Doctor Illuminatus (3 page)

“Look at this,” he continued.

Standing by Pip’s door, he started to measure, heel-to-toe, the distance from the door frame to the wall behind her bed that separated their bedrooms.

“There!” he said. “Five times eighteen centimeters, the length of my foot. That’s about ninety centimeters. Now come with me.”

She followed him into his room, where he did the same thing, measuring from his door to the separating wall.

“Four times eighteen — seventy-two centimeters. All right? So ninety plus seventy-two —”

“Tim,” Pip interrupted him. “What are you doing?” “— makes a hundred and sixty-two centimeters.” “Tim!”

“All will be revealed.”

He went into the corridor and started to heel-to-toe the distance from his door to Pip’s.

“Get it?” he asked as he reached her door.

“Get what?” Pip replied, now beginning to lose her patience.

“Our rooms take up a hundred and sixty-two centimeters, but the distance, door to door, is roughly two hundred and ninety centimeters. That means the wall’s a hundred and twenty-eight centimeters thick. One and a quarter meters!”

“So what? It’s an old house. They have thick walls.” She turned back into her room, exasperated by Tim’s foray into architectural surveying, and started, once again, to unpack her ornaments. Tim followed her.

“Did you hear a knocking in the wall last night?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes,” Pip said, somewhat taken aback.

“What do you think it was?”

“The central heating pipes.”

“In
summer
?” Tim answered.

“Hot-water pipes, then,” Pip retorted. “So what do you suggest?”

“Do you know what a priest’s hole is?” Tim asked in his usual infuriating way.

Although she hated to admit it, Pip did not. Once again, Tim, who seemed never to read a book and yet knew an amazing number of obscure facts, had the better of her.

“It was a hiding place for a priest,” he went on. “In Tudor times, when Roman Catholicism was banned, rich Catholics hid their ministers to avoid detection and arrest. I think the wall’s hollow and the sound traveled upwards —”

“— in a secret chamber,” Pip cut in, scornfully. “Well, Tim, you get high marks for imagination.”

“. . . and if it is hollow,” Tim continued, undaunted by his sister’s sarcasm, “there must be a way into it somewhere. I’ve tested the panels in my room. It’s not in there. Can I test yours?”

Pip shrugged and lifted a china horse out of the ornament box. Little balls of polystyrene stuck to her arms with static electricity, like fake snowflakes.

“Suit yourself,” she said.

Tim knelt by the wall and started tapping his knuckle on the paneling, his ear close to the wood to detect any hollowness. On reaching the panel by Pip’s bedside table, he knocked twice. His knock was answered.

“Told you so!” he said, triumphantly. “It echoes.”

He knocked again, twice.

Three knocks were returned.

“Some echo!” Tim exclaimed.

“Do it again,” Pip said. “Do a pattern.” Yet, no sooner had she spoken than she felt suddenly, unaccountably, very afraid.

Tim knocked twice, paused, knocked three times and stopped.

The reply came back:
knock-knock, knock-knock-knock
.

Pip’s spine crept: it was as if the blade of a cold knife had been run up her back.

“It must be Dad playing his silly tricks,” she muttered.

“They went to the supermarket, remember?” Tim whispered back.

Knock, knock-knock.

The first knocks had come from far down in the building. These were nearer.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Each was nearer than the last. It was as if something were rising up through the wall towards them. At any minute, Pip thought, it might burst through the paneling, erupting into her room like the massive claw of a prehistoric monster in a horror film, and reach out to spear her on its slimy talons and drag her to the paneling, where a mouth like an octopus’s beak would rip open her chest and suck out her still-breathing lungs.

Tim got quickly to his feet and stepped swiftly away from the wall.

Knock. Knock.

Whatever it was, it was now in the paneling right behind Pip’s bed. She and her brother exchanged worried glances.

“I’ll never sleep here again,” she whispered.

“Nor me,” Tim murmured. He ran his tongue over his lips. His mouth was dry and his hands clammy with fear
.
“What do we do?”

“Get out,” Pip suggested in an undertone. “Quietly. And when we get to the top of the stairs,” she added softly, “run like the devil.”

