She sat out on the edge of the bed, moving carefully, thinking about the Hall.
She had been going there before the Strix attacked her and Becky. She must go now and allow nothing to stop her.
There was probably nothing that she could do against such a fearsome enemy, but nothing was going to prevent her trying to protect her family. She was going to have to die anyway, before the creeping thing inside her turned her into a beast. Josie had enough tablets to do the job, all being normal. But she feared it would take something different to kill what had got into her.
She found a selection of her clothes in the wardrobe, brought here by Becky no doubt. She quietly dressed in jeans and jumper and pulled on an anorak that also hung there. If she was quick, she could slip down the hall and out the front door that was seldom used. She stood at the bedroom door which was ajar and listened.
‘We can’t stay here, Matt, house or no house,’ Becky was saying. ‘Not after what happened with that thing.’
The Strix, Rose thought.
‘I don’t know what that was, but you’re right. I don’t want to raise the baby here. It’s not a good place. I didn’t see it before, but I feel it now.’
‘And we’re bringing Mam,’ Becky said.
‘Of course. We’re all going,’ Matt said.
Rose’s eyes stung. She was glad they were going, and wished she could go with them, and see her grandson grow up. She blew a silent kiss in their direction and slipped down the corridor, peeping in at the sleeping baby for a last look. She hoped they would decide on a name soon. The child needed a name.
From experience, she held tight to the front door as she opened it. The front of the house having no protection, the wind nearly ripped the door out of her hands. She ran out and pulled it shut behind her. She feared they wouldn’t have missed the sudden howl of the wind, so she ran as fast as she could down the hill to the road, glad that Becky had brought her sneakers. Even with them, her knees hurt. It was a long time since she had run anywhere. She carried on through the pain, through the wind snatching at her breath.
If they had heard the wind, they would have gone to check the baby first. What would they do when they found she was gone? Becky wouldn’t leave the baby and Matt wouldn’t leave the two of them alone. Becky was a good daughter, but she had her own family now. She couldn’t put her mother above the baby. She had already left him to follow her after the funeral and nearly got killed over it. Rose was glad that no one followed her this time, even though she had never felt so alone.
The storm was here, trying to knock her off her feet, but the way the sky looked she realised that there was worse to come. Out over the ocean, something was awake and beginning to roar.
She forged onwards against the wind, past the pub and on to the Hall whose sharp outline cut the sky. At last she was climbing over the broken wall, her progress raising a small flock of birds sheltering in it. They puffed up like a drift of brown leaves, before settling back down. She made her way through the wet grass and weeds towards the house.
It had been years since she had been over here, and she had never got as close to the house as this. She knew it must have been magnificent once, full of life and light, but right now it was a dreadful relic of better days. Even the sight of it always caused a shudder but, with the Strix inside her, she felt differently. If she had wanted to turn back now, she wasn’t sure that she could.
The huge front door was locked. Andrew probably had a key. His and Dan’s land bordered the Hall, once part of the great estate, when the farmers were only tenants on the land they had worked for generations. She moved around to the back of the house. Most of the windows were boarded up but, close to the old stables and coach house, she found one where the board was hanging loose, with the glass smashed in behind it. She pulled the board off, hunted around for a rock and used it to knock the remaining glass away, wincing at the noise she was making. She had to drag an old crate under the window to climb on, testing her weight gingerly. The last thing she needed was a fall, out here in the cold and wet. She would never be found. The end was coming for her, but she didn’t want it like that. As much as she could, she would take some control over her own fate.
Ignoring the pain in her knees and back, at least as much as she could, she hoisted herself up and by force of will squeezed through the broken window and managed to get onto the floor inside. The house was all around her and at first she couldn’t move away from the cold air coming through the window. But there was no point in delaying. It had to be done. A long shard of glass winked at her from the floor. She slipped it in her pocket.
She moved through the room carefully. The floor of any other abandoned house might have been covered with empty beer cans and other rubbish, but this one was free of debris. It looked as though the house had been left untouched since its last occupant left centuries ago.
She pulled open the damp swollen door of the room and found herself in a corridor. It led to the large front hall. There was no apparent light source, but a soft luminescence filled the space. The stairs was magnificent. It rose to a landing and continued both left and right from there.
Rose could see that it had once been beautiful. The wealthy family who had lived here had wanted for nothing. Although covered in dust and mould, she could make out the fabulous ladies and scenes in the many paintings that graced the walls.
There was nothing to hear except the wind echoing around the building and yet she felt them coming. She pressed herself into an alcove and watched, terrified and fascinated.
They came in twos, ladies and gentlemen, finely dressed, enjoying some unheard music. As she watched, the couples turned to face each other and began to dance. They were colourless and Rose couldn’t make out their features. It looked as if their faces and bodies were veiled in cobwebs. As they moved, small contrails of it followed them. They didn’t seem to be aware of Rose. After some indeterminable time, they faded from sight and Rose was about to move from her alcove when the silent procession began again, this time from a different part of the hall. Again, the couples started to dance, filmed in whatever was veiling their features.
