Nocturnes (2004) Page 11

  Sam no longer went walking with me down to the stream. Instead, he preferred to stay in the house, spending more and more time in his own room, with its window screens, or in my study, which had narrow leaded panes that would open only an inch at the top. When I asked what was troubling him, he declined to say what had caused this change in his behavior, and it seemed almost that some threat hung over him, requiring silence on all such matters if it were not to be put into action. For the first time, I began to make serious enquiries about selling the house.

  Then, one day, I was called away to unavoidable business in London, where I was forced to spend the night. Despite my repeated warnings to her that all the windows and doors should remain securely locked at night, Mrs. Amworth, who had agreed to stay with the children, left the window in Louisa’s bedroom slightly ajar, so that air might flow through her room and give her some comfort. And whatever dwelt within the mound took the invitation that was offered, and all was altered irrevocably.

  It was Sam who first alerted me to the change in his sister. Previously adoring of her, he now kept himself apart from her, refusing to join in her games and remaining even closer to me than before. One night, after I put him down to sleep, I heard movement in his room and, upon attempting to enter, found my progress impeded by a chair and cushions, and Sam’s toy box. When I asked him what he was doing, he at first refused to speak, instead pushing his lower lip out and looking at his feet. But slowly that lip began to tremble, and in the midst of a flood of tears he told me that he was frightened.

  “Frightened of what?” I asked.

  “Louisa,” he replied.

  “But why? She’s your sister, Sam. Louisa loves you. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

  “She asks me to go outside and play with her,” said Sam.

  “You like playing with her,” I said, conscious suddenly that while this might once have been true, it was true no longer.

  “At night,” said Sam. “She wants me to go out and play with her at night. In the dark. At the fort,” he added, and then his voice broke altogether and he would not be consoled.

  But when I questioned Louisa about her brother’s fears, she would answer only that he was lying, and that she had no desire to play with him anyway. When I tried to pursue the matter, she would not reply, and I eventually gave up, frustrated and uneasy. In the days that followed, I watched Louisa, noticing now a stillness about her, a wariness. She spoke less and less, and appeared to be losing her appetite. She would eat only the meat on her plate, leaving the vegetables piled to one side. When confronted about any aspect of her behavior, she simply retreated into silence. There was little that I could do to punish her, and even then I remained unsure of precisely what I was punishing her for, although one day I found her examining the metal screen that kept Sam from opening his window until he was older, testing the lock with her fingernail. For the first time, I lost my temper with her, demanding to know what she thought she was doing. She did not answer, and tried to slip by me, but I caught her by the shoulders and shook her hard, demanding a reply. I almost struck her, so furious was I at the change in her behavior, until I looked into her eyes and saw something red flicker in their depths, like a torch suddenly igniting in the darkness of a deep chasm; and it seemed to me, although perhaps I merely imagined it, that her eyes were narrower than before, and slanted upward slightly at the corners.

  “Don’t touch me,” she whispered, and there was a hoarse, filthy aspect to her voice. “Don’t you ever touch me again, or you’ll be sorry.”

  And with that, she wrenched herself from my grasp and ran from the room.

  That night, I lay in bed and thought of fire, and recalled again my predecessor’s drawings curling to black. I wondered at the manner of her death, and briefly envisaged her, tormented by her imagination, piling picture upon picture in the hearth in the vain hope that their destruction might bring her some peace. Her death was adjudged to have been a tragic accident, but I was not sure. Sometimes there was only so much that a mind could take before it sought at last a final release from its sufferings.

  There is only one further incident that remains untold, and one that frightened me more than any other. Last week, Sam complained about the loss of a toy, a small bear given to him by his mother for his third birthday. It was a mangy thing, with mismatched eyes and thick black stitches where its fur had parted and been inexpertly repaired by his father, but he loved it dearly. Its disappearance was discovered shortly after he awoke, for it always rested on the small table by his bed. I asked Mrs. Amworth, who had just arrived, to help with the search while I went looking for Louisa in order to ask if she had seen the bear. Louisa was not in her room or in any other part of the house. I went out into the garden, calling after her, but it was only when I reached the orchard that I saw her in the distance, kneeling by the foot of the mound.

  I do not know what instinct made me decide not to alert her to my presence. I stayed under cover of the trees to the east until I was close enough to see what she was doing, but as I neared her she rose, cleaned her hands on her dress, and ran back toward the house. I let her go until she had entered the orchard and was lost from sight, then approached the mound.

  I suppose that I already knew what I would find. There was a newly dug hole, and as I scraped away the earth I felt fur beneath my fingers. The eyes of the bear stared blankly up at me even as I pulled it free. There was a ripping sound, and I came away with the head alone. When I dug further for the rest of the bear, it could not be found.

  I stepped away from the mound, aware more than ever before of its strangeness: the regularity of its lines, suggesting a plan to its construction; the way it flattened at its peak, as though inviting the careless to rest upon it, to lose themselves against its warmth; and the rich color of its grass, so much greener than its surroundings that it appeared almost unreal.

  I turned around and saw a figure in white standing at the edge of the orchard, watching me, and I no longer knew the girl who used to be my daughter.