On tiptoe, they started towards the door. The floor-boards creaked out the message of their progress at each step. Pip’s heart was racing.

As they went through the door and were about to flee, Tim stopped.

“Listen!”

The knocking had stopped, only to be replaced by an insistent tapping.

“It’s not so loud,” Pip replied.

“Not that,” Tim said. He waited a moment, then added, “That!”

Muffled by the paneling was a voice.

Tim stepped back into the room, Pip grabbing him by the arm.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed. “Listen,” Tim said again, but no longer in a whisper. “Help!” called the muted voice in the wall. “Please help!”

“It’s coming from behind your bed,” Tim declared. “Give me a hand.”

Much against her better judgment, Pip helped her brother pull the bed away from the wall. As she tugged, the thought occurred to her that this might be a trap, that they were being tricked into releasing a demon that had lived for centuries, incarcerated in the walls of the house. Perhaps it was the ghost of a priest long since martyred for his faith, hung, drawn and quartered for conducting Mass. When he appeared, his intestines would be swinging like rotting coils of khaki rope from his belly, one eye dislodged from its socket to roll to and fro across his cheek, suspended by its optic nerve.

The bed reached the center of the room. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a barely audible click, a small section of paneling at floor level swung back slowly on heavy, iron hinges. Through the opening appeared the pale face of a boy. He looked as apprehensive as the two faces peering down at him.

“Please, may I beg of you a drink of water?” he asked cautiously.

Two

Sebastian’s Story

T
he boy sat on the edge of the bed and sipped a second glass of water, having drained the first in one long gulp.

“I had a great thirst,” he explained, breaking the silence, “for it is a long while since last I tasted water. Now that is quenched.”

Pip and Tim watched him, bemused. He appeared somehow weak, as if he had just come through a long period of illness, and was dressed in grimy gray flannel shorts, long gray socks, a soiled white shirt and a brown, V-neck pullover. His shoes, which were spotted with mildew and badly needed polishing, were of brown leather with their thin laces tied in a tight bow. He looked, Pip thought, as if he had just stepped out of a film set in the 1950s. All he needed was a little peaked cap with an embroidered school badge on the front.

“You have many questions you would ask me,” the boy said, “but first I would know your names and how you come to be here.”

Pip told him who they were, how their parents had bought the house, which had been derelict for some years, and had just moved in.

“What has become of the old man who lived here?” the boy inquired.

“He died,” Tim said bluntly. “Was he a relative?” “Yes,” replied the boy, without any sign of emotion. “He was,” he paused as if unsure of quite how to describe their relationship, “my uncle.”

“But ... ,” Pip replied, somewhat confused and a little shocked that the boy was not upset by the news, “. . . but he died years ago.”

“At least ten,” Tim added. “You won’t remember him. You must have been about two.”

“Indeed, I remember him well.”

Pip and Tim looked at each other. Neither of them could remember their fifth birthdays clearly, never mind their second.

The boy took another sip of water and said, “There is much I must tell you yet, before I take you into my confidence, I must know if I may trust you.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then, suddenly opening them, stared hard first at Tim, then at Pip. As his gaze fell upon her, Pip felt as if a small electric charge were running through her. Looking down, she noticed the fine hairs on her arms standing up. The sensation lasted only a few seconds.

The boy then smiled and remarked, “We live in a dangerous time and I must be certain of you. Now I know you will be for me.” He placed the glass on Pip’s bedside table. “Are your parents returned?”

“No,” Pip said, wondering how he knew they had gone out, “they won’t be back for at least an hour.”

“Nevertheless,” replied the boy, “please close the door, for what I shall tell you must remain between us. There is much at stake.”

As Tim shut the door, the boy left the bed and sat cross-legged on the carpet, signaling for the others to join him. Once they were seated, he leaned forward.

“My name is Sebastian Rawne,” he began. “This house was built by my father, and my family has always lived within it. The land was granted to my family in perpetuity by His Majesty, King Henry the Fifth, shortly before his death. My father was in the king’s service as . . .”

“Hang on!” Tim interrupted. “You’re telling us your father built this place?”

