The String Diaries (37 page)

C
HAPTER
28

Aquitaine region, France

Now

From rich autumn light she stepped into a cloying abyss. The sun’s heat had roasted the air inside the mill; it was thick with the smell of dust and timber and disintegrating linen sacks. Underlying it was a fouler odour. Some animal had crawled in here recently to die.

The windows were caked in filth. They allowed scant sunlight to filter through. To Hannah’s left, the waterwheel’s main shaft entered the room through a hole in the wall. Upon it sat a huge metal pit wheel. As the pit wheel turned it rotated a cog on a separate axle, converting horizontal motion into vertical. A toothed spur wheel drove a second spinning shaft that disappeared through the ceiling to the milling room upstairs.

The machinery clacked and shook and knocked and creaked. Its vibrations lifted a fine haze of flour into the air around her.

Slowly Hannah’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. A collection of rusted farm tools were heaped in one corner. In another, a stack of firewood. Under a window stood the workbench Nate had used to patch the mill’s roof and reglaze its windows. On it rested a chipped blue coffee mug, a china plate, several offcuts of glass.

Leah sat cross-legged in the middle of the room. The girl’s pupils had dilated so much that her eyes looked like black holes. Her face was smudged with dirt and blood. A lump like a halved plum swelled on her forehead. Her skin was white. Her left cheek was lacerated.

But she was here. In this same room. Alive.

On the floor, opposite her, sat Jakab.

Utterly still, his back to Hannah, legs tucked beneath him, he perfectly mirrored Leah’s stance. He wore corduroy trousers, boots, an old army coat. Hannah would need only two steps to bring him within reach: the abomination from Gödöllö; the horror that had ripped through generations of her family like a sharpened scythe.

Her husband. Her mother and father. The grandfather she had never met. Erna Novák, little more than a name in an old diary, but a woman who had loved and feared and grieved and died. All of them gone. All because of this creature before her, this stalking beast.

She stared at the back of Jakab’s head – at the tanned skin of his neck, at his dark hair – and felt her stomach seizing, her mouth flooding with saliva. To be this close, within touching distance of the source of so much death and pain, made her nauseous. Waves of insanity and corruption seemed to flow from him. She felt buffeted by their swells.

Leah lifted her gaze to Hannah. The girl’s eyes were wild, lost. Her mouth hung slack.

Oh please God, am I too late? Has he ruined her already? Stolen away her mind?

She tightened her grip on the scalpel. Against Jakab, it was a mere talisman, but it was all she had. ‘Leah, get up. Come away from him.’

The girl remained still, as if transfixed by some spell he had woven.

‘
Leah
.’

Finally, her daughter blinked. ‘It’s OK, Mummy. He explained everything.’

Never before had Hannah heard that tone in Leah’s voice. It was caught somewhere between wonder and horror, denial and acceptance. ‘Darling, please. I don’t know what he’s said. But you know who he is. What he is. Anything he’s told you is a lie. I promise you that. Now stand up. Come away.’

Leah’s face tightened, as if she tried to communicate with more than mere words. ‘We don’t have to be afraid any more.’

‘You’re right. We don’t have to be afraid. Not of him – not ever again. Please, honey. Get up.’

Around them, the mill wheels clanked and turned. Dust shivered in the air. Floorboards vibrated. Leah untucked her feet from beneath her.

When the girl began to rise, Jakab copied her. Moving with preternatural grace, he unfolded his legs and pushed himself up from the floor: a single sinuous movement, like steam curling from a pot.

He turned and Hannah felt the breath whoosh from her lungs as if she had been kicked. Felt her fingers lose their grip on the jerrycan. Heard it thump to the floor. Felt her throat constricting as impossibly –
impossibly
– she found herself staring not at Jakab, not Jakab at all, but Nate.

Nate. Solid, incarnate. Standing before her.

Nate. Resurrected from the lifeless vessel she had abandoned at Llyn Gwyr.

The skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled, and when Hannah saw the animation in that soft expression she thought her heart would burst from her chest. Her knees buckled and she stumbled. Managed, just about, to stay on her feet. Felt the scalpel, slick with her sweat, begin to slip through her fingers.

It’s not him! You know it’s not him!

The jerrycan had tipped on to its side. Fuel glugged, gushing from the nozzle, spreading across the floor. It soaked into the wooden boards beneath her feet, staining them black.

