Buried Fire (13 page)

Michael woke suddenly. He lay a while in the bed without moving, tasting a sharp acidic flavour in his mouth. The room was very hot; his pillow was damp against his face. He had been dreaming again; he knew it, although he could not recall anything about what he had dreamed. Only a faint writhing sensation in his stomach, just before he awoke. Strange: now it had entirely gone.

He sat up with difficulty, and looked at the clock, blinking to remove a slight film that had formed upon his eyes. It was 1.35. He had slept for four hours, longer than he would have guessed. He should have been well refreshed by now, but, as often happened when he slept during the day, he instead felt irritable and out of sorts. His body was raw and tingly, as if he had slid down a cheese-grater. And he was hot. The window was closed and the sunlight had pooled in upon the bed. He would have a shower.

Showering reminded him of Stephen, and a hot flush came to his face. There had been no call for what he'd done. Oh, he might strut and threaten, and use his size to bully, but he'd still wriggled and squirmed when he'd had the sight turned on him. And soon there'd come a time when physical strength would matter not at all.

Michael would have a shower, and then . . . he'd see.

He got off the bed and walked towards the closed door. Before he'd taken two strides, he noticed a tiny change in the familiar surroundings. The key had been taken from the lock. A sudden suspicion quickened his step. He rattled the handle.

Locked. And no need to guess who by.

For a moment, Michael could not believe it. Stephen had locked him in, in his own bedroom. His own brother. The shock of the discovery disorientated him. 'Am I my brother's keeper?', he thought, 'and is he mine?' With an upsurge of fury he kicked the door, jarring his toes and causing a further burst of rage. As he did so, his focus changed, drowning the room in red. Heat burst from his eyes; he snarled like an animal.

At that moment, in the distant hall, the telephone rang.

He froze in his anger. He knew it was for him, that he must answer it. The beating of his pulse in his forehead told him so. And he was locked in.

The telephone rang again.

Michael fell to his knees in frustration, his hands clenched, pointing towards the door that barred the way.

Stephen – I'll kill you when I catch you—

The telephone rang again.

—when I get out.

Somewhere in Michael's brain, his anger concentrated into a block so hot and dense he felt he had a burning coal lodged in his skull. His eyes had closed, but it seemed a red curtain billowed behind his lids. Across his body, every limb relaxed. His hands fell against the carpet, his back sagged slightly where he knelt. All the rage and tension rushed upwards into his head, to a hidden place, where it grew, with mounting speed, until the pain and pressure became unbearable and it seemed his head must split.

Then he opened his eyes.

And the door caught fire.

Michael did not see the flame come springing from the centre of the panel. For the moment he was blind; red shooting lines, like veins, crossed and recrossed along the surface of his eyes. His mouth hung slightly open, but no noise came out. The only sound in the room was the crackling of the timber and the popping of the paint as it shrank and blistered on both sides of the wood. And behind it all, the telephone rang on.

So intense was the heat concentrated on the door that within three minutes the centre of the panel had fallen away, and still the flames were licking outwards on all sides, a ring of fire expanding. Through the growing hole, the passage was filled with smoke.

All at once, Michael coughed, his lungs drawing in their first breath since he had sunk to the floor. His chest heaved and wracked, his lips drawn back like a beast's. At last, his eyes watered and cleared. His red sight had gone. He gazed ahead, uncomprehending, at the blazing hoop that had nearly severed his bedroom door in two. Beyond it, somewhere far away, beyond a corridor of smoke and scattered ash, a telephone was ringing for him.

He stood up, legs weak as water, and a new strength poured into them. With it, a terrible confidence awoke within. The fire was dying, having reached the fringes of the door. Only the corners remained, smouldering, attached to each other with thin blackened strips of wood. Halfway down, the rectangular metal lock protruded from the frame, naked of wood. It had warped under the heat.

Michael stepped up to the halo of charred wood and touched one edge lightly with a finger. It was warm, crispy. Then he stepped through the space, small flakes of ash settling in his hair as he bowed his head to pass beneath. He walked across a pile of debris and down the passageway, leaving a trail of grey footprints in the carpet. As he walked, he laughed quietly to himself.

At the foot of the stairs, in a niche beside the stick rack and the hat stand, the telephone was ringing. Michael picked it up.

"I'm glad you could make it, Michael," Mr Cleever said.

The Hardraker farmstead lay two miles from Fordrace, hunkered down on the slopes of an outstretched spur of the
Wirrim. As Sarah drove along the untarmaced
road, she passed endless small fields filled with pinched rootcrops, untended high pasture, and scrawny coppices of pine. These were the Hardraker lands.

Sarah knew a little of the farm. To her grandmother, the name Hardraker had been a byword for sloth and criminal neglect. The family had a bad reputation and they had let their farm drift to rack and ruin. Once it had been a viable estate – now, with the death of the last Hardraker, it was forlorn and deserted. In summer, no one worked the fields; in autumn, the rains turned the wild crops to green-black sludge.

