‘She’s a looker, ain’t she?’ said the youngest, a youth barely seventeen. ‘That figure, an’ that hair, an’all.’
‘Don’t even think of it,’ said the gypsy. ‘She can see you thinking.’ He stared at the spot where the goblin stood, so that for a minute Dibbuck thought he was observed, though the man made no sign. But later, when they were gone, the goblin found a biscuit left there, something no one had done for him through years beyond count. He ate it slowly, savouring the chocolate coating, feeling braver for the gift, the small gesture of friendship and respect, revitalised by the impact of sugar on his system. Perhaps it was that which gave him the nerve to investigate the attics.
He did not like the top of the house. His sense of time was vague, and he recalled only too clearly a wayward daughter of the family who had been locked up there, behind iron bars and padlocked doors, supposedly for the benefit of her soul. Amy Fitzherbert had had the misfortune to suffer from manic depression and what was probably Tourette syndrome in an age when a depression was a hole in the ground and sin had yet to evolve into syndrome. She had been fed through the bars like an animal, and like an animal she had reacted, ranting and screaming and bruising herself against the walls. Dibbuck had been too terrified to go near her. In death, her spirit had moved on, but the atmosphere there was still dark and disturbed from the Furies which had plagued her.
That evening he climbed the topmost stair and crept through the main attics, his ears strained for the slightest of sounds. There were no ghosts here, only a few spiders, some dead beetles, a scattering of mouse-droppings by the wainscot. But it seemed to Dibbuck that this was the quiet of waiting, a quiet that harkened to his listening, that saw his unseen presence. And in the dust there were footprints, well-defined and recent: the prints of a woman’s shoes. But the chocolate was strong in him and he went on, until he reached the door to Amy’s prison, and saw the striped shadow of the bars beyond, and heard what might have been a moan from within. Amy had moaned in her sleep, tormented by many-headed dreams, and he thought she was back there, that the woman had raised her spirit for some dreadful purpose, but still he took a step forward, the last step before the spell-barrier hit him. The force of it flung him several yards, punching him into the physical world and tumbling him over and over. After a long moment he picked himself up, twitching with shock. The half-open door was vibrating in the backlash of the spell, and behind it the shadow-bars stretched across the floor, but another darkness now loomed against them, growing nearer and larger, blotting them out. It had no recognisable shape, but it seemed to be huge and shaggy, and he thought it was thrusting itself against the bars like a caged beast. The plea that reached him was little more than a snarl, the voice of some creature close to the edge of madness.
Let me out…
Letmeout letmeout letmeout letmeout …
For the third time in recent weeks Dibbuck ran, fleeing a domain that had once been his.
* * *
Lucas Walgrim sat at his sister’s bedside in a private nursing home in Queen Square. Their father visited dutifully, once a week, going into prearranged huddles with various doctors, signing dutiful cheques whenever required. Dana was wired up to the latest technology, surrounded by bouquets she could not see, examined, analysed, pampered. The nursing home sent grateful thanks for a generous donation. Nothing happened. Dana’s pulse remained steady but slow, so slow, and her face was waxen as if she were already dead. Lucas would sit beside her through the lengthening afternoons, a neglected laptop on the cabinet by the bed, watching for a quiver of movement, a twinge, a change, waiting until he almost forgot what he was waiting for. She did not toss or turn; her breast barely lifted beneath the lace of her nightgown. They combed her thick dark hair twice a day, spreading it over the pillow: there was never a strand out of place. In oblivion her mouth lost its customary pout and slackened into an illusion of repose, but he saw no peace in her face, only absence. He tried talking to her, calling her, certain he could reach her wherever she had gone; but no answer came. As children they had been close, thrown into each other’s company by a workaholic father and an alcoholic mother. Eight years the elder, Lucas had alternately bullied and protected his little sister, fighting all her battles, allowing no one else to tease or taunt her. As an adult, he had been her final recourse when boyfriends abandoned her and girlfriends let her down. But in the last few years he had been busy at the City desk where his father had installed him, and she had turned to hard drugs and heavy drinking for the moral support that she lacked. He told himself that guilt was futile, and she had made her own decisions, but it did not lessen the pain. She was his sister whom he had always loved, the little rabbit he had mocked for her shyness and her fears, and she had gone, and he could not find her.
At his office colleagues eyed his vacant chair and said he was losing his grip. The malicious claimed he had succeeded only by paternal favours, and he did not have a grip to lose. His latest girlfriend, finding him inattentive, dated another man. In the nursing home the staff watched him covertly, the women (and some of the men) with a slight degree of wistfulness. Purists maintained that he was far from handsome, his bones too bony, his cheeks too sharply sunken, the brows too straight and sombre above his shadowed eyes. But the ensemble of his face, with its bristling black hair and taut, tight mouth, exuded force if not vitality, compulsion if not charisma. Those who were not attracted still found themselves intrigued, noting his air of controlled tension, his apparent lack of humour or charm. In Queen Square they thought the better of him for his meaningless vigil, and offered him tea which he invariably refused, and ignored the occasional cigarette which he would smoke by the open window. He was not a habitual smoker but it was something to do, a way of expressing frustration. The bouquets came via florists and had little scent, but their perfume filled his imagination, sweet as decay, and only the acrid tang of tobacco would eradicate it.
He came there late one night after a party—a party with much shrieking and squirting of champagne and dropping of trousers. He had drunk as much of the champagne as had found its way into his glass, but it did not cheer him: champagne only cheers those who are feeling cheerful already, which is why it is normally drunk only on special occasions. At the nursing home he sat in his usual chair, staring at his sister with a kind of grey patience, all thought suspended, while his life unravelled around him. There were goals which had been important to him: career success, a high earning potential, independence, self-respect. And the respect of his father. He had told himself often that this last need was an emotional cliché, a well-worn plotline which did not apply to him, but sometimes it had been easy to lapse into the pattern—easier than suspecting that the dark hunger which ate his soul came from no one but himself. And now all the strands of his existence were breaking away, leaving nothing but internal emptiness. The excess of alcohol gave him the illusion that his perceptions were sharpened rather than clouded and he saw Dana’s face in greater detail: her pallor appeared yellowish against the white of the pillow, her lips bloodless. He did not touch her, avoiding the contact with flesh that felt cold and dead. Somewhere in the paralysis of his brain he thought: I need help.
He thought aloud.
Without realising it, he had fallen asleep. The unfamiliar words touched a chord deeper than memory. He was in a city—a city of long ago, with pillars and colonnades and statues of men and beasts, and the dome of a temple rising above it all flashing fire at the sun. He heard the creak of wooden wheels on paving, saw the slaves shovelling horse-dung with the marks of the lash on their backs. There was a girl standing beside him, a girl whose black hair fell straight to her waist and whose eyes were the pure turquoise of sea-shallows. ‘—help,’ she was saying. ‘You must help me—’ but her face changed, dissolving slowly, the contours re-forming to a different design, and he was in the dark, and a red glimmer of torchlight showed him close-cropped hair and features that seemed to be etched in steel. The first face had been beautiful but this one was somehow familiar; he saw it with a pang of recognition as sharp as toothache. There was a name on his lips—a name he knew well—but it was snatched away, and he woke abruptly not knowing where he was, reaching for the dream as if it were the key