26

Irene did not like the way the train rolled through the dark. It was fast enough for an ordinary journey, but not fast enough for this night.

The reason for her sudden trip was very simple: she understood what was happening. She had been walking across Russell Square, on the way to the Bloomsbury flat she shared with an old girlfriend, when she understood everything.

Peter is dangerous. He is too sick. Something must be done or a terrible thing will happen. She had understood, hurrying across the square in a sudden current of cold, what Peter had done.

She had not bothered to return to the flat, but had flagged a cab. She had a return ticket, so she was able to run and catch a train just as it was about to leave. She had been foolish not to see it before. And now so much depended on her. And on the speed of the train. There were delays, and a voice droned over the metal roar of the rails announcing a delay at Doncaster.

She clenched her fists. If the train was slow, rattling through the night, then she could do nothing.

She had not bothered to telephone Davis. Let him be surprised. Besides, she understood things that Davis was not yet ready to accept. She had always preferred to be independent. She would take care of everything. She wanted to hold Davis, and felt her hands tremble at the thought. She wanted to stitch a message through the darkness, across the blank, empty fields: Oh, Davis. Be careful. Be very careful.

Davis, she thought: Be safe. I am on my way.

Peter was a sick man, and sick men make mistakes. Irene nearly smiled, despite her icy hands, her icy feet. She would stop him herself.

It had gone magnificently. Better than he had dared to dream.

He folded his costume, and put it on the back seat, beside his passenger. They were all leaving. There was no reason to stay here any longer. He shut the door as quietly as possible. The Austin started, and he eased it into gear.

Peter forced himself to drive slowly. He crossed the Lendal Bridge, not shifting out of second. There was no traffic, and there were no police, as far as he could see, but he did not want to do anything wrong at this point.

“I don’t want to make a mistake now,” he said to his passenger, who lay, as though drowsing, on the back seat.

“Don’t want any mistakes at this point,” he continued, “after everything has gone so well.”

More than well. Perfectly.

He leaped from the car, and unlocked the gate. He shot the car through the narrow gap. This would not take very long at all.

It was a blessing. The chorus of voices in his head had stopped. The little sounds around him were clear again. The rasp of his work boot on the earth, the tinkle of the keys.

The dig was a well of darkness. It would be easy to make a mistake of another sort here, he thought, and fall into one of the trenches. Best be careful. Best be very careful.

And fast. The thing to do now was to flee. Get his few things together, his notebooks—mustn’t let them see any of those. He might have scribbled something in a book that might tell them everything. He had made notes. He had used scissors from his desk to cut the burlap. Even a thread of cloth would betray him. Just a few minutes to clean his desk, and then he would be gone.

He did not know where, but there was no reason to expect that his genius would fail him now. He had a great talent. He was one of the most brilliant men in the world, and he did not have to worry about anything.

And the Man would be worth something. Wouldn’t there be private collectors somewhere in the world who would crave such a possession? Necessarily secret, of course, but entirely unique. Switzerland, no doubt, with the Man folded easily like the leather handbag he very nearly was. He would be easy to hide. And no one would guess that Peter had done this. He would leave a note. “Professional pressures too great. Need a few days away.”

He parked the car as close to the office as he could. The ground was uneven, scarred with ruts, and pocked with puddles.

When the car’s motor was switched off everything was quiet. His own breath was loud. “Yes,” he told himself. “I taught him a very good lesson. A well-deserved lesson. A very important lesson that he will never forget.”

How foolish people were! An intelligent man like Davis believed that a bog man could walk. Now Davis was probably dead. Peter certainly hoped so. Dead, his last moments hideous.

Peter laughed and laughed until the small car shook.

The most wonderful, most delightful joke anyone had ever played, and it was a pity Davis would never know what a tremendous joke it was. Peter wiped a tear. It was simply all too wonderful.

Every step had been brilliant. The night he stole the Man, for example—wrapping the Man’s hand around the door handle for a moment had been a choice bit. That had no doubt pleased them no end. The police must be very happy indeed to think they were tracking a twelve-hundred-year-old fugitive.