Good, then, that it was coming on the market. Someone would turn it back into a working farm. Sarah spotted the huddled rooftops of the Hardraker buildings appear from behind the hill at last. By now, the road itself had disintegrated into a grassy track, pock-marked with stones and jagged pieces of old brick. It petered out finally on the edge of the grass-grown cobbles of the farm yard, under the black silhouette of the farmhouse. There, at the edge of the yard, she stopped.

The farm had once been huge. Its yard was bounded on three sides by stables and enormous barns filled with dust-covered debris. Beyond these, through side gates and covered passages, lay a maze of further barns, storerooms and animal sheds, thrown up on the hillside with no regard for regularity or form. The tiled roofs of most of the buildings were punctured with gaping holes, through which rafters jutted like black ribs picked clean of flesh.

Sarah tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. During the drive, her anger at Tom had subsided a little, and now she paused to take stock. Technically, she was now trespassing. Although Mr Cleever had invited her to see the farm, he hadn't said she could come up on her own at any time she pleased.

But it was hardly likely to matter. The place was clearly quite deserted. A quick look round would do no harm, and might force a little sense into Tom Aubrey's head.

Sarah stepped out of the car. The dust of the track scuffed round her shoes and the heavy pollen-laden air made her sniff and her face itch. She gazed round at the desolation.

"Oh Tom," she said to herself, "You are an idiot. There's no way Vanessa Sawcroft would live here. She's far too neat."

A sudden onslaught of pollen brought on a sneeze. Sarah dabbed her eyes with a tissue, and took her clipboard from the car. She would take a quick look only, and then head home.

Black windows stared emptily down at her from the dull grey front of the farmhouse. Instinctively recoiling, Sarah turned to the outbuildings. The main house could wait for another day.

The nearest outhouse was distinguished by a gaping hole in the wall. Inside, it was empty, except for a pile of sacking in one corner. The next barn was filled with fallen timber and twisted ploughshares, although there was still a strong animal smell inside which made her nose tingle. She sighed, and made a few brief notes. Mr Cleever would have his job cut out getting much money for this.

Passing along the edge of the yard, she reached what had once been a side gate, although the wood had rotted on the hinges and fallen away. A flag-stoned passage ran down between two barns and turned a corner out of sight. She passed along it, noting the rough size and contents of the barns on either side: echoing cow sheds, cobwebby stores, piles of brick, rusted scythes, grain bags, mouldering heaps of meal, decay, decay, decay.

After a while, the relentless desolation began to oppress Sarah's spirits. She entered a cow house, moving quickly along past the empty milking stalls to the far end, where there was a dirty yellow door.

Idly, she tried the handle. It opened, scraping stiffly on the flagstones, and she stepped through. To her surprise, she found that the door opened not onto some further yard or barn, but into what was evidently part of the farmhouse. She frowned. The geography of the place had begun to confuse her. Still, she might as well look round, now that she was in.

The room was evidently a scullery. A large iron tub was suspended from a hook in the ceiling, and a wooden scrubbing brush lay on a counter, next to a tap. Stone steps led up to a low arch, beyond which Sarah caught sight of dark panelled flooring.

Beyond the steps, a long hall stretched ahead, losing itself in the dusk of the house. For some reason, Sarah began to feel uncomfortable. There were too few windows in the hall, and too many black doors slightly ajar. The silence was oppressive. She really should wait for Mr Cleever before continuing her tour.

A door on the left, black with age, was open. Sarah looked inside, conscious for the first time of the sweat on her hands and down the back of her top. The house seemed to be acting like a reservoir of heat, though its thick old walls should have kept her cool.

The room was empty. An old carpet lay across the centre, studded with a few chairs and a moth-eaten sofa, and the windows were thickly curtained off, endowing it with the half-light of a sick-room. Sarah returned to the hall, at the far end of which was a huge door, almost certainly the main one which led to the yard. And on her right there rose a staircase.

All of a sudden, Sarah wished to be outside again, in the pollen-heavy air. The air here was too thick and stultifying. She would wrap up her tour early and come back another time. In company. Maybe just a speedy look upstairs, to check for rotting and structural damage. Then she would go.

The staircase rose with the steepness of a ladder, sandwiched on either side by the plaster wall. A narrow window high above gave it a mediocre light. After six steps it turned sharply at ninety degrees; six more steps and then another turn. So old-fashioned. The house must be hundreds of years old. The air was very hot, and grew more so with each step; it was like climbing the staircase in a hot house in some Botanic Gardens.

She stopped short. Had there been a tiny sound, a quiet scraping suddenly cut off, from somewhere in the upstairs room?

