A DEW BEGAN FORMING on the lawns as darkness descended on the grounds, Lucy could feel it soaking through her inappropriate choice of footwear as she trotted down the bank towards the old stables.
She’d arranged to meet Sam at ten o’clock, having had to carefully sneak past her mother’s newly spiked awareness of her actions, a major downside of confronting her for answers.
Lucy hadn’t snuck from the house since she was a child, and the excitement of reliving her past set a fizz in her belly.
She could see one of the stable doors hanging open as she neared the block, Sam must already be there. ‘Sam, is that you?’ she whispered.
‘Yep. I’m in here,’ he confirmed.
She rounded the open door and found him rifling through a stack of old furniture, the exact same furniture they’d seen at the gatehouse in the other realm.
‘Hi,’ he said, with an excited smile, introducing Lucy to the furniture with an extended arm. ‘There, we were right, it is the same stuff. Exactly the same.’ He started tearing tape from the lid of a battered cardboard box. ‘I’m sure my theories are right, it is a parallel world.’ He straightened to consider his words. ‘No, not parallel – it’s an opposite world…’
He bent down again, and continued to ransack the mound of forgotten belongings. ‘Ah!’ he cried, triumphantly, lifting a heavily tarnished candlestick from the mildew-speckled box, scooping a couple of dead spider carcasses from the hollow of the base. The stamp inside read ‘Silver’. ‘You see, I’m right on this. It’s like – like, there’s a world beneath our world – an under-world.’
Lucy watched on as Sam conferred with himself, she would find it amusing, if it wasn’t for the fact that everything he was saying made perfect sense.
‘I spoke to Mum, about her disappearance,’ she announced.
Sam ceased rummaging. ‘You spoke to her. But how did—?’
She smirked. ‘Now don’t laugh, I used Hilly’s idea. I set something up to jog her memory and, amazingly, it worked.’
‘Shit! So how did you do that?’
They both sat on the forgotten furniture, illuminated by a single low wattage lightbulb dangling from a pendant above them. Sam listened open-mouthed as Lucy described the ruse she’d used…
‘…and she thinks it’s a dream she’s having,’ Lucy explained, ‘but I reckon, it’s actually a memory.’ She extended a finger in the direction of the big house. ‘That place through there, I think it might be where my mum was trapped for all those years.’
Sam nodded slowly in agreement. ‘I think you’re probably right, I’ve had similar thoughts myself.’ They sat in silence, deep in shared reflexion. ‘That’s incredible, if it’s true,’ Sam muttered. ‘Accidentally aligning those mirrors, and creating another way in. Well – another way out to be more precise.’
Lucy popped an incongruous smirk. ‘Crazy isn’t it?’
Sam burst from his thoughts, taking his phone from his pocket. ‘Look at this,’ he said, excited, ‘I went back up to Hobswyke, to take a proper look around those steps. I took some photos. Here. Look.’
He sat down next to Lucy and opened his picture files. ‘Remember those symbols carved on the stones, and the ones you noticed hidden within the design of the handrails? Well, I did some investigating.’
‘Let me see,’ she fizzled – her curiosity pricked.
He sidled close, his phone illuminating the fascination in their faces. He pointed his pinkie at the screen. ‘See that symbol there, the one that looks like two linked crosses with a trident at one end.’ Lucy nodded. ‘It’s carved in the stones as well. Well, I found a version of it in that book of Dad’s.’ He swiped to a photo of a page from the book. ‘See it there, it’s a talismanic symbol called “The Seal of Exu”. Apparently Exu is a sort of entity, a guardian of the doorways and passages to and from this world, passages that lead to other realms – well it was something like that anyway. Thing is, I found this seal carved all over those stones.’
Lucy looked and listened, fascinated, and more than a little unnerved. She never really gave much credence to magic, spirits or superstitions before, but she found herself having to re-evaluate her whole perception of the way the world was, and the way it worked. ‘Do you think that’s what chased us?’ she asked. ‘This “Exu” thing?’
Sam huffed a shrug. ‘Maybe?’
