Master of the Moors (28 page)

"Naked, exposed and
vulnerable, I ran as fast as my pitiful feeble legs could carry me,
back to the house, where I hid in the cellar and wept. I thought
I'd be safe there, but I was confused. I should have known they
would try to cleanse Callow House with fire, driven by preposterous
and archaic beliefs that what had happened would never happen again
if their enemy's home was obliterated.

"The cellar filled with
smoke and when I tried to escape, I found myself trapped. Panicked,
I ripped and tore at the walls, flung myself against the rapidly
warming door until it splintered and I could unlock it by threading
my hand through the gap.

"I made it as far as the
hallway before the ceiling---a mass of burning plaster and wood---came
down on me. And so I burned, and screamed at the injustice that had
led to my certain death. But I did not die. Someone pulled me free
and dragged me from the house; someone I did not expect to see
standing there with concern written across her ravaged face. A face
I would have sundered had everything not come to ruin. A woman who
wished for death at my hands, but took my advice instead and saw to
it herself.

"A woman by the name of
Mansfield."

***

Mrs. Fletcher was jolted
from a doze by a sound from the hall. Blinking away the confusion
of sleep, she sat up, her sewing falling to the floor unnoticed.
She paused for a moment, listening.

Outside, the storm
continued unabated, grumbling its way to unmerciful roars and
filling the spaces between the curtains with white light as rain
tapped incessantly against the glass.

But from within the house,
there was silence.

"Mr. Grady?" she called,
wondering if they'd come back and if it had been their arrival that
had roused her. She rubbed her eyes and squinted at the clock above
the mantel. It was close to midnight. She'd hoped they'd be back by
now, safe and sound and with a shaken and sodden but unharmed Neil
in tow.

"Kate?"

No answer. Sagging with
disappointment, she settled back in her chair and joined her hands
over her belly.

"Please God," she
whispered in prayer, "Let them be all r---"

From the hallway, came the
groan of stiffened hinges. Immediately she sat up, hands braced on
the arms of the chair. "Master?"

A shuffling, then what
might have been the sound of someone sliding along the wall that
divided the hall from the kitchen. She waited a beat, then stood,
grabbed the lamp from the mantel and quickly moved to the doorway.
The flickering light from the lantern made the short passage to the
living room seem impossibly long.

"Master?"

She took a step, then
another, her scalp prickling as she drew to a halt a few feet from
the living room door.

It was open.

With a nervous swallow,
she held the lantern out and inspected the door. The jamb had
splintered, leaving jagged spikes of wood poking out from the
frame, and the lock had broken. It swung from a single screw like
one of those 'Do Not Disturb' signs she'd seen them use in fancy
London hotels. Cautiously, she leaned closer and brought her
fingers to the paneled wood, realizing as she did so that the door
would have had to have been pulled
inward
with great force to get it
open, for it had been designed to open out onto the
hall.

"Master?"

She edged into the room,
lit by lanterns in all four corners. Still, the furniture looked
sinister; hunched dark things that might at any moment rise to
reveal themselves malevolent. Frowning, her gaze fell on the
master's robe lying in a heap beside his chair.

"Hello?"

Where did he go?
she wondered. And what kind of urgency had
possessed him to almost tear the door from its hinges?

Despite the reassurances
she whispered to herself, she felt as if lice were crawling all
over her. Her skin positively buzzed with apprehension. Though she
was still inclined to attribute the words she'd overheard earlier
to derangement, the last echoes of fever, they haunted her
now.

I saw Helen, telling me I needed to
die in order to save the children.

There was broken glass in
front of the chair. She set the lantern on the floor and began to
pick up the pieces, each one wet and reeking of brandy. It wouldn't
do to have the master return and step on the shards. The simple
task made her feel a little less uneasy. Perhaps he'd desperately
needed to use the bathroom and had thumped on the door until he
couldn't stand it any more. It was a reasonable theory, but one
that didn't sit at all well. Given the state of him, she doubted he
possessed the strength to all but yank the door out of its frame
and she wasn't that heavy a sleeper. She would have woken at the
sound of his summons, just as something had woken her
now.

Carefully rising, her
right hand full of glass, she picked up the lantern and looked
around the room one last time, just in case he had fallen and the
chair had concealed him from her sight. There was no one there.
Clucking her tongue in irritation at her own inability to stay
awake, to look after her ailing master, she turned, eyes fixed on
the shards clustered atop her palm.

A hiss.

She froze, her gaze drawn
by the shadow that slithered in the corner of her eye. Nothing
there.

"Master?"

A scuttling from above her
head.

Reluctantly, her skin
crawling with fear, she looked up.

The man-sized shadow of
the thing clinging to the ceiling leered at her, eyes burning with
white fire, and she screamed, glass forgotten and falling in a
shower to the floor.

With a horrible sucking
sound, the thing released its grip on the ceiling and fell toward
her.

24

"I was scared, you know,"
Kate shouted over the wind. "But I shouldn't have left him alone."
A pause. "Daddy, I mean."

"He's not alone. Mrs.
Fletcher is with him," Grady told her, but Mansfield's words
weighed heavily on his mind, playing in an endless loop that made
his head hurt
.
Everything about this night seemed predetermined, and
destined to end badly.

