‘But this one?’
‘He wasn’t sure, and neither am I, to be honest, although I did look him up in Catesby’s Compendium of Pre-Druidic Demons. It says in there that he was possessed with “the madness of dogs”, and that he was never seen out when it was raining. That may suggest that he’s infected with rabies, and because of that he suffers from hydrophobia. On the other hand, it may simply mean that he’s a psychopath who doesn’t like getting wet.’
Rob looked out of the window. The knobbly stalks of Brussels sprouts were glittering like pale green sceptres, and the overgrown rhubarb leaves were repeatedly nodding and nodding as the raindrops fell on them.
‘It’s raining now. Maybe this is the right time for me to chance it.’
‘I don’t know what to say, Rob. I know how desperate you are to rescue Timmy and your brother and Ada, but maybe we need to find out more about this Fluter before you try anything.’
‘If I hold off any longer, it may be too late. And in any case, how can we find out more? This thing is a myth. It’s a legend. It’s a supernatural demon. How do we know if the stories that people have been telling about it are true? Just because nobody’s ever seen it in the rain, that doesn’t mean that it’s never been out in the rain, or that it has some kind of aversion to water.’
‘Why don’t I come over and help you?’
‘Because Francis and Father Salter have both been killed and I don’t want to risk any more people dying because of me.’
John was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, ‘All right, Rob. I can’t stop you. But don’t do anything rash, okay? You might have lost your Timmy, but as far as you know he’s still alive. Ada and your brother too. Even if you never get them back, they’ll still be there. Maybe they’re not living a happy life, but it’s better than no life at all.’
Rob ended the call and put down his phone. Vicky said, ‘Well?’
‘John says it may not like rain.’
‘Is that all?’
‘He’s not even sure about that. But there’s only one way to find out.’
*
Rob and Vicky went back into the drawing room, where Grace and Portia and Katharine were sitting around the fire.
Rob said, ‘I’m going to have a crack at getting rid of this demon. I won’t be trying any prayers or ritual chants or appeals to the Lord because I don’t know any. I’m hoping that if I don’t say anything religious to it then it won’t get riled up the way it did with Francis and Father Salter. But if it does get angry—’
‘What then?’ asked Grace. ‘What if it kills you, too? What are we supposed to do?’
‘You’ll have to decide that for yourselves. But if Francis and Father Salter couldn’t get rid of it, and I can’t, either, then I’d say that your only option would be to leave this bloody house and lock it up and never think of coming back. John Kipling said that Timmy and Martin and Ada Grey are probably still alive, and if Francis was right they’ll probably live for ever.’
They sat looking at each other in silence. A draught whistled softly down the chimney, sending up a flurry of sparks and blowing a ghostly wraith of smoke between them.
‘It’s like Father Salter said to me, when I was driving him here from Tavistock. Sometimes you can be faced with something that frightens the living shit out of you, but life doesn’t give you any other choice except to confront it head-on. Timmy’s our son. I’m his father and I have to save him or die trying.’
‘Rob—’
‘No. Stay in here. Keep the door closed and no matter what you hear, don’t come out until I call you, or until it goes totally quiet.’
He hugged Grace and gave her a kiss, and then he gave Portia and Katharine a quick hug too. He held Vicky tightly and kissed her and then he gently stroked her cheek and said, ‘Listen. I love you.’
Vicky nodded, unable to speak, with tears running down her cheeks. Rob kissed her again and then he walked out of the drawing room and closed the door behind him.
He passed the sealed-up cellar. The silhouette that Francis had left behind had almost completely faded now. He felt strangely buoyant and unafraid, as if he had always been destined to do this. It occurred to him that he had felt more fearful on the day he had given in his notice at the design studio where he had been working for four and a half years and started working as a freelance animator. He had been deeply in debt, with all his credit cards maxed out, and Vicky had been seven months pregnant with Timmy.
There was a narrow oak cupboard beside the front door, in which Herbert Russell always hung his house keys. He also used to keep a rubber-covered flashlight in there, in case he heard what he thought might be prowlers outside the house. Rob opened the cupboard and found to his relief that the flashlight was still there, and when he clicked it on, it worked. He pushed it into his inside pocket.