If only he could tell the tale, thought Peter. How impressed everyone would be.

He unlocked the office Portakabin, and shut the door behind him quietly. Every sound seemed so loud. His breath seemed to roar. He switched on an electric torch, and turned the torch toward the wall. No one could see him here. He would be quick, and quiet. He tugged open his desk drawer.

Yes, here was a sketch, in this W. H. Smith notebook. The frame was drawn in pencil, the frame that even now gave the Man his structure. Peter tucked the notebook into his pocket. God only knew whatever else he had scrawled. He had been confused, even feverish, for quite some time.

But all that was over. Now he was going to be calm, and very careful.

He froze, and held his breath. A sound. A click, or a snap. A lock, perhaps. He listened, and heard only his own heartbeat thud like a machine. A heart made an ugly thump if you really listened to it, didn’t it? Ugly, and loud, as well.

Then there had been the terrible thing that had happened, the thing that Peter groaned to think about. He would weep if he let himself remember it. He would weep, and be unable to sort this drawer.

He had too many notes. Computer printouts, scraps of paper. It was a good idea to clean this desk—he found a design, scribbled on a finds card, of the knee hinge. If you knew what it was, the secret was made clear. Otherwise, it looked like a bit of sloppy Leonardo. Clever, but enigmatic. He could take no risks. Keep it all perfect, he told himself. Leave them blind.

There was too much here. The best way to make sure he left nothing behind was to burn it all. He had what he needed, a box of matches. A fire would attract attention, though, and this was what he wanted to avoid.

He was weeping despite himself. It had been too terrible.

Jane had come into his flat, using a key he had given her long ago, and she had written him a note.

A kind note, affectionate. Not loving, but a note he would have treasured if he had not been forced to tear it into bits and flush it down the toilet.

He had found her dead in his flat. How she had died was a mystery, but the closet had been open. She must have looked into it and seen the Man, and died of shock. This was hard to understand, but he had found the Man lying next to her, as though she had taken it out of the closet and intended to take it with her, and then suffered a failure, quite literally, of heart.

A brutal discovery. The sorrow had made him tear furniture to bits, the blond pine table, and the two benches. He had torn them apart out of grief. Even now, hot tears kissed his hands as he worked.

Jane.

It had made him all the more determined that Davis suffer. He hoped Davis was lying even now with his face smashed in, teeth and pulp down his throat.

He wept. Gradually he gathered his thoughts, and breathed more easily.

He had committed her to the river. He could not run the risk of having the Man discovered, not while the intelligence breathed into his ear, not while everything was going so well.

But it had given him a bad thought, a thought that flowered in him even now: Maybe there was something to it. Perhaps—although it was impossible—perhaps the Man was able to move by himself. Something had nearly killed Dr. Higg, and certainly Jane was dead.

Peter forced himself to laugh. See how nervous he had become! He was as foolish as any of them, nearly as nerve-shattered as Davis.

But there was a sound. A real sound. He could not move as the door opened behind him with a dry, empty laugh of its hinges.

A voice said, “I hope I am in time, Peter.”

Peter did not pause to wonder, or to formulate a response. He turned, saw who it was, and knew immediately that he would have to kill her.

Irene’s eyes were bright. “I hurried back from London, and then I thought, I wonder if he is at the site. You see how well I am beginning to understand you, Peter. I saw the lights, and now I see you standing there, looking unwell.”

She was panting slightly, carrying only a handbag. She put it down and unzipped her jacket, as though she were someone arriving for a long-planned meeting.

Peter’s voice was a rasp. “I am up late,” he began. “And so are you.”

“I have come all the way from London tonight for a reason, Peter.”

Peter had begun to believe himself entirely brilliant again. He would be able to talk her out of whatever she thought. And yet there was something about Irene that made her indomitable. Her eyes were too bright, and she seemed always to be about to smile, as though she knew, always, too much.

“I have work,” Peter offered, panting, unable to control his breathing. “Catching up to do.”

