Darkwater

twenty-three

Scuffles outside Sarah’s door woke her; before she could jump out of bed and hide, a key rattled in the lock. Scrab came in sideways and dumped a breakfast tray on the table. He yanked the window curtains wide. “Always fetching and carrying for you! Thought this setup would be different.”

“Hello, Scrab,” she said.

His small eyes peered at her as she huddled in the quilt. “’Imself said the condemned woman should eat a decent breakfast. Daft beggar.”

He scratched, scattered a little dandruff, and scraped out. Sarah lay back on the pillow. After a while she managed a relieved smile. Her fate was all worked out. Why worry.

She forced herself to eat some toast, then dressed and went down. Darkwater Hall felt cold and deserted. All its pupils were at home now, having their warm Boxing Days, eating leftover turkey and watching TV. Quite suddenly, gazing up at the Trevelyan portraits on the stairs, she felt like a ghost, left over from an earlier age. She wanted to go home. But this was home.

She took the tray to the kitchens and stacked the dishes in the sink. It was completely silent down here. Except that deep below, something thumped.

She turned the cold tap off and listened.

There it was again.

In all her nightly prowls, in all the years she had lived here before, she’d never found the way back to Azrael’s mysterious stairway. She’d even had the corridors upstairs peeled open by workmen, but there had been no panel, no door. Had it really been a dream? After all these decades she didn’t even know.

She turned abruptly. The cat was there, and behind it, like a shadow in the doorway, Azrael stood. He had his lab coat on, and there were yellow sulfur stains on his fingers.

“Sarah,” he said quietly, “there’s someone in the cellar.”

She stared.

“Was it your idea? Did the tramp put you up to it?”

“What?”

“Putting him there.”

“I don’t know what you’re even talking about.” She had rarely seen him so grave.

“Then come on,” he said, hurrying out.

She grabbed a knife from the rack and raced after him. “A burglar?”

Azrael shrugged. “I sincerely hope so.”

He snapped the lights on and ran down the steps to the cellars, huge shadows flickering behind him on the wall.

“How did you know about the tramp?” she gasped.

He glanced back, dark. “This time, Sarah, he won’t spoil things for us.”

At the bottom it was damp. Sarah had been here often. The corridor stank of drains, old beer casks, mice. No one bothered with it. But as she raced after him she heard the sound again, a weary thump, faint, as if all the hope had drained out of it.

Azrael ran through the vaults to the door at the end, the strong-door. He gripped the rusted top bolt, grinding it back.

“Quick!” he snapped. “Hurry, Sarah!”

The bottom bolt was warped; she had to work it frantically up and down before it would shift. Someone had jammed it hard. The thump came again. Just over her head.

“They’re locked in!” she said.

“I know.”

“But who . . . ?”

“Never mind! Have you got it?”

“Yes!”

The bolt slammed back. Azrael hauled the door wide. A pitiful figure, filthy with dust, tearstained, bloodstained, collapsed into his arms.

Scrab opened the front door so suddenly that Tom almost put the key into his eye.

“Oh my Gawd. Yer for it.”

“What?”

Scrab grinned and stood aside. Coming in, Tom saw the Christmas tree in the hall had been lit up again, towering in its green height against the stair-rail.

“And ’aven’t we been a wicked little boy!” Scrab slammed the door; Tom almost jumped.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The caretaker laid a dirty finger along his nose and tapped it. “Saying nowt. But ’imself’s upstairs. High and mighty today, so I wouldn’t keep ’im waiting. Always like this, after ’e’s been ’obnobbing with the Powers that Be.”

Uneasy, Tom took the stairs two at a time and walked boldly into the library, his whole body listening for sounds from below. But the only thudding was his heart. He wondered what was coming.

The lab was gloomy.

Azrael was leaning against the fireplace on one elbow, watching him. To his surprise Sarah was there too. As soon as she saw him she leaped up. “You stupid, stupid fool,” she snapped.

“What?” Tom stopped dead. Simon came in behind him, reflected grotesquely in twisted tubing. “What have I done?”

“You know!” She seemed too angry for words.

Of course he knew.

They had found Steve.

Tom rubbed his face nervously. “Look. You don’t understand . . .”

“I know what’s been going on! But do you think doing it back to him will help?”

Azrael’s silence was terrifying. Tom turned to him.

“Is he alive?”

“Alive!” Azrael’s voice was airy and dangerous. “That’s such an interesting word, don’t you think, Tom? What does it mean, to be alive? Do you have to be born, to be alive?”

He paced under the spinning planets. “Are only the sons of men alive? Or are there different sorts of life, different deepnesses of being? Angels and demons?”

“Azrael . . .” Sarah said shortly.

“Maybe in a way that boy was not alive before. Not alive to the suffering he caused you.”

Tom shook his head. “Please. Tell me.”

Azrael put both hands down on the bench and leaned over. “There is no place for revenge, Tom, in the Great Work. It’s a corruption in the crucible, a gritty unburning cinder. You should never have done this.”

His anger was bleak, a darkness in the room. All his geniality was gone; this was a new being, relentless, unknown.

“Stop tormenting him,” Sarah muttered.

The alchemist turned in disgust. “He’s alive. There. No thanks to you.”

The domed jar was on the bench. Tom bent over it, rubbing a hole in the dust. Cobwebs brushed his eyelashes as he gazed in.

