Chapter Twenty-Eight
TWENTY-EIGHT
There is a sudden ringing in my ears, a rush of blood to the head as if I have stood up too fast. Heat blooms close to the surface of my skin like a surge of quick blood. I lift the box and carry it out into the basement, setting it on the workbench beneath the lights. I’m careful, brushing the fine scrim of dust from its surface. My hands are shaking and my heart is in my throat as I open the lid. Inside are two objects wrapped in tissue paper. I lift them out, feeling the dull weight of them, aware that sweat has started to trickle the length of my spine. Half an ear is pricked for the sound of a car outside, the slam of the front door. I have to be quick, I tell myself, but I make sure I unwrap the items carefully, laying them side by side on the table in front of me.
They look agricultural, like medieval farming tools. Crudely shaped but purposeful. One resembles a knife but thinner, like a darning needle with a long wooden handle. The handle is printed with writing in gold leaf, something in Latin. DAEMONIA EICERE , it says. The second is an ugly, industrial-looking tool, like something used by a blacksmith. As I stare at them, I realize what they look like—crucible tongs. I’ve seen them used in Oscar’s laboratory, only what I’m holding aren’t gleaming scientific instruments of stainless steel. They are fire-blackened metal, rough to the touch. The scissorlike handles are fixed to two long pincers that end in flat plates, crudely formed. Some inner revulsion forces a bubble of acid up into my throat. It burns like salt water. I hurriedly put the tongs back on the workbench, face twisted with revulsion. I turn back to the needle. DAEMONIA EICERE . I trace my fingers over the worn gold lettering, pressed into the wood.
Oscar would know what this means , the little voice in my head reminds me. He’s forgotten more Latin than you’ll ever know.
Overhead, the sound of a door slamming, footsteps pounding down the stairs. In my fright I bite my tongue hard enough to taste iron.
“Mina!” It’s Alice. “Mina, oh God. Mina, where are you?”
“I’m here!”
I start shoving the items ( the Devices, he calls them “the Devices” ) back in the box, not bothering to wrap them, driven by the sound of Alice’s frightened, desperate voice. I can hear her in the kitchen now, the clatter and thud of something heavy falling to the floor. In my panic I think it might be Alice, collapsed and convulsing, a wasp buried in her throat. But no, I can still hear her crying—hoarse, choking sobs.
“Where are you?” she croaks, and I answer, “Right here, I’m coming!” lifting my skirt so I can take the stairs two at a time, hitting the light with the heel of my hand and plunging the cellar, the dummy, and the Devices back into the darkness in which they belong.
There is a dining chair lying on the floor of the kitchen. Alice was moving at such speed that she was propelled into it, knocking it down and barely noticing. Her skin is ashen and when she looks at me she blinks rapidly, as if trying to make sense of what she sees. I move beside her, brushing her hair away from her face and forcing her to look at me.
“Alice, what is it? What’s wrong?”
There is a tremor running through her. Her stricken face is damp with tears. I know what she is about to say before she says it, some ancient telepathy passing between us, can feel the answer in the heat of her skin beneath my hands, the sharp clockwork of her eyes moving left to right, wild with fright. I know, and I am afraid.
Adrenaline sends me flying up the stairs and into Mary’s bedroom. My heart is a totem drum, a warning pounding out a rhythm to Alice’s words, she’s dead she’s dead. Mary is sprawled on the bed with her face tilted toward the ceiling. Her body is askew, twisted slightly as if she were in the process of trying to stand and has fallen backward. Her mouth hangs open, lips stained a dusky, lethal blue. The bedside lamp has rolled onto the floor, casting shadows at strange angles.
“Mary?”
My fingers brush along the wall. The woodchip wallpaper reminds me of Eddie’s bedroom. For a moment the déjà vu is so complete I can almost see him lying there in the bed, football scarves and posters on the wall, oxygen mask hanging from his narrow, pinched face. Headlights splash across the ceiling—a car driving past outside—and for a moment I see Mary’s eyes, shiny glass orbs, blank and empty.
“Mary? Can you hear me?”
I approach the bed and lean over, resting two fingers on the underside of Mary’s wrist. There is a line of spittle suspended between her parted lips. Tears sting the backs of my eyes but I keep my fingers there a moment longer, just to be sure. There is nothing beneath my fingertips except her skin, soft and cool and powdery. No pulse, no rattling breath. No telltale rise and fall of her chest. I sink onto the bed next to her and the movement cants her body toward me, head lolling bonelessly to one side. A skein of silver hair falls over Mary’s brow and I instinctively lean over her to gently tuck it behind her ear. The movement reveals a redness that has flooded Mary’s glazed and staring left eye. A capillary burst and spread like spilled ink. I pull away quickly, heart pounding.
“No,” I say quietly, voice small as if it has curled up in my mouth. “No, no, no.”
I snatch up the lamp and point the light toward her, making all the shadows of the room stretch and swell. For a moment it looks as if her mouth is yawning open and filled with ( molasses, it drowned the horses ) the same tarry substance that leaked through the cracks in the brickwork, but it is just a trick, an optical illusion conjured by shades. That’s when I see the livid marks on her neck, the long, vertical furrows dug into the skin of her throat. It is as if she has raked her nails there, clawing for air. The thought sends a shiver through me, strong enough that I have to wrap my arms around myself to stop the violent shaking.
Bert will be home soon, that same voice says. Practical. Assured. You need to pull yourself together.
Yes. Yes. I force deep drags of air into my lungs. I need to focus. Alice is just downstairs. Alice, I think. Oh God. I think of Vicky Matherson with her heels beating on the soft tarmac, the scratching in the chimney breast. I think of Simon Pascoe pulled cold and bloated from the still quarry waters and Alice saying “The dead become transformed.” I wonder what shape Mary has taken, what strange vision she has become. Flame and eyeballs floating over strings of nerves.
You see it, Mina. You see it, don’t you? That eye. That bloodshot void.
I lean against the wall, my strength seeping from me, down, down, subterranean behind my ribs. I think of Eddie, how weak he became, how quickly he let go.
You know what it means, don’t you?
I turn and run out the door and down the hallway, bouncing off the walls like I’m drunk. I burst into the bathroom and fall to my knees in front of the toilet, one hand clamped around my stomach as all my dinner comes back up, spattering into the bowl. The sour smell makes me retch again as I grope for the flush and it’s only as I sit there, spitting out long spindles of drool, stomach fluttering, muscles sore, that I hear it.
There is music playing downstairs.