Thorn (42 page)

Dan was half prepared, but there was still a fraction of time when his senses spun in incredulous confusion. He took a tighter hold on the torch and the world steadied slightly, but the thing inside the white coffin was still there.

Lying packed in ice, remote and terrible, was the unclothed body of a human being, either newly dead or in some kind of suspended animation. But even for a dead body there was something very wrong indeed about it.

Dan forced himself to look properly and he forced his mind to analyse what he was seeing. The body was not complete; the arms ended at the forearms, but apart from that it had torso, shoulders, thighs, legs. It had genitals as well – it was unmistakably male. And it was segmented, jointed and hinged as all bodies are jointed and hinged.

But the joints did not fuse and the segments did not match. The shoulders and arms had been aligned with the neck, but the alignment was not quite true and jagged edges of skin overlapped; the hips and thighs lay at unnatural angles to the torso. The body was like a puppet whose limbs had been dislocated, or a human whose shoulders and arms and legs had been twisted out at the roots and left flaccid and useless. The impression of something broken and flung down was inescapable, but also inescapable was the impression of something that might, under certain conditions, animate and sit jerkily up and climb out of the white coffin, and walk disjointedly forward . . . Stop it, Daniel!

There did not seem to be any putrefaction – Dan supposed that this was due to the sub-zero temperature – but here and there the skin was mottled and darkened like raw meat, and frozen blood caked several places. It was impossible not to visualise someone hacking the requisite lump of flesh away, arranging it more or less in place, like building up a model, and disposing offhandedly of the unwanted parts. How? demanded Dan's mind. How did she manage that?

He had recognised the head at once. He recognised the hair that was glistening with white frost but which would normally be golden, and he recognised the eyes – closed now – and the narrow, high-bridged nose. Edmund Caudle. Thalia's dead son, entombed in an ice coffin, provided with this motley collection of human flesh and bone and gristle; waiting to be stitched together in a kind of insane grisly patchwork. Dear God, she's building him up, she's going to recreate him out of human scraps and human lumps of flesh. This isn't Bluebeard's dungeon after all, it's Frankenstein's laboratory.

It was as he straightened up from the freezer that he heard, from overhead, the sound of footsteps crossing the stone floor of the kitchen, and descending the stairs.

Dan had left the outer cellar door open, and although there was not very much light down here, there was some.

He turned to face the door, his heart hammering against his ribs. Someone coming . . . Something wicked this way comes . . .

A wavering light shone on the wall of the stairs, showing up the crumbling stonework and the cold dankness. Dan backed against the wall, searching for the knife he had picked up in the kitchen. But if it's Thalia, would you really use a knife on her? Could you? After all those nights together? And what if it isn't Thalia?

Her shadow appeared before she did; impossibly elongated, the shadow of a thing barely human, a massive, fantastic creature prowling down into its dungeons at dead of night, sniffing out the scent of human meat . . . Dan shut the thought off before it could grow into something even more monstrous, and clenched his fists, ready to spring.

And then she was there, framed in the sullen light trickling down from the moonlit kitchen, holding aloft a square old-fashioned oil lamp that flickered in the slight current of air and showered her with its eerie glow, so that for an incredible moment it was as if she wore a rippling crimson cloak.

There was a moment when she stared at him, and Dan waited. Then she said, very softly, ‘Daniel.' There was a pause, and then, ‘My dearest boy, what a fool you've made of me.'

She stepped aside, and there was a scrambling, scuttling sound on the stairs and a second figure joined Thalia and stood at her side, grinning horridly. Dan, his mind by now ready to accept anything that might materialise down here, saw that even in this Thalia was conforming to the traditional villainess pattern: she had her familiar, and it was the obligatory ugly hunchbacked dwarf.

Between his hands, the hunchback held a massive iron spanner and a length of thin chain.

Dan was aware of his mind working on several levels all at the same time.

On the topmost level was simple self-preservation, and he was already trying to assess the hunchback's strength and the swing he might give the heavy spanner. But what about Thalia? If Thalia came just a little further into the cellar he could probably grab her and use her as a hostage. He remembered he still had the kitchen knife, and he began to reach stealthily into the pocket where he had put it.

