HIS OTHER SON (24 page)

           
His
fingers found the switch, but before he had chance to flick on the light his
wrist was seized and he was hauled into the room, the door slamming shut behind
him. He staggered forwards, cracking his shins against the coffee table, the
impact ruining his balance and sending him crashing to the floor.

           
The
air was filled with sound – an intense buzzing, like the sound of a million
flies, but there was nothing flying around. In the vague light that filtered
into the room through the net curtains from the street outside, he could make
out nothing at all untoward. There was the bed, the wardrobe, the dressing
table and the suitcase rack. The door to the bathroom was slightly ajar, but
there didn’t seem to be anything through there either. Rubbing his shins he
hauled himself to his feet and stood in the middle of the carpet, looking about
the room.

           
The
hand that gripped the back of his neck was cold, with fingers like steel bolts.
They bit into the muscles at the base of his skull and squeezed, paralysing
him, keeping him rooted to the spot. He simply couldn’t move, and when the
clothes he was wearing burst into flames, there was nothing he could do but
stand there, held in the vice-like grip and watch them burn. Fear turned to
incredulity as the clothes were burnt from his body without heat. There was a
flickering blue flame, and the cloth was blackening and charring, dropping to
the floor as ash, but the flames weren’t touching his skin; he remained
unscathed. Even when the fingers released him and he stood in the centre of the
floor naked and surrounded by a circle of ash, he still couldn’t believe the
flames had left him unmarked.

           
He
held up his arm in front of his face, but it was clear, in the filtered light
that there wasn’t a trace of a blister or a scorch. He was shaking his head in
wonder, when a strip of skin an inch wide and six inches long was ripped from
his forearm.

           
It
happened so suddenly he felt no pain. One moment he was looking at the
unblemished skin, the next it was gone, leaving a livid wheal of raw flesh in
its place. Seconds later the pain rushed at him and he reeled backwards
clasping his arm close to his body, feeling the wet stickiness of the blood
seeping through the hairs covering his chest. He opened his mouth to cry out
and his tongue was grasped by unseen fingers, sharp nails digging down into the
soft tissue, cutting, lacerating until the tongue was ripped from his mouth and
hurled against the wall.

           
Blood
poured down his throat and he gagged, choking for breath. The pain was pulsing
through him like a living thing, intense and vicious, the shock of it dimming
the boundaries of his vision, leaving him teetering on the brink of
unconsciousness. But when most of the skin was ripped from his back in one
large bloody sheet, unconsciousness receded and he was frighteningly,
agonisingly aware of what was happening to him. Blood bubbled in his mouth as
he made incoherent sounds of pain and fear, and when the steel fingers closed
around his neck and ripped out his throat, the end was mercifully quick.

Martin and
Narina
made love with an intensity that shocked both of them. There was an animal
intensity about their lust, and when they climaxed they lay in each other’s
arms, spent and totally fulfilled.

           
She
leaned across and stroked his cheek. ‘I never thought it could be like that,’
she said.

           
‘That’s
what freedom means. You’ve had the sword of Damocles lifted from above your
head. You’re free of
Finlay
Crawford. We’re free of
the Brotherhood. This is how it will be from now on.’

           
He
cradled her head in the crook of her arm. ‘Let’s go away to celebrate this.
Paris?’

           
‘Vienna,’
she said.
Then cried out in pain as something gripped her
ankle.

           
‘What’s
wrong?’ Marin said, and then he too yelped as something crushed his shins.

           
They
struggled to rise from the bed but their legs were trapped, as though someone
had laid a great weight across them. The pain was excruciating. They stared
into each other’s eyes and knew that
Finlay
Crawford
had broken his word.

           
The
air was filled with a crackling sound, like the sound of ice crunching
underfoot, but the bed was anything but cold. Gradually the weight crept
further up their bodies, pressing them down into the bed.
As
though the bed-covers were being pulled slowly up to their faces.
But
the covers didn’t feel soft, as they should do; they were hard, like metal.

It
reached their thighs, crushed their genitals and crept on up to their bellies.
They twisted and writhed as much as they could, but the bedclothes had them
trapped. The sheets and blankets were turning to iron, crushing them with their
weight and, as the weight reached their chests, squeezing the life out of them
and suffocating them.

           
With
his last ounce of strength Martin reached down and tried to push the bedclothes
back from
Narina’s
body. He expected the covers to be
hard, resistant, but his hand sunk into soft cotton and wool fibres, and within
a split second was trapped as the fibres turned to steel. The bed was turning
into a metal coffin and they were being crushed by the weight of it, yet the
bed seemed as normal in appearance as it had before.

Narina
Dressler
made a small choking sound in her throat as the
last of her air was squeezed from her body. Seconds later she died.

Martin
took one last look at his lover’s lifeless body, and then, with a noise that
sound like a long regretful sigh, he closed his eyes and accepted the
inevitable.

Gareth paid the taxi driver and watched as
the cab moved away from the kerb on its way to another fare. The ride from the
guesthouse to Clifford Stein’s had given him enough time to digest June
Gafney’s
story, and what he’d read in Marie Elise’s notes.

           
Her
research had paid dividends. She’d traced
Finlay
Crawford back to his very first appearance on stage at a small theatre in
Edinburgh. But what was more interesting was that the history of Crawford
before Edinburgh was vague to the point of being murky. It was as if he didn’t
exist before he first appeared on stage.

