Fanatics (6 page)

The commotion in the skies slowly moved east, and the sound and light show faded, leaving the soft thrumming of rain. Out on the water, I thought I heard an outboard motor running roughly and muffled shouts as the sound faded. Wondering what kind of fool would be boating at night in a storm, I drifted off to sleep.

Soon I was in the grip of one of those anxiety dreams. I was alone, cowering in a dark corner of a small cabin. It was stiflingly hot, but I was wearing a heavy overcoat. Someone was trying to break in, howling with malice as he hammered on the door. Someone who I knew was dead. I dashed back and forth, frantically checking the door lock, which never
seemed to close properly, and broken window latches that spun uselessly on the sash. The heat was unbearable. I tore open the coat and tried to take it off, but my arms tangled in the sleeves. There was a deafening boom and the cabin door flew off its hinges, and I stood helpless, my arms snared by the coat.

I awoke struggling and thrashing in the bed, one arm snarled in the sleeve of the bathrobe. The bed was hot, the room airless. I sat up, throwing back the duvet. The candle still burned. I got out of bed and opened the window, admitting a draft of fresh, cool air. I returned to the bed and pulled the sheet over me.

Every house has its own night noises, and the older the building the more it seems to creak and groan, like an old dog getting comfortable in his basket. The Corbizzi mansion was no different. And if you had a big enough imagination, every squeak and crack had a sinister cause—a malevolent intruder creeping slowly up the stairs, an evil spirit bent on revenge pushing open a door. What is there about the dark that awakens primitive images and drags them to the surface of your mind? And why will a rational human being—like me—lie awake, telling himself, “That’s just branches scraping against the roof slates,” or “It’s only the floorboards shrinking as the building cools”? And why don’t these explanations bring any comfort?

After a while my body sank deeper into the mattress and my eyelids grew heavier. I became aware of a sound emerging from the air around me, muted and faint. It reminded me of two pieces of cloth rubbing together, or a fingertip brushing repeatedly across an open notebook. Soft as a whisper, the sound was rhythmic. Like breathing.

There was someone in the room.

I jerked to a sitting position. Frantically scanned the shadows in the corners of the candle-lit bedroom. The breathing grew louder and rougher. I jumped from the bed and threw open the door. Nothing. The hallway was a silent black cave. The breathing was coming from behind me. The respiration became laboured and coarse—someone struggling to draw air into constricted lungs, fighting for every breath, saliva rattling in his throat as he began to choke.

It stopped.

The room was silent except for the window curtains brushing the sill with the breeze.

I closed the door, crawled into bed, curled up, and dreamed.

A
BLACK RAT SCUTTLED
across the floor of a dripping jail cell, the yellow light of a single candle reflected in each glassy eye. It passed unnoticed beneath a rough-plank trestle table where three men in hooded robes sat deep in shadow, their hands folded on sheaves of documents.

An iron key struck a lock. A heavy oaken door squealed open on rusty hinges. A man clad in only a filthy shift, his face veiled in shadow, was dragged into the room by two burly jailers and dropped on the floor. He moaned, rising to his knees, clasping his hands to his chest as if in prayer. The jailers yanked his arms behind his back and bound his wrists with leather thongs.

One of the three men at the table nodded almost casually. A jailer reached overhead for the rope that hung from a pulley bolted to the ceiling and passed the end between the arms of the groaning victim, tying a stout knot. Both jailers moved away into the murk at the opposite end of the room.

The rope tightened and quivered, the pulley squeaked as it took the strain. The kneeling man’s arms were pulled up and behind his body, squeezing an animal-like noise from his collapsing chest. He was hauled up until his feet barely touched the stone and his contorted shoulders took the full weight of his body. Then, in sporadic jerks, he was winched higher and higher until he hung close to the ceiling, like a grotesquely misshapen angel.

He cried out, then his voice fell to a chant. “
Credo in unum deum patrem omnipotentum factorem caeili et terrae. Credo in unum deum …
” He paused, choking. “
De profundis clamavi ad te domine, domine esuadi vocem meam
.”

For the second time, one of the men at the table nodded.

The bound man plummeted toward the floor. The rope unspooled, then thrummed viciously when his body jerked to a stop, inches above the ground, the momentum of his fall dislocating his shoulders with a sickening crack. His scream exploded against the stone walls.