I could turn
around
, he thought suddenly, his heart
beating faster.
Go back, ride out of the
village and keep ridin' till dawn. Take Kate away from this
accursed place. At least I'll be savin' her life.

And yer
own
, another, less charitable part of him
said and he cursed under his breath. The prospect of avoiding a
confrontation with these things and their master thrilled him, as
did the idea of sparing Kate whatever consequences might come about
as a result, but he knew he'd never be able to live with knowing
that Neil might still have been alive, and waiting for him to come;
that he had just abandoned him to his fate because...

Because I'm scared to
death.

The horse staggered
slightly as they trod across a marshy patch of grass and Grady
quickly steered the mare away from the unstable ground. "Easy,
girl," he said. The light from the lanterns illuminated little in
the heavy rain, but he felt better having them. Plus, the frequent
flares of lightning aided him in navigating the treacherous
terrain. He couldn't begin to imagine what it would be like
traveling across the moors in total dark, particularly knowing that
there were creatures out here watching him---creatures that
considered him prey.

"What's out here, Grady?"
Kate asked, as if she'd read his thoughts. Frequently over the
years he'd felt as if she had some crude ability to tap into the
wavelengths of other people's musings, particularly his. He guessed
it was nothing more remarkable than the kind of affinity shared by
two people who have spent so much time together, and yet it never
ceased to amaze him. On this occasion, however, he wished he'd
guarded his thoughts more carefully.

"I'm not sure," he
said.

"That thing you told me
about," she said. "The thing that killed the man you were with that
day. Do you really think it's the Beast of Brent Prior?"

He shook his head. "No I
don't."

"What is it
then?"

Though he didn't want to
scare her too much, he knew there was little to be gained by lying,
and it wouldn't hurt to prepare her for whatever she might see out
here. "Somethin' else," he replied. "Somethin' worse."

"Worse? What could be
worse than a great big lumbering monster with fire for
eyes?"

A pack of
them
, he thought, but did
not say.

"Do you think it's out
here now?"

He forced a chuckle and
reached a hand back to pat her thigh. "Unlikely," he said, "but
even if they are, this gun'll scatter 'em right quick and in a
hurry." Even though he'd silently agreed with Fowler that guns
might prove useless against whatever these things resolved
themselves to be, he couldn't think of any other way to defend Kate
if they ended up facing them.

"They?"

Damn it
. "I wouldn't worry yerself about it, Kate. We're just goin'
to have a little chat with this man the Newman young fella was
talkin' about. See if he's seen Neil."

It was a lot more than
that, of course, and he knew Kate knew it too.

They rode on in the
silence and he was thankful that so far at least, he had not seen
any sign of those slinking shadows. While that didn't mean they
weren't there, it made it easier for him to hope that they might
make it to Callow House unchallenged.

The slate gray face of the Fox Tor
rose in the lamplight.

They were getting closer.

***

Kate's dream had turned to
nightmare in the blink of an eye. When she'd come home to find her
father sitting there waiting for her, she'd only been permitted a
fraction of the elation she'd always imagined she would feel when
he awoke from his torturous slumber, before the horror that had
clung to her since Neil's disappearance from the October Dance
reasserted itself. She'd hugged her father and kissed his cheek,
but she hadn't been with him. Not really. In her mind she'd been
battling with the guilt of not having stayed with her brother. But
would she have vanished too? It didn't matter. Neil was gone, and
maybe gone forever, and the thought of never seeing him again made
it difficult to draw breath.

She closed her eyes and
willed Neil to be all right. To reinforce her hope, she pictured
him waiting for them at that house, cold and scared but relieved
that they had come. Only then, once they knew he was safe, would
they truly be able to celebrate their father's return. They'd be
one big happy family once more, and everything would return to
normal.

She smiled feebly. It was a beautiful
thought.

But one she suspected would only ever
be realized in her dreams.

Worse, she could feel the
fear radiating from Grady in waves. She had never known him to be
so afraid and it added fuel to the fire of her own terror. Until
this moment, she hadn't understood how much she had depended on him
all these years, how much she loved him as if he were her father.
He had certainly slipped into the role during Father's illness
without any of them really realizing it. The fact that this was the
first time she had sensed such terror in him made her feel as if
the world itself might end tonight.

***

The room was alive. Neil
curled himself into a ball, hugging his knees so tightly his chest
hurt, his sightless eyes darting from side to side.

They were here; he could
sense them, could feel the passage of air as they circled him, and
smelled their foulness.

Monsters.

Another
whump
and a crackle of
sparks.

The room had grown
crowded. It was no longer just the two of them, Neil was sure of
it. He could sense them moving around the room, could hear the
tick-tick-ticking of their nails against the floor. Petrified, he
drew himself in further and struggled to block out the debate that
raged within him.

Grady, where are you?

---They left you.

No, they didn't. They
wouldn't.

---Of course they would. They
left you. Stephen is right. No one cares. No one ever cared about
you. Why would they? What good are you for
any
thing?

The voice was like an extension of the
vile things he could feel watching him from all sides.

They wouldn't leave me. They wouldn't.
Grady will come. Any minute now, I'll hear him coming.

---You're a fool to believe that. You're
alone because all you've ever done is strive to be left alone, and
now you'd better get to like it or accept these creatures as your
kin, just like your new Daddy says...