He swiped a few more times to a different photo. ‘Now this one, this is just one of the designs hidden in the railings.’ Lucy took the phone from him to look closer. Sam leaned in. ‘You can just make it out if you line it up right…’ He circled the end of his little finger around an area of the screen. ‘See there, that detail there, it seems to be an image of a serpent spitting what looks to be a wall of venom in front of that shape you can see.’ He lifted his face from the light. ‘I looked it up. That shape is an Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol called an “ankh”. It’s supposed to represent the human soul.’ He turned to Lucy. ‘I found other symbols with similar themes hidden in there too. I think all this stuff in the railings is some kind of barrier, a-a talismanic force field that blocks passage to the other realm. And I accidentally broke through it!’
‘So, do you think that’s why we’re able to pass through?’
‘Yes, I do. And I also think the fact that the handrails on the other side are still whole, is what created a force that stopped me from bringing anything from that world, through into ours.’
Lucy sat, absorbing it all… ‘What do we do now?’
Sam shrugged again, clueless. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, we can’t just leave those children in that awful place!’ she insisted.
‘I know that, and I don’t think either of us was planning to. I mean, there is the problem of what the hell we would do with them if we did manage to bring them through.’
‘Maybe they came from here in the first place?’ Lucy suggested. ‘Maybe they’ve been missing for years?’
‘I never thought of that,’ Sam said, ‘but they seem so oblivious to this side?’
‘But whatever, we can deal with that problem when we come to it, if we come to it,’ Lucy said.
Sam gazed through the open stable doors, the chimney-lined silhouette of Hobswyke just visible in front of the evening sky, looming over the trees far in the distance. ‘We will try. Christ knows how we’ll do it, but we’ll certainly try.’ He turned his attention back to Lucy. ‘But we need a plan.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Sam… what was that thing watching us from the window? Do you think it was that “Exu” entity?’
He shook his head. He’d been trying hard to forget about it. ‘God alone knows. Maybe it was, or it may have been Antoine Mallette.’
Her brows furrow. ‘But didn’t he die? Burned wasn’t he?’
‘Apparently. But maybe he just died in our world? Maybe he sacrificed his physical self so he could exist through there?’ he suggested, extending his chin out towards the looming silhouette. He sat in contemplation for a time… ‘Or maybe it wasn’t him they found. Have you ever considered that? Maybe they just assumed it was him?’
‘What does that mean?’ Lucy asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Maybe the body they found wasn’t Mallette. How could they know, they didn’t exactly have dental records to refer to then did they. They might have just assumed it was him, just because he wasn’t around anymore.’
Lucy tried, but failed to pick a hole in his logic.
‘Think about it…’ he said. ‘What if it was just some random guy Mallette sacrificed to please a god, or a demon, or something like that – not that I know how any of that stuff works.’ He sat quietly, honing his theories… ‘Maybe it was a sacrifice made as an offering to create a passage to that bloody awful place. Or maybe it could have been something to do with actually creating that place?’
He rose to his feet and walked to the door. He leaned against the frame and gazed out across the grounds…
‘But why?’ Lucy asked. ‘What would be the point?’
Sam tortured his thoughts, trying to concoct a scenario that might fit… ‘If I was him, why would I do that…?’ he muttered into the night in an attempt to channel Mallette.
He spun to face Lucy. ‘Okay. Imagine you were him, right. You’ve grown really old, but you’re not yet ready to let go of life, what do you do?’
Lucy shrugged.
‘What if he, what’s the word? Conjured! What if conjured into existence another realm where he can slow time down. A place to exist within, where your physical body hardly ages.’
Again, Lucy failed to find a hole in his reasoning, however insane it sounded in light of all that had happened, and on the contrary, she found herself giving increasing credence to the possibility of its truth.
‘Didn’t you have some records somewhere, Luce, that would show when those steps where added to the Hall?’
‘Yes, we did, somewhere?’
‘Can you find them?’
‘I could look, why?’
‘Because, if they were built not long before he died, or vanished – whatever the hell it was that happened to him, then that would confirm at least the possibility of what it is I’m saying.’
‘Okay, I’ll have a look around,’ she agreed.