The pulley began to creak again.

I
WOKE UP PANTING
, breathing raggedly, my heart knocking at my ribs, my eyes frantically probing the gloom for faceless men in hooded robes. There was barely enough pre-dawn light in the bedroom to show the outline of the
bedposts and the dresser. It was a dream, I told myself, lying back to stare at the ceiling. Just a nightmare. I forced myself to breathe evenly, repeating my words until my heart rate slowed almost to normal. I threw back the sheet and stood by the bedside, closing the bathrobe and tying the belt tightly. I looked around the room. The window curtains lifted and fell in a cool breeze. The house was silent.

I made my way on unsteady legs to the bathroom and gulped down two glasses of water, then splashed more on my face. I held my hand out. It was shaking. Tension knotted my stomach. I hadn’t had a nightmare that bad in a long time. I returned to the bedroom and looked out the window. A gold-red line, with a pastel blue band above it, marked the horizon.

“A normal day,” I said out loud. “I hope.”

On the dresser top a spent wick lay in a pool of wax on the candle holder.

I climbed back into bed. Raphaella had once advised me that you should always confront a nightmare right away. Lie back, tell the dream to yourself, analyze it, ask yourself what the dream is trying to tell you. That way you can put it in perspective. A fear faced is a fear defeated. Show your terror who’s boss, she told me. But I wasn’t ready to face the horrors I had witnessed. I had seen five men calmly torture a sixth, indifferent to his suffering.

I pushed the images away, reminding myself they were only that—images—and forced myself to concentrate on my plans for the day. I would return home for a change of clothes, call Raphaella, and see if she could come and begin to catalogue the books. I would work on the mantel while she got started in the library.

Fixing on normal, everyday things brought me back to reality. I rolled over, hoping to catch an hour or so of sleep. I dozed. A black rat scuttled into my mind. A candle flame flickered. Suddenly, the room was flooded with light. I jumped up, jolted with adrenaline, looked frantically around the bedroom.

“What the—?” I yelped.

The overhead light had come on, as had the lamp by the bed. The electricity was back. I hadn’t switched the lights off when the power failed in the storm.

“Stupid fool,” I said into the empty room.

M
RS
. S
TOPPINI HAD BREAKFAST READY
when I came downstairs. She had dark circles under her eyes. For my part, I had managed an hour of fitful half-sleep that hadn’t relieved my fatigue one bit. And my head ached.

“Good morning, Mr. Havelock.”

“Morning, Mrs. Stoppini.”

“I would customarily enquire as to how you slept, but I expect no one for miles around managed a restful sleep last night.”

“You can say that again.”

The music of robins and starlings trickled in from the yard, and outside the patio door a hummingbird darted and hovered over flowers sagging from the night’s onslaught of wind and rain. Mrs. Stoppini rose from her chair and stepped over to the espresso machine on the counter. She wore the same type of long-sleeved black dress that fell past
her knees—only this one had a velvet collar—and woollen stockings with black lace-up leather shoes.

“Cappuccino or straight espresso?” she asked. “Or perhaps you’d prefer a caffè macchiato.”

“Er … a—”

“Espresso marked with a little milk foam,” she explained. “It was the late professor’s preferred morning drink.”

“Sounds good.”

There was a plate of small pastries in the centre of the table alongside a bowl of warm rolls. Mrs. Stoppini placed a small cup of deliciously aromatic coffee in front of me and indicated the food with a turn of her hand. “Please,” she invited.

As I layered butter on a roll she sat down. “The patio chairs and umbrella seem to have disappeared during the storm. The gardener doesn’t come until Wednesday. I wonder if you’d be so kind …”

I took a sip of the coffee. It tasted as good as it smelled—hot and strong.

“Sure,” I replied. “Be glad to.”

Mrs. Stoppini nodded.

“If you’ll make me another macchiato,” I said.

I
FETCHED MY PUSH BROOM
from the workshop and swept the leaves, sticks, and dirt from the patio before tracking down the four chairs the storm had tossed across the lawn. I found the umbrella knee-deep in the lake, up the shore a bit, where the sandy beach gives way to gravel and shale. I waded in and hauled it onto the bank and allowed the water to run out of the canopy, still furled around the pole, secured by a bungee cord.

