‘He’s here all right,’ Francis panted. ‘He’s here, he’s close, and he’s fully awake now. Hell on earth, my heart’s beating like a hammer and I’ll bet it’s him that’s causing it.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to do what I set out to do. I’m even more certain of what’s needed, now that I’m pretty damn sure what he is.’
He coughed again, and wheezed like a pair of old bellows, and then he took hold of Rob’s arm, made his way unsteadily across the hallway and sat down on the chair.
‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ Rob asked him.
Francis nodded, and kept on nodding. ‘I have to be up to it, because nobody else is going to do it, are they? Nobody else is capable. Who’s going to rescue Ada and your brother and your little boy if I don’t?’
He coughed again. ‘I’ll have to collect quite a few things. I’ll need water from the Druid’s Bowl, which is like the Druidic equivalent of holy water, but I’ve a bottle of that already, so that will save me a trip up to Cosdon. Candles, plenty of candles, and a turfing iron, as well as sheep shears. I’ll have to have wolfsbane. And cloves. And slugs, of course. My friend Dorothy will have plenty of those in her garden.’
He stayed seated for a while, his chest rising and falling. Vicky came up to them and said, ‘Are you all right, Francis? You’ve lost nearly all of your hair.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve made a mess of your floor.’
‘I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about you. You look terrible.’
‘I’ll be all right. I’ve had to deal with hostile forces before. None quite as hostile as this one, I’ll admit. But I’ll survive. Once I’ve cleared it out of here, I’m sure my hair will grow back. If not, I’ll just have to buy myself a toupee, won’t I?’
Rob said, ‘Don’t make light of this, Francis. Are you really sure you’re going to be able to manage it?’
Francis stared up at them, unblinking, with his colourless eyes. His expression was even more biblical than when Rob had first seen him.
‘I have to, Rob. It’s my destiny. Sometimes you’re confronted with things in your life and you realise that you have to deal with them. You don’t have a choice, because that’s what you were born for. I could leave here now and drive home and try to forget that I ever discovered the force that’s holding this house in its grip. But how could I ever forget it? If I don’t decontaminate Allhallows Hall tomorrow, I’d be guilty of criminal negligence – manslaughter, even – because I could have saved Ada and your brother and your little lad, but I would have been too much of a meregyon to try. Meregyon, that’s Cornish for sniveller.’
He stood up, leaning on his wand for support, and cautiously patted the side of his head to see if any more hair was going to fall out.
‘I may look weak but I have plenty of strength in me,’ he assured them. ‘I knew what I was getting into when I became a gleaner. There’s nothing Harry Potterish about wizardry, believe me. The dark forces you’re up against, and the things you have to do to send them back where they belong, like strangling a badger or turning a live hare inside out.’
‘All right,’ said Rob. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow then. But if you need any help in the meantime, or if you change your mind about doing this, you’ve got my number.’
‘I won’t change my mind, Rob. I can’t. When I’m able to tell you what we’re up against – who we’re up against – you’ll understand why.’
‘You can’t even give us a clue?’
Francis shook his head. ‘If I gave you a clue, and you worked out what his name was, and spoke it out loud – even if you thought it – that would amount to my committing manslaughter. Worse than manslaughter – murder.’
Rob helped him into his raincoat and together he and Vicky showed him to the front door. They watched him walk slowly across the courtyard to the driveway, where he had parked his car. Halfway across the courtyard, next to the headless cherub, he turned around and looked back at Allhallows Hall like a general surveying a fortress that he would have to assault at dawn.
Behind the trees, a full moon was rising, bleak and pale.
‘We should try and have an early night tonight,’ said Rob. ‘From what Francis was saying, this spiritual decontamination is going to be like all hell let loose.’
‘You really think that any of us are going to be able to sleep?’
Rob closed the front door and the draught made the tufts of Francis’s white hair blow across the floor like dandelion puffs.
*
They didn’t go to bed early, but stayed up until midnight, talking. They agreed that with all of his knocking on the walls, Francis seemed to have provoked even more tension in the house, even tauter than the silent, suspenseful atmosphere that Father Salter had sensed in it.
‘I know it sounds insane, but I can’t help thinking that the house has started listening to us,’ said Grace. ‘I don’t just mean this force that Francis kept on talking about, whatever it is – this force that we’re not allowed to mention – but the whole house. The floors, the curtains, the walls, even the pictures on the walls, all of them listening to every word we say. Especially the pictures on the walls.
‘That portrait at the top of the stairs – I don’t know which Wilmington it is, but his eyes don’t just follow you across the landing, they feel as if they’re following you all the way down the corridor and then spying on you through your bedroom keyhole while you’re getting undressed.’
‘I agree with you, the house does feel alive,’ said Vicky. ‘But in a way that makes me feel a little more hopeful about Timmy. If it does have life in it, then wherever it’s keeping him hidden, perhaps he’s still alive – and Martin, too, and Ada.’
The clock in the hallway struck twelve, very slowly, because it needed winding, and they agreed that it was time to call it a night. Katharine went upstairs first, and when Grace and Portia had finished their drinks they followed her. Rob damped the fire down while Vicky cleared up their glasses and mugs.
