Once. Part 31

'Pick it up!'

Not only was Rigwit's vexed shout in the room, but it was also inside Thom's head. As if mesmerized, he looked round to see a small kinetic structure made up of teeming black sh.e.l.ls and minuscule brown bodies and thousands of moving threads, all in the shape of his little friend Rigwit. Only the slanted eyes that blinked and dislodged clinging spiders and the moving lips gave indication of any life beneath it.

Crawling things wriggled into the elf's mouth as he shouted, 'Throw it out, do it now before it's too late!'

The words were only mildly distorted.

Once again, galvanized, Thom leaned forward, flicked off as many spiders as he could, then picked up the dirty gla.s.s jar by the upper rim of its opening.

Spiders - hundreds, vile, loathsome things - continued to spill from the top, but he took no notice of them - why should he? He was sharing a room with millions - and holding it out before him as though it exuded a nasty odour, he made for the front door. It was awkward to hurry across the piles (by the way his light boots sank into them, there had to be more than one layer) of crawling sh.e.l.ls and bodies and his fear, among so many other suppressed fears, was that he would fall and land among them. What chance then? They would smother him in seconds, weaving their webs around him so that eventually he would be bound tight, unable to move, unable to swat them away ... He forced himself to stop that line of thinking, tried to go numb, halt his imagination in its stride. Not easy...

Thom made it to the door and, with the gla.s.s vessel now in the crook of his arm (he shuddered and shuddered again until it became a constant shiver, for the spiders were still climbing over the rim, from there dropping to the floor or scuttling up his arm) he turned the key in the lock, grabbed the door-handle, and pulled. It jarred in its frame. He had forgotten it was bolted top and bottom.

He yelled in frustration and immediately two, three -G.o.d, it felt like a whole scrum! - maybe four spiders rushed into his mouth. Disgustedly and weepingly, he spat them out, not in the easy, cool manner that Rigwit had, but in a convulsive hawking, jettisoning them all like mushy pips, save for one which got caught between his tongue and the back of his teeth. He tasted its blood and the slop that was its juices and gagged, wanting to throw up but the vomit inside refusing to budge. Anyway, there was no time.

He reached up to the top bolt and lumps fell into his eyes so that he shied away, ducking and rubbing the lids before blinking them clear again. He was in a nightmare, only this

was real and his mind knew it was so. No other choice but to keep on, keep moving, do what had to be done. Thom located the bolt beneath the rummaging infestation, closed his eyes (he felt drops of rain on his eyelids - drops of rain? He wished!) and yanked back the bolt. The door moved a fraction inwards, the top pressure off.

Wasting no time at all and refusing to believe his body was now entirely covered in jostling spiders - accepting that fact was the sure way to madness and again, he had no time for that - he sank to his knees and grabbed what he hoped was the end of the bottom bolt. His grip crushed the little bodies smothering the bolt's upright and he pulled hard so that the bar flew out of its supports. The door moved a barely perceptible millimetre, free of its restraint.

Something tickled the inside of Thom's ear and began to venture further. Thom stuck in a finger and mashed it, then dug it out with the nail. It was hard - oh G.o.d, it was so f.u.c.king hard - for Thom to maintain the numbness of mind, but really there was no choice, he had to move on.

He rose and pulled the door open, all in one movement, and it was good, so good, to breathe the warm summer air, to see the brightest of bright stars, even if he had to blink away irritating distractions just to clear his vision. It was invigorating, exhilarating - my G.o.d, it was bracing! - just to feel and look upon the outside world, the reality instead of the nightmare. But it wasn't over yet.

A stinging in his back. A bite to his neck. Pincers digging into his arm. They were becoming real! They had evolved from the phantasm to exist in the honest world, despite what Rigwit had told him. Herealized that the longer the invasion had gone on, the more his belief in the normal had been weakened, so that the real had withered, finally giving in to the unreal. He was feeling pain, and if he didn't follow through quickly, then it would be too much too bear.

Thom grasped the jar in his other hand, his right hand, ignoring the spiders and bugs and G.o.d knew what else that scrambled from its opening, drew back his arm and threw.

The gla.s.s jar described a perfect arc, bodies spilling from it like a Jetstream all the way, and landed almost at the forest's edge. All his strength and determination gone, Thom sagged against the door-frame.

