The Sorrows, page 20
Chapter Seven
The rain had let up a bit, though here on the beach it still whipped in stinging gusts. Naked, Eddie spread his arms and let the sea wind lash his body, the rain and salt spray lance his limbs, his genitals. The black clouds stretched on unabated as far as his sight would reach. It was late, but what sun there might have been at this hour had been smothered by the storm. Soon it would be full dark. Eddie closed his eyes, enjoying the tempest.
If Ben was still alive, Eddie would have to kill him. Tragic, yes, but all of them would need to die before the chopper came at month’s end.
After all, allegations of attempted rape and murder might hurt Eddie’s career.
He wondered if Eva had survived whatever had happened in the pit. If she had, and if Ben did live, the three would soon begin fortifying the castle against him.
Eddie smiled. Just like medieval warfare—no guns, no help imminent.
The lone tower would be his headquarters. The padlock would be easy to break. He would spend the night there, make his plan tomorrow, then tomorrow night he’d find a way back inside the castle and pick them off, one by one.
And what about the creature? a voice in his mind asked.
Eddie dropped his arms, thinking. Whatever lurked in the pit had been pure evil, of that he was certain. He remembered its colossal size, how its horrible eyes leered at him. Eva was likely dead already. In fact, it was possible—probable even—that none of them had gotten out of the basement alive.
Eddie shivered, for the first time really feeling the cold. No matter what had already taken place, it was best to stay away from the castle until the beast was sated.
Then what about the here and now?
The tower appealed to him, yet it stood a mere thirty yards from the castle, far too close to the beast’s home for Eddie’s liking. There had to be some place safer, somewhere—
He turned and peered into the cave. It was the same cave in which he’d seen the child earlier.
Had there been a sound, faint but definite, coming from within?
Eddie pushed wet hair off his brow, approached cautiously. He feared seeing the child again, but he was also aching with curiosity. Yes, he could hear the sound now. Muffled, distorted.
He stepped closer, a new thought arising.
Could the child have been real? Was it possible the boy had washed ashore from some faraway shipwreck or plane crash? It was possible, wasn’t it? But why would the boy live in a cave when there was a perfectly good castle in which to sleep?
The answer came immediately—the child did live in the castle but had fled when he’d seen visitors approaching.
The storm behind him had begun to lag, a brief respite in its relentless assault, and in the stiller atmosphere Eddie could better hear the tune playing deep within the cave. Though the song was different, its style was very much like the piece Eddie had arranged earlier and played for those unappreciative assholes in the great hall.
He closed his eyes, entranced by the music. Its lyrical, mystical lilt was more complex than the song of earlier that day. More seductive. A love song, an ode to a lady’s beauty. A lightning flash followed closely by a rush of thunder propelled him deeper into the cave. The storm was about to worsen, but Eddie was safe in here. And though the cave was dark, it was not as dark as he’d expected. In fact…
Yes. He detected a faint source of light. And deep within the cave he heard the music growing stronger. Echoing, liquid. The light was also intensifying, a pale green effulgence that seemed to warm the very air of the cave. He crept forward, his bare feet padding on the cool sandy floor. Beneath the music he could hear the sound of a flowing fountain, some bubbling trickle within the cave.
He suddenly wanted—needed—to see the child, to watch him play his crude wooden flute. The memory of the boy’s features rose in Eddie’s mind, clarifying, until he could construct the small face, the large eyes, the dark hair. The boy, he realized, looked somewhat like him. With the thought rose a weird species of pride. Yes, there had definitely been a resemblance. Moving forward, he detected a hint of something putrescent, but it might have been his imagination.