On another level entirely, he was acknowledging at last that Thalia was mad, she was madder than any of the mad ladies born into the Ingram family put together, and he was aware of strong revulsion at the knowledge.

At the deepest, most primeval level of all was a crawling fear, because the emotions and the compulsions that were swirling around in this shadowy cellar were very dark and very dreadful, and they had nothing to do with grief for a dead child. They were born out of ancient rituals learned at the black heart of pagan midnights, time-crusted rites celebrated beneath a sickle moon, Devil worship and men's futile attempts to outwit death . . .

He became aware that Thalia was saying something about a renaissance, even, incredibly, a resurrection. Her eyes rested on the white coffin, and there was the terrible light of the fanatic in them. ‘He is almost ready, you see,' she said. ‘He is waiting only for hands and heart. And the hands will be artist's hands.'

‘And then?'

Thalia looked back at Dan in surprise. ‘And then Edmund can live again,' she said.

I don't believe any of it, thought Dan, staring at her. It's pulp horror fiction. Or I'm still suffering from whatever drug she was giving me, and I'm hallucinating.

He said, carefully, ‘How did you do it, Thalia?' And thought that if he could keep her talking, if he could lull her into a false sense of security, he could inch forward and pounce. He found himself flinching from the thought of striking her, of using violence towards her. But if he could grab her and put the knife against her throat, he might be able to use her as hostage to keep the hunchback away.

He said, ‘You took the head, didn't you? Somehow you stole Edmund's head out of his coffin and used it to make everyone think Imogen was insane.'

A smile curved her lips. ‘Edmund . . .' she said, her voice blurred and slurry with terrible passion. ‘Yes, Dan, I took his head. It was so easy – the undertakers were so trusting. So sympathetic to the poor bereaved mother. The last private farewell, the closing of the coffin.' Her eyes, which had been unfocused, suddenly snapped back into awareness. ‘And it was so easy,' said Thalia. ‘It was so very easy to get the bitch locked away.'

‘Why did you hate Imogen so much?'

‘Because she lived when Edmund died,' said Thalia, sounding surprised that Dan should ask this. ‘Because she would have had everything that should have been Edmund's. I couldn't allow that to happen. I wanted her punished. I wanted them all punished. Most of all, I wanted Edmund back.'

‘Resurrection,' said Dan, softly.

‘Yes.' The word came out eagerly, as if she was pleased to find him so instantly comprehending. ‘He came to me every night, after he died, Dan. I used to wait for darkness because it was when he would be with me. Sometimes when I couldn't wait for darkness, I went to the flat and drew the curtains and locked the door . . .'

Dan, feeling sick, said, ‘Because you had part of him there already.'

‘I could stroke his poor mutilated face. I could talk to it. It was all I had left of him. And after a while I knew what he wanted.' She paused, and Dan waited, hardly daring to breathe in case the spell was broken.

He said, ‘You used your charity work, didn't you? That was where you found your victims.' Keep talking, Thalia, because the more I can find out before I jump on you, the better.

‘That's intelligent of you, Dan. Yes, it was almost all through the charity work, although I never saw them as victims, you know. They were sacrifices. Libations. But yes, they all came from the boring endless charity work. Committees to help drop-outs, misfits, homeless. Everyone thought I was so good, so selfless. And perhaps at the beginning I was. But after Edmund died . . .

‘You killed the most suitable,' said Dan with mounting horror.

‘Yes. But I've only taken four, no more than that. Counting Quincy, there will only be four.' There was a note almost of placation, as if she was saying, only that small number. Nobody could blame me for so few.

‘Quincy?' said Dan.

‘Imogen's friend. I need her hands.
Artist
's hands,' said Thalia. ‘And I could easily have taken more. You would be surprised how many of the homeless or the drug addicts or the drunks were once young people of great promise.'

‘I wouldn't.' This had to be the maddest conversation anyone had ever had. ‘It's often the truly gifted people who crack.'

