The String Diaries Part 11

Nicole breathed quickly, hands gripping the table, knuckles white. Slowly, incredibly, he watched her recover herself. They sat in silence for a few minutes, and he waited as she looked from his eyes, to the table, and back to him.

'Charles, we need to get out of here,' she said. 'Somewhere darker. Somewhere with stronger drink.'

They found a suitable watering hole two streets away. Dimly lit, noisy, anonymous. Wooden booths lined the wall opposite the bar. Nicole slid into one while he ordered two large cognacs and brought them over. A sputtering candle sat in a dish upon the table. She blew it out as he sat down, an indication of just how much he had managed to shatter her demeanour in the last half an hour.

Charles watched her take a swallow of her drink. She hunched over in her seat, fingers laced around her gla.s.s. He sipped his brandy, wanting to hear her story but careful not to pressure her. He was still astounded that he had told her he loved her, and dismayed both by his atrocious timing and her lack of reaction.

'Jakab.' She shuddered. 'G.o.d, how I hate to say that name. When I was a little girl, my mother told me the tales of our family, told me why we had to be careful, keep our heads low. My grandmother, Anna, was Hungarian by birth, but she fled with her husband to Germany before the start of the Second World War. His name was Albert. Something happened in Hungary to make them flee. It was all very quick, in the middle of the night. They said goodbye to their families and that was it never saw them again.

'They settled well enough in Germany. My grandmother gave birth to my mother, Hilde, shortly after they arrived. When war broke out, Albert was conscripted by the n.a.z.is. He survived for about a week until a sniper got him at Stalingrad.'

'Hilde? I thought-'

'Her real name. When the war ended and the Allies occupied, Anna was itching to move again. I don't know if she had a near miss with Jakab or she was just concerned about the borders opening up again. Either way, she decided to move further west, this time to France. She took Hilde with her.'

'Not a good time to be in France, if your husband was a dead n.a.z.i.'

'Conscript. But yes, you're right. They were outcasts. Moved around a lot. My mother changed her name to Alice and then she met my father, Eric Dubois. By this time, Anna had pa.s.sed away. I never met her.

'My mother always warned me to be on the lookout for anything strange, to watch the behaviour of the people close to us, in case it changed. She told me there had been a man in Hungary Jakab who grew obsessed with her grandmother. There was a chance he was still out there. With Anna dead, there was a chance he would come for us.'

Nicole glanced up at him, measuring his expression. 'Of course, she thought he was a hosszu elet. And by this time, I had read the diaries. When you read that kind of thing . . .' She took another drink. 'This is the bit I don't expect you to understand. Or believe. But let me put it like this. Imagine you are hosszu elet. Imagine the myth you heard was true, that you have that ability. And imagine that the woman you're obsessed with is married to another. And hates you. And imagine that, even knowing how she feels, you don't care, you want only to possess her.'

He shook his head, opening his hands.

'Charles, you become the man that she loves. You supplant him. My mother had been guarding against that all her life. But at the time, with no real experience of what was coming, it still seemed like a superst.i.tion, an eccentric set of hand-me-down diaries and warnings from a family too carried away by its own fireside tales. That was until we started noticing the changes.

'My father, Eric, was a quiet, lovely man. A carpenter by trade. When he wasn't in his workshop making furniture, he was churning out toys for me and my friends in the village. We were living in a tiny place just outside Carca.s.sonne. A newcomer came to town. Petre, we called him. He and my father became very close. Petre came to dinner with us, was at the house all the time. He began apprenticing to my father, even though they were almost the same age. Work was scarce. People took what they could get.

'But as time went on, Petre began seeking out my mother. He would visit the house when he knew my father was out. He started buying presents for her. My father must have seen what was coming. I think he was reluctant to act because he cared so much for his friend. It came to a head one afternoon when Petre made a pa.s.s at her. Father was a pa.s.sive man, but it pushed him over the edge. He went berserk. He found his apprentice and beat him. We never saw Petre again. Everyone in the village knew what had happened. The man had nowhere to stay, nowhere to drink, nowhere to work. Everyone loved Eric and no one was going to forgive someone who betrayed him like that.

'Shortly afterwards, we began to notice changes in my father. He stopped making toys, for a start. That was the first thing I noticed, anyway. My mother she would never tell me but I think their relationship . . .' Nicole swallowed, choking on her words. 'Let's just say their physical relationship went from healthy and loving to violent and perverse. The arguments started. My father would forget huge chunks of our previous life together. I would make up stories about things we had done and he would nod in agreement, or laugh alongside me. Even though none of it was true.

