Gallows at Twilight (21 page)

Quilp moved silently through the throng until he reached the centre of the hall. Situated just below the hole in the roof, the nightmare cabinet waited for him. Pinch danced merrily into the box but Quilp hesitated. He glanced at Grype who stood nearby, wringing his sweaty hands. There was no love lost between the witches, but Quilp felt a strange jolt of pity for the librarian. They were all that remained of the true Crowden Coven.

‘Get out of here,’ he whispered.

Grype came forward, his vulture-demon squawking on his shoulder.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Leave this place, if you value your life.’

With that, Quilp stepped into the box. He saw no hellish landscapes, no nightmare visions—the cabinet was a well of emptiness. Looking back into the Great Hall, he watched Grype squeeze between the witches and make for the door. The universal coven was too preoccupied to notice his going. Every eye was fixed on the figure at the top of the stairs.

‘Brothers and sisters, HEAR ME!’ the demon called. ‘The time has come to pool our magic and to summon the great Door. Are you ready?’

A chorus of cheers.

‘Then join hands and we will begin.’

Breathless whispers; the rustle of hands.

‘You must focus your attention on the cabinet. Your powers will be channelled through the box and through Mr Quilp. The Door will then be constructed directly above them. When I give the word, you will release the full extent of your magic. Rejoice, my faithful witches, for the Demontide is at hand!’

Two hundred and forty-three faces turned obediently to Quilp. Nervous smiles and excited twitters passed between the crowd while their demons lay quietly at their feet. Quilp studied those monstrous faces and seemed to read the same dark message in each. The demons knew very well what was about to happen. For the sake of the greater mission, they were willing to sacrifice their masters. Quilp stole a glance at his own demon. Mr Pinch’s yellow eyes danced excitedly in his head, and Quilp wondered how far the demon’s loyalty to him extended.

No time for such questions and doubts.

It was beginning …

Slowly, the nightmare box started to revolve. Quilp watched a circle of faces pass by. They were whispering, intoning spells, reaching deep to summon their magic. Again, he felt a stab of remorse: these were brother witches—he should call out, warn them of what was to come. But guilt was an alien emotion to Tobias Quilp and was easily swamped by his need to revenge himself on Jacob Harker.

Behind the universal coven, the Demon Father raised his hands.

‘Release your magic, brethren! Let it flow!’

The witches’ arms shot out from their sides and pointed towards the cabinet. The demons flinched, as if in pain. A strange gurgling sound rattled at the back of the witches’ throats. Their eyes snapped open and agonized screams cut the air. Jagged forks of blood-red magic exploded from their mouths. As the box rotated, Quilp saw flashes of the Demon Father reaching out and directing the lightning streams to a point just above the nightmare cabinet.

‘More, my brothers and sisters! Give me your power!’

Raw, brutal magic burned the witches’ lips to pouting cinders. One of the Japanese coven shrieked with pain and her eyes exploded out of her head. Twin columns of magic streaked out of the empty sockets and joined the crackling mass that had gathered above the cabinet. Seconds later, the entire gathering had lost their eyes. Faces burst into flame and skin folded down like melting candle wax. Under the liquid heat of magic, clothes and hair ignited. Soon all two hundred and forty-three witches were aflame, burning like Guy Fawkes effigies.

The demons added their own horrific cries to the chaos. They too were on fire, returning now to the desolation of the demon dimension. Heaps of charred corpses tumbled to the ground and black ash floated into the air. As the last of the witches fell, Quilp saw the Demon Father smile and make a plunging gesture with his hands.

‘Safe journey, Mr Quilp!’ he called.

The door of the nightmare cabinet slammed shut.

In the darkness, Quilp reached for Mr Pinch’s hand.

‘It’s all right, my pet,’ he whispered. ‘We’re on our way.’

Chapter 18

The Nightmare Begins

They came at night, under the door, spreading across the floor like a black carpet. Cockroaches. Thousands of them. The
tick-tick-tick
of their legs made every inch of Jake’s skin crawl. He did his best to shoo them away but the roaches were never gone for long. They would regroup in the corners of the cell and march out again, making for the boy and his thin straw bed. The only part of Jake that seemed to welcome the cockroaches was the scarab tucked away inside his skull. Whenever the beetle heard the insectile clicking it would chirrup happily in response.