He opened the front door and crossed the courtyard to the larger of the granite barns, kicking aside a lump of stone from the shattered cherub. The rain was little more than a fine mist now, and he hoped that it would be enough to put the Fluter into a panic. That was always supposing that he really was hydrophobic, and that his fear of water wasn’t just an old dummons’ tale.
Forcing open the collapsed barn door, he went inside and crossed over to the gardening tools that he had seen when he was looking for Timmy. There was a shovel, a pitchfork, a pair of shears, two rakes and a sorry-looking broom with hardly any bristles, but what he was after was the pick. He walked back to the house with it, hefting it from one hand to the other, like a Viking warrior pumping himself up to meet his enemy with his battleaxe.
Back in the hallway, he stood in front of the sealed-up cellar, his eyes closed, his head bowed, trying to detect any vibration or any sensation that the force was aware he was there, and what he had in mind. After all, hadn’t Father Salter said that it was so sensitive to its surroundings that it could hear a twig snap, even while it was imprisoned here in the cellar of Allhallows Hall?
The drawing-room door opened a few inches and Vicky called out softly, ‘Rob?’
‘I’m okay. Close the door, darling. Please.’
‘No. Here, look. Take this. Just in case.’
He walked back to the door and saw that she was holding out a ten-inch carving knife from the kitchen. He hesitated, but then he took it, and said, ‘Thanks. With any luck, I won’t need it.’
She gave him a sad smile and then closed the door. He tucked the carving knife into his belt and went back to the sealed-up cellar.
He paused, took a deep breath, and then he almost ran towards the wall, holding the pickaxe high over his head. Using the silhouette of Francis’s head as a target, he smashed it into the plaster. A lump the size of a breadboard clumped onto the floor, exposing the rough yellowish bricks underneath.
From inside the cellar, he heard a hoarse, grating groan, more like the cry of an agonised sea creature than the cry he would have expected from a malevolent spirit. The floorboards began to shudder underneath his trainers and a prickly wave of static came flying out of the wall. He felt as if he were facing into a blizzard of very fine sand.
He narrowed his eyes. You’re in there, you bastard, and no matter what you do, I’m coming in to get you.
He struck the wall again and again until his shoulder muscles began to hurt. Most of the plaster dropped off easily, because it was mixed with horsehair, and the mortar between the bricks was not only old and crumbled but had clearly been slapped on by somebody in a hurry.
He knocked out two bricks, and then another three, and once their support had gone, almost all of the bricks underneath the header collapsed. He knocked them into the darkness with the point of his pickaxe, and he could hear them rattling and bouncing down the cellar steps. The remaining bricks stood knee-high and he kicked at them three or four times until they fell over.
The groaning had stopped, but the vibration and the prickly feeling of static in the air continued. He tugged the flashlight out of his inside pocket and poin
ted it into the cellar. He could see dusty brown cobwebs drooping down from the ceiling and he wondered how long they had been there. How had spiders managed to crawl in here, once it had been bricked up? Maybe those cobwebs were hundreds of years old.
He climbed over the broken bricks and started to make his way down the cellar steps, kicking aside more bricks as he went. When he breathed in, the air in the cellar smelled stale and dusty, but he could smell something else, too, something deeply unpleasant, like a chicken breast turned green.
The floor beneath his feet was littered with human bones, scores of them, and tattered clothes, and the clothes were stuck together with putrescent black slime. He saw at least five skulls, so Francis and Father Salter had not been the first to be pulled through the wall.
He pointed the flashlight upwards, and he could see the huge oak joists that supported the floor above him. They were all thick with woolly spiderwebs, and in some of the webs he could see the transparent skeletons of long-dead spiders.
The left wall of the cellar was lined to the ceiling with shelves. They were crowded with a collection of old wine bottles, all of them empty. Presumably the Wilmingtons had taken all their wine upstairs before the cellar was bricked up, and stored it in the larder.
