At Wrokeby, the house-goblin was no longer playing poltergeist. He lurked in corners and crannies, in the folds of curtains, in the spaces under shadows. The newcomer did not appear to notice him but he sensed that sooner or later she would sweep through every nook and niche, scouring the house of unwanted inmates. He watched her when he dared, peering out of knotholes and plaster-cracks. He was a strange wizened creature, stick-thin and undersized even for a goblin, with skin the colour of ageing newspaper and a long pointed face like a hairless rat. His name when he had last heard it was Dibbuck, though he had forgotten why. The piebald cat which prowled the corridors could see him or scent him, and hunted him like the rodent he resembled, but so far he had been too quick for her. He had known the terrain for centuries; the cat was an invader, on unfamiliar ground. But the presence of Nehemet made him more nervous and furtive than ever. Yet still he crept and spied, half in fascination, half in terror, knowing in the murky recesses of his brain that the house in his care was being misused, its heritage defiled and its atmosphere contaminated for some purpose he could not guess.
The smaller sitting room now had black velvet curtains and no chairs, with signs and sigils painted on the bare floor where once there had been Persian rugs. A pale fire burned sometimes on a hearth long unused, but the goblin would not enter the room then, fearing the cold hiss of its unseen flames and the flickering glow that probed under the door. Instead, he ventured to the cellar, hiding in shadows as old as the house itself. The wine racks had been removed and shelves installed, stacked with bottles of unknown liquids and glass jars whose contents he did not want to examine too closely. One bottle stood on a table by itself, with a circle drawn around it and cabalistic words written in red along the perimeter. It had a crystal stopper sealed in wax, as if the contents were of great value, yet it appeared empty: he could see the wall through it. But there came an evening when he saw it had clouded over, filled with what looked like mist, and in the mist was a shape that writhed against the sides, struggling to get out. He skittered out of the room, and did not return for many days.
On the upper floors he found those Fitzherberts who had stayed this side of Death, their shrunken spirits rooted in age-old patterns of behaviour, clinging to passions and hatreds, the causes of which were long forgotten. They dwelt in the past seeing little of the real world, animate memories endowed with a glimmer of thought, an atom of being. Yet even they had felt an unfamiliar chill spreading through every artery of the house. ‘What is this?’ asked Sir William, in the church tower. ‘Who is she, to come here and disturb us—we who have been here so long? This is all that we have.’
‘I do not know,’ said the goblin, ‘but when she passes, I feel a draught blowing straight from eternity.’
The ghost faded from view and the goblin skulked the passageways, alone with his dread. At last he went back to the cellar, drawn, as are all werefolk, by the imminence of strong magic, mesmerised and repelled.
She wore a green dress which appeared to have no seams, adhering to her body like a living growth, whispering when she moved. There were threads of dull red in the material like the veins in a leaf. Her shadow leaped from wall to wall as she lit the candles, and her hair lifted although the air was stifling and still. The cat followed her, its skin puckered into gooseflesh, arching its back against her legs. There was a smell in the cellar that did not belong there, a smell of plants and earth and uncurling fronds: the goblin was an indoor creature so it took him a while to identify it, although his elongated nose quivered with more-than-human sensitivity. He avoided looking at the woman directly, lest she feel his gaze. Instead he watched her sidelong, catching the flicker of white fingers as she touched flasks and pots, checking their contents, unscrewing the occasional lid, sniffing, replacing. And all the while she talked to her feline companion in a ripple of soft words. ‘These herbs are running low…the slumbertop toadstools are too dry…these worm eggs will hatch if the air reaches them…’ At the end of one shelf he saw a jar he had not noticed before, containing a pair of eyeballs floating in some clear fluid. He could see the brown circle of iris and the black pupil, and broken fragments of blood vessel trailing around them. He knew they could not be alive but they hung against the glass, fixed on her, moving when she moved…
He drew back, covering his face, afraid even to brush her thought with his crooked stare. When he looked again, she was standing by a long table. It was entirely taken up by an irregular object some six feet in length, bundled in cloth. Very carefully she uncovered it, crooning as if to a child, and Dibbuck smelt the odour more strongly—the smell of a hungry forest, where the trees claw at one another in their fight to reach the sun. Her back was turned towards him, screening much of it from his view, but he could make out a few slender branches, a torn tap-root, the leaves that trembled at her caress. She moistened it with drops from various bottles, murmuring a sing-song chant which might have been part spell, part lullaby. It had no tune but its tunelessness invaded the goblin’s head, making him dizzy. When she had finished she covered the sapling again, taking care not to tear even the corner of a leaf.
He thought muzzily: ‘It is evil. It should be destroyed.’ But his small store of courage and resource was almost exhausted.
‘The workmen come tomorrow,’ she told the cat. ‘They will repair the conservatory, making it proof against weather and watching eyes. Then my Tree may grow in safety once more.’ The cat mewed, a thin, angry sound. The woman threw back her head as if harkening to some distant cry, and the candleflames streamed sideways, and a wind blew from another place, tasting of dankness and dew, and leaf-shadows scurried across the floor. Then she laughed, and all was quiet.
The goblin waited some time after she had quit the cellar before he dared to follow.
He knew now that he must leave Wrokeby—leave or be destroyed—yet still he hung on. This was his place, his care, the purpose of his meagre existence: a house-goblin stayed with the house, until it crumbled. The era of technology and change had driven some from their old haunts but such uprootings were rare, and few of goblinkind could survive the subsequent humiliation and exile. Only the strongest were able to move on, and Dibbuck was not strong. Yet deep in his scrawny body there was a fibre of toughness, a vestigial resolve. He did not think of seeking help: he knew of no help to seek. But he did not quite give up. He stole down his native galleries in the woman’s swath despite his fear of Nehemet, and eavesdropped on her communings with her pet, and listened to the muttering of spells and schemes he did not understand. Once, when she was absent for the day, he even sneaked into her bedroom, peering under the bed for discarded dreams, fingering the creams and lotions on the dressing-table. Their packaging was glossy and up-to-date but he could read a little and they seemed to have magical properties, erasing wrinkles and endowing the user with the radiance of permanent youth. He avoided the mirror lest it catch and hold his reflection but, glancing up, he saw her face there, moon-pale and glowing with an unearthly glamour. ‘It works,’ she said. ‘On me, everything works. I was old, ages old, but now I am young forever.’ He knew she spoke not to him but to herself, and the mirror was replaying the memory, responding to his curiosity. Panic overcame him, and he fled.
On the tower stair he found the head of Sir William. He tried to seize the hair but it had less substance than a cobweb. ‘Go now,’ said Dibbuck. ‘They say there is a Gate for mortals through which you leave this place. Find it, before it is too late.’
‘I rejected the Gate,’ said the head, haughtily. ‘I was not done with this world.’
‘Be done with it now,’ said the goblin. ‘Her power grows.’
‘I was the power here,’ said Sir William, ‘long ago…’
Dibbuck left him, despairing, running through the house uttering his warning unheeded, to the ghosts too venerable to be visible any more, the draughts that had once been passing feet, the water-sprites who gurgled through the antique plumbing, the imp who liked to extinguish the fire in the Aga. In the kitchen he saw the woman’s only servant, a hag with the whiteless eyes of the werekind. She lunged at him with a rolling-pin, moving with great swiftness for all her apparent age and rheumatics, but he dodged the blow, and faded into the wall, though he had to wait an hour and more before he could slip past her up the stairs. He made his way to the conservatory, a Victorian addition