‘I just heard them. That was worse. It was like I’d been struck blind – I couldn’t see. But in my head, I saw these images.’
Lucy was absorbed by now. ‘Martin. How come you’ve never mentioned this before?’
‘Because I couldn’t fucking cope with it. I’ve not told anyone before – not even my own sister. I’d trust her with anything, but not this. I can’t lump her with this.’
Her bright eyes didn’t blink. ‘What happened then?’
‘Nothing. I just waited. I was too afraid to move. And Christ, I thought the dawn would never come.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘When it did, I found that I could see.’ Another pause. He shrugged. ‘The house was empty.’
‘And nothing since?’
‘Not a whisper. Nothing for two years. That’s why I’ve kept searching. I need to look them in the face again.’
Lucy sat there, watching, with her back against the wall. ‘You sound like my old boyfriend,’ she said drily. ‘He backed down from a fight one time, then kept on reliving it, and winning. It wasn’t as if I minded. Stupid git.’ Her tone was shrewd but amiable enough. He smiled thinly, scuffing at the cinders.
‘Believe me, girl, I’d run a mile from this lot.’
Her expression grew more pensive. ‘You’ve considered—’
‘That it might be something psychiatric?’ He shoved his hands into his pockets; took a breath. ‘Jesus, Luce: of course I have. That’s another reason why I have to keep on looking. I know what I saw. It’s just, I need to prove it to myself.
‘There’s something else. I’m sure that what I saw that night was something from outside. Something science doesn’t understand – not yet. And if it’s there, I want another look.’ He crossed the room abruptly, startling her. ‘I’m going upstairs now.’
She stared up at him. ‘Hey, listen …’
‘There might be something up there. If there is, I have to see it. Are you coming?’
She hesitated. He saw how much her confidence had dwindled; she was looking very young now. ‘No,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘I’m not.’
‘I don’t blame you. I really don’t. But don’t go away, all right?’ He turned towards the stairs.
‘What images?’ she asked, belatedly.
Looking back, he hesitated: trying to find the words.
‘Like predators with human skins,’ he said.
The house, of course, was empty. Though its past was real and horrible enough, he sensed no echoes from it. The upper floor was desolate: just empty, mournful darkness. If something evil had been here, it had gone its way long since.
His reaction was the same as always: frustration and relief in equal measure. They wiped each other out, and he was left there feeling nothing.
Lucy ventured up a short while later, not wanting to be left alone downstairs. He saw her torchlight flashing from the corner of his eye, but stayed where he was: letting her track him to the scorched shell of the bathroom. One of the window-boards was missing here. He’d switched his own torch off so that his eyesight could adjust.
‘What … ?’ she asked, still waiting on the threshold.
‘It’s all right. Put the light out. Come and see.’
She joined him cautiously. In the black frame of the window, the stars were very bright: scores of them compressed in that small gap.
‘There’s the Plough,’ he told her, peering out. ‘Up overhead … you see?’ The names began to form again, like whispers in his head. Dubhe. Merak. Phecda. Megrez … He forced them out of focus, and tried to fix his thoughts on something else. Like chasing Vicki round the field, beneath those same bright stars.
‘I had this girlfriend, back in school. I used to try and teach her constellations.’
‘And was she interested?’ asked Lucy wryly.
Martin’s smile came easier. ‘Only in the mnemonic for classifying stars. Wow, Oh Be A Fine Girl and Kiss Me Right Now – Smack.’
She giggled. ‘Snog or slap?’
He shared her grin, relieved at last. However briefly.
‘Now that would be telling.’
They left the house, and lingered in the road. Martin adjusted his rucksack, looking round. The junction was deserted. The Burnt House seemed to hold it like a strongpoint.
‘Want me to walk you home? I will.’
‘Just to the bus stop, Martin, thanks.’ They turned towards the railway arch. After a pause, she glanced at him. ‘You’re going to keep on looking?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m going off to Uni in October; but anything before that, let me know …’
He nodded wordlessly, and then looked back. The instinct was a primal one: alertness to some danger. Nobody was following, and yet the itch persisted: a nervous urge to grasp her hand and run. To flee, and keep on fleeing down these endless lamplit corridors of night.