Seven or eight large picture frames of tarnished gilt were leaning against the right wall, and standing guard beside them was a mangy stuffed fox with green glass eyes and a semicircular cobweb connecting its nose to its front feet.
Most of the cellar, though, was taken up with a massive tent-like structure of brown tarpaulin. This was suspended from the ceiling with an elaborate array of iron hooks and a cat’s cradle of greasy ropes, and pinned to the floor with rusted iron stakes driven at yard-wide intervals into the hem all around it.
Rob carefully picked his way between the bones and shone his flashlight at the tarpaulin. It was completely opaque, and so he could see nothing inside it, although the rotten-chicken smell grew even more pungent as he approached it. The smell clung to his sinuses and he could taste it on his tongue. He shivered as if he were about to wet himself. His initial confidence had suddenly drained away, and he was seized with the urge to go bounding back up the cellar steps and shout at Vicky and Grace and Portia and Katharine to collect up their belongings and get out of the house right now – now! – and then to put as many miles between them and Sampford Spiney as they could before nightfall.
By now, the vibration had built up into a loud, nagging drone, so that sawdust was drifting from the ceiling and the hooks holding the tent to the joists above it were jiggling and clinking, and the empty wine bottles on the shelves were tinkling as if they found it amusing that he was so frightened.
With his heart palpitating, he circled around the tent, shining the flashlight this way and that. On the far side of the tent, he found where the tarpaulin was joined together. Both sides had been pierced by metal grommets and knotted together with cords.
There was another groan from inside the tent, followed by a long slurring sound, like somebody trying to breathe with congested lungs, and then a rustling noise.
Oh shit. I can’t do this. I need to get out of here. How is this going to bring Timmy back? I’ve lost him, just like so many grieving parents lose their children. I’ve lost him for ever and I’ll have to accept it. Martin, too. And Ada Grey. I simply can’t do this.
Strangely, though, as if it didn’t belong to him, his left hand drew the kitchen knife out of his belt and started to slice evenly and deliberately at the knots that were holding the two sides of the tarpaulin together. The rope was hemp, tarred black like liquorice, and tightly twisted.
From inside the tent came yet another groan, and then a voice said, ‘Art thee?’ At least, that was what Rob thought it said, because it was gurgling and clogged-up and it had such a strong accent.
He didn’t answer, but kept on slicing. He cut through three, four, five knots, and gradually the two sides of the tarpaulin started to sag apart.
‘What art thee?’ the voice repeated – still gurgling, still thickly accented, but much clearer this time. ‘Not grove, art thou? Not conventus? And not holy Papist, neither.’
‘I’ve come to release you, that’s all,’ Rob said, in a voice far less steady than he had intended. ‘I’ve come to let you out of here.’
‘Thy coming… it was foretold! The rule of three! A sacrificer, then a priest, and then a kiffy man of no faith!’
Rob cut through the last knot but he kept his knife in his hand. Using only his forearms, he pushed the tarpaulin flaps wide open and shone his flashlight into the tent. The smell was so sweet and so foul that he couldn’t stop himself from retching. Two grey reflective eyes looked up at him.
‘So… thou hast come to release me at last, as it was spoken in the stars a hundred and twenty thousand and sixteen days ago – a hundred and twenty thousand and sixteen days ago to the very day. Here, then, sever my bonds, o man of no faith. Thee and me, we shall ride the moors and be faithless together. My name is Esus, and thou may call me Esus, and consider thyself my servant from this day forth.’
39
Inside the tent stood a long wooden trestle, draped over with layer upon layer of filthy grey blankets. The figure that was lying on the blankets appeared to be a man, but he was at least a foot taller than most men. He was dressed in a jerkin and breeches of rough black suede, criss-crossed with thin leather straps, with leather gauntlets on his hands and heavy black riding boots with bucket tops. His wrists and ankles were bolted to the trestle with thick iron hoops. The stench he gave off was almost unbearable, as if he had soiled himself again and again, for every one of those a hundred and twenty thousand and sixteen days.
