Master of the Moors (24 page)

Please God let him be
there.

But in his heart and soul,
he knew he wouldn't be.

19

The house was like an
oasis in the dark after their walk through the storm. While they
were gone, Mrs. Fletcher had put lanterns in all the windows,
giving it a homely, welcoming look it hadn't had in quite some
time.

The charwoman greeted them
at the door and both Kate and Grady hesitated at the threshold,
despite the warmth that flooded out from the hallway. Mrs. Fletcher
looked shocked and frightened, her face bleached of color. She
wrung her hands nervously as she stepped back to let them
in.

Whatever had upset her,
Grady didn't give her a chance to say it. "Neil?" he asked, then
ripped down his hood. "Is he here? Did he come home?"

Kate hadn't thought it
possible that the woman could get any paler, but as the
implications of what Grady was saying took hold, she looked as if
she might faint.

"What's...what's
happened?"

"Is he here?" Grady all
but shouted, his impatience getting the better of him.

"No, he didn't,
but---"

"I'll be back soon," Grady
said, turning back toward the open door.

"But please..." Mrs.
Fletcher pleaded, her voice brittle, "What's happened?"

Kate stepped aside to let
Grady pass, unsure whether or not she was supposed to follow, and
then a voice, hollow and yet familiar, drifted out from the living
room and froze them all where they stood.

"Grady."

He turned and looked from
Kate to the charwoman, then past them to the door to the living
room. "Is he...?" was all he managed before Kate broke into a run,
almost tripping in her haste to reach the room. Mrs. Fletcher
looked at Grady, who asked, "He's awake?"

She nodded, and stepped
around him to close the front door.

"No," he said, putting his
arm out to stop her. "Neil's gone...I have to try and find
him."

"Not yet," the charwoman
said softly. "Talk to the master first."

Confused, Grady nodded
once and followed her to the living room.

Inside, they found Kate
sitting on her father's lap, her face buried in his neck, weeping.
Mansfield nodded in silent greeting at Grady, who moved as if he'd
awoken to find himself in some bizarre alternate universe in which
the air was made of glue. He practically had to feel his way to the
sofa, where he sat and expelled a sigh that sounded like it had
been locked inside him since birth.

Mansfield looked skeletal,
his cheeks hollow and shadowed by stubble, deep gray circles
ringing his eyes, but the eyes shone with life. Dark blue veins
formed a network across his waxen forehead.

Mrs. Fletcher stood by the
door, hands clasped beneath her bosom.

"My God...how do you
feel?" Grady asked in amazement. Kate continued to sob, as her
father gently stroked her hair.

"Much better," he replied,
with a slight smile. "And by dawn it will be as if I'd never been
sick at all."

Grady glanced at Mrs.
Fletcher but there was no explanation in her eyes, only worry.
"How?" he asked.

But Mansfield was looking
at the door, a querulous expression on his face. "Where's
Neil?"

Grady felt his stomach
plummet at the thought of telling him what had happened. Would it
trigger a decline in his newfound health? Ultimately he decided
that he had never before lied to the master and it would be
irresponsible for him to start now. "I don't know."

"What do you
mean
you don't
know?"

"The October Dance.
Somethin' happened." Grady gestured futilely. "The Newman boy
attacked him. Neil ran off somewhere."

"
Somewhere
?"

"I think someone took
him," Grady admitted, and Kate looked up, her eyes puffy. "Newman
mentioned a man, a bandaged man who came to the village and asked
him to lure Neil outside."

Mansfield raised a
trembling hand to his brow and sat so rigidly in his seat that Kate
was forced to stand. Slowly, not taking her eyes from her father,
she moved to Grady's side. When at last the master raised his head,
there were tears in his eyes. "This is my fault."

"No," Grady told him. "'It
isn't. The fault is mine. I should---"

"Listen to me," Mansfield
interrupted. "There is a lot you don't yet know, but if you take a
moment to cast your mind back, you'll realize this day has been a
long time coming."

"Daddy?" Kate asked. "What
do you mean? Is this about the search?"

Mansfield cast a tired
glance at Mrs. Fletcher. "Florence...take Kate into the kitchen.
Make her a cup of tea." Then to Kate, "We'll talk later, I promise.
But for now, I need to speak to Grady alone."

"No. Don't. I know about
the creatures on the moors. Grady told me. Now I want to know
what
you
know."

"I know you do, but now is
not the time."

"No," she said again,
color rising in her cheeks, "You've been gone for so long, I don't
want to leave you now. I---"

He glared at her.
"
Now
, Kate.
Please
. We'll have time
to talk in a while, but this is between me and Grady. I've been
gone a long time, but I'm still your father and you need to do as
you're told. "

She stared at him, the
frustration evident in her eyes, as if she feared he'd be gone
again when she returned. "What's going to happen?" she
asked.

Mansfield nodded at Mrs.
Fletcher, who hurried to Kate and put her arm around her. "C'mon,
love," she said. "I'll make a nice brew and we can talk for a
while."

"Kate," her father said.
"Later. I promise."

Kate nodded, but it was
clear she was not happy. Mrs. Fletcher led her into the hallway,
and closed the door behind them. Mansfield stared after them for a
moment, then looked at Grady. "Would you fetch us a drink? I fear
we will both need it by the time I'm finished."

Grady obeyed, but it
bothered him that Mansfield didn't appear more upset about Neil's
disappearance. As he poured the drinks, he concluded that there had
to be a valid reason for it; that perhaps Mansfield knew something
about the bandaged man that might help in the search. He served the
drinks and sat down.

