Thorn (48 page)

‘We're very concerned,' she said. ‘We don't know how far outside Thornacre they've got. Can someone come right away?'

It was a different voice to the one who had asked the questions about Quincy, which was not surprising since this was the middle of the night. ‘How dangerous?' it asked. ‘Violent?'

‘Well, yes. Potentially.'

There appeared to be a hasty consultation, and then another, more authoritative, slightly older voice came on. ‘Sergeant Pomfret here. How long is it since the patients got out? Do you know?'

‘Not precisely. But we think not very long.'

‘All right, we're on our way to you. Are the gates shut? Have any of them actually got out of the grounds?'

‘I don't know, we're checking on that now. We're in a bit of confusion here.'

‘We'll be with you at once,' said the voice. ‘Can I have your name?'

Thalia had been ready for this. She said, ‘I'm the sister in charge of them.' Her tone had a strong flavour of ‘Who did you think I was, you fool?' ‘I'm sorry, someone's calling, I'll have to go. Please hurry. We won't unlock the gates, but if you call through the intercom we'll let you in.'

Saying she was the sister was another risk, but like the others it was not a very big one. People at Thornacre would ask one another who had phoned the police and no one would know and everyone would assume that somebody else had done it. It did not matter. The important thing now was to get into the grounds unseen through Harris's tunnel, and get Imogen out to October House.

Imogen had missed the broken glass, but the drop from the window had jarred her heels and sent a shuddering pain up her spine and into the base of her neck. She almost overbalanced because of not having the use of her arms, but she managed to keep upright.

The obvious thing to do now was to go round the side of the house to the front and somehow rouse them. She had no idea whether there would be a bell or how entry was gained, but there would presumably be something.

She had landed in a patch of half-cultivated garden, probably once a small kitchen or herb garden which had been neglected. This was lucky because to have landed with bare feet on concrete or even gravel would have been pretty nasty. She stood in the darkness for several minutes, trying to get her bearings, and then set off, trying to close her mind to the shadows which might be hiding the appalling things who had broken into the wash house and trying not to think about what she had seen. I'll face that one afterwards, thought Imogen. When I'm safe and when this is all over. Then I'll face it.

The night was filled with little stirrings and rustlings and it was unbelievably eerie to be creeping towards the house's front like this. Imogen expected at any minute to be confronted by one of the grotesque creatures who had broken into the wash house. If that happened, she would run like the furies into the night and hide in the undergrowth and the trees. But of course it would not happen; she would reach the front quite safely and ring the bell or manage to sound the door knocker and people would come running. Dr Sterne would certainly come. She would hold on to the thought of Dr Sterne getting her out of this.

Twice she froze because surely there had been the sound of someone creeping along behind her, and once she thought there was a flicker of movement on the edge of her vision, as if something huge and lumpish was lumbering silently out of the clump of trees fringing the carriageway.

She went warily on, staying close to the side of the building, keeping in the deep shadow that it cast. Another twenty steps and she would reach the corner; she would only have to turn to the left and surely, oh surely she would be at Thomacre's front. Eighteen steps, fifteen . . . Almost there. Nothing's happened, no one's come lunging out at you, Imogen. Keep going.

She had actually reached the corner, and there ahead of her was the blessed sight of a deep porch like a church, with an old-fashioned bell pull on one side. She could not reach either hand to it, but if she could get to it, she could lean on it and keep leaning until someone came.

She was within a dozen steps of the porch when the darkness suddenly and terrifyingly coalesced, and coming towards her with a horrid lurching, shambling gait were two – no, three! – of the macabre creatures who had broken into the old wash house. They were blocking her way to the house's front.

A wave of panic engulfed Imogen and she backed away at once, stumbling in the other direction, into the safe darkness. The ground sloped down, and several times she slipped and almost fell, but each time she managed to right herself and keep going. She thought she must be on Thornacre's main driveway; she could make out immense gates up ahead, backed with sheets of iron so that no one could see in or out. On each side of the gates was a high brick wall, and in the thin, cold moonlight it was possible to see that the bricks were old and dry-looking and covered with lichen and moss.

