Gethsemane Hall (21 page)

“None,” Meacham admitted. She pictured herself on a flight back to the States. The pang of desire brought tears to her eyes.

“So get in.”

Meacham took a step away from the car, as if it were playing an active role in her temptation. “Do you think you’ll be able to leave?”

Sturghill nodded. “It won’t be easy. Momentum’s the key. As long as I don’t stop, I think I can avoid being pulled back.”

“Good luck.”

“Last chance?”

“For whom?”

“Funny.” Sturghill turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. Big funny, all right. She tried again. The click of the turn, otherwise dead silence. Sturghill placed both hands on the steering wheel. “Shiiiiiiiiit,” she breathed. She pursed her lips, looking straight ahead and a thousand yards away.

“Kristine?” Meacham asked.

“Okay. Plan B.” Sturghill got out of the car. She started up the drive.

“You’re walking?”

“It worked before. See you.”

“Hang on.” Meacham trotted up and fell into step beside Sturghill. “I’ll see you to the gate.”

“Why?”

“If you don’t come back, I want to be sure it’s because you’re actually safe and gone.”

“No one walks alone.”

“Absolutely.”

“And what about you? If you don’t come with me, you’ll be walking back alone.”

“I figure giving in and returning to the house is safe enough. Relatively speaking.”

Up the drive again. At night again. Into the woods again. The act wasn’t growing easier with practice. Each step was harder. The night was a thick coil around them, constricting, crushing ribs before it opened its jaws wide for the swallow. The flashlight beams were too narrow, too weak. Sturghill tripped. Her light showed a thick root snaking across the road. “Was this here before?” she asked. Her voice was very shaky.

The root was big enough to act as a speed bump. Meacham was sure she would have noticed. She traced the root back to its tree. It was one of the yews. The tree was massive, its trunk thick enough to be a castle turret. It was as old as it was huge, and Meacham was sure it was in the wrong place. The yews were the inner perimeter of the woods. She couldn’t remember seeing any here, midway through the forest to the gate. “Keep going,” she said.

They walked more slowly, careful of their footing, watching for more trees that might present threats. Meacham felt the back of her neck prickling, as if the yew were watching. She looked back at one point. The drive had curved, and she couldn’t see the tree. The woods were a tangled mass of black. She could still sense it, though. It could see her. It was judging.

They reached the gate. Meacham tried to keep her pessimism at bay as Sturghill reached out to push the button. There wasn’t even a click. The gate did not swing open. Sturghill began to shake. “Hang on,” Meacham said. “Maybe Richard can trigger it from the Hall.” She pulled her phone out. She half-expected it to be dead. It wasn’t, but there was no service. “Battery’s dead,” she lied. She wanted to spare Sturghill what she was experiencing: the claustrophobic sense of total isolation from the outside world. “See if you can use the intercom.”

Sturghill reached around the gatepost, felt up and down until she found the buzzer. Meacham saw her push. “Nothing,” Sturghill said. She eyed the top of the gate and the wall. “Can you help me over?”

Meacham’s flashlight caught the glint of broken glass embedded on the top of the wall, ten feet up. The gate was wrought-iron spikes, just as high, with no good crossbar footholds. “No. Not by myself. Not safely.” Visions of Sturghill slashed and bleeding, Sturghill impaled, Sturghill dead.
Not by my hands.
“With the others helping, maybe,” she said.

“That means going back.”

“That’s right.”

Sturghill’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, God,” she whispered. Meacham thought she was going to start trembling. Instead, she straightened up and started back down the drive, her gait steady. “Just so you know,” she said. “If that bitch of a ghost tries anything else to keep me from leaving, I’m torching the place.”

from the walls

And the bitch heard what she said. There was a rumble behind them. Then the sound of metal twisting. Meacham looked back, saw nothing through the darkness of the forest. Her flashlight beam was useless. “You’re not going over that gate,” she said. “Not tonight, anyway.” Sturghill opened her mouth to reply, but Meacham cut her off. “Shut up. Not another word. Don’t make it any worse. Go. Just keep moving.” They tried to walk faster. Heading back wasn’t as easy as Meacham had expected. They were swimming with the current, but there was no simple pleasing of the Hall now. The darkness of the woods was growing thicker. There were more roots on the drive, roots that Meacham absolutely
knew
had not been there on the way up. More sounds in the night. They began as rustling in the underbrush. At first, Meacham thought she heard the rubbing of leaves on leaves, the foliage whisper of a light wind. Only the air was still. The rustling grew. It was the sound of a small animal moving along the forest floor.
Squirrel
, Meacham thought.
Bird
, she thought.
You wish,
she thought. The rustling became a slither. The slither grew in bulk. The thing that moved was huge. It multiplied. “
Run
,” Meacham whispered.

