Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
T obias was afraid of what was moving in the forest. The sun had gone and it was dark and cold. Leaves and branches shook and parted, and a figure appeared. It was an exceedingly old woman with thin white hair plastered to her scalp, hunched over with a spine that was twisted. Her eyes were rheumy, set into a deeply wrinkled face, and she wore a simple white shirt and trousers. Clothes that didn’t seem to go with the rest of her appearance. Tobias felt he had seen a picture in a book long ago of this sort of figure. That she ought to be wearing a black dress. She smiled, gaps in her mouth where teeth ought to be. ‘There you are,’ she whispered.
‘Who are you?’
The old woman reached into the neck of the loose linen shirt and pulled on a gold chain. There was a round jewel on the chain, and she held it up for Tobias to see.
He took a step closer. It wasn’t a jewel. It was a mirror.
Esme still didn’t trust Luke’s clarity, kept expecting him to give in to the pull of Lewis’s charm. To turn from her and walk out of the kitchen and back to his brother. She could feel it herself, the urge to be near to Lewis, tugging at the edge of her mind with a terrifying persistence.
‘What would Tobias do?’ Luke asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Esme wrapped her arms around her middle, holding herself together. ‘I’ve thought and I’ve thought, but I really don’t know. There’s something else…’ Before she could speak, the landline began to ring.
‘Don’t answer it,’ Luke said. ‘It might be him.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ Esme said, hoping she was right. She went into the dining room, where the phone was attached to the wall.
It was Fiona, not sounding like herself. It took Esme a moment to realise that she was crying. ‘Is Hamish with you?’
Esme went cold. ‘No.’
‘I left him with Seren, but she’s not here. She’s not at mine or at the pub.’
‘I saw her going into the mayor’s house.’
‘With Hamish?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see. She was in a crowd of people. There was a bit of a crush…’
A strangled sound.
‘Don’t go to the house without me,’ Esme said, but she was speaking to dead air.
She replaced the receiver and found that Hammer and Luke had followed her into the dining room.
‘Seren?’ Luke asked. ‘Is she all right?’
‘She was going to Lewis,’ Esme said. ‘She’s looking after Hamish.’
‘Why would she take Hamish there?’
An awful thought had fallen into Esme’s mind, so terrible she couldn’t voice it. What if Lewis was hungry for something other than food? He had been gathering people to him, feeding off their attention, their energy. What if that was more than metaphorical?
‘Esme?’ Hammer was a stoic sort. Impassive, unless you knew him well enough to read the minute changes in his expression. Right now, he looked terrified. ‘Why would Seren take the baby to Lewis?’
‘I don’t know,’ Esme said, pushing down the awful possibilities. ‘But I think that whatever is in Lewis is as strong as Tobias. It’s filled the gap that he left.’ She took a breath before delivering the final piece. ‘The wards have broken.’
Fiona banged down the receiver at The Rising Moon. Her mind was filled with one thing only; the need to get to Hamish. To hold him in her arms and protect him from whatever was going on. She was out, the door banging shut behind her and her feet flying up the main road to the mayor’s house.
There were people standing outside in the garden, gazing up at the windows with yearning expressions. ‘Have you seen my baby?’
Nobody looked at her. It was as if they were all drugged.
A young woman opened the door after a few minutes of Fiona hammering on it and yelling.
‘Wow,’ she said, in a voice that couldn’t have been more laconic if she had been asleep, ‘you’re very loud.’
‘Where is my son?’
‘Son?’
‘My baby. Hamish.’ At that moment, she heard a wail and she pushed past the woman and into the house.
There were too many people, and they were crammed into the entrance hall and up the stairs. She was hit with the smell of human sweat. Fiona could hear Hamish crying in the living room, but the press of people was too great to move through. She tried to fight her way through, but they were immovable. One man shoved her back when she tried to squeeze between him and another. It was a hard shove and she would have fallen if it wasn’t for the people that had filled the space behind her. She stood, breathing heavily and trying to work out what to do.
The people weren’t moving. They were all clearly desperate to get as close to Lewis as possible and he must be in the living room. Images of Hamish being crushed carelessly by these slack-jawed, hypnotised cattle made her chest squeeze painfully and her heart thud faster. She had to get Hamish back. Now she had been absorbed into the crowd, she didn’t know if she could get out. She couldn’t move. It was terrifying. ‘Please,’ she said to the people nearest. ‘Please let me through. My baby is in there.’
Nothing. Blank stares. One woman was moaning softly and Fiona realised that she was hurt. She was cradling one arm in the other and her skin was a waxy colour. But she was still upright and staring toward the living room door. The cold fear was creeping across Fiona’s skin. In the water she was strong, but here in this form, she was a middle-aged woman of average height. She was too weak to push through and, if she wasn’t careful, she was going to get crushed herself. The bodies around her were pressing in, squeezing.
She managed to manoeuvre her phone from her pocket. She didn’t usually bother with a mobile. The reception on the island was patchy at best, but since Matteo had started texting her, she kept it on her. Communicating via text message was perfect. They were even in writing. And being at a distance made it feel both safe and exciting. She tapped out a short message. Help. At T’s. Hamish danger.
