Darkwater

thirteen

At once all the clocks had started ticking. Lying in bed now, shivering under the heavy covers, she remembered that, and it seemed to her as if the house had woken up at that precise moment, that the windows had begun to rattle and the boards creaked, as if far below the Darkwater raging through its underground caverns had roared with a strange fury. Even lying here now, barely awake, she could hear tiny movements that had not been in the house before, gusts and the bang of a door, the rapid scuttle of a beetle across some wainscot.

It took her a long time to fall asleep.

When she did, her dreams were a jumble. She found herself in a room full of clocks, their ticking so loud she put her hands to her ears, staring around. It was the laboratory. But Azrael’s experiments had dust all over them, the alembics cracked, the liquids and chemicals in every tube dried and crusted.

“Where are you?” she called.

There was someone standing by the mechanical model of the planets. A dark man, shadowed by the heavy curtains. As she watched he set the model moving, and the planets spun off their wires and went careering around the room, whizzing past her. She had to duck, feeling their fiery glow, the ends of her hair singed by Mercury’s sizzle.

“Stop it!” she hissed. “You’re breaking it!”

It wasn’t Azrael. It was the tramp. He stepped out of shadow and she saw how big he was, taller and broader than she remembered, his coat tied with string looking more like a belted robe, and a great sword in his hand.

“Tha’s done it now, ain’t thee!” he said angrily. “Tha’s made the pact with him!”

“I had to. I had no choice!”

“There’s always a choice!” he roared. “Thou’rt lost now, girl! Lost forever and all eternity!” And he swung with his sword, and the glass vessels crashed and tinkled, the top of the bench cleared with one terrible sweep, a thousand fragments bouncing and shattering on the floor.

“This too,” he raged, and she jumped aside as he shoved the telescope over and dragged everything off the mantelshelf, notes, papers, books, carvings, globes, and hurled them all into the fire.

The fire! She had never seen it so huge; it snarled and crackled and spat like something alive. She was almost sure she could see hands in it, tiny red hands that grasped and seared and curled the paper, a demonic delight in the roaring and heat. It had spilled out of the grate; now it rampaged through the laboratory, devouring benches and tables, and in the heart of the smoke the tramp was unlocking the wall safe with a great black key.

“Come on,” he yelled to her. “This way!”

There was a glass jar inside, and with another key he opened a tiny door in its side and grabbed her hands and pulled her in, the fire laughing hoarsely behind them.

The room was a strange one. There was a bed in it, and the odd lamp she had seen before, and a box-like contraption and small, cheap-looking furniture. All its colors were bright. On the walls huge colored pictures of men in ridiculously short trousers with numbers on their garish shirts shocked her. They were photographs. She was amazed at their color, at how real they looked.

The twins were there. One lay on the bed, the other sat by the window, looking out. He was talking. “I would have died if it hadn’t been for you,” he was saying.

Sarah was alone; the tramp had vanished. Now the twin on the bed sat slowly up. He was staring at her.

“Tom,” he said softly. “She’s back.”

Tom turned. They were identical, both about her age. “I can’t see anyone.”

“She’s here.” The other boy stood. There was something misty in his outline. He blurred as he reached out to touch her, and she twisted away with a hiss of fear as his hand became the paw of a black cat, soft on her fingers.

Then, a long time later, she was dreaming of the beach. It was gray and raining, and the gulls screamed over her head. Azrael sat on a rock elegantly, as if it were a throne. He wore his dark expensive coat, and behind him stood a huge grandfather clock—the one from the oak dining room—and it ticked, but its tick wasn’t mechanical, it was a human voice, infinitely weary, repeating the same words over and over. “Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.”

She stepped nearer. “Is that . . . ?”

Azrael smiled sadly. “Your grandfather, I’m afraid. Doomed to be trapped in eternal torment. Until, of course, your actions release him. Oh, and your father. Do you want to see him?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

The rain drifted apart. She saw him lying on the sofa in Darkwater Hall, wrapped warmly in cashmere and wool. A great fire blazed in the grate. He poured tea into a vast porcelain cup.

Azrael came over to her. “You’ll see. It will be worth it.” He put a small card into her hand. “But I will come for you, Sarah. Wherever you go, wherever you think you can run, there’ll be no escaping me. No one ever does. The experiment has to run to the end.”

The mist closed around him. A small beetle ran into a hole in the sand.

She turned. Mrs. Hubbard put the cane into her hand. “You’re a menial!” She took a huge pinch of snuff out of an open desk. “What are you?”

Silent, Sarah watched the cane. It grew a tail, and back legs.

“What are you?” Mrs. Hubbard snapped ominously.

Front paws. A great head, its jaws wet and slobbering, growling, the red eyes opening, nostrils fuming with smoke, and as she turned, it sprang on her and she screamed, and yelled, “A menial!”

Sarah opened her eyes.

She was soaked with sweat. The fire was out, a gray gather of ashes, and through the curtains the dimness of a winter afternoon filtered.

She sat up, dressed in a furious rush, and ran down the stairs.

The servants’ hall was empty. Here too the fire was out. There was no sign of the cook and nothing to eat; she picked up some bread from the table, but it was stale, rock hard. Annoyed, she flung it at the ashes.

“Scrab!” she yelled.

No one answered.

The library was a mess. Somehow the wind had gotten in and whipped everything out of order; it would take days just to sort it out. Dumping armfuls of pamphlets on the desk she marched through to the laboratory, and flung the door open.

The room was completely empty.

She stared in disbelief. It was all gone: the benches, alembics, astrolabes, boxes, charts. The walls were bare. Even the telescope had gone. All she saw was a dusty space, with an old clock ticking on the mantelshelf and the curtains thick with cobwebs. As if none of it had ever been here at all.

“Azrael?” she whispered.

A cold fear moved inside her, a sickening emptiness in her stomach.

She turned and ran out, into other rooms. Everywhere it was the same. The house was deserted. And more than that, it was transformed. Time had come back. Decay had resumed. It was a palace festooned with webs, the doors warped from long neglect, the Trevelyan portraits lost under grime. In the hall the black-and-white tiles were cracked, choked with leaf dust and melted snow that gusted under the door.

Her face white, she went into the drawing room.

It was cold. Through the tall windows she could see nothing but snow, swirling in silent cacophonies of storm outside. Far out in it the sun was setting, a sliver of scarlet into the invisible sea.

The piano was covered in dust. On Azrael’s footstool a small white card was pinned. She pulled it off quickly.

ALL YOU WANT IS YOURS. MY SOLICITORS WILL SORT OUT THE LEGAL PROBLEMS. BE GENEROUS. ON THE LAST STROKE OF THE CLOCK ON THE LAST NIGHT OF THE YEAR IN ONE HUNDRED YEARS LOOK FOR ME.

He hadn’t signed it.

Folding the corner over in her fingers she looked around, bewildered. She had done it. She had the house. Her father could come home. Azrael had gone.

It must be some sort of mania, she told herself. All his studying, all those years of guilt and disappointment, all that medieval nonsense about spirits and elements and demons had deranged him. She should have seen it before. Everyone else had.

But as she stood there in the empty house all she could hear in the silence were the clocks, ticking.

They had never seemed so loud.