Only one thing succeeded in scattering the roaches, and that was the rats. Chased along the prison corridors by the gaolers, the half-starved rodents would scamper under the cell door and find a feast waiting for them. At first, Jake had felt grateful—the rats’ midnight supper saved him from a night of creeping, crawling torture. But when they had exterminated all the roaches, the rats had turned their attention to him. On his second night in the keep, Jake had woken to the tickle of whiskers and the sudden, sharp bite of wicked teeth.

Much to the annoyance of Sergeant Martin Monks, by the end of the week the Witchfinder General had still not arrived. The delay was a blessing. It meant that Jake still had a chance to speak to the one person in Cravenmouth who had shown him mercy: Leonard Lanyon, the man who had saved him from Monks’s bullet. Every day, Jake begged Monks to deliver a message to Lanyon, asking the vicar to visit him. Every day, Monks reported back that ‘Mr Lanyon begs the pardon of Mr Harker, but as a good Christian he cannot converse with such a damnable witch.’ Jake doubted that Monks had
ever
spoken to Lanyon on his behalf and, as time passed, he saw his chance slipping away.

Day by day, hour by hour, Jake weakened. He was fed just once a day. In the mornings, Monks would open the cell door and throw a wooden bowl in his general direction. At first, Jake had been unable to eat the thin stew of roots, beets, oats, rat bones, and old apple cores. Three days into his imprisonment, the gnaw of his stomach had forced him to lift the bowl to his lips and choke back the food. A rancid slop peppered with maggot eggs, it flushed straight through his stomach and made him sick.

On the fifth day, he felt feverish. On the sixth, delirium set in and he could no longer tell the difference between the real world and his nightmares.

Lost in dreams, Jake witnessed the victory of the Demon Father. The Door had been summoned and the Demontide had engulfed the world. Buildings burned, rivers ran red, and the sound of monsters hatching their young filled the air. Demons ran like feral dogs through the empty streets and fed on the corpses of men, women, and children. Only a scattering of humankind remained. Playthings of the demons, these unlucky few turned their faces to the burning sky and cursed the name of Jacob Harker.

Jake moved on through the dream. He saw his father racked with pain as Crowden’s hex ate its way through his organs. He saw powerful demons pursue Pandora into Yaga Passage, fall upon her, and wrench her eight arms from their sockets. She writhed on the ground and spat Jake’s name into the dirt.

To the north of the lifeless city, the Demon Father had established an arena of blood for his hideous children. Jake watched, helpless, as Rachel was led out into the centre of the new coliseum, lashed to a post and left there. A restless hush settled over the demonic crowd. Then a cage was pushed into the arena and the horde shrieked its approval. The half-demon creature, Simon Lydgate, was released from his shackles. His yellow eyes found Rachel and he launched himself at the girl, his massive claws shredding and tearing …

On the ninth day, Jake’s fever broke.

The nightmares fell away and he felt the hard, cold reality of the prison cell around him. As his senses returned, Jake heard the lonesome beat of a drum drifting over the fields of Cravenmouth. He grasped the brickwork and staggered to his feet. He had already lost a lot of weight and his legs trembled beneath him. Although chained, he could still just about climb up to the window and look out.

It was still dark outside, but the peasants were already leaving their ramshackle homes and heading into the fields. A cock crowed and dawn shouldered its way over the forest. Alerted by the drummer boy, the peasants stopped in their tracks and turned to the forest road.

A man on horseback was moving sluggishly towards the town. A small figure robed in black, his tired head rolled with the motions of the horse. Two large saddlebags hung either side of his mount and a long staff had been tied to the horse’s flank.

The drummer marched out from the gatehouse to meet the man. Reaching him, he lifted a drumstick to his brow in salute. Then he executed a stiff about-face and escorted the stranger into Cravenmouth. All the while, the boy drummed out the same dull beat—
thum … thum … thum
—a sound that echoed across the still-waking town and turned Jake’s heart to lead.

The cell door swung open.

‘What have we here?’ Monks bellowed, a grin plastered across his fat face. ‘Looking out for the omen of your doom, witch? Well, it has come, as sure as death.’

The other gaolers entered the chamber and grappled the prisoner down from the window. Jake cried out as he was hurled against the stone floor. Meanwhile, Monks lifted his musket overhead.

