The Prestige

The Prestiges

My brother's voice was speaking ceaselessly to me: I am here, don't leave, stay with me, all your life, not far from you, come.

I was trying to sleep, turning to and fro in the large, cold and much too soft bed, cursing myself for not having left the house before the snowstorm set in, when even now I would have been in my own bed in my parents’ house. But every time I thought of this the voice insisted: stay here, don't go, come at last to me.

I had to get out of bed. I pulled my suit jacket across my shoulders and went for a pee in the bathroom across the galleried landing. The house was dark, silent and cold. My breath fumed white as I stood shivering over the bowl. After I had flushed the toilet I had to cross the landing again, naked but for the jacket, and when I looked down the large stairwell I noticed a gleam of light from the floor below. One door had a crack of light showing beneath it.

I returned to the miserable bedroom, but could not bring myself to get back into the chilly bed. I remembered the easy chair beside the log fire in the dining-room, so I put on my clothes quickly, grabbed my stuff and went downstairs. I looked at my watch. It was after 2.00 a.m.

My brother said: all right, now.

Kate was still in the dining room, sitting awake in her chair next to the fire. She was listening to a portable radio balanced on the fire surround beside her. She seemed unsurprised to see me.

"I was cold," I said. "I couldn't get to sleep. Anyway, I've got to go and find him."

"It's much colder out there." She indicated the blackness beyond the windows. "You'll need all this."

On the chair opposite her she had placed several items of warm clothing, including a chunky wool sweater, a thick overcoat, scarf, gloves, a pair of rubber boots. And two large torches.

My brother spoke again. I could not ignore him.

I said to Kate, "You knew I was going to do this."

"Yes. I've been thinking."

"Do you know what's happening to me?"

"I believe so. You'll have to go and find him."

"Will you come with me?"

She shook her head vehemently. "No way on earth."

"So you know where he is?"

"I think I've known all my life, but it's always been easier to put it out of my mind. The difficult thing about meeting you has been realizing that what traumatized me as a child is still down there."

#############

It had stopped snowing, but the wind was an insistent rush of freezing air, penetrating everything. The snow had piled deep around the edges of the large garden, but in the centre it was shallow enough to allow me to walk through, stumbling on the uneven ground. I slipped several times, without falling.

Kate had switched on the intruder alarm, which flooded the area with brilliant light. It helped me see my way, but when I looked back I could see nothing but the glare.

My brother said: I'm cold, waiting.

I kept going. On the far side of what I supposed must be a lawn, where the ground rose up suddenly and dark trees blocked the view ahead, the light from the torch picked out the brick-built archway where Kate had said it would be. Snow was piled up against the base of it.

The door was not locked, and it moved easily when I pulled at the handle. The door opened outwards, against the drifted snow, but it was made of solid oak and once I got a good hold on it I was able to push the snow far enough out of the way for me to squeeze through.

Kate had given me two large torches, saying I would need as much light as possible. ("Come back to the house for more, if you need them," she had said. "Why won't you come with me and hold one of the torches?" I had asked her. But she shook her head emphatically.) When I had the door open, I peered inside, letting the beam of the bigger of the two torches play ahead of me. There was nothing much to see: a rocky roof slanting down, some rough-hewn steps, and at the bottom a second door.

The word Yes formed, inside my head.

The second door had no lock or hasp, and opened smoothly at my touch. The beams of my torches swung around; one in my hand searched all about, the other tucked under my arm followed my direction of sight.

Then my foot collided with something hard that jutted up from the floor and I stumbled. The torch under my arm broke as I banged against the rocky wall. Crouching on the ground, resting on a knee, I used one torch to examine the other.

There's a light, said my brother.

I swung the single torch beam around again, and this time, close to the inner door, I noticed an insulated electricity cable, neatly tacked to the wooden frame. At shoulder height was an ordinary light switch. I flicked it on. At first nothing happened.

Then, further down in the cavern, deep inside the hill, I heard the sound of an engine. As the generator picked up speed, lights came on for the full length of the cavern. They were only low-power light bulbs, roughly attached to the rocky ceiling, and protected by wire visors, but there was now enough light to see without the torch.