Rose moved out into the hall. None of the dancers reacted to her. Her bladder was suddenly full and she was afraid that she might wet herself. Nonetheless, she pressed on and when she had to slip through the dancers she did so, somehow confident they wouldn’t see or feel her. When she brushed against them, it felt like dewfall, soft and otherworldly. She was left with a sensation of sadness instead of fear. When she looked back, the dancers were gone.
Rose started up the stairs. It seemed to go on forever. Rose was in a nightmare world, where the corridor never ended and the stairs climbed higher and higher. She bit her lip hard and took one more step to the first landing and turned left, climbing with the aid of the bannister. At the top, she stopped to catch her breath. The black-and-white tiles below were very far away.
‘Rose.’
The voice was unmistakeable. She had taken enough orders for pints from him over the years. He was in shadow, but she knew.
‘Hello, Dan. We thought you were gone across for good.’
He chuckled and the sound made her skin crawl. The invader in her blood responded.
‘That’s funny. I did go across after a manner of speaking,’ he said.
Rose nodded.
‘Seems like you’re heading that way yourself, woman.’
‘Let me see you, Dan.’
He had been waiting for her to ask. He stepped out of the shadows and she saw what she had ahead of her. The voice was the only part of him that was familiar. In every other way, he looked more like that girl. He was beautiful, as he had certainly never been in life. His face was white, and the unearthly light caught the tips of the tiny feathers that overlapped on his face. The transformation was not complete, but even since he stepped out she could see that it was continuing, filling in the bare patches of skin still left on his body. One part of her knew that it was hideous, but it was
like the paintings that Becky showed her in her art books. They were mix-ups that Rose couldn’t understand but there was something strangely magical about them. Dan was a monster and all she wanted to do was be close to him.
‘Come on then, come to me.’
Rose almost went. She had taken the first step when she heard a cry like a bird or a child. It pierced her.
Becky. Oh, she had been so small. Premature. They let them go home but they thought she mightn’t live. Rose had tucked her to her breast and kept her there next to her heart. Frank had made her a sling. She slept in a chair with the child and carried her around all day, praying silently. It had been summer at least, so she had spent a lot of time sitting on the bench looking out at the Chimneys. Funny that it was at that very bench that Frank himself had almost caused the loss of Becky’s own child.
And she had thrived. The doctors were amazed and, Rose thought, a bit put out that they were wrong. To them, at the time, there was no reason why a mother’s love could save a child’s life. But that had often been true and Rose had no doubt that it would be true again. After all, it was why she was here. To save her daughter and her daughter’s son. She wished they had named him before the storm had come.
‘Rose, come to me. You’re so close.’
She walked towards him, but her mind was her own again. She could feel the pull of him, like the moon pulls the tide but, for this one moment at least, she was herself.
He extended his arms towards her and his face sharpened and became rapacious. She slipped the shard of glass from her pocket and went into his embrace.
He hadn’t fully changed. When the shard went into his heart, he screamed and blood gushed over her hand. He clamped his arms around her, crushing her face against the blood and feathers. She couldn’t breathe and the blood kept flooding but she could feel his arms loosening. If she could just hold on long enough, she would be free.
And then she tasted the blood.
They had siphoned petrol out of Andrew’s car and filled a jerry can. When they were ready, they had set off towards the Hall. The wind had picked up and they had to lean into it. Although it was impossible, Evan felt more like himself than he had since it all began.
With the Hall looming over them, he stopped and rubbed his knee. Jim watched, then raised his bushy eyebrows.
‘I hurt it the night she came, remember?’ He had to shout against the wind, which was trying to get into his lungs.
Jim frowned. ‘Aye, but it hasn’t hurt all this time,’ he yelled.
‘No!’
They moved on, accepting the change. The pain in Evan’s knee was fresh and he felt a trickle of warm blood run down his shin and into his sock. He didn’t say anything.
They gathered sticks and rubbish and set the kindling at the door of the house. Neither of them wanted to go inside, even though that would have ensured the job. They poured petrol over the mound they had made and stood back. Jim lit a cigarette with difficulty, turning away from the wind. When he had got it going, he flicked it onto the pile. They stood back, but it didn’t catch straight away. Evan was about to put his boot to the wood to shift the cigarette when it suddenly caught.
The wind helped. The blaze rose quickly and Jim pointed to the bottom of the door which was blackening. They waited until a flame flickered on the door itself before turning away. At the bottom of the driveway they stopped, even though the storm was lashing their faces. They watched while the fire grew, racing up the front of the house.
Evan’s knee throbbed and he saw Jim rubbing at the arthritis in his knuckles. It was working. It might mean death for them, but it would be welcome after so long.