3
It was one o’clock when he slipped into the flat. Locking the door, he tiptoed through the dark. Every sound seemed magnified; but Claire didn’t wake. Not even when he slithered into bed.
He settled down beside her, and listened to her breathe; trying not to think of how she must have spent her evening. Coming back from her shift to an empty house and a scrawled note on the table. Perhaps she’d cried a little, as she sat and watched TV. A pang of guilt transfixed him – but it faded soon enough.
Perhaps he’d feel the same with a more everyday addiction: alcohol, or gambling, or drugs. Hurting somebody he loved – and yet not sparing her. Watching while things went to hell, unable to let up.
CHAPTER II
Out of the Deep
1
If you fancy her, she’s got a boyfriend. Since leaving school, he’d found it was a universal rule: like the second law of thermodynamics, only stricter. But then he’d met Claire – attractive, unattached. If she goes out with me, he’d thought, the universe collapses. And yet, despite his disbelief, they’d somehow got this far.
He’d been portering at the hospital – the latest in a string of low-paid jobs – and met her when he’d come to fetch a body, of all things. Claire had been the nurse in charge: confident and friendly as she took things in her stride. Heartened, he had noticed she was rather pretty too, with her gilded, gamine haircut and clear blue eyes. He’d asked her out (not then, of course), already gearing up for a rebuttal. But she’d said yes. The universe continued to exist. And six months later, here he was: sharing her flat like a partner, not a boyfriend.
He stirred in the bed, still half-asleep. A shape of warmth was dwindling beside him – as if she’d left her shadow on the sheet. Claire was in the kitchen now; he could hear the kettle boiling in the background. He tried to gauge her mood by her movements. Sloppy and resigned – or brisk and angry? Sitting up, he listened like a guilty little boy.
She hadn’t dumped her sleepshirt, but her dressing gown was missing from its hook. Gone were the days when she’d bring him tea, wearing nothing but her briefs. He pictured her, still pasty and dishevelled – and felt a surge of longing. So maybe it was really love this time.
And he looked set to let it go to waste.
She’d seen behind his mask by now: she knew he’d been disturbed by things he wouldn’t talk about. When she’d failed to coax them out, she’d given him some room: putting up with his moods and his late-night walks. She knew he was in with the ghost-hunting group – though not that he would sometimes watch alone.
He’d moved on from the hospital: he found it too unsettling. It was the district’s psychiatric unit – a grim Victorian barracks on the outer edge of town. Moving through its garrison of patients, he kept on getting glimpses of himself. Hunted faces, haunted eyes. Perhaps he really was as mad as they were.
Claire would call them ill, of course, and talk with them for hours. Perhaps she saw him as a patient too. Perhaps she only kept him on to pity. Or observe.
Shaking off that paranoid thought, he got up, pulled his boxers on, and went into the kitchen. Claire was sitting at the table, glancing listlessly through the paper. Her legs were crossed, and naked to the thigh – but her glance was guaranteed to kill all passion.
‘So when did you get in last night?’
He winced. ‘About one-ish …’
Her baby blues were hard today. ‘Don’t take me for granted, Martin. I know you need your space – but I need to be treated like a girl you care about.’
‘I’m sorry, right?’ He turned away, towards the cafetiere.
‘I suppose something for the rent would be out of the question?’ she went on flatly.
‘Can it wait to the end of the week?’
He sensed her glower at his back, then look down at the paper. Here, in this cramped kitchen, he could feel the gulf between them. But how could he begin to build across it?
The cracks were showing up at last. The universe was crumbling. You couldn’t break a cosmic law and hope to walk away.
2
It was Lyn, in all her innocence, who’d told him of the star-chart.
They’d been wheeling their bikes along the lane: the end of a hot day’s cycling in the country. The sky was beaten gold behind the gables of the cottage, but the air still held a pleasant glow of warmth. Lyn looked sleek and trim in shorts and T-shirt. His mates all called her Martin’s snooty sister, but he knew how envious they were of him. Here she was, this gorgeous girl, and he was living under the same roof. And Martin would smile, content to let them stew. They never saw her loll around, or cut her nails, or sulk. Or come round very timidly to ask if he could help unblock the loo …
Tick-tick-tick said the turning wheels beside them.
