dress drop to the floor, then pulled back the covers and slid beneath the sheets, tugging at his hand in an effort to get him to follow.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Come to bed.’

  He turned and smiled at her. ‘You’re right,’ he said, then sat up and took off his shirt.

  Ralph Jarvis sank the last dregs of his pint and said goodnight to the barman. He glanced up at the clock above the bar. Only nine o’clock but it had been a long and stressful day and he felt incredibly tired. He felt no guilt at having betrayed his employer’s trust. He’d hated Clifford Stein for years, only remaining with the family, first out of loyalty to Eleanor and then, after her death, to Martin. He loved the boy like a son – and had circumstances been slightly different Martin may have been just that. But that was all a long time ago, and he was too old for regrets.

  Instead he looked forward to a future. Martin Stein owned a house in the Cannonbury area of London. Nothing too grand, but he’d been assured of a position there, and he would be only too happy to accept it.

  He took the stairs to his room on the first floor. At the top he looked along the landing. He thought he’d seen something moving further along. Just a brief fluid movement by the door of his room – a shadow perhaps, but then there was nothing to cast a shadow. The landing was deserted. He walked along to the room and turned the key in the lock. He opened the door and put his hand around the frame, feeling on the wall for the light switch.

  His fingers found the switch, but before he had chance to flick on the light his wrist was seized and he was hauled into the room, the door slamming shut behind him. He staggered forwards, cracking his shins against the coffee table, the impact ruining his balance and sending him crashing to the floor.

  The air was filled with sound – an intense buzzing, like the sound of a million flies, but there was nothing flying around. In the vague light that filtered into the room through the net curtains from the street outside, he could make out nothing at all untoward. There was the bed, the wardrobe, the dressing table and the suitcase rack. The door to the bathroom was slightly ajar, but there didn’t seem to be anything through there either. Rubbing his shins he hauled himself to his feet and stood in the middle of the carpet, looking about the room.

  The hand that gripped the back of his neck was cold, with fingers like steel bolts. They bit into the muscles at the base of his skull and squeezed, paralysing him, keeping him rooted to the spot. He simply couldn’t move, and when the clothes he was wearing burst into flames, there was nothing he could do but stand there, held in the vice-like grip and watch them burn. Fear turned to incredulity as the clothes were burnt from his body without heat. There was a flickering blue flame, and the cloth was blackening and charring, dropping to the floor as ash, but the flames weren’t touching his skin; he remained unscathed. Even when the fingers released him and he stood in the centre of the floor naked and surrounded by a circle of ash, he still couldn’t believe the flames had left him unmarked.

  He held up his arm in front of his face, but it was clear, in the filtered light that there wasn’t a trace of a blister or a scorch. He was shaking his head in wonder, when a strip of skin an inch wide and six inches long was ripped from his forearm.

  It happened so suddenly he felt no pain. One moment he was looking at the unblemished skin, the next it was gone, leaving a livid wheal of raw flesh in its place. Seconds later the pain rushed at him and he reeled backwards clasping his arm close to his body, feeling the wet stickiness of the blood seeping through the hairs covering his chest. He opened his mouth to cry out and his tongue was grasped by unseen fingers, sharp nails digging down into the soft tissue, cutting, lacerating until the tongue was ripped from his mouth and hurled against the wall.

  Blood poured down his throat and he gagged, choking for breath. The pain was pulsing through him like a living thing, intense and vicious, the shock of it dimming the boundaries of his vision, leaving him teetering on the brink of unconsciousness. But when most of the skin was ripped from his back in one large bloody sheet, unconsciousness receded and he was frighteningly, agonisingly aware of what was happening to him. Blood bubbled in his mouth as he made incoherent sounds of pain and fear, and when the steel fingers closed around his neck and ripped out his throat, the end was mercifully quick.

  Martin and Narina made love with an intensity that shocked both of them. There was an animal intensity about their lust, and when they climaxed they lay in each other’s arms, spent and totally fulfilled.

  She leaned across and stroked his cheek. ‘I never thought it could be like that,’ she said.

  ‘That’s what freedom means. You’ve had the sword of Damocles lifted from above your head. You’re free of Finlay Crawford. We’re free of the Brotherhood. This is how it will be from now on.’

  He cradled her head in the crook of her arm. ‘Let’s go away to celebrate this. Paris?’

  ‘Vienna,’ she said. Then cried out in pain as something gripped her ankle.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Marin said, and then he too yelped as something crushed his shins.

  They struggled to rise from the bed but their legs were trapped, as though someone had laid a great weight across them. The pain was excruciating. They stared into each other’s eyes and knew that Finlay Crawford had broken his word.

