House of Small Shadows

FORTY

‘His religion didn’t understand it. His science couldn’t explain it. But my uncle found something. And it passed across a distance you cannot imagine. Unless guided. As you have been, my child.’

As soon as Catherine’s feet skittered across the polished floor of the hall, Edith’s sharp voice had come down at her from the vaulted airiness above, to cut short her breathless cries of ‘Mike! Mike!’

The mistress of the house had spoken from where she waited behind the first-floor balusters, sat in her chair, a carriage that appeared to have absorbed the frail body inside it. A body that now appeared as little more than a collection of bones wrapped in an evening gown of black silk. Edith’s small face was but a pale smudge, high up in the air, at the furthest reach of the red lights of the hall walls.

Mike had not been outside the Red House, that great spiky monolith with roofs and chimneys and finials she could no longer see, all rearing into a night that itself lacked definition and borders. Catherine had been calling, and then crying his name in the lane that tapered cold and lightless to the black front gate. There had been no answer.

The front entrance to the house was open in expectation and emitting the unwelcome red glow of the interior. Tonight, each of the arched front doors had been swept back to the reception walls, as if to provide access to a group of guests.

From the distance the amplified blare of ‘Greensleeves’ still drifted, as if broadcast from a nightmarish ice-cream van that collected children after midnight. The encroaching sound had finally propelled Catherine through the front entrance.

But was Mike even here? If he was, the idea now troubled Catherine more than she wanted to admit. And what was Edith talking about? The sudden sound of her voice from above had nearly stopped her heart. But as ever, the old woman’s meaning was obscure and disingenuous. ‘What do you mean?’ she cried out to the small figure above her. ‘What are you saying? I don’t want to be guided!’

Edith pretended not to hear her. The distant head of the woman was angled upwards at the skylight. ‘My uncle found the places where they rested. Buried with the remains of their murdered masters. In unmarked places they hid themselves, and waited. Eager to perform. You know of Henry Strader’s fate. And you now know of the fates of the other known Martyrs. Blessed Spettyl, blessed Pettigrew. They too heard the calling from hallowed ground.’

‘I don’t want anything to do with this! Where is my bloody car! You’ve no right!’

Edith ignored her pleas and continued to speak as if to an audience peering through the skylight. ‘My uncle spent years looking for what remained of them, for what had returned itself to our soil after the Last Martyr fell. But maybe my uncle was found. Chosen. Perhaps the other known Martyrs were too, in their own times. Who can really say in these matters?’

‘I do not want to know any more, or see any more. Nothing of what you are trying to show me.’

‘But what called out to the Martyrs was a life most precious and sacred. Not life many would recognize, or believe in, unless they were young. But this life came back to certain things when called upon, my dear, in the right places. Small things were repaired. There was resurrection, blessed resurrection, for them and for those who revered them.’

‘Enough of this! Mike. My friend, Mike. Is he here? My car has gone! My bag—’

‘Do be quiet! You are hysterical. I will not conduct a conversation about a stairwell. It is undignified.’

Edith’s chair rolled backwards out of the winey light. But how she had been moved, or by whom, Catherine didn’t understand. The regular squeak of wheels rotated along the first-floor landing in the direction of the drawing room. The wheelchair moved as it had done so during her first visit, a time that now seemed like an old and weird dream. And one she wished she had once taken better heed of.

Either she had gone mad here, or nothing but a total relocation back to a recognizable world would create a discontinuation of the house’s manipulation of her mind, her memory, her dreams and imagination. The very structure and its trapped chemical air were like a powerful psychotropic drug, one whose effects prevented the organization of clear thoughts.

Catherine climbed the stairs. Perspiration from her race back to the Red House cooled beneath the thin dress and made her shiver. Both of her feet bled.

Perhaps she’d never been this ill before, mentally ill. But if she had to seize Edith by that scrawny neck she would have answers. Edith had not invited her to the pageant so much as sent her there. Edith had not been present because Catherine would have seen her enter the wretched hall. But who had operated the marionettes? Maude?

Please let it have been Maude.

When Catherine stood in the doorway of the drawing room, a hundred glass eyes glittered in the dim light around Edith, who grinned behind a gauzy veil. Like an old exhibit returned to its place in a public display, her wheelchair was back in position beside the fireplace, with Horatio curled around the iron footplates.

‘I just want my car back and my things… and then I will go.’

‘Go? Where, dear? Back to where you came from? Preposterous. Why would anyone want to go back over there? It’s been quite the ordeal, I can assure you, just tolerating the place again for a short while.’

Catherine approached the old woman. ‘I have a life—’

‘A life? Why, really.’

‘A family—’

‘Not your real family, dear.’

