Master of the Moors (26 page)

"My father and Kate are my
family."

"Do you really think
so?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't
I?"

"Because you were adopted,
or should I stay,
stolen
from your true parents."

Although Neil refused to
believe what he was hearing, the shock of it still rippled through
him, making him colder still. Again, he wondered why this man was
saying these things, what he stood to gain by deceiving him.
"You're a boldfaced liar," he said.

"Am I now? Why don't you
come sit by the fire and we'll discuss it. I'm confident I can
convince you of the truth once you've heard my story."

"No. It's a
trick."

"Neil. I have no reason to
want to trick you, or harm you in any way. I have brought you here
to the remains of Callow House, to what should have been
your
house, to hear the
truth. Once I've enlightened you, you'll be free to leave. I won't
raise a hand to stop you."

"I don't believe
you."

"Fine, then stay there by
the door, but it's so much warmer here by the fire."

The tang of smoke was like
a lure tugging at Neil's insides. He told himself that if Stephen
wanted to hurt him, he'd have done so already, but even as he began
to move, both hands outstretched, he realized that the desperate
need for heat was blunting his suspicions and his good sense.
Nevertheless, he continued forward, hands lowered and slowly
sweeping through the air as it grew warmer and warmer still, until
he could feel the heat on his face.

"Right there," the man
said. "Sit. Do you need help?"

"No. And even if I did, I
wouldn't accept it from
you
. You're nothing but a criminal
and you'll pay for what you've done."

"Perhaps." Stephen didn't
sound at all concerned that that might be the case.

Carefully, Neil lowered
himself into a crouch, then straightened his legs out in front of
him. Beneath his hands he felt slivers of wood and a dry dusty
concrete floor.

"We're in the old
kitchen," the stranger said almost wistfully.

"Are you
Callow?

"Not Edward Callow, no. He
was the owner of this place. Him and his wife, Sylvia, before he
died on a hunt. Before he was killed, I should say."

"But you said this house
was yours."

"So I did, and for a time
it
was
mine. I as
good as owned it in all but name. I even laid claim to the mistress
of the house."

"Who are you, then, if not
Callow?"

"I already told you. My
name is
Stephen
.
Stephen Callow, child," he said. "Edward Callow was my
brother."

***

Grady opened the front
door to the violent night and looked warily at Kate, wrapped up in
a raincoat that had scarcely been given time to dry. The pistol
looked big and clumsy in her hand and he knew she was bravely
trying not to show how the weight of it inconvenienced
her.

"Yer sure you want to do
this?" he asked, and called on every favor he imagined God, or Fate
or Destiny might owe him for all the bad luck he'd endured in his
lifetime that she would change her mind. But she was
resolute.

"He's my brother," she
said. "And I want to find him. I want to be the one to tell him
that Daddy's awake. I want to be the one to bring him
home."

"If he comes home in the
meantime, you won't get the chance to tell him
anythin'."

"He won't come home. We
both know that."

Grady stared at her---a
beautiful woman with an intensity to her that sometimes frightened
him---and he knew he would never persuade her of the wisdom in
staying behind, even though it scared him to think what might
happen to her out there.

"Let's go, then," he said,
tucking the breeched Winchester beneath his left arm. He raised the
lantern and led them out into the rain.

***

Behind them, Mrs. Fletcher
raised a trembling hand and covered her mouth. She was not the type
of woman gifted with visions, or premonitory feelings, unlike some
of the villagers, but at that moment, as she watched Grady and Kate
huddled together under the barrage of rain, she was overcome with
the awful certainty that she would never see them again.

Before the tears could
come, she stepped back into the hall and closed the door on the
storm. There she waited, her hands pressed against the door, her
breathing shaky, until she had composed herself. She turned and
glanced at the door to the living room at the end of the hall. She
still could not believe the master was back, but she found herself
almost wishing he'd stayed ill, for in waking it seemed he'd set in
motion a nightmare that even now was rushing in to consume them
all.

Why had he locked the door?

She didn't know, but she
had overheard snippets of their conversation, enough to thrill her
with terror, so she quickly crossed herself and went into the
kitchen where she put the kettle on, and settled in for a long
night.

22

Neil heard him rubbing his hands
together over the fire.

"It started with the death
of my uncle, a studious and wealthy man by the name of Arthur
Callow. Arthur was a bumbling, tiresome old fool who liked to
squander his money on silly things---charities, traveling to miasmic
hovels around the world, spreading the word of God. I often
wondered why he never became a priest, when in almost all respects
he considered himself one."

Neil shivered despite the
heat and inched closer to the fire. Stephen spoke in a monotone
that he feared might lull him to sleep, but he daren't do so, for
God only knew what this criminal might do to him then. He drew his
knees up to his chin, cradled them with his arms, and silently
offered up a prayer that everything the man said turned out to be
obvious lies, designed to keep him here and nothing
else.

"The last place he visited
was a wretched village in Romania called Calinesti, and while in
his letters he expressed a desire to see the rest of Europe,
Calinesti was to be his last stop.

"Whatever it was that drew
him to that village kept him there for almost six months, during
which time he befriended the locals and drastically improved their
lives. I imagine the worship they directed at him appealed to
Arthur, making it harder still for him to leave. He built them a
church after realizing to his disgust that they hadn't had one in
over fifty years. Then, he paid a priest from Bucharest a
staggering amount of money to perform monthly services there.
Apparently, Calinesti had long been considered a cursed village, so
even when the priest agreed to the monthly mass, he didn't dawdle
there sharing niceties once it was done. No one who didn't have to
be there stayed very long, aside from my fool of an uncle of
course."