Then they saw a woman running from the side of the house. She stopped when she saw the fire and seemed entranced by it. Evan looked at his old friend. Jim shook his head. She would be far from the first innocent they had left to die by their hand. Yet, Evan had wanted to be finally free of all his past deeds and their dreadful consequences. Would it help to wash his sins away if he saved this one woman? He reached for Jim’s hand for a handshake, but the older man refused the shake. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders and trotted up the drive towards the woman. Evan, surprised, started after him, despite the pain in his knee.
They skirted the fire, going through what had been a garden, and coming out behind the woman, seeing what she saw.
The fire was blazing higher than the roof of the Hall, but it was a tower of flame, not touching the building. There was a burn on the door where they had seen the first flame, but otherwise the house was not damaged. Evan stared at it and, with terrible regret, felt the pain leave his knee.
The woman turned to look at them. It was Rose, but Evan only barely recognised her. She was covered in blood, looking as though someone had slit a pig’s throat with her standing underneath. She smiled at them and her teeth were impossibly white against the dark blood on her face.
But it was not just the blood. They could see that she was transformed.
Jim looked at Evan, and he looked back. For the first time in their long friendship, Evan groped for Jim’s hand and was glad when his friend took it. Together they faced the creature that had been Rose. As she came for them, they ran to meet her, driving her back with them until they fell together into the flames. For a moment, Evan thrilled to the feel of it wrapping him up. It was curiously like the deadly cold of falling into a winter sea. Then it burned off his clothes and his hair and he opened his mouth to scream. The eager fire rushed down his throat and consumed the part of the beast that had lived inside him since the night of the storm in 1695, the night when they had brought her here and she had paid for her freedom with centuries of life for them all. And still, like men before them, they had held her as their captive, as she had held them. They fed her, and she fed them. Without one, the other couldn’t exist.
When the fire had taken his eyes and his last thoughts were of nothing but pain, he heard the terrible scream once more, this time emerging from Rose as the fire forced the beast from her veins and she returned to a brief mortal existence, full of pain. Together, he, Rose and Jim became part of the fire. The heat burned them to ashes, and sank back into itself, a smouldering mess extinguished by the rain. The Hall lived on with only the shadow of the fire visible upon its face.
Andrew watched the fire and, when it was done, he went around to the back of the Hall and quietly let himself in.
Twenty-Five
There is a reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge,
you would perhaps better understand.
Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897
Something hit the window and shocked Jasmine awake. Ed and Lia were snuggled close together on Ed’s mattress. Jasmine propped herself on her elbow and looked around. The fire had bedded down and was low and red. Harry was standing by the window. She got up quietly and went to stand beside him. He glanced at her.
‘Is everything OK?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Rough night.’ He put his arm around her and she leaned into him. It seemed the most natural thing in the world.
‘Are you scared?’ she whispered.
It took him some time to answer and, although his presence was reassuring, his answer was not.
‘All things must come to an end. It’s something I’ve learned over and over again, but I guess I just keep forgetting. This feels like an end.’
She slid her arm around his waist and they stood like that, watching lightning flash behind a big house on the horizon.
He turned her to him.
‘Maybe it could be a beginning too.’
He bent and kissed her cheek before letting her go. She went back to her mattress and watched as he banked up the fire and lay down on his own makeshift bed. He threw his arm across his eyes and went quickly to sleep. In the low red light of the fire, the resemblance to her husband was startling, unsettling. She looked over at Lia. She had turned on her back and she too had an arm over her eyes.
Unable to sleep, Jasmine slipped away from the others and quietly moved a chair to the window to watch the lightning. This time there was a peculiar light out there. A red glow. She looked back into the room and realised that it hadn’t just been the light of their own fire. Something was burning out there, perhaps struck by lightning. She watched it, hypnotised by the way the fire flickered in the wind. It would blow out, or it would spread. She had done some fundraising for injured fire-fighters and had heard their stories about how fire could seem to have a life of its own.
She could dimly see her own reflection in the glass. She was wearing a white T-shirt and leggings, thanks to Ed, who had grabbed her bag as they ran. The pale image was superimposed over the red glow in the distance. She changed her focus to the reflection instead of the fire and found that the image was regarding her. She recoiled. The image was not hers. There was a girl standing out there, just within the reach of the meagre light from the room. She was a gorgeous girl, but Jasmine didn’t rush to the door to bring her in from the storm. The storm was having no impact on her, except to play with her long hair. She looked at Jasmine with her head on one side and then moved, too fast for Jasmine’s eyes to see. She blinked and found herself face to face with the girl, with only the glass between them. The girl was standing close to the window, her features distorted by the rivers of rain on the surface. Jasmine had never seen anything like her.
She cried out and then others were moving. She couldn’t take her eyes off the girl. Lia put her arm around her in the same way Harry had earlier. Ed was standing beside Lia. The girl was watching him intently.
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