“I believe, Peter, that you stole the Skeldergate Man, and took our poor old friend away and hid him.”

He stared, and then he experimented with a smile. “Why would I do that?”

“I believe that you have been taking advantage of the rumors here, Peter. The stories about the site, and how it is haunted. You want to scare us, I don’t know why. I think perhaps you dislike someone among us, perhaps Davis. Perhaps you want to frighten him, or frighten all of us. But I understand other things, too, Peter.”

Kill her. The command was like a slap. Kill her now. A snarl from within his bones.

“I think perhaps you have underestimated the site, and our old friend the bog man. Perhaps you are the one who has been deceived, Peter. Perhaps the spirit of this place has possessed you and used you to give our old friend a new life. Perhaps the Man is using you, Peter, and perhaps you should be warned.”

She said this lightly, as though disagreeing on the accuracy of a train schedule. But her eyes were steady. Peter could not answer her, and in his hesitation she saw that she was right.

“I am so glad I came here, Peter. Because I know it is true. You have done something terrible. Have you—I cannot even ask it. Have you hurt Davis?”

Peter turned and mentally discarded the objects he saw. Even the scissors looked difficult, undependable, and he needed something sure. Something like a mattock, or a hammer, or—he saw it.

The Bulldog spade was in his hand.

Irene told him everything with her eyes: that she saw how late she was, how truly too late. And she was determined that it would be difficult to kill her. She flung herself across the cabin to a chair, and lifted the chair to keep him away from her.

It did not even slow him down, this minor obstruction. His movements were fluid, and swifter than she could have imagined. He swung wide, and the spade rang with the sound of the blow.

But she did not go down. She speared him with a leg of the chair, and all the breath left his body. She lunged toward the door, and he caught her with one hand and managed to bounce her off the table, the kettle clattering.

She was on her feet at once, picking up the chair, and this time he planted his feet, and swung harder.

There was no moment of falling. One moment she was upright, fending him away with the chair. The next she was on the floor, and he tore the chair from her grasp. He struck her again, but the unconscious rolling of her head made the blow half miss, and the spade handle splintered.

Peter fell to his knees. He was sweating, and his arms trembled. He could not even bring himself to laugh, aside from a croak.

Now he had a problem. Now he had a dead body, and this would not be so simple. He would have to put her somewhere quickly, somewhere no one would look for days, or, better, weeks. The river could not be trusted. Bodies tend to float. He could anchor the corpse, but as he considered this he realized exactly where he should put her.

He was barely trembling as he gathered her, and began to half carry, half drag her. He gathered up her handbag. He was not so foolish as to forget that. He would put her and her handbag in the discard heap, among the slag, the slabs of concrete, and the screened soil. She could stay there for months.

He was trembling now with delight. Even this disaster would be overcome. He found a place quickly, settling two or three chunks of concrete over her. It was too quick, he realized. He would need to find another spade and do the job as it should be done.

At the last moment, hurrying back to the cabin, he realized something about her body. As he had carried it he had felt it moving. Slightly. Just barely. He had felt it breathing.

She was still alive.

He clenched his fists. He could not deny it. He had not killed her.

He would fix that. He would clean his desk, find a new spade, and go back where she was, pinned under concrete. She would not go anywhere.

He sat at his desk. He could not stop shivering. What a mess this office was, he saw. Bits of spade handle. An overturned chair. And blood, bright spatters of it. He had a good deal of work to do, and he began, gathering wood bits, righting the chair, making the cabin look like a place of business.

A sound, somewhere out there in the darkness. It could not be Irene. There was no way that she could scramble out from under the concrete slag. And besides, it did not sound like a human being at all. There was a click, and then a long, whispering sound. It sounded like something dragging through the dark.

Surely there was nothing. Surely it was imaginary. But there was, he convinced himself, something. Something real. He crouched, tilting his head. He could not hear the sound now, but there had been a click again, metallic and sharp.

Someone was out there. Someone shuffled slowly in the dark. There was a step, and a drag, and another step. Someone with a limp, or a very irregular stride. A drunk man, perhaps. That is exactly how it sounded. A drunk man out there, staggering through the dark.