His excitement growing, he ventured farther into the cave. The green light grew brighter, and when he rounded a corner, he beheld the thin green oval before him, the place where the cave opened up into a vast, echoing cavern. The song mesmerized him, a hymn of nature, of love. Spellbound, Eddie strode the final few steps into the cavern and realized that, yes, the child was here. He sat with his back to Eddie on the far side of a large green pool, a hidden spring of some sort that splashed and rippled under the continuous stream of water and light pouring through a gap in the center of the rock ceiling. Eddie frowned, wanting to hear the notes above the babble of the water. The stench had grown—definitely not imagination—but he knew how easily a fish could get stranded by the tide and end up bloating in some hidden grotto. He scrunched his nose and sidled around the green pool, his bare shoulder blades scraping the wall. Eddie moved carefully, worked to control his anxiousness, but several times he almost tumbled into the spring. In some spots the ledge was only five or six inches wide, and he had to curl his toes like some goddamned marsupial to grip the rock and avoid falling in.
Finally, panting with the effort, he made it around to a wider space, six or eight feet between the wall and the pool. The child was younger than he had estimated, just a toddler, really. The face was shadowed, but this close Eddie could see the bare back, and something about it made his heart thump erratically. There was something wrong with the skin, the shoulders…
Eddie took another step and felt his insides go cold.
The boy’s skin was badly burned. Here and there the flesh of his little shoulders rose in crisp ridges, the roasted edges curling up in black strips. The putrid smell wafting up from the child reminded him of flyblown meat, but the worst was the cremated scent that crawled out of the blackened flesh. Sobbing, Eddie took a step back, but the boy turned and regarded him, his pink face misshapen and blistered. The lipless teeth grinned at him.
“He’s ours,” a voice behind Eddie said, and he turned and saw her standing in the entryway. Her face was burned beyond recognition, even worse than the child’s, but the voice was smooth and clear and unmistakably Lily’s. She circled the pool the way Eddie had come, hemming him in.
He gasped as tiny hands pawed at his leg. He backed away from the extended arms, the horrible longing in the burned face. The child had no ears, just clotted black pits that oozed a noisome scarlet liquid. Eddie gagged and retreated, but his back scraped the low cave wall.
“Eddie,” said a voice at his ear. He shrieked, whirling, and saw her reaching for him, Jesus, something dangling from the charred cleft between her legs. Maroon and yellow, it glistened, and then Eddie did vomit as he realized it was an umbilical cord.
The child bit him in the calf, the tiny teeth sinking in like serrated daggers, and Lily grabbed for him. Sobbing, Eddie dove sideways into the pool, but the child came with him, gnawing, feeding. Eddie kicked his legs but above him the surface of the pool shattered as Lily dropped on top of him, reaching.
Though out of breath he flailed to go deeper, to push away from the fiend sinking onto him, but he saw in her grin there was no escape. The child clambered up his body and met its mother at Eddie’s stomach, where both began to feed.
Chapter Eight
From a vast distance Ben became aware of someone shouting, the feel of warm skin pressing his cheek. It was like climbing out of a deep well, the voice growing louder, his sense of touch returning. He was being jostled, and the voice reminded him of his mother. “Please…please…” the voice that wasn’t his mother’s was whispering. “Please,” as though the woman didn’t want to be overheard.
His eyes fluttered open. A face staring down at him. Claire’s face. Her eyes were squeezed shut, tears streaming out of them. She hadn’t seen he was awake yet, and he wasn’t sure he wanted her to. His head ached like death and he was having trouble breathing, his chest hurt so badly. She pulled away and locked eyes with him, and her face crumpled into a grateful smile that almost made him forget how awful he felt.
“Oh thank God,” she said. “We have to go Ben, we have to go now.”
He couldn’t imagine moving, so he closed his eyes, hoping she’d abandon the notion. But hell, she stood and hooked her arms under his. It killed his throbbing head, and using his legs made it even harder to breath, but he figured if he cooperated she might leave him alone afterward. Halfway to his feet, her strength seemed to fail, and it was just as well because a molten tide of vomit was elevatoring up his throat. He swiveled his head and puked, and was amazed she didn’t drop him, instead bent him forward, supporting him as he retched again and again, despite the fact that there was nothing left to vomit. He lowered to the ground, held his left side, where it felt as if someone had punctured his lung with a railroad spike.