Rob shone the flashlight into his face. It was long and narrow, with sharp triangular cheekbones, a long curved nose with white hair sprouting out of his nostrils and a chisel-like chin. His hair was white and long and wild, shoulder-length at least. His lips were white, too, as white as the ghost slugs that Francis had stuck on the wall, and drawn back across his pointed irregular teeth in a condescending snarl.
It was his eyes that disturbed Rob the most. They were plain silver, with no pupils or irises, and slightly wolf-like in shape, but even though they had no pupils or irises they still seemed to be staring at him directly, with an expression that was partly pleased and partly mocking, as if he were thinking, You don’t know what you’ve let yourself in for, do you?
Rob stood beside him, the back of his left hand pressed against his nose and mouth, trying to suppress his breathing so that he wouldn’t retch a second time.
‘Was it Matthew Carver who brought you here?’
Esus tossed his white hair contemptuously. ‘Carver, that dawcock! Thought he could best me. Locked me down here right enough, but I dragged the raymes right out of him before he could walk half a chain.’
‘Do you know why he wanted to lock you up?’
‘’Course I do. It’s ’cause of my power to hold back time, should anyone call on me to do it, and should anyone chant the right chant.’
‘You know that there are people in this house who are trapped in time, because of you.’
‘I have no say in it. If the chant is chanted, my power is drawn from me, if’n I will it or if’n not.’
‘But when you leave here, when I set you free, those people will be set free too?’
Esus looked at Rob slyly. ‘Why dursn’t thou release me, burd, and discover that consequence out for thyself?’
‘That’s all very well. But if they won’t be set free, there’s no point in my setting you free, is there?’
‘Ah, but if thou decideth narrrt to release me, I’ll juggle the bones right out of thee as soon as blink. Thy leg would make for a gurt fine flute.’
Esus raised his head from the trestle and grinned at him, and Rob thought, I can’t believe this. I must be going out of my mind. I’m down in the cellar of Allhallows Hall trying to bargain with a demon.
With horns and a tail and a for
ked tongue like Satan, Esus would have been scary enough, but it was his down-to-earth rustic clothes and his slurry Devon accent and his creepy insinuating threats that Rob found so terrifying. Even locked up here he had the power to drag the skeletons out of living people, and pull them through walls, so who could guess what he might do if Rob were to set him free. He might simply disappear and cause no more trouble, but even if he did, Rob had no way of knowing for certain that they would ever get Timmy or Martin or Ada back.
‘Well?’ Esus croaked, and his throat cackled with phlegm. ‘What’s it to be? Wilt thou release me, kiffy man, or watch thy raymes jump out of thy skin for a dance on its own? I’d play it a right merry jig if my hands was free.’
‘You’re so powerful, I’m surprised you couldn’t pull off those shackles yourself.’
‘Oh, zurrprized, art thou? That tells me thou knowest naught about magic and spells. These irons, they was forged with a curse that not even God Himself could unweave.’
Rob said nothing, but lifted up the pickaxe, turned it upside down, and forced one pointed end into the space between Esus’s left wrist and the iron hoop that was holding it there. He pushed the handle sideways, leaning against it with his whole weight, and gradually the bolts that were holding the hoop came squeaking out of the trestle. The hoop dropped to the floor with a clank and Esus lifted his arm and flapped it three times to shake off his gauntlet. His bare hand was white and finely wrinkled and claw-like, with liver spots and long curved nails.
‘Arrh,’ he said, and reached up to claw at his withered neck. ‘To scratch again, what a boon that is, and when I’m free I’ll scratch every crevice of me, between my toes, and my ballsack too.’
Rob pushed his way under the tarpaulin to the other side of the trestle, and started to prise off the iron hoop from Esus’s right wrist. This one was fixed more firmly, and he had to pump down on the pickaxe handle again and again before the hoop finally dropped off and clanged onto the floor. Esus shook the gauntlet off this hand, too, and then lifted himself up into a sitting position. His stench was so strong and his jerkin was so rough and greasy when it rubbed against Rob’s hand that Rob retched again, and his mouth filled with bile, which he was forced to swallow.
The House of a Hundred Whispers Page 28