'Then one day, outside the village, they found the body. It had been buried for a while, and the face was gone. Sliced off. The gendarme failed to identify it. But my mother knew.'

Charles nodded, transfixed by her words, filled with concern for Nicole's state as she talked. 'What happened?'

'One evening, my mother packed me off to friends. She plied my father with drink until he was virtually comatose, put him to bed and locked the door. Then she went downstairs, boarded up the house and torched it.'

'My G.o.d.'

'She collected me in the middle of the night and we headed north. We never went back.'

Nicole leaned back in her seat. She smiled at him, brushing tears from her eyes. 'And that's it. What do you think? Still interested in me?' Her tone verged on hysterical.

'Want me to play devil's advocate?'

'Sure.'

'It's difficult to say this without the risk of hurting you, but your father could have been ill.'

'A degenerative disease that would explain his behaviour. Alzheimer's.'

'Perhaps. Or something similar.'

'And my mother burned an innocent man.'

'That's the bit that's difficult to say.'

Nicole nodded.

Then he asked, 'So if Jakab burned in the house, why are you still running?'

'Because my mother had one friend in the village she confided in. She called her a few years later to find out what happened. By the time the fire reached the upper floor, it had drawn the villagers out of their beds. They saw a man screaming at one of the windows. Some said later he appeared to be writhing. Rippling. He broke the window and threw himself out, from a height that would have killed or crippled most men. And then he got up and ran away.'

'And he's still after you.'

She picked up her cognac, gulped it. 'And that's why I'm in England. In Oxford. I've been researching all this time. There are texts here: original sources, doc.u.ments I can't access anywhere else. Hosszu elet means Long Life but it doesn't mean immortal. I want to find out how much longer this can last.'

Charles breathed deeply. He found it difficult to respond to the enormity of what she had just told him. It was impossible to believe any of the more sensational aspects of the story. But clearly something tragic had happened to the Dubois family. Whether Beckett's tales had any relevance suddenly didn't matter to him. Eccentric or not, he would take another leap of faith if she asked him to, would put the mythology to one side until he had worked out what to do.

Reaching across the table, he took her hand. 'Will you let me help you?'

She laughed, tears falling this time, and put her own hand over his. 'Of course, Charles. Thank you.'

'Will you let me read the diaries?'

'If that's what you want.'

'Will you leave them with me for a while? Maybe one or two of them?' She hesitated, then squeezed his hand and nodded. Charles glanced at his watch. 'We'd better get back to the cottage. You sail for France in the morning.'

'There's one more thing, Charles.' She still held his hand, and now she really did smile. 'It sounds better in French.'

'What is it?'

'Je crois que je vous aime aussi.'

It was the most beautiful phrase he had heard.

CHAPTER 8.

Snowdonia Now A wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm Hannah as the full impact of Sebastien's words seized her.

Have you validated Nate since he got into the car with you?

She took a gasping breath. Another. Felt a buzzing in her ears, a dryness in her mouth.

Could she even conceive that the man downstairs was someone other than her husband? The possibility that Nate had not been the one to travel with them to the farmhouse brought consequences so dire she could hardly even consider them.

She searched her memory frantically for any proof that it was Nate her Nate that lay injured on the sofa in the kitchen. She reran their flight from her father's place, the words they had exchanged in the car. What words, though? He had hardly spoken. Had hardly even told her what happened.

But he was dying!

And unless we've managed to stop the bleeding in time he may STILL be dying!

Unbidden, a memory rushed at her: the day she married Nate. No guests. No fuss. Her husband, her father and a single minister in a church on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Annecy. Charles booked them into the bridal suite of a hotel overlooking the lake, but Hannah bundled Nate into their car and drove him into the mountains instead. That night she made love to him on a blanket and they fell asleep watching a cold moon dust the lake with wedding diamonds. The next morning they drove back to the hotel in time for a breakfast served by staff who did their best not to notice the dirt on their clothes and the flush on their faces.

Tears blurred her vision. She clenched her fists, forced herself to lock away the memory. Focused instead on hatred. On rage.

She would not yet believe that her husband was gone, but she would go downstairs and find out. If it was Jakab she found if he had supplanted Nate then G.o.d pity him because the only thing left for her would be vengeance and hers would be terrible. She would destroy him. Utterly. Pulverise his flesh. Shatter every one of his bones. Stamp him into the earth. Gut him. Burn him. Obliterate him.

Hannah realised that she was shaking. Eyes gritty, she jumped up from the bed.

Sebastien climbed to his feet. 'What are you thinking?'

'I need to know.'

