Resonance (20 page)

You

Y
OU ARE WALKING
down a staircase in darkness. Ahead of you walks a man. He is invisible to you in the dark, but I can see him. Through your eyes, I see him. He is carrying unlit candles. There are matches in his pocket. He passes a painting on the wall – the intelligent, dark-skinned face of the man he loves – and his fingers brush the frame as a caress. Behind you, hopeful and frightened, is an old woman. Her hopes are pinned on you. You are nothing to her but a currency.

Your heart and lungs and stomach are squeezed in the grip of a merciless giant, and you find it hard to breathe. You are thinking,
Joe Joe Joe. I will find you. I will find you, Joe
. It is this that has called me back. This and the singing, which is not aimed at me. It is not aimed at me at all, but I can hear it, as I know you can. It, too, called me back. From the cold arms of my mother; from a darkness so intense it hurt my thoughts; from eternity, it called me.

Need. Hunger. Loneliness.

And you.

You reach the bottom of the stairs, and the man leads you to a big room where there is a table set up with planchette and spirit board. The man means to test you with these things, to force open your mind so he may speak with the one who is with me here in the dark.

That will kill you. You must not allow it.

There are others sitting on a sofa in this room. They rise and the man smiles, waving them back down. He sets you up before a silent piano, behind a screen, and arranges you like a doll. He moves about the room, putting candles in holders and setting a match to them.

The old woman hovers by the door, unheeded and uncared for. Her hope is turning to bitterness. She is so close to hating you.

The man raises his head. The light of the candles is shaded from you by the screen, but his face is illuminated by them. He smiles across at the people on the sofa: the man he loves, the woman they adore.

‘This is just an hors d’oeuvre,’ he says.

He unshields the candles, and – as you have been commanded to do – you turn and turn and turn.

All is sparkling, all is brightness, the room about you filled with shivering light. There is a surge of wonder, and with it a howl, a scream, a vast, visceral, eternal
rush
. The creature with me rises up. It rises up. It is the one howling. It is reaching for the ceiling. Its arms, its wings, its face are turned upwards in painful need. At last. At last. At last. It feeds.

Hungry for Something

H
ARRY’S MOTHER WHISPERED
,
‘Ehrich, was sitzt du da so rum?
’ and he opened his eyes. The room was flooded with silent moonlight. For a moment he found himself listening for the sounds of New York; then he remembered where he was.

Tina. He had left her. He had turned and walked away and left her all alone with that man.

Frantic, he jumped to his feet and rushed into the hall. The women’s room was empty, and Harry came to a halt within it, frozen at the sight of clothing strewn about. With sick certainty, he picked a familiar garment from the floor. It was Tina’s blouse, the sprigged cotton cold between his fingers. How long had he been sitting, calm and motionless, across the hall, and in that time what had been done here?

Harry went to the closed door of the adjoining room, certain that he would find Tina crouched, huddled and ruined, within the darkness there. He realised that her blouse was still clutched in his hand and he dropped it. Tightening his jaw, he pressed open the door.

‘Tina?’ he whispered.

Only stillness and shadows greeted him.

Somewhere far off downstairs someone crashed their hands onto a piano. It was a jarring, dissonant chord that made Harry jump. Angry and aggressive, the music forced itself upon the silence of the house. Harry did not recognise the tune at first; then he realised that it was the third movement of Beethoven’s
Mondscheinsonate
– the
Moonlight Sonata
. A music-hall favourite. Harry had never heard it played with such rage. There was a frantic desperation to it that, in light of Tina’s scattered clothes, set Harry’s heart to racing.

In the attic above, the whisperers began moaning, low and yearning.

Harry made his way down to the first-floor landing. He paused in the segmented light of the arched window, staring down the main flight of stairs that led to the hall. The music was very loud down there, coming from a room somewhere to the right of the big horse. There was candlelight there, a scintillating blaze of it, which flooded the hall in warm contrast to the cold moonlight illuminating the rest of the house. The music, the sheer rage of the music, drew him downwards.

From the shadows of the hall, Harry peered through open doors into a vast ballroom. Tina sat opposite him, in a lone chair on the far side of the room, shadows at her back. A table at her elbow held a spirit board. She was dressed in Ursula Lyndon’s gold-sequined costume. From the upward slant of light it would seem that much of the floor within was covered in candles, and they reflected off the dress and spangled Tina and her surroundings with shivering radiance. Her attention was fixed on something out of Harry’s sight in
the far corner of the ballroom, the source of the music. Her face was strained, her eyes glittering.