And watched the hurrying creatures as they fled the cottage, forming a rippling stream that funnelled back into the dirty gla.s.s jar.

BEFORE THE STORM.

THOM AWOKE with a start, and overwhelming panic almost seized him yet again. He sat up in the bed and saw that he was alone in the bedroom and that it was daylight. The night was over, finished with; he was safe. The sight of the chest of drawers pushed up against the door reminded him of what had taken place the night before, the invasion of spiders, walking among them, throwing the carrier out of the cottage.

When the spiders had fled he had collapsed completely in the doorway, so weak again he feared another stroke was coming on. How long he had lain there, he had no idea, but it was the elf who had roused him and pressed a thimbleful of some sweet liquid to his lips, urging him with soft, kindly words to drink. Whether or not it was only in his mind, he had felt the potion sink into his body, then spread as though travelling through veins and arteries and even airways, reaching every part of his system, from toes to fingertips.

'It will help you as you sleep,' he remembered Rigwit had told him.

How he had got from the doorstep up to his bed was patchy - he'd insisted on locking, then bolting the front door, top and bottom, even though the elf had a.s.sured him the danger had pa.s.sed for the night, and he remembered the long crawl on hands and knees up to the bedroom, Rigwit encouraging him all the way. But from there on, there was nothing. He had no recollection at all of pushing the chest of drawers against the bedroom door, nor of having climbed fully clothed into bed. He noted that his feet were bareand presumed Rigwit had pulled off his boots and covered his body with a bedsheet. Mercifully, sleep had swallowed him whole and had not even allowed a dream or two.

Thom rose from the bed, his body stiff, but his left arm and leg more mobile that he had expected. He drew circles in the air with his elbow, loosening the muscles of his left arm, then raised his left knee chest-high a few times, bending forward to meet it. The movement was awkward and hurt a little, but otherwise he was fine. Looking down at himself to examine his clothes, he saw the small dark patches, alien blood and squashed pulp, and his sweatshirt was torn in several places. He declined lifting the material to examine the skin beneath.

Instead, he went to the window and looked out at the woodland beyond. The day was grey, a vast blanket of light cloud filling the sky, covering the sun and dissipating its glory. The woods seemed very still, and when he listened, no bird calls came to his ears.

With some dread, Thom went to the stairs and looked down, expecting to see the small carca.s.ses of spiders he'd killed; and see them he did. He was shocked, for another part of him had not expected them to be there, had thought all the spiders were imaginary, an illusion sent to the cottage by the wiccan, Nell Quick. And hadn't Rigwit said they couldn't harm him? Didn't that suggest they had been real

only in his mind? Thom was confused. He had seen them, felt their scurrying legs on his own flesh yet they hadn't stung or bitten him. At least, not until the very end ... Lying in small scattered heaps was evidence of their existence. Maybe it was Rigwit's persuasion that they couldn't harm him that somehow nullified their effect at first. If the elf hadn't arrived in time to convince him, who knows what his own mind would have accepted.

Thom trod gingerly on the stairboards, his bare feet avoiding the splats and leg-curled bodies, and at the bottom he warily opened the door to the kitchen. It was the same in there, empty of any living creatures but the broken sh.e.l.ls and pulp lying in heaps all around, a spider's graveyard whose sinister grimness was not lessened by daylight.

By the book - now closed, he observed - lying on the table was a jug containing the same juice that had revived him so well before; at least, he a.s.sumed it was the same. Rigwit, who obviously had closed the book, had left it there for him.

He called the elf's name, but there was no response. Thom was frustrated, but presumed that although he was the guardian of the cottage, Rigwit did not actually live there. It seemed he came and went as he pleased.

Guiltily (because he should have remembered sooner) he tried to ring the hospital where Katy Budd had been taken in Shrewsbury, but all he got on his mobile phone was the usual static. He resolved to drive into town later and visit the hospital. The next thing Thom did was to drink the juice straight from the jug, almost finishing it all before he felt satiated. He felt the same reaction as the first time, a sudden invigorating zest for life, his mind clearing of negativity, his strength returning. Unlike any hardcore drug, repet.i.tion did not appear to diminish the effect. With new-found enthusiasm, Thom swept the cottage free of squishy corpses, stripped and tossed his soiled clothes into the big rubbish bin hidden away round the back of the place, and took a

long hot bath, scrubbing his skin hard with a brush, then soaking till the water cooled. Once dried, he realized he was famished, but quickly donned a midnight-blue short-sleeved shirt, medium-blue jeans, and soft black ankle-boots, before cooking a huge breakfast of bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes. He finished off the remaining juice in the jug and, wiping his lips with a tea-towel, he thought he could now take on the world.