‘Is that a star?’ she asked him, looking back towards the east.
He turned, and saw a point of light, pricked out through the deepening blue.
‘Not that bright, this early … It’s Jupiter, I think.’
She shook her head, still staring. ‘I think it’s great, that you can see the planets.’
‘You should look at it through the telescope. See the moons and everything.’
‘I’d like to,’ she said softly. ‘After supper. Give me a knock, I’ll just be reading.’
‘Bookworm!’ he teased delightedly; she giggled, made to swipe at him. But he was pleased beyond measure by her interest. She was going back to college next weekend. He missed her very much when she was gone.
They came up past the orchard. The countryside was quiet, bathed in amber; but some swallows were still spiralling around. The west face of the cottage would be glowing, but the walls this side were dark with dusk and ivy. The place had been a rectory once: a rambling old building which their parents had restored over the years. Cottage was hardly the word for such a warren of rooms. But for children growing up it was a fairytale house: a castle of their dreams.
‘Have you seen that map in Daddy’s book?’ Lyn asked him at the gate.
‘Which one?’
‘There’s a medieval star-map. I found it years ago …’ She let him wheel his bike into the shed.
‘What, a zodiac or something?’
She shrugged, and pushed her own bike in. ‘I don’t know. It’s got all the constellations on it. Used for magic spells, apparently.’
‘Yeah?’ He finished locking his bike, and straightened up. ‘Sounds interesting. Which book?’
‘Magic in the Middle Ages, or something like that. One of the ones we weren’t allowed to touch.’
He grinned. ‘But you did?’
‘Mm. I got a real telling-off, as well.’
‘Well, serves you right for being a naughty girl. But thanks,’ he added quickly, both hands raised to fend her off. ‘Seriously … I’d like to have a look.’
‘Come on, you,’ she grinned, and turned away. ‘We’re just in time. Let’s see what’s on the menu.’
He hadn’t given it much thought, until a few weeks later. Autumn was advancing, and the nights were drawing in. He’d failed his driving test again, so couldn’t use the car: it felt like being stranded in the sticks. The cottage was still home to him – still big enough to lose himself inside. But relations with his parents were beginning to grow strained.
Mum was patient, like she’d always been: soaking up his selfishness, his adolescent moods. She knew that he was raring for the off – to follow Lyn. Not long now, she’d told him once, it’s just around the corner. So long as he kept studying. He had to get his grades.
His father was more distanced, as if unsure what to say. He rarely ventured up to Martin’s room. And that was just as well, from Martin’s viewpoint. He’d probably feel bound to pass some comment on the pin-ups. At least Mum turned a blind eye to those.
Now and again, there’d be a spark between them. Dad listened to the radio in the evening as he worked: Radio 3, on quietly in the background. But sometimes, like the other night, he’d switch to Radio 4. And Martin had stood listening on the landing – hearing the twangy, ethereal opening bars of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy come drifting through the open study doorway. He could have gone in then, and shared his interest. But their talk might have turned to other things – like study and exams.
To some extent, he’d grown up in Lyn’s shadow. She’d won all the prizes – and got the marks that he would have to match. The challenge was unspoken, and it didn’t come from her. His parents hadn’t pushed it, not overtly. And yet he seemed to feel it every day.
He’d countered it by digging in his heels. Lyn had gone to private school, but he’d refused point-blank. Dad had nudged him on towards an Oxbridge application, but Martin was content to go for London. And yes, he thought, I’ll sit down and revise. But not tonight.
At least the unlit fields round here gave clear sight of the stars. He’d got the timer working on the telescope, and was planning to take some photos of the sky. His parents were away tonight, and Lyn was back at Oxford. As he ate his supper, he recalled what she had said.
An antique star-map. Interesting. Worth looking at, before Orion rise.
He loaded the dishwasher, then went up to the study. No prohibition now, of course; though Lyn was the one who’d always been attracted. He tracked his gaze along the shelves, and found the likely volume soon enough. Myth and Magic in Medieval Europe. He took it to the desk, sat down and started flicking through. Finding the chart, he unfolded it with care. Something about it made him catch his breath.
