Out of Nowhere (7 page)

Stephen opened his eyes to find himself back in his bed in the abbey. He blinked in panic at the low ceiling. For a moment he wondered whether the whole trip to town had been a nightmare. But then he felt the aches in his body where he’d been punched and kicked.

The light in the room was dim and red. It was either dawn or evening. He raised his head. In the dimness he saw a tall thin figure sitting at the table: the abbot. The monk sat motionless, his elbow on the table, his sharp chin cupped in his hand, staring at the bed.

‘Abbot Paul,’ Stephen said weakly.

The abbot came over and sat on the bed.

‘Relax,’ he said softly. ‘You’re safe now.’

‘What time is it? What day?’

‘Saturday. Saturday morning. Dawn.’

Stephen blinked.

‘I’ve been unconscious since yesterday afternoon?’

‘I shouldn’t worry. Your body obviously needed rest.’

He took matches from his habit and lit the candles in the candleholder. The soft light spread. Stephen saw that the abbot’s face looked grave and tired.

‘Have you been here long?’ he asked.

Paul smothered a yawn.

‘Since last night,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to be alone when you woke up.’

‘Is everybody all right?’

‘Yes, I think so. But I need to talk to you.’

Stephen sat up, fully awake now. His body hurt. He felt it gingerly.

‘There’s nothing broken,’ the abbot said. ‘But you’re rather bruised.’

‘We were almost killed in that library,’ Stephen said, the memory of it making him shiver. ‘If Philip hadn’t come when he did we’d have been finished.’

‘Yes,’ the abbot said, ‘Philip’s arrival. That’s what I want to talk to you about.’

‘He was in the nick of time. Another few seconds and …’

His voice trailed off in the face of the abbot’s steady gaze. The tall monk was staring into Stephen’s eyes as though trying to read his mind. The brown eyes locked with the boy’s for what seemed like minutes. Then the abbot nodded slowly.

‘You know nothing about it,’ he said regretfully. ‘That’s a pity.’

‘What should I know about? Those people attacked us. Kirsten pushed one out of the window – I don’t think she meant to, but she did it. Then Philip came and shot the others. That’s all I know. What more is there?’

The abbot looked at his hands and pursed his lips.

‘Yesterday morning,’ he said, ‘when you came downstairs, you met a young novice. His name is Thomas.’

‘Yes. He was scrubbing the floor. I startled him.’

‘I know. Then you went to find Fräulein Herzenweg and Philip. In the courtyard, something happened to you.’

Stephen tried to remember.

‘No. I mean yes, but nothing serious. I had a fit of weakness. I stopped by the well.’

‘And?’

‘And … nothing. A little weakness, hardly surprising my first time out of bed. It passed, and I went looking for Kirsten.’

‘After your party left the monastery,’ the abbot said, ‘Brother Thomas came to see me. He was very frightened, because he thought he was catching whatever it is that’s wrong with the majority of our guests. He thought he was seeing things.’

‘Seeing things? Like what? What did he see?’

‘He saw … he saw you stop by the well. Then you leaned over and looked down into the water. And just then, as Thomas watched, Fräulein Herzenweg appeared beside you – literally. She didn’t walk over to you. She simply appeared, out of thin air, standing beside you and looking at you with some concern. You jumped up, obviously startled, and turned to look at her. But she was gone. She’d disappeared – like a light going out, Thomas said.’

Stephen felt the blood drain from his face.

‘But that was a hallucination,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mention it to anyone. I thought I mightn’t be let go on the trip.’

‘So. You did see it too. And do you think Brother Thomas shared your hallucination?’

‘No. That’s not possible. But Kirsten simply wasn’t
in
the courtyard. She was with Philip.’

‘I know,’ Paul said. ‘So when Thomas told me his story, I reassured him that he wasn’t going mad and I told him to rest. The youngster is overwrought – we all are – and people see things when they’re frightened. The mind under stress does peculiar things. But when I spoke to Philip yesterday before you left, he mentioned that Fräulein Herzenweg had a moment’s faintness just before you came along. Perhaps she had, after all, gone outside to clear her head. Philip hadn’t mentioned it, but then he didn’t say that she didn’t go out.’

Stephen could see that this latest mystery was cause for concern. Was there really some contagious form of madness loose in the world? What was it – an experimental weapon of some kind? But that would suggest that some terrible war really had broken out.

‘You think the madness might be spreading?’ he asked the abbot in a hushed voice.

Paul sighed.

‘I haven’t finished my story,’ he said. ‘I sent Thomas to rest, but of course I didn’t dismiss his story – one can’t dismiss any oddity in this situation. I just thought I’d check with you when you returned.’

‘And?’

‘Fräulein Herzenweg was with Philip when you and Thomas saw her, there’s no doubt about that. But she did report an odd passing weakness just before you came in. She described it as a strange
pulling
sensation in her head. She couldn’t recall ever having such a feeling before – of course, that means
nothing in the circumstances.’

Stephen frowned. ‘But you’re not taking seriously the notion that …’

He stopped. What, if anything, was the abbot suggesting?