Catherine reached out her hand and steadied herself against the back of a chair. Her thoughts scrabbled. She was at the heart of a cruel conspiracy. She was asleep and this was a nightmare in which she was endlessly persecuted. ‘What do you know about me?’

Edith smiled and softened her voice to a tone of patient understanding when speaking to a confused child. ‘You were given away, dear. And picked up again. That was very kind. But you didn’t get far because you were born in Magbar Wood. The last child, no less, practically within the shadow of the First Known Martyr’s tomb. So you could hardly fit in anywhere else, could you? Our people never did. You may never have amounted to much, but nonetheless there are those for whom you were always special.

‘And since my uncle returned enchantment to our little corner of the world, there are some opportunities that are granted to so few. We mustn’t spurn opportunity, dear. Don’t you agree? Your little friend, Alice, has known marvels since she joined us on your behalf.’

Catherine sank to her knees. She needed to be close to the floor before she collapsed. She was so tired now her breath shook its way out and her legs trembled. Once she’d got her wind back, she would set off again, with or without Mike, through the garden gate and across the fields. Eventually she would reach a road. On a road there would be cars with people inside them. People that belonged to the world she knew. She found herself staring at the hem of Edith’s long, antique dress.

‘Try and understand, dear. All my uncle ever tried to do was startle us awake. Into wonderment at what lay beyond us. After us. We all became party to what chose us to see such sights. Things that had not performed in this part of the world for many years.’

‘Please, I don’t want to hear this. You are mad! Your uncle was insane—’

‘Perhaps he lost his way at the end. And he lost his nerve, dear. He was old and tired. But he was once a man of God, let’s not forget. It was perfectly natural for his old faith to return when it was too late. You must understand, as we have all had to accept, that what was fetched out from those hills, and from the church, my dear, was not so easy to put back — it was too late for that.’

‘What are you saying? I don’t understand. My car. My friend, Mike—’

Edith gazed into the middle distance. ‘When my uncle opened his throat, he only seemed to tighten his relationship with it. You could say he even strengthened the whole family’s association. He was the first to be saved. My mother was next. I can’t even remember when. And then it was my turn.’ Edith smiled her yellow smile. ‘And we’ve all made a great effort to welcome you, too. But we’re tired now. It’s very demanding on us to be here, even for a while.’

‘Please, what is happening?’

‘How many little girls were ever offered such a gift? That is what you should consider.’

Catherine gripped the wheelchair, as if a closer proximity to the old woman would add weight to her pleading. ‘Gift? I’m not well. Please. I need help now. Edith, please.’

‘It would have been better if you had come across with your friend, Alice. We saved that little stowaway because you weren’t ready. You still wanted to fit in somewhere, out there, in a world that despised you, rejected you. But all of this unpleasantness could have been avoided if you weren’t so stubborn! Their arms are always open for the lame, and the forsaken. Of course, you may find it strange at first. We all do. It’s much easier for the little ones.’

Beyond Catherine’s hot tears, Edith’s shape blurred to a shimmer, itself vanishing into the dark mantel and fireplace. The wheels of Edith’s chair squeaked. Something clicked above her head. She briefly thought of knitting needles as small fingers, cold as porcelain, combed through her tangled hair and touched her scalp.

‘I want to leave. Where is Mike?’

‘Hush.’ Edith’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I tried to leave once. When I was twelve I ran away. I didn’t get far. About as far as my poor father did before me, though I never met him. When my mother caught up with me, she remarked at how I had followed my father’s footsteps, into the meadow you’ll never find the end of. Then she put me in a room with Grizell Killigrew for a day, and I never ran again. I can tell you.’

Catherine raised her head, frowning so hard it hurt the muscles around her eyes. She pushed herself to her feet, swallowing the constriction in her throat that seemed determined to render her mute. ‘What are you doing… what… to me?’

‘Enough of my old tales. Your young man, your beau, is waiting for you.’

‘Mike?’

‘He came with that girl who had too much to say for herself. Maude was the same once. Compared to your friend, I’d like to say poor old Maude got off lightly, but then I doubt Maude would agree with me on that matter.’ Edith tittered.

Catherine’s voice was more intention than sound. ‘Mike’s here? Tara?’

‘Strangers have never been welcome. How could they understand us, Catherine?’ She said us and looked at Catherine in such a way as to include her. ‘We have made a rare effort for you and your needs.’

‘Needs? I don’t—’

‘All must learn there are consequences for what they desire.’

Catherine wrung her hands together until her fingers hurt. She stepped away from the mad old thing in the chair. ‘Stop this! Stop it now! I don’t want to hear any more of your crazy shit!’

‘When you were mooching in my uncle’s room, did you not come to a better understanding of our history? We hoped you would. It’s why we let you go in there. So you could see how my uncle was tutored in the Great Art.’