Coming closer.

There was a shape at the window. It was infuriating how disrespectful drink made people. Nosy and obnoxious. Dark hands worked at the window frame. The man was trying to break into the office. Peter clenched his teeth. It was a very good thing he was here to prevent what was, quite plainly, a crime about to take place.

He parted his lips to warn the man away, and then he had a much more brilliant idea. He would let the crime begin, and he would surprise the would-be burglar in his tracks.

Peter took a sharp breath. There was something wrong.

It was not a burglar.

It was not a man.

The dark hands patted at the glass, and then retreated. The shuffling step carried itself along the outside of the cabin. A foot found, and missed, and found again the bottom step.

The Skeldergate Man was climbing the steps. His hands pattered on the outside of the door, feeling it, by the whispering sounds they made, like slow black butterflies.

Peter felt his life stop, and believed that he would never move again. His heart clattered in his chest, and in his ears. The Man—the leathery thing that had been a man—had begun to walk on its own.

It made no sound but the pad of its hands on the outside of the door. No sound at all.

This was impossible, entirely impossible, and he should simply stride to the door, and open it, and stuff the tiresome corpse back into the car where it belonged. This was funny in its way, wasn’t it? A fine invention, one that wouldn’t shut off.

The door handle began to move. Shakily, but relentlessly, it twisted from horizontal to vertical. This was impossible as well, Peter thought to himself, feeling his mind become paralyzed. The hand had no strength in it at all for a very good reason. It had no bones. It could not turn a door handle.

The door opened. The silhouette was a darker shape against the less perfect dark of night.

Peter backed away, all the way to the computer. He would go out to the car and get the controls, as soon as he could move again.

The corpse stood upright, trembling slightly, swinging its head from side to side, a blind thing. It lurched into the cabin, and Peter dashed past it, down the steps.

It was a very good thing to be out under the sky. The cabin had been a trap. Now that he was out, he knew how easy it would be to resolve this crisis. He would run. It was very simple. And at the same time he found Irene’s words burning into him.

The Man had been using him.

He turned toward the car. He would lock himself in there, and he would have a chance to think. That’s all he needed. A moment to think. Just a moment to understand what was happening. But he was puzzled.

There was something around his neck. Nothing terribly strong. Something snakelike, and constricting. It tightened, and there was a weight behind it, dragging along the ground.

He spun, tangled in this obstruction, and for some reason he could not see clearly. It was dark, he knew, but he could not understand why his vision was so obscured.

There was a head in the way, just before his eyes, and the bindings that held him, and grew tighter, were leathery straps, the arms and legs of the Man.

Peter wrestled, and worked his way out of the leather lashes that held him, but which were, after all, quite light. He was very deeply puzzled as to how he had become entangled in them. He must have brushed the Man as he leaped past, toward the door. As he tried to strip himself of the ancient leather, one arm worked itself up toward Peter’s face.

Toward his mouth. Peter cringed, backing away, but the thing would not leave him.

The hand found his lips. Leather fingers forced themselves between his teeth. Peter bit hard, trying to cry out, because this was not the powerless, device-driven thing he had known. This thing was alive. A wind, like ancient breath, icy as the exhalation of a cave, kissed Peter’s cheeks. The taste of the ancient hand was tannic, like a new glove, and the leather limb forced its way into Peter’s throat, and down. Peter gagged, his scream silenced. The face touched Peter’s face, and Peter danced, struggling to toss the thing away.

The hand reached into Peter, and made a fist inside him. He could feel it like a knot as he danced, and he leaped and spun and ran, until he knew that he could not breathe, and had not been able to breathe for a long time.

Peter rolled on the ground, hammering the skull before him with his own. He tore at the thing, unable to hang on to it, and when he did find the throat before him, the neck collapsed easily within his grip.

The hand within Peter worked, spasming, searching. Peter fell, stood again, fought, fell, and rolled.

He rolled into a place that was not earth, but was an opening, and he fell, his mouth stretched in an unutterable scream.