Sturghill tried. So did Meacham. They couldn’t do more than jog. Their lights couldn’t show them more than the next immediate step. The roots were legion. They were big. They were knotted leg traps. Meacham’s gait turned into panicked hopscotch. The slithering spread out on all sides. It was an embrace. Tentacles were stretching out to draw her in. She tripped and fell. Her left knee came down on a pebble the size of a golf ball. The pain was so white-flash intense she barely noticed the blow the bridge of her nose took against a root. Her flashlight smashed open, went out. Sturghill turned around, her light a smeared glare in Meacham’s tearing eyes. “Keep going,” Meacham croaked. Sturghill ignored her, grabbed her by the arm and helped her to her feet. The slithering was turning into something bigger yet. Immensity moved all around them. Meacham winced when she put weight on her knee. She limped forward, leaning on Sturghill as she tried to walk through the pain.

Down the drive. The darkness infinite. Meacham had no idea how far they had come. She had lost track of the curves and couldn’t see the way out. The slithering was now a roar. The roar came from a throat of wood. So did the hiss, when it came. It bore down on top of them, pushing wind ahead of it, a subway train with jaws rushing through the tunnel of night. Meacham’s back tensed for the impact. The sound was deafening. It blocked out the world. She fought the urge to close her eyes against the end.

The flashlight beam suddenly expanded. There were no trees ahead. They were out of the woods. She and Sturghill stumbled a few more steps, then collapsed on the gravel. They looked back at the woods. The noise had stopped. The trees were still. The darkness within the woods, starless and thick, lapped towards them but didn’t pursue. Meacham eyed the line of yew trees, looking for a gap in the line-up where one had gone missing. The formation was solid. If anything, it was more of a wall than it had been before.

She stood up. Her knee spasmed, but it could support her. “Thanks,” she said to Sturghill.

“Thanks for not letting me go in there alone,” Sturghill answered. She took a step back, putting distance between her and the darker shadow of the woods. “I guess I’m not getting a second crack at that gate.”

“Not tonight. Maybe in the morning.”

“Think we’ll make it that long?”

“I plan to.” Which was no answer.

They headed back inside the house. They found Hudson and Gray in the Great Hall. They were seated at the table. Hudson looked exhausted, Gray reserved. Meacham had the impression of walking in on the aftermath of a struggle. Her money wasn’t on Hudson.

He said, “I didn’t hear the car.”

“Not working.” Sturghill tossed Gray’s keys onto the table. He didn’t reach for them. “Neither is the gate, and the woods are fucking dangerous. Where’s your phone?” she asked Gray.

“Nearest one on this floor is in the library.”

“Be right back.” She left.

Meacham limped over to a chair and collapsed into it.

“What happened?” Hudson asked her.

Meacham filled him in. Sturghill came back just as she was wrapping up. “Phone’s dead,” the magician announced.

“So we’re cut off.” Hudson lost a bit more colour.

“Looks that way.” Gray stood up.

“Where are you off to?” Sturghill asked.

“Bed,” Gray said simply.

“Just like that?” Sturghill’s eyes were shocked wide. “Anna’s disappeared, probably dead, there are monsters in the woods, and we’re trapped in this house. Well hell, that’s quite the day. Better go sleep it off?”

“Do you have a plan of action that I’m interfering with?”

“No,” she admitted.

Gray shrugged. Meacham said, “I don’t think it’s smart to be alone.”

“Do you really think that makes any difference at all?” Gray asked. “If Rose wants to kill one of us, how would anyone interfere?”

“Why be alone if you don’t have to be?”

“Because that’s what I want. So if you’ll excuse me ...”

