Darkwater

nineteen

Christmas was almost here.

Tom’s mother got the box of decorations down from the attic and he had to put them up, pushing the pins into last year’s holes. Paula always enjoyed Christmas. She made the small cottage cozy, burning logs on the hearth and making swathes of ivy and holly across the fireplace. Lamps were lit and the best china came out, and extravagant cheap boxes of chocolates from Truro market. The house smelled of brandy and fruit cake. That evening Steve Tate’s dad dropped the tree off in his van. Tom kept well out of the way. From the upstairs window he saw Steve in the passenger seat with his feet on the dashboard, whistling to the loud thump of music. He turned his head and glanced up.

Tom dropped the curtain and jumped back. Just too late.

“Where’s your girlfriend, lover boy?” Steve shouted. He took something small out of his pocket and held it up. “Be seeing you.” He grinned.

Tom stood still, chilled and puzzled. It had looked like a key.

All evening his mother decorated the tree with tinsel and small wooden angels painted gold, their tiny haloes needing straightening after months in the box. They’d had them for years. When he’d been small Tom’s favorite had been the one with the tiny broken foot; he picked it up off the floor now and handed it to her. As she hung it he went back to wrapping the presents while Simon lounged on the sofa and ate chips.

What had Sarah meant? How could she have killed Simon? It didn’t make any sense, and it scared him. Like this crazy story of a hundred years of life. Had she deliberately cut her hands to match that portrait?

Folding the silver paper with its galloping reindeer, he bit the tape off and looked at Simon, who muttered, “Just imagine for one minute it’s true. Think of all the things she’s lived through! Both World Wars. The sixties. Politics, fashions, inventions.”

“Maybe.” He turned the package over.

His mother put the last star on the treetop and flicked the switch. Red and blue and gold, small lights sparked into brilliance, lighting the green secret spaces of the tree. Hands on hips she looked at the room with satisfaction.

“That’s more like it.”

That night in bed, he was cold. Frost was forming outside the window, a white intricate pattern. Deep under the bedclothes he muttered, “So what happens to her on New Year’s Eve?”

“He takes her away. To some dark, supernatural place.”

Tom was silent. Then he said, “She’s scared. And what does that make Azrael?”

Simon sighed sleepily and turned over. “God knows. Ask Sarah.”

He couldn’t. There was no sign of her. Next day, the twenty-third, he went up and hammered on the bedroom door twice but there was no answer, and it was firmly locked. But when he came down to the lab and put on the white coat Azrael had lent him, his fingers touched something icy in the pocket and he pulled out the keys he had given her; one for the upstairs room and one for the outside door. So had she gone? Or had copies made? That worried him. Things might go missing. It would be his fault.

Azrael said, “Stop daydreaming, Tom.”

“Sorry.” He dropped the keys back and glanced quickly at the watch; an old-fashioned fob watch. He was timing a peculiar process; Azrael was dripping a liquid from a pipette into a flask, one drop every two minutes. Exactly. “Now,” Tom said.

The globule grew, wobbled, fell. It spread on the pink stuff in the flask, giving off a brief stink.

“Mmm,” Azrael muttered.

“This afternoon,” Tom said, “I have to help out downstairs. Getting things ready for the Waits.”

“The Waits?”

“A sort of carol service. By candlelight. It starts off in the great hall every Christmas Eve. The founder gave money for it.”

“Ah.” Azrael smiled narrowly. “The founder.”

Tom glanced at him. “You must know about her,” he said carefully. “Oh . . . now.”

Azrael squeezed the pipette delicately. Another drop fell. “Suppose you tell me,” he said slyly.

“Be careful,” Simon muttered.

Tom ignored him. “Her name was Sarah Trevelyan. She started this school. She made it so that local people—poor people—could have an education without needing any money. Fishermen’s sons, and girls from the factories.”

“How very generous.” Azrael stirred the mixture smoothly. “And what else did she do?”

Tom kept his eyes on the watch. Maybe she’d been lying after all. “Plenty. There are the Trevelyan almshouses, the village library, the old people’s cottages down Gannet Lane. She paid for the harbor defenses and the lifeboat. There’s a Trevelyan Scholarship for something, and all sorts of charities and funds. Now.”

The drop plipped.

“You forgot the Cottage Hospital,” Azrael said mildly.

Tom’s heart thumped. He looked up, and a gull screamed by the window. “If you knew, why ask?”

Azrael shrugged. “I suppose I like to hear it. So many good things in one lifetime. Why do you suppose she spent all that money on her tenants, Tom? She must have been an extraordinary woman.”

The door creaked. Scrab’s greasy head came around it.

“Staying for Christmas are yer?”

Azrael gave a delicate smile. “I’ll be away. Just for the day.”