“We have to go, Ben,” she said.
Dimly, he remembered coming from upstairs, Eva in trouble, something about Eddie. The pain grew worse. He fought back panic, but it was so hard to get air. She shook him.
“Ribs are busted,” he told her. “Can’t breathe.”
Her terrified face appeared in front of his. “Listen,” she said as if he were a child, “something has Eva. It’s…” She shook her head, chin quivering. “It’ll get us too if we don’t get upstairs.”
Upstairs, Ben thought, and raised his head enough to follow Claire’s gaze up the interminable staircase. Impossible, he wanted to tell her, but she kept shaking him, and some of her urgency seemed to communicate itself to him, because he started to worry about whatever dwelled in the pit, whatever had Eva.
“Okay,” he said, “okay…just hang on…”
He fought the disorientation, the burning sensation in his throat that threatened to trigger another bout of puking. A nasty pounding in his skull, he finally got to his feet, vision gauzy and full of swirling black dots. She put her arms around him, but that made his ribs scream, so he started up the staircase without her aid. The wooden handrail helped some, but the going remained slow. She stayed a step or two behind him to make sure he didn’t fall.
He paused as a spate of nausea rolled through his body. God, even his toes hurt. Leaning on the handrail, his forehead resting on his hand, he became aware of a noise from below, one he hadn’t noticed until now. Slowly, he pushed erect and gazed down the stairs. Then, he looked at Claire. Her mouth twisted as though she were fighting back tears. Or a scream.
“Is that what you were talking about?” he asked, knowing how dumb the question was.
She nodded, her eyes those of a child staring into a dark closet.
Ben nodded and tried not to imagine Eva down there. A shroud of guilt already haunting him, he moved with Claire up the steps.
Chapter Nine
From the Journal of Calvin Shepherd
July 29th, 1925
I have locked myself in my room. My reasons for doing so will unquestionably raise the eyebrows of my future readers when taken into consideration with my earlier characterizations of Gregory Blackwood.
Yes, I refer to Gregory Blackwood, the frail, androgynous creature whom I’ve ignored throughout his nineteen years on this earth. Alas, we have all—the adults, rather—been guilty of hardly noticing the young man up until now, and I must say that I seem to be the only one sensitive enough to note the changes in him. I have always regarded the boy with an indefinable sense of pity. Not that my soul has ever been touched by the emotion, but I can at least say that I have recognized how unhappy his life has been.
Gregory has changed.
To explain this transformation, subtle though it might be, I must first share the rather shortsighted plan concocted by Robert Blackwood and Henry Mullen to conceal our crime from the four surviving members of the youthful quintet. As scheduled, Gregory, Becca, Amarinda, and Tassee returned to the island on June the 2nd. Making no mention of the tower, Henry Mullen callously announced to Gabriel’s little cult that their leader had finally been manumitted from his servitude and had been delivered safely to a seaport just north of Bodega Bay. They were outraged, of course, but the absence of their leader soon became obvious. Amarinda, the most outspoken of their band, forthwith conducted an exhaustive search of the castle and the forest. Even the caves. Robert and Henry had gambled that the youths would not include the tower in their search, and I was astounded when this gamble proved correct. Despite their determination to scour the island for their absent leader, the quartet’s lifetime of conditioning to never, under any circumstance, set foot in the tower prevented them from entering.
Until this morning, that is.
As I have said, Gregory has undergone a subtle but very real alteration. This alteration has been expressed only in the occasional offhand comment that, to the disinterested listener, would hardly be worthy of note. Perhaps you, Future Reader, will find in Gregory’s comments nothing troubling. Perhaps you will conclude that I, in my heightened state of paranoia, am jumping at shadows. In any event, here are two snippets of conversation that have led me to believe that Gregory knows more than he is letting on.
At dinner last week, I was refilling Elizabeth Blackwood’s water glass when I looked up and saw Gregory watching me. We regarded one another in silence for what seemed an eternity. Then, as if nothing were amiss, he nodded to his empty drinking glass.