‘His eyes are still following me!’ called Grace, from the landing.
‘Turn his face to the wall!’ Rob called back. ‘Or hang a towel over him!’
Vicky returned from the kitchen, and Rob wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. She felt cold, and so he held her close until she had warmed up a little. Even her flowery perfume smelled cold.
‘I can’t wait for tomorrow, Rob,’ she told him. ‘I can’t wait for it, but I can’t tell you how much I’m dreading it.’
32
‘It’s a full moon tonight, love,’ said Jaws, easing himself down on the floor close to Ada and whispering in her ear. ‘Not too many clouds, neither, so it’s nice and bright and shiny.’
Ada shifted herself away from him. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s the fulness, that’s what it means. The fulness. That’s what we call them three nights when the moon’s supposed to turn people into lunatics and werewolves. I don’t know about that, but that’s when all of its energy comes beaming down to us – you and me and all the other poor sods that are trapped with us here.’
‘So what does that do?’
Jaws reached out and playfully flicked the tip of Ada’s nose with his fingertip. She flinched, and shifted even further away from him.
‘I’ll tell you what the full moon can do, darling. It can give us a fucking break. While it’s up there high in the sky, it can set us free from the moment when we was trapped in here, like being let out of our cells for a bit of exercise. It’s only for one night a month, but for that one night it can fetch us forward from then into now. It can make us feel real again. Do you know what I mean? Hearts beating, lungs going in and out, like we’re living the way we used to.’
‘Only while it’s up there? Then what?’
‘Then it’s all over. Then we go back to being stuck in the second we was chanted, just like we are now. Don’t ask me why, or how, because I don’t have the first fucking idea. But
all you have to do is go out and stand in front of that window with the devil and the dogs in it, with the moonlight shining through it. “Unlocking”, that’s what we call it. Well, you can understand why.’
‘Is that all you have to do? Stand in front of that window?’
‘That’s right. You stand there and you let the moonlight shine into your eyes, and you cast your mind back to what you was like the second before you got trapped. Before you can say holy forking shirtholes you’ll be as solid as you was at that very moment. I’m not kidding you. Even your watch will start working again.’
Ada narrowed her eyes and looked at him suspiciously.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ said Jaws.
‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’
‘Why would I tell you a porky about something like that? What would be the point? Go out there and stand in front of that window, and see what happens. If fuck all happens, then what have you lost?’
‘But how can I? I can’t get out of here, can I?’
‘Your energy can, love, the same like we did before, when we went out for a quick breather from them two girls. All you have to do is close your eyes like you do when you’re having a weary, leave your body behind and walk through that wall. Once you go up to that window and stand in the moonlight and get yourself unlocked, your body won’t be here in this room any more. That’s because you won’t be stuck in the day before yesterday any more, you’ll be right where you are now.’
He inched himself closer, and caressed her hair with his knuckles, and again she shifted herself away. The smell of Old Spice was making her feel nauseous.
‘You’ll be able to walk around the house the same as your friends. Go downstairs and help yourself to a glass of plonk, watch some telly, do whatever you want. Me – I’m going to do it. I always do, every full moon. I’ll be doing it tonight, if you do.’
‘But my friends are going to hear us, aren’t they, and come out to see what’s going on?’
‘They won’t, love. Usually, there’s nobody here in the house when there’s a fulness. But before I go and stand in front of the window, I’m going to go sneaking around to your mates’ bedrooms, lock their doors, and take out the keys.’
‘Supposing they break the doors down?’
‘Come on, you’ve seen those doors. Solid oak. You’d need a fucking tank to break those down. We could even put on some music and have a dance. As soon as the moon goes down I’ll put the keys back, but if they come to look for us, we’ll be gone, back in here, and they’ll be none the wiser.’
Ada was silent for a long time. She could see from the small stained-glass windows in the witching room that the moon was shining brightly outside. It made Jaws look as if he were wearing a multicoloured Pierrot costume. Even his face was triangulated in red and green and yellow.
At last, she said, ‘All right. But if the moonlight can set me free, what’s to stop me walking out of the house and never coming back?’
‘Sorry, darling. You can’t. I don’t know what’s holding us all here, but you simply fucking can’t. I tell you something, it’s more secure than Dartmoor. I’ve tried it more than once, and some of other blokes have tried it. Oh yes, you can open the door, but you can’t walk through it. I’ve stood right there with the door wide open and I’ve seen outside. I’ve heard the birds twittering and I’ve felt the rain on me mush. But it was like I was paralysed. Couldn’t move a muscle. Three times I’ve tried it, at least, and it’s always the same.’
‘Perhaps it’ll be different for me.’
Jaws pulled a face. ‘Might be, might not. You won’t know unless you give it a whirl, will you?’
‘If it gives me any chance of getting out of this room, then I’ll do it. But what about all the other men here? How many did you say? Seventeen of them? Don’t all of them want to be free for a while, even if they can’t escape from the house? Even if it’s only till the moon goes down?’