“Ah. Knew it.”

He withdrew, tripped over the cat, and swore.

“Now!” said Tom, remembering.

The pink liquid heaved. It separated. Faint coils of smoke rose from it.

“Have you seen her?” Azrael asked quietly. In the utter silence the rasp of the cat’s tongue was enormous. A sudden hiss of sleet rattled the windows. Tom looked up.

“Yes,” he said.

“I suspected as much. Mephisto said the room held the scent of her yesterday. So she’s early. And the father of lies, the tramp, is back too.”

Tom dumped the watch on the bench and whirled around to face him.

“Who are you?” he breathed.

Azrael smiled sadly. “That would take too long to explain.”

“What do you want with her! She’s scared!”

“She has no need.”

“She said you’d come for her.”

“That much, I’m afraid, is true. She has”—Azrael glanced at the almanac on the wall—“eight days left.”

“Then what?”

“The price must be paid.”

“What price? Her life?”

“Time, Tom?”

“What?”

“TIME!” Azrael glanced at him in sudden anxiety. “When? WHEN?”

“I don’t know!” Tom grabbed for the watch. “Now! No! Wait!”

But the drop wobbled and fell, and the flask erupted into an instant acrid yellow hissing steam that made them cough, clouds of it mushrooming up and filling the room, so that the cat spat and ran, and Azrael had to rush over and wrench the window open, and they both hung out coughing and retching.

Cold sleet slashed their faces. In the bitter gale the sea to its horizon was empty, a spumy-gray agitation of waves, the cliff tops sheep-gnawed and deserted. Azrael turned, leaning his back against the sill. He took out a silk handkerchief and glanced ruefully at Tom.

“Sorry,” Tom gasped.

The dark man was still a moment, wiping his eyes. Then he sighed gracefully, and limped back to the scorched and ruined flask.

“Still a few more things to add,” he said quietly.

“I should have remembered to tell her about the tramp!”

“She might know by now.” Simon opened the gate to the Bear Garden and listened. “Voices.”

“Tate?” Tom said instantly.

“Don’t be paranoid.”

In the twilit garden the bears were dark blue shadows, glinting with frost. From the claws of one a great icicle hung. Tom listened. There was the far-off sea, and a fox up on the moor. There was a car on the road. And there were two voices.

They were coming from a small summerhouse that leaned in one corner, its dilapidated roof mended with corrugated iron. Old cricket stumps and a lawnmower were stored in it. Now light gleamed from its cracks. Simon crept nearer, Tom close behind. The grass was crisp under him, the shadow of the Hall blackening the lawns.

“It’s her,” Simon whispered. He moved aside, and Tom saw Sarah. She had her back to him.

“When?” a voice asked her.

“Tomorrow night. Or better still, Christmas Day. That’s a good time for it.”

“No chance. For a start he won’t stay here, girlie.” They recognized the tramp’s wheeze. “Too holy a night for the likes of him.”

Tom stepped closer.

A dog gave a short yelping bark. Through the door’s crack he saw Sarah turn.

“Is it the hounds?” the tramp breathed.

“No.” Sarah opened the door and pulled Tom in. “It’s your useless messengers.”

The summerhouse was lit by a single candle stuck in a splintered table. The tramp had been lounging in an old striped deckchair; now he sank back in relief. “Lord, laddies. I thought it was all up with us then.”

Tom looked at Sarah. “Azrael will be away for Christmas. And he knows you’re here.”

She shrugged, sitting on an upturned bucket.

“She thinks,” the tramp said in disgust, “that talking to him will help. Asking him, all polite like, to let her be. Useless folly. No one gets clear of that one.”

Sarah glared at him. “This is my problem.”

“And I’m sent, girlie, to help thee solve it. Of course, if tha’d listened to me before . . .”

She stood, scowling. “Forget it. My mind’s made up. And I’ve got things to do. A new will to write, for a start.” She looked at Tom. “You stay out of this. I’ve had a hundred years to get used to the idea.”

“Aye.” The tramp took out his cigarettes. “And how thou’ll pay for ’em.”

Sarah marched to the door. “Get out of my way,” she snapped, and as Simon moved she swept past him into the dark night.

The tramp rolled a cigarette. “Trevelyan to the core,” he said, with a sort of pride. “She won’t beg, whatever she thinks. ’Tis we that’ll have to do it then.”

“Do what?”

“What she won’t. Azrael wants a soul. That’s his right. But he’s fond of a bargain. All we have to do is get him a substitute.”

He puffed. Blue smoke drifted. “Who’s thy worst enemy in all the world, Tom?”

“Steve Tate,” Tom said, without hesitation.

The tramp winked, shook the match out and threw it away. “And how would thou like to be rid of him forever, eh?”