‘The girls. Those girls from Ellyll Fields, what did he do to them?’

Edith continued reminiscing, as if Catherine had not even spoken. Nothing had changed between them, even now. ‘To my uncle, I think they returned changed. Much changed. They were not so gentle then. No, dear. You see, in their beginnings, the troupe hid while the savagery of this world was unveiled. Oh, they saw injustice and tragedy unfold upon those they loved, and those who loved them. Tragedy that you can’t imagine. It’s why they made the cruelty plays to remember those who were murdered. But my uncle found the troupe damaged. As children are disturbed. As we are all changed by adversity when we are tender and innocent. By terror. By cruelty. Such things change us, dear. Shape us.’

Edith spread her spidery white fingers. They were back inside the tight silk gloves, for which Catherine was glad, as they had been so cold upon her scalp. She wasn’t sure who Edith even spoke to any more, but the woman kept on talking. The brittle voice filled her head. She briefly imagined being trapped inside the Red House, listening to the woman’s words, for ever. She wanted to scream.

‘They recognized my uncle’s suffering. It was akin to their own. And he put a troupe of those wretched shadows back together, as others had done before him. Through him they continued the tradition. And they are very much looking forward to picking up with you too, from where they left things. A long time ago. But not so long for them, dear. Or Alice.’

‘Stop it, stop it, stop it! You don’t know me. Who I am. You know nothing about me. You are frightening me. Please. I just want to go home.’ She looked at the window as the discord of ‘Greensleeves’ neared the Red House. ‘You’re sick. Your uncle was sick. This house is sick. You took those girls. Alice.’

‘Sick! You little fool. Is not the world that persecuted them sick? The world that burned and broke and hanged their fathers sick? They only want to save you. Save you as they saved the other poor wretches that were discarded. They have only ever offered sanctuary to those who are as broken as they were broken.’

Edith seemed to lose interest in her after the outburst, and looked fondly at the kittens in their glass cabinet. Wide of eye, curtseying, their tiny furred faces seemed scandalized behind the spread fans.

Catherine had come up to this room in desperation. And she had run back to the Red House because there was nowhere else for her to go. Don’t even think that! But on reflection, she wished she’d just hobbled into the darkness on the road leading away from the village, or clambered across a ditch and fled into an unlit open field. Even if those old things, those people from the village, had come after her, and moved around her, whispering in the void, it would have been better than this.

Catherine backed towards the door. She fought hard to suppress all of the instincts that tried to make her accept something impossible. She fought against thoughts that wanted to become as insane as the Masons and the house they had filled with so much confusion and horror.

In the doorway, she weighed up her options, which still didn’t add up to much more than an escape through the meadows at the back of the property, in complete darkness, alone.

‘My parents will be looking for me. You understand that don’t you? My colleague Leonard will tell them.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes! The police will come here!’

‘I hope not. They’ll waste a great deal of their time, because they won’t find us. This is one of those houses where an invitation is necessary.’

‘Stop it! Mike. Where is Mike? You said he came here. He wasn’t invited—’

‘Are you sure of that? And they will not let go of those they love. Not again. Not ever. We are the exhibits to small tyrants. You were never our guest, but theirs. No one is ever anything else here.’

‘Tell me where he is. Tell me!’

‘And they will remake their guardians in their own image as angels have always done.’

‘Shut up you horrible bitch!’

The fact that the face Edith turned upon Catherine was veiled, she considered a mercy. ‘The salacious ape that followed your scent? Is that all you can think of at a time like this, when you witness miracles? Your hosts will be so disappointed in you, Catherine.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Your beau was invited inside to wait for you, and wait he does. You will find him in my uncle’s workshop. With his lover. Those who wrong you will always be taken care of by those who love you. Your mother certainly was, after she gave you away.’

‘My mother…’

‘Has known such torments for what she did. They saw how you suffered. They shared the pain in your dear little heart. Now you are here her suffering can end.’

‘What are you saying?’

Edith grinned. ‘Here you are wanted. Here you are loved.’

‘I don’t want to be loved by anything here!’

‘But you do. It’s what you’ve always wanted. Your heart bled in the right place at the right time. They came to you, like they came to my uncle. They came to bring you home. Where wonders never cease. Where you will be loved.’

For several seconds the suggestions behind Edith’s words did not register. Catherine’s entire mind was one morbid but half-conscious blank in which she could hear the rushing of her blood mixing with the cacophony of the pageant outside the front of the house.

She slipped into one of those rare episodes when the separation of her consciousness into three divisible minds occurred. One was frantic with fear and panic about a terrible outcome. Beneath that maelstrom she was aware of a strange feeling of acceptance that almost cried out for calm. Deeper still, was the edge of an awareness that partially understood the impossible, and had always done so, but never converted comprehension into a lasting belief or wisdom she could call upon.