"Are you sure alcohol's a
good idea?" he asked.

Mansfield nodded.
"Positive." There were a few moments of silence, then he said,
"It's a virus."

"What is?"

"This illness."

"How do you
know?"

He smiled, though it was
little more than a brief pull of his lips. "I've had ample time to
ponder it. Ample time to see the truth of it."

Grady sat forward.
"Campbell thought it might be somethin' tropical."

"Campbell is and always
was an idiot. I expect as we speak he has been distributed as spoor
across the moors for his part in this nightmare."

"His part?" Though Grady
couldn't help being interested, the need to find Neil nagged at him
like an insolent child. He felt incomplete, hollow, as if he'd left
a part of himself out in the storm.

"Oh yes." Mansfield stared
at his glass. "He delivered Neil, and as such, had a hand in
killing his mother. The birth was what finished her. A better man
might have been able to save her life. Not Campbell though. The man
is---
was
---an
imbecile."

"How can you be sure
somethin' has happened to him?" But even as he asked, Grady
recalled Donald Newman's words at the dance
hall---
he gave me Doctor Campbell's
flask
---and wondered what, other than grave
misfortune, could have made Campbell part with that cherished item
and the elixir it held. But what Mansfield said next forced that
memory to dissipate.

"Because I can feel them,
Grady. I can almost, but not quite, see through their eyes, and let
me tell you this---" He leaned forward, eyes narrowed, stick-like
index finger jabbing at the air with every word, "---Brent Prior is
done for. After tonight, it will be a place of echoes, nothing
more."

Grady cleared his throat
as a torrent of questions flooded his mind. At length, he settled
on the most obvious one. "What's goin' to happen?"

Mansfield looked suddenly
exhausted, and sat back again. "You remember that day, don't you
Grady?"

"Of course. It's not
somethin' that's easily forgotten."

"Only one person was
responsible for Sylvia Callow's death, you know that don't
you?"

Grady knew the direction
the conversation had taken, but refused to follow it. "Her husband,
sir. No one else."

Mansfield seemed amused.
"Really? So by your logic you would have me exonerated from all
blame for the death of my
own
wife too, would you?"

"Why are you bringin' this
up now?"

"Because it needs to be
brought up. If you don't see the association here then you're not
half as clever as I've always given you credit for. I fell in love
with Sylvia and her husband killed her, no doubt because he
discovered the affair. Then, shocked, I watched Campbell pluck a
child from her dying womb, a child I claimed as my own, hoping it
might aid in my atonement for a death I had most certainly caused.
Proud, and anxious to introduce the babe into a marriage gone
sterile, I brought it home despite my grievous injuries, only to
find my beautiful wife hanging from her neck in the barn that same
night. She knew, you see. She knew of my affair. She came with the
villagers after the hunt, helped burn down Callow House, but she
must have seen me in my grief over Sylvia. I lost both women that
day. So to whom, my dear Grady, would you assign the blame for
their deaths if not me?" He waved a hand in disgust. "The virus
wasn't punishment enough."

Grady felt a surge of
guilt at the memories the words unearthed. He remembered the look
on Mansfield's face that night, the utter devastation as he begged
Grady to help him cut his wife down. And all the while, through his
tears, he'd pleaded with him not to ever tell the children the
truth.
"She must die in her bed, laid by
the heels by some sudden malady. But not like this. Dear God, not
like this..."
Grady had dedicated the next
few months to erasing that night from his memory, but the image of
Helen dangling from that old rope, her eyes filled with blood,
still haunted him. But not nearly as much as he suspected it
haunted Mansfield.

"It was not my business
what you did with yer life, sir," he said. "And what came about was
unfortunate, but not yer fault. A man can waste an entire lifetime
thinkin' himself the villain, but that's a title I'd be
hard-pressed to give you. You made some questionable judgments, I
grant you that, but show me a man who hasn't?"

Mansfield drained his
glass and held it out to Grady. "Another, please, to stave off the
chill."

Grady nodded, and went to
the decanter, but his thoughts were with Neil, who was likely
somewhere out there in the violent night, wondering why no one had
yet come for him. He shivered as he passed the drink to Mansfield.
"We need to hurry, sir. Neil needs us."

"Yes, yes. I'm sorry. I've
been alone with my own thoughts for so long, I suppose they've
overwhelmed me, taken on more significance than might otherwise be
the case. I do apologize."

Again, the groundskeeper
was struck by Mansfield's casual tone. "There's no
need."

"Indeed there is, Grady.
There most certainly is a need to apologize and for more than we
have time to discuss."

"I don't
understand."

"I'm afraid my cowardice
has damned us all."

Grady said nothing. In the
wake of such a pronouncement, he could only wait for elaboration.
The wait was not a long one.

"I believe those creatures
are diseased. They carry within them something horrendous, a plague
of some kind that attacks the body, and changes it."

Grady set his glass down
on the floor. "What kind of a change?"

"I'm not sure, but I fear
the metamorphosis might reduce---or perhaps the correct term would
be
elevate
---a man
to their level, force him to become a ravening animal."

"Men do not change into
animals."

"I won't argue with you,
my friend. But tell me, then, where do you think these things have
come from? We both know they're out there; of that there can be no
doubt, but where did they originate? Surely they haven't been
roaming the moors forever or we'd have heard of them before that
fateful search?"

"I don't know. Perhaps
somethin' escaped from London Zoo."

Mansfield smiled. "And
just how long have you been trying to convince yourself of that
particular fantasy?"