The feeling was not to see him through the whole day.

He called her name in vain.

Thom had left the cottage earlier that morning and gone into the forest in search of Jennet, walking through glades he had visited with her, along paths they had walked together, but there was no sign of her. In fact, there were no signs of faeries at all. Nor of the animals that they had come across in such large numbers.

The woods seemed empty, barren, devoid of life save the flora itself.

Thom needed to see her, needed Jennet's comforting arms around him, needed her to explain to him what was going on, for his return to Bracken had become a nightmare, the events of the past week beginning to weigh on him both in a mental and physical way. Whatever relief he'd had from the juice that morning was wearing thin, the enthusiasm and strength beginning to wane. But it wasn't the only reason he wanted to find Jennet.

He knew he loved her. He could hardly think of anything else but her: the terrible events, his suspicions, the monster that had nestled on his body to steal his vitality, the attack by wasps and its consequences, the spider invasion, all remained in the periphery of his mind when he thought about her, her loveliness, her nature, the mere image of her overriding all else. If it hadn't been for Jennet he might have

easily packed his bags, climbed into the Jeep, and left Bracken for ever. Well, maybe not. Maybe he would have stayed on until after Sir Russell had pa.s.sed away. He owed that much at least to the man who was, after all, his grandfather.

Sir Russell was of the old ways, respectable and duly respected, someone whose set opinions and traditional values would never allow birth out of wedlock to be acceptable. Maybe he was a relic of the past, part of an era that was never quite as pious and honourable as it pretended to be; anyway he was Thom's paternal grandfather and in the end that was all that mattered. Despite the rejection, Thom felt sure that Bethan - and perhaps even his father, Jonathan, Sir Russell's son - would have wanted him to be there for the old man as death drew close, or at least, to be around, even if at a distance. Besides, he was curious to discover just what game Nell Quick and, so it seemed, Hugo were playing. What had he, Thom, done to incur their rancour?

He went on with his search, continuing to call Jennet's name, his heart filling with dread as his echoes died away and only silence remained. There was no movement in the undergrowth, not even a shaking ofleaves to indicate a fleeing animal, and no b.u.t.terflies fluttered among the long flowers, no birds perched on branches or flew over the treetops. There was a strange quietness in the forest.

Finally, when he reached the lakeside, he cupped both hands around his mouth and shouted: 'Jennnneeet!'

Calm ripple-circles made by feeding fish spread here and there over the gla.s.s-still surface. But nothing rose from the lake's depths.

He called again: 'Jennnneeeet!'

Once more, in despair: 'Jennet!'

Thom sank to his knees, resting on his heels. He waited.

Disconsolately, he waited. Surely she hadn't deserted him? Not when he needed her so much. He leaned sideways, rested a hand in the gra.s.s. Eventually he sat, chin on his knees, hands around his ankles. He shivered. Despite the season, the forest felt cold. And he felt alone. After an hour or so, he returned to the cottage.

THE STORM.

THOM HAD gone back to the cottage and brooded for the rest of the day, asking himself questions that appeared to have no answers, dwelling upon his relationship with Jennet, wondering about her unexpected absence that day. He thought of Hugo too, his so-called lifelong friend. Was he really involved in some kind of devious plot with Nell Quick? If so, why? And what was the purpose? It was as perplexing as it was tiring, and eventually Thom went upstairs and laid down fully clothed on the four-poster bed, his mind in turmoil, occasionally questioning his own sanity. Faeries, elves, witches, magic potions? Was he going crazy? He did not ponder too long, for soon his eyelids were drooping, his body relaxing. His last thought before sleep stole in and claimed him was that later he would drive to the hospital to see how Katy was faring. Then he was asleep ...

It was the rumble of distant thunder that woke him. His eyes opened smartly, no flickering, no slow-rising from the depths of sleep, just sudden wakefulness. He was surprised to find the room in darkness and quickly turned on the bedside lamp so that he could look at his wrist.w.a.tch. 9.45 pm. s.h.i.t!