‘Ready to meet your maker, boy?’

The sergeant slammed the rifle butt into Jake’s face, crushing his nose and splitting his mouth apart. Jake felt a brief moment of pain before the darkness claimed him.

When he eventually came round, Jake’s hand went straight to his face. The swelling from Monks’s previous attack had only just gone down; now the skin was taut again, the muscle beneath blooming. His index finger shivered as he traced the zigzag of his broken nose.

Dragged from his cell, Jake had been taken to a large, stone-flagged room roughly the size of a football pitch. It might have been a banqueting hall once upon a time, but all the furniture had now been removed and the only decoration was a mouldy tapestry showing Norman knights fighting against Saxon soldiers. Judging by the huge grey stones from which the room had been constructed, Jake guessed that he was still within the castle walls.

Something caught his eye: a boy, roughly his own age, sitting in a chair at the far end of the room. Frightened eyes stared out from beneath straggles of filthy hair. His face was covered in bruises and his mouth was torn and bleeding. Although not skeletally thin, his cheeks stood out like blades in his face. The kid had the look of something hunted. Jake turned his head slightly and the boy mimicked the movement.

Shaken, Jake turned away from the great wide window and the horror of his own reflection.

Voices. Shadows on the floor. Jake realized that he was not alone.

‘I must stress my objection once again, my lord. We should not place our trust in that …
gentleman
.’

Jake looked up. The first person he saw was Martin Monks, his musket slung over his back and a great hoop of keys twirling around his fat finger. Next to the sergeant stood a middle-aged man with a short, pointed beard and light blond hair that hung down to his shoulders in ringlets. From the finery of his dress, Jake guessed that this was Richard Rake, Earl of Cravenmouth. Jake recognized the third man at once. Immaculately dressed in a costume of black, Mr Leonard Lanyon gazed down at Jake.

‘I have heard many reports of the Witchfinder General,’ Lanyon continued. ‘It is said in some parts that his desire to seek out witches knows no limit. That he may even manufacture evidence when no real proof is to be found.’

‘Yes, yes, vicar,’ the Earl waved an airy hand. ‘You said all this at the meeting of the town burgesses, but the decision went against you. Mr Hopkins has already settled into The Green Man and we have agreed to pay his expenses and a fee of twenty shillings—’

Monks gaped. ‘That’s a month’s wage!’

‘We cannot very well send him away now,’ said the Earl, ignoring Monks’s outburst.

‘But this boy is in no fit state to be interrogated,’ Lanyon objected. ‘Look at him! He can barely sit up unaided. I’d like to know what kind of treatment he has had at your hands, Mr Monks. You deprived him of an ear, sir, was that not enough?’

‘He has been violent, vicar!’ Monks complained. ‘Me and my boys have had to restrain him many times this past week.’

‘Indeed? I should like to know how a half-starved wretch could cause problems for three burly men.’

‘But-but, he’s a witch!’

‘You’ve already made up your mind then, Sergeant? Then what is the use of this Witchfinder come from Manningtree?’

‘How can anyone doubt what he is, sir? Did you not see how he came among us that day? How he appeared out of nowhere wreathed in magical flame?’

During the to and fro of the conversation, Jake had tried to find a point at which he could speak. He wanted to tell them that the whole thing had been a mistake. He wasn’t a witch and he hadn’t meant to frighten the townspeople. Several times the words formed in his head only to die on his swollen lips. How could he even begin to explain who he was and why he had come to Cravenmouth?

Is the sergeant right, boy? Are you truly a witch?

Jake wetted his lips, ready to answer the vicar’s question. And then he realized that Lanyon had
not
spoken out loud. His voice had come to Jake like an unbidden thought.

How are you doing this?
Jake answered inside his mind.

I am not the one who needs to answer questions. Quickly now, there isn’t much time: do you mean us harm?

No,
Jake insisted.
I swear. Please, can you help me?

I’ll do what I can, but you must understand that, if it is proved that you have used magic, I cannot aid you. In these desperate times
all
magic is seen as evil. Even ministers such as I have been accused of witchcraft, and as much as I may wish to help, I will not endanger my life to do so. I will not be another victim of this cruel man, this self-appointed—