I walked with as casual a gait as possible around the long table and endeavored to pour water into Gregory’s glass. I fear my hand shook, and though it sounds idiotic, I could feel the malice rising from his gaunt body. When I had finished, I straightened and took a step toward the kitchen with the goal of refilling my pitcher, but was arrested by the following words:
“I should like some ice with my water.”
Taking care to behave normally, I responded, “Of course.”
Before I could escape, Gregory spoke again, “I believe you’ll find it shut up in the freezer.”
Ignoring the whisper of fear his choice of words conjured, I said, “Of course it is, Master Gregory, where else would it be?”
He eyed me meaningfully. “Any place tightly sealed, I should think.”
I glanced from face to face to see if anyone else had taken note of this bizarre statement. Robert was staring distractedly out the window. Elizabeth, as usual, was picking at her food.
But Becca observed the exchange with an avidity that bordered on obsessive.
This incident alone would not have stretched my nerves to such a terrible pitch had it proven isolated. Yet that very night another conversation occurred that made me fear for my safety.
Robert and Elizabeth had embarked on a moonlit ramble, and I seized the opportunity to slip inside the hidden network of tunnels with the intention of eavesdropping on Gregory and the three young women. I found them in his room. Unlike they had when Gabriel was alive, the four youths remained fully clothed this time, and I must admit it was surreal watching them sitting together on the floor, talking rather than engaging in wanton behavior.
I had observed them for a goodly while without much of interest occurring when Tassee, the youngest, became very still.
Becca frowned at her. “What is it?”
“Shh,” Tassee said. “Do you hear it?”
Becca shook her head and opened her mouth to answer when Gregory stilled her with a gesture. He and Amarinda had apparently heard whatever sound to which Tassee had alluded, and soon Becca seemed to hear it too. I also leaned forward to pick up the sound, but nothing at all came.
Becca was suddenly overcome with emotion. “Is it…”
“Yes,” Gregory answered.
“It’s true then,” Amarinda said.
Though their cryptic utterances could have meant anything, I was certain they pertained to our crime.
Since that night there have been several other examples of mysterious glances and inscrutable speech, and their cumulative effect has led me to avoid human interaction except when absolutely unavoidable.
Daytime is now as menacing to me as night. It is barely noon now, and I can hardly bring myself to venture downstairs to assist in the serving of lunch. I dread Gregory’s eyes. I dread his insinuating voice. This is why I have holed up in my room like some animal at bay, the feeble remnants of my—
Someone is shouting outside. I must go.
From the Journal of Calvin Shepherd
July 29th, 1925
Though I wrote to you earlier today, I feel as though an eternity has passed. Oh, Journal, when I heard the shouting voices on the castle lawn, I did what instinct bade and scampered down the stairs to see what all the commotion was about.
How was I to know what horrors my eyes would soon behold?
In the center of the lawn I perceived a host of people. I immediately made out Robert and Elizabeth, and the majority of my fellow servants. Present also was Henry Mullen, whose apelike form I couldn’t mistake.
I could also see flames.
Gathered around the flickering blaze, the figures reminded me of devils in a Hieronymus Bosch canvas. As they gesticulated and shouted to make themselves heard above one another, I moved quietly into their midst. The smell of roasted meat hung in the air, and in moments I saw why.
There were four rabbits spitted on wooden stakes. The tapered ends of the pikes were poking forth from the dead creatures’ mouths like swollen tongues. Someone had surrounded the macabre arrangement with tinder and what smelled like kerosene before setting the rabbits on fire.
Another voice penetrated the general din, and one by one the members of our party ceased bickering and glanced about to locate the speaker.
Because of the noonday sun, we were able to spot the culprits soon enough.
Perched atop the castle battlement, six stories in the air, was Gregory Blackwood. Becca stood to his left. On his right were Amarinda and Tassee. All four stood poised on the crenellated border of the roof. A stiff wind could have sent them tumbling to their deaths.