He left, and they were three. “Ideas?” Meacham asked. There were none. “Patrick? Up for anything?”

“Right now, just staying alive.”

“Okay. So. You two feel like a pyjama party?” Her words were flip. They were pathetic.

After a dinner of cold cuts, Gray was back in the old bedroom again. Close to the Old Chapel, close to the cold spot whose roots he now knew. He was here because he wasn’t hiding. He sat on the edge of the bed, wondering why he wasn’t afraid. He had been sent running from the Hall a few times already. He’d been spiritually assaulted. He had no reason to believe he was immune. Everything was escalating. His sleep in this room had a nice collection of nightmares and trauma. So here he was, ready to lie down and be hit again.

He wasn’t worried. There was something building in his chest, but it wasn’t anxiety. He was trying to hold it back, half-ashamed because he recognized it as a form of elation. He had never been so close to truth before. Gray was on the verge of absolute revelation, of knowledge that brooked no interpretation, no ambiguity, no contradiction. He was hungry for what would come next. The elation wasn’t happiness, though. When Hudson had been pleading his case, Gray had had to bite down hard on anger. There had been an impulse to slap Hudson for his stupidity. There had been an even greater rage at the belief system Hudson was clinging to. He wanted to see that philosophy exploded. Truth was here. It was down in the torture vault. It would leave no room for an all-loving God and His self-sacrificing Son.

He lay down, fully clothed. He closed his eyes. He didn’t expect to sleep. He was waiting for the next move. Each event pushed closer to an eruption of truth. He knew it would hurt. If he wasn’t terrified now, he would be soon enough. That was fine. That was the price to be paid for revelation.

The bedrooms were not comforting. They couldn’t be. The house was hostile down to the mortar. When, on the staircase to the upper floor, Meacham’s shoulder brushed against the wall, she twitched. The wall didn’t feel like it had when the house shook. It wasn’t warm to the touch. It didn’t give like flesh. But it radiated bad potential. It wasn’t flesh, but it might be, should the spirit move it. Somewhere in the house, a spirit was moving, and it had them in its sights.

They settled on the room that Sturghill had shared with Crawford. There were two beds and an armchair that was old, but not so antique that it wasn’t soft. Here, they could pretend they were going to sleep. Hudson insisted on taking the chair. Meacham and Sturghill sat on the beds, leaning against the wall. Neither lay down. Meacham didn’t like the vulnerability of being horizontal. Sturghill hugged her knees to her chest, tight in a defensive ball. Meacham had the urge to hide under the covers. The laws of childhood stated that the monsters couldn’t get you there. As a ritual, it made about as much sense as Hudson’s prayers. She looked at him. He had his eyes closed, his head bowed, his hands clasped just below his mouth. He
was
praying, pulling his blanket over his head.

Sturghill said, “That isn’t going to do any good, Patrick.”

He paused, raised his head. “You don’t know that.”

“You weren’t out in the woods. This is huge. We’re not talking about a human scale here.”

“God isn’t on that scale, either.” When Sturghill didn’t respond, he continued. “I agree with you. We can’t fight this. So I’m asking for help.” He sounded almost calm.

“I wish there were someone there to hear you.”

“With all that’s happened, how can you doubt that there is?” He turned to Meacham. “You know better, now.”

She was so tired. “I’m just not sure whoever is there is listening.”

“He is,” Hudson reassured. “He is.” His voice was steady, but Meacham saw the vein throbbing in his forehead, the nervous-sweat rubbing of his hands. He was holding on hard to his faith. It wasn’t coming easily. He wanted a convert. He wanted backup.

“I hope you’re right,” Meacham said. That was all she could give him.

It was enough. Hudson nodded, satisfied, and closed his eyes again. His lips moved as he prayed under his breath.

Meacham leaned back on her pillows. She had them bunched against the bed’s headboard. She turned her face to the lamp on the side table. The 60-watt bulb was harsh on her exhaustion. It was also a thin flicker of comfort. No way she was turning it off. She didn’t mind if it kept her awake. Sleep was dangerous and scary.

But Christ, she was tired.