Something glinted at the waterline. Glass. I bent to pick it up, thinking glass on a beach is a danger to bare feet. It was a hand-held
GPS
with a camo finish, a waterproof variety, the same brand as the
GPS
on my motorcycle. The display screen was cracked, allowing water and sand in. I pushed the Power button, but the screen didn’t light up. Ruined, but too valuable to throw away, I thought, jamming it into my pocket. I’d check it out later. Maybe the batteries were dead.

Back at the house I erected the sodden umbrella and opened it to dry in the sun.

A
FTER SAYING A TEMPORARY
goodbye to Mrs. Stoppini and thanking her for putting me up for the night, I mounted my motorcycle and headed back into town. It was cool in the shaded roads along the lakefront, and the air, washed by the storm, was fresh and fragrant, coaxing the aftermath of my nightmare from my mind. I rode slowly, 650 cc’s of power rumbling serenely between my knees, along Bay Street, around the park, and up the hill on Brant to our house. I parked in back by the garage.

Mom was at the kitchen table reading a manuscript, a pencil in her hand, her favourite dictionary close by. She liked to edit her work on hard copy rather than the computer.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. “Dad at the store?”

She looked up and smiled. “He has a line on a nineteenth-century pine table. He’s trying to persuade Summerhill to sell it now rather than put it up for auction, but so far it’s no go. He’s as happy as a clam.”

“I’m going to change,” I said, heading for the stairs.

My room was on what Dad referred to as the third level and I called the attic. Accessed by a steep flight of narrow stairs, it was a good-sized, wainscotted room tucked up under the mansard roof, with two dormers looking out onto Brant Street—one a window and the other a glassed door to a small balcony. Another window overlooked Matchedash Street. It was the kind of place where, in a gothic novel, the family would lock up their mad auntie when company came over. In real life, a century or so ago, in the days when rich people owned the house, my room was where the servants had lived. I liked it. I had the balcony, lots of light, and if I craned my neck a little, a view of the lake.

I showered and changed into fresh jeans and shirt. I pulled a duffle bag out of my closet and tossed in a set of clothes, a flashlight, a novel, and the charger for my cell. I planned to leave the clothes at the shop in case I was ever soaked or stranded again.

In the kitchen I made some sandwiches and raided the fridge for a few cans of juice, making a mental note to find a small used fridge for my workshop, and put the food into my pack. Dropping into a chair, I sat back and keyed Raphaella’s number into my cell.

“Hello?” she answered.

“It’s your boyfriend.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“The good-looking one.”

“That narrows the field to seven.”

“The one you love the best.”

“Oh. Hi, Steve.”

“Very funny,” I said. “Listen, can you make it out to the Corbizzi place today?”

I heard the muffled sound of Raphaella holding the phone against her body and telling her mother she’d be there in a minute. “I’m at the store,” she said to me. “I have to unpack and shelve a big shipment of Chinese herbs that came in this morning.”

Raphaella’s mother made up natural medicine prescriptions. Lately she’d been teaching Raphaella to prepare some of the simpler ones.

“Can you mix me up a batch of frogs’ teeth and spiders’ tails?”

“Not today. I’ve got to get going.”

“How long will you be?”

“Probably all day. Maybe I could come by your place for dinner.”

I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “Okay. Give me a call if you get the chance.”

“I promise. Gotta go.”

“Okay, bye.”

“Bye, Steve,” she said brightly.

B
ACK AT THE SHOP
I cut pieces of dowel to make spindles for the decorative “fence” around the edge of the new mantel top. I fixed the first one between the spurs of the wood lathe, clamped the tool rest into position, and turned on the motor. Using one of the old urn-shaped spindles as a model, I meticulously shaped the wood until I had an accurate replica, finishing it with sandpaper. Then I turned off the motor.

The lathe had a feature that made the rest of the process easier, an electronic gizmo with a stainless-steel tip much like a ballpoint pen. I manoeuvred the tip to rest against the new spindle, turned on the device, and stood back as it silently travelled the length of the spindle, “reading” and memorizing its shape. I had only to remove the spindle, put a blank in its place, fix a cutting tool into the attachment, push a button, and watch as the lathe automatically shaped a new spindle exactly like the first.