‘A few of them do. Maybe five or six. The rest of them – nah. All it does is piss them off even more than they are already, so they don’t want to do it any more. You think of Father Thomas. Nearly four hundred years he’s been here in this room. And Bartram, he’s been here more than two hundred and eighty. They don’t want to be reminded of what they used to be like, when they was able to do something different every day apart from sitting here feeling sorry for themselves – when they was able to grow up, and grow older, and then snuff it, the same as the pilgrims, as Father Thomas calls them. We can’t even commit suicide. Bartram tried it once, during a fulness. He took a carving knife out of the kitchen, fetched it up here and cut his throat. He’s still got the cut and that’s why he whistles when he talks. He’s had to accept the fact that we’re all going to be here forever, until the end of the world, and even beyond.’
‘Still – I’ll try it,’ said Ada. ‘When do you want to do it? Now?’
‘There’s five other blokes unlocking along with us. I’ll go and tell them to make themselves ready, and then I’ll be back. All you have to do is close your eyes, relax, and get yourself into a weary.’
He stood up and padded silently on the horsehair carpeting back down to the other end of the witching room, where seven or eight men were gathered, whispering to each other. She saw him talking to them, and occasionally looking over at her.
It could be that he was right. Maybe she would never be able to return to the life that she had been leading before she had been chanted. As a charmer, though, she knew at least half a dozen incantations for breaking spells and reversing conjurations. She had been reciting them over and over under her breath since she had been trapped here in this room, without any success. But perhaps they had failed to work because she was trapped in the moment when she had been dragged through the wall. If she were unlocked and living normally again, if only for the few hours while the moon was up in the sky, she might be able to undo the chant that had trapped her here and escape.
She looked across at Jaws and the other men. Five of them were sitting down now, with their eyes closed, so that they would fall into a weary. Only Jaws still had his eyes open, and when he saw that she was looking in his direction, he winked. Then he closed his eyes, too.
She did the same, but first she whispered a small prayer to the Druidic goddess Druantia, asking for her protection. Druantia was not only the guardian of women, but the goddess of sexual passion, and the creator of phases of the moon. If any spiritual being could take care of her now, she couldn’t think of a better one.
33
Ada’s energy rose out of her body in the same way that she had risen before. She still found that it made her feel unbalanced, and swimmy, and she wondered if this was what it was like to be a spirit, after you had died. The most disturbing thing was to look down and see herself still sitting propped up against the wall, her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted, breathing her last breath over and over again. That’s me. That’s what I look like to other people.
Down at the far end of the room, Jaws and the other men were rising out of their bodies too. Once they had all taken shape, Jaws approached her and the other men followed him. She had never seen such a hard-looking collection of men in her life. They were stretching and jiggling and sniffing like footballers preparing to run out onto the pitch for a match. Jaws was giving her his usual enigmatic grin but not one of the others was smiling.
‘Ready, love?’ Jaws asked her.
‘I suppose so. What are all these fellows going to be doing?’
‘Them? Oh, I think they’ve got something in mind, haven’t you, lads? Ricky here, he’s been stuck in this room two years longer than what I have. I’m sure he knows what he needs to cheer him up.’
A young man with a blond crew cut and a white T-shirt bulging with steroid-swollen muscles gave Ada a sideways twitch of his head, as if to say ‘awright?’, but he still didn’t smile.
‘Go on, you go first,’ said Jaws, and guided Ada towards the wall that would take
her through to the end bedroom.
She turned around to look at the men following them, and she began to feel that something was badly wrong.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Maybe I won’t do it.’
‘If you don’t do it now, love, you won’t get another chance until the next full moon.’
‘Yes, I realise that. But I don’t know. If we can’t leave the house, and we’re still going to be trapped when the moon goes down, what’s the point of it?’
‘What’s the point of it? Don’t you want to feel your heart beating again? Don’t you want to breathe some fresh air, in and out? I know it’s only for a few hours, but don’t you want to feel like you’re a real human being again, instead of a fucking spook?’
‘Go on, darling,’ said the young man in the white T-shirt. ‘We ain’t got all fucking night.’
Ada hesitated. But then she thought: whatever my misgivings, this could be the only way to escape from Allhallows Hall. I think I know an incantation that could free me – the same incantation that was used by Alice Kyteler, the first woman to be sentenced to die for witchcraft in Ireland. The night before she was due to be burned at the stake, she had disappeared and was never seen again.
‘Glaoim ar na taibhsí gach doras a oscailt,’ Alice Kyteler’s incantation had begun. ‘I call on the ghosts of every door to open.’ It had been found, written down, in her abandoned cottage, and after she had read a feature about it on the Irish Examiner website, Ada had memorised it.
Jaws placed his hand against the small of Ada’s back and gently pushed her towards the wall. She didn’t resist him. As she penetrated the plaster, she felt the same frosty tingling that she had before, the same sensation of having all her millions of atoms disassembled and mingled with the atoms in the wall before she was reassembled in the bedroom on the other side. All the lights in the house had been switched off, but the door was half open, and she could see the moonlight falling on the floor of the corridor.
The House of a Hundred Whispers Page 22