He had meant to drive in to Shrewsbury and check on Katy. He'd have to find a call-box and phone in, or drive to a better reception area for his mobile.

Thom left the bed to go to the window. It was late, but it shouldn't have been this dark. There were heavy clouds over the forest, but they didn't appear to be thunderous. Nor was it even raining. The sound of faraway thunder came again.

Curious, Thom left the bedroom and climbed the staircase to the roof. A strong breeze hit him as soon as he stepped out the door, ruffling his hair and clothes. The small figure of Rigwit was sitting on the parapet, looking outwards, over the woodland. Thom went to him.

"Where were you all day?' he asked, watching the elf's profile, his voice almost pleading.

Rigwit continued to gaze into the distance. He seemed agitated and even in the dusk of night Thom could see the distress in his expression. There have been many counsels throughout the woodlands today.

The faerefolkis have been gathering to discuss what is to be done.'

'I tried to find Jennet.'

You couldn't, not this day. The undines have gone to ground. Or should I say, to water. They're very afraid.' He turned his small face to Thom. 'As are we all,' he said ominously.

Thom shook his head. 'I don't understand. What's happening, Rigwit, what the h.e.l.l is wrong?'

'It's the wiccan. She's unleashed powers she does not understand and cannot control.'

'Nell Quick?'

Rigwit nodded. 'She's a vain foolish woman who is not aware of her own limitations. She will wreak havoc this

night. The faerefolkis are trying to find ways of restraining the malign forces she has released, but I fear it is already too late. I think all we can do is hide ourselves away until it has pa.s.sed.'

Rigwit shuddered and Thom reached out to clasp his narrow shoulder. The elf was shivering.

'Why too late?' Thom asked, the breeze growing stronger so that his words seemed to be whisked away.

The elf turned away again and nodded towards the horizon.

'Look,' he said, his teeth chattering.

And Thom looked.

The wind hit him the moment he swung open the front door, pushing against him like some gigantic invisible hand, almost forcing him back inside the cottage. In the short time it had taken him to leave the rooftop and race down the stairs, the breeze had grown into a gale.

Bending into it, a forearm over his eyes, Thom ran out into the dry storm and such was the sound of the wind, he failed to hear Rigwit's cries from behind.

'The book! You must take the book with you! It's your only hope!'

Realising it would be quicker by foot, Thom ran across the clearing and on to the track that eventually would lead to Castle Bracken, the wind whipping at his clothes and hair, leaves flying across his path, and into his face, branches bending before its increased might. As he ran, the vision he'd had from the rooftop remained stark in his mind.

The clouds were heavier in the distance, with a thin light of yellowish-white from a sun that had long sunk from view silhouetting the low hills of the horizon, the light vignetting abruptly to dark grey the clouds themselves. But directly over Castle Bracken - he had seen lights in some of the windows - there hung boiling black clouds, their turbulent

edges defined by flashes of inner lightning. Even as he had watched, a lightning bolt forked through the air to touch the mansion's roof itself. It was eerie and it was frightening, for it seemed that the big house had been singled out for attention, the dark rolling clouds directly hanging above it like a baleful portent.

It was this and a dreadful feeling of impending disaster that had sent Thom down the stairs and out into the woods.

The wind set up a howling as he ran, growing stronger by the moment, bending not just branches but the young saplings also; it tore into his face like stabbing fingers, as if deliberately trying to blind him. He kept his right arm up, glad he knew the path so well, for it was growing darker by the second, the summer sun too far below the horizon now to have much influence. Already his breath was coming in harsh dry heaves and although his left leg was fine at present, he knew it would not be long before he was limping.

A leafy branch lashed at his face and would have struck his eyes had not his forearm protected them.

Other branches waved at him from the sides of the path as though jeering his progress, their rustlings like angry voices. Crazily, the wind did not come from just one direction: one moment it was in front of him, slowing his stride, the next it was behind, speeding him along; at other times, when it appeared to come from all directions at once to whirl around him, it was like being buffeted by a whirlwind. There was moisture in the air - single raindrops constantly splattered against him - but there was no downpour. At least, not yet. He prayed he would get to the Big House before it did, for the track would quickly become slippery, the open field he would have to cross, a quagmire. Something tripped him and he sprawled headlong.