Coming up out of the ground, seeming to rise up from the bracken and undergrowth and wreathed in shadows and twining ivy, was the thin, hungry outline of a woman.

The last person Imogen had been expecting to see. Her aunt, Thalia Caudle. And at her side was the hunchback.

The hunchback grabbed her at once, and this time there was no doubt about the lasciviousness of his embrace. He clutched her to him, grunting repulsively, and a dribble of saliva slobbered on to Imogen's neck, wetting her skin and the edge of her nightgown. She shuddered and tried to kick him, but he had a firm hold and he half carried, half dragged her into what looked like an ancient gully sunk deep into the ground near the old wall. There was a rising stench of dirt and dead or decaying things and as he carried her along, Thalia ahead of them, Imogen felt a wave of nausea. If the hunchback came this way often it was no wonder he smelt so disgusting.

The walls and the ceiling of the tunnel were rounded; it was probably an old drain. Their footsteps echoed hollowly as they went, and Thalia's torch showed up the rusting iron of the drain and the cracks where tree roots had forced through. They looked like pale, blind worms and Imogen shuddered.

She was just starting to think they had been down here for ever and that she could not bear it much longer when the tunnel ended abruptly. In front of them was an iron ladder nailed vertically into the wall. A dim dusk-light filtered down, and as Thalia grasped the lower rungs and climbed up, she was silhouetted blackly against it. The hunchback waited for her to reach the top, and then slung Imogen over his shoulder and swarmed after her. This time Imogen did not dare to struggle in case he dropped her and she went tumbling down on to the tunnel floor. As he went up the ladder her face was pressed against the hump of curving bone on his back.

They came out into a small copse where a car was parked. The hunchback bundled Imogen into the back and got in next to her. As Thalia drove away, there was just time to catch a glimpse of Thornacre in the wing mirror, and to see that after all someone had raised the alarm, because lights were blazing in almost every window.

As the car drove away from Thornacre, the hunchback turned suddenly and stared through the rear window. In the dim light, his face wore a look of gloating triumph.

The tenuous, fragile plan that Dan had concocted had to be put into operation at once. It would not be a very pleasant thing to do, but it would be even more unpleasant to die at Thalia Caudle's hands and the hunchback's, knowing that his body would be used in some gruesome ritual involving the resurrection of the thing lying inside the freezer.

The thing lying inside the freezer . . .

The plan was based on a mixture of trickery and blackmail and barefaced effrontery – what in Adam Cadence might have been described as ‘dash' but what in Dan was sheer desperation. It might work spectacularly well or it might fail ignominiously, but even failure was preferable to simply sitting here, hands folded, waiting for night to fall. Dan refused to consider the prospect of failure, ignominious or otherwise.

Thalia or the hunchback had judged the chain precisely. Dan had already tested its length in every direction, and discovered that he could reach quite a large section of the cellar. He could not reach the door, and he could not reach the electric socket and plug powering the freezer itself because they were on the far side and the chain brought him up short. But he could reach the freezer lid.

He propped it wide open, having first plundered the boxes of household jumble and found a couple of old pewter jugs that were about the right height and size. Adam Cadence would have been able to knock up a super-structured contrivance, or make a block and tackle out of a couple of spent matchsticks, but Dan thought the jugs were pretty effective for the job, which was to hold the lid to its widest extent so that there was no risk of it descending unexpectedly on his head. Thalia had left him his torch, and he propped it so that the thin beam would shine straight on to the freezer's interior. And then he reached inside.

It was excruciatingly difficult. The freezer was lined with its own ice, and Dan's fingers and wrists were aching with cold within the first couple of minutes. The cuffs of his jacket were absorbing the freezing moisture as well, and he pushed them back impatiently and gritted his teeth. If you get out of here in one piece, you can lie in a scaldingly hot bath for five hours.