The cavern appeared to be a natural fissure in the rock, with extra tunnelling and hollowing carried out latterly. There were several natural shelves created by jutting rock strata, but these had been supplemented with cavities hollowed out in the tunnel walls. There had also been an attempt to smooth the floor, as it was laid with numerous small chips and chunks of rock. Close to the inner doorway a spring trickled water down the wall, leaving a huge yellow calciferous deposit in its course. Where the water reached the floor, a crude but effective drain had been put together with modern pipes, which conducted the water into a rubble-filled soakaway hole.

The air was surprisingly sweet, and noticeably warmer than outside.

I went several paces down the cavern, balancing myself with my hands against the rocky walls on each side. The floor was uneven and broken, and the light bulbs were weak and widely spaced, so in places it was difficult to find a safe foothold. After a distance of about fifty yards, the floor dropped steeply and turned to the right, while to the left of the main tunnel I noticed a large cavity which to judge by the roundness of the entrance had been hollowed out artificially. The ceiling was about seven feet high, giving plenty of headroom. The opening was not electrically lit, so I shone my remaining torch inside.

I immediately wished I had not. It was full of ancient coffins. Most were stacked horizontally in heaps, although about a dozen were leaning upright against the walls. They were all sizes, but the greater number of these, depressingly, were small ones obviously designed for children. All the coffins were in varying degrees of decay. The horizontal ones were the most decrepit: the wood dark, curled and fractured with age. In many cases the lids had fallen in on the contents, and several of the ones placed on the tops of the piles had sides which had fallen away.

At the base of most of the heaps were piles of brown, broken fragments, presumably of bone. The lids of the vertically stacked coffins were all loose, and standing propped against the box.

I stepped back quickly into the main tunnel and glanced up towards the door by which I had entered. There had been a slight curve, and my way out was now invisible to me. Somewhere deep inside the cavern, the generator continued to run.

I was trembling. I could not help but think; that distant engine, this torch I held, only these lay between me a sudden plunge into darkness.

I could not go back. My brother was here.

Determined to resolve this quickly, I followed the path down and to the right, curving away more steeply from the exit. Another flight of steps followed, and here the lights had been placed closer together because these steps were uneven in height and angled to the side. Supporting myself with my hand on the wall I went down them. The tunnel immediately opened out into a wider cavern.

It was full of modern metal racks, brown-painted, held together with chromium-plated nuts and bolts. Each rack had three broad shelves, one on top of the other, like bunks. A narrow gangway ran next to each rack, and a central aisle ran the whole length of the hall. A light was positioned above every gangway between the shelves, illuminating what they held.

Human bodies lay uncovered on every shelf of the racks. Each one was male, and fully clothed. They all wore evening dress: a close fitting jacket with tails, a white shirt with black bow tie, a modestly patterned waistcoat, narrow trousers with a satin strip along the hems, white socks and patent-leather shoes. The hands wore white cotton gloves.

Each body was identical to all the others. The man had a pale face, an aquiline nose and a thin moustache. His lips were pale. He had a narrow brow and receding hair which was brilliantined back. Some of the faces were staring up at the rack above them, or at the rocky ceiling. Others had their necks turned, so they faced to one side or the other.

All the corpses had their eyes open.

Most of them were smiling, showing their teeth. The left upper molar in each mouth had a chip missing from the corner.

The corpses all lay in different positions. Some were straight, others were twisted or bent over. None of the bodies was arranged as if lying down; most of them had one foot placed in front of the other, so that in being laid on the rack this leg was now raised above the other.

Every corpse had one foot in the air.

The arms too were in varying positions. Some were raised above the head, some were stretched forward like those of a sleepwalker, others lay straight beside the body.

There was no sign of decay in any of the corpses. It was as if each one had been frozen in life, made inert without being made dead.

There was no dust on them, no smell from them.