‘Han,’ he said. And it was Nate’s voice. Unmistakably Nate’s. His timbre and his accent. His playfulness and his strength.

A wretched sound bled out of her as she stared at him and wanted it to be true. She forced her eyes shut, squeezing out tears. Opened them again. Saw his face, his beautiful face. ‘You’re dead,’ she whispered.

Nate sighed. His face creased, and he shook his head. ‘Oh, Han. Don’t say that. How can you stand there and say that? Don’t write me off. Don’t write
us
off.’

‘You killed him.’

‘Killed him? He’s right here. He’s
me
. I’m everything he was and more. I can take care of you, protect you, love you. Look at me, Hannah. Look at this man before you. How long have I searched? How long have I committed my life to looking for you, only ever for you? And now suddenly you’re here, and I’m here, and Leah is here. And we can be together, the three of us, sustaining something you thought you’d lost for ever. Do you know how many times I’ve dreamt of this moment, dreamt of the things I’d say to you, the promises I’d make?’

‘You killed all of them.’

He shook his head. ‘It was a different time. A different world. A lifetime ago. For you, several lifetimes. Whatever happened before, this is where we are now. This moment. A turning point. No one can change the past. But I’m your Nate. The Nate you want me to be, the Nate you’re so desperate to have back. I’m here, Hannah. Just let me in. That’s all you have to do. We can’t change the past but together we can make the future. Just give me a chance and let me in.’

Behind him, Leah retreated to the far wall, her eyes huge.

Nate smiled, reached out a hand. ‘Hannah?’

From the heap of old tools in the corner, Leah picked up a wooden fork handle and swung it at her father’s head. When it connected with Nate’s skull it made a sound like a cricket bat striking a ball.

Not Nate.

Jakab
.

Hannah blinked away her confusion. The creature wearing her dead husband’s face crashed to its knees and pitched over on one side, eyes rolling in their sockets.

Leah dropped the fork handle. She raised her hand to her mouth. Chewed her fingers.

‘Leah, that was so brave of you,’ Hannah told her. ‘So very brave. And this is all going to be over soon. I promise. But first, I need you to go outside.’

The girl looked up at her.

‘Leah, go on. Go outside and wait there until I come out.’

‘Will you come with me?’

Hannah nodded her head. ‘I will. But first I have to finish this. You don’t need to see this part. Go on.’

Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Can’t we just leave? Right now? Do you have to hurt him? He looks so much like Daddy.’

‘Please, scamp.’

Leah stumbled across the floor of the mill. When she reached the door, she hesitated, turned back. Hannah discerned something in the girl’s expression that was grim and dark and ultimately accepting. And then she was gone, leaving Hannah alone with Jakab.

Around her, wheels turned, axles rotated. Upstairs, the millstones rasped and scraped as they ground together. Dust motes hovered and sparkled in the thickening air.

Hannah gripped the scalpel. Crouched over Jakab.

This, then, was where it ended for him. She wondered, if he had known his last moments would find him lying in filth before the woman who rejected him, if he would have asked himself what he had achieved from all his killing, what he had gained.

As she raised the scalpel to his throat, tensing her arm, preparing to plunge the blade into his carotid artery, he opened his eyes.

Not Nate’s loving eyes.

Not Gabriel’s magical eyes.

Not even the eyes of a demon.

These were too ordinary. Lustreless. Dull.

In them she saw madness and she saw fear.

Blood skated down the side of Jakab’s face where the fork handle had opened his skin. His smile was forced, tight with pain. ‘For a moment there,’ he said, ‘you considered it.’

She shook her head.

‘Yes. Just for a second or two. But you did.’

‘Never.’

‘If you do this, Hannah, it’ll make you no better than me.’

‘That’s a joke.’

‘You’ll really watch me die all over again?’

Scowling, she raised the scalpel, scanned his neck, saw the flicker where his artery pulsed. She glanced upon his face a final time. Not Nate’s features, she told herself firmly, but the features of a killer who had stalked her through time, and whose time had finally run out.

Not Nate’s face but so like it. Jakab was right, though. In the end, she couldn’t watch, couldn’t witness that awful sundering a second time.

