Once (36 page)

Thom had room to feel wretched. It was not what he wanted. Hugo had always been a good friend … hadn’t he? Thom thought of the item that had gone missing from his London home, the pair of dividers he’d had for years so that they were almost a mascot to him, a talisman even. Probably the shirt button too. And the photograph had been Hugo’s. Hugo must have taken the items and supplied the photo. To Nell Quick. Who, no doubt, would soon become Hugo’s wife. Yet Thom still had no desire to come between father and son. As much as he loved Bracken’s woodlands and the cottage, they did not rightfully belong to him. They were Hugo’s inheritance. Maybe it wasn’t too late to talk to him, make him see sense. He had to try, he felt he owed it to his friend. His one-time friend? Even if the estate was left to him, Thom, they could share it. He could persuade Hugo there were better things to do with the land.

Hartgrove was stirring, clutching at Thom’s shirt again.

‘It … must … go … to … you/ he gasped. ‘Only you … will understand.’

Even in his pain, there was a special gleam in Hart-grove’s eyes. Thom was curious. What exactly did the

injured man mean? There was a knowing look in his tired old eyes, one that went beyond words, an understanding that the manservant obviously assumed was mutual. And probably, it was.

The … land must stay … privately owned, Thom. They…’ he emphasized the word ‘… depend on it.’

He knew of the faerefolkis? And if he did, then Sir Russell must also know.

‘You must keep … their secret, Thom. They will count on you.’

Thom was about to speak, to question Hartgrove, find out how he knew of the others that lived in the woods and the lake, how long he had known, but Hartgrove raised a faltering hand.

‘You must go now. Sir Russell, you … must… you must … stop…’ His words trailed away and he slumped down the partition, his body stretched out.

Thom wanted to stay and help him, but was aware he could not waste another moment. Something bad was happening up there in Castle Bracken’s roof room, and only he could prevent it.

If there was still time .

STAIRWAY TO HELL

HE’D HAD no choice. Thom had had to leave Hart-. grove lying unconscious on the cold dusty cellar floor. The old manservant was in a bad way, his breathing shallow, the full extent of his injuries unknown. By candlelight, his thin, cadaverous face seemed to have a deathly pallor and his eyes were mere slits, neither open, nor quite closed. His stillness had something of death about it.

Thom reached the top of the creaky cellar stairs and he saw the bank of light switches by the door. He flipped a couple, but nothing happened. Now he was sure the mansion’s main fuse had blown, but he didn’t have time to locate and fix it. He had to get to the roof room.

He twisted the handle to the cellar door, half-expecting it to be locked - in which case he would kick it open, regardless of noise - but as soon as he pushed, the door opened. He went through, the candle’s flame creating unsettled shadows like darting spectres in the great hallway. The eyes of portraits around the walls seemed to be watching him

from the surrounding darkness, statues on plinths seemed to agitate because of the wavering light. The inset doorways contained deeper, concealing shadows. The house’s familiar smell came to him and it was stale, degenerative, different from the stronger smells of the dusty cellar, but even so, somehow more intrusive. There was a corruptness about this odour.

Thom did not linger. He quickly moved to the stairway and began to climb, the candle held before him like a weapon against the dark. His left hand swept along the curving banister, ready to grip tightly should he stumble, or should anything emerge from the gloom above to throw him back down. He was not quite sure what he expected -a lunatic Nell, the succubus again? - so was ready for anything.

The darkness retreated before him on the first-floor landing, but only so far: the candle was a weak champion after all. He could just make out the tapestries on the half-panelled walls, the longcase clock at the far end, for some reason its trunk door left open. Pausing only to catch his breath - his left leg had to be dragged up every step so far, his left arm felt like a dead weight on the rail, and although the shock of seeing Bones down there in the cellars had set adrenaline on free-flow again, exhaustion had returned like an unwelcome guest - he went on. The smell of corruption was even stronger here. It wafted down from the stairway to the floors above, becoming more odious with every tread of the stairs. And it was unlike two days ago, when he had ascended this stairway with Hugo for, although pervasive and unpleasant, the smell had been bearable; now its pungency almost made Thom retch. He began to question his actions. In his present state, what would he do, what could he do, when he reached the ‘penthouse’ room? He was weak, badly debilitated, and no match for the two of them, Nell and Hugo, let alone whatever evil she had conjured. If he had thought to bring his cell phone, he could have called the

local police and they would have at least have been on their way by now. Then again, he couldn’t be sure the mobile would work in this area; it hadn’t at the cottage. Find a phone here. Go back downstairs and find a phone. The power cut wouldn’t affect the telephone lines. Even as he considered retreating (and in his heart he knew he was looking for an excuse not to venture up those stairs any further) he realized if he wasted time it would be too late to help Sir Russell, that only he could prevent any more harm coming to the sick old man. He had to keep going. Besides, it was probably already too late. There were noises, quiet noises, quiet noises combining to make a fuller sound, coming from the floor above.