The map showed all the seasons of the stars. He sat there, poring over them, as if this were some kind of mythic realm. That was how they would have seemed, six hundred years ago. Part of him still felt that he could lose himself amongst them.
Yet each star was a thermonuclear furnace, breaking down the fabric of the Cosmos to keep running. That was more miraculous, to him, than any myth.
Nonetheless, intrigued, he kept on looking. Clustered in the centre were the signs that never set – the Little Bear, the Dragon and the Plough or Greater Bear. Each one bore an unfamiliar name.
branpen. fluar. aeelgar.
He didn’t recognize those words – nor many of the others. Some were too obscure to be deciphered. The outer ring was full of weird scribbling, with gothic crosses used like punctuation. He made out the word Agla, which he’d noticed in the text. Leafing back, he found it was a Hebrew acronym, often used in medieval magic.
Ata Gibor Leolam Adonai. Thou art mighty for ever, O Lord.
Returning to the chart, he started checking constellations – tracking down his favourite ones like close friends in a crowd. The detailing was exquisite. Most of the stars bore their Arabic names, evocative and strange. Sheratan and Sadalsud; Aldèbaran; Al Nath. Antares, at the Scorpion’s heart, was inked with murky red.
The stars of the Plough had their own peculiar rhythm: from Dubhe and Merak, pointers to the Pole, to Benetnasch, the last star in the tail. He knew those well, and mouthed them one by one.
His finger traced the patterns: following the lines from star to star. Boötes, the great Herdsmen, had been dubbed leofric here; the crooked kite of Auriga was ealdred. The Great Dog – Canis Major – had dominicain beside it. He guessed that these were magic words – the constellations being used as symbols. Or sigils, or whatever they were called.
Dubhe. Merak. Phecda …
Suddenly he realized it was getting hard to see. The desk lamp was beginning to go out. He looked up quickly – startled by a sense of someone with him in the room. Nobody was there, of course; but the lamp continued dying. Its yellow light turned reddish as the power was sucked out, to disappear like blood into the dark. The filament remained, a burning thread – then that faded, too. Darkness swallowed up the desk.
He saw the stars were glowing.
The first thing that he felt was awe: they had a spectral beauty. Charted with luminous paint, he thought … then realized this was just a photograph. And the pinpoints were too bright for that – bright enough to shed a cold light of their own. Then the stars went out: became black holes. He felt the sight being sucked out of his eyes. The last faint tinge of bluish light was swallowed by the book.
Martin sat there, stupefied – and suddenly the universe burst open all around him. It felt as if his thinking mind had risen from his body, straight up through the ceiling and the roof. The rectory just vanished, and the stars were everywhere: ones that hadn’t risen yet, and some he wouldn’t see until next spring. His nostrils were filled with the night’s distinctive smell – a fresh aroma, strangely sweet, and dark inside his head.
Then he tumbled back to earth. The starlight followed, piercing the study – as if the house was riddled full of worm-holes. Something brighter than the sun came blazing through each one. The sight lasted a fraction of a second. Then darkness; and he realized he was blind. Panicking, he clawed his face, his eyes. He couldn’t see.
He could still feel empty countryside; the vaulted sky above. The night was somehow with him in the room.
Reaching out, he found and grasped the book. Visions came unbidden to his disbelieving mind. Far horizons opened in his head.
He saw a landscape torn apart by war: trampled roads, and gutted towns, and fields of mud and bodies. It made him think of Bosnia, in all its eastern bleakness. But then he noticed medieval details; the corpses lashed to wheels on top of poles. They stood in silhouette against a strangely glowing sky. The night was lit, as if by fires just over the horizon. The colours were stupendous; majestic clouds reflected in the pools of stagnant mud.
With a sudden plunge of vertigo, he realized what they were. Nebulae in deepest space: the wombs of dust and gas that formed the stars. Towering above the earth, and drifting on the wind.
Voices rose around him in a babble: snatches of speech from many mouths, like samplings on a record. The language was unearthly and corrupted – but then he caught a snatch of words he recognized.