“Yes.”

“But, according to the estate agent, it was built in 1422.”

“It was begun in 1422,” Sebastian corrected him, “yet it was six years in the making.”

“Right!” Tim said sardonically.

“Surely you mean your great-great-umpteen-times grandfather built it,” Pip suggested.

“No, it was my father, Thomas Rawne.”

Tim snorted. “Are you trying to tell us that . . .” he did a quick calculation, “. . . you’re coming up for your five hundred and eightieth birthday?”

“I am twelve,” Sebastian replied, “yet I was born in 1430. On the first day of July. As it happens,” he looked around almost nostalgically, “in this very room. And it was here that, eight days later, my mother died. She gave her life that I might be.”

Pip felt a wave of sympathy sweep over her. It was strange to think that anyone could know exactly where they had been born. She and Tim had arrived in one of a dozen identical, anonymous delivery rooms in a huge county hospital. To know also that your mother had died giving birth to you was horrific, and to live in the same house, passing the door to the very room every day, was, she thought, something she could not do.

“This is all rubbish!” Tim retorted.

“Tim!” Pip remonstrated.

Tim looked sheepish and said, “Not about your mother. I mean . . . Well, how can you be nearly six centuries old? It makes no sense.”

“I have much to explain,” Sebastian admitted, “and you will find what I tell you to be fantastical. Yet I swear to you that all I say shall be the truth, for I live by the truth and will bear no falsehood. I know not where to begin and so will tell you that, although I am but twelve years of age, I have existed for hundreds of years. My age is calculated not by the calendar, but by how long I have been awake.”

“Awake!” Tim exclaimed.

“Now that might just make a bit of sense,” Pip said, thoughtfully. “You mean you sort of hibernate.”

“That is one means by which to explain it,” Sebastian replied.

“But animals only hibernate for a few months,” Tim reasoned. “Like a tortoise or a bear, going through the winter. They don’t turn off for
years
.”

“Lungfish do,” Pip said. “I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel. They can lie dormant in dried mud for years.”

“Does he look like a fish to you?” Tim rejoined.

“My father,” Sebastian said quietly, “discovered a potion, which he called
aqua soporiferum
, the water that induces sleep. By means of this, one can slow the functions of the body. When I am not awake, my heart beats but six times an hour and I breathe but once in twenty minutes, and then only shallowly. My body cools and, as it does so, my brain ceases to function in the ordinary fashion.”

“But how do you wake up?” Pip wanted to know. “What makes you?”

“That I shall tell you soon,” Sebastian said. “But now, I must request of you some food, for I have a terrible hunger now that my thirst is slaked.”

Tim checked that they were alone in the house, and they went downstairs to the kitchen, where Pip set about preparing a meal for Sebastian. There wasn’t much in the cupboards except cans and jars brought from the previous house, but she found a beef and ale pie in a flat, circular tin and heated it up in the oven. While that was cooking she gave him a bowl of cream of tomato soup and slices of bread and butter. Whatever was placed before him, Sebastian ate with gusto, wolfing it down as if he were starving. He also drank a liter of milk and a Pepsi, which, he remarked, tasted most curious.

“We’ve got to get you some different clothes,” Tim commented as Sebastian started on a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. “Yours look as if they’re about to fall apart.”

“Would you like to wash while we find you something to wear?” Pip asked.

“I should very much like to bathe,” Sebastian said, “for my flesh is still cold. As for my clothes, they are over sixty years old. They were, briefly, my school uniform. Just for the summer term of 1939. A truancy officer visited the house and my uncle and aunt had to send me to school to comply with his demands. On the third of September, war was declared with Nazi Germany. There was much confusion thereafter that autumn, so I did not return.”

“What about when you were . . .” Tim was not sure how to phrase it, “. . . when you were a little boy? Didn’t you go to school then?”

“Indeed not. There were the universities at Oxford and Cambridge, but schools were very few. The monasteries educated young boys, but, mostly, only if they were to enter the service of Our Lord. The King’s College of Our Lady at Eton beside Windsor was not founded until the year I was — or, rather, I would have been — ten. And the Church was not to be my destiny.”