Coming his way.

He stopped climbing.

He looked upwards.

They poured over the lip of the top stair like a rippling river, a mass of blackness flowing from the greater darkness, hundreds - thousands, millions maybe - of them.

Spiders. A fluid multitude. Legions of dark scuttling bodies. Streaming towards him.

He was too aghast to scream. Too shocked to move. Not again! Oh dear God, not again! But they couldn’t hurt him. Rigwit had told him that. They could crawl all over him, they could get inside his clothing, skitter over his flesh, but - they - could - not - hurt - him!

In a second they were swarming round his feet. In two seconds they were climbing his legs. Holding the candle in his left hand, he swatted them, squashed them against himself, his jeans turning darker with their blood. But they were inside the material, they were crawling over his bare flesh. And - Christ! - they were biting!

This couldn’t be! Rigwit had said they couldn’t hurt him!

And they hadn’t before! At least, not till the very end of their attack!

He cried out as his calf received a particularly vicious nip. Jesus! It hurt! He slapped at the back of his leg and felt something pulp against his skin. Others were climbing higher, he could feel them racing up his thighs! More bites, more nips. A stinging. Like a needle pushed into his knee. No! They shouldn’t - A cry again. Oh God, something on his neck, puncturing the skin there! They moved so fast. And there was no end to them. More and more swept over the tip of the top stair, rippling over lower ones, a great tide of spiders, all headed towards him, re-igniting the conflict.

Involuntarily, he stepped backwards, missed his footing on the stair, and went down, at first falling against the rail, then bouncing off it, tumbling down the rest of the stairway to the flat half-landing below. He lay there, stunned and in terror, the candle on its side a little way off, out of reach, but, fortunately, still burning. Even as he raised his head from the floor, the scuttling hordes streamed down to him and within moments they were all over, in his hair, inside his shirt, his jeans, everywhere. He felt their jabs, their stings, their bites - he felt them eating him!

Thom rolled over in an effort to crush as many as possible, but still they came, a seemingly endless flood of them, covering him, swarming over every square inch, finding their way into his ears and nostrils and, when he opened his mouth to scream, into his mouth. The pain was terrible, like red-hot needles pricking his skin and he had to close his eyes as they poured over his eyelids. He rolled this way and that, hitting himself, rising enough to press his back against the wood-panelling of the wall, killing as many of the little bastards as possible, squashing them so that they were no more than gooey bits of mush and gore that could no longer bite. It was no use though, there were just too many and their stinging jabs were too much to bear. Thom felt

himself swoon with the intensity of the pain, for although the bites were nothing in themselves, painful but tolerable, combined they were overwhelming. He spat bodies and dismembered legs from his mouth, swiped tormentors from his face, and felt what remaining strength he had left fast draining from him.

Only when something tugged at his shoulder did he open his eyes, immediately closing them again to blink away spiders. He brushed a hand across his eyes again and saw the anxious face of Rigwit staring up into his own. The little man had comparatively few spiders crawling over him -Thom apparently was the main target - and to those there were he paid no mind.

‘You’re allowing them to hurt you this time.’ The elf said, cross rather than anxious. Tour mind is tired, weak, as well as your body, and because you’re not resisting them, they have power over you.’

‘I am … I am resisting them.’ Even as he spoke, Thom feebly swatted spiders crawling over his raised knee.

‘No, you’re believing in them too much. It’s not your fault, you’re too exhausted. But you must resist, Thom, you must tell yourself they cannot hurt you.’ Rigwit’s voice was not even raised. It was as though he, himself, was not unduly bothered by the spiders. As if to make the point, he flicked off a particularly large and nasty-looking individual with a gross furry body and heavy furry legs and which had appeared crawling over his shoulder.

‘But they are hurting me!’ Thom yelled back at him.

‘Go into your mind, tell yourself otherwise,’ Rigwit patiently urged.

‘It’s no good, I can’t! They’re killing me!’

Try. Try harder.’

Thom did try, but he could still feel those prickly legs all over him, still yelped at any particularly stinging bite, of which there were many.

‘Keep trying, Thom. I’ll be back.’ With that, the elf sprang up the stairs, crushing spiders with his feet as he went.

‘Don’t leave me! Come back!’ Thom’s disbelieving gaze followed the climbing elf - each step was like a waist-high shelf to the little man until he disappeared over the edge of the top stair and spiders dropped from Thom’s hair into his eyes again.

In desperation, he scrambled for the candle lying a short distance away, its flame still burning. He picked it up with spider-infested fingers and brought the flame close to his body, touching it to the tiny specimens that had now become slow, content to nest and feed on their prey. They shrivelled up under the fire and he could almost hear - only in his imagination, of course - their dying screeches. There were still too many though. Blinking hard again to dislodge those on his eyelids, he looked down to see his body was thick with them.