Thalia said, ‘I took only the best. Only those in Edmund's image. The first was a young man who was a student of law, but a keen athlete in his spare time. He was lean and lissom.' A pause, and a small, secret smile. ‘He took to drugs though, that young man. I found him through one of my very early committees – a counselling service for one of the student bodies. The heroin was already starting to destroy him by then, and he was easily lured,' said Thalia, and again there was the travesty of a smile. A lady remembering a past and pleasant lover. Dan wondered if she would remember him like that. No, she would not, because he was not going to die.

He said, with cold politeness, ‘I hope he wasn't HIV positive, Thalia.'

She laughed. ‘Of course he was not, Dan. None of them were. Do you think I wouldn't have checked that? The counselling service was very particular about its records.'

‘Who else?'

‘Oh, next was a young French boy who had been studying dancing with the Ballet Rambert. His ankle was badly broken in a car crash, and he had to give up dancing. He became clinically depressed as a result. Again that was the student counselling service.'

‘A useful source,' said Dan, politely.

‘Very.' She paused, and then said, ‘The last was a young Irishman, a Roman Catholic ordinand struggling with the vow of celibacy.' This time the smile was wolfish and Dan thought: she enjoyed that one! ‘Ironically he came to talk to the French boy,' said Thalia. ‘We met over discussions about the boy's rehabilitation.' A quick gesture with one hand. ‘You see? Only the very, very best. Strength and beauty and music and philosophy. And art.'

Dan said, ‘Quincy?'

‘Yes. Edmund must be given every gift and every grace, exactly as the bitch-creature Imogen was given. And Quincy is immensely talented. Edmund will have artist's hands, sensitive and gifted.'

So Quincy, whoever she is, is not yet dead, thought Dan. ‘Yes, I see,' he said. His mind was still racing, but he asked, very softly, ‘And what about the heart, Thalia?'

Thalia took a moment to reply, but when she did, Dan felt as if he had been plunged neck deep into a freezing cold lake of black water.

‘The heart,' she said, softly. ‘The final ingredient. A fresh, warm,
living
heart. Tomorrow night I shall extract the sweetest revenge of all on Imogen, who lived when she should have died in Edmund's place. Tomorrow at midnight Imogen will be brought here and as dawn breaks I shall remove her beating heart so that Edmund can live.'

‘You're mad,' said Dan, staring at her in horror. ‘You're absolutely mad. You do know that?'

‘Tomorrow, Dan, we shall see which of us is mad and which is sane,' said Thalia, and nodded to the hunchback. ‘Knock him out,' she said. ‘And then tie him up and leave him down here.' She paused, and the smile lifted her lips again, but now it was the cruel, thin smile of the ogress. Margot, thought Dan. ‘Because since we have him,' said the ogress, in her attractive, slightly husky voice, ‘it would be a pity not to make use of him.'

It had afforded Thalia a degree of pleasure to relive, however briefly, those weeks before she left London, searching for the young men who would make fitting sacrifices. There had been such dark, sensuous pleasure in luring them to bed. She thought that no one had guessed and even if anyone had, there was nothing criminal about ladies of a certain age lusting after the sweet young bodies of boys.

She had loved all three of the young men who had died. The young lawyer so hungry for heroin that he would do anything to get it, hiring his body to women – or men – who would pay enough. He had been easy to lure to the London flat, and easy to kill while he was fathoms down in the drug-induced visions.

The dancer had been easy as well. He had been embittered and sunk deep in self-pity, but he had possessed sufficient vanity to be flattered at the half-shy, half-voracious suggestion. Thalia had known that he had been framing in his mind how he would tell this story to his contemporaries: the lonely older woman, greedy for satisfaction, but I satisfied her. Thalia had been proud of her performance with that one. He had never once guessed what lay behind the invitation, and he had died still not knowing.

The young priest had been the sweetest conquest of all. He had come to bed with a kind of helpless anger. He had been inexperienced but violently passionate, as if he had banked down his body's needs for many years and could not keep them banked down any longer. He had wept in her arms afterwards, praying for forgiveness, and Thalia had held him to her while she pushed the glinting point of the skewer into the base of his skull. His God would probably deal harshly with him for dying in what he himself had considered mortal sin.