‘He hath made me dwell in darkness like those long dead …’
A different smell engulfed him, and he gagged and almost retched. Like mushroom-mouldy earth and shit, stuffed deep into his nose. The dreadful stench had other flavours too: of mildewed cloth, and rotting wood, and reams of musty paper. The smell of age, and all it had corrupted.
‘My soul waits for the Lord,’ said a sonorous voice, ‘more than watchmen wait for morning …’
The landscape was changing, like decomposing tissue seen in time-lapse. The nebulae were different, too. He glimpsed the dark, contorted Horse’s Head.
‘… but my face shall not be seen.’
He turned around inside his skull, but couldn’t find the speaker. Instead there was just a field of crosses. Shapes were walking past him now, and weaving through the markers. He watched them go – powerless to follow, even if he’d wanted to.
‘… but my face shall not be seen,’ the grim voice said.
The figures kept on trudging past, towards the haunting flares along the skyline; but one of them looked back over his shoulder. His face was gaunt, like something starved. His eyes bored into Martin’s.
Terror leaped up, like a flame – but the phantom didn’t pause. The shadow-army carried him away. His pale face faded in the burning gloom. And Martin was still rooted by that glance of accusation.
‘… watchmen wait for morning …’
He was still inside his body. His hands felt warm and slimy on the book. Blood, he realized, horrified. The visions melted, folding into blackness. He sensed the study closing up, encasing him in silence. It was colder than an empty grate in winter.
A scuttling movement crossed the room. The sound a rat might make – but much too loud. Martin yelped with fright, and drew his legs up. He remembered the picture on the wall: the one that used to give Lyn nightmares. It felt like he’d been swallowed up inside it.
But there was just that one swift movement; nothing more. Huddled on the chair, he hugged his knees and started shaking. His eyes were useless: dead as failed lightbulbs.
‘I’m not blind,’ he kept murmuring. ‘It’s something in my head.’
Oh Jesus, let me see the stars again.
His skin was bathed in sweat, like icy water. Slowly, as the hours passed, he felt it start to dry. And all the while he listened to the house. Now and again it creaked somewhere, and all his nerves caught fire. But nothing came towards him through the void.
He didn’t dare to trust that first pale glimmering of light. He blinked, and screwed his eyes tight shut – then opened them again. A gluey smudge was growing in the darkness. Slowly it congealed, becoming furniture and shelves. The room took shape around him, still muted in the greyish light of dawn.
It was deserted.
Martin sat there stiffly for a few minutes more; then carefully prised his knotted limbs apart. His muscles cramped in protest, and his bladder started aching. Ignoring it, he clambered up and leaned against the desk.
The air smelt as it always had: a subtle, bookish, papery aroma. He sniffed, but found no trace of fouler odours. His hands were clean and dry: no trace of blood. The desktop showed its weathered grain. The paper was unstained.
The house felt hushed and empty. He listened, breathing shallowly, then ventured to the door. The living room was spun with twilight cobwebs. The stairwell door to Lyn’s room hung ajar.
Attic, he thought, and gazed at it: unwilling to go up. After a pause, he went back to the study. The star-chart was unfurled across the desk. He felt a pang of stomach cramp, but crossed the room towards it.
A photo of a drawing – that was all it bloody was. But panic kept on simmering inside him. The evidence had disappeared; the memory remained. Staring at the chart, he felt a groundswell of revulsion. For a moment he hesitated; then took one comer between finger and thumb, and folded it again. Then closed the book and crushed it. Heart spasming, he carried the volume back, and shoved it into place upon its shelf.
Even Lyn had been a stranger after that.
Her bright and newsy letters home seemed suddenly banal. He’d looked forward to her phone-calls once, but now their Sunday chats were full of small talk. Before, he’d been so envious – watching her leave home to make her fortune. Now her student life was insignificant to him: completely overshadowed by the wonders that he’d seen. Now he was the experienced one, and she was just an innocent abroad.
He’d wanted to share it, but he couldn’t find the words. Perhaps he’d been afraid that she would laugh it off and tease him. More likely, he was scared that she’d believe. His turn to feel protective now. He couldn’t drag her into this, and cloud her sunny sky.