A light patter of feet on the stairs, the occasional squelch of a larger-bodied spider as it was flattened underfoot, and then Rigwit was by his side again, the same dirty jar (so Thom assumed) that Thom had hurled from the cottage the night before in his small hands.

Throw it, Thom,’ Rigwit said close to his ear while proffering the jar. ‘Cast it away. The spiders must follow wherever the vessel is cast.’

Like a drowning man grasping for a lifebelt, Thom took the jar from the eh0 and raised it over his shoulder, ignoring the parasites that nipped and ate his body, making ready to throw it down the stairs.

‘No!’ Rigwit commanded urgently. Through the window. It must be cast outside for it to work.’

Thom aimed at the window overlooking the stair-landing, and pitched the jar as hard as he could, using up whatever strength he had left. The window shattered and the jar disappeared into the night just as lightning flared outside.

Thunder seemed to rattle the building.

He collapsed against the panelling and the spiders instantly began to leave. They seemed to drain from him as one, flowing towards the wall beneath the broken window; up they rose, a thick throbbing mass of them, climbing on to the glass in lower frames and then through the opening, where the wind howled and whistled in. The stream on the stairs bypassed Thom and the eh0, pouring to the wall and up to the smashed windowpane. It took surprisingly little time for them all to go by, and quickly the numbers began to dwindle, the stream becoming narrower, a trickle.

A strange thing - that is, another strange thing - happened to the last few hundred or so. As they reached the wall and began their journey upwards, they began to dissolve, to fade away, as though they had not really been there at all, until finally, there were none left to see. Only Thom and Rigwit remained on the mansion’s stairway.

Thom closed his eyes, but this time it was with relief. He drew in great gulpfuls of the fresh but charged air that blew in from the hole in the window. He was finished. He knew he could do no more and a tear spilt down his cheek. He could not save his grandfather. He was too used up. Although he no longer felt any spider-caused pain, his body ached with fatigue and he knew he would be bruised from the fall downstairs. He was cut and marked from his race to get here, but that was all, there was no other hurt. It was as if the episode with the spiders had never happened, although he knew it had and that it was something he would never forget.

Opening his eyes, he searched for Rigwit in the candle light, but the elf had disappeared from view. He soon heard the soft patter of small feet again, and there was Rigwit, climbing back up the stairs from below, the book from Little

Bracken clasped in his arms. The elf laid it down next to Thom.

‘It’s no good, Rigwit,’ Thom told him wearily. ‘I can’t do any more. I can barely move.’

That’s why you need this.’ Rigwit raised a loop of leather over his head and one shoulder; attached to it was a tiny leather bag that held a container or vial of some kind -Thom could just see its top sticking out from the bag’s open end.

Rigwit undid the top and held the bag out towards Thom. ‘Drink this,’ he said ‘You’ll soon feel better.’

What is it? Another magic potion?’

‘It will make you feel strong again. I brought it from the cottage with the book. I’m sorry I couldn’t catch up with you, Thom, but the book is heavy and my legs were never meant for running too far.’

Thom’s head sank back against the oak panelling. He closed his eyes. ‘How did you get in here?’ he asked distractedly, wanting only to lay down on the floor and sleep. Through the cellars, like me?’

There are a hundred ways for my kind to get into this place,’ Rigwit answered, pushing the leather-encased container against Thom’s lips. ‘Now come on, you must drink. If you’re to be of any use, you must be strong again.’

Reluctantly, Thom opened his mouth and allowed Rigwit to pour in the liquid. It was not only his strength that had left him, but his spirit too. How much more must he endure?

The potion flowed like treacle, thick, glutinous, but it tasted like nothing he’d tasted before. It had a sweetness that was subtle, an aftertaste really; he had an odd image of drinking deep red velvet, it was the only way he could describe the sensation. And he could feel it sinking into his throat rather than it being swallowed, flowing smoothly and instantly beginning to spread into his system like the brew he’d drunk before, but somehow different. From the main arterial that was his throat, it seemed to follow lesser tribu-

taries he hadn’t known existed so that his whole body was replete. The small bottle or vial contained no more that a thimbleful of the potion, medicine, whatever, and it was gone in one long gulp.

That should see to it,’ said Rigwit when he was satisfied that every last drop - in actuality, it was all one large drop - had been consumed. ‘It’s very powerful stuff, lad, extremely potent, and, I might add, ‘tisn’t easy to come by. Had to do a lot of bargaining to get this much. I’ll be working off the consideration for the next hundred and fifty years or so. Not meant for humans, /see, only for the faerefolkis. However, in your case there was a lot for the counsel to consider.’