Deliver us from Evil (36 page)

'Not him,' Sir Henry begged suddenly, pointing at Robert. 'Do not permit him to come with us.'

The Marquise stared at him, intrigued, and raised an eyebrow. 'Why?'

Sir Henry's eyes darted to and fro, bright with a desperate, hunted fear. 'It
..."
He swallowed; and at the same moment, from the depths of the house, there came a second faint cry, a long, soft sobbing moan. 'It is not safe,' Sir Henry began again, loudly, as though to blot out the noise. 'If dangerous for you, then how much more so for him.'

He stopped talking, and Robert listened to the darkness. 'What was that cry we heard?' he asked.

Sir Henry swallowed, and paused, as though preparing to lie. '
I
do not know,' he said at last.

'
I
think you do.' A cold, sick suspicion was forming in Robert's guts.

'Why, Lovelace,' asked Milady, a faint frown on her brow, 'what do you mean?'

Robert raised the lantern, and gazed down the long dark corridor from where the cries had seemed to come. '
I
dread to say it.' He began to walk, then to run along the corridor. The Marquise followed him; she seized his arm and pulled him back, her face gleaming from the shadows like pale fire. 'Be prepared, Lovelace,' she hissed. 'For you cannot begin to understand what it is we now approach. Beyond lie the Gates of Death, and that veil which must be parted if we are to gaze, as we hope, upon the sacred Mysteries of the world. We shall not be like that bold Roman, who entered the Holy of Holies of Jehovah and found nothing - for nothing must always come of nothing. Of the true God, however, in His sanctuary, much may be expected. And so again,
I
warn you to be prepared.'

'
I
thank you, Madame.' Robert pulled her hand from his arm. 'But you forget -
I
have already gazed upon the face of your god.'

'Yes,' nodded the Marquise. 'And have not yet understood what it was that you saw.'

Robert frowned at her for a moment; then shrugged impatiently, and turned again. There cane a sudden soft moan from the darkness ahead, and though it faded as fast as it had risen, there lingered a sound of something being slapped. Robert began to hurry again along the corridor. Ahead of him, he saw a sudden glimmer of white; he raised his lantern; he saw a creature of the kind he had been pursuing, bloated and soft, lying in a pool of something sticky on the floor. At first, Robert thought the liquid must be blood; but then he bent over to inspect it more closely, and almost gagged, for it seemed from its stench to be a compound of sweat and semen, yet touched with the rotten, damp odour of the grave, which Robert remembered all too well from the previous night. He dared to feel the creature's naked flesh: it too was sticky, and Robert realised that the liquid was oozing from its pores, so that the whole corridor, as far as he could see, appeared to glisten with it. There were more pale bodies lying in the darkness ahead, and piles of earth heaped against the walls. Robert walked forward; and he saw that the earth was littered with dried chunks of flesh. He remembered what he had seen outside the gate -the bodies in the mud and the creatures with their knives - and he had to lean against the wall, to try and calm his guts.

'There is worse,' whispered Sir Henry. He nodded slowly, and took the lantern from Robert's hand; closing his eyes, he seemed to mutter a prayer. Then he walked forward, but slowly, for there were more creatures now, lying in their sticky pools of filth; and the way across their bodies was a hard one to pick.

He paused at last beside an open door. 'This was lately Sir Charles' library,' he murmured, staring through the doorway at the room beyond. 'Twice
I
have come here, to learn the will of the new master of the Hall - but never unsummoned. Are you certain, then, that you dare to proceed?'

He was staring at Robert, who answered him by seizing the lantern again, then pushing past the Marquise and through the open door. As he did so, he heard the slapping noise, and a moan of despair very close, so that he knew he had discovered the source of the cries. He raised the lantern; he stared about him.