Silence surrounded her. A voice inside her screamed out to turn and go, to escape into the fields and sunlight, but another stubborn voice said. 'Rats. I might have guessed.' Very, very quietly, Sarah went up the stairs, one by one, placing her feet on the edges of the wooden treads.

She climbed another step.

The board creaked; its sound had the impact of a knife in her back. Sarah froze, a heaviness seemed to weigh down on her spine. Don't be stupid. You're grown up now. Five more steps, and she reached the top of the staircase.

A landing. Through a nearby door there was a glimpse of a bathroom; white walls and a huge four-legged Victorian tub. A mirror too: curtained-off, except for a crack at the bottom, where its surface showed. 'Why a curtain over a mirror?' she thought. 'This place is weird.'

A quick look and then go. She strode across the landing, to where a brown and polished door stood wide open. The room beyond was bathed in sunlight, and there were white sheets of paper on the wall. Then she stepped through and saw the rest of the room, and her heart started pounding against her chest so hard that it seemed it might break through.

A chunk of stone lay on a white-clothed table, surrounded by a mess of pens and paper. It was rectangular in shape, smooth along every edge, except one, where the surface was rough and jagged. She knew it immediately for what it was, and also that she could never lift it by herself, for it was two foot long, and nearly a foot thick. A large greasy-looking sheet of tracing paper rested on the flat upper surface of the stone. Someone had carefully been tracing the outline of the carving on the cross.

For a moment, Sarah considered turning tail and running immediately. Then she stepped forward. She had enough evidence for the police, true, but not quite enough for herself. What was going on? This tracing . . . She bent over it and examined it closely. A head, crudely drawn, little more than a rough oval with two dots and a slash for a mouth.

Suddenly, she wheeled round: the sheets of paper pinned to the wall on every side were tracings and copies and photographs of the rest of the cross, magnified to all proportions, covered with annotations in red pen, diagrams, yellow highlights – and alongside them; older documents, sketches, and large scale Ordinance Survey maps of the Wirrim.

'Oh Tom,' she thought. 'You were right. But what on earth are they doing it for?'

One particular piece of paper caught her eye. It seemed to be a cross-section of a piece of ground. Stick figures stood on a rough curved line. Below it was stuck a photocopy of the creature in the centre of the cross . . .

A noise. From the stairwell. A floorboard creaking.

Oh no.

Where could she hide? Out on the landing? No – they'd be round the corner in a moment. No. Another door – at the end of the room. Small. Perhaps a cupboard. Try the handle. Turns? Yes. Quick, dive through.

A small room. Dark. Sarah stood there, with her back against the door. Heat buffeted against her face: she felt like she was pressed against a radiator. An acrid tang bit into her nose and made her flinch.

Then her eyes grew accustomed to the dark.

The body of an old man lay on a bed.

It lay on its back, with its long thin arms by its side, stretched out like an effigy on a marble tomb. It was horribly thin; a white drape covered the body, but the sharpness of the ribcage almost pierced the cloth. The lips were drawn back and the eyes were closed.

And the great heat came from the body. It radiated out in waves which beat against Sarah's temples and burnt her mouth dry. She stood staring at it in mortal terror, unable to think, or act, or do. Her jaw sagged as the last vestiges of her will evaporated.

And then the body raised its head, and peered towards her with sightless eyes.

Sarah gave a cry of terror and made a wrench for the handle at her back, tearing at it and pulling the door open. She flung herself through and ran past the cross and out onto the landing. Somewhere behind her, there was a fast movement. Her breath came in gasping sobs as she leapt down the staircase three steps at a time. Halfway down the last flight she stumbled, and hit the remaining steps with the small of her back.

She lay for a moment at the base of the stairs, then forced herself to her feet. As she did so, a man came out of a room at the far end of the hall. He ran towards her. Sarah fled away along the passage, down the stairs into the scullery and out into the cowshed. Heavy footfalls sounded behind her on the flagstones. She dashed past the cow pens and out into the yard, along a side passage, round a corner—

Into an empty tool shed. She paused in confusion. She hadn't come this way. Turn round. Through that door. No. Locked. Oh God. Try this one. A barn. No way out. But a ladder . . . up into the hayloft. Quick. Softly now, avoid the rotten beams. Stand still out of sight. Did he see?

Silence. Sarah was a statue in the yellow-brown dusk of the hayloft. A scuffled footstep sounded outside. A muttered curse. Silence again.

Sarah stood there. The air was thick with haydust. A slight tremor began, high up in her nose. She twitched it, and closed her eyes in prayer. An itch began in her throat, water gathered in the corner of her eyes.

Oh God, hold it in, damn you.

The tremor gathered in her nose, and she pinched her nostrils together with sweating fingers. Her shoulders shook with the effort of repressing the coming sneeze.

Please . . .

Then Sarah sneezed. Twice. As quietly as she could.