  Now I have caught up with myself, and the details are almost entirely known. I am once again lying on my bed, my daughter standing beside me in the darkness, a red cast to her eyes as she says:

  “I am your new daughter.”

  And I believe her. Close by me, Sam sleeps. I keep him with me every night. Sometimes I wake him with my dreams, dreams in which my true daughter lies buried beneath a mound of earth, alive yet not alive, surrounded by pale things that have taken her and now keep her close to them, both curious and hateful of her, her cries smothered by the dirt. I have tried digging for her, but I hit stone within inches. Whatever lies under the mound has secured itself well.

  “Go away,” I whisper to her.

  The red lights flicker briefly as she blinks.

  “You can’t keep him safe forever,” the new daughter says.

  “You’re wrong,” I reply.

  “Some night you’ll fall asleep with a window open or a door unlocked,” she whispers. “Some night you’ll be careless, and then you’ll have a new son and I will have a new brother.”

  I grasp the bundle of keys tightly in my fist. They hang from my neck, secured by a chain, and they never leave my sight. Only at night are we at risk. Only when the sun has departed do they come, testing the security of our home. I have already put it up for sale, and soon we will leave. Time is pressing, for them and for us.

  “No,” I tell her, and I watch as she retreats into a corner and sinks slowly to the floor, the red lights shining in the darkness as unseen figures pull at the windows and the doors and my son, my real son, sleeps softly beside me, safe.

  For now.

  The Ritual of the Bones

  The headmaster’s voice was the voice of God.

  “You there, Johnston Minor, stop running. Bates, my office, ten A.M. Be prepared to explain why you were studying the form on the two thirty at Kempton during Latin One yesterday. In Latin, boy, since you’re obviously so adept at the
language that you no longer feel obliged to study it. You there, boy, what’s your name?”

  And, for the first time, or so I thought, I found his attention turned upon me.

  “Jenkins, Headmaster. The scholarship student.”

  “Ah, Jenkins the scholarship student.” He nodded, as if everything had suddenly slotted into place. “I trust you’re not too intimidated by your surroundings, Jenkins the scholarship student.”

  “A little, Headmaster,” I lied. The Montague School, with its mahogany walls, its elaborate busts, its legions of dead men in powdered wigs staring down from the walls—prime ministers, bankers, captains of industry, diplomats, surgeons, soldiers—was just about the most intimidating place I had ever encountered.

  “I shouldn’t let it trouble you, Jenkins,” said the headmaster. He placed a hand on my shoulder and gripped tightly. I could feel his fingers moving upon me, testing the small muscles beneath my blazer. “I feel certain that you’re going to make a fine contribution to the Montague School. You know, in many ways, scholarship students are the lifeblood of this establishment…”

  The Montague School for Boys had been in existence for almost four centuries. So many great men had passed through its portals that it had become almost a microcosm of the Empire, a byword for all that was once great about Britain. It stood amid rolling hills and green playing fields, its buildings elaborate constructions of towers and battlements, as though the school were in a state of constant readiness to repel the great masses envious of the privilege it represented. Its Old Boys’ network spread through the upper echelons of British society like a great unseen web, permitting only its favored sons to trip lightly across its strands on the way to wealth and glory while trapping those less worthy of ascension and draining them of hope and ambition. Their hollow forms littered the hallways of the Civil Service, the Foreign Office, and the lower divisions of the foremost institutions in the land, an object lesson in the power of good breeding and better connections.

  It was surrounded by a vast high wall, and although its great iron gates remained open from early in the morning until late in the evening, few without business at the school dared to venture beyond them. Relations with the natives of the neighboring villages were strained at best, for the school appeared to evoke feelings of intense dislike among those whose children would never experience the benefits of such an establishment (feelings exacerbated by the knowledge that, in all likelihood, their children would be subject to the whims of some of its graduates in later life, just as they themselves were). As a result, trips to the villages were carefully monitored and supervised by the school, although the older boys were permitted greater latitude in their wanderings and took a perverse pleasure in taunting the local merchants, certain in the knowledge that however much the merchants despised these wealthy interlopers, they could ill afford to turn down their custom.

  Still, occasionally groups of local urchins would mount an assault on the school’s property, hoping to inflict some minor vandalism on the statuary or steal apples and pears from the orchard. If they were very lucky, they might encounter an unfortunate student who had drifted too far from the safety of the herd, and a beating would be administered. But this was a risky business, for the grounds were regularly patrolled by porters in night blue uniforms who meted out their own brand of justice upon those who fell prey to them; and, on at least one occasion, potential marauders had found themselves facing the combined might of the school’s First Fifteen, and were fortunate to leave the grounds without medical assistance.

  Yet the Montague School appeared to recognize, in some small and infinitely patronizing way, a vague duty toward those less fortunate than its fee-paying elite. Every ten years, a scholarship examination was held in the school’s Great Hall, and this test, along with a subsequent interview, was used to determine the identities of those lucky few who would be plucked from a life once destined to be littered with disappointment and unhappiness and instead allowed to glimpse the possibility of a better future (even if that future was never really on offer, for the ignominious reek of charity would hang about them for the rest of their days, and dirt would forever cling to their boots, leaving a trail behind them so that the wealthy and privileged might not, however briefly, mistake them for their own).