           
What
was also interesting was the fact that the actor/manager of the small theatre
was a man called Oswald Bryce, a man in his late seventies whose theatrical
career went back to the second half of the nineteenth century. In some obscure
reference book Marie managed to find an entry for Bryce. It was nothing to do
with his acting career, but a lot to do with a dining club he ran in Edinburgh
called the Brotherhood. A number of eminent people both in and out of the
theatre were members of the club, and a footnote to the piece went on at length
about a Roman Catholic priest called McNeal who was lobbying various
authorities to have the Brotherhood declared an illegal and blasphemous
society, claiming that the group were involved in unearthly practices.

           
In
Marie Elise’s research there was little more about Oswald Bryce but much about
Finlay
Crawford, including a theatre programme with a
biographical piece about Crawford, comparing his talents and acting style to
that of Oswald Bryce. This, added to the other pages of research led Marie to
believe that Oswald Bryce and
Finlay
Crawford were
linked more deeply than just fellow actors. And having read through her notes
Gareth was coming to the same conclusion.

           
As
fantastical as it seemed he was starting to believe that Oswald Bryce, old and
ailing Oswald Bryce, had in fact taken over the body of
Finlay
Crawford, the young actor and in some way inhabited him, thus securing his own
perpetuity.

           
He
walked up the sweeping lane to the house, keeping to the bushes at the side of
the road. The light was gone from the sky but the moon was providing its own
illumination. He reached the front door but it was locked and he’d no desire to
knock. A gravel path led around to the back of the house and he negotiated it
as quietly as he could, breathing a huge sigh of relief when he finally stepped
onto the cold hard concrete of the veranda. The French doors were ajar and he
pushed them wider and slipped into the house.

           
The
ground floor was deserted. There was no sound to be heard. He crept quietly up
the stairs and along the landing, pausing to peer through each open door and
putting his ear to each one that was closed. He reached the end of the landing
and found himself at the top of another flight of stairs that he presumed led
to the servants’ quarters.

           
Walking
on tiptoe and hardly daring to breathe, he crept quietly down the stairs. At
the bottom he found himself at the head of a long burgundy painted corridor.
There was a huge oak door at the other end, resolutely shut. He reached it and
grabbed the door handle, turning it silently. The door opened on well-oiled
hinges, swinging into a huge room, dimly lit and reeking of incense.

           
He
stepped through the door. The ceiling was low and
swagged
in white silk; the walls of the room were draped in long red velvet curtains,
and between each fall of velvet was a man-sized alcove, each containing a
cloaked and hooded figure. He drew in his breath sharply and was about to turn
and run when he saw the podium in the centre of the smooth concrete floor.
Lying naked on the podium was the unconscious body of Meg Johnson.

           
The
figures in the alcoves were curiously still. Surely if they’d been living,
breathing people standing there his intrusion would have been discovered and
the alarm
raised
. He walked across to the nearest
alcove and stretched out his hand to lift the hood of the cloaked figure.

           
He
almost laughed aloud. The figure was nothing more than a wicker armature
fashioned in the shape of a man. Where the face should have been was a
photograph and nothing more. He pulled the photo from the figure and took it
across to a candle burning in a sconce on the wall. Once he could see the face
clearly he recognised it instantly. A cabinet member; a politician he’d heard
speak on the radio several times; a man of high standing, respected throughout
the country.

           
He
went to the next figure and lifted the hood.
An actor this
time.
One he knew
well,
and even shared a stage
with. Were all these men members of
Finlay
Crawford’s
Brotherhood? He moved on down the line to the next figure and the next. When he
reached the fifth figure he was breathless.
Two actors, an
eminent politician and an archbishop.
He raised the cowl of the next
figure and
Finlay
Crawford smiled at him. ‘I wondered
when you would get to me,’ Crawford said and drove a stiff right hand into
Gareth’s stomach. As the younger man doubled over Crawford brought a heavy
stave down on the back of his head.

           
Gareth
collapsed in a heap at Crawford’s feet. With the toe of his shoe
Finlay
Crawford rolled the younger man onto his back and
stared down into his face. ‘I recognise him,’ he said.

           
Clifford
Stein emerged from one of the other alcoves. ‘It’s Gareth Barker, a friend of
Martin’s, and a friend of
hers
.’ He jerked his thumb towards Meg
Johnson.

           
‘Tie
him up and let’s get started,’ Crawford said. ‘The others will be waiting.’

Gareth was aware of a crushing ache at the
back of his head. He flicked open his eyes. He was sitting upright but his head
was bent forward looking at the floor and it hurt too much to move it. The
smell of incense in the room was intense as was the sound of chanting. Two
voices monotonously mouthing a litany of strange words and sounds, over and
over again. He tried to move, to bring his hands up to clutch at the pounding
in his head, but he couldn’t move. He was tied securely to the chair in which
he was sitting.

           
Gradually
he raised his head and looked about the room. In the alcoves lights were turned
on and the wicker figures disrobed, so their photographic faces could see the
piece of theatre being enacted in the centre of the room. Meg Johnson was still
lying on the podium, the reddish lights of the room making her naked skin glow
pink. She was flanked by Crawford and Stein, each with their heads bowed, each
chanting the monotonous rhyme that to Gareth’s ears made no sense.

           
He
tried to speak but his tongue felt twice its normal size. He struggled with his
bonds but they’d been expertly tied and it seemed the more he
struggled
the tighter they became. He suddenly became aware
that the temperature in the room had dropped sharply. As he breathed out he
could see his breath misting in front of him.
And the same
with Crawford and Stein; as they chanted so their hot breath turned to steam in
the freezing air.