As in the corridor, mud and litter were piled across the floor. Human bodies, their limbs bound fast, lay twisted amidst the rubbish. They were naked and pale, with barely the strength to moan, or even to stare up, although they blinked and struggled to look away, for the light of the lantern was burning their eyes. All of them, Robert saw, were smeared with silver filth, the same as had glistened in the corridor outside, so that they seemed imprisoned within a cocoon of the stuff, helpless to shrink from those who would feed upon them. For, like monstrous grubs, their pale bodies swollen and suffused with pink, dead things were drinking from their mortal hosts; and sometimes as they drank, their moist lips would slap. One paused in its meal, its mouth still sucking as though the fetid air were blood; it rolled from its prey; then lay bloated in the mud.

Robert and Milady both looked away; but the Marquise studied the creature with fascination, it would seem, then,' she murmured, 'that this breed of thing need not always kill its meal but, like the leech, is content to preserve its host alive. Do you observe it, Milady?' Milady did not reply. The Marquise smiled faintly, and turned round to Sir Henry. 'These people here,' she asked, 'how long can they endure being fed upon like this?'

Sir Henry had closed his eyes. 'A year,' he said slowly. He swallowed. 'Yes, a year, maybe two.'

Robert stared at him with an ugly frown; then gazed around the room, holding the lantern aloft. A woman began to scream as the light fell on her face, and her fingers started to twitch helplessly. Robert crossed to her. Two of the creatures were feeding on her, one on either flank. He kicked them both; they fell off at once, as though over-engorged. The woman still screamed; Robert bent down beside her but, though she could not endure to open her eyes, she screamed all the more, her words violent and meaningless. With a shock, he realised that he knew her. 'Why,' he exclaimed, 'this is Mary Brockman, Jonas' wife. Does he know that she is here?'

Sir Henry did not reply.

Robert rose and crossed to him, the suspicion he had felt before now growing into terrible certainty.
'Does he know,' he asked again,
'that his wife is here?' He drew his sword; he pointed it at Sir Henry's throat. 'Tell me.
Does he know?’

'Answer him,' whispered Milady. She froze him in her stare, and Sir Henry's eyes began to bulge with the effort of resisting her command. But he could not maintain his defiance, and he writhed as the words at last came out. 'Yes,' he moaned,
'yes!
Jonas knows his wife is here.'

'And how did that come to be?' Robert asked. 'Did he surrender her himself?'

'Please!' wailed Sir Henry, twisting his hands as though trying to cleanse them. 'We had no choice.'

'No choice but to do what, Sir Henry?'

'It was for the best,' he stammered, nodding violently, 'the only way we could hope to survive. Not just us - but all the village. For otherwise, we knew, we would all have been destroyed.'

'Unless?' Robert asked.

'Unless all of us - that is - the members of the guard
...'
' Unless?'

'Unless . . .' Sir Henry swallowed. 'Unless we surrendered a person we loved

Robert breathed in deeply; but the filthy air only made him feel more sick. His arm shaking, he lowered his sword. 'And you as well?' he whispered. 'You did what was asked?'

Sir Henry wiped his hand across his forehead. His hair and beard were matted with sweat, and his eyes more desperate than they had ever been. 'Not all of us,' he said at last. 'But for each man who refused, ten were tortured - tortured to death - before their friends and their family on the village green.' He turned aside; like Robert, he gasped for air; and as he fell upon his hands and knees, he began to retch. 'Please!' he shrieked. 'Please! We did it for the best!'

Robert studied him for a moment; he did not raise his sword. 'Where is she?' he asked, his voice perfectly calm.

Sir Henry stared up at him; he did not reply.

Robert studied him a moment more, then turned in a frenzy of fury and despair. He crossed to the darkest end of the room, shining the lantern into the shadows, inspecting each face he discovered there. But it was in vain; and so he began to hurry this way and that across the floor, still holding up the lantern, until he had reached the opposite wall and had looked in the face of every person in the room. 'Not here,' he whispered. 'Pray God then she is dead.' He turned round. 'Your own daughter, Sir Henry. Pray God that she is dead!'