Neil sighed. "What does
any of this have to do with me?"

"I'm getting to that,"
Stephen said. "You'll soon understand everything and, as I said
before, once I'm done, you're free to go."

Neil felt a twinge of
panic at the base of his skull. Something in the man's voice
suggested he would not be returning Neil to where he'd found him,
but would set him free upon the moors. Alone.

There was a long silence,
then Stephen chuckled. Neil jumped as another chunk of wood was
tossed on the fire with a loud
whoompf
followed by the firework
crackle of sparks.

"My uncle died in
Calinesti," Stephen continued, "no doubt spiritually at peace with
all he'd accomplished for those
poor
peasants
." He said this last with audible
disgust. "And when he passed, my brother and I had not the
slightest doubt that he had secured himself a place in
Heaven.
Good for him
, we thought, but now our minds were set on what he might
have left behind, what he might have left to help us improve
our
lives. I was a
struggling artist, Edward, a musician, and only slightly better off
than me. Neither of us would balk at whatever our uncle had decided
to leave us in his will.

"Or so I thought." His
tone was bitter. "He left almost everything to Edward, the house,
the land, and most of the money. To me, he gave fifty pounds with
instructions that I should use it to obtain a nobler profession. I
was outraged, of course, but when I went to visit my brother to
challenge him, I found him equally dismayed, despite his new
fortune. It seemed even his inheritance had not been unconditional.
To claim the house and the money, he was instructed to travel to
that wretched place where my uncle had found such contentment,
Calinesti, and continue the work Arthur had started. He was to
build a school there, and hire a teacher, whatever the cost. He was
to provide the villagers with whatever they needed to lead normal,
healthy, and prosperous lives. A man named Petrica, a friend of
Arthur's and one of the few English-speaking locals, would meet him
there and aid him in completing Arthur's mission.

"Edward was, of course,
disgusted. For weeks he ranted and raved about how no amount of
money was worth such hard work and degradation. But in the end,
with what little money he had slowly draining away, and with my
deceased uncle's solicitor keeping a watchful eye on everything, he
was forced to concede to the proviso.

"He left for Romania a
week later."

A breeze ruffled through
the flames, sending threads of smoke into Neil's face. He coughed.
He was so tired, it was an effort to keep his eyes open, but he
forced himself to stay alert, sure that at any moment he'd hear the
sound of footsteps approaching the house. As soon as he did, he
intended to run before Stephen had a chance to stop him. He knew
from the sound of the wind and rain behind him that the exit was at
his back and it helped that the man seemed lost in his own
tale.

"I didn't see him for
almost a year," Stephen said. "A year passed, and the man who
returned to England was not the same one who had left it. In fact,
if anything, he looked quite shaken, as if he had seen nothing but
death and destruction in his time spent abroad. He was horribly
thin, his face sunken, and he walked with a hesitant step, as if
fearing bottomless holes riddled the path before him. Any
satisfaction I may have derived from his appearance, however, was
obliterated at the sight of the woman who accompanied him.
Sylvia---an absolute vision, unlike anything I had ever seen before.
A Greek goddess, a siren, the kind of creature that can make your
heart melt just from the scent of her. A little like that pretty
young thing you lust after, Neil."

Neil imagined reaching
into the fire, plucking from it a blazing length of wood and
hurling it in the direction of that mocking, hateful voice. Tabitha
had betrayed him. She had lured him to the hall so her brother
could ambush him---there had never been anything more to her
seductive invitation. His burgeoning love for her had led him to
follow her without question, to hope she felt the same, and in the
end she'd made a fool of him. They had all made a fool of the poor
little blind boy. Now he felt the anger compete with the heat from
the fire, burning him from within, until he felt compelled to break
something, to hurt something. Hurt
someone
.

"Months later, I learned
the truth about Sylvia," Stephen continued. "That for some reason
never revealed to us, the villagers had condemned her to death, but
on the day she was scheduled to be executed, my brother fled with
her back to England, sparing her a stoning, and gaining himself a
wife.

"From the outset, it was
clear she was no ordinary woman, no meek peasant driven to serve.
Rather she was possessed of a fiery indomitable spirit and an
incorrigible lust that drew men to her and reduced them to mindless
sheep. For every day she was married to my brother, he grew weaker
and more perturbed. His interest in Sylvia waned, except on those
occasions when his demons drove him to use her as a target for his
violent urges. In the end, she came to me. We became lovers, and I
reveled in her Dionysian appetites. But outside of my bed, she
became aloof and distant. When I quizzed her about her moods and
about the past that seemed to weigh so heavily on her, she offered
little more than tantalizing, maddening scraps of information about
her village, superstitious nonsense about a centuries long
cohabitation with what she called '
strigoi
.' Then she would stop herself
and leave me alone, with questions, and an insatiable need for her
company. She became like a drug to me---opium in a beautiful sculpted
vessel. I began to see her more and more until finally, she told me
enough to at once strike fear into my heart and also to question
the stability of her mind. It was, she warned me, what she had
confessed to my brother and slowly it was rotting his brain because
of his refusal to believe it and, she said, because he had forced
her to prove it to him.