Hannah scrunched up her eyes and plunged down with the blade. And even as she did, she knew she had hesitated a fraction too long and her opportunity had been lost. She felt his fingers encircle her wrist, gripping her so hard that she gasped in pain. He leaped to his feet, dragging her with him, and when she tried to transfer the scalpel from her trapped hand to the other, he wrenched her arm so savagely that it tumbled from her fingers and clattered across the floor.

Jakab panted, blood dripping from his face, mouth twisted into a snarl. ‘You actually would have done it, too, you crazy bitch. You really thought it would be that easy? You thought I’d
allow
you to
kill
me?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not even
here
for you, Hannah. I’m not even
interested
in you. It’s Leah who’s important. You’ve confused her. Poisoned her against me. Filled her head with nonsense and lies just like Nicole did with you. But it’s not too late this time. She’s young enough to heal. Once she’s out of your reach.’

Hannah swung her left fist at him, intending to batter his face. He caught that wrist too and when he yanked her arms apart it took everything she had not to scream.

If you scream, Leah will come. Whatever happens, whatever he does, you can’t allow that.

She drove her knee up into his groin. Eyes flaring, he pivoted and tossed her across the room. Hannah flew towards the mill machinery. Fearing she was going to be sucked into the gears, she put out a hand to grab hold of something and slow her momentum. Her fingers snagged on the teeth of the huge spur wheel.

It took less than a second. The cog yanked her in a half-circle, and as it dragged her hand into the teeth of the pinion wheel, three of her fingers burst apart in a wet spray.

Pain like white fire in her brain.

Don’t scream.

The shredded meat of her hand had fouled the pinion. Its axle groaned and flexed. The pinion’s teeth stuttered as they ground against bone.

Don’t scream.

Her hand was a pulped mess. Severed fingers; torn skin. In the gloom of the mill, the blood painting the machinery looked like oil. Hannah tried to pull what remained of her hand out of the gears. Pain shrieked in her head. She was caught.

Across the room, Jakab smirked. ‘That’s unfortunate.’ He ambled over to her, peering down at her ruined hand.

Her ears buzzed. Her eyelids fluttered.

So this is where you die. In a stinking millhouse.

You failed, Hannah. And now he wins, and you lose. And you die, and he gets Leah. He gets to destroy Leah’s life because you failed
.

Except she wouldn’t let that happen. She didn’t care about dying. Even if it
was
in a stinking millhouse. She wouldn’t let Jakab have her daughter. No way. She wouldn’t risk the prospect of an afterlife where she had to explain that.

‘I’ll say one thing for you, Hannah Wilde. You never gave up.’ Jakab glanced around the room, and when he looked back at her he saw that she held a butane lighter in her fingers. Her thumb rested on the flint wheel.

The jerrycan had emptied a gallon of petrol across the floorboards. The stench of the fumes was thick in the air. One spark. That was all she needed.

Something cracked and splintered in her trapped hand, and the spinning pinion snapped away a shard of bone. A shockwave raced up her arm and exploded in her head.

As fast and as lithe as a wild animal, Jakab sprang at her and snatched the lighter from her fingers. Shaking his head, he tucked it into the pocket of his army coat. ‘Insane,’ he said. ‘Totally insane.’

She moaned, then. Moaned with grief at the thought of what would happen after she had gone. ‘Nate.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Oh, Nate. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, I failed. I let her down. Leah.
Leah
 . . .’

Jakab approached her. Eyes hungry. Head cocked to one side.

Not Jakab. Nate.

Hannah shook her head.

No, not Nate.
Not
Nate.

The creature with her husband’s face took another step closer to her and lifted its hand to her cheek. Fingers caressed her skin. ‘Hush,’ it said. ‘It’ll all be over soon. Hush.’

It leaned towards her face. Nate –
not
Nate –
Jakab
. The pinion rotating on her ruined hand, on her crushed bones, clattered and wobbled on its axle. It bumped and stuttered.

A ghoul filled her vision. And now it was kissing her, although somehow it was Nate’s mouth, unmistakably Nate’s lips upon hers, kissing her the way he had always kissed her, while his fingers traced a line down her cheek, along her throat. Now his hand was at her breast, squeezing, caressing, and his kiss became more urgent, and Hannah felt her knees sag, and then she did what she never thought she would do, never thought she
could
do, and found herself opening her lips to him. Even as his tongue entered her mouth and she felt the heat of his body against hers, she was digging her free hand out of her jeans.