  The air was filled with a crackling sound, like the sound of ice crunching underfoot, but the bed was anything but cold. Gradually the weight crept further up their bodies, pressing them down into the bed. As though the bed-covers were being pulled slowly up to their faces. But the covers didn’t feel soft, as they should do; they were hard, like metal.

  It reached their thighs, crushed their genitals and crept on up to their bellies. They twisted and writhed as much as they could, but the bedclothes had them trapped. The sheets and blankets were turning to iron, crushing them with their weight and, as the weight reached their chests, squeezing the life out of them and suffocating them.

  With his last ounce of strength Martin reached down and tried to push the bedclothes back from Narina’s body. He expected the covers to be hard, resistant, but his hand sunk
into soft cotton and wool fibres, and within a split second was trapped as the fibres turned to steel. The bed was turning into a metal coffin and they were being crushed by the weight of it, yet the bed seemed as normal in appearance as it had before.

  Narina Dressler made a small choking sound in her throat as the last of her air was squeezed from her body. Seconds later she died.

  Martin took one last look at his lover’s lifeless body, and then, with a noise that sound like a long regretful sigh, he closed his eyes and accepted the inevitable.

  Gareth paid the taxi driver and watched as the cab moved away from the kerb on its way to another fare. The ride from the guesthouse to Clifford Stein’s had given him enough time to digest June Gafney’s story, and what he’d read in Marie Elise’s notes.

  Her research had paid dividends. She’d traced Finlay Crawford back to his very first appearance on stage at a small theatre in Edinburgh. But what was more interesting was that the history of Crawford before Edinburgh was vague to the point of being murky. It was as if he didn’t exist before he first appeared on stage.

  What was also interesting was the fact that the actor/manager of the small theatre was a man called Oswald Bryce, a man in his late seventies whose theatrical career went back to the second half of the nineteenth century. In some obscure reference book Marie managed to find an entry for Bryce. It was nothing to do with his acting career, but a lot to do with a dining club he ran in Edinburgh called the Brotherhood. A number of eminent people both in and out of the theatre were members of the club, and a footnote to the piece went on at length about a Roman Catholic priest called McNeal who was lobbying various authorities to have the Brotherhood declared an illegal and blasphemous society, claiming that the group were involved in unearthly practices.

  In Marie Elise’s research there was little more about Oswald Bryce but much about Finlay Crawford, including a theatre programme with a biographical piece about Crawford, comparing his talents and acting style to that of Oswald Bryce. This, added to the other pages of research led Marie to believe that Oswald Bryce and Finlay Crawford were linked more deeply than just fellow actors. And having read through her notes Gareth was coming to the same conclusion.

  As fantastical as it seemed he was starting to believe that Oswald Bryce, old and ailing Oswald Bryce, had in fact taken over the body of Finlay Crawford, the young actor and in some way inhabited him, thus securing his own perpetuity.

  He walked up the sweeping lane to the house, keeping to the bushes at the side of the road. The light was gone from the sky but the moon was providing its own illumination. He reached the front door but it was locked and he’d no desire to knock. A gravel path led around to the back of the house and he negotiated it as quietly as he could, breathing a huge sigh of relief when he finally stepped onto the cold hard concrete of the veranda. The french doors were ajar and he pushed them wider and slipped into the house.

  The ground floor was deserted. There was no sound to be heard. He crept quietly up the stairs and along the landing, pausing to peer through each open door and putting his ear to each one that was closed. He reached the end of the landing and found himself at the top of another flight of stairs that he presumed led to the servants’ quarters.

  Walking on tiptoe and hardly daring to breathe, he crept quietly down the stairs. At the bottom he found himself at the head of a long burgundy painted corridor. There was a huge oak door at the other end, resolutely shut. He reached it and grabbed the door handle, turning it silently. The door opened on well-oiled hinges, swinging into a huge room, dimly lit and reeking of incense.

  He stepped through the door. The ceiling was low and swagged in white silk; the walls of the room were draped in long red velvet curtains, and between each fall of velvet was a man-sized alcove, each containing a cloaked and hooded figure. He drew in his breath sharply and was about to turn and run when he saw the podium in the centre of the smooth concrete floor. Lying naked on the podium was the unconscious body of Meg Johnson.

  The figures in the alcoves were curiously still. Surely if they’d been living, breathing people standing there his intrusion would have been discovered and the alarm raised. He walked across to the nearest alcove and stretched out his hand to lift the hood of the cloaked figure.

  He almost laughed aloud. The figure was nothing more than a wicker armature fashioned in the shape of a man. Where the face should have been was a photograph and nothing more. He pulled the photo from the figure and took it across to a candle burning in a sconce on the wall. Once he could see the face clearly he recognised it instantly. A cabinet member; a politician he’d heard speak on the radio several times; a man of high standing, respected throughout the country.