Waiting was the worst thing that she had ever endured. Previously, she would have given that to the seconds after her ex-husband had blamed Euan for Alvis’s death, the time when the protective veil she had pulled around her marriage fell away and she could no longer pretend that he was a good man who was struggling. That she had, in fact, been harbouring a monstrous person in her home and her bed. Allowing him to spread his toxins throughout their family home and infect her precious boy. She could not fail to protect a child of hers. Not again. And Hamish was a baby. He was so vulnerable. He could be harmed through carelessness or stupidity, there didn’t need to be evil intent. Her phone buzzed in her hand, and with difficulty she manoeuvred it to see the screen. In the minutes since she had texted, the bodies had shifted and her arms were pinned in place. She had almost got it twisted into position when somebody let out a howl of longing and there was a violent surge from the back. Fiona’s phone slipped from her grasp and she knew she had no hope of bending down to get it. She didn’t dare sink to a crouch, either, as she would be easily toppled. If she ended up on the floor, these people would walk over her. It was a single, awful thought, that there was a very real danger of being trampled to death in Tobias’s hallway.
The front door slammed open, and a gust of fresh air blew through the throng.
Fiona heard the same laconic voice say ‘hey’. Her heart leapt, but before she could call out, she heard an unfamiliar voice. It was a man’s voice, deep and extremely compelling. She felt it thrum through her body as if he were standing next to her and her head was on his chest, feeling the vibrations of his speech.
‘Walk through this doorway and stand in the garden of this house.’
Fiona couldn’t see what was happening, but the pressure of the massed bodies seemed to be easing. She took a full breath and realised that she hadn’t been able to for a few minutes.
She could feel something else… a desire to walk through the front door of the house and stand in the garden. The idea of the fresh air and the sunshine on her skin, of being in the open, it all seemed extremely appealing. She turned in that direction and Matteo appeared in her line of vision. He frowned at her and mimed putting her fingers into her ears. She did so and then felt the vibrations of his voice again, and the muffled rumbling of speech.
The people in front, blocking Fiona’s path to the living room and Hamish moved back. Their faces were confused, glazed eyes sparking into life as they fought the impulse to be near Lewis with the instruction from Matteo.
Fiona didn’t know why Matteo’s words had such an effect. Truthfully, she hadn’t known he was capable of speech, but at this moment, she didn’t have time to ponder it. Grabbing the opportunity with a grateful heart, she ran into the living room. It was roasting hot and Hamish was on Lewis’s lap, held in a firm embrace that didn’t seem to be physically harmful but was clearly upsetting to the small boy. Hamish was squirming to escape and his face was bright red and streaked with tears. Her heart squeezed painfully and she felt light-headed with relief. He was alive. He was well enough to cry. He had just opened his mouth for another plaintive wail when he saw Fiona, and the desperate relief seemed to halt everything in his small body for a split second. Then his mouth opened wider and he let out a roar that was part distress, part excitement, and part pure fury. There you are! it seemed to say, in that way that only a toddler can manage.
Fiona was suffused with such a powerful rage that it coursed through her body and gave her strength she had never had before. She felt as if she could lift Lewis bodily from his chair and wrestle Hamish from him, but she was also wary of frightening Hamish more than he already was, and of him getting hurt in a tussle. Despite the exodus of people, the room was still filled. And Lewis’s arms were like a cage around her child.
She realised that Seren was close by, gazing at Lewis with naked adoration. There was anger somewhere inside, for the woman who had brought her baby into this hellish place, but it would have to wait. Her only focus was on Hamish, on getting him to safety.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said in a singsong voice. ‘It’s okay, my love. I’m here to take you home.’
‘No.’ When Lewis spoke, every head in the room leaned forward, as if afraid they would miss a precious syllable. Seren reached a hand out and joined it with Lewis’s, adding to the barrier that kept Hamish on Lewis’s lap. ‘I need him.’
Keeping her voice light and not looking at Seren, Fiona said, ‘what do you mean? He’s just a bairn.’
‘So much,’ Lewis said. ‘He has so much…’
‘Potential?’ a woman with frizzy hair and sweat patches on her pale blue t-shirt asked.
Lewis’s gaze snapped to her. For a moment, Fiona thought he was angry, but then his expression relaxed and he smiled at the woman. ‘Exactly. Well done.’
The woman sighed in a breathy, over-the-top way. It was overtly sexual and Fiona felt the prickle of discomfort to go along with her terror and fury.
‘He’s my baby,’ Fiona said. She smiled at Hamish, beaming as much reassurance as she could while physically shaking. ‘It’s all right, poppet, we’re going home.’ Her throat was tight and she forced herself to swallow. To Lewis she added, ‘you’re not yourself.’
Lewis still hadn’t loosened his grip and Hamish had begun to cry in a thin, desperate kind of way. She wondered when he had last been fed, whether he had been given anything to drink. He could be dehydrated. There was a strong smell in the room and it wasn’t just sweat or even Hamish, so she was pretty sure some of the adults hadn’t been able to leave the room to use the bathroom.
She felt a touch on her arm. It was Matteo. He pushed his way to Lewis and leaned in, cupping his hands around his ear. Seren gasped and attempted to push him away, but Matteo held on. Lewis’s eyes shut as Matteo whispered.
Fiona wondered if he would be able to hear above the sound of Hamish crying and the moans, articulations from the crowd. She wondered if it would have the same effect that it had on the other people or whether Lewis would prove immune.
It seemed to be a struggle. There was tension in his shoulders and his jaw clenched, muscle ticking. Lewis seemed to be trying to move, and a strange shudder went through his body. Seren began wailing, a sound of pure distress that was soon echoed by the others in the room. It was as if they weren’t able to think for themselves and had become merely reactive to each other and to the object of their fascination.
Matteo held out his arms and spoke again, loud enough that Fiona could hear him, even above the wailing and crying. That strange sensation from before ran through her body, the vibrations of his voice seeming to come from far away and also inside her mind, as if Matteo was simultaneously everywhere. ‘Lewis. Give Hamish to me.’