Are you hurt?
he thought.
What has he done to you?

A sofa was positioned between them. On it sat three distinctive figures, their backs to Harry. The carriage driver was lounging at the closest end, his arm stretched along the ornate back. His strong profile was outlined in candle glow, the soft mass of his dark hair coloured by it. Raquel nestled comfortably against him, her head leaning against his shoulder. Her legs seemed to be up on the sofa, her feet perhaps even resting in the lap of Lord Wolcroft, who sat on the far end, nearest the candlelight. His face was hidden from Harry’s view, his shoulder-length hair pure, unbroken darkness, rimmed in a thin thread of gold. All three were motionlessly absorbed by the music, Raquel and the carriage driver so rapt that their faces were blank.

Harry stared at Tina, wishing she would look his way, wanting her to know that he was there. But she could not seem to draw her attention from the far corner of the room, where someone was pouring all their rage into a violent rendition of the
Mondscheinsonate
’s third movement,
Presto agitato
.

I will be back for you
, thought Harry.
Just hold on.

Silently, he backed away.

The best thing would be to head for the stables and see what he could find by way of transportation. Even if he had to perch Tina and the old woman on the back of one of the carriage horses, he’d do it. He’d put them on his
own
back if he had to – just so long as they got away from this crazy place.

Making his way through the library, he exited via the
French doors, slipping out onto the moonlit terrace. He came to a halt there, his shadow stretching long and black ahead of him on the flagstones, the moon glaring down on the back of his neck.

What about Joe?
he thought. Last time he’d seen him Joe had been lying on the carriage seat, a blanket flung across him as if he mattered nothing at all. Was he still there? If he was, Harry would take him with them. He wasn’t going to leave Joe’s body here for these vultures – God knew what they’d do with it.

‘Contemplating a walk, are you?’

Harry shrank back against the wall of the house. A chuckle drew his attention to the far side of the roses, and there, so much a part of the shadows that he was invisible until he raised his hand, was Luke. He was sitting on a bench, his back against the stone wall of the sunken garden, his arms folded, his legs stretched out before him. He grinned as Harry found him.

‘Caught you,’ he whispered.

‘How did you know I’d be here?’

A soft snort told Harry that he had a high opinion of himself if he thought Luke was there for him. ‘I come to watch the bats,’ he said, and he tilted his chin to indicate the space just above the roses.

Their petals were black in the moonlight, and moths big and small rose and fell from the heavy blossoms, bright as glimmering stars. A sudden flutter of shadow disturbed the fragrant air, and Luke made a satisfied sound.

‘I’m awaiting on that one,’ he said, pointing high above.

A good five or six bats were swooping and diving, gorging themselves on the aerial creatures of the rose garden, but
up above them, barely discernible against the stars, a single member of their species flew in aimless circles. Luke followed it with his eyes. ‘It’s been like this a good few nights past now. I’m awaiting on it.’

Harry glanced furtively back to the terrace, wondering if he could slip away. Luke chuckled again.

‘How do you figure dealing with Himself’s dogs, eh? They won’t be so friendly now you’re up and about, you know, and there’ll be no distracting
them
with a coin pulled from their ears. Animals don’t have our sense of wonder, boy; things like that don’t stop them in their tracks.’ The man nodded, as if agreeing with himself. ‘Only Eve’s fallen children are stopped in their tracks. It’s the last residue of our closeness with God, I reckon, the ability to see the wonder of things.’

He fell silent, gazing up at the lone bat again.

Within the house, the pianist had returned to the first movement of the
Mondscheinsonate
. In contrast to its earlier frenzy, the music now held a graceful melancholy, and for the first time ever, Harry heard the yearning in it – the genuine, soul-deep
heart
that cheap music-hall renditions had hidden until now. Even under these circumstances, it gave him pause.

‘Say,’ he whispered. ‘That’s beautiful.’

‘It’s the girl is playing, is it?’ Luke asked this the way one would ask after a fever patient – in the same tone one would ask,
Has she much time left?