She decided she must be stuck in someone else’s nightmare, as if she were trapped in the residue of M. H. Mason’s consciousness, or Edith’s, and whatever it was that consumed this house. The sense of this idea retracted as soon as it had begun and was submerged again. Only fear and despair were left behind.

She’d been driven to what she sensed was the end of her mind. The situation even stopped feeling peculiar. And for barely a moment she came near to a precipice of understanding something much bigger than anything she had ever known. She was brushing against something so monumental her reaction to it would be pure terror. But she must get beyond the terror and find peace or she would break.

She found the strength to run, out of the drawing room and into the dimly lit passage beyond. It was there, as she fled for the stairs to the ground floor, that she heard Edith’s final words. ‘They are the ones who offer justice now, my dear. And their justice can be terrible… what they did to your poor mother.’

By the time she made the ground floor and stood within the hall, another voice spoke. To her? She couldn’t be sure. But it groaned and circled down the stairwell as if from beyond the roof of the Red House, like some great unseen mouth now covered the place where the skylight of red glass was normally positioned.

It was a voice she recognized. A man’s voice. The one narrating the play in the village. And one just as unclear and obscured by static, as if broadcast through poor reception across a great distance of time. Another old recording, because no voice spoken in the present day was capable of such solemn and dour intonation, with a timbre degraded so horribly by age.

Keep one kitten, destroy the rest…

Much of the speech she didn’t catch, words slipped into white noise and became garbled. What she did hear she wanted to block her ears against.

Drowning is the preferred method… up by the hind legs, a quick blow to the back of the head…

Catherine moved across the hall.

Bind the tow with cotton threads… Push the wires through the false body… Pack soft stuffing around the wires…

She looked at the gaping front doors. The music in the lane had stopped. She could see nothing but the tips of blood-lit weeds beyond the porch and a long line of candle flames.

Treat larger mammals in the field… depends upon the circumstances… the trap… placement, temperature… before you carry it indoors… never cut the throat…

‘Mike!’ Catherine screamed and ran into the unlit passage that led to the back of the house. At the far end of the utility area of the building one door was open and its murky light served as a beacon. ‘Mike!’

The voice from above came down and filled the spaces of the Red House, to both push and chase her through the corridor.

A ventral incision through the belly, or a dorsal entry through the back… Breastbone to tailbone… undress from the incision… scissors to disjoint the arms and legs. Pull down the skin to the toes… cut across the foot…

Without light, because her slapping hands failed to find the switches, she was at once ungainly and glanced off a wall. The blow forced her to slow down. To all but stop moving.

She could not see what was around her feet any more. Had something moved near her feet? Was that a quick series of bumps close by, footsteps? Maude. Was Maude a child killer? Catherine imagined the woman’s mute head, mopped in white hair, close by. Waiting with one of Mason’s fleshing blades in her angry old hand. It must be a trap. Edith had lied about Mike to get her down here. They’d stolen her car and bag and phone. Cut her off and were tormenting her. Was that how it went down here?

How did they know she was adopted? Had they killed her natural mother? Isn’t that what Edith had said? For giving her away? No, Edith had said that her mother’s suffering would end now she was here, which implied her mother was alive. But where was she?

Lies. Half-truths and manipulation; all she had ever been offered in this house. But Alice? They knew about Alice.

Go through, Alice. Go through, Alice. Go first. Go first. It’s all right… Don’t! Alice, Alice, come back. It’s not safe. Alice. Please, Alice. We’re not allowed. Come back.

She cupped her hands over her ears to drive out the sound of her own memories and the drone of the man’s voice, which made her nerve endings shriek. The static-corroded voice was inside her head. Such was her disorientation she thought she might fall in the dark and not be able to get up again. She swatted her hands about her body to ward off what she thought was Maude.

Trim close to the skull. Around the eye orbit detach the lids. Remove the eyes. The lids must be arranged under a magnifying visor as microbes are moved beneath a microscope. The smallest adjustments give the effects of panic and terror.

‘Stop! Stop it!’

She ran to the open door of the workshop, to the dim, dirty light. There was no other light here. It was a place where you squinted and crept and tottered and brushed against things in the darkness you could not identify.

Trim the ear to the base, separate the skin from the cartilage… then turn the ear inside out… unglove the head with sharp tugs.

‘Mike. Mike. Mike,’ she cried at the open door of Mason’s workshop.

Flesh the meat from off the skin… Degrease the skin. Rinse in plain water.

She looked inside the workshop for a moment that seemed much longer than a moment. Then sat down just inside the room with her back against the wall. The wall held the weight of her body that her legs could no longer support.

A degreased skin can pickle for months and incur no damage…