#############

A piece of white card had been attached to the front edge of each shelf. It was handwritten, and mounted in a plastic holder that was clipped ingeniously to the underside of the shelf. The first one I looked at said this:

Dominion Theatre, Kidderminster

14/4/01

3.15p.m. [M]

2359/23

25g

On the shelf above it, the card was almost identical:

Dominion Theatre, Kidderminster

14/4/01

8.30p.m. [E]

2360/23

25g

Above that, the third corpse was labelled:

Dominion Theatre, Kidderminster

15/4/01

3.15 p.m. [M]

2361/23

25g

On the next rack there were three more corpses, all labelled and dated similarly. They were laid out in date order. By the following week, there was a change of theatre: the Fortune, in Northampton. Six performances there. Then there was a break of about two weeks, followed by a series of single appearances, about three days apart, in a number of provincial theatres. Twelve corpses were thus labelled, in sequence. A season at the Palace Pier Theatre, Brighton, occupied half of May (six racks, eighteen corpses).

I moved on, squeezing down the narrow central aisle to the far end of the cavern. Here, on the top shelf of the final rack, I came across the body of a little boy.

#############

He had died in a frenzy of struggling. His head was tilted back, and turned to the right. His mouth was open, with the corners of his lips turned down. His eyes were wide open, and looking up. His hair was flying. All his limbs were tensed, as if he had been fighting to be free. He was wearing a maroon sweatshirt with characters from The Magic Roundabout , a small pair of blue jeans with the bottoms turned up, and blue canvas shoes.

His label was also handwritten, and it said:

Caldlow House

17/12/70

7.45 p.m.

0000/23

0g

On the top was the boy's name: Nicholas Julius Borden.

I took the label and shoved it into my pocket, then reached forward and pulled him towards me. I scooped him up and held him in my arms. At the moment I touched him, the constant background presence of my brother faded away and died.

I was aware of his absence for the first time ever.

Looking down at him in my arms, I tried to shape him into a more comfortable position for carrying. His limbs, neck and torso were stiffly pliant, as if made of strong rubber. I could change their position, but the moment I released them they swung back into the shape in which I had found him.

When I tried to smooth his hair, that too moved intransigently back to its former position.

I held him tightly against me. He was neither cold nor warm. One of his outstretched hands, clenched in fear, was touching the side of my face. The relief of finding him at last overwhelmed everything — everything except the fear of this place. I wanted to turn around so that I could head back towards the exit, but to do so involved moving backwards out of the gangway. I held my past life in my arms, but I no longer knew what might be standing behind me.

Something was, though.

I eased myself backwards, not looking. As I reached the main aisle, and turned slowly around, Nicky's head brushed against the raised foot of the nearest corpse. A patent-leather shoe swung slowly to and fro. I ducked away from it, horrified.

I saw that at this end of the hall there was another chamber, just five or six feet away from where I was standing. It was from here that the sound of the generator's engine was emerging. I went towards it. The entrance to the cavity was slanting and low, and there had been no effort made to widen it or to make access to it easier.

The sound of the generator was now loud, and I could smell the petrol fumes being emitted from it. There were several more lights within the chamber, beyond the entrance. Their radiance spilled across the uneven floor of the main hall. I could not go through the gap without putting down Nicky's body, so I bent over to try to see what might be within.

I stared across the short stretch of the rocky floor I could see, then I straightened.

I wished to see no more. A chill ran through me.

I had seen nothing. Any sounds there might have been were drowned by the mechanical clattering of the generator. Nothing moved within.

I took a step back, then another, as quietly as possible.

There had been someone standing inside that chamber, silently, motionlessly, just beyond my line of sight, waiting for me either to enter or retreat.

I continued to step back down the shadowy narrow aisle between the racks, easing my body to and fro so as not to scrape Nicky's head or feet against the bodies on the shelves. Terror was draining strength from my body. My knees were juddering, and my arm muscles, already strained by Nicky's weight, were aching and twitching.

A male voice said, from within the chamber, reverberating around the hall, "You're a Borden, aren't you?"

I said nothing, paralysed by fear.

"I thought you'd come for him in the end." The voice was thin, tired, not much more than a whisper, but the cavern gave it an echoing resonance. "He is you, Borden, and these are all me. Are you going to leave with him? Or are you going to stay?"