Harry shook his head, alarmed by the man’s expression. ‘It … it may be Miss Lyndon, the old woman. She’s the entertainer. As far as I know, Tina doesn’t play.’

The man eyed Harry from head to toe. ‘What are you, boy?’

‘I’m a magician. Lord Wolcroft hired—’

The man tutted. ‘Not what do you
do
! What are you? Where are you from? Your accent is mighty strange.’

Harry drew himself up. ‘I’m from New York.’

‘A colonial.’ Luke seemed amused by this. ‘So, a Spanish settler? British convict? Some poor Dutch Puritan running from the church?’

‘I’m an
American
,’ insisted Harry.

‘Ach, there’s no such thing. What are you really? Where were you born?’

Harry huffed. ‘Just because I wasn’t
born
in America doesn’t mean—’

‘Ah, sure you don’t know what you are,’ the man said dismissively.

‘I know
damn well
what I am. I—’

Luke waved his anger aside like a gnat. ‘Hold your whisht, it nary matters. I used to think it did, and it’s habit that makes me cling to the question – but after a time, you come to realise we’re all just mongrels. It’s the man himself that matters, not his seed and breed. The Captain taught me that.’

The Captain – the carriage driver. Harry looked over his shoulder, as if naming him could conjure him. ‘Why do you call him the Captain?’ he whispered.

The man’s expression hardened. ‘Why else would I call him Captain? Isn’t that what he is?’

‘Of a ship?’

‘Aye, of a ship. Of
his
ship. Best cove to work for in the West Indies, that man. Had the same crew his whole time at sea, give or take. That’s a rare thing, boy, to hold the loyalty of a shifty gang of scoundrels such as to be found in the islands. And him the colour he is, and them so used to
seeing the dark fellas subject, and them loving it, because what else do you want when you’re bottom of the ladder but some poor cove lower than you so as you can spit on him?’

Luke looked up again at the bat fluttering aimlessly over his head. ‘Captain earned his title. As far as I’m concerned, he’ll keep it. God knows, the disease stole everything else from him.’

Harry descended a few steps, the better to hear the man’s quiet voice. It was sultry down there, the moist heat heavy with scent. The subtle burr of bat wings agitated the air. ‘Why did they bring Tina here? And that man – the Captain – he took our friend Joe. Why?’

‘You said it yourself, boy. You’re here for the show. Because Himself chose you for the show.’

‘Himself? You mean Lord Wolcroft? No, he—’

‘
Wolcroft?
’ Luke sneered. ‘Wolcroft is long ago dulled and grey and gone to the oubliette. And you should thank your stars for it. That old bastard was wicked beyond repair – you would not want to find yourself in
his
grip.’

The man grinned at Harry’s obvious confusion. ‘My family and I had the gall to think we owned this place once, the nerve of us. Wolcroft – the
real
Wolcroft – was the fist the English sent to beat us down. Planter bastard. New Model Army spalpeen. He settled himself over this land like a toad, he did, and I fled his rule like a beaten whelp. Fled halfway round the world. But I didn’t stay gone – not me.

‘The villagers bless the day I brought Himself and the Captain here. Didn’t take long for those two to change things, like I knew they would. The Captain was always one for the underdog. And even Himself, with his high blood, he knows what it is to baulk against the yoke.

‘Himself is a great man, boy – no matter his quare ways. It’s him brought us through it all, in the end. Through Williamites and rebels, through famines, plague and war, with his fine words and his pretty manners, playing one side off against the other. No one here’s ashamed to say they love him for it. He’s held this place out of the mud of history for the past two hundred year.’

‘What are you talking about?
’ cried Harry, losing his patience at last. ‘What are any of you people talking about?
Two hundred years?
Do you expect me to believe that? That black man, the carriage driver, your Captain, he
stole
my friend Joe
! And
Himself
? If
Himself
has laid a hand on Tina, if he’s so much as laid a
finger
on her, I’ll—’

‘If he laid a finger on her? Himself?’ At that, the man began to laugh.

‘Say!’ cried Harry. ‘Say, that’s nothing to laugh about! You’d better watch it. You—’

Luke hooted. ‘Oh, be quiet, you yapping pup. You know nothing, y’understand? Nothing! You will spend your short life knowing nothing, and when you die, you’ll
be
nothing. Gone and forgot in the blink of an eye.’