‘When your party came back,’ Paul continued gently, ‘it was obvious that something very bad had happened. Philip said he had to talk to me immediately.’

He seemed unsure how to go on. He leaned forward and stared into Stephen’s eyes again.

‘I’m certain you’re telling me the truth as you know it,’ he said. ‘And I’m equally sure about Fräulein Herzenweg. Tell me, the weakness you felt in the courtyard, did it feel in any way
odd
?’

‘Odd? No. It was just a weakness.’

‘And later? In the library? Did you have any peculiar feelings then?’

Stephen was getting angry. He wanted to retort that he’d had several peculiar feelings, mainly the certainty that he was going to be murdered. But then he thought of what Paul had just said about Kirsten’s description of her weakness, a “strange pulling sensation in her head”. He suddenly remembered the moment in the library when he’d heard Kirsten’s scream, and the weird
twisting
sensation he’d felt in his own mind.

It had been a very odd feeling, but in the later excitement he’d forgotten it. Was the abbot suggesting that it was connected with that morning’s hallucinations? Had something like that happened again – had someone else seen Kirsten? But the abbot seemed almost surprised when Stephen asked
him that question.

‘You’re missing the point,’ he said softly. ‘Not Fräulein Herzenweg. Nobody saw
her
.’

And then Stephen realised what he was implying.

‘Me?’ he asked, almost choking on the word. ‘Someone saw
me
?’

‘After he left you, Philip went into a hardware shop. While he was there, he sensed someone behind him. When he turned, he saw you. You looked exactly as you had when he’d last seen you a couple of minutes before. He was annoyed that you’d managed to come up behind him without his noticing you. But he was worried because you were alone. You said nothing, but you gestured, beckoning him. He was looking right at you, and he saw what happened next.’

Stephen didn’t want to say the words, but he was certain he knew what they were and he didn’t want Paul to say them either.

‘I disappeared?’ he said in a small voice.

‘You disappeared. Into thin air. Like a light going out. Philip overcame his shock and ran to the library. As he reached the square he saw one of your attackers come out through the library window. He ran upstairs. You saw the rest yourself.’

Stephen hung his head.

‘You, of course,’ Paul said, ‘had never left the library.’

‘No,’ Stephen said. ‘I hadn’t.’ He looked into the abbot’s brown eyes. ‘Paul, I knew nothing of this. I swear.’

The abbot nodded wearily.

‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘In a way I was hoping that you did know something, however odd the explanation.’

Stephen stared at the quilt on the bed. His mind was numb. Paul tried to say something soothing.

‘It’s obviously some kind of
doppelgänger
,’ he said. ‘A double. I’ve heard of such things, though I must admit I always thought of them as legends. But there seems to be nothing threatening about it – quite the reverse, in fact. Your appearance yesterday saved your lives.’

‘Yes,’ said Stephen blankly. He was anything but convinced. It wasn’t comfortable to think that another version of you was likely to appear somewhere without your knowing about it. And Stephen had no solid identity to hold on to: what if he himself turned out to be the double?

Mad thoughts maybe, but it wasn’t the sanest of situations. In his mind Stephen saw again the wicked little eye of the gun- barrel staring at him in the library. He saw Philip’s own wild mad eyes.

‘Philip doesn’t think this is harmless,’ he said.

‘No,’ said the abbot gravely. ‘He doesn’t. In fact, it’s given him a terrible shock.’

‘He was very disturbed anyway. He told you about the body?’

‘Yes. A mystery, certainly, but there are a lot of mysteries lately. I see no need to drag in the supernatural.’

The abbot said the word with some distaste. Then he sighed.

‘Philip told me once, jokingly I thought, that if you scratch an Irishman you’ll find a superstitious peasant under his skin. They have a
doppelgänger
legend here too, you know. It’s called a fetch. It’s a messenger of death – a messenger from hell, some
say.’

Ordinarily that might have sounded funny. It didn’t sound very funny now.

‘Who
is
Philip?’ Stephen asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He has guns – handguns. He handles them like he knows what he’s doing. And he shoots people without hesitating. Who
is
he?’

The abbot pursed his lips. He sighed.

‘Philip confessed to me yesterday,’ he said, ‘that he was very tempted to kill you in the library.’

‘I guessed that. I could see it in his face. I’m surprised he didn’t.’

Paul nodded. He stopped for a while, collecting his thoughts.

‘I suppose I may tell you about him,’ he said. ‘It might help you to understand the pressure he lives under at the best of times. I won’t try to excuse him, but a man is what he is not what he was.’

That’s easy for you to say, Stephen thought – you know what you’ve been and what you are. I’ve just found out that I may be a messenger from hell. But he said nothing, and the abbot told him Philip’s story.

‘Brother Philip,’ the abbot began, ‘is the only Irish monk here. The basic purpose of this abbey is to train novices, and our order prefers to train its novices in countries other than their own. Philip came to our doors about ten years ago, shortly after we first arrived here. He asked to join the order. For various reasons, not least his age, it would have been unusual for him to be posted here in Ireland, even if he was accepted. But after he told me his story I arranged for him to join, and pulled some strings so that he could stay with us for his novitiate and afterwards. I might have done better to send him away, I don’t know. But he was a special case.’