The thing that had once been Edmund Caudle, and that had also been three hopeful, slightly lustful young men, was wedged tightly into the freezer and packed with ice. There was a bad moment when Dan felt the handless arms. Revulsion scudded across his skin, and he remembered that there was still a grisly final operation to be carried out. Quincy, Thalia had said. Imogen's friend. Then this was as much to save the unknown Quincy as anyone. Dan forced himself to go on.

The ice would plainly have to be chipped away. Dan looked around for something to use for this. What about the steel strips banding both the sea chests? A section from one, six or eight inches long, snapped free of the dry, brittle wood easily enough, and he returned to the task.

There was a cracking sound as the last layer of ice splintered and in the enclosed cellar it echoed like the crack of doom. Dan cast a quick look over his shoulder. It would be exactly like Thalia to have crept down the stairs unnoticed and be standing there watching. But nothing moved and nothing stood watching him, and the shadows were quiescent.

Slowly, inch by careful inch, Dan got the appalling thing out. It came stiffly and awkwardly like a wooden doll, and it felt exactly like a monstrous piece of frozen butcher's meat. Don't think about that! Think of it as simply an instrument of escape. But beneath the forced calm, Dan's mind was skittering. Up you come, Edmund, upsadaisy now. Let's sit you in the chair and dust off the nasty bits of ice . . . Dan suspected that he was not wholly sane at the moment, but for heaven's sake, who could be sane prising a frozen body – lumps of frozen joined-together bodies – out of a deepfreeze!

There was a truly horrific moment when the thing was out of the container and standing vertical, with Dan holding it in the travesty of an embrace, keeping it upright. His hands slithered down over the glazed skin and the body rocked and almost fell back. Dan snatched at it but his fingers were numb from the cold, and it slithered back from him, crashing to the floor. A flurry of ice splinters flew out from the skull and shoulders. Dan shuddered and set himself to drag the thing back up and then to prop it up in the chair facing the cellar steps.

The longer Thalia left it before coming back down here the better. The more the body could thaw out the better as well. The instant Thalia saw it, the instant she saw that Dan had tampered with her grisly plan, she would be across the cellar like a wild cat. And if Dan was quick, and not squeamish about striking a female, he could surely overpower her, get the key to the chain and escape.

He switched off the torch to save the batteries – he could flick it on the second he heard her coming. The darkness closed down, absolute and stifling, and pitchier than the pitchiest black night. There was no sound except the steady drip-drip of the ice melting as the body began to thaw.

A
s Harris carried Imogen down the stairs of October House, she had the feeling that the dark evil of the ancient enchanted dream forest was returning. Wherever this place was, it had the same clotting malevolence.

Thalia had taken down an old-fashioned oil lamp from a hook in the large, stone-flagged kitchen, and she was leading the way down, holding it aloft as she went. Her shadow flickered grotesquely on the stone walls, and the long, dark mackintosh she was wearing swirled around her ankles like a cloak.

Imogen was very frightened indeed by now, but she was managing to maintain a semblance of calm. The situation was so wildly unreal that she was no longer sure if it was really happening. It was entirely possible that she was still partly in the forest nightmare.

Thalia unlocked a small door at the foot of the steps, and as it swung open, a sour stench of age and mildew and mice gusted out, and with it something else. Something rotten and tainted. Imogen's stomach began to churn and for a truly terrible moment she was back in the Hampstead graveyard with Dr Sterne and the others, uncovering her mother's coffin. She was smelling the appalling breath of corruption as the lid came up, and then seeing the twisted, screaming thing inside . . . Don't think about it. Concentrate on what this is all about and on getting free. I can't believe that Thalia has brought me down here like this. Clearly she's mad – oh God, yes, Sybilla and Lucienne . . . Oh God, then this might be even worse than I thought.

Thalia had stopped dead on the threshold of what seemed to be an inner cellar, and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Even before she screamed like a scalded cat and bounded forward, Imogen understood that something had gone very wrong. Whatever her aunt's plan had been, whatever mad, warped logic lay behind all this, something had gone wrong. And then the hunchback pushed Imogen forward and she skidded several feet and came up against the left-hand wall in a confused tumble. It was a moment before she managed to sit up, but when she did sit up, she saw everything with terrible clarity.