Lucy peered out at the pitch black sky. ‘It’s getting late, I have to go. I’ll let you know what I find tomorrow, alright?’
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Come on, I’ll see you back home.’
‘Okay,’ she smiled. After all the talk of witchcraft, demons and sacrifice, Lucy found herself glad of the company…
*
The morning sun lifted into yet another cloudless sky, charging the air with its warmth. The rays streamed through the east-side window of the gatehouse, warming Lucy’s shoulder.
She sat cross-legged in front of the large bookcase in the living room, searching out the documents Sam had mentioned.
She could hear the turbine whine of the vacuum cleaner upstairs, so knew her mother’s interests were elsewhere.
Frantically, she leafed through the file of old paperwork her mother kept on the bottom shelf, flicking through every document, searching for anything resembling a set of plans.
The vacuum fell silent. Lucy froze, barely drawing breath… She could hear muffled knocks of her mother banging around in one of the bedrooms, then a door close, then open again…
The vacuum cleaner fired up, and Lucy exhaled. ‘Crap-in-hell,’ she murmured, clapping a hand to her lurching stomach…
She carried on leafing through the documents: deeds, wills, insurances, something called Premium Bonds? Then came across neatly folded, heavily aged documents, yellowing at the edges, and carefully opened them… ‘Got it!’ she cried, holding up a set of drawings detailing the stone staircases of the old Hall. She refolded them, and carefully placed them to one side. They had a smell of ancient books, and the aroma took her back to the library at Hobswyke. The arid face of the demon flashed through her thoughts. She shuddered.
Carefully, she straightened the folder and slipped it back onto the shelf, and ensconced her find quietly into her rucksack…
*
Lucy arrived at the stables again, dead on ten thirty as they’d arranged. Again, an excited Sam had beaten her to it.
‘So, you found them?’ he asked, holding up his phone that displayed her last message. Lucy nodded, and withdrew the discovery from her bag.
Sam carefully flattened the delicate plans out on a table he’d cleared. Lucy looked on. ‘So, what do you think?’ she asked.
Sam scanned the drawings. ‘Yes, this is them,’ he said, studying the details of the stone staircase that rose to the plateaux ahead of the main doors. He pointed to the plans. ‘See, there are the pools.’
There were other drawings folded in with the main plans, detailing the carved designs for the stone masons to follow, including rough sketches of the desired symbology for the railings, hand drawn, and also folded in with the main plans. There was a faint signature just visible in the corner of the sketch – they were penned by Mallette.
Sam spied a faded date – 13/4/1862.
‘It fits,’ he bubbled, ‘it bloody fits.’ He squinted his curiosity towards Lucy. ‘Your family took over the house in the late eighteen hundreds, right?’
‘That’s right,’ Lucy confirmed.
‘Well, Mallette commissioned the staircase in eighteen sixty two…! So it fits. He planned it, he planned it all, and when they were finally finished, he suddenly disappeared.’
Lucy could see it all slotting into place, however, none of it explained the existence of the children. But she couldn’t bring herself to care too much about such an extraneous detail, all she could think about was getting the kids away from the horrific entity they’d encountered inhabiting that oppressive world. ‘So what do we do?’ she asked.
‘I have a few ideas, but whatever we do, we would have to do it quickly. Remember, we were only over the other side for roughly two hours our time before it started changing us. So, it figures, we’d only have a two hour window to find the kids, take them to the stairs, cut the railings and get them out.’
‘It’s possible,’ Lucy proclaimed.
Sam shrugged a maybe in response. ‘It is possible, but it’s tight!’
Lucy paced the stable. ‘What do you think was happening to us through there?’ she asked. ‘When we were changing.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that. Everything else seemed to be flipped over on that side – in opposition to our world – so I guess, it figures, that maybe our personalities would too?’
Lucy frowned.
‘Think about it. What is one of your major personality traits?’ he asked. She shrugged. ‘It’s that of someone who always thinks about others before themselves. You’re caring, considerate, kind. Really, you’re one of the most selfless and lovely people I’ve ever known.’