She did sleep. She closed her eyes, thinking,
Just a short rest
. There was darkness that almost felt like a relief. She slept. She thought she did, anyway, because she began to dream. In the dream, she floated down through her bed and passed through the floor. She was swimming in air, and she was caught in a current. The current was pulling her down, toward the crypt. She knew she was going to be dragged to the caves. She didn’t want to go. For the moment, all she felt was worry over what the dream might become. If she went underground, there would be no doubt: this would be a nightmare. She didn’t want to have a nightmare, not here and now. The dream would be too awful. She whimpered softly and struggled against the current. It ignored her efforts. She didn’t even slow her descent. She was sucked into the crypt.

She spiralled down the staircase, caught in a swirling drain. Her face passed close to the wall. It was no longer stone. It was a membrane. It pulsed. Beneath it, black blood coursed through runic veins. There was a rushing sound in her ears, loud as whitewater, hollow as an intaken breath. She fell faster. She spun. She was in a whirlpool. It was hauling her to the centre of the dark, to the room of tapestries and pain. The caves glowed with sentience. The walls of the tunnels had scales. She really was descending a serpent. She fell through the false tomb. She was rushed toward Rose’s sanctum. She didn’t want to see. She wasn’t given a choice. She arrived in the room. The tapestries were neon bright. The chair was molten red and bleeding black. The figures in the tapestries were moving. They were screaming. The claws and teeth were rending flesh. Christ pulled an arm from the cross, trailing flesh and tendons caught by the nail, and reached
out
, into the room, pleading for help from her. The reptilian movement in the background gathered definition. Something was going to turn her way. Something was going to see her. If it saw her, it would drag her into the tapestry, and she would become part of the torture loop. And even worse than that was the thought that she might see the thing that would look at her. She tried to scream, but the dream-weakness was upon her, and her lungs could do nothing. Even her whimper came out as no more than expiring sigh. She wanted to close her eyes.

And she thought,
They are closed. I’m dreaming
.

And she thought,
Open your eyes and wake up
.

She opened her eyes. She was awake. She saw the bedroom.

But she was also in the caves. She still saw the tapestries. She was still floating in mid-air, trying to cover her eyes so she wouldn’t see the reptilian arrival.

She was seeing double. The two scenes were superimposed over each other, first one, then the other becoming more solid, the unreality of the bedroom and the reality of the cave feeding her terror.
You’re not awake yet
, she told herself.
You’re still dreaming. Wake up, wake up, wake up.
She tried to scream again, and this time she did, an ear-shattering yell that hurt her throat, and the pain was too precise, her sense of her body too complete, and she knew she was awake, she was having a nightmare, but she
was
awake. She clawed at the air, trying to shred the images before her. She screamed again, saw Sturghill beside her, reaching out for her, but she wasn’t real enough, the thing in the tapestries was closing in, its huge movement graceful with infinity, and she was going so
see
it.

There was another scream. Not her own. The dream ended, bleeding into a reality that was almost as bad.

Shrieks blew out of the walls, raced across the room, chased into the adjoining apartments, echoed in the hall and then howled back, deafening. The same pattern as before: hunter and hunted, the hunter’s cry filled with rage and triumph, the prey’s with agony and fear. Louder now. Huge force behind the sound. And the prey wasn’t just one voice. There were many, a chorus of voices overlapping and overtaking each other in a race not to escape, because there was no escape, but to be the expression of the horror.

Meacham tumbled out of bed, she and Sturghill retreating on instinct to the centre of the room. Hudson was on the floor, on his knees, squeezing his eyes tight and his hands tighter. A scream shot out of the wall behind Meacham, knocking her forward. She ducked, crouched low, stayed near Hudson. Sturghill dropped down. The four corners of the room let loose an artillery barrage of howls. Meacham was able to make out individual voices now. The screamers were male and female. Some had the rasp of old age. There were other voices that made her cover her ears and yell, “
No!
” She tried to block their sound with her own cries. She didn’t want to hear them. They were the voices whose gender she couldn’t determine because they were too young. They were the vice-squeezed wails of tortured infants. She tried to banish the images the screams summoned. She tried not to think of the room of the tapestries. When she failed, she tried to tell herself that what she was hearing had been designed to beat her down. It wasn’t necessarily the historical record.