  Like all such great institutions, the Montague School had its own unique traditions and rituals. There were particular dress practices to be followed, certain directions in which to walk, and peculiar hierarchies of students and teachers that appeared to have little to do with age or merit. Those with the strongest familial ties to the school were permitted dominion over those with less secure links, and with great wealth came the freedom to inflict pain and humiliation with impunity. There were songs to be learned and histories to be recited. There were games with no rules and rules without purpose.

  And then there were the bones, and with them went the strangest ritual of all.

  That morning, following my first face-to-face encounter with the headmaster, I saw them for the first time. A selection of the final-year boys was presented with them at Assembly, each one stepping onto the stage in turn to receive a bone locked in a small velvet box. In most cases their fathers had held the bones before them, and their fathers in turn, back, back for hundreds of years. When a family line died out, there was always another great name waiting to take its place, and so possession of the bones remained the preserve of only the bluest of bloodlines. It was an old Montague tradition, this ritual of the bones. When at last the final student received his token, all the boys turned to face their younger fellows and we were permitted—nay, instructed—to cheer loudly three times.

  I wondered where the bones had come from, but when I tried to catch more than a glimpse of them as their new owners were proudly displaying them I found myself shunted roughly away, and a sea of backs closed before me, denying me even that small concession. Later that night, as I lay in my dormitory bed, I imagined my father, devoted but impecunious, discovering to his surprise that he was the lost heir to a great fortune, with a title to his name that would eventually be passed on to his son. Overnight, I would find myself elevated to a position of influence and respect in the school. I would perform heroic deeds on the sporting field, and my academic achievements would dwarf those of my peers. As my reward, the school would ignore the submissions of better-known families in order to make up for earlier injustices, and I would take my place on the stage and receive into my hand a small velvet box containing a single yellowed bone, the symbol of a new life to come.

  It was a brief fantasy, driven sharply away by the flicking of a towel at my face and a burst of laughter from the culprits. I knew that there would never be a relic for a scholarship boy, that they were not for the likes of us.

  But I was wrong, for in a way they were all for us.

  One week later, I was standing in the rain watching a dispiriting rugby match when a small untidy-looking boy with dirty-blond hair approached me.

  “Jenkins, isn’t it?” said the boy.

  “Yes?” I replied. I tried to sound detached and unconcerned, but secretly I was quite grateful to be approached. I had found it difficult to make friends among the other students. In fact, I had made no friends at all.

  “I’m Smethwick, the other scholarship student.” He smiled uneasily. “I’ve been a bit ill, so I started term late. Crumbs, it’s quite a place, isn’t it? So big, and old, but everyone’s being jolly kind, even the older boys, and they were the ones who scared me the most.”

  For a brief moment, I was jealous of Smethwick. Why had the older boys spoken to him but not to me?

  “Scared you?” I said at last. “Why?”

  “Oh, you know, in case they’d try to bully me. And then there are the stories.”

  “The stories?”

  “Crikey, Jenkins, you’re like an echo. The stories. You must have been told some of them? Ten years ago, a scholarship boy died during some kind of prank. It was all hushed up, of course: they
claim he wandered off and got hit by a passing train, but some say he was dead before the train even left the station.”

  Smethwick’s face betrayed mingled terror and fascination at the tale. I wasn’t sure what to feel. I was finding it hard enough to settle into the routine of life there without adding stories of mysterious deaths to my woes. I had already been regaled with tales of wandering spirits and creatures that lived in the eaves, and on my second day at the school my head was covered with a pillowcase and I was locked in a dark cupboard beneath the stairs until the housemaster heard my cries and finally released me.

  “But don’t worry.”

  Smethwick smiled and patted my shoulder.

  “We’ll be fine.”

  But we were not going to be fine. We were not going to be fine at all.

  In the weeks that followed I grew closer to Smethwick, even though we had little in common. It was natural that I should do so, for I was without allies or support in that place, and Smethwick offered both. Yet I found myself distanced from him by the actions of the older boys. It was as though they had chosen to take Smethwick under their wing, for he was not subjected to the same little humiliations and hurts that marked my first months at the school. Instead, they joshed with him and permitted him to run small errands for them, in return for which he was allowed to conduct his business without fear of casual violence. He seemed to become almost a mascot for them, a totem of some kind. I took to staying close to him, in the hope that some of the goodwill directed toward him might extend to me. Smethwick, to his credit, did all that he could to protect me, even to the extent of placing himself between me and those who would have harmed me otherwise. On one such occasion, he received a gash to his forehead that required treatment by the school nurse. The headmaster was called, and although he spent some time with both Smethwick and me in an effort to discover the identities of those responsible, we both remained silent. Nevertheless, the fifth-formers who had perpetrated the assault were quickly found, and their punishment was both savage and public as an example to others. The result was that, gradually, I was left in peace, although less out of a regard for my well-being than a greater reluctance to cause Smethwick any harm.