For Lucy to hear the way Sam perceived her felt odd, but heartwarming. She felt an urge to hold him, an urge she’d felt many times before. She wondered whether the tendency was bound in any way to a feeling of love? But this wasn’t the time to ponder such distractions.
‘…So, I ask, what’s the opposite of you?’ Sam continued. ‘Someone narcissistic, uncaring, self-absorbed, and that’s exactly what I was seeing in you the other day.’
Lucy had to agree, she couldn’t find fault in anything Sam had reasoned up to that point. ‘So when do you think we should do this?’
‘I’m not sure?’ he said, sitting again to rest his excitement. He had a troubled look.
‘What’s the matter?’
He rocked on the seat. ‘I’m just not sure we know enough of what we’re getting ourselves into. I think I’m right about the handrails, well, actually, I’m certain I am. But it wouldn’t hurt to see them first. And we need to find the kids and let them know what it is we plan to do.’
Lucy could see his point.
‘We need to go through and set this up properly,’ he continued, his expression turning resolute. ‘…Lucy, we have one chance at this, and it has to go right.’
‘I agree.’
Sam stood. ‘So let’s go through tomorrow. I’ll get some things we might need together. We’ll find the kids, and explain what they need to do.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Tomorrow it is then, let’s make it midday. Mum’s away all day.’ Sam agreed.
They left. Sam made for his father’s workshop to collect what they’d be needing. Lucy headed for home…
*
The day that had been, seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye, and hour as a minute.
Lucy lay in her bed, gazing through the ceiling, unable to turn her back on her thoughts.
She could hear the stuttering whistle of a tawny owl drifting in from the woods through the still night air. She rolled onto her back so she could better hear it, trying to use its haunted song to distract her from her worries.
A delicate breeze passed through the open window, tickling the hem of the curtains. Lucy watched them float gently on the breath of the midnight wind…
A blinking light caught her eye within the darkness over by the door to her room. She adjusted her gaze towards it…
It came again, the briefest of flashes, something shiny catching the light up in the corner of the room.
She lifted her head clear of the pillow and pushed her face towards the glinting. She peered into the darkness, straining to see…
A black spot materialised in the shadow, then started to expand like an ink blot, elongating towards the floor…
She heard a breath, and a chatter, then a salt-white face pushed out into the moonlight, staring directly into Lucy’s terrified face.
A dry, black tongue lowered out of a mouth hanging long beneath a lifeless gaze, a hollow groan drifting from a protracting face, filling Lucy’s paralysis with panic.
She tried to scream, but her desiccated throat remained silent.
The demon dropped slowly from the shadows, crawling down the wall. A woody clatter of horn shocked the silence as the heads of the bull and the ram begin fighting behind shoulders pulled taught with ill-intent.
The end of its tongue lowered towards Lucy’s horrified face, ashen white and drooling with terror.
The tip of the tongue started to oscillate in front of her mouth, tasting the fear-drenched breath from Lucy’s muted screams. It drew the tongue back in, bringing its face down to Lucy’s ear. She shook beneath its arid stare…
Its thin-lipped mouth stretched further open, and it leaned in, exhaling its cold, rotting breath – ‘Asssssssmodeussssss…’
Lucy jerked awake! Beaded sweat soaking her pillow. ‘Holy shit!’ she muttered, sitting up on her elbow.
She looked up to the corner of the room, but there was nothing there. She exhaled, attempting to abandon the moment with a dismissive laugh, but failed. She leaned out and flicked on her bedside lamp, far too afraid to contemplate more sleep. She decided to read instead – far less frightening a proposition.
Sliding her bedside drawer open, she spied her copy of The Handmaids Tale and reached for it…
A bony hand thrust from inside the open drawer, and wrapped its spidery fingers around her wrist. She screamed!
A long, emaciated leg extended from the opening, folded at the knee, and lowered its foot onto the carpet.
The drawer slid further out, revealing a gaunt, skeletal face grinning up at her.
Wiry arms began unfurling from either side of its grimacing features, unfolding like a birthing insect, and reached out towards her…!
Lucy flinched awake again. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ she cried…