I saw a vestige of a shadow moving beyond that rough-hewn entrance, and then to my horror the sound of the generator faded quickly away.

The lightbulbs died down: yellow, amber, dull red, black.

I was in impenetrable darkness. The torch was in my pocket. I shifted the weight of the little boy, and managed to get a grip on the torch.

With my hand shaking, I switched it on. The beam angled crazily around as I tried to get a good grip on the torch and keep Nicky's body held tightly in my arms. I twisted around.

Shadows of raised legs whirled about me on the cavern walls.

With the crook of my arm clumsily shielding Nicky's exposed head I shoved my way along the rest of the aisle through the racks, my shoulders and arms colliding with the shelves, and dislodging several of the plastic labels.

I dared not look behind me. The man was following! My legs had no strength, I knew I could fall at any moment.

As I mounted the crooked steps out of the hail, my head collided with a spar of rock in the roof, and it hurt so much I almost dropped Nicky's body. I kept going, staggering and hunching, not even trying to keep the torch beam steady. It was all uphill, now, and Nicky's deadweight seemed heavier with every step. I turned my foot, fell against the tunnel wall, recovered, kept lurching on. Fear drove me.

The inner door appeared before me at last. Barely pausing, I pulled it open with my booted foot and forced my way through.

Behind me, on the stone-laid floor of the tunnel, I could hear the footsteps following, pacing steadily over the loose stones.

I ran up the stairs to the surface, but snow had blown in and was covering the top four or five steps. I slipped, fell forward, and the little boy rolled out of my arms! I lunged forward, pushed the door open with all my weight.

I saw: snow-covered ground, the black shape of the house, two windows lighted, an open doorway with a light beyond, snow hurtling from the sky!

My brother yelled in my mind!

I turned back, found him sprawled across the steps, and picked him up. I stumbled out into the snow.

I floundered and staggered through the thick snow, aiming for the doorway, turning my head constantly to look back over my shoulder at the black rectangle of the open vault, dreading to see the emergence of whatever it was that had been following me.

Suddenly, the intruder light mounted on the side of the house came on, half-blinding me. The blizzard thickened in the glare. Kate appeared at the open doorway, dressed in a quilted coat.

I tried to shout a warning to her, but I could not find the breath. I continued on, sliding and staggering in the snow, Nicky's body held before me. At last I reached the yard in front of the door, slithered on the snow-covered concrete and pushed past her into the brightly lit hallway beyond.

She stared wordlessly at the body of the little boy in my arms. Gasping for breath, I turned around and went back to the doorway, leant against the post, looked back across the snow-covered garden at the indistinct shape of the vault entrance. Kate was beside me.

"Watch the vault!" I said. It was the only sentence I could get out. "Watch!"

Nothing was moving, over there on the other side of the snow. I took a step back, put down Nicky's body on the stone-flagged floor.

I fumbled in my pocket and found the label that had been on Nicky's rack. I shoved it at Kate. I was still struggling for breath, and I felt as if I would never again breathe normally.

I gasped, "Look at this! The handwriting! Is it the same?"

She took it from me, held it up in the light, and gazed intently at it. Then she looked straight back at me. Her eyes were wide with fear.

"It is, isn't it?" I shouted.

She put her hands around the upper part of my arm, and held herself against me. I could feel her trembling.

The intruder light went out.

"Get it on again!" I shouted.

Kate reached behind her, found the switch. Then she held my arm again.

The snow whirled in the blaze of light. Through it, vaguely, we could see the entrance to the vault. We both saw the slight figure of a man emerging from the door of the vault. He was dressed in dark clothes, and was covered up against the weather. Long black hair straggled out from under the hood of his jacket. He raised a hand to protect his eyes from the glaring light. He showed no curiosity about us, or fear of us, even though he must have known we were there, watching him. Without looking at us, or anywhere in the direction of the house, he stepped out on to the flat ground, hunching his shoulders in the blizzard, then moved to the right, between the trees, down the hill, and out of our sight.