Sir Henry made no reply. Like a lunatic, he was rolling his head round and round, as though his skull were a censer, and his memories smoke which might be dispersed and lost upon the air; yet his eyes betrayed him, that he would never forget. Slowly, he pointed at the room's darkest corner. Robert turned again and stared; then he held up his lantern. Dimly, he made out an open door.

He crossed to it, but the Marquise was faster. He followed her through. There was a narrow passage ahead, a second doorway, and then steps. Robert watched as the Marquise began to hurry down them; he paused at their summit and felt a blast of something terrible, as though the waiting darkness were a mighty wind, loathsome with the stench and evil of Hell. As he took a step down, it seemed a struggle merely to command his limbs. He could feel the terror in his stomach singing to him now, singing and clawing at the very same time, so that as he continued to descend, disgust and pleasure were insensibly mixed, and his stomach seemed made of liquid air. He clutched at it suddenly, and leaned against the wall. 'What is happening?' he moaned. For the pleasure was so painful, he thought it would rip apart his guts and send them spilling down the stairs. He laughed at an idea so grotesque; then doubled up again, still laughing wildly, as he sobbed at the pain.

'You have a pretty humour, Lovelace, to smile in the very entrails of Hell.'

He felt Milady's hand against his cheek, and glanced up at her. She too was smiling, yet it only made her loveliness seem all the more deathly - for her face, Robert realised, was icy with fear, so that he reached up, despite himself, to hold her hand and comfort her. Her smile broadened, and she looked away as though ashamed to have her terror glimpsed. 'We must leave,' she murmured urgently. 'The dead things behind us are stirring, and if they seal the doorway, we shall never escape. Wait here.' She stared into the darkness,
I
must search for the Marquise.'

She brushed past Robert; and as she did so, he struggled to his feet. She glanced round, and shook her head; but still he tottered, hands on stomach, down the steps,
I
must see
...'
he whispered. He swallowed,
I
must find
...'

Robert felt another sudden stab of pain from deep inside himself, searing and delicious, so that he half-screamed, half-moaned. He lost his footing; he stumbled to the foot of the steps. The light in his lantern began to flicker and fade; he cupped it nervously, and watched with relief as the light was preserved. Then he raised the lantern high. Ahead of him was an
archway; ever
ything beyond it seemed to swim before his gaze. He barely felt conscious of his own thoughts any more, for he seemed possessed by the mingled pleasure and pain which was beating now with the rhythm of his heart. The very darkness seemed red; and as he passed through the archway, it pulsed, and shimmered, and flooded his mind. Then he was flowing with it, as though drawn on a tide across the floor, towards a second archway, and beyond it a blackness which could not be pierced. The Marquise was standing before this impenetrable gloom, her arms upraised, a look of rapture and triumph on her face. She was chanting in a language Robert had never heard before; and with each word, the blackness seemed to swirl, and thicken, and form itself anew. As it did so, Robert felt himself drawn ever closer to it; for though the pain in his stomach grew worse with each step, so also, entwined with it, the pleasure grew as well. The source of both seemed to lie in the blackness, as though Robert himself were a par
t of it now, his pro
foundest emotions absorbed into its depths. Waiting for him there, he could sense a mystery of wondrous and awful power, and he longed to behold it with all of his soul.

Suddenly, though, as he walked towards the blackness, he grew aware of something holding him back. He turned. A lady - a girl -had taken his arm. She was of a terrible beauty - her long hair streaming as though in a gale, her face lit silver, her eyes gleaming gold. Robert tried to shrug her away, for the blackness was waiting, and the mystery it held; but still she kept hold of him and, though he could hear nothing at all but the pulsing of the dark, her lips were moving as though fashioning words. He frowned. Milady. That was her name. He had known her once, long, long before. But what was anything compared with the blackness ahead? He turned again, for its tide was sucking him implacably now, sucking on his stomach and the agony and pleasure which were intermingled there. But still Milady held him; and when he glanced back at her angrily, to beat her away, he saw that she was pointing, and despite himself he looked.