Steve Tate lay on a white bed. He was still, as if asleep, and tiny—so tiny Tom could have picked him up with finger and thumb. His face was filthy, his hands bandaged, as if he had banged and scraped for hours on door and walls. He looked exhausted and half starved. Pitiful.

Tom should have felt glad. But he didn’t.

“And the worst thing was,” Azrael’s voice said behind him, “that you planned to offer this soul to me.”

Tom closed his eyes.

“And if you think”—Sarah stalked up and down in utter contempt—“that I would ever let anyone take my place . . .”

“You weren’t supposed to know.”

Azrael came and covered the jar with a black velvet cloth. He turned. “Whose idea was this?”

“Mine.”

“Not entirely. Someone else suggested it.” He stepped closer. “I think I know who.”

“No.”

“Tell me, Tom.”

Tom was stubbornly silent. Simon’s voice startled them all.

“The tramp put him up to it.”

Azrael looked straight at him. To Tom’s astonishment he nodded, curtly. “As I thought. Scrab!”

He yelled it; instantly the door flew open and Scrab sloped in, a dark coat slung over one arm.

“’Eard it all.” He held the coat up; Azrael flung it on and was gone, sweeping through the library, all the book pages ruffling in his draft, the papers flying.

Tom looked at Sarah in terror. “What will he do to him?”

She looked uneasy. “I never saw, last time. But they’re enemies, Tom, all down the centuries.”

Doors banged below.

Running down the stairs, they found the house was crackling into life, shadows gathering, the corridors full of footsteps, the slavering of hounds. Azrael leaped the last step, coat flying.

“Stay here!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Don’t let them out, Scrab.”

Breathless, the caretaker shuffled behind. “Still giving yer blasted orders,” he muttered.

Out of the rooms, the cupboards, the desks, a host of presences gathered, invisibly slipping past on the stairs, a running emptiness. Sarah grabbed Tom. “Quick!”

They had to push their way through; the air hummed and jostled with the whisper and crackle of beings they couldn’t see. Powers and principalities, Tom found himself whispering. Angels and demons.

“Oy! You get back ’ere!”

Scrab was screeching, but they were out, and the gray afternoon was agitated by sudden wind, and out to sea a storm cloud was looming down on them, terrifyingly black, its underside lit by electric glimmers.

“There he is!” Simon yelled.

Azrael was a fleet shape among the trees; they struggled after him. Huge drops of rain fell, icy, the wind buffeting them back.

“What do you mean, down the centuries?” Tom gasped.

“Never read your Bible?” Sarah thrust fir branches aside. “There was a war in heaven, remember.” Then she hissed, “The Quoits! That’s where he’s going!”

As he ran, Tom felt Simon close; the sleet swirled down, freezing into flakes that soaked his coat and Sarah’s sweater, and he saw that they soaked Simon too. Tiny flakes, like white feathers, that stuck to his lips and stung like acid. Simon grabbed him.

“Look at me! I’m cold!”

He seemed elated, holding his arms up to it, hair plastered to his neck, drops running down his face. “I can feel it, Tom! I can feel the snow!”

“It’s like no snow I know,” Sarah muttered.

Nor was it. It was a storm of shards and slivers; it stabbed and stung, and the trees roared under it, even the muddy soil seeming to boil, and for an instant Tom was convinced they were running through the bubble and hiss of some vast cosmic experiment, until he crashed against the wet bark of a tree, and saw the Quoits.

The black stones streamed with frost.

His back flat against the nearest stone, the tramp stood, facing them. He had drawn himself up, and now he flung his arms open and laughed.

“So tha’s come for me, Azrael! What good will it do thee, old friend?”

Lightning glimmered.

Among the dark trees, Azrael was barely visible. All around him the sleet hissed and the wood crackled with movement.

“I warned you,” he whispered.

A hound’s tongue licked Tom’s hand; he jerked back in terror. Close around his knees the darkness panted and pressed.

“Have I maimed thy work again?” the tramp said cheerily. “Well, I’m sorry, lad. But tha knows me. Only I can follow thee down the twelve stairways, and I will. I’ll face thee in all the world’s ages.”

The tramp dropped his arms. Rain dripped from his coat hem. “It’s hard for thee,” he muttered. “All else is thine, but not me, eh? Not till the end itself. Tha’ll never be free of me.”

Thunder rumbled, a hollow grumble. Azrael said clearly, “Come back to us.”

The tramp spread his hands. “Too late. I’ve changed.”

“You can be as you were.”

The tramp laughed. “Aye? But I don’t want to.”

For a moment Azrael was silent. Then he raised his face, the rain dripping from his hair. “I’m sorry, brother,” he whispered.

Lightning cracked. A spear of it. It shot through the hand Azrael held up, and in one vivid instant the tramp was there, pinned to the stone with sheer light and a scream that shocked Tom rigid. An implosion of rock stung him; he was flung back into a wet hollow of dripping brambles, all the night seared with a horrifying, scorching smell. Dizzy, lifting his head, he saw a darkness slither away between the stones.

Snow fell, silent. Beside him Sarah scrambled up, blood running from a cut on her forehead; Simon looked stunned.

“Did you see?” he whispered. “He killed him.”

“You can’t kill evil,” Sarah said.

Only the sleet pattered, and around them, for miles, the wood was empty.

Azrael lowered his hand, turned, and saw them. He pulled his coat tighter and strode past them. His voice was bleak and weary.

“I told you to stay inside,” he snarled.