He nodded. 'I'm coming with you.'

No need to be stealthy now, she reasoned. Either her husband lay on the couch downstairs or a monstrous counterfeit.

You left Leah with him.

The grotesque reality of that thought swamped her, a capsizing black wave that closed over her head and pushed into her lungs.

You left Leah.

Hannah gagged, stumbled. Would he harm their daughter? Everything she had read in the diaries described a creature whose mind was so broken, so incapable of empathy or love in the way she understood those concepts, that any attempt to predict its behaviour was an exercise in insanity.

The possibilities she had discounted moments ago were now so real they seemed like probabilities. As Hannah crossed the room she realised with horror that she had already started to grieve.

She had been raised to survive: to flee, to fight, to grieve, accept, protect. She had been taught by three decades of fear, of loss, of s.n.a.t.c.hing moments of joy in a world of instability. She could not remember a time, even during her happiest moments especially during her happiest moments when she had not caught herself wondering when it would end, how it would end, and how the entries in her own diaries might read if they survived long enough to be pa.s.sed down.

Act.

Stop thinking. Don't hesitate. Act. The mantra had served her tolerably so far. Looking into the future would immobilise her if she allowed it.

Earlier, after verifying Sebastien's ident.i.ty, she had put the shotgun back on the pantry shelf. The old man's arrival had rea.s.sured her, and she had been more worried about leaving a loaded weapon within Leah's reach than their immediate discovery. How costly might that mistake turn out to be?

Hannah stepped out of the bedroom, began to move down the stairs. As she pa.s.sed the landing, the eyes of the stuffed falcon followed her with a dead stare.

She had little need for stealth. But she found herself creeping down to the ground-floor hall nevertheless. Little need for stealth, but little need either to alert him to her approach. She kept tight to the wall, minimising the creak of the treads beneath her feet. Sebastien followed, close behind.

At the bottom of the stairs Hannah paused, listening.

Wind. The knocking of window-panes. Rain bouncing like rice grains off the gla.s.s. Inside, the house breathed silence.

She padded along the floorboards to the kitchen. Winced at the hard shadows cast into corners by the dull light of the chandelier. Sought them anyway, rejecting her fear.

The first door on her right was closed. Dining room. Further down, the living-room door gaped open. The darkness within emitted a chill breeze. She remembered the smashed window she had seen. Remembered that she had not investigated it. Another mistake.

The hallway twisted a dog-leg before arriving at the kitchen. She would have to turn her back on the living-room doorway, on that black void.

And that's when he would grab her. She'd feel his fingers slide around her throat, hear him whisper her name, and she would scream and kick and bite and claw and gouge but when she turned and saw the ghoul wearing her dead husband's face, she would know she had lost everything.

Hannah stopped in the hall, and when Sebastien b.u.t.ted up against her she nearly cried out.

You left Leah with him.

She turned away from the toothless mouth of the living-room doorway. Balled her fists. When nothing leaped out at her, she stepped into the kitchen.

Hannah had left candles burning and a fire crackling in the grate. As she entered the room the light was soft and warm. The sofa where she had laid Nate and they had treated his wounds was empty. The hose of the drip she had set up lay on the floor, discarded.

In the armchair where Leah had slept, a solitary cushion remained.

Hannah felt something wrench inside her. She opened her mouth. Wanted to scream. A million dark thoughts flooded her. Thirty years of nightmares condensed into a single moment.

Yet this was real. This was happening.

Don't think about what it means. Don't. Just think of Leah.

Sebastien walked into the kitchen behind her. He hissed when he saw the empty sofa. His eyes flicked to hers.

Gun, she mouthed, and he nodded in response.

The pantry door was ajar. Hannah slipped inside. She felt around for the shelf where she had left the weapon. Even as she wondered what she would do if the shotgun was missing, her hands touched the shelf and slid along the wood. Empty.

Hannah wasted a few more seconds, feeling blindly, knowing the truth but needing to convince herself that the weapon had really gone.

She backed out of the cupboard.

Sebastien still stood in the doorway, but he had turned to face the hall. She heard him take a slow, measured breath. 'It's OK,' he said, the timbre of his voice startling after the silence of the last few minutes.

Something odd in his tone. Something terrifying.

She couldn't make her legs work. 'What is it?'

'It's OK,' he repeated. 'Everything's OK. I've found Nate.'

Sebastien took a step backwards, then another. As he reversed into the kitchen, Hannah saw that the shotgun's twin barrels were pressed against his chin. Sebastien backed further into the room. The shotgun followed. Holding it was a nightmarish, corpse-like version of her husband.