He paused. He was a man careful with words. He preferred to take his time, to find exactly the right expression.

‘Philip,’ he said, ‘was a terrorist – over across the border there. I use the word ‘terrorist’ as neutrally as I can. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter. In my experience their methods tend to be identical – a freedom-fighter is what history calls a terrorist who succeeds. I don’t presume to judge others. I try not to have opinions on things which are none of my business. I fail, of course, but when I do have opinions on such things I keep them to myself.’

He was watching Stephen carefully as he spoke, as though
for a reaction to the news of Philip’s past. But Stephen just thought that at least now he understood Philip’s familiarity with guns.

‘Philip was never a bomber,’ Paul went on. ‘He was a specialist, a marksman. But many of his friends dealt with explosives. One day, one of these friends asked Philip to do him a favour – to store some explosives in his house for a day. At the time Philip lived with his parents and his younger sister, whom he especially adored. He didn’t want to endanger or incriminate them by keeping explosives in their house, but it was an emergency. His friend was holding the explosives for a bombing team that was due to plant them that night. He’d received a tip-off that his own hiding-place was known, and that he himself was to be arrested that day. In the circumstances, Philip decided to take the risk. His family fully supported him in his activities. Far from condemning his involvement, they were proud of him. But Philip didn’t tell them about the explosives, because he didn’t want to worry them.

‘Philip was working all night that night – at his legitimate job, I mean. He warned his family that someone would be calling late to collect something from their house. There had been other such occasions, although never involving material such as this. But Philip’s family trusted him implicitly and never asked questions. At such times they went to their beds early and listened to the quiet footsteps downstairs in the middle of the night without going down. The idea was that they could never be forced to identify anybody they had never seen. This of course is not so, as anyone who’s had dealings
with an army fighting terrorism will tell you – one can be made to do all sorts of impossible things. But anyway, Philip gave the spare key of his parents’ house to the leader of the bombing team and told him exactly where he had hidden the material.’

He paused again, and looked down at his feet.

‘Something went wrong,’ he said quietly. ‘Perhaps all the moving around had made the explosives unstable – there’s no way of knowing now. At any rate, the material detonated when the bombers tried to move it. Everyone in the house was killed, both the bombers and the sleeping family. Four people in the adjoining houses – including two small children – were also killed, and several maimed.’

He stopped speaking. There was silence for a while.

‘And Philip did … what?’ Stephen asked.

‘He left the world. He felt he’d killed his family. At first he meant to kill himself. Then he turned to alcohol, which is only a slower way of doing the same thing. Then he left his city and crossed the border, living rough in the mountains for a time. And then he came to us. How he’d heard of us I don’t know. I took him in. He’s been an excellent Brother, especially popular with the novices. He still supports the cause he fought for then, a little at least. No man would be happier to see peace in that poor place, I think. But it’s only his own involvement that he’s terminated. He’s still indirectly involved at times, I regret to say. We’re very close to the border here. I’ve known for a long time that Philip occasionally holds things for people: packages, letters, small pieces of equipment. No explosives, of course – Philip won’t have anything to do with explosives
again. But certainly other things.’

‘Such as pistols,’ Stephen said.

‘I hadn’t known, but obviously yes.’

‘And you never interfered?’

‘No. I could stop what he does, but that wouldn’t change his mind. Instead I waited for him to see sense. That’s what our order does: it encourages, it doesn’t demand. We don’t believe ideals can be enforced by mere physical might any more than they can be suppressed by it. So long as he didn’t endanger his fellow monks it seemed a matter for Philip alone. And I knew that he’d never endanger the monks – the order is like a second family to him. The novices all look up to him, and he takes that responsibility seriously. I may have been wrong not to interfere, but do remember that if Philip hadn’t been armed either you or Fräulein Herzenweg might be dead.’

Stephen didn’t know what to say. The abbot looked at him with sympathy.

‘Will you do something for me, Stephen?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’

‘We’ve said nothing to Fräulein Herzenweg about what happened in the town. She knows something is wrong, but not what it is. I wanted to talk to you first. She’s extremely upset.’

‘She would be. So am I.’

‘I wondered whether you could tell her about the doubles? She must be told. You’re a similar age, and it may be easier for her to hear these things from … a fellow sufferer.’

Stephen nodded.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course I’ll tell her, if I can think how.’

‘Thank you,’ the abbot said. ‘She’s been waiting to see you. She was asleep in a chair the last time I saw her. I’ll send her up. And about these …
manifestations
. They’re certainly strange, but we’ve no reason to think that they’re harmful. Do try to remember that the one yesterday seems deliberately to have saved your lives.’

Damn your fairness, Stephen thought, it’s not you these things are happening to. But of course he didn’t say that.

‘Yes,’ he said instead. ‘Yes, I know.’

And he did know it too. But he drew no comfort from the knowledge.

The abbot left. Stephen lay back in his bed. The thought struck him suddenly that for all he knew his double might be appearing to someone at that very moment. It gave him an odd feeling. He felt the flesh creep on his bruised and weary bones, and he was very afraid.