  He went to the next figure and lifted the hood. An actor this time. One he knew well, and even shared a stage with. Were all these men members of Finlay Crawford’s Brotherhood? He moved on down the line to the next figure and the next. When he reached the fifth figure he was breathless. Two actors, an eminent politician and an archbishop. He raised the cowl of the next figure and Finlay Crawford smiled at him. ‘I wondered when you would get to me,’ Crawford said and drove a stiff right hand into Gareth’s stomach. As the younger man doubled over Crawford brought a heavy stave down on the back of his head.

  Gareth collapsed in a heap at Crawford’s feet. With the toe of his shoe Finlay Crawford rolled the younger man onto his back and stared down into his face. ‘I recognise him,’ he said.

  Clifford Stein emerged from one of the other alcoves. ‘It’s Gareth Barker, a friend of Martin’s, and a friend of hers.’ He jerked his thumb towards Meg Johnson.

  ‘Tie him up and let’s get started,’ Crawford said. ‘The others will be waiting.’

  Gareth was aware of a crushing ache at the back of his head. He flicked open his eyes. He was sitting upright but his head was bent forward looking at the floor and it hurt too much to move it. The smell of incense in the room was intense as was the sound of chanting. Two voices monotonously mouthing a litany of strange words and sounds, over and over again. He tried to move, to bring his hands up to clutch at the pounding in his head, but he couldn’t move. He was tied securely to the chair in which he was sitting.

  Gradually he raised his head and looked about the room. In the alcoves lights were turned on and the wicker figures disrobed, so their photographic faces could see the piece of theatre being enacted in the centre of the room. Meg Johnson was still lying on the podium, the reddish lights of the room making her naked skin glow pink. She was flanked by Crawford and Stein, each with their heads bowed, each chanting the monotonous rhyme that to Gareth’s ears made no sense.

  He tried to speak but his tongue felt twice its normal size. He struggled with his bonds but they’d been expertly tied and it seemed the more he struggled the tighter they became. He suddenly became aware that the temperature in the room had dropped sharply. As he breathed out he could see his breath misting in front of him. And the same with Crawford and Stein; as they chanted so their hot breath turned to steam in the freezing air.

  At the far end of the room another cloud of mist was beginning to form, but there was no one breathing here. It was as if the pale, shimmering cloud was emanating from the wall itself. Slowly it billowed into the room, rising and falling, twisting and turning in on itself, all the while growing more and more dense, more and more solid.

  When it was the height of a small child it began to shift across the floor towards the two men and Meg. Crawford and Stein had stopped chanting and were watching the cloud approach, something close to awe on their faces.

  Once it reached them the cloud rose into the air and stretched out, moulding itself to Meg’s naked form, and gradually, so slowly the movement was almost imperceptible, it started to sink into Meg’s body.

  Finlay Crawford gave an almost exhalant cry and raised his fist in the air in triumph.

  Gareth screamed, ‘No!’

  Finlay Crawford wheeled on him. ‘Too late!’ he said. ‘It’s don
e. My daughter has returned to me and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Not you, not Narina, not that fool Martin. And now I’ll deal with you the way I dealt with them!’ Walking across to one of the alcoves he reached in and picked up the mahogany stave he’d used to club Gareth earlier.

  He took a step forward and Clifford Stein stepped out in front of him. ‘So you broke your word,’ he said to Crawford, his voice shaking with emotion.

  ‘I had no choice, Clifford. They betrayed us, betrayed the Brotherhood. There was no possible way I could allow them to go unpunished.’ Crawford spoke calmly and reasonably, like a vet telling an owner why he’d put their favourite cat to sleep. ‘You do see that, don’t you?’

  ‘You broke your word,’ Clifford Stein said in a curiously flat voice. ‘You killed Martin. My son. You killed Martin…’

  Crawford’s face twisted into a mask of fury and he lunged at Stein, knocking him to the floor. He towered over him, wielding the stave threateningly. ‘Do you honestly think I gave a damn about your son and that Dressler woman. They were nothing but extras, Clifford; walk-on parts… bloody spear-carriers. So they were in love, but you know what they say, “all fair in love and war”. Napoleon had a phrase to describe war. He called it “the business of barbarians”. We are the barbarians, Clifford, and this is war. A constant war against the passing of time, against the ravages of age, against death itself, conquering death. That’s why the Brotherhood was formed and why it’s been so successful for so long. And tonight we’ve begun a new chapter. The resurrection of the dead!’ He turned to Meg and grabbed her hand, patting it, trying to revive her, trying to bring her, or rather his daughter, back to consciousness. He was convinced the transfer had worked. He knew Marie had waited so long to be reunited with him, and he’d seen her aura, her spirit enter the body of the unconscious girl. But he had to wake the vessel; he had to be sure that the eyes that looked up at him were the eyes of Marie Elise, his daughter.